First, I must tell you, before continuing my review, I am a book review blogger for BookSneaze.com, Thomas Nelson Publishing’s blogger book review arm.  I am in no way required to give a positive review of this title.  With that being said…

When I asked BookSneaze.com to review this book it was a mistake.  I had thought it said, The Gospel According to THE Lost, which I thought was a great concept on how to reach The Lost with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Perhaps it is a book that needs written, perhaps I should right it…

Anyway, when I received the book I was a little disappointed.   I am not a fan of the Lost TV show and it took me a while to get into the book.  However, my disappointment dissolved away as I started to read. 

Ultimately, this book is not about the TV show, it tackles a much deeper question, using the TV show as its platform.  The true topic is how Christians interact with the culture.  I’m a firm believer in being a relevant Christian.  I believe that being in the world, but not of the world doesn’t mean that you disconnect yourself from the culture, but you live within the culture with the goal of reaching people within the culture.

Chris Seay takes on a similar tone as he takes the characters from the show (which I assume are accurate caricatures, as I don’t watch the show) and places them in Biblical stories.  This is a tool that I like, it exposes scriptural principals in an indirect, but relevant way, to people who are fans of the show.

While I can’t give this book 5 stars on the fact that I had to read it on limited knowledge of the subject matter, I can give it a solid 4 stars on the writing and the way Mr.. Seay interwove modern culture with classic principals.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com <http://BookSneeze.com> book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 <http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html> : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Thank you, Tim Heuer, for creating this simple to use tutorial on how to make a custom media player in Silverlight, simply.  Here’s the link to the actual Blog Post.

To see how I do at using this tutorial, I’ll be putting Silverlight video on the Family Fellowship Christian Center website in a couple of months when we start our expansion project in Miami.

In the meantime I am going to be hard at work doing a complete site redesign, so look forward to that as well.

Have you ever wanted to have total and complete control over all things Windows 7?

Would you like to have this immense power at your fingertips in one simple Library?

What if I told you that you could have this power by following three simple steps?

Would this thrill you?

Would this change your computing world?

How much would you pay for this information?

Is it worth $50? $25?

Well, right now can have these immense, God-like powers, in an itty-bitty living space for just $0.

How is this possible you say? 

How can you afford to give this power away for free?  Well…

Just follow these steps exactly.

1. Copy the following text exactly: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
2. Create a new folder anywhere on your Windows 7 computer.
3. Paste the text you just copied as the folder name.

It’s that simple.  Those 3 steps will create a library with all Windows 7 administrative functions in one convenient spot.  Brilliant!

ConsultUSA is looking for a .Net Architect for a position in the Pittsburgh, PA area.  If you are looking for a new and exciting opportunity, this one may be right for you.  This is with one of ConsultUSA's bigger customers and is a 4-6 month contract-to-hire, or as I like to call it, rent-to-own 

Perhaps I'm biased, bu, in my opinion, ConsultUSA is one of the best companies to work for.  They truly take care of their people with training and advancement opportunities.

Here is the Job Summary.

JOB SUMMARY

The primary function of the Application Architect is to research, design and develop enterprise-wide architecture and solutions to meet business needs.  Architects are experts in multiple technologies and are capable of taking abstract requirements and ideas from conception to actual implementations.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Identify new technologies with intrinsic value for application in ServiceLink solutions.  Lead activities with external vendors and internal team to identify, evaluate and recommend system hardware and software.  Defines and leads proof of concept activity associated with technology assessment
• Work with IT and business representatives to identify opportunities leading to the design and development of tools and applications in support of ServiceLink Moon and VGS partner business operations.
• Document the desired future state of application architecture, and document the gaps between current and future states.  Define transition plans to close the gaps.
• Design, document and drive adoption of enterprise-wide architectures and frameworks.
• Assume a leadership role in establishing and insuring compliance with IT governance policies and initiatives including standards, best practices and policies.
• Serve as subject matter expert in multiple technology areas.
•  Assure that solution designs meet requirements for scalability, performance and quality in accordance with negotiated service level agreements.
•  Participate in the assessment and resolution of software defects discovered during the quality assurance process.
•  Work with software engineers, QA engineers, technical writers, configuration management and infrastructure, as needed, to ensure quality and the successful implementation of new applications or features.
• Assist IT Managers in assessing feature and requirement tradeoffs.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related years of experience
• 10+ years experience in software or applications engineering and/or technical operations.
• Work and/or academic experience building applications employing the following:

.Net

• Extensive background in the .Net Framework with emphasis on version 2.0 - 3.5
• Experience architecting ASP.Net web and web service solutions, Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundati

Common

• Relational database with emphasis Oracle 10g+ and Sql Server 2005+
• XML, XSL, XSD and XPath
•  Common web protocols such as HTTP, HTTPS, SOAP, etc.
• Object relational mapping tools
• Internet and hardware technologies such as load balancers, firewalls, clustering, encryption devices or accelerators.
• Detailed knowledge of operating systems or components such as transaction processing, asynchronous implementation and load balancing is a plus.
• Heterogeneous operating environments emphasizing Windows and Linux.
• Experience with design tools, design patterns and familiarity with application of UML and class diagram representation

• Works effectively in a fast paced environment.
• Works well in team scenarios and possesses characteristics representative of a self-starter and motivator
• Creative and effective problem solving skills
• Ability to work on/manage multiple tasks concurrently
• Excellent communication skills

I just got off of my first Microsoft Ambassador call.  At least that is what we’re being called for the moment, as they explained.  We’re waiting for an official name to be issues.  At that time we’ll be giving titles, badges and all of the other fun stuff that comes from being associated with Microsoft.  I’m looking forward to that, it will be cool.

Anyway, I walked away from the call with 4 pages of notes, most of which surround Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2.  I haven’t compiled them into anything usable yet, but when I do, I’ll put up a post about some of the coolness that is in the next version of our favorite IDE.

Steven Smith, one of Microsoft's Regional Directors, owner of ASPAlliance.com and all around nice guy, has a new blog post explaining how he has installed Windows 7 from a USB drive.  This is especially useful for those of you who want to install Windows 7 on a netbook.

Also, for those readers with Netbook, it's been said that you can only use one of the trimmed down versions of Windows 7 on the netbook, this is only partially true.  You can only purchase the trimmed down Windows 7 on the netbook.  If you have a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate, the rumor is that you can install it on the netbook and it runs swimmingly. 

Anyway here is the link to Steve's blog post on How to Install Windows 7 from a USB Drive.

Thanks for all of the hard work Steve!

This morning I attended the Windows 7 launch event in Pittsburgh.  It was the start of a very good morning.  First, I had set up some time to meet with the local Microsoft Partner Evangelist so we could set up a lunch meeting.  ConsultUSA is a Certified Microsoft Partner and we're wanting to level set with Microsoft to see how we can make our partnership beneficial for both of our companies.

The Evangelist was gracious, of course, giving me some valuable information about other people at the Pittsburgh office of Microsoft that could probably be more help than he.  He even grabbed my attention a few minutes after we were done talking to introdoce me to one of the people he'd mentioned.  I'm going to try and set up a lunch meeting with him as well.

When I get together with these gentlemen, I need to remember that I've been wanting to talk to someone about getting some .Net MVP's in Pittsburgh.  It's amazing to me, we have a pretty large community of developers in Pittsburgh, but no developer MVP's.  I think it would help bolser the area if we could get a handful of MVP's in the Pittsburgh market.

Well, then we went into the launch event itself.  We sat toward the front, which is what we get for going into the theater late.  I guess my gabbing gave us less than optimal seats.  Normally, I would consider the front row, or seats toward the front, to be great seats, however, the setting for the event was a movie theater.  Not just any theater, it was a 3D screen.  The presentation wasn't in 3D, but the screen was HUGE, making it hard on the neck from our vantage point.

Testiment to the size of the community for Microsoft is in the fact that there were two theaters sold out.  There were no seats in either.

The first presentation was titled, "Taking Your Application to the Next Level with Windows 7".  The presenter took us through some of the new features of Windows 7 and showed us how easy it is to put them into our existing or new applications.  Features such as The Windows Troubleshooting Platform, which will be great for our system admins.  The admin that was with us declared that he was excited, he could put troubleshooting steps in place that could stop many mundane calls to the help desk.

Another nice thing that is in Windows 7 is the ability to stretch the battery life of a netbook out to 6 - 8 hours by changing the settings of services.  You can now set certain services to turn on "On Demand" instead of always being on or off.

Some other neat features are the ribbon bars that were once proprietary to Microsoft Office are now part of the core of the OS.   The ribbons can be added, fairly simply, to new applications.  We can now take advantage of the new task bar in Windows 7, which is one of my favorite additions to Windows 7, by the way, you can now place quick links on the preview windows.  An example would be an MP3 player application.  You could add the play, rewind, forward, pause and stop buttons on the preview panel and they would work in the same way the same buttons would on the full application.  The Zune software does that well and it's awesome, one of my favorite features of the Zune 4.0 software on Windows 7.  Meaning I don't have to Alt+Tab to the application to go to another song, or pause, I can mouse over the Icon and hit the right button without ever bringing up the application in the main window. 

The second session was, "Beyond Human Interaction with Windows 7 Sensor and Location Platform". It turned out really sad though.  The speaker had dropped the sensor panel that he was going to use the day before and it wasn't working right.  It's a shame, I was really looking forward to seeing it in action.  The link above gives the how to on the platform. 

The final session was, "Building the Next Generation User-Interface with Multitouch and Ribbon on Windows 7".  it was just really cool to see how easy it is to turn an existing application into a multitouch enable application.  I hope to get an HP Touchsmart someday, so I can start working on some Multitouch applications.  There are some great features in Windows 7 that I will not be able to use until I can get a touch enabled PC.

After the event we all got copies of Windows 7 Ultimate.  I'll be giving the copy I recieved away at my Windows 7 house party, since I'm already running it from my MSDN collection.  If you haven't gotten an invite to my house party and would like one, and I actually know who you are, leave me a comment.

As an aside, when we got back to the office the owner of the company had brought in his 2009 Stanley Cup Championship ring.  Here's a pictury of me wearing it.  it made for the perfect end to a really good morning

Ted Dekker does it again with another amazing book.

The Circle Trilogy has been my favorite series of books since I first read it, supplanting the Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings. When I first heard that Green was coming out and that it was going to be both the beginning and the end of the series, I was skeptical at best. How do you end a story and start it in the same book? Well, Ted pulls it off masterfully.

Green is the true beginning and appropriate ending to this absolutely life changing series.

ConsultUSA is looking for an experienced SQL Server DBA for one of our downtown Pittsburgh clients.

If you or anyone you know fits the bill and are looking for a new and exciting opportunity in Pittsburgh, the City of Champions (and the Pirates), let me know via the contact form on my site.  I'll get back to you with my email address so you can send me your resume.

 Here's the description:

Our client in the Pittsburgh, PA area is seeking an SQL Server DBA to fill a contract opening.

Position Requirements:

-  Four plus years of SQL Server DBA experience using both SQL Server 2000 and 2005

-  Ability to work within established guidelines regarding database security, installations, and configuration

-  Able to handle multiple projects concurrently with little supervision

-  Outstanding verbal and written communication skills

Experience with SQL Server on Microsoft Clustering would also be desired but not required.

Thanks!

As many of you know, I'm a huge fan of Ted Dekker.  He's definitely been my favorite author over the past 5 years or so, when I first discovered his books.  Since then I've read many of his books.  I would type out the list, but he writes a lot of books and the list would be long.

Well, Ted, being the genius that he is, has a street team called the Forest Guard, based on his books Black, Red and White, who's job it is to let people know about his books.  Well, I, being the fan that I am, am a member of the Forest Guard.

If you would like to join the Forest Guard or find out more about Ted's new book Green, go to http://teddekker.com/readgreen and register for the site.  My recruit ID is 6291, don't forget to enter it.

Also, hit up Ted on Twitter and Facebook, those sites will help keep  you in the know.