Did the hero slay the dragon?

Fantasy has always been fascinating to me. Whether it was the cowboy's and Indians, Star Wars, knights and dragons, superhero's, modern day and past. I found Zorro fascinating along with Daniel Boone, Davy Crocket and Jim Bowie. I always wanted to wield a lightsaber in defense of the Republic defeating Darth Vader and I wanted the magic sword of King Arthur, because I knew no dragon hide, no matter how strong his scale, could withstand the sword filled with magic and fueled by honor.

I bring all of this up, because, even to this day I still like to pick up a magical weapon or super powered laser rifle or other weapon in a video game and go forth and defeat the evil horrors that prowl the lands or threaten life, family, children and people as we know it in this galaxy. I love to sit down with a book, comic or movie like Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, Spiderman, Superman, Eragon and inspire the hero inside me that wants to come out and save the day, coming back from impossible odds.

It seems that there is a call to honor, deeds and glory that every man's heart wants to reach for, to change the world (or even his small corner of it) somehow. As my children grow older, I want them to reach for that. I want their imaginations to grow with the fun and possibilities of the world around them. However, I also strive to teach them that heroism is not just found in a video game or a movie. While those things, like a book, can be a teacher of those things, actions win the day.

I emphasize and want them to see the everyday heroism of people around them, our firemen, our policemen our volunteer military. People who work with the homeless or fight disease and illness while still trying to live a productive life. I have a brother-in-law like that, family members like that. We encourage our kids to watch TV shows like Extreme Makeover to learn about giving back to the community.

We also encourage their participation, in making self sacrifice to help at Christmas and other times of the year with families or people in need. Just helping out with people who are in trouble by doing something as simple as delivering a meal. That money and things are a tool, yes to make life better, but not just for yourself, for others too.

The real point is, there are real heroes among us, every day heroes that we need to recognize and appreciate and teach our children to recognize and appreciate. And it doesn't hurt to start small, the big will come one day, by having a child help a younger brother or sister find a toy or with a chore. Then, defeat a cog in Toontown or as they get older help a group or fellowship take down a dragon or get a ring to the fires of Mt Doom. Then helping pack food baskets for church or outreach and then one day helping in a soup kitchen or charity organization.

The important part is by mixing their fiction heroes with real life heroes and events, from our children we can build men and women of courage and hope, starting with giving them challenges and successes for their age and building on that. By doing these things, we teach them character. Not just character in the pursuit of the next fancy, whizbang thing, but character that whatever career they decide to follow or toy they decide to purchase, they will also know how to reach out in their communities in little ways, that build up and ripple around them. That they will know how to start helping, changing and making a difference in their world.

We can teach them (and maybe ourselves at the same time) to be heroes in the real world as well as the imaginary one. So, take your child and go slay a dragon today!

(Click the picture for a nicer view of the dragon! Oh and it took lots of people working together to take this big guy down.)

Killer NIC - K1

I'm not usually a fan-boy of much stuff. However, I'd read a lot of reviews of this "Linux based firmware NIC" and FNApps from Bigfoot Networks. Some people saying it was crap and others that couldn't stop singing it's glory. The only thing that bit me, was the $250+ price tag.

When I heard they had released a sub-$200 version and our tax return happened to come in about the same time, it was time to bite. I bought the K1 version, which was still painful in the price department.

I installed it in my 3 year old Athlon 64 3200+ XP SP2, PC with 1GB of RAM and a couple year old GeForce 6600 video card, and ran through the installation of the drivers off the included CD-Rom.

After the system rebooted the K1 immediately checked Bigfoot Networks for updates and let me know that new drivers and firmware were available. Due to reading user complaints about some of the early releases of their drivers and firmware, (not withstanding that I was on the newly released hardware and that, to their credit, they were purported to fix user problems very quickly) I went ahead and allowed the updates. I also accepted the install of the FNA firewall, with the full desire to remove the CPU bound slowness of the Windows and McAfee firewalls I'd previously been using from the equation.

Upon completing all of the installs, updates and corresponding reboots I was ready to launch my favorite online game, WoW and see what affect this NIC had on my system, and more importantly, my gameplay. It was immediate, running through Ironlag, Stormwind and Hellfire Peninsula's Hold, my common ping times of 65 to 130 milliseconds were down to 32 to 40 ms. Quite unbelieving, I repeatedly ran through these tests, only to find that it stayed consistent, during high and low login times.

So, now I'm a hardware fanboy, of a Network card of all things. Quite unbelieving, and all of the different reviews out there complaining about this and that, but the Killer NIC has convinced me and has had a real impact on my game play. In fact, so much that my wife with her GeForce 4 motherboard and built-in Nvidia NIC has told me she wouldn't mind seeing one put into her PC. ;-)

Gall Bladder Surgery

Ok, so I'm going to cheat some on this post and use the contents of an e-mail update I sent out, so I don't have to spend a lot of time writing it.

Even with the pain meds, I feel like a walking bruise and am in a lot of pain right now. Apparently my surgery went well. From Heather talking to the doctor, apparently my gall bladder has been bad for some time. It had been oozing/leaking/excreting a sticky substance which had it stuck to the liver. So, in addition to taking out my gall bladder (I'm rather fascinated with this next comment and can't wait to ask the doctor more about it) the doctor had to scrape my liver clean of the sticky stuff.

I'm still hurting all over though. My belly button incision is infected or something from the gall bladder coming out there. (I guess the incision by my belly button is larger and different than it would have been, due to Heather and I forgetting I'd had an umbilical hernia when I was a baby that had been operated on. So the doctor had to cut differently to get the equipment (and gall bladder :-) past the scar tissue left over from that surgery.)

Was going to go into emergency Saturday because of the infection but finally got a hold of the doctor and she called a prescription in for me for antibiotics, so Heather went and got that. That area kind of feels like it's on fire and it hurts like heck when I move or try to bend over. (You know, forget every so often and try to bend and .... ouch - lol, nuff said.) On pain pills from the doctor, was on 2 about every 6 hours, trying to work down to 1 every 6 hours, however still hurts like heck.

The doctor said it was definitely a very gall bladder bad. I talked to her on the phone Saturday. She told me then that it was very nasty (I think those were her exact words). She told Heather that it had been bad for a long time. She had found evidence of scar tissue and decay that was pretty old. She also told Heather on Thursday that my gall bladder had been excreting a sticky goo that had gotten onto my liver, (and that she had to scrape it off of the liver). The doctor also stated that she had to do a lot of cutting of fibrous-fatty tissue attached to and around the gall bladder to get it out. Apparently it was being stubborn.

Hopefully the above is readable and not to fragmented, pain medication and e-mail writing don't seem to go together too well.