Ernstsen.Net

Tuesday evening, MY BIRTHDAY, I pick up the newest member of our family, a 2010 Camaro SS. I placed the order on Dec 28th and it arrived at the dealership the morning of Feb 16th, on my birthday of all days. So naturally we had to drive the 50 miles up to the dealership and pick it up that evening after work. All I can say is WOW! I've wanted a Camaro since I was 14 and finally Chevy did it right with the 5th generation. They took everything I love about the 1st generation styling and combined that with all the modern technology that I love. Here's to good cruising weather, the sooner the better... cheers! (click image for larger pic)

OK, on with life we go…

While my oldest brother Jim was in town for my father's funeral he re-introduced my mother and I to geocaching, and introduced it to my 8 year-old for her first geocache find ever. If you don’t know what geocaching is, read more about it here www.geocaching.com.

This past Sunday, while using my iPhone, Kailee and I looked up and found two caches together. We’re hooked. With my birthday coming up next week I convinced my wife that Kailee and I needed a new handheld GPS unit so we could further indulge in our hobby...together. Well I’m proud to say that I ordered a new GPS receiver off Amazon this morning and I’m giddy as a school-girl waiting for it to arrive (overnight shipping thanks to Amazon Prime).

While geocaching will be its primary use, I also plan to mount it to my bike for some upcoming training rides and eventually a couple big charity rides in the area (Tour De Cure in May and possibly the MS-150 in September). I’d like to see if I can log the rides on the GPS then upload that data to Ernstsen.Net to show my progress on a map of some sort. Kind of a location based blog of sorts. I think the challenge of getting the data on-line intrigues me just as much as riding the bike to begin with. So check back soon and see if I’ve made any progress. Hopefully this project will be a little longer lived than my mobile phone app development stint I did a while back.

It is with great sadness that I post this blog entry and mark the recent death of my father, James Ernstsen. I’ve thought about what I’d write here for a few days now and I’ve come to the simple conclusion that while internet blogs are meant to share various events in ones life with family, friends, and complete strangers wandering around the “inter-tubes”, I’m not sure I’m comfortable writing a eulogy of my father here. I don’t want to depress any of my readers, while at the same time I what to honor my father, for he was a great man, no one can deny that. So I’ll simply say this…he was a great father, taught me everything I needed to become a good man, loving husband, and caring father myself. I love him, and know he loved me and was proud of me.

You hear it all the time, “I never got to say good-bye.” While it’s true I never got so say the words “good-bye” to him, I think that I personally was prepared and ready for his passing after seeing him deteriorate and suffer from the cancer and surgeries he had endured over that past 6 months or so. I have no regrets, no “I wish I would have said…”, and no “I should have been there more” feelings. I was there for him when I needed to be, I talked to him the day before his death, and we were on good terms (as we always have been). So that in and of itself is what comforts me now…no regrets.

The sole Marine member of the VFW Honor Guard that honored my father at the graveside service saluted my father casket ceremoniously, as the other VFW members did, and then with as much honor and force he could, yelled “Semper Fi”. While all of us there at the services somewhat chuckled as we all knew, “yep, that’s Dad alright”, it was the icing on the cake and completed the services making them perfect in my eyes. While Dad has always been proud to be a Marine, he always did so in a humble manner. So while I always knew he was a Marine, and that Semper Fi is their motto, until that day I never knew what it meant. The first thing I did when I got home that day, after changing out of my suit, was to look up the meaning of Semper Fi on the internet. “Always Faithfull”. Yep, that’s Dad alright.

Semper Fi Dad, we’ll miss ya.

I have uploaded all the old photos from the old Image Gallery into the new one. I have also posted some new pictures of the kids. If you haven't found it yet, the link to the Image Gallery is in the menu on the left. Enjoy the new pics and leave me a comment or two while you're there.

Just a reminder, my theater room construction blog is located at http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=744634. That's where I'm posting all my pictures and comments about the current build process. Take a look when you get the chance and let me know what you think.

"Hey Kurt, what's up with the little 'heads' on your logo?"

I don't know, there was one there to begin with as the default icon in the software I'm using for the layout of this site (Drupal). I sort of liked it but as always, I wanted it to be slightly unique. So I changed it to represent my family; my wife, daughter, son, and myself. The littlest one is my son who can't seem to stop moving and is always running off to do something new, hence his 'icon' is running off to explore something new.

Gotta go...have to catch my son....

"Dude, you're getting a new web server!"

I've moved my website over to a new server at the same hosting company. Why? Well they were going to do in anyway in a few months so I decided to get a cheaper hosting plan and move it over myself. New plans are so much cheaper than they used to be, so there was no sense renewing at the higher price I was paying.

I figured I'd also take this opportunity to try out a new content management system that allows me to type little messages like this one, isn't it cute. :) I'm also going to install a new copy of the old image gallery, and at some point upload all the old pictures. This time I'm going to implement some pretty hefty comment filtering, so I don't get all the content spam I was getting on the old site.

Check back soon,
Kurt