Archive

The house I grew up in is now for sale. Before my parents moved out, I bought a Phantom 4 drone and captured around 3 hours of aerial video. I edited it down to a 2+ minute video highlighting the house, amenities, and landscape. I was planning to use Adobe After Effects but was able to do everything I needed in iMovie.

My wife and I watch movies and TV shows in the evenings to relax.

As 2015 winds down, I wanted to look back on this project and see what went well, what didn't, and what is still left to do.

In Texas, one of the most important aspects of construction is planning for heating and cooling of the space. Also important, especially in a small office, is how much noise is made while heating and cooling the office.

Applying the concrete overlay was the last major piece of work to be done on the office project. Unlike stamping and staining, overlay has a different texture and allows precise matching of existing patterns.

After the retaining walls were finished and all of the stone was put up on the office walls and breezeway, there was still a lot of stone left, approximately 3 tons in total.

Tough Mudder has revised a number of their standard obstacles and has introduced new ones which are very challenging and somewhat more difficult to train for. There is a greater emphasis on teamwork now as many of these new obstacles are simply not achievable without working together. An analysis of the obstacles that have been used in Tough Mudder events over the last couple of months show that the following are highly likely to be used in the 2015 Chicago event.

I don’t buy many paper books these days. However, for some really great ones, I do. And I get those in hardcover if I can. So today there is one that I want. Just came out today, too. I went on Amazon and it is available there for $10 off the hardcover price at Barnes & Noble. WHOA!

I lived in Illinois for 41 years. Moving from Illinois to Texas was one of the hardest things I've done. But it was the right decision. I've now been living in Texas for almost 5 months. We caught the end of the hot summer and are now in the mild winter. I thought I'd write a bit to share our impressions of life in Dallas.

I turned 40 last fall and it has now been 18 years since I last competed in bodybuilding. Through friendships I made at that time with the amazing UFE fitness competitor Melissa Hooper Francis and her husband Bryan Francis, I've been invited to be a judge at the UFE Fury event in Chicago in 2012 and 2013. Naturally you would expect judges of such an event to have a fair amount of experience in the sport and, for those who don't know me, it's not immediately clear that I would have such experience. So, for the benefit of anyone who might be interested, I've decided to tell the story of my life as a competitive bodybuilder. It started earlier than you might imagine: