Now, of course because we love her we pulled over when we could and Jeanette fed her; but it struck me how much like her we all are. We don’t see the bigger picture, all we see is our immediate discomfort. "Oh no, things aren’t exactly the way I planned them to be!" Whether that means our relationships, our job, our money or whatever… it’s so easy to only focus on our pain. It’s tough to believe that God knows better than we do, and that if we trust him… it’ll be so much better. We never see the trouble we avoided by trusting him, only the pain we feel when it’s hard.

It’s not easy when you aren’t the adult.

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So here it is. As of May 2nd I will no longer be working at GCC.

There’s no grand scandal or anything, I’m just not a great fit for the job. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the people I work with, and the people I support. You can’t find better. No seriously… You can’t. But, I do my best work as part of a team. Here at GCC, I’m the Lone Help Desk guy, "Captain 111" as I’ve been called (111 is my extension). Some super heroes work well alone, but others flourish as part of a team. That’s me. So as of May 5th I’ll be returning to Notre Dame’s OIT Help Desk in my previous capacity. I’ll be a part of a team of 7 amazing people who keep Northern Indiana’s largest employer/University running smooth.

Some have asked if I’ll still go to church here… umm duh. This is my home. I live and breathe what we do at GCC. I can’t leave here, where else would I go? I’ve never seen anything like this. I LOVE doing life and church with these people. I’ll be on stage acting, I’ll be in the nursery holding babies, and I’ll be here every weekend just like I am now. The only thing that changes is where I’ll make my money. This church will always be my passion.

I had a good run here. I think I helped move ministry forward. I helped GCC transition to a new model of Help Desk support that someone else will have an easier time fitting into, I trained and transitioned them to Vista and Office 2007 which is no easy task. I’ve had my hands in the back end of lots of small decisions that have affected hundreds and thousands indirectly and directly.

I’m sad to leave here. Very actually… But I know I’ll love being back at Notre Dame. God has taken care of me in greater ways than I can ever know. The way God made this happen is undeniable. His timing is better than mine, and his provision is greater than I could have hoped for. That’s all I’ll say, but know… God loves you more than you can know; and I especially know that He loves me.

Here is a Jing of me using clonezilla. If I were cooler I would find a way to embed this, but alas… I’m not quite that rad yet. Just download the swf file and run it in IE or something.

After school she went to the Doctor and mentioned the fall, and he sent her across the street to the hospital to get checked out. It was just a routine thing because she had fallen, but he wanted to make sure everything was fine.

This scared my wife.

She called me and told me what was going on, so I left work immediately and rushed over.

This scared me.

I got up to the Maternity Ward at Memorial and couldn’t find a nurse to help me find Jeanette (I think they were in a meeting or something) and then one happened to walk out and help me. I found out she was in Triage (btw, that’s about the scariest sounding place in a hospital, but it just means, we bring you in here and check you out. Still scares me though.). I finally got to her and she was hooked up to a fetal monitor and a nurse was talking to her. The nurse was great, she let me know that everything was fine and that they were just gonna take some blood and urine and do an ultrasound to make sure Jeanette and the baby were OK. Jeanette was pretty shaken up, but she was glad I was there with her. We were there from about 4:15 to 7:30, and everything looked fine. On the bright side, we DID get a second ultrasound and another chance to see Katie (we had the tech check to make sure she didn’t see any boy parts… yup, still a girl. :)). They did notice incidentally that Jeanette had an above normal amount of amniotic fluid (97th percentile) which isn’t a really bad thing, there’s a really tiny chance that there’s something wrong with the baby, but the doctor said more than likely, the baby just pees a lot (did you know the amniotic fluid is pee? How weird is that?). So they want us to come back to the doctor next week or the week after and have another Ultrasound (darn) just to make sure everything is cool.

We left and were able to talk to our parents and let them know what’s goin on and they were very encouraging and supportive. Then we went to Logan’s because we were starving! Oh, and Logan’s was also very encouraging and supportive… well, as supportive as a steak and potato can be. Which is a lot.

We came home and sat on the couch together and were glad to just have the day over. It was a long one; especially for Jeanette. She’s a brave girl. I’m glad I married her.

The day that we found out we were having a girl, we were all excited and we decided to go to BRU and register for Pink Stuff because we finally could pick out gender specific stuff. So, we went into the store and got the little scanner gun and started through the store. We picked out a few things here and there that were adorable and finally made our way over to the pacifiers. There was another couple a few feet further down the aisle from us. She was a little further along than Jeanette, and they were talking quietly to themselves about diapers or drool or whatever it is other people talk about… As we looked at all the different shapes and sizes and colors of pluggies (that’s what my family called ‘em), we found one that we thought looked ok (how does ANYONE buy a pacifier who’s never had a baby before?) and as we scanned it the other mother (the one talking about drool) says loud enough for us to hear with a little snarl in her voice, “That reminds me, OUR baby is NOT going to have a pacifier.”

Ok, so lets stop for a second. First of all, Jeanette and I didn’t get mad or talk to her or anything like that, we both kinda looked at each other, went to another aisle and laughed our heads off. But why? Why did we find that so funny? I mean… she was rude. Like she wanted us to feel like we were going to be worse parents than her because we were planning to use a pacifier. A Pacifier! Believe me, I’m planning on screwing up my children just as much as the next guy, but… I had never thought I would do it by giving her a pacifier. I guess it was funny because we felt so bad for her. I mean, she needed to demean 2 people she didn’t know to feel good about herself. That’s just sad, and somehow, I find that hilarious. It’s like when you’re around a little kid and they’ve somehow gotten themselves up on the coffee table and their socks slip and they fall on their butt and get a good jolt. It’s funny! I mean, he didn’t get hurt, but a child with some sense in them would have known to take their socks OFF first before climbing on the coffee table so he’ll get better traction for the jump to the couch. I felt the same way about the lady in Babies ‘R Us. If she had any common sense at all, she would have waited until we left the aisle and talked to her husband about pacifiers just between the two of them.

I think over all though, the real take away from this post, is that you should never leave me alone with your child… unless the emergency numbers are clearly posted nearby.

I’m so proud of my wife.

BIG NEWS!!!

We found out that we’re having a girl. I never really knew how much I had subconsciously wanted a boy until I found out we were having a girl. It’s taken me a few days to get used to the idea, but I think it’s gonna be alright. Everyone assures me that they’re pretty much the same for the first couple years anyway, and maybe by then I’ll know what to do with a little girl.

I’ve been fighting in my head with something… I don’t want to be an annoying dad. I’ve had 0 children for 27+ years now, and for all 27 years, baby pictures have all looked the same. Ultrasounds were all just blurry pictures of weird looking things, and the whole parents doing the “interpret-what-my-baby-may-or-may-not-be-thinking-for-them-because-they-can’t-talk” thing has always seemed weird “Oh YES daddy! I made a big poopy for you!!!” *argh*

I’m sure once I have my own, I’ll do all that stuff too, but I just want to be cool about it. For instance below is an ultrasound of my daughter Katie. If you look closely, you’ll notice that her leg is raised straight above her head. Yes. That’s her leg, not an arm. The ultrasound tech referred to it as the “Pike Position.” Now see? That’s cool! Sure I could have shown you a picture of her face, or whatever, but… they ALL LOOK THE SAME… unless they’re doing something cool, like say a sweet dive like my girl is.

So, here’s the deal. If I’m gonna show off pictures of my girl. Dang it, they’re gonna be cool.

Well, unless her chubby little bald slobbering face is JUST TOO Adorable for words!!!

Oh boy.

Those of you who are fathers will remember the first time you felt your son or daughter kick you while inside their mother. I strongly recommend reliving the experience. Here’s how:

1. Get your kid to roll up into a tiny ball
2. Have your wife lay on top of them
3. Now you lay on top of them
4. Experience the magic of those little fists and feet kick you through your wife again… but get up before your child runs out of air. (That part is VERY important, as they just spent about 2 minutes under 2 grown adults whose combined weight is potentially around 350 - 400+ lbs.)

    
    

   Or, if you aren’t too keen on potentially squashing the guts out of your child, just lay on the floor and have little Johnny or little Susie (those are your kids names… you should have recognized them.) come and just kick you a few times in the head as hard as they can. You may think to yourself, “Hey! These kids are a LOT bigger! They kick really hard now!” That’s when you get to thank God for how well they’ve grown since you felt them move for the first time, and also thank Adidas for making their soccer cleats so darn affordable.

   Whether you pick the first or the second option, I hope you can take some time to relive what it was like when YOU were waiting for your first baby to be born.

Dear estudio 3510,

I freaking hate you. Stop sucking! Why can’t you work like your exact twin downstairs? There is no difference between the two of you except that it works and you screw up everything.

Just when we think we have you working and happy, you find a new way to screw everything up. I don’t have time to deal with you, and looking at you just makes me angry.

Sincerely,

Kyle

Bitlocker is super easy to set up.

1. In BIOS turn on the TPM chip on the motherboard.
2. Do Updates (make sure to get them from Microsoft, not from your system administrator if you use SCE or something like that) and get the Ultimate Extra Bitlocker Drive Preparation Tool which will get you rolling.
3. Run the Bitlocker Drive Preparation Tool which will create a partition that won’t get encrypted so the computer has something to boot from and activates the TPM chip on the motherboard.
4. Run Bitlocker it will save the Bitlocker password for you to a USB key, and you can print it off as well. (They recommend storing it in multiple locations AWAY from your computer).
5. Do the recommended system check where it will attempt to start the computer and read the USB key’s password you just saved there. It will reboot and make sure everything is good.
6. Bitlocker will run in the systray while it encrypts your drive. This takes a LONG time. Our laptops have 160gb hard drives, and it takes around 5 hours to encrypt them. But once it’s finished, you’re done!

    
    

   Ok, here’s where I give you some added info you won’t easily find on Microsoft’s website…

   I had to swap a hard drive into a different laptop (the original laptop had some hardware issues out of the box) and when I booted it, it asked for the USB key with the password, which is fine. I put it in, and it started right up. However, I rebooted again to test it, and yet again… it asked for the USB key. The TPM chip on the motherboard didn’t match the encryption on the hard drive. Dang it. So, here’s what I did after checking microsoft.com and not really getting a clear answer.

    
    

7. Run Bitlocker again, and choose Turn off Bitlocker. It will ask what you want to do, whether you want to decrypt the drive or just disable bitlocker… decrypt that sucker. This takes a while, but not as long as encryption.
8. You guessed it, Run Bitlocker and re-encrypt the drive. Is it faster the second time around? No. Of course not. That’s dumb.

    
    

   So lesson learned, don’t encrypt the drive until you know the computer is in good working order… cuz it takes all day to re-encrypt a hard drive.