Pray

I think it’s entirely appropriate to pray for the financial health of the country today. The stock market took a huge tumble today with the Lehman Brothers news. Many people are losing money, the economy continues to slide, and things do not bode well for many. Pray for those who are losing their homes (either while trying to pay or deliberately to escape their mortgage). Pray for those who are making the decisions in the back rooms of the large financial institutions. Pray for those who are trying to recover from the hurricanes of the past few weeks while all this uncertainty is going on. Pray for those who are trying to get to work or the grocery store as gas climbs towards $5 per gallon.

If the situation seems hopeless to us now, then it is a perfect time to turn toward God and lean on Him to straighten out the situation.

HSBC Struggles With Transactions After Computer Crash

Unfortunately, to almost every company we deal with on a regular basis, we’re a number. You’re identified to the government by a Social Security number. You’re identified to police while you’re driving by a driver’s license number or a license plate number. Your bank knows you by your account number and only knows your account balance by what the computer says. The stores you do business with only knows if you have good or bad credit when the machine either says “Approved” or “Declined”.

This happened late last month, but it highlights the dangers of an unsecure, unreliable data center holding sensitive information and refusing to process financial transactions. This kind of thing is why business continuity plans and disaster recovery plans exist.

HSBC Bank USA is still scrambling to recover after its core banking computer system mysteriously crashed Sunday, preventing it from recording withdrawals and deposits, and wreaking havoc on consumers and businesses nationwide.

In the meantime, daily and overnight processing was delayed, and many transactions were not posted to accounts, leaving customers and bank personnel unsure of exactly how much money anyone had.

Officials said in the statement Tuesday that most of the affected systems are back up and running, but “we are still working through the remaining recovery work.” No data, transactions or money was actually lost.

The Delaware-based bank, formerly Marine Midland Bank, has been severely hampered by technical problems for three days, preventing customers from accessing accounts and money. Officials “managed” certain transactions manually at branches and call centers to “minimize interruption of customer service,” the bank said.

Is it appropriate to start stuffing our cash in our mattresses again?

Learning Slide Design From an IKEA Billboard

Want some ideas for developing your visual aids? Turn to billboards… after all, when you have millions of potential customers flying by a large rectangular sign at 80 mph every day, you need something that is eye-catching and sends a message in a few short seconds.

Good billboards and other signage, must (1) get noticed, (2) be read/understood, (3) be remembered, and (4) we hope an action is taken or one’s thinking is influenced. The first three in particular apply to presentation slides as well. I am not suggesting that you literally copy the style of the signs outside an IKEA. But you can incorporate the same principles for your displays used in your live talks that designers use for billboards and other ‘glance media.’ Most people could not care less about a billboard or the signs outside an IKEA store, of course. But you’re different. So you slow down and you pay attention to “the design of it.” You notice the elements such as color, size, shape, line, pattern, texture, emptiness, alignment, proximity, contrast, and so on.

In particular, you can see how bold, simple colors and the use of contrast (along with a thick, powerful font style) can communicate simply and give a clean appearance. In addition, here are “8 lessons from standing outside an IKEA store”:

Hulu Profits Off 404s

You’ve probably encountered an HTTP 404 Not Found error at some point in your travels on the internet. The most common cause is clicking on a hyperlink to a file that is nonexistent. The server hosting the file cannot find it, and then throws back a 404 error.

Anyway, it seems that some web sites are discovering ways to make money off of these commonly-accessed errors.

Hulu, the online video site that prides itself on its sparse advertising, had the fortunate problem of running out of ad inventory awhile back. Seems one of the solutions has been to sell ads on 404 pages. The company — a joint venture between NBC and Fox — runs a montage of Home Simpson’s “D’oh!s” on 404s (pages not found), which also carry overlay ads. As Online Video Watch notes, there’s a fine line between annoying and tolerable, and Hulu walks it pretty successfully.

Be Prepared

I’m going to go off the page for a moment today to mention something that happened to me last week.

My wife and I were in our living room last Tuesday talking to my 3-year-old daughter about what she learned in preschool that day. She attends Chapel Rock’s Discovery Days once a week, and it was her first full day of school. She talked about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden and other topics. Later, we got on the topic of Christians in general when she blurted out, “I’m a Christian too!”

Well, that was certainly heartwarming to know that she wants to be identified as a Christian, even if at 3 she may not be aware of all that entails. So, my wife and I wanted to talk to her about being a Christian and praying to ask Jesus into her life, when I suddenly had one of those “deer in the headlights” moments.

I didn’t know how to lead my daughter to Jesus.