Disclaimer: This entry was written during and while drinking four beers. (Or was it six?)

This blog has definitely seen better days when it comes to posting frequency.. Nevertheless, it may be a good thing that I've not posted much in the past half year or so; I've been too busy to have adequate time to write! Although, that's unfortunate in of itself.. "Busy, you say?" Certainly. It's been quite an intense, eventful few months—neigh, I'd almost say a half-year!

I think the craziness really started back in May (not exactly six months ago, I know.) Back in May, OmniUpdate's (where I work) team of Developer Monkey's (ie, Brian Tusi, Ted Rust, Yves Lempereur, and myself) were extremely busy working on the version 8.0 milestone release of our flagship product. The two weeks prior to release, I managed to rack up 120 hours at work (ie, I worked three weeks worth in two weeks. Hah!) That was incredibly taxing on me, but ultimately incredibly rewarding. For a while I literally woke up, went to work (for like 12+ hours), came home, went to bed, repeat. I suppose it was unique experience.. Dedicated geek, perhaps?

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Me pondering while drinking delicious Bavarian beer in Munich.

After we released version 8, the next few weeks were spent pushing out bug fixes and other patches. Bug-Squash-Fest. But it was pretty fun for a while. As I started to run out of bugs to kill, I began to turn my focus on implementing a entire site redesign/restructure/redo/what-have-you for our company website (this had been in the works for a year or so.) We had a partner of ours (Donoughe Design) work with us on the new design and content architecture for the new OmniUpdate, Inc. corporate website. When we finally (after tens and tens of revisions, going back and forth between my boss Lance Merker, marketing, myself, and Donoughe Design) had the final design, we got some Photoshop PSDs from Donoughe Design, and I then took it from there. 

The goal with the new company website was to utilize our CMS product to its fullest potential. I wanted to make sure the website could utilize every bell and whistle of the CMS. The site would utilize a combination of XML (for the content), XSL (to format the content in the CMS), XHTML with CSS (for the design of the site), PHP (for server side stuff), and JavaScript (for eye candy and client-side functionality.. Building it—combining all of these pieces of technology with a wholly-clean slate—was pretty cool! I ended up working 40 of around 60 hours over the weekend right before I departed for Europe to get the site launched in time before my vacation. The site went live a few minutes past 22h on June 23rd and little more than 12 hours later I was on a plane to Munich, Germany. Intense!.. But kind of fun. I get a rush from this kind of stuff.. Am I twisted? I dunno. But it's fun nonetheless.

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Schloss Neuschwanstein in Bavaria, Germany

Vacation. After two months of craziness at work and not really doing a whole lot else than working, I left for Europe with my family (except for my sister Daniela who had summer courses at UCLA.) We flew to Munich via Frankfurt, Germany on June 24th. We spent about two days in Munich, and a few more in Bavaria (including a evening and night at a house up in the Bavarian Alps for a cousins wedding party-get-together thing.) The beer in Bavaria is awesome. We also went and saw Schloss (castle) Neuschwanstein which was pretty awesome (albeit rather touristy..) Schloss Neuschwanstein is a castle straight out of a fairy tale, which made it that much cooler.

Following our stint in Germany, we (as in my dad Roland, mom Margret, and sister Andrea) ended up in Switzerland (the motherland!) where the usual ensued (visiting relatives, ascending some alps, relaxing, eating well, etc.) I've posted a *crapload* of photos from the trip. You can find photos I've taken from Bavaria here (94 images), and photos taken by family (mainly Andrea) from Bavaria here (230 images). Then there's the photos from Switzerland. Mine are here (275 images), and the ones on the family camera (again, mainly taken by Andrea) can be found here (428 images). Don't have too much fun looking at those. There's like 1027 of them. :-)

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This photo is awesome. At the Statue of Liberty.

I came back from Switzerland late on July 14th and was back at work the next day. Three days in the office, and then on that Friday, Brian, Leigh Ann, and myself flew to Philadelphia from Los Angeles and made our way to New York City on the night of July 18th. Hah! I'd never been to NYC before so this was pretty exciting. The reason for the trip was the eduWeb conference in Atlantic City which began the following Monday. However, we decided to take advantage of the company-paid trip to the east coast, and thusly explored NYC on our weekend. Besides walking up and down the streets of NYC (Wall Street, Time Square, etc.), Brian, Leign Ann, and I also visited the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Photos from New York City can be found here (400 images) and a few images from Atlantic City and the eduWeb conference can be found here (21 images).

We left the conference and Atlantic City on Wednesday, July 23rd.. And got to wait for 4 hours on the tarmac (due to weather) until our flight to Los Angeles could finally depart! ... That was fun. In retro spect, I suppose it was an interesting experience.. Looking out the airplane window and seeing many, many, many airplanes all queued up ready to take-off while dark gray clouds loomed above, lighing bolts striking various airport buildings in the distance. Hah! Fun stuff.

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Dolphins are awesome. On the way out to Santa Cruz Island off the shore of Ventura County, CA.

The weekend following the return from the eduWeb conference, I joined Lance Merker (my boss) on a trip out to Santa Cruz and Anacapa islands on his boat. I had never been out to those islands, so I was pretty thrilled about the invitation. Photos from that trip can be found here (39 images).

It's been quite an eventful past few months.. I hope the momentum keeps up. School starts up again in two weeks.. I'd be lying if I said I'm looking forward to it. I enjoy my life much, much more while I'm not attending Moorpark College. That place is so boring. Good thing there won't be much more of it in my future...