Tuesday, February 28, 2006

I like almonds

This could be the pettiest complaint ever in the giant scheme of things, but it impacts the Detroit area especially in a huge way:
Northwest has removed the almonds from their first class snack mix and replaced them with soy nuts. They went from the perfect, heavenly mix of sesame bits, almonds and cashews to the bastardization of a snack mix that they try and pass off as food. Sure coach gets squat for snacks and I should just be content and grateful that I get anything, but it's the little things that make travel easier. Maybe I'll bring my own bag of roasted almonds, remove the soy nuts and put them in the snack mix

On a completely somewhat related note, whenever I fly and watch episodes of Scrubs on the flight, I remember that Scrubs is one of the funniest best written shows in the world.



Just read this cool article in Rolling Stone: Shaun White: Attack of the Flying Tomato

Monday, February 27, 2006

Life inside the Googleplex


This is a great photo essay on life at Google.

Join Me

At camp this weekend, I happened to room with Steve Carter, one of the junior high leaders from Mars Hill Church. I download all of Mars Hill's teaching stuff and listen to it while I workout and travel, and it turns out that I'd I'd listened to some of his teachings in the past and finally put a face to the voice. Great guy. Got a chance to hear about how Mars Hills does what it does from a Youth Ministry perspective, which is one of the great things about bringing different churches together at a camp like this. Anyways, we were comparing recent books and movies and turned me onto a bunch of new stuff I hadn't heard about including this: the book Join Me by Danny Wallace. It's a book about this guy's quest to try and create his own cult, and how he does it. Check out the web site that gives an interesting overview of the process. He also turned me onto the book Lamb: The Gospel According to Bif, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore -that's supposed to be hilarious.

Cool story from my sister sooze.

Sunday, February 26, 2006

Separated at Birth?


This picture doesn't quite show it, but the guy on my right is the bass player for the band Daniel's Window and just so happens to be the body double for Jimbo from the Simpsons. If you're skeptical, I had at least 10 youth pastors agree on this. What better authority do you need?

We Made it Home!

We made it home from Spring Hill in a record 2 hrs and 30 minutes, which begs the question: Why did it take us four hours to get there?? Anyways, it was an amazing weekend - a great time for our core group of kids to connect with each other and with our leaders. Jess, Jason and I all agree that we couldn't of asked for a better group of kids - Because, really? Who would you ask?

You can view the whole photo gallery for the weekend by clicking here.

Last Session before we hit the road


We made it until about 2:30 this morning, except Cam, who crashed at midnight. We're packed up and after this session we're getting on the road at noon.

Midnight Tubing


What could be more fun than tubing at midnight with a group of junior highers? Not much. It's cold but you hardly notice. Our motto: 'You're not hardcore, unless you live hardcore.'

Saturday, February 25, 2006

Rocket Ball


We just finished our Saturday night session and we headed over to the gym to play Rocket Ball. It's a giant inflatable moon walk in the shape of a space ship, complete with strobe lights - perfect for Dodgeball. After this we're going tubing and then going over to watch the DDR (Dance, Dance Revolution) competition. Tonight's going to be a late one and we'll be lucky to get to bed before 3am. Tomorrow we head out around noon after games and session.

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After session headed into town to hit the local dollar stores. The great thing about giving jr. high students money and putting them in a store is that they will buy anything, regardless of whether they like it or not. The kids loaded up on candy and we bought a mascot, which we've been taking with us everywhere to pose in pictures. Afterwards we went tubing for a couple hours. It's an amazing tubing hill, complete with a tow rope. They had three multi-heat tubing races and Crossroads won two of them. Joel and I won the doubles racem beating out 30 other teams, and I won the singles, beating out a zillion 100 lb middle schoolers. We followed it up with swimming and then hung out and talked for a while.

Spring Hill Broom Ball


We won our first round of broom ball. The downside is that the next round is at 7am tomorrow morning. Sure we want to win, but we want to sleep more.

Spring Hill Morning 1


We fell asleep around 1:30 and had the worst night's sleep ever as the room went from frrezing to boiling, hearing every sound every time anyone moved We started the morning off with the Game Show and then to breakfast, topped offered by broomball.

Spring Hill Day 1


We made it to camp about 9 after spending 40 minutes in line at Wendy's. We took two vans, one for the guys and one for the girls. We got settled in and then headed to session where my boy Raitz is speaking. The first session centered on God's huge love for us. After the session we broke into small groups and talked more about the topic.

Friday, February 24, 2006

I took yesterday and today off to hang out with the kids during their Winter break. Yesterday we headed out to Lansing to go visit my Mom, then my sister and finally my Grandma. In the afternoon, I had a chance to take Madeline to her gymnastics practice, which I hadn't done since she'd made it into level three. I can't believe the things she's doing there. She is really, really good at gymnastics (and I'm not just saying this because I'm her Dad.) It was amazing watching do some of the things on the uneven bars and the balance beam.

Last night, Cathie and I went on a date, for dinner and coffee and had a great time just hanging out and talking for three+ hours. This morning, even though I could have slept in until ten and knowing that Kirk saves Friday's to really hurt us, for some dumb reason I got up at 5 to go workout with the guys. He had us do this funky set that involved us doing these crazy high knee runs while holding a 15lb medicine ball, doing 10 push-ups on the medicine ball, doing a squat lunges back with the medicine ball, 10 more push ups, etc. We did that five times, rested, and did the whole series of 5 three more times.

I'm heading out this afternoon for Spring Hill camp with our Junior High Youth Group with Jason and Jess and my buddy Raitz, who's the speaker this weekend to about 900 junior high kids. I'm looking forward to the camp, and to coming out on Sunday absolutely exhausted. It should be a great time. Next week I'm in Washington DC for a couple of days and then off to Kansas City for a couple of days.

Thursday, February 23, 2006


Thanks to Micah in beautiful Hot Springs for this:
It's a free service called Orb that lets you view your audio, video and photos on your home system from any PC or mobile device. I've got it installed on my desktop and I'm going to see if I actually use it over time. With Verizon's EVDO, it has potential. No Mac support.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

My brother Jon's two favorite people

As kids, we used to play the "Who would you like to be stranded on an island with" game, and my brother Jon's answer was always the same: "Steven Seagal and Carrot Top". For the record, mine was Jesus.


Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Motorcycle Diaries


At Ken Buck's recommendation, I rented and watched the movie the Motorcycle Diaries, the story of Che Guevara's motorcycle trip across South America with his buddy that helped shape some of his views that turned him into the revolutionary he became. I didn't realize it was subtitled, but after a while, you don't even notice.

There's a great scene in the movie while they're volunteering at a leper colony in Peru. As they head across the river to meet the lepers, one of the doctors hands them a pair of gloves and explains that even though leprosy is not contagious, it's their policy. Seeing the symbolism in this, they decide not to wear the gloves. When they get to the colony, they go to shake hands with a leper, who asks the doctor if they've been told about the policy. He explains that they had, and the two shake hands, the leper's face lighting up to have that kind of contact with someone, to be looked up on that way. Reminds me of the way Jesus treated people in the Gospels.

I didn't know a lot about Che Guevara going into this movie. Watching the way he and his buddy spend years traveling Latin America and living amongst the poorest of the poor, he sees the separation of classes, the separation of the countries and wants to set it right, to bring equality. I've been trying to figure out what social justice looks like in my own life - beyond just noticing the injustices of the world, and actually setting about changing things to impact the bigger picture. I think what I'm doing with Project 311 does that to a degree, but I look at the impact of Che Guevara, right or wrong, and wonder what my impact will be on the world. Seeing these two guys travel 10,000km made me realize how little I've seen of the world, and even how what I've seen in America has been so safe and tame.

Dollar Store Redemption


Just read this great article in relevantmagazine.com about redemption. Here's an excerpt:
I hate dollar-store-toys. There, I said it. My only dilemma: I have three boys that are crazy about them. I know I can make them smile in wistful excitement with a trip to the Dollar Store and a brand new toy—maybe an airplane, a plastic truck or a rubber bat (the flying kind). But every time we leave the store the toys break into a thousand pieces in about 4.5 seconds. I make an effort to repair them, usually to no avail. The toys soon disappear into the toy-box-abyss, and within hours the toys are a memory.

This world has a great deal of short-term fulfillments to offer—things that claim to give us what we need, things that boast of the ability to make us who we’re meant to be with three-easy-payments. Cheap imitations of grace lay around every corner and the temptation is always imminent: Get a shoddy replica of redemption for instant gratification at the cost of our own hearts.


Update on my Mom


Here's the latest update on my Mom from my Dad:
Before Lynn's chemo treatment last Friday, we met with her oncologist at U of M. The good news is there is only one more chemo treatment and that will be this Friday, February27th. On March 1st, she will have a CT Scan to determine how effective the treatments have been, but won't find out the results until we meet with the Doc on Monday, March 6th. Please keep her in your prayers for great results.

Depending on the results of the CT Scan, radiation and another form of chemo treatment is scheduled to begin mid - March. These are daily treatments (five days a week) for 5 1/2 weeks. We'll be finding out this week whether or not this can be done in Lansing under University of Michigan Cancer Clinic supervision. We are very pleased with the medical team and don't want to switch, so we'll go to Ann Arbor if that's our only choice.

Lynn has really been impacted more by this last treatment than the others. She is so-o-o tired and feels really horrible. The Docs have told us that they are treating her cancer very aggressively with two very strong chemo treatments simultaneously. Her appetite is not as good as what it was, but the good new is she did not loose any weight over the last two weeks.

As you know, Lynn has always been an avid reader. Since October, she hasn't felt like reading and it was hard for her to comprehend the books she has always loved. About three weeks ago, she picked up a book and really enjoyed it. Ever since, I've been going to the library for her favorite books. Reading books and doing Sudoku puzzles has really made the time go by faster.

May God bless you for your continued prayers, meals, cards, flowers, phone calls and all the other acts of kindness shown. We appreciate you.
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Monday, February 20, 2006

Morning, Sunshine!

We had a group of people over last night from church, including their kids. One of the children (who will remain nameless, but her Mom's name rhymes with Flori Brigard) and my daughter Madeline decided to play a few practical jokes on Nate. They took poop from the guinea pig cage and put it in his bed, they covered his bed with straw, and his underwear all over the room. I figured that was it. I was wrong. At 4:00 AM this morning I found I was very wrong. I woke up, thinking it was 5:20 and my alarm was going off. Nope. I lay there trying to figure out what I was hearing, got up and figured out that Nate's alarm was going off. I shut it off, went to bed and lay there long enough to know that I wasn't going to fall asleep. I got up, had some coffee and read for a while before Joe picked me up at 5:45 for our morning workout.

Sunday, February 19, 2006

Spoons


Sunday evening we had a bunch of people over from church as part of our monthly community groups. Different people host a random cross-section for dinner, hanging out and a quick teaching. We ate like kings, pot-luck style, and then played a giant game of spoons, which I didn't win.

Festivus


Dana, Eli, Will and Monaca came over last night to celebrate Festivus. Yes, we know it's a couple of month's late, we had no alumnium pole, but we did have the ceremonial fondue and perform the traditional feats of strength. The fondue tasted great, but no one was willing to drink any of the residue:

We fed the six kinds first and the the 6 adults sat down to a pretty amazing meal of cheese and meat fondue. I think the thing bout eating slowly, over a period of an hour is that you can really stuff yourself something fierce. At some point, the girls (the four little ones, not Dana, Cathie or Monaca) began asking for piggy back rides and Will began feeling left out. Up for the challange, decided to see if I could do a full lap around the room with Will on my back. I was successful.

The party broke up around 12:30 and the kids were still going strong except for Makenna and Madeline, who didn't quite make it that far. The 6 of us had such a good time hanging out - if only we'd of had an aluminum pole.

Saturday, February 18, 2006

Nate's Game


Nate had a basketball game this afternoon and his team played well. Being one of the few teams with 5 girls on it, they often have a tougher time against teams of all boys or mostly boys, just because the boys have typically been playing longer. The team they played today had three girls and two smaller kids, so the coaches let the five bigger kids play against the other teams five bigger kids, and our girls play against their girls and smaller kids. I'm sure this violated someone's civil rights, but the girls had more fun without the boys always taking the fast breaks. They passed a lot more and all got a chance to touch the ball a lot more. Nate had 9 rebounds and a couple of steals. He's getting the hang of the game, all of the kids fight hard for the rebounds (even if it's their team mate their fighting against for the ball). Nate and I went out for pizza after the game to talk, where I had the right of passage talk with him about Santa Claus, which was a tough one. I didn't want him to be like my younger sister Sooze, who was 16 before she found out.

Thinking outside the Box

Emily's a creative little girl. She played for hours yesterday in this box and decided last night that she wanted to sleep in the box. We made her bed up, and she got comfy. She discovered a couple hours in that the box was a little too short for her and climbed back into bed. Wonder if any of this stems from my earlier picture of her in the sleeping-bag-bag.

My Boy Dwight


Check out Dwight Schrute's iTunes Playlist and Michael Scott's Valentine's Day song picks.

Breakfast in Bed

Cathie and I were woken up by Emily coming into our room telling us, "Mom and Dad, even if you're awake, stay in bed." Two minutes later, the kids came in bringing both Cathie and I breakfast in bed. My plate consisted of toast, orange slices, melon slices, bacon and licorice along with the newspaper and a cup of coffee. They figured out how to make the bacon in the microwave by reading the instructions on the box and they figured out how to make the coffee by pour the water and grounds into the coffee pot and then pouring it back into the coffee maker. When your kids do something selfless and thoughful like this all on their own, it makes you feel like you're doing something right as a parent.

Friday, February 17, 2006

Reason #734,231

Reason #734,231 that I know that that Cathie is my soul mate:
She laughs as hard as I do at the MTV show Wild Boyz.


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Zathura


Em, Nate and I watched the movie Zathura tonight. It was a good family flick, but the big lizards were a little freaky for Em at times. It's about a couple of brothers who find a magical game in an old house that turns out to play for real. It was directed by John Favreau, of the ultimate guy-flick Swingers fame, and he did a nice job for his first kid movie.

HD DirecTV on XBOX 360?

This article describes integration between DirecTV and Xbox that has some very cool potential:
Well it looks like they might not just be hooking up a DirecTV box to the 360 and calling it good, but might in fact be adding a whole new blade to the Xbox 360 Dashboard that would allow for HD movie and TV downloads along with "standard-definition streaming DVR (i.e., TiVo) functions."


Apple and Blockbuster

Interesting article about a potential acquisition of Blockbuster by Apple.
Take your Video-out iPod to Blockbuster, drop it in a kiosk dock then download from the local xServe your choice of 50,000 movies. You can rent the movie or buy it and you can even choose the resolution, which may or may not affect the final price. Take the iPod home, drop it in the dock attached to your TV and watch the movie. H.264 decoding takes place in the iPod in hardware.

I finished it!


Over one year later, I've finally finished one of the most difficult and challenging books I've ever read: All 400 pages of The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard. To put it simply, this book is about discipleship and what it means day in and day out to follow Jesus. The guy is a professor of philosophy and he takes this idea to such a foundational level - never dealing with nice, happy, generalities. The first three chapters were painful as he laid the philosophical groundwork for the book, but after that it opened my eyes like no other book has. Over the past year, this book has transformed my ideas around what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, resulting in real action and transformation in my life. It's an amazing book that I don't think I was ready for before last year. I'm on to start his next book, Renovation of the Heart. I started that one a couple years ago and never got beyond chapter 4. I think I'm ready this time.

As soon as someone finds out I'm a Christ follower, my reputation becomes His reputation.
--From Noel's recent message "Carson Daly is Wrong"
Whoah.

Plyometric Day

Our workout this morning was a killer, but in a pretty good way. Kirk set up a plyometric workout course that consisted of 20 boxes from 6" to 24" high, 20 1/4 hurdles and 20 hoops. All of the jumping involves having your feet together: you start by side jumping over all of the boxes and immediately move to jumping over the hurdles, and then side jumping from hoop hula-hoop to hoop. We go through these three sets three times, and do that whole thing five times. It's a really explosive workout that gets your heart rate going, with everyone pushing and encouraging everyone else to make it. A couple guys had some minor "black out/throwing up in their mouth" issues, but everyone pressed hard to make it through, except Brad, who didn't make it this morning. The excuse we heard was that he had to go to shopping this morning. At 5:30 AM? I'm amazed at the progress I've seen in my cardio and endurance. Joe keeps pushing me to do a triathalon with him at the end of June, and I think I'm going to - if I can get the swimming thing down and not sink like a rock.

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Google Widgets


I'm a big fan of google in general. I use their search engine, their e-mail (to a degree) and their home page as one of my start pages. I came across this collection of Google Widgets that you can add to your start page to make it even more useful: including things like Netflix Queues, Flickr Streams, Soduku's and other things that are fairly complex, much more so than Yahoo's widgets. Google continues to amaze me with the products they put there and the innovation they possess.

Microsoft has released the latest beta of their anti-spyware software called Windows Defender. It's free, it works, and if at some point you've ever called me for tech-support, you better download this. A trained monkey can do it.

Luge Brothers

I was reading Monaca's blog and came across this entry on Matt Lauer and Al Roker doing the Luge in full body suits, with Al on the top and Matt on the bottom.

Al's (Pointing to self in full bodysuit): "Passion lives HERE."

Instructor to Al: "Reach in and grab the handles."
Matt: "Those aren't handles!"

You can watch the video of Matt Lauer and Al Roker doing the luge here . It's hilarious. (You need IE To watch it)

Stone Skipping


Interesting article on the physics of stone skipping. It makes all of the physics classes I retook in college seem worthwhile now.

Wednesday, February 15, 2006


This person really, really, really, really likes The Simpsons. Probably in an unhealthy way.

Digital Rebel XT


I finally got my digital SLR camera. I've been saving for quite a while for this, and a large gift certificate I got from work put me over the top. I ended up buying the Canon EOS 350D Digital Rebel XT, an 8MP SLR. I used to take all sorts of pictures with my film SLR camera until digital won out. The prices on the SLRs have finally dropped down to a point where it was doable for me. It comes with an 18-55mm (F3.5 - F5.6) lens, which is so-so. I haven't had much of a chance to play with it yet, but from messing around with it last night, my first impressions are that it's fast, quiet, light and produces excellent quality images. Its on-board flash throws a lot of light and the software that it comes with is pretty decent.

Jury Duty

I'm on Federal Jury duty next week. Don't get me wrong, I've always wanted to actually serve on a jury, instead of driving somewhere and sitting around only to not be selected. The kids are off school next week and we were planning on going out of town for a couple of days to a hotel/water park. I sent the Jury Clerk back a nice note explaining this only to receive a note telling me that this is not a legal excuse, so show up or else. I've never really cared about who I voted for for the Clerk positions - I always thought it was pretty much a glorified secretarial job and not something we should be voting on anyways. From now on, my goal is to make sure that Arthur McCoy is not reelected as the , Clerk. I consider it an honor to serve on a jury, but just don't tell me about the jury duty three weeks before, and then hose my vacation to do it. If Arthur's position is one that we DON'T vote on, I want to begin voting on it, so that I can NOT vote for Arthur.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

This was Emily's idea. There was no warning label on the sleeping bag cover saying NOT to do this:

Welcome Home!


Cathie got home yesterday morning about 2:00 AM, sans luggage. The kids were thrilled to see her. We'd made the above sign on Sunday, and our collective artistic talents shined through. The retreat was amazing for Cathie. We got a chance to sit down last night as she shared with me all of the ways God showed up for her and her friends and it was beyond what I'd hoped for for Cathie! Here's the group that went:

Phi in Nature

Guess it's math day on the blog. Don't know if you've ever seen the movie Pi, but it's a great movie about the mathematical theory behind Pi, Phi and it even throws some Jewish mysticism in there in the context of the mathematics behind the Torah. Anyways, I ran across this article this morning on Phi in nature and thought it was fascinating. Guess that makes me a geek. It's pretty amazing (Phi, not the part about me being a geek) I don't know about you, but when I see this stuff, it points me to the wondrous complexity of the universe and the brilliance that beyond my comprehension that went into all of it.

Birthday Paradox

I know it's correct mathematically (I think we had to prove it in one of my discrete mathematics class in college), but I've always had a tough timeunderstanding how the whole Birthday Paradox works for two people having the same birthday in a given room. Here's a good explanation.

Sunday, February 12, 2006

Things I learned while Cathie was gone:
1. Emily likes to have her socks put so that the lines on the toe of the sock line up just right.
2. Making a good pig tail in a girls hair is harder than it looks.
3. When Mom's gone, I'm the one the girls fight about sitting next to.
4. I'm the one the kids see as the easy mark when I take them to the store.
5. It's easier to try and clean the house at the end than to keep it clean 24/7.
6. It's hard to try and dance with two girls at the same time at the daddy/daughter dance.
7. My wife works really, really, really hard - especially when I'm out of town. What I did was the easy part, minus shopping, laundry and about a million other things.

Kanye

I didn't watch most of the Grammy's, but this was my favorite part: Kanye West and Jamie Foxx doing the song Gold Digger, Marching Band Style.
This is my nephew Gabe, doing his hippo song with the hippo hat. I took the video with my camera phone, so the quality's not great, and it's really kinda cute overall. This will be great blackmail material some day when he's 16 and dating.

Opening Ceremonies Thoughts


I watched the opening ceremonies for the Olympics today. My favorite nick-name was the German Luger's: The Flying White Sausage. Didn't need to see Yoko Ono or try and figure out what she was saying. I dug Peter Gabriel's rendition of John Lennon's Imagine. I liked the spider monkey guys creating the big dove. I'm rooting for Bode Miller and Shaun White (The Flying Tomato, which isn't much better than sausage, I guess). Pavarotti is a big boy. The fireworks at the end blew me away. Everything looked so good in High Def that I wanted to cry.

I took the kids to the store today after church and I throughout our entire shopping experience they asked me to buy this and that to the point that I was about to stick their heads in the frozen food section. On the way out I asked them if they did this to their Mom:
Nate: "No, we don't do this to Mom this much."
Me: "Why?"
Nate: "Mom doesn't buy us the stuff."
Me: "Then why do you do it to me?"
Nate: "Most of the time you do."
Me: "Huh. Gotcha."

The house is in a state of total chaos. I've kept up with the dishes, but not much else. The kids and I are going on a whirlwind cleaning tour today and then I'm going to duct tape them in front of the TV so they don't mess anything else up. Cathie gets home at 12:45AM this morning and then Cathie and I are working in Emily's pre-school class tomorrow morning.

Saturday, February 11, 2006

Road Rally

The road rally went great tonight. We had eleven kids and each one of them had a blast. It's strange to think that the last time I did one of these road rallies for the junior high youth group, I had over 60 kids there. For something like this, I look at the fact that I had 4 of my usual kids and 7 other kids there. One of the 4 usual kids is one who'd come to the last game night we'd done as a new kid, and since then he's starting coming to church with his Mom and Dad. He came tonight and brought 4 friends of his own. When I started the youth group up 10 years ago, I had 4 kids and grew it into over 100 kids that came on a regular basis. I was pretty focused on the number back then, now it's not that big of a deal. Sure I want a lot of kids to come to these things, but I want to make sure that the kids who do come are connected with and impacted by God's love through the leaders and kids they interact with. My theory is that if you do that, kids will come, because they don't experience that too many places.

BASE Jumping

Wild video of a group of guy's BASE jumping and having a mid-air collision. Wow.

Basketball Pictures


Nate had his basketball pictures today followed by a game. It's really starting to click for him. He had his best game yet, with five rebounds and a basket. Being one of the taller kids, he plays a kind of power-forward position. Nate's team has more girls on it than any other team, and the coach designs plays to get the ball to them, because none of the boys ever cover them. The girls miss most of the time, but the girls have gotten to the point where they no longer look like a deer in the headlights when they get the ball.


I've got a video road rally tonight for Fusion (our jr high youth group), which should make Ingrid (my laodicea babe) pretty angry since we'll be having fun in the context of church, which Ingrid believes makes baby Jesus cry. (The last youth group game night I did, I was able to make Ingrid's Hall of Shame award. Later, she chastised my youth group for not reading the King James version of the bible.) I've got lists of things for the teams to video tape and retrieve as part of a scavenger hunt. The big point items are for getting a team member handcuffed and placed in the back of a police car, with the sirens running. Big scavenger hunt items include a personal check made out to me for $1,000,000 and pictures of a monkey.

Friday, February 10, 2006

Daddy Daughter Dance

Tonight was the Daddy/Daughter dance for Emily, Madeline and I. With Cathie being gone, I enlisted one of the girls baby-sitters, Delaney, to do their hair. We went over there at 5 and she spent about an hour getting both of the girl's hair as beautiful as can be. They both felt like princesses.

From there we went out to dinner and then to the big dance. Each of the girls had a corsage and a got a carnation at the dance. There were about 100 dads with their girls, and it's the funniest sight you've ever seen. 100 rhythmless white men dancing without alcohol, all dressed up in their nicest suits. There are a couple first-timers who think that wearing slacks and a shirt will be enough - but no. The veteran dad's wear their suits, knowing that no outfit is too fancy for this thing. Madeline helped me pick out my outfit today, and she chose a suit without any tie.

At one point in the night they had the dads go in the middle and all do the hustle, which was a debacle and one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Both of the girls loved the dance, but trying to dance with both of them was a little tough, even for a dancing king like me.

F/A-18 Drop Test


This is great video of an F/A-18 being dropped from 20 feet in the air. Watch the landing gear collapse and respond to this. Amazing.

ADD in a High Tech Career

Top Ten Advantages of having ADD in a High Tech Career:
1. The Ability to Hyperfocus.
Hours of full engagement and concentration in a task, IF you find it interesting. You can get into the zone and be totally immersed in what you’re doing while the outside world disappears. When I went on the net for the first time in 1993 at an Internet cafe I got on the machine at 8 pm and around 4 am decided it was time to go home.

2. Rapid Fire Mind.
Your brain processes information at hyperspeed. You can do things in 30 minutes on a computer that might take other people hours. Downside if you’re stuck with an old machine and not enough RAM you’ll be frustrated cause it can’t keep up with the speed of your brain.

3. Multitasking at Will.
Able to run 14 apps at a time and effortlessly switch between each without breaking a sweat. Able to do several projects at a time with ease.

4. High Energy Level.
You’re able to keep going on a project (if it’s interesting, ADDers are more into creative and entrepreneurial activities than clerical and repetitive ones). 14-hour days? No problem. Adrenaline is my fuel source:)

5. Highly Creative.
Able to think beyond the idea of a box. This comes naturally for ADDers, while others pay thousands of dollars to try and learn this. Since you take in more information than the average person, and you’re easily distractible, you’re more likely to view a problem from many different angles than vanilla people (non ADDers), and therefore come up with more possible solutions to a problem. Need an idea generator? Find an ADDer.

6. Quick Learner.
IF it’s something you’re interested in. ADD is mainly a condition of boredom; you have no trouble paying attention to something if it’s interesting. Most people find it difficult to do boring or repetitive things but these can often totally shut an ADDer down. Your rapid fire brain + highly creative mind + the ability to hyperfocus equals fast absorption of new information quickly. Dr Ed Hallowell, who has ADD and has written several Delivered from Distraction : Getting the Most out of Life with Attention Deficit Disorder, said he stopped teaching Psychiatry at Harvard University because the non-ADDers brains were just to slow and they took so long to get it. He got tired of being continually frustrated waiting for them to catch up to the ADD students.

7. Stimulus Seeking Brain.
A perfect match for the wired world, an under stimulated brain and an over stimulated virtual environment. Being an info junkie can be a good thing. Well, not always:)

8. Constantly Scanning your Environment.
Allows you to notice more and find information and resource that others miss. Also allows you to see possible problems before they arise, and opportunities that others may not see because they have tunnel vision vs. multiplex vision. An ADDer invented the electronic ticket.

9. Great in a Crisis.
High energy intense situation? Lots of chaos and change? Sign me up; I thrive on stimulation, change and chaos. We can create order from chaos effortlessly. We can also create such an environment as well if needed.

10. Risk Taker.
Impulsivity means you’re more willing to take risks and have a bias for action, act now while the opportunity is hot instead of getting into analysis paralysis. Many entrepreneurs have ADD i.e. Paul Orfalea who founded Kinko’s, JetBlue Founder and CEO David Neeleman who attributes his creativity to ADD. Both are Billionaires. Imagine how successful a high tech CEO would be if they didn’t take many risks.
Also check out this list of 151 positive characteristics of people with ADD.

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I'm a bad father. With Cathie being out of town, I decided I'd call in and excuse the kids from school today and take them out sledding and do some other fun stuff. There was a huge jump at the sledding hill made out of a hay bail. Nate and I hit this thing a couple of times at full speed and launched a couple of feet in the air each time, covering at least 5 or 6 feet from the point of launch. After the third time, I learned to put my feet down in midair rather than land on my butt with Nate coming down on top of me.

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Check out the preview of the new Jack Black movie, Nacho Libre, about a Mexican Wrestler. It looks like more Jack Black genius.

Apparently TurboTax reads my blog.

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Thursday, February 09, 2006

Torrent TV Downloads

Good article on how to download any shows via torrent that you watch regularly and might have missed via Tivo.

Church Sign Seen in Hot Springs, Arkansas


Even funnier, there are a whole bunch of books dedicated to church signs.

Emily and Mom


After I took Emily to her gymnastics, we headed to Lansing to return my rental car from last night and then we headed over to see my Mom and then over to Sooze's house for lunch. This Man-Mom stuff is great, Jon!



Now if only I could find someone I could pay to clean the house on Sunday night before Cathie gets gome. FYI - Note the stylish doo Emily is sporting. That's all me. I did the pigtails this morning... Not so successful, really.

Keep Walking

Can't remember when I signed up for it, but I just got a very cool iPod case from Johnny Walker as part of The Striding Man Society. I'm a Dewer's scotch man myself, but I could be swayed by gifts.

Wild at Heart/Captivating


It was about 4 1/2 years ago that Noel, Brad, Bill, Will and I headed out to Colorado for a Men's retreat put on by John Eldredge, author of the book Wild at Heart. It was a four day retreat - Thursday - Sunday, held outside of Colorado Springs at Young Life's amazing Frontier Ranch camp. This retreat was a defining event in my life, one of a couple that I look back on that really changed me internally in a huge way.

Cathie, Dana and Sherry have left today for a similar retreat, put on for women, called Captivating. Cathie's been planning this for almost a year and today was finally the day. As usual, she's very prepared for the whole thing, she's left me lists with everything I need to do to , every activity they need to be at, what to pack for school - you name it... Everything except their bathroom schedule.

I've been praying for month's about this retreat for Cathie, that God will do a huge thing for her and her friends. If you think about it, please do the same.


There should be a law...


If you've never seen Under Armour workout apparel, it's clothing meant to be worn under your workout clothes that wicks the sweat away from your body. The stuff is like a second skin and it works great. I'm all for it. What I'm NOT for, is guys wearing it as workout apparel all on it's own. There was a guy in the gym today wearing the above pants, and nothing else. It was creepy and uncomfortable with this guy prancing around showing his junk to the world.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

This is a cool site I got from Erik called Zillow.com. It allows you to enter an address and instantly pull up the home value, value of the homes in the area, and do comparisons on taxes and see previous sales info. One question: how'd they come up with the name?

Update: You can read Moosberg's WSJ review on the site here.

My boy Chester


Today would be the 100th birthday of Chester Carlson, father of electrophotography (Xerography) aka photocopying (and laser printing). It's because of my boy Chester that Xerox is where it is, and the company is giving us his birthday off (which we can choose to celebrate on the day of our choice). The funny part of the story is that no one wanted his invention. He went to General Electric, IBM, RCA and the U.S. Army Signal Corps and no one would touch it.

If you go into any Xerox office, you'll find the following picture of the first Xerox ever made.



Good to know, huh?

Morning Workout


I've never watched the show Walker Texas Ranger, until this morning. I went to hit the treadmill this morning at the hotel and a guy was already in there, and the channel was already turned to walker. A lot of times when you go into the hotel workout rooms, the TV has been left on from the last person, and common courtesy is to make sure they're not already watching something. I asked if I could change it to CNN, and he sheepishly replied that he was in the middle of watching Walker. He then proudly explained to me that he used to have an office in the court house they use on the TV show. I tried to explain to him how funny the random Chuck Norris facts are, but I'm not sure he got it. They don't sound as funny out loud, probably even less so if you're a huge Chuck Norris fan.