ChrisMoncus.com

After almost four years of abuse my 15″ PowerBook G4 - nicknamed the Powerbook of Doom - is finally confined to an almost exclusive desk job. The logic board is failing (one memory slot doesn’t work, a fan is out, and the processor is unseated slightly). It’s a single core 1.5GHz IBM. PhotoShop CS3 eats it for breakfast. It can only be used at an angle. It’s enough to finally send me to Apple.com to replace it.

So as of 2:00pm today my new 24″ Intel Core2Duo 2.8 GHz, 500GB iMac is on its way. It’s gonna help me in being more efficient editing photos, websites, and video. The “crunch time” is going to be decreased greatly. Plus, moving from an 80GB drive to a 500GB drive gives me lots more room to keep my music and the like all on one hard drive.

I bought it refurbished (the only way to go). It cost $700 less than a new one with the same specs and carries the same exact warranty. Most likely it was a store model or even just sat on the shelf too long. Either way, I got a current Mac for 31% off retail.

It should be here next week!

Our youth group at SSCC – named “Inside Out” – is doing a series called “Inside Out” to try and re-center the youth on the idea that God is trying to change us from the inside out to become more like Him. Jon, our youth minister, asked me to make an XBox-looking graphic for the series to put on the screens and to print as posters on our brand new Canon 36-inch wide format printer (SWEET!).

So anyways, I got to work and out came this. It’s all from scratch except for the font called “1979″ that I got from dafont.com.

I hope you like it enough to steal it and use it at your church. This is big enough to print 24″x36″ or to drop down low enough and use on the screen. Please let me know if you use it by leaving a comment.

Is there any other word but “wow” to describe this morning. Maybe “wow!!!” with three exclamation points might do.

When I got to St. Simons Community Church at 7:00am as usual on a Sunday, not much felt different. I had been coming to work at this new building each day for two months. Until today we were still having church in our shopping center location. I helped set up graphics and sermon notes as I sometimes do in the sanctuary then headed to the Roof Top – a room we will be using mainly for students and young adults.

It wasn’t until I got in “my” room – the Roof Top – and flipped on the sound system that it really hit me. “We’re about to have church. Holy cow.”, I thought, then said aloud. On Sunday mornings my main role is production of the middle school service we call Rush Hour. When I sat there holding my printout from Planning Center and began getting things in order on our iMacs and set up the stage is when the fact that a mob of middle schoolers would be in there in only a couple hours truly hit me. Still, it was crunch time. “No time to concern myself with ‘wow-ness’”, I thought.

I finished the stage and headed back into the sanctuary to make sure the volunteers in the video booth were taken care of. All was well. Music in the main service was amazing. The team did an outstanding job. Congrats, Fred, on an awesome first day. As it got closer to 10:00am I headed back out to make sure everything was done for Rush Hour. Turns out none… NONE of my content was on the iMacs. The computer that did have the content was put in the Clubhouse – our elementary schooler’s room. I had a scary moment when we thought it had been cleaned up and all non children’s ministry stuff was deleted. Luckily, it wasn’t, so onto a portable hard drive it went. After fixing that I was ready.

The band was ready to practice at 10:00am so we sound checked, got a few kinks worked out with the wireless gear, and let the kids in at 11:15am.

What I saw next put me in a state of awe. We had around 150-200 middle schoolers enter in the room. This number was double our PEAK numbers from recent months. Simply shocking! As we got started the energy was apparent. We played a game, heard a welcome, and then got a talk from our associate youth minister Justin. His talk was outstanding and so very appropriate for the time. The summary goes something like this, “God is big. He is all we need. This building is just a place that we can get together and worship Him. If that isn’t the reason we built this place then it needs to be turned into something else because it is worthless without the focus being God. He is worthy of our worship.”

Amen. Amen.

Next the band played. Shannon, if you read this, all I have to say is that I am amazed at how well things went. You guys sounded fantastic. I have nothing to say but “wow”. I got word from Travis, our Tech Director and my boss that he could hear our subs in the sanctuary. You’d have to know our facility to really grasp that but let’s just say it was pretty fun to hear. You can’t blame me, I had to give our FOUR brand new EIGHTEENS a workout.

Once I got the band’s mix straight I got to sit back and finally just enjoy what was going on. During the last song “O Happy Day” by Tim Hughes it really hit me hard and I started to tear up. All across the room were kids raising their hands worshipping God. They got it. It wasn’t about the building. Right then it was all about God. They were connecting. It was glorious.

I cried because years of work culminated today. Hours and hours of work all met at this junction and we had church. Hours and hours of work just for some kids on a small island in Georgia to have a place to get together to meet God. I cried because I got to be a part of it. It was all worth it. Every second I spent was worth it. I’d do it again for another moment like that. Praise God I get those moments every Sunday.

As far as the rest of the church, Fred McKinnon, our Worship Director, has a pretty good summary he began with, “Wow”. Also, Shannon Lewis, our Youth Worship Director, has a recap he calls “Wow”. Funny, we all wrote these before reading each other’s.

Here’s my summary: 2000 people total on campus. Almost filled to capacity. God was praised. We have some kinks to work out. God is good.

Read Shannon’s and Fred’s for the juicy details.

Today truly deserves a Wow. Praise you God.

I did it. I got rid of my Motorola Q (which broke) and Verizon last Thursday when I bought the iPhone and sold my soul (for two years) to AT&T.

All I can say is that the iPhone lives up to its hype. It is the best phone ever made in regards to features and innovation. The iPhone’s version of Safari (the web browser) is outstanding. Paired with multitouch it leaves others in the dust. Visual voicemail is a breath of fresh air in light of the full minute it takes between dialing and waiting on all the prompts to listen to voicemails. The incorporation of iPod features with simple yet robust controls is a winner.

Now to AT&T. AT&T service in South Georgia is patchy at best. In particular, both my house and work get no service inside the building. Outside they peak at two bars if I walk about 50 feet away from the building. Along the roadways the service is in and out. I can’t really bash the company because they have great customer service. They were really helpful and knowledgeable. It just comes down the the lack of towers. So unfortunate.

Amanda and I tried AT&T for 4 days. During that time Amanda went to Albany, GA with her dad and brother. She had almost no service during the trip.

As of yesterday Amanda and I are Verizon customers again. Since my Moto Q was broken I bought a Blackberry 8830 World Edition - a $400 phone. I knew I had to get a phone and wasn’t going to go back to Windows Mobile or an LG interface. After I told the salesperson which phone I was getting she went to work trying to get the price down. She gave me a $100 rebate for my “new every two” discount I had as of 4 days before (yay!), a $100 rebate as part of their “AT&T winback” program plus free activation (a $75 savings), and $100 off for getting a data plan with the phone. I left there with a $400 phone for $99 and then another $75 in savings off my first bill. Amanda went back to her old phone, the LG V — which she loves — so no added cost there. Add all that to Verizon’s amazing coverage and I think we got a sweet deal.

We still have our same numbers through the whole process if you were wondering.

I then returned my iPhone (*sniff*) and her Blackberry Curve to AT&T. It was nice to get that $650 back on my debit card. I did have to pay a 10% restocking fee but I think it was worth it to take one for the team and settle my own wonder. At least I’ve had the phone and no longer have to wish I had one.

So here’s my advice to my friends here. Don’t hurry to get an iPhone in South Georgia unless you are ok with patchy coverage. Hopefully AT&T will improve and it’ll be worth it one day.

Any other AT&T/iPhone users out there? What’s your experience?

UPDATE: I found out like 5 minutes after writing this that the iPhone’s storage just got bumped up to 16GB from 8GB. Good for those in big cities. Still doesn’t make AT&T work better for me. If only Verizon had said “Yes” to Apple’s offer to carry the iPhone.

Yesterday I was browsing to our church media server for the first time since I installed Leopard on my iMac at church. Then something very familiar caught my eye. The icon representing a Windows computer in Leopard’s Cover Flow is one of those ugly yellow monitors with the “blue screen of death” proudly displayed.

What laughter the design team must have had while designing those icons!

Click for larger views.