So… yet another crazy weekend. Drove back to Michigan Friday night to drop off some more truck stuff with the parents. Also got cruise installed on the new car. Took Sophie to Rose Lake Saturday morning, then visited the Jeffries before doing dinner with the whole family at De Luca’s. (Best pizza in Lansing!) Then the drive back to Chicago. “Mission University” class at 9 and church at 10:30, then lunch at an awesome Indian restaurant on Devon. Back to Erin’s then off to Korean Fest for the evening! Which was amazing. I snapped this picture of guys sumo wrestling in the middle of the street. There were also a bunch of guys break dancing - and it turned out that they were from an organization just a block away from my apartment! So basically, I’m still catching my breath - it was a rather busy few days!

Saw that Noel had reposted this on his blog from Eugene this and it seemed worth reposting here too.

To my lovely wife,

Honey, it must be hot and difficult there. I have no words to say to you other than that I am sorry. I can’t be more hateful of myself for eating and sleeping at a time when you must be really sick and going through so much hardship.

I told our children that you are staying with the children in Afghanistan a bit longer because you love the people there so much. The children are really proud of you for helping people living in poverty and distress. You must really miss our children, our darling children, our children that you so dearly love. Although you may desperately want to see them, we must be patient for a bit longer. For the sake of our children, stay strong and healthy and please hold on to positive thoughts.We will see each other soon. I am proud of you. Although it may be hard and difficult, please hang on for a little bit longer. I am sorry. I am really sorry, all I can say is that I am sorry. I love you, I truly love you.

If you aren’t following this situation then read Eugene’s post and this Newsweek article.

Taliban Subcommander Abdullah was on the lookout for hostages. Ever since his superior, Commander Daro Khan, was arrested by U.S. forces in Ghazni province’s Qarabagh district in June, Abdullah has had his men patrolling the main Kabul-to-Kandahar highway that runs through the province, watching for foreigners to kidnap. The goal: to exchange the prisoners for Khan and other Taliban operatives in Afghan and U.S. custody.

On July 19, Abdullah’s men got lucky. A pair on motorcycle patrol spotted a large, white passenger bus, traveling with no armed security escort. The fighters immediately pulled their motorcycles alongside the bus and pointed an AK-47 and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher directly at the bus driver’s head. Rather than speeding up and trying to outrun the gunmen, the driver stopped and the 23 South Korean Christian aid workers riding on the bus were trapped.

Well I really don’t have much time to write… but what a crazy Friday night. First, summer dance. Then, walked around downtown with Aris, Winita and Erin. Found a bookstore and spontaneously decided to watch the costume contest. After that we went down to where they’re filming batman. Security was very high so we couldn’t really get close but we had a great time talking to one of the guards. There was one bridge where you could kindof see lower wacker and people were out there with lawn chairs!

What’s everyone doing anyway? Sometimes it helps to have a little info about your markets. Not that I’m looking for a new job - I was getting up-to-date on my marketing lingo this afternoon while working on writing an exec-level paper for our marketing guys here at work… and a few clicks later, I was browsing this stuff and found it rather interesting. I always have been the big-picture type. :)

According to May 2006 dept of labor stats, seems that the US labor force consists of about half the 300 million people in the USA. Almost 1 in 4 of these is employed in either healthcare or retail. Other leading industries by number of employees are manufacturing, education, and accomodation/food services. [Detailed Diagram]

Another way to look at it is by size of the business. Personally I’ve always thought of three main categories, and I’m going to steal a few labels that are common in IT market segmentation:

1. enterprise or large companies (1000+ employees)

2. small/medium business or SMB (10-1000 employees)

3. small office/home office or SOHO (1-10 employees)

I’ve worked for companies at each of these sizes and each has a distinctive atmosphere and unique challenges. March 2005 dept of labor stats show the current breakdown in the United States:

That’s right… yet ANOTHER festival! Like I said, Chicago rocks. This one was put on by the Old Town School of Folk Music. We had a barbecue/meeting for church small group leaders Saturday afternoon and afterwards Joel and Bekah and I decided to head over and check out the festival. Checked out the booths, did a little salsa dancing and then listened to music at the main stage before heading back to Bekah’s place to look at pictures from Bekah’s trip to the grand canyon and Joel’s trip to the boundary waters.

Oh yeah - one other unrelated thing… recently stumbled across this video of some pretty awesome breakdancing. Check it out:

Awesome Hip Hop Battle - Awesome video clips here

Finally getting a few pics up from two weeks ago! Dianna Lee and Kaylyn went to the lakefront at 2pm on Tuesday to stake out a bunch of grass for us to watch the fireworks. I joined them around 5pm and helped defend the land. :) Everyone else joined us by 8:30 and the fireworks started around 9:30. And wow - what an amazing show! We had about the best possible seats, on the grass 10 feet from the lake directly east of Jackson. The Grant Park Orchestra played an accompaniment to the show - it was very, very cool. The first minute was about as cool as the finales of the shows I’d seen up until now!

The big Chicago fireworks show was Tuesday night, and Wednesday afternoon I drove back to Michigan for the rest of the week. Left my laptop in Chicago and turned my cell phone off so I wouldn’t have any distractions. I spent some time with the family and read Ian Murray’s biography of John Wesley (very good). Also managed to catch Transformers with my brother and watch that foosball documentary I’d been meaning to watch forever. Fantastic week!

Oh yeah - and I finally bought a car on Friday. (I’ve been looking for a few months now.) It was a major compromise. I had really wanted something like a Camero or Mustang… but I ended up making the practical decision and got a Chevy Aveo (a little fuel-efficient subcompact). It really was the smart thing to do, even if it was a sacrifice… I think that my dad will be able to get some use out of the truck so I just gave it to him and left it in Michigan.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it a million more times. Summers in Chicago are awesome!!! Caught an amazing concert over the weekend with Over The Rhine. They’re incredible musicians who I try to catch anytime they’re in Chicago.

Then of course we went to the Taste on Sunday… there’s a good reason that this is one of the biggest festivals in the city of Chicago!

Sometimes, office equipment makes me laugh. I just noticed this on Friday and it seemed worth a quick pic. Just in case you were wondering, this is not an appropriate way to dispose of ties.

Sometimes Chicago traffic seriously drives me crazy… last night I needed to be home for a 7pm meeting at church so I left extra early. Picked up Kathryn to give her a lift back into town and we were driving back into Chicago by 5pm. But wouldn’t you know it… apparently a bunch of traffic signals were down yesterday. The Kennedy and the Eisenhower are always a mess at rush hour so I usually take non-expressway alternatives if I’m driving around that time. But thanks to the signals being out - which I didn’t know about at the time - traffic was horrendous. After three hours I had missed my meeting and we were still out by O’Hare. UGH.

So we just parked the truck and walked over to a random thai/sushi place for dinner. And after some sushi everything seemed much better. Got home eventually… really late… but hey, life goes on. :)

Couldn’t resist at least one short tourist moment and had to snap a pic (not a great one). It’s pretty cool that my hotel is a short walk away.

I’ve been in DC all week working on PeopleSoft HR and Financials database systems for a major world-wide publisher. Oh yeah - and of course swing dancing. :) Went to The Jam Cellar Tuesday night and had a blast! They had a great turnout and there were lots of cool people around.

Also, just picked up this short video from another blog I read pretty regularly and I think it’s worth reposting. What do you think of it?