My Date with Cincinnati Bell

Cincinnati Bell knows how to throw a party. I had a great time yesterday with a half day seminar about Cincinnati Bell solutions for Education.

First it was at the NKU METS center which was a very nice facilty both in form and function. They had technology that made me drool. And the food spread was really sweet! They had great catered food all day long... I was stuffed early on. Then we got to meet Todd Benzinger and I had him autograph a baseball for Hallie.
Anthony Munoz gave a keynote chat at the end of the day but due to the fact that I have had many opportunities to meet Anthony in the past, we skipped out to get ready for the Reds game.

That's right, Cincinnati Bell sprung for us to go see the Reds last night and they even had free parking for us. We got to watch the game from the party deck. That was fun because you can just stand around tables and chow the bottomless buffet of food or even sit down like the commoners and watch the game more traditionally. Oh, and I forgot to mention it was Felipe Lopez bobblehead night, so, yeah. Now the Reds pitching was not as apitizing as the food but on some level it's always fun to watch a baseball game no matter who wins.

So Cincinnati Bell gave me a lot of food and pampering yesterday and I didn't spend a dime. To CB I say cheers, thank you, and whatever you're selling, I'm listening.

P.S. I did get some good information from the seminar too. 

Video Blog Test

Ever since I first saw video blogging on Channel9, Microsoft's geeky underworld, I have been wanting to find a way to do the same thing. After seeing the efforts of my cousin Steve's audio blog from his cell phone, I thought I better get on the ball... so here is a movie trailer video of the new Superman movie that I am posting as a test. Just click on the picture to start the trailer. I got the idea for this by modifying content included by these guys.

Fashion Police... Literally

I don't have a lot more to say about this article other than it amuses me. It is nice to know that the police are still here to serve and protect from this sort of thing. If nothing else be sure you get to the last line of this article. Simple and hilarious at the same time.

Microsoft killed the video star

One of my favorite movies is Pirates of Silicon Valley. I am more of a Microsoft fan than an Apple guy. But Microsoft really represents the stuffy-suit business world while Apple has been an icon for creativity and youthfulness. So if you told me when I was fourteen that MTV and Microsoft would join forces one day I would have "laughed out loud" old school (we hadn't figured out "lol" back then).

Anyway, the news is that Wednesday Microsoft and MTV will join forces to lauch Urge, a service to compete with iTunes. So cool (MTV) meets geek (b. gates) to take on Apple's juggernaut music monarchy, iTunes, with it's iPod family and entire iLifestyle.

However, when I refer to MTV being cool, that is MTV of the 1980's, the one that actually showed music videos. Today MTV is the home of loser programming. So now you actually have MTV and Microsoft combining to enter the music industry and neither company is really in touch with "the kids these days".

Oh this could be funny to watch. Now with my luck Urge's success will make me eat my words but if Microsoft and MTV can pull this off then perhaps father does know best.

Wikipedia, the next best thing to osmosis

As the song says, "... The more we get together the happier we'll be...".

I can sit in front of Wiki P. for a few minutes and present myself as a genius a few minutes later. Seriously, it is like the osmosis brain dump I wished for as a child. With this tool I can "learn at my own pace" and digest chunks of information based on relationship rather than the predetermined course of a textbook. Not so long ago I would crack open a smelly, slightly outdated copy of an encyclopedia from the darkest, most dreary part of a library to find a small paragraph about my topic and hopefully a picture in color.

Rather than sitting and waiting for Britannica to update their hardbound and very expensive next edition, we now have Wikipedia. Wikipedia is different in that it can be edited by around 6.5 billion people or as far as population of the world would allow. Of course, there are people that might slip in poor information but again, billions of people can help catch that error. So while credibility can be a concern here, context is a key to truth.

By context I refer to the links that propagate entries and help add drill down tactics to information. This ability to link through connected information offers context to actually help verify factual information from different angles. The social experiment is a very good one. You give the mass population a helpful tool and you give each person equal access to the system. The majority using the product seem to want it to succeed and so the "neighborhood watch" program goes into effect.

Now laziness can come in many flavors of discipline. For some it would seem lazy that I pull away from the Dewey decimal system where I grab volume A and look up Alexander the Great. While reading about Alex I come across the word Hellenistic so I go back to the stacks of books and find a dictionary then look that up. You see the trend and probably live it as well. Anyway, with Wikipedia I look up Alexander and most of the obscure words or terms will have a hyperlink already. Right away I have the information I need. Pretty cool... but is it lazy? Well, I have learned more information in a less amount of time. Isn't that the important component of all of this? Or is it a balance of some information and the discipline of doing more leg work. Knowledge itself is powerful to most people so I imagine that more time spent in actual study outweighs the old "craft" of research but I could possibly be wrong.

Hallie is back home

We spent the last two days at Children's Hospital. Hallie had some tests run and we are home now but exhausted. The good news is that God has favored my desires in His answers to my prayer. There is still need for further testing but I want to be sure that I have taken time to glorify God for being with us through a stressful few days.

First, Hallie's kidney is not experiencing reflux which is a very good thing. It appears her kidney just has a narrow feed into the bladder. We have to find out if her other kidney does most of the work. If that is the case, then we just need to keep tabs on her kidneys as she grows and things should be fine. If she need more productivity out of this kidney she will need to have a small surgery but it sounds like it should fix the problem.

Second, we have to wait until early next week to find out results from blood work for testing Hallie's liver. It appears that MRI scans show that Hallie has a collection of blood vessels in one area. So that is what was seen on the ultrasound. This means that she most likely does not have any cancerous material in her liver. If it is indeed the blood vessels, they will actually reduce in size as she gets older. Again, to be certain that this isn't cancerous we have to wait for some blood test results but the odds are quite astronomical at this point.

Praise God for hearing my prayers and give us joy. Hallie was incredible throughout the entire hospital process. She hardly ever fused and she even seems to be getting on a better feeding schedule. She really amazes me as she is only two weeks old but seems to be learning things already.

Well our household needs some rest so that is where I am heading next.

Do You Believe in Prayer?

I do. Although I am not sure I have to test my faith of prayer. I just do it. I pray all the time. And right now more than ever. Before Hallie was born the doctors thought that she might have an ubstruction in her left kidney and that we should have it checked out after she was born. So she is twleve days old and we took here to the hospital today for an ultrasound. The team there was able to assure us that there is some sort of blockage issue with here kidney but unfortunately something else was detected nearby. It appears for now that Hallie also has a lesion in her liver. We have to wait until Friday to have an MRI performed to be certain of anything but I am spirtually on my knees right now out of a desire to have my Father heal my baby and out of a weakness and trembling of the unknown. I am trying to keep emotions at bay until I have more information but fears are creaping up around my wife and me. Hallie is so pretty and so happy. It is hard to imagine that anything terrible could be happening inside of her body.

Dear Lord,
Thank You for Your love that is powerful and so much more than just an emotion. Thank You for giving us Hallie no matter what trials our family may face. We trust in You with everything that comes are way. You are here with this family and You will never leave us. We cast our anxiety on to You and ask that Your will would be done in the midst of our fears. Give me strength to be strong for my family. Please heal Hallie's body by any means You desire. Please be gracious to us beyond what we deserve.

We love You and by the authority and power of Jesus Christ I bow before Your throne.

Amen.

Ajax, you're my hero

I am talking about Ajax the programming language not Ajax the king of Salamis as you were probably expecting.

I have been programming with web languages for about nine years now. I always have appriciated dynamic functions on the web. "The more real-time the better", I always say. So when AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML) came along I got really excited. "How did they do that?" I was in web pages that could drag-and-drop content and update information without refreshing the whole page. Oh, how I wish I could watch my Fantasy Football stats change with hearing the rythmatic "click... click..." of traditional Javascript "F5-ing" the page on my behalf.

So now you can have all kinds of individually functioning web parts (portlets, modules, applets, etc.) on one page and not have to refresh the site. This is demonstrated in Google's personalized home page, Gmail, and Google Calendar. Beyond the Google world other cool tools are coming into view. You can host your own Ajax Portal using Myiosoft's Ajax Portal. Microsoft can't be left out but it would appear that even MSN and Windows departments are at war over a better portal with Start.com and Live.com respectively.

Tools like AjaxWrite are working to bring MS Word clones to the web (needs FireFox to run). If you are lucky enough to have a friend on the inside you can join the inner circle of orkut. Zillow is waiting for buyers and sellers of real estate.

While WikiUpload is based on Ajax that is not what makes it so cool. The special thing about WikiUpload is that they provide you with 5 GB of free, hello, FREE private and public web storage space. Not only that but they allow you to link to your files here from other sites or use RSS feeds to track them.

So flavor of the month is Ajax. I can't see past this horizon but in the world of programming nothing is top dog forever.

The Gauntlet has been thrown

To borrow a phrase from Corky St. Clair: What my cousin Steve really did was "... give me a challenge, and it's a challenge that I am going to... accept. It's like in the olden days, in the... days of France, when men would slap each other with their gloves... say, y'know..."D'Artagnan!"... y'know, "how dare you talk to me like that, you!," and... smack 'em! "

So just like that I have been given blog fuel that will burn for ages. Oh, my posts may lack in quality and substance and I may not always post good head shots, but with all of you as my witnesses, I WILL BLOG! (except maybe for tomorrow. I might be busy)

Today we got to take Hallie to church with us. It was nice to get the family out of the house and to show off my little girl. All she has done so far is eat, poop, sleep and cry... and I am so proud of her for all of those things.

So she has now begun to face the world. I can only imagine what her blog will read when she is older. I'm sure something cooler than blogs will be big by then though.

Maybe instead of blogs, in the future people will just be entrys in the wikipedia. 

Sad, sad, and very sad...

I will get to the sad part in just a minute...

One of my favorite bands of all time is the rarely heard Blackball. I have not found much information about this band other than a CD I bought years ago entitled "Hope". But their music is fresh to me. On my way to work in the mornings, I jam to the Red-Hot-Chili-Pepper/Faith-No-More-ish track "Just Don't Know".

What I love the most are their lyrics. I will refer to their songs in many posts as they have some good truths for the sake of summary.

Which leads me to today's thought... "christians" that protest funerals of soldiers. (I won't use a capital "c" for those that obviously haven't figured it out yet.)

"The clock strikes down and the people are free, but what they do with their freedom is what comes sweeping over me" - Blackball

Here we are in a land of obscene freedom. I mean, I don't think I could imagine any more freedom than what exist in the USA. But please, would we have this freedom with out any of our wars? Of course not!

So lets live in ACLU heaven for a second (don't worry I won't leave you there).
Step 1) We pull US forces out of all foreign countries.
Step 2) We disband our military and just rely on unarmed police officers for keeping the local law.
Step 3) We are IMMEDIATELY attacked by just about every country in the eastern hemisphere.
Step 4) Mexico takes the western coast of the US because they have guns and our policemen do not (per step 2).
Step 5) Strangely enough our new "American" Flag looks a lot like China's.
Step 6) "christianity" is outlawed.
Step 7) Hmmm... don't have to worry about US troops but you'd be shot dead if you try to protest anything as a "christian".

All that to say I am proud of those that fight for my freedom everyday. Whether you be in the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, or even our Police forces, THANK YOU! You keep me alive and protect my family. THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

I am a Christian and I work to spread the message of Jesus Christ to other people in the US and the world. The longer I am protected the more I can do to share this wonderful message. Seems to me like the "christians" complaining about the troops are not only evil to cast judgement on all people (what a sad "gospel") but they are wasting their time they should be telling people about Christ's forgiveness that is salvation. James 3: 9,10, "With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be."

The Bible seems to do anything but justify men cursing the actions of other men. We just don't have time for that. So says James, so says Blackball.

Papa's got a brand new bag... er, baby.

I welcome Hallie Jean Coulter to the world wide web today. She was born on April 28th @ 12:57 pm. She weighed 7 lbs. 13.4 oz. and was 20 in. long. Believe it or not she is 10 times cuter in real life. Both she and Deana are home recovering well. Hallie has been so good about everything. She keeps her crying to a minimum and actually lets us get moments of sleep.

Hallie was the name of one of her Great-great-grandmothers on Deana's side and Jean was one of her Great-grandmothers on my side.

(Warning: cliche) The moment she was born my life changed forever. It is one thing to have a wife to be responsible for, but a child is something so different. I can go to work and I don't have to worry all day long if my wife is alright or if she is eating. But a baby, she truly needs her mommy and daddy. And that isn't a bad thing.

We have spent a week with our new baby and the experience is still surreal. I'm sure reality will kick in soon. But for now we are parents, the new adventurers, embarking on the unknown journey and accepting the challenges of the future.

Thank You Lord for this blessing!