finite speck

Two days ago, based off of participation in marketing programs I was feeling pretty defeated and circling around what do we do differently to get people to participate in our programs. Are they not good? Are they too involved? Are they too expensive? Are they not the right ones? Participation was way lower than we had hoped. But, that was the last day of the program and the final results weren't in yet... We got the final results for our program yesterday morning and we actually had our best program ever! Was all of the worry worth it on Monday? No. Except for what helped drive some action on our part to make some more calls potentially and remind people to participate. My boss and I were still a little shocked yesterday at how well the program did after the numbers being so low just the day before. Don't stay down. Get back up.

What good does it do to check how many people are participating in a program before it's over? I guess it depends if you can do anything about or not. I know I'm always curious in the middle of a program or specifically during the last few days, how many people have participated. But, not until the last year or so have I realized there's not a lot of value in doing it if I don't share the information with the sales team which are the ones that can help push if numbers are down. Otherwise, I just watch the numbers and nothing else really can happen. Don't just check and check again. Check and then share what you're seeing.

The other day I stumbled across what my wife said is her new favorite ice cream flavor... and my kids love it and I think it's good too. What is it? Unicorn Swirl from Kroger. It's a cookie batter with blue icing covered animal crackers and it's blue and pink. I have no idea if it's good for you... but, what ice cream really is? Our family gives it two spoons up! We actually bought two more of them. And the funny part is I bought it for our kids not thinking the adults would like it.

What makes a person enjoyable to be around? Why are there certain people we'd much rather hang out with than others? When you get invited to do something with someone else what makes you not even hesitate to say yes? I believe there are a couple things that really make a difference. One is how engaging the person is. Do they ask questions? Or do they just talk about what they want to talk about without engaging others? Second, do they have a breadth of knowledge giving them the ability to talk to just about anyone about something that interests the other person? Third, are they pleasant, positive, enjoyable to talk to? Or are they always pretty negative in their tone? As I think about it number one is asking questions of others you're hanging out with. Two is having that good attitude, tone and three is just having some well-rounded knowledge. I'm sure there's more, but these definitely help in being someone others can enjoy being around. One more I just tho

My daughter who's now four got her own library card this week and she's super pumped about it. Yesterday she checked out her first library books. And it was really fun watching her get her library card out of her little billfold and hand it to the librarian. I enjoy seeing our kids get excited about little things and want to take ownership of a task or a thing. I see the desire to do things that I and my wife do in our kids even though they're mostly not ready to do them yet.

So, we have an IHG account membership that gives us a free night every year as part of the membership and this is the first year that we're attempting to use the free night. I thought it would be super easy to do, but I've now learned that there are some tricks to using it. For one the further out you can book your hotel the better. They only have so many free night rooms each day at each hotel... so the closer you get to the day the less likely you'll be able to get something. Secondly, the more specific you are in what you are wanting to get the harder it is to find something. For example, we were hoping to find a  suite that would fit our family, with an indoor pool and free breakfast. That's made it even tougher. Lastly, there's really no way to search online for the free night. You have to call in order to find out what's available for this perk and have them book the free night for you. Not the greatest experience IHG. Now that we know all of the rules

Well, yesterday I had a prior Houston Astros minor league baseball player originally from the Dominican Republic drive me from the Houston airport to my hotel. I could have said the pleasantries and just looked at my phone or stared out the window for the 25-minute ride, but I decided to start asking him some questions. I found out that he was born in the Dominican Republic and was one of probably thousands of kids that trained with hopes to play baseball in the major leagues in the United States. He was a pitcher, but due to a car accident, he injured his arm and was not able to get back into the game after the accident. He still gets tickets to all Houston Astros games for free, but after the accident, he started driving cabs and now drives for Lyft and Uber. All of his family now lives in Houston. I think the most interesting about our conversation was that he spoke mostly Spanish and in order to communicate better with me, he used Google translator. He would speak into Google t

I'm bad about it. My wife is way better at it. What is it? Keeping that connection with people where you meet up in "real life" with them. For that matter, even the texts or phone calls to friends I don't do a good job with. One of our friends from Peoria now lives in Pheonix and he and his wife are in town for a few days over the 4th of July. My wife has done a great job in coordinating a get-together with them and some of our other friends this morning for a little brunch. If it was up to me I don't know if it would have happened or not. I'm thankful for a wife that is good at staying connected with people and it's something I pray God will keep working on me in to think more about other people and how I can stay connected with them. Not for myself... so I have friends... so much as just because He has worked in me to care more about others than just about me. When I have spare time. I rarely think things like, "Who haven't I talked to

It's new release Friday and I ran across this great song this morning by JJ Heller. Doing a quick search I couldn't find anything about the story behind this song, but I know this quote from C.S. Lewis and it's part of why this song struck a chord for me this morning. "It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." - C.S. Lewis And here's the lyrics to the song. I'll just leave at that instead of trying to add anything to it. You Want More For Me I've been thinking about the way my life turned out How nothing's really gone the way I planned How each blind curve, each twist and turn, brought me where I am now And looking back I

My oldest two kids just saw fireworks for the first time last night. They had never experienced them before and they spent quite a bit of time yesterday talking about going to see them and asking questions about them. They knew they would be loud. They were told they were all kinds of colors. They even watched a video of what they looked like. They knew they would be in the sky. But, they really didn't know what it would be like. They both had ear protection because they were scared it was going to really be loud. Once we got to the park it was quite a while waiting until finally, the first fireworks went off. I had no idea how they'd respond... Their faces lit up with smiles and they just stared. I don't know if it was anywhere close to what they had imagined it would be like, but they now knew from experience what fireworks are really like. We can know a lot anymore about stuff because of the access to information that is around us, but there's still something

I was just thinking someday it'd be fun to take my kids out at night to see a lot of stars. But, how far away from our place would we have to go to see them well? I found a website called DarkSiteFinder.com that has a map that shows light pollution and it looks like we would have to go about an hour and a half away to get to a decent place to see a lot of stars. Looks like near Macomb, IL. It wouldn't be totally black, but better than right where we live. Looks like we'll have to take a little road trip sometime or use this website when we travel to find some really good spots to see the stars.

This will be the first time in 6 years that my wife and I haven't traveled to Minnesota for the week of the 4th of July. We have typically taken this week off and visited her parents there for the week, but since they live 6 blocks away from us in Illinois that trip will probably not ever happen again. There were a lot of good memories made up there. It's really where I first got to know my wife before we got married. I went up there with some of our friends and her for a long weekend trip. It's also where I first got to know her parents as well and I thought I could see myself enjoying this family. It's where my daughter first got in a pool. It's where I got mono! It's also where I've done more fishing than anywhere else. We're gonna miss those trips.

I've missed them over the past few days. I've gotten up a little later. Not a lot. Maybe one extra hour of sleep, but the time between around 5 and 6 when no one else is typically up yet and all is quiet I really enjoy. This is the time that I read the bible and get some blog writing in as well as do anything else that I can get done while the kids still aren't up yet. I think I've gone the longest stretch without writing that I have since I started and I don't like that I've taken four days off (not on purpose). Over the past four days, one thing that I really enjoyed was working with my daughter on learning to swim. She gained a lot of confidence since taking swim lessons and right now she wants to listen to me give her instructions on how to swim. And she making progress. She's not afraid to stick her head in the water and hold her breath. She almost seems to have a little too much confidence, but I'm not going to complain about that. She trusts