Proud to announce Ella the newest addition to my family joined us today @ 6:19pm, weighing in at 6lbs and 11 ounces. Yes, that's 6lbs of cuteness. :-) I'm incredibly blessed to have this third addition to my family, and look forward to treasuring every moment with her. God sure knows how to give an amazing gift!

It was a rough 24 hours resulting in our first cesarean experience. This was a bit intense, but Sarah pulled through as a trooper, and we are now finished with post-operation recovery, and enjoying time with our new bundle of awesome.

Ella

Inky toes

Ella

6 lbs 11 ounces.

Ella

Sleepy head

Ella

she woke up pretty quick, and started trying to look around despite the bright lights of the OR

Ella

she's a bit bummed at the bright lights and being poked. the nurses did an admirable job however.

Ella

Momma had a rough time, and had to wait a few minutes to hold Ella. They had a beautiful moment together just looking at each other while momma finished recovery

Ella

Yes... I'm a proud dad!

Ella

being swaddled

Ella

was surprised at how fast she opened those eyes to explore. Bright lights did little to deter her

Ella

Trying to figure out who the masked wierdo with the camera was....

Ella

Getting hungry

Ella

Out of surgery, Sarah is relishing the time with her little angel

Ella

Snuggling with my girl

Ella

A ninja lurks in the background

Ella

Grandma getting some quality time with the newest addittion to the family

Ella

Grandma visiting again before taking off to help us with the kiddos

Ella

Grandma getting some quality time with the newest addittion to the family

Ella

Excited to visit their sister again

Thanks for all the prayers! Now for some sleep... or not ;-)

Shout out to Willowbrook Women's Center for their consideration and stellar care during the delivery. I left my camera in the other room, not knowing operating room rules, and wanted to respect that, and not complicate the moment. A nurse asked me where my camera was so I could capture a few of the precious first moments, and walked to the other side of the hospital section to go fetch it for me to make it happen. That's how considerate they were!

Thanks to their care I have a healthy baby girl, healthy wife, and some beautiful moments despite the complication of the delivery.

Ella

Music courtesy of Rivers and Robots - King of My Heart. Support them by checking out their beautiful music @ http://bit.ly/2y8lKPA

It's important to remember that the road to recovery is not an instant process. Right now we have a ton of volunteers and people working to help those in need. I'm reminding myself, as much as any readers here, the process to recovery for people most impacted is not a single week of effort event. In some cases, entire homes were lost and without flood insurance, the financial devastation can be profound. I'm proud to be part of the Vineyard Church association which is sending an equipped response team to the area to send volunteers and various professionals to aid in recovery. This will definitely help increase the impact we have as people have to go back to work and available time is reduced.

The beginning of recovery for this one family. It's important to remember that this will be a process, not a quick week of work to resolve. We need to keep lifting up in prayer and financial support the people who have suffered from the impact of this devasting event.

continued help

In the meantime, if you are helping with some giving @ nwvineyard.com/give please consider doing a recoccuring donation for a period of months to continue the help. I'm hoping that the impact the church community has in Houston is going to be a testimony to commitment as believers we have in serving those in suffering and in need.

not be forgetful

As a reminder to all my fellow followers-of-Christ, our actions are under scrutinity (just see the barrage of accusations against Joel Olsteen right now). As I was driving to a site on the first day back in my house, I saw a small church with a guy riding a lawnmower and trimming a lawn that already looked good.

It made me angry and sad at the same time.

Yes, I should not judge. That church may have had a large response team out serving, and I'm probably just seeing part of the picture.

However, that same part of the picture is what others would be seeing. Less than 1 mile up the road were houses devasted by the flood, ripping out drywall, furniture, and dealing with the loss of a lot of belongings. I pray that we all remember the hardship that others are going through and while we can enjoy and relish the moments of life we are given, let us strive to not forget those others those can't move on yet. Those who have lost everything, are in shelters, dealing with the emotional fallout of a disaster, and in the process of rebuilding a place they can call home for their family.

Update 1:30pm Wednesday

Better than expected, we are looking to be back in our house Thursday. Apparently some SUV's are just starting to gain access. Don't want to risk it so giving it a little extra time. That's much better than I expected at beginning of this whole situation!

Relief efforts mentioned at bottom are underway at nwvineyard.com so if you are looking to help the Tomball/Northwest Houston area that's one place to help or find out how to help.

Original Post - Tuesday

From my favorite "No Hype" weatherman:

We are probably about 24 hours away from a general cessation of rainfall, including for most of the eastern half of the Houston area. It's been an absolutely miserable four or five days, but it's almost over - > Space City Weater

Almost through it!

Message from neighbor reports that everything seems high and dry still after the rains last night, so pretty sure my house, along with a few of the houses high enough on our street are not going to have water enter. If the water keeps going down, I'm hoping to have the family back in the house Friday or Saturday.

There will definitely be people in our neighborhood that will be dealing with repairs and issues as the video I posted previously shows.

Walked over to the church today from our friends house. Figured I'd get some work done, and was doubtful of my ability to concentrate with my kiddos getting stir crazy. The walk was supposed to be 37 mins... an hour later I arrived. Gave me some extra time to pray at least :-)

Projections for the area are never certain, but seems to point to being clear of anything that would cause water to get into the house.

For those interested in helping out in the area, my church is participating in relief efforts and starting to gather resources to help those in the community. Randy (the lead pastor at nwvineyard.com) will make sure that any donations made are used to impact the local area as this is a core passion of our small church plant.

The view from my driveway. I was seriously blessed, as many others were not as high

What a crazy weekend. Choose to evacuate the family as water was slowly creeping up closer to the house. I was ready today when I made it back to the house to see the water in the house, but to my astonishment it was only half-way up the driveway. Turning down the road 1 house away, many houses did not fare so well, and water looks to have made it in many homes.

It has been a stressful time, and still not finished, but what a remarkable time to see people coming together. From a neighbor walking my family in a small boat to the front to ease the way for the kids and pregant wife in 4 ft of dirty water to the evacuation boats running all day to help get people out. I saw first responders from a surfer walking a raft in his wetsuit to Kemah volunteer firefighters walking the roads to check on people and confirm everyone wanting evacuation was taken care of.

Our area was not as devastated as downtown and other areas that have been on the news, but for us it was still a pretty nerveracking experience.

The hospitality and friendship shown by my church was encouraging, and without these friends we'd have been in a tough spot. From driving through some deeper water, to providing warm meals and hospitality (and giving up some rooms/space) for us. As it stands, thanks to my friends I've got my kids tucked in warm and safe and am able to sit back and think about the days' events without being in the rain. Being removed for our home for a week helps put the important things back in perspective for sure!

If we make it through tonight we should be fine with no water damage, but this storm has definitely given us surprises.

Prayers out there for those in worse situations from this storm. It's been a bit numbing to see just the little pieces I've seen in the last 2 days. The financial impact (no flood insurance for many in this storm, including us, as we are outside any normal flood areas) is going to be tough, along with the stress and rebuilding that will be required.

Northern Point subdivision on Sunday afternoon. Ended up evacuting. This is the front of the subdivision. The back was hit harder.

As a developer, I've been a big fan of multiple monitors for a long time. I moved to a triple screen setup years ago, and up until recently, had no desire to try anything different.

Well... I've finally found the replacement. The holy grail of productivity, immersion, as well as usability. Ultrawides :-)

Don't you miss the extra screen?

No. The width of the screen is plenty for 2 full Visual Studio environments, or 3 text editors side by side. I've always had issues with effectively managing multiple IDE environmen with floating windows as those can tend to get pretty confusing on which parent they belong to. I've found I prefer to keep floating windows in the parent environment, and an ultrawide allows this type of workflow perfectly.

Do you need the curve?

I prefer it.the Samsung CF971 is curved at 1500R, which is one of the most curve displays as of the current time. Unlike TV, where this feature is pretty much useless, with an ultrawide monitor only a few feet from your face, the curve is welcome, and still subtle. I do videography, photography, and some gaming, and for my purposes I've found it to be perfect.

Do I need to get a 3440x1440 or can I save money and get 2560x1080?

Get the 3440x1440 if you are doing anything besides gaming. Then for gaming just toggle to the lower resolution. I way overthought this too, and thought the downscaling would be terrible. It's not. Don't listen to the naysayers. If you aren't a competitive ESports gamer, then it will serve you just fine at the lower resolution, and then you can toggle back up to the high resolution for anytype of productivity work. I recommend Display Fusion as you can setup some quick monitor profiles to toggle without delay.

Gaming on it?

Awesome! I still am running an old AMD 7950, and when I down the settings I'm still enjoying it. It's about time with Vega to upgrade, but until then, I'm still getting some life out of the current card, and still not leveraging the 100hz refresh rate with Freesync.

Any negatives?

I had 1 stuck pixel that I couldn't fix, so with black background this small dot can be seen (red). However, I'm still happy with the choice.

For Development

I plan on moving to this screen in the future for development as well. I included some images of the workspace you gain, so I have no complaints about my time at home working on it.

But I'm scared of moving away from IPS!

Me too. No regrets. The SVA panel beautiful. No complaints whatsoever, and no regrets about leaving behind my IPS display for this.