• Not everyone is like me. While I try to see the best in others, they might not do the same. Don’t expect people to respond the way I do.
• I don’t know their life. I don’t know what they’re going through that may have caused them to react the way they did. There’s a good chance they’re mad at something totally different, and I just happened to be available to dump on.
• They need Jesus. Almost as much as I do. Remember that I’m here to show them love, even if they don’t show it to me. Jesus did.
• I stand in the way. People are angry and hurt and are used to running in to other angry and hurt people. I’m different. When others run into me, I want them to see something different than they are used to. I have the chance to affect, on some days, more than 50 people who call expecting to be treated poorly when they need computer help; and when they get me, I want to break their expectations.
• No matter what happens, I get to go home to a loving wife, and a beautiful baby who love me and are excited to see me when I walk through the door.

This is just an initial list. There’s a lot more I need to remember with this stuff,but it gets me started and helps me take perspective. Maybe it will help you too.

We hung up and went on eating our pizza. About half an hour later she called to tell us how cool my dad is.

They went to WalMart and dad talked to the manager. He told him about the need at Faith Mission, and asked if he would give them some blankets and pillows to take to the mission. The manager said “Sure, we can help” They gave my dad 25 blankets (real nice ones, like $20 blankets) and 12 pillows (those run like 15 or 20 bucks a piece)!
So dad and mom drove to Elkhart in the middle of our insane winter weather to go help people who are poor and cold.
Lots of times growing up my parents went out of their way to help others. It was just what you were supposed to do, it was never a big deal. I’m proud of my dad, he always set a good example for us when we were younger, and now that we’re older, he continues to do the right thing. Not because we’re watching anymore, but because he cares about people.

That’s the kind of dad I want to be.

I think you’ll hear a lot of this sentiment, “This is what Vista was supposed to be”

The Bad

• McAfee 8 isn’t compatible with  Windows 7 yet. This really isn’t a big deal, MS was smart about this and expected problems here, so they’re giving free access to their Live Defender stuff, until Antivirus makers can catch up. Installed AVG instead which seems to work ok.
• I also got a message that my video card driver wasn’t compatible. No surprise there right? It’s a new OS, that’s always an issue. However, everything works fine videowise.

The Good

• Speed. Wow this is fast. I haven’t tried a reboot or a cold start yet, but in general, opening the start menu, Control Panel, moving through My Computer, launching Apps… all much faster.
• Cool Factor. Yes. They did steal a lot from Apple. Lets all cry about it. Truth is, Apple has a good product, and MS would be fools not to copy some of it.
  • The Task Bar is different. You don’t have big bars of open applications, you have 1 icon for each app, similar to stacks in XP and Vista, but here they’ve made some sweet improvements
  • You can “pin” apps to the Task Bar, basically adding them to the quick launch menu which just keeps expanding to hold all the pinned apps. Starts to look a bit like an OS X Dock!
  • While we’re in the Task Bar, mousing over an icon’s app shows you all open windows of that type. All your Word docs, all your IE Tabs that are open, and you can then mouse over anything in the window it gives you it does a very Expose` kinda thing… it brings that window or tab to the front, and hides everything else. Letting you find what you’re looking for faster.
• Control Panel does a cool slidey thing when you select something, or go back to the main Control Panel window.
  • Lots to geek with in Control Panel, I’ll be adding more here.
  • Personalization. Themes and stuff like what we had in Vista, but better. Changing your Theme, is instant and it fades in, instead of stopping everything and adjusting everything painfully like in XP/Vista.
    • Also, in these themes are background sets. They have some sweet wallpapers, and they rotate every 15 minutes by default. New coolness.
• Libraries!!!! I Just spotted this. Vista had saved searches, but I don’t know anyone that used them. in Windows 7 they advise you use them instead of your My Documents folder. You can now find all of your Documents, pictures, videos, and music, no matter where they’re saved.
• Start Menu. I installed Live Writer and Messenger, and expected the normal, All Programs Bar to glow a bit and say “New Programs have been installed”. Not quite what happened. If I go through the start menu, the folder of the new App is Highlighted, but also, one of the apps that was installed, showed up in the Frequently used list on the main page of the Start Menu! I’m guessing this lets the publisher get their app to you a little quicker. Just kinda neat.
  • Recent Items are gone, and that’s OK. If you Pin Word to the Start Menu, you now get an arrow next to it that shows you all of your recent Word Documents.
  • The Shutdown Button. Vista did a really annoying thing here that Windows 7 fixed. In the Start Menu, there’s a button that just says “Shut Down” and guess what it does?! It Shuts the computer down! The arrow list to the right is still there so you can log off or hibernate or restart or whatever, but the Start Menu won’t lie to you any more!
  • Devices and Printers. We’re used to the Printers and scanners window, well now we have Devices and Printers. If it’s hardware and it’s connected to your computer, you can see it here. Mine shows my keyboard, mouse, 2 monitors, Hard drive and thumb drive in Devices, and then under printers and faxes… all my printers and well… faxes. From here you can right click on anything and configure it or change it. Right clicking your monitors brings you to the display settings page where you can change which monitor is default, their location, and their resolution. Right click the mouse and you can change pointers. Right click the thumb drive and you have all different options. Cool.
• Speed again. I seriously can’t get over how fast this is. Opening your list of programs to remove (Add/Remove Programs in XP, remove Programs in Vista) you always had to wait for it to index and list them. It’s instant. I don’t wait.

“Oh but Kyle! Your computer is probably beastly and awesome! Myyy computer would never run that well with it!”
Here’s my specs: Intel Core 2 Duo 3.16 GHz, 4GB Ram, 32Bit OS, ATI Video Card with 512mb Video Ram.
Ya, this is a sweet machine, but here’s the deal… compared to Vista, things move a lot faster. My computer is stacked, and Vista still ate my ram and seemed to beg for more. Windows 7 is handling resources better.

I Like.

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.