At 9 years old, a kid tries everything. There is no expertise. There is no rationale. A kid just tries whatever new hobby/craft/sport seems interesting. If a kid does field hockey? Sure, why not? Soccer? Yes, please! Theater camp? Sounds great. Art lessons? Absolutely (thanks Cici!). Swim team? Sign me up.
For Rosie, this means that the menu of options includes anything that her friends do, and recently, a good friend of hers got the acting bug. So, a 2.5 week acting camp it is!
A company called stage lights here in town does the production, and this time around they made a play out of the movie Madagascar.
If you haven’t seen the movie yet, it’s a good one. I was very proud to see my daughter as a lemur. And a lioness. And a New Yorker in the zoo. Rosie stole the show.
It was neat to see what the group of kids put together over just two and a half weeks- Rosie often said camp was a bit hard, but she really enjoyed getting out to perform after putting in the work.
There were three performances, and Rosie got a great audience to come check it out. It was a lot of fun to see: the second time around was a bit better when the kids got a little more confident, and I knew what some of the funny parts were.
The hippo singingThe whole castFriday Night fansCentral Park ZooHer biggest FanBestiesEating Seaweed
Minor Leagues
As a youngest child, I feel for Mercy. Rosie has a pretty eventful life. Mercy gets shuttled around from one thing to another to cheer her on. Mercy loves it- but also, this girl doesn’t get as many priorities on the family schedule. It’s easier to plan events and make friends for the first born- a little harder after that. Am I alone in this? Anyways, I digress…
Rosie had three performances. And, one of the kids in the play had a sister in Mercy’s daycare. Stay with me here. So at the last minute, learning it was princess night for our local Greensboro Grasshoppers, I asked the other dad if he had plans, he did not, and it worked. Just two dads. With two girls. On Princess night.
And Mercy was pumped: She got to play with a friend, Andrew and I got beers, and Mercy got to see some more princesses to get her fired up for Disney world in the near future.
Summer Camps
Theater camp was great, but I am not confident Rosie got the acting bug. She had fun, she did well, but I think she is gonna stick with dance as her thing. That’s what being 9 is all about.
At the end of one thing comes another: Back to the same camp she went to last year. The same camp her older cousins got to go to when they were her age. And after saying good bye to swim team this year (they got first in the Open championship, but second in the city meet) with another epic kids party:
Taylor made the long trek to drop off Rosie for the week, in about 94 degree weather.
Rosie and her bunk mateBestiesDrop off momsEvan and Lila
Time to take the 3.5 hour trek to Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina. This is an optimistic estimate- one that can be done for all of you readers who make “normal” times without children.
Where is Ocean Isle Beach?
Ok ok, I am a nerd and like to talk FACTS and history and stuff. But, I won’t bore you with the details about the island, just this one thing to get an idea of exactly which part of NC we are talking about:
Every year?
Yup. This has been going on for a long bit. I just married into it. And here is a fun flashback down memory lane, for most of the 15 years that I have been a part of it:
For the images above, I made it so you can look at the full-size pic if you click on it.
The Menu
Oh, this is good, and it is unshakable. It is almost unchanged, except when someone gets married and has to start contributing their own part of the week, but is as follows:
Saturday. Lasagna. This is new, and replaced the seafood boil, which was a tall order to pull off on the day we all arrived. It does take quite a bit of prep work.
Sunday. Pulled pork, Mac and cheese.
Monday. Hamburgers and hot dogs; but they are really, really good hot dogs, not your average Oscar Mayer.
Tuesday. Fish Tacos/Shrimp Tacos. This is the one Taylor and I help with. I just warm the corn tortillas, but I am still trying to work my way up the totem pole to contribute my culinary skills.
Wednesday Steak and twice baked potatoes. These are a home run, as always.
Thursday. Pizza. Its easy. And a good pizza joint too.
Friday. Leftovers. We are all exhausted and have to clear out the fridge.
The Beach.
The house is on third street, which means the sand is about 300 yards from the steps of the house. In the olden days (pre-kids), this journey would require:
chairs
Bocce ball
corn hole
sunscreen
towels
coolers, ice and beer
Koozies
Boogie board
Bottled Water
Snacks
A book
Now that we have a Rosie, Mercy, Everly and a Sadie on the scene, there have been a few adjustments:
No time for bocce ball. Gotta keep those kids alive in the ocean all day.
No corn hole either.
Yes, we need booze.
Rosie is big enough for a boogie board, that is fun.
There are never enough snacks.
Books? Yeah right.
Umbrellas. Gotta take skin care serious now. And no one wants to get burned out there all day.
A bucket of kids toys. They love them.
Ted (my father in law) was awesome enough to set up the umbrellas and chairs just about every day, which helped a ton for when the troops made the journey down to the sand every day.
The kids.
My first 5 years, there were no kids. The second 5 years, Rosie was the only kid. The past 5 years, there have been several kids. Ok, that math isn’t exact, but is is a round about idea of things.
They love it. You wanna talk about fun? Talk about a week at the beach with ice cream and your cousin:
Or, a week hanging out with your big sister:
Derek makes some things look easy.
Mercy is getting bigger and was eager to try out anything her big sis does. Rosie got a chance to play with her friend Hadley, and they were on the boogie board for about 3 hours straight. And Mercy wants to do everything her big sister does:
One of the staples has been the July 4th parade each year. It is completely open to anyone, and doesn’t require any pre-registration or work. You just have to show up an hour before the parade starts. Cars go first, and then golf carts. They did away with the throwing out candy, but people still did it.
The parade is always a highlight. This year, Mercy was old enough to stay up and watch the fireworks, which we can see from the house:
No matter what is happening, the kids will have fun, and it really is fun to be a part of:
If the kids are having too much fun, beach patrol will let you know about it, just like they did to the group next to us on the beach who dug a hole too deep. Beach Patrol got out and ensured it wasn’t beyond acceptable depths with his tape measure:
Rosie is 9 years old and it is great to see her old enough to have her own fun. One of the highlights of the week for me was to take a short walk to the pier (1/4 mile). It was at the end of the week, and we just had a good old time talking about rollercoasters. She asked, “if you could design any roller coaster, what would it be like?”. I just thought it was sweet, and we got a good pic of the moment:
The house is full and it is a good old time. There are noisy kids playing games, early in the morning whether you like it or not. They are sweet though, because this phase of life is going to be over soon enough.
In addition to the kids, there are many adults with many different opinions- on just about everything. It isn’t any different than any other family vacation when a bunch of people are living under the same roof. I have learned to get through the week by balancing some introvert time into my day, which means reading a bit in the morning, and playing Zelda on my Nintendo Switch in the afternoon, and it works great. We went to the public library this year before the trip, and I got this one:
Maybe I am getting old if I am interested in history more than many other topics. But, Genghis Khan was a badass, and this book confirmed it.
Since most of you reading this blog were on the trip with me, and I don’t really have any witty insights, here are a bunch of pictures from the week:
The family shot on the beachKenna just looks happyTay and GrandmaRosie and HadleyGood drinksKenna is a great cousinRosie and HadleyCousins before bedtimeThe poolTay looking goodBeautiful sunsetBrother and SisterDerek’s famSadie Kids tableCousinsThe Haney familyMy groupCousinsBig cousin exhaustionDerek is a good uncleMy group on the sandBeach time
A friend recently asked about the blog saying that he enjoyed reading it, and I thought how I enjoy writing blog posts, so I will keep writing from time to time.
For Father’s Day, Taylor planned a daytime adventure for the family and I off to Saxapahaw, North Carolina. If you haven’t heard of it (of course you haven’t heard of it, who in the world is familiar with Saxapahaw?), it’s a 45 minute drive away in some direction that the GPS took us.
Once there, there is a great little mill-type building that has been re-finished into a brewery/event space/coffee house/place for shops.
For a Sunday after church, we went to the brewery. It was a great little spot right on the river. The place was slammed for the occasion, and even though it took a while to get our meal, it was delicious.
We keep telling Mercy she is going to regret it one day when she gets older and there aren’t any pictures of her because she either a) runs away, or b) frowns for a picture.
After lunch, we crossed the bridge to the small state park on the island in the river. It has a few trails that go in different directions. I’m not gonna lie- my “watch out for snakes” alarms were going off in my head. We didn’t see any though.
We got to play around in the river, just like the words of a country song about living in the south. And, the playground was pretty great: shaded, and simple, and it looked almost like Jonah and the whale.
Also for Father’s Day, Taylor got me a shirt for our upcoming trip to Disney World. The back story is, all my life, but especially when I was in middle/high school, when meeting people and introducing myself, people would respond with something like “Luke? Does anyone ever say ‘I am your father’?” in reference to Darth Vader’s famous line in Star Wars.
So, since Star Wars is now a part of Disney World, I am pretty excited to see Darth Vader, and Tay got me this special shirt as part of the occasion:
Summertime
Summer for us is a lot of pool, swim team (also at the pool), and whatever this is:
We had some friends over for a cook out last week, and it was great. It is hot as fire outside, but it didn’t matter much. Between these three families (we miss the fourth family of the group, Hernan and Cathy, as they moved up North to Rhode Island). These kids have known each other since the beginning, so when they get together, they just pick up where they left off, and it is awesome to see.
Mercy and PopsicleWaiting in the line at the poolMercy and her cousin EverlyMercy with AmeliaSlow, tired mornings
One day I was taking Mercy home from school, and she randomly pointed to a street and said “I want to go home that way”, so we took another route home. We weren’t in a rush, and even though I often feel like I am the “no” parent saying no to everything, I said “yes” to Mercy’s little request that day. We ended up at this park near our house and just played under the trees. It just reminds me how beautiful Greensboro really is.
Scrub the deck
Are you a “handy” kind of person? Like, would you consider yourself pretty capable of fixing things around the house when you need to?
I’m not. I’m not really a handy person. I work on a computer all day, and mow the lawn, but I am not really a fixer-upper kind of person.
But, my deck is looking terrible. A few boards are rotting, and it just felt a little embarrassing when people came over.
Deck beforeDeck Before
So, before the dinner party above, and using that as a motivating deadline, I went to town, doing an hour or so of work every day, plus a full day on Wednesday in honor of Juneteenth, and it turned out pretty good.
A few boards had to be replaced. I listened to a book on tape about Elvis Presley and it was kinda nice to get down and dirty and work with my soft office hands to create something that looks pretty good.
What to say about traveling to India for the first time? If you don’t have time to read through it all, the short of it is this:
the trip was amazing.
Video Summary
What stood out? Best to break it down:
The travel
It took a lot to get ready. Our office has a google doc of some of the important things to remember when traveling to India. This was useful, but besides that, there were a ton of other things to accomplish in the week before the trip:
Get cash from the bank
Check with Verizon, to ensure my phone works
Get items from pharmacy like tums, pepto-bismol, melatonin
Mow the lawn
Laundry
How to manage all of these thing to do before the trip? I took a page from my friend Chad’s approach when he travelled to Disney World: break things down into smaller, day-by-day to-do lists, all before my 11pm Friday departure out of Charlotte.
After mowing the lawn and packing, charging all of my devices, playing one last game of memory with mercy, and saying goodbye to Rosie and Taylor who were going out for the night, I was ready to cover the 90 minute drive to Charlotte, along with a cup of coffee to help mess up my sleep rhythm and get ready to adjust to India time.
Check the forecast in India for the week to know what to expect:
Screenshot
The route was Charlotte to London (8 hrs)
London to Hyderabad (10 hrs).
Leave Charlotte at 11pm on Friday. Arrive in India at 5:20 am on Sunday.
My company was able to offer economy+ fare, and if it is feasible for any long trips you may have planned, jump on it. The upgrade was worth it.
What was the weather like in India?
This was the final forecast before leaving for the week:
The final forecast before leaving for the week.
After not sleeping the first flight, I took a melatonin and slept 8 of the 10 hours the second flight, so I was ready to GO upon arrival. Made it to the hotel around 7, hit up the hotel breakfast, pool, then a massage. Mike, who I was traveling with, had some issues with his back over the past couple years, so getting a massage was helpful.
Now might be a good time to talk about:
The food.
It’s awesome. Guy Fieri travels across the USA to go to flavortown. Well, we can one-up that mission, because flavor-town is actually in India.
What did we eat?
Rather than be ignorant and just say “I don’t know, but it was good”, here is a partial list:
Cashew nut upona
Base bale bath
Coconut Chutney
Sambar
Sprouts Idly, a carb eaten with sambar soup for breakfast.
Paratha (bread)
Samosas – little meat filled, fried breakfast dumplings.
Egg curry
Bhaji
Cholar Dal: made from a type of beans or something.
Suji ka halwa. This was really good; slightly sweet, like cream of wheat?
Dalia khichdi.
Lassi: almost like a milkshake
Mango cream.
Chicken Biryani- the best dish in the town
Peshawari Mutton
butter chicken- very different than what the name seems to be.
Pickled mango- my one food mistake of the trip.
Most of this list? Comes from the breakfast buffet at the hotel.
Indian Breakfast items at the hotel
Putting small portions on my plate and going to town (think, hummus) the meals were great. On the last day, the chef came out to say good morning and ask if there was anything I needed (great service!). He took one look at my plate, thought about making a correction, then settled by offering to re-make my plate because I prepared the Indian breakfast foods the wrong way.
Our team, who I will share a bit about in a second, took great care of us. We got a chance to go to:
Peshawar
Broadway Brewery- saffron infused gin there was on point!
Masterpiece International Buffet- beware of the pickled mango!
Bawarchi- beware of fake bawarchi
Crispy Crust- try the mango cream
Skyhy – excellent apps. Sometimes open talent night if you play the guitar.
10 pounder pizza. Way better than 9 pounder.
The hotel rooftop. It’s a great cricket-viewing setup.
Meal after meal, the flavors kept coming. One of my favorite parts was the dinner at Masterpiece. It was a team dinner, and they were sharing a bit about how much of our office is comprised of people from all around the country of India. I asked a bit about the food from the different areas, it was interesting to hear how many of the regions have their own types of oils used in cooking, and a variety of wheats used for cooking.
Compare that with the USA, where we only have a few types of oil, and mostly wheat flour, unless you want to spend an arm and a leg.
Time for some food porn:
Mango Cream
Meal after meal, it was amazing. It made me think, in the U.S., our spectrum of major flavors goes from salty to sweet; at least, that is the way things our in our house. In India, the flavors were all over the place. It was as if my taste buds that never get used were getting a chance to shine. And after eating a lions share at every meal, I felt great after.
Except for the Lassi: this one messed me up. I think it was just too much dairy for the moment; but I would do it again.
Out of the whole week, there was only one, semi-dire event: eating a large spoonful of pickled mango.
As a normal, American person, one would think, “pickled mango? What’s the big deal?” Well, it is not just mangos in brine. It is a seasoning used with rice as a shortcut to add more flavor. Here is a link to the recipe if you are curious, but it was an intense shock of something salty, spicy, and sour all at the same time. For about 90 seconds, I didn’t know how this was going to play out. My part of the table went silent, but it was ok. The best I can compare it with is like eating the ginger and wasabi in a big spoonful at a Japanese restaurant. It’s not wrong, it’s just not right. If you are curious, here is a recipe for pickled mango
Food wasn’t the end of it. The best way to experience a country is to know the history, the sports, and the culture.
A museum, a cricket match, and a temple nailed that trifecta.
The fun things to do.
Wednesday of our stay was a national holiday in India. Vasavi and the team showed us through the Salar Jung museum, which housed a collection of artifacts owned by the King hundreds of years ago, and includes exhibits of:
Miniature paintings
Swords
Porcelain
Bronze and Marble statues
Chinese and Japanese furniture, cups, art, etc.
Wood carving items from lots of cultures
Walking sticks. Yes, this was fascinating.
There are too many great items to share, but this was my favorite item of the day: a marble statue carved to look like a flowing veil. The detail was something I had never seen before:
There were too many great items from the museum to capture, but here are a few items:
Vasavi and Swamy
But that’s not all: our company has a cricket team: you know, the British sport with a wicket? So we had to support our guys on Saturday as they played against another company for their fourth game of the season. It’s pretty dope: many IT companies participate (like Verizon, AMD processors, Dell, many others you may recognize). They have jerseys, and play on a field outside of the city. The fields are often converted farms that put together these great facilities, and lease them out to leagues that want to play cricket, and they were in great shape. They even professionally stream the games, complete with scores and replays.
We were able to see about 90 minutes, but did I mention it was 108*? We were roasting, I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to play in that heat. Storable India folks are a tough breed.
The Temple of Equality was next on the list. It was new (only a couple years old) and gigantic. Cameras weren’t allowed inside, so not many pics to share. And we didn’t do the “audio guided tour”, so we were clueless about the 108 gods that we saw that day.
But it was beautiful. And the sound of the buddha singing that melody over a speaker covered the area in serenity. Many of the “followers” (I am not sure the right word for people that work/live at a temple?) were much younger than I was expecting.
The architecture was something unlike anything I had ever seen. Beautiful, intricate details are something that people stopped doing hundreds of years ago, or so I thought. Seeing so many details on such a new temple brought a different kind of energy to the place.
We made it to the top where the buddha was sitting. Did I mention it was 109* or so? The temple requires shoes to be removed, so viewing the buddha on the white-painted walkway did burn my feet. As I am on the plane writing this, my feet still hurt a bit, but it’s fine. I would do it again.
If you google Hyderabad, India (Not to be confused with Hyderabad Pakistan), an image of Charminar is going to come up. This is the four-spire muslim monument with a mosque on the top floor. It was built in 1591, and the official emblem of the city.
Sometimes I have a hard time with large crowds. It can give me a bit of anxiety. Large crowds in the area, along without our awesome tour guide Aarshad, a little bit of dehydration, and lots of beggars, a quick lap of the monument was more than enough for me on that specific day.
It was a completely different part of the city.
We stayed in the Westin, Hitech City. The Storable office is pretty close to the hotel. And this is just a small part of the city of Hyderabad, a population of 10 million. It is on a giant plain, and driving outside of the city reminded me of the dry, hilly parts of west Texas.
The city is ancient. And after learning a small part of its history from the museum and talking with my coworkers, it seems the history of Hyderabad interweaves Hindu, Muslim, and British influences over hundreds of years.
More recently, Tech has been moving in in a really big way. There are dozens and dozens of 20+ floor buildings under construction. Huge signs of companies you would recognize from across the world have signs strapped across the buildings the have been completed, the largest being Deloitte.
People from all around the country are moving to Hyderabad and moving the industry forward, including most of my peers in the Storable office.
What were you doing in India anyways?
Ok, this post has been about a bunch of touristy stuff. And yes, we did a good deal of that. But the reason for the trip was work, and we did a large amount of work.
I work at a company called storable, and we do software for self-storage units for a large marketshare across the country: around 60%. Think inventory, payment processing, access to facilities, auctions, etc. Now, we do the same for marinas, and are moving into the camping/RV vertical as well. It’s pretty cool.
Part of our project is being manned by our team in India, so this was a week to do some forecasting and planning, and more than anything, just get some FaceTime with our peers who we only see over zoom on a regular basis.
The conference room
We did a week of reviewing, planning, Jira boards, projecting, collaborating, and anything else you can think of relating to the software development lifecycle.
The bulk of our time was spent with Aarshad, who is on our team, and Vasavi, the product owner (think, “the boss”). Aarshad showed us all of his favorite places, and Vasavi was an amazing hostess who helped us all feel welcomed. She spent her day off showing us around town, and very much reminded me of my wife: works hard, is a great mom, values her faith, etc.
The other things
’m going to stay clear of saying “India was this” or “India was that”. It is a huge country, and I only saw a part of it.
You know what I really liked about Visiting Hyderabad? The clothing. It was beautiful- there were so many colors, and not just boring western style clothing.
The traffic seemed a bit chaotic at times- but most of the way through the trip, Mike pointed out: none of the cars have any dings or scratches in them. It is like they are all moving in the same direction, and understand the same rules.
The language. India has 3000+ languages. How drop. That is astounding. In the office, people come from around the country, and there are two main languages spoken, Hindi and Bangali. But, around Hyderabad, many of the signs were in three languages: Hindi, English, and Bengali.
Museum Sign in EnglishSign with Bengali, English, and HinduBengali or Hindu?
Finally, the post wouldn’t be complete without reflecting on the time Mike got on stage and did an impromptu song in Skyhy, while the band was finishing up their warm up. A core memory was created that night, and, Mike was pretty good:
This is a post to say goodbye (from the blog) for a while. Here is why.
One of the first pictures from the blog in Feb, 2021
A little over two years ago, some pretty terrible things were said. Those harsh words and accusations really shook me- they made me doubt my identity and values, and question a lot of things.
This blog has been my way to work through that. After 85 posts, with confidence, I can say:
Being a dad is the best. I love my girls.
Taylor is an amazing gift in my life.
Church is an essential part of who I am. The people and community are so, so important to me.
There are seasons in life. Good ones, bad ones, and everything in between. That’s ok.
Solid friendships are worth fighting for. This is something Taylor teaches me through the way she lives.
Having something to look forward to is important.
Laughing brings joy to everyone. Laugh at yourself. Laugh with your family.
Counseling is important. Life isn’t easy. Talk it through with someone.
I am only responsible for myself. Not how others interpret/respond/react to things.
Stay curious to learn, or try something new.
Saying sorry means a lot.
Jesus Christ is the most important part of all. Where would we be without prayer? Without worship music? Without keeping that as the cornerstone of our lives?
This blog has been a special outlet for me, and if you have read through it, I hope you enjoyed it as well. Now, I feel like I DO know who I am. I feel like I have confidence in how these weekly posts show the parts that make up my life, and that was the goal for me with this blog since the beginning.
One of the most recent pictures of the girls on the blog.
I don’t want to go down the path of posting weekly updates and measuring views to get results. And, I don’t think you would want to read that either.
What will you do now?
This blog has reminded me how much fun it is to create. So, I want to follow that passion and use it with my professional life by making videos/posts/blogs/social media about the things related to IT that I really enjoy. I don’t quite know what that is going to look like, but time will tell.
What happens to the blog now?
I’ll keep the blog for sure. Going forward, I will do some posts every now and then. Later this year I am going to India for work, so I will be doing a post about that. And another post when we go to Disney World, for sure. Other than that I am not certain. I hope to keep it going though, to pick up at some point in the future. It is a great way to document our family events. Maybe I’ll keep doing that in some way? Stay tuned.
Taylor and I both work from home. Taylor is in sales, and spends a large amount of time on work calls during the day; I am a software engineer, and spend a large amount of time doing deep work (mostly pretty quiet).
It has been this way since the pandemic- Taylor’s company from Greensboro allowed her to work from home; since then, she has transitioned to a new company out of Philadelphia. My company doesn’t even have an office, but on paper, they are out of Texas.
Taylor’s setup is downstairs; I am upstairs. Taylor’s office is very clean and organized. Mine is not.
The great thing about this setup is how much it helps complement our other job: as parents. Often, the day will go something like this:
Taylor: “Do you have any meetings this afternoon?”
Luke: “Looks like my last meeting ends at 1”
Taylor: “Can you pick up the girls from dance at 3:45? I have a call until 4”
Luke: “Sure, thats fine.”
Boom! Ok, that isn’t very climactic, but compared with how challenging things were before, it just makes so many things so much easier. Then, If I need to, I can add an extra hour on before or after the workday to keep things balanced.
Also, it is just 1/2 mile walk to Rosie’s school, so walking to school with her in the mornings is often one of the highlights of the day.
Work Life Balance
Increasingly important has been the drive for work/life balance for me. Taylor often says I have an “Interest based attention span”, and I have a ton of interests. But if I go too far with one of those interests, other things seem to go off the rails. Let me explain.
Here are the key elements:
Professional Life: Work
Emotional Life: Time to be happy, be sad, and everything between
Spiritual Life: Church, time for prayer
Social Life: Time with friends, family
Mental Life: Time to read, grow as a person
Physical Life: Working out, getting the blood flowing.
Ok, that list doesn’t come from any doctor or a book. It’s 100% just Luke making this stuff up.
There are different seasons in life, but if there isnt a little bit of time to fill each of those proverbial “buckets”, I’m not my best self. So here are the ways each bucket gets filled:
For work, I wake up and do continuing ed in the mornings. This world of IT is still fascinating, and there are so many fun things to learn.
At home, I value laughter when we can. Also, the ability to laugh at oneself; this part I learned from Taylor, but allowing the kids to laugh and poke fun at how much I love to sneak some of the kids candy can make for special moments. Time being sad is also ok.
At Church, I am on the prayer team. We get a list of about 80-100 things to pray for each week, for people in the church. Also, I am teaching a class at our church right now as part of our Wednesday night “Connections” classes. Listening to worship music throughout the week totally fills this bucket too.
Taylor keeps us busy socially; marrying her was the smartest things I could have done in life. This bucket gets filled with weekend trips, date nights, and pickleball, which I am going to pick up a little more now that the weather is getting warm.
Mental life is a way to keep grinding the axe. This can be reading, or anything else that tickles my fancy. Taylor calls this the “things I obsess about”. It is the way I stay curious, maybe even a little weird. Listening to podcasts while doing yardwork is an example.
Physical life is just a way to take care of my body. Don’t eat junk food, exercise a few times a week, drink water, sleep good. During the work day, I may slip in a 30 minute run; or some quick yoga moves to stretch my body that tends to sit in a chair all day.
Not every week includes all of the elements, and sometimes there are tradeoffs: more exercise some months, more work some months, more social time some months. But I loosely try and tend to each area of life just as a normal rhythm, and without it, I start to feel restless.
Before jumping into the fun stuff about the dinner party, I didn’t do a post last week. Or the week before. The reason I didn’t write was because I didn’t know what to write- or how to write about it.
My older brother Jake had a birthday. I haven’t spoken to him in 2 years. It is embarrassing to talk about. Some things in life are- embarrassing, sad, broken. The details of how this came about are not worth going into here, but my phone number is blocked, which means I cannot call him or his wife to wish him a happy birthday.
The biggest shame is that it has been allowed to go on for this long. Surely someone, somewhere could have spoken into his life over the past two years and said something to the effect of, “Hey, I know things aren’t great, but he is your brother, and you should give him the benefit of a doubt. Cutting him out of your life isn’t the right thing to do.”
There is a lot more to say about it, but I love and respect him, and do wish Jake a happy birthday.
Party Time
Taylor and I work pretty great as a team. We learned this early on in our marriage, and have recently gotten out of the habit of collaborating for parties after 10 years of having Children and living through a global pandemic. So we thought this might be a great time to have a party. What were we celebrating? Nothing at all.
Taylor has to have something to look forward to. I think we all do- whether it’s a vacation, party, time off of work, etc. Since there haven’t been any weddings in a while out of our friend group, and our group is almost done having kids (are we, Cores?), what fun reasons are there to get together and celebrate? Nothing much, but let’s have a party anyways!
Taylor took the Friday off of work, the grandparents had the kids, and Taylor spent THE DAY cleaning. How this was relaxing, I have no idea. But, Tay the house looked beautiful. You could hardly even tell that children lived there.
She asked that people dress “funky formal”, which was part of the fun. Bowties? I have never worn one before. Funky Formal? Definitely gonna wear a bow tie.
Dinner was catered- kinda. There is a great local place with some tasty, but not too pricey, food. They cater many events, but also have options for a take-and-bake kind of thing. Along with a fancy dessert. And charades. Then, fireworks that I brought home from South Carolina. Mortars that shoot up into the sky are a lot louder than I remember them being.
Chad got a delayed Christmas PresentFirst pic of the nightFunky fresh?GentelmenLadies
Something New.
We have 2 cars. One is 15 years old. The other is 13 years old. They are paid for. My role in the household is to keep the cars running- change the oil, tires, lights, inspections, and ensure there are no “check engine” lights in the car.
I go to the car shop every other month. The cars are running mostly pretty great- but I am sick of it. Going to our mostly awesome car repair guy, and taking a few hours, every other month for ONE of the two cars, I kinda reached the end of my patience. To argue the other side, at least all of the recent maintenance things have been fairly inexpensive recently.
We knew we needed a new car. Taylor wanted a minivan. I wanted the SUV. Neither of us have ever had a new car before (3 years old, anyways). I was motivated because I tend to obsess over things. After many months and wayyyy too much time researching, we finally got out to a place that had the model of minivan, and SUV for us to test drive side by side and see what we like. We even had the kids, and made a unanimous decision: we all liked the SUV better.
So I knew what we liked, and made them an offer: $2k less than their asking price. THEY SAID NO. My children were there, and they still stuck with their guns. Really?
There was another model, almost the exact same. $1k less than their asking price; they still said no.
Some might say, surely you could have financed just a little bit more? Yes, we could have, but I wanted to pay for it, and stick with an exact figure that Taylor and I agreed upon.
The THIRD option was 90 minutes away, in Raleigh. So, I asked my mom if she had anything to do that Friday afternoon, she said no, so we went to Raleigh.
This is the last pic of the Camry. We had it 9 years, added 80k miles, and it only depreciated about $5500. I guess its true what they say: Toyotas really hold their value
Originally I was hoping to sell it myself and get a few thousand more than the dealer would offer, but the last time I sold a car myself- maybe 5 years ago- it was hard to navigate around all the scammers out there, and seemed like a hassle. And the dealership made a better offer than I was expecting.
A nice guy named Jermaine helped us out. We had been in touch the day before. The car was a trade-in, and had just come in the day before that.
He saw what I was reading, and we ended up talking about Jesus for a bit; Jermaine helps to pastor a few churches in the area.
Last shot before leavingAll the paperworkOn our way home
We are pretty happy with it. Coming from a car that is 15 years old, it feels like I am just coming out of the Stone Age: the bells and whistles on cars are pretty amazing. This is a 2021 model, but feels pretty darn new to me. Some of these things have been normal on cars for a LONG time.
Other fun things
These are just some other fun pics from the past couple weeks, with no context.
When there is a daddy daughter dance, attendance is not optional. It is not the dad’s night to shine on the dance floor (though a few did).
We got our tickets to the daddy-daughter dance before they sold out. Yes, I have a weird tone when writing these posts, but the event did actually sell out. A friend of ours was really sad learning about the dance that day through his daughter, and realized he couldn’t go because he didn’t have a ticket.
Rosie got a special dress for the occasion, and she got to choose the fine-dining option, no place was off the table.
The final decision, between Applebees, a steakhouse, and a taco place, she chose the taco place. The conversation was delightful.
The place was packed with dads and sweaty kids. The snack table was popping. The moms worked their butts off to make this night possible, where no moms were allowed.
The 360 Photo Booth was a hit. But the highlight of the night was the daddy dance off. Our host, Brian, shared that he wasn’t going to participate; when sharing that, I didn’t quite remember any dance off happening from last year’s event. Oh, but it was so amazing:
Daddy Dance off.
The dad that did the split took home the prize this year: pride, and a torn hamstring.
The whole night I kept thinking to myself: “Rosie is just like her mom.” No, this isn’t a slight towards her or Taylor. She is just like her mom when, in the early days of our marriage when we were attending what seemed like an endless amount of weddings, Taylor would often disappear, only to turn up having a conversation with yet ANOTHER friend/coworker/someone she grew up with/sorority sister/parent’s friends kid, what-have you. Taylor was just very social, it drove me crazy and it is one thing I really love about her.
The whole evening at the daddy daughter dance, I kept looking up, and Rosie was GONE. But, she would always turn up, just like her mom did.
Making Cake
We had fun at the Super Bowl this year. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a ton of pictures to really share about the evening, but Rosie and Taylor spent some time making a great cake for the event.
24″ pizzaMercy watching UsherTay leading the charge Rosie in the zone
Mardi-gras
A few fans wrote in that they were disappointed about not getting a post last week. I apologize deeply on this shortcoming, as this should have been posted last week.
Our neighborhood does a pretty fun Mardi-gras event each year. And by pretty fun, I mean the parade is led by 4 riding lawnmowers kind fun. Beers in coozies, kids in beads eating sugar kinda fun.
So much fun, we invited our friends from the country to come join us this year. Houston made it at the end after addressing a plumbing emergency at his house, but we had a blast in all the ways listed above:
The parade this year was the most impressive one on record:
Multi-media
Ok, I wanted to come back to this one, and answer the question about where and how to store the ever-growing collection of videos and pics on your phone. What do you do with them?
This is part II; last time, I shared a bit about our current setup:
WD Mycloud to store videos locally
Amazon Photos to store all photos
Plex server to watch videos on the tv.
This works ok, but it has its issues:
Videos are hard to organize
Videos need to be formatted properly
Lacks many features we like on images, like location, finding people in videos, etc.
Update:
Currently there is no service that does what we want it to do, which is to format videos and keep them organized with a great user experience, without storing them in the cloud. Plex is the service used, but even that just puts all videos into the same folder, and they cannot be searched via date, location, etc. Plex was designed to serve movies, like a personal DVD collection, and can be extended for home movies. The features just aren’t the same, and formatting the videos to be the right format for a tv is time consuming and technical.
Also, we want to keep our videos in the same place we keep our videos.
One note here: if the goal was to just keep our videos stored, and access them occasionally, I am quite happy with our current setup. The biggest difficulty is organizing, and watching on the tv.
This leaves us with one of a few different ways to proceed:
Google Photos- now called 1Google. If on android, this is the way to go. 2 Terabytes, $100/year.
iCloud+. A great option. I am toying with the smaller plan to see what is available, and really like it. It syncs pics with my computer to quickly edit them for this blog. It can be shared among people in the house with Family Sharing. If you have an Apple TV, use this one. $9.99/month ($120/year) for 2TB
Amazon Photos. This is what we have been using to backup our photos for years. Currently, we have 59,000 photos. We also have FireTv in our house, so it just made sense to use this one. The app on our phones automatically backs up all photos/videos. Currently I am uploading all videos stored on our local drive. Currently I am using the 1TB for $60/year, but will eventually jump to the 2TB for $119/year.
A couple caveats here. Bandwidth is important. No matter what solution you use, your upload speeds are very important for this. One good place to check is speedtest. No matter what solution you are using, if you are uploading a lot of content to the cloud, it will take some time. We have a 500MB internet plan with fiber, and it took about 6 hours to upload 220 gigabytes so far.
However, we are done with this task. The next step is to continue uploading our videos, and then, possibly sell out WD Mycloud server on eBay. A lot of time was spent on this task trying to avoid lock-in with a specific cloud provider, but the features are pretty great, and it seems like the best way to go for now.
On Saturday, we had nothing to do. This doesn’t happen…ever in our family. Normally there is at least something to clean/organize. But this time, nothing.
“Let’s go to the zoo!”
There’s not much to say about the zoo, but I did take lots of pics, so enjoy this little video.
This visit did make me wish I had a better camera- especially with a zoom. Do you have a camera? If so, what kind? There are some great options, and people who do photography seem to have a lot of fun with it.
The cloud
What do you do with all of your videos/photos that you acquire, year after year? The library of media only gets bigger each year, as phones with better cameras take increasingly larger sized images for each shot.
The options are either:
Store them in the cloud.
Keep them on a file in your house (locally)
Not bother; delete them when you get a new phone.
Before deciding what option is best, I think it’s important to figure out what you want to do, because there is no one-size fits all solution. My goals are:
Keep all photos
Record 4k videos, as my camera has that option (most cameras do now)
Be able to watch those videos in 4k on our tv
Have a good app to look up photos by time/location/person
Keep videos, but all videos don’t need to be available at all times.
Save money.
Automatically sync my media, as well as Taylor’s
option 1: the cloud
This is the best option, and the most expensive. There are three major options out there, and each seems as good as the other, in my opinion. I am not going to go deep into the details on these, but here are the three major options, and reasons why they may be the best fit. Some prices are listed, all for the size of the library we currently have at our house, which is about 2 terabytes
Google photos. Has an app on the phone. $10/month. Best if you have google chrome cast.
Amazon Photos. Has an app on your phone. Photos are free for prime members. The app is great: sort by person, location, time, etc. $12/month. Best if you have fire TV.
Apple iCloud+. Just buy extra storage. The app is also great. $10/month. Apple TV supports this to play things on the tv.
Whatever you use to stream your tv with will have the best way to show your photos/movies. Also, month after month, year after year, this can get expensive. And uploading terabytes of data to the cloud will take a long time, depending on the upload speeds of your internet. Once the initial upload is past, you are pretty much good to go.
Option 2: local storage
One of my goals is to avoid the monthly fee each month, so I went with this option. This is a NAS: Network Attached Storage. It is one of the cheaper ones, but a good way to get started.
It plugs into your router, not your computer, and is a one-time expense, and should last a couple years before we max out the storage capacity.
Pros:
one time expense
Automatically uploads all media from Taylor and Is phones.
The app is good, but limited.
Don’t have to worry about file size, or 4k videos.
Cons:
Western Digital is a storage company, so their priority isn’t to make the best app. We got spoiled with the amazon photos app (others act the same way) where location, person, even things are searchable).
App cannot search by location, person, etc
Playback on a tv.
This brings up an important point about metadata. Each time you take a picture, besides the name of the photo (the file name), all sorts of other information is recorded in the photo.
At this point, we have all of our photos (Taylor and I) backing up to Amazon Photos automatically. This is a great app, and again, free for prime members. We have been using this for years, and love it.
We have all of our videos being backed up to our local storage device, a wd mycloud 4 terabyte device next to our router. Here is a link to learn more about that, if you are interested: https://www.westerndigital.com/brand/wd/my-cloud-home
But we still don’t have a great way to watch these videos onour amazon firetv stick.
For each photo/video that gets created, there is a ton of metadata included. Your phone keeps a local database of every image, who is in the picture, what else it thinks is in the picture, the location, time of day, the camera settings, and a whole lot more. Here is a screenshot of what I got when writing some software to get the metadata for a video I wanted to see:
The reason this is important is because we have a way to play these videos on our tv, but each tv/software has certain limitations: videos have to be in the right format to be played, including resolution, file extension, bitrate, size, and there has be enough bandwidth to stream the file to the tv without any interruptions, so you better have good wifi.
There is a free, local media server option that can do a lot of this for you. It was created as a server to keep all of your movies and music (think back to when people had VHS tapes). However, it has been tweaked to be able to show home videos that are stored as well: https://www.plex.tv
It is the recommended way to interact with your videos on our wd-mycloud, so I set it up. We got spoiled with our other ways to view photos and videos (the google photos app, iPhone photos, or in our case, amazon), so this interface seemed terrible:
But, it is free, and allows us to view home videos.
But there is one last problem, and this is where that metadata became important: Plex only plays videos in the proper (landscape) format. This means that every video recorded in portrait mode (up and down), doesn’t play properly on the tv.
After combining all of our videos into a single file, I wrote a bash script to go through and get the metadata for each video. In our case, we wanted to get the orientation of the file: 0 degrees, 90, or 270. If the video was 0 degrees, we are fine: it is landscape, no further action is needed.
If it was a 90 or 270 degrees, it is portrait. We would need to:
Move the original file to a new folder.
Format the video by adding black bars on the sides, so it will play on the tv.
Here is the code for that:
Now, we can view our videos, even the portrait mode, on our tv, through the janky plex interface.
That is a lot of work, for a video interface that is pretty bad. What if there was another way?
At this point, we have almost everything we wanted:
Photos backed up to amazon photos
photos AND videos are backed up locally to our WD Mycloud
Videos can be played on the phone through the app.
Videos can be played through the Plex app, but the interface is terrible. We can do better.
If you have a TV that can do Airplay, you can stop here; just stream the video (stored on WD Cloud), to your tv. This is a great option. But I want more.
What we need is an app that can make use of all of the metadata from a photo/video. The job of the Plex media server is to make sure your videos can be played, and if not, format them to the right format. Running some computer code to get the job done isn’t ideal.
Is there something else that can work with the files we have (not in the cloud) that can show them on the tv, without having to use Plex or running computer code?
Just yesterday I bought an Apple TV 4K to give this a try. If it works, I can sell the WD Mycloud on eBay for about the price of the Apple TV; if it doesn’t work, I can return it. Here is what I have so far:
It can show photos AND videos from an external drive, connected to a MAC, through the PHOTOS app. No need for the Plex server. To do this, you need to enable media sharing on your Mac.
This external photos library needs to be the System Photo Library, or, the main library used by the photos app on the computer.
The Apple TV need to be signed into the same Apple account/userID as the Mac.
The Pros of this approach:
My files are still saved locally; no monthly cloud fees
Fairly easy to set up.
No more Plex server for watching videos on TV
Can see 4k as it was filmed.
We have iPhones, so the same apple ecosystem makes it nice.
The cons I have found (so far):
Had to buy an Apple TV. I can sell the WD MyCould for about the same price though?
The interface on AppleTv for photos isn’t as great. Cannot search by location/year/person.
Photos on the local external drive can only be viewed through the “Computers” part. Again, not the best UI for searching for videos from a place, or featuring a person.
Syncing photos. This approach doesn’t automatically sync photos/videos from Taylor and I’s phones. There may be a way around this by syncing to iCloud+ with a shared photo library, and then importing that to our local drive every month or so. This is something I am going to look into.
One of the takeaways is that the premium you pay with storing your photos and videos in the cloud is that they have stellar apps that can make use of the metadata in your media, and create versions of your videos to play on any device, at any time. If you steer away from that and still want the same niceties, you will have to put in some work to get there.
I have 2 weeks to return my AppleTV. In that time, I am going to see if there is a solution to the syncing issue, while still showing videos saved on our 4 terabyte external drive, connected to the Mac. Stay tuned.
Around here, a birthday isn’t just a day. Around here, there is a birthday with one side of the family; then another side of the family; then alone with just the family.
This week I woke up on my actual birthday, read a book about the Old Testament, checked my blood pressure (part of my new years resolution, everything is fine), and realized: here is your sign. You are old and boring.
Taylor and Rosie made an awesome breakfast, with a candle in the scrambled eggs for kicks.
Rosies special sign
Rosie even made this sign for me, and explained what each of the icons means:
Guitar because I like music
Video game controller because I like playing zelda
sunglasses because I am cool
Heart because she loves me
hat because it is time to celebrate
scary emoji because 39 is old
beers
cupcakes because they got me cupcakes
basketball because go tar heels!
burrito. Everyone loves burritos.
Chocolate because I like candy
Rosie is so thoughtful. May she never change!
UNC Basketball
Every year Rosie and I go to a UNC game on a night when the schedule works best- typically a 7pm weeknight game when tickets are more affordable. This year happened to be an awesome year for the tar heels. They were #3 in the country when they matched up against Wake Forest.
This year all three of the Lineberry boys got to join us, and the night was great. This year we went a few hours early to enjoy dinner, and looking at some of the stores on Franklin street.
We spotted the famous Roy Williams across the stadium wearing a pink sweater. I told Rosie about his accomplishments, and Rosie asked if we could go see him. With 10 minutes until tipoff, it didn’t look like there was a line any more, so I said “Sure.”
We made it all the way across the stadium. I got a little mixed up and had to jump over some seats, but we made it down right beside Mr. Roy, when “Excuse me- you are gonna have to go back to your seats.”
Security got us. Apparently there is a cut-off for when Roy allows drop-ins. He made sure to get our attention, and the people around us confirmed what he said to Rosie and I: “Come back at halftime. I want to see you.” were his words, after seeing my smile and boldness to bring my 9 year old.
Rosie did confess that she was a little embarrassed and didn’t want to take him up on his offer, but still. It was a fun memory.
Also one thing we noticed is that the opening part for the games- including the laser light display on the court- was different than last year:
Rosie and I at the gameGot to see my friend Charlie HiserMr Igetbuckets, Armando BaconRJ Davis warming upNot the best seats
A small adventure
There is an area near our house. It is a small little green space, with a little pathway removed from the road that is good for riding bikes. This little green space has a creek running through it, and is bordered on 2 sides by a slightly busier road in town. There are no sidewalks around it, which means, no one ever goes over there. Is is the perfect little spot for an adventure.
It was going to rain that Saturday afternoon, and Taylor had been out with the girls doing this and that. So, this was the best opportunity to build up the suspense for Rosie. Her response? She is just like her mom (in the best way possible): “Why don’t you just tell me where we are going?”
No, I would not tell her! That would defeat the purpose! But, we got the bikes and helmets ready, packed a PB&J, and rode the 3/4 of a mile to our destination.
The first challenge? Cross the creek without anyone falling in. Luckily there was a 2×6 laying there, and a narrow-enough place to lay the board down, and cautiously cross, one by one.
Across the creek, what did we find?
No trails
Lots of pricker bushes
a lot of mud
It was hard for the girls to walk.
You know what Rosie’s reaction was?
“This is so fun daddy, I feel like an adventurer or explorer or something.” That side of the creek wasn’t as grand as I was expecting. We crossed back across the creek, used some hand sanitizer, and ate our sandwiches.
Before peddling back up the hill, we made use of our walkie-talkies and explored the large grassy field bordering the creek.
One thing I tell the kids often these days is “If you have enough ideas, eventually you will have a good one.”
This last picture might be hard to see the ducks that Rosie and Mercy saw in the creek.
