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So I am not going to get into the over use of the term “cloud” in the computing world today but I would like to look at an idea that has been rolling around in my head for the last few days.  With the launch of Google Drive there is yet another major player in the online storage space.  There are a large number of them and The Verge did a nice comparison over here.  That is all well and good and there  are several place online to get free “cloud” storage.  Users can now select the one that they desire to use.  Once you have hit the limit of the free space for a provider what do you do then?  You can select to pay for their services and increase the storage space or select an additional service and go down the same path… but what if there was another solution.  So the idea rolling around in my head would be “cloud storage” aggregation.  The idea is to have one service running on your device (computer/mobile device/…) that you authenticate with several cloud storage providers.  The aggregator then takes care of synchronizing your files up to one or more of your cloud storage provider spread the load and storage.   Based on some rough calculations there is 50+ GB of free online cloud storage.  Just a thought…

Today in worship I was singing along and praising God when right after I joyfully sang the following lyrics I was struck and had to stop

Lord use us (me) as You want, whatever the test

I was struck by the power and responsibility of that statement. As I was standing their silently reflecting on this I was convicted that I don’t believe that I could sing that with full truth. I have said yes to the Lord in many places and callings not knowing what would come of it… spreading the Gospel, world travel, unemployment, sleepless nights…

But am I ready to stand before the creator of the universe, my Savior, my God, my redemption, my Lord, my all and say; use me as You want, no matter the test!?!  I know what my Jesus would want me to say, I know what my heart should say.  My Savior Jesus left eternity to enter this world and be humbly born as a human, lived among us, taught us, feed us, prepared us, lived without sin and then was crucified brutally on a cross and died.  His death was not for anything He had done, but instead the punishment for my sins and the sins of all people from eternity to eternity were laid upon Him.  So where is the joy, where is the hope, why would submit my life to this Lord and be used no matter the test?  The joy is found in the resurrection of my Savior Jesus Christ, whom on the third day was raised from the dead, defeating death and hell for all of eternity.  My Savior lives, my Savior has concurred death so that I can live, so that all might live if they place their faith, trust, their all in Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

So, whatever the test… what is your answer?

Copy of a post that my lovely wife posted on our family site:

It is absolutely amazing to think about the significance of the month of March for us over the past few years. In March 2010, God spoke clearly to us while we were on vacation that we were to embark on the journey of adoption. One year later almost to the day, we were meeting Julia for the first time. And now, here we are one year later – celebrating our Forever Family. In between, it has been a series of highs, lows, and frankly, the darkest moments of my life. Let’s break it down…
Opening our hearts to a precious child born physically outside our family – EASY. Flying halfway around the world, adjusting to the 12-hour time difference, and spending 2.5 weeks away from our other children – NOT HORRIBLE. Loving a little girl as she howls over the loss of everything she has ever known?…Teaching her the rules of the home while still giving her the extra care she needs to work through her grief?…Living nearly an entire year of your life in a sleep-deprived state, waking up every one to two hours and hoping that prolonged screaming won’t be involved?…well, you get the idea. Adoption is HARD.
But then, somewhere along the way the days become marked by more joy than sorrow. The grieving becomes an occasional occurrence rather than a daily event. Crawling gives way to first steps, followed by running. First smiles turn to tentative giggles, which evolve into quick smiles and belly laughs. And stress and tension give way to familiarity and love. But I think pictures speak louder than words…to me this picture of Julia is a perfect, adorable representation of how far she has come in the past year. (Special thanks to Warner Photography for capturing the moment and allowing us to share it here!)

I could spend paragraphs telling you all the milestones that Julia has achieved already – and maybe I will at some point. But for now, I just want to say thank you. Thank you to all of you for your support over the last year while we adjusted to our new family. Thank you to Julia’s birth parents for bringing her into the world. And thank you to Our Heavenly Father, who led us to Julia and shows us all the ultimate model of adoption through His love for us.
And to our precious Julia – sweetheart, it has been a very long year in so many ways yet I also can’t believe it has already been a year since you were placed in our arms. I am constantly amazed by your resilience, amused by your antics, and in awe of the progress we have all made together in the past year. We love you forever.

Here is far more than I could capture already written about disk alignment for both physical and virtual machines so I will not attempt to recount the reason, theories and proofs for having aligned drives. So you know that you need to have your drives aligned but you have 2000+ virtual machines and you find that your drive alignment is off… now what? You (and your team) continue to search for a solution that is the most effective use of technology to help bring the world into alignment. Enter finally one simple amazing tool from Nicholas Weaver, UBERalign.

UBERalign allows for fast and if setup to concurrent VM drive alignment correction. There are some caveats that are pointed that need to be taken into account so before testing please read the details through. Test it out and then get on UBERaligning your virtual world away.

As some of you as friends and family know, our youngest daughter is currently in a stage where she does not sleep well at night. This is a heavy weight on my wife and myself as we help comfort her for what seems like endless hours night after night. This morning in worship this song was spoken from God’s heart to mine as I sat there in tears trying to listen. So I sat there thinking: What if my healing comes through tears? What if a thousand sleepless nights? What if those are what it takes to know God is near? What if trials of this life are God’s mercies in disguise? What am I really praying for? What are you really praying for? The song is titled: Blessings, by Laura Story.

We pray for blessings
We pray for peace
Comfort for family, protection while we sleep
We pray for healing, for prosperity
We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering
All the while, You hear each spoken need
Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things

‘Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

We pray for wisdom
Your voice to hear
And we cry in anger when we cannot feel You near
We doubt Your goodness, we doubt Your love
As if every promise from Your Word is not enough
All the while, You hear each desperate plea
And long that we’d have faith to believe

‘Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near
And what if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

When friends betray us
When darkness seems to win
We know that pain reminds this heart
That this is not, this is not our home
It’s not our home

‘Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
And what if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near
What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy
And what if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are Your mercies in disguise

Have you ever had a small  or large new idea, really new it could take off but just did not have a place to fund it from.  There is now a way if you can get the “community” behind you.  Kickstarter is a new way to fund and follow creativity.

The first project that I was turned onto was a new book that Anne Jackson was working on: Interlude: An eBook of poetry, photos & stories behind them. Having read and enjoyed Anne’s previous works I signed up to be a backer right away. After digging around more on the sight I had found a book that I was excited about but turned out to not get fully funded. I am hopeful that Matt Weber will continue to work on China: The Alphabet Book (26 rhymes, photos, facts A to Z), I would love to see that make it to print.

Kickstarter is not just for enthusiastic authors that are trying to find a way to get books published, they currently sort their projects into 13 different categories including: Art, Comics, Dance, Design, Fashion, Film & Video, Food, Games, Music, Photography, Technology, Theater and Writing & Publishing.

A list of some of the projects that I have offered backing on include the above to books as well as; MySaver, Pen Type-A, Orbit.

Head over and help back some fun and creative projects and products that people are trying to get off the ground.

Tomorrow will mark one year since I entered into a time of transition in my life.  After an interesting nine months of prayer, family time and job searching I accepted a position back into the corporate world.

It was clear from the very first day that I was let go from Messiah that this clearly directed from God… it was just up to several months of prayer understanding.  There were moments of frustration, anger, and desperation.  The time was spent in joy, the love of Christ and seeking after Him.  The time that was spent with my family is priceless, nothing can replace that time.

So what did the job search look like?  Well the first item was I was not out to look for a job but I was seeking out what my next career would be.  After applying with over 12corporations, grueling interviewins with 3 of them I accepted a position at The Dow Chemical Company as a UNIX Architect Specialist.  There is some amazing computing going on at Dow.  I am working with an amazing team; small, agile and highly empowered.

For the side venture that Erin and I are pursuing, well that is still in the works and more to come on that as far as location and time of opening.

To add to the ongoing online recipe collection I bring to you Buffalo Chicken Dip. This recipe originally came to us from our friends the Hansen’s.

Buffalo Chicken Dip

• 4 bonless chicken breast
• 12 oz hot sauce
• 16 oz cream cheese
• 16 oz blue cheese dressing
• 8 oz monterey jack cheese
• 1/2 cup celery

Season and bake the chicken in a shallow backing at 350 degrees for 1 hour. I generally bake the chicken in advance a day or two. After the chicken i cool, shred the chicken and layer into a 9×13 pan. Cover with the hot sauce. Melt together the cream cheese and blue cheese dressing in a pot or a double boiler. Pour the melted cheese mixture over the chicken and hot sauce. Sprinkle the shredded cheese on top and bake for 30 – 40 minutes at 350. Remove from oven and top with chopped celery. I serve it with corn tortilla chip scoops.

Enjoy!

In fixing a PC for a friend this week I noticed that the free version of Malwarbytes had not been updated of run in a long time.  As noted, the free version will not auto update or auto run.  So then for the non-parinoid person Malwarebytes is simply installed and doing nothing… well that does no good.  After updating the software and removing the crud that had infected it I had a realization;  why not just use Windows Scheduled Tasks to update and run Malwarebytes?  So a quick expereriment using the command line showed that it will take command line aruguments and run the update and full scan.  Over to the Windows task scheduler, drop in two new tasks to run the update command and then run the full scan.  There you have it, a more automated and hopefully sooner catch to nasty software that someone might get.

Just another step in automating the world one task at a time.  I kick myself over not thinking of this sooner to help fend of nasty stuff from friends PCs.

After reading Pastor Thomas‘ comments and thoughts on what Messiah and journeys coffeehouse are doing I was beyond compelled to reply.  Below is my reply to his post.

Pastor Thomas I would like to share my thoughts on your post and journeys coffeehouse on main street.

When journeys coffeehouse was formed over three years ago inside the of the walls of Messiah it was known that is was only a place to grow and cultivate the idea of using a third place to help share the Gospel to the world. As much as one will try the fact is that journeys coffeehouse in it’s current location is stuck within the confines of a traditional church building. Folks who don’t yet know Christ as their personal Lord and Savior don’t want to walk into the walls of a traditional church, most churches buildings freak them out. As I recall from what I read, Jesus did not do the majority of His ministry and outreach in the temple but out where the people are. journeys coffeehouse goal is to create a ministry venue in which the gospel can be shared and lived out. journeys coffeehouse is not intending to be “a church” on main street but instead and more powerful to be “the Church” on main street. We can continue to build traditional church buildings and asking the world to come to Him, or we can take Him to the world.

I would rather pour my life into someone while sharing the gospel instead of polishing the pretty bricks on a traditional church building. Jesus did not come to the world to have us make members in church clubs but instead to have His creation cross from death to life through believing in Him.

Be Blessed,
Dan Lacher

Update to the post.  I do understand and believe in the local church so please don’t misunderstand that through my strong statements above.  What I do have a problem with are the traditional church settings are so inwardly focused that they are not evangelizing to the world and tightening in on the “club” mentality if even unconsciously.