Busy

So the last few weeks have been extremely busy what with State holidays, vacations, funerals, and family reunions. The 24th of July is a State holiday here in Utah and Kaylee and I decided to take time and go visit her grandparents up near Logan. We watched the parades, read good books, hung out with the grandparents and otherwise had a thoroughly enjoyable time. But while there we received a phone call that Kaylee’s great aunt had passed away. So later that week we ended up in Las Vegas for the funeral. We got to visit with Kaylee’s immediate family as well as other relatives. Despite the sad reason that brought us all together we had a good time visiting with family. Then just this week we headed up to Washington out to the beautiful Vashon Island for a family reunion on my Mom’s side of the family. That was very fun if not quite as relaxing! Kaylee and I helped keep the young cousins occupied with games, swing pushing, and beach combing parties. The place we stayed at had these crazy barrel swings that were amazingly fun and exciting. We also got in some frisbee golf with my brother – I was the winner by some six strokes. Towards the end of the trip we went kayaking on Lake Washington and while there we saw the Blue Angels practice over the floating bridges. Now we’re back home, slightly sunburned, but wow! Busy and fun. I hope your summer has been as busy and fun.

Happy Independence Day

Happy 4th of July to everyone. Over 200 years ago, a bunch of stubborn and independent-minded colonists gave the mother nation the shove-off, not out of ingratitude, but out of the belief that every man should be able to have a voice in government through duly elected representatives. People have died and continue to die for this troublesome idea. People risk their lives to give freedom an opportunity in lands where freedom was only a choice between which hill to let your goats graze on. Freedom never was and never will be free. It comes with a price, yet is always worth it. Thank you to those who have helped pay the price.
Now to something less serious but definitely fun: I love fireworks. I’ll be setting off some fair amount this weekend. So stay safe, have fun, and let Freedom ring! Poor Utah doesn’t have Bottle Rockets, Roman Candles or even Saturn Missle Batteries. What a shame. Not even Little Bees. Something to do with “firehazard.”

A clean grunge

So, yeah, with the help of Style Master, a sweet CSS editor developed by by WestCiv, I’ve quickly created this theme that’s more aligned with the look and feel of my portfolio site. Style Master is an awesome tool, especially for those new to the world of CSS. It auto validates, tells you which browsers support what, has a handy GUI approach to CSS for those who hesitate to hand code and it has an impressive (if sometimes a tad slow to load) live preview so you can actually see what’s happening. I highly recommend it. Your CSS skills will get better. It’s a tad expensive (IMO) to purchase your first license, but the update price and the special 2 seat license (which allows a license for Mac and a license for PC – how cool is that?) are good values. This is not paid or requested marketing for WestCiv, I’m just enthusiastic of this great product that has made my web design life easier.

I know I’ve talked about adding additional graphic elements to the site but now I’m thinking maybe I won’t. I kind of like the empty space and I think further graphic elements may become more distracting than useful to the presentation. If I do add a graphic tweak, it will be nice and subtle.