d0gz.net

Wow, anyone still subscribed to this?

It’s been slightly more than a year since the last update to this site. A lot has happened since then.

I’ve spent more than half of that year in Denver, on a contract job.

Mary Victoria is now in School.

William is now NOT in school (His daycare closed)

I’ve lost my Father to a tragic accident.

The puppy… Is still a puppy, but he’s huge.

I’ve lost almost as much weight as he has gained.

I’m running. More than I ever have. 2 Half marathons are done, as well as a couple of 5k’s and 10ks. Now I’m training for my first full marathon in April.

I don’t know what to do with this space. I’m seriously considering making it a running blog – updates on what I’m doing, a place to publish results, graphs, thoughts, etc.

Part of me really wants to do that, part of me wants to make sure that it’s maintainable. I keep a ton of data in Polar, but getting that information here easily might be another story. I could always link to my RunKeeper pages and update from that… I don’t know.

So… I know this blog is here. It’s called back enough to have this post. I suppose I’ll start writing again, but I doubt it will be as voluminous as I used to be (and that wasn’t much)

Our first parade! Mary and William, never attended one before. Jeffie is unclear as to if she has been before or not. She recalls a bit, remembers getting beads. Foggy about the rest. (or simply isn’t going to tell ME.)

I’ve marched in one parade in New Orleans, but had never been on the spectator/tourist side of the fence. The really nice thing about where we stayed for this one, is that we got to see the parade up close and personal, and then could go back to the room, and watch it again from up above. It was REAL nice.

We have the pictures for the Pharoh’s parade on the Saturday after. I’ve got to push them up, and then start getting ready for the next set of Parades! We’re heading back down to Mobile for the culmination of Mardi Gras – Saturday through Fat Tuesday. Mary Vic has been told there are Fire Breathing Dragons on Saturday at the Mystic’s of Time (I think that’s the parade). I hope so, as she has locked down HARD on that idea.

The second reason we went to Mobile last weekend was for the Baptism of Sean Pavel. It was rather interesting pulling the kids into nice clothing after the parades and festivities of Mardi Gras, (and telling them if they weren’t good, they couldn’t go to the parade that evening!) Add to that, it seemed that our choice of Hotels backfired on us a bit. Because it was downtown, ON the parade route, we ended up leaving the baptism reception afterwards a bit earlier than we would have liked, just to keep from being blocked out of the hotel and parking. They do shut the streets down, and frankly, I didn’t know when that was going to happen.

Our kids had a blast. They banded together with some of Jim’s Nephews, as well as Christian, and made their own entertainment, all while actually being quite good. Running laps around a prayer garden seemed to be the greatest attraction, although the baptismal pool held great interest. Sean, being the star, didn’t enjoy the festivities nearly as much. That water seemed quite cold.

Enough talk. Here are the Pictures that I pulled. I didn’t know the etiquette for the ceremony, so I mainly stayed in the back, and just shot with the long lens, but I think I got a few good ones.

When we did the initial sort, I noticed this one. It’s quickly becoming one of my favorites. Click through to see the larger version (or click above, it’s the last image in the gallery).

I haven’t forgotten them. We had a bit of extra time when the Parade wasn’t in full force.

Of course, there were pictures:

These include the shots of Aunt Janie before the Conde Ball. I thought they came out quite well given the five minutes we had to actually take the shots, and the fact that the best backdrop available was a dark window.
I’m going to have to change how I’m posting pictures… It seems that the aspect ratio gets screwed up a little when I upload them directly here. And I’ll probably start posting the pictures to Facebook as well. It seems that they will end up there, regardless on if I post them or not.
Hopefully, I’ll get the Parade pictures and the Baptism photos up tomorrow or Friday.

They have won. The Divorce is final. They weren’t meant to be together, they’re independent software, and it’s going to stay that way. WPG2 is a great concept, but I’m tired of beating myself silly trying to get it, permalinks, and url rewriting to work together.

If you want a Simple Gallery, it’s fine. You want Gallery to be part of WordPress, sure. Gallery to be a fully functional member of Society AND work with WordPress? HA!

So, I’m sure that some of the image links are broken now. I’m trying to fix them as I have time and find them.

Link farm:

The Blog (in case you aren’t reading this) : http://d0gz.net/blog

The Gallery : http://gallery.d0gz.net/

Ganphoto (WordPress and Gallery working together simply) : http://www.ganphoto.com

Ok, not really. But three posts HERE in less than 6 hours is not normal.

Back in Out with the old… I introduced the “Expensive Home Maintenance” Tag to hopefully stay away from the “Air Conditioning” tag. Look, BOTH come back today…

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After all of the election coverage over the last 40 TRILLION YEARS, I had a thought.

Just one… Didn’t want to go overboard or anything.

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Something weird is going on with the Gallery -> WordPress integration. Pictures appear to be fine (or at least I can’t make them fail). WPG2 doesn’t seem to be liking the album links however. I’m tired of trying to fix this right now.

If you can’t get to the albums, or they just bring up a blank page, go here: Gallery

If everything DOES work for you (like the album links in the side bar) PLEASE drop a comment to let me know I’m completely insane now.

Thanks,

Greg

One of the main reasons photo’s haven’t been coming quickly from this trip to Destin is pretty simple.

There are a LOT of them. And I’m doing my best to prevent this from completely overloading both the site, AND the viewer. We found out pretty quick that looking at 400 images of the same thing can get pretty boring pretty quick. So, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time sorting through images, and trying to choose the best ones, that represent what was going on the best.

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In one of the greatest oddities of the entire trip, I was awake to see sunrises every day in Destin. Now, this doesn’t seem overly remarkable, except that I am one of the original night owls. For me to be AWAKE at 6:00am would be cause for great concern. For me to do so, WHILE on Vacation, well, that’s just mind boggling.

Of course, when you consider how lovely the sunrises are when you are on the beach, it’s pretty easy to get up for them. More times than not, Jeff and I would get up, head down to the Gulf’s edge, and watch the sun come up. Kids still asleep, and just the sound of the waves while watching the colors change. I’d have the tripod setup and just click away while talking and watching the rise.

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