Performed Well

2017 started with a flurry of emotions as we endured our first miscarriage.  But I must admit something: that experience has given me--and I think the rest of my family too--a much stronger sense of appreciation for the special gift of creating a child. Our new baby Symphony Joy was born on November 27th, and she appears healthy and happy.  And once again, I get to see the extraordinary talent that my wife has for caring for infants.  Christine is just so wonderful at loving on the baby and keeping her on a consistent schedule. I was overwhelmed with emotions on the day Symphony was born--even more than the day my first child was born.  I just felt so grateful that she was healthy.  For whatever reason, there was even some surprise mixed in there.  I don't exactly know why I thought something might go wrong, but I definitely didn't take for granted that everything would be fine. I felt similarly when we performed our musical Rhythm City for the first time on stage.  W

So much has happened in the last month!  Instead of focusing on one thing, I'm going to recap on several things with just a short blurb for each: SuccessVision Express Point of Sale My brother David and I have been working on a great new project for SuccessVision Express.  We are building a point of sale system for them using Ruby on Rails framework.  It has been an exciting project to take on, and I love working with my brother. DeerAngel - Restricted! Many of you have watched my daughter Angel's DeerAngel videos on YouTube (www.DeerAngel.org).  They're entertaining videos of a 12-year-old girl talking about conservatism.  Well, we just learned that YouTube has been putting some of her videos into restricted mode (which means that many kids would not have access to view them).  Here's an example of one in which Angel calmly argues in favor of eliminating the minimum wage (https://youtu.be/BRt9-mpO-dw)... and this is restricted?  It's crazy. DITEC Going

Last February, my father bought an old church that had been unused for over a year and began the process of renovating it into a theater and event space as well as a new church home for another local church. Originally, I took a more-or-less hands-off approach to the whole thing, but about 2 months ago, my dad and I agreed to bring me on board as the Director of Operations.  It's been an interesting and good journey so far.  A lot of renovation has happened, and things are looking so much better than they did in February.  It's exciting to see all the changes. On top of that, the theater space has already been utilized for several performances of Shrek the Musical and Little Women, and it's been booked by Culture House and Stage Right for their musical productions too!  After another month of renovations, we should be in good shape to hold weddings too!  We're all very excited about how this space will be used! The biggest question of all though is which church wi

On May 15th of this year, I started practice to be on my company's Flag Football team for Corporate Challenge.  As soon as the practice began, I started tossing the ball back and forth with one of my would-be teammates.  About 5 minutes into this little game of catch, I broke the index finger on my left hand. Now, four months later, I've had over a dozen doctor/physical therapy appointments in an effort to treat this finger.  I've been doing painful physical therapy exercises at least four times per day. Until recently, I saw very little progress.  I simply could not bend my finger past 60 degrees (110 is degrees is normal for making a fist)--and I could only even get that far after intense physical therapy.  When i wasn't continually working it, the finger would stiffen right back up again.  It was like that finger was in a constant relaxed hook position. Then a week ago, I underwent surgery.  (Sorry for the disgusting pic--I hope it didn't make you barf) The

As a homeschooling dad, I have a strong desire to teach my kids how to code.  I've given them many different coding curricula with varying degrees of success.  While they have usually shown a lot of progress with kids programs like Scratch, there was often a feeling that the general knowledge didn't translate well to actual multi-purpose programming languages like JavaScript or Python. I have signed up for different programs and given them coding books for kids, but I kept seeing the same things happen again and again: the program would move at a pace that was too fast for them.  Frequently, they would create some impressive little programs using the book(s), but if I were to ask them how it works, they usually didn't have any idea.  When asked if they could produce the entire thing from scratch without looking, the answer was consistently something to the effect of "I have NO idea.  I wouldn't know how to start." So this inspired me to start writing a boo

My wife Christine and I have tried many different parenting methods over the years with varying degrees of success.  But probably the most successful single tactic we've tried has been when we typed out all of the rules--and their appropriate consequences if not followed--and put them up on the wall where the kids could see them.  No matter how clear we thought the rules were before we typed them out, they were never so clearly understood as they are now. Here's a practical example of what USED to happen before we typed out these rules: 1. We clearly tell the kids what time they need to be in bed and administered proper discipline when necessary, and it works the first few days. 2. We make a special exception on some given day(s). 3. We are more relaxed about it on some other day (cuz we don't really care to be drill sergeants that day). 4. After the kids start taking advantage of our relaxed attitudes (staying up way too late and dragging out bedtime to be a very lo

This month is an exciting one for a family. My older brother Robbie is getting married! Robbie lived in Japan for a year and met his wife Norie while he was there. We have not gotten to know her extremely well yet but she seems very sweet and loves Robbie. Christine has been working very hard lately at getting everything prepared for the wedding. She is really showing how awesome she is at being responsible with a budget and taking care of the needs of others. I am so lucky to have Christine as my wife. I pray that Robbie and Norie have as rich and happy a life as Christine and I have together.

As i write this, I'm in Salt Lake City Utah preparing to start Day 2 of NG-Conf--a  3-day tech conference that attracts hundreds of developers from around the country to learn the latest trends and best practices for development using the front-end Angular framework.  Here are a few thoughts: 1. The technical aspects of this conference are top-notch.  After watching something like 15 different keynote speakers on Day 1 using thousands of slides and several multi-media presentations, I couldn't identify even one technical glitch or delay due to technical issues.  This is remarkable. 2. I find myself frequently trying to assess the skill level of the room to see where I fit in.  Obviously, this should't matter too much, but I often wonder how I measure up in my industry.  Many of the speakers were moving through their subjects so quickly that I had a hard time following them.  Was that unusual?  Were most others feeling the same way or were they tracking along step-for-st

Almost two years ago, I ran into an old friend of mine named Evan (not his real name, since I haven't asked his permission to tell this story) who was somewhat recently married and working a part-time job.  I knew him to be an intelligent person and quite capable of learning new skills.  I pitched him on the idea of starting a new career in Software Development. I had made a Software Development Curriculum a few years back that centered around Lynda.com as a tool for developing practical tech skills and frequently practicing them with do-it-yourself projects.  My brother Davey had used this, and it was a major starting point for him learning the skills to take on his first full-time job as a software developer.  He is still working as a software developer to this day and making a very good living doing so. I wanted to use the curriculum to help Evan also.  Evan worked diligently at following the instructions and learning HTML, then CSS, then JavaScript.  I think he learned a li

For many years, my mom has had a dream about buying a theater to use for musical performances.  Most of her children--myself included--were fairly skeptical of the plan.  We thought the idea was rather far-fetched and impractical.  My folks had casually looked at various theaters over the years, but rarely with much serious interest in actually purchasing one. Then about a month-and-a-half ago, they ask me to come look at a property that was less than a mile away from my house.  I expected to go there, tell them all the reasons why I felt it would be unwise, then head home.  Much to my surprise, I found myself believing in this particular property and investment just as much as they did.  The price was great, the seating capacity was near-perfect (340 seats), and there was an immense amount of good, usable space.  People who've toured the place since kept saying things like "ANOTHER huge room?!  This place just keeps going!" At the end of this week, my parents will ha

Last month, Christine surprised me with the best news I had heard all year: we're going to have another baby!  I was overjoyed as were all of the kids.  I knew I wanted another baby, but I didn't talk about it much because it wasn't something Christine and I had agreed on together.  I was perfectly happy having 5 terrific children anyway. But hearing that we were having another one got everyone in our family so very excited.  The kids were all cheering about it, and we made this cute announcement for Facebook: Several weeks later, we were hit with the horrible news that our baby didn't survive past 6 weeks in utero. We had never experienced a miscarriage before. In our minds, that was hardly even a possibility. And now it was a reality.  The hardest part for me was telling the kids. We told them each individually. Angel rushed into our arms and cried with us. Harmony sobbed and said through her tears "We were so excited." Chase handled it like a c