Luke’s Notebook

First off, Luke’s Blog is now officially known as Luke’s Notebook. I think it’s a nice change, and I thank Jude for his creativity in helping me come up with a more original name than “Luke’s Blog.”

Second off… I’ve had it with these spam comments! So, for the time being anyway, I’m disabling the ability to comment here. It’s been really fun and uplifting to receive comments from so many people from so many different places on so many different topics, so if you’re one of my commenters, I thank you very, very much for participating. Feedback is a great thing.

We just finished watching “It’s A Wonderful Life” as a family. That movie might just be the best one I’ve ever seen. The more I watch it, the more I like it. I think it makes any viewer realize what a wonderful life they have, despite their current concerns. It’s such a great movie!!

For lunch today, a handful of us went out to Ryan’s Steakhouse with Dad. Wizzy came along with us, and, I’ve got to say, I am amazed by that little girl. For those familiar with Ryan’s, they have a buffet (think similar to Golden Corral, Hometown Buffet), and it’s one of the popular diet-killers for us.

Well, Wizzy came along and exercised some incredible self-control, managing to dodge the pizza, fried chicken, tacos, cake, ice cream, cookies, and instead fill up on salad. I’m so proud of her willpower! That’s no easy task to go there, have access to all this food, and to still be in control of what you eat — especially for a girl who’s just nearly 10 years old. It’s not really that big of a deal, but it was a glimpse into her character. For her to be able to manage to say “No” to herself even despite all the tempting food — I’m just very proud of my little Wizzy for cheerfully deciding to do that! I love my sister! What a good example she set — for her older brothers, even!

By the way, I managed to hit the Y yesterday. Even with a holiday-shortened week, I’m trying to still make it three times this week. I’ve gone Tuesday and Wednesday, so if I can go tomorrow I’ll be all set. It’s especially important for me to stick with it in these times, as all the get-togethers make it really hard to eat as well as I really should, so I don’t want to get myself too far behind by also neglecting to work out in addition to eating too much.

YMCA on Tuesday.

The past few days have been really interesting. The Christmas weekend was so much fun, and we had such a great time hanging out with family and friends at different get-togethers. We also just recently moved FamTeam.com to a new web server, which has been an adventure.

I’m… somewhat experienced in administering servers, but there is a lot that I do not know. We recently jumped to a dedicated server — meaning we have a computer devoted to FamTeam — which ought to be able to withstand a big surge in traffic, should we happen to have a big increase of hits pursuant to the airings of the TLC documentary.

Anyway, for one reason or another, I kept running into different difficulties getting the new server to work correctly. Normally it’s a pretty smooth and painless process to transfer the sites between servers. This time, though, I ran into several different snags, which made things kind of complex and actually ended up knocking FamTeam off entirely for about 12 hours early Christmas Day.

Thanks to the tech support of this new host (Christmas Eve and Day, believe it or not!), we managed to get back online, and now things are running pretty well. That’s a big, big relief, because it was scary to have kind of “broken” the website and not be able to get it back online. I still don’t know exactly what happened, but I’m relieved that we’re back up and that things, for the most part, are working like normal.

I’ve been very immersed in all things FamTeam over the past several days, and I just really look forward to being able to more or less step away for a bit and not have to worry about it. With the transferring and everything, it’s kept me kind of chained to the computer, and it’s also just a little bit stressful, as you don’t want to have the website at any time be inaccessible, if possible, and you don’t want to lose e-mails, lose message board posts, and the like. But I’m really happy that the transfer is done with, and there are just a few minor kinks to iron out.

Aside from website issues, Christmas weekend was wonderful! On Christmas Eve, after our morning service, the family went out to a movie theater in Waterloo and watched the new “Rocky Balboa.” I was really surprised, but I liked it a lot! I thought it was really well-made, and I’m glad we got to see it.

Sunday evening, we had a get-together with Mom’s side of the family. Then on Monday, we hosted Dad’s side of the family during the day and went back to another party with Mom’s side in the evening. We just had a great time with all of the family members and friends, and last night it struck me just what a blessing it is to have family. Cousins, aunts, uncles, parents, siblings, grandparents — it’s so neat to have such a tightknit group of people that like each other and have so much fun together. Thank You, God, for family! Friends can come and go — and there is absolutely nothing wrong with friends — but I’m just realizing the value of family.

Merry Christmas!

Yesterday evening, Paul and I had another workout at the YMCA. I set a new personal record for bench-pressing, so that was a nice feeling. It’s still pretty pitiful compared to what some of those guys can lift, but at least it’s momentum in the right direction.

This morning, Mark, Jude, James, and I got up very early and drove over to Jefferson Barracks Park in South County. We met up with a couple of old friends there, Kevin (remember “Dumb Things With Kevin”?) and Ryan, in order to play some disc golf. The two of them are brothers and were pretty much our best friends for several years until they moved away about four or five years ago. Ryan was visiting in from San Diego, and Kevin lives in central Illinois. We hadn’t seem them for a couple of years, so it was awesome to get to meet up again! And the disc golf was very fun, too, despite the chilly temperatures. Meeting up with old friends never gets old!

Well, we’re just a few hours away from Christmas Eve. What a great time of year this is! Now if only we had some snow. That would really be icing on the cake.

This evening, we started watching one of my all-time favorite movies, “It’s A Wonderful Life.” Really, the title of the movie has been my working theme over the past several months, as I’ve been trying to make myself realize, day-in and day-out, that it’s a wonderful life.

Anyway, this is an old classic, and we love to watch it as a family. We never seem to tire of it, which I guess is a sign that it’s very well-made! It’s amazing to think that this movie was somewhat of a flop when it was originally released, evidently.

In other news, we are preparing to move our website to a monstrously-capable server. The kind folks over at GigeNet have been working with us in order to set us up with a server that should be more than enough to handle whatever increase in traffic — be it a flood or a trickle — we receive subsequent to the airings of the TLC documentary.

We’re less than four weeks away from the scheduled premier date of January 15th, and I’m hoping to have these server changes finished within a few days so as to give us plenty of time to iron out any kinks and be ready and waiting to welcome new visitors to the site.

Just for my own reference, I got another YMCA visit in today. My neck and back are still bugging me, so I’ve been trying to exercise them even more. To be honest, I’m not sure if it’s best to fight through the pain or to just hold still and let it heal. In a way, I could see how it would be smart to keep exercising the sore areas in order to build up those muscles. But, I could also see the advantages of resting it. Of course, this will all be a non-issue if the pain just dissipates.

We’ve been doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work and planning in regards to the website. There are quite a few changes to be made, including a switch to a new server in order to handle a surge in visitors subsequent to the airings of the TLC documentary. For those of you who follow the site, just stay tuned. Within the next few weeks, we hope to be unveiling some new sections, and our goal is to just tidy up and streamline the site as a whole.

One more thing. Lately, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do about all of these spam comments I’ve been receiving. I’m amazed that some of the spambots are able to clear a few of the hurdles that I’ve already put up. I think I can completely ward those off by requiring the user to be logged in in order to make the comment. That would probably be the simplest solution, and then I wouldn’t have to worry about the hundreds of spam comments that keep on flooding in!

Christmas Day is only one week from today, New Year’s is two weeks away, and four weeks from tonight the TLC documentary on our family is scheduled to air. This next month ought to be very interesting. It’s really exciting to wonder what God has on the agenda.

Paul and I had a really long workout tonight at the YMCA. We were there for nearly two-and-a-half hours, and we got a lot done in that time. Since I’m only averaging three workouts a week, I’m trying to make an effort to get a lot done whenever I do go to the Y. I usually try to really max out on weight-lifting and then end with 30 minutes of pretty intense cardio.

We’ve had a lot of video projects lately, including a rare call on Saturday, where we had to hurry up and copy nine videotapes onto DVD. That kept me up until 3:30 on Sunday morning, but I thank God for providing the work. Aside from that, Paul and I just finished putting out a couple of weddings, and in fact right now I’m just archiving the finished videos onto tapes, which will let me free up quite a bit of hard drive space.

A great Sunday is in the books.

During our service this morning, we had a terrific discussion about just how important it is to always be going to God for direction. It’s easy to kind of take a command and run with it, but God really wants us to be in tune with His heart, communicating with Him, in a relationship, just like any father wants with his child.

In the afternoon, the 12 oldest (that’s Caleb through Paul) went out to our ballfield in order to play a game of touch football. It was John, James, Philip, Nathan, Wizzy, and I versus Paul, Mark, Jude, Seth, and Caleb. We had a great time, and the younger guys seemed to especially have fun. Wizzy actually had the game-winning touchdown run. Poor girl isn’t going to ever be able to escape sports…

This evening, I had my final volleyball games of 2006. There was some mix-up or something and we ended up not having a referee for the games. Since both teams were there and were ready to play, we decided to just play for fun, and I think it was even more enjoyable than having a ref! Competitive, but still light-hearted — a good mix. We lost two of three games, but they were a very solid team. It was fun, and I look forward to January 7th of 2007, when the next games are scheduled.

We are one week away from Christmas Eve, two weeks from New Year’s Eve. These are very fun times.