derekjberg.com

I’m sure this is because of my newness to blogging but as I was trying to give credit where credit was due, and share some of the great blogs I mentioned in my inaugural Happy Thanksgiving post I went back and realized that none of the trackbacks worked. It seems that the trackback links on posts are not what you want to link to, but the permanent link as you would one of your own posts. The trackback link is actually used to let the owner of the post that you are referencing know that you are linking to them. After figuring this out I found a great free resource that will do you trackback pinging for you it’s called the Wizbang Standalone Trackback Pinger. I’m sure there are other resources out there but this is what I found and it’s super easy to use.

Recently attended the free Microsoft Connections Event in Orlando. I was first impressed by the fact that it was free, not something we normally think of when talking about Microsoft. Unfortunetly did not find the event overly useful. What was described as being a seminar covering work essentials including, Outlook, Excel, and Publisher. Though Outlook was covered thouroughly especially with Business Contact Manager I found little of the information useful for anyone other than the most basic users. Excel wasn’t covered at all, and Publisher and Powerpoint were both covered in little over 5 to 7 minutes and basically it was to use the Microsoft templates.
I am looking forward to another free event from Microsoft, the Launch Tour 2005, which not only is free they give you a free SQL server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005. I’m scheduled for the data platform tract which hopefully be useful in integrating with Shelby to allow us to better use our information.

Since we’ve been married, my wife and I have a tradition with our friend(also known as our maid-of-honor) of hitting the day after thanksgiving sales. This day starts Thanksgiving night when go through the sale ads time and time again looking for all of our must-have items. This morning for the fourth year in a row we went again getting to Circuit City at 4am. After waiting in line for an hour there and getting the $20 DVD player for her classroom we head to Staples. There’s where we got the fun stuff, the $20 DVD burner for the computer, the $3 spindles of blank DVDs, the $10 512MB USB drives, the FREE paper shredder(did we really need it? no but it was free), and the $15 512MB Compact flash. After unsuccesfully hitting a couple more stores we are back in bed by 8am and sleep till noonish.
The remainder of the day is spent watching some TV and then getting ready to go to Buca di Beppo’s for our friend’s sister’s birthday dinner. Food was pretty good, atmosphere and service were excellent, this should be a great place for the small group to come for a night out.
Now to catch up on the day’s sports and go to bed, another day to be thankful for!

First off for those of you who actually see this on Thanksgiving, Happy Thanksgiving! Secondly how in the world did you find me? (Please let me know) For everyone else I hope you had a great day with friends and family, I know I did!(Any day that is set aside for eating and being thankful works in by book)

As I enter this world of blogging I thought today would be a great to begin. I want to start by giving thanks to all of you who I have learned so much from and one day I hope to be a help to others as you have been to me. I have listed some of my favorites and linked to one of their posts that I either found very useful or was just one of my favorites. So drum roll please in no paticular order:

Anthony Coppedge
Blogging Church
Church Tech Matters
Brian Glass
Jason Powell
Kem Meyer
Peter Bishop
Terry Storch
Perry Noble
Tony Morgan
Church Marketing Sucks