cdcstudios.com | portfolio v7.1

The boys in a rare moment of semiquietness.

Well it’s been a strange few weeks since I last posted anything other than my weekly links (sorry about the lack of links last week (and this odd habit of alliteration as well)). Anyways, since I last wrote anything I’ve: gotten to spend more time with my family which is a great thing. Been laid off from my job as a network engineer (I’d name the company but they don’t need the search engine bump and I only advertise products I truly believe in. On top of that my father went back in to have a tumor removed (same spot as 5 years ago).

In the short term I’ve decided to return to my roots a bit and focus more on building my portfolio up a bit more and taking a few classes to bone up on my all around skillset as a network engineer and also as a web developer.

What’s coming up in my personal future:

• The soon to be unveiled new project
• The soon to be fully launched “Portland Dreams” site
• A resurgence in my participation in the Portland Tech Community (add my absence as another failing of my former employer. How can you possibly be a vibrant tech organization when 95% of the rest of the tech community has never heard of you?)
• More baby pictures than you can possibly shake a stick at. (why in the hell would you be shaking a stick at pictures of my babies? They’re awesome and cute. Plus the littlest one’s drool is a proven cure for dryness)
• Massive note taking and rehearsal to give a decent couple of panels at Wordcamp next month. This will be my return to the world of public speaking (for those unaware, it’s been about 12 years since I’ve done anything remotely resembling public speaking). If anyone wants to give me a pair of New Balance sneakers to go with my black turtleneck and jeans that’d be great :D

On the work related side (and as part of a return to my graphic/designer roots):

• The soon to relaunch site for the Percussion line I’m in.
• Wordcamp Portland limited theme
• Launching a photography site for a former coworker from the K. Falls newspaper
• Completion and launch of 3 plugins on the Wordpress.org site.

While not on either list I’ll also be endeavoring to write at least 2-3 posts a week from now on as well as increasing the number of Howto articles as well.

In the last bit of news I also recently switched to Disqus for my commenting needs. For those not in the know this means I have a few new features for my little spot on the web.

Features of the new Disqus Wordpress plugin:

• Comments are indexable by search engines (SEO-friendly)
• Export and import of comments
• Automatic synchronization between Disqus.com and your WordPress comments
• Uses the new Disqus API
• Moderate/administer your blog right from the WordPress admin

Very cool stuff and they even have integrated Seesmic support for video commenting which is just awesomely cool.

Well that’s it for now, I’ve got work to be done and eventually my In-law’s swimming pool to hop into. See you all on the flip side.

Lastly:

• RIP Bernie Mac & Isaac Hayes.
• Major congrats to the Phantom Regiment for winning their 2nd DCI title. This version of Spartacus was amazing and I enjoyed getting to see it twice this summer. Way to go! Hope you guys come west again next year!

So I’ve hit a point where I’m happy with the background for the site. It’s about as close to what was in my head as I could get given the amount of spare design time I’m allowed at home (word to the wise: babies (especially those that can walk/run/climb) do not let daddies work on their computers).

I’ve still got a bunch more work to do (cleaning up the widgets, tweaking here and there, bringing the iphone theme to be more in line with the main theme (based upon n-design studio’s excellent iTheme) and putting the big ass links list I had back up. I’d thought there was a plugin to help manage large link lists but I seem to have lost the link (alliteration much?). Anyhow enjoy the new site and now that I can more easily update the themes I cando things like release more plugins and new wallpapers.
In other news, just a few days till Ignite Portland hits and I’m quite excited to hear all of the presenters, plus hopefully meet more awesome folks to talk tech with.

In totally unrelated news I’m currently turning into an Obama fan, partially because the cynical part of me is intrigued and partially because Randall Munroe of xkcd fame is endorsing him and Randall is the awesome.

Now I’m off to enjoy my xbox 360 and play some Burnout :)

I was just featured on Portland On Fire! For those not in the know, Portland on Fire is a site started January 1st that each day showcases a quick profile of a Portlander. Totally free and refreshingly open. There’s quite a few awesome people on there already (especially me…erm yeah). Anyhow if you’re a Portlander you should head over and register to participate.

The man behind the site is Raven Zachary, who I just met at my first ever barcamp meetup. I’d always meant to get “into” the whole being proactive about how I feel about technology and the entire FOSS movement but never had the right mix of desire to do so and actual availability. Overall I’m totally thrilled I got to go and am really looking forward to far more interaction with the Portland Techie community. This city is so friendly and culturally diverse and the tech community here is phenomenal so it’s an amazing mix to me.

In other news you may have noticed that the site is back to looking like it did. Well this is hopefully only temporary since I just noticed all of my plugin posts have gone poof (those will be coming back shortly) due to a database issue. I’m also experiencing a few problems with a rogue htaccess script setting a few pages to show directory structure (not that I can actually find the damn htaccess. I wiped all of them by hand which makes me think the issue lies with something on the server. If only there was a resultant set of htaccess policies tool I could use.

Well I’ll get going now but this has been a great week and will hopefully keep going to make a great year :D

Oh one last thing my son is apparently a Sithlord. Don’t believe me? Here’s proof:

So I’m going to start this off quite simply and succinctly. I am so enamored with OSX Server and the Apple Remote Desktop tool that returning to a Windows based network literally makes me want to cry. This is the greatest server setup I’ve ever dealt with. It’s amazing, simple, stable and all around just great. Other than that I’m dealing with the typical getting systems updated and correctly configured.
Right now I’m in planning stages to overhaul the account management and equipment management policies. So far it’s going swimmingly and I hope it contiues to go as smoothly.

Overall after the first week I’m totally thrilled about the place. My boss is great, my Corp. IT Director is great, my tech Mike is awesome and everyone else I work with seem excited to see what I can do about cleaning up the network and making it a faster, more reliable stable one.

In other news, still looking for a house down there and so to minimize the costs of a car rental and wear and tear on my friendships with Jason and Angela I’m going to relocate temporarily to a extended stay hotel until I find a house (I figure this will also motivate me that much more to find a place quickly since hotels are spendy :D

I’ll try and get a more verbose posting up with a daily rundown but that might end up moving to it’s own blog at dreamflicks.com

Lates.