Tagged - Huh?

Well, it appears I've been tagged. It's altogether a new concept for me. From what was posted by The Mom with Brownies (Story of Us)... it looks like I have to give you the following:

• Talk about 4 new things that happened in my life in the past 4 years
• Talk about 4 things that I hope happen in the next 4 years

So, it's some kind of 4x4 thing....

Well, lets start with the most significant...

1. We had two more kids.... Aaron and Kara. Both are unique and cool in their own ways. Aaron is tons of fun and always wants to help, however, at the same time, he's a little rascal. I think he's stuck in the terrible two's, rolled into the troublesome three's and here's looking forward to the friendly four's! ;-)

Kara @ 1 year old is the sweetest bundle of joy, full of smiles and now toddling into everything she can, at full speed... the experience most memerable with her was going without pain medication for a day and a half, just so I could get Heather to the hospital while she was in labor and then both of us being brought up to L&D in wheelchairs and the nurses asking which of us was having the baby. It doesn't seem right to say anything about pain, considering my beautiful wife was going through labor at the time, but a pain pill was never so welcome. I thank God for our very cool friends, Fabrizio and Santy who came and took me and my car home that next day, they truly were a blessing to us during that time.

2. Learning how to walk again and in the course of it, gaining a whole new appreciation for my family. They are truly precious treasures that showed a lot of love to their fiercely independent, workaholic father in a time when he was truly unable to care for himself the way he thought he should be able too. My pregnant wife and oldest son and daughter really poured themselves out for our family during that time. I have a new love and appreciation for them for their strength, courage and self sacrifice during that time.

And, during that time, just before what happened to my ankle, our house had water damage and we went through a couple of the coldest months with cold freezing air blowing through our house, while the insurance company somehow overlooked us. We learned the hard way that you sometimes have to fight tooth and nail, to get what you paid for. And then, in the midst and end of that we experienced the kindness of companies and strangers that came in and went above and beyond, on their own time, to try and make things better than they were, even before all that drama started. They were truly blessings and angels in disguise, so much so that their kindness to our family throughout all those struggle still brings tears of gratefulness to my eyes, even as I type this now. Those people know who they are, and I only hope that in some small way, my life can be lived in daily gratitude and for their kindness.

3. Watching the blessing and courage of my brother-in-law fighting cancer and winning. While he will probably still battle some the aftermath for the rest of his life, his joy, his sharing of his faith and his families unabashed leaning on God throughout that time, again make me want to be a better and more selfless person every day.

4. Filing for unemployment. To me, it's a strange thing that I've never done. I've been working full time or going to school full time and working part time since around 16 or 17 years old and have been blessed to never have been out of a job for more than two weeks at a time. While I initially thought some things would work towards fruition when I was first told I was going to be laid off, they weren't able to happen and I ended up having to file. But, "che sara sara", what will be, shall be... God is bigger and we shall move on to better things.... :-)

And now on to things I hope will happen in the next 4 years...

1. I hope that we will get a bigger house... not a ton bigger, just a little bit, probably with a basement and a decent sized back yard for the kids to play safely in.

2. I hope that our business will kick off, survive and thrive. I would like to create an IT services/specialty company that is different, that people like to work for, creates jobs, helps make customers successful and gives back to the community.

3. Someone asked us tonight if we wanted another kid... my wife said something about number 6?!!!? Umm, lets, see how about finishing college or something like that? That would be cool.

4. Find a way to help out with Habitat for Humanity and stay active living Christianity, not just playing church and staying in a safe little building in the burbs, but really giving back to the community, living it for real and teaching my kids how they can too...

5. I love to write, so writing more too. Maybe add a voice of some type of randomness to the air. :-)

Anywho, to quote someone I heard recently at a LBN meeting, "America is the greatest country in the world and opportunity is there, waiting for us to take it"

My personal goals:
1.) To live with honesty and integrity
2.) To give back to the community, remembering that I can't out give God, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't try ;-)
3.) To help make people's dreams come true
4.) To look for something wonderful, every day
5.) To value people

Anywho, since I'm being long-winded today, my last personal thought is this, "It is better to try and fail, than to never try at all"

How are things today

Things are going much better. The doctor has declared me the epitome of health. We are just waiting for the aches and pains in my body to catch up. Better living through Advil. Ugghh.

Well, seems two surgeries in two years and all the sickness, time off work, etc managed to move me to the top of the "eliminate that job" - "we are only hiring for our group overseas" - "the company is downsizing" list. (Coincidentally, three or four working days after my last note saying the doctor couldn't find anything else wrong with me.)

However, I think it was all the right timing. It was getting very tough working for a company that appeared to be deliberately de-skilling their workers for the sole purpose of sending jobs overseas to cut costs. It really makes one wonder... when are companies going to realize that they sold their own economic and intellectual stability out of the country? Probably when it's too late, and Wall Street punishes them for no longer having any intrinsic value. Especially technology based companies that are dependent on skilled workers. Brainpower and people-power is their asset.

Ouch. But, I guess they are doing what they think they need to do to survive. Maybe Wall Street won't realize the brain trust is gone before the people doing it have cashed in their assets?

All that's ok though. In spite of an economy that is in flux, there is still a lot of opportunity out there. We are trying for different things and hope to see good things soon. I know that God watches over us and is faithful. Our family has been very blessed over the years and I've had opportunity to work in good jobs, with good people and learned a lot, from them and the job. For that I'm very grateful and am very excited about the next opportunity around the corner.

Waiting .... uggh

Well, after a fairly sleepless night (aided by a 10 month old and 3 year old,) it appears my hospital visit has been delayed for the testing. There were no openings to get me in for the test(s) today that need to be run. So now I'll be juggling my first day back to work with potentially a several hour visit back to the hospital tomorrow.

Well, all in God's time. Tomorrow will be another day and I'll deal with it when it comes.

A little bit nervous (maybe a lot)

Ok, so, maybe a lot nervous. I'm probably scared a little too. I actually wonder if I'll be able to sleep tonight. I'm still having more pain than the doctor or myself thought I would still at this point. I'm also scheduled to go back to work on Thursday. I probably should have called the doctor Friday or even Monday, but I didn't. I was just hoping that it would stop hurting.

The thing is, even short drives in the car, say to get Taco Bell or somewhere just a couple miles away hurts. I even had my wife drive me to Microcenter (another place that's cool to shop, because their sales people really work with you to meet your computer needs, whether you're a first time builder, buying a complete system or just picking up an odd part) in the car the other day, instead of going by myself, because just a short drive hurts so badly.

Sitting at my desk for long periods of time hurts. I feel like an Advil junkie. I practically take it right now for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I'm still not getting restful sleep because pain wakes me up throughout the night and every morning. Even with taking a pain pill at night before bedtime, I have to push myself to exhaustion to get to sleep at night to get past the ache.

So, ironically enough, that's not what has me bothered. I was writing all of that off to the side affects/after affects of the surgery. Just thinking if I grit my teeth it'll go away, get better like it's supposed too, so on and so forth.

Well, after the side affects of the surgery, like the secondary infection at the belly button incision and such are all gone, now I got a call from our family doctor's office today. As part of standard procedure, they received a copy of my CT scans. As Dr Craig was reviewing them, he noticed that I have an enlarged spleen. His office wanted me to get in right away, or notify the other doctor from Crittenton so someone could take a look at it.

After a number of phone calls and phone conversations, it appears I will now be spending most of my last day off of work at the hospital. Re-running a gamut of tests that I had before my surgery. The potential side affects of it being my spleen are definitely scary to me. It can mean the rest of my life on antibiotics. The part that's scarier still is what could be causing it.

Dr Audet, from Crittenton hospital, is saying that it doesn't have to be the spleen causing the pain. So that's what I'm holding on to. I'm praying it's just some fluid buildup or drainage. Or maybe an extra tube that was coming from the liver that might still need to be sealed up. I really appreciate the doctor's over there at Crittenton, they have excellent bedside manner and really work to make you feel at ease while trying to figure out why your body is misbehaving.

Anywho, it's not good to borrow trouble and I don't want to until we find out what's really going on. So, I'm trying to distract my mind from it with some light exercise, reading, blogging, setting my son up on the Lord of the Rings Online beta (comes free in this month's issue of PC Gamer Magazine.) And trying to get my mind to settle down enough to get some sleep. (I also like Games for Windows magazine, it's my monthly "have to have" so I subscribe to it via Zinio.)

I'll probably try to drink a hot cup of Peppermint herb tea with a little honey to get myself to relax. That and a good movie will hopefully do it.

Anywho, I thank God for my health. I've actually been fairly healthy most of my life and hope that others are too. I know that nothing I've gone through even compares to some of what I've seen my sister and her husband go through in their battle against him having cancer.

Well, pray for me, that all of this is unfounded worry and we find that it's just a hiccup to get fixed. If not, we'll deal with that too, when it comes.

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.

Gall Bladder Madness

If you must end up in the hospital...

Ok... there you go, I started it. I wasn't really sure how to start this one. See, you never want to end up in the hospital, at least noone I know does. I mean, maybe for a job, but not usually as a patient.

It's probably the part about, "you must be ill to stay here" type thing...

Or maybe it's the "we are going to poke you with lots of needles" type thing...

Or, it could be the "we may have to hurt you to make you better" type thing...

Or, it could be the "we are going to run lots of tests on you now, and they may turn something up, or.... not" type thing...

Of course, the hurting part probably goes with the needles part, not necessarily as much as stitches or broken bones, etc....

So... why would I be thinking about hospitals? Well, I got to spend the better part of my weekend in one. Not a fun experience. I mean, I could think of better ways to spend the weekend. Like, doing nothing, sitting on your but watching t.v., that would be non-productive, but still more fun with 5 fun little buggers running around like crazy than sitting in a hospital bed watching t.v. , while an IV drip slowly hydrates your body and provides all the nutrients in liquid form that you could want and a nurse comes in to take your blood pressure and temperature every 4 to 6 hours.

Basically, I had what appeared to be a gall bladder attack, however none of the proteins that would indicate it were showing up in my bloodstream. Then, as my bloodwork came back, they identified that I had very high liver enzymes, (and they were actually climbing while I was in the ER). The internals specialist decide to admit me and they took every picture under the sun they could of my gall bladder, liver, kidney's, etc. I had a ct-scan, x-rays, ultrasound and dye scan (radioactive juice so they could trace the workings of my internal organs.)

In the meantime they were keeping me on pain meds for all of this. Well, at the end, my liver enzymes (while still way too high) were starting to come down and they decided to release me.

Ahh, the joys of real food. My first taste of something good was a fresh whole grain bread loaf from Panera (provided by the kindly neighbors in my room) and a large glass of water provided by my kindly nurse. I am someone who drinks water voraciously, so that first glass after two days without any was awesome.

So, still in pain on Saturday afternoon and going home with orders to be in for lab work on Monday and take Advil for pain management I was off for home...

Oh, and to finish the if you must stay in the hospital part... I have to say, I highly recommend Crittenton Hospital in Rochester Hills, Michigan. The professionalism of the nurses seems like 2nd nature and is softened by their compassion and kindness to their patients. To have a nurse say you were a good patient and she doesn't want to see you leave, makes a person feel like a human being, when a lot of times hospitals make people feel like meat. That doesn't happen at Crittenton. From doctors who are specialists and surgeons, to nurses to lab technicians, nurses assistants and transporters, they make you feel like you are important. I watched them treat elderly people who could barely walk or move, with kindness and gentleness, taking a little extra time to make conversation and jokes and listen to them and make them feel important, when they could have just bustled off to business. But instead, I saw a true attitude of kindness that makes people feel like they are more than the next case, like going into Crittenton isn't just going to a medical oil change place, but stepping into a family who wants to get you better.

This isn't the first time I've seen that there. I've seen it in their treatment of my mother-in-law and my wife, when she was pregnant. (One of the many reasons all five of our children were born there.)

~ Happy Valentines Day ~

Happy Valentines Day!

In addition to valentines day, today was our anniversary too. I took a vacation day from work, to spend it with my wife and try to spoil her a bit. We've been married for fourteen years now. We had plans to go out in the morning and for lunch. Well, best laid plans of mice and men, since here in Michigan, we were pretty much hit by the North end of a nasty little blizzard that shut down most of the Midwest from Chicago to New York. There was also a wave of tiredness that we were both fighting from being up and down with small children in the middle of the night.


Speaking of 5 or 6 inches of snow, we have really cool neighbors too. Jim and his wife, a retired gentleman on our street came through and snowblowed ours and most of the neighbors driveways and walks. It was bitter cold out with windchills below zero and this man and his wife went through with his snowblower and dug a bunch of us out. His wife came behind and shoveled peoples porches and walk areas he couldn't get to with his snowblower. (We've been in this house 7 or 8 years now and have gone through two snowblowers. I talked to some friends about it this year and they said I need to look at something with more horsepower and chain driven, so it doesn't break down when I'm removing snow from mine and the neighbors home.) We did have some really pretty ice storms not too long and I got a couple shots...

My oldest son then had instructions to unbury our back driveway, garage door area and garbage cans. The quite funny part of it is that he decided this meant a one shovel wide area for walking in, not shoveling the back step or a path to any vehicles and not clearing enough space to get a mini-van out and leaning on the side fence, holding a shovel and chatting with the kid from next door. I guess that is shoveling snow in the mind of an 11 year old and we will have to work on a new definition during the next real snowfall.

Well, with all of that we finally got out for a late lunch of around 2pm. We went to National Coney Island (famous date and family dining place for us ~ it has something to do with food being good, kid friendly, hot and fast). We had a friendly waitress and thanked her with a Valentines Day tip. We then talked and drove around a bit, visiting Barnes and Nobles to pick out a book or two and get a cup of Starbucks coffee. We are quite hooked on a new one they have out now, Cinnamon Dolce' Latte, it's very good. I think she got it first and took me down with her. ;-)

Well, we picked up an absolutely hilarious book, Don't Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings, by Tyler Perry. If you haven't seen any of Tyler Perry's work with Madea you really need to pick up the videos from Netflix or your local video store. His work is full of meaning, life lessons and dealing with reality, wrapped up in the tales of a spunk and spit filled Madea who pretty much butchers every "witticism" there is with hard hitting and humorous honesty. Just glancing through the book made us decide to pick up a copy for some friends of ours, (who actually introduced us to Tyler Perry and Madea.)

During our trip and time together, we talked about ourselves and our marriage. And I guess, for me, the real end thought that I came to was this.... I still love my wife very dearly, it may seem funny, that at 14 years, I can say that; but you know, we've had a lot of crazy things going on, but in spite of all that, it doesn't feel like 14 years, but more like a year or two. I have to say that I've been truly blessed with a precious gem of a woman. I've seen her gentle and giving spirit, her tender heart towards her mother and our children and others in our community.

I've watched her grow as a woman and a mother, and truly appreciate that in her. She is truly a beautiful woman, from the sparkle in her eyes when she's sassy, the tenderness and love I see in her when a child is in need or just wants attention, to the tears when her heart is broken or wounded. As an example, when I asked her what special thing she wanted to today, she responded that she wanted to take coffee and small gift to friends of ours, that evening. They weren't really able to go out for Valentines day, due to the wife having a broken leg. This mother of 5 split her Tibia from the top down and recently had surgery on it. So, after getting the kids to bed, that's what we did.

So, I have to say, there are people in my life that make me want to be a better person and my wife is one of them. It's very cool to be married to a woman that you just have fun being with. She is an honor to her husband, her children, in fact her whole family. She is who God created her to be and has a tender strength with just enough spitfire to make the world around her sparkle. She is truly a wonderful and beautiful woman. I love her as much, if not more than the day I married her.

Why I Moderate

I get asked why I have moderation turned on. It's not to make it hard to post, it's because I've had to deal with forum/blog trolls trying to post ad links in response to posts. It's silly, but it's what happens. So, I'm not interested in censoring your post, I'm censoring the people who are wasting blog posts and comments for their own advertising. If they want to sell ads, they need to get their own blog. :-P

Edit: 03-26-07 - Ok, so I'm going to try some of Google's new features and see if that takes care of the trollers... :-)

Vista - Ready Boost

I've been playing with Windows Vista, Business Edition on a D600 Dell laptop. The UAC security model leaves me questioning most days. I find it frustrating that, as an Administrator, I have to elevate privileges just to run an "ipconfig /flushdns" command. However, I'm also very excited about Ready Boost.

Ready Boost is the ability to plug a USB Thumb Drive into a USB slot and have the system use it as RAM. For someone who likes to run a three virtual machines on a laptop computer all at once, this is an awesome feature to look forward to. So, I sat down in the living room the other night, and threw in a 1GB USB 2.0 PNY Attache' drive. No go. Hmm, can you believe, it actually took me to the next day to realize that if you're running on battery, Vista Power Management might not actually give you the juice to run that little 2.0 USB drive as RAM. Now, it seems like the power draw on that wouldn't be enough to keep it from running, but Ok.. I'll go with that.

So, the next day, I plugged in the power cord and tadah... up pops Ready Boost after I've logged in. So, now I've got an extra 800 MB of "Ram" to use.

Well, how do you tax a computer? Load up World of Warcraft! Can you believe it? It works, and works pretty well. (Don't tell anyone, but I logged in, dueled a gnome warlock with a dwarf paladin and actually won!) I'm very pleasantly surprised. Even the add ons work. It's wild. The only thing that doesn't seem to run at this point is the Blizzard, background Bittorrent downloader. Not a big deal, since most people, myself included, aren't really thrilled with how it works anyways.

Anywho, my next goal is to see if my MSDN subscription has the new beta for Virtual PC available, so I can load it up with a couple of VM's and test performance that way (which, by the way, Microsoft is now including a few Virtual Images for download from MSDN, very Sweet!) If not, I have a couple licenses to VMware workstation 5.5 and will look to get into the beta for their 6.0 product.

If you have any ideas on tools that I can use to test/validate this Ready Boost technology, leave me a comment as I'd like to try them out.

Christmas Ramblings

Christmas is one of those times of year there is a lot of controversy about. Do this, don't do that. Don't spend that, do spend that.

We get yanked between religion, tradition and commercialism... and who knows how many more "ism's".

In our family we are trying to build a healthy mix. We want to honor God and thank Him for the gift that he gave. We want to create traditions that our children keep. We want our family to have fun. We want to share blessings with others that might not have a Christmas of any kind, without a helping hand.

Most years we inundate our kids with gifts and they get spoiled by relatives as well. This year, money was tighter than usual, so we talked to them and let them know, that for us, there's a lot that happens during the year, that is good and so this year was about giving, not getting. No matter how you cut it, that's a tough pill to swallow when your a kid. Don't get me wrong, we really would have liked to have given them a lot this year, but we had made commitments to help other's and those were important.

To understand, I guess you have to know that there were many times when I was a child that we didn't know where Christmas or Thanksgiving or sometimes food or money to pay bills was going to come from. Yet, never a year did we go without. God used people in Family Services, Goodfellas, Churches and so on that helped a family with 6 kids get through. So, now that we have been blessed with all that we have, Heather and I can't help making a commitment that is an act of gratitude, of wanting to bless, of wanting to give back, even a fraction of what was given to myself and my family when I was a child.

So, this year, we may not have gotten a lot for our children, but we were able to give. And if you didn't get the living Christmas card or baked goods from us this year, it's because things were tighter than we planned and we really needed to make sure what was allocated went where need was greatest.

We were able to spend time with family and friends. We have been very blessed. Last year was a struggle beyond belief for us, yet nothing compared to men and women on a front line laying down their lives fighting for freedom, families losing everything to a hurricane still not able to put their lives together, tsunami's and earthquakes.

I never thought I'd have surgery and have to relearn to walk again, or that our home would go through it's own waterfall or 6 months of repairs and my wife struggling to keep things going while pregnant with a beautiful little girl at the same time.

But, in reality, that was nothing compared to a brother-in-law fighting cancer or my father's lovely wife who went through an amputation of her foot last year and then more cut off this year, and talk about having to relearn how to walk, she will be learning to use a prosthetic, I have my whole foot and ankle, with just a little torn ligament. Yet, when we see her, she always has a smile and kind words. So, while sometimes things may look down or lean, there's probably someone, somewhere that has it leaner.

2007 will be a new year and hopefully we will grow stronger and learn a lot from 2006.

The 5 Minute Date

I had a phone call from someone very dear to me the other day. Her husband and herself are struggling with communication and connecting with each other. They've been through a lot of ordeals in the past few years and this call felt strangely anticlimactic after all of it.

The reality is that they aren't communicating, and it's putting a huge burden on the marriage. I prayed with her and recommended that she and her husband start talking to a professional counselor, whether the pastor at her church or someone else. Thankfully, I heard some time later that her and her husband were going to proceed in that direction.

As she talked to me, I thought back to the hard times my wife and I have gone through. How many times, when not knowing how or where to proceed, I would clam up and not talk. I would retreat into my cave or cocoon... processing and studying and trying to decide what the next right move would be to care for my family and meet their needs. And sometimes, it was really just a weariness of trying to figure out how to proceed further or gather the emotional and physical strength needed for the next day.

Well, somehow, Heather and I started going on coffee dates. Brad had been born at the time and we could only leave him with his grandma for a little bit, or while he was napping. These were basically dates that lasted the amount of time it took to get to Tim Horton's for an English Toffee Cappuccino and back home. Later on, when Starbucks started popping up, we switched to such fancy things as Grande Cafe Mocha's, Peppermint Mocha's, Frappucino's, Caramel Machiatto's and so on. (Don't get me going on coffee, my wife loves it almost as much as I do :-). Anyways, coffee isn't really the point.

The time we spent together, sometimes in silence, just enjoying the quiet warmth of each other's company and the drive to and from the coffee shop. Sometimes talking and letting each other discover likes, dislikes or fears or worries or small joyful moments of our day. That made our marriage stronger, even in the midst of hard times, growth times. And really, those trips back and forth to Tim Horton's and Starbuck's over the years helped keep our marriage vibrant and alive. It took us away from the chaos of the kids for a few minutes and let us be ourselves with each other, not just Mom and Dad, but husband and wife, friends who could love something warm and special together.

That's something us guys need to do, if our marriages are struggling in silence and we are using the TV to drown out the kids, maybe we need to take our wives out for more 5 minute dates, even if its the back yard. Take her away for a few minutes and remember the man you are and her as the woman you married, and treat each other as friends. Sometimes those 5 minute dates can put life back in a marriage and pull that friendship back into it also. :-)

Reflections on Pain and other stuff

Somehow in the craziness of pain, change, chaos and pain medication honor is sometimes hard to grasp. What is honor and right for one, may not be the path another chooses.

I ended up getting surgery on my ankle almost 6 weeks ago now. To make a long story short, I went to a new doctor who stated that even if I'd been treated poorly (i.e. no cast, no proper elevation and all the other stuff you do for a grade 3 sprain) that I should be doing much better than I had been. Because I wasn't making progress with the amount of time that passed, he recommended surgery. He thought he would need to put in an anchor. It ended up being two.

Well, this is the upswing, so it's good. I'm actually on my 3rd cast now, which gets to come off for examination this coming Tuesday, May 16th. The doctor wouldn't commit what kind of cast I'm going to end up with after that. Whether it will be another fiberglass or a walking cast belted on.

During all of this time, I've been in multiple states of pain and medication with doctors orders to stay off my feet with my left ankle elevated. Throughout this time, my pregnant wife and children have been hero's. Heather was under orders to stay off her feet, due to heavy premature contractions. With a due date of May 15th things have been crazy. My two oldest have had a character growing time, helping out both parents, above and beyond. And then two to three weeks before the new baby was born, Heather started experiencing elevated blood pressure, and the doctor told her to stop shopping or going out and to stay off her feet. In the midst of all this, our home was under repair for the frozen pipes & water damage that occurred Thanksgiving night and the morning after. (That repair is still going on.)

With two parents down my kids were a huge help. But we had a huge lesson in community also. Family, friends and Our church really have pulled us through. Our children performed a miraculous effort of cleaning house, helping with meals and laundry. Then women from our church brought us meals, deserts and friendship. Other family members took my mother-in-law during this time. My mom came out and shopped for us multiple times, people from our small group have been helping out with some of my spring projects to remove hazards from the yard.

Then, the doctor started looking at inducing Heather and was reiterating on a weekly basis that she needed to stay off her feet. She tried explaining to him, how "nigh on impossible" this was for her, with my foot up and being on pain meds and 4 kids at home already. Well, the Kara Amelie decided to come May 2nd, 2006, two days before the Doctors 2nd induce date. We had a wheelchair train into the Labor and Delivery area at Crittenton, much to the amusement of the nurses. The nurses and doctors were fabulous. She was born a beautiful 7lb, 6oz and 20 inch long baby, and Heather's blood pressure went back to normal. Family members and friends carried us back and forth to the hospital (I haven't been able to drive due to the pain medication I'm on containing narcotics.)

Well, it's now time for the work on our home to complete and they are moving us out for a week starting Monday morning.

The stuff that goes on here is not a statement of how our family has met a challenge, but the amazing contributions of time, energy and love of our family, friends and church towards us is a testament of real community. It's something I can write of with deep gratitude, but can't even begin to express or repay how our lives have been touched with peoples and God's love and grace.

Chaos for the holidays

It's been a crazy couple of months for us. On December 2nd I slipped and fell on a decorative piece of pavement outside my church while we were picking up tickets for an outing at Greenfield Village. Needless to say, we didn't make the trip, and instead got to spend the evening with the wonderful and overworked staff at Crittenton Hospital in Rochester Hills. In short, I succeeded in achieving what was considered a Grade III sprain.

A week later and a half after the sprain I was put onto a normal regime of Physical Therapy. I actually started two days later than the doctor wanted, a Wednesday vs Monday, because I misunderstood his request and had to call his office for clarification.

Well, things seemed to plateua and they sent me in for an MRI. The doctor just said I had some tearing. But after the Physical Therapist reviewed the MRI and MRI report, I now have a new regimen from him. I have to go back to icing, staying off of stairs and no bending of the ankle (doesn't want me to worry about heal-toe gait right now - keep it at 90 degrees, etc) and such as that. It's really weird when you ice your ankle and after the 10 - 15 minutes is up, and it doesn't even feel cold at the ankle, but when you touch it with your hand, it's very cold to the touch.

In a nutshell, the MRI revealed that I had a complete tear involving the anterior inferior tibiofibular ligament (AITFL for short and not to be confused with talofibular, which can get a similar acronym and is a very common sprain). I also get some weird clicking at times from my ankle that I'm not sure what is causing it. I guess some of this explains the constant pain build up I've been experiencing after evne limited activity. If my research on the AITFL is correct, those types of sprains are not only rare, but a complete tear is the worse end of a Grade III sprain (if it can be classified as a sprain at all). Some of the medical references I've been reading also state it as a primary ligament used in the stability of your ankle and walking. (just 1 example - http://www.sportsci.org/encyc/ankacuinj/ankacuinj.html)

The Orthopedist, just wants me to follow continued physical therapy and states that the scar tissue will heal it.

I hope he's right but it almost seems I'm being treated for a talofibular sprain, not a tibiofibular complete tear and am trying to find a way to get a second opinion with an orthopedist that is unbiased and unrelated to the current doctor treating me. I just want to be able to have restful sleep at night and to walk without pain. This happened on December 2nd of 05, shouldn't it be getting a lot better by now? It's been over 10 weeks.

Basically, I start out my mornings feeling somewhat ok. I'm able to walk with the cane in the right hand and not in the left where the ankle is sprained however as the day progresses and it gets to be about 1 or 2 pm in the afternoon, (with just some moderate back and forth walking, cuz I work at a desk job), I am experiencing intense throbbing and sharp pain throughout my foot and ankle. Some days it starts sooner and I have to switch the cane back to my left hand trying the daunting task of keeping my weight off my left ankle. By mid-afternoon, I'm convinced a bottle of Motrin wouldn't take the pain away.

Early Thanksgiving

It's been a while since I've put anything down. A lot of craziness at work and home has kept us running in circles. Recently moving out of an Ops role to an Engineering role has really brought a lot of new challenges forward. Learning a new group can be a fun and exciting thing.

On a personal level, we had a roof leak down our kitchen chandelier (thank God for my brother-in-law who took the morning off work, came over, traced it down and helped fix it), I spent a week with a sore throat and funny voice and later the same day of fixing the leak our van broke down to the tune of $1300.00. The van started overheating and some type of seals were busted.

We decided to have Thanksgiving at my mom's a day early this year, so my sister and her family could be there too. Her husband has lymphoma cancer, but does his best not to be sickly. For all the struggles their family has gone through, he's always concerned with how you are doing and how work is going and the people around him. When we finish spending time with him, I always walk away wanting to be a better person and find more and better ways to use my time to serve my family and those around me. Dave is always looking to give and wanting to volunteer to help people out. He's been battling cancer for a little over 5 years now and even two summer's ago, he was out at my mom's digging out and helping repair her well when it went out.

Well, here in Detroit, Thanksgiving Eve brought a beautiful snowfall that really helped put you in the mood for the holiday season. (Speaking of putting you in the mood, I've really been annoying my friends by playing Christmas music in the car since WNIC started up with it a bit early this year. :) )

My mom just loves to pull all the stops out at Thanksgiving and makes enough food to feed an army. Funny, because with everyone piled into her house, it probably was the size of a small army. All together we had 16 people shoved and tucked around her dining room table. The noise is deafening, but the smiles, chatter and food were definitely worth it.

Cool Kids teaching the Dad a thing or three

My children are some of the coolest people I know. Their minds are so full of imagination and life. It's a pleasure to see them set up lemonade stands, plays and their own carnivals. When you see a child's imagination in action, the innocence, fun and joy is probably one of the brightest evidence' of God breathing his spirit into man. No wonder Jesus said to his disciples "...suffer the little children to come unto me." and "Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven"

So, I have to learn to think like a child, and had a good example of this a week or two ago. I'm one of those people who think garages were made for putting cars in. It's almost a religious fervor with me. It's funny because it's largely due to my lack of desire to sweep Michigan winter snow & ice off of my vehicles.

However, my children introduced some magic to my garage, that to me, changes how I will ever look at my garage again. After my daughter's birthday, they turned it into an art studio and gallery. They stood up canvases and poster paper and painted, drew and markered their little hearts away. Every color and paper size you could imagine graced the garage floor and walls and tables throughout. My three children turned themselves into an art team with an energy, joy and childlike creativity that surpassed the greatest artists history has ever known.

In the course of their creation's of beauty, their father learned an important lesson that humbles him. A simple garage for keeping snow and weather off of a few cars could be transformed into a palacial studio of art and creativity at the whim of his children's imagination. I hope in my lifetime, I learn again to touch but a bit of that imagination.

To be willing to take the simplest of things, of people and of dreams; and apply a bit of imagination and creativity and make an art studio from a garage or a fort from a pile of leaves or a palace from a tree fort in my life.

A twist on a technology career

Being employed in the technology arena, I tend to get very focused on it and all of the things surrounding it. (It probably doesn't hurt that it's fun and a hobby for me too ;-)

However, I have a friend that started out in Civil Engineering, wound up as a "LAN" Administrataor, network admin and eventually a manager at a technology firm. Very sharp guy. However he surprised the heck out of me when he told me that he was diversifying his hobbies into stained glass!

Anywho, I was out on his site this morning and saw some very beautiful pieces! They were really examples of hands that can build a pc or a server or a network infrastructure finding something creative to do that expresses an artistic side of him, that I knew was there, but didn't know the extent!

I was impressed, not by just the pieces, but even the settings that he chose to display them in! From all impressions he has also unintentionally captured the beauty of Michigan's different seasons in the backgrounds that fill out the life in his stained glass. Displaying his work in use at a dinner table also brings out a delectable and fashionable dining experience. This one here, Strawberries, made me want to reach out into the computer screen and take a bite.

Here are some of the pieces I really enjoyed that I thought bring out some life of their own. The names are mine, so if you send them an e-mail wanting to buy a piece or have one custom made, make sure you use the photo number or their headings to let them know! ;-)

Reflection
Note the person and trees in the background that make this piece feel alive.
Winter
Winter2
SummerRain
Monogram Fall
WinterSunshine

So, those are just some of my favorites; beautiful artwork framed by nature's beauty! I hope you enjoy it too!

Innovate - Do something different today

Innovation, Change, Action, Agile......

These are all the things a business needs to stay feasible in today's world! I actually have the privilege of working for one of these companies. For privacy reasons, I can't really talk about who they are, but I can say that they have reinvented themselves over the past two years.

That reinvention bodes well for their future. They've taken old school determination and applied themselves to new, inventive ways of doing things that breeds creativity. They are re-creating themselves from the inside out. They are also creating awe-inspiring potential, by allying with their technology partners to solve problems and create new solutions for business.

While this type of change takes time to reach into every facet of a company, the enthusiasm and infectious nature of it, really are spreading to the people who work for them and are generating the opposite of what I complained about in my last post; They are creating desire for change, desire to innovate and also putting in place essential tools and people to remove the artificial boundaries that prevent a company from innovating and moving forward.

It's exciting to see a company implementing the things that will not only make it an exciting place to work, but as this Idea Virus grows and spreads, will launch themselves and their customers into the next generation of technology and enabling business success.

Their people are the key to this, the people working for them that are spreading the excitement and potential. So, while there may be a struggle with growing pains and some fight for mediocrity, others are pushing the envelope for success. That's where I want to hitch my star, with those who are driving this better, making it grow and creating the atmosphere that makes a company and their customers successful.

People who aren't in groups or companies with that kind of vision, have to become the driver. Take hold of the infection and excitement, in fact, generate it yourself. The naysayers will eventually be caught up with, they will obsolete themselves if they don't catch on. In the technology arena, don't let those types obsolete you by absorbing their philosophies; instead, grow yourself and move forward, generate good change littered with new and common sense ideas.

Be innovative, it's what you as a person were born to do!

Change, challenges and technology

One of the things I like about technology is the change, the growth, the challenge of working on new things, inventing new ways of doing things and solving new problems.

As companies grow in today's world, why do so many of those who could be at the forefront of change and coming up with ways to apply these new inventions (yes I call the evolutionary growth and leaps in technology, invention; but I also call invention that creativity of the people who give us practical application of new things, and inventors, those people who look at new technology and see the ways to make it useful to our daily education, business and lives) practically fear that change, fear that success?

The sadder part of this is that the companies that could benefit from this creative thought, scare it away or push it away into a pool of process entrenched in buzzwords like ITIL or QMS or ISO. Are these things bad in of themselves? No, they aren't. In fact all of them are good, they help build frameworks around the good things companies do in business; making them repeatable, sustainable and hopefully generating efficiencies that will help weed out the bad things we do and replace them with the good.

So, what is the bad? What is the complaint about these things. The complaint is that very few companies understand that these frameworks need to be flexible enough to encourage the change and innovation with the courage that takes them to their next level, or give them their next product or service to sell. But, instead of embracing the flexibility that helps us grow, companies embrace the structure, they think the framework is the solution and forget that the innovation and change brought on by the innovation of people are what make them successful.

In the struggle to embrace the framework, the people who generate and embrace change and new ideas are forced by their respective corporate policies to shut up and embrace or be punished. Punishments range from lectures, firings, demotions, promotion passovers, being passed over for pay raises etc...

What happens to the innovators when these punishments are passed on? Some pull up their own courage and move on. Some pull up their own courage and continue to force for change. And then some adapt, and become the automotons the corporation thinks they want.

Sometimes months, sometimes years later companies realize what has happened. They realize it when other companies stop buying their goods, services or both. Some companies plug the bleeding holes with soluble solutions such as new process fads or new CEO's or new layoffs. However, making shareholders feel good doesn't really contribute to the overall health of a company. Throwing away the things that made shareholders want to own pieces of something great, something growing and alive doesn't really fix things.

Is all bad, no... some is good... because some companies get off the treadmill before it's too late. They embrace change and learn to live in it. Growing pains show them new ways to grow, new ways to change, new ways to lead. These companies are on the cusp of innovation, but more than that, their people lead us into the future.

While corporate community is a macrocosm of motion, so are we all individuals microcosms of it. We have the ability to lead that change, to break the mold, to break out of our fear zones and courageously use the innovation in front of us. We need to embrace ideas, imagination and change. We need to be willing to make mistakes and successes. Start small and work big.

People around you will catch the excitement of that change. The excitement of fresh ideas is contagious. Maybe it'll rub off on your management, their management and your companies board of directors. Start something exciting, start something new and you may find that innovation and new ideas addictive.