Bringing Chapman Family & Friends News, Photos and More Since May, 1999! www.RobandDara.com

Archive 14 - 1/8/2011 to 12/26/2011

12/26/11 - Christmas, 2011, Chicago Signature Room Photos!

Well, I guess Christmas, 2011 is mostly over now but it is still the holiday season, the kids are still home and there is still a lot of family stuff goin on. We had a very nice Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We had some good food and we all got some nice gifts. Unfortunately, I did not have my camera handy and I really don't have any photos from Xmas eve or Xmas day.

Today, we did a little spontaneous trip to the city for lunch! Dara, Casey, Corinne, Nadia and I all headed to the Signature Room, on the 95th floor of the Hancock Building for lunch. And this time Dara and I both brought our cameras with us. So we got some pretty nice photos of our family lunch with some nice city scenes in the background.

So check out the:

Signature Room Photos from the 95th Floor of the Hancock Building - Chicago!

 

12/20/11 - December Bike Ride, 90 in December

Well, I pulled a "Monk" yesterday. It was a pretty nice day here (high around 50) and my bike odometer miles for this season were at 1,192. Not a very even number! So like Adrian Monk I decided to ride another 8 miles so I would have a nice even 1,200 for the year. There that's better!

Then I remembered that it was my dad's birthday today and that he would have been 90 years old today (OK, it wasn't 90 degrees in December but I thought that that would get your attention :-) )

I was going to just post a little picture then I was thinking that I would make a little animated gif with multiple photos then I decided to check out how Photochop does slide show so I decided to do that. That was really pretty easy and did not take any real time but the output format was limited. eventually I imported the Photochop Slide Show into Premiere Elements and created a Flash video from that.

Anyway, this was never intended to be a big project so it is pretty short and I just used some old photos that I already had on my PC so here is a little:

90th Birthday Slide Show for my Dad
Don't forget to have your speakers on for the background music.

12/5/11 - Paying it Forward, The Last Minute Roommate, Pimping His Ride! A Few Thanksgiving Photos

Well, I have quite a bit of news so I was thinkin that I better to do an update to the old website.

First off, I have the story of how an accident and almost a big problem turned into a nice early Christmas story with a Paying it Forward theme (I think that is the right term for this story). Last weekend when KC was home he accidentally spilled a little water on his iPod Touch. Well, it stopped working! We decided to give it some time and it started working again for his ride back to school. Then, it died again :-( It didn't work while he was at school, and KC (being 21) could not live without an iPod (which goes without saying :-) ). So KC went out and bought a new iPod Touch (which was only around $200).

KC came home this weekend to pickup his new (pimped out (more on that later)) car. He brought both iPod Touchs with him. He had the old iPod on a charger here for a while and all of a sudden it started working again! Yippie! Well, KC still liked the newer iPod Touch so to show his gratitude to me for helping him to buy his first car, he gave me his old (16GB) iPod Touch and it is still working!

OK, it was a long story but I was impressed with how grateful KC was and I also have a new iPod that will now hold ALL of my music (so I no longer have to pick and choose what goes on it and what does not).

My next story is The Last Minute Roommate. Most of you probably already know that at the beginning of the school year, the girl that signed up to be Corinne's roommate at Miami, decided to drop out a week or so before school started and Corinned ended up with a room to herself. Corinne has made a lot of friends and has some very good friends at Miami so the single room was not a problem. It was actually very nice to have all that extra space.

Well, the powers that be, at Miami just decided to move a girl in with Corinne today (just before finals!). I hear from Corinne that her new roommate is nice but I thought that it was bad the way that Miami would move someone in with very little notice and just before finals. I hope it all works out well and that the adjustment period is OK.

Next, KC left his car here when he went back to school to have a mechanic check it out (before the Honda bumper-to-bumper warranty expired) and to do a few other things. I found out later that he had also decided to Pimp Out His Ride! (btw, I like to say that it is pimping not pimpin (emphasizing the second P and clearly articulating the word (it drives the kids crazy! :-) )).

Anyway, what they did was to tint all the windows (except the front) and to tint (or blacken) the tail light covers so it looks like a knight-rider car or something. I must admit that the window tint looks kind of cool but I still do not like the tail light tinting. Aside from them not being as bright red, I am also concerned that this could become a cop magnet. Well, we will see. It does look cool though (there are a few photos in the photo link below).

As for some Misc News... My bike site has been doing really well. As a matter of fact today was a record breaking profit day! Black Friday and Cyber Monday were also very good. I am still very concerned that this may not last and could go away over night or at anytime. But, I will just keep working away at it and hope that it lasts as long as possible.

And finally, here are some Thanksgiving Photos. Of course, I save the photos for the end so you have to read all of my boring text before you get to them (OK, I know you can still skip the text, but at least I try to make you read it).

Anyway, I did not actually take any photos at Thanksgiving this year but Dara did take some. There are really not all that many but there are a few so I gotta put them out there. I am also including a few photos of KCs new pimped out car at the end.

So now that you've made it this far...

Here are the Thanksgiving (and car) Photos!

 

11/23/11 -  Happy Thanksgiving and KCs New Accord!

Wow, the holidays are starting, KC and Corinne are home for Thanksgiving now and man has it been busy around here! First of all I have been busy trying to keep my website all up to date for the holidays (and I still have a lot to do. Sales have been picking up pretty good on the website). Then I got my bike fixed and I also did a fitness club visit and had a personal trainer workout which I blogged about on my bike site, and then the big news of course, helping KC to buy his new car!!!

Here are some photos of KCs new 2010 Honda Accord which we just picked up tonight (the photos are from the dealers website).

KCs New 2010 Honda Accord

 

11/14/11 -  Wow, November Already, Wore the Bike Out! :-(

Just had to take a break and thought that I would do a quick update here since I still had October at the top of the page!

It's November and sales on the Bike Site are picking up (as I would expect for the xmas season). I am still getting a lot of Proform Tour de France exercise bike sales but the other products that I've been working on are picking up too.

KC was home last weekend and will be back home again next weekend for Thanksgiving break. :-) I talk to Corinne a lot when she is walking to and from classes. She said it was in the 70s and hot today! (This is November. Right?) Corinne does not get as long of a Thanksgiving break as KC :-( but she will be back soon too!

As you can see by my bike mileage at the top of the page, I have still been getting some riding in. I'm nowhere near a 2k mile season but 1174 is fairly decent. Actually, I hope that I can get some more riding in this year but I Wore My Bike Out! On my last ride (yesterday) my gear shift cable broke. :-( I was stuck in the highest gear going against a heavy wind (25 to 40mph at times I think). I hope I can get it fixed in time to put in at least a few more miles this year.

10/23/11 - Insured!, Goal Achieved, Da Bloody Bears!

Just thought I'd do a quick Sunday update with a few News Flashes.

The first story of the day is that we are Insured again! Health Insurance, that is. For those of you who have regular jobs and insurance (technically, I have not had a job since around January of 2003!), you may not be familiar with having to go out and get your own health insurance. 

Well, since I have been a Free Lance Programmer and Internet Entrepreneur (I thought I'd try out some fancy-dancy titles! :-) ) for almost 10 years now, I have had to get my own health insurance and have only had it on and off at different times. We have been lucky that none of us has had long-term health problems and we've also been lucky that we have not had any major operations, hospital visits or health problems, etc.

Here's how our insurance coverage and costs broke down. We had no insurance from 1/2003-8/2005. We had a Golden Rule HSA policy (high deduct able for major problems only) from 8/2005-3/2010. This insurance started at $291/month and kept going up every year. In the end it was $570/month! When I was out of work from DHL (and before the website bidness was working out) I dropped the insurance again so we had no insurance again from 3/2010-10/2011 (now). Blue Cross Blue Shield

We just signed up for a Blue Cross, Blue Shield  HSA policy. This is another high deduct able policy so it is really just for major problems. There is a $10,000 deduct able but after that they pay for just about everything (up to some crazy maximum). This policy is $392/month (at least for now) and it only covers Me and Dara (since the kids now have separate insurance). I'm gonna try to keep this insurance now until I can get Medicare (a ways off but getting closer!)

OK, now was that exciting?! Nothing like talkin insurance to put people to sleep!

In other news, I just made my modest bike mileage goal for this year! I was only shooting for a thousand miles this year since I was not riding as much as previous years. Well, I made that goal a few rides after our 400 State Trail ride. I like having my goals to shoot for even if it is not a major record or anything.

OK, it's time to go watch da Bloody Bears (in England) now! Actually, I hope they don't get too bloody. I think they're playin the London Bulldogs or something :-) .

Later...

10/16/11 - Reunions, 400 State Trail Trip

Ya'all about ready for an update?!? Yea, that's what I thought!

Well, first off we had a little unplanned Chapman Reunion family this weekend. Corinne has what they call "Fall Break", which meant that she had Friday off and so she came home for the weekend and KC came home to drop off Dara's car that he had borrowed for the previous week.

It was nice to see everyone and we all got together for dinner yesterday at Friday's (nothing like Fridays on Saturdays!) with Dara's mom and even a guest appearance from Aunt Karen who was in town for her class Reunion too! I really liked our little Friday's dinner.

And speakin of Reunions, My 40 year Reunion was a few weeks ago too, but I ditched. :-( I never actually got the details on it but I had heard about it on Facebook. In the end, I just got lazy and didn't make it. I made the 10, 20 and 30 year ones so I am 3 out of 4 so far. I'll have to make the 1/2 century one!

In other news, Dale and I took a trip up to Wisconsin to ride the 400 State Trail! We had this planned for a while but weren't sure  of exactly when we would go. We ended up going on a perfect weekend for weather and for Fall Colors! Anyway, the 400 State Trail starts in Reedsburg, Wis and goes to Elroy, Wis. (22 miles).

We did a 45 mile round trip and we both took quite a few photos (I even used one for my October logo above) . Of course, I called it a Business Trip, and wrote about the trail and our ride on my bike site. Check out the photos at the 400 State Trail page on my bike site and the blog rambling in my bike blog (if you dare!)

I did a couple of additional local bike rides after the trip and am up to 994 now so I am only 6 miles away from my goal this year! I am only shooting for 1K miles this year but I should have a little more than that before riding season is over.

I am still working on exercise bikes on the bike site, of course. Profits dropped a little last week but there are always ups and downs. I am doing brand reviews right now and I have discovered that, through the process of doing all the research and reviews, etc., I am getting to know quite a bit about the various fitness companies. There is just so much to know and I still have so much more to do!

9/4/11 - Video Released - See the Trailer!

Well, Jake & Ashley's Wedding and Reception video has finally been released! A few DVD copies have been "shipped" and will be available to some of the cast members very soon. Until then, I have put together a little Video Trailer (/teaser) to wet your appetite and get people into the major DVD Theaters to see this video!

I'll just let the video speak for itself now. BE SURE TO HAVE YOUR SOUND ON FOR THE VIDEO TRAILER (the sound is a big part of the production!) Jake & Ashley's Wedding and Reception Trailer!

See Jake and Ashley's Wedding and Reception Trailer - Here NOW! (Large File Size)

See Jake and Ashley's Wedding and Reception Trailer - Here NOW! (Medium File Size)

...and be sure to see the full (edited) version the first chance that you get!

 

8/24/11 - Ma Move In for KC, 2 cars, River Bend Trail

Well, right after the Ohio trip, to drop Corinne off at school, I took Casey to WIU (in Ma(Macomb)). We did the trip to WIU on Saturday and all went well. It was nice listening to our iPods on the trip. We also moved some stuff for one of Corinnes friends (who is now at WIU) and KC helped me to drop that off which was really helpful.

So we are now officially "empty nesters"! One of the biggest things that I have noticed right away is that we now have full access to 2 cars! My car is in the driveway whenever I need to go somewhere. Other than that it is pretty quiet around here which might take a little getting used to.

Well, I stretched my college move in time off to include one extra day off to take a bike ride with Dale on Monday. We rode some somewhat new bike trails (some new, some old) and I wrote up some bike trail pages to keep that part of my site a little more current. The bike trail article that I just wrote up is the River Bend Trail.

Google must have known that I had a few days off because my sales for the last 3 days dropped off quite a bit (although today was OK).

8/19/11 - Miami Move In for Corinne, Other News...

We just spent the last 2 days helping move Corinne move in to her dorm at Miami University in Oxford Ohio (KC's move in is next). All went well and Corinne has a really nice room and dorm in a very nice area. Moving was a little hectic, of course, but we had a pretty good time too.

For those of you who don't already know this story: Corinne had signed up to be roommates with a girl that she met online and had been communicating with her for months. They were both signed up at Miami and both went to orientation. Then, about a week or so before classes were to begin Corinne's roommate (and her parents) decided that she was not ready for college! What this means, of course, is that Corinne no longer has a roommate and has the dorm room to herself (at least for now). They may, eventually, move someone in as Corinne's roomate, but for now, she has the room to herself.

Anyway, I took quite a few photos of her dorm and her dorm room (and even some video) so here are the photos:

Corinne's Dorm and Move In Day at Miami University

In other news, my bike website is doing much better than I had anticipated at this point. My profits are up over 400% and I am making 5.5 times what I was before my latest rounds of website updates! Still selling Tour de France bikes along with a good amount of Nordic Track fitness bikes, other exercise and spin bikes and regular bikes and accessories! I am also #1 in Google for the term "Exercise Bike Reviews"! (which is an excellent search term to be in the #1 position for).

I actually felt a little guilty about taking time off to move Casey and Corinne in to their colleges, but I talked my boss into it! :-) And I even got paid time off!

I have also managed to do some bike rides too but I haven't really had much extra time for riding. I should still clear 1,000 miles for the season, hopefully.

OK, I gotta get back to work and get ready to take KC off the Western Next!

8/2/11 - Just doing the video and website work , Bike Rides

Well, since it's August already, I figured that I better do an update. I have still got way too much to do but I am mostly working on the wedding video (in my off work hours) and working on my bike site the rest of the time.

I am making some progress on the wedding video but it is going very slowly. I had some technical difficulties to get around and the video editing program crashes my PC sometimes but I am making progress.

I am making progress cranking out exercise bike reviews, but that takes a while too. I am trying to write more meaningful pages with quality content so it takes a little longer than just bashing out any kind of crap just to get more pages out there. So far I am up to a total of 40 exercise bike and indoor cycle pages! Some of those are obsolete unfortunately (but I counted them) and 2 of them are Livestrong bikes that have not yet been released so I can not post the pages until that happens.

I am hoping that this all pays off when peak fitness equipment season kicks in (or hopefully even before then)!

The Tour de France bike sold like crazy last month and I have even kept selling some of them this month so July is now my best month ever for bike site sales!

I've been getting in a few bike rides here and there too. Last week Dale and I did a 55 mile ride on the Fox River Trail (from Dundee to Aurora). I blogged a little about the Fox River Trail ride here on the Bike Blog. We took some cool pictures of the Windmill in Geneva and posted them here.

Today was 94 degrees and humid and I did a 26 mile bike ride! Not sure why I did that but it is nice to be inside again.

OK, gotta git back to work.

7/17/11 - Viva le Tour de France!!!

OK, I just have to add another blog post today with the latest news on le Tour de France. In case you missed it below, I mentioned how I was really enjoying le Tour this year. Well, I am REALLY enjoying it now. I also mentioned below how I put the Proform TDF Exercise Bike page on my bike site. Well, I just checked my stats for this exercise bike today and found that I just sold 4 of these exercise bikes in the last 24 hours! I'm not going to say what I made on these :-) but the bike sells for $1,300 and I get 12% comission on this one. Can you say: Viva le Tour de France!!!?

7/16/11 - A Ton of News, The Wedding Photos!

Man has it been hard keeping up on stuff!!! Sorry for the delay in updates. I have a Ton of News! OK, I know that some of you are going to be jumping ahead and going right to the Wedding Photos so I will just get right to that first!

I just filtered through what I thought were the best 80 or so photos from our collection of over 400! Dara took almost all of these. Some are really good and some are a very different perspective.

Here are Our Wedding Photos of Jake and Ashley's Wedding!

As most of you probably already know, I was the videographer for the wedding. My trip to Wisconsin was really nice and it was great to visit with the family in addition to going to the wedding and reception. The wedding and reception was very busy for me since I was doing the video and I still have a ton of work to do on the video which I should be working on after I finish this update.

Well, the wedding and video has certainly kept me busy but let me back up to some of the other stuff that's been going on.

First of all, at the beginning of July we had KCs 21st Birthday celebrations! (he did more heavy celebrating than the rest of us, I think) and Karen and Nadia came down for the forth of July visit and we had a nice time for the holidays.

Next, a little over a week before the wedding, I made my first trip up to Wisconsin (this summer) for meetings that I had at Johnson Fitness in Cottage Grove Wis (around Madison). My friend, Fred, had the connection at Johnson and initially setup this trip for me and the experience was invaluable for my website business. They rolled out the red carpet for me and I learned a huge amount of valuable information. After my business meetings, I continued up further to visit with the family. That was also really nice!

Next, we had plumbing problems and the drain for the kitchen sink and washing machine was clogged! This was around the time of the big storms and the plumber that I use (and really like) had truck problems, in addition to power outages and could not make it out for about a week (he suggested calling another plumber but I wanted to wait for him because he is good and reliable). Our plumbing has been fixed now.

While we had the drain problems, we had another little issue. Dara's car broke down on the road when Corinne was driving home. There was an issue with the car not having enough oil! :-( Well, after we had it towed in we found that it did indeed have major engine damage! We could not get an exact cost to rebuild the engine until they started doing the work but we also had the option of putting in a whole new (junkyard) engine. The junkyard engine cost was a little more than the lowest possible cost on the engine rebuild but the rebuild had potential to go much higher so I opted for the junkyard engine. We are still waiting to get our car back.

OK, well with all of the stuff above going on, I have still been trying to get some good website work done. I have all of this good information from Johnson fitness and I am still trying to really build up the website and profits, of course. Well, I have been getting some work done in this area (mostly in the exercise bike part of the site) and doing some reviews but I would really like to be getting more done than I am.

One of the exercise bike places (Icon fitness the maker of Proform) told me about this new exercise bike that they are advertising on the Tour de France and said that they were selling like crazy so I put up a page on the Tour de France Bike here. I have gotten a ton of website traffic to this page and just sold one today! ($155 comission!)

The last thing that I wanted to mention (I need to get some other stuff done!) is that I wanted to see the TV commercials for this exercise bike so I started watching the le Tour de France and I started REALLY getting into it! I just never really watched it before but, as a biker, it is really cool!

Here's a little blurb from Wikapedia on le Tour that I thought was interesting: "“The New York Times said the "Tour de France is arguably the most physiologically demanding of athletic events." The effort was compared to "running a marathon several days a week for nearly three weeks", while the total elevation of the climbs was compared to "climbing three Everests.””. "

The Tour is over 3,000 miles and they average about 30mph or so in the flat parts! Then when they are coming down the mountains they do like 50 to 60mph! On a bike with skinny tires and nothing but riding cloths and a helmet!!!

OK, as you can see I am getting into the "Tour" this year.. and now I gotta get going and get some more stuff done!!! (at least I got the family and friends page blog done!)

6/23/11 - First Week on the New Job! Ipod Problems (temporarily resolved).

I just thought that I would drop a line here on the latest stuff going on (no photos this time (just yappin)). Well, my last day at DHL was Monday, so Tuesday was my first day on the new job (my website bike product marketing job). I have actually been quite busy already (my new boss is a real slave driver!).

With the help of my friend Fred, I have setup a trip to Johnson Fitness (an exercise bike place) in the Madison area and will be meeting with them next week to learn all about their products. I have also found a retail store that sold Elliptigo Elliptical Bikes and have done a couple of Elliptical Bike Reviews and I have been out reviewing bikes and exercise bikes (which is necessary but not my favorite part of the job).

As I was updating my website prices and stuff I found that I have a lot of maintenance to do on my existing pages (discontinued models, etc) before I even get to the new review and content pages. Like I said, I have been really busy and there is a lot of work to be done.

I have not even had much of a chance to get out for bike rides due to my schedule and the crappy weather that we have had. I had one pretty nice bike ride and one ride that I had to cut short (to 10 miles) because the weather took a bad turn on me.

Another thing that happened this week is that my iPod stopped working! This is not good for me because I just love having my entire collection of music in my car and playing it in shuffle mode whenever I am on the road (especially for long trips, like I have coming up).

I bought the iPod through a 3rd party company through Amazon. I got a good price $210 for a 60GB ipod classic because it was an OLDER model. Not a USED model but an older model that is no longer being manufactured. So I get this brand new ipod about 6 months ago and all of a sudden it stops working. Well, I called Apple and they told me that the warranty expired in 2008! I told them I just got it new (in the original packaging) in January. Basically they said "too bad" contact the seller. I contacted Amazon and they said the same thing. I contacted CMTRADERS (the actual seller) and they said that since it was an older model it did not come with the warranty. I said "yea thanks m***** f*****s!)

Anyway, as I was trying to figure out how I would resolve this (my Ipod is an essential piece of equipment for me), it turns out that Dara had a brand new iPod Nano (still in the package) that she bought a long time ago, intended to return and never returned (until it was past the return date)!

Well, I like that the nano uses flash memory instead of a disk (I am sure that is much more durable) but since it is only 8GB and my current music selection is about 12GB I had to chop out some of my music collection for this model. I don't really like that but I still have about 2/3s of all of my music (about 1600 songs) and a lot of the stuff on the cutting room floor was junk anyway. I did have to cut some albums that I would like to have kept though so I may need to upgrade again at some point.

Well at least I have an ipod again even if it is downgraded a little.

6/12/11 - Lots of Photos! (Prom, Graduation, Miami)

Well, it has been really busy around here but I finally got my act together and went through all of the photos that we have been taking lately and picked out the best ones to post here for you all.

First we had Corinnes senior prom pictures, then her graduation photos and then our trip to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio this weekend. I really enjoyed our Ohio trip and the campus is really beautiful. I was there on my birthday but I still really enjoyed my birthday too and it was fun to get all of my messages (Facebook, texts, voicemails, emails, cards, etc.) when I got back (or while I was still there or on the road in some cases).

The Miami Orientation was pretty hectic but well worth it.

OK, I guess it's time to get to it! I have my usual comments with the photos so no need to keep rambling on!

Here are Corinnes Senior Prom Pictures - PG version

Corinnes dress was a little too low cut (IMO) so I had to do a seperate page of her photos for our readers that are over 18 only! No cheating!

Here are Corinnes "R" Rated Prom Photos - WARNING: You Must Be 18 or Older to Click On This Link :-)

Here are Corinnes Graduation Photos!

Here are the Photos from our trip to Miami University in Oxford Ohio.

 

5/31/11 - Wisconsin Trip and Aris Graduation

I had a real nice trip to Wisconsin this weekend and visited with the family and went to Ari's graduation ceremony and party! Her class has like 30 or so people so it is a lot different than the graduations around here!

Well, I will get to the photos right away since I just downloaded, selected and formatted them. I did not get real good photos in the gym but some of the others were pretty good. I also liked the camera video that I got of Demi and dancing in Larrys garage (she really had some great moves!) so I included that here too.

So without any further yakin:

Here is the Wisconsin Trip and Ari's Graduation Photos!

and Here is Demi Dancin in the Garage!

5/22/11 - Another Change of Lifestyle,

Well, here we go again. I just found out on Friday that my contract at DHL will not be extended past the June 17th end date. I can not complain though. My original contract, last June, was only supposed to be 3 months and I have made it until now. I am very grateful for that. Besides, now I'll get some summer vacation! (actually it will just be more like a more flexible schedule)

As for my next step, I have decided to totally dedicate myself to my website work. This may sound a little crazy, and it is a little, but not totally. The affiliate website model that I use does actually work and it seems to work very well for my bike site.

If I can improve the site at the same levels that I did last year (and I do believe that this is possible) then with my 6 months of DHL work this year, plus the website profits, 2011 will be OK. Then I have estimated that 2012 will be a little lower (assuming no DHL work at all) and 2013 should be up to a normal living level with the websites alone.

There is a big risk with this but it is a calculated risk and I do think that the reward is worth it. In the past I would just be guessing at the business profits but now it is more of an analysis based on past experience.

Of course, I did consider riding to the west coast over the summer, for the bike site PR, but I think that may need to wait until next summer or summer of 2013 for that (unfortunately, I keep getting older and it keeps getting harder to stay in shape! :-) )

As you know, I'll keep you all updated here occasionally. So stay tuned.

..and now it's almost time for da Bulls and Miami game!!!

5/7/11 - Misc Updates, Robmark Update, Another Magazine Photo and My Mag Portfolio.

Just some quick updates. Badminton season is over and Corinne did really well (she has various ribbons and medals that she won). KC is having a "riot" out at  Western (literally! See his Facebook for more info).

I have not done nearly as much riding this year as I usually do. I checked my stats (I keep stats on everything!) and for the last 2 years, I had over 300 miles by the end of April. This year, I don't even have 100. I gotta get off my lazy a** and start riding!

Oh yea, please be advised that the Robmark Factory is currently out of service. I was unable to get to my card making machine and got totally behind at the beginning of the year so I just put the Robmark business on hold for now anyway. Now, I am starting to feel bad about it and may have to get er going again (and do some retro-cards!) So don't feel left our or forgotten if you did not get your usual Robmark this year (yet). You (all) are not forgotten!

I found that a few of you basketball fans out there kind of liked my Bulls Quiz below. That was actually kind of fun and Da Bulls are still kickin a** in the playoffs. I think they have a shot at winning the whole enchilada this year!

Well, I got my website bidness moved to Wyoming and I am still getting my commissions from Amazon (and everywhere else) so that's good. I just did some updates to my site over the last few days but I also feel bad that I haven't been able to keep up on that as much as I would like to.

And finally, I wanted to mention that I had another one of my photos (from my bike site trail pages) published in another hardcopy magazine. The magazine is called Competitor and looks like a pretty major publication but we had a real hard time finding a copy out in the "brick and mortar" world.

Dara did just pickup some copies at a running store so I will have a hard copy now. They actually wanted higher resolution photos than I had available and they only published a LITTLE TINY copy of one of my photos and they got the link to my website wrong on their webpage (!!! oh well).

Well anyway, my little tiny photo is on here on page 68 of the magazine. You will need to enlarge the image and look at the little circular photo with the red background in the center of the page. It is a photo on the Busse Woods trail and I get credit with some horizontal writing to the right of the little paragraph. get out your magnification glasses for this one! :-)

I was losing track of what magazines that I had photos or articles in so I just did a little list on my pc so I could remember (this is getting real important these days, at my age!). It's good to put them here on our website too so here's the list of hardcopy magazines that I have had photos and/or articles in:

4/17/11 - The Bulls (nickname quiz)

I am so behind on everything! I just now updated the monthly logo above! It's taken a while to get my new LLC setup (for my website business) but I think that I am done with that now. Now I can do some actual work on my bike site, which I just did today. See the Bike Blog if you're interested in that.

One thing that I've been into lately is The Bulls. For those of you who know me as the old music guy that never watched sports or knew anything about sports this is probably a suprise! Well, I've been into the Bulls all year and now they end the season as #1 in the NBA!!! This is great for a fair weather fan like myself.

So the one thing that I wanted to do was to test you fellow Bulls fans out there. I think that the Bulls announcer, Stacey King has some interesting nick names for a lot of the Bulls players so here are your Bulls Nickname Questions: 

OK, how many did you get right? No fair looking ahead... Here are the answers. Bulls Nickname Answers.

3/28/11 - Medal, Moving to Wyoming!

Just a quick update. First of all, Corinne is well into goodminton season now and she just got a Medal at the meet this weekend for her performance. Congrats Corinne!

And the other big news is that it looks like I'l be Moving to Wyoming soon... ♫ (not gonna be a dental floss tycoon!) ♪ ♫ (that's an infamous Frank Zappa song for those who don't get that one :-) (OK so it was Montana in the song)).

OK, well, I'm not physically moving there, but part of my website business will be moving there. This is all because of Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and his idiotic, business unfriendly tax laws! (don't get me started on that one). Anyway, Illinois just passed the so called "Amazon Tax" in order to try and charge Amazon and other online merchants state taxes. Amazons answer was just to drop all affiliates (associations) with Illinois so my website is getting dropped as of 4/15/11. I've also been dropped from Overstock.com and JensonUSA (a popular online mtn bike merchant). All because I live in Illinois.

Anyway, my solution is to move my business (part of it anyway) to Wyoming. I believe that this is totally or at least mostly legal thing to do (there are gray areas sometimes). I was looking at S-corporations and LLCs (Limited Liability Companies) and LLCs looked like the best option for me.

I still have some work to do to finish setting this up and I'll let ya all know if it works as expected and is not too overbearing. I had to pickout a company name and I wanted it to be specific to websites but not too specific (like for the bike site alone) and the name is mostly for the checks to and from the company and for my tax forms.

So my new company name is: Websites2C LLC!

3/3/11 - Varsity Badminton! , Birthday, 1966

Well, I just had to do some updates tonight! First of all, Corinne just made the Fremd Varsity Badminton Team!!! Tryouts were tough and it wasn't looking good in the beginning but Corinne hung in there and played some tough games and made the Fremd varsity team! Congratulations once again Corinne!

Corinne also just turned 18 on Tuesday. So Happy Birthday Corinne. I might have a better chance of her seeing my web page update than actually seeing her! :-( (just kidding (sort of) I just talked to her a little tonight).

...and I was just thinking about 1966... Let's see, I was 13 years old... the average cost of new house was $14,200.00, the average income per year was $6,900.00, gas was 32 cents a gallon and the average cost of a new car $2,650.00... and Larry and Patty got married on March 4th of that year making this their 45th anniversary! Happy Anniversary yous guys!

2/2/11 - Miami!

Miami University! Just a quick update to let you know that Corinne has been accepted to Miami University in Oxford Ohio! Although Corinne was accepted at all of the other colleges that she applied to (OK, she didn't apply to Harvard) this is the school that she really wanted to go to. Congratulations Corinne!

Just some historical notes (from internet sources)...

So that city in Florida did steal the name from Miami university in Ohio (after they stole the name from the redskins (Miamis original mascot) oh wait I can't say that... the Indians no wait   the native americans).

I am so bad politically correct.

OK, I worked a few hours from home today, now I gots to so shovel!!!

2/2/11 (part 2) - Some Snow Storm Pics

Here's my second update for today. Although I usually have the latest on top, I wanted to leave the Miami news on top for now.

I am so sore from shoveling!!! Anyway, I took a few snow storm photos. I'm sure there are some great photo ops out there but I did not get real artsy. These are just a few photos mostly of our driveway and house...

Some 2/2/11 Snow Storm Photos

On a technical note, I made the blow up pages smaller on this batch of photos so the whole photo and caption will fit on the screen at the same time. The trade off is that the blow up photos are not as large as what I normally would do. What do you think? Better or worse?

1/23/11 - Well, we still have da Bulls!

OK, I had a chance for an update and my prediction (below) was off I guess :-( I hate to repeat the old Chicago sportsfan saying but "there's always next year" sad face Da Bulls are doing really good though! Derek is fun to watch.

Congratulations Packer fans!

1/22/11 - Bears Beat Packers! (just in case I don't get a chance for another update)

<optimistic photo removed> :-(

1/8/11 - Happy 2011

Just a quick update since I had to update my month photo above to January. It's been "hectic" here as most of you all ready know so I haven't had a chance for many website updates. My Bike Site really did pretty well for 2010 and I really wish that I had more time to keep up on it or maybe improve it right now but I am having a hard time keeping up and everything else :-(. I just did some minor updates yesterday but have not had a chance to really add or improve the content. Fortunately, I have a 6 month extention at DHL and that has been excellent.

Casey is still home from WIU but will probably head back next weekend. I may end up driving him back but the plans have not been finalized yet.

Obviously bike riding season is over, and although I haven't been into a real regular walk/run routine this year I have been able to get out on the weekends a little now that the first round of snow (from December) is gone. I am not walking as often as before but since I was getting in a little better shape from riding over the summer I have been able to do some decent running this year.

Sorry, not a real exciting update, but at least it's an update! Later.

 

 



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