Texas Wait No More

A local Dallas church, Watermark, is holding a huge conference this weekend in partnership with Focus on the Family, Dallas CPS and area Adoption Agencies to help focus efforts on finding adoptive families for the children currently in the custody of the state of Texas.

Right now there are over 3500 kids who have legally been declared orphans living here in Texas waiting for families.

Previous efforts like this in the state of Colorado have helped to reduce the number of waiting children in that state by over half. Amazing.

For more information or to register for this event, go HERE.

Viewzi in the Newzi

Okay, first, let’s just clear up one thing. The whole “newzi” rhyme was Tricia’s idea. So if you loved it, now you know. And if you didn’t, well, there you have it.

Yesterday around 4:30 p.m. a news-team of two showed up at our offices to put together a story on Viewzi’s upcoming live launch. Stephanie Lucero interviewed several of us, got her footage, and had a story run on the 10 p.m. news. We were on the air at about 10:15 p.m. The end of the story included a teaser for a referral code found at the story’s accompanying web article. At approximately 10:22 p.m., our servers became a giant molten blob that sank into the earth’s crust…

Actually, the platform did amazingly. And the story had a fun “local boys try to make good and take on the big-bads of internet search” angle to it. You’ll see me briefly. If it was a movie, I would be listed in the credits as “Man 1, 3 men at a table”. Here’s the video. Enjoy!

RIP Larry Norman

Why Don’t You Look Into Jesus? was my introduction to Larry Norman.

Sipping whiskey from a paper cup, You drown your sorrows till you can’t stand up,
Take a look at what you’ve done to yourself, Why don’t you, you put the bottle back on the shelf,
Yellow fingered from your cigarettes, Your hands are shaking while your body sweats,
Why don’t you look into Jesus, He got the answer.

Gonorrhea on Valentine’s Day (v.d.), And you’re still looking for the perfect lay,
You think rock and roll will set you free honey, You’ll be dead before you’re thirty three,
Shooting junk till you’re half insane, Broken needle in your purple vein,
Why don’t you look into Jesus, He got the answer.

He was not a normal man, let alone normal Christian, but some of his music moved me. I can remember painting in our first house while blasting Only Visiting This Planet (Tricia was out and about). Perhaps this is a good tribute: Razing the Bar (ht Looking Closer Journal).

Pandering

It is shocking to hear a modern politician refuse to pander. Not merely so, but to mock the very notion that pandering is healthy.

Dumb

Let’s see. We are running a huge retail business. We need to cut costs. How should we go about cutting back costs without hurting sales?

I know, let’s come up with an incredibly simple scheme that ensures we fire all our top sales people. Every last one of them.

It boggles the mind.

Here’s a chart of Circuit City’s stock performance over the past couple years. I’ve marked the spot at which they took this bold cost saving action with a little red explosion. Yeah, that really helped stop the bleeding.

circuitcity.gif