Going Paperless

I've wanted to do this for a long time, but scanning every page of every bill is a real hassle, especially when the bills are non-standard sized pages and are double sided. It completely defeats the purpose of going paperless since I end up doing 3 times more work.

Well, I have a new approach. Since nearly every single bill I receive now has an option for getting an electronic version instead of getting it mailed to me, I have decided that, starting in 2008, I will have all my bills sent to my email and I will save each as a PDF document. No wasted paper, less trees wasted, less paper to recycle, and no need to worry about what I'm going to do with hundreds of bills at the end of the year or when I run out of room in my drawer.

I still have to keep the paper versions of my old bills, but at least it's a start!

The Hilton Line

That was a very long 10 minutes!

Always Learning Something New - Product Photography

I have a very unique job. While my main focus is software development and website design, I always end up learning something new with every client. In the past, I have learned about the propane industry, FOREX currency trading, real estate, antiques, mortgages, and senior housing to name a few.

I've also learned many new skill sets from each unique project. I learned ASP.NET and C# programming while doing my first social networking website. I can't even count the number of new things I learned from working on Famesource. Two recent projects have required me to learn even more. One project involved heavy Flash and Flash Media Server programming. I've never done anything related to Flash, so this is a very interesting endeavor.

Another project involves me taking some product photos - a task I usually leave to a photographer. It's not easy taking pictures of products. Today I went to Office Depot to buy foam boards and went to Home Depot to buy lights. I ended up getting some kick-ass 100W Daylight Halogen Lights. These things are BRIGHT! I only bought 2, but now I realize I need at least 4 to get a well-lit box. I came home and assembled the whole thing with tape and started taking pictures. Turns out, it's not that easy. I don't have a professional grade camera - just a 6 megapixel Exilim. I don't even have a small tripod, so I had to use books and other small things I had around my room to hold the camera still.

Here's what it looks like so far (with a bit of Photoshopping to increase contrast and adjust levels. I didn't remove the background):



You can see my orange Exilim in the bottom corner of the phone. Even with all the touch-up it's obvious that I don't have enough lighting (though it is bright as hell when you look at it through human eyes). I look forward to taking more product pictures and maybe having it bring in enough to warrant the purchase of a professional camera and a better lighting studio. It's definitely fun!

Keeping Cords Untangled & One Very Happy Arthur

Anyone that has spent more than 10 minutes with me knows I'm extremely OCD, especially when it comes to organization. I could always keep my desk clean, but tangled headphone cords always got the best of me. Finally, I thought of a very simple solution that has worked liked a charm.

Since I have a giant cork board next to my desk (which, by the way, is a great way to keep a desk clean) I figured I could use said board, and the magical powers of gravity, to fight my battle with cords.

Ladies and gentlemen, I declare victory (and not a half-assed George Bush style victory either)!

A Bit of Practice

Today I spent about 40 minutes exercising and practicing jab and cross with weights. While I definitely can feel that I am out of shape and quickly run out of breath, I can also feel myself improving very quickly. It took about 4 days for my legs and back to recover from Sunday's training. I'm going to go for a little run tomorrow and then get ready for Saturday's training. This is actually turning out to be a lot more fun than I expected!

Martial Arts Training

One of my resolutions was to exercise more, so what better way than to get involved in some boxing and tae kwon do? I had my first day of training yesterday, and am going again tomorrow. Levon, Araks' brother, is the one training me, and he is very good at what he does, so it's very fun.

I'm looking forward to getting in shape this year. I think it will really help my overall mood and my work productivity.




Photo credit: Tomm Hansen

Catching Up On Work

Waking up today was very difficult. While I tried to sleep early last night, my body was just not used to it. I fell asleep around 4am and woke up a little after 8am. I have been half-awake the entire day. I was very close to giving in and taking a nap, but I fought the temptation. If I had napped, I wouldn't be able to sleep tonight either.

So in the morning I called all of my customers and updated everyone as to where we stand as far as their project goes. Some clients had said they would call me but I hadn't heard from them for weeks, so it was time to get the ball rolling. While it's going to be a bit difficult working on everything at the same time, it will be worth it since I will be able to finish projects quickly and, most importantly, get paid for them!

I had lunch with Adeh at Islands, then visited Alex at POS Solutions to fix an odd problem with their proposal generator. After that I visited Vazgen at his office to discuss changes to his project. I'm really excited about getting everything complete and growing my company this year.

I spent some time relaxing at home, then went over to Araks' house to help with creating a school assignment for her mom. We had some fun playing around with Clairol's Try It On Studio, then I came home and relaxed a little more until I finally decided to go to bed.

Every night I plan the next day's events, that way I have a reason to wake up and a way to track my productivity for the day. So far, so good. Let's see how day #3 goes.

Oh and I used to do this a while back with all my posts, and I think it will be fun to do again: a picture with every post! This time around, I'll give credit for all the hard work these great photographers have put into their photos:




Photo credit: Marmur []

Java Java Everywhere

In case you forgot what you were installing:

And So The Year Begins (And Why The Rose Parade Sucks)

I was about to go to bed today, and then I realized I was already close to breaking my first new years resolution: blog more often! Now, I have 3 blogs, so it's not easy to keep all of them updated, so I am going to focus this one on daily events, sort of like a diary. I don't really have any other focus for it, so why not document my life? It's not going to provide much benefit to anyone reading it, but it is definitely worth its weight in gold years down the line when I look back and read about what I was doing day to day and what my thoughts were.

So anyways, I spent New Years with my parents until midnight. Nothing very exciting there. Then, I went out with Araks. We were going to meet a few friends at a party in Pasadena, but by the time we navigated all the street closings caused by the Rose Parade, the party was over.

I seriously never understood the appeal of the Rose Parade. It's just a bunch of arranged flowers going very slowly down the street. Wouldn't it be much more effective to take a picture of each float and post them online as a slideshow? The only thing that would be missing would be people no one knows artificially waving at people they don't know.

Even if you like the Rose Parade, why the hell would you camp out in 36 degree weather on New Year's night instead of watching it at home? You really don't have anything better to do? Just seeing people sleeping on the streets with their blankets and comforters touching the dirty sidewalk made me nauseous. You people need to get a life!

Anyways, so we just ended up driving around some dark neighborhoods and looked at some very nice houses. Of course, ours will look better, but now we are just getting some ideas on what to do :-)

I got home around 4am and knocked out until 1pm when I woke up from the sounds of my nieces' gigglings.

My sister and her family was over, so we had a bit of an after-new year's early dinner (which was my breakfast). Then we all went to my grandmother's house to wish her a new year, where my brother and his family were already doing their wishing. Afterwards, they came over and I got to spend quality time with Angela and Hovik. Hovik is growing up fast and is always fun to play with. I let him loose playing Call of Duty 4 for a little bit. He's not bad for a 3 year old.

Angela was an angel as usual. She definitely acts much older than she is. I always think of what it is going to be like to look back 20 years from now and remember how they were as little kids.

And that about rounds out my day. I am looking forward to waking up early (8am) and getting a lot of work done. I am really set on keeping my resolutions this year, and this blog is just another tool to help me stay on track.