The Most Expensive Thing I Ever Bought

At our church small group last night we were asked what the most expensive thing was we ever bought. One guy said it was his wife's engagement ring. Another said his house, and another said his car. I said it was an ice cream cone!

The Rest of The Story
After my first date with Grace, my wife, I decided we needed to break up. So I went to her apartment the following day and told her. She lived on the third floor of her building, and by the time I was in the stairwell I knew I'd just made a big mistake.

When I got to the ground level I walked out to the parking lot below her open balcony window. I yelled up, "Yo! Grace!" She came out on the balcony to see what I wanted. I yelled up, "Want to go get an ice cream cone?"

Since then that ice cream cone has cost me engagement and wedding rings, our home, cars... and I'm STILL paying!

It was the largest and best purchase I ever made.

New Article on What To Do If You Still Have WinXP Computers

Yup! They're still some XP computers out there! And because of Microsoft's announcement about XP's end of support date (April 8, 2014), some folks are panicking!

Here's a link to a brief article I wrote on what to do if you still have some XP computers... click here to read it.

Fun at the Datacenter!

This week we increased our hosting capacity by 25% and doubled our backup data storage capacity! It's so exciting to see how The Lord is using MBS as a private cloud host for Christian churches and ministries!

MBS is hosting more than ninety servers in our rack after just two years of offering this service to The Church, and we're barely scratching the surface of our capacity! Here are some of our stats; we have:

• One rack in The Switch SuperNAP datacenter in southern Nevada (four legs of power, 29 internet trunk connections). The rack is about two-thirds full, which means we have plenty of room to add hardware as we continue to grow.
• Two 1gb fiber internet connections plugged into two cross-connected DMZ switches for HA (high availability). Our peak data throughput volume, though we're capable of 1gb (1000mb-- and can scale to 10gb), is just below 20mb. Lots of room to grow there.
• More than 500gb of RAM alone!
• Our Barracuda SPAM Filter 600 processed more than 70,000,000 emails last year! (About 85% were SPAM of some sort and got rejected.)

It was fun going up there and expanding our capacities as we get ready to add more hosting services! We hope that by Valentines Day we'll be hosting data file storage and synchronization that works a lot like Dropbox-- very simple and easy for users, but more secure and private.

New Article on Why Churches Change ChMS Solutions

Churches and ministries change database and accounting solutions at a surprisingly high rate. There are reasons why, and this new articles addresses them and how to improve the future.

Click here if you'd like to read it now for free on the MBS website!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to you!


    From The Nicholaou's
          Nick & Grace & Amanda
                       & Java

Christmas is the celebration of God invading our space and time by sending himself as a human being so we could understand him better and so he could live a perfect life-- the life he had always hoped we would live. Because we don't conduct ourselves perfectly, though, he allowed himself to be killed as a sacrificial replacement on our behalf, making his perfect righteousness available to all who will receive it as a gift. And that, he said, is how we can be sure of a maximally enjoyable life, both here and afterwards in heaven.

Our prayer is that each whose life we touch will know that maximally enjoyable life. Merry Christmas from the Nicholaou's.

Big News for the MBS Family!

As you may know, my wife (Grace) is a CPA that serves many Christian churches and nonprofits. Her practice has been focused on California, and she is terrific! (You knew I’d say that!)

This week she announced that her firm is joining a larger national firm with the same focus and aim-- to help churches and ministries through solid CPA services (link to announcement).

She is joining BMWL as a partner in early 2014. We have known them for many years, and I think very highly of them. You may know of their president, Mike Batts, who has served as ECFA’s board chair and who also chaired the Commission on Accountability and Policy for Religious Organizations.

I am not trying to pull you away from your current CPA firm. I want you to know, however, that Grace is now part of a larger team and has even greater resources in case you’re thinking of putting your CPA needs out for bid. If you are, I know she would appreciate the opportunity to be considered.

2014 IRS Standard Mileage Rates

The IRS has announced the Standard Mileage Rates for 2014. They are:

• $ .56 for business miles
• $ .235 for medical and moving miles
• $ .14 for miles in service of charitable organizations

The reason the charitable mileage rate is still at the ancient amount is because the charitable mileage rate can only be changed by Congress, who has been unwilling to do so for many years.