Finally found it!

Enter – the MacBook Air.

I have been toying with the idea of getting a MacBook Air for some time. For the past two years I was huge MacBook Pro fan and user. I didn’t want anything else. Then the when the iPad came out I had to have one. I thought it was going to change my life. I tried it out. I thought it was cool but couldn’t really find its place. Then Verizon finally got the iPhone. I got one. I love it! After the iPhone I was confused as to why I needed an iPhone, and iPad and a MacBook Pro. My backpack was getting really heavy! I kept saying – if only the iPad had a keyboard. I thought about getting a keyboard case for the iPad but then that is something else to carry around.

We needed a test Mac for some projects. Back at the beginning of the year we ordered an 11″ MacBook Air for our test computer. The Air was cheap and lightweight. I still couldn’t part with my beloved MacBook Pro. One of my employees has taken “ownership” of our 11″ Air and he thinks it is the best thing ever. I kept say it was so little, I can’t use anything like that. Then about a month ago the opportunity arose to possibly swap my laptop out. I got to thinking, can I really do everything I need to do on a MacBook Air? I ran down the list – I think it might work! So I went for it. I ordered up a 13″ MacBook Air with the i7 processor, 4GB of RAM and the 256GB storage option. I was very excited.

It has now been a little over a month since I got thing going with the new MacBook Air. I must saw I love it! The size is perfect. I can still use my big monitor when I am either at work or in my home office. The speed is great. I have no issues running VMware Fusion or Virtual Box. The storage has not been an issue so far. It is great to take to meetings and just pull out at home for quick things. So far I love it and I can’t imagine using another laptop ever! My backpack is much lighter. This is a great product by Apple! Way to go!

 

Happy New Year!

Well it seems it has been almost a year since my last post! I thought this blog thing would be easy but apparently I am failing miserably at it. My New Year’s resolution is to blog more about projects going on at work and some technology reviews of some really neat products we have been using recently. That should keep me busy for a while anyway!

In the meantime you can check out my most recent home improvement project of installing a water softener. It turned out to be pretty fun and should be a massive improvement in our house since we have such hard water. It had got so bad that our black dish ware was starting to turn white! Here are some pictures of my installation project in case any of you want to try this for yourself!

Water Softener Installation

I look forward to providing you some more insightful technology news soon!

 

It’s Official!

Ok…I admit…I must be the worst blogger ever! I seem to make one post every 6 months! I really am going to try and do better. We have a ton of huge projects going on at work and I will try my best to keep the church IT crowd up to date on what we are doing. As for me, well I will bring you up to speed on what we have done since my last post!

At the and of May 2009  we had our family and friends beach trip. It was a ton of fun. We went to Corolla, NC which if you have never been there is a must visit for a beach vacation. We spent our time kayaking in the sound and also driving up into the 4×4 beaches which are litteraly at the end of the road in Corolla. They are some of the most beautiful beaches on the east coast. Looking at these pics again really makes me want to up and move to the beach now!!

Corolla, NC Trip – May 2009

Things were pretty quiet for us the rest of the summer. We enjoyed relaxing at the pool and a few weekend trips to see the parents. Once summer was over it was time for Marcus to start kindergarten! He was very excited as you can see in the pictures. He really loves school and does very well.

Marcus First Day of School

In September I commenced Phase 2 of our backyard landscaping project. This includes building a paver patio beside the deck we built. We were going to wait and do this later in 2010 but we came across some used pavers on Craigslist and couldn’t pass them up. These pictures show what we did but I accidentally deleted the photos of the current state of the project. Basically all of the grass has been removed from the patio area and there is a huge mud pit in our backyard. I worked on this for a few weeks and then every day that I had off it rained and rained and then it snowed. We might never get this project done! More updates to follow on this one.

Patio Day 1

On the work side of the house we had the official launch of McLean Bible Church – Prince William Campus. This was a really exciting time for us as a church. This was our first Community Campus that we built from scratch and it turned out amazingly well. Attendance has been good and this weekend Frontline Prince William will start services on Sunday night. We are excited to see what God is going to do in Prince William County!

Prince William Campus Launch

During the fall we met up with some old friends at Cox Farms in C’ville. It was a great time catching up and the kids had a blast. The day we went was pumpkin smashing day. You could bring your pumpkin and have it smashed. It was fun to watch!

Cox Farms

Well here is the blizzard of 2009! What a crazy time this was. Out of the blue we got hammered with 2 feet of snow. Yes that is correct 24 inches! I had not seen this much snow in a long time and it came very quickly. It was beautiful to see but created a huge mess all over the area.  Is all I can say is thank goodness for 4-wheel drive! The kids and I had fun sledding and Michelle also made a huge batch of cookies that we delivered to all of our friends who were stranded in their house. It is our family tradition to go driving in the snow if and when it does snow in the DC area.

Blizzard December 2009

Finally the year ended with an amazing Christmas celebration hosted at our house this year. My parents moved to Houston, TX last fall and since everyone was traveling in we decided to host. Unfortunately Michelle’s dad got really sick right before Christmas and had to join us via Skype on our home theatre PC. It was a good time though.

Christmas 2009

Well that is about it friends. We did go to Houston at the end of the year to check out my parents new house and the city down in Texas. It was my first time in Texas and it was a fun trip. I haven’t had time to upload the pictures from that trip but will try to do that soon.

Stay tuned for our big 2010 projects at MBC this year. Some really exciting stuff that I can’t wait to tell you about! Till next time…hopefully sooner than 8 months!

 

What have I been doing?

Apparently I am very bad at this blog thing! I have no idea if anyone actually reads this or not but here is what I have been up to lately.

The first part of April we spent landscaping our yard. We did some landscaping last year but never really finished the job.

Landscaping April 2009

In April Michelle and I took a trip to the gulf coast of Florida. It was so much fun! The weather was awesome and we had such a great time exploring the area. Part of our goal of the trip was to find areas we really liked so we can buy a vacation house down there at some point in life. Our real goal is after the kids are off to college we can move there!

Florida Trip April 2009

When we got back from Florida we started working on building a deck in the back of our house. It has been quite the project and taken much longer than I anticipated. I hope to have it finished up this coming weekend if it would just stop raining!!!

Deck Build April 2009

Well that is it for now. We have been quite busy lately. Along with all of this I am trying to organize two new campuses opening at our church as well as getting our budget together for next year. I need a break!

 

Projects, Projects, Projects!

So we in the MBC Operations Department have started using Basecamp to track all of our projects. For those of you who don’t know what it is you can see it here.

I must say that I really do like using Basecamp so far. It is a pretty well know project management tool that many top companies use as well. The one thing I have noticed is that we have a lot of projects going on! It seems like everyday I am adding something to the “On Hold” list. It always amazes me how much we actually have going on. People always ask me how I stay so busy working at a church. My answer to them is that my job is no different that a IT job at a Fortune 500 company. We have the same needs, the same type employees BUT we don’t have enough budget or enough employees to help us! To me that is what makes my job interesting. It is up to me to figure out how to do the things we need to do with no budget and no resources. While some might think this is very stressful I find this being in my comfort zone. I get antsy when something goes easy! I know I am weird but that is how I roll!

Anyway all of this to say that I really do like Basecamp. It gives our Senior Management a great overview of all the tasks we have going on and also reminds us that no matter what we are going to be busy!

 

NTC 2009 – IN THE BOOKS!

Well folks another National Trumpet Competition (NTC) is in the books! What a great weekend we had. In my personal opinion organizationally it was the best NTC to date. The concerts were amazing and our staff did a great job with everything! It is fun to be a part of such a great organization. We took hours of video of this past weeks event and I am excited to get all of it online as soon as we can! It is going to be great to watch those Junior Division Final performances again! Thanks to everyone who helped…and now this starts the beginning of NTC 2010!

 

Hello???

Ok so I admit…it has been forever since I blogged about something! One of my New Years resolutions is to write more on here so we will see how it goes!

I can’t really pinpoint what I have exactly done over the last couple months. It seems like a blur! With Thanksgiving, Christmas and everything in between our lives have been very busy. The holiday season was a lot of fun this year. The kids had a blast and I was able to see all my grandparents and some extended family a couple weeks ago. You can see pictures from our Christmas celebrations here.

Over the next couple of months I have some pretty big projects at home lined up. We are going to install a sprinkler system in the yard and also finally build a deck on the back of our house. We are very excited to get started and I hope to have things finished up before the warm weather gets here so we can really enjoy our new deck!

At work I have several big projects to manage. First is our computer rotation plan. We will be swapping out about half of our fleet of PCs and Macs. It is going to be a huge project but it is always a blast to play with the latest and greatest technology! Also our Prince William Campus is gearing up and I will be managing the Information Systems deployment there. We hope to be in our new campus by Easter.

Well that is about it for now. Lots more to follow!

 

Are you kidding me??

Ok I was reading this article on Fox Business and it just made me mad. Where do they get this data? Here is the article:

http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/industries/industrials/cheaper-gas-fails-draw-drivers-roads/

I would love for one of the people that gather the data to ride to work with me one day and see how many cars are still on the road. In fact in my opinion the traffic has gotten worse in the last few months. Anyway that is all I have to say about this. You can take the article for what it is worth but I don’t buy it!

 

This is just the beginning of the financial crisis…

So this morning as I sit less than 20 miles from the US Capital Building, the House of Representatives is about to vote on the Financial Bailout plan. While many think this is a good thing, I think that if this bill passes it is going to signify the beginning of the REAL financial crisis of the US economy. Why do I think this? Well because now the US Government is going to help all of the companies and individuals that started this whole crisis by setting a precedence that if you make a bad decision the US Government will be here to save you.

Lets take for instance the house that I live in now. It was built in 2005 which was the height of the real estate market boom here in the DC area. The couple that had the house built paid $745,000 for it and my guess is had one of the crazy mortgage loans that offered 110% financing, interest only payments, zero down payment and an interest rate of around 4%. If this was the case the couple financed $819,500 and had a mortgage payment of around $2,731/month. The couple closed on the house in March 2006. Now fast forward one year to March 2007. Their loan adjusts back to a 30-year fixed loan at a rate of 5.5%. Their payment jumps to $4,650/month. Panic sets in and foreclosure looms for this couple. It is about this time the real estate bubble is bursting because this same situation is happening for millions of other people around the country who were roped into these ridiculous loans.

Now it is September 2008 and here we sit. Banks or going under, the stock market is tanking and all of this because the banks and creditors decided it was OK to give consumers loans that they really could not afford. I am not blaming banks 100% for this. Why a consumer did not read the fine print of these loans or did not have enough common sense to see that in 12 months their loan payments were going to almost double is beyond me. It is however apparent to me that banks were making fortunes off of peoples stupidity. Now the Government wants to help all of the individuals involved which really ticks me off.

My personal opinion is that the Government needs to just let this whole situation correct itself. While I am mad that all of these big bank CEO’s and Executives are walking away with millions and millions of dollars I have little sympathy for all of the consumers that were sucked into the credit market. If the bailout plan passes, the economy is going to take longer to recover because when the Government intervenes, it always takes away from the natural supply and demand of the economy.

OK my rant is over. Now I have no choice but to leave things in God’s hands. It is great to have an opinion but God is untimately in control and knows exactly what is going to happen. I do pray for all of us during this crazy time.

 

Marcus’ First Day of School

Well today marks a new era in the Haines household. Marcus went to school for the first time! He started his Tuesday/Thursday preschool near our house. He was very excited especially about his new shoes that he picked out. We took a few pictures so enjoy!

Marcus’ First Day of School