Snow again

Snowed enough today to actully keep Mary from going to work!

Work showcase

This a USB flash application done for Universal Lighting. I finally got one, hell most of frozen over. That or everyone else was to busy. Anyways, I think it turned out pretty awesome. I got to spend a lot of time with the flash animation. Click the link below to check it out.

Flash Walkthrough

This isn't a fully usable app this is just an example of the motions it will go through. So some instructions are needed.
Click Login
Click Yes or No
You can now click Linear fluorescent Ballasts to see a sub page aniamtion.
Click the universal lighting logo to go back.
Click the search, the first more in latest updates, or contact for a secondary sub page
Click products to close out those

It was a fun little project and is currently in the process of being dumped onto USB drives.

All better

Joe Neubert deliveries.

They actually brought the S to us! The bumper, fender and light were to damaged to fix so they were replaced. The front bumper needed to be replaced, bad, even before the hit. It looked horrible from 10 years of life, straps, rips, dents and scratches all over it.

Now to get the Works back on it and have the seats refinished and it'll be golden.

Chimney Tops hike

Brian and I met up at 8am at his house in Maryville to head up to the Smokys for a hike. We got to the top with little struggle. It took me a while to get into a rhythm but I found it. We didn't pass one single person the whole time, that was sorta shocking. We reached the top and I was semi shocked. It's a rock face and you have to climb about 50 feet up. There were a few folks there climbing. One seemed to of run out of steam and was just hanging out. We started our climb, but only after Brian took his shoes off. Apparently it's easier for him to climb that way. Brian went one and I started. I got to the spot were the guy I spoke of earlier had called it quits. It was the toughest spot. Brian helped me a tad and off we went to the top. Once at the top we found a great spot on a rock and chillin, chatting about life, work and everything in between. I brought a small bottle of jack to celebrate as well.

We were there for 30-45 minutes and not a soul dropped in on us. We decided to descend other way then we came up. It was a tad steeper but a lot shorter trip. Once at the bottom we decided to "butchwhack" down. That means we made our own trail down. We found a stream and just followed it to the creek. It was quite a journey. Tons of fun. Once we carved our way to the creek which was not so easy we had to cross. I of course accidentally tested the water, yup defiantly wet and a tad cold. I also learn a valuable lesson as why one would wear boots instead of cross trainer shoes. Besides the obvious, when you get a shoe wet it has probably soaked into your sock as well. So when you take a step it forces water out causing a watery footprint. Why is this a problem? While have you ever tried to walk on rocks in a creek? Some dry, some wet. Well those ones that are wet are undoubtedly slick, making them super hard to walk on and defiantly not a place you want to jump and land. So with a wet shoe you make everything wet. So needless to say I had a hard time crossing the creek.

Brian had gone into the thick brush before I even tried to cross. Once on the other side the thickness of the woods was unbelievable and very jungle like. Of course I couldn't find him and yelling was hard due to the raging creek. I used a ton of energy climbing the hill in front of me and once there I heard Brian yelling for me. Long/short we reconvened and set our sights on the hills of thick brush. It drained us both just to go 30 yards. But at the end of that 30 yards was the pay off! The trail. We made it! Only half a mile from the car. What a feeling, great accomplishment. It's really hard to describe, one of those had to be there things but man was it fun!

adding pics soon

Busy bee - Week in review

Monday
Worked 7:30-2:30. Freelance meeting at 3. Home at 4. Ran a mile, walked a half. Worked til 11:30 on freelance work.

Tuesday
Worked 7:30-3:45. Travis and Brain meet me at home right after work to...work. Spent 7+ hours trying to figure out how to get a CMS to run on our server. Mary made us all dinner, which was amazing. Finally got the CMS working. In bed at 12:30.

Wednesday
Worked 9-3:30. Meet Travis for a beer and shot then headed to the theater.
We saw Book of Eli. I really liked it! Great story, nice twist, great cinematography, awesome action scenes. They did a great job of scorching the earth and making it feel very gritty, uncomfortable and a horrible future if it were to happen.

After the movie Mary, Kristen and Zack met us a DT Grill for dinner. Travis and I hung out at Sapphire before they got there.


Thursday
Worked 7:30-3:15. Went to the bar with a few DMG cats and headed home. Mary and I started watching Sherlock Holmes and I passed out by 7. I was exhausted. Got some great sleep!

Today
At work by 7 leaving at 4. Heading home to do the P90x stretch program then relaxing to prepare for my hike tomorrow morning at 8am.

Bye bye gotee.

Started growing this bad boy after I removed my first after the Titans 3rd loss which was September 27th. Longest one I have had.

Nice ride at RIVR Media

Went to RIVR media today for a meeting and left the evo in good
company. Looks like they are doing well.

Once again, my baby knows me.

Pepsi throwback released for the 2nd time! This time in the old cans!
Love it.

Got some crazy snow

Our roads are super slick and our ac decided to stop working. So we
are stuck in the freezing house for now. To top it off I logged in to
our servers, dragged work over and it decides to delete it off the
work servers. So as of now it looks like I lost about a weeks worth of
work. Awesome.

S2000 Smack

Mary spent the night at Alicia's house last night and Richard, Alicia's boyfriend accidentally backed into the S when leaving for work in the morning. He was very nice about it, and was actually worried it would effect our relationship, silly Richard. Mary took it to Joe Neuberts for an estimate today.

He got the bumper and fender.

My fingers are crossed we get the bumper replaced, need a new one anyways.

Night out

Travis, Matt, Dan and I went out for a night of fun and drinking.

CJ2K!

CJ, the O line, Crump and Hall

Titans pulled out a victory on Sunday, beating the Seahawks 17-13. They are the only team to ever start 0-6 and get to 8-8. But the big story line of the day was CJ's record breaking day! He beat Marshall Faulk's most yards from scrimmage record with 2,509 yards. And most importantly he hit 2,000 yards with a 134 on the day. His 11th 100 yard game in a row. He topped off at 2,006 yards for the year. Welp, here's to a descent year and hopefully the beginning of a deep playoff run next season.

About to take a brewery tour

Winter Classic - Boston - Fenway Park

Welp, today's the day! I'm of to Boston for the NHL Winter Classic. I was up at 3:45am, left the house at 4am, walked right through the check-in and security and was at my gate waiting by 5:15am. The flight left at 6am.

That would be the moon.

I landed in Washington to catch my connector. While sitting at the gate more and more hockey fans began to show up. Boarding started. After getting into my seat I notice a guy and gal walking up the aisle, one wearing a Flyers jersey and the gal wearing a Bruins jersey. They ended up sitting behind me. I turned to them and said,"So I guess you guys are headed to the game?" They laughed and confirmed. We talked for a while, come to find out they are huge Detroit Red Wings fans but this is something they do every year. I thought that was pretty cool. The flight took off and I dozed for a while.

We start our descend and the airport is east of downtown and I was sitting on the west side of the plane. I got to watch Boston get large and large as we approached. It was a very cool view. Now on the ground with evidence of the day's before snow fall, I was preparing for the cold. I called James for the plane and he was on his way.

Little side story: James texts me late in the evening asking how closely Jason (the guy that got us our tickets) resembles his brother Chris, whom is married to our cousin. I responded with very closely, why? He there? He says, "I'm in the hotel bar next to Brian Propp (former Flyer) and a guy that looks just like Chris." I text Jason and let James know I'm doing so. About 45 minutes later Jason responses, "Yeah I was there with Propp." Crazy, I just missed introducing them through text, ohwell.

I'm standing the freezing cold waiting on James to arrive. He does, we head to the hotel. Now, Boston isn't really know for its great streets and easy access. It was defiantly not built with the use of satellite navs in mind, who'd of thought? We drove around for about, 30 seeing the sites (trying to find our hotel while traveling through tunnels with exits and splits right at the end of them and the nav is to confused to tell us which way to go). We found the X, parked the car and headed in.

The hotel is right downtown about a mile or 2 from Fenway. It's also inside a mall.

We went up to our room, on the 14th floor to get our cold gear on.

We decided taken a taxi would be a good idea, due to the super confusing area plus it allows us both to drink. We hop in a taxi and head towards Fenway, looking for Bill's Bar which is right across the street. There are tons of fans on the street and I was amazed at the amount to Flyers fans. It almost seemed to be equal. We pull up to Fenway and surprisingly are right next to the stadium and the bar. We get out right under one of the most famous sites of Fenway, inside and out.

And just a turn to the right of this picture is:

Bill's Bar, where you can see a line. I give Erinn a call, no answer. I try Jason, nothing. We are standing outside the front door and a radio station employee over hears us talking and asks who we are looking for. I tell him and he comes into the dark bar to find them for us. He comes out asking for there names again and he didn't have any luck the first time. James decides to get in the line while I wait at the door for the radio guy. He returns with the same news, so I jump in line. After about 30-40 minutes we get in. Not in the place more than 20 seconds and guess who comes walking up the hall towards us? Yup, freaking Erinn, haha. We hug and I tell her what happened. She said she tried to call back but had no luck.

James and I grab a beer and head to the back of the place. Man it was super crowded. We find Jason and I introduce him to James. They recognize each other and Jason says, "Man, I wish I knew that was you, I had an extra ticket for the New Year's Party." Later Jason told us it was pretty boring so no harm, I guess. Dave "The Hammer" Schultz is walking by and I introduce myself to him and explain about us meeting in Atlanta at the All-Star game and that I designed his wine label. He said he remembered (I think he was being nice) but that he loved the label.
Later standing by Erinn she introduces us to her brother and his girlfriend. After she says,"Oh you need to meet him." "him" was behind me so I turn around and she says, "Philip this is Brian Propp, Brian Philip Gray." She introduces James and she tells him what I do and Brian asks if we want a card. We said sure not really knowing what it was. He says, "Do you want it made out to you." We both say yeah. He asks if I'm one L, and say yes and he says cool, that's my middle name.

After that Jason comes back over and tells me he has a ton of work for me and says, "In fact, one second." He turns around, makes eye contact with Schultz and calls him over. My heart kicks it up a beat. Dave comes over and Jason introduces me as your [Dave] new website designer. I say we met earlier, Philip Gray, and stuck my hand out for a second hand shake with him. I introduce him to James, which has a huge grin on his face. Dave goes on, saying he doesn't like his site and he hasn't even liked it. I drop a few lines and he seems interested. Jason says, "I just wanted you guys to meet, but we'll talk shop later." Jason says, "These guys are going to come to the after party and say they are with you." Dave, "Ok see you guys there." Dave says bye and goes off to sign autographs. James and I are on cloud 9 and its only 12 o'clock! Jason tells me he wants to get about 150 players a personal sites, if this was a cartoon this is were I pick my jaw up off the floor. And not because I can't do it but because it would be amazing!

I tell Jason we want to let some more people in so we are going to go to the stadium. Jason gives us our tickets and we are off. We walk out of Bill's and our gate is right across the street. We walk in and you can just feel the history soaked up in the place. Our section is right in the gate, prefect. We had to walk further to the bathrooms than so our section.

After a walk around we headed to our seats.

Not the greatest view but yeah, at least we were there! We took in the sights for a while then headed to grab some food. There is a line right at the bottom of the stairs and we hop in. As we get to the front we realize it's a beer only line. We decided to go elsewhere. After walking around a bit we realized that you can't buy beer and food from the same place so we each get in a different line. I was on beer duty while James grab us some food. We wanted hotdogs but somehow the place we were at ran out so he got us pretzels. We then decided to get inline for pizza and by the time we ate our pretzels we had pizza slices and headed back to our seats to enjoy.

Da Green Monster!

After the Dropkick Murphys played and the anthem was sung a stealth bomber did a fly by.

Bobby Orr and Bobby Clark taking the ceremonial puck drop. This was sort of strange cause Clarke took the puck in the faceoff and usually the home team takes it.

After the game started we had the fill of our seats and decided to walk around. We ended up with a good view from right behind the plate.

You'll notice they left the mound uncovered. I thought that was pretty cool as well as the stage is home plate shaped.

Shot of the famous green monster scoreboard

During the first intermission we relocated to a really nice spot and watched the actives. They had chainsaw ice sculptors do some work.

We wondered up to the top and found a bar and had a sit, a few drinks and some interesting convos. Met some brothers from Boston, one of which was wearing a spriderman outfit, head to toe. They told us an interesting little tid bit. The bar we were at (if you click on the image above you can see it better) was made of old candle stick bowling lanes that use to be it the Fenway location before the park was built.

Now in the third with time winding we find a nice place to watch.

The Bruins score with a little less than 2 minutes left in the game. Time runs out and pushes the game into overtime.

The Bruins put one in the back of the net within 2 minutes. The place went crazy!

The teams about to shake hands.

We really were there!

They had a cool bubble making machine making these Bruins logo shaped bubble. They would cut them off at a certain size and let them float away.

In our seats!

View from the room

Hotel entrance in the mall

In snowy Boston