Football season is over.. Almost

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*Dave*
davekurt.com

What I'm doing on my next flight

Total Eclipse...mid flight from mike escamilla on Vimeo.

Fall Family Day

Maddie's Cheer Team

MSU vs. U of M Game (Spartan Victory!)

Article: Is Facebook Killing our Souls

A couple of months ago, I fasted from all social media: Twitter, Facebook, RSS feds and blogging.  I learned a lot about the pull that social media has in my life.  The first week of fasting I was amazed at how my thoughts are wired around tweeting and my facebook statuses.  I figured out that there's a pretty narcissistic side of me.  I read this article on Relevant magazine article entitled "Is Facebook Killing our Souls" by Shane Hipps and put into words what I'd figured out on my fast:

[Facebook] encourages not just self-absorption, but, more accurately, self-consumption. We become creators and consumers of our own brand. We become enamored by a particular kind of self, a pseudo-self. A self-image controlled in much the same way corporate brands are controlled. Complete with pictures, videos, songs and, most of all, metrics—the number of friends we have, the kinds of friends we have and the kind of associations we have. We endlessly refine, create and consume a digital projection we want others to see. However, we are rarely what we project. This image approximates reality, but it is not reality.

Good to be back in the city

Panthers Victory 25-0!

First Day of School: Then and Now

Cathie's Surprise Party

Tough to believe, but my wife turned 40 this month.  To celebrate the big 4-0, I threw her a surprise party, with lots of help from family and friends.  Thanks to my friend Mark, I actually got the planning for this going about 6 weeks prior to the party, and tried to plan it as the kind of party that Cathie would like. I had no idea it would be so much work and there would be so many details to take care of...

On the day of the party, Cathie's parents came down and Cathie's Mom took her out shopping.  They got a late start and left a few minutes before everyone was set to come over and clean.  Cathie's Dad, the kids and I worked to get the house cleaned and everything ready.  Jon, Beth, Dan, Kris, Tiffany and John came down to help get the house clean and then Cathie's friends Jen & Lori came over with the decorations.  The house was spotless (Cathie's version of spotless, not mine) and the decorations were amazing.  The coolest part was the collage of pictures at the top in the shape of "-40-" that they made.

Cathie was late, but showed up about 7:35, but I think she was genuinely surprised.  We had about 40 people inside and outside, including family, friends and friends from school.

Jackie and her husband Neale came all the way up from Columbus to celebrate Cathie.




My brother, "Thanksgiving Dan" showed up much to my sister-in-law Kris's chagrin, and thankfully, "Surprise Party Cathie" didn't show.  We had beer pong in the garage, and Brad even got his "pointy finger" going.

The evening was made even better as Tiffany brought her brand new boyfriend, John, along to meet the whole family and gain our blessing.  We approved.


You can see all of the pictures in the Picasa album here.

Rush Concert, Time Machine Tour, Columbus OH 2010

Perfect Fall Football Weather

Social Media Fast

In order to avoid having to respond to any more e-mails stating, "Why did you defriend and block me on facebook?", I figured I'd put this quick post out there.  I'm taking 30 days off of all social media: facebook, my blog, twitter, RSS feeds, etc.  I deactivated my facebook account during this time, which gives me the appearance of not existing as far as facebook is concerned, and looking like I've blocked you if you search for me.  I haven't. Well, probably.

Anyways, this is a tougher deal that I'd thought.  Four days in, I'm learning just how much Facebook and twitter consume my time, energy and thoughts.  Part of it is not knowing what other's are doing, but if I'm honest, the larger part is about not broadcasting out to the world what I'm doing.  Pretty narcissistic, huh?

My brother Dan pointed out that it still hasn't stopped all of the auto-posting things I've got setup out there, so things like youtube and flickr are still automatically updating other social media streams, like Google Buzz. I guess I'll have to come to grips in the near term with people not knowing my every thought and seeing pictures of my every activity.  See you in a month!

Kid Rock Concert

Emily's Horseback Riding Camp

20+ Year Old Letter to My Mom

I was going back through a bunch of old documents and I stumbled across this Valentine's Day letter that I wrote to my Mom.

Mom,

I know this isn't a valentines day card, but it says what I want to say a little bit better.

First and foremost, I LOVE YOU! I think you are the best mother in the world. Growing up I sometimes questioned the things you did, and argued with you once or twice, but in the end, I wouldn't of chosen to be raised any differently! I know that the person I have grown into is because of how you and Dad raised me. Looking back, I always felt so loved by both you and Dad, and everything you did radiated with that same love. I look back and I am very angry with myself for the way I treated you both, and the things I said and did that disappointed you. It took a lot of growing up for me to finally see how much you really do care for me and love me. My greatest wish Mom, is to marry someone who will raise my children as well as you have raised yours, and who will be as kind, gentle, beautiful, loving, caring, and spiritually together as you. Most people are lucky just to have a good father who they can look up to as a good male role model. I am doubly blessed - I have YOU. You have always been someone I have admired very much Mom. The way you stand up for what you believe, never compromising your values for anything, your consistency, your kindness towards other people, your good common sense, and giving nature. I just hope and pray I will have all of these same virtues someday.

I want to say thank you Mom, and ask you if you will be my valentine, because I love you very much and think you are the best mother in the entire world. I'm very lucky to have a Mom like you!

Your son,

David John Kurt

Emily's Albino Caterpillar

Lola's Birthday Party

Odd as it sounds, Maddie threw a birthday party for our dog Lola.  It started with receiving an e-mail from the Jeffrey Animal Hospital reminding us that Lola's birthday was coming up.  From there, it got expensive.  Madeline sent out invitations to her friends and their animals, made up gift bags and she and her friends even made a dog cake.  They decorated the back yard and even got party hats for the animals.  Odd, I know.


They invited some of the neighbors.... even boys.. and they showed!  I'm not sure the fellas were quite as into it, and definitely hoping that no one posted the event on facebook.


The cake was even a special dog friendly recipe with peanut butter frosting (not Gabe friendly though):

Executive Dinner

Last night was one of the cooler nights of my career. The story starts back shortly after Xerox had announced it's acquisition of ACS. Xerox's CEO, Ursula Burns and ACS's CEO, Lynn Blodgett had a meeting for our sales teams talking about their goals wanting to see deals involving synergy between our town organizations occur, deals where the value of the two organization brought deals to bear that could not have happened separately. Off the cuff, Ursula and Lynn announced that they would have dinner together with the team that made the first synergy happen. During this call I was IMing with the team for one of our large accounts, and we agreed that we would get that dinner.

We had that dinner last night.  Mark Kohne, a good friend of mine and co-worker, myself and the rest of the team on the account were there along with Ursula, Lynn, our CFO Larry Zimmerman were there for dinner. Mark and I ended up sitting next to Lynn, who is a fantastic and gracious guy.  He was as interested in us as we were in him and shared some great stories on some of what happened behind the scenes during the acquisition of ACS.  He's huge into photography and has published a book already called Finding Grace on America's Homeless, he shared with us that he's working on another book right now around the men of the military as an honor to their service for our country.

Meeting our CFO was very cool as well.  Larry is legendary in our company and was one of key people behind the ACS Acquisition.  I spent a few minutes with him as well and he was great to talk to, not nearly as intimidating as I'd expected, but I'm sure he can be when the time calls for it.

The highlight for me was when Ursula came down and sat with us for a bit, bringing her iPad as well.  I'd been out in a half day workshop with her earlier in the year and she played with my iPad there for a while and it was cool to see she'd picked one up since.  As she sat down next to me, we talked about our mutual love of them after which she got my contact information for future iPad support and said she'd be calling.  She also took us through some of the pictures on her iPad , which included pics with of her family, President Obama, Sting and others.

It was really an honor spending the time with the executive leadership team.  I have a deep passion and loyalty to Xerox and these are people I look up to in what I do, and I wasn't disappointed.  The executives made it their goal to have personal interaction with everyone in the group and it was a better reward than cash for me.  As many of you know, I was an equally big fan of Anne Mulcahy (I went back and saw just how many entries I had on my blog praising Anne) and now you'll to bear with me on similar entries about Ursula.  From the color and style of my hair, and the beauty of my tie, you can see that it's been some a while since I had my picture taken with a Xerox executive:

Dinner with Ursula Burns and Lynn Blodgett