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Dilemma - PS3 vs. Xbox 360

I've got a dilemma. Which to get? After reviewing the comparable specs, I think the PS3 is the superior technology at this point, but the 360 has much better baseline cost model and better market saturation along with many more games, including Guitar Hero, which seems to be a must have. Add that to the fact that Halo 3 is coming out at the end of the year and there aren't any real "must-have" games for PS3 yet.

Any help here?

Wrestling Team Picture

I found this picture from my 7th grade wrestling team - front row. I wrestled in the 82 lb weight class.

Dan and Dave

Maddie and I were going through a box of some old stuff, and I came across this picture taken by my Uncle Bill. My Uncle was a semi-professional photographer who shot everything from professional sporting events to pictures of us, his nieces and nephews. As you can probably see, this is my brother Dan choking me to death. I'm sure I ended up getting in trouble somehow for this and Dan received a raise in his allowance.

Chicago

It's the kids spring break this week and we're taking them to Chicago for a few days. We're staying downtown, right on the Miracle Mile, which will be fun. I think we're going to the Museum of Science and Industry and The Shedd Aquarium for sure. Any other recommendations from those of you who've been there before with your kids?

Swiper no Swiping

Thanks to Marko for this spoof on Dora. With three kid (and my love for swiper), I've watched waaaay to many episodes and this is spot on.

Kasey is getting married!!!!!

I got a call tonight from Kasey telling me the great news that she got engaged to her boyfriend Michael today! I've known Kasey for around 11 years - since she was in the junior high youth group at church. It's been amazing watching her grow up over the years and having her become a part of our family as well. She's like a big sister to my kids, and a little sister to me. Since she's known me, the same rule has applied: If a guy wants to date you, he has to come through me first. I haven't always liked all of her boyfriends and I made that pretty clear to Kasey over the years. I'd met her boyfriend Michael in the past, but hadn't spent a ton of time with him until last night, where I got to drill him a little further on his plans for life and watch him around my kids. Funny enough, after last night, I felt pretty comfortable with Michael dating Kasey. Good thing, because when Kasey called me tonight to tell me, I was able to give her my blessing. It would have been awkward for her to have had to call the whole thing off after saying yes!

Wow! This is really like finding out my little sister's getting married. I'm so proud of the woman Kasey has become and I'm thrilled for this next big step in her life.

Odd Easter Verse

There's all sorts of odd things you can learn from John's telling of the Ressurection, but I find these three pretty amusing:

John 20 - The Empty Tomb
1Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!"
3So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. 8Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9(They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)

1. John thought rather highly of himself - referring to himself as The Disciple Jesus Loved the Most. Guess if I'm telling a story for the world to read, I'm going to paint myself pretty well.
2. John was a fast runner. Not only did he want to show the world that Jesus dug him, but that he was waaaay faster than Peter.
3. The disciples were pretty clueless most of the time. Maybe hindsight is 20/20, but after all the times they'd been told, they still had no clue that Jesus was going to die and rise again. Good thing I'm not dull and thick headed like them. :)
   

Rascal is Odd

1. My cat likes bread. If bread is left out, my cat will tear the bag open and eat a loaf.
2. My cat has a crush on our guinea pig. Check this picture out below. They're kissing.
3. My cat has 3 stuffed animals that it carries around like babies. It uses them as pillows and sleeps on them.
   

I'm a dog person, but this cat amuses me to the point that it will continue to live another year.

He is Risen...He is Risen Indeed!

At church today we celebrated Easter! I love Easter Sunday. Maddie was a part of a dance today. As much as I mock interpretive dance (and I've seen some pretty ridiculous interpretive dances) it's beautiful when it's your own daughter involved. The girls worked very hard on this it went great.


We usually get together with family on Easter Sunday, but not this Easter. So we didn't feel left out, my Dad threw us a bone and stopped by...for computer help. We didn't allow him to eat with us, but he was able to sit at the table and watch us.

Easter Photo Shoot

After church, the Schultz's stopped by for a quick lunch and the girls got a chance to hang out, giggle and take some pictures in their beautiful Easter outfits.

Easter Eggs

We decorated Easter Eggs last night with special guests Kasey and her boyfriend Michael (in the background with Nate playing Wii-Boxing). Kasey is like a big-sister to the girls and they loved having here there. Nate was still pretty attached to her last boyfriend from a couple of years ago, but Michael won him over by playing video games with him. Emily ended up schooling Michael in Wii-bowling at the end of the night where she smoked him with a 215, marking in every frame.

The girls had such a blast with Kasey, giggling non-stop with these deep-belly laughs which is just contagious.

Spartans win first NCAA hockey title since 1986

They won tonight. They came in as the underdogs and smoked Boston College tonight, and they're now the NCAA National Champions.

Wacky Wednesday

Emily had Wacky Wednesday this week (named after the Dr. Seuss book). They tried to dress as wacky as possible, which in Em's case included an inside out shirt, two different shoes, different socks, backwards pants and crazy hair. This was not difficult for her since we had Jess Shinn living with us at one point and her bohemian dress seemed to have rubbed off on both of my girls. Jess would actually consider the above look stylish.

Mac on a Dell?

I'm typing this blog entry from a Dell that is now also a Mac. I loaded the developer's version of OSX on my Dell D610 laptop as part of the OSx86 Project to see how it world work. It's not much of a laptop, but I'm amazed at how well it runs OSX - way better than it would run under Vista with all the same functionality.

Using Parallels, I'm able to run native windows applications as well. How well the OSX load works on your native intel machine is dependent on the type of machine you have and you have to be somewhat technical to get it to work, but in the end, it works flawlessly on my equipment.

Baptism

Nate's famous. This weekend's baptism at Crossroads was featured on our Church Denomination's web-site.

You gotta be kidding me

It was 70 degrees yesterday. It's snowing today. Amazing. That's Michigan. I have a fire in the fire place. Inside.

Aunt "Bird Poop Hair"

I hate to just steal stuff off Sooze's blog, but these are too funny not to re-post.

This can't be safe

My niece Libby loves power tools....

Nate and Maddie's Baptism

Nate and Maddie were baptized at church on Sunday. It was a huge deal as a parent to see this. Both of them were dedicated as babies and both were ready to take the next step in a public proclamation of their faith through the sacrament of baptism. As a part of the preparation for this, each had written out their own story of faith and what God has done for them. It was cool to see from their perspective how their walk with Jesus has shaped their hearts and minds. I'm so proud of the way both Nate and Maddie are growing up and growing to have their faith as an integrated part of who they are, not just this separate thing that they do on Sundays. They ask tough questions and we as a family deal with tough stuff in the context of our faith, without having easy answers a lot of the time.

One cool thing about having gone to the same church for 12 years is to see the impact of one generation on another. Some of the most influential people in my kids lives at church are people who were my kids in our junior high/high school group growing up. Maddie, for example, has this amazing group of women as role models apart from just her Mom. People like Kasey, Tiffany, Jess and Dana all offer her this great picture of what it means to be a Godly women in a very real way that she can look up to, and come to as she has questions, thoughts and problems. We have such an amazing community of friends at church who love our kids, pray for our kids and care about their spiritual formation. For our kids to be able to be baptized in that context of people is a gift.

It was great to have Cathie's parents, my Dad, Will and Monaca all there, but it was sad without my Mom. Maddie commented last night that my Mom was looking down from heaven and cheering as they were baptized. I know she was.

My brother Jon is Special to me

Why, you may ask? The man on the left (not the crazy little monkey face in the middle) is my younger brother Jon. He has graciously volunteered to watch our three kids for three days while Cathie and I go on a little shindig. Cathie has no idea where we're going and will not know where we're going until we're on our plane the morning of the trip.

Say what you want about Jon, but he was willing and able to move his schedule around, travel with his 1 year old daughter up here and stay with the kids while we're gone. Jon has just moved up to the top spot in the coveted "Dave's Sibling Ranking".

Blades of Glory

Cathie and I went to see Blades of Glory with the Niemi's and Girard's on Saturday. I laughed hard. It's a great movie to see in a full theater because the gut-wrenching laughter makes the movie even better. If you have a sec, you can watch this interview with the stars at AskaNinja.com.

Stuff

I was reading the parable of the talents from Matthew 25:14-30 this morning. It's a parable Jesus tells about a guy who goes on a trip and gives his servants different resources to invest for him. Some do better than others, and they're rewarded or punished based on what they did with the resource they were given.

After reading this, I spent some time this morning reflecting on how God has given me so much and how I'm doing with my time, money and stuff. Am I doing the right things with the resources I'm given? Am I helping the poor and marginalized? It's easy for me to get into a mode where I'm measuring myself based on all of the stuff that I'm doing to be other-focused. Based on what I have or haven't done lately, I can either praise myself for what a benevolent guy I am or else beat myself for being too self-centered. I believe that you can tell what's important to me if you follow me around and watch how I spend my time and my money, and ultimately those things are driven by where my heart is at. I try and keep myself in check with questions like:

• Is acquiring "stuff' and valuing my "stuff" less important to me today than it was a year ago?
• Am I more giving with my money and my stuff today than I was a year ago?
• Do I spend my time in a way that lines up with what I say is important to me?
  
• Does my heart beat fast for the kind of things which God's heart beats fast?
  

I have such an amazing propensity for selfishness that if I'm not doing stuff for others, my world can can quickly revolve around myself. Doing stuff with and for my family, my kids, my church, our youth group keep me grounded and keep me from living in a Dave-centric Universe, which isn't nearly as amazing as you might imagine.

Gates and Buffett

Just watched a fascinating show on PBS called Buffett & Gates Go Back to School. It was a forum discussion with a group of University of Nebraska business students dialogging with Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. These two guys are brilliant and rich (worth $52B and $56B respectively) and both are hugely philanthropic (each giving away all of their money before they die). Warren Buffett is fascinating as the founder of Berkshire Hathaway (currently trading at $101,000/share) and Gates as the founder of Microsoft is equally fascinating. The cool thing about the show is that only students were allowed to ask the questions and they asked questions about everything from playing Halo to time allocation to charity to faith. One of the best questions was, "If you dropped a $100 bill on the way out, would either of you bother to pick it up?" The answer from Warren: "If Bill drops a dime on the floor on the way out and doesn't pick it up, I'll pick it up." I'm fascinated by these guys and it's so amazing hearing them in a candid setting like this. The other, "Mr. Gates, I received an e-mail saying that if I forwarded an e-mail 20 times, I'd receive $10k from you. Where's my money"? The special is like An Evening with Kevin Smith without the profanity.

Another nugget came out of the discussion what kind of employees they look for. They spoke about the ideal individual in an organization that stands out for them and how rare those are with the combination of these three skills:

1. Great individual contributor
2. Great leaders of people
3. Great at strategy
4. Combined with working at something you love doing at an organization you feel good about.

Two Great quotes from Buffett about philanthropy:

"I personally think that society is responsible for a very significant percentage of what I've earned. If you stick me down in the middle of Bangladesh or Peru or someplace, you find out how much this talent is going to produce in the wrong kind of soil... I work in a market system that happens to reward what I do very well - disproportionately well. Mike Tyson, too. If you can knock a guy out in 10 seconds and earn $10 million for it, this world will pay a lot for that. If you can bat .360, this world will pay a lot for that. If you're a marvelous teacher, this world won't pay a lot for it. If you are a terrific nurse, this world will not pay a lot for it. Now, am I going to try to come up with some comparable worth system that somehow (re)distributes that? No, I don't think you can do that. But I do think that when you're treated enormously well by this market system, where in effect the market system showers the ability to buy goods and services on you because of some peculiar talent - maybe your adenoids are a certain way, so you can sing and everybody will pay you enormous sums to be on television or whatever -I think society has a big claim on that."

"I don't have a problem with guilt about money. The way I see it is that my money represents an enormous number of claim checks on society. It's like I have these little pieces of paper that I can turn into consumption. If I wanted to, I could hire 10,000 people to do nothing but paint my picture every day for the rest of my life. And the GNP would go up. But the utility of the product would be zilch, and I would be keeping those 10,000 people from doing AIDS research, or teaching, or nursing. I don't do that though. I don't use very many of those claim checks. There's nothing material I want very much. And I'm going to give virtually all of those claim checks to charity when my wife and I die."

The Planet Earth

If you have High Def TV, you need to make sure you're TiVoing the show Planet Earth on Discovery Channel HD. It's a 10 part series that shows the most amazing footage I've ever seen about various parts of the earth and animals. The Pole-to-Pole episode showed a great white shark launching 15 feet in the air in slow motion with a seal in it's mouth. Another part showed a pride of lions hunting and taking down an elephant. It's not just animals, but different geographies from volcanoes to mountains and the ocean floor. Emily and I have been watching this together and she loves the animals.

Fight Video

Here's the video from the fight Nate and I saw at the Wing's game the other night. Thanks to big ted for turning me on to HockeyFights.com which has the fight description and video for every fight in hockey, including this one.

From Noel:

“You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

- Anne Lamott

Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work - this is a gift of God.
Ecclesiastes 5:19

Huge Fight at the Wings Game

My friend Mark invited Nate and I to go with he and his son Josh to the Wings game. Chelios reveived an award for the most games played by an American born player. Even more exciting was the huge brawl at the end of the first period. Nate got to see his first big center ice, throw-down as the Wings bench roughed up the rest of the Mighty Ducks line.

Nate and I at the Wings Game

They gave out Red Wings hand towels tonight and Nate and Josh were waving them like crazy every chance they got. At one point, the two of them made it up on to the big screen at the game which they were both excited about.

Em Loves Animals

My five year old Emily has helped me get what Jesus calls us to when he said to love other people the way we love ourselves. Emily loves animals. Any kind of animal. She will try to pet and play with any animal she sees, no matter how big or small. We've had to teach her to ask the people if she can pet their dog, so as soon as she sees someone with an animal, her first words are, "Hi-can-I-Pet-Your-Dog" as fast a you can imagine - almost like it's one word. It doesn't matter how mangy the dog is or how ugly it might look, you can sense from the way she approaches each dog that she sees as if it's the most amazing, special creature she's ever seen. She pets them and talks to them in such a loving, gentle way and they seem to lover her. When I see the way she looks at the dogs, treats them and interacts with them - I get a sense for how we're called to treat others, and I smile.

Ear Wax Removal

My ears create enough wax to stock a candle shop. I've discovered that BIC pen caps (the kind that has a curved lip on the sitck off the cap) are really the ultimate for cleaning them out. Noel turned me on to these places that takes the place of a pen cap. Amazing. In heaven, there will be one of these places on every street corner.

Em's Early Birthday Present

This is what happens when you combine running over you daughter's bike with some quick thinking: An Early birthday present. I can't be the only Dad whose ever done this.

Diana and Cathie on Guitar Hero

Nate and Trevor Playing Guitar Hero

Emily and Sprite

We went over to the Kohne's tonight for dinner and wine tasting. Mark and I rocked out to the game Guitar Hero while Em was fascinated by their bird, Sprite.

Navigation by Gary

The TomTom GPS application on my cell phone has the ability to put different voices on it to give you directions. They've added celebrity voices like Mr. T and John Cleese (Monty Python), which are both pretty amusing. I just got an e-mail today explaining that you can now download a Gary Busey voice for your TomTom GPS. What kind of person would want someone as messed up as Gary Busey telling them where to go?

Emily is riding a two wheeler

Her cousin Matthew started riding a two wheeler when he was only 3.

The bible of Cool

Nate and Maddie have decided they want to be baptized and will be on April 1st. I was looking around Zondervan for kids bibles and i came across this one, which had this fantastic description:

Based on Luke 2:52: "And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men," this Bible helps boys become more like Jesus mentally, physically, spiritually, and socially-smarter, stronger, deeper, and cooler.

I found it funny at first - thinking of Fonzie style cool. I guess if you define cool as counter-cultural, than Jesus was all over cool - just without the leather jacket and thumbs-up - "eh..."

Tommy 'The Hit Man' Hearns

Pistons v. Sixers from the 10th row

Spelling Bee

Yesterday and Today were Maddie and Nate's spelling bee's at school for their respective grades. Maddie came in 5th for her grade overall and Nate came in 3rd place out of all of the 4th graders. In third place, Nate is an alternate for the regional spelling bee should one of the other two kids die. I was looking for some side bets with other parents, but couldn't find any takers.

Wii Age

Sure beats my previous age of 77.

"To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it."
-G. K. Chesterton

Hokey Pokey

Doing this read-the-bible-in-a-year thing means you have to trudge through books like Leviticus, which can be pretty painful to read. I came across this in Leviticus 14 which just might be the origin of the Hokey Pokey. I can't figure out why some people say the Bible is confusing:

14 The priest is to take some of the blood of the guilt offering and put it on the lobe of the right ear of the one to be cleansed, on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot. 15 The priest shall then take some of the log of oil, pour it in the palm of his own left hand, 16 dip his right forefinger into the oil in his palm, and with his finger sprinkle some of it before the LORD seven times. 17 The priest is to put some of the oil remaining in his palm on the lobe of the right ear of the one to be cleansed, on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot, on top of the blood of the guilt offering.

Love, Reign O'er Me

I just heard Pearl jam's version of The Who's Love, Reign O'er Me from the the new Adam Sandler/Don Cheadle flick Reign Over Me. IMHO, the vocals are at least as good as Roger Daltry's. Amazing song.

Tags: The Who, Love Reign O'er Me, Pearl Jam, Roger Daltry, Reign Over Me

Will, Mark, Eli and I went to see the movie 300 on Saturday night. One of the best movies I've seen - as good or better than Gladiator or Braveheart. The cinematography is just amazing in this movie. The 300 Spartan soldiers were in amazing shape, like nothing you see on TV. Check out this article and video on the workout these guys did - the same kind of stuff we do at Triad in the mornings - bands, medicine balls, bear crawls and other crazy stuff - but no tractor tires. The difference is that we do it for an hour a day, they did it for five.

Kevin after one Margarita

Red Wings v. Bruins

My brother Dan got tickets to the afternoon Red Wings game and brought Kevin, my Dad and I along. The Bruins captain, #33 Chara is a freaking giant at 6' 7". The last game I went to was called five minutes in after Yuri Fischer went into cardiac arrest on the ice. The Wings were up early but couldn't score in the secind haf of the game. Small world, I saw Chuck Harmon at the game. We headed over to Mexican Town for dinner.

What I learned in Napa

"Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine." -- Fran Lebowitz

American Idol Top 12

Ryan Seacrest: "America has spoken and Sundance, you will not continue."
Nate: "America's stupid."
Me: "You're part of America."
Nate:"Ok, everyone in America except for me then."

Kohne Loves His Girly Drinks

At dinner last night, I must have missed Mark ask the waitress: "What is the most feminine drink that you have involving whipped cream that I can drink through a straw."

PARC

After working at Xerox for ten years I finally got a chance to visit our Palo Alto Research Center. This the same PARC that's famous for developing the GUI, Ethernet, the Laser Printer and other huge innovations. I was with a customer and had the chance to hear about some of the latest innovations, including Transient Documents, a reusable paper where the content disappears over time and can be re-printed multiple times. PARC has recently been spun off as an independent self-sustaining research entity, but it still does a lot of work for Xerox and still has brilliant researchers focusing on document technologies and their adoption. It was interesting to hear from one of their anthropologists today in terms of how they deal wiith the cultural shifts to get people to use new technologies.

Academy o fart

The San Fran Academy of Art signs are all over downtown. One of .y coworkers pointed out that the sign looked like it said 'Academy o' Fart' and I couln't see it any other way afterwards.

Pier 39