In the last few years I have developed a love of comic books. As a kid a good chunk of my paper route money went to buying issues of Batman, Superman and Dark Rider. This was before I discovered video games and computers. My interest in comic books was rekindled a few years ago when I saw the movie American Splendor, the story of Harvey Pekar, a underground comic book writer.
As I started to look into comics, I quickly discovered that the target audience for modern comics is geeks my age. Over time I have become a regular reader of several books that I look forward to picking up every month. I have also developed a pretty impressive collection of trade paper backs (monthly issues collected into books) and graphic novels.
One of my first purchases was “Wizzywig Vol. 1: Phreak” written and illustrated by Ed Piskor. Piskor just happened to be one of the artists that worked on American Splendor. Wizzywig is a graphic novel that tells the tale of Kevin “BoingThump” Phenkil growing up in the early days of personal computers. Many of BoingThump’s adventures are based on stories of famous hackers and geeks of the day like Kevin Mitnick, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. I loved the book because it captured the feeling of excitement and adventure that I remember from growing up as me and my friends started to discover computers.
I am glad that this is one of the first books I picked up as it inspired me to dig into comics and led me to discover some of the great artists and writers working on comics today. I have since bought the second volume of Wizzywig and I am waiting patiently for the third volume which will be available in a few months. When I received volume 2, as a gift from my wife, I was thrilled to discover that Ed Piskor had drawn a personalized picture inside of the front cover. That made this book one of my prized possessions.
Rather than write a detailed review of the book myself, I thought I would post a video from iFanboy that does a good job of describing what it is all about.
Aaron started riding four years ago at Helping Hands Therapeutic Riding Center (HHTRC). He went from being led around on a lead rope, to riding on his own, to competing in the show ring. Every Monday night for four years we have driven one hour both ways for a one hour lesson. During these four years Aaron got to know and love Scooter, Skippy, and many of the other great horses at HHTRC. The highlight of the last two years was having the opportunity to work with a truly wonderful horse trainer, Lacie Robinson. Lacie gave her all to helping Aaron improve and she pushed and inspired him to achieve things that he never thought possible.
Sadly, our time at HHTRC must come to an end. In August, Lacie had a falling out with the program manager, and had to leave HHTRC. Since Lacie left, Aaron has worked with other trainers, but it is just not the same. One night as we were riding home from a lesson Aaron told me that he really wants to continue to improve his riding skills and to work on some of the more advanced showmanship skills that Lacie had taught him. I was thinking the same thing, but I was glad that he came to that decision on his own.
So, we started looking in earnest for another trainer. To my surprise it has been very difficult to find a barn that specializes in western pleasure (as opposed to english). After an extended search I finally found a trainer that could work with Aaron. The best part is that the barn is only 20 minutes from our house.
We had our first lesson tonight. I was very impressed with the trainer, Sarah. Aaron really seemed to click with her. Aaron got to ride a retired show horse named Buggs, and he did very well on him. We have agreed to start riding with Sarah twice a week.
While we will miss HHTRC, I really have a good feeling about our decision and I am excited to see Aaron take this next step.
Here is a short video that I took at the new barn.
Aaron had the opportunity recently to ride a beautiful quarter horse by the name of Boo. Boo is only seven years old, but he has had a lot of experience and success showing. I took some video of Aaron at two riding sessions. For those of you with riding experience you will recognize a few problems with Aaron’s form. This is mostly because Aaron is not used to riding a horse with as much get up and go. But, Aaron got the hang of it rather quickly and by his second session he was able to get Boo up to a canter in the arena. This is no small feat given a small arena and a big horse. I was very proud of Aaron, he showed a lot of confidence and control.
Boo is available for sale. I have to say I have not been this interested in a horse yet. Unfortunately, the owner knows what Boo is worth and is asking a premium. Aaron wants to start increasing his training and start showing a little more. So, we might consider getting a horse for him if he continues to progress.
San Francisco has been one of my favorite cities since Leigh Ann and I spent part of our honeymoon there. I occasionally have the opportunity to travel there on business and each time I visit I am taken in by the beauty, history, and casual feel of the city. The Long Now Foundation posted a presentation of amazing historical film footage that has been restored using modern technology. The film, with some footage going back to 1904, shows how much San Francisco has changed, but also how much the world has changed in just over 100 years. As I watched this I kept wondering how people will view video from today in 100 years?
Aaron and I started right after Halloween last year planning a Pirate scene for all of the neighborhood trick-or-treaters. This all started when we found a life sized skeleton at a Halloween clearance sale. We spent the year talking about what we wanted to do, and spent the week before Halloween putting together. We wanted to borrow some of the ideas from Pirates of the Caribbean, which is one of favorite Disney attractions.
The pictures you see here capture the major elements of the scene. We used lighting of different colors to really enhance the look of the scene. Aaron also put together a sound track using Disney sound effects from the attraction. I think the sound effects really made the scene come to life.
Aaron was so excited on Halloween that he immediately put his costume on when he rolled out of bed in the morning. He spent the morning of the event working out a script to be used to narrate the scenes for our guests while I made some final adjustments to the scene.
The neighborhood kids had a lot of fun checking out the scene and getting their treasures (jewels, coins and beads) from our Pirate’s treasure box which was placed at the back of the scene. Aaron delivered his spiel flawlessly in a perfect Pirate voice. He really should consider getting into theater at school Some of the smaller kids were afraid at first to venture into the scene, but their parents were eventually able to coax them in. We had about 100 guests which is more than normal. We plan to do this again, only bigger and better next year. Hopefully word will spread in the neighborhood that this is the place to go on Halloween.
All in all we were very happy with the results of our work. The real reward for me was working on and planning something big with Aaron. His imagination, creative ideas and hard work really made this scene special.
I have reached a point in my life where less is more. I have little tolerance for unnecessary clutter or excess stuff in any area of my life. I am working to reduce and recycle anything that is not earning its keep or adding significant value to my life. While this is an ongoing and possibly never ending battle, I find the small successes along the way to be very satisfying. This redesigned and simplified blog is another small victory. I wanted to come up with a clean and clutter free site that will inspire me to post here more often. I hope you like it.
Today I got the urge to break out the Big Green Egg for some BBQ. I have not been able to use it for the last few weeks because I had a broken thermometer. I had to make up for lost time.
I have not done a brisket for a while so I picked one up at the Costco meat counter. I chose the fresh cut brisket rather than the vacuum-packed. It costs more, but I like the idea of fresher meat. This brisket was on the small side, about four pounds, so I was able to get it done in about five hours at a temperature of about 250 degrees. I prepped the meat the night before using the tried and true method of spreading yellow mustard over the brisket and then covering it with rub. Professional BBQ chefs will balk at this simplistic method, but I find that it gives me excellent results with very little effort. I also enjoy trying different rubs each time I use this method. This time I used a rub by Rufus Teague. I also applied a light dusting of Bobby Luv’s Redneck Pepper.
To go along with the brisket I decided to smoke some trout since I have not tried it before. I bought two fresh, whole, boned trout at the supermarket. To prepare the trout I just rubbed some olive oil on the inside and covered with Emeril’s Fish Rub. I am sure there are better rubs, but this is all I could find at the supermarket. I also cut some lemon slices and placed them inside before placing the trout on alder wood planks that I had soaked in water. I put the trout on the egg about one hour before I expected the brisket to be done. I smoked everything over hickory wood, which turned out to be a good choice and not too strong for the trout.
We paired the meat up with some sweet corn and potatoes. Everything turned out amazing. Everyone loved the brisket, the rub gave it a somewhat sweet taste. I thought the trout was amazing but I could not get anyone else to try it — no other fish fans in the family.
While the meat was good, I will have to say it was upstaged by the sweet corn. It is very hard to compete with fresh and locally grown sweet corn! Oh well — it was a great day for a BBQ.
Imagine my surprise when my screened in porch was featured as the workspace of the week on one of my favorite websites Unclutterer.com. I have been a regular follower of this site for the last few years. Workspace of the week is always one of my favorite features. It comes out every Friday. Today I was checking Flickr and noticed that my view count was way up. I tracked this back to a link from Unclutterer. What a surprise.
After spending a little more time on my new Mac I have started to add other applications that I use less frequently, but still find extremely useful. I will be posting about some of them in the future. I have also taken a little time to explore a few applications that I have been wanting to try. At the top of my must try list is Tweetie.
I started using Twitter about six months ago, but I have not been a heavy user. However, one feature that I use frequently is the option to post Tweets automatically to Facebook. I use this method to streamline posting from my blackberry. Now that I have discovered Tweetie, I will probably become a more active Twitter user. If you are not yet a Twitter user you should give it a try, but I recommend using Tweetie from the start.
Twitter out of the box is simple, but some of the more advanced functions can be a bit confusing. Tweetie takes all of the confusion out of it. While Tweetie is fairly intuitive I found this screen cast that explained everything I needed to know. I would recommend this screen cast especially if you don’t yet use Twitter and want to get up to speed quickly. By the way, this site contains many other useful instructional videos. I have bookmarked it and I expect to be using it frequently.
When you do sign up for Twitter don’t forget to add Birddog10 as a friend.
Tweetie is free for the add supported version, but also has a paid version sans the adds. There is also a version for the iPhone.
One parents thoughts, ideas and experiences while raising two wonderful children, one of which has Asperger's syndrome.
Our family loves to travel. I will use this blog to share our many adventures.
Please feel free to share your thoughts by adding comments to any of my posts.
