finite speck

During every interaction that you have during the day, you're earning trust or losing trust. In the way, you wrote that text or that email. In the way, you interacted with your spouse or a fellow employee. Are you communicating in a way that says you're important and I value your opinion? Are you just dismissing people? Each interaction that you have has an impact. No one's keeping a tally (at least you hope not), but if every time you interact with a certain person it's negative do you think that they're going to want to work with you? How can you be positive and think about your interactions at this level? Today think about your interactions. Is what I'm about to type or say going to build someone up or is going to tear things down? Why is it that I'm going to choose to take a jab at someone if it's going that way?

I found a really good service a while back through Stickermule that will turn almost any raster image into a vector image for you for what I would consider cheap. The cost is $29 and the turn around time is about 24 hours! I tried it out with about 30 dealer logos that came to us as raster images and need to be converted. They turned out better than the originals that were sent. I could have never done them all that quick or that well. Sometimes it's better to hire things out than do them yourself. It probably saved me days of work. I would totally recommend this service through Stickermule. What are some ways that you could be more productive? Are there things that you could outsource instead of doing them yourself?

When the incentive isn't there for me it's tough to keep showing up. I'm thinking specifically about social media right now. But it goes for anything. There's a daily slog that you have to keep going through even if you don't see results. That goes for anything that you want to see improvement in I believe. You don't have a better marriage by just showing up once and doing a really good job. You don't improve your job skills by doing it to the best of your ability once. It's a daily or regular process of showing up. There are many days when the process of showing up and doing the work isn't rewarding, but you do it because you believe that there's value and there's a good result that will come from it. I'm not saying that your marriage, job, and social media posts are on the same level or require the same amount of time... each one is different, but each one requires your time regularly. So are you going to show up today? Are you going to

On the side of the office that I work on it was only me and two co-workers yesterday. It was really quiet. Quieter than I expected. I think some people may have been on vacation, but I believe many are working from home again. I'm not sure as we haven't heard anything from our department about working from home. Not much surprises me anymore though. I don't understand it all with COVID-19, but there's been a lot of change. Kids are getting ready to go back to school here and they will be required to wear masks and they will be asked to social distance. The church we go to will be having services outside again unless it's too hot this coming weekend.

I think we're getting close. Mac is over a year old now. He's walking on his own. He's starting playing on his own really recently and he's sleeping through the night. The last two nights he's slept in a little longer too. Before that, he was getting up between 4 and 5ish. I think we're getting close to not really having a baby anymore. Which is a little sad, but that's how it's been for the last 5 years. I'm sure we'll still have diapers for a while and waking up in the middle of the night sometimes, but I think we're over the big hump.

We had a problem. Our guests at our rental property called and said they only had 16 towels when they arrived. There is supposed to be a total of 60 towels available since our property will hold up to 30 people. Right away my wife got a hold of our cleaning company to find out if we could get them the towels they were supposed to have. Our cleaning company said that they could either get them to our property later that evening or the next day. My brother-in-law checked with our guests to see if dropping them off the next day would be ok, which they said would be fine. This is where I stepped in and said here is where you need to under-promise and over-deliver. So my wife called the cleaning company and said we needed to have them delivered that night. Our guests received all the towels they needed that evening the same day that they requested them. I'm guessing they were happy that they got taken care of right away. A problem is actually just an opportunity to go above and beyond a

I ended up trimming all of my bushes in the front yesterday afternoon. The front of the house looks so much better now. It was all looking so overgrown before. It felt good to get that task done, but even better was seeing my oldest who is 5 help me. She was working hard pulling weeds and helping me pick up all the trimmings. Last week we started giving our kids a little money and I think that's been a little bit of a motivator for our five-year-old. So another thing happened yesterday. Our mower died again. I think it might be for good this time. So, I talked to my wife about getting a new one to which she also agree, but our idea of when was not the same. You see I'm ready to get one now where she's looking for the best deal. So we had to talk it through realizing we have different reasons as to why we think the way we do. She brought up a good point that it's about the end of the season and maybe prices may go down on mowers and that we could borrow her parents. I br

I typically go to bed between 8:30 and 9:30. I'm usually pretty wiped by the time my kids are in bed. I usually get about 8 hours of sleep which means I get up between 4:30 and 5:30 and I prefer getting up closer to 4:30. But many times I don't get up right away and then one of our kids ends up waking up before I really get going. I like my quiet wake up time. This morning was one of those mornings. I didn't get up until Mac was already up. He doesn't usually want me in the morning so that means mom has to get up then too.

Since January 1, my wife and I have been making sure we get at least one video captured every day. Many days it's not until the end of the day that we get something. Other days the moment is obvious. Either way, the idea was made possible by an app called 1 Second Every Day. I think I blogged about it earlier in the year, but it's a simple app that you take a second of video from a video that you take each day and it compiles it into a long video of all the days in the year. It's a great way to be able to go back and look at a year.

How bad do you want something to happen? To get a task done? To learn something new? To write a post? To read a book? To lead your family?  What's holding you back? What are your excuses? What do you do in the time when you have nothing to do? What do you do in those rare moments when all of your kids are playing well together? Do you make up things that are easier to do to distract you from the things that need to get done? Or even from the things that you really want to get done? What are the buts? If there's something you want to see happen make it a priority. Make it the most important thing of the day or the week. Get going on it. No "I want to... but..."

Staying up late. Sleeping in until 7 AM eastern time. So, 6AM still central. It was nice to just change things up a bit over the weekend and yesterday. It was relaxing. We played some games with my brother and sister-in-law and my wife's parents. We had some good meals. I didn't do any work. I didn't even blog or work on any other stuff on my computer either. Some times it's good to just kind of shut things down for a few days. This was one of those weekends. Today will be a day of getting back into the swing of everything.

We took a trip yesterday to my brother-in-law's place. It's about 4 and a half hours' drive. My in-laws' took our two older kids earlier, so we just had Mac. Which meant either we would have a really quiet trip with him sleeping or there might be a lot of crying. My wife kept him from taking a nap in the morning and so as soon as we took off he was out and he slept for 3 hours! So we just had about an hour where there was a chance of a crying baby... and he did awesomely. The one thing we've learned with little kids is to get them to sleep as much as possible during the trip. This means a lot of times for a longer trip we'll take off in the middle of the night and hope they'll sleep all through the night. I'd highly recommend it.

We were at Josie's soccer practice and Mac had a poopy diaper. So I took him to the van to change him and realized we no wipes in the diaper bag. What do you do? Well, you hope for the best. Try to keep your kid's hands out of his diaper and wipe up as much as you can with the diaper. Then the only other thing I had was more diapers. So I took a second diaper and wiped as much as possible could off of him. Then I up a clean one on. Now that's how you change a poopy diaper when you have no wipes.

Whether they are typed and read or spoken and heard, words do things. They cause us to think differently. They bring us to action. They cause others to do things. They reinforce what we already know. They make us feel something. They attract us to someone. They cause to not like someone. What are you saying? What are you writing? What kinds of things are you setting in motion by the words that you write or speak?

What if I just started doing 20 sit-ups a day? Every day. If every morning as part of morning routine along with getting a cup of coffee, reading the bible, writing my blog, I also did 20 sit-ups. That would be 7,300 sit-ups in a year. That feels like a pretty big number compared to zero. I used to exercise every day as a teenager except for Sunday and I'm thankful for the discipline of it. Once I hit college that discipline of physical exercise has been very up and down. I've never been very consistent. I do best when I have a goal of a race that's looming ahead or some sort of deadline. So that's what I'm thinking about here and trying to establish.

I took the kids out for a bike ride. Josie and Baer were riding their bikes and I had Mac in the carrier behind my bike. We were almost to where we were going when I looked over and watched Josie slam right into the down tailgate of a truck with her lips! She had been looking over at Baer and hadn't noticed she was coming up on a parked car. I felt helpless. There wasn't much I could do but get off my bike and hold her. Thankfully she wasn't going that fast and she didn't get hurt that bad. My neighbors walked by and brought her bike back home for us so I could put her in the carrier with Mac. She ended up with only a puffy lip. No other injuries. We learned it's always a good idea to look where you're going when riding a bike otherwise you might run into a parked car!

One highlight from the weekend was cleaning the house and getting some help from our older two kids. We told them we would pay them a little if they helped out and that was a motivator. We don't have it all figured out as far as how to instill the idea of work, getting paid, and saving, but we're trying.  It was very ad-hoc. We had them help put all the toys away and pick up so I could sweep the floors and told them when we were done vacuuming we would pay them. Then we decided to give them dimes. Josie, who is five, got five dimes and Baer, who is three, got three dimes. Then my wife and I talked to them about giving, saving, and spending. We encouraged them to save some of what we gave them so they have money for something bigger later and said we would double what we gave them if they save it. So they each gave some back which we'll invest for them. It's not a lot, but it a way to get them started thinking about it.

So today will be the first time we're inside a church building since COVID-19 hit. I'm looking forward to it. We are following all proper protocols and have to wear masks at certain points while we are at church, but it will be good to be together inside instead of outside in the heat. This week it's just going to be me and our two older kids so we can see how that goes and see what makes sense with our baby for next week possibly. There is the option to be in the nursery, but you have to be with your kid and somehow stay away from other kids I think. So Josie, Baer, and I will be in the main sanctuary this morning. We are supposed to wear masks while singing so we'll see how that goes too. 

So many, many good memories with you and grandpa like picking raspberries and eating them in your backyard, having popsicles at your place, watching movies in the basement, and having sleepovers with the cousins there.  I think one of my earliest memories of you, grandma Geri, was calling your phone number when I was around 5 or 6 and my mom left me at home for just a few minutes and my sister Andrea or maybe it was Julie started crying. And you came over right away. But this is just an example of the kind of Grandma you've been to us growing up. From remembering what my favorite meals were and making them when we came to visit... like your huge crepes filled with all kinds of fruit and whipped cream! I remember you coming down multiple times to Kentucky as well for a band competition or a swim meet (I think you went to a few of our meets any way... my memory is getting bad!) You were always interested in what the grandkids were up to. We always loved coming to visit your place and

A couple days ago we were outside with the kids and a couple walked by that's moved onto our block recently. So we struck up a conversation with them and introduced ourselves. We found out the husband is a pilot and they lived in Dubai for about 5 years. But the thing I found most interesting in our conversation was when he mentioned that in Dubai they do this thing called cloud seeding because they get very little rainfall. They basically take planes that have what looks like a bunch of roman candles on the wings and inject materials into clouds to speed up the process of them being able to produce precipitation. From a quick google search, this can be done to produce rain or snow and it's being done some in the United States as well. From what I can understand of the process it's not creating more precipitation, but it does speed up the process so that there's the ability to change potentially where the precipitation happens. So there have to be clouds to work with fr

Do you get frustrated with a co-worker, a spouse, a teammate, or your kid? Don't forget you're on the same team. Your end goal should be the same. It might not be exactly the same, but in the end, the largest goal is you want the company to succeed or you want to stay together or you want to win or you want to be part of a family.  When things happen that aren't exactly the way you would have done them that doesn't make the other person wrong. It just makes them different than you and they chose to go about the challenge in a different way. Remember that. Be thankful that they bring a different perspective to the table and trust that what they are doing is also trying to bring success or whatever is needed for the relationship(s) to be good. Sometimes there is intentional hurt that is done but don't assume that's the purpose of the other person on your team when they do something you wouldn't do.

One thing that I've done that I wouldn't recommend doing is having 2 financial advisors. It's just awkward and neither knows what the other is doing. Neither knows what the others percentage is and it's not really motivating to them to know that someone else is working on behalf of their client as well. I realized early on that it was going to be a challenge when I mentioned something to my first financial advisor about having invested some money with another advisor and once that was said it was a little awkward from then on. Neither one has done a bad job for us. I think it just puts them both in a funny place. But, there's something good that came out of the process for us. That being that we found an advisor that connected with us well and that was able to give advice on some of the things we were considering. I'm thankful for that. There's also another side of consolidating that's good and that's that you're able to get a better return most

There are these words that only get used for one thing and shuck is one of them. I hadn't really thought about it before but did this weekend when my parents said let's go shuck the corn. We don't use the word shuck for anything else that we remove from something. Like I don't say I'm going to shuck my clothes or I'm going to shuck the tires on my car. Maybe I should try bringing the word shuck into the mainstream and use it for references to removing something from something else. Then again there's probably a reason why people don't use the word shuck or shucking for much besides removing the husks from corn. That's probably enough.

Just start typing. The first step is to write. Nothing will come if you just sit there. Writer's block isn't a real thing. It's just what happens when you decide not to write. It doesn't mean that when you can't think of what to write about and you start writing that what you write is going to be awesome, but at least you're going to be choosing to keep writing. So much of getting better at things is just practicing. Even creativity. Practice. Choosing to do the hard work instead of no work. Choosing to learn a new skill instead of doing nothing. This past weekend was good for my creative juices too. Just getting outside in nature and being with our kids. We played in the creek, made a huge slip n' slide, went on the four-wheeler, and jumped on the trampoline. Lots of playing outside.

Yesterday was a great day with plenty of time to get going and wake up. This morning I didn't get up early and we have to get going early to get to church and we'll be gone for the whole day with family. I could see myself getting frustrated as we're getting ready to go. God help me to love my family. Help me to see these moments better and prepare myself for them. My tendency can be to get mad when I don't have much me time in the morning and we're rushed... which could be this morning. So help me to not be selfish and instead serve my family.

How many times did someone like what I posted or how many views did it get? Why do we care? Does it actually equate to something in the end or is it just a metric? It feels good to say my post got thousands of likes and I guess in a way that's not a bad thing that means that real people saw a post you put out and decided to hit some sort of like button. You got their attention. But are they going to buy or are they going to engage in a discussion with you? Do you know who they are? How do you know that the next time you put a post out there that they will see it? Can you control what the social media giants decide to show to people and don't decide to show to people? It can feel pretty black boxy to me. There are parts of the social media platforms that I like, but every time you're putting something out there you're hoping that people will see it and engage with you. They might have liked your page or started following you, but how long ago was that? You have no metric

I don't do it very often. Maybe once or twice a year, but going through my office area and throwing stuff out, organizing, and taking stuff home feels really good. Yesterday I spent a few hours going through filing cabinets, drawers, boxes, and my desk to clean up some. I know there was more I could have gone through, but I got through a lot. I threw out a couple garbage cans of stuff that I probably never would have looked at again or used. Why does it feel so good to do that? I don't know... and some people could care less. For me, some of it is probably about what others think about my space. Some of it might be that I do like things clean and picked up even though it can look like I don't.  I'm fairly particular. I like organizing. I also think at least for me it makes it easier for me to find things. Yesterday was a pretty good day and it was all because I tackled cleaning out and organizing. I may do a little more today... it felt that good.

I'm getting ready to put in hours of time to set up syncing between our rental property booking website, Airbnb, and VRBO. There's a whole process to go through in order to make syncing possible as well as take bookings and credit cards through our personal website, but I believe it will be worth it. The company we're using for the integration is Lodgify and they seem to be a growing force in giving rental property owners a way to get bookings through their own website. I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes.