Performed Well

About two years ago (February 7, 2016), on the day of the Super Bowl, my brother Davey (who lives in Iowa) and I decided on a whim to meet up together, watch the Super Bowl and play some board games.  We chose a city that was halfway between the two of us, and we went to a comfortable motel for all of our gaming.  It was such a fun day.  One of the most enjoyable Super Bowl days I've ever experienced. On most of the way home, he and I talked on the phone and brainstormed about how we might improve on this experience and spread it to many of our other friends.  That's when we developed the idea of a Guys' Board Game Retreat. We invited many guys in our circle of influence to drive down to Bethany and hang out for a day and a half of board games.  Everyone pays a small fee, and we use that to cover bedrooms, game room, meals, gas, and lots of delicious snacks.  We have done 4 of these board game retreats (with a 5th one coming up next month), and they are...

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 fi...

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. ...

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 c...

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...

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...