Dave Kurt's Blog

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Friday

Cathie and I went out on a date tonight. We went to a The Melting Pot, a Fondue restaurant in Novi for dinner and then we went to Wal-Mart. Why Walmart? To get a deck of cards. While we were in the parking lot another driver hit our van while she was backing out and she scraped up the side of the car and bumper nicely. We went in, got our cards and then headed over to Starbucks to get a coffee and play gin rummy. Cathie is the champion of the universe, beating me 4 games out of 7.

We came back and our babysitter showed me her new Mac Power book. It's got a built in camera and a great feature that lets you apply all sorts of great affects on the fly. Did I stop at just one? Oh no. I took 12.

I'm heading up north tomorrow with a group of guys from work. Guys are flying in from as far away as California to hang out. We're going to go wakeboarding (cold), fishing and golf.

Friday, September 15, 2006

Wow

Back a while ago in Orlando I road on this same slingshot ride. I didn't have quite the same reaction as the kid on the right.

Golden Tee Golf Game

I could truly be happy with one of these Golden Tee Home Golf Games.

Flag Football

I'm coaching flag football again this year. I'm coaching with 3 other dads in the neighborhood, all of us with sons on the team. We had a coaches meeting last night and then went out to the South Lyon Hotel to talk coaching strategy over a few beers. None of us are great football players or coaches, but we all want the kids to have fun and learn the game. The one thing I have going for me is that Will used to room with a guy who played football at Michigan State (or so he tells us all on a daily basis). Apparently, there's no organized sports-betting associated with this league - and that's not a good question to ask at the coaches meeting.

Bleeding Edge Technology

When I originally installed Windows Vista on my desktop, it warned me that if I didn't put the license key in at the beginning, I could be hosing myself in a big way and have to re-install. Whatever. I went to try and add a license key yesterday and found that there's a reason it's called a "Release Candidate" and not a full-release. The upgrade functionality didn't quite work as advertised, so I needed to reinstall the whole system. Naturally, I had just gotten the system to a point where it was working beautifully.

Vista has a new feature that allows you to supposedly transfer a machine's profile exactly - including users, software, data, settings - everything - and drop it into a new machine flawlessly. It lets you do this out to external hard drives, over a network over even over the internet. Potentially cool feature. The exporting part worked great, but it crapped out when I went to pull it into the new install. Microsoft's "Solution Finder" came back explaining that the feature just didn't work and that it would work on the full release. Nice solution.

Tailgating

While we were tailgating at the Buffett Concert, we cooked out chicken, brats and grilled some onions and peppers to go top of them. The Grill was sitting right below Brad's feet, in front of my car. Wow, does my car smell bad now. Not like smoke, which I could deal with, but like a giant cooked green pepper, which isn't as pleasant as you'd think.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Calling All Kids

We have a big wooded lot behind our house that over the past few years has slowly been torn down and is being developed into houses. Over the past 6 years we've lived here, our kids have built forts, played games and tracked animals back there. Putting Madeline to bed tonight, I came across this flyer that she and her friend Julie put together to rally kids to not have the forest torn down:

Calling All Kids!!
Kids, we need your help! Here's a question: Do you want Nature Well I know that I sure want nature. If the workers make a lot of houses then we won't have room to make cool forts and stuff like that. Please make signs and banners for us. And here are some reasons I think we should keep nature:
1. You can build cool forts
2. Animals live there! Workers are destroying animals habitats!
3. The workers ruin nature
4. We can't play back there any more.
5. Keep the trees adn buses and that stuff!

Please help us!

Seger

I picked up the new Bob Seger album Face the Promise off iTunes yesterday and I like it. I'm more excited about his potential upcoming tour. When I was a kid, we would go and visit my Grandma in Detroit and I'd spend time with my Uncle Bill, who I idolized. I'd sit next to him in church, at dinner, at family events and ride with him in his car any chance I got (he started teaching me to drive when I was 12). When we'd get in his car, he would introduce me to all kinds of music, including Bob Seger's music. One of the first albums he gave me was Seger's Live Bullet (which IMHO is the greatest live album of all time), especially the version of Turn the Page. Everytime I hear the song, it reminds me of my Uncle. Toward the end of his life as he was getting sicker and sicker, I wanted to go to a Bob Seger concert with him. Seger never toured, but I'm not going to miss the upcoming tour.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Nonulcer stomach pain - MayoClinic.com

Nate had his Dr's appointment today with the pediatric gastroenterologist and after now that they think they've cleared up all of the ulcers, they believe it's a chronic thing, something called
Nonulcer stomach pain.

Nonulcer stomach pain is a common, sometimes long-lasting (chronic) disorder of the upper gastrointestinal system, which includes your esophagus and first part of your small intestine (duodenum) as well as your stomach. The disorder can cause signs and symptoms that resemble those of a peptic ulcer, such as pain or discomfort in your upper abdomen, often accompanied by bloating, belching and nausea.

The pain itself starts and then triggers some pretty bad headaches from there. The Treatment (if you look at the list, we've done all of them except this one) is a low-dose antidepressant that will help address the pain:

Tricyclic antidepressants and drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), taken in low doses, may help inhibit the activity of neurons that control the role of the intestines in decreasing pain. Your doctor may suggest antidepressants such as imipramine (Tofranil) and amitriptyline. SSRIs such as fluoxetine (Prozac, Sarafem) or paroxetine (Paxil) also may be helpful.

Online Bus Route

It's common knowledge that U of M doesn't turn out the sharpest knives in the drawer and that if a smart one does stumble out somehow, that they'll be sure and let you know. It's also a well known fact that MSU's computer science program is far superior to U of M's (one of the top ranked in the country) and routinely turns out useful stuff to make the world a better place. (Full Disclosure: I got my undergrad in Computer Science from MSU. Go Figure).

All that aside, I have to give Kudos to this online bus map that U of M developed. It uses Google maps, and shows the buses real-time on the map along with the various routes. Very cool.

Parrottheads

Last night Eli, Bob, Brad and I went to see Jimmy Buffett at DTE Music Theatre, thanks to Bob for hooking us up with fantastic and untouchable seats to a show that sold out in 10 minutes. The place was amazing to see. There were Parrottheads everywhere. This thing is really like a yuppie Grateful Dead Concert. People had giant setups including full tiki huts and bars and decorated their mobile homes and buses with fins, sharks and hula skirts. People were dressed in the most amazing grass skirts, coconut tops, hats and full shark suits.

The forecast had been rain all week and we knew it going in, so we were prepared. We got there early, setup a tent and got the grill fired up. We kicked back and grilled out as the rain started to come down... and come down.. and come down. The tent we'd setup was 20 feet away from the giant bus/motor home above. As the rain came down harder, we kept moving further from the edges of the tent and quarters got tighter and tighter. As we stood there under the tent, the people in the giant motor home waved for us join them inside. We came into their palatial bus, which was huge and decked out with everything you would need. They invited us to join them for drinks and food and we ended up hanging out with them for a while talking. This is the hospitality of the Parrottheads.

DTE is on a giant hill with a big pavilion. The hill was a mudslide and the rain just kept coming down harder and harder. Thankfully we were in the pavilion. The concert was fantastic. Jimmy played for 2 1/2 hours straight and the rain didn't damper the fans spirit.

It took us about 2 1/2+ hours to get home once we got home, with 1 1/2 hours of that coming from getting out of the parking lot.

Here's some video footage from the concert last night:

Monday, September 11, 2006

Amazon Digital Video

Amazon just released their new digital video download capability called unbox, so I figured I'd give it a try. I went to download a TV show on my mac, which I use for my home audio/video, and found it's not yet supported. The prices are similar to iTunes, but they offer rental for movies at a much cheaper price. The downside is that they don't support iTunes DRM, so there's no taking the video and putting it on your iPod. Yet.

If I've learned nothing (TE) it's that Amazon likes to start small and grow from there if an idea works. I would guess that a huge number of the early adopters of downloadable digital video are iTunes/iPod users and that they'll have to figure it out sooner or later. The one thing I don't get in the pricing for any downloadable video in general is the price point. Shouldn't it be a significant savings if I'm buying something digital instead of the physical disc and box? Even more so with a rental. Paying $4 to rent a movie digitally for 24 hours, when I can go to Blockbuster and rent it cheaper for longer doesn't seem to make sense. Once Amazon supports the mac/iPod I'll give this a try again. I read that Apple is holding out for a $9.99 price point for library movies and $14.99 for new releases.

Update on Nate

Back in July Nate had a when Nate had his latest endoscopic procedure on his stomach, we thought they'd figured out the problem. It doesn't look like it's gotten better. It seemed to be better for a while, but it's gotten bad again. Yesterday, Nate was curled up on the floor from stomach pains and today I had to come in and bring him medicine at school to help him out. Nate's got another doctor's appointment on Wednesday and we're hoping they've got some good ideas. The specialist we go to (Dr. Belknap) is great when we're at the office (out in Troy), but they suck at communicating in every form: calling you back, letting you know what's going on or talking to you on the phone.

Family Guy Quote

Old Lady (To Peter): "You're a monster."

Peter: "You know what was a monster? Frampton Comes Alive, 1976. Is there anyone you knew who didn't have that record? I don't think so."

Xerox Spans the Globe with Three New Imaging Services Centers

Very few people I know care what I do for for a living or can describe it very well. In the big scheme of things, it's not all that important or interesting to many, but I love my job, the people I work with with and the company I work for. This recent press release on Xerox Imaging gives some insight into some of the stuff I've been working on over the past 6 months in the new role I'm in:

Xerox Global Services also is now offering imaging services on-site at customer locations, and off-site at existing scanning locations. With on-site services, Xerox installs the necessary scanning equipment and software at a customer location and then manages the scanning process, enabling customers to scan hardcopy documents that can't leave the premises to be scanned directly into their own digital repository or to a secure Xerox repository. Xerox can also send customers' documents to a nearby scanning location, freeing the customer from having to send their critical documents long distances.

Bold CEOs

Interesting article on the changing role of CEOs. As I've said before, I'm a big fan of our CEO, Anne Mulcahy, and being in the strategy role I'm in now, it's interesting to be involved in some of the behind the scenes thinking on how we grow organically and through acquisition. (Note Anne's colorful language below):

Real growth requires placing big bets that probably won't pay off until far into the future - and today's impatient culture offers little incentive. What practically killed Xerox (Charts) was its leaders' resistance to making the technological leap from analog copying to digital, which was almost guaranteed (as most such changes are) to cut margins.

By the time they were finally forced to, their business was in free fall. The company was eventually charged with improperly accelerating revenues and overstating earnings. (It settled without admitting wrongdoing and paid a $10 million fine.)

"You have to change when you're at the top of your game in terms of profit," says Mulcahy, who cleaned up the mess, made the changes to digital and color, and is now trying to jump-start revenue.

"It's hard to do. Your business looks its best. Your margins are at their best. All that makes your job easier. Then you're like, 'Oh, shit, here we go again.' You've got to jump into that risk pool, and once again you're in this mode of 'You know, this could fail.' "

eBible Site

eBible.com has released a very cool new Web 2.0 interface that is very cool. It's got a million options and you almost wouldn't know you're using it in a browser. You can click on a verse and have it show you on the same screen all of the commentary and x-references associated with it as well as bookmark the verse. You can compare multiple versions side-by-side . I normally use biblegateway.com, but after using this initially, I think I like it more.

The TIre Swing

Emily loves the tire swing we've put in our back yard. She has me push her on it just about every day and she has no fear on the thing. When Kevin and I first installed the swing, the kids were small enough to fit inside the giant tire. They can still kind of fit into it, but they really like riding on top of this. When pushed to the full extent, it puts her about 15+ feet in the air. You gotta dig Emily's boots on the second picture.

PC Pro: News: Xerox reveals transient documents

Interesting article on Xerox's new transient document technology that disappears over time.

mySpace

A ton of the kids in my youth group are on mySpace, so a while back I setup an account to stay connected with them and use the technology enough to be able to intelligently talk to parents about what's going on. At least I've got 38 friends. My wife, siblings and some friends setup profiles a while back and we've all added each other, but haven't done much with it.

This SNL video which pretty much sums up how the majority of mySpace is used by adults: