I’m fortunate to know some cool people. But not all those cool people have blogs. So here’s a few people that should start blogging. I would read it if they did. I’d probably even share some of their posts.

Dave LeBlanc
You have an interesting life and good insight on a lot of things. Plus you moved back to Michigan so how else am I supposed to keep in touch?

Kirt Manuel
I know you started a blog at one time. But I would love read you perspectives on church communication on a regular basis. You’re a smart guy.

Holly & Jamin Williams
I know Holly attempted to start one but I think you both have smart things to say.

Brandon DeWitt
I know you’ve written new music. I want to hear it. Record some rough demos and post them along with the stories behind the songs. They’re always brilliant.

Josh and April Berardi
Josh was blogging before it was called blogging. It was called LiveJournal back then. And I really liked your posts. Especially the consistent updates on how often Evanescence was on the radio. Bring it back! And April- you soak up information more than just about anyone I know. Share some of it!

Ben Lenz
I set one up for you man. You should use it because people should read some of the things you think.

I’m sure there’s more but that’s a good list for now. I’ve had this post in the wings for quite a while. In fact it’s been so long that one of the people originally on the list has started blogging. My brother-in-law, Adam, has just entered the blog-o-sphere. And if he keeps it up, I think it will be brilliant.

Wow. It’s been over a month since I’ve posted. Here are some quick, unconnected thoughts to catch up on the past month.

• I’ve been busy with a steady stream of freelance design and photography work. It’s been a huge blessing financially, but I want to pull back on the amount of freelance work I take so I have more time for Megan and for life in general. Money isn’t the bottom line for us.
• I will be buying a new iMac soon and doing away with all the PC’s in our house. I’m very excited about that.
• On the Apple front, OS X Leopard has been delayed again. I’m not excited about that. I want it now.
• I spoke at Crossing (our twenty-something ministry) last week. I think that’s my first time giving a 20 minute talk. It was fun and I think it went pretty well. It was based on The Gospel of Apple.
• I continue to try and discover my strengths…the things I’m really great at and focus more energy there.
• Andy Stanley had a great three-part series on prayer. You should listen to the podcast. He points out that when people asked Jesus about prayer his response was never “Praying is just talking to God.” Jesus had some specific instructions about how to pray. I want to learn to pray. I think there is a lot to learn and it’s not just as simple as we make it sometimes.
• I brought the idea of moving our church database to FellowshipOne over a year ago. A few weeks ago our Senior Leadership Team approved it. This is going to change the way we do everything…for the better.
• Nobody does world missions like Christ The Rock. I really believe we have one of the best missions departments in the world. God is doing some incredible things through them.
• Megan is going to Mexico in June. I am planning on going to Africa (Sahara Desert) in November. It will be my first real “mission trip.” And I hesitate to use that phrase because the things that are happening, especially in the desert, are so much more than the typical idea of a mission trip.
• Megan and I are going to Chicago next weekend. I’m excited. We wanted to travel as eco-friendly as possible, so we’re taking a bus from Milwaukee to Chicago and using public transportation once we’re there. I think it will make the trip a little more adventurous and enjoyable.
• Our new apartment really is great. If you need a place to get away, come to Appleton and stay with us. We have an indoor pool, hot tub and access to a gas grill.
• Life really is better without TV. Try it for a week.
• Megan is not the person I married.  She’s a deeper, more caring, more Godly and more beautiful woman.
• Today is beautiful. Warm and sunny. A much needed change from last week’s snow storm. Megan and I are going to do something outside.

I have a lot more things I want to post about, so hopefully I’ll get to it in the next week. Have a good weekend!

Megan and I have had a lot of things stirring inside of us since attending Isn’t She Beautiful. The conversations have been great.

If you would like to read some more coherent summaries of the conference check out the Aspiring Indie blog. He’s done a really nice job at capturing the message of each session.

One of the things I love about WordPress is all the stats it keeps track of for you. I didn’t expect my notes from the conference to draw much attention from anyone but my friends, but aparantly I’m popular this week. Here’s what the graph looks like today:

The moral of the story is take notes and take notes and share them. People will like you.

Sorry if you received that last post multiple times in your RSS reader. WordPress gave me some errors when trying to post. Click to my blog to make sure you get the final, spell-checked version.

I started posting links my favorite entries from blogs I read each week, but I just discovered the beauty of Shared Items from Google Reader. When I see a post I like I just have to click “share” and it will appear on my public shared items page. And to top it all off there’s an RSS feed for my shared items as well. I tried to pull the feed into my sidebar, but I can’t seem to get it to work yet. So I probably won’t do a weekly post anymore because this method is much more efficient. If you really want to see what posts caught my eye, just subscribe to my shared items feed.

*EDIT* Right after I posted this I figured out the problem (had to do with how Firefox 2.0 handles RSS feeds). My 5 most recent favorite posts can now be found in the sidebar.

Here are my favorite posts this week:

Five common cliches (done wrong) by Seth Godin

Why Be Great? by Charlie Dean

Top Firefox 2 Config Tweaks from Lifehacker

Alternative Pumpkin-carving PDF patterns from Lifehacker (they even have patterns for Jay Leno’s face)

Shadows and Light by Seth Godin

Download of the Day: Optimized Firefox 2.0 (Mac) from Lifehacker

The Cringe Factor by Mark Batterson

A note for the RSS subscribers out there, I’ve changed the design on my blog. It’s much cleaner now (especially the sidebar). One thing I really love about WordPress is that they’re always adding new designs to choose from.

I’m going to try to start doing a weekly post with links to my favorite blog posts of the week. I always “star” things I like in Google Reader, but then don’t really do anything with them. This will give me more of a reason to star posts. So here’s my favorites from this week:

Future Tense by Mark Batterson

Oldest Remaining…a copywriting tip by Seth Godin

Top 10 Open Source Windows Apps by Lifehacker

 I Wish There Was A Word by Charlie

I started using Bloglines as my RSS reader a while ago and was pretty happy. But then Google updated the Google Reader interface a little while ago. I checked it out quickly but stuck with Bloglines. Today after reading this comparison of Bloglines and Google Reader I decided to poke around a little more and now I’ve made the switch. Google reader is a much better interface than Bloglines. I didn’t even realize how clunky Bloglines feels until I started using Google Reader. And it’s really easy to switch. Just export your feeds from Bloglines and then upload the file to import them into Google Reader. It even preserves the folder structure for you. So for all you Bloglines users out there, I highly suggest checking Google Reader out. Your life will feel less cluttered for it.

Three things that scare me.
1. birds
2. bad drivers
3. a slow, painful death

Three people who make me laugh.
1. Meg
2. steve carrell
3. Brian Regan

Three things I hate.
1. when I could teach a class better than the teacher
2. Laguna Beach
3. poor church marketing
Three things I am doing right now.
1. hanging out with my hot wife
2. watching Funny Face w/Audrey Hepburn
3. blogging

Three things I want to do before I die.
1. Parachute
2. travel in Europe
3. go to Africa
Three things I can do.
1. play guitar
2. design stuff
3. make love
Three ways to describe my personality.
1. geek
2. sarcastic
3. quiet
Three things I can’t do.
1. work on a car
2. talk about sports
3. pick up chicks
Three things I think you should listen to.
1. rob bell
2. Erwin McManus
3. your mom
Three favorite foods.
1. pizza
2. burgers grilled by megans dad
3. italian beef
Three shows I watched as a kid.
1. macgyver
2. heman
3. the wizard of oz

Three people I tag.

Megan
Tim
Mark