Welcome to Monday Moments! 

HERE are the guidelines. If this is your first time giving your “One shining moment, PLEASE take time to read them. It will save us both a lot of time.

To join me, do a post today (or a post you’ve written from last Monday to Sunday) sharing something tht has happened to you this last week - anything funny or interesting, crazy, fulfilled, too busy, hilarious, wistful, or any number of out of the ordinary happenings that made you happy or miserable last week.  Put a link in your post to this post permalink (not my general URL) and then put the permalink of your post (not your general URL) here at the end of this post. Thanks.

Tell me your “Inspired by the truth” story every Monday…

Yesterday, as I mentioned here, I encountered a virus on my computer the likes of which I haven’t seen for a for about 5 years.  I was doing some google searching on “authentic community” in preparation for the next four weeks at Fellowship, and I came across a web site that looked like it “could” be useful, with a video on the front page that said I needed to access a “Flash player” to download it. 

I’ve downloaded a flash player or a shockwave player or an adobe reader lots of times and just figured this was another one of those times, which it was not, because when I pressed the button, it brought up a popup that said I had let viruses into my computer and “do I want to run a virus scan immediately?”  The immediate answer, by the way, should be no. But in a fit of reaction, I hit yes.  Hitting yes to this,and not the first pressed button, was indeed the thing that released the virus onto my computer. 

Earlier I was thinking of a good way this could be used as an object lesson or as a point to make about life, but really I just remember how ticked off I was that I could instantly make that decision and allow a crappy virus onto my own laptop, and how I wasted a whole morning trying to fix this mess I created. 

So no lesson here today, except to be careful kids, of the buttons you press on your computer. It could end up being more trouble than its worth.

Until next time…

Guidelines

1.  So what exactly IS Mondays Moments (MoMo) anyway?

M0M0 is a “blog carnival” (that concept is explained here). Basically, the idea is that on Monday you post a story that happened to you in the last week–anything funny or interesting that made your life last week (from Monday to Sunday) crazy, fulfilled, too busy, hilarious, wistful, or any number of out of the ordinary happenings that made you happy or miserable last week.  You post a link back here to my MoMo post, and enter your link in the “Mr. Linky” form at the bottom of my post.   

2.  You do not have to ask me first before you participate in MoMo.  Just jump right in. 

3.  You are not required to use the MoMo banner, though you are more than welcome to do so.

If you do, please be sure you’re using the the current one, at the top of this post.  If you don’t know how to add an image to your post, you can follow the instructions here. 

4. Please only leave a link if you have written a MoMO post.  Please mention MoMo in your post, and link back to my master list here.

From here on out, I’ll just delete “empty” links.

5.  Link to your MoMo post, not to the front page of your blog. 

This makes browsing so much easier for everyone, especially when people browse around in the archives.  For an explanation on how to do this, go here.

6.  Please DO NOT host your own MoMo “Mr. Linky” at your site.

I’d like to keep “Inspired by a True Story“ as the only homepage for Monday Moments, for simplicity’s sake. 

7.  Please be patient with your e-mail questions.

In particular, if you have a question that could be answered by using the “Help” section in your blogging software (“How do I upload images?” or “How do I link back to you from my page?”), please check there for answers first.

8. When you enter your link on Mr. Linky, you will most likely notice that it says “delete link” next to your name.  If you click on that, it will let you delete what you just posted.  No one else can see it, just like you can’t see the “delete link” next to my name on my computer.  Make sense?

9. Enter a 3-4 word description of your post, in parentheses, after you put your name.  Be descriptive, be specific, and BE BRIEF.

For example, where the box below says “Your Name”, you might put:

Billy (The worst day ever)

-OR-

Steve (Guitar Hero Champion)

-OR-

Carie (My great husband)

Make sense?  This will make it a jillion times easier to browse through the tips.  PLEASE KEEP YOUR PARENTHETICAL TITLE TO A MAXIMUM OF 4 WORDS. Mr. Linky freaks out sometimes when the “Your Name” portion gets too long, and it can mess up the alignment of the whole deal, making it harder to read.

10. I’ll put my MoMo post up no later than 12:01 am (central time) each Wednesday.  Frequently, I’ll have it up an hour or two earlier.

I know this is a lot of information!  Please know that I’m just trying to find a way to make it easier for people to browse through all your wonderful creative ideas.  Thank you SO much for participating in this–YOU are the reason it is such a success!

11.  I reserve the right to delete any links that are inappropriate.

12.  These guidelines were based on and used from Randy Elrod’s “Watercooler Wednesday” guidelines.  Check out that blog here.