One of the top memories I have of my first two years in college is of Saturdays spent at Camp Special as its residents Brent, Joel, Rob, and JD hosted Big Breakfast. No, it’s not much more complicated than the event’s name makes it sound. About once a month on a Saturday morning at around 10am — okay, maybe closer to 11am or noon — I’d crawl out of bed and make my way off campus where a veritable feast was waiting for me and scores more. Eventually the Big Breakfast tradition migrated from Camp Special to a number of different dorms on campus, including Salley Hall and Kellum Hall the years I lived in them. And I’m sure it also inspired the Saturday Morning Breakfast with Disney Movie crew who met frequently for two years or so in the apartments behind Camp Special. But for whatever reason, with the exception of one final hurrah before Brent moved to Austin two years ago, Big Breakfast has not returned to its point of origin.
I’ve become pretty serious about the responsible use of social networks after hearing so many stories of digital mishaps that have proven costly offline. I’m sure you too have heard a number of anecdotes about people who have shared something publicly that should have stayed private or posted a status that slammed a boss that was read by that supervisor. Personally I have very strict privacy settings on Facebook, whereas on Twitter I have an open profile and thus am guarded about what I post there.
Furthermore, I’ll soon be making a Facebook Page for where I work. In preparation I’ve been reading up on the ins and outs of the site’s privacy settings and policies. As a rule, they’re pretty good.
However, there are two features on Facebook which each lack a privacy filter, and I would argue each needs one. I’ve sent numerous inquiries to Facebook, but since they haven’t replied or tightened things up I figured I’d point them out.
On November 3 I taught at Nav Night, the FSU Navigators’ weekly fellowship meeting, for the second time in three week. This time my topic was missions. When I first started to prep for this talk I thought it was going to be easy to put together. After all, I’d just been on a mission trip this past summer. But as I started to put my thoughts to paper I realized that I was about to talk to a group of people about sharing their faith abroad when, for many of them, it was still a very new and scary thing to do right here at home.
Google Voice is Google’s take on voicemail. It offers those of us without an iPhone or other fancy smart phone some pretty slick features for saving and organizing voice messages. But it does much more than archive messages. Google will give you a new phone number. You can then direct all your existing numbers to that one number. Indicate which line should ring when Person A calls. Block Person B entirely. Even listen in on Person C’s voicemail as they’re leaving it and, if it’s too important to wait, pick up the call mid-message just like back in the day when we all used our answering machines to screen our landline calls.
The feature set sounded awesome from day one, but I didn’t like the idea of needing to give out a new phone number to everyone just so I’d have a few more features on my phone. Google has hinted at allowing users to port their existing number to their service sometime in the future. They still haven’t added that ability, but today Google released the next best thing. You can now use many of the Google Voice features with your existing cell number.
Published on 10/23/09. Categorized under Ministry.
On October 20 I had the opportunity to teach at Nav Night, the FSU Navigators’ weekly fellowship meeting. My topic was conflict resolution. It was cool to have a topic that was so practical, but rough because I didn’t want to come across like a know-it-all just out to criticize or fix people. Still, I’m glad I got to be the one to teach the subject. I’m in my eighth year with the FSU Navs and I’m not sure I can remember ever hearing a message on conflict resolution before.
