I’m on a cut diet, so that means limited condiments.
Limited condiments means I start using tons of hot sauce again.
Tons of hot sauce means I get into a weirdly passionate state of being towards different hot sauces.
Right now, Sriracha.
I’ve got a few technical posts I want to get written up as soon as I can find some time. Until then, remember, “it’s only after we’ve lost everything that we are free to do anything” lol.
On the very early morning of December 27th 2007, my wife became more than herself. She became a mother.
She worked, and toiled to do everything she could to ensure that this new life dependent on her had everything he needed. Her self interest and importance became a secondary drive towards that of the new calling she found in Will. Even leaving her job to become a stay at home mom to care for this new addition to our family.
Then again, on a very early morning of Sept 7th 2010, my wife moved forward to become a mother to yet another child. Our sweet little baby girl Maggie. Our daughter however had special needs; and my wife, the mother, heeded the heightened call and began working continually with her to try and better her. Reaching to a place in her heart, and physical being to produce an endurance that surpasses my understanding. To show interest to our son, to let him know that he too is loved, and that his little sister was a joy, not a burden to take his mommy from him.
When we thought we could take no more, that our line was running short; this beautiful woman found she was pregnant with our next child. Born Sept 17th 2012 was Jake, and she again found a level of endurance and ability that makes me feel as if I’m hopelessly left behind as she runs this marathon. Catching but a glimpse of her dust as she carries on in this race. Carrying the burdens of bottles, therapies, dinners, diapers, discipline, she shows a compassion and a heart that could only be found in a mother.
Amanda, you are amazing. I’m thankful to God that I have a wife like you, and am ever impressed with you, the mother.
I love you.
All that remains.
So last week we lost our second dog to cancer. My corgi Keenan who’s been with us for 9 years has left us. I’ve not really been able to talk or write about it but my wife has done a good job with it here: http://thebelcherfamily4.blogspot.com/2013/03/farewell-friend.html?m=0
I loved that dog, and am thankful for the time we had with him. He’s been with us a relatively long time.
There is definitely something missing in our home now.
Before I get going, I just want to state this is intended for my sons. All, obviously, are welcome to read it.
To my dear sons Will and Jake,
A man is the sum of his actions, not his words. Words are powerful, but if there is nothing to sustain their value, they are pointless dribble. Likewise, your words should be of value and reliable. If you say you will do something, then do it. Use your words to lift up others rather than tear them down; and to show others you care for them.
A man does not gripe, grumble, or complain. He accepts what is given him, and seeks to make it better with dignity and respect; not by the worthless prattling of his tongue. Understanding of course that at times you will need to confide in others your worries and your concerns, but don’t make yourself a constant source of negative discourse.
A man is gentle and protective of those who are less fortunate, or less capable than they are. They do not lord over others or treat them in a condescending fashion. He leads, and by leading he serves; and presents himself as an example. He asks nothing of others he is not willing to do himself should it be required. Not of course to speak of things he is not capable of doing, but in such a situation shows due respect for those more capable. He does not act petulant towards his superiors, but instead seeks to grow to be as capable. If his superiors aren’t as capable, he still shows the due respect required for that title and relies on his actions to show his worth rather than demeaning speech.
A man does not raise his hand in violence, lest it is to protect the helpless, and will gladly lay down his life for others if it is required. Simply put, it takes far more strength to stay your hand, than it does to let it fly.
A man never strikes a woman. A man never forces himself onto a woman. A man never pressures a woman to do anything she is not willing to do on her own. A woman is not a trophy, but a precious person. A daughter, a sister, a mother. Generally under appreciated in our society today, but the brace that holds most things together. You are of no greater worth, and you will not act otherwise. A man respects a woman, and when he finds the right one, loves that woman more than he loves himself.
A man does not fear commitment, and when he finds the right woman, he will marry her. A man does not leave his wife. A man will do anything in his power to make his wife feel safe, secure, and loved. I know that a person is responsible for their own feelings, one can not force security, happiness, and love into another; but that is not an excuse to stop trying, EVER! If you are failing to do this, you are a selfish boy; only interested in your own contentment. Admittedly that may sound harsh, as what is required may not be possible or even practical. At those times discernment is required about what should or should not be done, but the final decision should never be reached for the sake of personal gain; but for the gain of both. If a concession needs to be made, it is not weak to concede to your wife; and it will not go unappreciated if it’s from the heart.
Know that making a child doesn’t make you a man, raising one does; and a man raises his children in integrity, and shows them all the love and attention they deserve (They do not however take precedence over his wife.). He is patient with them, he plays with them, but he doesn’t hesitate to rebuke them. He is the firmest, and gentlest hand that his children will know. A sons first hero, and a daughters first love. His heart beats for them, and he lets them know that they are his pride. The words of a father to his children can be the difference in how high they fly, or how low they sink. Do not be an anchor, but wings for your children.
Finally, a Christian man loves Jesus, and seeks to emulate him in his every day life. Loving others, always forgiving, and obedient to God; even to the point death (literal, or metaphorical). Life is not perfect, it’s a series of heart aches and joys. You will not be strong enough to do it alone; I certainly don’t. But for as long as you have me, I will do what I can to help you; and I pray that you find peace and strength in Christ and the faith that these teachings are a part of, but I will love you any way my sons.
– Your Dad
Ok, brief introduction on this. We are moving, and in the process of selling a home among other things. So in the process of staging our home we’ve packed up our desktops and servers here. Not a problem, we have 3 laptops, 1 is my personal, 1 is for my work, and the other is a shared one for the family. Recently while testing some stuff with hyper-v installed on the shared laptop I had imaged the machine then saved it to a portable drive. Well what does that have to do with anything? My wife wanted to use the shared laptop as a stand in until her desktop could come back out, and I’d since deleted the image and packed all my windows 7 discs etc. Ruh roh.
So being the FOSS guy that I am (outside of work), I decided I’d use this opportunity to throw a very user friendly Linux distribution onto the laptop and see what my wife thought of it.
The distribution:
Now this was a fairly easy setup to make for my wife. She is what I would consider an average user with some advanced usage areas. Primarily with video editing and photo editing (some graphic design stuff). However for her day to day she needed web, office suite, and email. Since I’m going to be on the road a lot, I needed her to have Skype as well as other chat programs.
I installed from a USB key using the live iso image. From windows this is easy to achieve, download Windows 32 Disk Imager and the desired ISO file, rename it to a .img then apply it to your flash device and viola.
After a very light crash course on navigating the system and the passwords I setup for her she was off and rocking. Our first hurdle however was the native mail client with KDE, Kmail. It’s functional, but she was having some issues with the large volume of emails she has on one of her accounts so I opted to install one of my favorite FOSS mail clients on their instead, Thunderbird.
We both are avid Chrome users, and have our accounts and profiles linked for easy setup across platforms, so that was a breeze for her. I imported her windows profile data to her home directory which got her back up and running with the data she needed as well.
For her Office needs we went with (and she’s adjusted quite easily to) using LibreOffice which has usurped OpenOffice as the FOSS Office Suite of choice with most Linux distros these days.
For her photo editing there is of course Gimp which has been an amazing free image manipulation application for over a decade. For her video editing needs there is Avidemux and OpenShot, neither of which she has made use of yet. Her video editing needs are slim at this time anyway.
Now, here is the mind blowing part for some of you Linux timids or FOSS nay sayers. Up until this point, I’d done everything from install of the OS to now without once going into the terminal. I had made it a point not to. If I was going to give this to my wife to use, regardless of my feelings about the console, she shouldn’t have to use it. All the application installs were performed from default package stores as well using only the Linux Mint Software Manager. Being a long time Linux user (since 97~98) I was personally blown away by this. I normally run to the console out of habit, but found that it was at a point where I genuinely didn’t have to. However there was a problem for usability for my wife that I felt needed to be addressed, and it would require me to script something for her.
In Windows, I have a PowerShell script my wife uses to pull file system object information for her pictures and looks to the creation date then renames the files for her. So this was something she of course wanted, and even though Dolphin and Konqueror have a really cool built in rename feature, this date method wasn’t possible for her out of the box. I’m not going to lie, I was personally elated with this task, but finding the best method was tricky so I went with a simple iteration script she could drop in the folder and double click to run. If she chooses to use Linux longer I’ll work on a possibly building her something a bit more robust, but here’s the existing code:
#!/bin/bash
#Script to rename jpg by create date and number
x=1
for i in *.jpg *.JPG
do
y=$(stat -c %y "$i" | sed 's/^\([0-9\-]*\).*/\1/')
file=$y"("$x").jpg"
mv "$i" $file
x=$[$x+1]
done
So there is a bit of regex usage here, but the end result is each jpg file in the existing folder has it’s date information pulled from the file using stat, then piped through sed to chop it down to a preferable string. That string is then concatenated into a file name with an incremental integer and extension then the existing file has it’s name changed to that newly created string.
So what did my wife gain from this interim transition? A new appreciation for another operating system and the flexibility and eye candy that comes with Linux environments? I don’t know, but it’s allowed us to retrofit some old hardware with her level of desired functionality at 0 additional cost. All in all, I’d say that’s pretty cool, and I’m still stoked my wife is rocking out with Tux.
Little feet, marked for measurements, and a smiley face. Round one of my little girls corrective equipment collection begins.
Spun up another blog dedicated to her crafting:
and from my understanding is willing to craft things for other people as well if they are interested…
I’m not sure how the female readership is to my blog, but men if you have wives or kids, it might be worth showing them so they can follow it. Thanks.
Here’s the link to her announcement post.
To say I’ve been a bit busy lately would be the understatement of the year.
Finalizing critical content packages to allow the decommission of our previous systems management software. Transitioning our infrastructure to the new systems as well, and performing software rationalizations in our environment has put me at a limit to sitting and writing.
Oh, did I mention general systems integration for a new company that I’m not certain I have a future with still?
I do thoroughly enjoy the work though as it’s largely technical and requires little (or allows for little) theory crafting sessions on the best possible way. Don’t get me wrong, I love planning, but planning without action to me is just a miserable existence. I don’t thrive on anarchy, but I enjoy doing work as opposed to talking about it; and I enjoy clutch situations at times.
In other, life altering news; our daughter was officially diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy last week. I’m not really sure where else to go with that outside of the fact it is what it is. It was a rough day last Monday when we got the news; but I think I am past the diagnosis and back to looking at my daughter for what she is, not what she will or will not be.
I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world. – John 16:33
When I see my beautiful daughter smile, I’m reminded how lucky I am that she’s alive and in our care. Even if that burden is great, I gladly bear it; as would most parents. I’m sure there will still be anger, and pain dealing with this so please, if you have been then continue to pray for us.
Will on the other hand, my main man. He’s absolutely digging “getting muscles” lately and is continually asking me if such and such builds muscles, or telling me how or where he got some new muscle. He’s also been doing a really great job lately with being a responsible big brother to his sister in her trials. Admittedly he still gets frustrated at times with the amount of attention his sister receives, but his love and encouragement for her continues to amaze me and makes me proud to be his father.
So back to the building muscles thing. I came home last night from work, and my son comes yelling “DADDY COME HERE I WANT TO SHOW YOU SOMETHING”. So I walk into the family room, and he’s taken a toy shopping cart and pulled it up to the mantle, and proceeds to do wide grip overhand chin ups. It was a rest day for me too so I just did some yoga that night as well, which my son was MORE than eager to get involved in; the entire time explaining to me how or why it builds muscles. That kid is awesome.
Hah, well I ended up writing a lot more then I expected; I should quit while I’m ahead. Take care until next time.
I just wanted to make a brief post to let all my readers and loved ones who read my blog know that I am ok.
My wife was a bit shook up as she hates tornadoes, and we count ourselves lucky that this one missed us as well. We’ve already begun to hear reports of fatalities in the town/suburb just north west of us.
Prayers for those affected.