Justin R. Meats

Happy 3rd Sunday of Advent! Today is Gaudete Sunday.  Gaudete is the Latin word for “Rejoice.”  Advent is a time for preparing for Jesus, and the theme is a need for penitence. Today is different, and the readings emphasize the joyous anticipation of the Lord's coming. 

 Here’s the trailer for a video Isaac and I are making about our Appalachian Highpoints Trip.  5 nights, 7 states, 1,678 miles

This is a work in progress about using the DISC behavioral styles to more effectively communicate with others in meetings, task management, handling conflict, and managing.

Taking Flight! Master the DISC Styles to Transform Your Career, Your Relationships…Your Life by Merrick Rosenberg and Daniel Silvert is a good overview of the DISC Behaviors. It assigns a bird to each DISC style to make them easy to remember. 

One of the fun parts of a smart home is thinking of new ideas to simplify things. I created the following list of smart home conveniences and automations we have set up in our house using Samsung SmartThings and Alexa. Hopefully, sharing my list will give someone else an idea for their home. I plan to add to this list over time and Iwrote a Smart Home Products article about the hardware that enables this list.

One of my favorite quotes is from the introduction of Patrick Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team : "If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time." I didn't fully understand or appreciate that saying until my daughters started rowing in high school. Just like rowing, for an organization to be successful, it takes hard work, teamwork, and communication.

I just finished reading Robert Iger's The Ride of a Lifetime that shares his career's story of rising through ABC and eventually becoming the CEO of Disney. It's a chronological overview of his 22 years at ABC and 23 years at Disney, with the last 14 being CEO of Disney and provides great leadership principles. 

I spent the past week with my 12-year-old son, Isaac, and my 6-year-old daughter, Haley, traveling to the highest point in 7 states. While it was fun checking the highpoints off our list, the journey was the most memorable. 

 LAST UPDATED: 10/18/2020   Five nights, seven state highpoints, and 1,679.7 miles.  Isaac, Haley, and I took a road trip from Monday, Oct 12 to Saturday, Oct 17, 2020.   This page highlights our trip and is our digital scrapbook. 

I'm in a weekly Bible study on Friday mornings and use Verbum on my iPad. I sometimes get asked what software use. I wrote this as a resource to share with others interested in a digital bible reader.