Maddie's Reading at Church

Maddie and Jordyn did this reading at all three service this past Sunday. They did a great job.

Death By Longboard

How I'm handling work e-mail these days

I swear I get more and more e-mail every day and it's all being pushed out to my mobile devices (iPad and iPhone). I need to reference my e-mail in new and different ways, in context of the entire conversation and in the context of knowing more about the people. Here's a basic overview on how I'm handling e-mail from a process standpoint and a technology standpoint:

Technology - I'm using 4 tools to manage my e-mail:

1. Outlook 2010 - I'm using Outlook 2010 in Windows 7, which is nice because they've created conversation based e-mails that will pull up e-mails in the context of the broader conversation.  It will also connect e-mails to linkedin and facebook profiles.  This can be good and bad.  It will update contact pictures and contact information by pulling from public linked in profiles, which is nice.  I also had it pull a contact picture over of a co-workers posing on the beach in a man-thong.  Awkward. In a given year, I'm sending and receiving over 10GB of e-mail and I never delete anything.  I use outlook's PST files to archive e-mail and a whole foldering system within that, which brings up the necessity of the next two tools..
2. ClearContext - This tool has changed my life.  It helps with intelligent tagging and storage of your e-mail conversations.  Here's how it works: When you send an e-mail, it will prompt you to file the e-mail and bring up a series of suggestions based on who it's to and the subject line.  That suggestion is a hierarchical series of folders that corresponds to a folder hierarchy in your PST file.  The next time you receive an e-mail in that conversation, it will remember that and automatically tag and archive the e-mail out of your inbox.  It allows you to deal with an entire conversation easily and remembers the tag as you reply to a thread.
3. X1 - I've been using X1 to search my Outlook PSTs and inbox and I hate it.  It used to be amazingly fast and I convinced many others to use it, because it would instantly find e-mails that I couldn't track down any other way.   It's now slow, painful and unresponsive.  Other than that, it's great.  I don't know if it's the number of e-mails I've got, or my environment - but everything else works great on my system, except for X1.  It can take 15 seconds just to launch it.  I need to find something else, or figure out how to get the performance to be decent.  I'd tried Xobni a while ago, but had it dog my machine down. I might have to go back to it.
4. SafePSTBackup - This is a great tool.  It allows you to backup your PST incrementally, while outlook is still running.  I archive my PST's out to dropbox and this lets me not have to backup all 10GB every night.  It's free right now and works flawlessly.

Process:

I wish I could say that I'm going with a zero-inbox philosophy, but my e-mail has been overflowing and I'm not dealing with it well, except maybe with how I archive it.  I archive everything to a PST and never delete anything. I have two PSTs by the year, one for sent and deleted and another for everything else.   I use folders pretty meticulously with top level folders like Customers, Team, Internal, Technologoy, etc and then build them from there.  ClearContext helps simplify this in a big way.  

I would have switched to Outlook 2011 (the mac version) a while back, but my company has not upgraded their servers to Exchange 2010 to support the platform.  Hopefully by the end of the year.  What I love about Microsoft Exchange is the real time syncing of my e-mail and contacts across multiple devices.  This allows me to simultaneously have my e-mail, calendars and contacts sync'd up across my laptop, iphone and iPad.

Any ideas that I'm missing?  Maybe a good search engine or better way to backup e-mail and deal with PSTs?

NFL Field of Dreams

Field of Dreams 2: NFL Lockout with Taylor Lautner from Taylor Lautner

Surprise!

My wife threw me a surprise party. That's the great news. The bad news is that she waited. A long time. An inordinate amount of time, really. Long enough that one might think that I wasn't having a party at all. Long enough (hypothetically) for a person to accuse his wife of not actually doing anything for their birthday. Long enough for a person to believe that they were forgotten and not think that there was anything going on. Yes, I was surprised. Even more surprised, when the event turned into a roast of me. I sat there as story after story was told and I was not allowed to respond. Just sit there and smile. Brad took the cake with his amazing story of his third fella.



If the video doesn't show up in this post, click here to see the video in Youtube.

How to become Dave Kurt

What bigger honor can a person have in their life than to have a documentary (or should i say a 'mockumentary') produced about them. Thank you to Jason Shinn and company for putting together this thorough explanation of how to be me.

Seth's Memorial

Seth was a kid in my youth group. He's been one of my kids since the 6th grade. He took his life on Tuesday. I'm angry and I'm sad. I was sobbing as I pulled these pictures together. Here's a quick snapshot of Seth.


If you can't see the slideshow, click here for the pictures.

Dave's 40th Surprise Birthday Party/Roast

If you can't see the video, click here to watch it on Youtube.

Getting to the point - Accupuncture

I've been dealing with chronic pain for the past 16 months or so, ever since a botched vasectomy caused some nasty nerve damage in places you really don't want to have it.  I've gone to doctor's all over the place and after two surgeries, they've now told me it's just something I'm going to have to deal with for life.  Not being one to give up, I figured I'd try acupuncture.  What do I have to lose?

I was skeptical.  I don't know a lot about eastern medicine, but the concepts of 'getting my chi aligned and flowing' were pretty foreign concepts to me, hence I went in skeptical.

The first acupuncturist I went to Dr. Paul Sheng,MD in Brighton.  I knew a few other people who'd been to him and recommended him.  I went in, explained my problem and he explained to me in very western, medical terms that I probably had a nerve injury (I forget the medical term) and that he thought he could fix it.  He had me lay on the table facing the wall.  He proceeded to put needles all over, in my ear, my abdomen, my back and my pelvis.  I know what you're thinking: he didn't place any needles in the area of injury, thankfully.  Dr. Sheng didn't do a very good job explaining what he was doing and why.  He took a very doctorish approach to the treatment, very different from the Lotus Center approach.  Interesting side note on the guy, he's a Christian, whose family escaped from communist China after being persecuted for their faith.

This went fairly smoothly.  The needle pricks were tiny and I really couldn't feel them.  What surprised me was the next part: hooking up electricity to the needs and laying there while a current is running through you.  Very strange and slightly painful.

I didn't really feel a change afterwards.  I was still in pain, and Dr Sheng recommended I start to wean myself from the pain medicine I was on, as they would only the dull the pain in my mind, not really deal with the problem.  It was a bigger ask than it sounds, as it had taken me a month or two to build up to the medicine I was on and quitting was no small task.

After a period of feeling pretty due to a group of friends at church praying and fasting for me, I went off the pain meds.  I kept going back to Dr. Sheng, even though I wasn't seeing any kind of immediately release.  The fifth visit, it felt different.  The shock went all the way down my leg when he turned the current on. Leaving the office, things felt the same. A few days later, the pain started subsiding, probably to about 80%.  I had no idea why at the time.  I'm still convinced it was because of the Acupuncture.

At the time, I wasn't sure what was working, and decided I'd try a different acupuncturist.  I went to a place in Ann Arbor called the Lotus Center based on a recommendation from Dana.  My acupuncturist was named Brody.  He sat down with me, looked at my tongue, took my pulse and my chi.  He explained that the flow of my chi was out of whack, hence the pain, and that his job would be to align the energy and take away the pain.  I did my best to be open minded and give it a try.  Brody did a great job explaining everything and making sure I was comfortable.  Very different than the place in Brighton.  Brighton had a very direct, medical approach.  This was a little more squishy and tougher to wrap my brain around it.

I laid on the table and Brody began putting needles in my hands, my feet and my head and then I laid there for about a half hour.  It was the craziest thing, but I actually felt like some kind of wave was flowing around me, I could feel movement.  Maybe it was the needles. Maybe it's something I don't get with a western mindset of believing only what I can see and prove.  It was a weird experience.  I don't know right now whether it's had any impact or if I'll go back.

I feel like the first doctor took a balanced eastern/western accupuncture mixed with medicine view, but didn't have the 'warm fuzzies' of the second guy.  In the end, I'll probably continue with #1 for now as it seems to be working.

I have angered Steve Jobs

I made the switch last week... I switched to and Android phone. It had been coming for a while. I've been bored with what Apple is doing with the iPhone and nothing that was coming downstream at the next iPhone announcement was of much interest to me: no dual core, no real 4G, no real shape difference, so I switched to the more innovative platform: Android - at least for the 30 day AT&T trial period, until I decide if I want to make the switch permanent.

As a friend of mine, Cris, pointed out: Apple makes it very tough to make the move. They try and lock you in at every turn because your media, your apps, your desktop and your devices are all incredibly interconnected. But it's tough to remain in top spot for long; Apple seems to have gotten lazy, or spread too thin.

The Android devices, while fragmented, have leapfrogged Apple. Their interface has many companies bringing new ideas to market and the best of those make it into the next version of the OS. Far better than just having what Steve Jobs thinks is cool making it into the device.  There's also a great hacker community out there rooting (equivalent of jailbreaking) the device and installing more functionality that the telco carriers have locked you out of for some reason.

The first couple of weeks are normally full of me being all excited about the device and then after that finding all of the holes. I've spent the first week figuring out how to make sure I can duplicate all of the critical functionality like exchange e-mail, contacts and calendaring and other nice to haves like run-keeper. I think I've got all of the baseline stuff nailed down right now. I'm having to learn a whole new paradigm from a UI standpoint, and I'm having to manage my batter and multi-tasking much more closely than I did with apple.

Some top of mind observations around my Motorola Atrix and Android OS in general:

• First, I LOVE how tightly this is integrated with Google.  I use Google for everything in my world: blogging, video, maps, documents, RSS feeds, pictures - EVERYTHING.  As you would expect, Google integrates very well into their own system and has tons of apps out there to bring them right to the device.  The only thing I'm disappointed in is the Gmail reader, which I'd hoped to be more like the iPad dual pane viewing of e-mails and their content side-by-side.
• It's a pain to sync it with iTunes, especially on a mac
• The phone is wicked fast. Dual core is impressive
• I like that I can expand the 16GB it comes with another 32GB with an SD Card.
• I love the widget concept, that they're constantly pulling down data so that it's ready when I want to read it, and not having to open an app to do it.
• Going from one button to four buttons is a big change
• I love the way all of my contacts are automatically linked
• Why doesn't it let me sort my contact list by last name instead of doing it by first?
• The battery goes fast on this, but I like that the battery is replaceable
• The voice recognition is amazing. I'm using it much more often, especially for stuff like text messaging and e-mail while driving
• The fingerprint reader/power toggle is a very cool idea for unlocking the phone
• I'm not sure if it's the dual core of the HSPA+ (AT&T's fake 4G network) that makes it faster, but the browser is ridiculous
• The phone can be hooked up to a TV via HDMI cable (included) and has a beautiful interface for watching movies, showing pictures, music, etc.  You can get a laptop docking station so you can connect the phone in and use it like a laptop, or get a multi-media dock and use it like an AppleTV.
• It's interesting to see my kid's take on my phone.  Apparently in the schools an iPhone is much more of a status symbol than an Android device.  Nate's just disappointed that I would make the switch and leave him behind with his iPhone.

I have 25 days left to test drive this.  We'll see if I keep it.  So far, so good.

This is an interesting article on how Apple is still ahead of Android in many ways, and I can't disagree with any of them.

Who is stranger? My kids or dogs?

2011 Kurt Family Mother's Day

Emily's 10th Birthday

Emily turned 10. We got her Taylor Swift concert tickets. We were touched at her response, almost as amused as we were by her response at being sung to at TGI Fridays.

If you can't see the video, click here to see it.

Stop motion videos we made at the Science Center

Ruby

I stumbled across an article in Lifehacker called Ruby For Kids Teaches Your Kid (And Yourself) The Ruby Programming Language. The article talked about how to get your kids involved in programming games through an easy to use language called Ruby on Rails.

I setup the Ruby programming environment for Nate and gave him the link to the tutorial. After dinking around with getting the programming environment setup right, he started watching the video tutorials and ended up making a very cool video game, a pac-man type game. He's moving on to the next level with another book I picked up for him called Ruby on Rails 3 Tutorial. Nate's 14 and I think he connects with the problem solving aspect of programming that's similar to the problem solving aspect of video games.

Clean Sweep

My wife did a clean sweep of the basement and my office is now visible once again!

Youth Group Paintball Video & Photo Album

For those of you seeing this on Facebook, click here for the video.

Here's the photo album for Paintball

Crossroads Youth Group Paintball

We had our annual Crossroads Youthgroup Paintball event yesterday.  We've been doing this for 15 years, not to mention playing it at camp every summer.  I'm not saying this makes me a commando, but I've asked repeatedly to participate in Ops with Delta Force based solely on my paintballs kills.  I even bought a gun about 8 years ago to give me something that would shoot straighter than the rental guns.  

Last year I wore a suit and tie.  This year I went with the Hawiian shirt, but kept the tie.

People go all out with their gear, including Michael.  He believes a fanny pack is useful in any situation, especially paintball.


Maddie believes that anything you do, should be done stylishly - note the nail-polish matching the face camo.

Nate's been playing paintball with me for 4 years, this is Maddie's 2nd year.  The first year of playing is always tough and the paintballs always hurt more when you're not expecting it.  Nate is always up front me and aggressive.  Last year Maddie was pretty reserved and made me promise to protect her.  This year, Maddie was right up on the front lines with Nate and I (see the picture below where she was on the front line with Michael, and everyone else behind her). Nate was right on the front line with Jake, taking people down.. I took the group of nervous middle schools girls on my team and turned them into an army.


The kids were all proud of their paintball wounds and loved sharing their war stories afterwards.


I love the picture on the right of Nate and Maddie.

Mark and Trevor Kohne came with us to play.  Mark joined in on the ugly Hawaiian shirt theme.

Video of Maddie's Choir Concert

Haiti - What I Learned While I Was There

I learned so much in Haiti that I'm sure my friends and family are tired of hearing all of my fun facts that I link to virtually every conversation we have.  Here's a brief glimpse of what I learned:

I learned  that women in every country love purses and that teenagers everywhere are glued to their cell phones.

I learned that almonds don't just fall of the trees the way they look in bags at the store.  You have to bang on them with a rock to get them to open up and eat them:

I learned that I'm still bad at soccer, even against young, barefoot kids

I got to learn that there are ways other than air condition to cool off

.

I learned that Spartans are everywhere!

I learned about the reality of Voodoo to the Haitian people.  I learned a little bit of what it's like to be a part of a Haitian family and see some work being done that is making a difference.  I got to learn about the plight of living with an incredibly corrupt government.  

I learned that kids everywhere love candy (I always kept my pocket filled with candy).

I earned to appreciate my iPhone.  (This kid only had one battery so he had a wire running out of his walkman that he had to hold to the battery to get music)

I learned to appreciate Haitian oatmeal, which Facilita does an amazing job making!

I learned that kids everywhere love action movies (This kids name was Jean Claude and he was convincing me he was tougher than the action movie star Jean Claude Van Damme)

I learned that people can carry a lot on their head, and that even a little kid can carry 40lbs of water.

I learned about different breeds of goats and that one lucky male goat keeps about 140 female goats pregnant throughout the year.

I learned that most Haitians aren't good at taking pictures with an SLR camera.  Especially Echo and Obenes.

I learned to appreciate water and electricity, especially when you have to haul a 400lb generator around to get a little power.

I learned about agribusiness and planting trees in a way that you could double production, prevent erosion and get water back into the springs.

I learned about poverty so deep that you would rather give up your children than see them starve.

I learned about joy through a household slave girl, Sophia who radiated a deep joy, that she explained by the fact that "she had jesus in her heart".  She had a joy that I want.

  I also saw a girl with a deep saddness in her that I wanted to fix somehow.  I didn't do much, but I experienced a lot and was changed deeply.  Make sense?  It didn't to me either.