Happy Birthday and Missing Steps

Today is my little girl's 15th birthday. Happy Birthday sweetie.

Also, the heat is stomping the midwest with humidity!!

We're getting our side steps tore out and replaced, work started yesterday, here's a pic:






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First day of summer 2010

Today is the first 'Official Day' of summer. I woke up to the sights and sounds of a near-thunderstorm and just a few short hours later... clear blue skies and warm sunshine. Hello summer.

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Memorial Day 2010 video

It was a great day, the video shows two things from Monday, a little yard work success and a cookout at a friends house.



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Go for Launch!

This is one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time.
Link.
It is a series of time-lapse movies of the Space Shuttle being moved into position and launched.

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Jackpot !!

Look at today and the next two, nice and sunny. I guess the reason I put this pic up is that I have never seen 3 suns in a row on the little weather window on my Yahoo home page screen. It looks like some kind of weather slot machine, Sunny Jackpot.




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Here is some video I shot of last night's ride home then the Royals game, I can't stress how beautiful the evening was last night.



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Last night the Wife, kids (daughter's friend and nephew too) went to the Omaha Royals game. It was a PERFECT night. The Royals won 2 to 1 too.




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Last day of school and weekend

Starting Friday May 21, my kids are out of school for the summer.

Saturday night at our friends house: My daughter riding the little 70cc motorbike.


Same bike, with my son riding. He was killing it, once he got the hang of it he was on it for 15 minutes making great turns (after one turn that included a privacy fence bump) and a little hot-dogging.


Friday night... Famous Daves !! Oh yeah!


Friday after I picked up my son from school (my daughter went home with a friend and spent the night) we went down to the river front. My son rides his bike while I shoot video and take photos. This night I was practicing shooting video with my new Nikon D5000.



Here is my son's school with all the kids lined up for the 6th graders to make their walk to all the applause. It was kind of touching.


My son right before the 6th graders walk.



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Farmers Market, May 22, 2010

Here is the third video I made for the 2010 Farmers Market season. It was a much warmer morning along with a good amount of wind but that was not a deterrent at all, there were a good number of people attending.

Omaha Farmers Market - May 22, 2010 from Joe Cubicle on Vimeo.

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Why you shouldn't let pet drive.

This is just too precious... Karla snapped a picture of her dog Pinky, "driving". We know dogs can't drive cars but Karla was just having a little fun. 10 minutes later she got into an accident and we (at least I am) can assume it was her fault and since she mobile-posted it on Facebook, we can also assume everyone was OK.
Hmmm... can we also assume that she allowed the dog to become enough of a distraction as to cause the accident, I think so. What if someone had been killed? Would it have been worth it to bring Pinky for the drive, no.
Don't be Karla.


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2010 Boys State Soccer Champ game

Last night we all went to the Boys High School State Championship soccer game. The game was just down the street from our house at Creighton University's Morrison Field. It was an absolutely perfect evening (whole day as well). Lincoln East ended up winning the game over Omaha South 4 to 2. The game was tied 2 to 2 at regulation end and was decided in the two overtime periods.

This is right before half time.


This is right before the first overtime period. Lincoln East is the nearest team with South High at the further end.



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Catfishing

The other night we were at my son's baseball game when a friend of ours came over and talked with us, my wife went to school with his wife, they're BFF's.
He was on his way home to gear up and take his kids out the the Platte River and drop some catfish lines. He invited my son and I to go along, we did.
To make the story short, it was a wonderful evening and it all worked out great.

Below is a picture from the river bank a little bit after we got there.


Here is nearly the same shot just after dark, if you look close you can tell that the lower bright light in the center of the photo is the moon showing crecsent and a planet (we were guessing Venus) above and to the right. The photo does not portray the amazing-ness of seeing it in person. The rest of the moon (the dark part) was really dark red. At one point my son said "I've never seen so many stars", I've told my kids that we need to get away from the city light and get to the middle of nowhere sometime so they can see just how many stars there are to see.


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Graduation 2010

My wife graduated this weekend with her Masters Degree from Creighton University. She got her Bachelors there as well (she's so smart).
Below is the hooding ceremony the day before the BIG graduation at the QWest center.
The hooding ceremony was really nice and intimate.
(by the way... that is not her on the stage)

Congratulations Lisa !





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Mother's Day Eve - 2010

We went shopping the night before Mother's Day last week. Here is my son posing next to one of the many "Jane Doe" sculptures spread around town.
Yes, my son is in his baseball uniform and it is later in the evening. Funny thing... the way that this day worked out was it was so dang busy that my wife and I got to running around all crazy-like and at one point my son was set to get picked up from a church activity and go to his game. He decided to skip the game and stay at the activity but kept his uniform on all day and night. I wish I was still a kid in a baseball uniform. He had a fun day.
Oh, by the way, we bought 'Pork Rib Eyes' and I grilled them the next day. They were a little beyond AWESOME !!!!




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Baseball and Blue Skies

Last night (Tue, May 4) I was at my son's baseball game. It started out a picture perfect night but got a little cloudy but no storms or anything. One bragging point: my son was pitching when he made all three outs in the bottom of the last inning helping them win 6 to 3. He struck out the first two batters and threw out the third.



Here is what the sky looked like at the beginning of the game.


This is what the sky looked like this morning (Wed, May 5 (Cinco de Mayo Dayo)). If you look real close just left of the middle you can see the moon.


This was the view looking out of the window in the break room at work just before I went out for lunch. Beautiful !!



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Monday afternoon I took my son to Elmwood park to mess around. I had just got rained out mowing and went home after 3 of 6 yards. As soon as I got cleaned up and came downstairs the skies cleared up and all was sunny and perfect outside, go figure.
Anyway, we went and got a bite to eat then went to the park, we played a little frisbee then he rode around on his scooter while I sat and sketched and listened to the radio.




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First Farmers Market of 2010

I got the opportunity to shoot 10 videos for the Omaha Farmers Market this year. Below you should see the video of the the first shoot from the other day being May 01, 2010.
The day turned out to be PERFECT. Thre were so many people and vendors selling such a variety of items.

Omaha Farmers Market on May 01, 2010 from Joe Cubicle on Vimeo.

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A week and a half ago I shot some video at Elmwood Park where the Earth Day celebration was happening.



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The name of this fine morning is Tuesday. The last few days have been cloudy and cool. I spent the last 2 hours of yesterday's work day working in the rain and cold (I could see my breath). Today and the next few days are supposed to be much better.
In just a few short days we are having the occasionally-annual garage sale for the Church kids summer camp. My garage is packed with donations from people. Our main floor is pretty stuffed as well. This Saturday will be just about the busiest day of the year. I'm also starting a video-taping contract with a local promotional firm that runs every Saturday through October. That same day we have the Sale (lots of set up), video taping, drum lesson, baseball pictures, baseball game and I'm working the snack shack at the baseball field for 2 hours before the baseball game. Whew !!!

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Here's a few minutes of my morning drive the other day. It was raining...




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Goodbye faithful cup

It's been at the very least 5 or 6 years that I've used this cup. It was the last of the 'thick walled' cups that you would get at your local QT convenience store.
The ones they give out now are very thin. When you grab them they pretty much about fold in just from the grip you need to pick one up.
The rim finally cracked and I'm sorry to see it go and all, but its time is up.





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Sweet smelly rainy morning

This morning was rainy and beautiful, it smelled wonderful outside also.



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Almost but no res-support

The monitor on the left is a 17" lcd, the monitor on the right is a 22" wide-screen HD I 'almost' got the other day. This is at work by the way and yes I did make the wooden monitor stand you see these guys sitting on. My current PC doesn't support the video resolution needed for this new monster so I gave it back to our Admin Asst. My new box is coming in a few months and I'll be getting dual 22" monitors so now worries mate.


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Trailer lights

Happy happy joy joy. I found one of my trailer light bulbs had one element burned out. I replaced it and it did light up but still no turn signal. Why? I've always heard that if the bulbs are good and they turn on when you turn on your vehicle lights... you should be good to go. I guess not.


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Baseball game

Above is a picture from Field #1 at Hillside. My son had a game today, this was their 4th game and this one they won. Today was very nice, a touch on the cool side and a little cloudy but still nice. We went to the ball game right after being at our friends house for a small celebration for their son who had his first communion.
Yesterday, my son and I went to the last part of the Earth Day celebration at Elmwood park by the University of Nebraska at Omaha.


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Pinewood Derby 2010

Yesterday was the annual Pinewood Derby at the Scout meeting. My son and I spent the last couple of weeks building the car you see above. It looks real nice but came in last in every heat. We picked up a few tips from some other kid/Dad teams. I think we’ll do a little better next time.

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I win again today !!

I so figured out how to print one page per side on our company printer!! Years ago the LAN guys, in an effort to save paper, set the printing default to duplex print FOR EVERYONE. For the most part duplex printing is alright for work documents but once in a while I need something printed one page per side.
Now I don't have to throw away one 500 page ream of paper per week to make up for the paper savings. Whew!

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My new want: Sony HDR AX-2000 Hi Def Camcorder

I think I have a new favorite camera. This beauty is under $3,500 and tapeless. It records onto 2 HCSD cards at 1080. I won’t go into all the details, there is a link below for all that. Wish with me for this creature to be in my possession in the near future. Oh yeah.



Amazon.com

Review on B&H




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February… ugh

I really don’t want to be ‘half empty’ but For The Love Of Pete is February not the most depressing month?!?!

It is in between “Winter” and “Spring” and no fun. Actually it is the middle of winter so that’s why it’s depressing.

My daughter said something the other day that I’ve been thinking for a long time, something like: “It would be fun to travel to wherever it is 72 degrees”. I agree. I could write a book about the travels and call it ‘Chasing 72’. <sigh>

I'm one of those guys now...

I finally have crossed the line, literally. I left the building I work in over lunch to run some errands to find that either I parked like this early this morning or elves came and moved my truck over 2 feet to the left. Wow, what a jerk.

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January almost gone – 2010

One month and a day after Christmas 2009 and I can’t wait for next Christmas already. I love Thanksgiving and Christmas, that it by far my favorite time of the year. We’ve only 10 months to go till Thanksgiving.

It’s cold and will be for the next few days. I took Audrey and Nathan to the Golden Archery club Tuesday night archery group lesson/shoot this evening. Nathan has been there before but Audrey went for the first time and really enjoyed it. We found out she is left eye dominant and shoots better left-handed. Nathan popped two balloons while Audrey had a number of near-hits.

Enough is enough. We've had a good amount of snow for sure. I've battled an ineffective (since fixed) snow blower, 19 snow removals, bitter bitter wind chill, on call at work, issues at work, my truck breaking down with my wife and kids with me and a $75 tow bill.

Whew!

I guess all is ending alright. A simple adjustment to my snow blower made it work like a champ. A call from the repair shop is implicating the my truck's battery, so if that is the case, it won't be that expensive. OK, they just called, the fuel pump is bad and of course it's in the tank so it'll be a few more bucks.

And... as this is written there is an emergency code fix needed at work, so off I go....

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A few weeks ago I shot and edited a music video for a fellow name Tracy Skretta. He lives here in Omaha and I met him when he was playing one Friday evening at a local coffee shop.

I offered to shot some video of him playing for him to use as well as practice for me. I think it turned out pretty well. I learned a lot and had some help from a guy named Chris Bridges. I can't thank Chris enough!

The embedded video above is a little wide for the column but that is the smallest embedding YouTube offers for this video.

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Don't forget to write 2010 on your checks

Jan 4, 201o and I'm going back to work today. I've been off since Dec 18, it was nice to have all that time off and I'm trying to not let it bug me that I'm going back into the office today.
The big snowstorm (read the previous blog entry) did in fact come and dump a ton of snow on us. The big snow fall happened on Christmas day. My wife and I went out together to tackle all the snow accounts I have the next day on the 26th. I went out at 8, did a couple then picked her up at 11:00 and we worked for the next 12 hours and 3 hours the next day. It was a lot of work and it took 2 days for all the aches and pains to subside with a little help from some Advil.

Happy New Year everyone

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There is a sleet/ice/snow storm coming our way over the next few days. This Friday is Christmas day and that is when the snow and whatever else is supposed to stop falling. I do snow removal for 14 residential houses. I am bummed.

I really really don't want to go out and do snow removal on Christmas day. I am actually letting this start to ruin my mood. In all actuality I can do all the houses in 5 hours if it's just a few inches or it can take as long as 12 like it did the last storm with someone helping me but we got 12 to 18 inches that go around.

I feel like a big baby but I SO look forward to the Christmas holiday, not to mention Christmas day.



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After the two snowfalls we had last week (the latter delivering much more snow than the first) we get freezing drizzle this morning which means... scraping.

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Omah Singer Songwriter - Tracy Skretta

I'd like to tell everyone about a local singer songwriter named Tracy Skretta. He writes and sings alternative rock and his sets include some covers of great songs.
Tracy recently recorded and put out a new CD, please follow the link below to check out his music.

http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/TracySkretta

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Happy December everyone! I'm writing this after the big ol' snowstorm we had two days ago. Sunday night we got a few inches of snow then a few days later another and bigger snow came through. That snow started falling early Tuesday and got BIG later that night and ended early Wednesday morning. The rest of Wednesday turned out to actually be sunny and a little blustery until the wind totally subsided by Wednesday afternoon. All in all we received 12 to 18 inches with some drifting up to 3 feet easily.
I did snow removal for the houses that I usually do plus my own.

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Crazy Mystery Light(s)

Did anyone see this story the other day. The photo was taken by a guy in Tromso Norway on his way to work. It turned out to be a failed missile launch from a Russian submarine. For a day it was a mystery though. I love the image, it looks like a crazy black hole sucking energy from our planet.

Back to work after Thanksgiving

Today is Monday, November 30th, and also is back to work after having a whole work week and two weekends off. It was nice to have some down time. Thanksgiving went well, there were many days of eating plenty.
We had very nice weather most every day, you really couldn't ask for better this time of year.
I hope everyone had a nice holiday.

Thanksgiving Day 2009

6:00 AM start to this day. Lisa and I got the turkey in the oven ( 21 pound tom ) and she went back to bed. I decided to stay up and turn into JoeCubicle for a few hours. I hope everyone is going to have a great Thanksgiving day. I know we will.

Sony Vegas Preview Fix

I recently had to reload my laptop that I use to edit and render video using Sony Vegas 8 Pro. When I had the laptop all set up once more and had Vegas installed and was ready to edit some video I noticed the video preview was REALLY jerky and skipped over transitions. It did not do this on the previous install before I reloaded my operating system.
There is something that does work for small, selected regions; select a region of the video timeline and press 'Shift-B'. Vegas will 'pre-render' the selected region then you can play it back smoothly without the jerkyness, that does work, BUT, you will want the preview to work all the time without the 'Shift-B' pre-render.
I'll make a long story short and get right to what helped me make it good.

Once you have a new project open and you have dropped in a clip or even before you have dropped in a clip, perform the following steps:

Click 'Edit' in the menu, then go down to 'Properties' and click it.


Once the new project properties window opens, click the little yellow folder.


Navigate to one of the video clips you are going to use, select it (the clip name should populate the file name text box) and click 'Open'. This will make Vegas 'read' your video clip and import all the properties correctly for that specific clip as well as subsequent clips of that type.


This worked for me like a champ! Please give it a try. I don't know if this will work for sure in Vegas 9 or other flavors of Vegas but it did help a ton for me in Vegas 8 Pro.

I have to credit Eugenia Loli for the information. I will include her website which contains MANY helpful articles as well as two great links I use to go to directly from time to time.

Eugenia's Website:
http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org

Sony Vegas hints and tips.
http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/2008/12/19/sony-vegas-hints-and-tips/

Exporting with Vegas for Vimeo HD.
http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/2007/11/09/exporting-with-vegas-for-vimeo-hd/

Here is another thing I had to do a little searching on to 'fix' ( In the menu, click on 'Options' then 'Preferences'). Every time I would switch to another window away from Vegas then come back, all my video clips in the timeline had 'ghosted' text across them saying 'Media Offline' and I could not edit until it went away, anywhere from 5 to 45 seconds. A major pain. Unchecking the box will keep your clips 'online'.


Good luck and thanks for reading.

Motorcylce - 4 out of 5 days

I have ridden my mototcycle to work the last 4 days in a row. With running errands and such plus to and from work I'm probably sitting at about 20 to 25 miles a day so figure I've saved about 100 miles in my truck at 12 mpg.





Here is our 'new' kitty, Zuuko. I don't really know how we spell it exactly but that's close enough. He is a really loving cat. He has started jumping up on the couch and sitting next to me. He's a good cat, sweet, playful and loving.

Two weeks to go till Thanksgiving

I love love love Thanksgiving. I will have the whole week off from work and that is a good thing.

I should NOT have taken this photo...

Hockey Game last week

My son and I went to an Omaha Lancer hockey game last week. It was fun, it was my son's first hockey game and my first since I was his age. I think we would go again.
The Lancers won. We got there when it was 5 to 1. The final was 7 to 4.

3 weeks till Thanksgiving 2009

A funny thing, I worked really hard getting a blogging application downloaded and installed on my JoeCubicle.com website a few months ago, then, I remembered I already had a 'Blogspot' blog page for JoeCubicle. After much trying to remember my sign on and password, I'm in!
It's been two years since I've put a posting up here but I guess you could apply the saying; better late than never.

With all that appologizing out of the way, I'm really excited about Thanksgiving coming up in three weeks. I will have the whole week off from work, which I love much big.

Here's a pic of me from 'right now':

http://www.twoweeks.com

Boss was on vacation and business trip for a combined timespan of two weeks. I have never got so much done and worked harder (and surfed the net) in my life. Why did this happen?

Be good to yourself and think inside the box.

Joe