Today was supposed to be a glorious Sunday. The Lord's Day. The day of rest. My wife had to go to the apparel market in Atlanta all day so in good fashion I hopped out of bed with her promptly at 6:30 am. That is a tad bit early for Sundays for sure but my favorite part of the day bar none is when it is real early and I have a fresh cup of coffee and I am allowed to clear my head an think.

I always read at least one chapter in whatever I am into at the moment. Currently I am reading a very fascinating book by Shane Claiborne called Irresistible Revolution. The book is challenging and well written.

As with most Sunday's I had no agenda I simply wanted to do a bit of catchup work in my garden and hammer out some .php code for one of the websites that I am working on completing.

Around 5 pm the day was going well. I was slow cooking a batch of freshly cut collard greens and I had cut chicken up to grill. The radio was playing some great oldies, It was actually Moving Easy channel on Sirius. The making of a perfect evening. I was nearly on my second glass of Chardonnay when my cell phone rang. Without glance at the caller ID or hesitation I answered.

At the other end was a local artist and good friend of mine who is working on a major project for a very famous client. They had a problem and no solution. He needed my help and he had to have it tonight. They have to board a plane tomorrow and they have to answer the problem.

I have no qualms about helping a friend even on a glorious Sunday afternoon. I am strongly of the opinion that I was put on this earth to serve and I shall hopefully do so with little regret. My angst with this task is that they knew about it 4 weeks ago. What happened to planning? What happened to consideration? Fortunately I knew about the problem 4 weeks ago as well when they told me about it so it had actually crossed my mind. The problem dealt with hacking an iPod touch. The solution was not to actually hack it but to thing strangely outside the box. We fixed the issue in simplistic fashion.

So after wasting 4 hours of a Sunday evening I simply ask, what can we do in a smarter fashion to alleviate someone else's pain?