don’t panic

i figured i would give y’all an update on my arm. as you probably know i received a typhoid shot earlier today to get myself ready for our annual youth mission trip to nicaragua. for some reason the typhoid shot is always painful and earlier today was no exception – it hurt. the question now is does it still hurt?

the answer is – yes it does still hurt.

critique

i love good comments from people. i really enjoy it when people brag about something i have done or said. it makes my day or night we someone says that what i have lead has been amazing.

of course, i don’t usually grow much from these positive comments that i love to hear. actually, i usually grow the most form negative comments. for me the negative comments usually point the clearest to my weaknesses. in some ways the negative comments are closer to honest critique than any of the positive comments i have ever received.

according to wikipedia criticism is:

the activity of judgement or interpretation … the process of offering valid and well-reasoned opinions about the work of others in a friendly manner rather than an oppositional one.

i need people to “reason” about what i am doing so that it’s weaknesses can be pointed out and i can work on improving those areas. that’s why i joined the weekly group at flickr. weekly is a place where you can post one picture a week and then people offer their criticism concerning your photo. i want to improve as a photographer and the weekly group is helping with that. i love it. the positive comments are good but truthfully i usually learn allot more from the negative comments.

i feel the same is true in ministry. the positive feedback is nice but the negative statements (when we sort through all the person crap that often accompanies them) do the best job of pointing out our areas for improvement. i don’t absorb all that is said with a negative comment because often there is a bunch of personal bitterness connected with some of those statements. yet more often than not there is a nugget of truth to be found within the criticism. that’s what i want to discover. i want to find that small granule of truth and learn from it.

alan, the assistant youth minister, and i are about to start critiquing each other’s messages. hopefully we can lovingly point out each other’s strengths and weaknesses and improve because of it. i hope it works because i know that i need it.

firefox is amazing

over the past few weeks i have found a new reason to love firefox. that new reason is called grease monkey. grease monkey is an extension to firefox that allows people to write and use scripts that improve how the browser works on various websites.

for example, i use one that makes it possible for me to get the link code to a specific image without having to go through several other pages, another that highlights which discussion threads i have been posting in and which ones have been updated, and finally another that automatically uses google maps to geotag my images.

if you look around i’m sure you will find some computer genius you has written a scrip to make surfing your favorite site easier. i love this.