One of the reasons we were invited was a song I wrote, which Bethany’s local director, Mark Unger, heard when we played a gig with his band. I wrote the song “Find Me” for Jonathan, in an attempt to explore what his life must have been like before us.

Mark liked the song so much that he had Bethany’s PR guy contact us, and we ended doing an interview for the local paper to help plug today’s concert. They got a few details wrong (for example, my band is a three piece, not a duo) but we were happy to be able to share a bit.

I may write more on this later, but right now I’m typing on my iPhone and it’s getting kind if tiresome.

The article is here: http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/267036.

Friday night was supposed to be the night we meet with our church small group, but only two of the couples were available, so we ended up skipping the study and just hanging out, which was really nice. It was really low key and laid back. We just chatted and our kids played.

Saturday morning I got up early to do a five mile run with some friends. Our circle of runners is expanding, and one of the two new runners with us this weekend was someone who used to live right up the street from me back in high school. We used to be really close, but we lost touch after high school, so this was the first we had a chance to catch up. And catching up on almost twenty years is a great way to take your mind off of the fact that you’re running five miles.

The run itself was great, and I was pleased with my time. It rained for most of our run, but that honestly felt great. I had my iPhone wrapped in a plastic bag inside my armband, so it stayed nice and dry.

Saturday evening was the Battle of the Bands at the Art & Soul Cafe. I was asked to be the emcee, which was a blast. I normally don’t like speaking quite so much in front of crowds, but I was in the zone. I introduced the three competing bands as well as the artist whose work was on display. They also asked me to play a couple songs after the last band performed so that the audience would have something to do while the judges deliberated. I ended up doing four songs, and unbelievably, the same kids who had been going nuts for the screamo bands a few minutes earlier really seemed to be enjoying my music and cheered wildly. To top off the evening, I did a song called “Sara” by The Rainchildren, who used to be a pretty big name in the local music scene before they broke up in the ‘90s. One of the judges had been the percussionist for The Rainchildren, and he joined me onstage to play that song. That was pretty cool.

Congratulations to End Of Silence for winning the competition, by the way. That was a nice moment for me, because their lead guitarist is in the youth group at my church, and I’ve watched him go from zero to awesome on the guitar. And their singer (screamer?) used to go to my church and has helped me lead worship a few times. Great guys with bright futures. It was really great to see their excitement when they won.

On Sunday morning, we had three baptisms during our church service, two of whom were children. All three shared their testimonies, and I don’t think there was a dry eye in the church by the time they were done.

We followed the church service with our annual church family picnic. Burgers and hot dogs on the grill, lots of good food, a dunk tank, two hundred water balloons, and a homemade waterslide.

I got home right in time to meet my friend Matt, who was coming over to do some recording for a solo EP he’s working on. We worked on music for about two hours, which was fantastic. Made me wish I had my own professional studio so I could spend more time on music. Anyway, we got the bulk of the recording done, but I still have some mixing to do, and Matt asked me if I’d lay down some bass, some lead guitar, and maybe some harmonies.

After Matt left, we went to the home of another family from our church for a nice meal on the grill. The whole thing was kind of impromptu, but the food was great and the conversation was wonderful. Our daughters conspired for my daughter to spend the night, so we took our son home and put him to bed.

At that point, finally able to breathe and relax after a really busy weekend, Jen and I had the opportunity to spend a romantic evening alone, something we rarely get a chance to do these days.

So yeah. That was a pretty sweet weekend.

Slowly.

The first workout has you running for a total of eight minutes, and those are broken up into one minute segments. But I still found it pretty grueling. I’ve never been one to run, and while I sometimes get on the exercise bike, I hadn’t done that for months. By the time I got to work that day, I knew I was walking funny. My legs ached. Getting up from my desk was a struggle.

The second day was the same workout, and by the time I got to work, my only hope was that no one would notice that I was walking like a mummy. I couldn’t bend my legs. But I was determined not to quit.

And by the end of the third workout (which was, admittedly, a couple days later), I was okay.

The workouts increased in intensity, and this morning was my last C25K workout. And to be honest, I went further than the program called for, running four miles without stopping.

I never thought I’d be a guy who runs for pleasure, but I find myself really enjoying it now. The days when I can’t run (either due to weather or just oversleeping), I still hit the exercise bike.

When I started C25K, I also decided to start a new diet program. At 210 pounds, I had gained back over thirty of the seventy pounds I had lost years ago on the Atkins Diet. But I knew Atkins wouldn’t work again. So I decided to go low calorie. I met with my chiropractor, and he recommended a 2400 calorie per day limit. I’ve never been one to back down from a challenge, so I decided to stay under 2000. At around 1850, actually. I grabbed the loseit.com app for my iPhone and started tracking my calories and my workouts. Tracking my calories obsessively really made me aware of what I was eating, and it forced me to “budget” my food better. Hmmm…. if I have that second helping of steak, I won’t have any calories left to spend on some pretzels during LOST tonight.

That was nine weeks and 23 pounds ago. This morning after my run, I weighed in at 187. I was thrilled, but I know I still have more to lose.

But anyway, I’ve been amazed at how much running has improved my life.

Since I started running:

1. I have lost 23 pounds, as mentioned above.
2. my waist is at least 3 inches smaller.
3. my gut has started to disappear, which is weird since I haven’t been doing any stomach exercises.
4. stairs don’t leave me winded anymore.
5. my kids can’t get away from me.
6. I have way more energy than I used to.
7. I’m sleeping better and waking up better, and that’s without giving up caffeine.
8. I actually went to the Apple Store and bought an armband for my iPhone so I can run without having to hold it.
9. I’ve gotten closer to some friends who are runners. We get together almost every Saturday to run, because running with others can be really encouraging.
10. I’ve registered for a 5K race. My first. And I know it won’t be my last.
11. my daughter has expressed tentative interest in trying C25K.
12. my wife has remarked how much she enjoys being able to actually put her arms around me.
13. I am proud of myself. I set a goal and I achieved it.

But since taking my current position, I’ve been all about the web. PHP, to be exact.

To be honest, I miss the desktop, but it’s not all bad.

For example, I really like being able to call functions without knowing the their names, just using a string. That’s pretty cool.

Also, there is TONS of documentation and help out there for PHP. Way more than I ever found for REALbasic, my desktop weapon of choice.

The JavaScript event model, though, leaves something to be desired compared to REALbasic’s event model.

And while it’s convenient not to have to declare my variables, I find it makes it all too easy to use unconventional and meaningless names.

In reality, it’s sometimes worse when things miss us completely.

Unless you want pictures.

Little Stevie Jobs

Yeah, we may need to get out more.

My intrepid helper is all the help I can stand:

And my other assistant isn’t terribly helpful, either:

]]> http://truetech.org/2009/11/black-friday/feed/ 1 http://truetech.org/2009/11/blue-streak/ http://truetech.org/2009/11/blue-streak/#comments Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:43:34 +0000 brad http://truetech.org/?p=1886 Continue reading →]]> So it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here, but I’ve been busy. The biggest news, of course, is my new job. I started at Manheim Township School District on October 1 after almost twelve years at Etown. Honestly, it was tough to make a change after so many years at Etown, but it’s been good for me and I’m really enjoying Township.

Tim, the guy who hired me at Township, is someone I’ve known for a long time. He was my cooperating teacher when I did my student teaching back in 1995. I should have ben able to tell where my career trajectory was going to take me, because even back, on my first day of student teaching in Manor Middle School, I was helping him run LocalTalk wires for the school office.

After student teaching and graduating, I went to find lots of work as an English teacher. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to secure any of that work for myself. I decided to change paths temporarily, and I took a job as a computer lab facilitator for Lampeter-Strasburg School District. That was an awesome job, the kind of job where I woke up on weekdays and thought, “Cool! I get to go to work today!”

But it wasn’t meant to last. Within a few months, I had been contacted both by Etown and by Eastern Lancaster County School District about tech jobs. Still not the teaching job I had trained for, but it sure paid a lot more than being an aide. My preference at the time was to go to Etown, since my good friend Joe worked there. His boss Dave had recently left Etown to moved over to Manheim Township. But Etown moved more slowly and Eastern Lancaster Country offered me a job, which I took.

For five weeks.

Because five weeks was how long it took Etown to hire me. I started working alongside Joe in February of 1998, and we had a blast.

For about a year and a half.

Because that’s how long it took for Joe to move over to Exeter Area School District. Interestingly, at that point, Dave came back from Township to work at Etown again, where he stayed until the fall of 2008.

In 2000, Dave and I managed to hire Mike, a talented computer tech and network admin. Mike had previously been working for Dave at Township. Are you getting a sense of how cyclical things are?

Mike moved onto IU13 in 2007, but Dave I kept working together until his departure from Etown last year.

Then, about two months ago, Tim called me. This wasn’t terribly surprising since we had kept in touch over the years. He had moved out of the classroom and into technology. He had also moved from Penn Manor over to Township shortly after Dave left Township to go back to Etown. Confused yet?

Tim said he was looking for a new webmaster/database administrator and asked if I’d be interested in applying. I said yes and got my paperwork together. The funny part is that I wasn’t looking to leave Etown. Etown had been far from a perfect workplace over the years, between administrative scandals, leadership upheavals, and various technology-related situations that I’ll never be allowed to talk about but took quite a toll on us personally and professionally. But in reality, in 2009, things were better for me at Etown than they had been in a long time. Still, I felt like it was the right time to move on when I got Tim’s call.

And move on I did. I’ve been at Township just over a month now and I’m really enjoying the work and the people.

Truth be told, though, I do miss my friends at Etown. I’m blessed to have been part of a great team at Etown and to have worked with some amazing people. Some great tech people I’ve worked with over the years at Etown: Dave and Mike (of course, mentioned previously), Tom, Dan, Ted, Christine, Kathleen, Brian, Gayle, Amy… and the list goes on.

Some of you may be wondering what happened to Kodiak, the student information system I had developed for Etown. Honestly, Kodiak kept me at Etown for a long time, through several job offers, one of which was particularly tempting. But Kodiak was retired in July, 2009. It had a good run, but Etown understandably decided it wanted a commercial product. With Kodiak put to rest, I felt more comfortable moving to Township, since Etown’s SIS no longer depended solely on the knowledge in my head and my head alone.

So, long story short: Yeah, I actually left Etown. And yeah, I’m happy.

She’s a Gretsch Electromatic G5120.

I’ve been wanting one of these for a long time, and yesterday I found one at a price too good to pass up. I haven’t much time to play it yet, with school just starting up and all, but so far I really love it. And it sounds great through my Peavey Classic 30 or my FloorPod. Or both, for that matter.

Somebody took this picture of my wife Jen playing bass:

Jen at Art & Soul Cafe

I’m a lucky man.

Happy birthday to my beautiful daughter, who turns 10 years old today!

Friday

I took a vacation day on Friday to help chaperone my daughter’s gifted class’s trip to the Smithsonian Insitute in Washington, DC. After some pre-trip jitters from my daughter, we made our way to the museum and had a great day. The only downside was that the return trip, which should only take about two hours took five hours. That’s a long time to ride in a yellow school bus.

Drinks at Turkey Hill: $4.50
Smithsonian Entrance Fee: $0
Souvenirs from the Air & Space Gift Shop: $17.49
Lunch at the McDonald’s inside the Air & Space Museum: $21
Afternoon snack at the Dino Cafe inside the Natural History Museum: $19.80
Dinner at a random McDonald’s in Maryland: $10.76
Spending the day with my daughter and watching her get excited about science: Priceless

Saturday

Saturday morning started with a trip to church to troubleshoot some issues we’ve been having with the sound system. After fooling around with it for a while, I finally got it working, at least to a usable state for Sunday morning.

In the afternoon, we headed to Tom’s house for a Memorial Day cookout, where we hung out with most of my department and watched dogs and children get soaked from head to toe in bubble juice. We followed that up with a trip to Lowe’s, a visit to the Art & Soul Cafe to listen to my friend Jeff Lease play guitar, and finally a brief soak in the hot tub.

Sunday

We almost made it through the whole service without the sound system acting stupid, but not quite. Time to upgrade, I suppose.

After church, we went to Toys R Us so my daughter could pick out her birthday present (she chose Wii Music, which I’m looking forward to trying). Then we stopped at Rita’s to buy four quarts of Italian ice  to take over to my friend Tim’s house for our second Memorial Day cookout of the weekend. At Tim’s, we swam a bit but mostly just sat around chatting.

Monday

Obviously, it’s only Sunday, so I don’t have all the details yet, but Monday will be my daughter’s 10th birthday party. Well, tomorrow is the family party; her friend party is in a couple weeks (as soon as school gets out). So we’ll be having our extended family here for the afternoon and evening, which would be our third cookout of the weekend for those keeping score at home.

I also wouldn’t bet against a trip to Guitar Center in the morning. I’m just saying.