Luke’s Notebook

One thing I just can’t quite fully understand is why exactly I get to be a part of this family.

The family that I have and the life I get to live — I am so privileged to be in this spot, and it kind of hurts my head to try to figure out just why I get to be involved.  I mean, I feel like I was born into royalty.

It’s hard to know where to begin.   The character that I see in not only Mom and Dad, but in my brothers — and Wizzy — is so admirable.  The hard work.  The talents.  The senses of humor.  The integrity.  The pure joy.  The humility.  The athletic abilities.  Put simply, I’m surrounded by the best of the best.

So we have this incredible cast of characters.  Such a diverse group, yet many similarities and common interests.  Sprinkle in some very entertaining chubs, a beautiful little sister, and two amazing parents, and you should understand how sometimes I wonder how I could ever have earned a spot on this all-star roster.

It’s kind of a deep question, really.  I mean, obviously I didn’t have a choice.  We can’t choose our parents or our family.  So the whole “Why me?  Why here?” question can’t really be answered.  It’s simply God’s goodness, His grace.  I guess He just wanted me to be a part of this group.  I’m a piece of the puzzle.  And it’s humbling to know that I had absolutely no control over it.

Since I clearly had no control over it, I just find myself constantly thanking God for such a wonderful setup.  I still have to almost pinch myself at times, to really realize that I’m part of this!  I’m one of the Arndt boys.  I’m a part of the all-Arndt softball team.  It’s an enormous privilege to be a part of the figurative team as well as the real thing!

One thing I know for sure:  If this is the best it gets, I have already had an amazing life.

I have this tendency to want to make things bigger and better, to constantly improve, to reach the next level — win more softball games, earn more money, lose more weight, run a faster mile, get a better phone.  Sometimes, some of my “gripes” are even over pretty trivial things that just aren’t quite right in my eyes, and so I worry about them.

While that could be a good trait to have, I guess, I need to make sure that I keep things in perspective.  Sure, it’s fine to improve, to sharpen up, but let’s not miss the obvious:  I live an incredible, privileged life. I never want to forget that.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying or stop pushing for improvement.  I just need to keep things in their proper place, and realize that right now — today — I have more than I could ever deserve, and that anything more is simply a bonus.

And to think that this is just a temporary life, too.  I get to have all this fun while it lasts, and then I have even so much more to look forward to when the time is up here.  Amazing.

God is so good.

Check out the main FamTeam page.  Look at the “Luke’s Notebook” animation.  Does it look like this? “Title Of Blog Entry” and “Blog text here”?

That’s not supposed to happen!  I don’t know why it’s not properly displaying the title of the entry as well as the excerpt.  I must have broken something… again!

Do me a favor, friends out there.  Check out the main page, and let me know if this is what you’re seeing.  You can e-mail me at luke@famteam.com.

I don’t think it has been malfunctioning for very long, but I’m really not sure.  I’ll have to investigate it a little bit.

Update:  Well, now that wasn’t too tricky.  Turns out it was thrown off by a little configuration-file edit I made when fixing a FamTeam Today bug the other day — specifically relating to how the database is accessed.  All is well now, as you can clearly see!

Now, back to your regular programming.

We have had a couple of situations recently where we have found ourselves trying to locate some old files that we thought we had stored on a computer somewhere.  In one instance, we were looking for a deposition transcript from several years back.  A couple of other cases had us in search of a bunch of photos that we had taken on various trips of ours.

To our surprise, we were unable to locate some of these files on any hard drive on any computer anywhere in the house.  I phrase it that way because there are many, many hard drives in many computers in this house, so we have a bunch of places to look.

Eventually, we located some DVDs that we had burned as backups several years back.  We were relieved that, when it was all said and done, we had recovered everything that was missing, thanks to a few DVDs or CDs that we had gone to the trouble to burn some time ago.

To be honest, I didn’t really think we would ever need them.  And I actually had forgotten that a couple of them had even existed.  They were just created years ago, and essentially thrown into a closet or a desk drawer.

I’m a little sobered up by this close call, because we could have easily lost a few chunks of photos just like that.  It wouldn’t have been the end of the world, but those vacation photos are very meaningful, and it would be such a shame to lose them due to carelessness.

Right now, I’m in the process of copying roughly 170,000 photos from one hard drive to another.  I don’t want to ever have this scare again.  Hard drives are so inexpensive.  The $100 or so I would pay to have another drive to back these up onto is well worth it.  These pictures are priceless.

Moral of the story:  Back stuff up.  If you have anything on your computer that you would miss if the computer blew up tomorrow — be it photos, videos, documents, music — I’d advise you to back them up somewhere!  It really is extremely simple to do, and it can save so many headaches in the future.

What’s really ironic is that this all happened after we had implemented our automatic backup system over the network.  My suspicion is that these photos were lost beforehand, but we just never realized it.  That would mean they never actually had gotten backed up onto the server, but that we had just assumed they were with all of the other photos.  So technically speaking, it wasn’t due to a flaw in the backup system; most likely, we just never checked to ensure that those photos were where we thought they would be.

So my advice to everyone out there is to take a quick inventory of what you have on your computer.  If there’s anything that you would miss if something were to happen to your computer, then you need to have some sort of backup system in place.

Finally, if you love the idea of backing up all of your stuff but don’t quite know where to start, you could contact our computer business, Arndt Computer.  We can give you advice on what to buy, and we can actually help you set things up via remote control!  If you’re local, we can obviously do on-location work, too.

One way or another, make sure you have a safe place for your stuff!  It’d be a shame to lose anything precious in the event something bad happened.

So… what ever happened with the Palm Pre?

Well, it has been out almost two weeks now.  I played with it on the morning of its release.  I have been closely following Pre-related news over the past couple of weeks.

So far, I’m going to hold off on buying it.  It does look pretty impressive but I don’t think it would be a wise move to hop to the Pre from my BlackBerry Curve.

Why, you ask?  A few reasons.

The Pre’s operating system, while very sleek and pretty, seems somewhat limited and babyfied compared to the OS on the BlackBerry.  I wouldn’t mind the BlackBerry having a prettier interface or sporting a few more bells and whistles, but right now, it’s got to be function over form.

Over the past several months, I have customized my BlackBerry like crazy.  I have four different e-mail accounts going to my Curve, and each of them has a different notification.  For one account, get a vibration and then a sonar sound.  Another one, I’ll just have two vibrations, with no audible alert.  The account I use for my FamTeam Today alerts gives me a cheerful little bicycle bell/cash regiser ringing.  My fourth account… I think it gives me a gong, with no vibration at all.

On top of that, I have alerts for text messages, for Facebook alerts, and, of course, my ringer, for those rare occasions where I actually use my phone as a phone.

One feature I love on the BlackBerry is its incredible amount of shortcuts.  I have instant access to nearly everything.  I press the “B” button, and the browser comes up.  Press the “M” key, and messages pop up.  “R” brings up the alarms.  “A” is address book.  “L” goes straight to calendar… for some reason.

Speaking of the calendar.  On my “home” screen, in addition to unread messaged, I have my upcoming calendar events displayed.  These calendar events are a combination of a few things:  My personal calendar, the family calendar (which contains doctors appointments, softball games, et cetera), and the Atlanta Braves 2009 schedule. Oh, and what’s more is that these are all synchronized with Google Calendar, meaning I can view/edit things either from my BlackBerry or from Google Calendar, and the changes will be automatically synchronized.  Amazingly handy!

With regard to the shortcuts, another feature I love on my BB is the AutoText feature.  It’s pretty self-explanatory:  You create a list of words or letters that automatically come out as something else.  So for instance, when I tap out “idk” on my BB, it automatically turns into “I don’t know.”  When I type “k,” it translates to “Okay.”  “imns” comes out as “I’m not sure.”

I must have well over 1,000 of these entries, and it saves a tremendous amount of time, and it also helps me avoid using too much slang when messaging.  The budding court reporter in me loves this, because this is really the exact same concept as the short forms that court reporters use.

Other neat things?  Well, we use some really nifty GPS software that enables us to track each others’ whereabout on a map.  Saves many, many phone calls to find out “Where are you??”  I’ll also use my BB as a music player fairly often.  Also, this thing is very durable.  It takes quite a beating!  Though I try to avoid too many disastrous falls, it has taken a decent amount of tumbles onto rocks or tile floors.  So far, it has survived everything.

Now, while there are a ton of features on the BlackBerry, it’s not perfect.  Most of its deficiencies would have to be in the fun/toy/entertainment department.

A few examples:

It can play music — such as MP3s — fairly well, but can’t do anything fancy.  And, in theory, it can play videos.  The reason I phrase is that way is simply because the video-playing experience just isn’t that good.  You can technically view YouTube videos on it, but it’s just not very pleasant, for a number of reasons.

The web browser isn’t that great.  It’s fine for finding information quickly — such as a quick Google search — but much beyond that is just kind of cumbersome.  It’s very difficult to actually browse through webpages on it.  The pages don’t look like they do on a computer, and the browser is just slow.  A page with any size to it will take a long time to load.

Despite its shortcomings in terms of being a flashy device, I really, really like the BlackBerry.  In the past, I don’t think I realized how great it is to have such a powerful organizer like this.  It can handle messaging and calendar tasks wonderfully.  And while the music player and browser aren’t outstanding, they’ll do in a pinch.  I can fairly easily listen to the MP3s I have stored on my MicroSD card, and the browser is good enough to check up on sports scores or to go on a quick information-gathering journey.

I do have a couple of things that I would LOVE to see on a new device:

Remote control support.  This one is huge for me, because I am constantly using remote-conrol tools on my computer, working on other people’s computers remotely.  I imagine how great it would be to be able to control a computer from my phone!!  It’s doable.  The Pre CAN do it (though it doesn’t do it real well yet), the iPhone seems to do a decent job of it, and Windows Mobile devices really excel at this.  The BlackBerries kind of lag behind, unfortunately.

A better browser.  The web browsers on the Pre, the iPhone, and the “Google phone” (the G1) all have great browsers.  Webpages actually look like webpages, and they seem easy to navigate.

Better streaming audio/video support.  Here’s my dream:  To be able to easily — easily — play audio and video over the Internet on my phone.  I can do it in a very limited fashion right now, but I would love to be able to have fast access to online radio stations, online video streaming (such as YouTube), but, most importantly, my own computer’s audio and video collection!  Really, it shouldn’t be that hard.  In fact, it’s doable right now on about any device, but it’s a very clunky implementation.  It shouldn’t be hard to make this a mainstream feature.

Flash Player.  This opens up a huge realm of possibilities, as it would make streaming audio, video, AND playing games on the phone much easier.  Plus, it would really enhance the whole web-browsing experience.  The Pre is actually supposed to get Flash support in the near future.

Overall, I love the BlackBerry.  With that said, though, I’m always open to trying new devices.  I remember how surprised I was back in the fall of 2008 when I found myself being drawn to the BlackBerry over my HTC Mogul.  And while I have been very happy with the BB by and large, I wouldn’t be surprised if something better came along.  Until now, though, I can’t very well complain.  This little thing is such a handy tool!

Here’s a picure of my BlackBerry main screen or “desktop”:

A few notes:

Normally, the calendar would show the times for the events, instead of simply showing the day (6/19).  For some reason, it is a little slow at updating sometimes.

The “Don’t eat breakfast” is a reminder to myself not to eat breakfast at home tomorrow.  I have a house call to take care of in the morning, and I want to put off eating until afterwards, mainly as a diet maneuver.  If I do that, then I can justify grabbing some fast food while I’m out for a late breakfast/early lunch.  I just need to watch the calories.

The third event is purposely blurred.  It’s nothing too scandalous, though, so don’t be disappointed.

There’s nothing shown under “Messages” simply because I have no unread messages at the moment.  I don’t like having unread messages, so they don’t tend to last very long once I realize that there is somethinng new.

Well, that does it!  I had no intention of writing this much, but there you have it.  There’s no doubt that I really love technology and gadgets.  More so, though, I love finding practical uses for the new things.  While it’s definitely fun to play around with a new iPhone or whatever the latest toy may be, I really enjoy finding real-world applications for these things.  The “cool factor” alone doesn’t wear too well, so it’s nice when you can find a practical purpose for something like this.

Sometimes I can get frustrated by different challenges in life, things that I wish were easier.  I would think a perfect resolution would be to have these things fall away, for me to have, say, unlimited money, and to have other limits removed.  Then life would be even more peaceful and enjoyable… right?

Not so.  I think this is a fallacy that I tend to buy into quite easily, that life would somehow be more pleasant if it weren’t for the challenges, the constraints, the rules.  I really believe that I could be totally miserable if I had unlimited money.

Why?  Well, I think of all of the things in life that are meaningful, and how much joy and satisfaction I get from trying to be smart, trying to spend money wisely, trying to succeed in business.  Some of my proudest moments have come when I managed to — either by myself or with some of the other guys — use my brain to come up with some solution, to solve a puzzle, that ends up saving a lot of money.  But if I was rich, then none of this would matter!

I think back to last fall, and how excited I was when I figured out that we were able to upgrade our cell phone plans to include data (meaning Internet use and e-mail) and text messaging, and actually save a little money each month.

Very recently — like in the past week — I have had a budding project idea.  My dream is to turn our DVD and VHS movie collection to an all-digital collection.  This would mean that all of our movies and home videos would be stored on one central place — a server, if you will — and then they would all be accessible over the network.  What’s more is that, using an Xbox 360 in conjunction with this, you can easily have access to movies, music, and pictures anywhere you have an Xbox.

In theory, this would allow us to use the Xbox remote control in order to access our entire movie library.  No more discs or tapes to deal with!

We don’t watch much live TV, but we have a great collection of old classic movies.  It would be so handy to have instant access to all of them.

This project has me really, really excited.  And the thing is, if I had a few thousand dollars burning a hole in my pocket, then I’m sure I could pay somebody to set everything up for me.  But where’s the fun in that?

I think it would be tremendously easy to be completely spoiled if I had too much money.  There would be no anticipation, no saving up for anything.  If I wanted something, and I had the money, why not buy it now?  And that would mean that anything I don’t have would simply be because I didn’t WANT it.  If it was something I desired, then surely I would have bought it already, as I would have had more than enough money to afford it.

I think it’s a trap we can all easily fall into to think that removal of limits or challenges would make life more enjoyable.  On the contrary, I think the lack of limits would make life terrible.

Think of it this way.  In any game you play — be it a sport, a board game, or a video game — the moment you remove rules and it becomes a free-for-all, the game stops being fun.  If you’re playing baseball, and you decide that there are no boundaries — there’s no balls, no strikes, no outs, no home runs, no foul balls — it would seem nice; right?  If baseball is this much fun WITH all of these rules, wouldn’t it be so much better without them?

For any of you who have ever played the video game “The Sims,” this is one of the best examples I can come up with.  The game is very fun and challenging, as you have your virtual job, your house, your appliances and furniture, and your budget.   But, there’s a cheat you can apply that will give you unlimited money.

Things are fun for the first few minutes, as you can buy whatever you want and even quit your Sim-job, but the game quickly becomes boring.  It’s amazing how fast the game transforms from being a fun (and addicting) game, but as soon as you remove those constraints, it loses its appeal.

Since I’ve never had unlimited REAL money (as opposed to the Sim money), I can’t speak from experience, but I am nearly positive that the same would apply if I was just living off of a fortune.

I used to think that, when given the choice between not enough money and too much money, that too much money would be he obvious choice.  I don’t agree with that anymore.  I really think life without challenge would be so unfulfilling.

In realizing this, I’m trying to better train myself to have a more appropriate first reaction to hurdles in life.  Instead of griping about them, I really should have my kneejerk reaction be thanking God for another situation in which I get to try to use my brain, where what I do actually matters!  The idea of throwing money at problems is appealing initially, but I think it would get very dull after the first few days.

Being spoiled is not enviable.  When you are spoiled, you lose the ability to enjoy the simple pleasures of life.  I hope I never become that way.  I am so fortunate to live a life now where what I do matters, where my brainstorms or ideas could make a difference.  And while certain challenges may be a bit more than I would prefer, I would much rather have those than have no challenges at all.

Since we introduced the new FamTeam Flashbacks section here on FamTeam, I’ve had the weekly duty of going through some very old home videos in order to put up little bite-sized clips.

It’s always fun to turn back the clock and reminisce about old times.  It’s neat to see what we looked like as babies, or to simply have all sorts of memories conjured up when seeing video of our old house, the yard we played in, or one of our favorite playgrounds back in the day (Bellevue Park in west Belleville, by the way).

When I look at those videos, I can see how much has changed.  Some of the videos are actually before my time, and then a few years later we have clips of Baby Luke in his little car seat.  Nearly everything has changed.

But not quite everything.

Mom and Dad are… almost exactly the same today as they were back in the  ’80s.  Mom especially.  Her joy, her laughter, her energy — that has been a constant for as long as I can remember.  The patience she had with us as babies is the same as the patience she’s had with the three youngest — Caleb, Peter, and David — when they were babies.

It’s just amazing to see how similar both Mom and Dad are a quarter-century later.  I am still floored by Mom’s spunk.  She clearly made a decision a long time ago, and has stuck with it.  She just doesn’t give up!

I think what’s most remarkable about my parents is when I realize that they are human, just like I am.  They get hungry, tired, weary.  They have thoughts, wants, needs, weaknesses, and strengths.

Since they aren’t superhuman (at least I think), it makes their constant selflessness and patience so inspiring, because I know that they’re playing by the same rules as the rest of us are — as I am.  And you know what?  It makes me realize that this is all attainable.  It shows, yet again, what a beautiful picture God will paint if you simply surrender your life to Him.

The fact that He can use flawed people is encouraging, because I’d quickly be out of the running if perfection was a prerequisite.  Since He’s willing to use me in spite of my shortcomings, I’m just wanting to dive straight in.  I don’t know what it will mean or what life would be like five, 10, 50 years down the road, but right now, God — would You use me?  I don’t want to hold anything back.  It’s not worth it.  I have seen firsthand the fruit that comes from living a life of simple trust and obedience, and I want that.  I just want to be a team player, God, so please just put me wherever You know is best.

Note:  First things first.  I apologize for the title.  I just couldn’t resist!

I actually played with the Pre for a little while at a Sprint store on Saturday morning while I was out running some errands.  I had a good 20 or30 minutes with the phone.

Conclusion?  It’s a very pretty phone, with a very impressive screen, but it may just not be quite ready for primetime.  It has great potential, but it’s kind of barebones right now.  It lacks a lot of advanced (and some not-so-advanced) options and features.

My BlackBerry, while it isn’t super impressive in its multimedia capabilities, is very, very robust.  It’s not as pretty as the Pre, but it sure gets the job done.  I have customized it in many different ways, and I use countless shortcuts to make things easier and more efficient.

There’s no telling what things will be like in the future.  For the time being, I think I’d be wise to stay with my BlackBerry Curve.  Down the road, who knows?  The Pre could start to mature and become more impressive.  I would imagine that as time passes, the Pre will get a lot more appealing, as updates become available and more apps are written for the operating system.

From a gadget-loving standpoint, it’s just fun to watch all of these new devices and advances in technology.  There’s a third-generation iPhone coming out shortly, a BlackBerry Storm 2 (the touchscreen BB), a Touch Pro 2 (which is basically a sequel to the Mogul’s sequel).  There’s just all sorts of fun stuff out there.

So with the Pre specifically, I think I’ll have to sit this one out.  It looks like it has a lot of promise, and I sure have had it in my sights for a while, but I just can’t pull the trigger yet.  Guess that’s a compliment to the BlackBerry!  While it isn’t exceptional at multimedia and doesn’t really have any “wow” factor, it does many things very, very well.

On January 8th of this year, Palm — the makers of the Palm Pilots back in the day and the Treos in recent years — announced a brand-new phone:   the Pre.

I follow a handful of tech sites, and I would see different articles on the Palm Pre or mentions of the device in forums.  People seemed very excited about it, but I actually hadn’t even looked into it much at all until two or three months ago.

I finally saw some pictures, videos, and specifications of the device, and I immediately understood all the hype.

I’m not going to go into great detail about it, but here’s the skinny:  It’s a  touch-screen phone, with multi-touch capabiliies (like the iPhone).  It has a pretty nice camera — three megapixels — built-in wifi, an accelerometer, and — what’s more — a slide-out keyboard!

The thing that impresses me the most about the phone, though, is its operating system, its software.  It has a brand-new OS, called webOS.  The operating system looks very, very nice.  The user interface is really pretty.

Anyway, enough about that.

This phone is coming out tomorrow, on June 6th.   Interestingly enough, it’s launching on Sprint, which has been our carrier since late 2008.

Of course, since this phone and the operating system are brand-new, there’s no book on it.  There are, obviously, very few programs out there that run on webOS.  But this should all change dramatically starting tomorrow, as people get their hands on the Pre.

So I’m excited to see how this phone does.  I think it’s going to be a big success.  I love the idea of having a phone that can do more, because a cell phone is one of few things that I have with me almost 24/7.  So if my cell phone can take better pictures, if it can help me get more work done, if it can function more like a computer, then those are all great advantages.

I’m very, very interested in this phone.  I do really like my BlackBerry, and I would be hard-pressed to give it up, but the Pre is reeeeaally appealing.  It seems to have a tremendous amount of potential.

Will it be better than the BlackBerry?  Well, it may just be.  Of course, last year I thought that the HTC Mogul would trump the BlackBerry.  I was mistaken, though.  I ended up falling in love with the BlackBerry, much to my surprise.  So I guess we’ll see how the Palm Pre fares.

It’s incredible how technology has advanced.  It is such a fun time to be alive!

One thing I’m not a big fan of is running.  I just don’t really enjoy it.  It’s very tiring, and it just has never been that fun for me.  Certain sports are tiring — football or basketball, for instance — but at least those have an element of fun.  Straight running, though, just isn’t real enjoyable.

I want to like it.  While I’m not a huge fan of running itself — that is, the experience of running — I do like the fruits of running.  I like being fast.  I like having stamina.  I like burning more calories.  I just wish I didn’t have to actually run in order to reap its benefits.

As strange as  it sounds, for a long time I have felt that I almost need to start running regularly.  That is, I should wake up at 6:00 or 6:30 in the morning and go for a run on some of the country roads around here.  Part of that idea is very attractive, but there is a part of me that dreads the idea.

I think it would be a neat feeling to be up very early in the morning, seizing the day, and getting in a great cardio workout.  It might be fun to be out in the fresh air, to get the blood moving, to start burning calories before a lot of people even wake up.

But then, it seems like it could be torturous.  Dragging myself out of bed at the crack of dawn, plodding along the country roads, up and down hills, when I’m still half-asleep.

I dunno on this one.  I really do wish I enjoyed running.  Instead, I kind of dread it.  I absolutely love the rewards you get from it, though.  I love to be able to dart around, to have plenty of strength and stamina.

I haven’t decided on this one yet.  We’ll have to see where it goes…