Kimball's House Of Pain

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the Jim Brickman Holiday Homecoming concert here in Boise.  Jim is a fantastic pianist and I was really looking forward to the music of Christmas performed in his unique style.  The concert was good, but at one point Jim talked about how hard it is to write…

To see the original high-resolution version, visit my photo gallery.

To celebrate our anniversary, traditionally and I have found a way to get out of town to a nice bed and breakfast and enjoy a relaxing weekend together.  We've stayed at all kinds of places, and usually had a great time.  It's nice to be waited on for a change - to be pampered, spoiled, even.

But…

Those of you who know me personally know that I like to think I'm pretty handy with power tools.

Ok, so mostly I take big pieces of wood and make them into smaller pieces of wood.

I've built lots of stuff around the house - storage shelves in the garage, a workbench, some invisible shelves, a…

All growing up we had "common ground" that ran through some areas of our neighborhood.  As an adult, I now realize that this is where the power lines went through the neighborhood, and city zoning would not permit land developers to build right under the lines.  Driving past this area today, I was…

Ever since my father passed away several years ago, my mom has been trying to figure out where she should live - stay in St. Louis, move to Salt Lake where some of her kids live, move to Idaho, where other kids live, move somewhere completely different, etc.

Well, she finally bought a house in…

I'm in St. Louis right now to help with moving my mom to Boise.  We hired some good folks from Labor Ready today to come help clean out the house, and as a result found ourselves ahead of schedule this afternoon.

So we took time to catch a movie (saw Get Smart - good fun there) and head out to a…

My wife's family came to visit us for the 4th of July.  After they arrived and got settled in, we began to think about what we had been up to.  My father in law mentioned that he and his son (with his church youth group) had spent the previous evening building rockets out of soda bottles.

…

For those of you (all 2) who read this little blog regularly, you know that I have planted a garden this year.  Well, I finally finished all the construction, and got around taking some pictures.

I was actually quite surprised about how much work there was to set up the garden in the first place: …

On a recent vacation in the Salt Lake city area, we took the kids to Wheeler Farm.  It's a real, working farm with places to have a picnic lunch, feed the animals, take ride through the rolling hills, see examples of farm machinery old and new, and sample some of what is produced there today.

The…

So, as you may know, I'm building a pretty large garden this year.  Some of what we want to grow needs a sturdy trellis to climb, so off to the hardware store I went to find some steel conduit to use as a frame.

Tonight I am finally to the stage of cutting the conduit to size so I can fit it…

Tonight was a full lunar eclipse that was visible at the perfect time of the evening for me to enjoy it with my kids.  So there we were - hanging out in the front yard with camera in hand waiting for the clouds to thin out a bit.  I was holding the baby and Erica was running around the yard trying…

Ugh.  Birthday time again.  At least the pain of turing 31 is to be offset by the relative joy of receiving doodads from folks who care about me. :)

• MOTOROKR S9 Wireless Headphones (I really want these things...)
• Leatherman Skeletool
• Flannel Shirts
• iPhone
• Air Compressor and Brad Nailer - would prefer…

Some time ago, Christine posted a note in her blog about our piano ordeal.  To sum up, we ordered a piano in June of this year from the folks at the Piano Superstore.  Normally I would not consider purchasing something like a piano sight unseen (and unplayed/heard) but after several weeks of…

I found this via a quick note that Hans wrote in his blog, but found it to hit the mark so astonishingly well that I learned quite a bit about myself, and about how patient my wife must be with me.

Thanks, honey!

The Nerd Handbook

Now, back to my cave...

This is particularly funny to me as I've recently begun to read up and attempt to practice some of the agile methods.  The basic gist of agile programming is that you make small, rapid, incremental changes to the software you build, and receive feedback on each change as you go from your customer. …

At work I occasionally get so involved in whatever I'm working on (usually really ugly code) that I don't realize just how long I've been at it.  Sometimes I am rescued from this near stupor-like state of staring at my computer monitor by an interruption - someone popping into my office to play…

Sometimes when I'm at the store to pick something up, I get to see the most entertaining things.  Ever watched people try to pick out vegetables?  Fascinating.

Sometimes, when I'm at the store I provide great entertainment for those around me.  For instance, last night I took my daughter to a…

When I hear "Nigeria" my mind automatically fills in "scams", as it has been one of the single largest sources of attempts to defraud on the internet.  However, at work we actually have a great customer in Nigeria... In fact, someone from the office has been elected to go to Nigeria to do some…

I like to pretend that I know a little something about woodworking, and occasionally even try to build something that won't be condemned by the urban housing authority.  Since it is nearing Halloween and all, I thought it was amusing to see a new story pop up on wikihow about how to make your own…

So, a few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to drive from St. Louis to Salt Lake in a minivan.  We did the trip in a little less than 19 or so hours, which means that we pretty well obeyed the speed limit and didn't get ourselves too tired/worn out, etc.

However, 19 hours is still quite a bit of…

Ok, so Christine has figured out how to save mucho, mucho bucks at the grocery store by using coupons and watching for the killer sales. She’s had such a great success that we’ve registered http://www.hugegrocerysavings.com and are going to write up a quick guide on how you can do it too, which we…

Ok, so we finally loaded up all our stuff into the biggest U-Haul money can rent, and headed north to the sunny climes of Boise, ID.  While the drive for me was mostly uneventful (except for when the car hauler behind the truck started fishtailing and whipping the back of the truck around - that…

I have tuned in to Joel on Software (the blog of the owner of Fog Creek software) from time to time, and have always found his opinions refreshing.  Today my brother pointed me to a recent article Joel posted about doing customer service the Right Way™.  I find all 8 of his points to be really…

Ok world, here it is:  Kimball's birthday list - 2007

This year I'm pretty much into the same stuff I'm always looking for (in fact, much of this list is the same as last year's list) - digital devices of some sort or another, tools (especially the kind that require at least 120 V AC) and typical…

With the ever-increasing speed of consumer computers, frequently developers decide that it is much more important to get their applications shipped quickly than to take extra time to optimize their code a bit.  This morning I ran across an interesting article that points why this is a Bad…

Ok world, here it is:  Kimball's birthday list - 2006

This year I'm pretty much into the same stuff I'm always looking for (in fact, much of this list is the same as last year's list) - digital devices of some sort or another, tools (especially the kind that require at least 120 V AC) and typical…

Isaac Henry Larsen

Congratulations to us!  Isaac Henry Larsen was born today at 9:46 am in the Alta View Hospital.  He weighed 9 lbs, 9oz, and mommy and baby are doing just fine.

I could pontificate about how cute he is, but I'd rather show you:

Christine was only in labor for about 4 1/2 hours, and…

Ok world, here it is:  Kimball's birthday list - 2005

This year I'm pretty much into the same stuff I'm always looking for - digital devices of some sort or another, tools (especially the kind that require at least 120 V AC) and typical guy stuff like movies and video games.

Here are the top items…

Erica had her second birthday on the 21st, and she had a blast! :)  We decided to not have a party with a bunch of people over (can you imagine a house full of 2 year olds) and just had a small family thing together when I got home from work.  Erica had six kinds of fun opening her presents and…

Ok, it's that time of year again, and we have a few items on our list that we would love to find under the tree... 

Board/Group Games

Cranium - possibly the most fun group board game we've run across this year.  

      Update:  Already broke down and bought one ourselves...

Cranium Hoopla - similar…

Well, it snowed a few days ago, so today we got Erica all dressed up and went out to let her explore a bit.  Of course, I had the camera.

Since we are going to need to move Erica into a new bedroom soon to make way for the newest Larsen, we are in search of some good inexpensive furniture.  Today…

As I was growing up, every summer my family would make a pilgrimage to Nauvoo, IL to participate in the City of Joseph pageant held there.  As part of the annual tradition, at the cast picnic one of the original writers of the pageant would jump up on a picnic table and recite "Elmer and the Bear".…

So, the other day I finally decided to refactor the source for AG (anyone who knows me knows what that is, others who dont... well, ask!) and break the huge monotlitic binary into lots of little xml files.  Only problem is the fine folks at RS (again, ask) decided that it would make perfect sense…