grillmasta.com

It's been a few months since i've blogged. I come to my site, read my last post, laugh (because it's still funny to me), and then say "I need to keep blogging." Life has been awfully crazy the past few months and needless to say, blogging has taken a back seat. I had a pretty good stretch there, let's see if I can start it up again.

So i'll catch you up with the latest on my life. If you haven't heard yet, I was laid off a couple months ago from Blazent. I was really disappointed because it was a great company to work for. My boss was incredible, the people are awesome, and they really treat their employees well (and i got to work with Turbo). They treated their employees so well that they decided to prepare and build up the team of people that knew and understood their product, so the team didn't have to work 90-100 hours a week for months at a time when all the work came in. Long story short, the "economic crisis" hit, and the deals weren't closing as they had anticipated. They had no choice but to cut costs quickly to prepare the business to get through this stage of the game.

It was a little weird for me to get laid off, but I really had a huge peace about it. In 2008, God started working on my heart to be wiser about how I spent money and how i saved money. Laura, my beautiful wife, was also in a cool spot in her own heart where she was feeling that she needed to be really wise about how she helped run our house. We both talked things out and really tried to listen to what God was saying to us. I've always been a spender, so it was really hard for me, but we started taking steps to spend less money, save money, and be better prepared down the road for whatever life threw at us. (One of the things we did was cancel cable -- best. thing. ever. -- we watch only the shows we want with limited commercials on Hulu now)

One of the things I've always had in my heart to do was to do my own thing -- freelancing, starting a company, short term project work, something like that. With enough non-retirement savings for a few months of living and a lot of time on my hands, we decided we would pursue that direction while looking for another job. Tony Gambee, a good friend of mine, hooked me up with some work right away, my sister hooked me up with a friend of hers who needed some custom programming, and Kara, a friend from cell group, was able to get me in to do some proposals (and some work) for her company. So exciting!

A couple weeks ago, I was contacted by a recruiter that found me on Facebook a few months back. She said she was getting in a lot of requests for people with my skills and would like to get me signed up with them so they can contract me out. In the middle of interviewing there and filling out the employment paperwork, one of her associates said she received a call that morning about a need for the kind of work I do. I interviewed at that place that afternoon and am currently on with them through the end-ish of January. Huge answer to prayer! That will help us get through another couple months while I continue to work on proposals for new clients. I also have another couple leads on possible contract opportunities after this one ends, so that is super exciting as well.

God says that He will provide all of our needs. He has certainly done that and more for us through this time. I know that He will continue to provide -- whether it is with more freelancing work, a side business that kicks off, a new job, or some more contract work. My plan is to keep listening and keep moving forward with what He has planned for us. I have found that one of the way God provides is through the friends and family, and that has been a huge blessing with the leads, thoughts, and prayers. We appreciate that SO much. We are blessed to have a great network of family and friends and we continue to ask for your prayers as we're figuring out this new chapter in our lives.

Thank-you!

...and I guess, while i'm at it...if you know of anyone that needs some web or tech work done, shoot them over to simplData.com where they can get in contact with me. :)

So, the other day, I was at my brother's house helping him put in sewage lines for his bathroom. We got to a point where we wanted to use the sawzall (for those of my readers who don't know, it's basically a power saw that can cut through anything), but none of us knew where the family sawzall was. I swore my brother borrowed it, he swore i still had it, and my dad knew that one of us had it. So, Peter went over to his neighbors to borrow one.

I went back home that day and looked around the house at places that I would have left it. Like I said, I didn't have it. So I called him up and told him to look around his house because, like I said before, I didn't have it.

Rewind to me in the middle of refinishing the basement...When I rebuilt the basement, I took into consideration all sorts of things. One of those things was a shelving unit for storage.

Fast forward to today. I started clearing out the other half of the basement so I could finishing painting the half of the basement with all our stuff. Now, I started pulling out all the rubbermade containers that were sitting in my office. I looked up and found the sawzall -- organized on the shelf with my other big tools. *sigh*

Seriously, who can find things when they are organized? It should have been left out in the garage next to some other things on the ground around my work bench. :)

So, I called my dad, and he laughed at me. I called my brother, but he hasn't called me back yet. He will laugh when he reads this post though. :)