Business has been picking up faster than I expected it. I have even been considering turning this blog into a business blog. Google has an official blogger, BlueHost has an official CEO's blog. Maybe Main10 needs to have one too. Still not sure if it does, or if this would be the right blog for it. So anyway... I went to meet with a potential client the other day and give him our schpeel. Seemed like it went well. He was very interested in what we had to say. He even wanted to hear our proposal. So then I had to run off to 10x. I was still part time there even though I was working on a way to leave completely. So I get there and all the offices are empty. The place feels like a morgue. "Something just isn't right here" I thought to my self. Finally I found someone. Josh had a very grim look on his face. Turns out that they (innuity) are closing the place. Maybe I don't have to actually quit after all! Sure enough, I am included in the layoff. One person got an offer to move to Seattle. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that she will be working for me. ;) I spent the rest of the day trying to figure out how I was going to hire all these people and be able to pay them. Well, that has been the story of my life for the last 6 days (excluding Sunday) Still working on getting everyone in here to talk to me. But I have been able to get 2 of them so far at least. So in the 7 moments that I have had to stop and ponder anything, a question arises. What kind of company plans a big Christmas outing to Tucanos and then lays off most of the staff 2 days before. Sure they give everyone a severance to almost cover things through Christmas. How kind of them. This brings me back to the whole reason I wanted to work for my self in the first place. I think business owners have a moral obligation to not just provide a living for their employees. They have a responsibility to give them a better life. I am pretty sure that putting people in the unemployment line less than a week before Christmas is NOT giving anyone a better life. Except possibly the few executives who will be able to provide themselves with a hefty Christmas bonus from the money they are saving from 20 some odd salaries that just got eliminated while blatantly lying to customers about being able to ensure high levels of ongoing service. They are just milking the clients that are stuck in their contracts for the last half of the month knowing full well that most if not all of the clients will be leaving by January 1. I remember writing a while back about how sad it is when stupid inept executives from a bigger company buy out a smaller profitable innovative company and bleed it of all it's resources. I knew they would ultimately arrive at this but honestly I a little surprised that they got there so soon. Merry Christmas John Wall and Jim Crisera. May your holiday spirit be returned to you ten fold.

With Kim Jong Il's refusal to show up for our little golf tournament, I have no choice but to officially declare war on North Korea out of defense as they have made it abundantly clear they have no intentions of maintaining a peaceful co-existance. I also moved into my first office. That is exciting. My kids love it. And they want to know who is going to be my boss. They'll catch on. I also have gone part time at good ol' 10x Marketing. It's hard to watch big stupid companies come in and buy out small brilliant companies and rob them of all their money and potential. Makes me wonder why anyone allows themselves to be bought if they intend on staying at the company. I guess that's why most shareholders and board members don't actually work at the companies they sell. It's too bad that most companies don't want to buy a smaller company and let them continue to be what has made then look so attractive in the first place. But enough about the morons from Seattle. I will be celebrating my 10th anniversary next week. Be staying at the good ol' Timpcreek. My wife has taken to photography like I never expected her to. Maybe she has some deeply hidden internal natural ability and gift for it or maybe all my hoity toity preaching of the virtues of "real" photography have rubbed off a little. What ever the reason, she is pretty good.

As most of my friends know I have taken up the sport of golf. I may be a few years away from playing in any real tournaments but I am getting better. In fact I am starting to feel confident enough in my golfing that I feel like calling out a challenge. No, I'm not going to invite my friends, they can go golfing with me anytime. And besides, what would that prove? I think I would like to take someone that might have a little higher profile. Maybe even a world leader. Hmmm, what world leader would have time to go golfing with the likes of me? It would have to be someone with a small enough country that this would not ruin a busy schedule. It would have to be someone without very much influence in the world. Those guys are too busy. It would also have to be someone who thinks he is much more significant the he really is. Maybe Fidel Castro. And I think it would be humorous to find someone who thinks it would be ok to make up the rules as you go along. Someone that doesn't mind taking 17,000 mulligan's in order to pull off 11 holes in one in just one round. Maybe someone that would shoot each caddy that handed him the wrong club (the club that didn't result in the perfect shot). Yes I think I know who could fit that bill. I hereby challenge Kim Jong Il to 18 holes of golf at Cascade Golf Center on October 31 2006. . Mr. Lunatic, please feel free to bring how ever many caddies you think you will need to beat me. I have to warn you though, my last round I managed to sink 13 holes in one. One of them was even on a par5. And while we are on the subject of warnings, let me warn you that failing to RSVP or show up the day of the tournament will be considered an act of war and will result in more acting cocky and belligerent (Probably on your part too but we're all used to that).

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. I just found a collection of sites that have gone pink in honor of the month. No I won't be doing that. Nor will I be changing to some other crazy color just in honor of what ever month it is. Don't get me wrong. I would love to see a cure for breast cancer. But how many cancers are there? How do you pick a cause to get behind? Even if I just choose between the anti-cancer organizations, I still have a plethora to choose from. But there's also save the planet, save the whales, save the homeless children, save the imported orphans, save the local orphans, save the orphans that you will never see, save the trees, save our historic sites, save our city from trashy yards, save us all from the UN, I could even join a cause to get some crazy family to relandscape their yard. How does one choose a cause without having some sort of personal grudge against a specific malady. Maybe I will choose a "pro" organization instead of an "anti" organization. There's a ton of them out there too. There's countless religious, political, scientific, photography, design, even car organizations. So do I need one of these organizations to help define who I am? Maybe. If I put a big CTR on here, maybe people would know I was LDS. Maybe I should write a big post about my favorite conference talk from this last weekend. Maybe I'll post some pictures on here that will let the world know how I feel about some cause. Maybe I'll create my own ads for my favorite political candidate for the next election.

So how does one make a difference without selling out to one specific cause? Somehow I want to say something eloquent about how we just need to live our lives better or raise our children better or maybe just eat better desserts. But then, eloquence somehow eludes me. You would think I would have gotten used to it by now. Guess I'll just go campaign to get those bigots thrown out of town. Man, if there's one thing I can't stand, it's a bigot.

Lately I've been pondering over my blog and what good it is to the world. I've read blogs from developers at Google, from CEO's of hosting companies, even the Rantings of a BYU Student and it seems like everyone has something to contribute to the greater knowledge of the world. What exactly have I done here? Other than create a place for family and close friends to check in on me without having to pick up the phone, What have I done? Almost ALL of the search engine traffic I get is from people looking for information on really quick boy haircuts. And even those people come away thinking "huh?" to themselves. I could create a place where design principles are preached to the designerly challenged masses. I could create a place where family values are heralded and inspirational stories are told. I could create a place where the marvels of the internet and technology are explored. I could create a place where design, technology, and marketing are analyzed in relation to today's business world. I could create a place where the teeming hordes of digital camera users could learn some basic principles to keep them from ruining everything they capture in their lenses. But what do I choose to do? I choose to ramble about nothings. I guess they must be important or I wouldn't ramble about them. Hmmm, I'll have to check into that logic there... (note to self [curiously posted on my non-private blog]: check into logic of ramblings being important just because I rambled about them) As I read back through my posts, they don't even read that coherently. Unless you already know a little bit about what I am doing in my life, they don't make much sense at all. What's the point? Am I just adding to the countless piles of hard drives on the Internet that are filled with nothings? (and can "nothing" actually be used in the plural form?). There you go Grant, how bout that?

"I'm not saying I'd like to build a summer home here but the trees are actually quite lovely." I don't know how many times I've said it. Most of the time it's been to mock some horrible place but I think I may have finally found where I would build a summer home if I were so inclined. It would have to be towards the north end of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. I think I actually said something like "Wow, the trees here are just so amazing" which of course brings up the summer home and then I really started thinking about it. A winter home would definitely have to be some place tropical (the DR) and why not have the summer home be some place that stays close to the same temperature and is just as green? The locals are even quite amicable too eh? Oh yes, that's another thing. Where can I find a guide on the correct usage of "eh"? It seems that all the Canadians use it in their own individualistic way. Eh? So yeah, the fishing was so so. The crabbing was pretty decent. The berry foraging was fantastic. The scenery was amazing. The bears were nice and kept their distance, except for that one bear that we almost drifted into when the prop got tangled on fishing line. But then, he was still very cordial and didn't eat us. Most (and I mean like 99%) of the Canadians we met were not just polite, but they seemed to go out of their way to be nice and friendly. I think it would be quite nice to become one of the summer locals. So if you have the chance, go visit northern Vancouver Island. And take a boat that has a motor if you want to catch fish this year. Or better yet, charter a fishing boat for a couple days.

You know its funny. I recently went to a BBQ with my closest friends from high school. We used to joke about the day when we would get together with our families and sit around and cook stuff on the BBQ and talk about grown up things like raising kids, jobs, buying houses and cars, you know, that kind of stuff. This time we were even sitting in a room with a bunch of people whose sight and hearing was fading, necks and back was aching... well at least that's where it stopped this time. Give it another 10 or 15 years. We'll see about that next part. I was all just kinda funny cause I can still see better than 20/20 (thanks to that racquetball incident) and I can still hear just fine. At least that's what I think. And my neck and back actually felt pretty good. So anyway, I have this old mattress that I have wanted to replace for the last year or so. Just haven't had the opportunity I guess. And if I try to sleep on any part of it other than my side, it gives me a backache. So last night, I woke up and tried to turn over just a bit and pulled something in my neck. At least it wasn't as bad as last time I hurt it. So yeah I am sick of getting old. Now here's the part where I am supposed to commit to going to the gym every day or something. So what do I do, I really do want to go to the gym everyday. I just have no time. Fine! I'll do it. I'll go. I'll go. I'll go. AAAUURGH!. He'll keep calling me. And he'll keep calling me. (Gets out of car. Throws keys at car. Screams. Gets back in) Fine, I'm doing it.

So there I was… I had just finished writing the last post on Monday evening when Yani started complaining about strong cramping and pains starting in her lower back and moving to her abdomen. Now being the over paranoid father that I am, I had practically memorized page 179 in the "what to expect when you're expecting" wonder book and calmly (OK, not very calmly) got up and proceeded to pack the car with hospital stuff while convincing Yani that "Yes, this means you are moving into phase two of labor". She didn't believe me and almost talked me into letter her go to bed to get her belly to relax. Then they started getting painful. OK, that was it. I grabbed the sleeping kids and finished throwing everything into the car. So we got the kids dropped off and hopped on the freeway. Now it's normally a good 45 minutes to the hospital but for some reason at 12:30 in the morning, there are not tons of cars on the road and we managed to make it in about 20 minutes. Gee, I didn't feel like I was really going that fast. So we almost didn't get an epidural. You would think that with all the reading that book, I would have clued in earlier and been able to get to the hospital without the huge rush. Oh well. So he was born at about 4:22 AM. And we didn't have a name, we had about 30. So then we remembered the ol' Cat in the Hat and practiced a little calculatus eliminatus. Got it down to three names. So we went with all three. So we got home today. The kids are super happy to have a new little brother. I am super happy to have a little boy with ten fingers and ten toes. He even behaves really well. What more could I ask for? Oh, how bout a sexy wife. Yeah, got that too.

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. Ok, so what has happened? Well, I will have a new baby by the time most of you read this. He is due on Saturday. That's closer than the other two kids made it by several days. So I finally feel ready for the new addition to the family. At the latest, he will be born on Wednesday. I kinda suspect that he may arrive on Tuesday. We'll see. I also started the ultimate weight loss challenge. Paul and I weighed in a week ago. I won't give the results because there may be some people reading this that assume that I am still in good shape. Well, this will be going for 3 months. Then we will weigh in again and see who has lost the greater percentage. What else… Oh I opened my first business bank account last week. Tomorrow I will be writing myself my first paycheck. How's that for a milestone? Main10 (as we are calling it) provides web management for companies who either can not justify hiring a full time webmaster or can't get the expertise they need in the number of headcount they have clearance to hire. As it is turning out, most companies would prefer to have development done by the same group that will be providing the maintenance. Can't argue with that. So here's what I need. I am looking for a number of people who would be available for some side work. Specifically, I would like someone with some good project management skills. I will be needing several high level HTML monkeys. Yes, more people like me. No Dreamweaver here. Yeah, I need several of those. I will also need a good supply of talented programmers. I already have a couple and yes I do know quite a few others already but most of them are a little busy with their high paying gigs right now so I need some more. I will also be needing a good sales person with some good technical understanding. Of course, maybe you just know someone that could use these services. We will be paying out a unique referral fee just for sending anyone my way so let me know.

The drama all starts two weeks ago when I went to ask my advisor if there could be a possibility that I could get them to count my Spanish 3900 credit for the humanities Spanish 2020 class that is a required general. I have a new advisor first of all. Stacy has always seemed helpful. Well sorta. Stacy sent me up to the annex offices clear up in no mans land. So I found Jennifer, the new advisor. She was very friendly and seemed like she was actually looking for ways to make my life easier and not just get out of her office. So I told her my situation: two classes left for my associates. Portfolio and a humanities credit. So she told me who is really the right person to talk to about that credit and then she was like "Hold on, lemme see what I can do about that portfolio class. Hmmm, looks like they have changed the requirements on it since it's going to be 1 credit from now on and not 3. So we can substitute one of these other classes you have taken for it." So then it all hinged on my math class. I wasn't sure if I would pass. I checked online to see my score. There weren't available 'til yesterday. So just had to sweat it out. Waiting. Waiting. So then yesterday I checked my grades. Looks like I pulled a B somehow. Homework was supposed to count for a third of my grade. Somehow I managed to get better than 66% without any of it. Now I just took and passed a math class and that still makes no sense to me. But I'm not about to argue with it. As it now stands, I now have my associates degree in design and only 33 more hours to get my bachelors. W00T

It doesn't rain much here. So when it does rain for more than a day or two it drives the worms out in droves. I realize that to most people this is nothing unusual. That's not the point here. Anyway, for the last two days it's been raining off and on. Just enough to keep the ground wet. And of course, the worms are everywhere. I was noticing yesterday that I don't like to step on them. And when I do accidentally step on one, I actually feel quite bad. I don't know why. It doesn't bother me when I see birds eat them. I don't mind killing flies or mosquitoes. In fact, I quite enjoy that. I don't even mind putting worms on a fish hook. Today I drove through a driveway that was just teeming with worms. I'm sure I ran over at least 20 worms. I didn't feel so bad about it somehow. I guess that when I would have to swerve dangerously into traffic, I have no issues with squishing numerous worms. But when I walked over to the deli to get me a wonderful breakfast sandwich I felt like I was having an internal struggle to figure out why I don't like to step on them. Every worm I passed seemed to make me wonder more and more.

So here is what I have decided. For now at least. Even though worms have no brain and I doubt they can even feel pain, they are God's creations and deserve some respect. They also serve some function for the good of man. They don't carry disease that I know of and they don't bite or pester. In fact, the only time you even see them is when it is too rainy to want to go outside anyway or when you really go looking for them with a shovel. Sure some people think they are gross but then so is Jell-O and no one is asking you to eat worms so let's all give them a break. I'm not suggesting that we swerve to miss worms or avoid going about our activities when it rains but if we all try just a little harder to keep from stepping on worms when we can, the ground will be healthier, the robins will be happier, there will be more readily available fish bait, and we'll all be able to sleep a little easier.

I sat and watched my kids play Ring Around the Rosy tonight. Kinda freaked me out listening to them over and over. The meaning of it all kept going through my mind with each rendition. "Ring around the rosy" The mark of the Black Plague. A small rosy red sore with a black ring around it. These sores would show up early on the victims of the plague. This was a sign that you were almost surely going to die. "Pockets full of posy" To avoid the wretched stench of one who carries the plague, victims would fill their pockets with a posy of flower petals. As their sickness progressed, more posies would be required. "Ashes! Ashes!" in order to limit the spread of the plague, and partly because there was not enough well bodied people left to bury the bodies of the dead, they bodies were all burned in great bon-fires. This is actually where we get the term bon-fire. Bone Fire. "We all fall down!" What can you say about that. pretty much shows the hopelessness. Once someone in your village brought in the plague (more likely a rat than a person but no matter) there was about this much hope that you would survive.

I wanted to tell them but I digressed. I don't think it would be a good time and they might not even believe me. "Black Plague? Whoever heard of that?" I'll give 'em 10 years. When they won't be playing that game and reciting that wonderful lyric anymore. I found out in Mr. Rigby's AP World History class. It's kinda cool when you're in high school. Then you really start to think about it and it just makes you sick each time you hear it. Makes you wonder why they even started teaching it to kids or continue teaching it to them. It reminds me of the time a mother had a still-born baby and couldn't afford a burial. She placed it in a box on the curb just outside my window. I was awakened by a commotion and quickly understood what everyone was doing running about just outside my bedroom. I was saddened, sickened by the thought of it. But I still felt that I had to look. Not like passing an accident on the freeway and you just want to see how serious it was and you contribute to the slow traffic that you have been cursing for the last 2 miles. More like seeing pictures of the Holocaust and understanding what really happened. I felt like I had to go see the baby's body. And I did. And it was worse than I could have imagined. I literally felt sick to my stomach. If I had to do it all over again, knowing how it would make me feel, would I look? Yeah, I think so. Maybe the understanding is worth more than pain. Maybe the nursery rhyme is the best way to make kids understand massive plague and death when they get it explained to them later in life. I guess it's better than living through a pandemic but losing half your family. Kinda makes you want to dance around in circles.

If you have been reading this blog since before it was a blog, then you probably are quite familiar with my ongoing internal struggle with the mighty Coca Cola. Well, I win. For months I've been throwing around the idea of a "Last Coke Party" where I invite all my friends and everyone watches me chug my last Coke. I kept putting it off cause I wanted everyone to be able to come. K, not over the holidays, too many people out of town. Not during the semester, too much going on. Not over spring break, I probably won't be available. Not during the summer, that's too far away. 'Sides, I'll be busy with a new baby in the summer. Hmmmm. During Fall semester, I had a fitness class where I started only drinking it on weekends. I lost 15 pounds in the first 2 months without even really trying. So then I got cocky and thought just a few during the week wouldn't hurt. Well I put all 15 pounds back on in one week. From then on I went back to the just weekends thing. Back down 15 pounds by the end of the class. In fact I started doing so well that I could just walk right past it in the store. Then they came out with this Black Cherry Vanilla stuff that I just had to try. (That way when it was gross, I wouldn't even be tempted.) But then it turned out to be pretty fantastic. What started out as just one almost turned into a full fledged addiction again. So I started weaning myself off of it just because I knew I should. Then the thinking about the party again. Hmmmmm. I just decided I had had enough. All it takes is a little commitment right? So I didn't even drink my last one after that. I'm just done. I know. I know. You're all thinking "yeah right. I'll give him two more days." But it's now been 2 weeks. No more headaches. No more heart burn. No more shortness of breath. And no more throwing away the money. I'll weigh myself one of these days and see what's happening there. It's funny, just a little commitment. That's all it takes. Now I see why so many men are afraid of this commitment stuff. It's so binding.

Blogs are all the latest craze now-a-days. From the magnitude of the craze, I would say they are here to stay. Just about as permanent at the Internet its self. All my life I never considered myself a writer of any sort. I can barely even spell WITH the help of a spell checker. Just IM me some time, you'll see what I am talking about. I didn't start posting here for people to come read some in-depth analysis on the current political issue or to stand on my own cyber soap-box. I really didn't even expect anyone to see this besides me. I think it's interesting though how many people feel the need to express them self on a blog. Take mySpace.com for example. Their goal was not to create a cyber community where prepubescent acne ridden boys and girls could try to woo the opposite sex. But now it's all over the news. Or take Google's Blogger. The tagline is "express your self online". Just about everyone has a Google blog. For some reason though, people feel like they can express them self more openly when there is a chance that no one or everyone will read their thoughts. I don't get it. I'd have to consult the psych major for that one. I have a co-worker who posts regularly about search marketing and technology in general. I have a brother in law who runs a conservative political website. I stopped counting friends and former co-workers with blogs a while ago because there are so many of them. My brother has jumped on the blogging bandwagon as well. I'm looking forward to implementing his site software here some day. I like to see how well people implement a design on their site though. I think you can accurately measure the intelligence of the site owner by the design. mySpace.com reminds me of the 1997 MLM world. I haven't seen more basic design principles thrown to the wind since Jon built a family homepage for Tom Basset. That was on purpose though.

So this is the new year. I remember when I was a kid that I never thought we would make it to 2006, I figured the second coming would come first. Well here we are. Looks pretty promising that we'll have a 2007 as well. Beyond that? Well, we'll see about that. In the meantime, what can we do but keep trying to do what we can with what we have been given.

I was thinking about my kids the other day. About how depentent they are on you at first. It's wonderful. We will be having another one for my birthday. I am excited to hold the baby in my arms and just watch him/her learn to recognize things. Learn to move around. Learn to make sounds. Learn to communicate. Learn to walk. Learn to speak. Learn to tell the truth. Learn to tell lies. Learn to manipulate. Learn to play. Learn to cheat. Learn to read. Learn to draw. Learn to curse. Learn to rebel. Learn to think for him/herself. Learn to choose. Learn to fall. Learn to get back up. Learn to run. Learn to care. Learn to ignore. Learn to love. Learn to work. Learn to give. Learn to share. Learn to sacrifice. Learn to suffer. Learn to grieve. Learn to live on his/her own. Learn to make a phonecall. Learn to visit. Learn to keep busy. Learn to kep too busy. Learn to take time. Learn to regret. Learn to strive. Learn to commit. Learn to remember. Learn to appreciate. Learn to feel. Learn to express. Learn to organize. Learn to prioritize. Learn to exercise. It makes my heart swell. It makes my heart ache. The joy, pain, gratitude, sorrow, loneliness, completeness, hope, and love. The hearts of the fathers and the hearts of the children is really my heart. I am a father. I am a child. I can not express the feelings for their magnitude. I can only give thanks and pray.