Never a Lack of Ideas

Look Out Below! On Saturday, April 3rd, 2010 (the day before Easter), Faith Lutheran Church in Aurora, IL (that's the church I attend) held an amazing outreach event for the community. At 11:00 a.m., a helicopter hovered next to our church while our pastor dumped 3,000 plastic Easter eggs onto an open field. Hundreds of children from our community then raced out to gather all of the eggs. It was an amazing sight. I was able to take some video of the event and I spliced it with some still photos that my sister took in order to make the video above. Check it out! If You Drop Them, They Will Come Our church used the drop as a great outreach event. We wanted to create some buzz in the community and invite people who might not know about our church to come out and have a fun time without strings attached. We took the idea of a classic Easter egg hunt and made it a big, bad, fantastic spectacle. My favorite part of the event was the fact that out of the 3,000 candy-filled eggs that were...

A Present in a Tube We received a gift from Facebook at work last week because we regularly advertise on Facebook. The gift came in a poster tube and had a cool "Open Here -- From your friends at Facebook" stamp on one end (see photo). Inside the tube were the following items: A really cool 19" x 19" letter-pressed poster that looks like a great graphic print, but when you look closely, there are words like "connect," "friend," and "since 2004" all over it. We're going to frame it and hang it. A letter-pressed postcard that can be used to spread the joy of Facebook. A cardboard coin with a big "$75" on it that says, "From your friends at Facebook -- for the public school of your choice" (see photo). This was definitely the coolest part of the gift. The Gift that Keeps on Giving The $75 coin that we received is redeemable at www.donorschoose.org . Donors Choose is an amazing website where classrooms of student...

Honoring our Heroes My new favorite charity is the Honor Flight . This organization provides WWII veterans all expense paid trips to Washington DC to view the WWII memorial. The trip lasts three days and two nights, and includes many thoughtful ceremonies and speeches. My grandfather, who served on the USS Pennsylvania (yes, he was on board when the Japanese torpedoed his ship), will be participating in the Honor Flight next month. He will be traveling with my Uncle, who is a veteran of the National Guard. Getting Others Involved Along with many of my family members, I would love to travel with my grandfather on the Honor Flight. However, that's just not practical -- this trip is meant to honor as many veterans as possible, and those of us who aren't WWII veterans take up room on the trip that could otherwise be filled by veterans. However, my family and I very much want to support my grandfather as he travels to and from Washington DC. Much to our delight, leaders of the Honor...

High Rollers? No. Online poker site FullTiltPoker.net just announced that they’re opening up real-money poker tables in which people can play for “micro-stakes.” That means that people can play for as little as $.02 per hand. With small blinds at $.01, this is the lowest price the site could possibly charge to play cash games on their site (without splicing pennies into fractions, of course). The Smaller, the Better Micro-stake online poker is a fantastic idea. Why? Because it all but eliminates the barriers to entry that potential customers feel when considering playing online poker. Consider the reasons why a poker player might be hesitant to play online poker for real money: He doesn’t want to lose money / he’s afraid to take too big of a risk. He is afraid that he won’t be good enough against players who play for real money. He doesn’t trust that the poker site offers a fair game. Offering games for players at the lowest possible price eliminates the first reason. It doesn’t get c...