Latest in Boeing's Airliner Fleet

The Boeing 787 "Dreamliner" took its first test flight today and I only know that because the West Seattle Blog posted an etry about the event, which happened today at Boeing Field in the Seattle Area. This plane looks amazing. Larger, more efficient, updated interior/exterior designs, longer direct flight capabilities and etc.... The list goes on and on!

Seriously, look at that overhead bin storage!!!!

These planes will be flying on a ton of airlines, but, my fellow program managers, keep an eye out on Northwest, Continental, and Air Canada for your best bet at being the first BER employee to ride one of these puppies. Customizable window tinting? For real, I'm excited.

Staying fit on the road

Of all ways to start the morning, starting it right is the best.

The view of a peaceful sunrise from above a blanket of early morning clouds is probably one of the most beautiful things I've seen in a long time. As we took off from Seattle around 8:00 a.m. this past Sunday, we broke through the low-laying clouds and all I could see in the distance was a blanket of smooth gray, a brilliant orange sun, and most of Mount Rainier rising above it all. Stunning, but my camera was in the overhead with the seatbelt sign still on (not yet at cruising altitude). The assured chastisement by the flight attendants was surely not worth interrupting my mental image capture of that scene.

I'll check my phone for pictures, but I doubt any will do it justice.

Canuck Extravaganza

This week is my first week in Canada, with or without work. Ontario's got all my attention for the first three days of this week: Ottawa on Sunday/Monday, Toronto on Monday/Tuesday, and Hamilton on Tuesday/Wednesday before heading across the border (eh?) to Buffalo on Wednesday/Thursday. The first night in the country, staying at the Hilton Garden Inn near the Ottawa Airport was awesome! Not sure if it was because I asked about a free room upgrade, but the room I got, pictured above, was HUGE!

Probably comparable in size to the living room of my last house in Orlando (huge, by the way), I had way more space than I really needed. Even though I passed on the option, the hotel has "Stay Fit Kits" for free rental in order to do just that, but in the privacy of your room. Apparently available at all Hilton Garden Inns, these kits include tools to accommodate three different areas of training: Yoga, Pilates and Core. Check the link for more info, but needless to say, I was very impressed with this very modern, very comfortable hotel (they stay even included the oft-desired minifridge and microwave!).

Worktime Water park

Chicago North (Elk Grove Village) is awesome. You never would guess from the outward appearance of the area surrounding the Holiday Inn we use there, but a quick drive into the residential areas will show you that it's actually a nice place. Not to mention the apparently affluent Elk Grove Park District, which, among other things, has the Rainbow Falls Water Park. Situated directly adjacent to both a high school and a middle school, who in their right mind would NOT skip school to go hang out at the water park when it's open for the season?!

Check out the park district's website for other great attractions in the Chicago North area. Program managers: take note of this site, only a few miles from the hotel, for the warmer months. Probably a great post-seminar relaxation place (if your presenter's way cool, of course) or, if you're willing to place a bet on it, a quick lunchtime stress-reliever.

Philadelphia Welcomes the Prints

Fellow program managers and print lovers, be aware of the upcoming print extravaganza being hosted by The City of Brotherly Love from January through April, 2010: Philagrafika 2010!


Printmaking blog, Printeresting, has written up an in-depth article about this insane collection of presentations, museum showings, exhibitions, and etc, so please check it out [ here ]. It seems as though this will be America's largest print-related event, which makes me giddy.

Since the BER program managers are very often in the Philly area, I suggest each of you take some time out to view the amazing art on exhibit starting next year. A map of all the associated venues and events can be found [ here ].

I'm excited to waste away some evening or lunch break absorbing all that is print. Official site is [ here ] for viewing.

Rewards Cards Reduction

It’s been a few weeks on the road now and I’ve gotten down into the swing of things. I still have yet to experience some of the craziness that some of my cohorts have, especially in regards to weather and stressful participant situations, so I will consider myself lucky for now. In preparation for all the traveling we do for this job of ours, I spent a little bit of time designing a credit-card-sized format for keeping track of all the various rewards clubs we’ve all signed up with. Below are the two sides for this card, which include all the rewards programs that I have personally signed up for; some of the airlines probably aren’t traveled that frequently with BER, but the content of this card is merely an outline for what it can be useful for.

Really, it helps reduce the number of cards that already clutter our wallets and purses in, hopefully, a visually-conducive way. I’ve attempted to work with this size format to make it easy to fit this in behind a credit card or ID, so the fonts are fairly small, but the current version of the design is easily legible for me. Also, space is an issue because I tried to indicate which hotels and airlines are partners with the program for which I applied; there’s no sense in applying to two separate airlines that would actually let you earn miles with one joint account. Consolidate, not disseminate.

I urge you other Program Managers, and anyone else, to look at the design, consider if it’s something you would like, and contact me about making you a copy. If you’re Photoshop savvy, I can send you my original .psd file, but some fonts are unique to the Windows 7 operating system, so take that into account. I have personally printed mine on heavyweight cardstock and have since laminated it to protect it from wear and tear in my wallet. It has worked wonders for me; hopefully it will for you too!

First post from the road

Tonight I'm writing during a layover at the Denver International Airport in Colorado. As I was searching for a place to settle for the multi-hour stint in Terminal A, serendipity occurred when I walked by a young lady practicing violin in a spare seating section. By herself, facing outward toward the chilly, clear night and crescent moon just visible over a Frontier walkway, she is playing a sort of sad, but upbeat folk sound that would be right at home in Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?

The kindness and inner desire that people have to be social creatures really is exhibited here tonight. Most of you would be familiar with the fairly impersonal and isolated culture of airports where people are simply on their way from point A to point B and are usually tired, hungry, and cranky. The section near this young woman is filling up with passersby who both give her a small bubble of space, seeming not to want to disturb her practice, and who also sit in the adjoining seats to listen in. In only the span of a few minutes, quite a few people, before heading to their departure gates, have approached the violinist (what's the difference between a violin and a fiddle, by the way?) to give her thanks and, at one point, a few dollars as a small token of appreciation. It is a somewhat surreal scene that is both beautiful and peaceful.

This week was the first week of on-the-road training with BER and today was the first that I was alone with a presenter. All went well and I seem to be dealing with a pretty significant lack of sleep fairly well. However, this is only after a few days, so we'll see how the rest of this contract year goes. I'm enthused about it all. A fellow Program Manager created a restaurant blog to help others find all those hole-in-the-wall places that are a true treat when out in a strange city. I hope to use it and maybe contribute myself.

RSS Feeds and How They Make Me Happy

RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication," according to its Wikipedia article. Basically, it's a standardized file format for automatically publishing and sharing blog articles, photo galleries, and many other bits of information in this Web 2.0 world. In order to take advantage of RSS feeds, you will need a feed reader (or aggregator). I personally use Google Reader and it seems to be one of the more popular web-based RSS readers out there.

My online interaction is fueled by social interaction and interlinked information; most of what I'm interested in is linked to from sites I already read or follow. RSS really has made a dramatic difference in how I experience the internet; I subscribe to RSS feeds that allow me to do all of the following, and more: automatically download episodes of my favorite TV shows, keep track of all the photographs and web articles that a lot of my friends are interested in, keep an eye on a customized Craigslist search for rooms for rent in Seattle, and get instant updates about local happenings here in Gainesville.

There are many how-to articles written about subscribing to posts with various programs. Google's "Getting Started Guide" is pretty convenient and helpful, while the BitTorrent client uTorrent's documentation can leave some things to be desired if you're just getting your feet wet with RSS.

If you spend any significant amount of time online reading blog posts, browsing Flickr for cool photographs, or even scouring Craigslist for that new toy you've been craving, learning how to take advantage of the automation and ease-of-consolidation that RSS readers provide is a MUST.


9-9-09: A total list of my RSS subscriptions at this date. I think some very interesting things are possible with the beauty of RSS feeds. If you like this, you should see my bit torrent feed filters...



Full View is a MUST.

Invention

03-01-08 - 162619, originally uploaded by J. Johnson.

I was on a run before 10am this morning and, when I got back, hopped in the shower to wash off and cool down. Of course, being Florida, the coldest water that came out of the tap was actually quite warm. This got me thinking: how hard would it be to integrate a home's HVAC and tap water system? When cold water is needed, it would be routed through the cooling fans (radiator?) and then through the HVAC system before being routed to the home plumbing.

I suppose this could be used for heating as well, especially since most in-home water heaters are constantly heating its supply of water anyway.

I wish I knew more about these systems. Can anyone shed some insight?

Portrait of Orlando mayor Buddy Dyer by Roberto Gonzalez

This may not be a totally mind-blowing portrait, but it made the front page of the Orlando Sentinel today and really stands out as a unique political environmental portrait.

It had me thinking, for a bit, that the photographer utilized an outside crane for the rear flash.

Simply beautiful, isn't it?

Please, if you cycle, watch this.

10 wins at The Trophy Lounge

06-25-09 - 081915, originally uploaded by J. Johnson.

A few weeks ago, my family and I went on a cruise. We dominated various sports and trivia events, leading to the photo of our awards table on the last night before a return to normal life.

It may seem like a pretty trivial skill, but I recently found a pretty nice tutorial on Tutorio.com describing how to create rounded corners in Photoshop. Very often Adobe surprises me with just how much potential their imaging products have if the user only takes a small amount of time to learn about their features.

The official "credit card" size standard here in America, and possibly internationally, is 2 1/8" x 3 3/8" (54mm x 86mm) with 1/4" rounded corners. Typically, credit cards are made from PVC and are a sturdy 30mil thick.

Ever wanted to know a really quick and easy way to fold your short-sleeve t-shirts? Check this YouTube video by VideoJug.

Recently, a close friend of mine highly suggested what she called her "type bible:" Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton. The book can be found on Amazon here.

First Friends Knowledge Share

Inspired by the knowledge-sharing events I've recently spoken of, BarCamp and Ignite, some friends and I decided to start our own small set of events to accomplish the same thing. Tentatively happening on the last Saturday of each month, the Reneers hosted the first gathering on May 30th followed by an outing to Tijuana Flats for dinner. Four attended and three spoke:

• "How to Calculate the Radius of the Earth Using a Stopwatch and a Yard Stick" by Mike R.
  
• Information about pruning various types of flora by Christie
  
• "Useful Knots and How to Tie Them" by myself
  

The photograph above is of my cousin Greta's MBA degree she recently received from Rollins College in Winter Park, FL. The frame she ordered, seen here, included a window matting that was too small to show the entire degree. I helped her out by separating the original navy backing, cutting a new set of windows, then cutting a larger window in the off-white mat on top. Good afternoon project to force me to get my mat cutter out of my closet and to use it again.

Below is the PowerPoint presentation I created for our Knowledge Share event.

Knowledge Share - Knots

View more OpenOffice presentations from downwitda.

Keeping productive

Went out on my bike after a little rain this evening. Took two cameras with me and took some shots. Nothing serious. Nothing crazy. Just enjoyable.

'95-'99 Nissan Maxima: Front Oxygen Sensor Install

Yesterday, I decided to finally get rid of that nasty "Check Engine" light that's been on in my dash board for a while now. I ordered two Denso OEM-fit oxygen sensors for my 1996 Nissan Maxima from SparkPlugs.com for a total of about $108.

It took only a few hours and was a fairly simple process. If you have basic tool/automotive knowledge, the installation on my particular vehicle was pretty much a breeze.

I took photos of the whole process and created a sort-of writeup/picture story over at my Flickr page. Enjoy.

Some BarCamp Orlando 2008

I'll open with a little graph showing Orlando gas prices (based on my personal purchases) from May 2006 to May 2009. The peak is about $4.13/gal and the valley is about $1.56/gal.

Awhile back, my house, road, and neighborhood showed up in Google Maps, but have since disappeared from the database. I finally found a way to help solve that problem, here.

My friends Mark and Yossi, back in 2008, turned me on to a nation-wide phenomenon named BarCamp, which is "an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants who are the main actors of the event." They came to Orlando and we all attended the 2nd annual BarCamp Orlando. I have had hand-written notes from various talks I attended sitting in my notebook for over a year now, so I think this may be a good forum to archive at least some of the interesting ones.

"Photoshop Techniques" by Mark Cambell [ArtsMC.net]

• Use a single marquee for repeatable backgrounds
• Utilize Actions for batch processes [link]
• Tutorials and etc... [link]

Misc. Links

• Aviary - Online image editing tools
• Society of Like-Minded Individuals
• Florida Creatives Group

Not much to write about that first year, but I attended this year's BarCamp Orlando 3 and it was fantastic. Check the official site for links to PowerPoint presentations, Flickr-hosted photos, and other discussions.

First Post: Yes, I've Joined the Herd

As I more and more realize how much I enjoy reading friends', family's, artists', photographers' blogs, I figure I should reciprocate if possible. My aim for this blog, if I can keep it going, is to post things that I learn, find interesting, and think others may also be interested in.

I believe that this host has given you, my reader, the opportunity to subscribe to this Blog through an RSS feed. Please, use that, because I have found it so useful in the past.

For a while now, I have been using a Firefox browser plugin called Ubiquity. It's a great, almost natural-language, plugin that allows you to streamline many of your online activities without ever leaving the keyboard. I have been interested in creating a skin for this plugin for some time and finally sat down this evening to iron out all the kinks in its CSS. I call it "Kiwi."


I'm proud of how it came out, but more so of how I managed to pull this off in an evening, especially with my coding skills being so very rusty. On a similar note, I have discovered that, in preparation of the upcoming CSS3 standards, both Mozilla and Apple's WebKit have begun to support the border-radius style, which will allow normally very rectangular tables and objects to become fluid and, in some cases, even oblong or circular. I have also found a fairly good illustrations (1, 2) of the CSS box model, which had me conceptually confused for quite the longest time.

I've requested a few CSS guidebooks from the Orange County Library with hopes of finding the time soon to revamp my personal website/portfolio. Exciting times to come.