Yep, dad though the ol son needed to get behind the wheel. A friend of ours gave us a really small bike but Ean just couldn't figure it out. So, I thought maybe something a little closer to the ground would help. He actually was able to steer and make himself go a little the night we got it. I haven't had a chance to work with him since. He's at that age where you either want to put him in his room for a little disciple or shake your head in amazement at how much he is learning. Dad is starting to wonder he can start teaching him some phonics. The world will only open up the day he starts to read. I sure wish I started reading a lot earlier in life. Oh well... just one life to live before heaven.

I upgraded Joomla tonight. Other than following the instructions I think everything is working okay. I also uninstalled Community Builder. It just isn't a feature I'm going to be utilzing at all for a while. Instead, I just need to focus on getting some content that anyone can see up and running. I've had a lot of fun working with Flickr, so I might see if I can get johncstark.com to automatically show the photo feed from our Flickr account. This site really is a learning experience for me. I don't anticipate anyone looking at it very often. There is hardly anything here.

This weekend we started using Flickr to make our photos available online for our friends and family. Yes, it may be a pain for some because they have to set-up their own account to view the photos. However, long-term, Flickr will be a lot easier for us to manage. In addition, they'll store all my photos forever at a pretty reasonable price. Most online back-up services cost a whole lot more than Flickr.

This weekend we started using Flickr to make our photos available online for our friends and family. Yes, it may be a pain for some because they have to set-up their own account to view the photos. However, long-term, Flickr will be a lot easier for us to manage. In addition, they'll store all my photos forever at a pretty reasonable price. Most online back-up services cost a whole lot more than Flickr.

I had a great day resting. I avoided anything remotely connected with work... it has been nice. I began re-reading "Conquistador" by SM Stirling again. There is something about that alternative history and relationship to current times that interests me. In addition, this particular book has some interesting insights into privacy issues I think are going to be true sooner than anyone thinks. The family went swimming this morning... my mom sold most of the items we gave her for the garage sale she had today. Getting rid of the stuff that doesn't fit in our home feels kindda good. The garage now has more room for the cars! I got a busy day at work tomorrow.

A friend of mine has a Xanga account, so I thought I'd sign up and check it out myself. In the last month I've been looking into a lot of the social networking sites to decide where I should hang my hat. Not a whole lot of people I know are into the social network thing at this point in their lives. Someday I'll land myself into one zone... if you check-out my website you'll find the links to the current spots you can find me. At this point in my life I'm just trying to hook up and stay in touch with old friends. Technology has made this a whole more feasible since snail mail.

Today I spent the entire day with the family. Actually, I did sleep in a while... We took my oldest son to "Cars" today. It was his first experience in a movie theatre. He did pretty good. It was occassionally too loud for him and a couple times he had to be held by his mom or dad. In time I think he'll come to like the movie a lot more than me. We also went to a park tonight. It is kindda weird having a kid doing things I remember doing growing up. How time flies. Tomorrow night we are going to the Glen Beck show at the Civic Center. I have no idea what the show will be like. His radio show is funny so I anticipate him giving a few laughs. We shall see. At work I'm going to try and tackle a few projects I've been waiting to do for several months. At this point I think the project will end up being hard to start than to finish.

Tonight was the second congregational meeting since Pastor Roger Poupart resigned back in Feb. It was a pretty typical meeting. Staff and board shared some prepared comments, the congregation asked a few questions, after 80 some minutes we all went home. I haven't done a whole lot of serious thinking for quite a while. I keep breathing each day and don't look to far into the future. I found myself continuing to read this book by John Maxwell about success and determining what course one should take in life. I really found it a hard book to read this weekend. There wasn't exactly any new information, or ideas, in the book I didn't already know. What made the reading difficult was being confronted with all those ideas at once. Applying those truths to my life was depressing. Or should I say... still depressing. I know it is true when he said that our journey through life will happen whether we plan for it or now. Either we can be apart of picking which path in life we will journey on... or it will be picked for us. If anything over the last 5 years or so of my life is apparent... I've not been making decisions in this life journey of mine. I got off my chosen path when I stopped by studies in seminary. WHile I strongly believe God opened the doors to the position at the church I've occupied over the last 10 years... I'm not sure whether or not my future will alway remain at First Federated Church. I'm in this really tough position at church. I'm more than a member of the support staff, I'm technically part of the pastoral staff. But my role in the church isn't really known or understood by many in the congregation. I don't think it was really intentional; however, you can look at the church's website and find information about the senior pastor position at the church. Every position on senior level staff was listed except my own. I don't know why it bothers me; it just does. Last week I was asked what my role at church was. I really didn't know of a good answer to that question. I think Joe Lightfoot knows what my role on staff is more than anyone else I currently know; however, beyond him many people place limitations on how see me. I think a big reason for that is my current job description and for the length of time most of the people at church have known me. Over the last few months I've thought about becoming ordained by the church. Perhaps that would be the next logical step in my journey in life. Joe seems to think it would open up some additional possibilities for me at the church. I think it will open up opportunities beyond the church as well. I really have been coasting through life since getting married in 1999. I don't blame Jayne for that; it has been my decision. Now after having two boys to look after... it is really tough not getting caught up with just plugging along in the place I currently find myself in. The days of this life seem to go by so quickly. Since Roger's resignation things have been looking better for me; however, I'm not sure how long that will last. Somehow I need to get myself beyond the role of day to day task fulfillment and back to leading again. Somehow I need to reach out and trust others to help me around the church. I need to go now. My wife just came to bed so good night.

After a twelve hour day I'm sitting here wondering where the day went. Wednesdays are typically busy; however, today was kindda weird. I was able to spend a few minutes with the family. They stopped by for a Summer Family Fun night we had at church tonight. Even though the boys are a bit too young to enjoy outdoor games, they had fun being outside. I worked on expanding the church drawing in the CAD today. We needed to create a map for an upcoming activity that is happening outside. So, I took the ol blueprints and started to add sidewalks, parking lots, and streets to the drawing we've been updating over the years. The nice thing about drawing in a CAD program is the flexibility in keeping it up-to-date and drawing it life sized. This weekend I'll be providing some media support for a home school conference. The work will keep me busy, but it won't be overly difficult. I'm mainly there in case something happens to keep things running smoothly. In the coming week I've also got get some proposals put together to implement some new software modules we use. I'm not used to journaling much anymore, so I better quit before I fall alseep.

I was updating my LibraryThing tonight with a new book and ran across a link to this site. I'm kindda into the journaling thing; however, I haven't done much of it intentionall for quite a while. The one thing I like so far about this site is the ability to enter both private and public entries. I explored setting up my own blog on my personal website; however, I wasn't that crazy about installing the software, learning how to use it, and keeping it updated and working all the time. It would also be limited to just me. If LiveJournal is anything like the LibraryThing I will like it. Using tags is pretty neat for organizing things... Anyway, I'm not sure if I know anyone else whose using LiveJournal. If it turns out I like using this service I'll recommend it to some of my friends. It isn't quite like a MySpace account... or another kind of blogging site. We'll have to see how it goes.

For several months I've thought about adding a gallery to johncstark.com. On several different occasions I looked at the extensions on Joomla for integrating a gallery into my Joomla CMS.

I tried installing a couple different galleries; however, I ended up choosing Gallery2. There is a bridge that integrates Gallery2 with Joomla which simiplifies some of the administration of the site. Installing Gallery2 wasn't extremely easy; however, I've been learning a lot in the process of working on johncstark.com which helped.

Right now the gallery is up and running but I've made it available only to those with a valid user name and password. I still have a lot of things to learn about incorporating a gallery into my CMS website. I also need to do some work on learning how to modify CMS templates.