Preparing the New Site After many many months of code changes I m delighted to announce that this site is about to get a pretty massive overhaul The changes won t necessarily be visible to the end user eg it will still look the same but the infrastructure that powers the site will be significantly different It will be much more powerful much faster and much cheaper for me to operate and maintain The end result is that there will be a lot more content which I don t feel like I m really lacking in the first place strong What s the timeline strong I started working on these software changes in early November of 2021 It s a passion project so I only work on it when I have some spare time I wound up taking some time off from the migration in January and early February but then got back to full speed in early March Since then I ve managed to get everything more or less where it needs to be It ll still be a few more weeks before I can actually flip the switch but as I ve been wanting to make this change for a couple of years now I couldn t be more thrilled to be getting so close strong What changes are coming strong The short answer is that it s a massive infrastructure overhaul Without going into too many technical details all of the backend software operating system database and processing infrastructure has been upgraded This should result in the site running much faster and should allow me to add several pieces that I ve had in the pipe for years detailed photo statistics geolocations and videos just to name a few It s also going to result in all of my media being distributed on networks around the world While this will likely have the result of my site being indexed much more heavily and routinely it should also reduce media loading times rather significantly I ve been testing them for awhile and everything seems to be on par with what I d expect Which brings me to the change I m most excited about I ll finally be able to put my entire video library online When I first built the original software back in 2006 I thankfully had the foresight to create full video support That might not seem like a big deal today but archiving digital videos back in 2006 was an extremely daunting and difficult technical challenge I continued supporting my video management with several major upgrades over the years but it eventually got far too difficult to manage The bottom line was simply that we were creating digital videos at a rate that was just too cumbersome to keep up with Not to mention storing videos is expensive I stopped trying to make all of my videos available some time around 2014 or 2015 That s a pretty big gap now Once the migration is completed I ll finally be able to start putting these online and properly managing them I ve been using YouTube s API for years to automatically place videos on their site but I m hoping that I ll be able to do the same with TikTok

New Years Eve 2006/2007 Though I'd been invited out with my regular group on their annual New Year's camping trip, I declined and instead rolled in the New Years with Derek Joyoprayitno, his lovely girlfriend Julie Kuchera, and a whole hell of a lot of people. We had a great time sitting out in his backyard and keeping warm with Derek's chiminea and playing some tunes. I distinctly remember (or perhaps don't) getting rather intoxicated.

Williams Last Day of School Though there really wasn't too much going on, Tracy invited me up to her school to hang out and party with the kids on their last day of 1st grade. Just like the last time I'd been there, my favorite part of the day was getting to build stuff with the kids. It seemed that my previous lesson of showing them the importance of building with triangles stuck.

First DiMage 7Hi Pics Just a few days before Tisa and I were leaving for New Zealand, my new digital camera came in. Though I still needed to buy a memory card for it, I was able to take a shots with the measly 16 MB card that it came with. This gallery is, as the title describes, the first images that I shot with my new Minolta DiMage 7-Hi digital camera in 2003.

Wholey Bagel Friends Since Tisa was the one with all of the friend's in New Zealand, in particular in Wellington, we went out to play some pool and have some drinks one evening with a bunch of the people she was working with at Wholey Bagels (my favorite little bagel shop in the world).

Nick's House in Auckland Shortly after our Christmas with the Hughes in Wanaka, Tisa and I took a flight up to Auckland to meet up with Nick and his family and ultimately to meet up with my family the next day. These are just a few photos around Nick's parent's house.

Out With Katie and Mav We met up with Katie and Mav for some Trudy's Central and then headed over to Hyde Park afterwards for a few more drinks. Apparently Mav is friends with one of the manager's at Hyde Park and so we got to stay after hours. It was amusing to run the bar.

Flying With Dustin and Barb Some pretty shots I took from a flight with Dustin and Barb. We were just doing some routine training in the Cessna 172, at this point mostly working with VOR navigation and that sort of thing.

Out With Tisa's Friends Right after getting back to Austin, we went out with Tisa's good friend Laura, and her old roommate (and new baby) Jennifer. It was a little weird seeing Jenn with her baby as I'd known her for two years before (through Tisa) and this was definitely a large change.

1607 Singleton Ave., 78702 So this just happens to be a little property that I found over on the east side of town, just a mile or so from the Disch-Falk field on east MLK (Martin Luther King). Mr. Graham was kind enough to act as my Realtor and take me for a stroll though the house, and it was too bad that he had to come all the way out there for that. As it turns out, and I only learned this from having a lengthy conversation with one of the neighbors, this was basically a condemned crack house. The woman that had previously owned it apparently inherited it from her husband (presumably deceased). She in turn started leasing the various parts of the house out to other crack dealers, prostitutes, and junkies. Although the neighbor (and probably others too) had called the police many times about the situation, it was never a priority of any sort to deal with the problem. Apparently after many months, APD finally had the S.W.A.T. team knock down the doors, use flash grenades, and arrest the occupants. No word on what actually happened with them. Regarding the status of the house as a piece of real estate, the problems are too numerous to list. Evidently the owner (who was arrested) was allowing people to live there in return for 'building' the place up. As a result, the house has four different levels to it, the impervious cover of the property has to be about 90%, there is a makeshift bathroom and kitchen in each room (thus making this little house a 4/4), and on and on. I was informed by my Realtor that this would probably be a complete tear-down.