I have just finished a new website for a photographer friend of mine that lives in my neighborhood in Mesa. Her name is Stephanie Ortega, and from what I’ve seen, a very talented photographer. Check out her brand new website:
I built the website over the course of two months in my “spare” time. It was a fun project, and Stephanie, with her Photoshop and InDesign skills, made a lot of the designing easy. It’s nice to work with clients who know what a pixel is. The bulk of the project was actually in the administrative parts of the website where she can login and completely edit all of the photos, galleries, and textual content. The front end provided some challenges as well with displaying the galleries and photos in a way that worked smoothly and presented her work. Overall, I think it turned out very well, and it looks really nice.
Well, it’s nearly been a year since I made a post on my blog (and I was doing so good before), but ever since I started working full time, it’s been hard to take the time for this. However, let me briefly tell you about what’s happened since last year:
I used to advertise 8 years ago that I would conquer the Earth by 2010. Well, that didn’t happen exactly how I planned it at that time, but in a way I feel like I have. I have a family, a home, and a career, and I couldn’t be more happy about that. I reckon that there are many adventures for Penny and I in the future, so I hope life continues to treat us well.
It seems like things have gotten busier since school got out, but it sure is nice to be out of school. Penny is done now too, and probably won’t be going back to her job at Keller in the Fall. She has three clients with respite program though, and they will keep her busy this summer.
Man, I am swamped. I haven’t officially started working full-time just yet (couple more weeks) but I am still putting in about 40 hours a week, and its a lot of work. I use to do 40 hours at the Carwasher during the summers (and though they were good times with the family, I am glad that I don’t have to work there anymore… it’s just not my thing) but I still feel like I have no time right now. Also, I’m trying to write two websites in my spare time: the new Regular Heroes website (not done) and Giveaweigh (my charity website, not done). By the way, the Regular Heroes album is almost done. It’s exciting! I’m actually going to the studio this week with Jared to finish up the back up vocals.
Well, that’s the update for now. You should check out Wolfram|Alpha though if you have some spare time. It is a “computational knowledge engine” that performs math, analyzes facts, and other things. Try searching for things like “$75,000/yr”, “x^2 sin(x)”, “D# Ab G C#”, or “China, Russia”. It’s fun!
Last year I wrote this poem for my wife for Mother’s Day. I think it is a very nice poem. It truly captured how I was feeling, and also had a unique structure that I still quite enjoy. The poem is written in rhyming couplets, but each of the couplets are separated by a short line that both ends the thought of the previous couplet and begins the thought of the next. It’s kind of interesting. I hope you enjoy.
So… I have gotten a few funny CAPTCHAs recently as I have signed up for some services online. CAPTCHAs are those extra parts of sign up forms on websites that ask you to read and type in some sort of distorted-looking word. You probably think they are annoying (and I happen to agree with you), but they are a good way to reduce the amount of spam on websites due to attacks from spambots and other automated programs. reCAPTCHA is one of the more secure (and accessible) CAPTCHA services available. In fact, it is so secure sometimes that I even have a hard time signing up for things when they are protected by reCAPTCHA. The few I have had recently have either been completely unreadable or have contained characters that you can’t actually type. I mean, you can get them by using the Windows character map, but who wants to do that? Here are a few hard ones:
Umm… I think the first word is the name Gwinn followed by a period. The second word? Not sure at all. I think it might be something like “höara”. Anyone else have a better idea?
The end of the semester is drawing near, and with it: Graduation!
That’s right, I’m finally done with school. OK… almost done with school. You see, I dropped my Artificial Intelligence class this semester. It was just too much work for me too handle, and it wasn’t nearly as cool as I thought it was going to be. So, I have to take 1 summer school class to compensate. Therefore, I will be officially graduating in August. I guess the only bad thing about being done with school is that I won’t get to take weird picture on campus like this:
Climbing on the… ummm… I actually don’t really know what it is.
What would an average day in the life of Mario be like? We know he does a lot of collecting coins and jumping and running about, but what else falls into his daily routine? I made this video almost two years ago, but it is still funny to me. I realized that I had’t even posted my own video on my own blog. So here it is in all of its glory: An Average Day With Mario
Thank goodness for Super Mario!
The Mario in me was able to rescue Princess Penny, and ever since then she’s stayed by my side. We made this movie before we even started dating, but we were hanging out so much around that time that this movie helped us to segue into a beautiful relationship that led into our engagement and marriage. Thanks to Erica Faler for suggesting the idea. Thanks to Steve Cox, Derek Sloan, Shaila Pew, Brian Nielson and Jensen Clifford for guest starring. Thanks to Stephen Moyer for filming. Thanks to Steve Cox for letting me use his video editing equipment and giving me some pointers. Thanks to Ted Sowards for producing the video with the others (like the Ninjormon) for YouTube. Thanks to my wonderful wife who is even sillier than me sometimes. Hooray for Super Mario and Nintendo.
My new favorite thing to do on Facebook is to have discussions on my wall via the comments. I propose a question or thought as part of my status update, and then everyone else supplies their opinions by leaving a comment on my status. It’s fun. This past week I asked about Gmail and web browsers. I took a screen shot of both discussions. Read through and feel free to comment here if you didn’t get a chance to on Facebook.
I have been using Gmail since 2004 (the year it started) and I have always felt that it has been way ahead of the competition in terms of features, usability, and speed. However, I also have a Yahoo, Hotmail, Live Mail, and a few other accounts. I use these all for specific things (like handling spam). Gmail has always just worked well for me. It has features that I can’t live without anymore like labels (better than folders), search, filters, chat, labs, themes, todo list, etc. You can read more about Gmail on their blog. Let’s see what everyone else said.
At the end of December, Penny and I took a trip to Disneyland and California Adventure for our first anniversary. It was a total blast. As we were waiting at the airport on the day of our anniversary, I was thinking about how much I loved her and was thankful for her. A few words gathered in my mind, and I wrote a brief poem for her:
It’s been a whole year, my dear,
But when I kiss your lips,
I still feel the fire singing like a choir
For more coal, and then I know…
That I will long for you until I die.
And though I’m not the greatest husband, I will try
To be,
Until you see
That I’m yours forever.
First of all, thanks to everyone who has signed up on the blog and has left comments, I hope that you will continue to read and leave comments in the future. I want it to feel social, and I want to blog about interesting, useful, and fun things.
The contest is over and we have some winners. The winners were selected randomly by a computer program, and everyone who signed up on the website through Google FriendConnect and left a comment on the blog before midnight on March 31st were eligible to win. Without any further ado, the winners are…
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