Oregon BrewFest Panorama

Have I said that I love making panorama's? Every late July here in Portland is the Oregon Brewers Festival. It's four days long, features about 70 beers from around the country, usually really nice weather, and lots of very friendly people. All ages are welcome and you see many people there with their whole families. I've gone to every one over the last 21 years and rarely I have seen anyone drunk or rude. Just a bunch of very friendly people enjoying some excellent beers. For the kids and designated drivers, they have free root beer. It's one of the most fun things to do in Portland in the summer. This shot is three photos stitched together in Photoshop. Please click the photo so you can see it bigger, small doesn't do it justice.

Zoolights Butterfly

Here are Maddie & Riley on either side of this cool butterfly. I put the camera's flash in SL mode, which triggered the flash but then kept the shutter open just a hair longer. This meant nothing was too dark thanks to the flash and the lights on the butterfly glow, thanks to leaving the shutter open longer. Riley has a really weird pose here. Kids, you just can't get them to take serious pictures. ...or maybe I should say I can't get MY kids to do that, probably because I would have done the same thing at his age. haha

Pinewood Derby 3rd Place!

Riley had a lot of fun yesterday at the Pinewood Derby. The Cubmaster made a fuss over his skateboard car, which made Riley smile big time! They did 6 rounds, which made it really long, 3 would have been enough. When they were done, they setup the movie, "Down and Derby" which was pretty funny - it's about how some dad's go WAY over the top with Pinewood Derby, not letting their kids build them, looking for the best aerodynamics, etc. Half way through we stopped to do awards. We did our derby with a Pack that just started at the new school that opened, many of the kids were from our Pack last year. First they called off the overall winners for the other Pack. Then they got to our Pack and started with 3rd place. I just stood there. He called Riley's name but it didn't register. I saw the kid walk up and said, "Hmmm... that looks like Riley..." Then the Cubmaster said, "Dad, are you gonna take a photo?" WOW! I was in total shock! I'd post that photo, but I was so shocked, I had to turn on my camera and didn't give it time to focus, so it's seriously blurry. D'OH! But I'm keeping it because in 20 years we'll be glad we did, and by then Photoshop will probably be able to fix those. hehe So here's a photo of him after we got home, holding his car and his 3rd place medal! SO PROUD!!!!

Maddie at the Beach

There was this huge piece of driftwood - more like a drift-tree - that the kids were climbing on. Anytime you take a picture of Maddie and she knows it, she has to strike a pose. haha

Reflection

Another Neskowin photo. This river empties into the ocean and on this day it was very calm. I thought the reflection looked pretty cool. :)

Tree on Proposal Rock

Another Neskowin photo. This tree was growing out of the side off the rock. I found it interesting how it must have started at a much greater angle, then started growing up towards the sky. Nature is cool.

Our Christmas Tree

Took this Christmas morning before the kids got up.

Moon Over the Trees

I was outside practicing with the One More Time Around Again Marching Band, looked over and saw this. Glad I was able to get it before the moon moved too much!

Building his Pinewood Derby Car

This coming Saturday is Riley's Cub Scout Pinewood Derby. Last year I built most of the car because he was having troubles. But this year he was able to do most of it himself. I cut a few of the harder parts and helped him cut the longer parts (his hand was getting tired), but he did most of it. He's just finished painting it in glow-in-the-dark paint. When it's all done I'll post another photo. BTW, it's going to be a skateboard. :)

Marci + Richard MORE

Another photo from Neskowin. I should do some post processing to enhance it more, maybe when I have more time. You can see Proposal Rock on the left and our condo way over on the right. I had fun writing "Marci + Richard MORE" in the sand, then showing it to Marci after downloading them onto my computer. We always say to each other, "Love you MORE!" then sometimes just simply, "MORE". :)

Two Panoramas

I love creating panoramas! All of mine are hand held. I've tried using a tripod before but I find it takes more time and the results aren't that much better - though once in awhile I don't keep the camera level enough and either have to crop way too much or leave it looking funky. haha

Today I couldn't decide which panorama to put up so I'm doing both. Thanks to Blogger not giving me enough space, I had to post the smaller versions. Please click the photos to see the larger sizes, these are much better larger! The first is from the Pumpkin Patch. Inside the maze there's this bridge you can walk on top and look around. I took several pictures and stitched them together to create this.

The second is from several years ago. We were in a parking lot and I saw this really awesome cloud. Took a bunch of photos and stitched them together. It came out very cool!

Again, please click these to see the larger versions, they are definitely more better!

Laser Headlights

This is shortly after I got my current camera. We were in Reno and I was having fun playing with long exposures - this one is 30 seconds. No post processing. I like how that car at the stop light looks like it has lasers coming out of its headlights. LOL!

Playing in the Misters

One year at the Oregon Brewers Festival, it was REALLY hot. So they got smart and setup some water misters that you could walk under and cool off. Being a kid, Riley of COURSE wanted to play in them. We didn't care, he got very wet but had a ton of fun. I really liked the composition of this one.

Philadelphia Mummers Band

This group came out to Portland to march in our Rose Festival Grand Floral parade. They were extremely colorful and bright, playing great music! Very fun to watch. One guy who you can't see here (but you can on my Flickr page) marched the whole parade carrying a full upright string bass! WOW! A very fun group.

Looking for our Christmas Tree

Each year we head to this great place to cut down our Christmas Tree. This year while walking around I saw this view, looking through the branches of one tree at the other trees, and thought it would make an interesting photo. :)

2009 Starlight Parade

I'm a member of the One More Time around Again Marching Band. We are about 560 musicians, dancers, flags and other auxiliaries, and I've been in it for 25 years now! Every year we march in two parades that are part of our Portland Rose Festival, a Starlight Parade (done 9pm when it's dark, hence the name) and the main event, our Grand Floral Parade. It's really a blast to march along, wave to the crowd, get silly, not worry too much how straight the line is, etc, after several years of doing this parade in high school where we were judged and HAD to be super perfect.

I was taking photos while on the parade route (which I love to do, give a different view of the parade) and forgot my camera was on the wrong setting. After I saw this one I actually liked it a lot. No extra processing here, just a camera goof that turned out well. :)

Heavy Rain

It does rain a good amount here in Oregon, though it's usually a really light rain, many times almost a mist. It can get quite annoying and bothersome, but at least when you're going from your car to the store, that means it's not raining hard enough to need to go through the "Put Up The Umbrella" dance while getting out of your car. We have a saying; you can tell the REAL Oregonians - they don't use umbrella's. LOL! Anyhow, on this day we had an exceptionally hard rain. Drops were very big and coming down HARD! It was mesmerizing to watch. Fortunately I came out of the trance and was able to capture this raindrop landing on our fence.

Rhododendron

AHH!!! I almost forgot to post a photo today! Slept in late, played games on the PS3 with Riley, Marci went to Chinook Winds with her mom so Riley, Maddie and I went Bowling then to dinner, it was a fun day, I just forgot about posting a photo. D'OH!

This is another I took at the Crystal Sprints Rhododendron Gardens. I liked how the rhody is in focus and the background isn't, and the framing. :)

Footbridge Pulled Up

At our favorite beach, Neskowin, there's a small river that flows into the ocean, it's very shallow. Going from the condo's to the beach there's a footbridge. In past years it had often been wiped out by high tides. Finally they replaced it with one they could pull back. It has worked great, just means you have a longer walk to get to the beach. Here they pulled it up. This was taken after I had learned the rule of 3rds and was playing around with that. I like how the composition turned out. :)

Morning Birdie

It was early in the morning, things were quite, calm, the sun was warm, I looked out and saw this little bird sitting on the fence. I was really happy he stayed there long enough for me to get my camera and take a picture. :)

Cub Scout Camp Ireland

Riley started Cub Scouts last year, I'm his den leader. It's been a lot of fun. Last summer was his first Cub Scout camp, we'd go in the morning and come back around 3:30pm. We had a GREAT time - even though all week the temps were above 100, which is really hot for Oregon! This photo is of the entry area where the little store is. It's six photos merged with Hugin, then I did the fake HDR thingy in Lightroom. I thought about posting a smaller version, but decided only a little bit was cut off and people can click the photo to see the whole thing - and when you click the photo, you can also click "All Sizes" to see the full original sized version.

Watching the Waves

I love going to the beach for many reasons, digging in the sand, playing in the water, skipping rocks across the small river that empties into the ocean, and of course all the wonderful photo opportunities. Here's Marci, Maddie, Riley and mom Mom watching the waves.

Summer Sunset

I really love taking photos of sunsets and sunrises when the clouds glow with such great colors. Here was a wonderful summer sunset.

Red Tree

In the fall around here the oak trees stay green longer than other trees, like the maple trees. I went outside with the kids to watch them play and saw this small maple that had turned a beautiful red with these two huge oak trees in the background that were still a nice green. I loved the contrast! I like the zoomed in photo much better, but thought I'd also share what the whole view looked like. I couldn't really capture how cool the whole view was with the camera, I still have more to learn. ;)

Marci & Maddie at the Beach

Another photo from Neskowin. The sun was setting, Marci and Maddie were walking by the waves and there's nothing quite like a mother and child photo. I really like the reflection. This is shortly after I learned about the rule of 3rds and was trying it out.

Beautiful Sunrise

One morning while driving to work I saw the sun starting to come up and could tell the clouds would look pretty. I got to work, looked straight ahead and the clouds looked ok, but not as cool as I thought they would look. Then I got out and looked behind me - WOW! I quickly grabbed my camera and took this photo.

I put my camera away, grabbed my stuff and started walking to the building. I can't remember why, but I turned around and looked back towards my car - and saw this! I've never seen a rainbow with such an amazing sunrise! My camera couldn't get the whole thing so I took two photos and stitched them together in Photoshop.

County Fair

This was in early August. While was overcast, it was still quite warm. Eventually the sun came out and it was hot! While waiting for the kids to get on a ride, I stood back, turned the camera sideways and took four photos, then stitched them in Photoshop. It turned out pretty cool, I was happy quite happy with it.

Then I decided to have some fun. I saved the jpg, pulled it into Camera Raw and played around with the settings trying for some kind of fake HDR look. It ended up being too over saturated, so I pulled the saturation WAY down and then it REALLY looked great! TOTALLY different feel from the original photo, but I really like it a lot!

Through The Trees

This was taken at the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Gardens. They have this really nice man-made lake that separates the gardens from a golf course. I liked how these two huge trees framed the photo. When I got home to process the photos I took I noticed there was some kid in this one. D'OH! Oh well, I still think it turned out nice. :)

Sun over Proposal Rock

I've been really busy lately which hasn't allowed me a lot of time to take some new photos. That and I haven't seen anything that has interested me either. So I'm still cycling through my older photos.

The beach at Neskowin is one of our favorite places to go in the summer and fall. Here the sun was setting over Proposal Rock. It wasn't a super photo, until I took it into Photoshop, cropped it and played with the colors. I like how this came out. In one of his blog posts, Trey Ratcliff of StuckInCustoms.com (who has some simply amazing HDR photography) said to seek out other photographers and ask them to look at your photos. So I asked him to look at mine and it was so freaking awesome that #1 he did it and #2 he liked this one! WOW!!

Dressing a Clydesdale

Every year here in Portland we have a Rose Festival with the big event being a Grand Floral Parade, 2nd only to the Pasadena parade in size. Budweiser brings out their Clydesdale's which are a crowd favorite. Here they were getting them dressed for the parade, putting their harnesses on. This was a riot. This horse turned just as I was ready to take the photo and smiled. It was like he knew I had a camera and he should smile!

The Pirate Park

There's this fun park close by that the kids love to go to. It has a Pirate theme, hence the name. There were some cool clouds, so I took nine photos and stitched them together in Photoshop. It was a little dark so I saved it as a jpg, then pulled it into Adobe Camera Raw to have some fun with it. :)

School Arts Festival

There was an Arts Festival at Riley's school. We got to see some things he did and a bunch of other neat things. I was just playing around with this photo, didn't really have a direction I was going with when I came to this. I really like how it turned out!

Water Trough

Many years ago when I stumbled on HDR I thought it was really cool, but didn't have the awesome tone mapping software. Then I found a tutorial of how to get that HDR look from a single RAW or even JPG file using Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop. I went looking through my photos for one to try and found this one. It's a water trough behind a building at our local Crystal Springs Rhododendron Gardens, a simply beautiful place not just to photograph but to walk around in, feed the ducks, geese, and squirrels.


I pulled it into Camera Raw, played with the settings I found in the tutorial, then tweaked them until I came up with this. While the colors are really blown out and everything, I really like how it turned out! It almost looks like something you found on an island in the Pacific in the 30's, 40's or 50's. Hopefully you like it too. :)


As always, clicking the photos will take you to my Flickr page where you can see the full sized versions.

Big Beach Panorama

I'm very proud of this photo. One thing I like about some multi-image-stitched-together photos is the photo looks nice but you can zoom in and see great detail. That's what I tried to accomplish with this. I zoomed in all the way then took 68 photos. I used Photoshop CS3 to stitch them together, and this was all done hand-held, no tripod. It required a lot of patience and framing of each photo, remembering where the last was AND the previous row was. But it was a lot of fun and I think turned out really well. There is one slight problem with doing these multi-shot photos: Look at the girl, then look to the left and you'll see her reflection again in the water. D'OH! I know I could have fixed that, but it made me laugh when I saw it and decided to keep it. :) This one you really need to click to see the larger size in Flickr and even look at the original for the full-sized version, I couldn't upload a larger version without part of it being cut off. I'd really like to get one of those Gigapan things and do more of these.

Sunflower

Last summer we went to the Bethany Nursery for a kids scavenger hunt. The kids had a great time and I took some photos. Marci told me to take a picture of this sunflower. The original was ok, but then I played around with it in Lightroom. I REALLY like how this one turned out! It looks extra cool viewed on black!

Driftwood

My Mom's sister owns a little condo at Neskowin in Oregon. We go there every year, it's a wonderful beach that doesn't have a ton of people. The kids just love it! Last year they had quite the storm that brought in this giant piece of driftwood - more like a drift-Tree! It was very cool. I thought this photo turned out really well, I like how I composed it and everything. :) No post processing done. This is from August 2009.

2009 Holiday Parade

Every year in Portland we have a Holiday Parade right after Thanksgiving. One year it rain big time and was cold, another it didn't rain but was freezing cold and cloudy. This year it was cold but really sunny too, when you were in the sun it was pretty nice. We turned a corner and I saw this view with the sky looking really nice and blue. I was supposed to be playing, but we had enough other trumpets playing so I could quickly take this pic. I think I over processed it, added back in too much color. Oops! Oh well, at least I'm still keeping up with my new photo post each day! :)

Zoo Lights

The Oregon Zoo does a fantastic job every Christmas season setting up tons of lights around the Zoo. It's really beautiful. These fish were on something spinning around. Since it was really dark I knew if I just stood there they would come out blurry, so I moved with them as I took the photo. Still came out a little blurry, but I was pretty happy with the result. :)

Morning Fog

I took this a few weeks ago when it was really foggy. It was taken through our upstairs window, which is really dirty, so it's not my lens. ;) I put the camera in B&W mode and cropped it in Lightroom. Photo #2, I'm on a roll! haha

A Picture A Day Experiment

I'm going to try something this year. I follow a few blogs where people post a photo every day. That's really cool and I didn't think I would be able to do that because I never thought my photos were that good. But after reading some other blogs in late 2009, I decided to give it a try. My photos may not be world class, but I think some are pretty good.

These won't necessarily be photos I've taken THAT DAY. They are just photos I think are neat. Some I'll have processed a lot, some I won't have done anything to. My goal is to post a photo each morning here, hopefully I'll be able to do that. :) I upload all my photos to Flickr and clicking the photo will take you to that photo on Flickr. http://www.flickr.com/richtpt

Oh, and for those curious, I have a Sony DSC-H50. I'd love to have a nice DSLR, but I feel I first need to learn more about photography before I purchase that level of camera. If a professional were using my camera they could take amazing photos, so me buying a DSLR won't instantly make me take better photos.

So here's the first photo. It's from Christmas morning 2009. I left the shutter open for 1.3 seconds with all the lights off except the tree. This is unprocessed straight from the camera. I might process this later if I have time. I thought it turned out pretty good. :)

We just got a cool food gift basket at work!

Our document imaging vendor called and asked if we would show a potential customer of theirs how we use DocuWare. We said sure and spent about two hours showing it to them.

Today we got this huge gift basket of crackers, cookies, chocolates, nuts, and other stuff - but it didn't come from our vendor, it came from the potential customer! What's AWESOME!!!

Good Enough For Me does NOT equal Good Enough For Everyone Else

Yesterday shortly before I was leaving a gal at the office asked me to scan some photos and print them on glossy paper. Only one really had problems, it was faded, but the rest were fine.  I'm swamped with work but thought I could easily fit that in.  Just scan and print.  No problem.

Wrong!

I enjoy editing photos, but am too much of a perfectionist.  I spent the last four hours working on them, something that should have taken me 1-2 tops.  These are for a poster they will put up celebrating someone's 30 year anniversary here.  That's a long time to work at one company and it's nice to have the photos look good.  But it's not a family portrait that will hang somewhere or anything super special like that.  In reality, once they are done it will probably be trashed.

I keep forgetting that good enough for everyone else is usually WAY lower than what I would accept from my own work.  And I must remember the purpose for the photos.  Maybe I should create something that I can print and hang on my wall next to me about this.

Then again, I'd probably spend way too much time making it perfect.  LOL!

Mydl.Me

I came across this cool website recently, http://mydl.me/. It's called My Digital Life and has all kinds of great tips about photography stuff. Go check it out!

Comcast follow-up

Yesterday I received some excellent customer service from @ComcastBonnie on twitter.  She helped me understand a bunch of stuff - and not just related to needing new converter boxes.  I also spoke with someone on the phone who was very nice and understanding, and again, helped me understand what is going on - and took my order for two free boxes and two that I'll be paying $1.99/month.

I think blogging about it yesterday was good.  I was really mad about this and blew off my steam in my post.  By the time I talked with these two people, I was calmer and able to talk with them instead of blowing up at them.

No, I'm still not happy at having to give Comcast yet more money, but I'm ok with everything.  Oh, and last night I saw a Comcast commercial that this time said I WOULD need either a cable or converter box.  I found that funny after I complained their commercials said I didn't need anything.  haha

COMCAST SUCKS!!!!

I've been with Comcast for a long time (we have our TV, internet and phone with them) and while they aren't GREAT, I haven't really had too many problems or issues. In fact, for the last probably five years, I can't think of a single problem.

The government says all over-the-air TV will become digital and you'll need a converter box. Hmmm... I'm on Comcast, they say they have digital cable. Does that mean I still need a box?

I give them a call and ask specifically about the TV's I have connected directly to the wall outlets, not through a cable box. They tell me I'm fine, I don't need any additional equipment. Cool!

I tweet @ComcastCares asking the same question. His answer was a little confusing but my understanding was again I was fine, no additional equipment needed. More Coolness!! (Then again, maybe I missunderstood him, which is possible.)

All of Comcast's tv commercials say if you're a Comcast customer, you're set, good to go, you don't need additional equipment. WOOHOO!!

Then I get this letter in the mail from them saying I DO need additional equipment.

What they are saying is I don't need anything for the government-mandated switch. HOWEVER, Comcast is changing channels 32-71 to digital format and I need a box for THAT!

WHAT?!

Wait, wasn't I told I didn't need anything? Didn't their commercials say I didn't need anything? And now they are telling me I DO need something?! WTF?!?! What kind of missleading advertising is that?!

I know a lot of people who slam Comcast and I've always semi-defended them saying things used to be really bad but they've been pretty darn good for us for a long time. After this crap I'm not sure I can defend them anymore.

Oh, I forgot to mention Comcast will be happy to rent us a converter box. It's only $1.99/month/TV. No, it's not THAT much, but it's $1.99/month/TV more that they are getting on top of the already high prices I'm paying.

I've got friends and family with Verizon FIOS and they are very happy. I'm nervous about changing because my wife works from home and simply can NOT have her phone and internet down. But after this latest piece of crap way for Comcast to gouge more money out of us, I'm going to do some heavy research and give them a call.

Comcast, this was really lame on your part!! (And if my parents didn't read this blog there would be a lot more uncensored words here.)

How to Fix the Economy

I know how to fix everything.  It's really simple.  Ready?

Have all the economists and other financial experts LIE and say we're out of this and things are getting better. 

Yep, it's that simple.  Why?  There are a lot of people and companies out there who listen to these experts and based what they do on what these people say.  Instead of being all doom-and-gloom, these experts should say something like:

"We've been talking about this for the last couple weeks, talking with everyone in our field.  After going over the data over and over and over, we have come to the conclusion that things are definitely getting better and we are heading out of this.  Our economy is soon going to be back and no one needs to worry anymore."

People would hear this and decide they no longer have to put off buying that new car, that new HDTV, that new iPhone, groceries, clothes, etc.  Companies would start buying the things they've been putting off, like upgrading computers and software, new equipment.  They would also start hiring people again.

Why do I think this insanely simple idea would work?  Because I blame these so-called experts for the dot-com bust.  Things were going really well, not a problem, and these experts said, "The economy goes in cycles.  Things have been going up and have been too good for too long.  We are due for it to come down and when it does, it'll come down hard because it was too good for too long."  And gee, within about six months of saying that, things started crapping out.  Then these experts were jumping back on the news patting themselves on the back saying, "See, we told you this would happen."

No.  They didn't know it would happen.  They MADE it happen.  Well, OK, it's not 100% their fault.  A lot of people and companies listened to these experts and put the brakes on a lot of things based on what they said.  Had they not said anything or people and companies not listened to them, there wouldn't have been a crash, or at least not as bad as it was.

We still have a lot of people listening to these same experts and waiting to do stuff based on what they say.  And what are they saying?  "Things suck and we don't see an end to it."  "We thought we'd be out of this by now but it looks like it'll last another year at least."  People and companies hear that and say, "Wow, we'd better hold off for awhile on spending any money."  No money is spent, jobs are lost, things continue to get worse, and the experts say, "See, we told you." 

So it's simple.  If the experts would just say things are starting to get better and we are out of this, people and companies would say, "AWESOME!  Let's go spend that money!  Let's hire those people!  Let's get busy!"

But they won't.  Why?  Not because it might be wrong or anything like that.  Nope.  It's because they have HUGE ego's.  Each one wants to be the one who says, "See, I told you so."  If they'd all do this, they could never be the one who called it, never say, "Yeah, we just decided to lie about it all to turn the economy back around."  They would have to live with the fact that THEY made the economy better - and no one would ever know.

A few ego's vs. millions of people around the world who are having a real hard time right now.  Some have even done horrible things like killing themselves.  Is an ego worth more than that? 

Anyhow, that's my plan.  I know a lot of people will give all kinds of reasons it won't work, but I know it would.  Too bad it won't happen.

Sick weekend. :(

I felt fine Friday night.  Saturday morning I woke up with a sore throat and feeling all achy.  Then I worked WAY too much around the house.  Marci took the kids shopping and gave me 3-4 hours of rest time which was really nice.

Got worse Sunday.  I woke up in the middle of the night with a REALLY bad sore throat, hurt to breath.  Got up, drank lots of water - I've read many places that water is the best on a sore throat - ate some food cause I was hungry and took some sore throat things.  That helped and I was able to get back to sleep.

In the morning it was much better.  So of course I overworked myself again.  D'OH!  Was really super tired by 5pm and called it a day.  We all sat around, watching tv, playing games, and I played quietly with the kids.  Got to bed early and got a good nights sleep. 

I feel much better today (Monday), but still not 100%.  Mostly just really tired with a bad sinus headache.  My sore throat is mostly gone which is nice - those kill me more than anything.  I'm going home at lunch to get some more rest.  One more night of good rest and I'll feel back to normal or close to it tomorrow.

At least we finally got the ornaments off the tree and I can take it down now, we got the house cleaned up some, and we hung up some new coat racks which look great!  And I had fun playing with Riley and his radio controlled car he got for Christmas.  He really had fun with that - and I did too!  ;)

Resolutions so far

I'm on day 3 of my resolutions and so far I'm 1.5 for 3.

I've been eating LOTS better. WIN!
I haven't exercised yet. FAIL! :(
I have been doing better at being a better husband and father, though I think I'll always be working on this. ;)

It's been hard to get all of us back on a work/school sleeping schedule. Not getting to bed early enough and getting up too early. I'm very tired. Each night I say we're going to get to bed on time, and so far we've failed. The only time I have to workout is before work. To do that I have to get up between 4am and 4:30am. To do that I have to get to bed by 9pm. I'll try again tonight.

Right now I'm resisting the urge to have another soda and eat my cookie BEFORE lunch. Not easy! haha

Happy 2009! Resolution time...

It's a new year full of possibilities, opportunities, excitement of what may be - and the pain of dropping the 20 pounds I regained. About four years ago I dropped 40 pounds and felt fantastic! I did it by eating better - LOTS less junk - and exercising. Since then I have not kept up the exercising regularly. I'd go 3-4 weeks of doing it regularly, then something would cause me to not get to it for a month or more. Each time just as I was getting my body used to exercising, I'd stop.

One thing I have learned over the last five years is if I don't exercise, I have to eat really small portions, and I can't eat much snack stuff - cookies, candy, chips, ice cream, etc. that also includes beer. :( BUT, when I DO exercise, I can eat more and more snack stuff without gaining a pound. Plus there's the added bonus of 1) feeling better physically, 2) looking better which causes 3) feeling better mentally, and that's a BIG win!

We've got an elliptical trainer at home for those days when it's too cold or wet to go outside. Starting today I am going to eat better, drink more water, less soda, less beer, and exercise at least every other day. That's what I did before. I'll just keep asking myself the same questions I did before: Do I want that or want to feel better? Do I want that or do I want to be able to play with Riley? Do I want that or do I want to take a chance at diabetes? I ask that one because my Dad got it from being overweight. I'm 45, will be 46 in March. Riley is 6. I'll be in my 50's when he's in high school. I won't be able to keep up with him like I could if I were in my 30's or 40's, but I don't want to be sitting in a chair because I can't do it at all.

I WILL drop these 20 pounds I put back on!

My other big resolution is my trumpet. Each year I say I'm going to practice, be in shape for the Rose Parade, and I never am. Last year was the worst! Then after the parade when I'm in ok shape, I say I'm going to keep it up, and never do.

This year I have decided if I want to play trumpet, I WILL practice. Even if it's just in my car at lunch, that's better than nothing. It'll take me longer to get in the shape I want, but I CAN get there. I AM a good player and could be a REALLY good player. But I've gotta do what it takes to get there. I want to be in shape enough that if someone calls asking me to play a gig or something quick, I can.

I WILL be buzzing my mouthpiece in my car. I WILL practice in my car at lunch and I WILL practice correctly! Not just playing songs (which is better than nothing), but actually practicing the way I should to improve my overall playing.

This other one isn't really a resolution, rather something I'm working all the time: Being a better father and husband. Sometimes I do really well, sometimes I fail big time. Mostly it's because I get frustrated and mad too fast. Well, I had pretty much two weeks off over Christmas and today I feel fantastic! In fact, at an intersection where cars cut me off all the time, when it happened again today, I didn't get upset or anything. I didn't even think about it until a few seconds later when I realized I was ok with letting them go first! All day today the things that really pissed me off before my vacation haven't been bothering me at all! I guess I needed that more than I thought. So now I'm in a MUCH better frame of mind and will work hard to stay that way so I don't blow up at my family for something they didn't deserve.

So there are my two big ones. I have a lot of other ones but these are the two I say I am going to do every year and I fail at horribly. I am going to concentrate on these. Instead of picking a ton, I have just picked two so I can focus more attention on them. I will be checking in at least once a month to share how I'm doing.

To begin with, today I DID buzz my mouthpiece on the way to work and I HAVE been drinking more water and eating better. So far so good! Now, let's see if I can keep it up for more than two days. ;)

Into work early for nothing

I need to install an update to see if it fixes a problem. Last night I tried to do it from home but for some reason the bandwidth was horribly slow. I decided to get into work early in the morning and do it.

I'm in at 5am. Perfect, plenty of time before people need the application for me to install the update. Logon to the server, shutdown the processes. While that's running, logon to the citrix servers that need the update. Get into the first one, open up windows explorer, try to get to the server for the update and find out I can't. Hmmm... I must have typed it wrong, let me try again. Nope, can't. Let me try a different way. No luck. It says that has been turned off. Ok. Let me try it from my computer, can I get into to server with windows explorer? Yep, no problems. Ok, let me try it one more time. Nope, it's just not gonna let me in. Fine, let me try the other citrix server. Same problem.

ARGH!!!!!!!

Now I can't do the update because I can't get the update onto the citrix servers! Nice. Thanks for changing that. I'm supposed to be in the admin group for all the computers so I SHOULD have rights to do this. Someone is going to get an earful when they get in! ...well, actually they'll get a nice earful. As much as I want to yell at them, call them names, tell them various things about how they compare to pond scum, telemarketers and spammers, I've grown and learned over the years it's best to be nice first.

SO I get to try the update again tonight or tomorrow morning, assuming they can get this fixed for me. sigh....

Not looking my age

When I was in my late teens to early 20's, I looked 5-8 years older than I was. That was cool because people didn't think I was some dumb kid, they took me a little more seriously.

Over the years things changed. Now I'm 45 and look younger, I've had people say I look as young as 34.

Normally I'm really happy about that. But sometimes it's a pain because people sometimes don't take me as seriously as they should, especially in a business/professional environment. Now and then either people write me off as some young kid who doesn't know enough or as some young kid who needs a lecture about stuff. It gets very frustrating when I have 20+ years experience yet people don't want to believe me even when I tell them how much experience I have and how old I am.

sigh....

Maybe I just need to wear a t-shirt all the time with a picture of my drivers license showing my birth date, or next time I get my hair cut have it died grey. haha

Freaking cool video!!

This is just simply amazing! After you start the video, put your mouse on the video, hold down the mouse button and move your mouse. Is that awesome or what?!

Men's vs. Women's Bathroom

At our office the women's bathroom is quite different from the men's. I've never actually been in there, only seen a little bit as I walked by and someone was going in or coming out. First off, there's music playing. They also have a bench to sit on and quite often you can hear several women in there having a lively conversation, I'm sure they've been there for longer than just the call of nature. I'll bet there's also candles, maybe some essential oil diffuser thingy, hints of lavender and and other women stuff.

The men's room is simple, plain, used for one thing. But if the women can have their special room decorated nicely and all womanly, I say we men should be able to upgrade our bathroom.

First, replace one of the urinals. Instead of pulling the handle to flush, you pull the handle to fill your glass with beer! Get rid of the bland colors and put up some posters and tool company calendars, sports team logos, street and other traffic signs, a nice hunting trophy or two. Replace the tile floor and carpet with garage flooring. Have a radio on the sports channel or better yet, a flat screen tv above every stall showing your favorite sporting event. When you flush, make it sound like you are reving the engine on a muscle car. Put a high powered exhaust fan in one area so you can have a quick cigar before heading back out. And instead of paper towels coming from a little ugly metal container, have some life-size carboard cutouts of some Hooters gals holding the paper towels for us.

We are men! Let us have our manthroom!

More ID 10 T Drivers

What was up yesterday with drivers? It must have been "Be an A$$hole to Rich" day or something.

I'm bringing Maddie home from the dentist and on 217. Speed limit is 55. I'm going 62ish in the left lane passing cars in the right lane. Car in front of me is going 62, I can't go any faster. The car behind me has to be less than 6 feet from my bumper. She's honking at me, flashing her brights and flipping me off wanting me to move over! Normally I don't move when they won't gain anything by getting around me. But this time I had Maddie in the car, asleep and recovering from the surgery, so I felt a little more like being careful. About 3/4's of the way up 217 I finally was able to pull over - and got flipped off as she went by. Then she went right up to the next car and did the same thing. Just once I really wish a cop were sitting somewhere to see that.

Then while bringing Riley home we stopped at Albertsons to pick up the X-Men Playstation 2 game I promised him. We're getting ready to leave, he's in the car and I'm talking to him, he's still a little out of it and upset about how his mouth feels. As I'm talking with his door wide open, this cab driver decides she needs to park in the spot right next to me but can't until I close Riley's door. I see her there but Riley is more important. Plus there are TONS of other parking spots. After maybe a minute, she starts honking at me and yelling at me to move. Well, by now I'm really tired and have already had one bad driver experience, so I'm in the best mood. I turn around, look at her, and say loudly enough so she can hear, "Gee, I'm soooo sorry the parking lot is sooooo full that you can't find another spot and HAVE to have this one." Then I go back to trying to calm down Riley. She honks again and this time I say, "Hey! My son just got out of oral surgery and isn't feeling great! I'm going to talk to him until he's calmed down THEN I'll get in the car! Go park somewhere else if you're in such a hurry!!" She honks, yells, and waits. I ignore her, get Riley calmed down and close his door. She zooms up fast but has to slam on the brakes when I open my door almost hitting it. I didn't think she'd do that or I would not have opened my door yet. I gave her a dirty look, had several choice words to say but for once wisely kept my mouth shut, and got in my car closing my door. She zoomed up, opened her door and continued yelling at me. Riley asked, "Why is she yelling at us, Daddy?" "Some people are just mad all the time and don't have any patience," I said. As we left I just gave her a big smile and waved.

It was really and truely a weird driving day.

Starlight Parade

Had a great time as always with the Starlight Parade this last Saturday. Man, a little over a week ago I got a little sick. Not enough to really put me down, but enough to make me tired, all phloemy, stuffed up, the usual ickiness. I've gotten back to about 98% and stayed there for a long time. Part of it I'm sure is not getting enough sleep. It was a little tough marching because I was tired. But I made it. Fortunately it's a short parade. The upcoming Rose Parade is much longer. I need to get lots of sleep this week, eat right, etc, etc. I just want to get over feeling tired and get rid of this stupid phloem stuff.

But it was fun and I had a good time. My lips survived which I was a little worried about since I'm horribly out of shape. My New Years Resolution this year was to keep playing until next years rehearsals start. It's easy to want to take a day off, play a game at lunch, etc, but I really need to keep in shape so next year my lips won't hurt as much, won't be as chapped, and I'll have more fun.

Geez, I sound rather pathetic, huh? Well, I know no matter what, I'll have a great time at the Rose Parade, I always do. :)

On another note (no pun intended), every year they get these beauty pageant types to hold our banners and march with us. This year they have Miss Oregon Teen. She's 17. I've been in the band longer than she's been alive!

I'm old. ;)

Cookies & being sick

I don't understand this.

I haven't gotten a lot of sleep for the past week and yesterday woke up with a sore throat. As the day progressed, I started feeling worse and worse. Got home and was feeling your basic cold sick ickiness.

I was hungry. Looked through the kitchen to find something to eat, nothing sounded good. I had to pick up my OMTAAMB uniform, so I took Riley with me. On the way back we stopped at Albertsons to get some bread. As we walked in they had their fresh baked cookies right there on sale. Riley asked if we could get some.

I looked at them and all of a sudden my sick body started screaming, "YES!! THAT'S WHAT I WANT!! BUY SOME! BUY LOTS!!!!"

Sure enough, after I ate several at home they hit the spot. I've had this happen before and don't get it. You'd think you're sick and your body would crave something good for you, like chicken soup or fruit or other good things. Nope, mine wants chocolate chip cookies.

I believe your body does crave certain things when it is lacking in them, like oranges when it wants vitamin C or bananas, things like that. I also say when you're sick, your body needs the food to help fight the bug and get better, so eat whatever sounds good. SO, if my body wants chocolate chip cookies, who am I to argue? ...I think it's time to eat another... ;)

Wynton telling the truth

If you're into playing music at all, you MUST watch this!

http://trumpetkings.blogspot.com/2008/04/wynton-marsalis-telling-truth.html

Why are you following me on Twitter?

Long time no post, sorry about that. I've been trying to focus on work and getting things done, and if I start blogging I get side-tracked REAL easy.

Twitter is kinda fun, would be more fun if I had more friends on there. And by friends I mean people I actually know. I'm following a few fun people, like Wil Wheaton and Samantha Murphy from SMTV.

But now and then, I'll have these random people decide to follow me. I don't know these people and when I look at their profiles, I haven't a clue why they have decided to follow me. Some have been companies wanting to use Twitter as a marketing tool, they get banned quickly. Most are just random people that I can't figure out what I might have in common or why they'd want to follow me.

I'm not upset they want to follow me, it's actually kinda neat feeling that some random person thinks my tweets are interesting enough to follow me. It would just be nice if they'd send a message to ME introducing themselves and why they want to follow me. Why? Because I'm the curious type (I HAD to be a cat in a previous life) . :)

So if you want to follow me (I'm richtpt), that's way cool! Just please send me a tweet introducing yourself. Thanks!

Comcast fun

While they are getting better, last night and just now I encountered the old fun Comcast support.

Last night I called to get a service call setup for someone to come out and swap our box with one that has a hdmi output. I was told it would be better for me to go to the service center and swap it myself because 1) If a tech came out we’d be charged a minimum of $19.95, and 2) The tech might not have a box with a hdmi output by the time he go to us. Huh? I was told in the morning the toss in all of the stuff they need for the calls they have. But sometimes things happen and they no longer have what a customer needs by the time they get there. Like another customer might say, “Wait, this one doesn’t have a hdmi output. I need that.” Then the tech – trying to offer good customer service – gives them one of the boxes with that feature. Now by the time he gets to us, he’s given out all of those boxes.

Gee, that makes a lot of sense. How about, “Sorry sir, but I don’t have any of those on my truck.” Then he will still have one for us when he gets to us.

Oh well, that’s ok, going to the service center will save me a little money, no problem. Just now I tried to call the service center to make sure they have the box I want so I don’t make a trip for nothing. I was told I can’t do that. Even the Comcast support number I call can’t call them. When I said, “So there’s no way for me to know if they have the box I want?” I was told, “I’m 99.9% sure they have it. I don’t see any messages saying they are short on the latest boxes, so they’ll probably have it.”

That gives me a nice warm fuzzy. I guess I’ll cross my fingers and rub my lucky rabbits foot while driving over there tonight. ;)

Jerry O'Connell is a RIOT!!!!

Oh man, this is soooooooooo funny!!!!

Stupid Alaska Airlines!

Each year I fly to Boston for a meeting at Progress Software (in Bedford). It's a 5 hour flight. On the flight back I fly from Boston to Seattle to Portland. I usually have enough frequent flyer miles to upgrade to 1st class, which is the only way to go on that long of a flight.

Well, last year (around August) Alaska decided to change their policy. Now you have to purchase a Value ticket (or higher) in order to upgrade using miles! There are two other ticket options that are less expensive, about $100 less and $150 less. Oh and let's not forget that I have to hope 1st class is available (which it usually is).

So for $100-$150 more, I get the chance to maybe upgrade to 1st class. What a ripoff!!

Sure, it's a nicer seat, more leg room, free drinks, better food (WAY better food), and a free digiplayer to watch movies, tv shows, and other things on. But is it worth that much extra? And if 1st class is full I just spent $100-$150 for nothing!

I have loved Alaska ever since I started flying for work many many years ago. I've always found them to be friendly, good seats, a good price (not great, but not the worst), generally just the most enjoyable way to fly. Plus being able to upgrade was great. Now in order to upgrade I have to pay $100! I've got plenty of miles but I can't use them. Oh, one more thing I learned. It's now 15,000 miles to upgrade instead of 10,000.

I know airlines are hurting and need money, but this just ticks me off! Alaska, you just went down a couple notches in my customer service book. Yes, I'll probably fly them again, I just won't be upgrading to 1st class anymore. sigh....

Joost is way cool!

I saw a blog that Joost now has classic Star Trek on it. I went to their website, looked at what they had and decided to try it - after all, it's free.

WAY COOL!

I watched a very high quality version of "The Trouble with Tribbles." It was awesome! I don't know how they are doing this free, but I'm VERY excited about it. I looked at their cartoons and saw they have several Rocky & Bullwinkle's, some Ren & Stimpy's, and lots of others.

This is a neat service, you should try it!

Not a slimy car salesperson

A few months ago I contacted a few internet sales people at various Honda dealerships in our area. I wanted to let them know we are interested in a 2009 Honda Fit when they come out (probably around June). These are popular and the new models will be even more popular, so I wanted to get on the top of their list.

Most of the sales people emailed back with something like, "Ok, you're on my list." Nothing rude, but nothing extra either. One lady emailed back what looked like a form email saying stuff like, "I can get you in one NOW! Is this the right car for you? Have you looked at others? I can help!!" It was a rather pushy sounding email especially since I had just said we are NOT interested in a 2008 but a 2009.

I sent her a rather firm email back stating I thought that email was a bit pushy and reiterating we did NOT want a 2008, only a 2009. She sent back a really nice email apologizing for the standard response email. We exchanged emails many times and I discovered that first email was just a reflex response and she is definitely not pushy, actually quite the opposite.

Last week she sent me an email (actually everyone in her contact list) that everyone who test drives a car will be entered in a contest for a Wii. I emailed her back saying that'd be cool but we already have one, we definitely wouldn't be buying if we did test drive and we didn't want to waste her time. After talking with Marci we decided to drive the Fit - after all, sitting in it at the autoshow and driving it are two very different things. So we went out this last Sunday to test drive it.

She was really nice, friendly, not slimy or pushy at all. Marci took the car out first as I waited with the kids. Marci said she LOVED the car and it was tons of fun to drive. Cool! She also wanted to look at the CR-V's and Pattie (the cool sales lady) was going to get someone else to ride with me for the test drive. I decided if Marci likes it that's good enough for me and decided not to try it, I'll just wait until the 2009's arrive.

Marci drove a CR-V and really liked it a lot. Pattie told us she had a 2007 model fully loaded (navigation, the works) she could sell us for $200 over invoice. Well, for a moment we got caught up in the excitement of new cars and asked to see it. About that time Pattie had another customer show up who also just wanted to test drive a car for the contest. Pattie asked if this other sales guy could show us the CR-V while she took this lady out and she'd be right back. No problems.

WOW! What a difference! We went from feeling like we were chatting with a friend to someone who made us want to run away and never come back. He was pushy, slimy, kept asking about what we were looking for, wanted to run numbers for us, etc. When we told him we were here just to test drive the Fit and were waiting for the 2009 model, he said something like, "People are always waiting for the next thing because they think it'll be better. You gotta grab it now because there's always a next thing and you'll be waiting forever. Let me go run some numbers for you on the Fit and CR-V." That's when I said, a little more firmly, that we KNEW what the 2009 model's were going to be because we had seen the previews on the web. After seeing what they will have in them we would NOT be happy with a 2008 model. He then said, "Oh yeah, we were just looking at them online. Aren't they sweet?"

Just looking at them? Really? Then why the push to buy a 2008??

Finally after he got us a CR-V brochure, we thanked him and said we were just going to wait for Pattie to get back. While waiting we had time to realize we planned on one new car payment this year, not two, and while the CR-V is a great deal, we just need to pass, other great deals will come along. We thanked her a lot for her time and said we'll be in touch.

After we got home and had time to laugh at what a jerk that other guy was and how nice she was, I sent her an email again thanking her and letting her know how much we appreciated her. Marci said when they were test driving the Fit that Pattie said she'd take the job ONLY if she could be 100% honest and not slimy/pushy/the usual car salesman stuff. Her boss didn't think she'd have what it took but decided to give her a chance. She's now the top salesperson there! Guess she showed him.

What a world of difference! Pattie made us feel comfortable, right at home, and definitely want to come back to her. The other guy (I honestly forgot his name right after we drove off the lot) made us want to run away and never come back to that dealership. Why can't other's learn from Pattie and be cool? Oh, and when we got there, we weren't even out of the car before some guy was on us asking how we were doing and what he could help us with. No offense, but let us get out before you start trying to feed!

Here's to Pattie at Larry Miller Honda of Hillsboro! A different kind of salesperson, one that actually makes you want to buy a car and leave knowing you got the best deal possible. Looking forward to dealing with her for a 2009 Fit!

I need these printed...

There needs to be some kind of digital photo orientation everyone has to take because I get this all the time:

Here are some photos. Could you please print them as 8 x 10's?

Sure, no problem. Except the photos are small, 640 x 480 at 72 dpi, which is about 8.9" x 6.7". This means the chance of printing it as an 8 x 10 and have it look any good is slim to none. To print it 8 x 10 at 150 dpi means it needs to be 1600 x 1200 at least. Printing the 640 x 480 72 dpi photo at 150 dpi means it will print at 4.3" x 3.2".

Fortunately I have Photoshop, Genuine Fractals and Noise Ninja. With all of these tools I can get pretty close. 8 x 10 is still really tough and not looking that great, but 6 x 8 looks pretty ok at 150 dpi, thanks to Genuine Fractals which saves my butt and makes me look good.

I just wish I could do some Vulcan mind-meld so people would know what size the photo they send me needs to start out as so I can print it for them.

Ah, Christmas vacation

Christmas is such a wonderful time, especially with little kids who really enjoy the season. Of course little ones also want you to play with them and all their new toys - all the time. While I don't mind, it certainly made for a busy vacation rather than relaxing. Part of me is a little happy to be back at work where I can just sit here quietly at my desk and write code. But part of me misses being at home, having our son or daughter come over asking me to play with them, where my biggest thinking problem is how to put something together and which pair of sweat pants to wear.

Usually Christmas seems to take forever to get here then it's gone too quick. This year seemed different. It seemed to get her fast and stick around a little longer. That was nice. Staying up late, sleeping in, playing games, eating cookies and other bad things, a time not to care about stuff like diets, rather to just enjoy.

It was a good Christmas, I'm already looking forward to the next one. :)

Sometimes there is justice

Yesterday I was on my way to Kinko's. I got off the freeway and came up to the light, there was one car in front of me. As the car in front of me is getting to the light it turns red. This car wasn't driving fast and had plenty of time to stop. But NOOOOO! Mr. "Laws don't apply to me" decides to drive through the red light.

As he drove through I looked to the right to see if any cars were going to jump off the line when it turned green and hit him. And what did my wandering eyes see? A nice police car sitting right there watching the whole thing! The cop was shaking his head, hit the lights and pulled him over to give him a nice ticket.

You see people running red lights all the time and it ticks me off. But it's nice now and then to see someone pay the price. I smiled about that all day!

Sunsets

Three versions of the same sunset. The top is the original which was made up of 8 photos (I used Photoshop CS3 to create the panorama). The middle is after I played with it in Photoshop. In this case I bumped up the blue too much but thought it looked cool. The bottom has better color and I added the moon. This was fun. :)

Cross-posting

I just put up a post on my family blog (http://rmrmu.blogspot.com) about Frankie, our Pembroke Welsh Corgi who passed away recently. It was a little hard to write, and my eyes became a little watery. Time for something to take my mind off it - starting up Doom.

Some people...

Sunday we took our puppies to the Puppy Romp. It's a one hour play time JUST for dogs 10 weeks to 6 months old, a great way to get the socialized. It was Zoey's last day as she is now 6 months old (and is getting fixed today). We have a great time here and rarely have had or seen any problems.

This time two people just made us shake our heads and wonder what they have for brains.

To make the place playful and fun, they have some things for the dogs to climb on, the walls painted nicely, and a few colorful kites. One is in the shape of a butterfly with some long tails. This must have been the first time Zoey looked up because she started barking at it. We were all laughing, even the gal who runs the place. Zoey wasn't barking a lot and was actually starting to calm down when this other lady saw her and started baking back. Of course this made Zoey bark even more. Marci and the gal who runs the place looked at each other like, "What is up with this lady??" Finally we had to tell Zoey to stop. I REALLY wanted to walk over to that lady and tell her to shut up (actually I would have been nicer and asked her not to do that), but I decided she was the type who wouldn't listen anyhow. So we just told Zoey that was enough, distracted her and she was fine the rest of the time.

The other lady really made us all wonder even more. She has a standard Poodle. For some unknown reason, she just HAD to bring it to the small dog side. Oh, I forgot to say this place has a big dog area and a small dog area so the puppy Mastif's aren't with the puppy Pug's. This time they even had a very shy dog area. Anyhow, they tried to get her to put her dog on the big dog side but she said she just HAD to be on the small dog side. We felt a little bad for the Poodle. His tail was wagging and he just wanted to have fun. But his fun was a little more rough than the rest of the dogs. And he had one Lab he just wouldn't leave alone. He kept trying to hump the Lab and at one point squeezed so hard he made the Lab yelp. His name was Andre but she kept calling him "Poodle". A few times Andre tried to play with the smaller dogs and they just kept running from him scared. Yet the lady just smiled and would say, "Look, he wants to play!" I think they let her stay on the small dog side because she got there with only about 10 minutes left.

Man, some people just live in their own world. It reminds me of a quote on Cheers with Fraiser talking to Woody, "What color is the sky in your world, Woody?" LOL!

Snow update

It has been snowing, but not that much. It snowed pretty good for about 20 minutes and was starting to stick, then stopped and almost all of it melted. Still some tiny flakes coming down but it doesn't look like we'll have any snow sticking, which is ok with me. :)

Snow Saturday?

Right now they are saying there is a chance of snow Saturday. Nothing major, might not even have anything stick below 1000 feet. Then Sunday it warms back up to 50 for a high and next week the high's will be in the 50's.

That's fine with me. While I enjoy playing in the snow, it's usually too wet to do anything and a major annoyance for driving. Mostly because too many people don't have a clue how to drive in it, and then there are the idiot's in the big 4x4 trucks who think they can do anything. Sure, they might have traction to go anywhere but they still have to stop.

When it does snow it makes me happy to work in IT. I just put on my sweats, slippers, turn on some nice music, and logon from home. ;)

No one understands...

Yesterday I was working on making a program run automatically when someone changed an order status. I could have found the code that runs to update that field in the database - and there are probably several programs that update that field - but I decided to add a trigger to that field in the database.

Now anytime a change is made to that field, some code will run looking for certain conditions. If those are met then this other program will run. I've done this before, but it has been a long time and wasn't remembering if it would work how I wanted.

It did. I was thrilled. Jumping out of my chair thrilled. Hands in the air as a sign of triumphant success thrilled. Others here in my IT department wanted to know what made me so happy. I told them. The reply was, "And that's a good thing, right?"

sigh....

Sometimes it's so frustrating when you do something really cool and no one understands how cool it is. You want to share it with someone, have them jump up and down with you, high-five, do the jump-in-the-air-chest-slamming thing. Oh well, in my mind I did that and enjoyed it a lot. haha

Too long between posts

ARGH! My was going to post at least once a week this year. I was going well then got busy and next thing I knew several months went by. D'OH! I'm going to try to get back on my schedule of once a week.

Neat quote

Heard this tonight on a tv show:

Ever beginning has an ending. But in life, every ending is just a new beginning.

Very cool!!

Sometimes there is justice

This morning I'm driving to work at 6:30am. The speed limit is 40, I'm doing 45. And as usual, some idiot is right on my bumper wanting me to go faster. I've never understood this, we're the only two people on the road, I'm going FASTER than the speed limit, yet some jerk feels the need to tailgate me.

Anyhow, I get to a nice straight part of the two-lane road with a double-yellow line and the idiot decides to pass. They really didn't go THAT much faster than me, maybe 5mph more as I watch them pull away. They get to the stop sign and pretty much don't stop at all, just slow down a little. I stop, then continue on at my normal morning driving speed. Up ahead I see them, still not really going THAT much faster than me.

Then Karma hits them.

They get behind a car going slower than they want and can't pass, so of course they have to drive a couple feet away (it was probably more than that but it sure looked way too close). The car they are behind ends up going about the same speed as me so the idiot doesn't get much farther. We come to a traffic light and it turns red just before the idiot gets there. They go into the turn lane and I go straight.

As the light is red I pull up right beside them, it's some stupid young girl who looks like total white trash. She looks at me and wasn't happy when she saw it was the car she illegally passed way back there. All I could do is laugh at her.

Once in awhile Karma does happen, this made my morning!

Finished Deck (well, almost)

Today we FINALLY finished staining the deck. We needed to get between the boards on about half of it - we did the top completely earlier this year - and decided it would be a good idea to redo the entire deck.

Ya, right, good idea. We're still wondering which one of us came up with that idea and why the other agreed to it.

Took us about 4 hours. Riley and Maddie wanted to help but it just wasn't working out. So they started playing and just Marci and I did it. Then they wanted stuff and finally wanted Marci. So I finished it by myself.

Sore, tired, long day, but it looks great! Now we're ready for winter with it. Next up, the fence. :(

Panorama's with Photoshop

Photoshop has made making Panorama's really easy. Take the photos. Open Photoshop (I'm using CS3, don't know if this is in previous versions). Choose File -> Automate -> Photomerge. Browse to your images and select them all. Leave all the defaults there. Click the OK button and wait. Depending on the size of each photo, how many photos you have and the speed of your computer, this could take awhile.

The above photo is made of six images each about 2MB. It took about 10 minutes on my laptop, but I also have a lot of other things open at the same time and was actually trying to work. Once the merge is done all that's left is to crop it out and you're done!

This is sooooo easy and cool that I'm going to start making more panorama's.

People at the beach

This last weekend we went to the beach for a few days with my parents. My Mom's family owns a little condo-type thing at Neskowin and any of us can use it anytime we want for free. Very nice!

It was a great weekend, almost perfect weather. The only thing that was annoying was some of the people. We're sitting in one spot, kids (and me) were digging in the sand, and some people just HAD to walk right next to us - I mean so close they were accidentally kicking up sand on our blankets. Others had to walk between where we were sitting and the kids were digging, about 10 feet difference. There wasn't anyone around us, they could have easily walked farther away. Another time Riley and I were digging some big holes and stuff, and another family HAD to setup right next to us and let their kids play right where we were digging.

I just don't understand people sometimes. Did these people feel they had to let us know we don't own the beach or some stupid thing like that? Oh well, we did have a great time anyhow. :) I'm uploading photos right now and will post about it on our family blog.

No free moments for me...

I thought I'd have some free moments tonight because Marci was taking the kids to visit her sister. But when I got home, Maddie was asleep. When Marci left she didn't want to wake Maddie, I agreed. Of course five minutes after she left Maddie woke up. I tried to call Marci but her cell phone wasn't on. D'OH! So it's me, Maddie & the dogs tonight, and she's wide awake. I was going to play our new Guitar Hero, but now I'm just watching The Wiggles with Maddie. It could be worse of course, and I'm enjoying our father-daughter time together. :)

Free moments...

On the wrapper of my little piece of Dove chocolate there is a little message:

Take advantage of every free moment you have.

This got me to thinking - what does it mean to take advantage of a free moment? Most people seem to take this as, "Don't just sit there, go do something! Read a book, enjoy your hobby, go for a walk, ride your bike, get in some quick exercise, etc." However, when you are always busy, sometimes having a free moment can mean doing nothing.

To me, taking advantage of the free moment means doing something you wouldn't be able to do if you didn't have that free moment. Maybe you've been extremely busy all day and you just want a moment to rest, watch something you recorded, listen to some music, not really do anything at all, just rest. You're still taking advantage of that free moment, right?

Tonight I might have a free moment and I've been trying to decide what to do. I could mow the lawn, do some laundry, clean the house, go through boxes we moved when we got our new carpet, or something like playing a game on the computer or Playstation, playing the piano, watching a stupid movie and drinking beer. I'm still not sure what I'll do. All I know is I will be taking advantage of my free moment.

So what does that little saying mean to you? Is doing nothing ok?

My 3D Photos on a NASA website - Coolness!!

NASA has a website that explains how to create 3D photos, the glasses, and shows off photos other people have done. They have two of mine right now. I sent them links to my other ones on Flickr because I think I have much better photos than the two they picked.

Coolness to be on a NASA website!