Watching Cartoons My cell phone called my oncall cell phone on accident the other day while I was playing with the boys. I ended up with a 4 minute long voicemail of the three of us interacting. A small sampling into how I am as a dad. I'm proud of it. 

Happy Pi Day everyone!  

Happy Fathers Day Dad!

And to all the other sleep deprived Papa's out there!

 

I was recently looking at some code on Merrellblogger. After looking at some of the code I decided there are lots of improvements that could be made, but thought I'd open up a suggestion thread. So, lemme know what would be good, fun, cool to see.  

Easter was a blast. There's just something really fun about 20 adults throwing around candy for 10 (or less) kids.


I love this photo. 

Love you Lisa. 

(I know this is a couple days late.)

HAPPY 25th Birthday Joe!

We should honor this occassion! If anyone has funny pictures of Joe then post them or send them to me and I'll put together an album! brian@merrellblogger.com

 

Me: OOOOOOOOH, a pirates life is a wonderful life sailing over the sea! Gimme a year as a buccaneer and a pirates life is for meeeeeeeeee!

Asher: A pirates life isn't for you. A pirates life is for pirates! 

As requested. :)

I've really never used RSS that much so if its buggy or there are issues let me know. 

Chris is building a website for himself for a class and for future use: http://www.dmlstg.net/christophermerrell/ 

Toast Toast Toast! Our scene opens with a view of a small kitchen with an Old Man and his two year old standing next to him. The father droopy eyed and exhausted has been up all night finishing some work. The two year old, dressed exclusively in his big boy underpants, is fully rested from a long nights sleep and decidedly hungry.
Two year old: Papa I'm hungry!
Old Man (getting the raisin bread down): I'll make you raisin bread toast.
Two year old (looking up with defiant independence): I make the raisin bread.
Old Man: I need to put it in the toaster. Would you like to help?
Two year old (more defiant independence): Yes! I wanna put in toaster!

Old Man picks up the two year old to assist in putting toast in.

Two year old: It picks me up! It picks me up!
Old Man (downtrodden): <*sigh*>

Fade to black
End Scene
 

Joe emailed and asked me to post the following:

Thank you for getting the pictures uploaded. I have felt very disconnected from everything that has happened with the family, but I have checked and rechecked to see if anything had been posted. I am sorry that I wasn't able to come. I hope that everyone understands, and was not offended by my inability to attend. I love you all and miss you very much.
-Joseph

 

I've been a papa for two years now. Its pretty incredible to think about. For the last couple days it keeps going through my head, "My little boy is 2 years old." It seems unreal to me, but it is real, and I love it.

Thank you Asher, for being you, and letting me be your dad and loving me even when I'm tired and I'm not the acting like the best dad out there. Happy birthday Buddy, I love you.

Papa 

EVEN BETTER IS THIS ONE!
 

I'll work on creating a wysiwig editor soon enough, and by soon I mean sometime the future, but for the meantime feel free to use <br> to create a line return. 

I thought google earth was cool. Google street view is like peaking into your house. Talk about big brother. It's almost surreal.
Go to http://maps.google.com
Find an address in Portland (not every city has it yet)
Click on an address
Click street view (You might need to click again on the little guy)
It pops up a picture just like you'd driven there. I looked at N and C's house just like I was there.  

I spent a couple hours and updated some code in the photo's section.
1) fixed the bug where images weren't uploading if you didn't click on the back button
2) added thumbnails to the edit pictures section to make captioning easier
 

Here are some photos that got lost in the shuffle(due to some code that I'll try and fix soon...promises promises!)

Vicky Alaska 2007 by Ron and Penny
Kids: by Shasta
Summer 2007 by David and Janet

And check Lisa's blog because she uploaded lots and lots of new photos too!

 

Goodbye Bajio Grill! We already miss you.


 

...but sometimes it feels like I'm supposed to be. Meeting work, family and other obligations over the last 2 weeks has been CRAZY! Working the night shift I periodically have relatively long periods of staying awake (over 24 hours) but I don't like them and they are definitely wearing. I've had an enormous number of those days lately (like 4+ in less than two weeks).

I've had a great time spending time with family, but I will probably NOT be answering my phone for like 2 or 3 weeks! :P

 

I'm resetting the stats on the blog, so I'm taking note of some.
So I thought I'd post them.

As of today there are: (these won't be reset obviously)
123 comments
143 blogs
379 photos
28 different albums
21 favorites
8 bloggers

The top reffering sites are: (these will be reset)
leaperville blog (57 referrals)
denae's blog (35)
angies blog (45)
The "J" blog (28)
gaiaonline (21, and why we are or were there I have NO idea)

Top Search Query: (these will be reset)
Brian Merrell
light headed

Some odd queries: (these will be reset)
merrells are cool debinkification
scrabble 26 points
kendra asher
ava roasteria
complex web page layouts with tables tutorials
uberdart
6 toes

Other
Generally used between 11AM and 4PM but most popular between 10pm and Midnight.
The most number of request came at 11PM
The least number of requests came at 8AM
MSIE and Firefox are equally popular.
Merrellblogger typically servers between 100 and 200 pages a week.(of course I can account for about 1/3 or more of this stat myself)

 

This is Asher in a nutshell. He likes being silly. He likes when people laugh and generally he likes laughing along with them. Apparently he didn't realize that when he's silly and goofy people sometimes people laugh not just with someone but at someone because they are the focus of the funny thing. That is until yesterday.

After working on a college project at my house for a couple hours we ended up chatting, and Asher was eating his food in the middle of the room so we could keep an eye on him. He likes being in the middle of things most of the time and was taking huge mouthfuls of food. He kept making faces at my college buddy and would laugh, wiggle, stare etc. We laughed and he laughed, and everything was fine. Then he made an "OH" face and stared at my college buddy again. He turned toward Asher and said "Well you'd sure win in a staring contest" after Asher had been staring unwavering for at least 10 seconds. Then we all laughed because it was silly. He laughed too.

Then he looked at me. Apparently he noticed that we hadn't laughed when he was staring, but after my college buddy had remarked about the staring. He noticed that we were looking and him while laughing and realized that it was directed at and about him! At him! He stopped laughing. He looked at me very offended. His eyes started to water. His face turned red. He started to cry. Not screaming. Not whining. Just the broken hearted cry of a little person whose parents that he trusts more than anyone had just violated that trust. Oops...

 

Learning more about money and taking better care of my finances has been a big goal of mine this year. Over the last month or so this goal has led to some pretty good conversations about money, debt, budgeting, and retirement. Many of those conversations have been with my wife, but others were with family, friends, and even coworkers. I've learned some things about money that I didn't realize before. Here are a couple links to articles and sites that have helped me learn a bit more.

Ben Stein gives good advice. Principles for retirement

Yahoo finance has been a huge help for me learning about finance and stocks. Learn About Investing & Personal Finance

If you have a 401k that uses a large mutual fund investment then you can and probably should compare them morningstar.com

Compare your credit card. Creditcard Ratings

Last and most importantly make sure you have a Budget.

Lisa and I have shared our budgeting spreadsheet with a few people. I tried using Money a while back, but it was just too complicated for our little budget. It may not work for everyone, but it works for us. If anybody would like a copy of our spreadsheet let me know.

 

The Victim

does it take to plant a tree? Ah, yes, the beginnings of a bad joke, but just the same it was a pretty funny experience planting the dogwood tree in the back yard. Something simple turned into this extravaganza! Way to live it up Merrell's!

Let's just say that I really really hope that tree makes it.

Oh... and I'm definitely gonna add the photos for this!

 

We'd need 3 planets if everyone lived like me. Interesting quiz. Kinda social liberal, but interesting nonetheless. I saw it on the J's blog and thought I'd post it here.

Take it at http://www.myfootprint.org/

 

Uberdart! I've been working on a couple websites for a friend. Check'm out and let me know what you think and/or how to improve them.

Ubderdart.com
AJSuppliers.com

I'm more of a developer than a designer (at least that's how I like to think of myself), but these are basic sites where design is much more important than the technical stuff. I'd like feedback on them if anyone would like to leave it. As I mentioned though, I'm not that great at design, so don't be too harsh.

update: I just updated the CSS for AJSuppliers.com and I believe it looks a bit better than before.

 

I've opened up the comments section to everyone again!

I've put in place a minor spam check to hopefully keep out any spam. I'll be putting in a better one this summer. If ths little check doesn't do the job I'll have to take them back down, but for now anyone can add comments.

Last week before I made some code changes I realized that I didn't have a correct hook in place for only allowing logged in users to add comments. I found this out because after not checking for a month or so I checked the comments and there were over 1700 spam comments left. That should give you an idea of how vile spambots (and their respective coders) really are. After putting a minor improvement to validate users being logged in it spam seemed to stop cold for the last several days which gave me hope that simply improving the spam check a little will allow for enough spam prevention until I'm able to spend more time designing and implementing more fool proof code.

I also did some minor code cleaning so you might notice things look just a little bit better.

 

I dunno where to begin so I'm just gonna hit some highlights.

I'm sad I missed B and K's wedding, but school and life got in the way. Lisa and Asher have duly made themselves scarce for two weeks because of the aforementioned ceremony, and although for the last week I've barely had time to think for myself I have missed them. I've been very busy with school and work, but now I get a brief reprieve from school for a few days before I start again for 3 months. I missed another wedding! N and E got married, but on the first day that I didn't have anything due I was sick so I couldn't go. Well, that's better than being sick when I had stuff do I suppose. I just built a new PC to replace Junior (see previous post if you don't know what that means), but I'll be writing more than enough techie details on that in a post soon.

Oh, and Go Ducks!

 

Tidbits for life:

Be the first to say hello.

When faced with a difficult task act as though it is impossible to fail.

Never underestimate your power to change yourself.

Leave everything better than you found it.

See problems as opportunities for growth.

Focus on making things better not bigger.

Learn from every person you meet.

 

I learned not to take classes on both Monday and Tuesday in conjuction with my current work schedule! :P
 

Sunday midnight shifts make sure
That your week begins with a blur.
Then comes Monday, its busy too,
School and work, no sleep for you.

Repeat on Tuesday, then you'll see
Why on Wendnesday you're a zombie
But Thursday's easy, and Friday's fun,
Rest on Saturday for the week to come.

You like your job, but staying up late
Is not the best for your age or weight,
With a kid, school, job and wife,
Lately you've been aging faster in life.

Going gray by the day thats the rule,
Do this do that, run around like fool
Budgets tight, make sure it fits
Pay your bills, don't call it quits

But today was the day that you knew
A father all this will make of you
He puked on you, and you didn't freak out,
Cause you're a good parent without a doubt! Yo... Peace out!

 

Some odd Google searches that people reached merrellblogger with.

how much fat is in three scrabble eggs
combination tv and computer
nicole craig kentucky marriages
 

For those of you who don't know (which is everybody), my laptops name is Junior. Errr... make that was Junior. Yup, Junior was my little buddy for 3 good years. We laughed together (or well, I laughed), and cried together (well, not so much but I think that's what your supposed to say anyway). We really had some good times. Thus passes away another Lappy into PC Heaven. (As opposed to MAC hell???) Goodbye Junior, you lived a good life (but way to short for a machine that expensive!!!!) 

I made a slide show video after we went to the pumpkin patch. I couldn't get it to upload to youtube because of the size. However, my tech savvy wife just tried it again and it uploaded so here it is.

Pumpkin Patch!

 

Although I'm not an avid reader, I do admire the ability of anyone to write a book and publish it. I recently finished and was very impressed with The Scottish Shepherd. I learned a great deal about some family history, and just as much (if not more) about general Utah/Mormon history. I wasn't entirely expecting the level of detail in the book about Utah, and Mormons, but it is fantastic.

The book reads like a case study on Mr. Murdoch's life. Figuring out pieces of a 150 year old mystery puzzle that spanned more than 80 years, and then putting those pieces together to paint to see the overall picture.

There are also some interesting things you can tell about the author. First, he must love this stuff. Second, he's very detailed (I can hardly imagine the level of research and shear number of hours it took to get all the information contained therein (wow, I can't believe I just wrote "therein"). Comparitively, I'm writing this blog in approximately 30 minutes with my only research being that I have recently read the book, and now I'll just write whatever I feel like! :P

Anyway, the book was good, and worth a read, and a large part of the audience that visits merrellblogger would/will enjoy it. Of course, I'm going to have some bias (by a relative, about a relative, etc..), but I really did enjoy reading it.

 

Comments are now restricted to only registered users. I hope this will be a temporary solution and that I will come up with a good way to fight spam without having people put gross comments on the site. Again, everyone can read the comments, but only registered users can post them. 

Recently someone was suprised to learn that I was majoring in business as he thought I was still "working in computers". While I still work in the high tech industry, I'm trying to move more to the business side of things, and so I'm in the midst of a multi year career change. I was lucky to recognize the need to switch careers as early as I did. In my earlier twenties I'd already been in the technical field for several years, and I could tell I was a burnout techie in the making. Rather than wait 10 years and hate my job, I went back to school, and now I'm majoring in Business.

However, like I said before I still work in the high tech field. While I'm in school I'll continue to do techie work because the skills I've gained allow me to have jobs that are (somewhat) reasonable while not over demanding (especially my current job which has been a huge help).

The most difficult thing that I've found so far is that old habits die hard. I still think I need a techie certification or that I need to take a programming class, but those things won't really help me in my future job. I like to dabble in technology, and its somewhat of a hobby which is why I've written all the code for merrellblogger instead of using a (far more polished) tool that was already written. I know I'll always be somewhat of a techie, so my ulitmate goal is to mesh those to identities.

Article about success by Ben Stein

 

Its Asher's first Christmas this year. It's currently 1AM on Christmas morning and I'm at work right now, but I'm so excited and I can't wait to go home and have Asher play in his new pajamas (Thanks G & G Merrell!) with his new toys. Even though it can be really really stressful sometimes, I love Christmas!

 

Merrellblogger has been getting hit pretty hard in the comments section with spam lately. Some of the spam has been pretty bad too (bad as in not kiddie friendly at all). If anyone ever notices this please feel free to call me Immediately day or night and I'll remove it as soon as I can get to it. I won't fight this for very long, but I'll try to do a couple things to make it more difficult for spambots to add comments. I might have to remove the comments section unless people register with merrellblogger, but I don't want to do this.

Also, I would appreciate any suggestions on how to deal with this.  

I've added the first couple blog help files. Feel free to review, comment and ask questions.

Help Files! 

I'd like to get some suggestions for improvements to implement over the next few months. I know there is a ton of improvements that I can make, but I want to know what improvements that people (both bloggers and readers) would like me to make. 

I had to build a small web project for my technical writing class. I decided that I would build some tutorials. I started off with a very simple HTML tutorial that I will build on. I'll build some blog help files too, but for now for those who are interested please review it and leave some comments. Thanks!

You can see it here. I have to do another project in a couple weeks and that's when I'll try to build some help files. 

People were forgetting to put their name in their comments so I added a name field as well as a field for a website (which Lisa requested). 

This is my third rewrite of this before I actually posted it because I don't want to whine too much. I wanted to state that more than 150 dollars for a single textbook that I believe is only designed to last me one class is just too expensive. I've considered signing up for a different class because of it, but this works best with my schedule so I think I'm stuck. It will be difficult to convince me that such an expensive book is necessary because I'm an undergrad majoring in business. In other words there is probably lots of information in this area as demand/supply for it is very high so it shouldn't be hard to find a cheap quality text. I hope it is a really good book and that it will be so good that in a few months I can make another post saying that it was definitely worth it. I will be very sad if it isn't because books like that seriously increase the overall cost of tuition, which even at a state school is not cheap. Sorry if I was ranting too much!

Hopefully schools will begin reviewing and then using things like wikibooks. Then texts would be free!

UPDATE!My instructor for this class is letting us use the older version of the text! A cost savings of a hundred bucks! Woohoo!

 

I was trying to think about what to write when I read methen’s blog on perspective. He was going to write about some things that had been frustrating or had gone wrong over the past few weeks, but then he found out his friend had health issues and all of a sudden his problems didn’t seem so bad. I was heading toward a similar bit of writing about how schoolwork has affected all my vacations this summer until I read his blog entry.

The truth is that I am doing very well. My health is good, my wife is pretty, and my son is learning to crawl.

Oh…
And I just had a delicious slice of cold leftover pepperoni pizza. Life is good.
 

I added a favorite sections so bloggers (all three or four of us :P ) can add their favorite websites that they like to go visit. I've been talking about adding a "Merrell Projects" section which will contain projects that family have been working on, like Uncle Ken's new book or maybe school projects that are being worked on. That will come soon enough, I'm just not sure how I'm going to implement it right now.

Also, I'll be adding a "favorite blogs" section soon so we can link to other blogs that we read. Lisa reads a lot of blogs and will probably have quite a few to add.
In the meantime, this is the epitome of Chris!
 

Truck Cab Cabin!

Did you know that its possible to convert a semi-truck sleeper cab into a cabin for campers?

No...?

Me either, until a couple weeks ago when Lisa and I went camping, again. No, we didn't end up staying the night in the truck cab cabin, we were in the space next to it (about 10 feet wide). All the good campsites at the beach were full so we ended up pulling into a trailer park / RV / tent camp / truck cab cabin camp site.

I'm so glad we found this little slice of heaven. Truck cab cabins, what a great idea! I've been wondering what Lisa and I should do for our fourth anniversary. I wonder if they take reservations this far in advance?

 

err...I mean duty. Jury duty would make a really crappy job if you had to do it everyday, but I found that it made for a welcome change to the activities of my everyday life.

When I got to the courthouse in the morning I filled out paperwork that took a minute or two. After that the couple hundred jurors that were there that morning waited along with me for an hour and a half before anything significant happened, but most people, like me, brought some light reading. In addition to reading I'm a people watcher so the morning went by rapidly because I had so much people watching to do.

There was the a def man in the juror waiting room who had a person signing for him. Another person had a very noticeable physical disability (parkinsonism?). Then there was the nice lady that directed me which way to go without saying anything about me being stupid even though there was like 10 huge signs pointing the correct way for jurors to go. Then the nice jury coordinator lady who told me to keep the paper I was holding onto after I asked her about it. Then after noting that I was to keep the paper I noticed I was standing directly in front of a sign with a copy of the form and in big letters wrote "KEEP THIS PAPER". Feeling stupid I walked back to my seat.

Then we watched a fairly dumbed down video of why we have jury duty and what jurors do. It went something like this...

------------- "Hi my name is Brian, I got the letter for jury duty in the mail and I thought, but I have so much to do that day, jury duty is an inconvienence, why do we have it anyway." .... insert long drawn out explaination for jurors here... and then "Oh. I see, it is important that I perform jury duty." blah blah ------------

Anyway, the whole thing was right out of a Dick and Jane jury duty book. (See jury, judge jury judge, good jury) And as I was in the audience that it was intended for I was a tad bit insulted.

Eventually some of us, including me, were chosen to serve on a trial. So juror number 251 (that's me!) and all the others marched up (in line) to the appropriate court room for the selection process. That process went much like what I've seen on TV, just a lot slower, and in way more detail. I did get to learn some interesting details about the other people at this time. One lady recently had a stalker (scary story), another knew two people who were murdered, a third was a victim of spousal abuse, another had a DUII. Needless to say not everyone was picked for the actual jury.

The twelve of us that were picked for the jury had to be back the next day for the trial. On the way into the courthouse I showed rookie juror I met walking in where she needed to go. (I'm such a boy scout. :P ) There was a detective, parole officer, the guy with the really long hair, several techies, a stay a home mom, construction worker, a bus driver, and the lady with a really long commute (Eugene).

After several hours, and the clerk coming in to apologize for the long delays we were called into the trial. I was expecting some decent instruction from the judge, and was a bit nervous. However, after everything that had happened judge thanked us for all our service, and then told that we were no longer needed because Mr. Defendent guy opted instead for a judge only trial and didn't want to have a trial by jury.

Of course, it is his right and we left the court without even knowing what happened, but I think it is pretty bizarre that a person would give up a jury for a judge trial.

The ending was not what I had hoped for as it would have been interesting to see the trial played out. I thought the overall experience was pretty fun. Lots different random people coming to serve a purpose at a random time in their lives bringing different experiences for a small amount of time. It would be a major headache to go through a similar process every day, but being the small amount of time that it was made what might normally be a very boring job pretty interesting.

 

If you see bugs in the website please let me know. Lisa mentioned that people might be having problems posting comments and maybe noticed other issues as well. Please email a description of any problems to me (brian@merrellblogger.com) or post a comment. After all, if I don't know about it I can't fix it.

Current Known issue: I do know that I am having CSS issues with IE (internet explorer) where the blog section isn't displaying correctly sometimes.Update: This should be fixed now. 7/21/06

 

You can now add comments if you wish. The comment section has been added, but is fairly basic, but it'll get the job done until I can dedicate more time to it. I also added a logo and fixed some bugs.

LOGOS: Having a logo for this type of site isn't really necessary, but makes it look nicer and a bit more pleasent. So I mocked up a few logos including the one you see in the top left of the page. It would be great to know what logo everyone likes. Personally I like the current one.

Links to all the logos:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 

Lisa went back to work part time three weeks ago. So during the afternoons I've been taking care of the lil' guy. Daddy day care definitely has its ups and downs, and both of which are almost completely out of my hands and in the hands of a four month old.

It has been pretty fun on some days, and simply a practice in patience on other days. Most days, like today, are a mix of both where he's very crabby and screaming for awhile (first half of the afternoon today), and then seemingly perfectly happy later (the second half of the afternoon today). Personally I prefer the happy days, but I'll take what I get because either way it is probably a good experience for me.

 

TV Drawing

Lisa and I haven't had a TV for around 8 months now. Our old TV broke in November (2005) and we decided that it wasn't a priority for us to buy one at the time. After a few weeks of weaning ourselves we decided we didn't miss it that much and most of the time so we simply have gone without it since. I believe I've benefited from not having it more than her, but there are a couple consequences to not owning a TV that I didn't anticipate too.

After not having a TV for only a few months I began to wonder how I had time to watch TV. I like to watch educational shows and love the Discovery chanel. However, I also tend to sometimes just vegetate in front of the TV too and would play on my XBOX periodically. However, after starting work again last Sept. I was watching less, but I'm sure I was still watching many hours of TV a week.

Once the TV was gone I thought that I might feel like I had more time available, or that my time was being spent more wisely. For the most part this didn't really occur. Let me clarify that a bit. I think my expectation was that I would "find" all this extra time on my hands now that I wasn't "wasting" it watching TV. This did not happen at all. Rather, with some minor exceptions, I rarely explicitly think about TV , but implicitly spend my time on other things, and not the explicit realization that I was spending time wiser or better or anything of that sorts.

However, I think there are been quite a few benefits that I didn't realize I was receiving until I was just now thinking about them (ergo the current blog). Before this last term I had never got all A's in school (attending with a 3/4 load). The closest I think I got to that before was in 4th grade (Mr. Millers class). I can't remember for sure, you'd have to ask my mother, but I believe I wasn't working 50+ hours a week back then. However, I do know I didn't have a newborn in 4th grade, otherwise I'd currently be paying for his college instead of my own. Also, I started the marathon training (even if I haven't been doing it for a few weeks). I'm taking a full load of summer classes because I don't feel like I need a school break because what else would I do with my time? I watch Asher for at least 5 hours durning the weekday, and I'm creating this site. Overall it is too much and eventually I'll have to slow down somewhere, but my point is that I didn't consciously think about TV during all the above transitions and decisions but I am doing more then I ever thought I had enough time to do. I didn't consciously notice that I found all the time to do this, but rather I don't know how I had time to watch TV and so I am using my time better.

The drawbacks are a bit more noticeable. The main drawback is the "watercooler" talk that I simply don't get. I was just reading about the new commercials for a Toyota and Honda compact car that recently came out and I had no idea what they were talking about at first. Other times were at Xerox when people would talk about popular shows, and I was just reading about a couple new shows that I didn't know (and really don't care) that recently started airing. The point is that I'm not a social misfit, but I noticed that I wasn't exactly a social perfectfit when people were talking TV talk at work, and was missing on some jokes that everybody else understood. "Deal or No Deal" was like a 20 minute conversation just in understanding the TV show.

The other drawback is that a lot of popular and more local news is overlooked. I'm sure the OSU games were all over local TV stations, but I was out of the loop and didn't know anything about it. However, after I found out they won the College World Series I read up on it a bit. Very cool. They won their first national title in 45 years in any sport.

Lastly, I think not having the TV has benefited me more than I realize. I don't play video games (I loaned out my XBOX). I don't vegetate in front of the TV (although I sometimes I do in front of the PC, but rarely) and we can still watch movies on the laptop if we really want too. Overall, I enjoy not having the TV around.

Eventually we will get a new TV that will probably be of a combination tv and computer monitor plus a really huge projection screen. In the mean time I'm enjoying my experience without it.

Howie: "The banker is making an offer."
Banker: (whispers offer to Howie, although I really don't know how I haven't seen the show)
Howie: "No TV, deal or no deal".
Brian: "Deal!" 

If you haven't noticed then you rarely visit because the look for site has changed dramatically. Not only does it look better it is written in pure CSS which will help the flexibility of the site later on. I am very happy with it because I think the design looks pretty decent overall and is much nicer than the previous look.

Project part:
I eliminated most of the duplicate code. There are no tables on the blog pages now, and eventually I'll get rid of them in the photo section.

Next Up:
First the bookclub page, and then I'll add the ability to post comments to blogs. We'll see when I can get too it, but for now I hope you like the new look.  

Me around 220

First: I uploaded a few more photo's from our camp trip.

Second: This is finals week so currently as I'm typing this and procrastinating studying I'm feeling extreme guilt :P Oh well, type away.

Third: My health...Lisa and I (particularly me) have not been very good about our Marathon training over the last two to three weeks. I guess schedule changes and what not have made it more difficult, but we're going to have to re-commit. However, we still do go walking (just not consistently), and I have apparently begun to lose [a little] weight. At least I'm under 200 now. That's pretty significant because it wasn't much more than a year a go that I was about 220. I uploaded a photo of me around that size. Just another piece of inspiration to keep losing and getting back to good health.

One of the biggest hurdles to walking lately has been pain in my left foot. I went to GoodFeet yesterday as recommended by my doctor last year when I wasn't walking long distances and bought some arch inserts to fix it. 500 bucks later I'm in the poorhouse. My expectations are pretty high because those things were extremely expensive for about 2 ounces of molded material.

Last: I'm not losing weight that quick, but it is probably better that way anyways. To Note, I lost a certain bet that I could make a weight mark by a date that recently past by. You'll get your money soon enough BRENT!!!!!!!!!!!

OK... back to schoolwork!

 

I thought I would share some of the better websites that I visit.

Wikipedia - The free encyclopedia! I absolutely love Wikipedia and I use it all the time.
Slashdot - A great website for Nerd news with science / technology and such.
Homestarrunner - The "Strongbad Email" section has some pretty funny stuff.
ESPN.com - No explanation needed here.
Launch - Now is music.yahoo.com, but either way its pretty cool. A music station that plays more of the music you like based on your ratings.
W3Schools - Great resource/reference for web technologies and tutorials.
Tucows - Good software download site. You can read reviews of other users and there is a lot of freeware/shareware available for demo's.
www.dictionary.com - Has a thesaurus too.
www.space.com - The pictures here are really cool.
www.aneki.com - This site is like an almanac and it has lots of different information about different countries. If you wanted to know what the poorest/riches/largest/smallest country is go here. 

The pictures area is now available for bloggers! Note that currently all the pictures that bloggers upload are both public and that the full size picture does not stay on the server. Large files take up lots of space and space can get costly for me, so when the pictures are uploaded I thumbnail (or shrink) them, but you won't notice a difference when viewing them on the web. You would notice a difference if you tried to print one of the thumbnailed pictures, but at least you can share photos with everyone now, and if someone wants to get the picture to print it then you can email it to them!!!

Bloggers can add new pictures using the "edit pictures" link when they login, and anyone can look at your pictures by clicking on the "My Pictures" link on your blog page! :P

I just uploaded a couple photos from our vacation we took to the coast for a couple days last week!

 

Happy Baby! Today Lisa and I walked almost 6 miles. We haven't been very good at getting to the group walk downtown the past two weekends. Getting up and getting a baby ready to be downtown by 6:40AM has been a bit much for us the last two weeks. We walked several miles on Sunday though (5-6_ and then we walked between 5 and 6 miles again today so we're not slacking off it is just really difficult to get downtown that early. I struggle to make it to work by 9AM let alone 6:40AM on Saturday!! :)
Anyway, we've been training for well over a month now, but I haven't really lost much (read any) weight yet. I've been trying to be a bit better about my general diet, but if things don't improve soon I'll have to start being strict about foods (and I hate doing that).
We had a great time taking the photo here!

Lastly, because I'll only have one job and school I should start finding time to update the blog some more.  

I've been working both a full time and part time job for several months now. I'm finally going to catch a break as I'll be moving to full time at my part time job and quitting my current full time job. I get my weekends free again, and I'll have lots of time to do schoolwork! :) 

Good Luck Joseph!!
 

Lisa and I have been training for a few weeks now. I'm very proud of us. Today we walked 7 miles in Portland. We had to get up at 6AM on Saturday to make it on time to walk with the group. Waking up that early in the morning is something that I have never been good at so I might be more proud of that we just show up on Saturday morning then doing the actual walking. :P
On another Note:
Fascinating article about internet censorship in china and google.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/magazine/23google.html?pagewanted=10&_r=2&th&emc=th
Brian 

Cool Space Photo's I would really like to know who actually reads the blog. If you would be so kind to email me if you read the blog I would appreciate it.
brian@merrellblogger.com
Also, I would like to know if anyone is experiencing problems with the blog. 

I've heard that a couple other Merrell's were interested in the web log. If so simply email me and I'll set it up.
I'm only working on the blog in my "spare" time, but I'm planning on adding lots of other features. A few blogs ago I gave a timeline on what I was hoping to get done, but I'm simply tooo busy to do much work on this right now. However, setting up someone to blog will only take me a minute to do so feel free to let me know if you are interested. ***Spare time defined: The time in which I'm not watching my son, working during the week, going to school or doing homework, marathon training, and working on a game (another side project). Life is great though!! 

David and I talked about taking a nice long 3 day hike some time this summer.
Anyone interested? email me: brian@merrellblogger.com 

Before Marathon Training For those of you who haven't heard. I signed up for a Marathon trainging program. It starts this weekend and being as busy as I have been I'm not exactly prepared. However I am starting and I plan on finishing a marathon even if it means walking for a lot of it. :)
Starting Weight: 204
Goal Weight: 175
It would be great if anyone else were able to join and go to portland fit with me. see www.portlandfit.com for info on portland fit. 

Like the new look? Send email to brian@merrellblogger.com and let me know if you like the new look!

My workmates convinced me that setting up a simple comment section should be harmless as pretty much anybody who visits merrellblogger.com is looking for the site. So I'll figure out how to put comments up soon and there probably won't be a login required to post the comments.

merrellblogger.com project list:
Simple way to upload and browse multiple pictures (Medium...Almost done)(ETA Two Weeks or Less)
Create Automated Albums (Difficulty Hard...Lots of rework on the site)(ETA Several Weeks)
Add Comment Sections (Difficulty is Medium... Mostly formatting issues)
Add Ease of formatting for blogs (Difficult is Hard... Parsing and changing text)
 

Asher Brian Merrell He sure likes to cry.
He's peed on me already.
I've changed about 20 diapers.
I've been up several nights between 2 and 4 am to try and comfort him.
and he's ONLY 8 DAYS OLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AHH GOOD TIMES!
 

Cool Picture! (go to space.com for more) Images are now able to be uploaded regardless of size. The blog will now upload and resize the image to a smaller file that is better fit for the web. Happy Days!
However, right now I'm only supporting jpeg. This is what pretty much all picture formats will be in, but in the (distant) future I will probably put png format and a couple more in. 

Lisa was talking to me about being able to post comments on blogs. For the most part I want everything competely monitored so anonymous posters won't be able to make posts. I might create something similar to how craigslist emails a post, but that is a ways off.
In the mean time for those who want to make posts I will create a way to become a "member" so when you want to make posts you can. In all likelyhood the way to become a member will simply involve emailing me. (brian@merrellblogger.com) This is still going to be several weeks out though, but for those of you who will want to make posts or comments I will start compiling a list now. My first priority is thumbnailing and pictures (see my last posting).  

All my wisdom teeth were pulled today. I'm really sore, but Lisa is being very nice to me. I've never used Vicatin before, but it seems to be working very well. I'm trying to get a better way to post pictures on the blog, but I need to learn how to automatically create thumbnails in php. I could probably do it pretty easily using some existing code by other people, but I'm trying to learn php intricately so I'm coding all the php. Thumbnailing is more difficult than I thought it would be, but I'll try to figure it out over the next couple weekends. That is unless the baby arrives! :) 

I'm setting up all these blogs. It is pretty fun to learn php because you can see results instantly and changes are pretty easy. Other languages are MUCH MUCH more difficult to get the same sort of satisfaction from. This weekend was a major overhall of merrellblogger.com because I hadn't really designed it for multiple people to use. However after Shasta wanted to start blogging I liked the challenge and the site is starting to come along nicely. Most of my blogs will probably consist of nerdy material about working on this site and that sort of thing.