I drove home from Gaylord, stopped home for an hour and headed to the airport to fly out to Conneticut. I got to the airport, printed my ticket and noticed the dreaded "S" next to my name, meaning I'm getting the bonus treatment from security. They went through my crap, felt me up and I took off to the gate. I went to check e-mail and noticed they'd never given me my laptop back. I scrambled back to security and found that they'd given my laptop to the police, who they had to contact to retrieve it. I got on the plane and fell asleep for about an hour. When I woke up, I'd noticed that we hadn't even taken off yet. I went back to sleep and watched Season 2 of Scrubs the rest of the flight.

Jerky

On our way down out of Northern Michigan we had to stop and get some jerky. Just the place for me.

I really would like to own a monkey that I could dress in armor and fight with when I get home from work.

I'm up in Gaylord meeting with a group of guys from work, getting some wakeboarding and golf in on the side. This is a picture of Big Air Bill flying through the air. I went after Bill, not having done gone wakeboarding all year. Once I got my legs back under me I caught more air than I had in the past, but it was pretty puny compared to Bill's jumping.


We did a crawfish boil tonight with crawfish, scallops, shrimp, potatos, corn and onions. Excellent. In a food coma, we hung out by the camp fire and then played some cards.

Cathie and I watched the movie Million Dollar Baby last night. Didn't realize it was going to be such a bummer. Almost as cheery as the movie The Champ with Ricky Schroder.

I'm heading up north tomorrow with a bunch of guys from work for a couple days of boating, work, meetings and golf. We've done it for the past 4 years and it's been a blast. We grill out, hang out, and work in between all that stuff. From there I'm flying out into Rhode Island for some meetings in Connecticut, and then back on Thursday.

I just put Emily, my 4 year old to bed. I noticed she was wearing 2 shirts. Further inspection revealed that she had her jeans and shirt on under her pajamas, "Because I want to wear this outfit tomorrow."

We had our annual youth group paintball game today. We opened it up to anyone in the church who wanted to play, and we had a blast. This nice quarter size welt came from my friend Bruce, who nailed me from about 10 feet out as we were storming their base. One of the other guys in my squad got the flag and won it for us while Bruce was busy lighting me up. The weather was beautiful, and it was a blast. I'm no expert paintballer. When I started out playing years ago, I'd wear 3 layers of clothes to avoid getting hurt. I'm old enough and dumb enough now that I figure it only hurts for a second, and just go with shorts and a t-shirt. We teamed up the adults vs. the students (including Jason and I) and we smoked 'em pretty much every game.

Beth had the baby!!!! Libby Danielle Kurt was born at 8:26 a.m. weighing 6 lbs 1oz and 19 inches long. Beth and Libby are doing great! More pictures on Jon's blog.

Neil Diamond Video

This Neil Diamond/Will Farrell Story Tellers Video is hilarious. It's a mock on the VH1 Storytellers series. Here's the transcript.

Zach's Truck

I've heard people say they don't like leaving their cars at Park and Go carpooling places, but never understood why. I also never got why people back their cars into spaces at these places.....Until now. Zach left his car there the other day, came back to find they'd stolen his grill, foglights and turn signals. It happened to be a couple blocks away from the rehab facility where Eminem is at. Coincidence?

On my way back from biking with Bill at Island Lake today, I drove by the rehab center down the street from me where Eminem is at. Apparently enough people have been trying to get in to see him they've now setup a cop at the entrance of the place. On the news they reported on a guy who got drunk and tried to admit himself, so he could see Eminem.

I've been thinking a lot about this issue lately, trying to dig a little deeper into the idea of what it means to turn your back on a relationship with God. I have a friend who's life is mired in sin but seems to be moving closer and closer to God as they wrestle with this sin in their life. What amazes me is the fact that others have spent time trying to figure out if this preson has "lost their salvation". I find it fascinating when people are willing to decide on behalf of another whether or not someone fits into the bucked of being "Saved" or not. I see people take scripture out of context to build their case and justify those conversations, but I'm really not sure to what end. Does it make them feel more secure about your own position with God or that maybe he loves them more than the other sinner? Does it change how much you should love the person at that point? My guess is that God has a pretty good handle on it already.

I stole this Marty Luther quote from Noel's blog. From A Cognizant Discourse:

God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, says Peter (2. Peter 3:13) are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign. It suffices that through God's glory we have recognized the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day. Do you think such an exalted Lamb paid merely a small price with a meager sacrifice for our sins? Pray hard for you are quite a sinner.

-Martin Luther

I read an interesting quote from Napoelon (Bonaparte the general, not Dynamite the movie character)

I know men and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no mere man. Between him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded His empire upon love; and at this hour millions of people would die for Him.

Couldn't get a baby-sitter last night, so we hung out at home and watched the movie The Notebook last night with Cathie (comon, it was my anniversary... it's a romantic movie, you figure it out). I thought it'd be a pretty girly flick, but I liked it. Good way to get in the "anniversary mood" if you know what I mean.

My company posted this video online, a success story for a customer I've worked at. It's akward enough hearing your own voice, let alone having to see yourself in a video, complete with make-up and editing. It's a customer I've been involved with over the past 3 years and I'm very proud of it, but the video's a little strange to see.

Check out this stick figure remake of the Fatboy Slim video for Weapon of Choice with Christopher Walken.

Stephen's Birthday Pics

I put all of the pictures from Stephen's party online, but thought I needed to point out some highlights and explain them:


My Mom was kind enough to deliver this nice plate and cup set for Dan and I. In this picture, we're renacting the picture that's on the plate itself. One of me sitting on my big brother's lap, labeled "Danny and David Kurt". The plate is not nearly as weird as the cup.

My sister Susan is waaay to open about nursing her children in front of her brothers. She just whips it out whenever and wherever and feeds little Bender. Apparently, she's okay with showing people her sexy nursing bra as well. No idea how this made it on her head.


At every family get together, nap are a tradition. I've learned to at least go find a place, hide and take a nap. I've slept under beds, behind couches - wherever I won't be found and disturbed. Not Kevin.

Not sure if Kevin is trying some kind of sympathy thing with his wife or just decided to wear a manzere.

13 Years of Bliss

Today is our 13 year wedding anniversary! 13 years and three kids later. Wow. I'm more in love with my wife than ever before, I think she's more beautiful, more sexy than ever and she's my best friend in the whole world. Through my wife I've come to understand what it means to have a soul mate. When I experience something new, it's not all that it can be unless my wife is with me to share in the experience. We both have parents who've modeled what strong comitted, loving marriages look like to us and that's a gift we want to pass down to our kids. I know this is a little cheezy, but give me one day of cheese.... It's my anniversary.

iPod Question

Hopefully someone out there has had the same issue and figured out a way to resolve this:
About 80% of my iPod is full of music, the rest is full of Audiobooks, Podcasts and Church Messages. The only time this is an issue when I go to Shuffle Songs on my iPod. I get a mix of all the above. Has anyone figured out a way to use the Audiobooks top-level category on your iPod or the Podcasts category at the top level? I suppose I could group everything into very narrow genre categories and just shuffle according to the genre, but I'd rather not have to. Any ideas?

Update:
I think I've fixed the iPod portion of my issue above. I nuked my iPod, reloaded the firmware and reloaded my music. I had updated my firmware before updating iTunes before, so the two seemed to be out of sync. This has moved all of my Podcasts into under one of the top categories. Still not sure how to use the Audiobooks section.

Update #2:
I figured out how to use the Audiobooks section on my iPod. You have to first convert the files into apple's AAC format and then rename the file extension in order to take advantage of the embedded bookmarking in the file, per this article. Secondly, you need to set the category to Audiobook, per this article.

Got this from Kathy: A guy is driving along while leaving a voice mail message for a friend when suddenly the guy witnesses a car accident (very minor, nothing in any way tragic). The guy's entire reaction to the accident was captured on his friend's voice mail account. Southwestern Bell and a Texas TV station were kind enough to post it on the Internet for one and all. You MUST listen to this. It is simply hysterical. (What cracks me up most is the sound of the guy's laugh.)

Ninja Bender

We went over to Dan and Kris's yesterday for Stephen's birthday. We got him a cool set of giant boxing gloves. By Giant I mean each glove was about 3 feet long, along with a big punching bag. Stephen also got this teenage mutant ninja turtle outfit, which someone proceeded to dress Ben in while he slept. We topped it off with the guys having a wood-splitting contest. Kevin smoked all of us. Stinkin farm boys.

I had a customer meeting yesterday in Lansing along with a friend of mine at work, Bill. Bill and I have worked together over the past 12 years in different capacities, but have been on different teams for the past 3 and haven't had a chance to go on a sales call for a while. We used to be a great team, so it was fun being back, doing the same thing again. We got to talking with the customer we were meeting with and it turns out they go to Riverview Church. I mentioned that Bill and I had a friend of ours who happens to be one of the pastors there and that we were meeting him later in the day to go biking. The customer responded that Noel often talked about what an agressive biker he is, even going so far to do a message on the topic, entitled Mountain Biking with Mike. We told Noel we'd remind him of that fact as we rode with him. I picked Noel up and we headed over to meet Bill at Burchfield Park, meanwhile Noel tried to find the exact point in his message where he explained his lack of prowess at biking (I've heard that he will only let people listen to his messages when he rides in the car with them.)
It was a fun trail, pretty technical with good speed. We had a great time riding. I ate it once pretty hard trying to hit a jump while not knowing there were big rocks and stumps on the other side of it. It had these crazy ramps all througout it, including a ramp with a crazy teeter-totter thing at the end. Noel egged me on a bunch of times to try to make it over the big teeter-totter thing at the park. You ride up the six inch wide ramp about 4 feet in the air until the weight of your bike I tried it about ten times, severely racking myself 4 of them, never making it over the thing. The trick is that you have to find the perfect speed to hit it, going fast enough that you don't lose your balance going up it, but slow enough that the teeter-totter has time change directions at the top. Some of the stuff they had at the park was crazy enough that I felt the need to at least try it, but wasn't real successful on much of it.

Last night we had Will's going away party at BW3's and went to see The Fourty Year Old Virgin afterwards with Will and Mark. Funny movie, Steve Carrel is hilarious. Probably could have waited to see it on video.

Forget running biomedical devices - I want one of these pee powered batteries for my cell phone. Dropping my phone in the toilet would then become a good thing as would not washing my hands afterwards.

I just saw that Rob Bell (pastor of Mars Hill church in Grand Rapids) has a new book out called Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith while reading this weird, disjointed interview: Find the Big Jesus: An Interview with Rob Bell.

Bull Finch pub

Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name....

Old Ironsides

I got into Boston bright and early, had my meetings and then headed out to the North End for dinner. The North End is renound for it's traditional Italian cuisine and culture. It's a very cool area right out of the Sopranos. We headed over to see The USS Constitution (aka Old Ironsides), the oldest active boat in the US Navy.

Vacation Video

Here are some video I took on vacation:

• I took this footage of a paraflight takeoff.
  
• I took this footage while flying over the Silver Lake Sand Dunes.
• At Michigan's Adventure amusement park, Nate and I rode the Cork Screw and I held the camera shot on his face to catch his expressions in this footage.
  

Family Vacation Pictures

We made it back tonight. By the time we got home, close to 11, all of the kids had crashed in the car and I carried them up. Carrying Nate up, I can't believe how big he's gotten. He's 4'2" and becoming a big guy right before my eyes. Anyways, before I leave tomorrow morning I thought I'd get the pictures online, so here they are. There's a ton of them, and I haven't really gone through them, but this way Cathie and the kids will be able to see them before I get back. I still need to post some cool video I took on vacation between the paraflight stuff and the roller coasters.

Anyways, you can see the pictures here.

Michigan Adventure Amusement Park

We're on our way home after a great day at the park. Michigan Adventure is a collection of carnival rides, 4 decent roller coasters (including the largest wood roller coaster in the U.S.) and a great water park. We got here when it opened and pretty much closed it out. Nate and I hit all of the roller coasters, Maddie hit the medium ones and even Emily went on some pretty scary stuff. It was a perfect day, overcast until we hit the water park and then bright and sunny. Nate and I went on the new the new ride called the Funnel of Fear in the water park, which was fun. It was a good vacation. I have to leave for Boston at 5am tomorrow morning. Nice.

Paraflight

This rocked. I took this picture at 1200 feet on my paraflight out to the Silver Lake Dunes. We flew about 40 mph, as low as 20' feet at times out over Lake Michigan and the dunes. Scary enough, you need no FCC license to fly one of these. My pilot was a retired commercial airline pilot whose been doing this for 8 years. I made the mistake of asking what happens when the engine dies, so he showed me. The flight is scary for the first 5 minutes when I kept wondering how quickly we'd die if the chute ripped off. It's a little bumpy flying this thing, but fun and pretty easy.

Trail Ride

We slept in this morning and then went to the Rainbow Ranch to ride horses. We went on an hour long ride. Emily rode with me and talked non-stop the whole way, giving commentary, talking to the horse and filling me whenever one of the horses stopped to go to the bathroom. The kids loved it when they'd let the horses run. The ride took us through a beautiful areaam and the weather was great.



We're heading to the beach this afternoon and I'm going paraflying tonight at the nearby Shelby paraflight school. Should be fun.

Will's Mom's Cottage

We went from the Double J ranch to Will's mom's cottage up near New Era, North of Muskegon. It's a beautiful place, in the woods with access to Lake Michigan. We spent a few hours at the beach, burying each other in the sand and swimming. Lake Michigan was suprisingly warm. We roasted hot dogs over the camp fire and are making s'mores later tonight. The kids and I have jad fun hiking in the woods behind the house, up a giant hill. It's so peaceful here, I love it.

Wild West Show

We went to the Western Stars Wild West show at the ranch tonight. They wrangled cows, cracked whips and like any good wild west show had dancing girls in tight outfits. The kids loved it.(The horses, not the girls)

Double J Ranch

We got to the Double J Ranch around 2, checked in and toured around the place. It's a dude ranch with horse back riding, fishing, water slides, petting zoos and kids crafts. We're staying in this cabin, which has a cool loft for the kids and a huge jacuzzi and king size bed for Cathie and I. There was a cowboy stunt show this afternoon and a big western show tonight after the pig roast.

A friend of mine, Erik, turned me onto the fact that the show Wife Swap on ABC is looking for a technology-savvy family to do a swap with. I sent them an e-mail telling them we're willing. Never really checked with Cathie, but I figured I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. I've only seen the show a couple of times, and it mostly consists of being stuck with people who are exactly the opposite of you. The opposite of me... that'd be someone who can't dance, can't sing and isn't funny, I guess. One odd thing on the web site: "Schedule a wife swap party..." Not sure they understand the double-entendre here.

Emily (she's four) is the only one of our kids that have been big into imaginary friends. One of her most prominent friends is Shaina and her lesser friend, the imaginary monkey. There was another imaginary friend that died on the swing in the back yard. Anyways, we were cleaning up her room today, putting her CD's back in the cases and she told us to stop. She explained to us that she likes to keep them mixed up in the cases because otherwise Shaina will find them and break them. We're either dealing with a very active imagination or poltergeist style demon posession. I'm hoping it's the former.

So Cathie sent me out to the store to pick up some groceries, and I was impressed. When Cathie gives me a grocery list, she actually puts the items on the list in the order they are in the aisles as I go through the store. I guess I'm easily impressed.

We (read: mostly Cathie) have been working to get ready for vacation tomorrow. Cathie's got a strange vacation preparation routine which involves staying up all night the night before getting ready. Doesn't matter how far in advance she starts, she always stays up all night. To top things off, we're getting the house cleaned up for one final open house before we take the house of the market. We don't want the kids to change schools mid-year, so we've decided to take it off the market until next spring. We're heading out to the West side of the state, staying at the Double J ranch tomorrow night and then staying at Will's Mom's cottage on Lake Michigan for a couple of days until we head out to Michigan Adventure Amusement Park on Tuesday. I head out to Boston on Wednesday and Thursday and then back all of the following week. Jon was going to go to the park with us but because of the latest with Beth's pregnancy, he's heading back to Memphis early.

I talked to my brother Jon tonight and apparently him and his wife Beth had quite a day. They went into the Doctor's office for a check-up on the baby as her due date approaches. Apparently the baby hadn't grown much since the last visit so they were concerned about things. They talked to them about doing a C-section immediately, but instead they went to a specialist who confirmed that the baby was a little smaller than it should be, but still doing fine. They've got a C-section scheduled for August 25th, two days after Beth takes her board exams. She's been studying for these things for 9 months and didn't want to have to wait another year to get them completed. It's a two part test, the first part being two days long, and the next part taking place at the end of October. I've taken tests in college hung-over, but never taken one two days away from giving brith.

I was laughing hard reading some of the T-Shirts at bustedtees.com

My sister Susan sent me this image she grabbed from the lego web site. Wouldn't you too like to help protect and preserve their brand. While you're at it, please don't say "Making a Xerox." Please say it making a photocopy.

Not sure why you'd get this tattoo. Not sure why my brother Jon would get it.

I had breakfast with a friend of mine Andy who I hadn't seen in a long time. We've been friends over 10 years and I think the last place I'd seen him was at a wedding he played guitar at. It was good catching up, and eating at the Cracker Barrel, which is full of country goodness.

The whole family went to see Charlie and the Choclate Factory tonight during $2 tuesdays at the South Lyon cinema. The good news: It's only $2. The bad news, it's packed, the seats are horribly uncomfortable, but hey, it's $2. Once I got over beeing creeped out by Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka character, i liked the movie. As much as Tim Burton has bad-mouthed the original movie, he seemed to have pimped a lot of the visuals from it. His story line is more true to the original book, and I liked the fact that Willy Wonka doesn't do any weird songs, I liked the explanation on why Willy is the way he is, and the better ending with the elevator. At least Gene Wilder didn't remind me so much of Michael Jackson when he played Wonka.

Peerflix.com

I've been using Peerflix.com for a couple weeks, per my previous post on the site. Peerflix is a peer-to-peer mail-based physical DVD trading service. You list your DVD's on the site and people can request them. When they do, you get an e-mail and a link to print a mailing label. You print the label, stick it in one of the envelopes they send you and send it to the person. As you do this, you accumulate credits which you can in turn request DVD's from the person. I've sent out a bunch and gotten a bunch so far. You pay $.99 for the transaction to Peerflix. Not a bad way to go.

This is an interesting article on A Day in the Life of a Nigerian Internet Scammer. A while back I thought it would be funny to correspond with one of these guys to see how far it would go. It stopped being funny when I must have been added to some kind of mass-sucker list that caused me to receive a bunch of these things, most of which weren't caught by my spam-engine.

I've got a day filled with eight hours worth of conference calls, which can be painful. Thanks to my Plantronics Wireless Office Headset and my wireless connection, i can sit on my deck and work all morning. I love working virtually.

Thanks to Dan for this article on Bono around Salty Dogma:

Bono puts it really well: "At the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics—in physical laws—every action is met by an equal or an opposite one," explains Bono. "And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that. . . . Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I've done a lot of stupid stuff."

This Sumo Tube looks like a blast, not to mention having two of these behind a boat crashing into each other.

On Saturday Cathie and I went over to Brad's and spent the day with a bunch of friends hanging out on the lake with Brad/Joanne, Ted/Sherri, Dana/Eli and Will, . Brad's got a new wave runner that is ridiculously fast. It's got 230 HP and goes 70MPH in about 5 seconds. That's as powerful as Brad's previous ski boat. It's like riding a crotch-rocket - gets real scary, real quickly. We got both of these huge tubes going out simultaneously and were launching back and forth between the tubes. We found that when everyone gets to one tube, the second tube would go airborne and launch about 10 to 15 feet in the air overhead and then crash down on top of us. Dangerous but fun. You can watch the pictures here.

We spent some time discussing Brad's death, and Ted decided to re-enact Brad's funeral, including a Will Farrelesque singing of "Dust in the Wind", per Old School, which you can watch here.


From there, we went to Bob's house for another Bahama Bob's bash. Bob built a huge Tiki Hut in his back yard by his pool and puts on great parties. We hung out there until about 12:30 when we called it a night.

Sunday was all about rest. After church we took some naps and Emily and I hung out in her wading pool. The water was right out of the hose and freezing cold. Emily had me playing horsy, crawling around in the ice cold water as she sat on my back, equally cold. Mark and Diana came over for dinner last night with the kids and the girls put on a big dance extravaganza show for us. They rehersed a bunch of dance numbers, put on lots of make-up and we got to watch the big show. The boys wanted nothing to do with watching their sisters dance, but Emily dug it.

Dave Lewis

Nate and I went to my friend Kirk's performance training center to hear a number of people from the Detroit Red Wings organization talk about athletics and performance. Dave Lewis (The Wing's head coach until a few weeks ago), Piet Van Zant their head trainer and their equipment manager, Paul Boyer all spoke. We heard lots of good hockey stories about the different players, including a good one from when Kirk used to be the Wing's head trainer: During his first game ever as their lead trainer, he was hoping no one go down on the ice where he'd have to go out on the ice and potentially embaress himself, falling on the ice. A player went down, Kirk went out on the ice trying to figure out what was wrong with the player. The player told him to get closer when he told him 'Kirk, welcome to the team. You're on TV, you're parents are getting some good pictures, so make it look good.' The guy was fine, but figured he'd indoctrinate Kirk on his first day. Nate enjoyed it and we got autographs in the end.

Just Good 'Ol Boys

Will and I went to see Dukes of Hazard last night after his going away party at work. The movie was average with the highlight being Jessica Simpson, who was suprisingly good. I grew up watching every episode of the show and probably went in with too high of expectations.

Instead of going to the gym during lunch, it was such a nice day that i decided to go biking instead. I went to Island Lake and road the Blue trail. It's a ten mile ride, a nice 45 minute ride that's mostly nice, flat out stuff where you can go fast. About 10% of the trail is somewhat technical stuff, with some nasty sand in spots. It was a perfect day for riding. Midway through, I stopped at the Lake where Cathie, Kris, Susan, Laura (Jon's sister-in-law), Jon and the kids were swimming and said hi. Midway through the ride I saw the largest gardener snake I've ever seen sunning itself on the trail. I tried to bunny-hop over it, but I'm not sure my back wheel cleared it. Oops.

About a month ago I received a promotion within my company and as a result they highlighted me within a recent newsletter. Someone called me a while back, asked me a bunch of questions and then wrote an article about me based on that interview. The article was nice, but the picture that they used was a creepy looking executive headshot that they'd taken a while back. By posting the article, I'm opening myself up to tremendous mockery by my brothers - but hey, they live dull lives vicariously through me, so what the heck:

For those of you who know Dave Kurt, he is a hardworking individual with a great sense of humor. Dave has been working for Xerox over nine years, in
various parts of the company that have led up to what is now known as BPS, starting out in what was then, Professional Document Services. Dave is now a Managing Principal, leading the BPS Healthcare and Public Sector team. Dave believes that his most significant accomplishment while at Xerox has been the opportunity to recruit a number of employees who have in turn had a significantly positive impact on the future of Xerox Corporation.

Born and raised in Michigan, Dave resides in the metro Detroit area with his wife and three children. He shares a passion for extreme sports and music. Last summer he played an instrumental part in overseeing a rock concert. As one of the producers of this festival, he worked to bring in over 3000 kids and 75 bands that performed across seven stages. Along with Dave’s drive for excitement is his intensity towards the betterment of today’s youth. Much of Dave’s time is spent mentoring young adults. Dave currently is on the Board of Directors for Project 311 (www.project311.org), which is an organization committed to working with middle school kids to ensure a positive future. Along with Project 311, Dave also leads Fusion, a middleschool youth group at his local church. Dave strongly believes in the guidance of today’s youth and understands the need to acknowledge them. He feels that they are often forgotten and believes that with direction they can be successful under any circumstance. Described by his peers as high energy, passionate, authentic and loyal, Dave knows how to spice things up here at XGS.

This is funny. A HALO version of Napoleon Dynamite.

Dammit, I can't believe my church didn't make this list of the Top 50 most influential churches.

Kansas City Wizards Soccer Game

I'm in Kansas City today visiting a customer of ours. The customer is hosting the local professional soccer team, the Kansas City Wizards, playing in a tournament. It's 94 degrees and sweltering without a breeze, with sweat dripping down my back. A friend of mine, Sara, got us tickets and filled us in on what was going on in the game. We headed over to her house on the lake afterwards for a ride on the pontoon boat aftewards. We floated around the lake for a while and never got the boat started. I'm heading back tomorrow morning on the 6AM flight, and I'm in town all next week.

Two kid stories:
We had a showing the other day and we were just finishing cleaning up as they came. The kids were outside playing when we answered the door, let them in and left. I found out the next day from our realtor that Madeline talked to the potential buyers. She was kind enough to tell them that we needed to cancel our showing and that we'd raised the price of the house to $7 million.

Last night Cathie and I were sitting out on the deck reading when Emily came down and asked for a glass of milk and we told her no. That night when we went in to check on Emily we rubbermaid with milk in it. I guess it wasn't a glass.....

I want one of these water balloon launchers! To be able to launch multiple water balloons over 300 feet seems to have huge potential. At camp one year ("One time at band camp") one of the leaders had his retina get detached after getting hit in the eye with a water balloon from one of the slingshots.

I've been listening to a series from Mark Driscoll at Mars Hills church in Seattle on Ephesians. It's pretty in-depth - I'm 5 hours in and half way through the second chapter. It's causing me to re-rack my perception of God and Justice. Mars Hills does a nice job putting their messages out there via podcasts and BitTorrents. I was a little dismayed to see that they're worship band is named Team Strike Force, which is the team name I use in every team-based situation. My guess is that they stole this from me. I won't sue them though, they're a church.

With Jon and Beth moving down to Tennessee for Beth's fellowship at St. Jude's Hospital, we don't get to see Beth as often as we have to see Jon. Apparently, she is actually pregnant, as these 34 week pictures will attest to:

This is a great collection of articles from Defcon, the annual computer hackers convention that takes place out in Vegas. One of the funnier articles is this story:

At DEFCON there's a wall with a projection of username and passwords (some of the password that is). When you use any wireless here, it's safe to assume that all the packets are being captured and if you're foolish, you logged in to webmail, pop, AIM, etc...DEFCON is reality concentrated in to one spot- when you see your friend's password on the wall, and a big sheep go by, it's a clever reminder.

This one too:

One the coolest projects I've seen so far at DEFCON was the kegbot, a linux based keg that dispenses beer as long as you have an iButton key. The system keeps track of who you are, how much you're drinking and in team mode- where you rank. the Kegbot crew built and deployed a kegbot on site at DEFCON, we were lucky enough to get there and document the building of it!

Funny interview from MTV.COM with Kyle Glass and Black Jack of Tenacious D about their new movie Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny. Watch the video on the page as well. Warning: If you don't listen to the D or have ever watched their show on HBO, you'll find this moronic.

This take on Ah-Ha's "Take On Me" video from the Family Guy is hilarious.

I was talking to Clint, a friend at work who was vacationing down in Bermuda last week. He and his wife stayed at Michael Douglas's Ariel Sand's resort. He was hanging out at the pool bar having drinks and ended up talking to and buyin ga beer, a guy who turned out to be Michael Douglas's business manager. He had no idea who this guy was until he mentioned that he worked for "Mr. Douglas". Clint responded "Mr. Douglas" who? The guy explained who he worked for, and ended up introducing them to Michael Douglas and Katherine Zeta Jones, who were there for their kid's birthday party. His business manager made a resturant reccomendation and reservation for them, and to their suprise not only offered up Michael Douglas's driver, but ended up picking up the tab at the very exclusive resturant as well. Just goes to show that it never hurts to buy a guy a beer.

Very interesting article on hacking hotel's systems via the in-room TVs.