Status update

I’ve been counting my blessings lately. I don’t do it enough.

It’s been a really packed summer. We moved into a new place, a three bedroom house on the same property that we’ve lived the last four years. The move was bittersweet, though. Our dear neighbor and friend passed away after a long bout with cancer, and we inherited her house and a lot of her stuff. The first few weeks moving and living here was a little tough, since we moved into what was essentially a full house, but we’ve made it our home in less time and effort than I thought it would take. And I’m falling more and more in love with the property we’ve been on for four years. It’s almost like a park, with the creek running through the back of the property. I think I changed recently, and thinking about moving to the Bay Area has made me realize how lucky I am here.

Nicole and I are doing great. We share lots of laughter and love.

My sister stayed with us for two weeks on her summer break, and it was wonderful. She is growing up to be a funny, sweet, intelligent and charming young woman. It’s awesome that I have such a great sister and friend.

My brother and his wife moved into a new house. It’s swanky. My brother is okay, for a smelly crazy guy.

I officiated Cat and Aeron Ford’s wedding in mid-August, which was my first time doing anything of the sort. I was nervous. Cat’s one request was that I keep her laughing so much that she couldn’t cry. Basically it meant that I had to trim most of the typical wedding crud from my first few drafts, and actually write something from the heart. And the gut. It was risky but it paid off, and to my benefit, Cat and Aeron still call me a friend.

The next book is coming along swimmingly. Tentative title: “Facts” About Faraway Stars. Of course I know everybody is probably going to call it Maybe There Is Something Poetic About These Fish Anyway, but they’ll probably only call it that to my face. Look for it next Spring.

Before that comes out, the three gents in my writing group and I are releasing a book of mostly new poems before the end of the year. More info on that soon.

I’ve been writing and rewriting and reading like crazy. I’m going to be a featured reader during the upcoming Plein Aire Poetry festival at the end of September. Should be awesome.

Well, my fingers are about to fall off… so hope you’re doing great, too, The Internet. Keep on tubin’.

A post of updates

A week ago I was married. It was possibly the greatest day of my life, and I had a blast seeing all the smiling faces of these people who love us (or just like us, that’s cool too). Here’s a small taste of the proceedings, from the first dance:

Believe it or not, search for Lawless Duel on the Googlemeister and that video is the no. 1 hit! Thanks to everybody who made it, and special thanks to everybody who posted their pictures on Facebook. It’s been a blast re-living those memories with you.

I never thought I could love Nicole more than I already did, but one week into the marriage and I’m glad to say I was wrong.

Also, today I submitted my business license for Penciled In Designs! I’m now legitimate business!

I’m now running the Windows 7 Release Candidate on my main machine and I’m seriously impressed.

The new PenciledIn.com

Welcome to the new site.

I needed to change things around to more accurately portray how I help people. This “new business” smell is awfully alluring!

It sounds bad, but its actually alright

Well, unfortunately on Friday I was laid off from BIG Images and Add Interactivity. It’s a little scary, but it’s given me the kick in the pants to actually get my business license and do my own thing full time.

I also left on very good terms. In fact, it’s kinda like I haven’t left at all given I still get to keep my desk and iMac for all my projects.

So, I’m planning on doing some major changes to this website soon. Things are actually very bright. I’m very involved with a couple of pretty large projects already.

Just thought I’d let you know.

Lawless vs. Sir Internet Explorer, the Sixth

Today, after a many hour battle with IE6 on a site I’m developing, I emerged triumphant.

I am truly a master of time and space.

Election Results

Yep, I voted.

The parking situation

At BIG Images, our street has notoriously horrible parking. Walking a block (or just biking from our houses) isn’t too much hassle for the people who work here, but sometimes people park in our parking lot and go to other businesses nearby rather than walking a block themselves. If they ask us if it’s cool, we pretty much give them the go-ahead, never mind that we have signs saying “PARKING FOR BIG IMAGES AND iii DESIGN” right in front of every parking spot.

Heck, sometimes people even stop and leave their car fully blocking the driveway. That really grinds my gears.

My mind often fills with possible avenues of revenge:

• Slapping a few BIG Images stickers and letting them advertise for us around town, you know, as a trade for our inconvenience.
• We have a giant slab of styrofoam that looks an awful lot like a boulder. We just pick it up and set it behind their car.

Friday a “gentleman” in a gigantic Ford F250 blocked our driveway to go next door. Completely blocked.

I wrote a note on a piece of paper saying,

“Please be more considerate to others. Respectfully, BIG Images and iii Design”

and stuck it under his windshield.

A few minutes later, he walked out to his jerkmobile, grabbed the note, and yelled back at the shop, “next time I’m going to block the entire f***ing driveway!” before peeling away. What a class act.

Save the date!

I don’t think I’ve been as excited about the wedding as I am now, but finding a site and picking a date kinda did that to me!

So, for all of you that want the skinny before almost everybody else, save May 2nd, 2009 for a totally face-kicking good time. We’ve put down the deposit for the Dana-Powers House, and believe me, it’s far more beautiful than the site shows.

Oh, it’s on.

Let that be a lesson to me

So, here’s a strange predicament: Thursday, I updated my site to WordPress 2.5 (mmm-mmm-mmm, good) and on Friday, 2.5.1 comes out, so I upload it to my site. Coda, by Panic software, is my FTP manager of choice. I think they added a new option when uploading, but I didn’t pause to take it in. When you upload a directory, you can either Replace or Merge. I have always just had the option to Replace, which, believe it or not, replaces the files that are new and leaves all the other files alone. Turns out this the behavior I want is now Merge, and Replace destroys the entire directory, and then rewrites it.

That means all my photos I’ve uploaded to my blog are lost, as well as the themes I’ve collected o’er the years. It’s not a huge deal, but if you were wondering why my site was sporting Kubrick until this morning, that’s why.

My weekend plans to become bear wrestling champion

I’m a little bit anxious; I’m going camping for the first time since I
was 12. Nicole’s Senior Project studies have her traveling up to Hi
Mountain most of the weekends this quarter, and this time I get to
join her. I hear there’s a spot on the peak where you can see both the
ocean and the Sierra Nevadas at once.

So, if I get mauled by bears, I expect all of you to visit me in the
hospital. Laugh now, but Nicole has been trying to convince me that
it’s standard for campers to leave bits of raw meat all around the
campsite right before bed.