What a BuzzKill

Our office got a call from one our clients today reporting a problem. We checked and quickly learned that their Internet connection was down. Nam took the call and immediately went to their office to help them get it back up.

15 minutes later, I get an email from one of the other users in their office:

Subject: Internet not working

Message: Our internet is not working

Obviously Nam was successful in quickly restoring their connection.

I replied back to the user to let them know that a phone call was the best way to report loss of internet, since an email won’t get sent until their internet connection is restored.

_{This entry got a good chuckle.}

Week 1 of 52 has passed and I’ve taken at least one picture a day and uploaded it to my 365 Day Flickr set. I’m slowly working on expanding what I do with my photos and have been happy with what I’ve come up with so far. What’s been a (pleasant) surprise to me is how much easier this project feels than the previous Month of Pictures project did.

Here are my favorites from week one:

One thing I find that I’m fighting is my tendency to (over)use familiar techniques and post-processing effects. So it’ll be interesting to see what I can come up with over the next 51 weeks.

_{This entry has caught the shutter bug!}

Watch out! There’s a new blogger on the loose!

Rece has officially started his own blog today and I wanted to congratulate him on creating his first post!

It’ll be interesting to see what he comes up with.

_{This entry wants its own blog, too!}

I started with a light switch, but it turned out looking like crap. Then I tried a corner of the ceiling in my bathroom … hmm … not interesting enough to start off the project. Sitting next to my computer I spied a spindle of CD-R discs, the light reflecting off the top one, which got me thinking. So after taking 24 pictures all over my apartment, I finally came up with one I liked:

It’s not amazing, but I think it’s pretty and rather interesting to look at. I’m positive that I’ll have days where I don’t give a shit and end up taking a lame picture of something stupid, but I’m looking forward to being pushed like that – outside my comfort zone is often where I tend learn something completely new.

I’ve added a link to the right side-bar to my 365 Project Flickr set. Buckle up, it’s going to be a wild ride!

_{This entry ate a meatloaf sandwich for dinner!}

I want to take at least one photo, every day for
an entire year, and post the photo(s) online.

Honestly, I’m nervous about even posting about this idea. It’s as though by announcing it, I don’t have any choice but to actually go through with it. I guess that’s why I’m putting it out there.

The month of photos project I did this past December turned out to be a rather interesting experiment. It helped me feel more comfortable about taking my camera with me wherever I went, made all the manual settings on the camera less scary to me, got me to start seeing the world a bit differently, got my creative juices flowing (why does that read so gross?), expanded my knowledge of Adobe Photoshop, and it helped improve my photography skills.

That month-long experiment did teach me that putting some reasonable limitations on myself is probably a good thing, though. So here are the general guidelines for the project:

• Take one or more photos every day for a full year (365 days)
• Post the photos online (to my Flickr account) a minimum of once a week, but try to post them every day or two – when possible
• Include at least some detail with each photo (below the photo on the Flickr page); be it an observation, description, and/or a story to go along with it
• Post a blog entry about the photos only when I feel like it – but not necessarily to accompany every picture or group of pictures I post to Flickr (this was the part that gave me the most trouble last time and I don’t want it to become an unreasonable obstacle to the core project)

So there you have it. I’ll start tomorrow … no, wait – I guess that would be later today, now that I notice the time!

_{This entry is intersted in seeing how this turns out!}

I was helping a client today troubleshoot their Internet connection. Their office is over 600 miles away, so on-site support was out of the question. I had to work with one of the 2 people that works in their office and walk them through checking cables, indicator lights, resetting things, etc. This is part of our conversation:

Client: OK, so what am I looking for again?

Me: A network cable.

Client: Oh, OK. They’re the fat phone cord looking ones, right?

Me: Yes. The ends look like large phone cord connectors.

Client: All right … (sounds of her moving things around for about 30 seconds) .. Oh! Here’s one.

Me: Great, now let’s follow it to one end and see where it’s connected.

Client: This is a long sucker, must be almost a hundred feet.

Me: Are you sure it’s a network cable? It should be just like the ones we were connecting to the router, but longer.

Client: Yeah, this looks just like those.

Me: Good. Are you able to trace it back to where it’s connected?

Client: Yeah, I think so … it’s pretty tangled up, though.

Me: All right. When you find where it plugs in, unplug it and plug it back in until you hear or feel it click to make sure it’s connected properly.

Client: Ah! I think I found it *click*

Me: Hello?

Just another day in tech support.

_{This entry still can’t stop shaking its head.}

We’re finally back and trying our best to unwind from the trip and get ready to slip back into the normal swing of things. The last couple of days have been all driving, so I’m rather beat. We didn’t end up stopping any place other than a couple of rest areas and places to eat. We stayed overnight in Sacramento and then continued driving this morning. I wish I had something more interesting to write, but I really don’t.

We had a great time on our trip and got to see so many interesting things along the way! The 3 nights we stayed in Seaside were relaxing and much appreciated. Sam and Rece are growing up so fast, so trips like these are all the more important. They might act as though they didn’t find much of it exciting or interesting now, but speaking from the experiences of my own youth and the many trips our family took, they’ll remember these trips as being mostly fun and something worth repeating the with their own kids.

With so many people living in their own isolated little worlds, it’s good to know that Rece will grow up knowing that not every street is paved. That cell phone service wasn’t available everywhere. That sometimes not being able to do much more than stare out the window and watch the passing scenery is actually a good thing. Most of all, he’ll grow up knowing that people are different and that it’s not only OK that they are, but that it’s one of the best parts of living.

_{This entry remembers staring out the car window, too.}

We loaded up around 60 geocaches into our GPS receivers to possibly find along our trip. Time and the elements – or just lack of interest – prevented us from going after nearly all of them. The only geocache we were determined to go find was the Original Stash Tribute Plaque, where the game of geocaching originated. It was located rather out of the way, outside of Oregon City, Oregon. We found the plaque, snapped a couple of pictures, found the cache, and were quickly on our way to Portland.

Downtown Portland is an interesting place. It has many of the oddities you’d expect a big city to have, just a bit smaller in scale in most regards. The river walk was pretty busy, probably due to it being an unusually pleasant day for February, but the city itself wasn’t too much abuzz with cars and people, which was nice.

We stopped in to Old Town Pizza, an establishment that’s been reported to be haunted and a local favorite. We sat in the back booth where it is rumored a girl named Nina died after being thrown down an elevator shaft (and is now the booth we dined in). None of us could claim that we experienced the spirit of the girl visiting us, but it did make for some interesting conversation while we dined.

Keeping in theme with the unusual, we stopped into Voodoo Doughnut, where they claim that “The magic is in the hole.” They have some rather interesting types of doughnuts such as the Voodoo Doll Doughnut (a voodoo doll filled with red berry filling, impaled with a pretzel stick), the Bacon Maple Bar (a maple bar topped with bacon), and the Cock-n-Balls (shaped like, well … as it sounds).

While none of us were brave or hungry enough to order the Cock-n-Balls (it was rather large, after all) but we did enjoy our choices as we walked down the street in search of Powell’s Books. After wandering a bit and asking directions (it wasn’t on our map!) we found the book store. There’s a reason why this place is so well known. Not only is it huge, it houses an incredible variety of books!

Our day ended with a feast at Christine’s sister’s home. Her husband is an incredible cook and made us a delicious meal that would have taken us days to finish, had we the time. Tomorrow we depart on our return trip to California.

Check out the trip photo set.

Memorable quote: “I can’t believe that I’m saying it’s warm while walking around Portland in February!” – Gabe

_{This entry is going back to Cali … I don’t think so.}

Today – yes, I’m actually posting on the same day for once – we left Seaside and drove up to Fort Clatsop. This is the area where Lewis & Clark finally came to the Pacific Ocean and stayed the winter of 1805-1806. We learned a lot about the expedition and found some new respect for the men and their journey.

We went on to Astoria, Oregon where we tried to climb the Astoria Column only to find it was closed for maintenance. The tower itself was quite interesting, though. After the tower, we visited the Maritime Museum and learned much about the history of sailing and the coast guard – we even got to tour an old light ship that was used to help ships find the mouth of the mighty Columbia River.

With the long Astoria-Megler Bridge in sight, the decision was clear that we’d be driving into Washington and taking the northern route to Christine’s parent’s home. This also happened to be the reported general route of the Lewis & Clark expedition. Wouldn’t they be astounded by how easy it is now to cross the country now?

Check out the trip photo set.

_{This entry probably isn’t rugged enough to have made the journey on foot.}

Seaside is a sleepy little town in winter. Our arrival on President’s Day deceived us, as there were still plenty of people about town. The next morning, as we walked the downtown area, the town seemed almost deserted – not that we minded. After our first restful night, we visited with Christine’s family who had rented a house a few blocks from where we were staying. We checked out the local aquarium and fed the sea lions there.

Most of our trips don’t allow for Sam & Rece to have much time to pursue their own adventures. We felt that Seaside would be a good place to let them roam freely. They enjoyed spending time away from our watchful eyes and to do whatever they felt they wanted without having to worry about them getting into trouble. They seemed to enjoy their freedom and looked like they were enjoying the vacation even more.

One morning we rented some beach cycles and had fun riding them around on the beach. Christine’s nephew hadn’t much experience riding a bike, but took to these without any problem.

Christine and I checked out Cannon Beach to take some photos and to watch the sunset. With the large rocks on the coast and a setting sun, it wasn’t difficult to take a lot of great pictures and enjoy the view.

We spent 3 nights in Seaside and left feeling rested and ready to move on to more adventures.

Check out the trip photo set.

_{This entry would love a cabin at the beach.}