• Setting up a proper blog [again] at studioprisoner.com
• Setting up a development blog at studioprisoner.com as well for my dablings in ROR
• Get some Ruby projects happening to widen my skills
• Play more Halo 3
• Read my bible more

And some cool things that have happened lately, I now have OSX 10.5 Leopard for my MacBookPro and I got my Big Day Out tickets in the mail. Well I got to get to work!!

Catch!

Work

Well, I’m still working for Primus Telecom under Hotkey Solutions, been there for a about a year and 3-4 months. The position I now hold is Level 2/Assistant Team Leader. This is a more management position, I now have a team to take care of and make sure they do their job, quite exciting for me I think. And it’s certainly going to be a different and challenging experience, but I feel that I’m going to a great job. Still on the topic of work, I’m a project manager for a new product which Hotkey Solutions is offering through Google Apps. For me, it’s pretty exciting, developing the product through Google so we could market it to the target we’re after. So I’m hoping it will go well in the next few weeks as we just launched it a couple of days ago.

Church

Ah yes, church. My church is in position where we’re about to take off, we’re currently raising $50,000 so we can move into our own building. The current figure is sitting at just over $30,000 which I think is awesome for a church of our size. When we get into this building, our church is really going to grow and be a shining light in the community. My involvement in church lately is in the music team and youth. I’m usually up there nearly every week rocking it out for the big man upstairs. Youth, well youth has been interesting this year, I won’t go too much into it. But recently I updated the Elevate website, go check it out: www.elevate-youth.com.au

Fun

Well, where do I start, because, as some of you know, I’m a pretty fun guy, haha, sorry I just had to chuck that in there. Well one thing that has been fun for me, is my Xbox-360 and Guitar Hero 2. The best console game I have ever played, haha. Seriously, it’s so much fun rocking out to various songs from the 60′s to now. And watching The Office (UK Version) over and over, probably my most favourite TV series, if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it.

Love Life

Ok, so all I’m going to say here is that there is someone who I love so very much, she knows who she is. Some people know who she is, but I won’t touch too much on what has been happening with our situation. But if you would like to know, throw me an email my way.

• He is the souce of love (1 John 4:7-8) – He is love. Love began with God for God is love. God does not merely love, He is love – it is His very nature. Love is who God is and we are never more like him when we love like Him.
• Love is valued by God above all else (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)
• Love produces godly character (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)
• Love has power to witness – “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:15)

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13)

Instead today, I helped out my friend Rachel with the one of the high school programs that our church has. This one is called Student Focus, where we go into a school at lunchtime and have some games with the kids and then a short devotional about God. Most of the games are fun and involve chocolate as reward, which gets the kids in. It’s one of our outreach programs where we get most of the kids from our youth group to come. I think it’s been great this year, as we have had an awesome year in growth for the youth group [www.elevate-youth.com.au].

Tonight we will be venturing into the City tonight for a bit of a scavenger hunt in the city [Melbourne]. So should be a good night, although I think it’s going to be quite cold.

I don’t know about the title for this entry, couldn’t think of anything. So deal with it, hahahaha.

Malachi 3:8-12
8 “Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed Me! But you say, ‘In what way have we robbed You?’ In tithes and offerings. 9 You are cursed with a curse, For you have robbed Me, Even this whole nation. 10 Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, That there may be food in My house, And try Me now in this,” Says the Lord of hosts, “If I will not open for you the windows of heaven And pour out for you such blessing That there will not be room enough to receive it. 11 “And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, So that he will not destroy the fruit of your ground, Nor shall the vine fail to bear fruit for you in the field,” Says the Lord of hosts; 12 And all nations will call you blessed, For you will be a delightful land,” Says the Lord of hosts.

Things we rob God of:

1. His Fatherly right of blessings.
2. His gift to His ministry.
3. Ministry and worship

The next session was all about having a “Spirit of Poverty”. As we see things in a spirit of control, we gain a spirit of poverty mentality. These 3 points are how we gain that mentality.

1. Unfulfilled expectations and disappointment
2. Inherited perspectives – We can inherit our perspectives onto our children and also gain them from our own parents, who might have a bad perspective of something that can then rub onto our kids, or you could of gained that perspective from your own parents.
3. Bad Christian morals

Genesis 3:16-19
16 To the woman He said: “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; In pain you shall bring forth children; Your desire shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you.” 17 Then to Adam He said, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’ “Cursed is the ground for your sake; In toil you shall eat of it All the days of your life. 18 Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, And you shall eat the herb of the field. 19 In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread Till you return to the ground, For out of it you were taken; For dust you are, And to dust you shall return.”

Isaiah 32:8
8 But a generous man devises generous things,
And by generosity he shall stand.

How to break that Spirit of Poverty mentality

1. Give your finances and possessions to God.
2. Meditate on the promises of success.
3. Reject the limitation mindset.
4. Tithe – Bring in the whole tithe.
5. Sow – Seed generously.
6. Create a faith atmosphere – heart/tongue.
7. Exercise your faith – Believe God.
8. Step out of your comfort zone and obey the Holy Spirit.
9. Practice good stewardship – Generous with people and God.
10. Give in a biblical manner.

God’s Order For Financial Increase

Genesis 8:22
22 “While the earth remains, Seed-time and harvest, Cold and heat, Winter and summer, And day and night Shall not cease.”

2 Corinthians 9:6-10
6 But this I say: He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. 7 So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work. 9 As it is written: “He has dispersed abroad, He has given to the poor; His righteousness endures forever.” 10 Now may He who supplies seed to the sower, and bread for food, supply and multiply the seed you have sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness.

5 Laws of the Harvest

1. We reap what we sow.
2. We reap after we sow.
3. We reap in proportion to how we sow.
4. We reap more than we sow.
5. We reap at the proper time if we don’t give up.

So it was a great morning, hearing Pastor Kevin speak, and I did learn a lot. And I have a long way to go in being financially free with God, if that’s the right way to put it. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, hahaha…

Well some things that have been going on recently in my life is really not that much really, I’ve just been working, sleeping and watching my TV shows. All the shows just started in America, so I’ve been downloading them as they screen over in the US. One show that I’m glad is back on is Lost, Season 3 premiered on the 4th of October over in the US, and who knows when it will start over here. I actually never watched it on TV over here. What is in-store for the Losties this season? Who knows, but I was happy with the premiere of the first episode, the creators finally shed some light on who the “others” are, well sort of.

Other shows that have started back up again that I watch is One Tree Hill, Desperate Housewives, Everybody Hates Chris, My Name is Earl and The Extras. Ricky Gervais is a genius, The Extras is a very funny show, maybe even better than his previous creation The Office, it’s close. What I love about The Extras is how well Ricky and Stephen Merchant write the characters for actual celebrity actors that come onto the show. My favourite guest appearances so far would have to be Patrick Stewart, Orlando Bloom and Daniel Radcliffe (that kid from Harry Potter).

New shows that I’ve started to watch is Jericho, The Nine and Prison Break (well it’s new to me, since I only just started watching it). I’m sure you all know about Jericho and Prison Break, since they have already been shown on TV over here. But The Nine is a show that has just started in America. It is based around 9 people who were all hostages in a bank robbery that turned into a 52 hour stand off with police. They were all strangers when they were all in the bank, well not all of them. And what they went through in that 52 hours has put them closer to each other, but what happened in that 52 hours? We’ll just have to watch the show to find out.

Ok, so enough about my addiction to TV shows.

But one morning, I was bought into a meeting with my boss and the principal, there I was told, that as of the 17th of May we will not be continuing your contract of employment. To be frank, I was shocked, and pretty upset, as you can read above that working there was great for me. As I look back at it now, being roughly 2 months now since I left, I see that it was God’s will for me to finish my employment there and move onto bigger and more challenging things. Which has happened.

I now work for an internet service provider in the heart of the city of Melbourne, the mob I work for are Hotkey Internet. What I do there is pretty much answer the phone when it rings, and help the customer with whatever question they bring to me. Whether it be “fix my internet please” or “I wish to sign up to broadband, what do I need to do?”. Or the dreadful, “my e-mail is not working” to which most of the time, the solution is, “it is because no one has sent you any e-mail”. But I am enjoying it though, it is a very different experience to Heathdale, and the people are way more different.

So for now, this job is just a place holder until I figure out what I’m going to do next. I would love to get a job in a design or web design related firm, doing what I love. I would also love to have the flexibility in my job that I can do it from anywhere as well and that it would not interfere with my Christian walk. Eventually I would love to get into doing creative directing or something like that for the Church, and help steer the Church into a better direction when it comes to image and marketing. This has always been something that I would love to see the Church take on. We live in an multi-media age now, where having an online presence is important. And that is something I feel the Church can benefit in, and I want to help them take part in that.

So, that’s how I feel about that, hehe. Watch more on this space as I bring more discussions about this topic and how I start to take this issue on.

This trip was actually pretty good, usually I don’t like travelling around Sydney at all, I’m so used to getting around Melbourne. You see, Melbourne’s CDB is a grid, it is so easy to get around, AND we have trams, how awesome are trams. So whenever I go to Sydney I tend to get lost and have no idea what to do there, simply because I have no idea where anything is. Luckily this time I was with some great guys who knew where they were going, and i was able to enjoy myself a lot more.

We had a decent hotel in the heart of the city and was a mere 5 or so minute walk to the Sydney Convention Centre in Darling Harbour. Now, for those of you who do not know what Semi-Permanent is, it is a yearly conference that is put on by Design Is Kinky. They bring in the worlds top design companies and influential people in the design/art business to give presentations about what they do and how they do it. It was quite an inspirational journey, and sitting front row for every session wasn’t too bad either.

For a quick look at what went on just head over to the Flickr set that i have made.

Flickr Photo Set 1

Flickr Photo Set 2

Some applications that I now love and some that I’m looking forward to using, that came with the Mac are: iCal, Mail, iChat, iPhoto, Garage Band, iMovie and iDVD, iWeb and TextMate. iCal has been great, putting in all my schedules and events that take part in my life, and having them organised in such a easy way to understand and follow. Also, it’s great how most of the programs interact with each other.

Now to the technical side, time to unleash to you the specs of this baby!!!

15.4-inch widescreen display
1440×900 resolution
2.16GHz Intel Core Duo
2GB (single SO-DIMM) 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
100GB Serial ATA hard drive
4x SuperDrive
ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 with 256MB GDDR3 memory
AirPort Extreme wireless networking (802.11b/g)

Not too bad ay?!

Some other cool features are Front Row, and the nice little remote that you get with it. This has proven to be a great little entertainment feature for my commute on the train to and from work. (Front Row)