It’s Gonna Be FUN!

For the past 3.5 years our company has been managing our projects with a web-based software called Creative Manager Pro. It’s worked out very well for us, although it was a HUGE adjustment when we made that initial switch. I’m at a point where I know the ins & outs of the program so well I barely have to think as I navigate from one screen to another. I’ve grown quite comfortable in my little CMPro world, and for some people I’m probably a little too much of an advocate for the product. This afternoon I spent 30 minutes talking to several people from another agency about the software and answering all of their questions — maybe I am a bit of a freak.

Yesterday the CMPro people loaded their brand new, upgraded, all flash version of their program onto our servers. I’m still a little unsure about the name but I’m having a lot of fun playing with my new Workamajig (yeah, that’s the name). They’ve managed to take what I consider a great project management tool for the creative industry and make it better. And in the process they’ve made it sort of fun. 

The basics of the program remain but what they’ve added is pretty cool. Without going into a bunch of detail they’ve created a flexible palette that users can customize into their own work space. Multiple widgets have been designed for placement on the dashboard. These widgets can be added, deleted, moved, resized, and modified in a variety of ways. You can even make the widgets disappear leaving a clean desktop that is covered in whatever canvas you prefer. OK, I’m going to stop now before you think I’m a total freak.

In a couple of weeks we get to roll it out to the entire company. My task will be to convince everyone else it’s gonna be fun. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Fifty Couldn’t Be Better

I normally only post this type of thing on Streams, my blog focused more on faith and family. But this is such a special thing that I decided to have identical posts in both blogs.

Being a dad can be the most rewarding thing in the world. There are those times when your heart is so full you don’t think it will hold anymore. This past weekend I had such a time. Although my fiftieth birthday is still a few days away we celebrated over the weekend because our three out-of-town kids were here over their Spring Break. We had a really wonderful dinner at home and retold some funny stories from the kids’ childhood. It was a lot of fun. After dinner our kids brought out some birthday gifts. Jacque (my wife) had told them to be creative, very personal and to not spend much money.

Jessica, our oldest gave me a beautiful scrap book that she had loaded up with stories from her life. On each page she captured a different phase of our life together. Some of the memories were fun and some even a little painful. Each of them express our lives together as father and daughter. Among many other things she said, “I would not be the person I am today without you.” In the back of the book she had written out the words to the song, I Love You, Lord. It’s a song I used to sing to her at bedtime when she was a little girl, and then when she got married I quoted it within the ceremony. It has always been a special song for the two of us. At the bottom of that back page was an envelope and inside was a CD. She and our son Ryan had recorded their own arrangement of the song the night before. Listening to it is just one of those moments for me. It will never get old — go ahead and listen.

Ryan, our fun loving, non-sentimental son (the one who engineered the recording of I Love You Lord, and played drums, keyboards and who knows what else) gave me a card and inside he had written words that I will cherish the rest of my life. While I’m unwilling to share all of them with the world I will proudly say that according to him, I am his hero and inspiration — it doesn’t get any better than that. Along with the card he gave me an N scale, toy train caboose to keep on my desk. He’s always loved trains, and he and I have had some great model train memories over the years. The caboose will remind me of him every time I see it.

My baby girl Aimee made me a beautiful card and mounted it in a floating frame. The card says,

Holds you when you cry, scolds you when you break the rules, shines with pride when you succeed, and has faith in you even when you fail. I love you. Happy 50th.

It summarizes what she knows about me. It will find a special place on my office wall.

Jacque and I are very blessed and proud parents. We’ve got three great kids of our own and two of them have married great kids. Throughout our adult lives people have asked us how we’ve raised such great kids, and while I think the reasons go far beyond this simplistic answer I usually say something like, we spent lots of time together. Much of it around the dinner table sharing the highlights (and sometimes lowlights) from our day, laughing and occasionally crying.

I could keep writing but there’s really no point. God has blessed us and I’m thankful. Turning fifty couldn’t be any better than this!