DanLacher.COM

For those that know I have had a sorta love / dislike relationship with Verizon for 10 years now. I have been a Verizon customer since March of 2000, so I am by no means an original customer but they have been my only wireless provider since I entered the marketplace. In the past my only real complaint has been how they sell/subsidise phones that have had functionality crippled or turned off all together.

Now fast forward to December of 2009 when Verizon decided that they would push the Bing application out to all of their Blackberry users. Really, for a device that owned by the user and not the company and for a device that is password protected from application install I don’t understand how a company would make that move. Now I understand that it was not a full application push but a shortcut to install the application and until recently no apparent way to remove it… I don’t consider hiding the application icon a solution.

Move ahead again to February of 2010 when Verizon pulls the same stunt and pushed a shortcut install application for Slacker Radio out to my device.

WHAT! At this point I was out right pissed off. I called Verizon to find out what they heck was going on. After a discussion with the front line customer service member who clearly had no idea what I was talking about he informed me all he could do is file a complaint for me, which I did. The following day I received a follow up phone call on the complaint to gather further information and clarification and was told they were going to escalated the issue further along. I am still waiting to hear back from them.

The saga continues when I then connect up the Blackberry to back it up before installing OS updates. The backup went fine but I can’t say the rest did. My device is currently running v4.5.0.138. In the process of updating to v4.5.0.175 one of the main application Blackberry Messenger disappeared. Details of the applications showed it installed, so I tried all the combinations of reinstalling, uninstalling, installing… with no joy. So I decided to swallow my pride and go in to see if the techs in the Verizon store could help. Well that was a waste of time, they did all the sam steps I had all ready done and then concluded that a device wipe would fix it. Well it does not. The store also has no ability to reload the OS on a Blackberry device. So I venture back home, downgrade the OS back to v4.5.0.138 and Blackberry Messenger is back and fully functional. So they failed in understanding devices they are supporting and I am just glad I was able to figure it out to get the functionality back.

So while restoring my device and poking through some deeper options, specifically: Options, Advanced, Service Book I found Bing and Slacker Radio. So I figured what they heck, can’t hurt to delete them, the worst that happens is I have to restore like I just finished doing after the Messenger fiasco. I am glad to say that did the trick, no more application shortcuts on the device.

I have been so pissed through this process that I have been researching a switch of the Verizon network. The devices and networks out there that have my interest are the iPhone, Blackberry (not on Verizon) and the Google Nexus One.

The story is not finished yet, but I am waiting to hear back from them on their next move.

Today marks an interesting day, a time of transition shall now begin. My first post college career with Sun Microsystems (now Oracle) I made the choice to transition to new employment. Today the decision was made for me to transition into the next area of life. I have loved to serve at Messiah on staff for three years. In that time I had the privilege of helping to give birth to journeys, and bring the technology Messiah uses to reach the world and spread the message of Christ much further along.

I leave this post with a word from our Lord.

And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns. Philippians 1:6

Be Blessed
dl

So what is up on this end… I use to be a power blogger and now it seems as though I have dropped of the face of the blogsphere?  I am here but my public writing has fallen off a bit so here is a slight catch up on some happenings.

I had the wonderful pleasure of joining with Third Place Consulting in helping to open up a cafe.  It was an amazing time of ministry, leadership and training.  As a side note… remember “ceramic works far better than paper when drinking coffee in the shower”.

From a local ministry perspective, this past Easter was the first since I have been full time at Messiah, that is a learning experience of really understanding what work / life balance is.  For those that have never been in employed full time ministry with at church, there as you would guess are two times that the work load goes up: Christmas and Easter.  This does not discount any and all of the other worship services that happen throughout the year, but those are two key opportunities to reach out and there is extra effort placed in those times.  If for some in America that are CEO Christitan (Christmas and Easter Only) than that is a key and curcial time to pour the love and salvation message into everyone that enters in either physically or virtually.

Virtually, what the heck do I mean by that?  One of the first items that we took on at Messiah was to launch a live streaming worship experience.  Messiah currently offers a live streaming worship service every Sunday at 9:30 eastern time.  We have blown the doors of the church and said that no matter where you are in the world, if you would like to worship with this faith family, then join us in worship online and give glory and honor to Jesus just like if you were sitting in the physical worship center.  Some time has passed now and we have most of the bgs worked out, a few more to go.  I am so honored to be a part of getting it off the ground and seeing it start to take a footing.  I was amazing the first time that we were able to witness someone through this streaming service give their life to Christ, that makes all the hours worth it.  All honor to Jesus for a transformed life and I am humbled to be a part in it.  If you would care to join it you can find it at Messiah On Demand.

journeys is still rockin’ away and I continue to see it as a valuable ministry tool to connect people, develop leaders and fund causes.  They just posted a brief on the latest cause the help to fund… nothing but life transformation and life saving.

Right now I am jacked to see spring is here and to enjoy being outside with my family.  Our oldest is starting soccer this year and she could not be happier.  Our youngest is still pushing in teeth, so that is a bit rough, but is all over the place and is bundle of joy and love.  My lovely wife is doing well, she is an amazing woman of God, awesome wife and unbelievable mother.  She is getting close to finishing up a large project at work and balances it all so well.  I can’t wait for the backpacking trips this season… I totally missed out last year with the bad knee.

God Bless,
dl

I have been working with Ustream as a very low cost solution for live streaming events, specifically worship, from Messiah.  We then embedded the Ustream video and chat into our own site at full resolution instead of being compressed down to a small image.  We have been fighting the battle though of users that enter our site being assigned a Ustream guest name similar to “ustream-12345″.  This works fine for the guest that desire to come in an remain annonymous, but we also have the flip side of folks that desire to worship online and have thier name or nick name displayed in the chat.

At first I thought the solution to this would be to first go to Ustream, get logged in and then return to the live streaming page.  This did not yield any change in the results.  Futher searching through the help and forums from Ustream did not reveal anything further to the solution.  I was finally albe to connect with someone on the Ustream live help chat and obtain the solution.  So instead of keeping this nugget of knowledge to myself I am sharing it with you all.

There are one solution that will help with any guest as well as guest that are registered users on Ustream.

• For those guest that desire to change thier assigned name from “ustream-12345″ to soemthing more understandable they simply type in the chat box:
  /nick MyName
  This will change the “ustream-12345″ to “MyName-12345″
• For guest that desire to use their full Ustream username then the also have to supply their Ustream password:
  /nick UstreamUsername:UstreamPassword
  This will change their nick to their Ustream one for the chat.

Solution accomplished for those that are using a Ustream embedded chat outside of the original Ustream show page.