Christmas Letter - Draft 1

This year was filled with an incredible amount of wonderful "firsts" for our family. From our first child and daughter being born, to Reba's first ten days away on a trip without me since we got married, to our first time living outside of the country, the year has been full of surprises and new experiences at every turn.

Reba took Summer to visit the Character Training Institute in Oklahoma she attended during her college years. They enjoyed time introducing Summer to old friends and Reba had the chance to help cook in the kitchen again she had worked in while attending there. Summer came back with some wonderful toys hand made for her while they were there.
This fall, one of the network/server administrators in our company took a short term disability leave, which gave me the opportunity to temporarily transfer to the Canadian office to fill in for him and receive training in our corporate standards and best practices for server and network management. During this seven week trip, Reba, Summer, and I stayed with a family from the office up there (their basement that they normally rent out was available at the time of our visit). We were there long enough to be able to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving and still make it back in time for US Thanksgiving as well (two in one year!). Summer took crawling lessons from the one year old and two year old we stayed with and had days of fun sharing toys and enjoying all sorts of new tastes and getting to share a bed with Reba and me again. While there, Summer started crawling (with the proper motivation, a slice of pumpkin pie Reba would drag along the floor in front of her), pulling up on the bed (and any other furniture with good enough edges to grab hold of), and even took a crawl up one step while we were packing up the car the day we left to head back to Denver, Colorado before Reba found her and scooped her up. Reba enjoyed days of sight seeing and touring the town, while I spent long hours commissioning servers and upgrading network components at the main office location and colo across town. Victory (our 7 year old dog) spent the time with friends to avoid complications at the border crossing leaving and returning to the US. He was overjoyed to see us when we returned to pick him up.

Summer Sunshine was born March 2nd, and our lives changed. She has grown up much faster than we could have imagined, having learned to crawl just well enough to be able to get to a couch or bed to pull herself up and stand there, reaching for anything low enough to get her hands on. Just yesterday Summer took the bottle from me and decided to feed herself (with marginal success) for the first time. At a little over 9 months old, she has started to stand for a few seconds at a time unsupported before sitting back down, and will take steps when assisted. Victory has developed a look of fear and trepidation at "little sis's" new ability to chase him around the apartment on all fours, and grumbles every time she tries to use him as a support to stand up. He is getting tired of having to run away from her; his only safe hiding places are on the couch or bed when we don't have Summer up there with us.

Reba's parents joined the Coloradan Davidsons and Winsingers for Thanksgiving this fall and we enjoyed a big family dinner together as well as a chance for the men of the family to spend an evening at the shooting range together.

== More Edits Soon ==

Good News! Heading Home!!!!!

On October 2nd, my wife Reba, our daughter Summer, our dog Victory, and I left Denver, Colorado to embark on a two day drive to our new home for a month and a half in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I don't like telling people when I'm home or away, because there are some unkind people in this world who would like to know such information. But as we are almost home, I can talk about everything in retrospect. Things to note from the last month:

• Summer is growing
• She started crawling shortly after we arrived at the place we stayed
• She decided crawling was only useful for getting to something she could pull herself up on and stand
• She will be walking very soon
• She has sprouted four teeth (that we have found, mostly by her biting us with them)
• She misses Victory
• Victory has been living it up terrorizing the cat he is living with while we are out of the country. Also, the family watching him for us either already has or will in the next week most likely be having their first baby (yay for growing families)! We pick him up on our way back to Denver.
• Reba loves Edmonton, but not enough to move there permanently. I agree. It's too cold there. I've been sick with all the cold weather and trying to bike to work. But there has been lots to do, capped by a rodeo we went to Monday night. The science museum we visited shortly after our arrival was also cool (liquid nitrogen presentations are always entertaining).
• The Aurora Borealis was worth sitting out most of the night in the cold car for. If we had stayed out longer, we could have seen a more amazing wave, but the one we got to see was very impressive. Greenish blue waves of ionizing radiation flowing across the sky is an amazing sight to see.

Life has been crazy and will continue to be for some time. Our vacation to visit family in December will include me being on call the entire time. No pressure.... I have been receiving training from the hosting division of our company and will be working remotely from the US office on hosted build outs for client projects and internal use over the next 4-5 months as needed. I'll also be helping with server updates and other regular outage tasks (which will be fun if the VPN goes down). I'm learning a lot about the corporate best practices and will apply this knowledge to the US infrastructure as it grows. It turns out I'm filling in for an employee on short term disability (had I known this, the 12 hour debate with Canadian immigration might have been shorter). My work permit expires soon, so that's why I'm headed back to the US in a hurry. Reba has been giving me rides since it is too cold for me to bike to work with how sick I've been getting. She has also been making me wonderful lunches. It's fun to poke into the bag each day when I get to the office and dig into an orange or chocolate bar (there's usually a couple of each in there, I'm getting spoiled).

Life in Canada is a little different. Not as different as I was expecting. Adjusting to to KPH instead of MPH was easy. Buying gas hurts, because it costs around $1 CAD/liter, but the car can hold 60 or so liters.... Costco, Walmart, Best Buy, lots of the same stores here. Costco is insane. The prices are way better than other stores around here, so it is a mad house in there, wall to wall packed with people all the time. Reba found a sled for our now 8 month and 1 week old baby girl. It's the perfect size and is well padded, so she should love going for rides in it all winter long. If the snow we heard about over the last month and a half keeps up, she will get lots of rides in the snow to get the mail, take the dog for walks, and just general time outside. Reba found a big, fluffy, down snow suit for Summer, with lots of space to grow into, so we'll toss a few warmers in the arms and legs and tow her around for as long as she wants.

While we are on the subject, Summer is amazing. She studies everything. She thinks a lot. You can pick her up and stand her up on your lap and she will give you this look like she knows she can figure you out if she just works at it long enough. She is happy all the time, even when we aren't. She still only gets upset if she needs something. And as usual, it's sleep, food, or a change of diapers. She hasn't enjoyed the cold either, but she is getting over the cough she picked up a couple weeks ago. Reba's teeth are doing well too (she had two pulled the week before we left).

All in all, the trip has achieved it's goal of introducing me to the work I will be doing for the next half a year, and has helped the staff catch up on workload due to being down a staff member. It is clear that at least another employee needs to be hired, but the dollars don't allow for that at this time, so we have to take projects as they come and do our best to prioritize and not lose any time.

I can't wait to get home, sleep in my own bed (with Reba, Summer, and Victory all snuggled in), and play a little Minecraft on a computer that can handle it. I've had a Foxconn NetTop that can't handle much beyond websurfing and video playback, and to have a real desktop with my multi-24"-monitor setup back will me nice. And whenever it launches, I need to go pick up the Samsung Galaxy Nexus to replace a very aged (launch day purchase) Motorola Droid (OG).

Almost Half Way

About three weeks ago, I started re-training with my company to fill additional responsabilities in managing internal systems and infrastructure (servers and network). This has been a great experience and I am learning a ton about delving deeper into hosting systems for customers. I'll be at work late tonight to update servers and do some other maintenance.

While I have been busy at work, Summer has decided to start poking out her first tooth (bottom left front tooth), and she is beginning to crawl (with the proper motivation; pumpkin pie works well). She's as big as a 1 year old, and yet she's just a week over 7 months.

Going Nowhere Fast

Today was a very frustrating day. After dealing with T1 and IP address migration issues all morning, I took Reba to get teeth pulled. On the way home and to pick up Summer, I got yelled at and cussed at by other drivers. I also had a driver fly out of a parking lot and across two busy lanes of traffic to stop short right in front of me for no reason I could determine. I almost hit her and I could have been hit myself. Then there are the drivers who tailgate, pass, and then slow down in front of you. I had a couple of those too. It was only a 40 minute drive... Rush hour in Denver is not pleasant.

Old Games

I picked up two $1 copies of Age of Empires 3 with all expansions some time ago and finally started playing it. Don't get the point of the cards, but ok. I should read up on some strategy for how to use those. Graphics are good for 2005 (?) game. Mechanics seem the same, but resources are simplified; mills are odd with how cheap they are, and that they give infinite food. Raising sheep is cool.

Summer will crawl any day now. She likes getting up on her knees, but doesn't move yet. Still, it is fun playing with and watching her wave stuff around!

On The Move

Summer is about to start crawling and we still have lots of baby-proofing to do. Also have a neat job opportunity coming up. More on both soon!

Life Of A SysAdmin

I just got home from work at 3AM after hopefully saving the servers from themselves. The AC unit has quit again, and the server room got up to just under 120 degrees F before I realized what was up thanks to E-mail and SMS messages not being sent (I will be looking into that Sunday afternoon or Monday morning). I have spent most of the day catching up on MS updates on 1/3 the servers, with a short break to install shelving and a longer break to rearrange the bedroom. Server admin is taxing, but I love working with the servers and the 2AM drives to work to set up box fans in the server room are down to once a year.

Regarding the room reworking.... Reba wants to move Summer into her own room, which means moving my half of the office room into a corner of the master bedroom. I'm keeping the Linux gaming server and the primary desktop I built early last year, but almost everything else needs to go for lack of space. On the up side, I can play Minecraft in bed now.

Summer is growing like a weed and getting cuter every day! Speaking of, she just woke up, so I will write more some other time.

My Wonderful Daughter

Last night, Summer was awake every couple of hours demanding food. She wasn't sleepy and wanted to play. Her mother and I did not want to play. We fed her and did what we could to make her happy, and this morning I watch Summer for a while so Reba could get some more sleep.

This afternoon, Summer had finally had enough. She was not happy and wouldn't stop screaming. The only thing we could do was walk around and bounce her until she finally gave up. I think I walked the circular walk in front of my apartment that goes around the stairs for about an hour before she finally got sleepy enough for us to lay her down.

Some people say parenthood is not worth the trouble, but I disagree. To see how happy she is to see me when I come home from work is amazing, even though she doesn't have a clue who I am yet. And when she gives me the cutest smile in the world every time I walk into the room, I melt a little inside. Summer is amazing. We love her.

Happy 4th of July!

Reba and I celebrated Summer's four month birthday on Saturday by taking Victory to the dog park. Victory has been needing more exercise this summer and is feeling a little neglected with how much attention Summer requires. He also needs a close eye to watch his feet when he goes to the park as he has been ripping the pads on his feet with how rough the gravel at the park is. He seems to be doing ok and healing up fine this time. We left as soon as he got a little hole in one pad, and it isn't bad enough to hurt him any. Summer slept the entire time we were there.

We also attended the annual DOSUG (Denver Open Source User Group) bbq/cookout at Plumb (something) Park. Good food and good talking with the active members. I want to start attending the regular meetings the group holds monthly. Reba enjoyed talking with some of the ladies that came. Good family event.

Sunday we slept in as Summer didn't sleep much Saturday night or Sunday morning. Lunch at Nate and Jos's was good as always and I helped nate with a wiring problem in his new truck. It now has a working radio! All the cousins had great fun, and all four are growing like weeds; especially Summer.

Today we took Summer and Victory to Cheesman Park to watch Nate's family bike/ride/walk in the 5th annual bike parade. Very hot out, but lots of shade to be had made it survivable. This evening was a cookout with Chris and Marie. Vic had to stay home, and was very good! He didn't get into anything this time! Chris grilled up some good buffalo burgers and a perfect t-bone steak. We swam for a bit and watched fireworks on TV. Twas a good day.

Potentate of the Rose

This morning, I became a "Potentate of the Rose". If you don't know what that is, check out the link, or search for "Petals Around the Rose". I figured it out and am sticking to my guns of not revealing the secret, but I would be more than happy to prove to any other members that I know it. And I will say one thing, having a very analytical mind helped. I saw three rolls and had the secret figured out.

If you want to try figuring it out, use this puzzle page from Lloyd Borrett.

More Minecraft Videos

For those who didn't know, I'm shooting minecraft videos on my youtube channel at http://www.youtube.com/arigornstrider. I finally got around to editing all the footage I've recorded (all the way back to the first of the year), but it took several days to upload as well. I was coming home for lunch some days this week just to get more videos started uploading, and I think Comcast has been throttling and even stopping some of my uploads completely (it could have been browser issues, but if I waited an hour or two, without closing the page I could restart the upload and it would work).

I'll throw up another post in a bit to talk about work and other life stuff. Hope all my readers are doing wonderful!

New Blog

Hey all,

It's been a while since I've last kept a blog, and as I've shut down that webhost and the blog running on it, I may be starting over from scratch. But I wanted to start writing some thoughts down and keeping a "brain" log as thoughts and memories come up.

Speaking of memories, My wife Reba and I are currently taking Dave Ramsey's "Financial Peace University", from which I have graduated once already before getting married. I am happy to have no debt and have a decent emergency fund saved up to take care of the unexpected expenses. We're going through a budget and savings plan, and are making good progress and agreeing on how we want to do things. Since we are expecting our first child in March (2011), we have started talking through how to teach her financial responsibility.

Growing up, I was paid for some chores that I did, and not others. I had to keep my room clean or I would get spanked (or some other punishment as age appropriate). I got paid for helping with some family chores like doing the dishes (and actually getting them cleaned). I had summer jobs all three years before I started college at Trevecca, and put that money into savings. I had a deal with my parents to go to one of three schools for college if I wanted financial assistance, and if I kept up my grades, we would split the bill half and half (they had been given money by my grandparents for us kids to go to school and additional gifts when each of us got married to put aside for a house), with any scholarships I earned counting toward my half of the bill. I was able to graduate debt free and with a modest care in my name (I had saved up while working 20-30 hours a week when not in classes).

My grandparents were very smart with money, and they passed that on to my parents. My parents then passed that on to me. Thanks to the planning and generosity of my grandparents who had passed away before I was old enough to get to know them, I have a much better start in life and when I moved away from home, had a reserve saved up instead of starting deep in the red with lots of loans and car payments. I thank God for His providence in my life.