Monday, March 14, 2011

Forty Years of Birthdays


Is that a yellow cake with chocolate frosting? Seriously? For my FIRST birthday?


Two years old.
One of my daughters bumped a shelf a few years ago. The shelf fell and I believe the item that broke was that cake platter.


I was always intrigued by that candle.


I must have like that shirt.


My mom made me invite the neighbor boy, Richy Pettit to my birthday party. I did not want him to come to the party.
Here he is blowing out my candles.


I got bunk beds and a light saber for my seventh birthday.


This is probably my 12th.


Landen was born on my 35th birthday.


Last year.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

How We Remodeled Our Kitchen - Part 1

In 2010 we did a major kitchen renovation and home addition project. My wife and I did most of the work on the project ourselves. This will be the first in a series of blog posts chronicling the construction.

On March 14, 2010 we were ready for our contractor to break ground on the addition. Our contractor did the foundation, framing, removal of the outside kitchen wall and shingle installation. Outside of cabinet and counter top instantiation, we did everything else ourselves.

Along with doing quite a bit of online research, during the fall of 2009 we watched a lot of kitchen remodeling shows on HGTV (especially Kitchen Impossible and Spice Up My Kitchen.) Preliminary work on the kitchen began in early February 2010.


I drew the plans for the kitchen using a free trial of SmartDraw.


We ordered and bought windows and the door before breaking ground so our contractor would know exactly what size to make the openings in the framing.


We bought appliances and the TV so the cabinet maker would know the sizes for these openings. This is our actual oven sitting on the floor on clearance at Sears in Mishawaka.


The old kitchen floor needed some serious work in a few spots. In this area a copper pipe had a slow leak. The floor was warped from this leak when we moved in over 10 years earlier. The pipe had probably been leaking that whole time. We replumbed 95% of the entire house with PEX as part of the project. I sold the scrap copper at a recycling center in Elkhart. I felt really out of place at the recycle yard and honestly was a little scared. Anyway, I got $67 for the scrap copper. My van broke down on the way home. It cost about $267 to get the van fixed. There are no pipes running under the new slate floor in the kitchen now.


We stocked up on some tools we thought we might need before getting started. During the whole project we frequented both Lowe's and Menard's very frequently.


My father-in-law and a family friend helped us tear down the old deck.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

An Internet Filter for All Devices Connecting to A Router (Including Wireless)

We've tried various Internet filters in the past, but found they were annoying at times blocking many benign sites for such violations as: A.) having too many letter x's in the URL (like many shopping site pages seem to have. And B.) having various words in the text of the page, for example many news stories would be blocked for various terms like "drugs" in the story.

I recently found a much better solution and it is free.


After signing up for a free account, OpenDNS is setup through the router's control panel. It is pretty easy to set up and can be done in about five minutes.

Advantages over software based filtering options that I have used include:
  • It filter's by category (customizable to block or not block any categories specified.)
  • It filters content for all browsers used (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, etc.)
  • It filters content to any device connected via the router (wired desktop, wifi laptop, wifi iPod Touch, etc.)
I highly recommend OpenDNS.

Here are some pictures of the block screen. The site being blocked is: www.exampleadultsite.com - provided by OpenDNS.

Desktop

Droid connected via WiFi

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Time to Buy Amazon Prime

We've thought about purchasing Amazon Prime for years. It costs $79 a year. It gives subscribers free two day shipping on Amazon with no minimum purchase. If you see a $2 item that qualifies for free Super Saver Shipping, Amazon will ship that $2 item right out with free two day shipping.

We like how items arrive really fast (generally quicker than the it would take us to find the time to drive to Goshen.) Also, it's very nice to not have to worry about the $25 minimum for free shipping.

We had seriously considered purchasing the $79 a year subscription, but had always just used free trial offers (and then missed Prime when we didn't have it - which was most of the year.)

Today, we bought Amazon Prime!

Why today?

Check out this announcement from Jeff Bezos.


I'm not even a huge movie fan, but 5000 movies and TV shows available to stream at any time for no charge made it a no-brainer.

I checked out the video selection and easily started streaming a movie. I also ordered this Monster cable for $1.43 (which had been in my cart for a while waiting for the cart to hit $25.) The cable will be here Thursday or Friday.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Bethel College Chapel from February 16, 2011

I heard Jeff Kling give his testimony on the radio during halftime of a NorthWood football game last fall. He gave an extended version during a chapel service at Bethel College on February 16. It's a story of an untimely cancer diagnosis, a strange encounter in a hospital waiting room and an unusual conversation.





Friday, February 18, 2011

Grandma Alice

I miss Alice. We always seemed to see eye to eye.



Sunday, February 13, 2011

Joomla


Over the past week I have been working on learning a new website content management system called Joomla. In order to learn this new skill I decided to work on my son Landen's web site (which hadn't been updated since he was a newborn.)

I am impressed with Joomla. While it isn't extremely simple to learn, I see the power behind it and think it will be worthwhile knowledge to obtain.

The simple site I made for Landen is at www.landengall.com.

I kept the site from when he was a baby active at newborn.landengall.com (built with Dreamweaver.)

Friday, February 4, 2011

Ten Years Ago Today

I think it was October of 2000. Kristi was expecting our first baby. During a prenatal checkup, Dr. Wally told Kristi that her stomach was measuring larger than was to be expected. "It probably isn't anything. . . but perhaps the wrong due date or maybe even twins."

I knew what I was hoping for. Twins!

We went in for an ultrasound a few days later. It took the technician about 10 seconds to let us know that we were indeed having twins!

_________

Early in the morning on February 4, 2001 Kristi woke me up and very calmly state, "Don't panic, but I think my water just broke."

The next few hours are a bit of a blur, but around 7:30 that morning our girls were born.

Kylee and Makenna.

I have adored them ever since.

They are just the kind of kids I always wanted.

Happy birthday Kylee and Makenna!

Sunday, January 30, 2011

2011 Goals

One of my friends recently posted his family's goal chart for 2011 on Facebook. I liked his format for the goals so well that I stole the idea. This is how our goals for 2011 turned out.

Click to enlarge!

Sunday, January 23, 2011

My Rearview Mirror


Once a month I have a meeting in Warsaw that usually gets over just early enough for me to get back to Nappanee in time to pick Kylee and Makenna up from school.

I've watched my girls grow up fast enough over the years that I have learned to make a serious effort to relish every moment I have with them.

I relish picking them up.

On these days that I get to pick Kylee and Makenna up, they are never quite sure if I will be back early enough or not. They are pretty tickled on the days I am there.

Rather than pulling up as close to the school as possible, I park about two-thirds of a block down the street. . . set my rear view mirror and wait.

Those parents who fight over the best spots can have them. I'll take the joyous faces of my daughters, sprinting down the block to me.

Monday, January 17, 2011

Star Wars Mixer

My daughter, Kylee, made an audio mix at starwars.com for her four-year-old brother, Landen. It's pretty funny. The mix she made by can be heard here.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Can I Change? Should I?

I've done this Google search before: 'one space or two after a period.' I recall reading this article about four months ago. I pondered what I read, then continued putting two spaces in everything I typed.

Tonight I was reading an article about John McCain when I spotted a link that said, "Two spaces after a period: Why you should never, ever do it." I immediately stopped reading about McCain and clicked the link.

I wasn't anticipating such a strong and compelling argument. Now I'm not sure what to do. I mean I have always put two spaces. Can I change? Should I?

Let me try. That felt. . . weird.

This whole 500+ post blog has been typed with two spaces, thing is Blogger won't even accept the second space. Maybe that's a clue.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Fixing the Dishwasher

I finally got the dishwasher working correctly after posting on this repair forum.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

GPS at the Sledding Hill

I took the Forerunner 305 GPS to the Nappanee sledding hill today.


  • Covered 1.1 miles in in 44 minutes
  • Average heart rate was 110 BPM, right at my normal walking rate

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Back to Blogging


Between March 20, 2008 and March 10, 2010 I wrote over 500 blog posts.

We broke ground (and a geothermal line) on a home addition/kitchen remodel project on March 15, 2010 and I haven't blogged since. The reason was two-fold. Besides the home improvement project, my blog was self hosted. Blogger changed their self hosting policy, which for me meant it was going to take some work to get the blog back to being updatable. I finally got around to finishing up that work in the last week. I probably won't be writing 500 posts over the next two years, but plan to stick with writing some stuff at least here and there.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Mike Hoffman's 16 Day Forecast

I like Mike Hoffman and enjoy watching his weather forecasts on Channel 16 (WNDU in South Bend, Indiana.) However, his "16 Day Outlook" consistently forecasts temperatures that are well below what the temperatures end-up being. Here is an example from earlier in 2010:




Feb. 20: Forecast high = 34º Actual high = 35º, 1 degree below actual


Feb. 21: Forecast high = 34º Actual high = 39º, 5 degrees low actual

Feb. 22: Forecast high = 30º Actual high = 33º, 3 degrees low actual

Feb. 23: Forecast high = 28º Actual high = 35º, 7 degrees low actual

Feb. 24: Forecast high = 21º Actual high = 27º, 6 degrees low actual

Feb. 25: Forecast high = 18º Actual high = 29º, 11 degrees low actual

Feb. 26: Forecast high = 18º Actual high = 30º, 12 degrees low actual

Feb. 27: Forecast high = 22º Actual high = 34º, 12 degrees low actual

Feb. 28: Forecast high = 25º Actual high = 36º, 9 degrees low actual

Mar. 1: Forecast high = 28º Actual high = 38º, 10 degrees low actual

Mar. 2: Forecast high = 26º Actual high = 38º, 12 degrees low actual

Mar. 3: Forecast high = 28º Actual high = 38º, 10 degrees low actual

Mar. 4: Forecast high = 28º Actual high = 40º, 12 degrees low actual

Mar. 5: Forecast high = 23º Actual high = 41º, 18 degrees low actual

Mar. 6: Forecast high = 20º Actual high = 46º, 26 degrees low actual

Mar. 7: Forecast high = 20º Actual high = 50º, 30 degrees low actual

That's an average prediction of 11.5 degrees below the actual high temperature!

I'm not a meteorologist, but forecasting a temperature over 20 degrees below normal over two weeks in advance CANNOT be good for a weatherman's chances at improving his credibility. From my amateur observations, temperature departures-from-normal of over 20 degrees are relatively rare and pretty extreme when they happen.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

American Idol Predictions

Steve:
Winner - Katie Stevens
Runner Up - Lee Dewyze

Kristi:
Winner - Lee Dewyze
Runner Up - Katie Stevens

Makenna:
Winner - Katie Stevens
Runner Up - Todrick Hall

We made the predictions after the initial performances by the top 24 - and didn't discuss the predictions.

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Puff the Magic Dragon

I've heard the song, Puff the Magic Dragon hundreds of times. A few days ago I sat down with my three-year-old son to sing along with a book-on-CD version of the song. We were having an awesome father-son bonding time singing and looking at the book's pictures.

I sang my heart out until we got to this page. . .

A dragon lives forever but not so little boysPainted wings and giant rings make way for other toys.One grey night it happened, jackie paper came no moreAnd puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar.
and I realized what the song was about. It's the kind of thing that gets to my emotions. I was too choked up to sing anymore, which, I guess, made the time that much more special.

If you have kids who are growing up way too fast, give Puff the Magic Dragon a real listen.



I'll save you from my singing, but here's Landen singing the chorus.

Friday, January 15, 2010

There's A Lot of Good in the World . . .

if you know where to find it. We found it in our driveway when we got home tonight.

Monday, January 11, 2010

There Is Evil in the World

On Saturday our Snowman still looked like this.

On Sunday morning he looked like this.

And this.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Is That Cool, Is That Still Cool?

I think this commercial is funny, probably because I connect with the "deal" message.