Are You the Inn Keeper at Christmas?

Let's face it, the Holidays are full.  They are full of hectic trips to the mall to get that perfect present for a loved one.  They're full of last minute runs to the grocery store for that ingredient you forget every year.  Then there's the wrapping, the decorating, the card sending, the cleaning to prepare for friends and family, and on and on.  Yes the holidays are full of alot of great things.  The question I'd like to pose is this: is your holiday also full of the most important good thing?
When Joseph and Mary arrived in Bethlehem they found the local inn and were told that it was completely full.  In fairness to the inn keeper at that time it is doubtful that he knew who he was talking, so we can't blame him for providing them the manger as a last resort.  Unfortunately we can't give ourselves the same benefit of the doubt when we give Jesus the left over room of our holiday.
I am not trying to say that the gifts and the time with family isn't important.  To be sure, we give gifts to remember the wisemen came bearing gifts on the inaugural Christma, and I can only imagine the searching they did to find the right gifts for that occasion.  And family is one of the most vital institutions in our culture and it is important to connect and spend time with one another.  I only want to point out that when it comes to how and why we celebrate Christmas, those things should all be given their proper place and Jesus should be given the highest place and highest priority.  It should always be that way in our live, God first and everything else after Him, but it should be even more apparent on this Holiday.
So wake up early, unwrap the gifts and eat too much all day.  Pile into the car and visit all the stops you have meticulously scheduled to see everyone you should.  If you have a large family like I do, have patience when you give the same answer to a question you've been asked by ten different people.  But most of all keep Jesus first and remember that we give gifts to each other not only because of the wisemen but even more so because this event was the beginning of the greatest gift God ever gave to all of us.  Merry Christmas.

What will become of RIM?

Friday, RIM gave investors a triple dose of ad news - profits and revenues missed expectations, Blackberry 10 was delayed (again) and the company announced it will lay off 5000 employees.  Investors responded by hammering the stock price to the tune of a 19% drop.  That brought the company's market value to 3.8 billion dollars, approximately 5% of what it was at its peak in 2008.
There were two possible silver linings to all the bad news - the company still has $2.2 billion in cash and it has no debt.  The question becomes, are dry rooms on a sinking ship worth any price?
RIM told investors that the Blackberry 10 devices will begin to be sold sometime in 2013.  That could mean as early as January or as late as the Christmas shopping season, and if history has taught us anything about RIM's time lines I would expect it to be no earlier than late Q2.  What does that mean for the company?
In the time leading up to the release of BB10 it means the company is going to be hard-pressed to keep that cash cushion from deflating like a cheap air mattress.  The company has already said they expect to spend $350 million in order to layoff those 5,000 employees mentioned earlier.  They have also struggled to control inventory as they consistently overproduce the underselling Blackberry devices.  Revenues dropped 33% in Q2 as a result, and this will continue to worsen as companies become more willing to explore bring-your-own-device polices and even continue to make iOS, Android or Windows 8 their enterprise system of choice.  For a company that values cash-on-hand as much as RIM, they do not seem to have the tools necessary to turn the cash-flow pipeline back on in the short term.
If they do survive until they release Blackberry 10 (and I think they will), the technology may already be obsolete.  That is unless you buy into the thought that RIM would have released something that was an entire year ahead of anything Apple, Google, and Microsoft had they released it this year.  It has been a number of years since Apple has produced a big leap in their iOS (no Siri was not a significant leap no matter how many commercials it does with Samuel L. Jackson).  With reports pointing to a new 4" screen on what should be the iPhone 5, that leap may be on the way shortly.  Google has just released a tablet that runs their Jelly Bean operating system (click here to see my first walk through on my Galaxy Nexus), which builds on the ICS idea of integrating all of a user's devices while also providing a consistent user interface experience and feel.  Microsoft launched, with little fanfare, the Nokia Lumia which is scheduled to receive the Windows 8 update as soon as it is released (probably by Christmas) and is currently running a similar operating system known as Metro.  Windows 8 will be Microsoft's answer to Android's consistent user experience and mobile mentality.  Given that these devices will have at least 9 months to divvy-up the smartphone market, do we really expect that RIM will be able to make inroads where the idea of switching devices and learning a new OS is both cost and time prohibitive?
The other hurdle that RIM has is the trend of product/brand ecosystems started by Apple and copied by Android and Windows 8.  Recently, a Bank of America analyst said he predicts RIM will not be able to effectively create an ecosystem the way its competitors have.  RIM disagrees (as if they could say anything else) but the question is, with the company laying off 5000 employees and struggling t release an already delayed product, who is going to have the bandwidth to work on creating an ecosystem?  If they are unable to create a stand-alone ecosystem, the BlackBerry 10 won't be able to make any inroads in a market where ease-of-use and integration are valued much more than technical specs and features.  It took Google a few years to figure this out as their phones were based on open source coding that allowed limitless customization and functionality, but continued to be less popular than the easy-to-use iPhone and its simple out of the box setup and industrial form factor.  If RIM is slow to create this type of integration, it may be the final death knoll for the company as we know it.
So what is my prediction for the company over the next two years?  At a market cap of only $3.8 billion, and an inability to impress customers, investors, or anyone that isn't an employee's own mother,  I think RIM has two possible futures.
One is a dramatic sell-off of all their current assets such as production lines and patents and a departure to a completely different core competency.  The patents are valued somewhere between $5 and $8 billion which would re-inflate the air mattress for a long enough period that RIM could reinvent itself into a completely different company.  Before you say this is a crazy idea you may want to think back to HP deciding they were going to do this before realizing they were actually decent at their current core competencies.  If Kodak had shifted its focus, could they be a competitor of Corningware in making glass for these high-end devices or even making the cameras for them instead of trying to sell us stand alone cameras that were marginally better than the ones found on our phone+text+email+internet browsing+gaming+etc devices?  A dramatic sell and shift mentality may be exactly what is needed to keep RIM independent.
The other future is the one I personally think has the higher likelihood of happening.  This is the future where RIM is acquired for somewhere between $9-15 billion and is absorbed into another company.  The main mystery in this scenario is: who does the buying?  Apple already makes their own devices, and although they are sitting on an Everest of cash, it seems like a high price tag just to keep a competitor from the table.  I would say Google would make an interesting match since they are both relatively young companies and Google could gather some synergy from RIM and use their production skills to become an OEM.  Alas, Google recently bought a good portion of Motorola's mobile capability which I suspect is for the exact reasons mentioned above, so they're off the list as well.  That leaves us one possible suitor - Microsoft.  The software giant is trying to play catch up in the post-PC world and this acquisition would let them skip a few grades.  Microsoft also has a little experience of their own as a manufacturer with their Xbox devices, so they've already learned some of the difficult lessons from that process that could be applied here.
So there you have it - in 2014 we will have 3 companies, Microsoft, Apple, and Google, all making their own devices and running their own operating system with fully cooked-in ecosystems to house all your pictures, documents, emails, music, and whatever other information you deem to be so vital you can't be without it.  Check back in 2 years and see how accurate I was.

Matthew 20: 1-16 Equal Reward is More Than Ok

In the twentieth chapter of the gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells a parable of a land owner and workers.  As the story goes, the land owner goes out in the morning and tells some people looking for work that he would be willing to pay them at the end of the day if they were willing to come work in his fields.  Later in the day, the land owner does the same thing with a second group, and right before the work day ends he does it again.  When it comes time to pay the workers he pays each worker the same amount. 

This is where it gets interesting.  The workers who had worked the entire day become upset because they thought their pay would be greater than those who came in at the final hour.  The land owner then replies that they knew the reward when they agreed to work in the morning.

As we can see, this is a pretty transparent analogy to the reward of eternal and everlasting life.  It's easy for many of us who already believe in Christ as our savior to unwittingly become like the first workers in the field when we are presented with the possibility that someone who lived a very different lifestyle than ours found Christ late in life.  It's easy to ask what the point is to be in the first group of workers if everyone receives the same reward. 

I would challenge us all to view this story from a different perspective.  Let us look at the story from the point of view of one of the workers in the last group. If we read the story more carefully we see something  extremely critical.  Verses six and seven give us a glimpse into the last workers: "...He asked them 'Why haven't you been working today?' 7 "They replied, 'Because no one hired us.'"  Notice the answer there; these workers didn't spend their day sleeping until noon and then partying.  They had been searching all day for something to dedicate the day to, for something to give them the reward they were seeking, but nothing could do that except this land owner.

If there has ever been a time in our country's history where we should be able to view what that existence must be like, it should be now.  Imagine you have lost your job.  You don't know how much longer the money you have will last you or how long you'll be able to put food on the table.  You spend your days and nights searching for openings and applying to the ones you find.  Still, nothing seems to be going your way.  Your days are full of anxiety and uncertainty of what will come next.  This is the life without Christ.

It is the nature of this world that we will have hard times and we will suffer setbacks.  Throughout my short time here I've had my share.  But I also have an inner-peace that is always with me, because I know this life is temporary.  I have moments when I grumble about how nice it would be to not have to do the work that God calls us all to do and just do whatever I wanted, but I always end up coming back to the fact that I'm thankful to know I have work to do.  I'm no longer filled with anxiety of how I will get my reward.   I'm no longer searching.

You see, there's something amazing about kingdom work - they're always hiring.  Maybe instead of worrying about measuring our reward, we should be sharing the help wanted ads with the people we see searching.

A Preview to This Blog

I was debating what the subject of my first blog should be, and I have made my decision.  It will be about my blog and what you can expect to see if you choose to subscribe.  As you might be able to tell from my profile, I am a bit of an eclectic person, and therefore it seems only naturally that my blog be the same.  There will be posts about religion, economics, politics, sports, and any other random events that get me fired up enough to force me to share my opinion on the situation.  I will try to post at least a couple times a week to make sure the material stays relatively fresh.  I welcome all feedback, criticism, and different viewpoints on my page and all that I ask is that you respect everyone's opinions and keep the discussions professional. 

Now on to the good stuff - just a little taste of some of my thoughts from the week.

• Ndamukong Suh should have a permanent spot on Sunday morning's "C'mon Man" segment on ESPN for his comment after the Thanksgiving Day game.  You were losing your balance?  Really?  Could you please explain how kicking violently helps you regain your balance?  They didn't cover that in my physics classes apparently.

• I was so excited to hear that the NBA lockout was over - now all their fans can watch forty-six minutes and thirty seconds of lazy basketball followed by one minute and thirty seconds of good basketball that lasts twenty two minutes and includes thirty four commercials.

• I was honestly excited about college basketball starting again.  The next four months will be full of buzzer beaters, upsets, and actual defense.  

• Urban Meyer is the new Buckeye's head coach?  Yea, I guess that life threatening heart condition is better after ten months.  Also, the whole being judged by what type of husband and father you are at the end of your life thing - yea he solidified that in 10 months I'm sure.  At least he went to a program where the pressure is way lower than at Florida.

• Barney Frank announced he won't run for re-election.  I guess we will need someone else who said that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were fine financially less than 18 months before they were virtually bankrupt to write our financial reform laws and sit on our House Finance Committee.  It's hard to imagine anyone as out of touch with reality as this guy thinking he did things that made this country better.

• ADP said 200K+ jobs created by private sector, jobless claims report said 402K made initial claims, and the government jobs report comes out in about 8 hours.  Could this be a case of one story, another story, and the truth?

• Lastly, I will have an entire post on Tim Tebow, but tonight I just want to address Jake Plummer's comments.  A.) Jake Plummer?  I was unaware he was even still on an NFL roster.  B.) What would the reaction be if Tim Tebow was Muslim and Jake Plummer had told him to shut up about Allah?  C.)  Tim Tebow's reaction to this was pretty much right in line with his reaction to all the other adversity he's had to face this year- 100% class.

Ok, there's the appetizer - hope you liked it!