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Catchup Post #3: Angels & Airwaves at 9:30 Club

jeff — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 02:01:25 +0000

Angels and Airwaves at 9:30 Club

Back in May – one of my many favorite bands over the last 5 years is Angels and Airwaves. Couple that with my favorite local venue – 9:30 club, and you got a great night. As always, I locked down my position at the back bar right by the VIP area. Good vantage point with easy access to the back bar. That’s just how it goes in my old age. Check out the rest of the pictures here on Flickr.

Filed under: life, music, pictures

Catchup Post #2: New Camera + Ella’s Month Party

jeff — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:00:57 +0000

Sometime in the last year or so, my camera started to take pictures slower than I could draw them, and also had developed a line of dead pixels. I think it was mostly because I didn’t take care of it and shoved it in my linty pockets instead of storing it in a case. I hemmed and hawed over what to buy next. Should I finally get a dSLR, or stick with a point and shoot? I decided not to decide. Thanks to a great financing deal at Best Buy, I got a new P&S and my first dSLR. A major factor was our choice of honeymoon spots (more on that later), and thinking of all the great shots I would be missing if I only had my slow P&S.

New P&S: Canon PowerShot SD1400 IS:

I haven’t used this camera extensively yet because I have been mostly messing around with the dSLR. It’s pretty much the same as my previous camera, with a couple more bells and whistles. The most important factor was the HD video recording capability. Like I said, I don’t use it that often, so not much video has been captured either. It’s form is very tiny, so that’s good for transporting, but a little harder to take those self-composed pictures of me and Amanda.

New dSLR: Canon EOS Rebel T1i:

I went against the grain a little bit here by going Canon instead of Nikon, which most of my friends have. I found it to fit better in my hands, and also was used to the menu system. I’m still shooting in all the auto modes, but I’m very pleased with the picture quality, and mostly the speed of capturing a moment. My first “shoot” was for my niece’s month party. It’s hard to get used to lugging around a huge camera, but the pictures make it worth it. Here’s one of my favorites.

Ella at her month party

Check out the rest of the set on Flickr: Ella’s Month Party

Filed under: life, pictures

What’s been happening?

jeff — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 22:30:23 +0000

Wow, a lot has gone on in the past 4-5 months since I last posted. I hope to get back to posting a little more regularly, if not just to link to the pictures I’ve been taking in my Flickr photostream.

Since our trip to Horton and Barboursville Wineries:

I’ve moved offices. Same company, but now I’m downtown. I had a nice period of almost a year and a half where I only had to walk 13 minutes down the street to the office in Courthouse, so I can’t complain. I’ve always wanted to work closer to the city, and not have to deal with a 45+ mile roundtrip commute. I now have to deal with the mess that is the metro, but so far, not too bad. This is a huge difference (and improvement) from my last two companies that were located deep into the ‘burbs out in Dulles/Sterling and Rockville/Gaithersburg. Here’s a pic of my new desk area right after we moved. It’s pretty bland, but I try to make it up to the newsroom (where the action is) as much as possible. There’s also the benefit of seeing some unique events that only happen in the downtown office – like the annual Peeps contest voting.

New office/cube

Peeps Diorama Contest - My fave - Super Peepio Brothers

Sometime in April or so, we wrapped up our Caps season. We had a kickass season, won the President’s Trophy, but fizzled out early and lost to the Montreal Canadiens during the first round of the playoffs. Another fun season, but a worse Playoff run. Hockey was pretty much dead to me after they lost. It’s amazing how it affects our group of friends who are all pretty heavily invested in the success of the Caps. If we’re pissy, we probably lost.

Ovie - MVP?

Well that’s it for the first entry into summing up the last 4-5 months. Stay tuned for more…

Filed under: life, pictures Tagged: capitals, catching up, hockey, move, offices, pictures, playoffs, wapo, washington post

1987: Balloon Launch Day

jeff — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:00:02 +0000

: 1987: Balloon Launch day at Fairview Elementary

While going through my baby book at my parents house, I stumbled onto this gem of a picture that my dad snapped. Back in 1987, near the end of the school year, was a great (and soon realized environmentally irresponsible) tradition of launching hundreds of balloons into the air. I think the idea was that if you tied your personal information onto the balloon, when someone found it, they could become your pen pal. Not sure why anyone would want that?

I love finding old pictures like these. Did anyone else have a balloon launch at their elementary school?

Filed under: life, pictures Tagged: balloon launch, elementary school, old school picture

Visit to Salt Lake City: Omniture Summit 2010

jeff — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 03:56:14 +0000

Last week I got to go to my first Omniture Summit. For those that don’t know, we use Omniture at work to measure everything about what people do on our site. The summit is a gathering of all the vendors, clients and Omniture employees to figure out what is going on in the web analytics world and what the trends in the industry are. Yeah, it sounds pretty nerdy, but it’s what I do! I gotta say, I enjoyed being immersed in learning and thinking about the different ways real companies are out there solving problems – and how we can do it better. On top of all that I won a business card drawing from one of the sessions (more on that one later).

As you can imagine, the conference costs a decent amount of money, which allows them to bring in great speakers, and entertainment for the week. This year, the big speakers were John Battelle, marketing guru Seth Godin, and The Killers! They were awesome. I hope to go again next year. But enough of that talk – I just wanted to share a few pictures that I took…

Omniture Summit on Flickr

Seth Godin speaking at Omniture Summit 2010

View of the mountains from my hotel room

I woke up to this in the morning!

Killers playing at The Rail in SLC

Filed under: industry, life, travel Tagged: john battelle, omniture, omniture summit, salt lake city, seth godin, travel

Welcome Ella Violet

jeff — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:50:59 +0000

I am officially an Uncle! My sister had Ella Violet on February 8th, 2010. I got to hold her when she was only a few hours old. I am excited to have a niece and see her grow over the years. My Dad also asked that I grab a Washington Post paper from the office to remember what happened on the day she was born. Front and center are two things I won’t forget about the current events – the snowstorm in DC and the Capitals beating the Penguins in an amazing overtime comeback.

Welcome Ella!

Ella Violet

The Washington Post - 2.8.10

Via Frontpages

Filed under: life, pictures Tagged: baby, ella violet, niece

2nd Christmas Tree

jeff — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 23:16:53 +0000

Amanda and I just put up our 2nd Christmas tree. (not much different than our first tree!)

Posted in life, pictures Tagged: christmas tree

Jackie Chan & The Kung Fu Kid

jeff — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:00:41 +0000

I just read here that Jackie Chan is going to be starring in a remake of the 1984 classic The Karate Kid. The Karate Kid was a huge part of my youth, influencing me to do karate chops and crane kicks all around the neighborhood. According to IMDB, there are a few differences in the remake, some in the plot, but they’re also changing the name to “Kung Fu Kid”. As much as I like Jackie Chan, I don’t think he possesses the same mysteriousness that made Mr. Myagi so awesome.

In related awesomeness, I met Pat Morita at a restaurant in Disney World back in the day. He was awesome enough to sign a headshot for me…

Pat Morita, Mr. Myagi signed headshot

via WTOP & EW.

Posted in entertainment, life, pictures Tagged: jackie chan, karate kid, movie, pat morita, remake

Photo: Burke Lake Park: Infrared

jeff — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:27:14 +0000

Burke Lake Park: Infrared, originally uploaded by mwhatley.

After another rendition of a goose being killed by a golf ball at Burke Lake, I was searching for pictures of geese at Burke Lake. Found this picture. I didn’t know Burke Lake could look so nice. Much different than I remember it when I worked at the Ice Cream Parlor.

Posted in life, pictures Tagged: burke lake, Flickr

Notaviva Wine & Music Pairing

jeff — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 15:26:21 +0000

Last night we did the Notaviva wine & music pairing that I mentioned earlier. First of all the building that we did the tasting in was awesome. Set at the end of a gravel road, almost the entire building was exposed wood. There were three levels to the building, and the top level was a recording/production studio. As I mentioned before, they played 10 clips of songs for each wine and we rated them based on a 1-10 scale. There was a wide range of music genres from organ music, to Metallica, to country and so on. It was much harder than I thought it was going to be. I ended up trying to think of the wine I was drinking, and what kind of music I would like to be hearing when I was drinking it. Others tried to think of the subtleties of the wine (bitter, long finish, etc.) and if that went with the wine. I would say by the 3rd or 4th wine (out of 5) – we trailed off and were just feeling good to be drinking wine. Notaviva said that they were going to release the results of the ratings and also the raw data to us, so I’m wondering what that will look like. Either way, a fun way to spend some time with friends.

With the winemaker from Notaviva

Update, check out the picture set on Flickr: Notaviva Music & Wine Pairing

Posted in life, music, pictures Tagged: music, notaviva, purceville va, wine, wine and music pairing, winery