Last night we had an awards banquet at the Wrigley mansion (as in Wrigley's chewing gum fame). It was located up on a hill with the mountains surrounding it. We saw one of the most beautiful sunsets ever.


It's a great group of people on this team, and after working on this project for two years, a number of them have become great friends.



Matt, Ross (pictured above) are I have just started a competition that involves points for working out each day and for taking time praying and reading the bible each day. Pretty simple, but it just speaks to the friendship that we've developed that we're doing something like this together.

Cathie and I are heading to Sedona this morning to go on a Pink Jeep Tour which are supposed to be amazing.

I got up this morning about 6AM and hung out on my balcony watching the sun rise, drinking coffee and enjoying the weather. I had meetings from 8:30 - 12 and then hung out at the pool for a while. Cathie was at the pool and then had a facial and a pedicure. I had a stone massage this afternoon, which was great. It's like a normal massage, but with hot rocks stuck all over your body - but not in a bad way. I think I feel asleep at one point I was so relaxed. This has been a great getaway so far.

My Dad can't figure out why I keep a blog, and I started thinking about why I do it. Part of it is that I'm a person who loves stories, and I love to use this as a medium to share them. It keeps me from having to share the same story 400 times. On the downside, I don't know who reads it and when I share the stories, I'm either quickly interrupted and informed that they read it, or they placate me and nod their head, knowing the end of the story. To that note, I talked to a friend of mine, Mike Thompson, the other day. He told me "I know you, but you don't know me." I had no clue what this meant, and he explained that he'd been reading my blog and knew what was going on in my life. I told Mike to get a blog.

Cathie and I arrived in Phoenix yesterday. Cathie did her usual gig where she stays up until 5AM getting everything ready to leave - lists, itinerarys, backpacks, clothes - everything. We then got up at six and headed to the airport. Cathie rode in First Class while I was waaaaay back in coach. I had an exit row seat, which is normally good, excpet for this seat, which had the door protruding out in front of it and a small leak of very cold air. I was wrapped in blankets and my toes were numb by the end. I'd forgotten how much nice the first class flight attendants are to you. A friend of mine, Marge, upgraded both of us for our return flight. Thanks Marge!

This place is amazing. Our room is about 1000 square feet - huge! With a giant wrap-around private balcony that over-looks the pool, actually 7 different pools a a giant water slide and water fall. Everything about this place is beautiful. I took the above picture last night on our way to dinner, as the sun was setting. All of the grass here is manicured like a putting green. It's an entire campus, lots of pools, fountains, golf courses, etc.


I was in meetings from 12:30 - 5:00 yesterday while Cathie hung out by the pool. We had drinks and dinner with the team and then went swimming and hit the hot tub. I took this picture last night:

Hopefully today, we're done by noon today. We've got a big dinner tonight at the Wrigley mansion.

I just started watching the show Scrubs. I don't watch sitcoms. This is one of the funniest shows I've ever seen. I'm laughing non-stop throughout the whole show. I need to check out season one when and if it comes out on DVD.

Cool new technology I'm trying out that I got from Erik. It's been a super-top-secret search technology from Amazon that was just put out there to compete with Google. The theory is that Amazon will drive Google and Yahoo crazy enough with this stuff until their stock price falls enough for Amazon to buy them up. Check out the toolbar and search engine at A9.

I just got back from Washington D.C. I'm not sure what's going on there, but it was nuts. All of the rental cars were taken at every rental car place, and when I tried to get on an earlier flight, there were over 1,000 people in line to go through security. I hate that airport. Plus they have these goofy terminal shuttles that must have been designed in comittee. I flew out at 7AM and back at 10PM. Back at the airport tomorrow at 8AM.

My ticket was upgraded, but Cathie's isn't. She gets my seat, I get hers. Hopefully I'm sitting next to crying children while she's in the lap of luxury.

Cathie and I are leaving for Phoenix tomorrow. We're staying at the Biltmore, which is an amzing spa/resort out there. While I'm entertaining a customer, Cathie will be getting spa treatments. My mom is coming tomorrow to stay with the kids through Friday, Jess is staying with the kids Friday night and my brother-in-law Ed and his wife Stacy are with the kids Saturday and Sunday, when we get back. Things almost fell through with the arrangements, but Ed & Stacy bailed us out at the last minute.

Remeber that whole I found some of your life site I mentioned earlier? Hope you had a chance to check it out, because it's now GONE. Not sure why, but all that's left is an apology note. Bummer. It was damn funny.

The InformationWeek 500 report is out....Xerox came in at #9 (up from #220 last year). We are top of the Consulting and Business Services Industry sector (see table below). This year's criteria include "crisp and efficient tech strategies that cut costs and optimize productivity...with a focus on corporate governance ...and ROI."

Here lies the Florabama Lounge and Package Store . I was down in Mobile Alambama last year and had a chance to visit the legend, which is often mistaken as a shanty. It's been made famous by lots of artisits, particularly Jimmy Buffett's lyrics. Buffett is a regular, playing there all the time.

When I first walked in, I thought it was a liquor store, and a dive at that. I knew I'd heard of the place before, but couldn't place it until I walked through the place and saw famous artist's all over the place, including autographed lyrics sheets from different artists that talk about the bar. The owners have comitted to opening it back up.

Ever lost your digital camera? If so, what pictures were on it? One guy who found it has decided to provide the world with 227 days of entertainment. I Found Some Of Your Life will post a photo a day and accompanying fictional narrative for the next 227 days using the photos found on a digital media card left in a cab.

I laughed hard at this. Emily was watching Dragon Tales and came up to Cathie and said:
Emily: "Mom, I can't watch this show. It has a bad word in it."
Cathie: "What word is that, Emily?"
Emily: "Fart. It says "I wish, I wish with all my heart, to fly in dragons with a land of farts."
Cathie: Hiding laughter. "Sweetie, it says "Land Apart, not land of farts'.

Jess had a bachelorhood party on Saturday night. Cathie, Dana, Sherry, Sue, Jen & Lori bought Jess an outfit, did a makeover (complete with fishnet stockings and a shirt that read "I'm so Hot"). They took her out for a night on the town that involved a limo ride, dancing and gifts for use on her honeymoon.

We had a crazy week last week and an equally crazy weekend. Actually, Cathie had the crazy weekend, I pretty much sat home and watched a lot of sports on TV. We decided to sit home on Friday night, kick back and watcha movie. Saturday Cathie was out running errands to get ready for Jess's bachlorette party and wedding shower. I had some guys over to watch the disappointing MSU vs. Notre DAme game. On Sunday, Cathie put on Jess's wedding shower. I'm amazed at how much it takes to do such a simple thing. All-up, all-in, I'd guess that it took about fourty hours to coordinate and throw the shower. That seems like a ridiculous amount of planning. Guess that's why guy's don't have them. Sunday night, Cathie and I went on a date and reaquainted ourselves with each other.

For what it's worth, my fantasy football team toasted Matt Gielow's team - even though I had Roy Williams on the bench.

Cathie and I watched the movie Man on Fire with Denzel Washington. I haven't gotten into a movie like that in a while. Not to give too much away, but the movie is about an ex-special forces counter-insurgency guy who has hit bottom and ends up as a body guard for a young girl. Things go bad and he tries to make things right. The last half of the movie is about him pursuing justice and vengance. I don't think I've ever rooted so much for a movie character and wanted so badly for the bad guys to get what was coming to them. There's an amazing scene at the end of the movie that was such a great picture of what Jesus did on the cross for us. At the end, Denzel willingly walks across a bridge into the hands of the enemy in exchange for a hostage, knowing full well what's coming to him. The core message in this movie really struck me - a guy who believes he' s destined for hell, but it doing his best to reconcile himself for all the evil he's done in his life. In the end, he finds something bigger than himself and his alcoholism to live for and redeems himself through sacrifice.

Cathie and I watched the movie Man on Fire last night with Denzel Washington. It was one of the best movies I've seen in a while. (Spoiler Alert) The movie is about an ex-special forces assassin who becomes a body guard for a little girl. Things go south and he goes on the rampage. The best part of the movie for me was a scene at the very end where Denzel's character makes this amazing exchange of himself for a hostage. It's such a great picture of how Christ gave himself up for us, hands raised in the air, not resisting, knowing his fate in the end. It's a pretty violent flick, but I can remeber a movie where I was rooting aginst the bad guy more. It was a fine line between vengance and justice. I was rooting for both, probably leaning on the side of vengance.

Every now and then my kids come up with some great words that stick with me. Take for example:

• Baby Fighter - Great generic word that can be used as an insult, a complement or an explicative. Nate came up with this one.
• Stink Rat - A pillow fighting game that Nate and I play. It involves getting points for either sneaking up on and wacking someone with a pillow or launching a pillow from across the room.

The latest one comes from Emily:

• Ching Bonk - She and I were out on a bike ride last week and saw a squirrel. She came back and started talking about the Squirrel (Ching Bonk). It's a great word. You've gotta try saying it.
  

Here's the latest from my sister-in-law Beth's mission trip to Honduras:

We saw about 1300 patients today, probably about 150 to 200 per doctor. Needless to say, it was a busy day at the office. My office is on the bacony loft over looking the Enlaces Youth center. It consists of a table and chairs to talk, my instruments, and an air hockey table covered with a sheet for an exam table. (And there are no walls.) The weather is muy caliente. I am sticky all the time, but thank goodness for a warm shower. The people are so grateful even though they wait many hours in the hot sun to see us. It's really a great feeling.

My brothers, Dad and I went shooting sport clays at the Island Lake shooting range. I didn't win - I came in somewhere around the middle of the pack, pretty tight with everyone else, except for Kevin and my Dad, who did fairly well. If you've never shot sport clays, you stand in a blind and multiple clay pigeons (discs) are launched (by the same machine you see aimed at Will) in different patterns in the air for you to shoot. The person at the end with the most pigeon's shot, wins.

Great article from RELEVANT magazine :: I Don't Like Church Anymore: "I've come to expect the church to forge my spiritual development. Instead of working on my own prayer and devotional life, I want the church to do it for me. Please tell me I'm not the only one in the Body of Christ who has this problem. Please tell me there are other lazy people, who come to church on Sunday and expect to be filled up for the week ahead."

I just added a great, free blog stat counter called StatCounter.com, which gives me all sorts of info on the usage patterns from my blog, including where people are visiting from. I have no idea who actually reads this. Not sure if I want to know, really. Leave a comment or drop me a note if you're one of those people that I have no idea read this.

Here's a strange story about a man being sentenced to probation Monday for snatching the hairpiece off the head of another man at a restaurant. The story's really not all that interesting, but the timing is ironic. A friend of mine was sharing with me an interesting story from the Bible that shows one way to deal with this situation: 2 Kings 2:23-25

23Elisha was on his way to Bethel and some little kids came out from the town
and taunted him, "What's up, old baldhead! Out of our way, skinhead!" 24 Elisha turned, took one look at them, and cursed them in the name of GOD. Two bears charged out of the underbrush and knocked them about, ripping them limb from limb--forty-two children in all!

I found the story pretty wild and obscure. I had no idea it was in there. Bible lesson for today - if you make fun of someone, you may get eaten by a bear.

This is my sister-in-law Beth (Jon's wife) holding a peas. Apparently in Korea, dried peas are a snack worth of being called airline food. Beth's over in Hondorus on a missions trip right now. She's a doctor, and went over there with a group of doctor's to help the poor and hurting. She's got her own interpreter. Pray for her. (Beth, not the interpreter. Well, okay, the interpreter too.)

My friend Will has The Gout. Will's the second person I've known with this disease. If he's going to go and get an odd-ball disease, he should have gone with some more like scurvy. I'm not saying it's the case here, but apparently large quantities of beer is one of the causes of Gaut.

I was a self-righteous weenie todya. My internet connection went down today and I was pissed. The speed on my connection was slow, at about .5% of what it should be - 3k/sec, which is slower than dial-up. I was on the phone all morning with SBC trying to get it resolved. Since I'm a computer guy, I obviously know more than them (or so I was thinking) as I explained to them that I'd changed nothing at home, therefore it must be their fault. They eventually sent a guy out who did all the line analysis and tracked it to an internal problem. Impsosible, I've done nothing. I've only got one phone plugged in, so it can't be my problem. As I went to unplug that one phone, I noticed that I have three TiVo systems hooked up. I disconnected my new TiVo system and lo-and-behold, it worked. I learned about the importance of putting filters on your line with a DSL connection and that I don't know everything in the world. Probably be a good one to write down somewhere where I can see it on a regular basis.

My brother jon turned me on to this ridiculos paintball gun being sold on ebay.

Good article about two technologies I love dearly: Why Netflix Can't Save Tivo.

This is a blog I read periodically. It belongs to Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and lead on his own reality show. He loves himself, but he's pretty honest in his writing.

Did you know that you can get a Harley Davison Sporster for only $6,495 . None of us believed my brother Jon when he told us this, so he sent out proof.

On a side note, all of my brothers (Kevin, Dan, Dad, Jon, Will) are going shooting this weekend. We're shooting sport clays at the local Island Lake Gun range nearby. It's got a great course. I'm either shooting really well, or really badly. I can usually tell within the first few shots.

I just got my HDTV Tivo hooked up and after seeing the picture quality of HDTV, I'm seriously considering quitting my job so that I can focus more on television (Oh wait, that's what Will and Jason do). I feel like a kid whose been playing in mud puddles and was all of the sudden shown the beach at the ocean. I was watching football tonight and The Tonight Show, both in HDTV. I'm giddy as a school girl. Tomorrow, the guys come to put the new DirecTV dish on my roof so I can pull down the HDTV satellite images. The nice thing with HDTV is that it's digital and you actually get a higher definition picture over the airwaves than you do over the sattelite or cable. The DirecTV Tivo unit is very cool, integrating the local broadcast and satellite channels together nicely, so I can record from either.

This article challanged me to look at my own worship: LeadershipJournal.net - It's All About Who, Jesus?:

When we're not affirming God for how well we're nurtured, our songs often
congratulate ourselves on how well we respond to God's grace. Have you noticed
how much we sing about how loud or passionately we sing? We talk a lot about
what we're going to do usually in the singular: I will worship, I will praise
you, I will bow down, etc., etc. One beautiful and well-intentioned song even
tells us that God thinks of 'me above all.' As my professor friend says,
'Begging your pardon: the only person who thinks of Me above all is Me.

Check out Jimmy Buffett's concert rider. Each concert involves 30 cases of Corona, distributed to every bus, van, car, room and stage. Amazing.

Check out the Smokinggun.com's collection of documents. These are complaints from people who've had interactions on the New Jersey turnpike with the toll-takers.

My brother Jon turned me on to this Bible review on Amazon (It's the third one from the top if you don't believe me):

At first, I was not sure if I was Extreme enough to understand this Extreme Teen Bible. I questioned my Extremeness and wondered if Jesus would accept someone as un-Extreme as myself. However, after reading the Extreme Bible I can say that only through Jesus can true Extreme-ness be reached, and that through Jesus even the least Extreme can find the true light of Extremeness and truly excellent righteousness! Now, I kick it with God all the time Forget, Snoop Dogg; Jesus (or Master J as I call him, we tight) truly is the most Extreme of them all, amen!
Don't you wish you could be Extreme too?
Read the Extreme Teen Bible and kick it with Jesus!JESUS CHRIST!
CAN I GET A "WHOOP WHOOP"?

This site is a collection of really, really bad senior high school pictures.

I was getting my shoe's shined today at the airport while sitting next to Rick Mahorn. Rick was a part of the Detroit Piston's bad boy era. He's a little heavier than the 255 he was at when he played for Detroit. I could think of absoloutely nothing worthwhile to say to the guy.

I finally pulled the trigger and bought an HDTV DirecTV TiVo system. It's got two tuners and allows me to simultaneously record HD programming over the air and off the dish. The picture quality of HDTV is mind-blowing. I can record 200 hours of normal television or 30 hours of HDTV. I'd been waiting for a long time to buy either an ATSC tuner, but I wanted the TiVo capabilities. This is the first unit like this I'm aware of. DirecTv has to come out and put a new dish on my house to support the unit, since it requires three LNBs on the dish.

We were at my parents house today with the whole family, except for Will. His IB syndrome was acting up on him. We celebrated Cathie, Kris and Dan's birthdays. Per the picture, Jon thought he should be the one to blow out the candles. We had our normal water-fight, we hung out and ate a lot. The guys made their ususal best-buy run while the kids all played together and were spoiled by Grandma. My brother Dan had just gotten back from China and brought lots of stuff for the kids, including Yu-Gi-Oh cards, which they loved. As a gift, he received this giant box of Moon Cakes. It was huge, done in ornate gold-leaf packaging, and turned out to be nothing but a glorified fruitcake (the moon pie, not Dan). It had something that resembled a worm in it, but Kris was the only one bold enough to eat it.


Shortly after we cut the cake, Jon thought he should be the first to get a piece. My sister in-law Kris proceeded to grind the cake into his face, leaving a large chunk up his nose. You can see the rest of the pictures here.

The kids start school tomorrow and I'm off to Kansas City for a couple of days. Yeehah!

My bother Dan just got back from China. He took a picture of this Starbucks there, and a pay toilet immediately behind it. They can't make the toilet free when they're charging $4.00 for a Latte?

We've had a really busy labor-day weekend so far. I flew back from Rochester on Friday afternoon, and was able to get on standby for an earlier flight through Detroit. Problem was, I couldn't get all the way back to Lansing where I'd flown out of (don't ask me why). The only thing I really needed there was my car. Instead of sitting in the Detroit airport for 6 hours, Will came and picked Bill and I up, getting me home about 6 hours earlier than planned. I was beat. I came home and crashed, while Cathie and the kids were swimming at her parents.

On Saturday, Cathie and I met one of the interim-pastor candidates for Crossroads, named Shan. I really dug the guy. When we first started the whole pastoral search thing, my criteria was that I wanted someone who'd come out of a youth ministry background that had the wisdom that goes with being an experienced pastor. This guy's got both, plus he kinda reminds me of Mike Yaconelli when he talks about what the church should be. He's got his finger on the culture around him, likes to have fun and seems to have a great grasp on what the kingdom of good and the church are all about. He's the kind of guy you'd enjoy sitting down and having a beer with and hanging out. My only concern was that he was very evasive when I asked him what super power he'd choose, if he could choose from any of them. He wanted to have the super powers of the shadow, but Jason explained to me that the Shadow had crazy tibetan mind control powers.


From there, we went to Brad's Cottage to enjoy the end of summer. Brad, Will, Ted and I tried tubing at first, but the boat just couldn't pull that much weight. We ended up going about 5 mph. We eventually got the big four-man tube going where Brad, Eli, Ted and I beat the crap out of each other, throwing each other off at high speeds. The lake was pretty busy, and we were constantly being thrown off and picked up as boats dodged us. At one point, I was floating in the water waiting for the boat and a pontoon boat filled with a big group came by. They asked if I wanted a lift, and proceed to throw me a beer and a jello shot while I waited to get picked up.


On Sunday, Crossroads had a huge picnic - complete with big bouncy things. They had this bunjee rope course that hooked you into a harness while you ran forward as far and fast as you could. When you reached the end of the line, you snapped back - hard. Hard enought to flip you if you did it right. We set money at the end, and if you could go far enough to reach it - it was yours to keep. They finished the picnic off with some fun family games, but we had to head out early to go to Cathie's parents.


Cathie's grandparents were in town, and we hung out with a bunch of family at their pool. It was a perfect day for it - hot and humid, and the pool felt great. The kids were in the water pretty much the whole time. I was amazed that my daughter Madeline (age 6) can do a flip off the diving board (that's her mid-air, above). I was messing around with my camera, taking some pretty cool pictures of Cathie's brother, dad and the kids jumping off the diving board (Those are my father-in-law and brother-in-law in mid-air). We hung out there until about 8, picked my car up from the airport and headed home.


We got home and watched the movie The Big Bounce. It blew.

Bill was so kind to share the story of my airport incident, so here's a story that I found pretty funny. On Thursday, our group from work had a team building activity near Lake Ontario in Rochester, NY. We were at a park hanging out and a group of us started kicking a soccer ball around. Bill happened to be on his cell phone on a conference call while this was going on, kicking the soccer ball as he talked. About 10 minutes in, someone lobs the soccer ball in the air and bill tries to stop it with his chest. He misjudged the distance. The ball hit him square in the junk as everyone looked on and he doubled over and tried to continue his conference call. I find this kind of thing funny. Is it just me?

I'm in Rochester until Tomorrow in planning meetings, meeting some of the other senior team from around the organization. Bill was able to tell the "Airport" story to just about everyone there. As he told it each time, it got better and better. By the end, it was a 96oz. tube of KY Jelly and I got a full body cavity search.

I'm sitting in the airport with Bill on my way to Rochester. I just got the body cavity search through security. I was carrying a tube of A & D ointment in my pocket (to keep my new tattoo lubed up), and the tube apparently has a metal liner. As I emptied my pockets, my "friend" and coworker Bill yelled from across the airport asking why I carried a tube of KY in my pocket, as the crowd turned and stared. The security guy looked at me, walked it back through to the metal detector, ran it through with a crowd watching and handed it back to me. Kinda akward.

In line with the quote below from Alice Cooper, Carole sent me this article on Celebrities who love the GOP:

The sad truth is, the real difference between Democrats and Republicans is that their celebrities are, like, actually famous and ours are, well, singing weirdly erotic songs about Our Savior. Metaphorically, anyway. It's not so much that Republican celebrities are all Christian rockers, it's that they all pretty much adhere to the Christian Rock Principle—it sounds like rock, for about one second you think it's rock, but it isn't quite. Something's off. The performers and celebrities who will appear at the RNC certainly sound famous—they have Grammys and awards and huge followings, apparently—but they aren't, quite. At least when compared to Ben Affleck, Leonardo DiCaprio, and the rest of the famous crowd that swanned around Boston during the Democratic National Convention.

I've been thinking a lot about where I'm at politically over the past few days. Economically and Socially, I'm a conservative. I believe that Abortion is wrong, I believe that the government is not the best care-taker of the people. I believe that President George W. Bush is a good president. Unlike a lot of conservative christians, I believe that you can be a christian and a democrat. I'm a republican. I'll vote for Bush. I believe that if Jesus were walking around today, he would probably be considered a liberal by many. I remember how taken aback I was at camp one year when teaching a class on the changing church. I asked kids to tell me about their church and one of my students described my church, Crossroads, as a liberal church. I asked her to describe what she meant by liberal and her response was "We're not picky about who we love." That really helped me get my hands around understanding what kind of liberal Jesus would be.

On the recent proliferation of Rock Stars playing for John Kerry:
"If you're listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you're a bigger moron than they are. Why are we rock stars? Because we're morons. We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit around reading the Washington Journal." --Alice Cooper

In a previous post I complained about the way some people choose to share their thoughts in less than loving way. I had a friend call me and share with me their thoughts on something I'd written earlier. The thing that struck me even more than what they shared was how they shared it. They approached me in such a kind and humble way, not as if their thoughts were capital-T truth, but just something for me to chew on. It was a great example for me of what it looks like to lovingly share my thoughts with others. Back to that whole idea of being Salt and Light to the world around me. She was a great example of that to me.

This is an interesting site called BlogPulse that looks at blogging trends based on blog content and links.

Jason, Will and I went to Chili's for lunch and Jason happened to be dressed exactly like all of the Chilis wait staff. At one point one of the waiters came up and chewed Jason out for sitting down on the job. I was nominated to pray for lunch but quickly lost the job when I stated the condition that the three of us to hold hands publiclly as we pray. Go figure.

Apparently, I'm a model. If you're picutre show's up on a web site advertising someone's services, that's a model by my definition. You can see more pictures of equally handsome families at www.portraitsetc.com

On Friday night, I had a bunch of guys over to play poker. I had a few guys from my neighborhood, my brother-in-law Kevin some buddies from church and a couple of new guys from church that haven't really connected with anyone yet. We don't play for big stakes - most of the reason behind it is to get together and hang out. We started at 8 and finished up about 2. I ended up ahead in the end. I provided the drinks and told the guys to bring snacks, "like chips and salsa or something". What do you think this imaginative bunch brought? Chips and Salsa. We had a table full of 10 bags of tortilla chips.


On Saturady we had Steven's birthday party. Standard Kurt party where we sat around, told stories about when we were kids, and laughed. Only person missing was Will (Who by the way went on a big date last night, be sure and ask him about it). My sister-in-law's brother owns a Quizno's in Ohio, hence the van. He started telling me about how they got this, and it turns out, I could have my mini-van covered in a large picture of me, saying something funny. Check this site out: autowraps.com for mroe info.

On Saturday night, I went to a party at Bob Ray's house. Bob just got a new pool and he had a pool party to celebrate. Unforunately, the weather sucked. Brad, Will and I were sitting around, trying to figure out a way to liven things up a little bit. My theory that "Betting on something always makes it more fun" was itching to be applied. Bob's pool had this automated robot cleaner that would cruise around the bottom of the pool in no particular pattern sucking up gunk. We got a bunch of pennies and put a buck into the pot for each penny. We then stood around around the pool cheering for the robot to suck our penny up first. A lot of people got into this, and pretty soon we had a big crowd involved, all standing around the pool cheering for this robot. It was like being at a horse race watching people scream as the cleaner would get close to there penny.

This might seem nerdy to some, but I just got an app that let's me submit blog entries from my phone. Like this one.

Here's my favorite line that I heard from a recent visitng missionary:
"Those twelve muslims that came to know Jesus are twelve muslims that won't be flying planes into buildings or spreading anthrax."

I'm getting stuff with my new Treo phone straightened out. All of my contacts and calendar entries in outlook (hundreds of them) were corrupted and I was pulling my hair out for a while. I ended up moving to a different contact synchronization software package. If you're considering this phone, here are some random thoughts on it:
- Mediocre battery life, and no external battery to swap out
- E-mail being pushed out to it is awesome
- You almost have to use a headset with this thing, because it fits so awkwardly on your ear.
- There's some great software out there for it, but most of it just helps get the phone's interface and functionality to where Microsoft's Smartphone's interface and functionality are already at.
- The syncronization is painfully slow, plus it's not an automated thing. You have to hit a button, instead of having it sync as you make changes, as the Smartphone does.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Microsoft fan. The best of both worlds would be the Treo 600 hardware running on the Smartphone OS. I have an old laptop connected to my company VPN that does nothing but sync my Outlook with Verizon's server, which in turn pushes and pulls things back out to my phone. Seems to be working well so far.

Here's a list of the search criteria that people have ended up at my site with:

Resital isreal
Girls with tounges sticking out pictures
Wild mind dave austin
chopper pictuersburning man attire photo
kids fun mud picsgalyans airsoft guns
pantsing storiespoop stain underwear pics
dave matthews wife picture
dodgeball the movieborder cantina northville
jeb mcgruder
how to do the robot dance

I love this idea of being okay with who God has called your church to be wether or not people jump on board or not.

The Relevant Church: A New Vision for Communities of Faith:
Churches need to remember one of the basic phenomena of human attraction: The least likable kid on the playground was always the one trying hardest to be liked. The cool kids, on the other hand, were popular partly because they didn't seem to care if they were liked; they were doing their thing whether or not you were watching. Those were the kids the rest of us openly (or secretly) admired (or envied). The theological version of this grade-school truism is that the Church will be most provocative and alluring when it is being itself, being who God has constituted it to be, that is, being a mini-society that proclaims the person and work of Christ, and imitates His sacrificial service. The Church will be least relevant when it is caught in the act of reinventing itself to gain more friends.

At some point during this whole debacle at our church, Cathie and I and a number of families had to come to the conclusion that they were comitted to our church, whether we're doing that with 5 other families or 500. I watch as some families leave because they've found something or somone that they disagree with in the church. Interestingly enough, many of these same families are on their third or fourth church in ten years. I'm hoping that down the road, they look back and figure out that maybe it wasn't the about the churches. (Warning: self righteous discord approaching) Cathie and I have been at Crossroads for ten years and I see huge value in sticking it out no matter what. I could no more bail on this church than I could on my family. I'll admit that my universe can take on a dave-centered orbit more often that most, but I'm just glad that in moments of clarity that I see beyond myself and see the larger story of what it means to stick it out a band of believers that are comitted to the same core values. If it's not evident from my blog, I'm annoyed by the people that have jumped ship, or even threatened to jump ship if they don't get their own way. They can bite me.

We had a fun weekend. On Friday, Cathie and I went out on date for our anniversary. Nothing fancy. We went out for dinner, and to see Collateral (more on that later). We spent a lot of time reflecting on everything we've gone through and accomplished in our first twelve years of marriage. Collateral was a decent movie, but an odd crowd. People were laughing at really strange times, like big killing scenes.

On Saturday, we had a block party, and a friend of mine from work, Newton, was in town from Louisiana joined us there as well. You could throw this guy into a crowd of any type of people and he could make friends. He's a great guy. There was one akward moment when one of my neighbors was telling Newton a racist joke - figuring a guy from the deep south must be a racist. Newton and I stood there as he nudged me, telling me not to say anything. Newton's wife is black. He was gracious enough not to want to embaress the guy in a large crowd, and we got a laugh about the whole thing later.

Sunday, we hung out and did a whole lot of nothing during the day. In the evening, Cathie and I went out to dinner before a church meeting that we had that evening. It was a meeting to get some closure on things and move on. Overall, it was a good meeting.

I've been listening to this 10 CD teaching on Leadership and Spirituality by Dallas Willard that I got from Brad; and I ran out of gas. These two things are related.

First, let me say that Dallas is one of the smartest guys I've ever read or seen. He's a philosopher of the C.S. Lewis quality. A lot of what he says I have to listen to many times before I get it. One thing that I did get out of this was the simple concept of how we as Christians are to be both Salt and Light to the world around us. I figured this was worth pounding in my brain, so I wrote it on a scrap of paper and put it on my dash. The great thing about this is everytime I get in my car, I see it, and I've been forced to think about the situation I'm either going into or returning from and how I did or am going to do at being Salt and Light in that situation. It's been great at getting me to reflect at how I act.

I was driving back from Kalamazoo today and in the middle of nowhere, I ran out of gas. Why didn't I notice my "Low Fuel" light? My "Salt and Light" scrap of paper was covering the warning light.

I got my new Treo 600 phone. It's good, not great. The main benefit to this phone is the thumb-keyboard on it, coupled with the ability for e-mail/calendars to be pushed to the phone, and for it's instant messaging capabilities. The interface is the Palm OS, and compared to my old Samsung i600 Smartphone, it blows. The Smartphone has far superior syncing abilities, a much better interface and graphics quality. The only reason I'd buy the Treo vs. the Smartphone is for the internet capabilities. The smartphone had them, but they were pretty cumbersome. Verizon just recently upgraded their mobile syncing capabilities on both sides with Intellisync's mobile sync product, and it works pretty well. Word to the wise: Back up your contacts and calendar before installing this thing. I didn't, and hosed up my calendar and contacts badly, both of which are sacred to me.

Suprisingly enough, my new phone did not complete my being or provide me the neverending joy that I was sure it would. I am still an incomplete human being, in spite of having a new toy. I know I'll find the perfect gadget out there that will meet my expectations and bring me life to the fullest. Or maybe not.

I get annoyed when I hear people talk about looking for a church "where they can be fed". It strikes me as such a self-centered concept of church. I agree that "being fed" is one part of church, but from what I've read about the biblical concept of church (i.e. Acts 2:42-47), church also involves worship, service and celebration. There's this consumer mentality to sit there and say "feed me, feed me" and when you're not just being fed the way you want to be, or if you hit a bump in the road, you bail and find another church. It's an easy out. No need to go deep, no need to be authentic. Just move on. No need to stay with it - if you disagree with something, or someone ticks you off - bail. For some reason, it feels good to get mad at people who are doing this. Nothing like good, self-righteous anger to soothe the soul.

I'm sure most of the people who read my blog know that we've had some pretty challenging times going on at my church. With my wife as one of the elders of our church, I've had a unique perspective and have sat back and watched the way people have interacted with my wife and the other elders as they've gone through this. I can understand people being upset about what's going on, and knowing that the elders of our church are learning how to process something like this as they go. There are certain people in our church who have been downright condescending and mean in how they deal with the leadership of our church. I'm sure they believe they have their reasons, but it's like they lose sight of the fact that the elder team is made up of real people - people who deserve to be treated with love, grace and respect. It's amazing how people like to "give advice" in a nice "Christian" way, when what they're really trying to say is "you don't lead as well as I would, you don't pray as much as I do, listen to God like I do, or love Jesus like I do". I would love to have the elders post the e-mails they've received on a bulletin board for the world to see. I know that in any group there's always going to be one or two, but I guess I thought my church was different. I'm not saying I didn't think the church was full of broken people just like me, I just thought we loved each other differently, and that was our hallmark. I heard a good definition of love: "Taking a hit and returning a hug." I'd like to poke some of them in the eye. I'm not sure that's covered in 1 Corinthians 13. I'm amazed at how well the elders of our church love people, even after they continue to be complete butt-monkeys to them. It's these people who complain the loudest who've been the first to leave when things haven't gone their way. Don't let the door hit you in the butt.

I'm sure this would piss a lot of Christians off:
Religious leaders and experts attended a Texas Faith Network conference in Austin on Tuesday to weigh a question: How would Jesus vote? Author James C. Moore offered his view to the moderate to left-leaning crowd of 250: "If ever there were a bleeding-heart liberal, it was Jesus Christ. I think the carpenter from Galilee was the original Democrat" ...

Joe has a T-Shirt he likes to wear that says "Jesus was a liberal".

There's a big boxing competition going on in Kansas City. Apparently there are over 1,500 boxers in town, and they all want waffles. I went out to breakfast this morning with one of sales guys and one of my employees at the Waffle House. It was packed (with Boxers) and we were waiting for a table. Four bix boxers came in and sat down at the table we were waiting for. I explained that it was our table and the sales guy makes a sarcastic crack about how we were just standing around waiting, not really wanting to eat. These guys didn't get it and wanted to throw down right there. Lesson: Never make sarcastic jokes with people who enjoy getting hit in the head and can in turn hit you in the head very hard.

I was out a customer site in Kansas City, and one of our customers and I were dressed exactly alike - from the pants and shirt, down to the belt buckle and facial hair. How akward. And lucky for him.

Found this on gizmodo.com

The dDrive is a concept from industrial design firm Creganna that would be designed to store medical records, security clearances, etc., and while I don't have a huge problem with that in and of itself, I don't think I'll be giving up one of my teeth just for something that's going to be obsolete in a year. At least not just for storage - get a Bluetooth-enabled cellphone headset in there and we'll talk about it.
Read - A Blue Tooth Implant

Flying from Traverse City to Kansas City yesterday, I saw a guy who gets the "Tool of the week" award. He boarded the plane with his wife and two children. He sends his wife and kids back to coach while he plops down in first class. I had a buddy of mine do the same thing on his way to Hawaii, so we now call this doing a "Kandra". Last time Cathie and I traveled together, a long flight to Palm Springs, I gave her my first class seat and got stuck next to a crying baby in coach for 4 1/2 hours.

I had a work-team retreat up north with some of the guys I work with. We'd throughout the day and head out in the evening to do some wakeboarding. Bill's got an amazing boat - a Mastercraft X10 Wakeboard Edition and does some pretty amazing stuff behind it. We're in the middle of nowhere, with sketchy cell phone coverage and a wireless network setup - and still being able to be productive. Gotta love working virtual.

I got an e-mail today that really suprised me from a guy at church I was joking with throughout the service. Go figure - God can actually use my immaturity, inappropriateness and humor in a good way.

dave,i am not sure this past sunday if you were joking around with me because i just happened to be someone you were acquainted with who was sitting behind you OR if by some chance, you were "lead" to converse with me or "picked up on something," but i just wanted to say -- your humor was most appreciated (i mean that seriously).sunday was not a great day, and i really had no desire to be at crossroads sunday morning. God & i had a rather heated discussion earlier that morning (i did all the talking -- hard to believe i know). to be honest, lately it seems that "my walk" is always up hill and there seems to be a lot of poo along the walkway. your humor this past sunday helped & for that i am grateful.

Four musicians whose music I can't stand:

1. Eddie Money
2. John Cougar Melloncamp
3. Tom Petty
4. Richard Marx (Honorable Mention)
   

This is my mantra today:
To the extreme I rock a mic like a vandal
Light up a stage and wax a chump like a candle.

Cathie, Jen and Lori went to Michigan Adventure on their way back from Manistee. Their sole purpose was to go on the ripcord ride. This is a ride that puts you and your two closest friends side by side in a harnass while you're pulled up 200 feet in the air. When you pull your ripcord, you fly down and forward, like a pendulum. They bought the video, but I haven't seen it yet.

My brothers and I (Dan, Me, Kevin and Jon) went to the Lions pre-season opener against Pittsburgh last night at Ford Field. Notice that between the four of us, we're dressed a little different. There's a reason. Dan had gotten the tickets from work and we had great seats at the club level, which equates to first-class in flying. As we were leaving our family picnic, Dan made sure to tell me there was a dress attire for the club level, including dress pants and a collared shirt. Made sense to me. We all met at Dan's house in Plymouth and whaddaya know? I was the only one dressed up. I though this was hilarious, and of course, my brothers did also. Before we piled into Dan's SUV, Jon grabbed the movie Austin Power's Goldmember. Here you have three guys sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with big 'ol infrared earphones on, watching a movie while laughing hysterically - all while the front seat is empty, and our big brother dan is driving.

We stayed for the first half of the game, and the Lions looked pretty good. Charles Rogers caught some big passes and the Lions ended up winning the game.

If you looks closely at the picture, my brother-in-law Kevin has his head stuck in there, hat pulled low and a big goofy smile - kinda looks like the retarded brother from Something about Mary.

The whole family (except Beth & Cathie) went to Island Lake today for a picnic. We hung out, went canoeing, barbecued and did a whole lot of nothing during one of the first mildly nice days we've had in a while. More Pictures here.

Gabe (my nephew) reminds me a lot of my son Nate. I can't remember exactly what he'd done to deserve a bein spun around repeatedly, but I'm sure it was something worthwhile.


Yes, this is my brother Jon open mouth kissing his dog. He keeps claiming that a dogs mouth is cleaner that a humans. Go figure.

Cathie left this morning to go up to Manistee, MI for a few days with her friends, Lori and Jen. The kids and I have big plans this weekend. Tomorrow, we're meeting up with everyone in my family to go to Island Lake State Park for the day. Tomorrow night, I'm going to the Lions game with my brothers Dan, Jon and Kevin. Sunday afternoon, I'm heading up North for a few days for a team meeting and then out to Kansas City, back Thursday.

I finally picked up an 802.11G router, a D-Link 524, to be specific. My price point had been about $35, and I picked it up at CompUSA for $35 after rebates. I got the thing upgraded, installed, and so far, so good. It's got some cool features for to make the configuration of virtual servers and all sorts of new types of encryption.

I've applied Windows XP Service Pack 2 on all three of my computers with no problems so far. The noticable stuff includes: Pop-up Blocking in Internet Explorer, New Wireless Networking interface and a single interface to tell you the status of your system in terms of updates, firewall state and anti-virus.

I listen to an MP3 player when I'm working out or traveling. I've been eyeing and iPod for quite a while, but can't justify the $400 yet, based on how well my current Mp3 works.

Here are the songs I've had loaded up for the past 30 days:

• Asia - Don't Cry
• Survivor - Eye of the Tiger
• Vanilla Ice - Ice, Ice Baby
• Motley Crue - Dr. Feelgood
• Sir Mix Alot - Baby got Back
• Eminem - Sing for the Moment
• Tenacious D - Dio
• Tenacious D - Flash Gordon/Wonderboy
• Delirious - My Glorious
• Delirious - Awaken the Dawn
• Delirious - God's Romance
• Waterdeep - My God has come to save me
• Michael W Smith - Rockettown
• Jesus Christ Superstar - What's the Buzz
• Jesus Christ Superstar - Superstar
• Kid Rock - Only God Knows Why
• Dave Matthews - Space Between
• Audio Adrenaline - Gloria (U2 Cover)
• Nichole Nordman - Grace (U2 Cover)
• Starfield - 40 (U2 Cover)

I'm in LAX, waiting for my flight to leave. I just read this interesting article on Scott Stapp, ex-lead singer of Creed regarding his faith, which has gotten way more press than it deserves. Interesting article none-the-less:
Scott Stapp, 08/04 - Interviews - Christian Music Today

I'm flying home tomorrow. I got upgraded to first class. Whoohoo! That makes my day.

I just got into my hotel in L.A. At 10:00 PM PST it was like rush hour traffic anywhere else. It took a half hour to go 2 blocks form the airport to my hotel.

It was a hectic drive just getting to the airport this afternoon. After church, Cathie and I went to Lansing to pick up the kids form Cathie's parents. We hung out there for a while, swam and then left around 4. We hit a traffic jam on the way home at the 96/23 overpass that really sucked. We finally made it home around 6, I packed and got on the road and made it to the airport by 7 and my gate at the airport just as they were boarding. While I waited to board, they called my name and handed me a first class ticket. First class on a 4 1/2 hour flight makes all the difference in the world - food, cocktails and space. The guy I sat next to worked as a consultant to car dealerships. I learned everything there is to know about how dealerships are placed where they're at, the differences between U.S. and European dealerships, etc. I spent the rest of the flight getting caught up on e-mails. I got my mailbox down to 50 e-mails, but sent 30, which comes back to bite me the next morning when I think I'm caught up.

I'm in training for the next 3 days, back Wednesday night/Thursday morning.

Cathie and I went to two weddings today. The first was for Mike Dicurcci and the second was for Scot Lewis (and their wives, of course.) Mike's wedding was at 11:00 AM and Scott's was at 5:30PM. Cath's parents were nice enough to take the kids for the whole weekend for us. We had a great day. We hung mostly with Jay and Jess at Mike's wedding and with a big group of our friends at Scotty's wedding (Andy & Laurie, Mark & Jen, Justin & Laurie, Andy & Brenda, Brad and Joanne, Matt& Maria). You can check out more pictures from Scott's wedding here.

Good article on Commentaries: What Is a Good Christian Movie, Anyway? (Part 1) - Christianity Today Movies:
Now this might look like a simplistic question. But it is important to know not only what a thing is, but what it is not. Succinctly put, a movie is the art of storytelling by way of motion pictures. A movie is not a sermon. A common mistake in the Christian community is to confuse sermonizing for storytelling. Desperate to convince the prodigal son, the Christian producer employs the instruments of film in the service of propaganda: the propositional persuasion of the viewer toward an idea.

I got a voice mail that made my week. It was from one of the kids who grew up in my youth group and went through some tough times in High School trying to figure out what God had to do with her life. She's in college now working this summer at a Christian Camp.

Here was her voice mail.
I don't know if you remember this or not, but when I was in High School, I was asking you all these questions about God and really confused and upset that everyone seemed to be following the Christian Faith without knowing why or having answers to their questions. The whole time I was asking you questions, you were just sitting their smiling and I could not figure out why you were so happy. You couldn't answer any of my questions and I didn't understand why you were so happy. I totally had the experience and I wanted to thank you for being so patient with me. I don't know, it is cool . My campers always ask me these insane questions that I can never answer and it just makes me so happy and it's totally weird and I don't know why, but I thought of you and I wanted to thank you for being patient with me for the longest time.

This kinda stuff makes it all worth while. Junior High youth ministry is about long term investment. I remember these conversations really vividly and how excited I was that she was really making her faith her own by stretching it on her own. She got really mad during some of these talks, asking great questions that I'd asked myself.

My friend Ken Buck and I were going to ride to Mike's bachelor party together, but Ken was late. If you know Ken, that's typical. At least he had a good reason. Ken and his wife Kathy were dropping their dog off at a friend's house while they were going to be out of town. These friends had just gotten a new bird. They took the bird out of the cage to look at it and the dog jumps up in the air, grabs the bird and bites it. Ken described it as the bird's head was facing the opposite direction of it's body. Needless to say, it was dead.

I got in about 3:30 this morning from Mike Dicurci's bachelor party. I was the old man of the crowd, complete with a minivan. Most of the guys had come from Cedarville University, the world's most conservative christian school in the world - no drinking, dancing, gambling or prostitution allowed. We stripped Mike down, blind folded him, and made him pick out an outfit from a pile of really ugly clothes, including a set of underwear that looked like an elephant, complete with a trunk. We headed out to Xochimilco's in Mexican Town in downtown Detroit, had great mexican food and margaritas and then headed over to the Windso casino. The idea was to start the night off by each of us gambing $10 for 30 minutes and give Mike the winnings at the end. Mind you, this is a group of guys from Cedarville who had, most of who had never gambled. We sat at the table for about thirty minutes and walked away with $700 for Mike. Amazing. I won about $400, Ken Buck about $130 and other guys with a hundred each. The look was great on Mike's face (not sure if it was the tequila or having that much money handed to him). We played some more and then headed back across the border, getting stuck in a long line at customs. We hit the duty free shop (What's duty, anwways) on the way back and stocked up. (The duty free shop had the phrase "Hors Taxes" on top of it. Anyone know what that means?) The customs lady was susicious of the fact that we were at a bachelor party in Windsor yet hadn't gone to the strip clubs. We shared some comments that we felt were humerous, including volunteering Mike for a body cavity search and made it through.

I'm just now getting caught up from my vacation. Best I can figure, it takes me about a half day to get caught up for every day that I'm off.

I've got a friend of mine's bachlor party on Thursday night and Cathie's Mom and Dad are watching the kids this weekend while Cathie and I go to a couple of weddings. I'm flying out Sunday evening to Los Angeles for training, back on the red-eye Wednesday night. I'm gone every week in August for at least a few days. I had a pretty good July in terms of travel, though.

I started reading a Vince Flynn's new book Memorial Day. I think his stuff is as good as Clancy's was during Clancy's hey-day and far better than the crap Clancy's been turning out lately. I also started reading the book The Jesus I never Knew again.

Amazon constantly amazes me the way they adapt to the world of ecommerce. They've got a new offering that they call Plogs that presents to you your interactions with them in a story form:Amazon.com: What is a Plog?: "Your Amazon.com Plog is a diary of events that will enhance your shopping experience, helping you discover products that have just been released, track changes to your orders, and many other things."

I've been looking at two new pieces of technology lately:

1. Treo 600 Cell Phone - The idea of e-mail and calendaring and always on instant messaging appeals to me. Verizon just came out with this model, prior to which my Samsung SCHi600 was the best option available. Downsides to the phone are the palm interface and slighly larger size.

   

2. DirecTV HD Receiver/DVR with Tivo - I've had an HDTV for a while, and the only way I've been able to really appreciate the picture was through XBOX and DVDs - neither of which really take advantage of it's resolution. I've been waiting for a while for this to come out, waiting on getting an HDTV receiver because I wanted the TIVO functionality for it as well. This box will record 200 hours of normal TV or 30 hours of HD programming.

I'm back from vacation. We finished up last week by heading out to the west side of the state with the Niemi's. They've got three kids almost the same age as ours, and the six of them play really well together.

We started things off by heading to Michigan Adventure in Muskegon. I went in with low expectations and I was suprisingly pleased. The place was great for our age kids - It's got both an amusement park and a water park, and most of the rides are geared towards younger kids. Nate got a chance to go on his first big roller coaster (Shivering Timbers) and I saw the true definition of fear when I looked over at him on the first big drop. At the end, he said it was scary, but fun. This thing beat the living crap out of you and just kept going and going. I heard somewhere that it was one of the longest wooden roller coasters in America. It was actually featured on a special on the discovery channel, which I found funny for such a small park. We closed the park out, leaving about 8:30 PM. The kids were beat and we headed to our hotel near Silver Lake.

The next day started off with a nasty forecast, so we headed north and hung out in Ludington to try and beat the rain. We hung out on Lake Michigan, where Emily found a pet fish and named it Blue. She wanted to bring it home so it could live in our hot tub. From there we headed down to Silver Lake and hung at the sand dunes. I couldn't believe that the kids climbed as much as they did. We were beat by the end, but not so much so that we couldn't hit the go-karts. We took the kids on the regular karts, and then Mark and I took a ride on the slick track karts. These karts go in an oval, and it's more about finesse riding, something I apparently have no idea about. You need to find just the ride speed, positioning and counter-steering to drive the track, and I found none of them. I must have spun-out about 20 times.

On Saturday, we headed to the Rainbow Ranch to go horse-back riding. The highlight of my vacation was having Emily sit with me on my horse during the ride. She talked non-stop - to the horse, to the other horses, asking questions, commenting on the scenery around her. I got to see a horse-back ride through the wonderous eyes of a 3 year old and it was so much fun! She would tell the horse (Honda) to watch out for the other horses poop in front of her, tell the horse that she wanted to go "Too Fast" again (trotting). We rode on this giant draft horse that could care less what I was telling it to do. It just followed the other horses. On our way back, we stopped off to see Will's Mom and have lunch with her, and then stopped by to see my brother Jon and his wife Beth (and their new puppy Zoe). Great vacation, wouldn't have changed a thing.

I just came across Hanlon's Razor which states “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” This puts a lot of people's actions (including my own) into perspective.

If you haven't been watching The Daily Show with John Stewart's coverage of the Democratic National Convention - Indecision 2004, you need to be.  I can only say that it's really, really, really, really funny - Republican or Democrat.  There's some funny video on the site.

I came across another great application - Picasa, a google company.  It's a free photo manager application that has some very unique features.  It's got the standard stuff - allowing you to pull pictures from digital cameras and edit them.  The cool stuff is that it will poll your computer for new images, categorize them into albums automatically and then present them in timelines and slideshows as well as export them to your Tivo Series 2 DVR.  You can go through a huge collection of pictures, select them, and then either order them or export them for ordering.  It also has integration into blogger.com through the Hello product.   Can't beat the price.

I've been messing with Feedster this week.  It's a data aggregator that lets you pull together feeds from blogs and news into a single site.  There's software to do this, but I like the web based version better.  Most blogs have either an RSS or ATOM feeds that you can connect to.  The upside to using something like feedster is that you don't have to go to multiple sites, checking out what's been updated.

I guess Cathie and I are doing something right raising our kids.  I went in to check on Madeline tonight, and found a letter that Nate had written for her:
Dear Madeline,
I love you very much.  You are the best sister ever.  You relely iproved on your jim nasticks.  You did reley good on your dance resital.  You are the nisist sister ever. 
Love,
Nathan

Sometimes, I wonder how we're doing as parents.  This kind of stuff sure helps.

I'm on vacation all week.  We're doing some day trips during the week, like going to COSI tomorrow.  We're heading up to Silver Lake later this week with the Niemi's.  Today, we went on a family bike ride, which was great, except for some technical difficulties (The pedal on Nate's bike came off in the middle of nowhere, so we had to improvise).  Nate and I went up this afternoon to the coffee shop and played chess this afternoon and then we hung out and did a whole lot of nothing for the rest of the day.

 

I started reading the book If Chins Could Kill : Confessions of a B Movie Actor.  It's the autobiography of Bruce Campbell, the king of B movies.   He's a great story teller - his sarcasm comes through in the characters he plays.  Will loaned me the book after I got done watching Bubba Ho-tep and I've been laughing all the way through.

Yesterday goes down in the books as one of my favorite days this summer. I had high expectations (which are usually resentments waiting to happen) and it met them all. A bunch of us went to Brad's cottage to hang out for the day.  We spent the day riding brad's wave runners, tubing and grilling.  This picture says it all.  This four person tube was one of the highlites.  We'd get four or five people on the tube and then the battle would begin.  The goal was to either hang on for dear life while the driver tried to throw you, or be the last man standing.  In this picture, you see Brad mounting Ted, holding on to his life jacket while ted straight arms me.  Things got ugly.  Biting (Ted and Jess),  pantsing (at one point I was holding on desparately with both hands while someone had yanked my bathing suit down to my ankles) and slapping.  Brad did beer-but chicken on the grill, which was the best chicken i've ever had.  There were over 7 different air-soft guns (guns that shoot plastic bb's really hard and fast) there and during dinner, an all-out battle broke out.  The battle involved Brad and I versus Jason, Will and Ted.  People switched sides many times, but I got hit a lot and wasn't afraid to use innocent by-standers as hostages to save my own butt.  We topped the evening off with a pontoon boat ride at sunset.

I saw I, Robot on Saturday night with Jason and Will. I thought it was a great movie - pretty fast paced, fun to watch. It wasn't one of Will Smith's funnier movies, but it had amazing CG and special effects (which I suppose are really one and the same). I thought it was a great take an the original story.

 TEL AVIV, Israel -- Natasha, a 5-year-old black macaque walks at the Safari Park near Tel Aviv. The young monkey began recently walking exclusively on her hind legs after a stomach ailment nearly killed her, zookeepers said.

I like monkeys.  Especially walking monkeys.