On another note..

Pun intended.

I duno if any of you have ever heard of Relevant Magazine, but they are a great Christian magazine for those interested Emergent style of worship and forward thinking. They also have a relatively new section called Relevant TV where they focus on all kinds of Christian and Secular up-and-coming music. Through this and other sources I have been able to keep up with some of the new great Christian artists... everything from country to hard rock.
One such artist is Anberlin. I had not heard of them before, but they have a new album out that Rocks...literally. So check them out if you like good Christian Rock.
Other good artists to check out are: Falling Up, By the Tree, Tree63, Casting Crowns, Skillet, Kutless, ReliantK, Lifehouse, Sanctus Real, Switchfoot, David Crowder Band, Delirious, FlyLeaf, MercyMe, Jars of Clay, Newsboys, Pillar, SONICFlood, Thousand Foot Krutch.

Also of note...Petra is no more. They have retired. Its a sad day, they will be missed.

Meeting with the builder...

We had a pre-construction meeting with our builder on Wednesday. It went very well. We walked the lot and talked about what trees will go, what will stay and he got input from us about the slope of the driveway as well and how high we wanted the house... The lot is on a slop, so he could cut down and put the house lower or build up the dirt around and place the house higher...we opted for the latter because it will give us a better view. One of the really cool things is that we will have input along the way for things like grading and rockeries (on the back side for retaining wall...all depending on how the lot gets finally graded). We have a protected growth area in front of the house, which means we get to (have to) keep a few trees in the front of the lot, which is fine by us.
Also, one of the options we had, that we gladly chose, was to have an open wood beam on the main level (9ft ceiling) that allows the kitchen/dining/living area to be fully open. This beam will be natural wood and we will have timber (real trees) as the two posts in the kitchen for support. The original plan was to have a Glulamb Beam. While we were at the lot on Wednesday, we saw a few large, straight trees that had been felled on the lot next to ours that the builder is working on as well. So I asked...

So about the open beam...would it be possible to take one of those (*pointing to the logs lying by us*), and mill it to be our open beam?

His response was this...

You know, I was just starting to think about that too, so I'll talk to my mill guy and let you know.

SWEET
:) Our builder is awesome.

New schedule (rough dates):
June 12th - clearing/grading starts
July 1st - Framing starts
December 1st - Completion

It will probably slide some, but I just hope we can get in by Christmas...

More to come as it unfolds.

Progress!

Yea, so during the final junk/odds-n-ends moving process on Saturday, we got a call from our cool realtor Andy with word that he has been in contact with our builder. Finally, permits are completed and everything is good to go. The site is scheduled to be cleared late this week or early next week and we have a pre-construction meeting planned for Wednesday afternoon. The meeting is to walk the lot to see what trees can be saved and to get an idea of what the final grade will be like, as well as to confirm all the requests/changes/additions/selections we have made over the past few months.

It is perfect timing, because now we can focus solely on the house and we are only 10 minutes away from it! :) God is good. We had an opportunity to move a while back and didn't end up proceeding down that path because it just didn't feel right. Everything about this move has been awesome and has fallen together easily and efficiently. That is one of the many reasons we know we are making the right decision.

All out

The sale of our house has closed, money deposited (YEHA!), and we are out...never again to be in our old house.

The apartment is packed...there are boxes everywhere. It is a nice area tho and the dogs seem to like it and are getting used to the noises. The only thing that sucks? No Air Conditioning...I really like my A/C. :)

Our place backs up to a rock wall and has grass off of the patio. Thus I have on order (delayed...suck) two sets of metal pet pens that I am going to link together and put up around the grass and patio so that we can let the dogs out without putting them on leashes every time. So that will be nice. We still have to clean out the garage so that we can fit the Z4 in it. Lots to do, but we are tired so it may take a bit to get organized. I have one thing to admit... as much as I hate moving and the fatigue that goes with it, I have been feeling more alert because of all the activity and exercise (moving boxes and such)... so I just need to keep that up.

Chaos Reigns!

We are moving. Need I say more?

I hate moving...


*sigh*

Movers come on Thursday. We are doing our best to get fully packed and furniture dis-assembled. 1/2 goes to storage, 1/2 to our apartment...(our 925 sqft 1bd/bath + den apartment). Its nice tho. :) I just hate this part of moving.

More later...if we survive.

New sound experience...

I have been running sound for my church almost solidly for the past 3 years. We have gone from school gym, to school gym, to finally our own location. It has been a fun experience and I have learned a lot. I have been humbled by how much the worship team, pastors, and congregation have consistently conveyed how much they appreciate having me around and how much they enjoy the quality of the music and the mix that I am able to produce. Let me put it this way... if there is a special service, or a Holiday service coming, I can pretty much assume that I have been scheduled to run sound. We have been able to train a fair number of people and have gotten a lot of nice, new equipment over the years. There are now several ppl that are doing a decent job and have contributed a lot to the system and setup. I now feel that I can release the reigns and let them proceed without me. Don't get me wrong, I love the church and the people there. We have developed a lot of awesome friendships and media/tech team is great to work with. I just feel like my skills could be used better somewhere that really needs the help to get things going.

That place is Seattle Family Church. They are just getting started and they really have a good thing going. Its small, but fun and very much centered on doing what they can to reach as many people for Christ as possible. The people getting it running are a splinter group that have come from a few different churches in the area that want to head is a slightly difference direction and go back to the basics of worship and ministry. That all being said, they are doing it right coming from a tech side. A lot of startups scavenge for equipment and limp along with crappy quality stuff for a few years and build as they go. Not so for SFC, they have gotten some good deals and have some contacts within the av community and so have been able to get good prices on rentals and great prices on good equipment. One such piece of equipment is this: The Mackie TT24. It is by far the best mixer I have ever worked with. I went to rehearsal last Saturday, jumped on the board and ended up running sound for that night's service. Now, mind you I have only
work with a digital board once before. The thing is a dream to use. It is amazingly powerful and almost infinitely configurable. I would recommend it to anyone. It has 24 analog channels and 24 digital inputs. It has almost everything and it sounds awesome.

All in all, I have found a place where I fit in and can lend my expertise to help them leap forward and get a good thing going.

Curious Tidbits from my family's blogs...

Here are a few cool things I thought I would spread from my cousin's blogs:

The need for Ethanol as an alternative fuel

Life Lessons on "The Freedom of limitations"

New house on East Lake Sammamish

I know I am on a posting rampage, but here is a few more tidbits.

Our new house is on the East side of Lake Sammamish, Wa about 5 minutes south of Redmond, WA. It is not in a development, it is a small builder building on a few lots he owns in the area. It is up a hill in the trees with a partial view of Lake Sammamish west through the trees and of cougar mountain south. We don't know the full extent of the views because it hasn't been built yet. It is smallish (1580 sqft), which we like, and it is 3 stories (including garage). The lot was suppose to be cleared late march/early April, but that hasn't happened yet. We are suppose to close August 30th, but that won't happen. You may be asking..."What the...". But we don't care. Its pretty much our dream house. We have massive control over almost everything...fireplace, rock on front, floors, slate, countertops, cabinets, molding, colors, windows, skylights, open wood beam in kitchen/dining/living greatroom with log timber posts, etc... So if it takes a while and we are crammed into an apartment for a bit...we don't mind so much.
Here are some specifics:

Listing

Floorplan
(kinda, its a little different from this: the kitchen/dining/living room on the main floor is all open with an island where the furnace/water heater/fridge is on the plans. The deck will be off back instead of the side and the half wall next to the powder room is not there. Also on the upper floor, there is a skylight in the master and master bath.

Weekend trip to Orcas Island

This last weekend, when our house went on the market, we packed up the backpacks and the dogs and headed on the ferry to Orcas Island. Our original plan was to go backpacking up trail 1002 (Taylor River/Snoqualmie Lake Trail) to Snoqualmie Lakes. It probably would have been a fun trip but the conditions were iffy and there is still snow around which would have been fine...But we were exhausted from the last 2 weeks of getting our house ready to sell. So we went to Orcas. :)

I had forgotten what it was like to camp in a state park. I grew up camping at Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park with my dad. I always loved it and still love to camp. But I think my preferences for camping have changed a bit. I like backpacking....it's quieter, more open, less people, and no cars. So our first night in Moran State Park was less then exciting. On top of that, I guess fishing season just started (don't really keep up with that), so it was quite busy... and loud... and there were other dogs (some not so friendly). Therefore we were unable to let Bailey and Zanni off leash...which was a pain. Don't get me wrong, the area was beautiful and if you like car camping its a great place to go. But I don't think we really like car camping anymore.
Needless to say, we did some searching and found Obstruction Pass Park. Its not much of a hike (.5 mi) and its NOT in Garmin's MapSource Topo mapset, but it was awesome. The short hike goes down from the parking lot, along the sound to a beach. There are 9 decent size and private camp sites with the sound of lapping water 50 feet away. Its an awesome little park and we were able to let the dogs off leash because there were not many people there. Another cool thing about it is that is it one of many waterfront camp sites on the Cascade Marine Trail. This is something we have been wanting to experience sometime soon. After we get settled in our new place, we are going to get new touring kayaks and spend a week or so kayaking around the San Juan Islands, stopping at the campsites along the CMT. It was a blast to experience one of the sites on the CMT. It did rain all that night and into the morning, but us and the dogs had a blast. I will post some pictures when I get a moment to pull them off my camera.

WOW

So...wow. Our house went on the market last Friday. We got back from our backpacking trip late Sunday evening and met with our realtors on Monday afternoon. Here is the status:

10 + offers

We have sold the house and are in mutual acceptance with inspection complete.

We got a fair amount over asking price.

We are amazed.

God is good.

Now we have to be out by June 3rd, and so begins the mad rush to find an apartment for however long it takes our new house to be built (its a little behind schedule).

Our House is now on the market

So I know I haven't posted in a while..but we have been up to a lot. We bought a house down in Sammamish, WA. It is just south of Redmond and is on the East side of Lake Sammamish. I can't show you much yet due to the fact that it hasn't been built. Construction is a little behind (like it hasn't started), but the original completion estimate was August 30th (yea right). It will slide, but that's ok. We are planning on getting an apartment for a bit after our house sells. So we are being flexible. It is an awesome house, its a small builder and its not a development. This means we have control over almost everything! And it has a partial view and beach rights! :) I will post more later, but the main reason for this posting is to get a link to our current house out on the web for you all to see. Here it is:



(not active anymore)


We have spent the last several weeks working on the house and its looking great and ready to go finally. Anyway, I have to get going because we are heading out for the weekend to go backpacking/camping.

Last Whistler trip of the winter (most likely)

We went up to Whistler again a few weeks ago with some friends and their 14 month old boy Ian. It was a blast hanging out with them and flying down the slopes (the snow was AWESOME). Here is one of several pics I hope to get up soon.
BTW- I will post more about the house as soon as I know more. We hope to get by the property and snap some pictures soon.

Whistler trip # 2 of ? for 2006

We have gone to Whistler a ton of times. Here is one of many, many pictures...that I of course have not done anything with. This is from 7th Heaven on Blackcomb looking at Whistler.

Yea, its been way too long

It has been a while since I have posted. Obviously. I will hopefully be keeping up a little more here in the future. The reason? We bought a new house that has not been built yet. Construction is suppose to begin in a week or so and I will be taking pictures periodically and posting them here with status. It is located on the East side of Lake Sammamish, south of Redmond and east of Bellevue, WA. It is going to be awesome! :) We can't wait. This is roughly what the house will look like, with some changes (skylights, Kitchen/Dining/Living is a great-room, deck off back...and a few others). Sammamish House Floorplan

Biking season is starting to wind back up. I road a little over a week ago for the first time this year. It was a lot of fun, but I am out of shape...duh. My friends and I are planning on riding Flying Wheels again this summer, so we will be riding more soon to get ready for that. There is talk about riding the RSVP which is a two day ride from Seattle to Vancouver, BC, Canada in early August. I don't know yet if that will happen or not.

More later...

Uptime for Win2k, 2k3, XP, & NT

So I have been using Unix and Linux a lot more lately because of my job. This has been good because I had gotten a little rusty and I enjoy the Linux environment. Recently I was trying to determine the uptime of one of our windows servers without having to search the Event logs for the last time the machine rebooted. Unfortunately windows currently does not have a command like "uptime" in *nix. However, I found something that is almost as good. Drop to a command prompt and type:

> net statistics server

It will output something like:

*****
Server Statistics for \\[your machine name]
Statistics since 1/9/2006 11:09 AM
...
*****

Not quite as pretty, but hey it works... :)

Hi...

Hmmm, so I guess its been a while. Two words: ME BUSY.

Yea, that pretty much sums it up.

Where was I....

oh yea...the STP. So it was intersting to say the least. Alot more hills then I expected.

hmm, brb...more in a bit...

Quote of the day....

On my personalized google front page today sat this quote:

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.
- Sir Francis Bacon

I thought it was interesting and worth repeating.

Cleaned and Tuned up

I picked up my bike from Gregg's Aurora bike shop yesterday evening. Its now all tuned up and clean with new rear break pads and new "vanity plates" (the top head of the Ultegra break/shift levers) that were mutilated in the crash. The tune up was free, which was nice, because I bought my bike there a few months ago. I was also able to get a free full bike fit done to adjust everything on the bike for an optimal ride position. It felt much better at the end of the fit, so we will see how it feels on a long 85 miles that we will do this weekend. Also, pictures are available from the Flying wheels ride. They are very small, but I am going to get the cd (kinda pricy tho) and get hi res images to print myself. Here they are:

Flying Wheels Pics

Word of the Day: Concurrent

Word of the Day for me:

Concurrent

The explanation of my current tasking priorities. :)

An object lesson on the correct use of a helmet.

Well, it was bound to happen sometime. We were on our normal Saturday morning ride on the 25th, about 20 miles in and up near Marysville when it happened. The culprit? Railroad tracks. The problem was, they were not perpendicular to the road, they were at less then a 45deg angle. We have gone over them before, without issues...but not this ride. We were at a steady 18/19 mph pace flying down the road and I thought I attacked them at the correct angle. Apparently I was wrong. I felt my rear wheel slip on the first track of the second set of tracks and there was nothing else I could do. I went down pretty hard, kissed the asphalt and rolled a few times. My left side took the brunt of the impact. I hit my shoulder, my arm and hand, my side, my leg and of course my head. Above all I remember the impact of my head/helmet on the pavement.

It was an interesting feeling because it felt like it was mostly in slow motion. The funny part of the fall was that as I rolled I saw Micah, who was right behind me before the fall, go flying by and over me. He was able to avoid me for the most part and only run over my foot, which didn't hurt at all. Amazingly he was able to un-clip and launch himself off and over his bike and stayed upright. I don't know how he does it, but he is amazingly agile.

We stayed there for about 20 minutes while I shook it off and then continued our ride for a total of 42 miles. Nothing broken and my bike was ok. My helmet is cracked tho and the worst pain I had was in the left of my palm and my little finger. Apparently I jammed my hand into one of the tracks as I went down, from what Micah said. After the fact, he said it was an odd feeling to watch me go down because he felt like it all happened in slow motion and that it took him a long time to reach me even though he was right on my tail at the time. When we talked on Sunday he said that he thinks it is almost worse to watch someone else go down then to go down yourself. Hopefully I won't have to watch one of them go down anytime soon.

I feel like I have been beaten up and I was pretty stiff the next day. But I am recovering pretty well and I am ready to get back on my bike so that I can keep in shape for the STP. I will pick up my bike tonight from the shop because it went in for a tune-up and check over that was already planned so that it will be in good shape for the STP. Hopefully there carbon fiber is fine and there is no major damage. I will be getting a pro bike fit tonight as well. I am looking forward to that. I will keep you posted as things develop and I will post the photos from Flying Wheels as soon as they are available.

A side note: For all of you out there skeptical of wearing a helmet....just do it. I would have had a serious concussion and probably a skull fracture if it wasn't for my trusty helmet. $80 is a small price to pay for avoiding a major hospital visit.