Nate's 3rd Football Season almost at an end

Nate's only got two games left in his third season of football. It's been so much fun as a Dad watching him learn the game, learn to play on a team and to grow as a person. His team this year is 7th and 8th graders, with the maximum weight being 215. Nate weighs 80lbs but he makes up for it with raw heart.

He's not the biggest or the fastest guy, but he works his tail off and is willing to go up against anyone and put a hit on anyone he can. As you can see from these pictures from lats Saturday's game, he ends up going against some big 'ol boys. The Dad's on the team and I joke that some of these kids must drive themselves to the game they're so big.

I'm so proud of Nathan and the way her perseveres. The difference between what's expected between the 5th/6th graders and the 7th/8th graders is huge. The practices are brutal and would make most in-shape adults throw up from the intensity. He's been playing corner and wide receiver this year and keeps getting better and better.

I'm Addicted to Picasa Tagging

I installed Google's Picasa 3.5 photo editor/manager about three weeks ago. The big new feature in 3.5 is that it has facial recognition and tagging, which previously had only been available via the Picasa Web Albums, but not the desktop client.

Picasa starts going through your pictures and extracts all of the faces in like sizes and has you start to tag similar faces. From there, it will start to identify groups of faces below a certain confidence level and let you confirm whether it's the correct face to person match. The more you do, the smarter it gets.

Once you've got your pictures tagged, you can search by combinations of people and events. I could search for pictures of my Mom and I, or find vacation pictures of Cathie. When you look at a given photo album, it will show you everyone in that album, allowing you to go directly to that individual. I've used iPhoto, and I like this more. The cool thing iPhoto allows that this doesn't is syncing to your iPhone by person, instead of just by album.

I've got over 50k pictures, and about 200,000k faces across those pictures. I'm amazed at the way it identifies and pairs them up with the correct people. It does well across ages, profiles, lighting and picture quality.


My biggest problem is that I've become addicted to tagging the pictures. It presents these to you in small groups as it identifies them, silently taunting you to "just tag the next group of pictures", at which point it presents you with an entirely new batch of faces. The other part that makes it fun is being able to go through old pictures and see how people have changed. Check out this link to see a collection of about 3,500 headshots of Madeline that I made just for fun.

The Birdmen Base Jumpers

My Dad sent me this video clip from 60 minutes on the wing-suit birdmen. These guys fly down mountains at 140 mph, flying a few feet from the cliff walls to give them a relative sense of their speed. Looks amazing.


Watch CBS News Videos Online

Capital City Half Marathon Recap

A couple of weeks ago, my brother-in-law Kevin and my step-sister Kristin ran in the capital city half marathon. There were around 1,500 people running in the race, the biggest I've ever been in.

This was my second half marathon, after doing the Portland half-marathon last year, which I finished at a pace of 1h58m at about a 9 min/mile pace. I swore I'd never do another half marathon after that race, but here I was. My goal was pretty ambitious: I wanted to shave about a minute per mile off my pace at an 8m/mile.

Kevin had been training for his triathalon this year and was less focused on just the running, so he decided he'd got for a different pace than me. Cathie, Maddie and Nate, my sister Susan and family and my Dad and Judy were there throughout the course to cheer us on. It made such a huge difference seeing them, giving me a great burst of energy.

I ran the first 10 miles at about a 7:55 pace, going strong. I ran in front of the 8 minute/mile pace guy and my goal was to keep my heart rate below 165 bpm for the first half of the race.

At about 10 miles, I experienced side cramps that I'd never had before. Ironically, this is something Nate had experienced when he and I ran and it was Tiffany who taught Nate and I how to breathe through it. It went away after about a mile, but that mile was brutal. At that point the 8 min/mile pace guy passed me and I just wanted to keep him in my sights to hit my target time. By the end of the race, my heart rate was the highest it had ever been at 186 (previously 181 at the end of my last 10k). Every turn I was hoping was the last and I had nothing more to give when I rounded the last turn and saw my family waiting for me, cheering me on!

You can see part of the runkeeper race here. It crapped out part way through when I got a text message from Eli, which started, "Hey, you're probably in the middle of your race..."

It was cool having my Dad there, as he was the one who got me started running years ago when he would take me out with him on his morning runs. I didn't take to it then, but my Dad was always a great role model around exercise in terms of getting us involved with him in biking, skiing and running.

I'm still not there to want to run a full marathon. Maybe someday. This year's training was far better than last year. I felt like I trained more at a pace of what I wanted to do, instead of rigidly following a training schedule. My speed was helped in a big way by doing the sprint relays in my training, and the Playmaker's Running Form class took away my soreness related to my form.

My next goal is to run a 5k with my son. We're training this month to do it.

Maddie's 2009 Cheer Competition

Maddie's team got a gold medal for Pom and a silver for Cheer

Afternoon cat nap for Em

Best Letter to the Editor EVER in the South Lyon Herald

The best part about our local newspaper, The South Lyon Herald, is the letter's to the editor. About a month ago, there was a letter from a guy who spent about 1,000 word lamenting his van that burned down. It was odd and boring, but amusing in it's own way.

Today's paper had a response to the guy's story about his van. It is fantastic. My theory is that anytime you bring Hilter into your argument, you've already lost. Check this out. Sheer lunatic genius:

I read the letter headlined "Van will be missed" in the Sept 10 Herald, but I cannot in good conscience echo the sentiment, or provide any condolences. The writer of the letter may miss his van, but I can bet the earth will not. I say kudos to the flames that rid the world of one more gas guzzling mechanized earth destruction device. The letter's author may not be happy, but the planet is ecstatic.

The author discusses all the precious memories of times spent in the van, but what about hte future generations that will not have the chance to make the same memories? That van, and other vehicles like SUVs, trucks and the despicable Hummer, are doing their best to leave those future generations without a planet to make memories on. You had that chance, but at what cost? The cost of our comfortable climate as you, and your whirling death machine, prodded us ever closer to becoming Venus II.

The author discussed 15 years of memory spaning things stored inside the van. The letter leads one to believe that things like paper, and plastic products were strewn about that van. How many others ended up in landfills? How many animals lost their habitat whenever that van was cleaned? The things he talks about as memories sound like trash to me. The noble flames that destroyed the van thankfully destroyed that polluting garbage, too. At least some things won't end up festering in a landfill.

I urge everyone not to accept sob stories about vicious things. I'm sure Hitler had a few sad things happen to him in his life, but I sure don't want to hear him whine about it. Billions of people are at risk of death from a runaway greenhouse effect. I ask all the Herald's readers to stand up, and let it be known that we won't tolerate perpetual pollution peddlers like vans and SUVs. If you see a person driving one of those vehicles let them know you disapprove. Don't be mean, don't be rude, and try to avoid the one finger salute. Give them a stern disapproving lot, and make sure they know that they are destroying the planet just so they can drive their unnecessary gigantic greenhouse gas spewing death pods.

Adam Gjokaj, Salem Township

Em, Colleen & Ashlyn at the Hannah Montana concert

Where the Hell is Matt?

This is an amazing video I found that was filmed across 42 different countries. This guy dances as well as I do.

Daddy Daughter Date for Chinese Food

Em's a cat

Go State!

Florida Sunset

Only in NJ can I get Lingerie and Cleats at the same place

Sunset at South Lyon Football

He's Going the Distance

Last Saturday, Bob, Brad and I ran the local Witch's Hat 10k race. This was my second time running it after doing the race with my brother-in-law Kevin, with last year's time being 46m 2s and a 7:25 min/mile pace. I ran the 10k a couple weeks after running my first half marathon and didn't really know what to expect. My goal this year was to beat that time.

I ran the first three miles at a 7:05 pace and then started dropping off a bit for the final three. I paced myself against the same 70 year old man Kevin and I followed last year, but this year I passed him in the end. The final leg to the finish line is up hill, which is brutal, but you've got a whole cheering section there that makes you dig deep.

This was Bob and Brad's first 10k and Bob finished in 55 minutes, which is great. Bob and I waited for an hour at the finish line for Brad for a while and then started getting worried. We walked back part of the course and couldn't find him. As old as Brad is, we figured he'd had a heart attack and died. Apparently he pulled his achilles tendon (one would expect that he would of pulled his groin).


I had my heart rate monitor on this year, my heart rate got to places I've never gotten it before, even on my long runs. I was upwards of 181bpm towards the end as compared to my resting heart rate of 45bpm normally, and 175bpm on a typical hard run.

My time was 44:46 with an average pace of 7m13s, 12 seconds per mile better than last year. You can see the runkeeper map here.

Emily's Horse at riding lessons

Movie Review by a Middle School Kid

I found this on the wall in a group of movie reviews and posters on
the wall. Nice movie choice...

Quality Emily Quote

Emily: "I'm Mad at the cat."
Me: "Why?"
Emily: "Because he's bad luck."
Me: "Bad luck? Why?"
Emily: "I wouldn't have gotten a punishment if it weren't for Rascal being bad luck. Black cats are bad luck, Dad."

Nate's Pic of Daunte Culpepper

The Lions QB was at our High School FB game last night watching his
son play on the opposing team. Kid Rock at a Panthers game last year
and now this. Our opponents seem to be a big deal.

Afternoon picnic in the park with my wife

Emily's new pet: Colleen the Snake

I found this Gardner snake while I was running today. I carried him
home and Em named it after her friend, Colleen Sugar.

Sleeping Beauties

Early Adopter - Story of My Life

Running out of Duty and Obligation Sucks - My Affair with @runkeeper

Most people don't know this, but I'm not sure I enjoyed running all that much last year. I talked about it all the time, including how I started in April and ended up running my first 10k and half marathon by the end of the year. When I look back on my running last year, it was pretty miserable. I remember getting to the end of my half marathon telling myself, "I'll never do this again."

Running last year consisted of me measuring, charting and plotting, following programs pushing myself again and again. The joy for me wasn't in the run itself - it was in pushing myself, and seeing how hard and how far I could go. The joy for me was when my long run each week would grow from 4 miles all the way to 17, when my 3 mile time dropped from 36 minutes to 19 minutes. Short of the runners high I would get at the end of my route, the actual running part was rough. I had to listen to books on tape or podcasts so that I wasn't left to mull over the fact that I still had X number of miles left to go.

The funny thing is that this year, I love running in a way I never did before. I enjoy it during the run. I look forward to my runs. I know how far and how fast I can push myself, so that hasn't been the rush for me. I don't write down my runs any more (short of my runkeeper tweets, which everyone in my family seem to love), I don't consciously map out a course before I got for the run. I simply head out in a direction and go as far as I feel like running. For some reason, this changes everything. I have a rough pattern for the week - but nothing too rigid. I do a long run anywhere from 8-15 miles every week, a speed relay run and runs just to run. I'm running because I want to, because my heart feels compelled to run and to move. When I'm out running, I can run with or without music or podcasts, thinking, reflecting, but never hating the run I'm on, because at any time, I know I can turn around and end it - just because I want to.

Today, all that changed. For the first time all summer I sat down and mapped out a course of about 15 miles. I was trying to find a new course and wanted to be able to tell Cathie where I was running in the event that I didn't come home, she could go and find my body. I set out to run, not because I wanted to run 15 miles, but suddenly feeling like I HAD to run this course, HAD to run 15 miles. My heart wasn't in it. In the past I had run a similar course and remember smelling the smells, hearing the birds, noticing the farms and horses. This time, it felt dry and sterile. Does the heart really have this much to do with how we pursue something? Seems like it does for me. It got me thinking of other areas where the same concept applies.

Growing up, I reached a point growing in my faith where I was doing all sorts of good things (going to church, going to catechism class, learning good things and doing good things), but felt like I HAD to do them, and as a result, I resented them. When I was suddenly given the choice to go to a youth group on my terms, all the sudden it changed the whole context of things. I've often pushed myself to DO the kind of things on the outside that are good, decent, righteous things - but that only lasts for so long if I haven't been changed on the inside.

I'm gradually learning that Jesus came to set me free from a faith built on the pillars of duty and obligation, from doing the right things externally without the right kind of heart and being the right kind of person. I'm learning that when I give my life to Jesus, he changes my heart to one where these kind of actions naturally flow from. I've seen it in myself when I let go and stop trying to arrange my life just so, and allow God to change me inside. The more I focus on Jesus, the more my heart changes. Crazy, huh?

Contrary to what I'd said last year, I'm running a half marathon again this year and a 10k. I'm in better shape, I'm faster and can run distances with an ease I never thought I'd achieve. I'm interested in seeing how my times are this year, but I'm not as interested in breaking records, as seeing what naturally comes out of my training program this year.

5 lbs of fresh rasberries

Picking Rasberries

Thoughts on my Kindle

I got my kindle a few months ago. It's a pretty amazing device. I've been playing around with this trying to figure out how this technology could fit with what my company does as a future offering in the document space.

I like my device a lot. I've read a number of books on it, and I get my Wall Street Journal delivered to it daily.

Here's what I really like about it:

• It works over a cellular network, not a wireless network, so you can get content any time, any where.
  
• The size and form factor. It fits well in my hand and in my backpack for when I travel.
• The easy of which you can buy books and even test drive a book is great. You can shop from the device or from the web site.
  
• The end user experience is awesome. The packaging was awesome and when I opened it up, it was already linked to my Amazon content, with a personalized letter from the God of Amazon - Jeff Bezos.
  
• The ability to have it read to you through headphones. I ran across my first book where the publisher had turned the feature off, which was annoying.
• The screen quality. The screen is ePaper, which means that once you light up a pixel, it stays lit up without additional power. It actually cycles the screen every so often with a picture of a different author, in fairly high resolution.
• I love the iPhone sync feature. On my iPhone, I can open the app and read exactly where I've left off on my Kindle, and vice versa once I go back to my Kindle after reading on my iPhone.
  

The downsides I've found so far are:

• No back-lighting. I think Amazon treats this more like a book, which needs lighting as well.
  
• No touch-screen. I don't mind it as much as think it could provide some cool features
  
• Power consumption will give you roughly a week of usage, lots longer if you turn off the wireless connection.
  
• You have to be a bit stealthy to read this on an airplane before you get up to 30,000 fee because of their rules on electronic devices.
• No ability to check a book out, like you would from a library. The books are cheap, never more than $9.99, but the library is still a lot cheaper.
• PDF viewing. You have to convert PDF's to Amazon's kindle format unless you have the larger Kindle, which will read them natively. The upside is that can e-mail content to your kindle's e-mail address and for around $.10 it will deliver the document right to your device, converted and ready to go.
• You can't charge it with a standard usb cord, instead having to use Amazon's special plug to charge it with higher voltage.

All that being said, I think this will change things. I'm trying to start to use this for document storage for meetings. It will never be a notebook computer, even though you can browse the web with it. You can highlight areas of a document and clip notes out that you can reference when you sync it up to your computer. I haven't figured out how to deliver an article or book clip via e-mail yet, which would be nice. I'd love a print driver that would easily feed documents to my kindle instead of a printer.

Twilight Football Practice

Riding the Roomba

My brother Dan sent me this video... We have a roomba, a robotic vacum cleaner we call rover. I'm pretty sure that after Emily sees this she'll try and teach Rascal, the giant cat, to ride it. Here are even more videos if you're into this stuff as much as Dan.

Family Walk

While Nate and Maddie were at practice today, Cath, Em and I took Lola for a walk to a nearby pond. Lola had a blast running around chasing the birds and bugs. I'm pretty sure that Emily had more fun just watching Lola run, and she gave us a play by play of everything Lola was doing - even though we were only ten feet away watching the same thing.

Being a third child, Em soaks up the one-on-one time like this and we had a blast doing this with her.

Season 3 of Panthers Football

Panthers season has officially begun. Our Saturday's are booked for the next 12 weeks. Last year Maddie cheered for Nate's team. Nate has moved up to Varsity and Maddie does cheer and Pom for the JV team, which plays a couple hours before Nate.

The South Lyon Panthers football organization is pretty amazing in terms of it's organization and structures. It's all parent/volunteer run, which means that each family has to sign up for a certain amount of volunteer time. I chose the chain gang this year, which is about as a fun as a volunteer job can get. How do you beat standing on the sideline next to the action, watching the kids play and listening to the opposing coaches bad-mouth your team?

This is Maddie's second year of cheer and Pom (yes, there is a difference) and she loves it. Her background with gymnastics gives her the chance to do some of the stunting and she's a natural leader out there with the girls.

This has been an interesting year for Nate as he enters into Varsity. The guys on his team are as big as 230+ lbs and at 80 lbs, he's one of the smaller guys. He's been playing corner and running back, but the contrast in size, as you can see from the picture on the left, is pretty huge. There's nothing easy about an 80lb guy hitting up against a 160lb line men, or getting tackled by one. They intensity of the workouts has increased significantly from JV. They run the guys hard, near the equivalent intensity of what we do in our Triad workouts. They had some extended three hour practices last week and I felt for Nate when he came home wiped out. I think the team is seeing a big difference from the conditioning, as they've still got plenty of gas in the second half of the game.

I'm so impressed with Nate's attitude about about the intensity and the disparity. Nate doesn't complain, he goes in with no fear, and he works his tail off. As happens with all of the teams, the coaches play the bigger, faster second year guys and the more junior, smaller guys don't get the same kind of playing time. It's frustrating for Nate, but he gets it, and I think it motivates him to push a little harder to stand out. I never had the guts to do what Nate's doing when I was his age and I'm so proud that he is. He's doing it because he love it, not because of what anyone else wants him to do.

For the past few years, I've also been the unofficial team photographer. Don't get me wrong - love doing it, but it just takes a ton of time. Not only do I take pictures through the two hour game, but it takes me 2-3 hours to go through the pictures and edit the 500-700 pictures down to the a couple hundred really good ones. I try and get pictures of all 30 players, not just the stars who make all the plays. It's amazing how cool you can make an out of context show look, by cropping it just right to not show the fumble or the missed block. At first I wasn't sure if anyone actually looked at these pictures. One of the Mom's on the team shared with me that some of the Dad's go through the pictures one-by-one with their sons, looking for their own pictures, missed blocks and good hits.

My Tombstone

Em and I saw this when we were out for a bike ride the other day. We cut through the cemetery and stopped to check out some of the tombstones. How cool is this one?

Best Panthers Volunteer Job Ever

Social Media is moving at the speed of light

Got this video from Shinn.. Very interesting, especially the ramifications around the documents and communication overall. Communication seems to be speeding up, our lives moving faster. I'm just not sure my life needs to move any faster.

Final thoughts on dead parents and dead dogs

I've been told I'm a bit oblivious at times - glossing over details and over generalizing a bit. It's a nice way to say that at times, I'm a bit clueless about things, until I live through them. As dumb as it sounds, I'd never understood what a monumental thing losing your parent could be. To a degree, I figured that everyone's parents died eventually and people had been dealing with this for years - how bad could it really be? I learned the hard way just how difficult and life changing this was when my Mom got pancreatic cancer and died. Out of that situation I developed a whole new level of understanding and compassion for what it's like to lose a parent. In hindsight, I went through a similar epiphany over the past few weeks when my dog died. I know it sounds weird to compare the loss of a parent with that of a dog - but bear with me.

I remember a couple of years ago, one of my boss's dog died. I went through the motions of saying how sorry I was, but there was a part of me that was thinking: "Really? It's a dog - come on, time to get over it." I thought the same thing to a degree when our friends dog Guinness died: "You really need to grieve for 40 days and write that many blog posts about a dog? Comon - it's just a dog!"

Fast forward to a few months ago when I started setting the stage for the kids that our dog Riley might not be around forever. She was slowing down and showing signs of wear, but I really hadn't thought the whole thing through myself. About a month ago when my wife and the kids were out of town, Riley got sick and I took her to the vet. As I sat in the room waiting for test results, I imagined having to tell the family when they returned that Riley had died. She didn't, but I didn't know at the time just how close it would be. This is when reality started setting in for me that Riley wouldn't be around forever and it would be a much bigger deal than I had ever imagined.

On Monday when Cathie took Riley in and I got the text message from Cathie "Bad news. Brad (our vet) will call you to explain" reality set in even further. I knew we had a week left, best case, and my wife and our three kids all started dealing with the end with greater intensity as the week drew to a close. I cooked eggs and chicken for the dog, I catered to the dog, we all spent lots of time giving her hugs and the kids grieved in their own way with tears and caring for her.

Here's what I came to understand, and I'm sure this isn't a major revelation to most people who've lost a dog (or a parent for that matter):
Riley was with us for 13 years, from the beginning, involved in virtually everything our family did in some way, shape or form. She was an animal, yes, but she had a personality as distinct as any of our family members. She was connected to each member of my family, and even many of our friends, in a way that transcends the fact that she was a dog. I mean I'd talk to Riley and she understood things. I'm not talking philosophy, but she would show joy, remorse, shame and I swear she'd occasionally roll her eyes at me. That kind of connection made it a whole different deal for me than losing a guinea pig, snake or cat (not to mention that I can't stand most cats and I'm an avid dog person).

If you've never had a dog for this long, or if you hate dogs, or had a mean one - it might not resonate. I know for a fact that there are a ton of people who have lived this and get it in a way that I never did prior to this week. I received more tweets, facebook messages, facebook comments, blog comments, cards, phone calls and e-mails expressing understanding and compassion for what we were going through. It was something that would have seemed like overkill or just surface sentiment in the past - but was huge to me, and something I want to pass on to others going forward as they go through this. I also want to say thanks to the many of you who reached out with kind words to me and my family over the loss of our dog. Your kind words meant a lot.

I've dealt with my share of major events in my life: death of family members, miscarriages, addictions, betrayal by friends, and more. Now I add to that list the death of a dog. I'm not comparing their magnitude. I'm simply comparing the fact that all of these things made me someone more capable of understanding other people's pain and made me more able to love others than I ever could before. Things have all sucked in the midst of them, but I can point to places where I've been able to reach out to people around me and walk with them and find common ground in our wounds. Maybe this is what James was talking about when he said this:

Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don't try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way. - James 1:2-4 (The Message)

The pain, as crazy as it sounds, has been a gift in the end. Don't get me wrong. The event itself was not the gift. The pain that resulted from it and the learnings that came out of it was the gift. It showed the cracks in my life and matured me. Those who know me will be quick to point out that I've got a long ways to go before I can be, as James says, "not deficient in any way".