Sandy's Sayings

The Teen 10 Day Tech Challenge

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Twitter, Church and Life

Twitter is all the craze these days.  I've been "twittering" for about a year.  My twitter account is linked to this blog so when I'm done with this post, all my friends on Twitter will know about it. My Twitter account is also linked to my Facebook page and yes you guessed it, it's linked to this blog!  I Twitter more than I go on Facebook these days, due to the fact that my Twitter update also updates my Facebook status.  With Twitter being such the rage, churches have been wondering how to best use it.  Time has an article about Twitter and the Church.  Some great idea's for how some churches are using Twitter. Even though we have a "Please Turn Your Cell Phone Off During Service Policy," you will find me twittering my thoughts during services.  Twitter has become such the craze that you can now get your twitter stats as well as a wordie of your tweets! So find out what everyone is doing in 140 characters or less, get a Twitter account today!!

Kindle and The ESV

This morning I opened up my google reader to read the morning blog posts and was happy to read JT's post over at Between Two Worlds.  I've been waiting for the ESV Study Bible to come out on the Kindle!  Woo Hoo! That little post just made my vacation.  The ESV is available for the Kindle!  I think it's time take my Kindle and go get some coffee and start studying.

Can't Wait for iPhone 3.0

WOW!  Lot's of great new features for the iPhone! Can't wait!

My First E-Newsletter

In January our Student Ministry made the final transition to go green. Yes, we are that cool now! This has been a year long transition for us. Throughout 2008 we were slowly making the transition to go paperless by moving towards a blog format to communicate to parents and students, as well as replacing our old phone hotlines with twitter and adding a text message service. The last thing to take off of my plate was mailing postcards and newsletters. I sent my first e-newsletter a couple of weeks ago. We are using My Emma as our newsletter host. For the most part the transition has gone fairly well and I've been pleased with the response.  We still have some work to do with our parents to get them looking online instead of through snail mail, but they are getting with it.  For myself personally, I've found that designing and doing mailings was such a time consuming process.  Going electronic saves my time and saves the church a good chunk of changing with paper and postage.  The best part in all of this, is each of these services can all be done from my iphone, so where ever I might be, whether I'm at the beach with kids or at camp, I can update our parents of what is going on with words, pictures and video!

Happy Early Birthday Mac

On Saturday, Apple Inc, will celebrate 25 years of Apple Computers.  25 years ago, the little computer you see pictured entered my world and I've been a "Mac Head" ever since. My grandmother purchased one for me in the middle of my college years.  I would never type on a typewriter again! I will never forget how amazed I was at how small this little desktop computer was, Apple had the coolness factor going on then. 25 years and 5 apple computers later, I'm still using a Mac.  So happy birthday Mac!  

Things

This last year it seems I've got more things on my plate than ever.  We've got more students to care for, more youth staff to care for, more events, more small groups yada, yada, yada. As you can see: more! The last few months I've been really feeling unorganized and feeling like some things were slipping through the cracks. For me this is very unusual.  So I checked a few organizational systems and tools and found one that is really working for me.  It's called Things! It is similar to Getting Things Done, but for me it has more flexibility.  Things will be released at Mac World in January but you can download it for free from their website. Come January it will cost $39-49.  The wonderful thing about Things: it syncs with your iphone and ical! You can also download Things for the iphone at the App Store. So if you are a Mac owner and are looking for a better way to organize life, check out Things! I'm loving it!

My Heart Is A Twittering

A few months ago I started "twittering."  Twitter is a micro blog that answers the question, "What are you doing?" in 140 characters or less.  Twitter has also been referred to as the "lazy man's blog."  I've been having a lot of fun with twitter and for me it has been fun to follow fellow youth workers and keep up with them.  I've gotten into Twitter so much, we have replaced our youth ministry phone "hotline" with a twitter line that is linked to youth ministry website!  We tested it out this weekend and it worked like a charm. It will be interesting to see how Twitter can be used in more ministry settings!  So if you twitter look me up!

Worth My $100

At Christmas time I purchased an Apple Pro Care card because it seemed like I was at the Genius Bar with Church computers and ipod's almost every week.  Most of the time the genius bar at the Apple Store isn't bad, but they never run on time.  So to save time a purchased the Apple Pro Care card so I could get in before store hours!  Well of course after I purchased the card all our computers have been running great! Murphy's Law!  Today I finally got to flash that sweet, black card!  My battery for my computer isn't charging, so I made an appointment at the apple store to get it fixed. I flashed my shiny, black card to get in the door.  I walked up to the genius bar, flashed my card again, but there was only one genius at the bar. He was busy, the server was down and I ended up waiting about 30 minutes.  I didn't make a big deal about it, I just sipped my coffee and coveted the new ipod nano's while I waited.  I think the guy at the genius bar felt sorry for me for having to wait so long and then they didn't have a replacement battery for my computer, that he didn't charge me for the new battery.  So thank you Apple!  And thanks Lach, the Genius, at the Burlingame Apple Store!

Score!!

On Thursday I finally scored a Wii for the Jr. High Ministry.  It took me 6 months to find one for our High School Ministry and 8 months to find one for Jr. High! I walked into Costco and BAM! There it was a Wii! We've also been on the hunt for Mario Kart for several months.  No where to be found!  BAM! Went to Best Buy and they had them!  I can't wait to try Mario Kart out!