Is It Just Me?

Am I the only one who...

• Can't seem to get those comment verifiers on the first try? You know, it's one of these:
  
  And those aren't even the hard ones with the letters all merged together with an overlaid grid!
  
  
• Uses Google to spell-check? I love the "Did you mean..." feature!
  
  
• Hates any embedded video that doesn't allow you to pause it until it's fully loaded? Nothing ruins a funny video more than pausing every 2.3 seconds for buffering.
  
  
• Uses Wikipedia as a culture guide or to "get the joke"? Anytime I ask myself, "what's the deal with (whatever)?" I just look it up on wikipedia.org. The best and most informative ones so far have been "badger badger badger" and "Flying Spaghetti Monster". The only time it's failed me is when it offered no insight into the crazy Scientology brain of Tom Cruise and his many acronyms.
  
  
• Goes to snopes.com (or other websites that combat spam email and urban legends) to verify what's in a forward BEFORE I send it to 85 of my closest friends? (I know I'm the only one who does a "Reply to All" with the snopes.com entry... but we've got to stop the insanity!)
  
  On a related note, I found this page the other day and will be sending it when appropriate.
  
  
• Is confused, baffled and bothered by the prevalent use of an apostrophe to pluralize a word? (For example: "All entree's come with a side of rice" or "I put my photo's and video's online" and the more common 80's or CD's.) Why do people do this? Can anyone explain?
  
  
• Plays a song 100 times in a row when I love it? For instance, that Michael Bublé video I posted the other day... I played it about 15 times in a row.
  
  
• Doesn't think it's a huge deal when someone sings a 'Christian' song on American Idol? The New Girl was in ecstasy two weeks in a row because someone sang 'This Little Light of Mine' and then 'Shout to the Lord'. Heathens have been singing gospel music for years.
  

Just checkin'.

Side note: check out my newest gig! (Thanks, Terri, for the referral.) Those are my designs. I'm working with a realty photographer to design templates with his photos. Very cool.

Where Am I?

Or, where have I been? Well...

We had our first Sunday morning service with Desert Vista Church this past weekend. Our current series is "30 Days to Live", so that's what the banners are for.


Martin leaves today for his first trip back to the Motherland. Fatherland? I'm not sure. Anyhow, he leaves tonight, and won't be back until after Thanksgiving. (No, Mom, murderers won't read my blog, google my address and kill me in the night. Besides, I have a killer dog to protect me.) He'll be seeing family, old friends, and attending his 10-year reunion.

Other than that, I'm keeping busy with work and all the side jobs of Iris Media. I'm looking forward to going to Seattle to see my mom for Thanksgiving, and I'm very excited to be attending an InDesign seminar on November 30 (David, want to go with me?), so hopefully I'll get some mad skillz.

OK, back to work. It's still month end.

It's A-MAZE-ing

As I mentioned a couple months ago, I worked with a farmer in Texas to design a corn maze. Well, it's now in the ground and ready for people to wander through!
How cool is that?

^The corn maze
My final design >>>
(We removed the face from the moon and obviously a lot of the small details were lost in translation...)

We used this image and this image as a starting point, and then added details to fill the space.

Deep Thought Brewing

I've been really busy at work, both at work-work and at home-work. But I'm working on a deep thought, and when I get the time, I'll post it.

In the meantime, go to the links on the right side of my page and visit some other bloggers. Matt's always got something good to say! And if you haven't read Lee's story, you've got to read it now.

Busy Weekend

Saturday was a full day, with getting ready for church and working on two designs for Iris Media: a bus wrap for a ministry in MN, and a corn maze in Kansas.

Today, Martin and I (and Alinea - thanks!) worked the Western International University graduation at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge. Just got home, put a load of laundry in, and now I'm finalizing what is hopefully the last revision on this bus. Then I need to get our April budget updated, our May budget caught up, and our June budget created.

Sometime this afternoon I would also like to get a nap, but I'm not sure that will happen. Because tonight is the season finales of both Desperate Housewives and Brothers & Sisters.

(Martin - I am not goofing off. It takes a looooong time to render these bus graphics files.)

and more...some Skillet pics

more pics...

Pics from Cali

Here's a couple pics from the event in California. In random order there are pics of Ron Luce, Skillet, me on camera filming and the TV satellite truck.

A great week in California

I left Wednesday morning for the OC. I arrived at Santa Ana airport and waited for my ride. I overheard two guys talking about the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) a sport Wes and I have enjoyed watching together as of late (as well as Betsy) So I turn to walk away and something prompts me to turn to them again and as I did I see a very familiar face. There right in front of me was Tim Sylvia the heavy weight champ and Sean Sherk. I went up to Tim and made a total fool of myself, stumbling over my words and finally shook his hand. I'm and idiot!

Anyway back to the point of my trip. I am the handheld camera on stage for a live Aquire the Fire event being televised on GOD TV on Friday night.

I am here again with my buddy Tracy Trost who does production for all kinds of events, shows and crusades. AND DAN THIS IS FOR YOU...I WILL BE ON STAGE FILMING >>>>SKILLET Wish you were here!

I'll be back on Sunday in time for our monthly visit to the Phoenix Rescue Mission.

Cheers
Martin

Guatemala Update

Since I don't care to update my blog anymore I figured I should help my wife keep hers up. As she said I just went to Guatemala to do a crusade with a guy named Dominic Russo. We left Thursday at midnight and arrived 1:30pm in the afternoon.

On Friday we had everything setup and ready and started filming at 4:00pm. As we filmed it started to rain softly so we covered our camera's with plastic bags. All of a sudden a torrential downpour started and quickly filled the grounds with about 4-5 inches of rain. Lighting, thunder and dark clouds filled the sky.The stage had a canopy built with stage truss and a vinyl type roof.
It was to loose and flimsy and quickly filled with a few hundred gallons of water causing the roof to bow. Tracy and a couple of us saw it and shouted at the band and 200 other people to get off the stage...because it seemed as if the roof was about to collapse. People were on the stage performing and others trying to get out of the rain.

As we were yelling all of a sudden the truss snapped and came crashing down onto the stage. It was horrifying to watch. I was about 10 feet from the truss as it collapsed. All I could remember was thinking OH MY GOD! How many people are dead! I had never seen such a thing before.



We rushed around, people screaming, trying to see if anyone was hurt and secondly tried to get our gear and van away from the stage so that the remaining trussing would not collapse onto the van with our guys in it. Thankfully it was reported later that only one person got cracked in the skull but they must have left as soon as it happened because we never saw them.


It was decided (obviously) that the crusade was cancelled for the night and would resume the following night in the gymnasium. Unfortuantely it could not hold as many as the crusade field but there was still approx. 10 000 plus there that night.

I returned home last night at midnight and am thankful to be home again and to see my beautiful wife.

These are some of the pics the stage pics are of before and after. We were unable to get pics of the collapsed parts just the aftermath of twisted metal and broken camera gear.



MORE PICS TO FOLLOW