The key to studio portraits is, it’s not your job to make someone look good… it’s you job to make some one look GREAT! Not simply capture the moment, but capture the person’s essence and make them look even better — some how.

That just isn’t me. Not that I want ANYONE to look bad, but I’d prefer to capture the moment versus bolster an ego. Of course, everyone seems to be super critical of themselves — myself included. But I’ll leave the pleasing to someone else and I’ll just stick to capturing what I see.

Technorati Tags: studio, portrait, photography

So, remember that tank of gas I bought on the 6th? This Sunday when I fill up again it will have been a full 4 weeks. 4 Weeks on a tank of gas and almost 300 miles on a bike.

I’m pretty pleased and eager to see what I can do for the month of August. If I hadn’t had a business function yesterday, I could have made it 13 days and over 300 miles. Oh well… that gives me something to shoot for in August.

On barbecuing
Last weekend we invited some good friends over for dinner on Saturday. I was grilling my first ever roast on the grill and wasn’t sure how long it might take. Once we determined that it was going much faster than I had expected, the wife invited our friends over. Now, knowing we were fixing to have company I began getting things ready – seating, cleaning tables, etc. Before I knew it, I look at the digital thermometer and my roast was up to 167 degrees! I meant to pull it at 150. I then open up the lid to the grill and I was horrified by a charred, black ball that was supposed to be my roast.

I wanted redemption, so I took another shot at grilling a roast today. I watched over this one like a hawk! Well, maybe not THAT close, but I certainly did check on it often. I also made a change and wrapped it in foil to then unwrap it once it got to 130 degrees, and finally to pull it off the grill at 140 degrees. AH… PERFECT! Redemption was mine.

On church
Lately, Daniel has been curious about church. We’re spiritual, but I wouldn’t consider ourselves religious. We attended a church back when we lived in California, but not since we moved up here to the Seattle area over 11 years ago. Some good friends of ours have been attempting to get us to visit their church for years now, so with Daniel’s curiosity and our friends’ nudging, we decided to attend today. Daniel loved it! He had numerous questions and we’re answering them one at a time. Undoubtedly, we’ll be attending for next several Sundays. Mel and I both enjoyed it too. Initially, it felt a little intimidating, it’s a larger church than what we’re used to, but it did feel welcoming and we were comfortable. We’ll see how it goes. There’s another, smaller church a couple of blocks from the house that we’re interested in checking out too.

So that’s it… that was the weekend. This week is going to be a busy one. I’m going to shoot for a 4-day commute by bike this week. For sure, 3 days, but I’m thinking I may shoot for 4.

OH… and for you SysAdmins out there… Happy Belated SysAdmin Appreciation Day! I hope your users were nice too you. I made it a point to thank ours.

Hope you all have a great week!

Catchy title eh?  First off, the dump simply refers to another info/brain dump that this post is fixing to turn in to.  But first…  I commuted by bike the full distance 3 days this week.  My last attempt (last week) as well as the week of the 4th on my third day I didn’t feel quite up to a full ride in to work so I drove in a little closer to work on those days and biked in from there.  That effectively cut the 10 mile commute to about a 6 mile commute.  It definitely helped on those days.  But this week, I did 3 days the full distance for a total of 60 commuter miles!  At some point I’m going to push towards a 4 day commute, but I think I’ll put that off one more week and do another 3 day full ride week next week.  So, on to the dump.

Great support for bikes at work

A couple of weeks ago I approached the office manager to see if we could purchase a bike rack for parking our bikes at work.  There are five of us who bike in pretty regularly — three of those five are from my department!  I was pleasantly surprised to receive word back almost immediately after my request that it had been approved and already ordered!  As soon as it arrived, I was like a kid at Christmas…  I grabbed my tools and slapped it together and found a place to put it in the shop.  We ended up purchasing this six-bike unit.  VERY cool!

Panniers

So yesterday, I needed to lug my laptop home with me, but I wasn’t quite prepared to do it on my bike.  So I had to get creative.  I ended up locating an extra laptop bag — a standard current Dell bag.  I grabbed some wire, only because I couldn’t locate any zip-ties, and began rigging it up to secure the bag to my rack.  Amazingly, it attached very nicely and looked pretty good.  I even received a comment on my way home from a fellow biker who thought it was very clever.  The only drawback to the laptop bag as a Pannier was that it sat a little too far forward and my heel would hit it if I peddled normally.  So I had to keep my foot angled like I was pedaling with my toes in order to clear the bag.  It wasn’t too bad, but it wasn’t very comfortable either.

I’m been Jonesing for a Pannier bag that will fit my laptop so I can cart it to and from work, but DANG!  The only one that I’ve been able to locate that even mentions a laptop runs about $160 list.  That means I might be able to locate it for something like $125-$130 online.  But DANG…  that’s a good chunk of the cost of the bike itself!  I just can’t see paying that kind of money for a pannier.  So now…  I think I’m going to look in to some sort of DIY project to create my own Pannier.  We’ll see what I come up with.

DIY

Speaking of DIY stuff, the day I purchased my bike, I sat in on a two-hour maintenance class put on by our local bike shop.  One of the things that the instructor mentioned was using a large rubberband to close the front brake when parking your bike, especially against a wall, so if it happens to get bumped that the wheels won’t roll causing to bike to fall over.  I thought that was an engenious idea.  I wasn’t crazy about using a rubberband, so I sought out another solution using some of my wife’s sewing materials.  I took a 1″ wide strip of heavy-duty elastic and made a loop (much like a rubberband).  Works like a charm.  Every time I park my bike, I put this strap on the front brake and my bike stays nice and secure.

Other Wish List Items

Seems that like with hobbies, none of this stuff is cheap.  Just trying to make the purchase of this bike pay for itself is likely to take me most of the summer.  On that note, regarding my gas mileage/savings, I filled up on Sunday, the 6th with 19.485 gallons at $4.29/gallong for a total of $83.77.  As of today, Friday, the 25th, I have only traveled a total of 174 miles and my gas guage is just under a half a tank.  For the month of July, I have driven to work 6 days, 2 days of vacation/holiday, 1 day sick, and 10 days commute by bike.  Upon my next fill up I’ll be able to determine my gas mileage in the pickup and THEN I’ll be able to determine how much money I’ve saved on gas.  Of course, that saving has already been consumed by the purchase of the bike, but hey…  my ROI is looking pretty sweet so far!

So back to my wish list times…  One of the next things I want to acquire is a bike computer, a set of fenders, a good air pump for my garage, a maintenance rack would be nice, a pannier bag, and another pair or two of padded biker shorts.  I also want to begin considering some sort of wet weather gear.  I already have a hi-viz rain jacket, but I need something for the lower portion now.

So, just like my photography hobby, this stuff just isn’t cheap!  There’s always some sort of accessory that you’ll want to get.

I’d be interested to know…  how many other are actively riding more these days?  Not necessarily commuting, but just getting out for a ride every now and then.  How frequent and how far are you traveling?

OK…  that’s it for now.  Dump over.  Time for me to get ready for my weekend.  More work on the deck!

Have a great weekend!

First off, we’ve been blessed with the most awesome weather over the month of July. It must be in direct exchange for the never-ending winter we experienced. It’s just been beautiful.

I made good, continued progress on the deck and its railing. I’ve got as much of the railing up as I can at this time and have started on the arbor. I hope to finish off the arbor this next weekend and begin putting up the spindles in the railing sections — they are called spindles, right? Once I complete that, then it’s back to digging holes and pouring concrete to set the last 4 rail posts and then I can wrap up the railing. I’m estimating about 3 more weekends to wrap it up, if all goes well.

We capped the weekend off with another BBQ. Of course, I grilled both days over the weekend, Saturday was some tastey hamburgers (nothing beats a home-made grilled hamburger!) and Sunday I attempted my first cross-rib roast on the grill. I used an indirect heat method to grill it, placing a bread pan-shaped pan amongst the coals to act as a drip pan as well as keep the coals pushed outwards to the sides of the kettle. It went far quicker than I expected and before I knew it it got away from me and lept up to 167 degrees. To add insult to injury, seeing how quickly it was going we invited some good friends over for dinner to enjoy the roast. Well… after cutting away most all of the char from what used to be my roast, I busted out the hot dogs! Yes… ALWAYS have hot dogs waiting in the wings for such a disaster — it’ll save your butt every time.

So I know what I’ll do next time, beside pay closer attention. Once my coals are ready I’ll drop the roast on the grill, monitor it until it get to about 100 to 110 degrees — that should be plenty to nicely brown the outside of the roast, then quickly wrap it in tin-foil to finish it off and pull it at 140 degrees. Let it sit for about 20 minutes covered, then slice. I think I may try it again this weekend!

OK… so my Home Depot and grilling experiences could have poo-poo’d the weekend, but they didn’t. We recovered nicely from both and enjoyed a really nice dinner and conversation with our good friends. It made the entire weekend a success regardless of the other negatives ..AND.. our deck is one step closer to being complete.

So another week begins now and another busy one at work. Having biked to work 3 days last week, my goal is yet again to bike 3 days this week, likely Wed, Thur, and Fri. I’ve also started my One Hundred Pushup Challenge. So today was day one of week one and it seems to have gone well. I’ll let you know how I feel tomorrow — I KNOW I’m going to be sore!

I’m eager to burn through my week and get things done so I can get back to the deck and more grilling next weekend. So far, this has been one of my most enjoyable summers since I was a kid — I can’t wait to get outside these days. I haven’t felt like this since I was a kid playing baseball.

Enjoy your week… I’m going to enjoy mine!

‘You can do it. We can help.’

Today was the worst experience I’ve EVER had at a Home Depot — there was one other time with my father-in-law, but that time was more of an embarrassment than frustration, I’ll share that moment some other time.

So I’m working to finish up the deck railing and I decide to make a run to the Home Depot to gather up more supplies — 4ea. 2″x6″x12′ pressure treated boards along with a few other supplies.  I locate everything else, but when I go the stack of wood where these boards were last weekend, there’s a bunch of 2″x4″ boards in that area.  I look up above and I see what appear to be what I’m looking for.  Not good, there’a another unit of lumber atop of it.  So I go looking for an associate who could fire up the forklift and pull it down for me so I could get my 4 pieces of lumber.  I can’t locate anyone.  So I go up to the checkout and ask, and as luck would have it, the guy I’m looking for is walking down the isle towards me.

So I tell the guy what I’m looking for, he does a search and agrees with me that the lumber I’m looking for is up in the rack.  So he begins to hunt down a forklift.

So I wait…  and I wait… and I wait.

At the hour mark I start hunting down other associates.  I get redirected back to the kid who is supposed to be helping me.  He’s still searching for a forklift — that HE can operate.  He flags down one pair of associates on a forklift they tell him he’ll have to wait, they have to pull down some other merchandise for another customer.  He flags down yet another associate, same story.

By this time, I’m now an hour and a half in to my wait and fuming.  While the guy who is supposed to be helping me is still hunting a lift, the two guys who he originally stopped come walking by me and I ask them for assistance since they appear to be finished with their previous task.  I’m told to go see the associate who is seeking out a lift.  I explain that I’ve been waiting now for over an hour and a half, and they insist that I must work with the kid who can’t seem to locate a lift.  I begin to express my frustration that a wait of this length of time is not acceptable — they both simply turned and walked away from me.  I was flabbergasted!

Finally, I’d had enough and went to the counter and asked for a manager.  15 minutes later a gentleman shows up extending his apologies and states that he checked with the associate to get the story of what was going on.  I asked him WHY does it take upwards of 2 hours to pull down a unit of wood?  His response was, “It shouldn’t, but I don’t know where you are in the queue.”  I then asked, “a two hour queue is acceptable in this store.”  He had nothing to say.

He finally got a forklift operator to assist me and who walked up and down the isle looking for the wood in question.  I pointed it out to him and he tells me that it’s not it.  He then begins clearing out the pile of 2″x4″s that were where the 2″x6″x12’s were last weekend and low and behold, there they are.

The kid who was seeking out the lift ran over to me, apologized, and practically dove in to the lumber pile to help me pick out my 4 boards.  ARGH!!!!  I could have been out of that silly store 2 hours prior!

Please…  Home Depot.  If you’re going to put someone in a department, especially one like lumber, please ensure the individual is fully equipped and qualified to be in that department.  This kid should have been able to run a lift himself for starters, but even more importantly, he should know that state of merchandise within his department!

You might ask, “why didn’t you just leave and go some place else?”  Well…  I had already invested THAT much time in the place.  It didn’t make sense to me to throw that away and start all over again somewhere else.  However…  my NEXT supply run may very well take me directly to Lowes or McClendons.

So back to that slogan, I think it needs an adjustment… “You can do it.  We *MIGHT* be able to help.”

Commuting:

Today’s ride was amazingly easy — a very good ride.  I need to get a bike computer so I can see just how fast I’m traveling.  It seemed I was traveling faster today than previous rides as I was bumping myself into the next higher gear.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again, I am SO grateful that we have the trail system that we have here in the Seattle area.  Last week, in the brief one mile or so that I must ride in the street amongst car traffic in order to make it to the office, I almost got ran over twice.  Both times were in the same area, just a light apart from one another.  I tell you, for anyone riding…  always look a driver in the eyes.  Make sure that they see you and even acknowledge if possible.  There is an alternative route I could take to remove this section of road from my ride, but it adds an additional 20 minutes to my ride.  If it continues, I’ll go ahead and make that change — 20 minutes is nothing compared to being dead or seriously hurt by a dumbass not paying attention.

While on the topic of my commute and riding, my rack arrived via FedEx today.  Of course, it’s already on the bike.  I had to manipulate the brackets a little to get it to fit, but my metal working skills from the Army came in handy.  I’ll likely post a picture to Flickr in the next few days.  But now, I don’t have to wear a backpack or fanny pack if I need to carry something with me to work.

Health and Fitness:

One thing that I’ve noticed since I’ve begun riding, I haven’t lost any weight.  I thought that I might, but I believe that I’m building muscle instead — which is totally fine with me.  I know my quads have hurt in places they haven’t hurt in years!

Today also makes a week + 1 day that I’ve cut my caffeine intake to zero.  I started to just cut out sodas, but decided to cut out coffee as well.  A while back I made a trip in to the emergency room for an irregular heartbeat.  The ER doctor checked me out and told me that what I was experiencing was PVCs — premature ventricular contractions.  I can’t explain what exactly a PVC is, but wikipedia does a decent job.  The Doctor told me that they were “some-what normal” (as in several people experience them) and likely caused by too much caffeine, but what is odd, I only began really experiencing them AFTER I had started working out — and doing mostly cardio work too.  So I’ve decided to give it a whirl and see how long I can go without caffeine.  Who needs the uncomfortable feeling of a weird heartbeat?  Water will do me just fine.

Tags: commute, rack, cycle, caffeine, PVCs

On the homefront

I started on another three sections of the deck railing.  Seems things went MUCH faster this evening than they did over the weekend.  I likely won’t finish off the top rail of these sections until this weekend, unless I find a spark of energy throughout the week — which I may be able to find as I’m anxious to see how this all turns out.  Strangely enough, I’m enjoying this, more so than I enjoyed putting down those deck boards.  Woof!

On commuting

I’ve been keeping a really close eye on my mileage per trip and especially this tank full of gas.  I want to now exactly how I’m consuming it all and how often.  I figure, most automobiles have about a 300 mile range regardless of the size of tank it’s equipped with.  As of today, I have traveled just over 120 miles in total over a nine day period since filling up.  One day I was sick, and two days I commuted to work by bike.  This week, I have used my pickup two days so far and plan to commute by bike at least two days this week, perhaps three. If I can pull off three days, that will mean 120 miles over a 12 day period, which of course, is an average of just 10 miles per day.  At that rate, I would possibly be able to stretch a tank of gas out to a total of 30 days.  Pretty cool feat I must admit.

On fitness

Naturally, commuting by bike has really helped me in this area.  I can feel a big difference in my quads as well as my stamina while riding.  Each day, the ride gets easier and easier — except when there’s a head wind.  But I’ve decided I need to begin expanding on this area — fitness — and incorporate something more that just riding my bike.  I’ve been reading with interest the “Get Fit Slowly” blog and specifically the One Hundred Pushup Challenge going on there (based on this site).  I wish I had stumbled upon this sooner, as it was already in in to week 3 when I found it.  But I thought that this is right up my alley.  Nice and easy, nothing all gung-ho or anything.  Just a simple way to build up my upper body strength.  It got me to thinking too…  this is the same way we did it when I was in the army.  We didn’t get fit from lifting weights or anything fancy…  it was just basic calisthenics that did it for us, and naturally, besides my time in high school, I’d say it was the time in my life when I was most fit — at least in my adult years.

So, along with my gas mileage monitoring, I think I’ll begin posting updates on my pushup challenge as well.  What the heck…  it’s what a blog is for anyway — keep me accountable. 

See…  I told you it was just a bunch of stuff.

Tags: Commuting, Cycling, Fitness

Seriously… some nifty new features in this release. If you’re running a Wordpress site, do yourself a favor and upgrade.

Technorati Tags: Wordpress, 2.6, upgrade

One of my most favorite parts of the summer is firing up the grill, grilling ANYTHING after it’s been marinading in something for hours, and enjoying a nice dinner outside on the deck with my family.

I don’t know what it is… but it certainly is one of my most cherished moments of the summer.

In the shot above, this is the never-ending home improvement project — our deck. On a whim, about 4-5 years ago, I decided to start ripping up boards of our old deck — on a Sunday afternoon. Not sure what the hell I was thinking, but in the end, it’ll certainly be a nice deck! All the boards were replaced with composite deck board and mostly what remains is the completion of the railing. Now with Darrin being old enough to play on the deck, the railing is my mission for the summer. What you seen in this shot, what is not painted white is what was accomplished today, along with power washing. We power washed yesterday and part of today, while the railing work that was done was done today.

I anticipate at least another 2-3 weekends worth of work. I’ve said it before, if I had to earn a living via carpentry, my family and I would starve! I’m just way too slow at this stuff. I think about thing too much before I act. I suppose that’s good in some way — but then again, this has been a 4-5 year project already.

Having purchased a quarter beef and half a hog, we wanted to keep close tabs on what we’re eating and as important, what we have left.  We came up with a rather simple little tool for the task — a basic spreadsheet of numbers representing each cut and the quantity of each that we have. Now, any time we make a meal, we simply decrement the item on the spreadsheet.

Better yet, the wife placed the spreadsheet within a small binder within a sheet protector.  Now we just mark on the sheet protector marking off each cut as we use it and the sheet remains untouched.  There are even blank spaces at the bottom of the spreadsheet so that we can add items that we purchase from the grocery store or perhaps Costco.

So far it’s been VERY handy to keep track of what remains in the freezer and allows us to plan accordingly.

Though simple enough to make, feel free to grab this PDF to use as a sample for your own.

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I was treated with a nice surprise on my commute in to the office yesterday, about three miles in to it a bald eagle was hanging out in a tree likely looking for breakfast there in the river.  As I got closer it decided to take off and make its way back across the valley.  During this morning’s ride, I was treated to two bald eagles.  About in the same area as yesterday.  Seeing stuff like this certainly makes the commute a little easier.  In commuting by car over the past 10 years up here in Seattle, I can’t say I recall EVER seeing a bald eagle.

The pics below are just more of the scenery that I get to look at.  These were taken today on my commute back home.

]]> http://kevindevin.com/?feed=rss2&p=2670 http://kevindevin.com/?p=2668 http://kevindevin.com/?p=2668#comments Sat, 28 Jun 2008 17:57:34 +0000 Kevin Devin http://kevindevin.com/?p=2668 So Thursday I made my first attempt at portrait photography. We needed new employee photos at work and we thought this would be a great opportunity for the photography club to get in some good experience. Turns out, the photography club was primarily just me. A couple of others did help out setting up, but nobody else really joined me in this endeavor. It’s too bad… I think I gained a lot of good experience that perhaps I can share back with the group some other time.

I don’t think the shots turned out all too bad, but I still have lots of learning to do. No strobes were used… this was pretty much a seriously low-budget affair. I wish I would have taken a shot of the setup, it’d be easier to show it rather than explain it. There will be a make up session as not everyone was able to make it. I’ll try and capture a shot of the setup then.

Tomorrow evening is my annual opportunity to knock the crap out of a golf ball, then hope I can locate the silly thing. I’ve loaded my bag with 4 sleeves of new balls. I know better than to buy expensive balls, the chances are just to great that I’m gonna lose em.

Every year at work we have a Summer Solstice golf event that is a blast. It’s a nine-hole scramble so the pressure and intimidation is removed. Then at the end, the finishing order is determined as normal, then a coin-flip determines who is actually the first place team. Prizes are awarded accordingly, typically being a gift certificate for lunch at a local eatery and company-branded schwag. The last place team is always awarded our special travel kits. Throughout the year, our traveling folks collect up the free soap, shampoo, and what-not from hotels and contribute to the prize pool.

It’s a load of fun and I can’t wait to tee off… I just hope I see where the heck it lands!

Technorati Tags: golf, HATNUS

Ah… it’s very satisfying to have a stocked pantry and/or a full freezer.

With our “economic stimulus” check that President Bush so graciously offered back to us, we decided to put it towards a half a pig and a quarter of a beef (grass fed). We received the pork 2-3 weeks ago, and the beef itself was just finished and ready for pickup today up in Stanwood.

We’ve tried to remain as local as possible with our food purchases of late. With the pork and beef coming from local farms as well as a CSA produce subscription that we get every week. It may ultimately cost us more, but it’s been very satisfying knowing we’re getting good food grown or raised locally and without all the processed crap that ends up in the general food supply.

We have an inventory sheet in the kitchen now so we always know what we have and what we’ve consumed and when it will be time to reorder. I would not be surprised if we end up going to a half a beef in the next couple of years as Darrin gets older — bubba likes to eat!

Technorati Tags: Organic, natural, grass-fed, beef, pork, CSA

The ride was nice… a few rough spots on the trail due to tree roots, but I’m not complaining. I’m just glad that there exists such a nice trail for cyclists to use away from car traffic. The last bit of the commute was the most treacherous having to mingle in and negotiate traffic. Naturally, Fall City Road tends to be a rather busy road too.

My calves must sense the end of a ride… seems every ride so far, as I near the end of it they start cramping up on me. I’m hoping that the work day will give them a nice rest before my commute back home this evening.

Take THAT! OPEC and speculators!

[UPDATE] Ride home was quicker, right at 1 hour. Took another route through Redmond Town Center rather than through Marymoor Park which I believe made it a little shorter of a commute by maybe a mile or so. I’m still not keen about having to deal with traffic through that area, but the RTC route I can deal with on the way home, not so sure on the way in.

Also found out that we have a bike club at work — predominantly at our other site next to Microsoft. Every month they do a group ride over to the Celtic Bayou. Next group ride is slated for next Wednesday. Not sure I’ll participate since Thursday I’m supposed to play golf.

Technorati Tags: Biking, Commuting, Cycling

Took a quick ride this evening — and I mean quick, no more than 20 minutes. But that was one painful 20 minutes and 2.2 miles. Every little bit helps to get my butt in shape.

It doesn’t look like much, and to more experienced riders, it certainly isn’t, but it certainly kicked me in the butt. Quick way to get a great lower-body workout, that’s for sure. A hazzard if you will for living in a hilly neighborhood.

Technorati Tags: Biking, Fitness, Workout, Legs

This evening I mapped our walk through our neighborhood and found it to be just shy of 1 mile. Pretty good, and something that we need to continue to do more of.

So then I got to thinking about my bike ride this past weekend. Just shy of 14.5 miles round trip, but when I mapped it, it tripped me out just how close to work I actually was! Based on Google Earth, it appears to be about a 11.5 mile ride, one-way, but if to Ride #2 was 7.2 what remains can’t be more that 2-2.5 miles tops. That should put me just over 10 miles for a one-way trip.

Now, if I do it right, I could start off by taking my bike with me to work, ride it home that evening, the rest overnight, and ride it back to work in the morning.

I have to say, I’m pretty jazzed about doing this. Dammit… I can do this!

But hey… you use what you got! Even if it is ghetto, it’s been very handy in determining how far I’ve ridden. Some day, when I get a new bike I’ll outfit it with a GPS meant for a bike, but for now, this little guy will do me just fine.

So today, while Darrin was napping, Daniel playing his Nintendo DS, and the wife settling in after her quilting retreat, I decided to treat myself to a bike ride. It was nice to get in some me time after being a single-parent for the last 3 days.

I made it all the way from Bothell Landing to Redmond City Hall before turning around — 7.2 miles one-way. Round trip I put in 14.4 miles — my longest trek yet. It gives me even greater confidence that I’ll be able to actually commute by bike here in the near future. I’m slowly working up my endurance to do so. Today’s accomplishment made me feel even better about this goal.

Next step, unless I take the full plunge, will be to do a trek all the way to Marymoor Park, and my ghetto bike computer will be with me for the ride.

Today, day 3 of the “I’m looking forward to my wife’s return” weekend, the boys and I took a ride/walk through the neighborhood. We had a great time, Dan got some good experience riding on the streets and Darrin… he just loves to go places — doesn’t matter where. We even ran in to a couple of Daniel’s friends along the way.

Tomorrow the wife is scheduled to return. I’m very much looking forward to it, but I also have to say that I’ve really enjoyed my dedicated time with my boys. We’ve had a great time and how fitting that it should wrap up on Father’s Day. I think every dad should have the opportunity to spend four dedicated days with their kids prior to Father’s Day… it gives the day a whole new perspective.

Yum… Daniel helped me prepare them, then we all three settled in for some home made hamburgers! Daniel is typically a pretty picky eater and usually won’t eat much meat. I had him help me prepare them by breaking up a slice of bread to crumbs before adding it to the meat along with some Worcestershire sauce. He them pressed them out in to patties and then we tossed them on the grill — the George Foreman grill. I just couldn’t see firing up the charcoal grill for just 4 burgers.

Day 2 of the “no mom or wife around” weekend is almost in the books. Only a couple more hours before bed times. Then it’s quiet time for dad! YEA!!

Only one injury to report thus far… Darrin still doesn’t have this running bit down at 15 mos, ended up doing a faceplant on the sidewalk yesterday evening — Ouch!

Wife is attending a quilting retreat this weekend so the boys and I are doing our “guys only extended weekend.” So far, so good… but I’m sure by Saturday, I’ll be wishing Sunday would get here sooner.

We have piano lessons later today then, if the rain holds off — or passes sooner — we’re gonna do some burgers on the grill. Tomorrow is supposed to be nice, so I’m thinking a nice walk or bike ride on the Sammaish River Trail might be a nice outing.

Now that I’ve reclaimed the blog, I’ve decided that there was no longer a need to maintain multiple blogs. So… I decided to consolidate my photos and elearning blogs in to the main blog, kevindevin.com. Hopefully it doesn’t cause too much pain, but heh… you didn’t have anything else better to do than switch around an rss feed now did you? I didn’t think so.

One thing I was curious about… Could I take exports from the two blogs which were running under WordPress 2.3.2 and import them in to a 2.5.1 installation without losing data. I quickly asked around but finally just chickened out and quickly upgraded to two sites to be exported to 2.5.1 before proceeding. Better safe than sorry!

A note of caution though if you ever decide to do something like this yourself. *IF* you happen to be using something like TwitterTools to publish a tweet any time you post to you blog, ensure that you disable TwitterTools BEFORE beginning the consolidation!

Friends don’t flood their friends with tweets! DOH!

Definitely not the center image!

We just recently purchased Flash CS3 at work. So now, as I wrap up my eLearning certificate with the UW, my next step is to dive in to teaching myself Flash. I’m looking forward to it, something different for me and an opportunity to “roll my own” where I feel Adobe Captivate lacks. Don’t get me wrong, I think Captivate is an awesome rapid development tool, but it’s not without its own idiosyncrasies. Of course, I’m not so naive to realize that Flash won’t have its own set of issues, but I’m up for seeking them out.

With the price of gas going up and my gut getting bigger, I’ve decided this summer would be a good enough time to try and tackle both if I could.

So, I pulled old Betty out of the garage and gave her a little TLC to get her back on the road. I’ve likely put more in to her than what she’s worth, but I couldn’t see spending mucho $$ on a new bike if it ultimately was going to end up hanging on the wall next to Betty. Why not just give old Betty a little TLC and see what she can do. Then, if this experiment sticks, I’ll begin looking at investing in a new bike. But for now… Betty’s my gal.

I took her out on her re-re-maiden voyage today. A half-hour trip down the Sammamish River trail and then back. I wanted to see 1) how well she rode, and 2) how well *I* rode.

I’m not exactly pleased with the new tires. I believe I may have gone a little too cheap on them. There a slight bump in the front tire and I thought a felt one in the rear. Sort of like a tire with a broken belt on a car. Not a major issue, but definitely a nuissance.

Overall, she rode pretty well. Me… I did ok. About 3/4 of the way through the trek my right calf muscle started cramping up, so I’m glad I limited my ride to the distance that I did. I’m pretty much pleased with the ride and feeling better about taking this experiment to the next step — a couple more practice runs going further each time and then ultimately an attempt all the way in to work. It’s about a 14 mile trek by road, so I’m anxious to see how far it is on the bike trail.

I brought with me my little old Garmin GPS to tinker with and see what all it can tell me. It’s not a fancy unit, but what the heck, it might be useful.

I’ve decided to reclaim the blog. When I started it several years back, it was simply a place where I scribed my thoughts and anything that interested me. Most of it was IT-related. I treated it like an extension of my memory. Things that were unique or just odd, I would document for myself so that I could easily recall it (and I’ve done that NUMEROUS times), and I would also document in the event that someone else could gain some benefit from it. Once I began podcasting, it still somewhat retained its form, but now in audio format and also now seeking out content to publish in the show. Then along came George Starcher and content really accumulated and by the time I left the show, the blog had its own life that was no longer mine.

So I’ve waited now for the past 8-9 months since I left the show, and 6 months since the show was retired completely. It’s time for me to reclaim my blog.

I’m going to retain the audio from the show, eventually I’ll put forth the effort to get it all uploaded to archive.org. Until then though, I’ll keep it all here.

So what’s likely to change? Well firstly, active posting will hopefully begin once again. Not likely to be heavy, but at least more often. My postings will likely not be as IT-centric as they were in the past since most all of you know I’m no longer working directly within that field. The blog is going to return to my personal blog. One that contains the postings of interest to me and perhaps others. Nonetheless, In the Trenches has officially been retired and kevindevin.com has now returned to MY blog, MY interests.

If you’re still subscribed from the podcast, now is your opportunity to run… run fast! If you care to hang around and see what the content ends up being, then welcome back!

Well… as I was working to change some captions which had page numbers within them, for whatever reason, I made a bad assumption that I would have to do all of this manually. Then I decided to have a look, and what do you know… Captivate actually has a Find and Replace function — and a VERY handy function it is.

Fill in your “Find” text string, click on Find All, and it lists every single slide the string of text is within. It also allows you to narrow the scope of the find to a specific type of object.

So… even if an application seems to lack some cool features you might wish for, don’t overlook the obvious wish list items, they may already exist.

I tell you, I can’t be finished soon enough!

On an even brighter note, I’ll be beginning my endeavors in to learning Flash within the next couple of weeks. I was just given the green light to get a copy at work. We’re doing well as far as rapid development tools, but we’d like to begin doing more complex things that we can’t do with rapid development tools. I made it very clear to my manager though, that the purchase of this tool was going to be an extended ROI as there’ll be a learning curve for sure with this tool and it’ll take some time to begin to see the fruits of our labor between myself and the other eLearning developer at work. I’m very much looking forward to it though.

Even though my position within IT was terminated causing me to move on to greener pastures, it seems I can’t seem to shake some of the former job responsibilities.

Over the weekend, the hard drive of our database server decided that it had had enough and wanted to be retired — so it simply decided to stop responding.

Fortunately, I had a spare server that I hadn’t shipped back to Cleveland yet and I’m glad I hadn’t as it came in very handy. First, the OS was already present so all I needed was to instal MS-SQL, configure it, then restore data.

Well… it certainly doesn’t seem to take very long for old knowledge to begin trickling away. I did struggle today getting thing back online, but a couple of hours away from the problem I was able to come back with a clearer head and resolve the problem.

So now… We have a much better server in place than what we had — EVEN though, the replacement machine is a “retired” machine! Tells you how lame our production server is… er, was.

Went from a PIII, 800MHz machine with 512MB RAM and a 40GB HDD running MS-SQL Server 2000, to a dual processor Zeon machine running at 2GHz with 2GB of RAM, and 300GB+ of RAID 5 disk. Amazing, isn’t it?

Fortunately, this setup will only last for another 6-8 weeks when we FINALLY transition the remainder of the server to corporate resources in our data center. Perhaps it will finally be THEN that I can shake these old responsibilities. That day can’t come soon enough.

Technorati Tags: SQL Server, IT

As the weather gets better, some of the easiest photographic subjects make themselves available. This is one of the few tulips from the wife’s garden this year.

Like I said, flowers tend to be just too easy to photograph — sort of like animals too. Hopefully I don’t clutter up this place with too many flowers. I’ve been trying to shoot more portraits, but every now and then… ya just gotta capture the easy ones.

This field was full of grass daisies, I believe that is what the wife called them, and so I wanted to see if I could capture the little one in them. Unfortunately, I think it would have turned out better had the grass been a little taller, but this portrait turned out pretty nice. Getting this kid to smile is incredibly tough to do!

Of course, a 13 mos old simply can’t resist the temptation to taste the chalk — yuck!

Today was the first time I’ve picked up the camera in a few months. Things have been busy and I simply haven’t had to the time for photography. Unfortunately, it looks like things will continue to be as busy at least up until June. I hope by then things will begin to slow and allow me to get behind the camera more.

Technorati Tags: Darrin, BW, Chalk

Well… August came and went, as did the remainder of 2007. It is now coming to the end of February 2008 and the requirements document is JUST being sent back to the customer for their OK for accuracy.

Needless to say, I’m told it was riddled with mistakes and omissions.

Now this person has to roll out what was to be a segment of this original project and must do it immediately. He took matters in to his own hands and outsourced the project and come Friday, this segment will be going live.

Just goes to show that though there may be advantages of a large IT department within a large company, but being nimble is definitely not one of them.

Technorati Tags: IT, sloth, outsourcing

After sucking wind that past couple of weeks on this challenge, today was just too beautiful of a day NOT to capture something.

I have a list of the different things I want to capture for the challenge, but most of them will be better when the weather turns nicer and everything gets greener.  But this one, I had an idea for it the other day.  So, seeing it was a nice day, I figured there HAD to be a soccer game going on, and sure enough, I was right.

Technorati Tags: 2008 Challenge, Soccer, Bothell

Well…  I’m sucking eggs on this challenge.  I completely missed the week before, and am a day behind on last week’s.  I hope to capture some more photos this week.

Actually, I had captured a couple of shots on Sunday, but I borked them so bad.  It should go without saying, “ALWAYS CHECK YOUR SETTINGS BEFORE SHOOTING!” or at least return them to you normal settings after changing them.  I failed to do so and had the camera set in manual mode, f/4, 1/40th shutter speed.  The shots I took were almost completely blown out.  And of course…  the ONE time I didn’t chimp my shots!  DOH!

Oh well…  I forgave myself with this shot.  Perhaps I’ll head back over to the UW this weekend and take those shots again.  THIS time, I’ll be fully aware of my settings!

Technorati Tags: 2008Challenge

It was SUCH a beautiful day today… when I mentioned getting out and shooting some photos, she was all for it.

We decided to check out a local establishment that used to be a dairy at one time.  From what the wife tells me, some friends of her grandparents used to rent or lease out the land where this dairy resided.  Apparently, that lady also made quilts for my wife and her cousins or their first born children.

The weather vanes atop of this barn were just too cool.  I’m sure, back when it was a working dairy, you wouldn’t have wanted to be down wind from it.

Technorati Tags: 2008Challenge, Dairy, Weather Vane, Cow

Today’s lunch was awesome!  Not simply because we had sushi, but because we were provided a lesson on how to make sushi.

My manager arranged a nifty lunch for everyone who was interested to show us all how to make sushi and then finally consume our creations.  A fun experience and it all tasted great!

You can check out more sushi shots of our experience here.

Technorati Tags: Sushi

I’ve been peppered with question after question about his data and with each of my responses he winces  more and more.

“Dude…  it’s gone.  The data on your drive(s), the PST files holding your e-mail…  it’s all gone.”

It’s undoubtedly been a very painful lesson for this guy, but I can only hope he truly feels the pain and doesn’t make this mistake of complacency again.

I love it when the wife diggs in to her quilting. I’m not exactly certain why.  Perhaps it’s the creativity aspect of it.  I know she’s happiest when she can be creative.  It’s also been a while since she really got any good, quality quilting time in.  She was just going through unfinished projects (known as UFO’s in quilters jargon) and she realized how many different quilting projects she has started, but hasn’t completed yet.  Hopefully, she’ll be able to find more time for these projects in 2008.

The project above is the beginnings of her Dear Jane quilt.  As I understand it, there is quite a following behind these quilts as well as some interesting history.

Technorati Tags: Quilting, Dear Jane

This shot of the walking bridge at Bothell Landing doesn’t really do it justice. It makes for a better shot in the spring or winter in the case of snow. It just so happens, this is the same vantage point I used to shoot the bridge last year for a photograph that was a winner in my company’s 2008 corporate calendar contest.

I’ve already begun a list of sites I want to shoot within the City. I just need to now look for opportunities to capture them. I’m promising myself to do a little better planning and capture a better shot for next week’s selection.

Technorati Tags: 2008 Challenge, photography

[UPDATE: Problem resolved. Good news is there was nothing wrong with my database, bad news is that I've exhausted the max_memory setting within php with the number of plugins that I'm running. Apparently with the latest round of updates I finally hit the tipping point. A quick request to my hosting provider to up that setting and we're back in business!

Support at Hosting Matters rocks!]

This evening, I discovered another one of these little plugins. I haven’t tried it yet. If any brave soul has out there, let me know. I’ve used the one Douglas blogged about, but not this one.

Technorati Tags: Wordpress, AutoUpdate, InstantUpdate, Plugin

Looks like MS has another TechNet blog, this one from the Security Group — the Security Vulnerability Research & Defense Blog.  It states you should be able to get background information during technical investigations of security issues, how timely these appear will be what makes this a worthwhile blog to frequent or add to your RSS feed.  Nonetheless, worth checking out.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Security

Fellow Friends in Tech members are doing a theme this month on Circles. So far several of the guys have captured some good shots and we still have the remainder of the month to go!

Likewise, at work, our photo group is doing a theme on Water. That shouldn’t be too difficult of one to do around here!

So, it’s not as if I don’t have ideas or something to shoot for… I just need to GET OUT THERE AND DO IT!

The shot above was taken almost a year ago at the Space Needle — the same Needle with the lame fireworks display this year for new years. Anyway… I was tinkering with some of my presents and liked the way this one turned out. Taken from the observation deck at the top of the needle looking South/SouthEast across the city.

You are suffering photography overdose if…

The problem is, when remotely editing your theme files, like when using TextWrangler and SFTP, there can exist the potential for a file clash where someone / something is attempting to access the file from your site while you may be attempting to write it back to the site. A collision occurs due to a theme validation function that happens upon every viewing. This validation can be omitted thus preventing the collision from occurring.

This “fix” is targeted for the 2.4 release of WP. Unfortunately, with every one of these incremental security releases, it ends up overwriting the fix.

Here is what I have done.

I’ve downloaded the official .diff file that is being rolled in to the 2.4 release. (Found here -
http://trac.wordpress.org/attachment/ticket/3907/3907.diff?format=raw )

To apply it, simply drop it in to the root of your WP installation and then run

patch < 3907.diff

This, of course, assumes that you have SSH access to your server. If you do not, simply download the diff to your local machine (assuming Mac or Linux here) and pull down your wp-settings.php file and run it locally. Then just upload your patched wp-settings.php file.

You could also do the same thing by downloading your wp-settings.php file, manually editing it and removing the line “validate_current_theme()” which should be at line 243, and then re-upload it to your site(s).

For me, with ssh access, and multiple WP installations, the patch method works very well.

Technorati Tags: WP, Themes, Default Theme, validate_current_theme

Now… back to shooting.

Over the past few days I’ve been contemplating what I’d like to accomplish from a photography point of view in 2008.

1. Get a photograph published in some sort of periodical. Heck, I’d settle for the local newspaper! But I’d really like to see what I can do to get a photograph published in something outside of my company’s calendar. Not that that wasn’t a joy itself, but it’s definitely a limited audience.
2. Sell at least one photograph. I haven’t looked too deeply in to the microstock sites yet, and from what I have, it appears to be a stock photographer it would behoove you to be up on current trends in stock photography and know what the market is demanding at the time. I simply haven’t put that much effort in to that endeavor yet. Maybe this next year.
3. Print more photographs. I’ve discovered how easy it is to print at the local Costco, so now I have no excuses. Along with printing more photos, I need to be a better son and send more of them to my folks. Even though were in the digital age, there’s still something about being able to see a photograph on the wall.
4. Do more photowalks, and even better yet, more phototalks! I did a phototalk earlier this year where I recorded audio with my iRiver and snapped off photos. I then converted that audio and those pics in to an enhanced podcast. A nifty way of taking someone along with you virtually on a shoot.
5. Get more of my co-workers involved in our photography group at work. I’d like to schedule more outings with that group and at the same time see if we can’t increase the number of folks involved. The couple that we did this past year were a blast, no reason why we couldn’t do it more often and have even more fun!
6. Get my head wrapped more around lighting. Not having an off-board flash, I simply haven’t looked that deeply in to the lighting aspect of photography. In my mind, an entirely new dimension to photography. If I can score a flash, this one should be doable, but I’ll need to acquire a flash first.
7. Try and shoot SOMETHING every day. There were several days this past year when I would real off a couple hundred shots, but not every single day. Not sure how realistic this one will be for me to fulfill, but it’s worth a shot.
8. Have more fun! I REALLY don’t know how I’m going to improve upon this one as I have had a blast with my photography this past year. It’s been a great learning experience and fun the entire time. I may push myself to do more themes and such. Something to push me to shoot something specific.

So… those are my photography goals for 2008. I’m sorta anxious to see how many of these I’ll be able to mark off come this time next year.

What are your photography goals for this coming new year? Have you written them down yet?

The photo above was taken this past October at the Shingle Creek Resort in Orlando, FL. I was able to lie down on the floor in the conference areas and capture the light fixture above.

UPDATE: Cool to see other’s posting their goals as well. Phill Price posted his here today (1/1/08).