Kyle's Random

I put this together just for fun.  Is this anywhere near accurate?

PS -  I built this graph online using the Google Chart API.

A few pics from our great trip to Lubbock, TX, to see my brother, Phil, get married.

PS – My wife is very selective about what she lets me put online.  So, when it comes to the kids, you only get profiles and backs of their heads 

I know I’m a dork, but I was really looking forward to this OS update yesterday.  Apple added some really nice additional features to the operating system of the iPhone.

Today has been a day of breaking things.  To start things off, I broke my new bike this morning.  I was trying to haul both my kids in their bike trailer up a steep hill, and I bent a bunch of teeth on first gear.

Then this afternoon, I came a little too close to the back porch steps with my riding mower, and I tore them apart.

A few minutes later, just before I finished mowing, the belt broke on my mower.

And here’s a photo of the repaired steps, just in case my land lord happens to be reading this. 

If you’re on Facebook, and you haven’t yet picked out your custom url/username, now is the time to do it.  I just got mine, and below are the screen shots.

I was hoping to get a url for the Faith Promise FB Group and new Faith Promise FB Page as well, but you have to have 1,000 members, and we’re still a bit short of that.  Fortunately, they’ll open that up in a couple of weeks, so I’ll grab that then.

Spurred on by a Craig’s List listing for a mountain bike and kid trailer, my daughter and I made a trip out to Cosby, TN, today.  She got to ride in the front seat for the first time, and we got an outstanding deal on the purchase ($100 total – Thanks, Kathy, for telling us about this!).

In addition to traveling on the newly-opened I-40, the trip into the mountains was gorgeous.  Hard to capture on a iPhone camera while driving, but here’s a snapshot of our trip.

By the way, the bike and trailer work great, and I’m whipped!

It’s true.  My shoes stink, but not in the way you might think.

I bought some black dress shoes about a year ago.  I didn’t pay very much for them, but I thought they looked cool.  I supposed that the gasoline-like* smell from the soles would eventually wear off, and Keri made me keep them in the garage at night for a couple of weeks when I first bought them.  Well, they still stink.

Good thing I hardly ever have to wear the things – only for weddings and funerals, but that also means I’ll probably have them for a long time too.

* It’s not exactly the smell of gasoline, but that’s the easiest way to describe it.  The most accurate way I can describe it is to say that they smell like the inside of the discount tool store, Harbor Freight.

For several years now, I’ve really regretted that I’ve never taken computer classes since I was a Junior in High School.* I really don’t care about getting another degree – I just want to learn how to write programs. HTML & CSS are great, but for me, to really understand the science behind programming Java, PHP, C++, or ColdFusion would be truly fascinating.

So a couple of weeks ago, I went back to school. OK, not really. If you haven’t seen this already, a bunch of courses are offered free online at Academic Earth, so I’ve started watching the lectures for Stanford’s Introduction to Computer Science online, and I love it.

* Most people think my degrees involved technology, but that’s not the case. My undergrad and Master’s degrees were both related to pastoral ministry, not computers.

This past weekend, some of Keri’s family came to visit us in Knoxville (Dave, Nancy, Erin, & Mattie), and we had a great time hanging out together.  That is, until they drove off to start their trip home.  My three-year-old daughter was heart broken.  I’ve never seen her look so sad.

Now, I want my kids to learn to cope with disappointments in life without my intervention, but still, I wanted to do something that would be fun.  I suggested that we create a tunnel in the living room floor from some big boxes in the garage.  The diversion did the trick, and both kids were thrilled with our construction project.

They had a great time playing inside the thing, but my favorite part was the graffiti decorations that my daughter added over the next couple of days.  I’ve included a few close ups here so you can see a few of her illustrations.

Maybe it’s just because I’m her dad, but I think she’s brilliant.  We may start writing and illustrating books from our home, just for fun.

Two Thursdays ago I was brutally attacked by my gallbladder after eating a couple of pieces of pizza.  I didn’t realize that I had gall stones, but the combo did a number on me.

I’ve honestly never had to deal with such pain before, and by 11 pm, I was begging Josh Whitehead to run me to the ER.  He was kind enough to take me – and it wasn’t until 20 minutes after I got the morphine (around 3 am, I think) that I finally felt OK again.

This Tuesday, I had laparoscopic surgery, and my gallbladder is no longer with me.

Today, I’m feeling great, other than four sets of stitches, a yellow-bruised belly, and some soreness.