Proud Dad Moment

I set Nate and Maddie up with e-mail accounts to teach them how to use e-mail responsibly and so that they can send me notes I'm traveling. I got two e-mails from them today:

Dear Dad,
I love you a lot. I cant wait till you come back! I miss you. I'm writing this to you because well I don't know! Do you ever get lonely when your on your trips? well I love you. Bye. love, Maddie

Hi dad,
I miss you. Where are you at right now?Can you send pictures with emails?I love you. You are the best. i HOPE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THAT TWILIGHT PRINCESS COMES TODAY!!!!!!! Cross your fingers for it. BYE!!!!
Sincerely
Nathan

I was checking their e-mail accounts tonight and I found this e-mail that Nate had sent to Maddie:

Dear Maddie,
I love you in every way possible. When I see you I say to myself what a good sister!
you're an awesome sister . Yes I know we may get in fights at times but still you are the best! Once again you make my heart warm when I am near you. Also I love you very much.

Sincerely,
Nathan

I know my kids aren't perfect, but gosh I'm proud of them.

Hot Springs, Arkansas

I'm in beautiful Hot Springs for a couple of days of meetings. After dinner we went downtown to Hot Springs version of Hollywood's walk of fame and saw Johnny Cash's 'star' since he was born here. My brothers Jon and Will both will be excited to see that Mario Lopez

(of Saved by the Bell and Dancing with the Stars fame) will be the grand marshall of their St. Patricks Day Parade.

Sunday

Sunday was a family day. We went bowling after church and I couldn't believe how expensive bowling is getting. For an hour of bowling and shoes, it cost us over $40 for a family of 5. Wow.

After bowling we decided to go play outside. Last year we'd built a fort in the wood behind our house and spent the night in it. The kids and I decided to build it out a little bit, so we built a new roof for it and dug out the inside so that it be a little larger. Our plan is to get the fort ready for another all-nighter.

We tried to build a big enough snow pile to jump off the swingset, but we just don't have enough snow to do anything too spectacular, but Maddie tried a few jumps before we moved on to the tire swing for thrills.

Mckenna Update

I talked to Eli this morning and Mckeanna is still in the hospital, hooked up to an IV, oxygen and getting breathing treatments. Mckenna and Dana slept well last night in the hospital. Once she can keep her oxygen levels up on her own and starts eating they'll let her go, but she's not doing either right now.

Rick Rubin

I just read this interview with Rick Rubin, founder of Def-Jam records and producer of Johnny Cash's 5 disc American Anthology. In the interview, Rubin talks about the process behind Johnny Cash selecting the songs he did for the CD and how they recorded them.

Makenna

Dana and Eli's 15 month old, Makenna Schultz, was admitted to the hospital this evening with pneumonia and a 105 degree temperature. Please take a sec and pray for her.

Harlem Globetrotters

My Dad took us to see the Harlem Globetrotters tonight at the MSU Breslin Center in East Lansing. Growing up, my Dad took us to see them a bunch of times and we always enjoyed it. My father-in-law, Nate and my nephews Gabe, Shabadu (Matthew), Andy and Steve-O all enjoyed it too. Before and during intermissions there were a group of trampoline basketball players launched themselves in the air and made some ridiculous shots. 20 years later, I still loved it and was amazed at what these guys can do.

Brad's Birthday and Funeral

Whenever Brad makes it another year, we're always impressed. Every time we watch our all time favorite movie Old School, the scene of Blue's funeral (Brad's name sake) comes on and we discuss how this is exactly the way we want Brad's funeral to go. In the movie, it went like this. In Ted's world, it goes like this (be sure and click on the video and check out the comments people have left. They're even funnier than the video):

Tags: Old School, Dust in the Wind

Happy Birthday Brad

Happy Birthday Brad "Blue" Jeffrey (as pictured in Key West toady mode)

To celebrate Brad's 53rd birthday, here are ten things you may or may not know about Brad:

• Brad is a veterinarian who likes to kill animals: Deer, Pheasant, Bear, Duck, Elk and the occasional puppy. He feels that he makes the herd/flock stronger every time he offs one of them and puts it in his belly.
  
• Brad has a son, Mitch, that is the same age as me.
• Brad and I went on our first official "friendship outing" 11 years ago to a Rolling Stones concert that I'd won tickets for on the radio. He was the only person that I knew in the South Lyon area that was old enough to want to go. A guy one section over was drunk enough to fall off of the upper deck at the Silverdome and die.
  
• Brad's shoulder was dislocated and broken a couple of years ago by our friend Will. (Will often hurts people when he gets angry.)
• At one time, Brad had to extract a sheep's head from a frozen pail of water after his wife was not able to euthanize the sheep with a 2x4.
  
• Beyond his new found fame (read here, here and here) at introducing his family to the lost art of cannibalism, Brad was a pretty big deal in Detroit, being the resident TV Vet for the morning show "Good Morning Detroit" and would do regular spots on the show. He's been a vet to the stars, including Mitch Albums dog.
• At one time, Brad knew the location of a large field of government marijuana was grown as Hemp during the war. Rumor has it that he visited it immediately after the birth of one of his children way back when.
• Brad and I both think that Dallas Willard is the smartest living guy in the world when it comes to theology. (This makes Joe Muzzi very angry for some reason).
  
• Brad has a spermatic testicle, which means a big 'ol growth on his nut.
• Although my wife disagrees, Brad is a pretty good source of medical information even though he's not a people doctor. I go to him for advice before I go to my doctor with most medical questions, and occasionally take the antibiotic or other drug on the side from him that may cure what ails me.
  
• Brad is one of the wisest men most generous and humble men I know and one of my closest friends Everyone needs a Brad in their life that when the world goes to crap, Brad has either just the right words of advice, encouragement or ability to tell you that he has no clue what to do. Either way he will stand beside you come hell or high water.

Brad is very, very old and likely close to death. Will and I have dibs on much of his stuff and will miss him when he passes on.

Xerox

I've worked at Xerox for ten years and it's a far from perfect company, but I'm very proud of this place. Xerox has a social leave program that employees can apply for. Xerox pays these employees salaries for a year while they use their work place skills to help non-profits make the world a better place. They've also recently given 122 scholarships to minority students for technical studies.

We've been in a turn-around for the past few years when things were pretty ugly. Our CEO Anne Mulcahy has done an amazing job turning things around while keeping the company motivated. We just reported our earnings and we're getting continued positive news from Wall Street (with the exception of a few naysayers).

Anyways, I like working for Xerox. I wake up every morning looking forward to doing my job.

Tags: Xerox, Social Leave Program, Anne Mulcahy

My Receiver

I've got my new receiver setup and I'm in love. Deeply. I had to gut my entire AV system which consisted of a rats nest of wires. I finally pulled my 300 disc CD changer off my rack since I haven't used it in the two years since I've had my MacMini running my Audio. My new receiver allows me to switch all of my video with component and HDMI and it will actually pull the audio off the HDMI channel instead of having to run separate audio and video signials. When cleaning up my system, I pulled out 20 different AV connectors out of the mix and I feel like I had a digital enema. The sound quality is phenomenal, the interface is simple and I love the way it uplifts my RCA and S-Video inputs up to component video. It took me another hour to reprogram my Harmony 520 Remote and I'm back in business.

It reminds me of what we talked about at our junior high youth group on Tuesday: Stuff. "The stuff you own ends up owning you."

Tags: Onkyo TX-SR6045s, Harmon 520

Amazon Prime

I finally upgraded to Amazon Prime. I buy most of my stuff online. Stores seem pretty inefficient and inexpensive. One of the rare reasons I'll go to a store and buy something is if I need it quickly. Amazon Prime gives you the ability to get free 2nd day shipping from Amazon and $3.99 next day shipping. Through my job I've had the opportunity to work with Amazon and TE hooked me up with a free preview of the service. What I finally just got (it takes me a while) is that it's not just a free upgrade to second day shipping, it's free second day shipping no matter what the item or dollar amount. I always figured that it was only an upgrade option, but you'd still need to do the $25 minimum before it would happen.

New Receiver

I've had Sony audio/visual equipment forever, but it seems like lately their quality has slipped. A recent Sony DVD player only lasted a year before dying and my current Sony receiver has had the front right channel start to die, which makes it pretty useless. After putting up with this for a year, I finally broke down and ordered a new receiver (via Amazon, using my Amazon prime feature and getting it the next day). The Onkyo TX-SR6045S (which happened to be the top model from consumer reports) lets you do HDMI and Component video switching and lets you configure the unit from the TV and microphone-based calibration of the unit.

Tags: "Onkyo TX-SR6045s" Consumer Reports HDMI "Component Video" Sony Sucks

Good Brad Story

My good friend Brad is old and with that old age comes a lot of great stories. Some of the greatest stories I've ever heard have come from Brad. Mark Kohne, Brad and I had sushi for lunch today and I laughed hard when he told me this story. Warning, half of Brad's story is how he tells them. My story telling skills pale in comparison:

Brad was cooking dinner last night for his family, making shake-and-bake type chicken. As he was cutting the chicken he cut off the tip of his finger. Try as he might, he couldn't find it in the cut chicken anywhere. He shook the chicken, cooked it and served it to his family. Before they ate, he explained to them, "After dinner, I've got a surprise for you." The family was excited about the surprise and as they ate their dinner, finger tip and all.

After dinner, the family gathered around waiting for their "big surprise". Brad went to the trash and pulled out the loads of paper towels he'd used to try and stop the bleeding of his finger and explained to them that one of them was the lucky person who'd eaten his finger tip. You would think they would feel lucky and thankful, but instead they gagged and screamed.

Em and Rascal

I'm not sure why, but Rascal loves Emily. Emily loves to grab the cab and cuddle and squeeze her any chance she gets. We found Rascal sleeping with Emily last night and this morning the two were back together cuddling.

A Convenient Truth

Although Will makes me out to be a borderline stalker, I do think Sara Silverman is funny (can I help it if she was drawn to me at the Jimmy Kimmel show?). This is a very funny video clip promo for Sara new show, mocking Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth documentary (or should i say, Mockumentary).

aTV vs. Mac Mini

This is a good comparison of the Apple TV vs a Mac Mini. After reading this, I canceled my pre-order for my appleTV. I like the HDMI and digital audio output, but my concern is how dumbed down the interface, network and codec support will be. It looks good in theory, but I'll wait until someone else gets one before i buy this and sell my current MacMini.

Tags: "Mac Mini" "Mac Mini" comparison

Wow

Thanks to Tom for this amazing video. This must have taken weeks to film and edit.

Cathie

Cathie worked in Emily's kindergarten class this morning. One of the little girls working with at a table stared at her for a second and then began this conversation:

Little Girl: What's your name
Cathie: Mrs. Kurt
Little Girl: You're not as pretty as my Mom. My Mom's a hip-hop Mom.

Maybe she had seen the picture on Susan's blog. After seeing this picture of Susan, she didn't feel as bad:

Happy 89th Birthday

We celebrated my Grandma's 89th birthday yesterday. Even with only 9 fingers (Emily still prays that it will grow back), Grandma is still going strong. She'd broken her ankle right after my Mom died and was in a rehab home getting back to walking. She moved back into her apartment on Saturday to see if she can get around on her own. If you look closely at her name tag, you'll get a sense for my Grandma's sense of humor and why she fits so well into our family.