Just got back from Hawaii, where we were doing a lot of interviews and photographs for a communication audit for a client in Honolulu. More on that later.

I was blown away by one high-ranking individual who used much of my one-on-one time with him to educate me on the “spirit of Aloha.” Of course, everyone knows that Aloha means hello and goodbye. But when the Hawaii license plate refers to the place as “The Aloha State,” it’s not saying that it is the “hello, goodbye state.”

This very kamaaina gentleman explained to me, with great passion, that the spirit of Aloha includes things like loyalty and generosity. But those are fringe components. At its heart, the spirit of Aloha is “love, responsibility, and doing-the-right-thing.” It is not a balance of these things, mind you. It is all three, all the time. It is love always. It is responsibility for what you say and what you hear…out of love. And it is doing the right thing…not necessarily the popular thing…out of love and responsibility. What a great and profound learning this was!

I love these people! Mahalo! And Aloha!

Well, I am now officially old. Closer to 101 than to 1. To celebrate, Anne and I went on a tour of restaurants we’d never been to. They were all very nice. But the most note-worthy had to be West First Wood-Fire Pizza in Hendersonville.

The place was started about a year ago by our friend, Scott, an artisan baker, once-and-future bee keeper, and all around interesting guy. It’s in an old warehouse looking building, all exposed brick. There is a metal staircase right in the middle as you come in the front door, leading up to a mezzanine. The stairs are decorated with Christmas twinkle lights.

Scott’s wife, a fine are jeweler, had done some incredible glass work. Stained glass on two of the windows. And some amazing translucent glass work on the brick oven chimney.

We had some salads, which were great. And we got some bread with dipping sauces—can’t go wrong getting bread from an artisan baker. And we had some very good, thin-crust, slightly crispy goat cheese pizza. Overall, we dug it and will go back. Maybe frequently (best laid plans of mice and men, ya know).

Oh, and we stopped for gas on the way out of town. Put nine gallons in the Prius. Got 60 mpg for most of the weekend, until it dropped off to the mid fifties when we went to Asheville on Sunday. It’s good being 50. It would be better being 20 and knowing what I know at 50. But it’s still good.

The nightmare scenario. We have an automated backup system for our accounting software. Up until now, this system would check once a day for any changes in the database. And if there were any, it would save that day’s database over the previous day’s database, as a “backup.” Anyone see any problems with this approach. Well, we didn’t really either, until aforementioned nightmare scenario. A weekend corruption!

Over the weekend, for reasons we can’t put our finger on, the software dumped a WHOLE BUNCH of data—like all of our payroll history, all of our receivables, some of or long-term assets, and some of our long-term liabilities, and our checking accounts. Software just FORGOT that stuff existed. This happened on a weekend. And, when the system did its automatic check for changes in the database, it detected the change, and saved the corrupted database right over the accurate database from Friday afternoon. Imagine our surprise, when we came into the office yesterday (Monday).

We called technical support. They were pretty technical, but not very supportive. The net of their assistance was, “Well, dude, if the data’s gone, it’s gone. Nothin’ I can do about it.”

But, by the grace of God, Anne had done a backup back at the beginning of January. So, instead of having to cobble together more than a year’s worth of data, we only had to cobble together about a month. We went to work tracking down job records, purchase orders, estimates, payables, receivables, client payments, checks, and deposit records. Props to Vivian for pitching in after hours yesterday. It’s been about 35 hours since the crash was first discovered, and we’re well on our way to recovery.

James says that we should “count it all joy.” And this has certainly been a growth experience. And thanks to the Lord, it was a lot less awful than it could have been. Still, I would rather not go through it again.

By the way, we’re changing our backup approach.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to tell you that I have been a Pittsburgh Stillers fan since … well, for as long as I can remember. So it was painful to see anyone challenging the dynastic unchallengability of my 70s stillers.

It was very frustrating to watch the Cheaters get away with video-taping opponents signals—a practice that you just know they used against good teams (like the 2001 Stillers), if they used it against wet noodles like the NY not Yets. But I digress. It was maddening to see them run up the score on weaker teams—and be celebrated for it in the media. American’s stand up to bullies; we don’t hail them as heros. It was irritating to look at Bellicheat’s antisocial mug, and Brady’s skeevy grin on every sports and pop-culture rag at Barnes & Noble. And the constant “nobody will EVER beat this team…this is the best team to ever play the game of football…19-0…history in the making…blah, blah, BLAH!”

So I just have to say this. The 2007-2008 New England Patriots are NOT undefeated. They are NOT the winners of four Superbowls in a single decade. They are NOT the in the top ten greatest teams of all time. They are NOT ANYTHING SPECIAL. Their amoral, pretty-boy quarterback is black and blue…but he is NOT GOLDEN. And they will not, or should not, ever again be mentioned in the same conversation with the 1940s Cleveland Browns, the 1950s Baltimore Colts (the real Colts), the 1960s Greenbay Packers, the 1970s Pittsburgh Stillers, or the 1980s Bears or Forty Niners.

Not germane to any relevant topic here. But I just had to say it.