AndrewReiter.com

John is getting bigger by the day.  He has had the chance to meet his new cousins Alix,  Mason, and Elizabeth.  He can’t wait to meet Anna in September, who was born the same day John was 2 months old, Easter Sunday!  Anna’s birth marks the end of the Reiter Baby Boom™.  Between 12/11/08 and 4/12/09, there were 5 more grandkids born to bring the total to 18 in our family now.  We are split evenly, 9 boys and 9 girls.

The Basment Project is nearing its end.  I’m actually writing this post while I wait for the carpet installers to arrive.  After that is done, all I’ll have to do is put my doors back on the hinges and install the new windows once they are delivered.  The project will end up taking about 6 months to complete.  I’d say that isn’t bad considering I became a father in the middle of it!

I’m a big slacker that I haven’t updated this over the past week and a half.  John Andrew was born on February 12 @ 6:59 PM.  He weighed in at 6lbs 12oz and was 19.5 inches long.  He and mom are doing well. It is impossible to describe the feelings you get holding your son in your arms.  He is simply amazing.

There are more pictures added to my Picasa site as well.  I’ve made it so you can browse all of them from within my site.  Just click the Pictures tab at the top.

I want to wish all 3? of you that visit my website a wonderful Thanksgiving!  This is probably one of the best holidays of the year.   It hasn’t been taken over by commercialism, or at least not as much as every other holiday.  It’s all about family and being thankful for what you have.  And on top of that, you get to stuff yourself full of turkey, stuffing, potatoes, pie, etc. without any remorse! … Maybe.

The LAN Party was a big success.  We had 19 or 20 people in the house playing Team Fortress 2, mainly.  We even had Garrett and Justin playing from home here and there.  It was a blast.  We mixed in some WAR and the Left 4 Dead demo when we had the chance.  I’m still looking for the owner of a jacket that was left, if it is one of you 3, let me know.

I have been working on a new project lately.  It is a website for my swim team.  It is coming along quite nicely.  I’m using an open source content management system, Joomla. For someone like me, that isn’t a web developer, it makes it VERY easy to setup a website.  There is a fairly large community that creates modules and plugins for the software as well.  That is really where open source shines.  I use an older version of Joomla for one of our websites at work, so I had a little bit of background with it going in.

For those that don’t know already, our baby is due February 19th.  We are excited!  If anyone has girl name suggestions, feel free to pass them along.  We don’t know what it is yet(maybe in a couple weeks, that we haven’t decided either!), but we have struggled with deciding on a girl name.

I hope everyone has a great Labor Day weekend!  I know I will.

I’ve finally caught up on a few things. I’ve uploaded several groups of pictures to my Picasa site. One set is from the Stephenson Family Reunion, which was this past weekend. For those not “in the know”, that is my Mom’s side of the family. We went down to Kimberling City, MO (just SW of Branson). It was great fun. I got to see some cousins from California that I don’t get to see often.. or ever. The weekend was filled with plenty of boating, fishing, and card playing.

This past Tuesday I participated in my first swim meet. It was a basic meet setup just to get your times on races. There were no awards or anything. I was happy to not come in last in any of my races. Well… the 50 freestyle I was last in my heat, but there were several slower times in other heats. I also swam the 50 backstroke, 50 breaststroke, and somehow finished the 100 butterfly. 100m isn’t that far, but the butterfly is simply a difficult stroke. I hadn’t even finished 100 fly in practice once, so I was pumped just to finish the race… and not even in last place! And of course, I was scheduled to swim in a 200 Free Relay the race after the 100 Fly. Luckily I swam the last leg, which allowed me to catch my breath a bit. So… I’ve gotten my first taste of competitive swimming. It will help the nerves quite a bit for the Show-Me Games.

Update: My Results

Pain? Yes, when you lose all but 1 Softball game in your league, that is painful. Also, turning your ankle 3 times during the last double-header hurts quite a bit as well. I’ve been hobbling around for the past couple days, trying to follow the ICE routine. Why would I keep playing after the first, or even second turning of my ankle? That is a valid question. Ignorance comes to mind. It was just a beer league after all. Some of the other teams seemed to think it was a competitive league. I actually thought we might be involved in a brawl during/after the game on Friday night. Some people just don’t know how to relax and have fun.


The real pain in my life right now is the loss that Katie and I have been dealing with. She put it better than I can, so feel free to read what she had to say.

Read the rest of this entry »

Katie and I got back from Florida on Saturday afternoon. We had a great time at Jesse’s Wedding and in Florida. The wedding was outside and barely got done in time for a thunderstorm that rolled through afterwards. It was definitely the fastest wedding I had ever attended at about 15 minutes. The reception was in a barn that has been redone for banquets and looks great. Apparently, it has become the place to have wedding receptions in Fayetteville.

The next day, I drove about 16 hours to Jacksonville, Florida and we crashed at my Aunt’s house. From there, we headed down to St. Augustine to join everyone else for the Family Reunion. Not as many people made it down as I thought were going to. Only 2 brothers and my sister made it down and some of the family in Florida weren’t around the entire week. We stayed at a hotel that was right on the beach, so we spent plenty of time in the water. Thanks to my brother Jeff, I did quite a bit of bodyboarding. We also went on a ghost tour of St. Augustine that was put on by Ripley’s. The “orb” in the linked picture is supposed to be a spirit of a ghost. Of course, I think its all a bunch of bs… but hey, I paid the money to go on the trip so I guess their stories are working.

After all the reunion festivities were over, several of us headed down to Orlando for a day at Sea World. Katie was looking forward to this for the entire trip. Both of us had been there when we were little, but couldn’t remember anything from those trips. The park is basically just a bunch of shows to go see. Shamu is, of course, the most famous of these shows. Katie and I sat in the “Splash Zone” but were never actually hit with water. The one roller coaster they have there, Kraken, is the best coaster I have ever been on. It goes upside down about 8 times, through 2 tunnels, and never seems to slow down.

LOTD: Sports Kill People

This past weekend, Katie and I were honored to celebrate with MF and KG at their wedding. They had it at the Sheraton in Clayton, which turned out really nice. We got Matt the best wedding gift he received, I’m sure. 8 or 9 of us went in on a Nintendo Wii and gave it to him Friday night. He was quite surprised. I just bought one for myself a couple nights ago, thanks to Nick, who found one at Wal-Mart. Just about everyone I know has a Wii now.

Tomorrow I’m headed back up to the training center to take my CEH certification test. They slot 4 hours for the test, but my instructor said it shouldn’t take more than 3. If it takes me 4 hours, I probably won’t pass. I’ve been studying for the last couple weeks, and I think I’m ready to go.

Right after I finish my test, Katie and I begin our vacation. First, we are headed down to Arkansas for another wedding. A good friend from college is getting married in Fayetteville, and I can’t wait to meet the gal he tricked into this. It should be a fun weekend, which ends in us driving down to Florida for a Reiter family reunion. We will be spending the majority of the time in St. Augustine, but we will also be headed to Jacksonville and Orlando. We will be going to Sea World, and we might even swing by Kennedy Space Center.

LOTD: Glasbergen Cartoons

While I didn’t exactly collect the toys and lunch boxes growing up, I definitely spent plenty of time watching the Transformers cartoon. Over the weekend, I went with a couple brothers to see the newly released movie. The effects were awesome, storyline was credible(for scifi of course), and it was Autobots vs Decepticons… what more could you want? Any fan of the Transformers must see this movie, along with any action film fan out there. It is my movie of the year already and the year is barely half over.

I’m a couple days into the CEH training and so far it has been very interesting. Much like the transformers, people use their hacking powers for good or evil. This class is not as much of a “defensive techniques” class that I originally thought it would be. It really is hacking 101. Not only do you learn how to use hacking tools, they are provided for you with the course material. After all, they are all readily available on the net anyways. As a matter of fact, many of the tools were originally written for good purposes, but are also used for hacking. Now, don’t come to me asking for tips, as I’m not at liberty to share any of the information… I would recommend this class to anyone that is interested in network and system security.

Ethical Hacking… sounds like an oxymoron doesn’t it? The idea is to know how hackers operate so that you can defend against them. I’ve been preparing for a class on it that I have next week. I was sent almost 3000 pages of course ware that I have been reading the past couple of weeks. It will be a pretty intense class as it is all packed into 5 8-hour days.

Last night, Katie and I went up to Fair St. Louis with our friend Greg. We definitely didn’t go up there just to see Cyndi Lauper, but she did happen to be playing a concert on the riverfront. Katie ended up with a headache, while Greg and I were laughing at all the people dancing around to “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” … or whatever the title is. The fireworks show was great, though. It is amazing how it is all timed to the music and everything. We watched the show through the arch, which was pretty neat.

LOTD: iPhone Dugout Chat