What's The Haps

After a day and a half of four kids (my two boys and their two cousins), two big dogs (my Nande and their Murphy) and my wife's brother staying with us, this morning is calm and mostly peaceful. Even with Murphy still staying with us, he's a great big, sweet and goofy black lab/New Foundland mix.

My cold sore is about 75% healed up now, which is good because it was a really bad one while it was settling in. Probably the worst I've had in five years. But, through a combination of yogurt, lysine, Abreva and Kyani Nitro FX, it has eased up considerably and should be completely gone in another day or two at the most.

And that's a good thing because I need to get back to working out and riding my bikes. I can feel some pent up energy that could really use a release.

We took several steps forward with our Kyani business this week. Say hello to our newest distributor, WindBlossom! We also spoke for the first time the other day as I helped walk her through the sign up process. With her joining our Kyani team, we will start to farm and own Canada because there is little to no presence there as of right now. And virgin territory is huge, huge, huge in this early land grab phase of the game.

If you are looking for an amazingly good Plan B that could easily turn into a Plan A then drop me an email, leave a comment or otherwise get in touch. Kyani is our future and our future looks fantastic! There is no obligation whatsoever to check it out and, if you happen to have sick people in your network of friends, you can make a substantial improvement in their lives.

I had to do a little creative organization in my office to get my computer to be Skype-ready so that WindBlossom and I could video conference but its worked out well, I'm ready and my office is even a little bit sleeker than before!

I've been putting in quite a fair amount of work on websites. I've purchased a new domain for my photography business, used iWeb to create the new site, set up an entirely new account with Backprint and done a pretty ridiculous amount of trouble shooting to make Intellectual Poison work properly again as I'd busted one of the pipes in the process. I'm also starting to lay the groundwork for our as yet unlaunched new bicycling website.

And I've also been tending to several auctions on Ebay to help clear out some valuable but unneeded stuff in the office. Nothing like converting goodies into cash even if I seem to be spending too much time at the Post Office lately.

One big event on the near horizon is Graydon's fifth birthday this Friday! It is hard to believe that he's turning five already but he is. I'm excited for him because I know he's going to absolutely love his main present, a limited edition Automoblox race car. Oh yeah! If you've got young kids, especially car crazy boys (or girls) then you should definitely look into these beautiful toys. We've already got a bunch of the mini cars but the big ones are even more awesome.

The other big events on my horizon are two weddings that I'm going to be photographing the weekend after next. I'm excited, busy with preparations and a little bit anxious about not screwing anything up too badly. Once the weddings are behind us, we'll all be able to breathe a little easier, maybe take a camping trip to Big Sur or somewhere else and start to really enjoy the summer awesomeness out here on the coast. But, until then, there's a ton of things to work on and get ready. My tasklist is just as long, if not longer, than it was when I was working as a computer tech for four schools.

And, lastly, I'm saving my pennies to buy myself a long, long, long wanted goodie, the ContourHD high def helmet cam. Just thinking about my video capabilities with this thing makes me giddy!

So, I may not be quite as crazy busy as WindBlossom but yeah, there's alot going on right now.

Projects

Today I get to start the install on one of my pet projects that's aimed at showcasing technology's utility to the teachers at one of my schools. To that end, we're putting in an installation of Imacs along with a digital projector (which does some pretty nifty stuff) and want to try and encourage greater tech adoption at the school since many teachers see computers as an necessary evil and not a really incredibly useful tool for communication and learning.

I hope I'm not moving these computers in a torrential downpour though, that could complicate things a bit.

One really nice benefit to working at three different schools is that I can mix and match technology across the three schools to make the most of what I do have available. For instance, one school had a pretty serious lack of mice, one school had a bunch extra (like a shopping bag full) so I grabbed some and brought them over, trading the mice for some USB keyboards that were needed at my other school.

And I can also use my other schools for ideas, projects and partnerships.

The project I'll be working on today is, more or less, a copy of a set up at one of my other schools. But if it can spark a little interest in using technology in the classroom then it'll be well worth the effort. Because I firmly believe that the more tech-savvy a kid is moving forward, the better equiped they'll be to be able to develop marketable skills.

Damn, looks like one of my three Imacs is not quite ready for primetime. Time to get out the hammer and re-educate it.

Memory Lane

One of the cooler aspects of my new job is that I come across alot of computers in my travels. Since most of my schools are Mac schools that means I come across old Apple gear. And it amazes me to find that some of it is still functional long, long beyond its intended lifespan.

In fact, right now, there is a special afterschool program in the library behind me making use of Lego Mindstorms, some serial interfaces and an assortment of older Mac gear including a Color Classic and a Powerbook 180c. Its amazing to think that these old machines were once the absolute state of the art.

And now we've got phones that are more powerful and capable.

The reason these machines are still in use? Serial connections and software that was never updated. But it all still works, it chugs right along and gets the job done. And that's part of the reason why I love Apple and Macs.

University Road Race at UCSC

I spent my Sunday on the campus at UCSC taking photographs of the University Road Race. It was a long day that started out very cloudy and overcast but sunned up quite nicely by the later races.

The course was a three mile loop up Hagar Drive, across McLaughlin and down the high speed arcing loop of Coolidge. The top racers went out first for a mere 20 lap race, that's 60 miles for the mathematically challenged.

I can't begin to express how impressed I was by their speed, stamina and tenacity. It made me feel very slow on my mountain bike. But I took solace in the fact that I could dyno down a set of stairs and not worry about destroying my rims and blowing out my tires.

But boy oh boy can they rip it up on nice pavement.

After the top men's racers were the lower tiers, the 35+ masterclass and the women racers. By the end of the day the sun was in full effect and the coolness of the morning was gone, replaced by bright, warm California sun.

I stayed until I'd completely filled up my 2 gig memory card and headed home about halfway through the last three races of the day, being run concurrently. Then came and comes the long processing of those 400 or so photos, correcting them for lighting and enhancing them for printing, uploading them to my e-store.

Ont he marketing side, my wife and two boys were super champs. They came up, walked the parking lot and handed out cards with the website and my photography company's name, CarpeVivo Photography.

Of course, things are never as simple or easy as they should be. After uploading photos from my camera, I burned a proof DVD and set it aside, in case of serious computer issues (burn me once, shame on you, burn me twice, shame one me). Then I started to process the images, working in batches and creating folders with all the images from each race. Once I had gotten the first race done, I started to upload thumbnails to my Backprint.com site, a process which took more than two hours for 55 photos. And, when I went to check my site, all of the images were broken. And I freaked out.

Bear in mind that this was after 11 pm last night, I'd been up since before 6 (thanks to Nande wanting out at 5) and I just wanted to cap off the day and go to sleep. But I had to sit and see if I could get a workaround. Nope. But I did figure out what was preventing me from loading up my blog so that was something.

Apparently, during the password fiasco last week, a Firewall setting had been switched off when it should not have been. I did not do it, I know that. But it got switched off and, once it was switched back on, voila, blog appears!

Anyway, I need to get back to processing the rest of the photos and get them uploading to the site. Only a couple hundred left to go. Maybe when I'm all done I'll look into a batch processing application or see if I can automate the process a bit.

Oh yeah, and I need to rattle the cage of the company I want to hire me. Let them know that they would be doing themselves a disservice by not interviewing me.