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Little Wookiee

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I don’t really talk about work all that often, but at the tail end of 2016, I was able to be a part of something amazing. Kathlyn, a friend of ours at the office needed a lung transplant desperately.

My boss orchestrated that we build a web site at lifedayforkathlyn.com .

This awareness campaign culminated in getting Kathlyn moved to UCLA from San Antonio, and a successful lung transplant.

This is a project I can be really proud of, and you can watch some videos from the awareness campaign here:

This past Friday, we had storm troopers and Wookiee’s in the office to celebrate and appear on the news with us while Kathlyn Skype’d in.

Watch the news segment with Kens 5.

I really cant begin to describe how proud I am to have worked on this project. A young girl gets to live.

 

I am going to Make 2017

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I am not doing resolutions this year for the New Year.

Instead, I am thinking up projects I would like to accomplish in 2017. During SXSW I got to play with a project kit from Spark Fun. It wasn’t anything big. I made a programmable lanyard by soldering a few wires onto a micro-controller and then soldering on an LCD screen. I had a ton of fun doing such a simple project, but I wanted to do more than that.

Some of my Christmas money this year went to purchasing an Arduino starter kit. I have been wanting to pick up an Arduino for a few years now, and so I finally pulled the plug and purchased a basic kit to learn how the system works.

My long-term goal is to build a simple robot using the Arduino system.

Additionally, I have been working on some Udemy courses to up my programming skill. I am very familiar with HTML, but I struggle with CSS sometimes. I have been learning Ruby and Javascript.

In 2017, I will build an APP. The main focus of learning on Udemy is that I want to make a simple iPhone APP. As a life skill. I have a few simple ideas for apps to build, and I think I can knock them out fairly quickly.

To 2017, and all the ridiculous things I will make.

2016 is finally over

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This year has had some interesting challenges, but I am trying to focus on the positives of the year.

Journeys

This year, I was more active in my traveling. I started the year off by visiting Pensacola, Florida again for another wonderful Pensacon. The place I enjoyed visiting the most would be Detroit. We flew up for Motor City Comicon this year in the early part of May. This will mark the farthest North I have ever traveled. Detroit and the small suburb of Novi were a wonderful experience. The food was tasty, the people were friendly. It even snowed on us while we were up there, which was a treat. Snow, in May!

After this big trip, I stayed at home, up until I took a nice trip up to Denton, Texas to visit some friends and meet some old friends for the first time. This was a wonderful trip because I finally met one of the cohosts from our old podcast. It was really interesting to talk to him, and it revitalized my passion for photography hanging out with so many photographers that weekend. I also had the wonderful opportunity to visit with Carla, from Boston. Carla is a kind person who entertains my shenanigans on the internet. It was neat to hang out and chat all weekend.

Cons

Oh boy, I started the year planning a recap for every con I went to. But I forgot to do it and got sidetracked. So here is a list of every con I worked in 2016:

  1. Pensacon
  2. Richardson TX ComiCon (i forgot the name. Might have been Dallas Comic Show)
  3. Motor City Comicon
  4. Frightmare
  5. Alamo City Comicon
  6. Marvelous Nerd Years Eve

Only 6? I feel like there was more this year, I may have forgotten them.

Concerts

This year was light on the live music. I did attend the Warped Tour and saw some truly fantastic bands. The surprise band that I fell in love with at that show was The Interrupters. They have a killer sound that I really recommend. I’ve actually seen them twice now since they came through town on their own tour.

Awolnation was another surprising band, they came through twice this year as the opening act for Prophets of Rage and Fallout Boy, and both times had a sound that was really interesting and entertaining.

Volunteer work

This year, I had the opportunity to volunteer at some really great events. The first opportunity came when the local library was looking for volunteers for their Mini Maker Fair. I have wanted to attend a Maker Fair for a number of years now, and I thought it might be very enjoyable to volunteer at one. I had a blast and it was really great to see the tech side of San Antonio coming out in force for this event.

In addition to this, I worked two start-up weekends as a mentor/coordinator. We helped some entrepreneurs work on the business plan for their idea and turn them into full-fledged businesses.  One of the small companies we mentored actually just launched their product and I am excited to see where they go.

Fun Shenanigans

I was unfortunately very busy this year, and so my fun shenanigans were very limited. I did get to visit Enchanted Rock, which is a large dome of granite thrust up into the sky in the middle of the Texas Hill Country.

Additionally, I was able to visit SXSW and get a glimpse of what the future might hold some very large Tech companies and play with some neat gadgets. I hopefully will be able to attend again in 2017.

Storms

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Earlier this week, a weird storm rolled through San Antonio, whipping up some serious wind and hail over the city. Fortunately the damage at my house wasn’t too terribly severe.

The big tree by the front of my house took a bit of a beating and even broke this massive limb.

I had to pull it down because it was too high up to saw off, and I felt it was unsafe to leave hanging. It could come down and smash into my neighbors house or car or my own. So I used the opportunity and tugged on it till it snapped all the way and then jumped back to let it fall safely to the ground.

As you can see this limb was massive, it is sitting in my drive way but is long enough that it completely covers my neighbors drive way. I had trouble dragging it and even lifting it up.

I went into my house to search for some rope thinking I could tie it to the back of my car and use the car to drag it when I found this antique axe that I thought could work. It hasn’t been sharpened in decades and it felt a little loose, but with some careful swings I was able to hack off the branches on the tree and make a nice pile for when disposal happens later this month.

The big takeaway from this for me, is never discount older tools. It may take a little bit longer, but it will still get the job done.

Building up others, to grow yourself

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Last evening I went to visit a friend of mine at the bar. She is starting to build her own blog on WordPress, and wanted to chat with me about her site and how it is organized and show me her first couple of original blog posts. I immediately became excited for her and the journey she was about to step out on.

Over the years I have helped numerous friends start their blogs, make web sites and tell their stories, however I have not done a very good job of cultivating that about myself or on my own site.

In fact, the whole reason I joined Pdexposures was to help Nate and Tony launch their site. From that launch we built up a very successful podcast with an amazing audience of fans.

The start of this, was a simple tweet to Nate, one of my co-hosts. I knew that he and Tony had recorded an episode but they were trying to figure out how to host it. I tweeted at him that I knew how to upload the audio into WordPress and how to generate the RSS feed to create the podcast and submit it to iTunes.

By helping to promote them, they asked me to participate in the show, which was a joy to work on.

Last night while sitting at the bar, reading her blog posts and helping her plan what she wanted to do, I had a moment to reflect on how much I enjoy helping others to build things. Big ridiculous things that can help improve everyones day of life.

Helping others can teach you two very important lessons.

1. It can help you to understand your own gaps in your knowledge

When I began this project with Nate and Tony, I knew the rudimentary mechanics of installing a podcast into WordPress. What I didn’t know was how to setup the site to handle multiple feeds so multiple shows could exist on the same site. Additionally, I learned more on the SEO of a podcast and how to promote it best to get a great audience.

The biggest lesson learned was, “I am bigger than I think I am.” Over the course of the show we had multiple guests. Including a representative from Impossible Project, and Lomography’s CEO. Big names in the film photography space sent their representatives to help grow our little site.

2. It can help you to see what success is

Success is a strange thing. How do you define it? What is each individuals definition for success? Is it 100 Facebook fans? 500 blog readers?

Helping others succeed shows you the steps to a great goal, and how to get there and every milestone hit, only introduces a new milestone that can help along the way.

What have you helped others build?

San Antonio Rodeo

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I have lived in Texas all my life, and I have never been to the rodeo. Well, that is not 100 percent true. I went when I was incredibly small but it does not count because I was too young to remember it.

Today we went to the livestock show to visit a client who’s child was showing their pig in the show. It was interesting to see that students from all over the state come to this show to share the animals they have been raising for judging and then sell them.

It has been a long time since I have been on a farm, so walking around the smells and sounds reminded me of my Grandfathers farm out in Castroville, Texas. I really do miss that farm sometimes. My grandfather would visit it three times a week and I would ride shotgun. We would ride around in his old blue pickup (Ford of course, this is Texas after all) and check the fences.

He would feed the chickens and the pigs, I would help him load a few bails of hay onto the back of the truck, exhausting work for a kindergartner and I would get to ride over to where the cattle live and we would unload it there. The cows knew the sound of his truck and would trot over to the side ready to chow down.

Afterwards we would ride around in his truck or an old beat up jeep and do some hiking, check the hunting blinds and just spend time together before loading up and heading back into town. On the way back we would always stop at Haby’s, a little bakery in town and pick up a few cowboy cookies.

When I became old enough, I was given a BBGun and would bring that along on our trips. With it I would pelt a few cactuses or empty coke cans. I always fancied that one day I would use it to bag a rabbit while we were out on one of our hikes. I don’t think I had the nerves to ever get a bunny, and I never actually saw one. But I would follow the trail of a rabbit through the underbrush for a few hours and really got to explore the old farm.

I miss that place, but unfortunately the land was more valuable than what could be raised on it so when the time was right the property was sold to an investor.

Times change, but I still remember the valuable lessons I learned there about respecting nature. And I truly believe that my love of the outdoors was spawned from those trips. The smell of the fresh air, the sound of the wind in the trees. The stillness of the world around me.