Latest Emilyism

People that are Japanese like to kill whales. I learned that on Animal Planet when I was watching the show Whale Wars.

Turkey of the Year

Sports Illustrated 2008 Turkey of the Year: Rich Rodriguez:

We're all for moving up. But you signed a long-term deal in West Virginia, bolted for Michigan less than a year later and then tried to back out of paying the price? And now, after the worst year ever in Ann Arbor, you knuckle-slap the fans? Maybe it's you that ought to be looking for a life, Rich.

Impromptu Shinn Bash

Jason Shinn was Crossroads first paid youth pastor and Jess was our first unpaid part-time Youth Pastoress (or priestess?) With the dream of someday having their own summer-getaway beside an express way drainage ditch, they moved to Ohio. When they made the move, part of the deal was that we would have huge parties for them at a moments notice whenever they come back into town.

I miss having Jay around. He and I have similar loves of mockery and cinema and I like being able to just hang out with Jay and soak in his cynicism.

My girls were in heaven. Jess lived with us for a year and she is like a big sister to them. Jess came face-to-face with the consequences of her oddness being passed down to both of my girls. It's amazing how much one year can twist two little girl's fashion senses and senses of humor. Besides Jess, my girls other favorite people and baby-sitters were there, like Tiff and Katie. I love having my kids grow up with a group like this.

Saturday was no different except that this was a costume party. Stephanie Lyons was the only one gullible enough to wear a costume. I quickly through on a sombrero, a pancho and my sweet 'ol mustache to be a bandito so that Stephanie wouldn't feel awkward in her outfit from 1980.

We had a slew of people show up, including the people in the pictures, but limited to them. We hung out in the kitchen until there was no more room, and then we moved to the living room, until that got full too. We split things up and got a giant game of uno going along with Halo in the family room.

It was just a ton of laughing, mocking and pointing out how Reagan looked like a homeless person in a nice outfit.

Jason has a theory that he can't take a picture with just one other man without it having gay overtones. I think the picture below proves his point.

We lost some people somwhere before this shot was taken, but it's a big 'ol happy group.


You can see the rest of the pictures here in Picasa.

Lebbon Thanksgiving

On Friday we over to Cathie's parents for a little tamer version of thanksgiving. We had turkey and pork tenderloin and ate until we were ready to burst. Ed and I hung out in the den most of the afternoon trying to rid his laptop of a virus.

Lola and Justice (Ed and Stacy's youngest child/dog) hung out played together.

Ed was very proud of his new hat. He kept trying to tell us that "Pink is the new black". Ed and Stacy live down in Dayton and I'd been telling them about Phil Wing's church, Apex. I called Phil and he promised that he would make sure they came on a day that didn't have snake-handling or "give-all-your-money-to-Jesus" day. He also promised not to ask Ed and Stacy any personal questions pertaining to me that might provide any future fodder.

Everyone but Ed and I hung out playing cards in the other room. I was disappointed that I didn't get a single nap in on Thursday, but it was a nice laid back Thanksgiving with everyone.
You can see the rest of the pictures here in Picasa.

Scarry Animal Loving

Em occasionally sleeps with this weird sleep mask. I went in to check on her to find the cat in a head-lock and Em in her creepy penguin mask.

A Maddie Makeover

Here's what happens when you let Maddie (or the two Maddie's together) give you a make-over... We've got pictures of them doing the hair of Jess, Cathie, Monaca, Susan and a bunch of others. None of them have ever ended well.

Kurt Family Thanksgiving

On Thursday, we celebrated Thanksgiving at my Dad's house. There were a slew of us, including my Dad's wife Judy, her Mom and some of her kids and grandkids. My Dad found a thanksgiving prayer to read (we think his impromptu prayers are just fine, but he has very high standards for his communication with God).

My Dad pre-soaked both of the turkeys in brine for 24 hours before and it made them amazingly tender. My step-brother Mark took the blue ribbon with his sweet-potatoes, which I confiscated and have been eating with every meal since Thursday.

We used the time to celebrate a slew of Birthdays, including Gabe and Matthews. Normally we combine Matthew's birthday with Christmas and just give him a $5 bill in addition to his Christmas gifts. I'm not sure why we're treating it any different this year. We got them both a tissue box with $20 in singles hidden inside.

I was very proud to see so many Kurt's sporting their Spartan wear proudly.

Gavin is my step-brother Mark's son. It was funny watching all of the kids play. Maddie and Em thought he was the cutest thing ever, showing her friends pictures of her cute little step-cousin. The boys kept saying how loud he was and kept interrupting their video games, which was hilarious, as we kept reminding them how they were about 10 times louder when they were that age, and 10 times more annoying.

Even though the Lions were dismal, we found a reason to all take a nap and watch the game.

We later celebrated even more birthdays, done with the most god-awful singing you can imagine, but one that we find very amusing.

In the tradition of getting my Dad gifts that he'll never use, Dan and Kris got my Dad a laser level that you need to use these x-men style goggles to truly see the beam. We all took turns, of course, wearing the goggles. My mustache made them look even cooler.


You can see the rest of the pictures here in Picasa.

The Dirty Stash Contest

Our first Kurt family dirty mustache race was met with mixed reviews. We had two true contestants - my brother Jon and I. Dan and Kevin are not able to grow a mustache (some believe it is due to their hormone replacement therapy), so they used strap-on mustaches (which are not allowed, according to the contest by-laws.

Our step-brother Mark participated, but with an existing gotee, which doesn't really count either. The winner (obviously) was me. Jon's brother-in-law Paul was very angry about the whole contest. Susan took this picture, which was one of the oddest, more poorly staged pictures she's ever taken.

Separated at Birth?

Northwest's new e-Boarding Pass

While checking in for my flight on Monday, I stumbled across a new feature on Northwest's web site. It offered me the ability to have an electronic boarding pass, which seemed kinda cool. It sent a link to my iPhone, which I was able to pull up on my screen. The screen shows a 3D barcode and your flight info. Rather cool, especially for NWA, who is rare on the cutting edge of anything.

I never got around to reading the e-Boarding instructions that NWA has on their web site so I printed off a paper copy as well. I went through security and they scanned the screen on my iPhone on a new reader they have at DTW. It showed up my name and flight info, the second time. Apparently you have to have a clean screen, otherwise it won't read your ticket.

I went through security and got to my gate. The reader couldn't read it at the gate, and I didn't want to be "That Guy" who holds everyone up, so I handed them my paper ticket. This is just plain cool technology. Most business travelers have devices like a blackberry or iPhone that will work with this technology. It saves me the pain of having to print off a ticket, and saves on the paper as well. One less thing I have to remember, and one less thing to lose.

You can read this article for more info.

America's Best Leadres

Good article on Anne Mulcahy, Xerox's CEO, entitled America's Best Leaders. In the article, she comments on what my group does:

Mulcahy is once again transforming Xerox—the plain paper copier company. Her new vision? She wants to eliminate paper in the office altogether and become the company that manages digital content.

Lose the world...

Not usually a big John Piper fan, but I dig the line at the end:

God i most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him in the midst of loss, not prosperity.

My Job and My Passion

I was reflecting on my post last night about not having my job define me. I was thinking this morning that over the past three weeks, that's pretty much exactly what it's done. I've been caught up in trying to figure out what I'm going to do "next". One of the great things about a big company is that they change and that you're given opportunities to move laterally and vertically. We reorganize and it's not uncommon for my job to change radically, or for me to be given the opportunity to take a very new position.

The crazy thing with my job is that I wake up just about every day looking forward to doing my job. I've worked virtual, out of my home, for the past 12 years and I love it. I like the people I work, I like most of the customers I get to work with and I like the challenge of what I do. To top it all off, I really believe in the stuff my company does and I love the company I work for. Most of the time. At the end of the day, those are the most important things. Money factors in to the fact that I want all of those job elements in a place where I'm valued. One of the ways my company expresses that value is through money. I'm a firm believer that if you love what you do, you'll be great at it, and in my line of business, that translates into money. I always find a way to spend what I've got, so while making more is nice, it's not on the top of my list really.

It seems like every 18 months to 2 years, I get an itch to change what I'm doing. I reach a point where my job stops challenging me. I can do the job too easily and I'm feeling too comfortable with it. At that point, I get restless. I want to do something new that makes me "uncomfortable" all over again. Something that pushes me to be better. I'm not a huge fan of being stationary. Being still just doesn't feel right.

I'd started looking at my options a few months back, most of them within my company. I'd identified a few that looked pretty interesting. I'd narrowed it down to one job that seemed silly to take. It was more work and more stress in a new group with a new job supporting a very challenging, very visible customer in a new way with more travel. The real upside of this would be the challenge. It was way outside of what I'm comfortable with, more in an operations role working as more of a general manager over $30M+ customer. I poured over this decision and even after I'd decided, the timing fell through and I'm taking a new job that I was promoted into. It's one I've done before and I'm pretty comfortable with, but I'm having to start from scratch to pull my team together. I've now got to figure out how to turn this into a role that will stretch me, when frankly it seems like it's standing still. On the positive side, I have a great job that I'm very good at, with people I like working with and that pays me well. I can't really complain, and I'm not.

Giant Paintball Gun

Dan sent me this video of Myth Busters giant paintball gun at an NVIDIA graphics card press conference. They create a smiley face with single robotic paintball gun and then show the power of NVIDIA with a giant parallel paintball gun processor. Fast forward to about 3:18 to see the first robot and then 8 minutes to see the giant gun.

Climb every mountain?

I almost never talk to people that I sit next to on the plane. I talk to enough new people in my job that by the time I get on a plane, I'm pretty much ready to get into my paper, my book or my e-mail.

The guy in the seat next to me saw that my mac was running parallels and we struck up some small talk. He, like me, doesn't usually talk to the guy next to him either. The conversation went from macs, to where we're from and where we were going to the standard 'what line of work are you in' conversation. It turns out he's a professional climber. Seemed like a conversation worth continuing.

I had no idea what this entailed, so I started asking questions. Lots of them. When Chris was 12 he had five goals that he wrote down, including: Having a big house with a pool, a Porsche, a million dollars, a dog and climbing Mt. Everest. Four years ago, Chris left a VP level job with American Express to fulfill his dream to climb Mt. Everest. He's since scaled 6 of the 7 tallest peaks in the world, including K2. He gets just enough sponsorship and the occasional speaking gig to pay the bills. He told me about the difficulty levels and what's involved in a climb in terms of endurance, risk management and decision making. He told me the story of his K2 expedition where 11 of the 24 people in his party died. He had decided to turn back on the final ascent, the other 11 did not. Wow. Great choice, in hind-sight. He showed me some pictures from the peak of Everest along with pictures of one of the guys who got frost bite on all of his toes (the before picture) and had to have them all amputated (the after picture).

He had some great stories about his travels and expeditions, and even his training (running and biking at Island Lake and Kensington when he's in Michigan). Great guy, very humble, very interesting to talk to. I'd love to bring him in to come and talk at a corporate event around teams, risk and goals.

What struck me is that he left his job to do something he loves. While we were talking, his story reminded me of Thoreau's line about how "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them." (this is about the only line I can quote from Thoreau). We talked about the people that we know in corporate america who live their lives only looking to get the bigger house or car, their worlds revolving around their jobs, their success and acquisition. Neither of us want to be that guy.

I like to think that I'm the kind of guy whose world is bigger than his job. As a result, I don't always take myself as seriously as some would like in a company where people typically take themselves very seriously. I have some senior management in my company who look at me as a bit of an anomaly and are at times hesitant about putting me into certain roles because of this. At the end of the day, the results that I'm able to drive with the teams that I'm given speak for themselves. My world is not my job and as a result, some people are drawn to that and others don't know how to deal with me.

It made me think about how thankful I am to have a job where I wake up every day loving what I do. I'm thankful for the people I have in my life who are willing to give me a reality check when I think I'm getting too big for myself. I'm thankful that I get to work with a bunch of junior high kids in my church that could care less how much money I make, what my title is, whether I can close a $20M deal or have a conversation with a Fortune 50 CIO.

Kurt Men at the Lions game

Big 'ol Shot of Wolverine Bitterness

I went to see my doctor today to see how my cholesterol medicine was doing and to get a flu shot. Dr. Kaminski has been my doc, and that of a bunch of my friends, for a while. He's roughly my age and happens to be a wolverine fan. He's got some big 'ol fat head decals of wolverine helmets and other U of M paraphernalia in the offices.

When I came in, I happened to take a couple shots at his team. When he came in to see me, he had a big 'ol crow bar and wrench in his hand and announced, 'time for the prostate exam. we've got a VERY new technique'. I explained that while my brother Dan may get the occasional voluntary prostate exam, I'm not old enough yet.

As he left, he told the nurse to bring in the 'rusty spartan needle' for the flu shot. The nurse came in with this syringe with a nice 3 inch needle filled with tar. Gotta remember to pick who I antagonize a little more carefully.

A Complaint Free World

When I saw the title of this book, I thought the author was Will Brown. Wouldn't that be ironic? Comon Will, that's funny stuff there.

Shows I'm Watching

Due to a DirecTV glitch, my whole list of recordings got nuked. Here's what I'm watching with some regularity:

• Fringe
• The IT Crowd
• Testees
• The Big Bang Theory
• Heroes
• My Own Worst Enemy
• Sons of Anarchy
• My Name is Earl
• The Office
• Best Week Ever

I'm backed up on a lot these shows, especially Sons of Anarchy and Heroes, which I typically watch when I'm working late. I'm digging Fringe - kind of a combination of Alias and the X-Files.

These are some of the Reality Type TV shows that I watch:

• Dirty Jobs - The whole family watches this one.
  
• MythBusters - Nate, Maddie and I dig this.
  
• SurvivorMan - Maddie and I watch this together.
  
• Prototype This - Nate and I watch this together
• How It's Made - Again, Nate and I.
  
• Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew - Cathie and I never miss this.
  

The Status of My Statuses

This year has been a weird travel year for me. I had a four month window in the middle of the year where my travel was dialed back to maybe once a month. The upside of this is that I've been home a lot more and very productive, with a pretty flexible schedule. The "downside", and I'm not sure it's really a downside, is that it doesn't look like I'm going to hit all of my elite travel statuses.

You may be rolling your eyes and thinking, "prima donna". Not the case. When you travel a lot and you're away from your family, it's the little things that make it easier. Things like being able to quickly get out of the rental car lot when you're running late to a meeting, being at the front of the plane, not having to check your luggage because you board early and can get your bags on the plane.

Here's where I'm at:
National Emerald Executive - I think I'm on track to hit this. It gives me automatic upgrades, a select group of cars and not getting gouged for not refueling my car.

Hilton Diamond - I may be a a few stays shy, but it's a rolling window, so I will likely catch up pretty quickly. This gives me some pretty amazing room upgrades. I'm talking penthouse suite level upgrades. They treat their diamond members pretty well, most of the time.

Northwest Gold - This is the most important one to me, and not just for the first class. It lets me bypass lines through security, pick the premium seats ahead of time and some other nice perks. This one will suck to lose. I'll probably only hit silver, which gives only a fraction of those perks. I'll probably end the year about 10k miles shy of where I need to be. My options are to spend the money and take a trip that will rack up 10k miles for me to help put me over the threshold. This may sound crazy, but you'd be amazed at how many people you talk to at the end of December who are flying for the miles.

Random Travel Stuff

I got the airport with my usual 45 minutes to spare and got to my gate without a problem. If you've never been to Detroit Metro Airport, it's a great airport, but it's about a mile long from end to end, to to mention the new middle terminals. I headed to my gate at A6, only to find that it had been moved to A76 at the opposite end of the airport. Stuff happens. I headed over to A76, only to find that it was now at A20, back on the other end of the airport.

I guess we all know that plenty of older people live in Florida. I have confirmed that based on these Florida flights in the winter. Holy cow. The average age on that flight is 70 with 20 wheelchairs lined up. The elderly are very demanding in first class. I feel bad for the flight attendants because most of the older people have completely lost their filters, as older people (Dad) tend to do.

In order to avoid flying out on Sunday night, I had timed things with getting to my meeting to the minute, assuming that my flight would get in about 12:30, as it had the past couple of trips down. We were delayed and I ended up getting into West Palm Beach about 20 minutes late. I chose the Dodge Charger with the HEMI in it and started on my 50 mile drive at 1:15 North to Port St. Lucie where my meeting was being held at 2, normally about a 1 hr 15 minute drive. I made it in the door, to the meeting at 2:01, very proud of myself, only to find that the meeting had been shifted to 4:00. And then I found ten bucks.*

*The "And then I found $10" is a phrase we've adopted in our family from Megan and Katie Green. They'll use this phrase if they're in the middle of a story and determine that as they're telling it, it's really not that interesting. The problem is, that our kids have now picked up on this. We'll be sitting at the dinner table and Emily will start to tell a rambling story, as 7 year olds are prone to do. Nate will quickly jump in with the "And then I found $10" as Cathie and I both give our undivided attention to Em's story. We used to do the same thing with their jokes when they were little, once feigning laughter at the 100th "Why did the chicken cross the road" joke got old. Of course, this was after a certain age, and only after if the joke made no sense at all. Probably explains a lot about our dinner table conversations, huh?

Let the stash bash begin

This Thanksgiving will add a brand new tradition to the Kurt Family - the dirty mustache contest. My brother Jon has a big head start on me and his mustache has been getting rave reviews. People love a good mustache and tend to give you free stuff and avoid fights just on the fear of having to tangle with a mustache wearing person.

I've got big plans for my mustache and I've arranged my travel schedule so that I have the next ten days leading up to Thanksgiving to grow this baby out. The hardest part will be for my wife, who can't keep her hands off me when I have a good mustache going. She simply finds it irresistible. It's difficult for me to continually remind her that I have a job to do during the day and can't spend the day frolicking around.

Me and two monkeys

Em and I got our picture taken with this monkey named Silas at the pet Expo. This monkey was the coolest thing ever. After he was done with the picture he turned around and gave me a hug. It could truly see myself happy with a help monkey of my own. He could get my remote control for me when I'm too lazy to get up and get it. He could get me a beer from the fridge and discipline the kids for me when I want to take a nap. I would have a laser pointer that I could use to direct him.

I might even teach him to read my mind so that I could have him dance on command.

Novi Pet Expo

Em and I spent the day at the Novi Pet Expo. If you know Em, you know she loves animals more than anything in the world. She looks at animals the way Jesus looks at people. She sees the good in every animal. It doesn't matter how ugly or old the animal is, scaly or slimy, she loves them all.

The Pet Expo was a collection of animal shows, rescue shelters, dog breeders and specialty animal training and toy groups. We spent three hours walking around the pet expo today, wandering up and down the aisles, back and forth, stopping in to see the same groups of pets 3 or 4 times each. You could pet all sorts of animals from dogs, to snakes and lizards. We even got our picture taken with a chimpazee, which was really cool. The dog on the left weighed 230lbs. It was huge!

There were a group of bird rescuers, all of them wearing these fancy bibs on their shoulders to prevent themselves from getting pooped on. Emily must have pet 100 different puppies, loving each one.

The snake on the left was a huge albino python and the collection on the right was a bunch of different kinds of snakes from another rescue shelter. She looked at every kind of snake. I'd be up for adding one of these to the Kurt family menagerie, but Cathie doesn't really like snakes, to put it midly (her exact words were, "If Dad had brought one home I would have taken the snake out and run it over with the lawn mower.")


She spent a while petting the greyhounds, and then we played with this sugar glider. It's kind of part squirrel and part bat, kind of a flying squirrel. The guy put it on the back of my hand and had me lift my hand above my head. It jumped off and flew to the guy, opening it's arms wide enough to glide.

This guy did some "magic tricks" and then brought out some pretty cool animals, like this crocodile, a cobra and a sloth.

We also found a bunch of groups that would be perfect for Ed, Stacy and their dog Justice. One group, the Dog Scouts of America, let you take your dog on different trips where you can both earn merit badges. Another group does choreographed dances with their dogs. Stacy would love this!

The more "interesting" group was the Fancy Rat association. They collect rats, love them and dress them up. I guess. They REALLY seemed to love their rats.