since heather decided to take over my book, the queen of the damned, i decided i should take a break from fun reading and read something that will give me some knowledge. on the recommendation from a friend i picked up christina woodtke's information architecture blueprints for the web.

i have been coding for about 8 years now 4 years on the web. never any formal training just learning as i go. the sites i have created have been pretty successful but i figured i should learn how to do things the 'correct' way. following some industry standards.

so far this book as been pretty good, really easy to read, not your normal 'tech book'. im about half way through it and have found some pretty good stuff. one good thing i have realized is that i am doing things pretty much right so far, so that i am happy with.

i am not an information architect, well i am pretty much all things when it comes to my company. but formally i am the director of information technology. one thing about this book is it is teaching me the questions i need to ask when developing a website. with my company the way it work is somebody says hey we need this or that, then i interpret that and write code and design a program that will fit that project. many times having to write and rewrite the code several times. one thing i hope i can do at the end of this book is to understand what the end user wants before i start coding so i don't have to code things so many times.

this day is turning out to be a very odd day. cameron went to his cousins birthday party last night so we had to wake up early to go pick him up. my sister lives about 45 minutes away and we had to be back by 11:30 so we wouldn't miss the cubscout tour of krispy kreme donuts.

we left about 9am cause heather wanted to go to mcdonalds to get breakfast. as we were driving we got followed by some kinda wack job. heather kept saying the guy next to us was staring but i didn't believe her, everytime i looked over he was just looking in the mirror or whatever. finally when he pulled up next to us for the last time he was staring so much he practically had to turn around while he was turning, it was the strangest thing.

when we finally arrived at mcdonalds i didn't have enough cash, instead of going to the bank first heather said that they accepted atm cards, i was aprehensive about it but she said she had done it many times before. we went through the drive through and right before we were about to order we heard a bunch of honking behind us. a fight just about broke out when two guys got of there car to yell at the guy in front of them who cut them off and cutted cut in line. it was pretty intense.

well i finally ordered and went up to the window to pay i handed him the atm card and the guy looked at me like i was crazy. he said we don't take those. great! very embarrasing as we drove away starving.

at 11:45 we drove down to krispy kreme donuts where heather had setup a tour for our cubscout pack to take. when we got there they had no idea what we were talking about, they knew nothing of a tour. finally after about 15 minutes they had somebody come out and tell us how they made the donuts. it was pretty bizzare but we got to touch the dough and see how the donuts were made. afterwards which was the best part we all got free donuts.

now we are back home and both vicky and cameron have friends over so i think they are gonna get in the pool. i have some work to do, so i think i am gonna stay in the nice air conditioned house.

this evening we went to my favorite store, ikea. a month ago or so our closet fell apart. the shelf with the railing where our clothes are hung fell and all the clothes and everything on top of the shelf fell with it. our closet is in shambles and now we need to repair it. so we went to ikea to check out how much it would cost to get an organizer. it was expensive but not too bad.

ok today is turning out to be a good day. much better then yesterday's fiasco. i feel much better, was still a little tired this morning but after my regular friday breakfast meeting i am feeling good. turned on digitally import to the hard trance station and they are playing some banging music... yes today is gonna be a good day!

we just got finished watching hellboy. what an interesting movie. knowing nothing about the movie and never hearing of the comicbook we were all in for a surprise. it was a pretty good movie, kinda cheesie at points and a little long.

im too tired to give a summary right now maybe i will write one later. i would give it a 75/100.

while heather took the kids swimming i decided to cook dinner. big mistake, as you can tell i made a huge mess. oh well, dinner was good anyways best part was the garlic bread. good stuff. now we are going to watch hellboy.

i had a meeting this morning in santa monica. and just driving around down there you realize they live a completely different lifestyle then we do here in orange county.

if you take the two beach cities that are comparable newport beach in oc and santa monica in la you can see the differences just by driving down any major street. in santa monica there are bums and people asking for money on every street corner (but these are high class bums i saw a couple on cellphones), in front of large million dollar apartment complexes that are right on the beach and even the benches on the beach. this would never happen in newport, if you try to cross the street and are not in a pedestrian walkway you will have 3 cop cars surround you within minutes.

i wish i would have taken some pictures but i think that will have to be a weekend trip. it would be fun to show the contrast between the two places.

have you ever woke up and thought wow this day is just not a good idea. well i am having one of those days. i went to bed really early last night and for some unknown reason i could not wake up this morning. i have been awake for almost 2 1/2 hours and i am still just as tired as i was when i woke up. i could close my eyes and sleep for another 6 hours at least. unfortunetly i can't i have a meeting in santa monica in two hours so i am gonna have to leave here shortly, great!

tonight i decided to ROCK!! when i got home we all went in the pool and had boogie board races. the kids would get on their knees on the boogie board and i would push them as hard as i could as they sailed down the pool. i need to get the marine pack for my camera so i can take pictures while in the pool, maybe for my birthday??

after swimming for some unknown reason (prolly cause i ROCK!) i decided to take everyone out to tony romas. it was really good, we all ate way to much and now we are home and i am miserable, but i still ROCK!!

heather and i are going to be taking the kids on their first 'real' vacation. we have gone on vacations before but only for a short period like the weekend or so. and not very far, san diego or oceanside. we thought they were old enough now so we are going to be taking them to hawaii.

we haven't decided on a date yet, either late august or mid september. heather and i got married in kuaui and thought it would be fun to take the kids there.

i am very excited i can't get my mind off of it. when i was a kid at the end of summer my dad and i would go to kauai for a couple of weeks. sometimes my mom and sister would come with us but for the most part it was just he and i. after he past away my mother and i would go. its a strange feeling but i feel closest to him when i am there. i can get off the plane take a deep breath and i can feel his presence. i know it might sound weird but i get the chills and feel at peace.

you could never imagine how much technology goes into mangaing trees. when i first started working for wca almost 10 years ago, the company barely had a network. 10 years later we have 12 servers and have developed many software programs for our customers.

just recentely i took our database program that we give to our customers, which went through many phases, and put it on the web. first phase was developed in microsoft access 1.0 (that was a nightmare if anybody remembers that program), then we upgraded that to access 97 (big improvement). phase 3 was done using sql server and visual basic but upgrading and fixing bugs was a nightmare trying to get fixes out to all our customers. most of our users were not computer literate so i would have to go out to just about everyone of them and update their systems. the customers in orange county were fine but it really sucked when i had to travel up to stockton or the bay area.

at the beg of the year, i finally finished phase 4 in the program and made it web enabled. this has forever changed my life here at work making not only everything so much easier for me to update but for the end user, they can now use the program and not be afraid. everybody knows how to use the internet. the end user no longer has to learn some obscure program, they just log in like they would if they were going to check there bank balances.

this gave us the freedom to add even more to the program. before all we could do was allow the user to look up an address to see the last time the tree was trimmed, planted or removed. now since they are connecting to our servers the users are able to get invoices instantly, check their balances to make sure they do not go over budget and all this is done in real time.

the only draw back for me is converting the data from all the existing users. some of the users have been using the program for almost 10 years now so they have put quite a few records in. oh well, sometimes to move forward 10 steps you have to take 3 steps back. it can just be tedious at times. i am a developer, i like to create new things not push numbers around!

its been confirmed the pool is HOT! oh and my wife is cool, or atleast that is what she is telling me. apparently all the 10 and 11 year olds at my daughters school think she is the greatest thing since sliced bread. now i don't know about all that cause sliced bread is pretty great.

as i was talking to heather this morning i remembered that i think i left the pool heater on over the weekend. i don't know if that is a good thing, i like it when the water is hot, but if i leave the heater on too long its like swimming in bath water, which on a cool evening is a lot of fun but when its 90 degrees outside that is a different story.

i promised joey i would take him in the pool tonight, so hopefully the water is not too hot. the kids all started school yesterday, hopefully they will have gotten their homework done by the time i get home so we can all go. that is pretty doubtful though.

ok driving has got to be the most exhuasting thing in the world to do. i went to bed early last night (9pm) and didn't wake up till 6:30am and i am still dead tired. i could have slept another 5 hours. now its almost 11 and i am starving, i swear this is a vicious cycle that i am in.

this past weekend, pat and i took john back to school. we left saturday morning and drove to monterey. it took us about 6 1/2 hours to get there but it felt like 3 days. after we finally arrived at the hilton we decided to check out the city.

we drove down to canary row, which is pretty much the happening place. they have tons of shops right on the bay. if you have ever been to san fransisco its very similar to pier 39.

at the end of the row is the monterey bay aquarium. john wanted to go really bad so we figured we could do the whole thing in about an hour. it was pretty cool, except my pictures didn't come out to well, way to dark. the coolest thing was the jelly fish, it almost looked fake, they were extremely brite.

after that we met jason, an area manager that works for the company, his wife and new born baby. we ate at the monterey fish house which is an old house that they converted into a restaurant. after 10 minutes jason's wife left with the baby, the baby was not too happy with all the noise. we ordered so much food, i don't know how we were able to walk out.

the next morning pat woke john and i up WAY to early and we headed to french gulch to drop john off. that was another 6 hour drive, then turned around and drove another 5 hours to san ramon. pat and i had dinner and then went to bed.

this morning pat woke me up even earlier, 6:30am and we headed over to jason's office to check things out there. we left there about 9 and headed home. finally made it back to the office about 3pm and now i can't wait to get home to see my wife and kids. i have missed them all so VERY much. heather was so good, she didn't complain one time, i am so proud of her.

ok, its 9:30 and i have been staring at my computer for the past hour and half waiting for it to inspire me. or at the very least entertain me. it has done neither. i have read a few articles, but nothing of interest. i need for this day to end, but i am not tired at all.

heather is sitting next to me reading MY book, but thats ok, cause i am not in the mood to read at all. like i said nothing interests me at this moment.

the kids are all upstairs but they are screaming about something. joey can't figure out how to get pajama sam to get on the bus or something of that nature.

why will this day never end. i am not quite sure what my problem is, but the fact that i keep staring at the clock, like i have been doing since 4:30 is driving me nuts.

i need some inspiration.

it is 8:30 and i am completely bored out of my mind. there is absolutely nothing on t.v. i do not want to read, i think i have serious adult add. this is ridiculous! and heather will NOT stop playing the streets: get out of my house. maybe shes trying to tell me something??

i think i am going crazy.

update: got this link on add pretty good stuff check out:

music thereapy and add / adhd

Examines the power of using popular music, something people already listen to, as a way for people to express their feelings. Includes examples of therapeutic messages in popular music as well as original music by Freudian Slip, therapeutic rock band.

the tivo remote control has been misplaced and its 20 minutes behind. i found the cable remote control but when i changed the channel, the channel didn't actually change for 20 minutes. i swear the remote control has legs cause whenever we put it down, when we go to get it, its gone.

update: as i was writing this heather found the remote control in the couch under the kids clothes. why the kids clothes were in the couch is beyond me, prolly the same legs the remote control grows, grew on the clothes. dunno what i would do without heather, would have to watch tv with a 20 minute delay.

ok, i never realized how much i used copy and paste. for whatever reason my copy/paste function stopped working and i was basically crippled. i may as well have cut off my left hand cause i couldn't do a damn thing. after a quick reboot needless to say it works again. doesn't everything work after a quick reboot? i wish i could reboot my brain sometimes.

today hasn't been one of my most productive days. i have gotten some things done, it hasn't been a total waste. went to a couple of meetings, those are always a waste. and now its 4:30 and the hour is dragging. i am hoping tomorrow is more productive, i don't have that sense of accomplishment like i should. i want this day to end.

ok its been about 2 hours now and i have to say that i like the sobe a-rush WAY better then redbull. not only does it taste a helluva lot better but it also pumps me up alot more. i don't know if its just me getting used to the redbull or not, but i think this is going to be my drink of choice for awhile.

update to: caffeine addiction

ok, so i have been off of my caffeine diet for a week now and have been drinking coffee and or redbull everyday. and i am loving it. when i stopped i was sleeping way to much and always felt tired. now atleast through the day i am awake and motivated.

i just bought a sobe adrenaline rush, which is supposed to be better then redbull, well at least in my theory cause it has two things that redbull doesn't: d-ribose and l-carnitine.

i'll let you know how good it is in about an hour...

steve and i had a meeting in the lovely city of la puente. on our way back driving down the 60 freeway we saw this construction truck with a sign on the back for 'pricz tattoo'. now this wasn't some graffiti on the truck it was an actual sign they intentionally put on the truck. i am still trying to figure out why a construction truck would have an advertising sign for a tattoo parlor? very weird, but very amusing.

ok, this has got to be one of the most repetitive days i have had in a long time. i have had to install windows 3 times today. it is so damn tedious:

1. Install WindowsXP
2. Reboot 6 times
3. Run Windows Update
4. Install Service Pack 1
5. Reboot
6. Run Windows Update
7. Install 15 security patches
8. Reboot
9. Install Mcafee Virus Scan
10. Reboot
11. Install Spybot

geez, it really shouldn't be so damn difficult to install windows, and i have had to do it 3 times today. heather's hard drive crashed so i bought her a new drive and have not had the time to set it up, she needed to print some stuff out so she asked me if i could please do it. finally just finishing up now, if i have to install windows again this week i think i am going to scream. and its only monday!!

a month ago or so i went to amazon and my home page was changed to what amazon called a plog. basically a blog of all the things i had either bought or things they thought i would like. amazon's definition of plog:

Your Amazon.com Plog is a diary of events that will enhance your shopping experience, helping you discover products that have just been released, track changes to your orders, and many other things. Just like a blog, your Plog is sorted in reverse chronological order. When we think we have something interesting or important to tell you, we'll post it to your Plog.

it was there for a couple of days and then went away which was really disappointing i thought it was a really cool feature. going to amazon today i realized it was back!

heather and i had a date night tonight... first we ate at black angus, which was pretty good but unfortunetly or fortunetly depending on how you look at it the waiter talked us into getting margaritas. heather ordered the midori margarita and i the mango. it was pretty tasty, after i was done eating and finished the first drink the waiter talked me into having another, but this time it was just a regular margarita. heather finished eating but barely touched her drink, so me being the gentleman that i was decided to finish it for her. after i finished her drink, and my other drink we decided to head over to the movies. still having an hour before it started we decided to find a bar.

acrossed the street from the movie theatre was off the border a mexican food place with a bar. i had a corona and heather a midori sour, still having another half hour we decided to order another round and watched the angel game. after the drinks we headed back to the movie theatre and watched anchor man. this was the first time i have been buzzed on the border of being drunk in a long time!! (get it on the border, hahahaha, yes i am drunk now)

the movie was hilarious, i laughed sooo hard that i pissed off the lady next to us, or atleast thats what heather said. after the movie we drove home and i don't think i should have drove. i drove fine, but i had my camera and kept taking pictures of the people that would pull up next to us, which freaked them out. we listened to tiesto as loud as we could and we finally made it home safe and sound. my mom, who was babysitting, bought the kids a bounch of movies and right now we are watching stand by me, which is actually one of my favorite movies. i poured heather and i another drink, and now i am drunk... pretty crazy, cause it has been a long time since i have been this drunk.

everybody is staring at me right now cause i have been typing for the past ten minutes non stop. they are asking me if i am writing a book, and i told them yes! i have absolutely no idea what i have said and i have no idea if i am making any sense. the movie is at the point where the kids are crossing the bridge and the train is about to run them over, k, i think i better stop before heather knocks me upside the head.

a week ago i was looking at amazon and found a cheap bocce ball set. i think it was $20 so i decided to buy it. it came a couple of days ago. this morning we were bored and trying to figure out what we could do and i remembered we had the game. vicky went to a girlscout event so the boys, heather and i decided to play. it was actually a lot of fun, i haven't played it since i was kid.

heather won, of course. but it was a close game, cameron came in second and half way through the game joey decided he wanted to be on my team instead of playing by himself, we came in third. we need to bring the set to the beach or to a park cause our yard isn't exactly the best place to play. there are ridges in the grass so when you throw it, it could be going straight at the jack and then at the last minute it hits something and goes the opposite way. it was a lot of fun, we took lots of pictures. as i am writing this i am now realizing that i got burnt on my shoulders so it should be an interesting night.

well i finally did it! i finished the book, odd thomas. i didn't think it might be possible since it seems like i have been reading it forever. don't get me wrong it is a GREAT book, full of surprises and the ending rocked me, still haven't gotten over it. i think the reason it took so long was i was so into the vampire chronicles and this was so different. heather bought me queen of the damned, which is the next vampire book in the series and the only one we didn't have. so i will prolly start that tomorrow.

[unrelated: i have finally updated our photo blog. i don't know why, but it hadn't been updated since heather's birthday, july 4th. heather took the kids, the kids friends and her sister to legoland yesterday and i have posted pics from that too.]

OK, this whole diet thing is out of control. everywhere i go every place has "low carb" menu's. you can go to subway and order a sandwich without the bread. you can by coke with less carbs. and this right here just topped the chart for me. i went to starbucks today, because i am off my caffeine diet and when i got back to the car i saw a poster on the carls jr window advertising the new low carb breakfast bowl. look at this picture, it doesn't look like breakfast it looks like a bowl of vomit. that has got to be the worst advertisment picture i have ever seen.

i went to the doctor a couple of weeks ago to have my blood pressure checked. they have been checking my blood pressure frequently since at a very young age my dad passed away of a heart attack. he was only 42, but that is a whole different story to tell. anyways, the last time i went it was still pretty high, not alarmingly but high non the less. so as we are talking the doc asks me how much caffiene i drink. i said oh i dunno, a couple of red bulls and maybe a couple of soda's a day. he looked at me kinda funny, almost like come on nobody drinks that much. he wasn't to sure what red bull was, which was a shock to me, but said doesn't a redbull have a lot more caffiene then coke? i said ya prolly twice as much. he told me that i probably should cut back on the intake a little bit and also he was going to change my meds.

well after about 3 days on my new blood pressure medication whenever i would drink anything with caffiene i would get the most awful feeling inside, like i was scared to death. the same feeling you would get if you had to get up and give a speach to an audience of 4,000 people. sometimes it would get so bad that i would just sit there and stare at my comptuer and couldn't stop shaking. pretty weird stuff. so i said ok, maybe this is my body telling me i should stop with the caffeinated drinks.

well i cut caffeine out completely, and that pretty much stopped the nervous feelings that i was having but now i am so damn tired i can barely keep my eyes open. when i go home all i want to do is sleep, i get home around 5:30 and after dinner i ask heather if we can go upstairs and read a little bit. after about an hour its all i can do not to close my eyes. when i do finally get to sleep it doesn't matter how long i sleep its never enough. i can sleep for 8 hours or 12 hours and its all the same. i am thinking now thats because i have no caffeine, so after 3 weeks i think i am gonna start the caffeine again.

i drank a redbull this morning for the first time and man was it good!! i got the nervous feeling but not that bad and it went away after about an hour. somehow i think i just need to control that, but who knows how? lets see tonight how i sleep and then i may add another redbull in the afternoon, cause right now if i saw my bed there would be no turning back.

i have been really neglecting my log for the past week. everytime i go to post something, i either get a call or have to go fix something. over the weekend i finished the vampire lestat. wow was that a GREAT book, first time i have ever read 300 pages in one day, usually that takes about 5 days. i need to go get the queen of the damned now, for some reason i thought we had it but of course we don't and the book ends right in the middle of it so now i have to read it.

i figure until i get it i might as well finish odd thomas(which i started way back at the beg of june), i am more then halfway through the book and its pretty good just different style of writing then i was used to with anne rice maybe thats my problem.

i have been so tired lately no matter what time i go to bed wether its 8pm or 11pm i can never get enough sleep, i am still just as tired. i had stopped drinking caffiene but i think that experiment has failed miserably and i am gonna go back to my red bull. its one thing being jittery and awake then to be falling asleep at my desk.

for heather's birthday, one of the gifts i bought her was the four books that she didn't have from anne rice's the vampire chronicles. she is still reading her steven king book so i picked up the second book in the series, the vampire lestat. i have been reading odd thomas and for some reason i just can't seem to get through it? oh well, i put it on hold and can't seem to put this book down. i have become entranced with it as i did with memnoch the devil.

it's a tale as the title says of the vampire lestat. and if you have seen interview with a vampire lestat is the character played by tom cruise. so far this book has taken us back to 18th century france to before lestat is made into a vampire, shows his struggles with his father and brothers and the love he has for his mother. he then runs away with his friend nicholas to paris to become an actor.

i am about halfway through the book, lestat has become a vampire and without ruining the book i will leave it at just that. this is a great book, i have been staying up way to late reading as i can't seem to put it down.

ok, it's wed morning and i actually made it to work on time. i skipped breakfast as usual and just drank an ensure after i got out of the shower. well that didn't do anything for me. i am now on a quest for food and there is none in this office. i swear when i am not hungry in the lunchroom there are donuts and muffins. but when i am absolutely dying this place has NOTHING. go figure. hopefully i won't wither away and die.

ok, so far on my day off i have:

-woke up @ 9am
-watched spongebob squarepants
-went to the brea mall
-bought heather LOTS of birthday presents
-bought tiesto's new cd
-had lunch at the park with the cubscouts

now i am waiting for heather and cameron to come home so we can go to the scout shop to buy cameron's new wolf uniform. then we have to wait for vicky to come home around 3 then we are off to see spiderman 2. should be exciting.

wow, where has this year gone?? its already july 1st!! seems like yesterday was january 1st. oh well, heather's birthday is in 3 days and i have no idea what to get her. she hasn't told me what she wants and i am at a total loss.

i have taken off tomorrow, woohoo!! so hopefully i can sleep in for a bit then meet up with heather and the boys at their camp. they have been at camp all week, including heather and tomorrow is the last day. i am supposed to have lunch with them. since i am off tomorrow i am sure this day is going to drag on and on. i keep staring at the clock and i think its been 10:45 for 3 hours. oh man!!