Taking The Heat...

Alright... alright... I think I'm getting the point. I need to blog a little bit.

Over the last 8 moths or so... the "bloggable" moments have been few and far between. And most of the ones I did have involved a cutie pie who is only a few feet tall. So I'm sorry to turn this blog into a one girl show... but she really does steal the show if you ask me.

Nonetheless... I'll try to back fill a little over the next few days... and then make sure to keep this thing a little more updated! :o)

[Edit] Added at 4/15 Round And Round...

Round And Round...

I actually grabbed this video when I was home to see the family in March... and thought it was pretty funny at the time. I ended up losing track of it on my camera and just got back around to making it a little bit easier to watch for all you guys out there.

Of course it's edited... and because it's sped up... the audio doesn't line up exactly... but this video came together really easily. The timing on all the edits just seemed to work out to make it a really, really funny video for me. After I finished editing it... I found myself laughing out loud.

Ahh... the joys of a toddler who can make anything fun!!! Completely unprompted and totally adorable to her uncle. Check it out and let me know if you got a kick out of it...

Fun With Static

When my sister was out to visit me in Santa Barbara last month she had the "privilege" of sleeping in my wonderful bed... while I was out on the futon.

The first night as we were putting clean sheets onto it... I was telling her about how much static the blanket I have can carry. Literally as I was telling her this the static was creating visual sparks in the dark room. She told me she had the same kind of blanket at home and that her's was just as bad.

Not too long after they got back to Vegas I got an email from my sister with a couple pictures and a video attached.

I think they speak for themselves... :o)

Love this girl!!

Backup!

When it comes to your digital life... do you know how at risk you are of losing it? Most of you who are reading this have probably heard this kind of thing before... but the real question I'm interested in... how many of you actually backup your digital life? When your computer decides to hiccup, cough, or just plain die on you... will all of your memories go with it? (Looking with eyes wide open at my family members here.)

If you don't already back things up... you probably fit into one of a couple different categories:

1. You have a blind faith in your computer's hard drive... thinking it will always turn on and start right up for you.

2. You feel overwhelmed by the idea of backups because you don't really understand how to go about doing it.

3. You know you should... you know how to... you just enjoy the thrill of living at risk!


I'm interested to know what most of you guys think and do about this. A few weeks back I had an incident where an iTunes file on my system got corrupted. It represented many hours of work... and would have been a bummer to lose. Fortunately I was able to use a week old backup and was up and running again within minutes. A simple example... but really got me thinking about the whole idea.




Personally I've been using a program that came with my .Mac membership called Backup. I've got a pretty decent knowledge of where all my personal files exist so it gives me the freedom to backup what I want to... when I want to... how I want to. But this is by no means the only or best way. There are things like Time Machine for Macs... or even online stuff like Mozy. Even photo sites like Flickr can serve as a backup.

Are you backing up? Are you not convinced it's worth spending a little money to do? Do you fit in category 2 and just need some pointers?

A Trip To The Zoo

Over the last year... it's worked out that I've made most of the trips to see my family. They last came out to visit me in Santa Barbara back in April... but not since then. So I've started to give them some grief about how they never come visit me... especially since I start getting anxious every couple months that I don't get to see my niece.

The last time I had seen my niece was Christmas... so I was able to convince my sister that she should come out to see me this month. The weather in Santa Barbara this week was wonderful... and I think they had a nice relaxing time out here. We got a chance to take Loralyn to the zoo here in town and I grabbed this video on the way there... pretty cute.

Angels & Airwaves

It was a few months back that my best buddy Dave was over at my place checking out the website for Angels & Airwaves. He had told me about them long before that... but I hadn't really paid much attention. However... that night he was playing some music videos from their most recent album and the music caught my attention. I love finding new music and these guys were right up my alley.
A&A came through SoCal this week and we had the chance to catch them in Ventura. Dave, Dayna, Carly, and I met up for some dinner before the show at Cafe Fiore just down the street from the theater where the show was at. The atmosphere was great and so was the food. We probably left the table too soon because we had to sit through a little bit too much of the warm up bands... who weren't anything special.

When A&A came out... I wasn't quite sure what to expect from Tom DeLonge. He's definitely changed his music around since his days with Blink-182... but I wasn't quite sure about Tom himself. Needless to say... Tom and I probably still wouldn't see eye to eye on much... but I can still appreciate his music! :o) These guys put on a pretty good show and the music was awesome... standing 10 feet from the speakers definitely let me have a pretty good listen to it!

Here's a peak of the video I grabbed with my Canon 850 point and shoot.

It was fun to open up Final Cut Pro again. I hadn't messed around with it in a little while. I stole some tricks from my new buddy Paul Rogers... who's got a bag full of them! Thanks for the new ideas Paul!

AP & LG IN SB

I've always claimed that Santa Barbara is one of the best places I've ever been... and this weekend I got the chance to show it off to some friends from Texas.

Annemarie (AP) and Lora (LG) came on over to SoCal for a surprise birthday party on Saturday night... but had Friday night and all day Saturday to see a little bit of the west coast. AP had never been to Santa Barbara and Lora had only passed through awhile back... so they decided they wanted to see what all the fuss was about. :o) So I got the chance to play chauffeur and also do something I'd never done before in SB...






We started out at the UCSB campus and walked around a little bit before heading over to the mission. After a quick stop there we headed up onto the riviera to DJ's place and a good look at Santa Barbara from his balcony. Back on down the hill... we stopped downtown and went up into the tower of the SB County building. Although it's a beautiful building... I guess I never really paid attention to it with much detail... because I never knew you could go up there. So that was a first for me. We did some other typical SB stuff... like walking up and down State Street... getting a Blenders... walking out on the pier... grabbing some food at Longboards... and having dessert at the Biltmore. The sun was out (maybe too much) and the weather was wonderful... making it a pretty sweet day! And I've got to give credit to AP for all but one of the pics in this post... she's a photo journalist at heart... and captured the day wonderfully!

On the way back down to drop AP and LG off for the surprise party they were out here for, we took out my computer to look at some of the software I'm working on. AP, who doesn't own a Mac, found Photo Booth for the first time and snapped some pictures of her and LG in my truck. I've got a couple pretty "sweet" pictures of the two of them now... so I'll only post the least horrible of them! :) But in all fairness I'll post a "sweet" picture of myself as well in the back of their rental car!. Thanks for making my weekend so much fun you two! Looking forward to the next time we get to hang out!

Good Ol' Whiffle Ball

Ahhhh.... I can vividly remember the summer days growing up. I lived in the typical middle class neighborhood... and as such... we had a half dozen or so guys that all hung out at each other's houses. We'd cruise around the neighborhood on our bikes... play football in the middle of the street from light pole to light pole... basketball in each other's driveways... take turns swimming at each other's houses... play Tecmo Bowl and MikeTyson's Punch Out on the Nintendo. It was great!!

However, the thing you'd find us doing the most... was playing whiffle ball! My buddy Brian's house was our favorite spot to play because his house was the perfect distance from the opposite side of the street he lived on. You'd hit and pitch across the width of the street... and if you really got ahold of one... you could clear the top of the roof. Ahhhh... the good ol' days.

In an effort to never really grow up... my best bud Dave and I recently got out and played some whiffle ball. It was a boys only weekend... so of course, we overslept, played some video games, and listened to loud music. But the whiffle ball was definitely the highlight!

Check out the video below. I thought it was amusing... but I was there... which always makes things more amusing.

And to wrap up the day of whiffle ball... we took a trip to 7-Eleven where I kept up the nostalgia and bought myself a very typical post whiffle ball snack!

The Best Place On Earth

I consider Santa Barbara to be one of the best places I've ever been to... and I feel very fortunate to call it my home town. I find myself saying it to myself all the time... "Self... can you believe how incredible the place where you live is?!?" Then a day like today rolls along and I'm just floored all over again. Today Santa Barbara was THE best place on earth!

If you don't live here... I'm sorry.

If you do live here and didn't get outside today... I'm sorry.

And now I'm off to go play some tennis and enjoy dusk... my favorite time of day!

Oh Charlie... You're Too Funny

At the risk of repeating everything that my friends are posting... I just had to put this up on my blog for everyone who isn't part of the SB crew! It's provided me with some gut wrenching laughter in the last few days... literally laying on the floor in pain from laughter. Check out the video below... or you can join one of the 8 million who have enjoyed it on YouTube here.

Ahhhhh... that was great! My favorite part is when he gets to the point of screaming "Oooowwwwww!" at the top of his lungs! I can't NOT laugh!