This is a wonderful photo of my Mom and my youngest brother, Robert Matthew (a.k.a. “Matt”). These two had a really special relationship and while I miss them tremendously, it warms my heart to know that they are in Heaven together for eternity.
Brandee and I continue to be amazed daily, how lucky we are to have been able to re-home my mom’s cat, J.C. J.C. (“Just Cat”) truly is a remarkable gift from God that came to us in uncertain times, but has worked out the best.
For those who might not have been following the story, Brandee and I already had four adopted animals with our two dogs of Gracie and Finn, but also our two cats of Bleu and Ella. While our dogs didn’t give us too much concern about integrating J.C. into our home, the unknown of having our two female cats was something we had to take very seriously. We just couldn’t predict exactly how everyone would interact with each other.
Fast-forward one year later and I’m happy to report that J.C. has assimilated into our family so nicely and I think he’s found his happy place in life. J.C. is the type of guy that you can sense his feelings, and it’s pretty apparent that he misses my mom and dad (who raised him for his first 10 years), but he also enjoys that zany-nest of his new family with Gracie, Finn and especially Bleu and Ella.
Brandee has given J.C. a new nick-name of “Bubba” which I think fits his funny personality very well. Bubba likes to spend most of his days lounging-around his bed, which Brandee constructed of many fluffy pillows, and leisurely exploring our living room area with the rest of us. Bubba never makes a fuss about himself and he just generally goes with the flow watching the action such as Daddy throwing the ball for Finn to fetch like 200-times nightly!
In summary, I’m so glad that J.C. is part of the Neal Barnhouse Family. He is such an interesting character that makes Brandee and me so happy plus he’s a good example of an older brother for his four other siblings. It’s also amazing that J.C. is an angel in our house that has experiences with my mom and dad that is only known to him.
We love you J.C.!
-Mommy and Daddy
Ella and The Hand
I don’t know why but I’m feeling a strong desire to write this simple message of appreciation for someone that will read this message.
Recently I went on a routine business trip for only two days. While I sincerely enjoyed my trip, meeting new people and getting business done; I missed my wife and our five furry children more than ever. And, frankly, the biggest highlight of my travel was coming home instead of going to the event itself.
The instant I came in the front door upon getting home, Gracie and Finn “embraced” me with their waggy-tails, big barking mouths and jumpy enthusiasm. I was so happy to see them, and I think they were happy to see Daddy again.
After Grace and Finn finally got settled a little bit, it was time to see how my youngest daughter, Ella Bean September Neal, was doing because she’s a very independent spirit and doesn’t pretend to make a fuss about anything.
So, I headed out to her lazy daytime sleeping bed in our office where she likes to nap in the sunshine and I said ‘hello Ella-bean’. She responded ‘meow…’, and rolled on her back as a direct invitation for me to rub her tummy like she enjoys so much.
I reached out my hand to scratch her tummy, back of her neck and chin, but I stopped because she was in such a frenzy for me to rub her with my hand that I didn’t know which rub-part was her priority.
So, I just held out my hand and appreciated the gift the God gave me.
A Hand, with five-fingers, that can move in various horizontal/vertical directions, have nerves to feel sensation such as heat and cold plus effortlessly interoperate with the rest of my body.
Basically, I had taken touch, with my Hand to scratch Ella’s furry-chin, as sort of an entitlement instead of the gift that this is.
As I held my Hand still for 30 minutes, Ella made the decision whether her chin, belly, neck, ears, back, or wherever she wanted rubbed. It was her choice, not mine, which was really cool. I spread my fingers out so that she was able scratch several areas in the same pass (she’s so small that she can get a neck, chin and back scratch in one fell-swoop). It was 30-minutes of great reflection that a simple gift, that I don’t appreciate enough such as a Hand with five fingers, can provide such happiness to others.
This 30-minutes also allowed me to consider how Ella’s paws (a.k.a. her Hands), with five nails, are specially created for her purpose in life. She has claws to be able to scale high-fences, climb on roofs as well as defend herself from attacks.
So, while we both Ella and I have similar features with Five digits, we are gifted with specialized purposes with our Hands. The commonality is that Ella and I can touch our Paws/Hands and be bonded forever in our love and happiness for this wonderful gift.
I made this presentation to illustrate how TWAIN Direct is operating system agnostic and perfectly aligned with the Red Hat, and overall open source, community.
It was a great honor for me to represent the @TWAIN Working Group at the Infosource Capture & IDP Conference last week in Chicago. I provided an update to the attendees on “Monetizing TWAIN Direct” with some examples of Use Cases for Generative AI, Conversational AI and Document Processing AI with TWAIN Direct. Then I shared our success with TWAIN Direct Developers Day in Safety Harbor, Florida as well as the TWAIN Direct ISV Showcase Series webinars. Finally, I thanked our valued member companies and encouraged membership to be part of the Digital Transformation AI future with TWAIN!
At the Infosource Capture & IDP Conference last week, I shared some real Artificial Intelligence use cases for TWAIN Direct. I was having some fun with the TWAIN acronym, to get the audiences attention and to fit in with the theme of AI, but I was also very serious about incorporating various techniques of AI including Generative AI, Conversational AI, and Document Processing/Analytics AI to illustrate the strategic importance of TWAIN Direct to the AI ecosystem
One of the TWAIN Working Group highlights I shared at the Infosource Capture & IDP Conference last week, was TWAIN Direct Developers Day (TD-DD). TD-DD was a terrific and energy-filled day of seeing TWAIN Direct in action. In one day software developers were able to get a functioning TWAIN Direct document scanning application working. Some feedback included: “Integration of TWAIN Direct was simple and easy”, “There was a good vibe at Developers Day” and “The partner ecosystem and ISV solutions for TWAIN Direct are really impressive”. We will be hosting another Developers Day in Spring 2024 so please send me a message for more details.
Fitting directly in the theme of my presentation of “Monetizing TWAIN Direct” at the Infosource Capture & IDP Conference last week, was sharing the TWAIN Direct ISV Showcase Series. This ongoing webinar series, hosted by the TWAIN Working Group, included various topics such as cybersecurity, cashflow management, content management, file conversion, capture, and more, featuring our growing ecosystem of software partners and integrations. Please send me a message if you’d like to be included in future TWAIN Direct ISV Showcase Series webinars.
As a non-profit organization, the TWAIN Working Group is supported by our valued member companies. At the @Infosource Capture & IDP Conference last week, many were in attendance including Atalasoft/Kofax, Epson, Kodak Alaris, PFU, P3iD Technologies and Visioneer. Since TWAIN is an open-source specification, our organization is selling nothing and charges no commercial licensing fees. Our only motivation is to provide a solid industry-leading and accepted standard for scanning device-to-software application communication. I’m pleased to share that at the Conference, the state of document scanning with TWAIN Direct has a very bright future and each opportunity means tangible business for one, or many, of our valued member companies.