We got home from church this afternoon and the kids and I headed outside to play. It was a perfect day for it: Cold enough for the snow to be good, but the sun was out without wind so that we could have fun playing. We first built a huge snow fort, and then without anyone to fight or defend it from, we started another project. We created a huge pile of snow right off the swingset. Nathan and Madeline took turns climbing on top of this (about 9 feet) and launching off it into the pile of snow. We made snow angels, tracked rabbit footprints and sledded down the driveway. The backyard was pristine when we started and by the end, you could tell that we'd had fun.

This quote from Napoleon Dynamite made me laugh:
"You know, there's like a butt-load of gangs at this school. This one gang kept wanting me to join because I'm pretty good with a bowstaff."

For Christmas, Cathie got me tickets to go see Rent with another couple and we went tonight. The downside was that we're in the midst of getting dug out of a major snow storm and the musical was in downtown Detroit at the Masonic Temple. We drove out there and the roads sucked. We were supposed to meet two other couples out there (Reynolds and Girards) but the earlier show they were going to at 2:00 got cancelled due to weather. We had dinner at an old Italian Resturant called The Roma Cafe. The food was good, but I'm not a huge fan of traditional Italian food. They offered a shuttle to the Masonic Temple, which we took. If you've never been to the Masonic Temple, it's a beautiful place, the largest Mason Temple, whatever that means. It's in a horrible area, surrounded by Crack Houses, but inside it's awesome.

Rent was amazing. Easily in my top 5 of all time musicals, with Les Miserables, Jesus Christ Superstar, Hair and Tommy. The music blew me away, great story, great cast. I've heard a lot of people complain about lots of overt Homosexuality in the musical. It's there, but it's not central to the plot, it's not what it's about. Sure, there are gay relationships in it, but the plot revolves around relationships, and some of them just happen to be homosexual ones. It's a strange audience - almost a cult like following. Much younger, very interactive. We sat next to two girls who'd been to see it 3 times. One of them was deathly afraid of Midgets, which I found interesting. Driving home was a lot of fun. Apparently the City of Detroit still hasn't gotten the whole plowing the roads thing down - which should make the Super Bowl interesting next year if we get any snow.

Madeline lost her first tooth yesterday. This was a huge deal for her. She's been having "phantom loose teeth" for the past year, having us check her teeth every few weeks with a new potential loose tooth. Her brother Nate helped her pull it out.

She left her tooth under the pillow, and the tooth fairy forgot to visit. Oops. She wrote a note telling the tooth fairy she forgot, and received a note back from the tooth fairy along with some money. $4. I think I got a nickle when I was a kid and I liked it.

Today was the culmination of weeks of work. We had Nate's Cub Scout Space Derby today. Each father/son team makes a balsa-wood rocket that's powered by a propeller and rubber bands. When you see a rocket that's a perfect replica of the space shuttle and the kid is in first grade, you know the dad did the work. I'm not the handiest, and ours wasn't the prettiest, but at least it looked like Nate and I worked on it together. We didn't do well, but we learned a lot. Here are the top four things learned for next year:
1. Lightweight and thin is the key. One guy used a lathe to make a paper thin cylinder that still had enough strength to not collapse.
2. Small fins at angles are important. The fins we had on our rocket were big and created lift, which put the belly up and caused more drag on the rocket, and also put uneven weight on the guide-wire, slowing it down. You need to have small fins that stablize and don't create lift.
3. Being wound last is key. They would wind the rocket 25 turns, and the one who got wound last, would typically win.

This year we're writing off to lessons learned.

We've got the pinewood derby coming up, which is a blast and something my brother did with my Dad growing up. The kids have to follow strict guidelines on what they can do with the axles, base and wheels. They've got a "Geezer League" for the dad's where it's anything goes. Last year, one guy hooked up a high power fan and created a hover-craft type device and blew everyone away. I'm going to try and outsource the building of it overseas, maybe India... I should be able to get it built for a few Rupees.

I went on a field trip today with Nate's class to the Walled Lake Nature Education Center. It was really well done and a lot more fun then I thought it would be, based on the fact that it was about 2 degrees outside. We sat through 3 45 minute classes that involved listening to a speaker and then going outside (in the 2 degree weather) and doing some kind of related activity. If seeds, deer and hibernation are ever Jeopardy topics, I'll be the next Ken Jenningers. I got to eat from a sack lunch and hear about how animals transport seeds with their poop. Where else do you get that?

I had dinner on Wednesday night with a guy who works for the Army's Battle Command Lab, looking at new technologies to use with the army. He was telling us about a Flexible Display conference he's going to in Arizona. He was saying that the it will be at least five years before the small flexible display technologies hit the consumer market and even further out for the larger ones. Check out some of the background information here.

I thought these were an amazing series of Pictures of Tiger Woods golfing off of the Heli Pad of the world's largest hotel in Dubai in the United Arab Emerates. He received $1M to hit the golf balls. Not a bad gig if you can get it. Click on the individual picture for an expanded pic.

I flew into Kansas City last night and it was almost 50 degrees. They'd been having the same 0 degree weather prior to this, but now they've hit a warm spell and it feels like spring. I'm back tonight and I think I'm in town all next week.

I was in the Detroit airport this morning and who did I see? The Rev. Al Sharpton. My brush with fame.

Will and I watched the movie Donnie Darko tonight. It's an older movie, can't believe I haven't seen it before. What a great flick. Great cinematography, great plot, kinda dark. The main character is played by Jake Gyllenhaal who was in the movie Bubble Boy, which was a little tough to get beyond, but he's great in this movie. There's actually a fake online book called The Philosophy of Time Travel which is referenced in the movie that helps explain a lot of the crazy stuff going on.

I've probably put this in my blog a few times, but it strikes me every time I read it. Its the best part of philosopher C.S. Lewis's book The Great Divorce. The book is a fantasy, a metaphor to describe the differences between heaven and hell. The part in this book around The Red Lizard of Lust is the greatest parable for our lust and how we deal with it before God. This excerpt is worth the five minutes it takes to read it. I don't think you necessarily have to have the context for the book for it to make sense.

Google released version two of their great free photo organizer and touch-up software. You can get it here. The new version has updated photo retouching capabilities and a tweaked interface. If you have a digital camera, this is some of the best software out there for managing your photos - and it's free. Google's foray into owning search content at a desktop level.

Will and I went to see The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou last night. When picking the movie, I shared with Will that I'd heard it wasn't very good from a number of people. Will responded that everyone he'd talked to loved it. On the way out of the movie, I asked Will who specifically he'd talked to that gave him good reviews on the flick and he said that it might of been that he'd only previews that looked funny.

The movie is done by Wes Anderson, who did movies like The Royal Tannenbaums and Rushmore. I liked those movies, but it took watching them a couple of times and letting them sink in to really get them. All of his movies have really ecclectic soundtracks to them. The Life Aquatic was all David Bowie songs, done in Portuguese. I read that he'll actually design scenes around the music that he's got tagged to be played in the background. He uses music a lot like the movie Harold & Maude does.

I walked down into my basement and my feet got wet... Which I've learned in the past is a bad thing. It turns out something in my basement that contains water, had water come out of it.... Good guess, eh? Haven't narrowed it down to either my sump pump, an outside drain, my hot water heater or my water softener. Cathie called a carpet cleaning company and I called my friends Joe and Brad to come over and help me quickly get all of the crap out of my basement. I had to disconnect my office, which means all of my computers - consisting of well over 100 different cables of different types, so I could move it all upstairs. We had some guys come out and soak up a lot of the water (about 200 gallons) and I tore up the carpet and threw out the padding. We've got lots of fans and dehumidifiers going. Meanwhile, I called the insurance company. If it has to do with my sump pump, they'll cover nothing. Nice of them. At this point, I honestly can't say where the water came from, but I want to be as honest as possible with the insurance guys, even if it means me not getting coverage.

I got back from Circuit City at 9:30 tonight. I'd brought my car in at 1 because of an annoying hiss out of one of the speakers in the stereo I bought 3 months ago. It sounds small, but it was the most annoying thing to me. I'd get in the car and the static would tick me off - because it compromised the sound quality and the principal of the matter - it just shouldn't be there if they'd done this right. This is the second time I'd had to bring it back after the original install. The first time I took it in, the guy tried to convince me it was my EQ settings. After explaining to him he was nuts, he replaced the stereo, it worked for 1 hour and then went back to doing the same thing. I brought it in this time and a different guy was working. He took one look at how the other guy had wired it up and apologized. It took them 8 hours to not only rewire the whole system that the original guys had screwed up but to run it through the amp (the other guys had bypassed it) and give me a brand new set of front speakers along with a new wiring harness so I didn't lose the car control functionality that came with my factory stereo. They were very apologetic, gave it to me for free, and proudly told me they'd taken extra time to make sure everything sounded great - and it did. I'd go back there again based on how they took care of me this time... Just making sure I don't get the original tool who did the install.

Jon called me last night and told me to go to Noel's blog to check this out:


It's called Guess the Dictator or Sit-Com Character. It's like 20 questions with just these types of people. It correctly guessed B.A. Baracus from the A-Team and Sidney from the show Alias. I could waste a lot of time trying to beat this.

My friend Jason (guy on the left) has started his blog backup. It went into "hiatus" for a while and it's back. J's a great writer, providing a somewhat cynical view of the world.

I'd never seen the part of Napoleon Dynamite after the credits. It's a scene where Kip is singing a song to his new wife Lafawnduh after they're married... I'm working on learning this to sing to Cathie:

Kip: Why do you love me? Why do you need me? Always and forever... We met in a chatroom, now our love can fully bloom... Sure the world wide web is great, but you, you make me salivate... I love technology, but not as much as you, you see... But I STILL love technology... Always and forever. Our love is like a flock of doves, flying up to heaven above... always and forever, always and forever... Why do you need me? Why do you love me? Always and forever...

I'm still plugging through this book and it's slowly working it's way through my brain. I think the book's main point is to say that a faith that is only about eternal life is missing the point as much as a faith that is only about the hear and now in terms of social justice. It's somewhere in the middle of the continum. Jesus's famous Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5) make so much more sense in this context, looking at them with the idea that they are a summary of his teachings on how to actually live in the reality of God's present kingdom which is available to us right now in the world around us. I'd always looked at this teaching as more of what a perfect world would look like, but the message, as I now understand it is more about the availablity of God to everyone, through Jesus. They're not really teachings on how to be blessed or instructions on how to do anything...they don't state conditions of God's approval, salvation or blessing. This was news to me. They're all about clarifying Jesus' fundamental message: "The free availability of God's rule and righteousness to all of humanity through the reliance upon Jesus himself, and the person now loose in the world among us." It's good head knowledge, but I'm trying to figure out to make this applicable to my real life. It hasn't gotten there yet.

Apple just announced this new Mac for $499. This would be nice for home use. I know, I know.... I'm not buying stuff right now...

I mentioned earlier that I've been looking at my love of "stuff" and I came across this in my reading this morning that really hit home:

Galatians 5

¹⁹It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; ²⁰trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; ²¹the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.

Paul continues on talking about the flip side of this....

²²But what happens when we live God's way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard--things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, ²³not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.
Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. ²⁴Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good--crucified.
²⁵Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives. ²⁶That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original.

I've been looking at switching from Verizon cell phone service to Sprint for the last couple of months, but haven't pulled the trigger. On one hand, Sprint's a lot cheaper and they've got a great deal on the new Treo 650 phone. I'd save almost $100/month on my plan at Sprint. The downside is that I've heard mixed reviews about their coverage and customer service. Verizon's coverage is second to none and their customer service is phenomenal. I've been with them ten years and they treat me like a king. I may switch to Sprint on a temporary basis and see how the coverage works for 30 days and go from there before I cancel Verizon. A friend of mine, Greg Kandra, is the master at this. He's tried at least 6 different providers, most of them for 30 days, and then switched back when he wasn't happy within the 30 day window.

The video from the infamous Napoleon Dynamite Dance Clip. If you haven't seen it, you need to. One of my favorite parts of the whole movie.

Here are the top search engine that people are using to find my blog:

• costume jacket epilets
• napoleon dynamite youth meetings
• jen and brad's breakup
• pics of napoleon dynamite
• dave kurt blog
• galveston strip clubs
  

This is very funny. Conan O'Brian "interviewed" Bill Gates as a part of the Microsoft product release at the recent CES show in Vegas. Apparently, none of Gate's stuff worked and Conan O'Brian had fun laughing at him. Watch the video here.

Also, check this new digital media center that was announced by HP. The interface and features on this thing rock. It could truly make me happy for at least a couple of weeks. I must have it.

pic05325

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This is one in a series of lego pictures of cathedrals. The guy obviously has waaaay too much time on his hands, but it's amazing to check out the detail. Click on the picture to see the whole series. Check out brickshelf.com to see huge collections of lego creations that people are so proud of, they take pictures of them.

I love gadgets and "stuff" in general. When I take a look at how much and how quickly I buy stuff online, it's pretty amazing. Rarely do I want for something for too long. I was talking with a friend of mine Matt in Kansas City who suffers from the same thing. We agreed that during January we would fast from buying stuff. Even for the short time I've been doing this, it's amazing how quickly apparent it becomes some of the "why's" behind my buying become apparent. Sometimes it's because I'm having a bad day or even a good day, and sometimes it's because there's a part of me that really believes that this or that "thing" (book, toy, technology, gadget, etc) will really make me happy. It's amazing once I get them how little time the joy around the stuff I get lasts... I move on to wanting the next thing. I've actually put a bunch of the junk I had laying around out on eBay.

I'm working out of Brewwater's this afternoon, the local coffee shop with free wireless internet access. A friend of mine (and fellow Xeroid) Will Brown happened to show up and sat down on the couch next to me. Here we are sitting side by side, plugged into our iPods, laptops on our laps, IMing with each other when we want to talk. We could be a commercial for something.... but I'm not sure that something is good.

We started watching the Surreal Life this week, season 4. Last season was pretty lame, with Flavor-Flav and Bridgette Neilson being the only highlights. We didn't finish the season. The premiere of this season's show on Sunday was promising. It's got big a great collection of has-beens: Big-time wrestling Diva Chyna, Peter from the Brady bunch and Mini-Me from Austin Powers. Mini-me gets stumbling drunk on the first episode. Go figure - TV using drunk midgets to premiere a new season.

I've got a lot of books going at once. Typically, I'm reading one fiction book, one or two business books and two or three books arounds spiritual formation at a time.

Fiction:

Tripwire
My brother Dan turned me on to this series of eight books, all with the same character, Jack Reacher. Jack is a man's man, a hero's hero. Great books that combine a little CSI with a little Tom Clancy.


Mount Dragon
This is a new author that the librarian turned me onto when I was looking for more Lee child books - thinking I wanted Lincoln Child. Apparently Preston and Child write together quite a bit, and the result is great. This book could have been written by Michael Crichton. It's about a genetic lab facility in the desert that could destroy the world. Good read.

Business:


How Full is Your Bucket?
Good, quick read that paints a great picture around the residual impact of your interactions with others and their interactions with you. Nothing new in this book, but for some reason, reading this has made me very concious of what I leave behind in the smallest situations - cashiers, doormen, rental car staff, etc. A friend of mine, Dorla gave me this book a few months ago and it was worth the 60 minutes I've put into it. I still have to make it throught the last chapter.


Execution
Apparently I'd rather read books that tell me how good I already am at what I do. This is a tough book. It's very straight forward, but it talks about the difference between theory and execution and how bad most people are at it. This can be a huge gap for me when the length of execution extends beyond a month or two. I've been going through the book chapter by chapter with a guy I'm mentoring in our company and getting a lot out of it.

Spiritual:

Divine Conspiracy
I've been plugging through this for the past month, reading it with a friend of mine, Brad. I think that Dallas Willard is a lot like C.S. in terms of how revolutionary the stuff he puts out there. The first two or three chapters of his books are really painful, though. He has to lay all of hte philosophical groundwork for what he's going to talk about and it's like eating paste. This book deals with the idea of the Kingdom of God and what it really is. He spends a lot of time digging through the beattitudes and the reality of them. Great stuff. It's the kind of book you read 10 pages, think about it and pick it up and read another 10. I'll probably be done with this is a month or so.


Searching for God knows what
Will got me this book for Christmas. This is written by the same guy that wrote Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious thoughts on Christian Spirituality. The first one was great, I'm only a few pages into this so far.


What every father must know
It's a tiny little book written specifically for Dad's that gives you a thumbnail sketch of Eldredge's three other books: Sacred Romance, Journey of Desire and Wild at Heart. It's a great book to give to any dad to walk away with two key ideas of what every little boy and little girl need from their dad. If people resonate with the message in this, they'll likely dig Eldredge's other stuff.

Matt sent me this commercial straight out of a men's room...

Bill Keith Dave Mack Black Olive Picture

3 others dressed alike. Bill Belanger, Keith Rouser, Myself and Mack. Apparently, this was the outfit du'jour.

It was also a pretty safe combination of colros as many of us got our pictures taken as part of our executive bio's. They had to do a full thing of makeup for us and the makeup gal spent an additional 5 minutes trimming my eye-brow hair. She left my ear-hair alone.

Mack and Dave Black Olive Picture

Nothing like dressing like another guy, right down to the color of your t-shirt. I got a chance to spend some time last week with Mack, whose been a mentor and a boss for me over the past couple of years. He's also responsible for turning me onto the show 24, which started off last night and is on again tonight. I'm hooked. As my friend Will puts it, 24 is like TV Crack.

Dave and Will Bangham

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I met this guy last week and had to have a picture taken with him, just based on name: Will Bangham.

Tsunami before and after satellite pictures.

In the meeting we were in today, they showed a video to 400 of us of one of the great leaders of Xerox, Joe Wilson from 60 years back. In the video, Joe talks about his comittment to the people and customer service. Great video, no big deal - until the end. After doing his spiel, Joe Wilson says, "And now and I want to turn it over to Dave Kurt...." and the video ends. There was a mumble and a lot of people looking at me to see if I had a clue what was going on. I didn't. Apparently, there was a great leader at one time here named Dave Kurt. I probably found this more amusing than anyone else, just because people have no idea whether it was a joke or actual.

There's a new virus out there, called the "It Takes Guts to Say Jesus" virus. Apparently if you open it, it will erase everything on your hard drive.This information was announced yesterday morning from IBM; AOL states that this is a very dangerous virus, much worse than
"Melissa," and that there is NO Remedy for it at this time.

I'm fairly sure this virus actually came FROM Jesus, because he got tired of people sending out those stupid freaking "Forward this e-mail if you love Jesus as much as I do" e-mails.

Apparently Evil Knievel can't take a joke.... Knievel loses 'pimp' appeal

After having a photo appear on a web site calling him a pimp, he sued, lost and an appeals court responded:

Considering the target audience, the Knievel caption "was most likely intended as a compliment,'' said Judge A. Wallace Tashima, citing one Web site's definition of pimp as a slang term whose meanings include "cool.'' At the very least, he said, any reasonable reader would have considered the caption "an attempt at humor.''

But Bea said a jury should be able to consider reactions from a more diverse audience. "What about those dowdy corporate bourgeois who are Knievel's clients and who allegedly have abandoned him because of the photograph and caption?'' he asked.

I just like the fact that they were able to work the term "dowdy corporate bourgeois" into a sentance.

One other highlight from the meeting yesterday was when one of VP's, Rich, quoted Napoleon Dynamite in his presentation.... The part about going back in time to replay the fourth quarter. Cracked me up.

They brought in Outward Bound tonight to lead some team building activities. There were about 30 teams participating, 10 people each. The things they gave us were youth group games - like buliding a tower out of newspapers and throwing balls. The Outward Bound team did an amazing job of facilitaing a huge group - enough to make any youth pastor proud.

Interesting day today. The company brought in a consultant from Disney to talk through some of the theory behind Disney's customer experience. In one example, he shared the magic behind how they help guests find lost cars. Seems impossible when people barely remember what their rental car looks like, let alone where they parked amongst 100,000 cars. What they do is ask the guest when they arrive, which most remember. As the cars arrive in the morning, they mark down every five minutes where they're parking people. All the attendant has to do is match the arrive time with the appropriate location and whallah!

A good friend of mine who I happen to work with (Bill Belanger) was a part of a roundtable discussion in front of the group. If you don't know Bill, he's about 5'2" tall and built like a tank - a hockey player. Bill goes to sit down in the raised chair on the stage, but the chair is too tall for him, so his feet dangle down like a kid sitting in an adult chain. Everyone laughed, including Bil. He has a good sense of humor about his height, but I figured Will, Brad and Noel would appreciate the story....

I was asleep before 11 last night, which was nice. The nights get longer and longer here, so I'm getting my sleep while I can. I got up this morning at 5:45 and played raquetball with a friend of mine, Matt. He beat me pretty badly both games, but it sure beat running on a treadmill for 40 minutes. The weather is amazing here - 60+ degrees!

I know I didn't blog much last week, but I had an amazing week at home. My days consisted of going to bed late and sleeping in, all while hanging out with the family throughout the day, doing very little that was productive. I watched a lot of movies, played lots of games with the kids, took some naps and read a lot of books. I was so recharged by the end of it, but it made it that much harder to go out of town for a week.

I got together on Wednesday with a couple of guys from work at BW3's and then had my family came over later in the day to go sledding, but weather didn't premit, so we just hung out for a while doing. We had a fun new-years, but pretty low-key. We hung out at the Reynold's house with a bunch of friends, ate a lot and laughed a lot. The next couple of days were just spent recharging. I ate like a pig throughout the whole holiday season. On December 26th, I decided I needed to shed some weight, as I was topping 210lbs. I went to the gym every day and hit it hard, doing hard-core cardio and weights every day. I finished up the week getting down to about 203 and feeling a little better about things, but still needing to change my eating.

I'm in Leesburg, VA at the National Conference Center for our company kick-off meeting all week, outside of Washington, D.C. I hate this place. It was designed back in the 70's with a maze in mind, to create a "learning environment". They were fools. If you check out the web site, it shows a very kind and simple map that would fool the ignorant. It took me a long time to find my room and even longer to find the cafeteria. Each room is like a self-contained dorm room, 12x12 with a bed, bathroom and desk. I've been coming here on and off for the past 9 years and it's gotten better over the years. We no longer share bathrooms with our wall-mate.

I'm still laughing from watching Napoleon Dynamite a few days ago. Some of my favorite lines, most of which will be meaningless without watching the movie.... Actually, they're pretty meaningless even watching the movie, but they're much funnier with Napoleon's delivery..

Napoleon Dynamite: Pedro offers you his protection.
--
Deb: What are you drawing?
Napoleon Dynamite: A liger.
Deb: What's a liger?
Napoleon Dynamite: It's pretty much my favorite animal. It's like a lion and a tiger mixed... bred for its skills in magic.
--
Napoleon Dynamite: You know, like nunchuck skills, bowhunting skills, computer hacking skills... Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills.
--
Napoleon Dynamite: What kind of bike do you have?
Pedro: It's a sledgehammer.
Napoleon Dynamite: Dang! You got shocks, pegs... lucky! You ever take it off any sweet jumps? Napoleon Dynamite: [Cut to Pedro jumping] You got like three feet of air that time.
--
Kip: Napoleon, don't be jealous that I've been chatting online with babes all day. Besides, we both know that I'm training to be a cage fighter.
Napoleon Dynamite: Since when, Kip? You have the worst reflexes of all time.
Kip: Try and hit me, Napoleon.
Napoleon Dynamite: What?
Kip: I said come down here and see what happens if you try and hit me.
--
Jock No. 1: Hey, Napoleon. I hear you're in a club for girls.
Napoleon Dynamite: Shut up, I am not.
Jock No. 1: Yeah? Why are you in the Happy Hands Club then?
Napoleon Dynamite: Cause I didn't have a freakin' choice. All the other sweet clubs were filled up. GOSH!

One of the gifts I received for Christmas was a framed collection of pictures of myself and the kids from this past year. Madeline wrote a poem to go along with it, which for obvious reasons, I love:
Our daddy is nice
Our daddy is strong
Our daddy is fun
Our daddy is never wrong
He likes his kids
He plays with them too
We all love him
Merry Christmas to you!

I just posted the pictures from Christmas online here:
Lebbon Christmas
Kurt Christmas

These are probably only of interest to my family.

This is either:
a. My mom displaying her new Christmas present from her kids.
b. My Mom taunting PETA enthusiasts around the world to throw red paint on her.
c. My mom modeling a coat that we found in the back of her closet that was cool 20 years ago.

Every year at Christmas we do our family photos. At just about every family get together we do these grandparent/grandchildren picture, and every year they get a little more chaotic as the crew grows. Notice that out of nine grandkids (and grandparents) how many are actually looking at the camera. I'm just trying to figure out what words of wisdom my dad was about to say before this picture was snapped.

The picture in this frame was taken at Jason and Jess's wedding and given to me as a Christmas gift by them. They thought that if I didn't want it, my Mom surely would....and they were right. Probably the best Christmas gift she's ever received.

This is going to be a great week... Last week was crazy between trying to finish up everything for Christmas, wrapping things up at work before vacation and my computer dying. It took reloading my system 6 different times to finally get the issue resolved... resulting in me doing a complete reformat of my system. Luckily, no data was lost. Keeping the four systems in my home up and running is becoming a full-time job.

Santa visited us Thursday morning - Christmas Eve-Eve. We did it then to try and space things out and give us some more breathing room in a time that's typically pretty hectic. We woke up, opened presents and the kids had all day to play with their presents. In the evening we had our annual 'Birthday party for Jesus' and then our church had their Christmas eve-eve service (Not having a building makes doing a christmas eve service tough to schedule). It was a great day overall.

On Friday, we woke up, pulled things together and headed to my parent's house for Christmas #2. I love getting together with my family - but between my 3 siblings, spouses and eight nieces and nephews, it's so high energy the whole time. My mom cooks amazing meals for lunch, dinner and the following breakfast - each meal consisting of at least ten different things, not including dessert. We had something to eat, got dressed for church and took our annual family pictures -which are no small ordeal, especially with my brother jon antagonizing everyone possible. I made the mistake of giving Jon my camera to take picture during parts of it and I ended up with a collection of people's butts and crotches. Thanks Jon.

We went to church that night at my Mom's church, which is a traditional Lutheran church. We've been doing this since I can remember. We take up 3 rows between all of us and it's pretty comical watching all of the kids who range from age 1 - 9. We sing all of the great christmas hymns and have a candle light song at the end, which is awesome. It's so different from Crossroads, but I love it just the same. I have so many great memories of going to church, especially going and sitting with my Uncle Bill (deceased). We'd sing and laugh, all while trying to stay under the radar of my mom and grandma's watchful eyes.

We came home, had a huge meal and the opened some of the presents from the aunts and uncles to the kids, and to our parents. The girls had gone through all of our families pictures and put together a scrapbook chronicling our family all the way from my parent's childhood through now. My mom loved it. I mixed up some of the hurricane mix that I brought back from New Orleans, which threw Dan, Kevin and I for a loop. We hung out, played with the presents and laughed a lot. Dan, Kris and family headed home and the rest of us finally crashed sometime after midnight, ready for an early morning.

We woke up Christmas morning early, with Madeline and Gabe running around and signing some obnoxious Christmas song, but it beat them ringing the bells my Mom's given them in the past years. The kids and grandkids opened presents from my parents and played until about noon. I got to go pick up my Grandma from her aparentment in Haslett. She's old (not sure how old - she'll never tell, but I think it's in the mid 80's). She moves at a snail's pace and is really fragile, but she amazes me at how sharp she is. We had a great conversation on the car ride back about Christmas in the past, my grandpa, my uncle, my kids an my job. It was one of the best parts of my Christmas. Around noon, we loaded up and headed for Christmas #3.

We got to Cathie's parents in Dewitt in the afternoon and were able to exhale after a crazy 24 hours. It's such a different atmosphere than my parents and I really look forward to it. There are only our three kids, my brother-in-law Ed and his wife Stacy, and of course Cathie's Mom and Dad. We opened a ton of presents and had a huge meal with at least 10 desserts. It's such a nice, slow-paced time, We hang out, eat and eat some more. The kids have so much fun, just loving hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa and their Aunt and Uncle. By the end of the night, we were beat and headed home. Loading the van becomes an interesting exercise in packing, but I got it done.

I'm thrilled to see that it's looking like airlines will NOT allow cell phone usage on planes: Phones in flight

Top 10 Cheesiest Movie Lines Ever:
1. “Titanic”: Leonardo DiCaprio’s “I’m the king of the world!”
2. “Dirty Dancing”: Patrick Swayze’s “Nobody puts Baby in the corner.”
3. “Four Weddings And A Funeral”: Andie McDowell’s “Is it still raining? I hadn’t noticed.”
4. “Ghost”: Demi Moore’s “Ditto,” to Patrick Swayze’s “I love you.”
5. “Top Gun”: Val Kilmer to Tom Cruise: “You can be my wingman anytime”
6. “Notting Hill”: Julia Roberts’ “I’m just a girl... standing in front of a boy... asking him to love her.”
7. “Independence Day”: Bill Pullman’s “Today we celebrate our Independence Day!”
8. “Braveheart”: Mel Gibson’s “They may take our lives, but they will not take our freedom!”
9. “Jerry Maguire”: Renee Zellweger to Tom Cruise: “You had me at hello.”
10. “The Postman”: A blind woman says to Kevin Costner: “You’re a godsend, a savior.” He replies: “No, I’m a postman.”

Jon sent me this. Gotta love public speaking. Nice save by the news woman at the end... Check this video clip out.

If you haven't already, download MSN Messenger v7 Beta. It has a much improved interface and some great new interactive features.

I'm in my hotel room getting ready to go into a big presentation and noticed that I had about a three inch hole in my pants. Great news. Luckily the thread had come out on the seam, so I sewed it back up. I grabbed the sewing kit, sewed it up, and it looks pretty decent, not great, but decent.

Emily brought home an ornament from pre-school that she'd made as a gift in pre-school. She told Cathie "Ms. Barb told me to give these presents to you, but I'm only letting you hang it on the tree until I want it back - because it's so beautiful."

I flew in to Galveston, TX (just outside of Houston) yesterday and it's not quite what I expected. I think Texas, you think warm and dry. It's in the mid-40's and rainy - but I can see palm trees and the ocean from my hotel room window. I once read that there are more churches and more strip clubs per capita than any other city in America. Driving to Galveston through Houston I must have seen 50 strip clubs along the expressway. I saw an interesting example of this dichotemy (good word, eh?) as I drove by a huge billboard for a strip club called "Heartbreakers" and behind it was another billboard that read "Jesus Heals the broken hearted".

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Very interesting article entitled Eminem Is Right out of Policy Review that looks at music today and why it resonates with kids:

In a nutshell, the ongoing adult preoccupation with current music goes something like this: What is the overall influence of this deafening, foul, and often vicious-sounding stuff on children and teenagers? Nonetheless, this is not my focus here. Instead, I would like to turn that logic about influence upside down and ask this question: What is it about today’s music, violent and disgusting though it may be, that resonates with so many American kids?

As it turns out, such an exercise yields a fascinating and little understood fact about today’s adolescent scene. If yesterday’s rock was the music of abandon, today’s is that of abandonment. The odd truth about contemporary teenage music — the characteristic that most separates it from what has gone before — is its compulsive insistence on the damage wrought by broken homes, family dysfunction, checked-out parents, and (especially) absent fathers...........

Check this out. It's the entire It's a Wonderful a Life movie in 30 seconds re-enacted by rabbits. The next question is... Why?

I'm a huge Donkey Kong fan! This is fun.

Why Jesus Likes Kids:
I think I know what it takes to be socially acceptable, and for some reason I’ve tried to be like that in my relationship with God—prim and proper. Forgetting that before Him I really am just a kid (no matter how old I may dress), in need of His loving help and grace, to the point that maybe I should be quicker and more persistent to ask for it. I’m not pretending to really understand prayer or what it does, but I think it probably involves being more kid-like, even if it annoys me.

This is Elvis... and my nephew Matthew. They both have a lot in common. Except Matthew is not an honorary member of the FBI. And Matthew's not dead. Other than that, lots in common.

These are the masks I brought back from New Orleans for the kids. The tough party was explaining to Emily why she couldn't wear her mask to her pre-school Christmas party Thursday night.

I've been trying out a new photo service called Flickr. It's not your typical picture site, most of which center around selling you photos. This site is around the storage and tagging of pictures for sharing, especially for blogs and e-mail sharing. It integrates in with all of the blog services, hosts the pictures, organizes them and lets you upload them via e-mail - including from cell phones. You can create various style-sheet templates that allow for a very customized look and feel to your blog post.

Here's a good article in Wired Magazine about flickr..

2004_maddie_xmas_tree

2004_maddie_xmas_tree,
originally uploaded by fusionmonkey.

We worked on getting the tree up yesterday. Okay, Cathie worked on getting the tree up, I carried some boxes and a tree into the room. Once Cathie got the lights on, the kids all helped decorate it. Every year they pull out the ugly ornaments that I made when I was a kid and ask why we've got it on the tree. This year was no exception. Emily had a stool and put every ornament within a one foot radius.

Lesson for the day: Just because Nate's seven, doesn't mean he can't hurt me with boxing gloves. A blow to the head with 16oz gloves hurts. In order to make it fair, I get on my knees as we box. Mom's still "helping" us come up with the ground rules for when the guys can use their gloves.

Mike, my son Nate and I went to the Novi Expo Center for the annual computer show. Half the fun of this thing is people watching. You get all kinds at this thing. I needed to pick up some stuff for our home system that kept randomly locking up. I'd tried everything and I finally broke down and bought a new board and CPU. I got a great deal. Mike and I installed it this afternoon and it all worked... well almost... the power light on the front is on when the computer is off and vice versa. But the thing clocks in at 3.3 GHz, all for $99, including the onboard video.

Half of the show was wall to wall computer junk, in the most literal sense. The other half was typical flea market type stuff - fake purses, cheap shoes, stereo systems and more knives and swords than you can imagine. We spent more time messing around with all of the knives and swords than we did looking at computer gear. They had a great deal on boxing gloves, so Nate and I picked up a pair and we've been boxing around the house all day long. I've got a longer reach, but he's at the exact wrong height - so it's even in the end.

One of the people I was with this week had one of these 20 Q games in their car and I played with it non-stop. This thing was borderline creepy. You think of something and it proceeds to ask you 20 questions to which you answer "Yes, No, Sometimes or Unknown". It was almost always right. I guessed stuff like: Soccer Ball, Jaguar, Tree and it nailed it.

Alright, this is something my dad sent me. It's a little corny, but I like the point:

I CORINTHIANS 13 - A CHRISTMAS VERSION a
If I decorate my house perfectly with plaid bows, strands of twinkling lights and shiny balls, but do not show love to my family, I'm just another decorator.

If I slave away in the kitchen, baking dozens of Christmas cookies, preparing gourmet meals and arranging a beautifully adorned table at mealtime, but do not show love to my family, I'm just another
cook.

If I work at the soup kitchen, carol in the nursing home and give all
that I have to charity, but do not show love to my family, it profits me
nothing.

If I trim the spruce with shimmering angels and crocheted snowflakes,
attend a myriad of holiday parties and sing in the choir's cantata but do
not focus on Christ, I have missed the point.


Love stops the cooking to hug the child. Love sets aside the decorating to kiss the husband. Love is kind, though harried and tired. Love doesn't envy another's home that has coordinated Christmas china and table linens. Love doesn't yell at the kids to get out of the way, but is thankful they are there to be in the way. Love doesn't give only to those who are able to give in return but rejoices in giving to those who can't. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.

Video games will break, pearl necklaces will be lost, golf clubs will rust, but giving the gift of love will endure.

I thought this was a great quote:
"The truth is that wherever a man lies with a woman, there, whether they like it or not, a transcendental relation is set up between them which must be eternally enjoyed or eternally endured."
-C. S. Lewis

I'm in Baton Rogue and I'm still full. After our workshop yesterday, we took our customer out to dinner at Juban's, a famous Creole resturant out here. The people down here are very hospitable to us Yankees and wanted to make sure I tried all of their cuisine. I sat at dinner with my plate of food, surrounded by 8 other smaller plates from our customers who wanted to make sure I had a taste of what they'd ordered. Really tremendous people down here, not quite as laid back as New Orleans, not quite as much debauchery, but a great place. I'm flying back this afternoon.

I got up, worked out, had some meetings and then headed down to the French Market Area to go to Cafe Du Monde. It's a great area with some amazing architecture.

So I went to the original Emril's resturant tonight down here in New Orleans. The service was the best I've ever had and the food was phenomenal. Across the street, they were filming a movie - I can't remember which ones, but it was starring Kevin Spacey. I was with one of our local sales reps, Dee, who grew up in this area and knows everyone. She knows everyone down here, even spends Christmas with the Manning family (ie. Payton, Eli, Archie, etc). On the way out of the resturant, we ran into Wayne Huizenga, founder of Blockbuster video, who said hi to Dee by name. She used to date the guy.

Tomorrow, before we head to Baton Rouge for customer meetings, I'm going to stop by the infamous Cafe du Mond for a Beignets and Cafe o'lait. It's in every movie that takes place in New Orleans - I just can't remember which.

I'm in New Orleans today, Baton Rogue tomorrow. My hotel is right off of Bourbon Street. I had lunch today at one of the best oyster places around, Acme Oyster. I had a po-boy. Check out the menu. They actually have something called a poopa. We're heading to the original Emril's tonight for dinner. Should be good.

My brother Dan turned me on to a great new author, Lee Child. The books have the same character through out all of the - a really cool guy named Jack Reacher. I think there are seven books in all so far. These are books that you cannot put down once you pick them up. The guy reminds me of John Clark in Tom Clancy's novels, but a little more down-to-earth and a little less serious and less psycho. Anyways, very well worth checking them out.

My brother Jon and I were both amazed that Dan would actually reccomend a book, seeing how he barely reads. If you loan Dan a book, you'll get it back in 6 months - maybe. The only time he claims to read is if he's on a plane ride to Korea, and then he supposedly reads 9 books each way. I think he's getting the cliff notes to try and impress Jon and I.

We had our big Dodgeball playoffs tonight and we went from third place to last by losing all but one game! The last game, Will Brown and Jason Monstrola caught everything thrown our way so that we went out big! I think I've finally figured out how to throw the ball so that my arm is usable in the week that follows. Dodgeball starts up again in January, and the movie comes out on DVD tomorrow. Dodge, dip, duck, dive and dodge!

I just got a new Uniden TRU8885 cordless phone for about $20. About 10 years ago I bought my cordless phone at Sears for about $150. For some reason, I bought the product protection plan, which was about $25 and is good for 2 years. In my house, the average cordless phone is lucky to make it that long. I bring it back, get a full credit towards a new phone, pay another $20 for the new product protection plan and get the latest, greatest phone. It's one of the few times that the product protection plan has ever really worked for me.

Here are technologies I'm still using after a few weeks:
X1
DirectTV HD Tivo
Firefox
iTunes/iPod
allofmp3.com
Treo 600 (Although I now want a 650 with Bluetooth capabilities).

Great article about the need to know, which I think I suffer from. As I was reading this, I was thinking about all of the different information sources I digest regularly... I love the newspaper I subscribe to three: Wall Street Journal, Detroit News and the South Lyon Herald - and I try and read them cover-to-cover as often as possible. I subscribe to 7 different magazines (Mens Journal, Entertainment Weekly, Money and a few others I can't remember). On top of that, I my computer and my phone push headlines over to me constantly through various blogs and RSS Feeds.

Check out this video from Jeopardy. Ken Jenning's question to the answer is "What is a Ho, Alex?"

According to this article Jesus was spotted in this dental X-Ray.

I found this on Dan's blog regarding U2's new single Vertigo off of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb:
According to this:

"The counting Bono does in the beginning is uno does tres catorce is spannish for one two three fourteen. According to several sources in the U2-Talk mailing list, the album is U2's 14:th album (including Wide Awake in America) and Lillywhite has been involved with U2's first, second, third and now fourteenth album. There have been some debate to which albums to include to get fourteen albums, if the "Best of" or "Wide Awake in America" should be included etc., but nobody knows for sure what Bono is referencing to yet. It might be so he just thought it sounded cool. "

Other sites list the lyrics as the numbers would be "en espanol" not in french. I wondered about the same thing myself and was just makng jokes to my roomie the other day about that.

I was dumping the pictures from the digital camera today and ran across this picture. Occasionally, Emily likes to grab the camera and take all sorts of crazy pictures. You can make up your own story on what Cathie's doing here.

Emily had been telling us about a boy in her pre-school class that she'd been playing with. Apparently the boy's name is cardboard. We got to class and she pointed out cardboard. Apparently, his name is Carter. Having a kid named cardboard seems funny to me.

As I lay sleeping on Saturday morning I heard the kids up and running around. I heard the door open and the kids proclaim "Hey, where did these come from? Let's play manger!" I heard the girls singing Away in a Manger as I faded in and out of conciousness. When I woke up, I found this collection of 2 foot tall figurines. I called the Niemi's and Girard's to find out which it had been. Turns out it was Dan Reynolds.

The three couples got babysitters at 9PM last night and exacted our revenge. It was really pretty elaborate. We decided to decorate Dan's house, in a bad way. We had pink christmas tree lights, huge strands of gaudy pearls and an entire nativity scene linked together by rope which we put up in their pine tree. The lights went over their doorway and bushes. I took part of the manger scene and used Liquid Nail to glue it to one of Dan's landscaping rocks. I'm just not sure that's ever coming off. The costumes? They just seemed funny at the time. Except the clown. The clown always seemed scary. Not funny. Can you guess who that is in the clown? One hint: It's not me.

Ya know, Justin looks pretty creepy here as well. Dan is probably the wrong person to start something like this with. I'm sure he'll have no problem escalating this out of control very quickly.

I went with a friend of mine in my neighborhood, Mark, to the Lions game yesterday. He has great seats. We were about 15 rows back from the field. It was interesting that at the beginning of the game they don't even announce a number of players to avoid the booing. Joey Harrington for one. John Navvarae (ex-U of M Quarterback) was in for Arizona. Did my heart good to see him fail miserably. How many U of M quarterbacks do we really need in the NFL right now anyways?

On Friday night, Brad, Ted and I took Will out for his birthday... At least that was the idea. For whatever reason, he ended up having to work until 9, which got him back to this area closer to 10. We ended up meetnig Will at Ted's house around 10 after the whaler's game and sat around watching Old School.

I just added a cool iTunes plugin that allows my blog to dynamically show what I've been listening to in iTunes. It's called Now Playing and it outputs my iTunes info to XML to which I've got a PHP script that puts both the song name, the image and a link to Amazon to buy the track. Heck, I'm just impressed that I was able to pull all of the pieces together to get this to work.

I've been messing with Audioscrobbler lately. It has plug-ins for both Mac and PC that work with every music player out there. The plug-in uploads a list of the tunes you listen to, compiles it with everyone elses and gives you some very good reccomendations.

A friend of mine, Kirk Vickers, was on the news on Monday night talking about the exercise aspect of the Dance, Dance revolution game. You can read more about it here. He was telling me that at one point during the kid's playing, his heart rate got up to 250/beats per minute... which is a lot.

I was listening to this message by Rob Bell of Mars Hill Church on Suffering. There was a part of 2 Corinthians 6 that he read that hit me between the eyes, particularly in light of the stuff my church has been going through for a while now. I sometimes get so discouraged about our church, about where we're at, the people that are being impacted - focused on everything we're not doing instead of what we are doing. This verse just resonated with my heart in such a huge way when I read it.

⁴Our work as God's servants gets validated--or not--in the details. People are watching us as we stay at our post, alertly, unswervingly . . . in hard times, tough times, bad times; ⁵when we're beaten up, jailed, and mobbed; working hard, working late, working without eating; ⁶with pure heart, clear head, steady hand; in gentleness, holiness, and honest love; ⁷when we're telling the truth, and when God's showing his power; when we're doing our best setting things right; ⁸when we're praised, and when we're blamed; slandered, and honored; true to our word, though distrusted; ⁹ignored by the world, but recognized by God; terrifically alive, though rumored to be dead; beaten within an inch of our lives, but refusing to die; ¹⁰immersed in tears, yet always filled with deep joy; living on handouts, yet enriching many; having nothing, having it all.

The second part reminded me of a conversation I'd had with a friend of mine on Sunday night. We were talking about how easy it is to get wrapped up in our own worlds, and the best way to get out of our funks can be to focus outside of ourselves. Paul continues on in 2 Corinthians 6:

12We didn't fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren't small, but you're living them in a small way. ¹³I'm speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!

Noel's message last week talked about the concept of Open Theism which is basically the. According to this, I'm a Freewill Theist. The first I'd heard of the idea of Open Theism was when I read the book, Letters from a Skeptic by Gregory Boyd
. Great book, but the part that didn't sit with me was the part where he explained his perspective on God's fore-knowledge of the future and free will.