We bought this mirror from Ikea. Look at the instructions that came with it. Can you make any sense of these? I'm thinking it has something to do with "what to do when you find a geoduck in your mailbox".

Award-Winning Design

It's about time I won a freakin' award for something. The Web Marketing Association gave me, ...us, ...Metia, an award for this project we did for the Microsoft SQL Business Value Calculator. Now, I've never heard of this organization, so I don't really know how prestigous this is, but it's always nice to get recognition from wherever you can. AND, it will still look nice on the old resume!

Breezeway Progress

This weekend, I pressure washed the building site of our future breezeway to make way for a little additional concrete slab. We were not able to pour, however, due to unruly rain. But since I had the washer for a full four hours, I was able to wash the whole back patio and deck. Look at that before and after of the deck... it's like new!

Go Go Microsoft!

This is supposed to be a slow time of the year for us at work. They always plan on being slow due to our client's budgets and fiscal years and so forth. That, coupled with the down turn in the economy, should be gauranteeing me with stress-free summer days coming in late and leaving early and taking lots of vacation time (I'm trying to take a week off for a bike tour). But noooooo. Microsoft is moving full steam ahead and just craming new projects (and money) down our throats. Good ol' Microsoft - keeping me very employed.

Here's two new sites that we just build for them. My job is creating the interactive main graphics for the home pages.

Streets and Trips and MapPoint

The Mudroom Begins

Or is it a covered breezway? Whatever, it is, we are both very excited to be breaking ground on this project as it has been something that we have wanted to do pretty much since we moved in. We have the detached garage which is where the laundry room is and we keep our shoes out there, too, since we don't wear shoes in the house and it really gets to be a pain in the ass schlepping shoes back and forth.

Anyways, we are going to connect the two structures and improve our quality of life significantly, I think. Last weekend, I tore up a portion of the deck and even removed some of the siding and door trim. This weekend, I will pore some cement for the slab.

Use your mouse to look around this 3D model of the project.

Stick Man Art

As many of you know, I collect stick man photos. That is to say, I shoot pictures of stick man signs and stickers, etc. So I was excited to see this brilliant album cover. And yes, I do have most of the above stickmen.

Miniature Golf at Work

This is how I spent most of my day at work today. We designed and built a little par five course in the middle of our work area. The Events team used a scoring system of 1 -5 based on 3 categories: Playability, Creativity, and Use of Theme (US Landmarks). My deptartment scored an almost perfect 14.5 out of 15 possible points.

Here's our course (it's a coast to coast theme). You start out by the Hollywood sign, jump the Grand Canyon, turn the corner of cheering fans, go thru the Mount Rushmore tunnel, past the Brooklyn Bridge and in the cup at Ellis Island, but don't knock down the Statue of Liberty