Just updated Ping.fm to not post to Twitter to avoid redundancy:)

Ping.fm is a web2.0 loaded weapon:)

Powerful Verse of the Day: Joshua 5:9 in New Living Translation (NLT)

Happy Sunday!

Marinate on this verse today from Joshua 5:9 in the New Living Translation (NLT):

9 Then the Lord said to Joshua, "Today I have rolled away the shame of your slavery in Egypt." So that place has been called Gilgal^[d] to this day.

Check this page for more out!

Thanks goes to Quest Community Church where I heard the verse in the specific translation today.

Peace!

Recent Sermon Uploaded: Where Is The Party? by Roney Smith

Although it appeared that I was having technical problems in uploading the sermon earlier this week, this morning I discovered that the uploading attempt was successful after all.

This is how some of our efforts will work to expand the kingdom of God, so we must not get discouraged when things do not appear to go our way on the surface.

The sermon is entitled "Where Is The Party?" and was delivered to the Team Soteria Deliverance Church on June 1, 2008 in Smyrna, GA where Apostle Terry Graham is their pastor.

I hope that the sermon and Apostle Graham's exhortations will bless and inspire you today!

Peace!

New Music: Make A Change!

Today I am finally making public a song entitled "Make A Change" that I produced earlier this year!

"Make A Change" is an instrumental track inspired by US Senator Barack Obama as he has inspired many worldwide in his quest to become President of the United States.

For one reason or another, the timing to release the song never felt quite right with my own schedule. With the Democratic nomination essentially clinched today and the need to unify the Democratic party present, there is no better time to make this song public.

I would deeply honored to see personally or hear that the song was played as Senator Obama takes the stage somewhere or even as song replaces "Hail to the Chief":)

You can hear song on either Last.fm and/or iLike and if you wish to make a purchase, just visit Electric Slide.com for a purchase and an instant download.

I hope to place the song on iTunes soon as well with other music created. You can also sign up to resell the song yourself and make a commission.

We are looking to use part of the proceeds to purchase two life saving products (malaria nets via Nothing But Nets and a dynamic, personal, water filtration system called Life Straws) as a part of my worldwide ministry.

Whether you purchase the song or not, please consider helping people worldwide with these products.

Also, feel free to share any thoughts, comments, and other forms of feedback:)

Peace and Enjoy!

No Longer Accepting What Was Previously Tolerated

The title of this blog entry came to me earlier this morning and it is still ringing within my spirit.

Time is one of the most precious resources that we have given to us by God and to see others willingly waste your time should upset you both in the moment and whenever you take the time to evaluate your relationships. Even when we waste our own time, we should not allow it to continue when we finally wake up to our own errors.

As a minister that just celebrated my 12th ministerial anniversary, I find myself listening to God this month especially for an evaluation of where I've been, what I am doing, and where I should be heading.

Too many people are saying these days "I gotta do what I gotta do" while I am hearing that "I gotta do what God tells me to".

Courage is the keyword for this month and too many Christians are vessels of fear and not faith.

Courage is the wall separating knowledge from understanding and understanding from wisdom.

To know what to do is one thing, but courage is the required ingredient in order to put the right things in motion. Stepping out in faith never occurs without courage being present.

Knowing that change is desired and needed is no longer good enough. We must demonstrate our faith in courage and not fear.

Cowardly fear will always be the gravity that separates our potential from what is actually experienced.

So we, you, and I must walk by faith and not by sight for without faith, it is impossible to please God.

To live otherwise places the blood of the souls of both the touched and unreached on our hands and we will not be able to take pride in what we have not done when we were empowered and equipped to be the critical difference in their lives.

Peace!

One of the Toughest Days of My Ministry for the Homegoing Ceremony of a Young Soldier: R.I.P. Joshua Caleb Burroughs

Earlier today (Thursday, April 24, 2008), our church where I am the youth pastor (Bethesda Baptist Church in Austell, GA) conducted a home going ceremony (funeral) for a young teen who was gunned down in broad daylight last week.

Gang involvement is being attached to the death and the lines are still blurred and the starting and ending points are still yet to be identified.

Our youth that was buried today, Joshua Caleb Burroughs, was a gentle and compassionate young man who had absolutely mesmerized our church family during a Black History play in 2007.  I was not fortunate to see the play, but every statement made about the play included how well Caleb had performed.

He was our budding playwright or actor and he was reminded of this several times since.

Caleb always had a smile on his face and his eyes always signaled that he was aware of any preaching, teaching, and biblical instruction that was taking place regardless of who the minister was and how the information was being delivered.

I could always personally tell that he was getting it and knew what needed to be done.

Now that the procession of cars and release of balloons have been done, we are depending upon God to lead us on how to not only honor our memories of Caleb, but how to move aggressively in a way to expand the kingdom of God to reach the young men and women who are drowning in lifestyles that will not sustain them.

There is no room or time for physical revenge because such thoughts and actions are simply not productive.

The necessity for our steps to be taken boldly and to demonstrate to the surrounding community and world that a better way does exist that meets your physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual needs.

The kingdom of God is not boring but the uninspired and laziness of mankind will cause it to appear that way.  Today, I am rededicating myself to become more bolder and creative to do whatever it takes to make a difference to reach today's youth and this present age.

My difficulty that I am now experiencing is that I was already in the process of releasing new music beginning in the month of May when this tragedy occurred.  Although the enemy wants to further accuse us all of either activity or inactivity that led to Caleb's death, we have already realized as a church family that this battle is not over yet.

So I am asking anyone that comes across these words to reexamine your relationship with Jesus Christ, allow Him to be your Savior, allow the Holy Spirit to guide you, and be inspired to be, see, do, and have the kingdom of God expanded in earth as it is in heaven.

If Christ Jesus was good enough for young Brother Caleb, then Christ Jesus is good enough for you. 

Now we will work continuously to show you how much better Christ's wine is.

R.I.P. Joshua Caleb Burroughs

Here are URLs related to the funeral conducted today: http://tinyurl.com/52z7e2 http://tinyurl.com/4oywqp http://tinyurl.com/4qg7o3

Peace!

Happy St. Patrick's Day from the Smiths in Mableton, GA

This morning the idea hit me to make green lemonade and my Wyteria jumped on the idea before our daughters came home from school.

Our youngest daughter Hailey kept going to the nearby bathroom to see if her tongue was turning green:)

It may become a Smith family tradition on St. Patrick's Day and was tasty too.

Somehow the mind tricked my oldest daughter Rachel and my wife's mind in that they said the Irish Lemonade tasted "minty".

Atlanta Tornado Pictures

The world is really wanting to see the damage from this past weekend's storms here in metro Atlanta.

The best footage that I've seen is located on a CNN-affiliated site named i-Report which is actually taken by residents of the affected areas.

The storms were highly unusual in that Friday's storm hit downtown the hardest and a tornado had not actually done so since 1975.

We live in Mableton, GA which is located within "tornado alley" and usually feel the brunt of any high winds year round, but the storm featured thunder and lightning and subsided very quickly Friday night.

Yesterday at church, I heard that a hail storm really poured down in Lithia Springs, GA which is probably less than 7 to 10 miles away in Douglas County, GA.  Our pastor's car had multiple dings all over from Saturday's storm which also hit the east side of metro Atlanta within Lithonia, GA very hard.

I personally only saw tiny, pellet sized hail outside of our home.

I met a photographer yesterday who took a photo of hail from Friday and Saturday's nights storms and the hail was golf ball sized and clearly might kill you if you were hit by them.

I thank God that we were spared from the damage that is having a large impact on the other areas.  To my knowledge, 2 deaths have occurred from the storms.

Peace!

Interesting Discovery While Going straight DSL versus Local Phone Service

After years of resisting an inevitable trend nationwide, I finally saw the light Thursday night and have switched our service to straight DSL and dropped local phone service altogether.

We can be more easily reached by cell anyway.

The point of no return was when I realized that we were paying over $400 annually for what essentially came down to caller ID service.  Taken together with a recent cellphone plan change, one utility bill (water) and another bill essentially becomes free each month with the new cost savings going forward. 

Our cell phones have pretty much become our cordless phones even at home, so there have been no benefits of having local in-house phone service.  We got burned this winter with several triple digit cell bills.  When the bills were mentioned to our service provider T-Mobile and the fact that we were on the wrong plan was undeniable, they provided a credit to us since we have had the service since 2000.

But the biggest discovery of this entire process is that the local phone number that we have had since November 1992 does not get thrown back on the open market after all.  The number is already permanently assigned as our DSL number anyway and can be reactivated at any other time in the future.

If this single fact had been known earlier, then the decision of dropping the local service could have been made a long time ago.

I know that keeping the number was a legacy of "old school" thinking that my parents and grandparents would have had years ago:)

Another thing that was interesting to me alone possibly is that my wife Wyteria made a comment to the effect of "I was ready months ago" when I explained my logic of the changed opinion:)  So you know how the wives are when it is said and done:)

I hope the above discoveries will help someone else if you have been thinking about it.

Peace!

ElectricSlide.com has a new design and music concept!

Check out our new music and creative concept on Electric Slide.com that you have been instinctively looking for!

Tiger Math Coach.com is back online!

A few years ago, a squatter got their hands on one of our domains entitled Tiger Math Coach.com and I was not too happy about it to say the least.

But whatever is meant for you will never be profitable within the hands of anyone else and being able to re-acquire our original concept is making me very happy on an otherwise gloomy, weather day.

Using my years of teaching math and business courses to grades 9-12, middle school students and even adults as the foundation to help more people learn better worldwide, our services and dynamic strategies formed a reinforcing circle that made the website and concept a huge success.

Now with the available technology, we will be able to reach even more people than we could during our most productive years.

One of the beautiful developments that we are offering this time around is that others will be able to resell our services.

We are going to take math education even higher in 2008!

Peace!

Link Updates for New Business Developments

Here are the links mentioned previously.

They should all work correctly now.

Free Money from Free Services: http://tinyurl.com/38n32k

Original Credit Guard: http://tinyurl.com/2fwfn4

Mac Mogul: http://tinyurl.com/25a3qd

BPSD 101: http://tinyurl.com/yt9kvy

Have a great day!

Peace!

New Business Developments

Earlier today, several new products and services have been released to the public. The best part about them all is that technology has finally provided an infrastructure strong and suitable enough to operate each one nation and world wide in most cases.

The biggest twist however is that other business professionals will be able to offer the products and services and receive commissions for sales made. There are products and services that every household is already looking for someone reputable to provide. I feel that it might as well be you and I versus anyone else:)

The list includes:

Original Credit Guard's Lifetime Credit Repair (from my very first business venture started in 1987)

Buy Pennies Sell Dollars 101

Free Money from Free Services (even when you get to a cash register to spend the money yourself, you will still have doubts like I did at first)

More products and services will be added weekly until everything is made available to the public.

I am excited since every product or service reflects industries that I am still within or have already achieved proven results.

The products and services initially only require using e-mail to make others aware of them and receive the commission. Every sale is tracked automatically for the salesperson and customer which I totally love versus manually calculating anything. Just send your friends and family a link that they can click and buy through, and receive the commissions as a result. I hope to make it even simpler if possible.

Feel free to ask any questions as well. I will make the links available within the hour hopefully and feel free to contact me directly otherwise..

Peace!

New Lighting for Creating Videos at Home

Here are a few of my thoughts on Super Tuesday 2008 and it is mostly non-political.

New energy for this blog!

I recently discovered some information that I clearly did not know attesting to the popularity and inherent profitability of this blog.

I was rather shocked since I thought that the information (and resulting royalties) would be sent to me automatically.

With the new information, I hope to create more blog entries on a regular basis as well as add video content as well.

I also found out that I was included within a prominent list of Black tech bloggers, so I must clearly blog more to uphold the recognition:)

This year is a breakout and breakthrough year, so everything included needs to reflect the new level of achievement and opportunities.

Peace!

Reversed Course on Planned Apple Purchase

After making a solid plan to buy a Macbook Pro very soon, I have changed my position and received confirmation that it was the right to do.

The markets collapsed to a degree on January 15th and everything has been a little too wishy-washy to accurately predict the short-term outcome.

Some words shared with others also came back to me and one thing that I have learned over the past 2 years is that a complete solution is far better and less stressful than a partial solution.

This means that to buy the needed HD replacement is a far cheaper solution and represents an "over and done with" moment versus going through the multiple payment option even if there is zero-percent interest available.

The funds required for the multiple payments can produce a greater harvest and then the buying will be within the proper season.

A visit to the website where I was going to buy the MBP then indicated that the price had dropped $500 but there are no multiple payments available. The price drop alone justifies buying Leopard as an individual purchase. But the Ghz on the chip was lower than the one I was eyeing.

So I am content staying on the sidelines still other than replacing the hard drive with a larger one.

A lot of online friends are creating content that includes video, so getting the larger HD will work best to incorporate video on the Macbook when the timing is right for video content for me. I believe that it will happen in 2008 for sure.

Today's bottom line is that through my activity within the financial markets, changing course happens every hour.

At times, one can feel like a hypocrite for changing your opinion so often and so fast. But without allowing the position to be dropped in favor of a larger trend, financial losses can put one out of the game forever.

It is better to let pride go down the toilet versus capital earned through hard work. So getting the HD is a decision I can live with:)

Peace!

Audio from Bible Study Series "Christ Jesus and His Anointing" Available Online

Recently I had the pleasure of teaching a Bible study series within our church Bethesda Baptist Church in Austell, GA under the leadership of Senior Pastor Charles B. Goodman that blessed everyone including myself greatly.

The series "Christ Jesus and His Anointing" answers many questions that new Christian converts and even those raised and functioning as members of congregations for decades have wondered about in terms of properly identifying and understanding the ministry, life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The content is not always taught within traditional Protestant churches.

Feel free to listen at your pleasure and ask any questions at anytime. If you wish to obtain a CD or DVD of the audio, just let me know.

The weekly Bible studies at Bethesda usually include songs, prayer, and testimonies before the lessons are taught, so all is included for you to have the full experience as if you were there.

The three parts are uploaded as wave files and they vary in length and part 1 is approximately 1:19 in length. I do plan on uploading the files as MP3s soon also.

Listen and enjoy!

http://www.tnlis.com/podcasts/ChristJesus_and_HisAnointing_Part_1.wav

http://www.tnlis.com/podcasts/ChristJesus_and_HisAnointing_Part_2.wav

http://www.tnlis.com/podcasts/ChristJesus_and_HisAnointing_Part_3.wav

Peace!

Down Goes Macbook Hard Drive Like Frazier!

On Friday, I learned that my Macbook hard drive had indeed bought the farm to push up daisies and all contents went back to the Architect's construct for lost data.  Call it a sign of technological maturity or simply being blessed far above what I could ask or think because I have not been fazed at the development in the least bit.

Everything is clearly out of my hands and one of the biggest surprises learned is that there are no differences between hard drives for the PC and Mac.  This tidbit meant that I could do the repair myself and skip paying Apple $300 to $500 just for the hard drive alone plus the labor charges or to any authorized Apple repair shop.

Since my Macbook is already out of warranty, there is nothing to lose on the repair itself since it is within my repair range.  I have fried enough computers to know:)

I had a great day on Friday and had my oldest daughter with me the entire time.  She had a full week of winter break left and most kids had already returned to school. 

Earlier within the day we had gotten our new 2008 tag sticker with a zero wait (walked straight from the door straight to the counter) and I picked up a wireless mouse made by Microsoft that I am still loving with each touch.  After hearing my favorite oil change place try to fry me on a relatively simple repair, I knew that I was not going to pay a lot for this hard drive repair.

With any suitable hard drive serving as a candidate for the repair, I have discovered that there are prices easily below $200.  I am going with Western Digital as the manufacturer regardless of the actual size of the hard drive and could have purchased one today right at $150 but I saw one online at $134 (before taxes are applied on each quote).

The Macbook Pro (MBP) is available at my favorite online store for music equipment and Apple computers with multiple payments available, so I plan on obtaining one within a week and postpone the hard drive repair until February or almost indefinitely.

The Macbook may become a system for either my wife or my kids to use.  As a result, I am inclined to keep the size of the hard drive to be bought higher than the previous, original hard drive space (80GB) but under the maximum seen so far (320GB).  My target price is looking good at $134 for the 250 GB HD.

250 GB is still no joke and it is awesome to see how storage space is really the new commodity that is to be taken for granted these days.

I always fought to no avail the hard drive wars of limited space and one can buy terabytes of space for what used to cost sub-gigabyte storage space.

But I will need to confirm why the MBP is needed and what advantages are being picked up versus repairing my Macbook.

The repaired Macbook will clearly have more HD space than the MBP does at 160 GB.  I already knwo that the MBP will not have Leopard even though the price is the full price for MBPs sold by Apple, but Apple does have a program called "Leopard up-to-date" that provides a free upgrade to Leopard in the post-iPhone fiasco that occurred last year.

The multiple payments at zero-percent interest are simply phenomenal and are loosening my mind and wallet at the same time.

The portability factor is the real asset being purchased because being able to work, surf, produce, or invest anywhere that has wi-fi is an asset that is really not fully understood until the capability is obtained.

Limitations melt and new opportunities are revealed to the initiated.  Doubters or the not-easily-convinced will never know how much they loss as an opportunity cost for not "getting it" earlier.

Just from the flow of this blog entry tonight, the debate of the HD space is pitting the MBP and Macbook head to head harder than they went at it earlier today.  90 GB of HD space is the real difference, so I need to put a price tag on the 90 GB.  The time required to obtain the HD for the repair is 3 business days after the order is placed and there is an unknown time limitation if the multiple payment options disappear as it did after I bought the Macbook.  So what's a geek to do?

Through the risk and money management that I have been practicing and still learning more in this new year, I see the solution coming over the horizon.

The 250 GB HD will be obtained first and we will see how the repair goes.  If the repair goes smoothly and without any hitches, the MBP ---whoa, whoa, whoa!!!!

The MBP has to be purchased first because of the "Leopard up-to-date" program that expires on January 26th I believe.  I almost do not feel like buying Leopard now or later for some reason and the Macbook did not have it.  But I know that the HD space limitation was a reason why.

So dude, you're getting a MBP!  LOL:)

The only data loss of the original HD is one song that was still being developed but I've lost greater masterpieces before.  I am just glad that my FlickrBeats were not lost since they represented not only a creativity breakthrough, but an investment of time and effort that cannot be recaptured otherwise.

I will share the new car smell of the MBP soon!  At least there will be multiple laptops with the iSight cameras that will allow me to create "at the computer or desk" videos that would have been too prohibitive with my time schedule for anyone else to be involved.

So it all works out in the end one way or another!

Peace!

Still Not Enough to Wreck 2008: Macbook Is Blind to Hard Drive

Today I have a surprise recreational afternoon planned for my girls and since the place has wi-fi, I thought about taking my Macbook.

The Macbook froze during its last usage in 2007 with my wife and I was too busy to invest much time in it until today.

I installed the original CD and RAM to no avail.  It is simply not recognizing the hard drive.

I have an appointment scheduled at an Apple Store on Friday to have it checked out.

I already knew that adding more Macs to our lineup was going to be necessary and I am just curious at this point what is going on with it.

First generation technology is never easy on you once the original warranty runs out.

I now know to avoid such early purchases especially with Apple from now on but 2008 is already going so great and although it would have ripped me apart on some level before, I can take this technology glitch or hardware massive coronary in stride this time around since I backed up everything late November 2007 after seeing the initial warning signs:)

A friend recently shared his backup plan with me and it was so broad in scope that I may implement it as well since multiple backups and remote storage increase the security and reduce the potential stress levels tremendously.

Peace!

Peace!