Think your information is safe? Think again…

Dear Curves: respect your client and employee data

About two weeks ago now a relative found a Dell Inspiron 4500 sitting in the trash at the complex where he works. As the computer looked perfectly fine and it was obviously thrown out, he grabbed it to take a look at it. When he got it home and booted the system he found that the hard drive was still intact and other than running very slow the system seemed fine… Additionally, it was determined that the computer came from the Curves that resides in the complex.

I was able to find several documents (Word Perfect) that contained mostly trivial data, while still others contained phone numbers and addresses of both employees and clients. Even more disturbing the system still contained the Curves database “iGo Figure” which is really just an Access database. By looking at the features of the “iGo Figure” software you can see that the database potentially contains extremely personal information (i.e. credit card information). The database is password protected and while I didn’t; extracting the information from the database would be trivial.

No matter who you are or what your knowledge is if you run a business it is your responsibility to educate yourself (or pay someone) on how to handle technological issues like proper data disposal. There is simply no excuse for a scenario like this to occur.

I recently disposed of a PC that we hadn’t used in about 4 years. It took that long for me to determine what I needed to do with it. Basically, I ended up going the manual route, which was to dismantle it and beat the motherboard and hard drives with a sledgehammer (with proper safety equipment and vision protection, of course).

The less drastic route is to have it recycled, and there are reputable (as far as I know) businesses who will do that for you with some kind of smashing woodchipper-like device.

Apple just gave out my Apple ID password because someone asked

I tried to log in to Apple Developer Connection this morning to find out that my password had been changed and the email associated with my account was now a yahoo.com address that wasn’t mine. Luckily, my “security question” was still the same, so I was able to reset the password and email address back. Based on the emails that have appeared in my .Mac mailbox, this was accomplished by sending this classy one-liner to Apple:

am forget my password of mac,did you give me password on new email marko.[redacted]@yahoo.com

To which Apple reacted by doing the only reasonable thing – saying Sir, Yes Sir! and handing my account over. Here’s the email I just sent Apple:

…

Apparently based on a single-line email inquiry, you have allowed a third party access to:
- My personal details
- My personal email
- All the files stored on my iDisk
- Everything I’ve synchronized to .Mac, including my Address Book, Bookmarks, Keychain items, etc.
- My credit card details as stored in my Apple Store profile
- My iTunes Music Store Account
- My ADC Premier membership, including the software seed key and other assets
- The iPhone Developer Program’s Program Portal, including details of our development team

Frankly, this makes me so angry that I can’t see straight. Did it not occur to you at all that someone at “marko.[redacted]@yahoo.com” was not actually me? For example, because the names didn’t match? Can you even begin to appreciate the amount of work I need to do to re-secure all the information that you have compromised? How do you propose to restore confidence that I, or indeed anyone, should ever store anything confidential on your systems again?

All I can say is just because you’re in IT, that doesn’t mean you have common sense.

One of my students remarked that her journey with Christ during childhood took her through a Pentacostal church, where she was told that she needed to speak in tongues in order to be baptized and saved. At her age, she decided to mumble some gibberish just to get it over with.

Other people will complain that their gifts are not glamorous. They don’t feel they have a gift for evangelism, and unless they’re out there winning souls for Jesus Christ, they feel that they’re doing nothing for the Kingdom. Others will complain that they are not teachers or preachers or in a position to do so. Sometimes, I wonder even if the complaints are less about doing work for our Lord and more about not getting recognized for doing work for our Lord.

One of the first things I learned as a new Christian (and I’m glad that I learned it) was to realize that everything I did was to be done for God, and that if I looked hard enough in what I was doing, I could see God’s work being accomplished through me with the gifts He has blessed me with. For example, I am using the gifts of writing and communication right now to talk to you about these things. I might not have as much impact trying to speak it aloud in person, and I have a greater capability of far-reaching communication by placing this on the internet. I thank God that He has given me these gifts to compose such a message, that He has given me a message to communicate at all, and that He has provided a means to do so where I can use my gift and be expressive.

Even if your gift is working behind the scenes somewhere as an administrator or someone who cleans or someone who takes notes, you are accomplishing the work of God by allowing churches to run smoothly, events to run easily, and needs to be met. You never know if a new believer might come to your church some day and take notice of what you’re doing, and you don’t even know it. That is why we cannot be proud or boastful of the gifts we have in comparison to others, sowing seeds of envy among them, and likewise we cannot diminish the gifts God has given us and minimize them in comparison to the gifts that others have. We must utilize our own gifts to the fullest for the glory of God.

What are the best spiritual gifts for a believer to have? It all depends. If I am having a difficult time sharing my faith with someone, and you come along and have been gifted as an evangelist, then that is the best gift at that particular moment.

But then let’s say I am trying to understand the meaning of a particular passage of Scripture, and God has given you the gift of teaching. For you to come along could be a great benefit to me.

Then again, let’s say that I am undertaking a complex project, and I need help. What I really need is someone with the gift of helps or administrations.

Or, let’s say that I’m lying in a hospital bed, and I’m discouraged. I don’t really need a Bible study. I don’t need someone to come and help me organize my life. I need someone with the gift of exhortation or encouragement. I need someone to come and help me see that God is still in control of my life.

Each one of these gifts is important, as God has distributed them. We make a big mistake when we think some gifts are of greater importance than others. They all have their place, and God has given them as He has chosen. Therefore, we need to pray, “Lord, what are my gifts? Help me to discover them. Help me to develop them. Help me to use them.”

One day, when you stand before God, you will be held accountable for what He called you to do. And one day, He will reward you for how faithful you were with what He gave you.

If you’re not a part of a church, I would encourage you to find a church somewhere that preaches from the Bible, has a program that reaches out into the local community or world through missions, has a program that teaches children solidly from the Bible in an engaging way (if you have children), and has a program that reaches within the church to build community between its members and to support individual members of the congregation through both the good and bad times.

Even then, your class can be a community in itself. I encourage you to develop community through your classroom in order to help all your classmates get through school both mentally and spiritually. Here is an example of how a church community can be so beneficial:

While traveling together, my wife and I started talking with a delightful young woman we met. The time passed quickly as we chatted about lighthearted topics. But when she heard that I was a minister, the conversation took a heart-wrenching turn. She began to share with us that when her husband left her only a few months earlier, she had struggled with the pain of that abandonment.

Then she smiled and said, “I can’t tell you how much my church has meant to me these past months.” Her mood and countenance changed dramatically as she recounted the ways her church family had wrapped their loving arms around her in her season of heartache. It was refreshing to hear how that local assembly had surrounded her with the love of Christ.

Far too often, it seems, we limit the significance of church to what happens on Sunday. But the church is to be so much more. It is to be a safe haven, a rescue station, a training center for spiritual service. It is particularly to be an expression of the concerned heart of the Lord for hurting, broken people, such as our young friend.

Don’t let your classroom community be limited to the days that you meet. Christ’s love is with us 24/7/365, and we should be ready to share His love with others on the same schedule.

I took the week off last week to work on VBS for church, so I didn’t have time to post anything. I’ll be online Monday though…

Our attendance was down from years past, barely breaking 400 kids at our peak. I guess that’s a lot of kids we should be grateful for having, but I always hope that we get improvement. I felt good in the fact that our teaching segments were more in-depth telling of Bible stories than we had done in years past, and many of the kids did a great job in retaining what they had learned.

Being there was helpful to me in writing the script to know what works and engages the kids and what doesn’t. Next year, I definitely want to include more audience participation. If you’re familiar with the fact that most learners are visual or kinesthetic, then you might understand my frustration with writing a script that was mostly verbal with joke-telling hitting the floor, but a superhero putting on green fuzzy frog slippers getting laughs.

My dialogue was also overly wordy, even with two rewrites, which probably frustrated the actors in memorizing their lines too. I’m thinking about putting together a lessons learned this year, since this was my first year of going alone with this, along with several new people in various other places in the program.

Anyway, I got to play The Hulk “Goliath”, tearing up sets and throwing props. It was fun until I jumped off the stage to chase after the superheroes and tweaked my knee. It’s been getting better since Thursday, but I guess I’m not in my ’20s anymore. How I can chase around toddlers is

Lots of stuff Monday, and hopefully a new class for my repertoire…

I’ve always equated worry to the fear of the future and fear of God not protecting us from what we will face, but there are some other possible reasons for worry that I found interesting.

Worry may be a symptom of a bigger problem. Sometimes it’s a lack of gratitude for the way God has cared for us in the past. Or perhaps it’s a lack of faith that God really is trustworthy. Or it may be a refusal to depend on God instead of ourselves… Don’t let worries hold you back from what God may be trying to teach you. He invites you to bring your anxious thoughts directly to Him (Phil. 4:6).

My wife and I were discussing this devotion I found a few weeks ago and how it related to our relationship with Jesus, that He doesn’t just simply dwell in a church or our house, but He lives in our hearts and goes with us wherever we go. She is part of the MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) group at church, and yesterday she received a packet of information. Enclosed with that packet was a short devotion called My Heart, Christ’s Home by Robert Boyd Munger. If you’re intrepid enough, you can probably find it on the internet, but your local Christian bookstore should have it very cheaply.

Anyway, I would recommend seeking it out. It will profoundly open your eyes to the work Jesus does for us. The story is about the narrator and Jesus walking through various rooms of a house (a metaphor for ourselves), discussing what is in each room and their condition.

After the narrator accepts Jesus and allows Him to live in his house, they start with the study, which is a metaphor for our minds and contains all the things we read and all the impure thoughts we entertain in our heads. Jesus tells the narrator to remove the books from the shelves and replace them with the Scriptures.

They head to the dining room, where Jesus tells the narrator that his accomplishments and awards are not what will satisfy him, but God’s work is so much more satisfying than all those. Next, they head to the living room, where Jesus promises to meet with us every day in our quiet time. But, the narrator squeezes Jesus out of his life over time to focus on work, kids, and errands, but every day he passes by the living room, Jesus is there waiting for him. Finally, the narrator goes in, and Jesus tells him that it is not only the narrator that wants to spend time with Jesus, but that Jesus also wants to spend time with us.

They go to the workroom, where Jesus tells the narrator that it is not he who does the work of God, but God who provides the tools and resources for us to do His work. Jesus then asks about the recreation room, and the narrator tries to hide it away from the Lord. One night, the narrator and his friends are going out when Jesus asks if He can come along. The narrator was guilty about where they were going and told Jesus that He probably wouldn’t enjoy it. The rest of the night, the narrator felt terrible for leaving Jesus at his home like that.

Finally, Jesus notices a foul smell in the house and says it is coming from the closet. They were old sins that the narrator was clinging to and not releasing to Jesus. Jesus threatens to sleep on the porch if it doesn’t get cleaned up, but the narrator confesses that he is unable to clean the closet and asks Jesus to do it for him. The Lord is delighted and immediately gets to work, removing the odor and foulness.

At this point, the narrator realizes that Jesus has made over his whole house and that he is unable to maintain it on his own. He signs the house over to Jesus to allow Him to become his Master and the narrator becomes His servant.

It’s a very good read, and I recommend that you get a copy for yourself and read it often. It will certainly convict you.

I think we forget that reaching people for Christ doesn’t always mean reaching the unsaved. We need to reach the saved as well, especially when they are going through difficult trials such as the ones described in this story.

After visiting a homeless shelter, a group of teenagers couldn’t wait to express what they had experienced. Excitedly, they wrote about their visits with men and women of all ages who were poor and destitute.

One teen wrote: “I talked with a Vietnam vet and told him that in heaven he would have a new body. I was able to reassure him in his faith.”

Another said, “A guy named Michael showed me that even though he was living in a homeless shelter, having faith made all the difference.”

Still another wrote: “I talked with a man who had almost stopped believing in God. I tried to [encourage him in his faith].”

While desiring to share God’s message of reconciliation, these teens were surprised to find that some of the people already knew God. By cutting through the discomfort of their differences, the kids discovered people who needed the reassurance that God still cared for them. The teens’ roles changed from sharing the good news to guiding their new friends toward a deeper faith. Being “ambassadors for Christ” (2 Cor. 5:20) opens doors of opportunity both to share the gospel and to strengthen the struggling.

When you think about all the catastrophes and natural disasters that we’ve endured lately, it’s nice to know that some things will always remain. Floods may destroy crops, wildfires may destroy forests, tornadoes may destroy homes, terrorists may destroy buildings and airplanes, but God’s Word remains eternal, both in its wisdom and presence. It is not by accident that we still have the original manuscripts of the Bible, but by design.

At Dublin Castle in Ireland is the Chester Beatty Library, named for an industrialist who gave generously to charity. The beautiful library includes a quaint coffee shop and a variety of exhibits.

The exhibit that grabbed my attention was the ancient manuscripts. I slowly walked through the area and viewed fragments of the New Testament Gospels dating back to the third century ad. The scrolls were among the oldest known biblical texts until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the mid-20th century. God’s Word, preserved through the years!

As I looked at those portions of inspired text, I was moved by the permanence of the Word of God. It is because of the enduring nature of God’s Word that we can have confidence in the message it contains. Jesus said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away” (Mark 13:31). Later, Jesus’ disciple Peter would write, “All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, and its flower falls away, but the Word of the Lord endures forever” (1 Peter 1:24-25).

Lemonade stands are a great way for kids to make a little bit of cash on the side, have some fun with the neighbors, and stay out of your hair for the afternoon. There’s nothing like building the entrepreneurial spirit when they’re young. So, what can we learn from our kids? Rhonda Abrams has some ideas.

If your child – or you – are planning on running a lemonade stand this summer, here are some of the necessary ingredients (in addition to lemons and water) for creating a successful business in any field:

Core competencies. Can you make lemonade? In other words, do you have the skills necessary to run the kind of business you’re planning? There are many types of businesses we’d like to run, but we need the right talents and traits. If not, who will you have to hire or partner with? If you’re only five years old, you might need to ‘employ’ Mom.

Sales Skills. It’s not enough to make lemonade – no matter how good you are. You’ve got to be able to talk to customers, and collect their payment. A lot of people go into business with specific industry skills, but as soon as it comes to selling, they become tongue-tied.

Competitive Analysis. Is your neighborhood already cluttered with lemonade stands? If so, how are you going to capture enough customers to make money? Realistically looking at your competition is a critical early step in developing a company. You’ll have to find some way to be different (raspberry lemonade?).

Competitive Advantages. For most lemonade stands, the key strategy is for the entrepreneur to be cute. Everyone’s a sucker for an adorable child with a hand-painted sign. Most of us in business need other ways to compete besides just being cute. Identify your unique competitive advantage and highlight that in your marketing and everything else you do.

Strategic Positioning. Think location, location, location. Being in a quiet residential neighborhood is going to limit lemonade sales but being in the middle of a highway will get you run over. Every business – whether retail or service – needs to target a clearly-identifiable segment of a market, one that’s big enough to sustain your income, but not so large you’re unable to compete.

Seasonality. Don’t forget to factor in seasonal fluctuations. If you want to start your business in Des Moines in December, you’re probably better off with a hot cocoa stand.

Marketing. That leads to the need for marketing. You can have the best lemonade at the best price, but someone’s got to see you to be able to buy from you. You’ll need to advertise. If you have a great location, you may need only one sign. If your location is less visible, you may want to put up a number of signs throughout the neighborhood.

Cost Control. You can’t stay in business if you don’t make money, so look carefully at your expenses. Sure, Mom may pay for the first can of frozen lemonade and pack of paper cups, but you can’t expect suppliers to give you free stuff forever.

Pricing. You’ve got to cover your expenses and make a profit. But you don’t want to charge so much you scare away customers. One way is to offer choices: different size cups of lemonade at increasingly higher prices. Because your overhead costs are already fixed (construction paper for a sign), and the cost of goods (more lemonade and a bigger cup) may only be a tiny bit higher, that’s a good way to increase profit margins!

Product Offering. Why just have lemonade? How about offering cookies too? A customer who’s ready for a lemonade is probably an easy touch for a chocolate chip cookie. That way you get higher revenues per customer. In your own business, think of ways that you can make more sales to the same customers.

If you or your child would like to try your hand at lemonade stand economics, you’ll find a number of online lemonade stand games. Or, you can add a “lemonade stand” to your Facebook or MySpace page, or other website – to sell all types of merchandise. Check out www.lemonade.com. If you want to try your hand at real entrepreneurship, you’ll find lots of helpful lessons by running a lemonade stand first. Happy summer!

I’ve previously mentioned my participation in our church’s Vacation Bible School program, but I wanted to put this up here in case anyone in the area was interested:

If you live near the west side of Indianapolis and would like to have your kids attend a week of Vacation Bible School, my church (Ben Davis Christian) will be having ours from July 14-17. If you want to sign up your children (or grandchildren), go to www.bendavisonline.org

This year’s theme is “Jesus Is My Superhero” and is based in a comic book world. I wrote the script for the four days worth of plays that deal with how the superheroes we see in modern pop culture are probably not really the heroes that we think they are. Instead, we talk about some heroes in the Bible that the kids should learn from.

I’m not sure how much of that the kids will get… they’ll probably just go for the fight scenes and the web shooting and stuff, but it was worth a shot to delve into that with the Iron Man, Hulk, and Batman movies out this summer. And, yours truly will have a cameo at some point as a raving lunatic monster that rampages across the city. It should be a lot of fun, and it will be neat to see the kids react to it. I’ve missed the last couple of years I wrote VBS when we did the pirate theme and stuff, but I’m going to get to see the whole thing this year.

Anyway, if you’re interested, go to the link and sign them up. I believe it is free to register, but if you want to get your child a T-shirt, it’s something like $6 or $8 I think.