Monthly Archives: August 2008

Template Update

Posted by admin on August 28, 2008 None comments

Depending on whether you read this blog through an RSS feed aggregator or not, you may or may not have noticed the new site template. One of the things I really like about WordPress is that it is ridiculously easy to update the site template. I mentioned back in February that I migrated from Moveable Type to WordPress for what ammounted to various usability and administration issues like this.

Updating themes is easy. First you have to download a theme from somewhere. I had been browsing themes.wordpress.com, though now that I poke around, I can see that there are many other WordPress theme sites. In fact this site also has the theme I’ve just switched too, titled Amazing Grace. Once you download it, unzip it and transfer it into your WordPress wp-content folder under “themes”. Once it is there, the WordPress Administration area just recognizes it – you click it and it is applied – automagically! You can switch back and forth from one theme to another with a simple click of the mouse. When you are used to typical web design and the effort it takes to develop different look and feel – it is a fun thing to do this and see a site change instantly!

So, this Amazing Grace theme is a nice clean theme that I chose for a few reasons. One is, I like the color scheme – it is reminiscent of the colors I use on tombartel.com. I like the neutrals – grey, taupe, black, white. Good contrasts and basic. The other thing I liked was the easy modification of the Amazing Grace theme to change the pictures in the upper right of the page to be photos that I’ve taken. There are a dozen or so that are rotated randomly each time you load a page. Go ahead, refresh this page and see. See? That was a fun exercise, selecting some of my favorite photos that I’ve taken over the years. I wish there was a description or label for each, maybe a hover over description, but there isn’t. I thought about trying to hack that in. We’ll see.

So, that’s my new template with WordPress. I hope you enjoy it for now – and knowing how easy WordPress makes it to change these, look for future theme changes down the road!

Quick Funny II

Posted by admin on August 25, 2008 None comments

Okay, Close To Home, got me again this weekend, especially since I work for an email company:


Close To Home 7/8/2008

Back To School

Posted by admin on August 22, 2008 None comments



P8184687

Originally uploaded by gcrgcr

Yep – that time of year again… where did Summer go?

On Monday this week, the annual return to school ritual capped out with our regular photo shoot on the lawn and photos from the bus pick up. Back to school of course includes much more than that – schools supplies, clothes shopping, getting ready for bed sooner and no sleeping in…

All three kids ride the same bus to and from now. It sure is fun to watch them grow and do this each year.

It sure will be sad someday when they don’t. We’ll try not to think about that now.

Enjoy the full set or slideshow of the Back To School shoot!

The Mouse Plank

Posted by admin on August 17, 2008 None comments

We enjoyed reading about and then hearing a bit more in person of our friends the Risdons battling some purported mice at their home the past few weeks. Apparently these fiends leave droppings each morning on the porch, disrupting Ken’s morning newspaper retrieval, and largely fouling his morning. This is really Ken’s battle – Beth is just enjoying the show. Full background from Beth is available at their Blog site – What Will He Think of Next.

I’m mentioning it here, only because I took note of the photo Beth posted of the latest setup Ken has in place. Using some military-grade graphics analysis software I have access too, I have identified some new insights. I’m not sure if this is helpful or not, but wanted to post here just in case.

Mouse over the photo below to see the difference between the initial photo and what is visible to the naked eye and what you can see after processing the image with this proprietary technology. If mousing over doesn’t work (how appropriate) just click here to view the end result.

Mouse Plank Before

Dad Week

Posted by admin on August 11, 2008 None comments



Dad Week Board

Originally uploaded by gcrgcr

What is Dad Week you ask? It is basically a vacation – or maybe even a “staycation” (ugh, so pop culture – thanks for that George!)

As a family, we’ve already been on some cool trips this year. Walt Disney World in January and Las Vegas in March for the NASCAR race. For summer fun, the kids have stayed busy with friends around town, local camps and activities, camping, etc…

Sometime earlier in the summer, I suggested that I would take a week off to just be home and do a bunch of fun things with the kids.

One key was to schedule this before the kids go back to school – which is next week!

Then, we had to pick out the things we wanted to do and get them scheduled. With no shortage of ideas to fill up six or seven days, we had to have a process to whittle things down a bit. At work, our development team (and some of our other operations teams) use the Agile process. We use Rally software.

If you are not familiar with the Agile process, in a nutshell, you plan development in ‘iterations’. There is a careful planning process that includes product management or others needing development work brining their “stories”. Stories are requirements or tasks to complete or progress a project. While the Rally software allows this to all be done electronically, our teams have found that using post-it notes helps in the acceptance, scheduling and tracking with our teams. So, long story short, we did this at home.

Each of us created three “stories” – things we wanted to do during Dad Week. One thing could cost money (e.g. the Movies) and two things had to not cost money (or be very minimal in cost). We then sat down and worked together to accepts stories and schedule them throughout the Dad Week days. The kids came up with great suggestions, and we’ve been having a blast. You can see the photo of our Dad Week Board above. Here is some of the list:

  • Water World
  • Family Guitar Hero Contest
  • Out To Lunch
  • Go Hiking
  • Hit a Movie
  • Splurge Breakfast (Waffles, Bacon, Sausage and real maple syrup) [Thanks Neil!]
  • Kids Plan and Cook Dinner Night
  • Erie Go Kart Track Day
  • Reading at the Library

And so on… You get the idea. No doubt this is keeping us busy, but we are having a great time. Dad Week is over half way completed. Today we did “Out to Lunch” – Oskar Blues in Lyons, Colorado, and then “Go Hiking” – Heil Valley Ranch near Boulder. We’ve got much more to do the next few days, of course check here for updates. We should have plenty of photos to share too.

I called it Dad Week, but four days into it, it probably should just be called Family Week. Missing work is always less than ideal for me – I love my work – but family and times like these are important – no matter how simple they seem. This has been really great so far and hopefully will be a family tradition from here on out!