Archive 15 - 1/5/2012 to 7/31/2016
7/31/2016 - Canu Canoe 
Dara and I went Canoeing on the Des Plaines River last weekend... :-)
OK Here's the Original Photo before I did any "enhancements"
7/31/2016 - Robiography
A few years ago I wrote up a quick Autobiography of the major events in my life. Mostly I was trying to remember what I was doing during various times and specific years of my life. I looked up a few things to try to get the dates and years correct so I think most of the dates are pretty accurate.
This was originally in a Word document on my computer but I wanted to find out the dates that I was at Digital yesterday and thought it would be nice if I just had the AutoBio info online. So I converted the Word doc to a page and put the Robiography button up at the top of this page.
I've added a few little things to the webpage version now and may add more as things happen in my life (if anything significant ever happens again :-)).
I did not make this a real in depth autobiography with all of the juicy details of my life (good and bad). I just wanted a big picture, factual summary that me and all of you could reference if interested. Maybe I will do the full auto biography as a retirement project (or bucket to-do list as I call it).
Well now that I've written more than I planned to here, here's the link to My Autobiography or Robiography ~ which you can get to with the button at the top of the page also. I guess I could have also called it an "About" page but that does not sound nearly as interesting...
7/29/2016 - 90 Years ago... 
Yea, 90 years ago on this day Vernice Francis Rowe (later Vernice Chapman (and sometimes even Susie (which is, of course short for Vernice :-))) ~ aka mom ~ was born. I wanted to do a little Facebook post so I put together this little photo collage.
Yep, I've already posted this collage on Facebook but wanted to post it here too since this is where I keep all my posts and photos and stuff (if/when Facebook goes away (or charges for your old history or something)).
Also, you can click on this photo and get the larger version (although since it is just old scanned pics it is not as large as the newer digital pics).
I wish I had a lot more pictures to work with but it wasn't as easy (or cheap) to take 1000 photos with your phone back then (oh wait, phones were just for talkin :-)).
Another thing that I have thought of recently is that pictures of people that are no longer with us are often just the latest photos of them when they were older. We all looked different (and usually better) when we were younger so I wanted to give the younger pictures of mom some new PR (like they never got before!)
Well, I gotta go but... Happy Birthday Mom ~ where ever you are! (still missin you a lot after almost 30 years...)
7/17/2016 - Robbbikin
Yea, that's my login for my Garmin bike GPS - Rob Be Bikin or Robbie Bikin (or robBbikin). Anyway, that's what I've been doin quite a bit lately. At least until today since I had to bring my bike in to the shop for a broken rear shifter cable 
I might have been able to fix that myself but they do it so much better and it would take a lot of time for me. 
Unfortunately, that say it could take a week to get back cause of their back log.
Most of you have probably already seen this photo (Since it's on Facebook and I got quite a few likes) but I thought that I would post it here to for the record (I find it easier to lookup past history here than on Facebook.
The idea with my odometer photo is that I've made it half way to my season goal of 1,000 bike miles...
Hope I get my bike back soon so I can finish the job.
7/2/2016 - KCs BD Lunch, Roomies, Goals
Yesterday Casey, Dara and I took a trip downtown (Chicaga) and up to the 95th floor of the John Hancock Building for KCs BD Lunch! Although we talked about it before it was a last minute final decision to go and we struggled to get there before their lunch deadline (2:00).
I actually worked a half day then Dara and I met with KC at his apartment in the city, then drove downtown from there. Corinne was in a wedding that day so she could not make it :-(. I've included a couple of phone pics of our lunch below.
BTW: For those of you who don't know, Corinne and her roommate are not renewing their lease for the apartment in Palatine and Caseys roommate needed to move too so Corinne is movin in to the apartment in the city, with Casey, to finish off their lease there. So our kids are now roomies!
And finally... I've had a hard time keeping my bike miles up in order to make my annual season goal of 1,000 miles! It's getting a little harder each year!
I only had 225 miles at the beginning of June and didn't have a lot of miles by mid June either. So I made a couple of mid-term goals to keep me on track. I wanted to have 400 miles by the end of June and as you can see by my mileage post above I made that one! Now, I want to try to have 600 by the end of July. So if I make that one, I think I'll be fine for doing another 1,000 this year.
Here's a few phone pics of our lunch at the top of the John Hancock Building.
Click on the Photos to Enlarge (of course)
6/6/2016 - Wisconsin Trip!
I just uploaded the photos from our Wisconsin Trip this past weekend. It was a GREAT trip and we did quite a bit for one short weekend. I also took quite a few photos this trip.
First, we visited with my brother and sis-in-law and had some great grub. Next we saw my nephew Jasson's house for the first time and visited with the whole family for a while (which was great).
Then on Sunday I got a chance to see 2 of my great nephews, Steve, with Audy, of course, Nick, and see Steve's and Audy's dog Rupert and Dara got a chance to shoot a 12 gauge shotgun!
Next I took a Bike Ride with my Bro for the first time ever, I think. He rented a recumbent and we went to the Sparta Trail and to and through Tunnel #3. I had a great time and I think he enjoyed it too.
After that I visited with Andi and Brad (my niece and Neph-in-law), had a great meal and attempted to see my other great nephew Jake and family but due to my hectic, spur of the moment schedule I missed them but we did drive to their new house and I saw that.
OK, enough yappin, here are the photos!
Wisconsin Trip, Visits and Bike Ride Photos! 
5/25/2016 - Jon Chapman's Graduation!
Wow, I didn't realize that my last post was 2 months ago!
Anyway, let's get to the main event. My GREAT Nephew, Jon, graduated from HS this past Sunday. Congrats to Jon and his family!!!
The graduation party was in Geneva, Il so Dara and I decided to sneak in a Ride on the For River Trail before the party. I meant to park in Geneva but ended up parking in St. Charles. Then we rode from St. Charles to Aurora, then through Aurora (on the new bike lanes (that I'll write about on my bike site at some point)) to my parents cemetery (Mt. Olivet) in Aurora for a visit then back to St Charles and on to Geneva.
It was really nice to see the family including many friends and relatives that I had not seen for quite a while. I really enjoyed that.
OK, enough yakin! Here are the photos!
Jon Chapman's Graduation Party in Geneva!
3/20/2016 - Longevity Grades, Flowers
I was sitting around contemplating how long people live a while back. I had checked out some of the longevity stats on the internet so I have some idea about what the numbers are (although there are a lot of different categories).
Then I thought of a very simple Longevity Grading system. Here's how it works just based on one of the standard grading systems used in schools:
Age Range |
Grade |
100 years and over |
A+ |
90 to 99 |
A |
80 to 89 |
B |
70 to 79 |
C |
60 to 69 |
D |
Under 60 Years |
F |
In general, most people don't feel quite as bad when someone with a very high grade dies but the low grades, and especially the F's are very sad.
I mentioned my little system to a few people and most thought it was interesting so I thought that I would officially post it here. BTW: This is an original thought. I didn't check the internet to see if anyone else had this idea before but if people post if after today they probably stole my idea. :-) (that has happened before).
Anyway, on a related topic, check out the cemetery Flowers that we just "planted" in our garden a few weeks ago! We are the only ones in the hood (that I've seen) that has flowers already!
These are the flowers that we found at Harper ~ from the 2/21/2016 story below...
3/12/2016 - First Ride!
Alright! First Ride of the Season! Yep, it was a really nice day today (in the 60s) and Dara and I got out for our first ride of the season. Right on time. Usually I consider Daylight Savings time pretty much as riding season. So 13 miles down, 987 to go!
2/21/2016 - 60s in February! Old Skank, Rich in Other Ways, Late Entry
I finally just updated my February photo above but that one is from another year and not at all what it has been like outside this weekend. Man, was it nice here yesterday! Nothin like the 60s in February!
I also just finished my latest trail pages on a trail that we rode in October! I call it the Old Skank Trail offline (off the record) but it is really called the Old Plank Road Trail. I'll be bloggin and doing a FB post for it next (I hope).
My brother called me on his way back to Wisconsin from Illinois and was yaking on about a lot of things (if you can imagine that... :-) ) then something came up and he said something like "well, it would be nice if I were rich..." then he followed that up right away with "well actually I Am Rich in Other Ways..." meaning other than financially, of course.
Well, I knew that was true right away and totally agreed with that. I thought about it a little and I was actually very happy that he realized that too. :-) 
2/21/2016 V2 - Late Entry
This just in... After I did the original post above I took a selfie of Dara and me after we went out picking flowers today! Yea, there is a story behind this one.
OK, we were really out for a walk today (it was a little colder than yesterday) and when we walked past Harper College on the Algonquin Road side, there were all of these fake flowers that I'm sure were blown there from the cemetery across the street on the high wind days that we had recently.
Well, I was thinking that these might look good in the flower garden in our backyard that usually does not even look like a flower garden due to neglect. So we gathered up all of these free fake flowers, took the selfie above, carried them home and I "planted" then in our flower garden! They look pretty good so far!
Yea, I can still be a little odd at times. :-)
1/16/2016 - Southern Wisco Bike Trails...
Just a quick update here since I have been doing some PR on the latest bike trail photos and ride reports that I just posted on my bike site.
Now that it's cold, I've been trying to get some of the bike trail pages done for the trails that we rode last spring, summer and fall.
For those of you who are not signed up for my blog updates or Facebook bike page updatess (not sure why anyone would not be signed up for these... :-) I just did a blog post on the Southern Wisco Trails here:
Southern Wisconsin Bike Trails Blog Post...
1/9/2016 - Happy 2016, Rather Be Riding?
Happy New Year All! Just a quick update. I just got an email that I sold a bumper sticker at Zazzle. I barely make anything from the bike trail products that I designed for that site but I always think it's fun when someone actually buys one of my Zazzle products.
Zazzle is a website that sells T-shirts, hats, mugs and bumper stickers and they have an affiliate program plus you can design your own products (and get a token commission when one sells). I put some Bike Trail Products out on Zazzle a few years back and even had a few sold over the years.
Anyway, I just sold this "I'd Rather Be Biking the Chicago Lakefront Trail" bumper sticker yesterday :-). 
(click on it to enlarge)
So if you see this one on someone's bumper... it's my photo and design! :-) I have also sold some Fox River Trail t-shirts and Chicago Lakefront Trail coffee mug (to someone in Europe) and a few other items.
It's not quite as good as that Smiley Face "Shit Happens" t-shirt that Forest Gump designed :-) but it is still fun.
You can see all of my goofy Zazzle Products here... and you can even buy one if you want to impress your friends! (or me anyway :-).
Later...
11/21/2015 - White Thanksgiving? 
What the ???!!! Who's been dreaming of a White Thanksgivin?!
In case you can't make this out it is the snow on the table on our patio (untouched) and the ruler is showing 12 inches! (you can also blowup the photo to a larger size if you click on it).
Just last weekend it was in the 60s and we were rakin leaves...
In other news, I've had a hard time keeping up on my business websites but now that I am snowed in at least I got around to updating my sites again today...
11/14/2015 - We're BACK! 
New Videos Page!
Well, just like the Energizer Bunny, we just keep going and going and going...! Yep, Comcast just decided to drop their personal web page service and never even notified me! This website was originally hosted under my AT&T (dial-in) site (in 1999 (before Facebook)) then later under my Comcast site and without any notification Comcast dropped our site and it was gone!
Well, never fear! We're BACK and hosted by iPower Web which I use for hosting my other business sites. So now this site is actually setup with a real domain and hosting service rather than under some free ISP space with a forwarded domain.
So what does all this techno-mumbo-jumbo mean to you! Probably not much except that we are still here and I hope this site will even be more reliable than before. I also have the option to set this up as a Word Press blog where you could post comments back and stuff but I'm not ready for that just yet.
You will need to use our domain name, www.RobAndDara.com to get here now so if you have any shortcuts, or bookmarks using the URL with "comcast" in the name, you'll need to change that.
And in a related story... as I was uploading all the web pages, photos and videos that I have posted on this site since 1999(!) I noticed that I had a fair share of videos that I worked on a lot and posted over the years but were sprinkled through out the site and hard to find. So I decided to put them all in one place for easy access.
I also noticed that I had the "Rob's Movie Ratings" page button/link at the top of the page that was really kind of out of date (and a little lame too) so I replaced that with the new VIDEOs button at the top of this page. Don't worry the old "Rob's Movie Ratings" Button is still available at the bottom of the page now...
Anyway, I have not completed the Video Page yet but as I put it together I found it really entertaining so check out the NEW VIDEO page when you get a chance!!!
10/4/2015 - < That's a Big 10-4, Hot Rods at Woodstock!
Dara and I went to Woodstock! (Illinois that is) to see my brother at the 2015 Iron Invasion!
I just posted a bunch of photos, with captions, so I'm not gonna say much here but just refer you to the photo page and let the photos do the talkin!
We went to the show on 10/3, which was also my nieces birthday! Happy BDay again Andi!
9/6/2015 - T-Minus 66!, New Southern Wisconsin Bike Trails...
OK, just a quick update (I hope). It's Labor Day weekend and I am getting close to my usual Season Bike Miles minimum goal of 1,000 miles. So the T stands for Thousand and I am currently at 934 miles for this year so that should explain the T-Minus 66 above.
I just checked and see that I have ridden OVER 1,000 miles per year since 2002 with the exception of 1 year (2006 when I only rode 732 miles). So for the last 14 years I have ridden a total of 17,872 miles (for an average of 1,277 per year) ~ but I am riding a lot slower as I get older :-(
The other news is also bike riding news (what a surprise, right?). I have ridden 3 New Southern Wisconsin Bike Trails so far this year. I just finished writing up the 2nd one today and have not completed the article and photos for the 3rd one yet.
The latest Southern Wisco Trail Rides are:
The White River Trail - Out of Burlington Wisconsin (I posted this below too).
The Root River and Racine County Trails - This is the article that I just finished today
and the Oak Leaf Trail in the South Milwaukee area - We did this ride on August 16th but I have not yet had a chance to post the photos or write the article. :-(
7/26/2015 - Corinne Apt Living, Casey Condos and St Louey, ...and me, me, me, me...
These days I usually just do updates here when there is some event or something that has been going on but I see I haven't done an update in quite a while and just had some extra time (since it supposed to rain today) so here goes! There has actually been a lot happening since the 5/23 update below.
Ooops I posted the August photo above a little early, oh well... it will be here soon enough...
First off, Corinne has already moved out even though she just graduated in May! She moved into an apartment (here in Palatine) with her friend Christa. Here apartment is pretty nice and has 2 balconies that overlook a small lake.
Corinne stays busy, as most of you know, and has been working 3 or 4 jobs already! They were part-time but now she also has a full time job teaching people how to use ultra-sound equipment. It's not really a "teaching job" (like she got her degree for) but I guess it is "teaching" people stuff. :-) Right now, she is at Country Thunder - The country music, camping fest that she has gone to for the last few years.
Casey is also out looking at condos right now. He also has an option to rent and apt. with a friend in Chicago but I am hoping that he goes for the condo thing here in the suburbs. I'm just not too big on the "livin in the city" thing myself and I would like him to be closer. Well, We will see how that all goes.
Casey also just got back from St Louey where his company Xtra-Lease sent him for a business and training trip. It sounds like it was a nice trip and I think he ate well also! :-)
OK, as for myself, I am still working at DHL for now. It looks like I'll probably be there until December but it is still not definite yet. I think I will be kind of technically semi-retired after DHL but I will still need my websites to provide an income stream (hopefully) even if it is not a large amount.
Unfortunately, I just never seem to find the time to do my website work too when I am so burned out from working full time at DHL. I noticed that my Bike site traffic picked up a little and even my treadmill site traffic picked up and I haven't done any work on that one since Feb 2014!
I have also been trying to get some good bike miles in as I usually do in the summers but I guess I have been slackin off at that a little this year too. It's almost the end of July and I only have 667 miles. I am still shooting for another 1,000+ mile riding season though. In case you missed it in my Bike Blog I did manage a couple of nice rides so far including one on the White River Trail in southern Wisconsin.
I guess dats about it... Until next time!
5/23/2015 Corinne's Graduation!
Well, last weekend certainly was busy. We went to Corinne's graduation from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio!
Corinne actually had 2 graduation ceremonies. The first one was for the entire graduating class on Saturday and was outside in the football stadium ("rain or shine" they said and we got the former!). The second ceremony was on Sunday for the College of Education (Health and Society) and was indoors.
Corinne now has a Bachelor of Science in Education and will be certified to teach grades 7-12.
Both ceremonies were pretty nice (as far as graduation ceremonies go :-)) and I liked the outdoor one but it would have been nicer without the rain.
I didn't take a large number of photos but I got some graduation ones and various family photos of those who were there. I did the one of everyone with my camera on a timer and sitting on a cannon! I think I looked pretty disheveled since I was in the same clothes that I had on in the rain at the graduation and I don't really look so good with stuff like that working against me (aside from the fact that I am old too :-))
OK, Enough of the story... Here are the photos:
Corinne's Miami Graduation Photos!
We stayed at the lodge in Hueston Woods which was really nice. Our balcony overlooked a good size lake. Unfortunately, we really were not there much to enjoy the view. We were mostly just there to sleep after our busy days.
We went to Corinne's house after the first ceremony which was nice and then we had a meal with the family which was also nice. After that we did the outdoor photos at the park in town.
Sunday morning we went to the indoor ceremony then went to a place called the Texas Road House to eat (which was great). After that we picked up a U-Haul truck and went to Corinne's house again for the big move back to Illinois.
I drove the truck back to Illinois, which was actually kind of difficult and uncomfortable but I made it and we unpacked the truck the next night after Corinne got back. After that, Corinne and Lexus were Off to California!
So as you can see we really had an action packed weekend. I am thankful for this weekend (it is Memorial Day weekend) for not having much going on. :-)
Oh yea, I even got a new "May photo" (above) from this year.
4/7/2015 Quick Update...
Just a Quick Update. I mostly just wanted to update my bike miles and the month photo above while I was updating my other sites so I decided to write a little thing too.
I don't have a lot of bike miles for this year yet but I have my first 100 so I am at least 1/10th of the way to my usual minimum bike riding season mileage goal of 1,000(+) miles (I rode 2182 in 2005 (but then again I was only a kid (52 years old) back then).
Also, just an FYI, most of the "month scene" pictures like the "April" one above are originals (or I used a few of Dales too I think). I tried to find a better April scene (the one above is very old and maybe even from my old camera) but I could not find any so I guess I better break out the camera this month and get some scenery shots!
3/21/2015 Spring, First Rides, Graduation and Post-Graduation Pics.
OK, time for a quick update! Well, we gave back that hour that we borrowed during daylight-wasting time and Spring and Bike Riding Season are here! As you may have noticed I have my new 2015 bike miles posted above. Pretty skimpy so far.
Mostly I wanted to do an update here to post Corinne's new graduation pictures and a few "post-graduation" photos of Casey.
Yep, we are lookin forward to Corinne's graduation from Miami (of Ohio) and she had the traditional studio photos taken. I also had a couple of photos of KC in his cool new (and expensive) sunglasses and I wanted to post them too so I figured that I would post the latest pics both of my beautiful kids together (awww).
OK, Here are the photos:
Graduation and Post-Graduation Photos!
I was glad that I got a couple of photos of Casey before he buzzed off his hair again. He couldn't quite make it until Corinne got home for spring break and our haircuts. I am getting a little shaggy too (yes, it still grows in the back mostly) but I am waiting for Corinne to come home for my haircut.
I am planning on doing a blog entry on my bike site but I wanted to to a quick Facebook post to let people know that I actually do have a life outside of biking, since mostly the only stuff that shows up on my Facebook page is bike stuff from my bike blog since that get automatically posted to Facebook.
When I do updates, I usually write too much for Facebook so I still write stuff here.
On the work scene, I am still working for DHL (as a contract programmer) for now. Unfortunately, that takes so much of my time that I have not kept up on my websites. i hope to at least get some bike blog posts done and ride and photograph some more trails this year.
OK, time to do the FB update and maybe get ready for da Bulls game!
1/24/2015 Electronic Robmarks® and Goin Green(er)!
Wow, 2 updates in a row! I actually wanted to post this notification before the first 2015 Robmarks® have been released but there have been 2 that have gone out already this year!
The Robmark bored of directors have gotten together and have made some important new decisions regarding the company's vision for the future. In an effort to keep up with current technology and also to Go Green(er) the company has decided to deliver all adult Robmarks (not x-rated just grown-up) Electronically! 
Children (and I use the term loosely (those 25 and under)) will still receive the old fashioned paper cards (and paper gifts based on age) that you have all grown to love. Adults, however should check their emails for electronic delivery.
I realize that it may be hard to stay on top of everyone's current email and or other electronic delivery options (text messages for those who prefer, etc.) but we will make every effort to stay current.
We certainly hope that this move to future technology is successful. If not, we can always go retro if necessary.
I considered Facebook delivery but decided against that in case the personalized Robmarks are boring or not funny or even embarrassing (which has been known to happen). I try to do a short, less embarrassing, post on FB when I remember.
One advantage to the E-Robmarks® that I just realized is that if you are the lucky recipient of an original PhotoChopped RM Photo (not included in all Robmarks), you will have the electronic copy of the photo to do what you want with (forward to other people, post on FB or other anti-social websites, text message to family and friends or just hit the trash-can icon right away :-)).
Our History: Yep, I've been doing original greeting cards (mostly birthdays) since I was very young before "Robmark" became the well known and respected corporation that it is today (ok, well the paperwork has not officially gone through on that yet). :-)
For those who don't remember, the original Robmarks were done with crayons, colored pencils, markers and stickers. Next, around 1998, Robmark jumped into the high-tech computer world and released our first computer-generated greeting cards. Well, we've had a good run with that technology (about 17 years now) and now we're moving into an exciting new phase! (OK, that's my PR speakin...).
For comments, questions or concerns about Robmark's new direction please contact: The Robmark® Bored of Directors here (here) and (here).
I keep complaining that I don't have enough time to get any work done on my other business websites... Well, I guess I know one of the reasons now. Oh well, I still like goofy website updates once in a while. :-)
Later!
1/23/2015 Xmas Photos (finally),
Well, hey! It's 2015 already! Happy New Year all!
OK, I am really behind here but I just realized that I had some Xmas photos that I had not posted here yet. Mostly I forgot about these because I didn't take photos with my big cheater (high quality) camera and these are just phone pics so you can see how bad my pictures really are when I don't have the help of a good camera :-).
Actually one of the cool things that I did was to use the Panoramic option on my phone camera to try to get everyone in the room in one photo. I didn't get a full 360 but it really is a handy option to get wide view photos. The other photos are just some photos that I took of our low keyed xmas morning at home. Then I added a few bonus photos at the end :-)
OK, enough Yakin about the photos here they are!
Oh yea, the last photo (the selfie of me in my cool sunglasses) was taken with the iPad mini that KC and Corinne gave to me and Dara for xmas (although it is really MINE! :-)).
12/13/14 1971 Jazz Band, Student Teacher, Xtra-Lease, Movin on up... to the North Side!
Yes, it's 12, 13, 14 today. I just updated our monthly photo above with Kitty enjoying a snow storm (as she does). Fortunately, that was NOT this year. It has been really nice weather here this last week (and no snow!).
I have quite a bit of news actually but I mostly got inspired to do an update here because I was talking to a lady that I work with and found that she may have had a friend that I knew back at NIU and that was actually in the Jazz Band in the 70s. Yes, that's the 1970s! So I tracked down this old Jazz Band Photo from 1971 (I think it was or it could have been 72).
This photo is a little scary and it's only black and white (which is probably good because I think it would be even scarier in color!). It's a scanned photo and the quality isn't great but you'll get the idea anyway. The real question here is can you guess where I am in the photo? (hint: I still had hair then!).
When I was tracking down this photo, I also came across a recent photo of Corinne after she got busted at Miami!
(OK, it was an old Robmark photo but I wanted to get a little more mileage out of it).
Speakin of Corinne, Some of my other news is that Corinne has her Student Teaching assignment, starting next month, and will be teaching some very fortunate high school students American Government at Mason HS in Mason Ohio (north east of Cincinnati)! Congratulations Corinne.
And for the other important family news, Casey has landed a job workin for Warren Buffet (indirectly) at Xtra-Lease! KC has only been there a week but he seems to like it so far. There is a variety of work and he got some use out of his college degree since that was a requirement for the job. Xtra-Lease is a large Truck Trailer leasing company by the airport. I also work right next to O'Hare and I see a lot of these trucks all the time.
Speakin of workin by the airport (man I'm on a roll at tying these updates together!), DHL Global Forwarding (where I work now) is moving from the south side of O'Hare to the North Side. We will actually have a Chicago address when we move, even though it is really more like Des Plaines, so I'll be workin in Chicago now.
Although I only work at DHL as a contract programmer, I have worked there, on and off, since 2002 and have not worked for another company since then (other than my own companies) so this move to the new location is a big change for me as well as the other people that have worked at that office for 16 years! I actually calculated my time there from my start and stop dates and I have worked there for 7 out of the last 12 years.
Well, I guess that's about it fer now... Till next time...
11/28/14 Thanksgiving 2014, Ralkin, Some Good News
Well my main reason for this update is to post this year's Thanksgiving Pictures. So I'll get to that right away. I just went through the photos that I took and selected the best 26 photos out of the 57 that I took then touched them all up to make them look better. As part of my honesty disclosure policy I wanted to mention that I am not a very good photographer but I like good photos and have to work at it (even behind the scenes) to get some good stuff and I really envy people that can just take great photos on the fly.
Anyway, here are the photos from Thanksgiving!
Chapman, Oium Thanksgiving 2014!
In other (less interesting) news I have switched over from bike riding to walking and running (or Ralking (Run-Walking) as I now call it) and am now walking 4 kilometers and running 1 kilometer (OK so I walk 3.1 miles and run about 6/10ths of a mile out of that). Of course, I don't run much faster than a younger person walking fast but it feels good for this 61 year old body to attempt to stay in shape.
As for the Other Good News, my programming contract, at DHL, just got extended to July! My current contract only went until the end of the year (2014) and now I am good through July. It is possible that it will get extended one more time (until the end of 2015) but that will probably be it for my programming career so I will probably be forced to retire at 62 even though I am not really prepared for that financially (like plenty of other people I'm sure).
Fortunately, my websites have been getting a little more profitable again but it is a very small percentage of what it was in the good old days when they provided a full time income. Once my contracts are over at DHL I will focus more on the websites again but that is a pretty iffy thing... OK, anyway, things are going pretty good for now!
10/25/14 Made my Goal! A Popular News Story!
It was a beautiful fall day today and I finally made my Goal of 1,000+ Bike Miles for this year. I have actually ridden 1,000 miles or more in 9 out of the last 10 years (only 732 in 2006 :-( ) and over 2,000 miles in 2 of those years.
So I have ridden my bike for 14,571 miles in the last 10 years (so far...) . And I brought my FAT belly with me the whole time! :-) OK, it's not the greatest thing for yer figure but I love riding and I believe that I am in much better shape, overall, than if I had just watched TV (or done something less physical) for all those hours.
<<< I just had to take a selfie with my bike odometer ( I reset my odometer to 0 on January 1st (or before the first ride) of each year).
We also just got a link from Dara's sister of an AP news story that they were in when they went to Iran this year. It's pretty cool. Here's the link to:
8/27/14 - The Latest Bike Trail Photos/Pages, My NEW Look!
Just a quick (and fun) update. First off, I just posted the photos of my last bike ride on the Des Plaines River Trail with Dale. We both brought our cameras and got some pretty good photos. Dale took and converted his photos into HDR (high dynamic Range) images which are pretty cool. Mine were just OK but I kinda liked the iPhone Panoramic that I shot even though it had some sun glare.
I haven't written my bike blog about this yet (I'll probably do that tomorrow) but the new trail photo pages are here:
Des Plaines River Trail September Photos
I used one of Dale's HDR images for this year's September image at the top of the page.
Now for the fun part that you have all been waiting for! I have been axed a number of times to change my look and I just always stay the same and never listen to anyone. Well, I finally listened and here are some photos of My NEW Look!
Wha Do Ya Think??? :-)
8/10/14 - Bike Trail Pages and Update, Camera Fool
I just finished some Bike Trail Pages on my bike site for the Chain O'Lakes rides that I did in June so I thought I would do a quick update here too. The COL Bike Trail pages are here and the Blog Post is here.
I don't think that my photos for this trail were all that great but it is always good to keep adding new content to the bike site and I think that they will add value to my site.
I've been noticing that a lot of my outdoor photos (like the COL photos that I just did) that I have been taking with my good camera have not been coming out all that great. I finally figured out that the exposure was screwed up. Some photos were over-exposed and washed out others were too dark. So I was fooling around with my camera and discovered that I had the exposure setting wrong. It was set to "Spot Metering" which sets the exposure to a very specific area instead of "Matrix Metering" which is the more all purpose setting and more fool proof.
Then I discovered that I had had it this way for about a year and a half! You can always use the auto setting or one of the preprogrammed settings on the camera but I liked to think that I was a little more proficient with the camera and could handle the more professional settings. Well, I'll keep trying to get better and get it right but I was a Camera Fool in this situation.
Well I don't have a lot of time to ramble on here so I'll leave this as my update for now. I think I'll go out to Facebook now and see what everyone else has been up to.
Later...
7/20/14 - Yes, Back to Work, Website Scene, Enjoy Summer
Well the biggest news, for those of you who may not have heard yet, is that I am Back to Work at DHL again. It took forever to get things going on their end (I was originally contacted in late March and didn't start until June 19th) but I am back now.
So far, I am only approved for a 6 month contract which will take me to the end of the year. I know that there is a lot of work that needs to be done there so I am hoping that I will get extended past the 6 month time frame but, for now, it is 6 months and I am very grateful for that.
On the Website Scene, my bike site traffic has mostly stabilized at around 800 visitors per day which is much better than it was earlier in the year when I was getting around 300 visitors per day (but not good enough to support us like it was when I was getting 3,000 visitors per day). I also managed to sell a few treadmills on my treadmills site recently. That was encouraging since the profits are really good on treadmills and I only have a limited number of review pages on the site so far. I will have to do more work on that site when I get a little time (like that will happen... Well maybe in January if I do not get extended at DHL).
I don't really have a lot of other big news right now, just trying to Enjoy Summer amap. I've been getting some nice riding in (especially with this slightly cooler weather lately) and am up to 580 bike miles for the season so far. It could be a little tough to get my 1,000+ in for the year. Well that sounds like a goal.
I am trying to post stuff to my bike site fairly regularly but I haven't posted all that much lately. I have been watching the TDF again this year, of course, and I really do like that although I have not sold any Proform TDF bikes yet this summer. I also just got a new heart-rate strap for my bike computer which I will probably blog about when I get a chance (any new content helps the site).
Yesterday I took my camera with me (not just my phone camera which is almost always with me) for a couple of experimental photos. I took some flower and weed photos and used one of them for this year's July photo above. I am also going through the photos that I took on our ChainOLakes ride back in June so I can post some trail pages on that.
Corinne is still here for the summer although I don't see her all that often. I know that she is going to Country Thunder next weekend. She is also still working at Friday's (the one in Wheeling or Buffalo Grove).
KC is helping a lot with stuff around the house (like mowing the lawn among other things) and he has been working for the Mosquitoe Abatement place again this summer. He also got a promotion and has more responsibility (and an air conditioned truck!) this year.
OK, dats it fer now. Thanks fer stoppin by!
6/6/14 - Doin Some Nice Riding, Wisco Trip and Bird Crap Story, Not Back to Work, Some Hope
I have a lot of news and not a lot of time right now but I really wanted to get an update out here (it's about time, right?).
I have been getting in some good bike riding lately. I rode the Busse Woods trail (and forgot how nice it was) and did a new photo page and blog post here. I also did a "great" ride on the Great River Trail in Wisconsin and am in the process of doing the website updates, blog and photos but do not have that complete yet. Just check in on my bike blog for an update on that.
One of my more interesting stories is my Van Painting and Bird Crap Story. I did another trip up to Wisconsin just before Memorial Day and my brother was nice enough to paint some parts of my van that needed painting due to a bad paint job from Honda (there was a recall on it). I tried to tell the story in the photo page so I am just going to post that for my story.
Here's the Van Painting and Bird Crap (photo) Story!
I had a nice trip in Wisconsin although my reason for being there was not a good thing (those who know me well know what that is about). I had a nice Kayak trip on the Kickapoo with my brother but that also had a sad aspect to it due to Larry having a blood clot in his eye and losing most of his vision in that eye. So, as with a lot of things in life, my trip was a combination of good and bad.
Next, I thought that I was going Back to Work at DHL in April but that still hasn't happened. I have been in contact with the people that I used to work with at DHL and they still say that it is supposed to happen but still do not have anything definite or a date. So I am still selling my IRA funds (and tapping other sources) to make the bills. I am planning on looking for some kind of work again although I still hope DHL will come through at some point.
And finally, I do have a little positive news that gives me a little hope for good things to come. As most of you know, I made a nice living from my bike site for about a year and a half until Google whacked my site and dropped most of my traffic. I was getting about 3k to 4k visitors a day in the good ol days until September of 2012 when Google dropped my traffic to less than half of that. I was still mostly OK in 2013 with the original Google bashing but then I got whacked again and pretty much dropped off the map for search traffic to my site.
Well I did a lot of things to try to recover the site and as of around Memorial Day my bike site traffic has doubled and is back to around 700 to 800 people a day. This is not what it was at it's peak time but this is still significant and might just give me an OK income if it stays that way and does not drop off again. I don't know if the improvement is due to my changes or due to another Google update but at least it is good news this time and there is a little Room For Hope that I can almost make a living on my bike site again!
Wow, it is late now but at least I got an update in. catch cha all later...
4/22/14 - Some Riding, Back to Work, Wisconsin Trip, Bike Blog...
Well, it's finally riding season here in ChiTown and, as you can see from my mileage above, I have finally gotten out for a few rides this year. It sure feels good to be able to get out and ride again!
For those of you who don't know yet, I have also gotten a call from DHL and have been told that they are planning on doing the big system upgrade that has been talked about for years now and it looks like they will be needing some help with that (i.e. ME (hopefully). So I am hoping to be going back to work soon, which is great since my websites are doing really terrible now. I was originally told this should happen by mid to late April but I have not heard back from them with an actual date yet.
On a related topic, I decided to make a trip up to Wisconsin last week while I still had some free time. We had a few fairly nice days before I left but it got cold and snowed when I was up there. I still had a really nice time though and took a bunch of pictures, of course!
The photos are from 1) Andi and Brad's house 2) Granddad's Bluff in La Cross (on a foggy day) 3) Larry and Patty's house and 4) The Glass Church (by Larry and Patty's house). So if a picture is worth 1,000 words I might as well shut up and post a link to the next 48,000 words!
And finally, I also wrote a little about my failed bike ride attempt on my trip, Larry's Gazelle and Dara's trip and bike rides in Chicago on my Bike Blog so rather than repeat all that here I'll just post a link to my Bike Ride Blog Post with those updates.
2/15/14 - Sheesh!
Sheesh it's been a LONG TIME since I did an update here. Sorry about that. I think I've lost most of the regular visitors to this site unless I also write a FB post letting everyone know that there is an update here. That's understandable with the limited updates that I've done recently. I'm not sure if I will place a "Facebook ad" about this update or just see if anyone stops by and stumbles on the update.
OK, let's move on to the news and updates... The main thing that I wanted to post was about something that we got in the mail last week. We got a nice looking certificate from Miami University that said that Corinne had made the "President's List"! I knew that she had straight A's last semester but getting the certificate was nice and at a time when I needed some good news.
I thought about posting a photo of Corinne's report card in December when I saw the straight A's but thought that might seem too "braggy". Well now that I got the certificate too I decided what the hell! It's not bragging about myself... it's Corinne... and I am proud of her. I don't know why the smart and pretty genes skipped a generation with me! :-). Well anyway, I photochopped the 2 pages of her certificate and her report card together for the photo below. I am also including Corinne's latest Facebook photo that I thought was nice too.
...and in other news...My Bike Site has continued to decline in both traffic and sales. It is sad how it supported our whole family for a few years then just dropped off the face of the internet (thanks Google!). OK, I still get traffic from Bing and Yahoo but not nearly enough.
For those of you who don't know yet, I am in the process of building another affiliate sales website and hoping that that one will generate an income for us once again. As with any bidness, it is a shot in the dark. Actually it is more like a calculated risk and I believe that it has potential based on a number of things that I have learned over the years. All I can do is try it and see if it succeeds.
My new website is a treadmill review website. OK, I know, YAWN... (if you are not looking for a treadmill right now) but I know there is potential in this area (along with strong competition) and my years of experience with selling exercise bikes online is very helpful with this site.
My new site is on the internet but I currently only have the infrastructure and 3 reviews on the site so it looks very skimpy and won't look so credible until I get more reviews done. So if you want a Sneak Peak at the new site and/or to monitor my (slow) progress, my new site is:
And, of course, there is a Plan B which is that I am still looking for another day-job (Even though I tried to sock away a lot of loot for retirement, I am not able to retire yet). I have sent out quite a few resumes for pretty much any kind of technical job (since my programming skills are with obsolete languages) and have gotten a few screening interviews but that has been it. For some reason it seems like a lot of places don't seem interested in a 60 year old with only a 2 year degree and over 30 years of programming experience :-(.
My Plan C will be to try to get any kind of low paying grunt job (like Wal-Mart Greeter or McDonalds burger flipper ~ OK, I would actually try for something in an office or warehouse before retail and fast food but it is the same idea and that kind of gets my point across).
So as you see I am really hoping that Plan A (the new website) succeeds. That would really be nice. Of course, there is no guarantee. Only time will tell.
Well, at least I started this post with the good stuff (Corinne's accomplishments). I thought I would ramble on about my own situation just to let everyone know where I am at and what I am up to. It is stressful to me but I chose to take the higher-risk options quite a few years ago...
Finally... I am getting Cabin Fever and and really tired o this long, cold and snowy winter! I can't wait to fire-up the old bike again!
11/30/13 - 2013 Thanksgiving Photos, Family Relationship Charts
Well, I guess I almost missed all the updates for November but there is still today. I'm just skipping ahead to December for the photo above.
I just went through my Thanksgiving Photos, selected the ones I thought were the best, touched them up a bit (just a bit), added my goofy captions and uploaded them here.
I had some settings wrong on my camera but nothing too devastating. Most of the photo quality was still OK and, of course, what is in the photos that is more important anyway. Maybe next time I will get it all right.
2013 Thanksgiving in Sparta, Wisconsin!
On a related topic, we were discussing Family Relationships at one point and I always thought that the distant cousin relationships always got a little confusing. I have a chart that I have got from my friend Julie at Digital (way back when I worked there) that I usually use to clarify the cousin relationships (like second cousins and 1st cousins once removed, etc.)
I scanned the chart and was going to post it here but then I realized that there are a ton of these kinds of charts out on the internet now (which I don't think even existed when I first got my relationship chart). I found one that was just like the one that I have used and another that I thought was also good.
So for anyone interested here are a couple of links to Family Relationship charts.
Later, Rob
10/18/13 - Corinne's new car, UPS for now, Website and Day Job, Fall Bike Riding
Sorry for the long time between updates once again. No wonder everyone is going to Facebook now! :-)
Things have been difficult here recently but I usually like to stick to mostly positive stuff here so I'll try to keep that tradition. Even when things suck there are usually still some positive things going on too.
I didn't mention Corinne's new car before so I wanted to post an update about that. I helped Corinne to get a 2011 Honda Civic LX before she went back to school this year. She paid for a lot of it herself but I had some money set aside to help her with a car since I helped KC to get his during his senior year. Corinne needed a car this year for some of her school obligations so she got hers a year before KC did. Here's an iPhone Photo of Corinne in her New Car that I took at the dealer when she first got it (I haven't seen her since then! :-) ).
Casey finished his Mosquitoes Abatement job and has taken on another job at UPS for now. He is loading trucks and I'm not sure if his back will hold out long for that kind of work (he has the famous Chapman-Bad-Back). He might be able to get a temporary (seasonal) driving job with UPS too but he needs to learn how to drive a stick shift. We are working on that.
Dara has just left for homecoming weekend at Miami (Ohio) and to see Corinne and her new apartment.
As for myself, I have been working on the website (which is barely making anything now) and also still looking for a day job. I have a luke warm lead on one right now but I have not been getting any responses for the other technical jobs that I have applied to.
OK back to the more positive stuff again, I have also been getting some good Fall Bike Riding in and will probably make my usual 1,000+ miles this year after all. I had my hip/leg injury in the spring and couldn't ride so I had a slow start to riding season and didn't know if I would even make my 4 figure mileage this year.
I also just rode 2 New Trails which I just wrote about and blogged about on my bike site so many of you may have seen the blog post that gets updated into my Facebook area. If you missed these, the Blog Posts are Here and they link to the ride stories and photos for these trails.
My Honda Odyssey is looking bad these days due to a bad paint job. Honda had sent out a notification about this problem a few years back but my paint job was fine then so I just ignored it. Now the recall has expired so they weren't going to cover the repair until I sicked Dara on them and she managed to get Honda to cough $3k for a new paint job. I'd like to just take that money and run but the van looks so bad that I really want to get it repainted. Here a Photo of the Bad Paint Job.
There is probably other news too that I missed but I gotta get going so I just can't cover it all now. I need to do my updates more often (and win my visitors back)!
For those of you who made it through the update... Thanks for stopping by!
8/29/13 - A Little Gap and Warp, Hit and Run, Back to Miami, Tennessee
Wow, sorry I got way behind on my updates here so I guess there was a little Gap (like 2 months) and a time Warp since my month photo above is for September. Hey August is almost over and I figure I better get ahead on something. :-)
There has been a lot of stuff going on but I'm going to have to do the short versions since I am so far behind. You may have picked up a few updates on my Bike Blog since I have done a few posts there in this time frame (and they get posted to my Facebook area too).
Well one of the big things is that Corinne got in a hit and run accident (she is OK) and she followed the car long enough to get the license place number. We tracked down the guy and his insurance paid for it all but we were without a car for almost a couple of months. All seems fine as far as that goes now.
Lots of other stuff has been goin on and Yada, Yada, Yada (as in the Seinfeld show) and I just took Corinne Back to Miami this past weekend and extended my trip to see my friend (and website mentor) Fred Waters in Tennessee.
I had some photos of Corinne, Corinne's new apartment in Ohio and from Tennessee and I just took a moment to format and post a few here. So here are the latest photos:
Miami Apartment and Corinne Country Girl, City Girl
6/20/13 - Where Did I Go Wrong?
OK, so you saw the story below about KC getting me a new big screen TV for my birthday and I mentioned that we usually don't give big gifts like that but KC was determined and I was humbled but I really do love my new TV.
Well, I guess this is my month. First it's my birthday, then it's Father's Day. I was joking with Corinne about needing a Blu-Ray player now that I had an HD TV and the next thing you know, on Father's Day Corinne hands me this square gift and I'm sure you can guess what it was. So now I have an HD TV and a Blu-Ray player!
I tried to teach the kids to work hard and save their money and then they go off and spend it all on gifts for me! Where Did I Go Wrong?
(I didn't ask for anything (at least not seriously on the Blu-Ray) but I really do love my new toys! and my kids!)
6/14/13 - Decade Birthday! Facelift
Well I just had yet another birthday on Tuesday. Yep, it's the start of a whole new decade. Those of you who know me probably know which decade it is (hint: My 4th decade :-)). I had a really nice birthday and just had to post an update on it here.
I had planned on keeping it very low-key since that is what I usually like. My main event for the day was going to be a bike ride. I did take my ride and it was a really nice day and a great ride. When I stopped to turn around I saw that I missed a call in my cell phone.
Well it was from my great-nephew Steve so I gave him a call back. The thing that I didn't actually know was that he was in Puerto Rico when I called. I thought that was cool (that he remembered my birthday and I got a birthday call all the way from PR!) and he gave me a brief update on some of the things that they had done. It sounded really cool.
Next, throughout the day I kept getting all my Facebook updates from people, emails and birthday cards in the mail so that was nice too (and still low-key). Dara asked me if I wanted to go out to dinner and I wasn't even really going to do that but in the end we went out to dinner (Dara, me and Dara's mom) and that was very nice too. Ellie gave me a hoodie for my birthday (now I won't feel out of place when I'm chillin wit da boyz from da hood).
So after dinner I thought that all the excitement was over (which was fine with me). KC was home and didn't make it to dinner with us this time. So we get home from dinner, say hi to the dogs and I go upstairs to unwind from the big day.
Well it wasn't over yet! Apparently Casey had a little surprise for me when I went upstairs. KC bought me a new big screen HD TV for my birthday!!! This actually blew me away and I was really moved by this. We don't usually do big gifts let alone something like that and I usually only get smaller gifts (which is fine with me too).
I needed a tv since my old one was having some major issues but I probably would have never gone out on my own and got one (I probably would have just dug out one of our other old ones when my old one bit the dust).
So my new birthday TV is a 50 inch Sharp Aquos LED Smart TV. The Smart TV gets the wireless signal from my router and I can easily watch Netflix movies and shows (in HD) and YouTube stuff with the touch of a button.
Anyway I really love my new TV and, of course, I have thanked KC but since KC will probably come out to this page at some point, once again Thank You So Much KC!
OK, here's a "Selfy" that I just took with me and my new TV (I also have my new hoodie on)!
...and one other minor thing that I wanted to mention. I did another minor Facelift to this site tonight. I decided that I didn't like that little box of links on the right towards the top so I got ride of it and added the links to the very top (pinkish area). I also moved my bike miles info to a location that was easier to update and made some other formatting changes.
I don't have that many bike miles this year since I saw my physical terrorist for my upper leg/hip problem and he had me not ride while I was doing the therapy (exorcisms that I did for about 2 months :-)). I am done with that now and I think it worked pretty well.
There is probably more news but I think I sign off now and just update more stuff later. I think there was enough good reading here for one update :-)
5/21/13 - Wisco Trip!
As some of you already know, I had a bidness meeting this past Friday at Johnson Fitness (makers of Livestrong, Horizon and AFG equipment) up in Cottage Grove Wisconsin so I took the opportunity to mix a little pleasure with bidness.
My meeting, at Johnson, was very nice and informative also. I was able to see the prototypes of 2 new exercise bikes from Horizon that will be coming out in the fall, learned some good stuff about the industry in general and we even talked about some fun bike trails and casual stuff.
For the pleasure part of my Wisco Trip, I visited the Wisconsin side of my family :-). My first stop was at Steve and Audi's place near Madison, next I went to my brother's house in Sparta (I also saw my nephew Jake there too but I did't bust out the camera in time to get a photo of him) then finally I saw my niece and family in Cashton. I was actually pretty busy and this was kind of a whirlwind trip. So many people to see... So little time...
I will be blogging about the Johnson Fitness side of the trip on my bike site eventually (for more on that) and the photo page below should describe the pleasure part of my trip pretty well. If a picture is worth a thousand words then the photo page below should be worth 23,000 words! So enough yakin, here's the photos!
The "May - I go to Wisconsin" Photos
4/13/13 - Taxes, Apple Family
Whoa! It's been almost a month since I posted an update. Sorry about that (no wonder I'm losing some of my readers (besides for everyone using Facebook too)).
Well, my accountant just finished my taxes. I actually don't like it to be this close to the deadline but I didn't get the info to him until a few weeks ago cause they changed my Wyoming bidness address and didn't tell me and I had to chase down all my 1099 forms. Anyway, I had an overpayment to the fed and state but I never actually get a "return" cause I just apply it to the next year's taxes.
And Corinne just got a new Apple Macbook Pro laptop. I guess we are really becoming an Apple Family. The Apple was more expensive that getting another PC but we have heard good things about their durability and Corinne has used them a lot at school and is familiar with them plus we got a good warranty through the Miami bookstore. If this lasts a little longer than her last 2 laptops it will probably be worth the extra cost.
I thought that it was interesting that we all started with iPods and progressed from there. iPods > iPod Touches > iPads > iPhones > and now Macbook. What a way to build a customer base! Actually I really like the interface on our Apple products. We did have some hardware problems with our early iPods but our newer Apple stuff has been very dependable so far.
<shoptalk>
I still haven't recovered the traffic that I lost with my website bidness. March was OK because it was still exercise bike season but sales are really slowing down now with the good weather coming (at least there is good weather coming).
In case you are not aware, Google's big updates that messed so many people up were called the Penguin and Panda updates. I don't think my site got hit with the Penguin update because that had more to do with over aggressive linking and stuff. I think I got hit with the Panda update which has to do with Thin Content, Duplicated Content, and Scrapped Content (among some other things).
I have been going through the over 500 pages on my site and diligently working at finding and removing any of these types of problems when I find them. One thing that I think could have caused a problem (it's not an exact science so nothing is for sure) is that I have over 240 Bike Trail Photo pages. These pages were designed just to be photo pages with short captions that go with the photos. Unfortunately, I don't think Google knows that they are just photo pages and may see them as regular pages with very little verbage (content... thin content).
So anyway, I am in the process of BS'in up my bike trail photo pages. I am trying for over 300 words per page so I just ramble on about junk on the page until it passes my minimum. This is a long a tedious process but I have about 74 (of the 244) done now.
Com 'on traffic... com 'on back... come to daddy!
</shoptalk>
3/15/13 - More Color 2 - The Encore
I just posted another batch of super color saturated photos that I'm using as the runner-ups to be posted on my bike site. There are a coupla from the first batch and a whole lotta new ones. I still need to filter these down but it helps to make a first pass and see them all together.
So here they are:
More Color Bike Trail Photos 2, The Encore
3/11/13 - Color Experiment, CheckUp
I just saw some cool photos on that went viral on the internet and I thought that I would do a photochop-like test with some of my bike trail photos. The effect that I used is really to just super saturate the original photos with color. It's not hard and anyone can do it but it looks kinda cool and even though anyone can do it not every does do it.
Saturating the colors reminded me of that old SNL skit where Christopher Walken kept trying to get MORE COWBELL on the Blue Oyster Cult song. I kept wanting MORE COLOR! I just randomly selected some photos that I've used before and I did not spend much time on these, but anyway here are my color experiment photos.
So does anyone think these photos are interesting? If so, really cool... kinda cool... just eh...? Just curious. I could do more and spend more time on it but I don't know if it is worth much effort.
And in other news... My blood pressure has been getting and staying high lately so I finally went to see the doc for some medication for it. It's only been about 7 or 8 years since I last saw the doc but he still wanted to give me a more complete check up. Well I got the BP medication now and have 4 more visits to follow up on a bunch of other stuff too. More on that later if there is anything interesting to report.
3/5/13 - Kitty in the Snow and Artsy-Phartsy
It's hard to get good photos of our 2 big dogs (Kitty and Shadow) since they are both almost completely black and you have to have real good lighting... or take pictures of them against a white background... like snow :-).
So now that the snow storm that they promised is here I noticed Kitty sitting outside getting buried in the snow and decided to get some photos. Of course she started to get up and shake the snow off soon after I got out there but at least I got a few shots off first.
The other photos that I just uploaded were from a few days ago when it was nice and sunny out and I decided to go out and fool around with my camera. I was kinda just going for the Artsy-Phartsy (that's short for Photo-Artsy) shots. I actually took quite a few but only selected the ones here. They are touched up a little but not too much in most cases. So here ya go:
Kitty in the Snow and Snowy, Artsy-Phartsy Photos
2/26/13 - Getting More Mileage out of the In-Camera-Lens Effect
Most of you have probably already seen my new Facebook profile photo where I used the In-Camera-Lens Effect but I wanted to elaborate on the story a little and mention the additional projects that I have used it for (or will be using it for).
I originally got this idea when I was putting together a Robmark birthday card for Ahliana. I had some nice pictures of her and she thought I was over doing the photos and was dodging me and my camera a little (just a fun thing). So I thought it would be fun to have a photo of me taking the photo of her with her photo inside the camera lens.
So I Photochopped the pictures together and I thought it came out really well. I'm sure this has already been done before since just about any photo taking or editing trick that I can think of has usually already been done but I thought it was cool that I thought of it rather than seeing it somewhere else and copying it.
So Ahlianas birthday card was the first and I waited until I knew she had seen it before I used it on another project. This past weekend I decided to use the effect on my Facebook profile picture so I went out to the bike trail behind our house and worked on that. I just blogged about that on my bike site blog <here> so I'm not going to rewrite that story again here.
In the process of doing the blog post I did another photo using the same effect which fit the topic of my bike blog post. Since I took the original photo (with me holding the camera and taking a picture) was in a mirror, the Nikon writing is reversed. I flipped the photo on the bike blog so the Nikon writing was the right way but that makes me look left handed.
So anyway, even though I like this effect I do not want to over-use it but I do want to get some decent mileage out of it so I wanted to use it on my bikes site too. Besides most of the people that see my bike site (and blog) won't be seeing my Facebook profile (or Ahliana's card) anyway (well except all of you here).
I think I may do another version of this for my About-Bicycles Facebook page soon and a better profile picture of me when the weather is better and I can get more color in the background.
So to explain what I am talking about, here are the first 3 photos that I've used this Photochop effect on:
My First 3 In-Camera-Lens Photocopped Photos
2/11/13 - Dawn of the 80s and End of the 80s!
This past weekend I went to a bar up near McHenry to see an old friend play in his 80s tribute band, Dawn of the 80s. John Faruzzi is the drummer, who I used to play/jam with (in the late 80s). We used to jam in his garage with his friend Buddy (on bass) and who also used to be in the Dawn of the 80s band up until just recently. I was bummed out that I didn't get to see Buddy play too but it was still nice to see John.
I went to the bar where they were playing late on Saturday with my friend Dale since we are both such major party animals! Actually I was tired before I got there and only lasted a few hours (I think we were the 2 oldest people there). I don't know how my friend John can do this all the time. He's gotta really love it.
So anyway, I also brought my camera to get some photos of the band. I got a few photos of the warm up band along with just some of the scenery from the bar and stage before they played. So here they are:
Dawn of the 80s Band Photos from Saturday Night
I also recorded a few short videos on my camera but they did not come out very good so if you want to see how the band actually sounds you should see their YouTube Video. This video has both of the guys that I jammed with back then (John and Buddy).
Before I went to the show I wanted to download some of the old videos of our jams from the End of the 80s on to my iPhone to show John (if I had the chance). I found the DVD with the 80s jams and downloaded them to my PC. Then I watched the first one a little to select a few songs or snippets of songs. This all took quite a while and it was getting late and I needed to get going. I made a real short video of a few highlights from 3 of the songs (it's 4 min and 22 seconds and includes parts of Gimmie 3 Steps, After Midnight and Hot Legs). In the end I got the iPhone version made but could not get it on to my iPhone before I had to leave. :-(
Well, I did get it loaded to my iPhone on Sunday anyway (and now I know how to do this for future videos). I also created a 2 versions for this website. The usual Flash version, which is probably the best format for viewing on a PC and an MP4 format, which is probably best for viewing on an iPhone. (the MP4 takes a long time to load before it plays on a PC).
Remember, this is 1980s video technology with the camcorder on a tri-pod while we practiced so don't spect too much. I might add a few more clips here in a little bit so you might want to check back a little later, but for now I just have this one sound byte.
We casually (and unofficially) called ourselves FreeBeer at the time (in hopes of drawing bigger crowds when we played places :-) ). There are only 3 of us (John, drums (and some backup vocals), Buddy, bass and me doing guitar and vocals) so the background gets a little thin when I tried to do guitar solos. it worked OK at times though. So enough blabbin, here it is:
FreeBeer, Late 80s Jam from a garage in McHenry, Illinois - PC (Flash) version
FreeBeer, Late 80s Jam from a garage in McHenry, Illinois - iPhone version
You can also play the MP3 version on a PC but it will not start until it loads. I think it will give you full screen capability though. I was going to just do it on YouTube but I don't know if John and Buddy want it to get that much exposure. :-)
I think Buddy and John actually made a good rhythm section (even back then). As for myself, I think I got to be at least a little better singer later on but I liked my lead riffs and electronics setup and stuff at that time. I was also a lot younger, looked better and seemed to have more groove!
<shoptalk>Unfortunately, the website is not doing so good and profits have dropped even more than before. :-( </shoptalk>
2/7/13 - Google Bashing Encore
<shoptalk> Well it's happened again. My bike site got hit with yet another Google Bashing (as I sometimes call it) as of January 22. I'm actually really bummed out since I was still trying to recover from the last Google update. It looks like the days might be numbered for my website business. I haven't given up completely but it's not looking good at this point. 
I just did a quick print-screen of my traffic stats from Google Analytics from Jan 1, 2012 through yesterday. Can you tell where the first Google update was? :-) (you can enlarge the photo on the left for a better view).
I have also been running Google Adwords (paid Google ads) for quite some time now. Although that does seem to help a small amount it is not nearly enough to make up for the loss in generic traffic from Google.
Not much else new right now. Maybe I'll take a vacation (which I can't even afford now).
Personally, I also think that Googles search results are getting worse rather than better. Many of the searches that I do these days come up with 5 or 10 results from the same websites that Google now favors. Like you may get 10 Amazon listings on page one or 5 Wikipedia listings.
Amazon and Wikipedi are great sites, of course, but do you really need your search results to show a full page of Amazon results and have to dig much deeper for any other sites or indivicual or small business listings? Sometimes when I have searched for technical info, the first 20 results are from maybe 2 different (highly favored) websites. Arrg!
I think Google is really screwing up and favoring big businesses (and major websites) too high over the small businesses and individuals. But I am biased, of course. :-)
Oh well, sorry that I don't have a more positive story this time. Maybe next time. </shoptalk>
1/18/2013 - Back at Miami, Bike Trainer, Lance Liestrong Endorsement of my Website
OK, now for some updates that should be more interesting than the reformatting of this website.
First off, Corinne is back at Miami (Ohio) now (she actually went back on 1/10). And that leads right into my next story, batch of pictures and video. Last month I borrowed Dale's Bike Trainer (which is a stand that you hook your bike up to to convert it into an exercise bike to use indoors) and I just now got around to setting it up. I didn't really have a good place for it until Corinne abandoned her room (for school).
I wanted to try out the bike trainer for a couple of reasons. First, so that I would have more hands on (butt on, feet, on etc) experience with them and to have more to write about for my bike site (and I did already write a long bike blog article on it). Next, I just wanted to use it for exercise indoors when the weather was crappy.
Anyway, I got my bike setup on the trainer in Corinnes room and have used it a couple of times now. KC donated his old stereo that he wasn't using so I had music (via my iPhone) and I also setup my laptop to watch my bike trail videos for a virtual ride as I rode. It did help with the potential boredom of indoor exercise.
Next I took some photos of it to use to make my blog post more visual and interesting. Then I decided to get a few shots of me on it so I asked Dara to work the camera and take some stills and some video of me in action. I wore a hat because, for some reason, there is this bright glare that screws up the lighting if I don't :-). So here are the photos and video:
My New Bike Trainer Setup Photos
The Bike Trainer Video of me in Action
...and finally I just had to post this photo of Lance Armstrong (aka: LieStrong) Endorsing my Bike Site!
Dale actually sent me this photo (and I really thought it was funny!). He mentioned that since Lance's disgrace and loss of all his sponsors that maybe I could get him to endorse my bike site for a lot cheaper these days. So below is the first photo that I was going to use for the new advertising campaign for my bike site. :-)
Lance Armstrong (LieStrong) Endorsing www.About-Bicycles.com!
<shoptalk> OK, to be a little more realistic, I did watch both Oprah shows on Lance since this has a lot to do with my Bike Site Bidness. I'll be blogging about this later on my bike site, of course. I thought that the first episode was kind of boring and all he did was confess to everything (not sounding very remorseful) and say what a bad boy he was ( and not even defending the good things that he's done).
I thought that the second show was more interesting and I think it had some good supporting comments on the Livestrong Foundation which also has a positive impact on my website since I promote a lot of Livestrong Exercise Bikes.
The Livestrong bikes that I have reviewed on my website have not been selling very well at all recently. After the Oprah show (which is huge and can make or break businesses) I just sold 2 Livestrong bikes today (on a Saturday, which is usually a slow day).
This is great news for me and I have also been invited back to Johnson Fitness, in Cottage Grove Wisco (the headquarters of Livestrong Fitness Products) for a meeting in February. </shoptalk>
1/15/2013 - Partially Mobile and Archived
Well the makeover on this website has turned out to be a much bigger project than I expected. I have, however, at least completed Phase 1 (as we used to say in the IT bidness).
You have probably noticed the cosmetic changes to this page. I had actually planned to do a more extensive update but for now I have left most of the format very similar to the Old Legacy format. For example, I am still just keeping the current month photo at the top and even my bike miles.
The main change, of course, is that this website (at least this page) is much more Mobile Friendly now. When you come to this site on your iPad, tablet computer or cell phone, you should see the text in a good size and have a one column format so you don't need to zoom in and then go side to side to read my exciting posts.
If you shrink your browser window (mouse over one side and make the window more narrow) you can see how the Responsive (liquid) Design works on this page. The text and objects will wrap to fit the screen size. If you make it very narrow (like 500 pixels or less) it will convert to the single column mobile format. The format (headings) get a little messed up if you go really narrow but it works fine on an iPhone and I think it should be fine on most phones and moble devices.
I looked into a number of different formats for photo displays and decided to keep the same format that I am currently using (for now anyway). The program that I use is easy to use and the photos can be displayed pretty well on mobile devices.
One thing that I noticed when I was reviewing this page on my iPhone is that it took FOREVER to scroll down to the end of the page in a more narrow single column format. I usually archive the older posts to keep the page size smaller and more current but I guess I got a little behind on that. :-) This page still had posts from 3/15/2009 to now!
So I archived from 3/15/2009 to 12/6/2010 here in Archive Page #13 and 1/8/2011 to 12/26/2011 here in Archive Page#14 and you can get to ALL the archive pages with the "Text and Photo Archive" link above (and below). So don't worry, the stuff that I post here just never goes away! (unfortunately in some cases :-) ).
So this page and the last 2 archive pages and the About Us page use the new mobile template and format but I have not converted any of the other pages yet. I will eventually when I have some time.
The About Us page is new and I haven't really added much to it yet but I wanted to include a page like that with some info on us and photos of us that are easy to find (rather than sprinkled throughout all the other posts). I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to format that yet but at least I have a start.
And finally, since I have kept a copy of the OLD Legacy format (before I added the new template and converted to mobile), here's a link to the OLD Family page (before the conversion) for comparison.
OK, that's it for now, I really need to get some more work done!
1/13/2013 - New Year New Look! Goin Mobile
I'm not going to do a long update here because I am in the process of giving the old Family and Friends website a complete makeover! As you know, I've been updating these pages since 1999 and I have really only made a few minor changes to the website design over the years.
Now that we all have iPhones and I check things out on the internet on my phone more often I have found that I really would like to make this site mobile (using a responsive design format) like my other business sites.
So that's it fer now but you may be seeing a lot of changes in the overall design here real soon. I think it will be too time consuming to do ALL the things that I'd like to do all at once so I'll probably be doing a little bit at a time.
12/29/12 - Christmas 2012 Photos!
We had a nice Christmas and I managed to take quite a few photos once again (this time I checked the auto-focus button fairly often!) I just went through the photos and selected a batch to post here. I'm not the best photographer but with a good camera, a little effort and some touchup in the lab I can at least get average pictures.
I was looking for the name of the hat the Rick got (in the photos) and I knew it was from REI and found this video on it. I thought that the video was interesting so here's a link if you're interested. Rick's Hat Video at REI.
OK, no need for more yakin. I've added my usual comments to the batch of photos so here they are:
Well if looks like 2013 is just around the corner now!
12/19/12 - Wisconsin (out of focus) Trip, Choppin Updates, iPhones to All!
Finally another update! Sorry for the delay. I had a nice trip to Wisconsin earlier this month and had a chance to visit with everyone once again (post-Thanksgiving that is). It was really nice seeing everyone for no particular occasion this time and to see Jasson and Vals new home and Steve and Audis new home. At least I had more time this trip since I stayed 2 nights.
I took quite a few pictures on my trip but unfortunately I had a technical problems with the photos. I was so disappointed that I almost didn't even post them here but I decided that, even though the photo quality is not very good, I still wanted to post them to at least capture the feel of the trip.
What happened was that at some point, before the trip, I accidentally hit the Manual Focus button on the camera lens. then I took most of the pictures on the trip before I realized what happened. My eyesight isn't that great anymore so I really depend on auto-focus and just glance and the photos in the viewer occasionally. It wasn't until just before I left (the Xmas Town pictures at Andi and Brads house) that I discovered the problem. So most of the pictures are out of focus. :-(
So even though the quality is not that great here they are:
December Wisco Trip ~ Out of Focus ~ Photos
OK, in other news... (actually this is out of order chronologically) my bike site had really nice Black Friday and Cyber Monday Choppin Days. I had a 1 day record profit on Cyber Monday. Of course, this does not mean that my websites have recovered from the Google Bashing because they haven't. This is just the peak time of the year for my sales. Overall sales are still way down :-( but I am surviving.
Corinne is home from Miami for xmas break now. We have been pretty desperate for new cell phones and are finally clear of the T-Mobile contracts so after considering the move for quite a while and looking into the options out there we finally switched our cell phone service from T-Mobils to Verizon and we all got New iPhones! 
If you had seen our old cell phones you would know how badly we needed the upgrades (except Corinne still had a fairly new phone before the change). Later, after buying the iPhones, KC sent me the photo on the right, which I thought was really funny! I don't have permission to post this so I hope I don't get busted. I'm sure it's already been around the internet by now anyway.
Anyway, even though KC and Corinne were really into getting new iPhones, my main reason for this change was to get better phone reception in our house. I wasn't all that excited about getting a new phone although I thought that it might be nice.
Now that we have the iPhones (3 iPhone 4Ss and 1 iPhone 4) I am discovering just how cool this thing is!!! It is just incredible what these things do and how they do it (like the human interface)! Now I see why these things are so popular. I am also even more disappointed that Steve Jobs has left this world (maybe he was from another world to begin with!). I could ramble on a lot about all the cool stuff it does but this is already getting pretty long so I'll spare you the details (for now anyway... :-) )
OK, I had a few other things but this post it getting way too long so until next time... And if I don't manage another update until after the holidays Merry Christmas to All and Happy New Year!
11/24/12 - Thanksgiving Pictures!
Whoa! I just saw that I haven't updated this page since last month! Well my main reason for commin out here now is for the Thanksgiving Pictures that I just uploaded! Corinne is home for Thanksgiving now and her friend and roommate, Lexus, came with her and is staying with us for the break. Corinne, Lexus, Casey and I all went to Brad and Andi's house (in Cashton, Wisconsin) for Thanksgiving (Our dog sitter was unavailable so Dara had to stay back with the dogs this time).
There is not too much else real new at the moment so I'm just gonna get right to the Thanksgiving Pictures. I took quite a few photos when I was up there but I ended up taking most of them outside (it was a really nice day). I got a few photos inside but then got a little distracted with everything else that was going on and never got all that many traditional Thanksgiving day shots (like the table, people at the table, the food, etc). In retrospect I wish I had taken more later inside too.
Still I did get some good shots. Since I got so many of the kids I decided to post 2 photo pages. The first one has the main/best TG photos that selected (and touched up a little here and there). The second page is the Runner-Ups that didn't make the first cut but if you just need more cowbell pictures, you can check them out too.
So here they are:
Thanksgiving 2012 Photos from The Oium's Home in Cashton Wisconsin
Thanksgiving "Runner Up" Photos
10/27/12 - KC, Dogs and TV, FB Updates
Just some quick updates. I took some photos of KC as he was walkin the dogs a few days ago and I also just took a couple of photos of KCs new big screen TV so I loaded them into my webpage photo program and just uploaded then here. So here are the photos of KC walkin the dogs on the trail behind our house and his new TV.
KC's tv is probably gonna be obsolete soon so I guess he'll just have to give it to me when he gets a new one. :-)
I also just uploaded a few of the fall photos that I took recently to my Facebook page but I see that a lot of people have already seen them since I have comments on them. I think a lot of people must use Facebook. Maybe even more than I get to this site. Can you believe that! :-)
These photos were already out on my bike site (and linked to below) but I wanted to use one for my FB cover photo which is mostly why I uploaded them there too. I heard that people who are active on FB change their FB cover and profile photos once in a while. :-)
Dara and her mom are currently in Miami for their "Family weekend". KC and I are chillin here (with all the critters).
In website news, things are still tuff after my Google Bashing. I'm still makin more than I would as a Wal-Mart greeter :-) (mostly from exercise bikes) but that Google update sure hurt. I've done quite a bit of analysis of my traffic and income and I am still optimistic (well hopeful anyway) that I can get the income back up to at least a reasonable level again and I have some new things to try in addition to just adding more content and reviews.
I've still been getting in some good bike ridin and, as a matter of fact, it looks like a good time to ride right now!
Later...
10/12/12 - Fall Color Bike Rides, Corinne is Home, Google Bashing
I guess it's been a while since I posted an update here again and there has been a lot going on as usual. Corinne is Home right
now but it's a limited time deal. She will be heading back to Miami (Ohio) on Monday. Also, as you may have noticed above I passed my usual 1,000 bike miles mark this year (as usual) between updates here.
Just this week I decided that I had to get out and get some photos of the fall colors while I had a chance. The Fall color window is not vey long. So I did some Fall Color Bike Rides , took a lot of photos, posted the best ones on my bike site and blogged about it on my Bike Blog Page Here. If you would rather skip the bike blog post and just check out the photos they are on the DPRT Fall Color Pages starting here (3 pages) and NBT Fall Color Pages here (2 pages)
There are not that many photos so you can check em out pretty quick. I think that they're perdy. Plus you'll want to see the suprise mushroom photos! :-) They are here if you missed them.
I also have a bike ride planned with Dale for next week. We are going to continue the I&M Canal bike trail ride that we started in 2003 when we rode from Chanahon west to Marseilles. I guess we'll start in Marseilles this time. I am not at all familiar with this area so this will be totally new for me.
And finally, the bad news (I also wrote about this is my bike blog so you may have already seen it there). My bike site took a major Google Bashing recently. Basically my bike site traffic (and consequently my income) has been cut in half by the latest Google update. This is something that I always feared and knew could happen at any time. It really sucks! I'm not gonna get into all of the details here (I summarized it a little in the bike blog).
Fortunately, I had built up the site and it was doing pretty well before the Google disaster hit but losing 1/2 my traffic and income is going to be very difficult if I can't get it built up again. Well, I'm not out of bidness yet, but this is sure a major blow to the bidness. :-(
9/24/12 - A Stretch for the Race Track Photos, Good Social Security Info
OK, one more follow-up on the race track stuff and some other good information. I did so much work on the race track photos that I wanted to get some additional "miles" out of it so I photochopped one of the photos and used it in a multi-topic blog on my bike site!
Yea, this is a little goofy and a Stretch for the Race Track Photos but I managed to tie it into cycling and post the photo on my blog. Actually, I see goofy photos and videos that get really popular on the internet all the time so why not post something goofy out there. After all I am so good at that! :-) Maybe I'll even get a few links out of it (then I can call it "work"!)
Anyway see my Bike Blog Entry Here for my combination bike race/horse race photo (you can click on it to enlarge it too).
The other (non bike related) thing that I stuck into this blog entry is some helpful information on your Social Security Statement that I just recently discovered and wanted to pass along. Basically, I just put a link to where you can get the Social Security Statement with work history and estimated SS retirements at the end of the article.
The place that you want to go to is: www.ssa.gov/mystatement. I'm gonna post this in my credit card blog soon too since it applies better to that site.
9/23/12 - Race Track Photo Encore
Last week when we did our spontaneous trip to the track (Arlington Park) I was thinking how I really wished that I had my camera with me since there were so many good photo ops there. Well, since it was another nice, sunny fall day yesterday, I decided to make another trip to the track for photos this time.
Here are the photos that selected from the ones that I took at the track yesterday (with my usual comments with each photo).
Arlington Park Race Track Photos
I made the blowup versions of the photos a little larger in order to see them better.
I only went there for the photos but Dara came with me and she bet on a few races. Amazingly, we broke even on our bets again this trip too ~ except Dara did not find any change on the ground this time (no change is not gonna change me this week either! :-) )
Oh yea, and da Bears won another one this week!
9/16/12 - Big Winning Day at the Races$$$!
Dara and I went to a movie for our anniversary today and on the way back we decided to go to the track (Arlington Park) on the spur of the moment. You can actually get into Arlington Park for free after the 7th race and it was about that time so we checked it out and got in for free.
Unfortunately, there was only one race left (the 9th) but being the high-rollers that we are we decided to go all out on 2 horses that looked good to us. Dara put $2 on Zip-a-dee-do-hah and I put $4 on some other hag. The excitement was mounting (along with the (disk) jockeys) as we went out to the stands. They're off!!! (they yelled :-) ). Zip-a-dee-do-hah was in second place for the 1st half of the race and my guy was in the back. Then coming around the last turn my guy kicks in the overdrive and pulls up to the front. It was a photo-finish and my guy came in second (and I bet for him to show $$$).
So as it ended up Dara lost her $2 and I won $6 ($2 profit after my initial $4 investment) but we got into the track for free and Dara found a penny in the parking lot so at the end of the day we came out 1¢ ahead!
Yea, we're not sure what we're gonna do with our winnings yet but I'm not gonna quit my website job and I promise that it is not going to change me a bit!
9/3/12 - Laborless Day, Back to School, and some other stuff
Wow, where did the summer go! Why do they call it Labor Day when most people don't have to work? Well, I'm takin the day off too (mostly anyway). Wow, I have really been bad at my updates here I see. It's been over a month since I did an update! Sorry about that.
Well, we dropped Corinne off at Miami (in Oxford Ohio) on the 18th. So she has been back at school for a couple of weeks now already. I think that she is enjoying being back at school. I think Casey would like to be back at school too! He actually was just back at Western again this weekend but only as a visitor (alumni I guess you could say). KC still has another month of mosquito killing left. Not sure what the plan is after that.
As for myself, I have been really busy both at work and at home. Wait a minute, I work at home so that must be the same thing! :-) No actually I mean I've been really busy with my website work and with some chores around the house.
In the Website News, the conversion to the Mobile Friendly format has taken me a lot longer than I expected and I have been obsessed with getting it done. I decided to convert 2 of my smaller websites before doing the conversion on my bike site. I wanted to be sure that there were no unexpected problems before making these major changes to my big daddy, cash cow website. So far everything looks good. I converted my credit card website and the chiropractor website that I did to the liquid/mobile format and I also converted the credit card blog and the bike site blog.
You can see how these websites are formatted on mobile devices by accessing them on a mobile device (of course) or if you resize your browser window. When you shrink the width of your browser window (on the sites or blogs listed above) you will see how the text and photos wrap to fit the smaller format. When you make your browser very narrow (about 500 pixels) on one of the websites above you'll see how the links on the side are converted to buttons and moved to the top. Everything else is rearranged to fit into one column for vertical scrolling only (with a few exceptions on the credit card site (too much to explain here)).
Anyway, I have only been doing minimal updates to the bike site while working on these conversions. It's a good thing that it can run on auto-pilot for a while. I really need to get back to more significant updates on the bike site though.
OK, as for the work around the house, I just spent 4 days trimming our trees and bushes and stuff!!! I ended up with 17 large bundles of branches! This was a lot of work and even though I tried to pick some cooler days, it ended up being really hot anyway.
After all these years (of owning homes) I finally realized that you can't let junk trees (like buckthorn trees) take over and trim them like hedges, which is what I have done for years. That's why my trimming has always been a ridiculous task while other people just have a few small bushes to trim. Last year and especially this year, I got much more aggressive with removing the buckthorn and other junk trees. I've been taking them out completely (sawing them down from the bottom) instead of just trimming them like a hedge. I hope this will make my job much easier next year (or the year after since I still have more to remove).
Wow, this was a long update. I didn't mean to make up to not doing updates for a month but I guess I just did. Shorter updates are probably better. Well if you made it this far you should be completely up-to-date on what is happening around here. :-)
8/2/12 - Angry Visitors Demand Website Update!
OK, maybe I exaggerated the heading above a tinsy little bit to grab your attention (and for entertainment value :-) ). I had one visitor to this website tell me that I needed to do an update since it is August now (and he wasn't really angry (at least I don't think so). So I updated the month photo above (That one is from Florida a few years back. I don't have any new August photos to use yet).
As long as I am here I should do a quick update on what is going on. Corinne has finished her classes at Harper, is still working her 2 jobs and is getting ready to go back to Miami already (it's still over 2 weeks away but she is packing and seems anxious to get back) Sheesh!
Casey is hangin around this year (still workin at the mosquito abatement job and playin basketball at the Y quite a bit) since he finished up college last semester :-). Casey just went out and bought a new iPad and then Corinne saw his and decided that she needed one too so both of them have new iPads now!
They got the iPads just in time. I am working on a new "Responsive Web Design" to make my website much more mobile friendly (which I mentioned below) and now I can test the new design on iPads (in addition to our iPod touches (which is basically the same as an iPhone), Corinnes Samsung Galaxy smart phone and all of the browsers that I have. Sheesh!
So this has taken me a few weeks so far and I feel like I am getting way behind on my regular website work. Oh well, I still think it is important. More on this later, I gotta get back to work now.
7/8/12 - 4th of July Stuff, Michigan Lake House Boating and Jet Skis!, The Signature Room
Wow, it's been a busy month so far. I've been pretty busy with my website work and as usual, there has been a lot going on with the 4th of July Stuff. Karen, Daryoosh and Nadia were in town most of 4th of July week and I hung out in Glenview on the 4th. I finally got a chance to use my new camera for some people shots and some good action shots. I still need practice and sometimes it takes some good luck (for good photos) but I do have a new batch uploaded (see the link below).
The action shots were from Thursday (the 5th) when we went to Kurt and Robin's house in Berrien Springs, Michigan (which is only a little over 2 hours from us) and did a lot of Boating and Jet Skiing. First we cruised the lake and river on a really nice, comfortable pontoon boat (and took a swim in the lake on the way back). Next I took a little kayak ride and most of us got a chance to take the jet skis out for a spin too!
The photos below are from Glenview on the 4th and the lake house in Michigan on the 5th. I didn't have my camera with me on the pontoon boat because I was nervous about bringing it on the boat. It turns out it would have been fine and I took a bunch of photos with dara's mom's point-and-shoot camera (I do not have those photos yet though). OK, as for the photos that I do have, here they are:
July 4th, Glenview and July 5th Michigan Lake House and Jet Ski Photos!
Unfortunately, Corinne had to work on the 5th and was not able to come with us. One of us would probably have had to stay with the dogs anyway so since Corinne had to work she drew the short straw on this one. :-(
On Saturday we had lunch at the Signature Room on the 95th floor of the John Hancock building in Chicago which was also really nice. Sorry, I didn't bring my camera to this even so there are no photos (except for the ones that we took the last time we were there if you missed these). Casey wanted to go there for his birthday and this was partially for that. Casey's roommate, Charlie, from his first year at WIU, also is working at the Signature Room as part of an intern program for school so we also had a chance to see him while we were there.
<shoptalk> For work, I've been trying to ride, photograph and write up more trail pages and also to blog about le Tour de France which is going on now.
Plus I am trying to get my site more compliant to the latest CSS stuff so it will be much more mobile user friendly. I discovered that over 1/3rd of my traffic now is from mobile users (and my site is primitive looking on mobile devices).
My website sales slowed down in June but they have picked up a little in July so far (partially with the help of some TDF sales) </shoptalk>
6/18/12 - June Stuff and Some Photos
Well, I guess June has been pretty good to me. First there was my birthday weekend then this past weekend was Father's Day. Both were very nice. Yesterday (Father's Day) I was able to just hang out for a while, play with my new camera and take a bunch of photos. I rode my bike over to Harper College since there always seems to be interesting photo-ops over there.
Most of this stuff is just experiments and playing with my camera but I selected the best of my experiments (from 2 trips actually) and decided to post them here. I also threw in a cat photo and a photo of KC out on the bike path behind our house but I have not really worked on any people or pets photos. I'll try that the next time a good people photo-op presents itself.
So here are My Latest Batch of Photos (mostly from Harper College).
6/11/12 - How Time Flies (the Pencil Story)! Camera Breakage and Millennium Trail Ride and Photos
Well, Casey and I drove to Macomb to pickup his FINAL LOAD of stuff from his apartment on Saturday (his lease (like his time at WIU) ends this week). I brought an envelope for his key and parking pass which he had to drop off at the rental office drop box. We put the key and pass in the envelope but needed to write KCs name and apartment info on the envelope. Everything was packed so he didn't have a pencil or pen so I went out to my van and grabbed a pencil from the door pocket where I keep some pencils and pads of paper. After he filled out the envelope info both of us noticed something nostalgic about the pencil. CLICK Here to See What We Saw on the Pencil. Man, How Time Flies!!!
In the bike trails and camera news, I chose the Millennium Bike Trail (around Mundelein) for my next ride and grabbed my new camera to photograph the trail for my website. I packed up my bike, camera, gps and all the stuff I needed for my ride. After I got to the trail I took my camera out of the case and this is what I found! Don't worry, it was just the lens filter and not the lens (which is the main reason that I use a lens filter). I have no idea how that happened.
So anyway I did ride the trail but without my camera (I didn't want to take it on a crushed stone trail with no lens filter for protection). Then I bought a new filter, packed everything up again the next day and ended up riding this trail 2 days in a row. Everything was fine on my second ride and I got a ton of photos. So I finally selected the photos and finished the Millennium Bile Trail Pages (here). I still haven't added the trail to my trail page template or blogged about it (on my bike site) but I hope to get to that tomorrow.
And finally, Thank You All for the nice cards and Facebook posts for my birthday!
6/1/12 - Bike the Drive Photos and Ride Report
For those of you who may have missed my bike site blog post and the cooresponding Facebook update, I just wanted to mention that Dale and I did the Bike the Drive ride on LSD (Lake Shore Drive, of course) in Chicago last weekend. They shut down 30 miles of LSD to automotive traffic and only allow bikes for 5 hours in the morning.
It was really a nice ride and a pretty nice day. It was also work since I brought my new camera and photographed a lot of the event. It actually is a lot more work to stop all the time for photos but someones got to do it! Right?
As for the photos, it was an overcast day which did not help and I am still learning how to use my camera so that doesn't help much either. I was not too excited about the composition of my photos (the camera can't correct plain old bad shots) but between Dales photos (from his Cannon DSLR) and mine I managed to at least capture the event pretty well I think.
Anyway, here's a link to the Bike the Drive Photos and Ride Description on my Bike Site.
I think, in time, I'll become a better photographer. It may take a while though! :-)
5/26/12 - First New Camera Photo Experiments
I actually thought that the "Bike the Drive" event that I am going to tomorrow (actually later tonight since I need to get up at 2:30am!) was going to be the first photos from the new camera that I would upload. Well, I have been fooling around with it a lot and trying to get familiar with the camera settings and stuff and took quite a few photos as Experiments.
While experimenting I accidently got a few 1/2 way decent photos and managed to catch some wildlife scenes from out by the lake behind our house. So check out the
First New Camera Photo Experiments Here
Don't miss the blow-up of the animated blue-hard-of-heron that I put together towards the end. :-) OK, I could have lined it up better and put more work into it but I just don't have all night for this stuff you know...
5/25/12 - Casey's Graduation, Latest Bidness Expense
For those of you who may have missed my Facebook comment on Casey's wall, Casey graduated from WIU on 5/12/12 and now has B.S. in Psychology. Congratulations KC!!! Sorry for the delay on this but our photos did not come out all that great so I had to get a few from Dara's mom too. I don't have a lot of photos but here are the ones that I did select:
Casey's College Graduation Photos!
In a related story, the fact that our old 2005 digital camera just did not get that great of photos of the graduation and also since I needed a better camera for the bike trail pages that I am planning on doing now, I decided to put some money back into the website bidness and finally got a new Digital SLR camera!
My new camera is a Nikon D5100 with a 18-200m zoom lens! I only have one photo of the new camera (taken with the old camera, of course :-) ) at the moment and it's no work of art but it does show my actual camera (not just the same model online or something like that) on top of my printer.
...and finally, I am signed up to Bike The Drive on Sunday so I should have some good new photos from the new camera next!
5/5/12 - Corinne's New Dorm, The Miami Trip & Mentally Challenged in Liberty Indiana
This "May" sound repetitive but... Wow, May already!
I just picked up Corinne from Miami (Ohio) yesterday. We managed to fit all of her stuff into my van (I was worried about that). I brought my camera (just in case) but didn't take any pics until just before we left when I stopped by to see Corinne's New Dorm for next year - Flower Hall. She will share 2 rooms and a bathroom with 3 other girls (4 total) so it's a little different arrangement next year. Anyway, here are the photos ~ including a panoramic view ~ of her dorm for next year.
Corinne's Dorm dorm 2012/13 ~ Flower Hall
I also brought my bike GPS with me to record The Miami Trip. The bike GPS is not real good at routes and navigation for a car but it was nice to see where I was and to upload the trip info after the trip. I thought it was pretty interesting. Here is a link to our Miami trip to pickup Corinne.
I think the GPS data for the trip is pretty cool. You can see my speed for every stage of the trip (don't tell the cops please), a couple of wrong turns that I took the elevations along the way. The trip data above is for the round trip so if you go to the "Player" option and press play you will see me go there and back! You can place the mouse arrow over the graph for any part of the trip (in the Player tab) and see my speed and the elevation, etc. at any time. If you press play it will show where I was at at that time.
I have to admit that my first wrong turn was not completely my fault. I have to blame the Retards in Liberty Indiana for that one! (oops not PC. Oh well). You go through this town on Route 27. They are doing construction there and there are absolutely no detour signs. You just go into town and see that you can't get through.
After trying one way (that was wrong) I went back to town and asked how to get through. They admitted that there is no detour signs and told me how to do it (a left, a right, past a few stop signs and then another right and drive around the "Road Closed" sign).
So if you hit this detour and you are not from the town you are supposed to be able to guess where to go and then there are no "Detour" signs but you need to drive around the "Road Closed" sign to take the detour!!! Arrrhgggg!!!! I just can't believe that one!
On the way back, it was my own stupid fault. I just cheezed out and accidentally went south on 355 instead of north. I was able to turn around pretty quickly at Army Trail Road though.
And finally, in other news... I got some good ridin in before my leg injury (had over 300 miles by mid-April). Now, nothing and my leg is still a problem. :-(
I probably have more news but I have other stuff to do today. I'll have to post stuff more often so I don't have to try and write everything at once.
4/7/12 - Chapters...
Wow, April already!
<heavyAlert> I was just thinkin the other day about how our lives are like books with many Chapters. Some are good of course and others not so good. Well I've had quite a few of both really (probably like most people). I've had some pretty bad chapters and I've also had some good ones. We carry the memories of our previous chapters into the current chapter but we are still living in the current chapter.
I would have to say that in many ways my current chapter is pretty good. There are still some crappy things left over from some of the previous chapters but in many ways it's actually pretty good. Specifically, I have 2 beautiful and healthy kids that are both in college and doing pretty well with one of them about to graduate with a Bachelor's degree. The other thing that I enjoy for the moment is that I have successfully created and built up my website business and it is doing well right now and gives me quite a bit of flexibility in my life.
OK, there are of course way more goods and bads but I just wanted to hit on the highlights at the moment and not write an entire "book" here.
It's another nice spring day here in Chicagoland. Maybe that is why I am in this kind of a mood. OK, I still got stuff to do. Back to The Book! </heavyAlert>
3/16/12 - I Need Somebody to Like Me
Hopefully this won't seem to shocking to all of you out there but I've Been Experimenting with Facebook. Yea, I just put up a bidness page for my bike site which you can find here: http://www.facebook.com/AboutBicycles and now I need some "LIKES" on Facebook.
So for any of you that has a Facebook account (like who doesn't), I would appreciate if you could go out to my Facebook bidness page and give me a "Like".
I will add a Facebook post begging for "Likes" soon too, but I am just putting it out here for now.
As many of you know, I am not totally Facebook proficient but I think that my posts to the bidness page will show up in your Facebook area if you "Like" my page but it looks like you can "Like" the page then click on the "Like" button you can also uncheck the "Show in News Feeds" to not see the posts that I do to this page. (I'm not sure why anyone would not want to see all of the exciting stuff that I write about bikes and stuff, :-) but just in case you do want to filter it out, I think this is how to do it)
The next thing I am going to attempt is to link my bike blog to my new Facebook Bidness page. My SEO place (Planet Ocean) sent me some links for good Facebook Apps and one of them allows you to link your blog to the Facebook page.
So let's everyone get out there and Follow About-Bicycles on Facebook!
"Does anyone know how to add a Bidness to Facebook" - that is so 10 seconds ago!
Oh yea, and Happy St. Patty's Day to all of you!
3/10/12 - The hour that wasn't there, Been Walkin, KC and Corrine are Here, Livin the Dream!, Da Bulls
Wow, how time flies. I didn't realize how long it has been since I did an update here (my month photo was still on February!) Plus time is really going to fly later tonight when we zip through an hour like it wasn't even there!
Well, I've just been workin and trying to get healthier (lose some weight, drop my blood pressure some, etc.) Aside from trying to eat better (which I have a hard time with but am getting a little better), I have been walking quite a bit and we have had great weather for it! Next up, Riding Season!
This is the weekend that both KC and Corrine are here although we have not seen Corinne much the last few days. :-( Corinne heads back to Miami (Ohio) tomorrow but KC will still be here next week (the dogs are really happy about that (he walks em a lot)).
My website profits have been great for the last 4 months or so but I'm afraid that peak season (for fitness equipment) is reaching an end. I am starting to see sales drop off now and I haven't seen the bike stuff pickup just yet. Still it just occurred to me that, in a way I am Livin the Dream! (as they said in Wedding Crashers ~ "Mom where's that hash!").
I always worry about sales and my website profits droppin off (even when it was really great over the last few months) but when I think about it, I have actually achieved one of my life goals. To startup and run a successful business where I can work from home and have a very flexible schedule. Even if this does not last forever, it has been very successful for at least a pretty good amount of time and, if I can stop worrying about the profits dropping all the time, I need to try and appreciate how fortunate I am in this way.
Anyway, I hope the outdoor bike sales pickup before the fitness equipment season drops off!
Oh yea, the other thing that I have been into is watchin da Bulls kickin all the other teams asses! We will definitely be in the playoffs and we actually have a shot at winning the Championship (if we can get by Miami).
2/24/12 - Corinne's Graduation Pics are In!
OK, so we are a little beind on this but we just got Corinne's HS Graduation Photos. We have quite a few prints and I got the images that I posted below off of the CD that we also purchased. I don't know what else to say except that she is beautiful. Oh yea, do you see how see looks like me?!? (OK, well maybe her nose just a little :-) )
Here are Corinne's Class of 2011 Graduation Pictures!
There are actually some more photos but these were the ones that we thought were the best and that we had printed. The other ones are similar to these, like there are no props or other poses or anything.
The one thing that I feel really bad about is that we had some problems with Casey's graduation pics and we never even got copies of the ones that they took. We tried to get Casey to the photo studio that we have used in the past so that we would at least have a late HS Grad photo but that did not work out. Hopefully we can get a studio photo of him for his college graduation.
2/11/12 - Wisco Trip!, Good Karma
Well, I just spent most of last week up in Sparta, Wisconsin and just got back yesterday. I was helping my brother to organize his websites and to put together his new website 1-Remodeling.com. This is only a start so far but stay tuned I think that my bro will be building this site up into a nice resource soon.
Most of my trip involved working on the website (we worked a lot of hard, long days) and fine dining! I did manage to get some down time and visit a little too. Besides for Larry and Patty, I was able to stop by my great nephew Nick's new place where he lives with Lori and Ezra (Nick is the ex-marine) and my nieces house in Cashton.
I stayed and Andi and Brad's house (my niece and nephew) on Thursday and had a great visit there with some excellent potatoe soup and sour dough bread (along with other assorted treats and things). I also got to see my great niece, Ari and her girlfriend Nicole there. Then for a finale, I stopped by my brother's house on the way back and saw my other great nephew Steve (the ex-sailor), his girlfriend Aude and a friend Josh.
OK, it looks like it will take thousands of words to describe my trip so I better use some pictures to cut down on the typing! So...
Here are the Photos from my Mid-Winter Wisconsin Trip!
Like I said, most of my trip involved helping my brother to get his new website up and his other websites organized. I think that I may have picked up some Good Karma by helping out like that since I had one record breaking profit day on my website and a recording breaking week while I was up there! Or maybe it was just the full moon. :-). Well, whatever it was, that was nice and now that I am back in Illinois the profits were not nearly as good for today. I gotta make another trip up there. and soon!
1/5/12 - Vegas and Miami!
I had to update the monthly photo above to January (2012!) so I'm just doing a quick update. Actually the January photo above is from a previous year, we do not have any snow on the ground at this point and I believe that it got up to 50 today! (but the photo looks a lot more like a regular January around here).
Anyway, KC has a pretty long Xmas vacation and he took off for Las Vegas right after New Years. I haven't heard much about the trip yet (he is still there until tomorrow) but I heard that he lost a little money so far. :-(
I am hoping that KC will have some Vegas photos that I can post here when he gets back. That is assuming that he has photos that can be published on a PG-13 website and that the only photos that he has are not of things that should stay in Vegas. :-)
Also on Tuesday, I took Corinne back to Miami (her school in Oxford, Ohio, of course). Corinne actually went back almost a week early since they are doing a sorority rush that she is going to. I didn't even know what that was about until this week but it is a very busy and hectic time. Corinnes roommate is not getting back until next week (when school actually starts up again) so I ended up staying with Corinne in her dorm (it's co-ed so it's OK).
The trip was nice and it was nice to spend a little extra time with Corinne and to see what all this stuff was about and to visit Miami again.