2008: Wrap Up

As I said earlier, 2008 was a big year for me. I started the year off pretty strong when I for the first time kept a New Year’s resolution. What was it, well it was to quit smoking. I smoked my last cigarette on New Years Eve, 2008. Quitting cold turkey was hard, but I am very glad I did it.

From then I decided it was time for a new car. My 2000 Nissan Maxima was approaching 100k miles and I wanted to sell it before it hit that mile stone. I ended up trading it in for a brand new straight of the truck 2008 Nissan Altima. So far, I love the card, it is a step down from the Maxima, but it get great gas mileage and handles like a race car. Having a car payment sucks, but you got to do what you got to do!

In the summer of 2008 I took my first trip out west. The trip was originally suppose to be a 2 week romp out to San Francisco and Las Vegas, but the unfortunate passing of my grandmother 2 days before I was suppose to leave cancelled the San Francisco part of the trip. I did still make it to Las Vegas though and was that ever and experience. Between the big wins at the poker and blackjack tables and the massive bar tabs, I can say that Vegas truly was an experience to remember. more…

From there, came the biggest thing I have ever done in my life. I bought a house. That is a big step for anyone, buying there first house. It was a smart decision to purchase at the time I did because of how crappy the economy was. I am still in the process of painting my house and making it my own, but it is almost done.

A couple of other things, in March is when I made the switch from a PC to a MAC, with the purchase of brand new Macbook Pro. In October of 2008, I purchased my second Macbook Pro, the new unibody aluminum model. In October, I also found Megan, my girlfriend, who is amazing. It is not everyday you meet a woman who can appreciate geekdom!

Overall, it is a hell of a year, and I have some big plans to look forward to in 2009.

2009: Outlook

I have some big plans for 2009. They are not personal plans, but more business plans. 2009 is the year I am going to try and transition to more of a technical/web developer life style. I am working on a web project that is unannounced at this point. It is me and 3 others developers working on it. I am hoping to launch in 2 months. I hope that this new project will help me to develop more of an income from my web development side work.

I am trying to be more efficient in my web development style, and am exploring new methods of development as I am approaching this new project as more of a business in a professional aspect. I have no travel plans as of 2009, but I hope to take my San Francisco trip that I missed out on this year.

My 2009 New Year resolution is going to be more fit and lose some weight which I have a jump start on already.

What are ya’lls resolutions?

Related Posts

• Macworld 2009 Quickie
  Photo Credit: Ars Technica OK, well...
• Macworld 09, Rumor Wrap Up
  With the Macworld 2009 keynote just ...
• HOW TO: Upgrade a (new) Macbook Pro to 4...
  In this guide, I am going to show yo...

Instead of posting about tech news, I have been dealing with appraisals, inspections, mortgages, and more! I am set to close on my house December 1st, 2008, yay! I have a few week break between now and when I move in, so I am going to take this time to try and post as much content as I can.

The House

Some of you might be interested in my house, and some of you might not, but I am going to talk about it anyways haha. I am purchasing a 2 bedroom, 2.5 bath, end-unit town home here is Atlanta, GA. I am super excited. This is my first ever house, and it is a very nice place. I can thank the economy for getting me such a good price. Below are some pictures. I hope you all like!

The house is in great shape, it is newly painted in and out. I t also has a very well groomed backyard and side yard. Now all I need is furniture, I am currently only renting a room in a house, so all the furniture I have is just office and Bedroom.

I promise you more post are the way.

Related Posts

• 2008 Wrap Up / 2009 Outlook
  2008 was kind of a big year for me. I st...

In an attempt to better establish myself as a professional blogger and web developer and not just another kid attempting to get rich quick online, I decided to design some business cards for myself. In a few weeks I will be attending the Webmaster Jam Session 2008, so I wanted to make sure I had something in print that I can use for networking at the event.

So, I did some research on the subject and came across a post on my friend Paul Stamatiou‘s blog, and took his advice. I looked into a few options of where to have the cards printed. The 2 places I narrowed it down to was Moo.com and OvernightPrints.com. After looking at the 2 different sites in detail, I decided to go with Overnight Prints because it was cheaper, and provided quicker turn around.

I used a template I found floating around the net as the template for my design. When having something printed off site, it is important that you follow a template to make sure your design bleeds well, and your logo or content don’t get cut off.

Overnight Prints PSD

I uploaded the design as a high quality JPG to the Overnight Prints website, picked my glossy or matte finsh, approved my final design, and submitted my order. The next day I recieved a email from quality control at Overnight Prints saying that there was a misprint found in my design. What had happend is the image didn’t upload correctly and it resulted in one sides of my card was printing blank. They quickly haulted the printing, and notified me. At that time, I reuploaded my design and the continued witht he printing at no additional charge to me.

I am very happy with the prints, but I opted for a glossy front and matte black, after seeing the glossy finish in person, I am thinking my next order I will get matte on both sides. The glossy was to shiny, and showed finger prints.

What are your thoughts? Do you like my design? Do you have your own self designed business cards?

Related Posts

• Me Today 10-5-2008
  Just a quick video updating you all on e...
• Me Today 8-23-2008
  Well, I am a big fan of watching people ...
• Webmaster Jam Session 2008
  In early October, I will be attending th...

Well, as I am writing this post I am in the process of doing  Time Machine restore. When I originally bought my Macbook Pro, I setup time machine purely because I had an extra 500GB external hard drive laying round, and I wanted to be able to brag to people about how cool time machine looks when you use it. Well, I have had my Macbook Pro for over 4 months now, and today is the 3rd time Time Machine has saved my ass!

I was at work earlier today running software updates on OS X when my machine asked me if i wanted to restart after it installed an update, and with out thinking, I clicked OK. When my machine came back up it occurred to me that I had my Windows XP Pro VMware Fusion partition running, and had not properly suspended it or shut it down. I quickly opened up VMware Fusion to see if it was still OK. Well it wasn’t, I found that it was frozen on the loading screen when trying to load up the Windows XP Pro install from where it left off. So yea, at this point I am worried.

I use Windows XP Pro on VMware Fusion as my primary work computer so when this would not load, I freaked. I had a 50GB partition of my hard drive filled with important work stuff and it would not load.

With in a few minutes I realized I had a Time Machine backup of that data on my home external backup drive. I opened up Time Machine, browsed to the Virtual Machines folder and clicked restore from my update last night. What a relief!!

Time Machine is probably the most unused program that comes on a Mac, but I would recommend you run it in the background all the time. When you happen to need it, it is great! Now if I could just get 50GB of data to restore in less than 1 hour I might actually get some work done today!

Related Posts

• New Macbook Pro + Wired Keyboard = Troub...
  It appears that Apple is having some i...
• Macworld 2009 Quickie
  Photo Credit: Ars Technica OK, well...
• Macworld 09, Rumor Wrap Up
  With the Macworld 2009 keynote just ...

With that said, I recently started the 100 push up challenge. I am in week 2 when writing this post. I have never been able to do a lot of pushups. I started the program by doing the beginning test which ask you to test yourself by seeing how many pushups you can do in one set. Well, this is hard for me to disclose, but I was only able to do 8 pushups during that test.

Well, it is currently week 2 and I most recently accomplished 32 pushups. This might not seem like to much to some of you, but it is over 200% improvement in just 1 week. The plan is to keep up with the schedule. If I come to a point where I can’t complete that days challenge, I will repeat said challenge for the next full 3 days.

I am not sure if I will complete the challenge in the set schedule of 6 weeks, but I plan to keep up with it till I can do 100 push ups in 30 minutes.

If you all are interested in taking on this challenge, check out the website for more information.

Most Commented Posts

• Did UPS intentionally delay my package?
  I just ordered a new external hard drive...
• Parallels Desktop 5 vs. VMware Fusion 3
  In the last couple weeks, we have seen M...
• How-To: Create Custom Share Buttons For ...
  For those of you that follow me, you are...

Related Posts

• Me Today 10-5-2008
  Just a quick video updating you all on e...
• My Business Cards
  In an attempt to better establish my...
• NEW iTunes 8 Visualizer Video Demo
  Just a quick video to show off the new i...

The Webmaster Jam Session is an all around web developers conference. It covers web design, coding, SEO, and social networking. I plan to use this as an opportunity to network with some of the biggest names in the business. Registration for the 2008 sessions is limited to 240, so if you are interested, be sure to sign up soon. The price is $199 for a standard pass, and $399 for a platinum pass which includes some extra special sessions. If you are interested in registering use promo code “BLUEDOG” and save 20% of the standard prices.

I will be attending all day everyday, so if you are attending, be sure to let me know and we can meet up at the event.

Related Posts

• 15 Beautifully Simple Web Designs
  For a couple of weeks now I have been br...
• Me Today 10-5-2008
  Just a quick video updating you all on e...
• My Business Cards
  In an attempt to better establish my...

As a result, I had to cancel the San Francisco portion on my trip. I was suppose to fly to San Francisco on Monday but I was in Gettysburg for the funeral. I did still take the second portion of my trip which was a trip to Las Vegas for a 3 bachelor party.

Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas

I arrived in Las Vegas on Thursday, July 20th, 2008. I was the first of the group to arrive so I had some time to myself. I took a cab to the MGM Grand which was where I was staying. From there I dropped my bags and headed downstairs to the casino to drop $1 in a slot machine. I won $5 so I knew it was going to be a good trip. After my one play, I headed outside to do some exploring. It was about 105 degree’s outside, but it was equal to about a 95 degree day in ATL with 100% humidity! I started walking down the strip past New York New York, Planet Hollywood, Bellagio, and Caesars Palace. This was about as far as I could go because the heat and the fact that I had walked about 10 miles when you factor in exploring the inside of each of the hotels.

Each of these hotels was pretty unique and amazing in its own. New York, New York was visually stunning from the outside. Planet Hollywood was very trendy on the inside with lots of shops and restaurants. The Bellagio was amazing with the pools and the fountains out front. Caesars was pretty awesome in and out, it was very visual with a lot of stunning replica style architecture from the Roman days.

Around 8pm the rest of my crew arrived. We spent the majority of this night in the Casino at the MGM Grand. I played a lot of Blackjack, some slots, and tried to play some of the other games but I was no good. After the first night, I was down about $300.00.

Day 2

My roommate Richard and I decided to go grab some lunch at the Hooters Hotel and Casino across the street. A couple of beers and some lunch later we decided to hit the pool at the MGM Grand and man did we hit it hard! We could not get a hold of the rest of the group, so we just chilled at the pool and drink very heavily! I bought a thing of SPF lotion for $17.00 at the hotel GRRR! After about 15 beers and 2 x $15.00 Margaritas, I decided it was time for a Nap! This was a big mistake. I should have stayed awake because I woke up feeling hung over as all hell at like 9pm. This pretty much ruined the rest of my evening. I went with the group to a club called TAO for a little while, but I decided to head back to the hotel about an hour after being there because I felt horrible.

I rested for a few hours then went back down to the Casino to do some gambling at around 3am. At about 5am I popped a quarter into a slot machine and hit a $400 jackpot! This was great because I was down by about $400 at the time so it was good to be back even! After that I called it a night at about 6am.

Day 3

I woke up about 10am the next day and decided to take the day and do some more exploring because the rest of the group was going back to the pool, but I had enough sun. I took the Monorail down past where I had already explored to save myself the walk.

This time around I checked out the Venetian, and the Mirage. The Venetian was by far the coolest of all the hotels. It looks like an Italian city on the inside and outside. They have rivers of crystal clear blue water inside and outside. You can also ride a gondola through the hotel. It was pretty neat. I took a ton of photos.

The Mirage was very cool too, it had some amazing gardens and waterfalls. The fish tank at the front desk was awesome. I explored around the lobby and the pools for a few hours and got in line to see the dolphin habitat but opted out of spending the $20.00 it cost to see them. I now wish I would have went in.

About 3pm I headed back to the MGM Grand where I took another nap. About 5pm Richard, Dave and myself decided to go check out the Stratosphere. Richard and Dave bought tickets to the ride on top, but I decided not to because I had already been drinking and didn’t want to get sick. The Stratosphere is pretty awesome, the view from up there is amazing. We were there during sunset so it was pretty amazing to see the strip during the day and at night. I didn’t have my camera, but I did bring my Flip camera so I have some video from up there.

Richard and Dave road one of the rides at the top then decided to not do the other 2. We offered our tickets to a newly wed couple that had just been married at the to of the Stratosphere. They were pretty excited that we gave them the tickets. I got a video of them that I wanted to post so they could save it. I didn’t get there names, so I am hoping they will leave me a comment and let me know who they were.

Newly Weds Video Coming Soon!

After the Stratosphere Dave and I went over to the Mirage for some dinner, and he wanted to do some gambling because he had gotten lucky on the slots there the night before. I decided to play just a little so I through $2 in to the penny slots to kill some time while he played. I turned my $2 into $22 at the penny slots so I decided to upgrade to the quarter slots and I hit a $200 jackpot! This was awesome. I had completely broke even for my gambling which is pretty good for Vegas. I decided this was it for the gambling. After that we went back to the hotel where Richard and I relaxed and watch Jerry McGuire. I called it a night about about 3am because I had to be at the airport by 9am the next morning to head back to Atlanta.

Overall the trip was a lot of fun. I did much more walking then expected, gambled for a few days and still broke even, saw some great sites, and ate some good food. But after 3 days in Vegas, you are ready to come home and get some sleep.

As for San Francisco, I still plan to make it out there, but I am am thinking Fall, because I hear it is beautiful out there in the Fall.

Related Posts

• San Francisco and Las Vegas Vacation
  Photo Taken By Thomas Hawk San Franci...
• 2008 Wrap Up / 2009 Outlook
  2008 was kind of a big year for me. I st...
• The Flip Mino HD
  Some of you know how much of a fan I...

Friday, I was stuck at work. I had to go in for a few hours by request of my property manager. It turned out to be a good time to catch up on all the work I needed to catch up on. I got done there at around 6pm and went home to relax for a while. From there I then went to the Buckhead area of Atlanta to watch the Lenox Mall fireworks which is one of the the biggest, if not the biggest, fireworks displays in Atlanta. The property I run is very near Lenox Mall, so I had access to an area where most people were not allowed. From there I set up my camera and tripod to see if I can get some good photos of the fireworks. I stuck around and shot some photos of the crowd and the traffic afterwords. I was mainly just trying to work on my evening long exposure shots. I am pretty happy with my results. Overall it was a very enjoyable evening.

On Saturday, I went up to my parents house for a day on the lake. I was not feeling great so I only took a few photos. We had a good turn out and I got a good action shot of Matt (my soon to be brother in law) jumping off the dock.

Sunday was a relax/house work day. I helped my roommate paint the spare bedroom in our house. The painting was fun. With 2 people it goes quick. The paint is a bit to yellow, but it looked OK once it dried. I will be moving into that bedroom soon because it is bigger and has a bathroom. We are going to do some more work on it over the next few weeks before I move in.

Oh and one final note, I leave for my San Francisco and Las Vegas trip in 1 week! I am getting pretty excited. See this post for more info.

Related Posts

• Nikon D40 Kit Review
  A couple of weeks ago, I dropped the...

San Francisco and Las Vegas, here I come. I have booked my summer vacation. I will be arriving at SFO on Monday, July 14th. I am so incredibly excited to go to San Francisco, I have never been out west, so this is a big deal for me. I am staying in the Fisherman’s Warf area of town. I look forward to taking some great photo of the Golden Gate Bridge. I am also very excited to visit Alcatraz Island, which has been a interest of mine from when I was a little kid.

Photo Taken By Bob Townsend

I stay in San Francisco for 3 days, then I am taking a Virgin America jumper flight out to Las Vegas where I am meeting 6 other friends of mine for a Bachelor Party Vegas Style. I am not sure what I will get to see because this is most likely going to be a drunkfest. I am hoping to check out the different theme hotels, some of the lavish nightclubs, and of course a strip club, I mean come on it is a Bachelor Party!

I have some friends in San Francisco, so I am hoping I will get to visit some web 2.0 offices, but I don’t have any specific plans yet. If you live in SF and want to meet up with me, leave me a comment. I will be alone in SF so I would like to meet up with some of my West Coast friends. Have any suggestions of stuff I should see on my trip, please let me know. I only have 3 days in each city so I will be trying to fit a much in as I can.

Any comments, tips, recommendations, … would be very much appreciated.

Related Posts

• What Happens In Vegas, Stays In Vegas
  OK, so lots to update you on. First off,...
• 2008 Wrap Up / 2009 Outlook
  2008 was kind of a big year for me. I st...