Category Archives: Confessions

Things about me you probably never wanted or don’t need to know.

Guitars, Guitars, Guitars

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I have 6 guitars.  I’m not saying that to brag because I know folks with way more guitars than that.  I’m just going to start out with that information so I can tell you the story of how I acquired those guitars.  There are some fun stories behind a few of them, and frankly, they’ve all been gifts of one form or another.

The oldest guitar I have is my bass guitar.  I got that when I was about 15 because we needed a bass player at church and I volunteered to learn to play the bass.  I saved up some money and through a good deal that I worked with my youth group leader the guitar was purchased for about $200.  I loved  having a bass guitar, it was the best after having fiddled with my dad’s acoustic guitar.  I’ve worked on the electrical wiring, and it still gets the job done as needed.  That being said, I’d love to have a 5 string for those extra low notes.

The second oldest guitar I have is a 12 string Yamaha I bought from a co-workers husband when I was about 17.  It is impossible to keep in tune and it hangs on my wall collecting dust.  I interrupted worship at church a few times just to tune it because it was so out.  Yes, I was that tacky.

Third is my Washburn 6 string.  I saved up my money from work for a few months and purchased this guitar because at that point in time I wanted to be a worship leader professionally and that required a good guitar.  After some work and such I had about $900 invested in it and it is singly the most expensive guitar I have and all of the other guitars together didn’t cost that much.  Even with that much money it’s still not an expensive guitar by today’s standards.  I lead worship with that guitar and have so for about 14 years now.  I don’t lead worship professionally, so I guess that didn’t pan out 😉  I did manage to record this and this though. There’s also this historical Texas number.

Next is the Washburn 6 string electric I got the first year for Christmas from my family.  Jessica orchestrated to have everyone pitch in and I got the red burst electric.  I really wanted a solid color guitar, but Jessica didn’t know and my first reaction was to be sad that it looked “too country and western” and not enough “Nirvana”.  I play it semi-regularly and I’ve recorded with it for a long time.  It’s a great guitar and I’m over the country & western thing, and instead remember how proud my wife was to get it for me that first Christmas.

Several Christmases ago I picked up my acoustic bass.  It was really cheap and it has some fret buzzing on the upper frets, but it doesn’t require an amplifier and it sounds pretty good for the most part.  I wanted to be able to play with friends (namely my friend Brad Maston at the time) and it seemed like a good idea.  It probably wasn’t 😉

Lastly is the classical guitar that my friend Mike gave me last year.  It was in his closet and he asked me if I wanted it.  Excitedly I said yes.  I really dig the classical guitar, the sound, the feel, and the playability of the classical guitar are really engaging.  I’ve recorded with it a few times, too.  I’m grateful for the gift, and I’m glad that I can use it – I’m hoping to use it at church soon to do a Willie Nelson-like number I’m writing.  Yes, that’s very silly.

I have told Jessica a few times, “I’d like to get another guitar.” She rolls her eyes and laughs at me because let’s face it: 6 guitars is a lot of guitars.  Just in case you wonder how I could want another guitar here’s why: each one is unique and has its own sound and feel and stylistic quality.  I would like a dobro guitar (also known as a resophonic) because they’re classic blues guitars.  I would also like to get a fretless bass guitar – because they’re super smooth sounding and jazzy.

I’m glad that when I asked my dad when I was 12 (yes, that was 21 years ago) if he would show me how to play the guitar that he said yes and he showed me the C and G chords.  It took me months to get those chords down smoothly and I could barely play a song when I foolishly told my youth group leader, “I’d like to play the guitar for worship tonight.”  I did HORRIBLE!  That being said I’ve written a number of worship songs, a number of silly songs, and a number of impromptu songs over the years.  I don’t take the guitars for granted and if you want to hear the differences in the guitars let me know in the comments and I’ll try to record something that lets each one of them shine in context.

Drink

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Did you know that about 3.5 million people die every year from dirty drinking water related diseases [source,sanitation, etc]?  World Vision digs wells for communities in need at a cost of about $13,700.00 per well.  Those wells will help get clean water for 300 or so people a day.  Children who used to go collect water may be able to go to school at that point in time or do other essential tasks for their households.  They’re also much less likely to die from water related diseases.

The US federal government has earmarked about $1,000,000,000.00 dollars a year for the TSA to help save people from dying from terrorism.  I know I’ve been on a tear about the TSA in the last few months, but I was beginning to wonder what would happen if we started to think about really saving lives in a very effective, provable way.  What if we stopped funding the TSA with $1 billion and instead moved to a different, less expensive system (that could be more effective)?  What if we used half of that money to dig wells?

That would be about 36,496 wells (possibly too many).  What if we saved the lives for sure?  Those wells (in just one year’s budget) would provide jobs for the well diggers, provide water for people, and help feed through agriculture in some cases, too.  That could be water for up to 10,948,800 people.  This Christmas consider donating to World Vision at the link above to help support water rights.  Also, if you don’t mind me asking, contact your political officials to let them know that the TSA’s invasive scanners are expensive and don’t save enough lives.  Then be thankful for your glass of water.

Detoured

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This morning on the way to Abby’s school drop off we had a bit of a shocking experience.  We drove about a mile out of our way to detour around the three lanes that were blocked (the entire northbound side of a 3 lane road).  The police had flares all over the road and many cars were routing elsewhere with a lot of confusion.  Abby was worried she’d be late.  She wouldn’t be my daughter if she didn’t worry about things that were not important 🙂

After dropping Abby off we headed south on the very same road we had to route around.  It turns out that we were not too far behind an accident where a woman was hit by a van.  She was crossing outside of the crosswalk wearing dark clothes.  The driver didn’t see her.  While the woman died the surviving driver will be impacted for days and weeks with great emotional trauma and months and years with emotional trauma.  It was a bit of a shocker as death often is, but it made me think about the families impacted by this massive change to two lives.

This Christmas – aside from thanking God for sending His son – take a moment to love your family.  Take a LOT of moments.  As of now there’s no time traveling so we can’t go backwards and make up for lost time.  My hope and prayers are that the folks who are reading this (and everyone else) would not go through such a huge event, but be grateful for the time you have – tell someone you love them one extra time today.

Tips for Job Interviews

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I’ve helped execute a few job interviews for work this last week and I wanted to pass along a few tips for my readers here who for some reason may not have heard these tips:

  1. Only be yourself if that’s good advice.  If you’re really a jerk, don’t be yourself.  Everyone else: don’t be fake.
  2. If the end of each of the answers you have to any number of questions concludes with something like, “…and that’s why I think I’m perfect for this job,” then you’re more than likely not perfect for the job.  That is of course unless they ask you over and over why you’re perfect for the job.  If they are asking that one question over and over you probably have found a job that is not perfect.
  3. If someone asks you to tell them about yourself, tell them briefly about yourself.  Do not tell them almost about yourself, about what your department does, your sex life, or anything else that is either far too explicit or not actually about yourself.
  4. If someone asks you when was the last time you were dishonest at work the correct answer is always one of two things: 1) I am always honest or 2) When I didn’t tell them I was coming to interview for another position.
  5. If you are asked about your career aspirations give something concrete.  We don’t care if you want to be the first person to discover a unicorn’s remains in the mid-layers of the earth’s crust, but we do care that you have a solid, clear answer.  Dancing around the answer to the question because you’re not sure is way worse than saying you’re not sure.
  6. Use Google to determine even more about the company you’re applying at.  In our case knowing roughly what our company produces (besides a tremendous amount of awesome) will get your far with almost all the leadership.  If there’s a product you can touch, find it to touch if at all possible.  If it’s software, install it.  If it is anything you can look at or experience in a safe, legal way – get it and look at it and experience it!
  7. Be ready to give feedback about the product or products you interacted with.  Be nice, though.  A lot of blood sweat and tears goes into different products so ripping into them is worse than just canceling the interview 🙂
  8. Know the key, broader principles that you operate by so that you can address issues you’re less specific with as specifically and effectively as possible.  Example: I know that there are a tremendous number of programming languages that are available today but I’m competent in a few of them and the principles behind good, clean software development apply to all of them.  If I get asked about C# (which I’ve only tinkered with) I can at least tell the person I’m familiar with Java and would be willing to learn C# if the job required it.
  9. Be punctual – don’t be late, but don’t be 30 minutes early
  10. Come prepared with questions for the interviewers.  They’re going to interview you, but return the favor.  Think of a past job that stank because you didn’t have a great relationship with a manager, or you hated a certain process.  Avoid repeat situations by asking questions about specific details that you either are very familiar with or are able to speak to knowledgeably.  This is probably better than a 2 page resume (with too much information on it) for revealing your competency.

What are your tips, readers?

I Speak in Rabbit Trails

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A friend from church said to me, “I speak in rabbit trails,” while we were discussing a Sunday school class environment.  That quote made me smile a big grin and I asked her for permission to use that quote on my website.  So now it is the sub-title for my blog.  It’s not original to me (obviously), but I feel like it is reflective of the places this mind wanders to.

La Bamba

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Tonight we had a good old fashioned jam session at the Kaes house.  It was an all request night by which I mean anyone could pick a song (I didn’t really pick a song, but I did try out a new guitar/melody/song piece accompanied by hand percussion and it was quite cool).  It was in honor of a friend, Eliska, who is from the Czech Republic, but was visiting for a number of weeks over the summer but has to fly home Tuesday.  She plays quite a few instruments so it was good fun.  We also had “Funkle Doug” on the piano (for some of the time), who is a great jazz pianist.  Eventually we worked our way to the song La Bamba.

I’m not sure how it came about that we played La Bamba, but we did.  There was dancing.  Young and old were either playing or dancing.  It was good.  There was life, there was fun, there was family, friends, and fellowship.  There was love.  All from a silly 3 chord song with a catchy hook.  I hope your weekend had a La Bamba  in it.

2000

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WordPress is telling me this is my 2000th post.  Not a lot of content here, but just for grins:

1) The surprise non-geek post: Ligers

2) I’ve been blogging (mostly at this site, but when I started on a site that no longer exists) for over 10 years

3) Doing the math on that, I’m not a very consistent blogger

4) Before switching to WordPress I wrote my own blogging platform

5) Most people really want pictures of my daughters on this site, but I’m a bit short on photographs

6) After all this time I think my Sister-in-Law, Shari, still thinks I’m a dork

7) I have probably gotten the most comments on this blog from my mom, who used to regularly correct my spelling and grammar

8) This list isn’t very interesting

9) The blog I used to link to, but that is defunct, but that I miss the most is “Apropos of Nothing”

10) Before Facebook and Twitter I used to spend a LOT more time on this site