Hiking, web development, best practices, and general awesomeness
It's that time of year again... When people realize that they've eaten too much food, spent too much money, or just haven't been overly productive over the holidays and decided to make firm New Year's Resolutions. I'm no exception to this annual tradition and have made a few commitments of my own…
Katie and I lived with her parents from the summer of 2009. After I lost my job at Michigan Tech they graciously opened up their doors for us until I could get a solid income again. What we hoped would be a several-month period grew to 18 months, since my SparkNET job wasn't enough to afford moving…
A few weeks ago, on an early morning hike in the Upper Peninsula, I met a bear cub and his mother. I've seen a lot of wildlife while wandering through the woods up there, including wolves, porcupines, and more grouse than I care to count, but this was the first bear I've seen outside of the car or…
When I first decided to create an online blog I wanted to avoid a common pitfall of many other blogs: lack updates. While there were a few empty months in 2009, it feels like a did a good job with regular posts every week or so... Until the New Year rolled around. This is the first blog post in over…
I've always been a bit of a goal- and task- orientated person. The only thing I enjoy more than making a long to do list at the beginning of a week is crossing the items off of the list one at a time. Now that I'm a 'real adult' with a full time job and puppy, I decided to create a list of goals to…
This blog was started in March of 2009 during a pivotal moment of my life. I had recently been fired from Michigan Tech, my first post-college job, and was using my free time to create a website to allow me to both market and develop myself professional. With the new site's blog I hoped to discuss…
I recently purchased a new car - a 2006 manual Saturn Ion. As with any good car purchase I had to take out a hefty auto loan for most of the car's worth. Thanks to a large amount of student loans and a short work history, the interest on the car loan was quite bad. I began to wonder if and how I…
The last few weeks have been pretty busy for me. To provide a bit of back story, I've been living in Appleton, WI with my girlfriend's parents working a few different contract jobs since May of 2009. While our income was enough to cover a few bills and loan payments, freelance web development wasn't…
One of my favorite parts of the waterfall project of summer 2008 was the planning process. Not only did I enjoy scouring topographic maps and satellite photos to find the quickest, safest, or most scenic route, but I also enjoyed achieving different goals; visiting every waterfall along Silver River…
In my free time, I try to keep up with web development for my personal sites. Over the last year, the gem of my side work became the 'Waterfalls of the Keweenaw Area' website, a truly complete and detailed project. Due to this project, I learned more about Google Map API, KML files, and general…