My sister last year asked me if I could build a website for her so for her christmas present I reserved a domain. One year later we have the site up and running. She does amazing artwork… Murals, Paintings, and Sketches. Check her out http://socreativeworks.com

So we setup a day that we thought would be comfortable for everyone and did it.
I setup a green-screen and two super-bright lights with diffusers I then set everyone in front of the camera and the outcome was great. We got a lot of good photos, there was still some stress but nothing like the traveling was.

The one thing I would like to sum this all up with is that the equipment I had cost around $1,200 (not including laptop or editing software) the cost of an olan mills photo with digital rights is about $400 for one photo and I dare say that the outcome of my photos might be better. Don’t be scared to do it yourself.

Enjoy the pictures below.
David Bates

So the title of my post may be a little misleading. I love Christmas and all of the memories you make during it. This Christmas however has been off to a rough start. Monday I decided to work from home for two reasons one was the snow and the second was I was feeling pretty sickly. I was happily typing away on code to attribute to my latest project when I got a call from my frantic wife where she informed me that my mother had slipped on ice on her steps, that I had just scrapped, and she believed broke her leg. I quickly informed my Boss I was not going to be able to be reached for awhile and headed to her aid. It took about 2 hours to get an ambulance to the house because of the snow and the holidays but when they got there she had been in pain for some time and had what looked like a bone pushing on her skin but not broke through. They with my help then loaded her onto a backboard and then the stretcher. The driver asked how much my mom weighed (as my family is hefty) and then called in for backup. I guess she scared him Soon the entire Bethany fire department was there to help. My Mom was in so much pain she didn’t catch any jokes I tried to crack to cheer her up. We got to the hospital and here is what the break looks like:

After that you may have guessed that my days have been filled trying to get her here and there but that is not it. Monday night after we got back from the Hospital my wife and son got a stomach virus… very bad so now I had three to take care of and I made until Tuesday morning when I myself got it. Now when I get sick I react a little differently than most people I know I simply goto sleep and continue to sleep until I get better. I don’t know why I do this and my wife hates it but it all works out. So after being in a dead-like sleep and missing Tuesday altogether I was able to get mom back to the doctor starting at 7:30 on Wednesday.

Now I must say that the previous paragraphs make it seem like I did all the work. I don’t want that to be the case as my wife and my sister has helped equally if not more than I. I also don’t want it to sound like I haven’t had a good Christmas I have. Spending time with my family is always good no matter what the circumstance and my mom is pretty funny when she is drugged

Now as for today I went to Lowes to do a little last minute Christmas shopping. I got my mom a safety rail for her bathroom so she can get around on her peg leg and got my father-in-law a little something too. I got to eat a nice smoked pork shoulder with the family and now I have to go downstairs and play Santa for my little boy. He is fast asleep with vision of trains and cars in his head.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!
David Bates

Dear Twitter,

Over the past few weeks I have been unable to rely on you as a collaborative platform.
First there was the attack on August 6th that went all day. I forgave you for that as it was probably some russian 16 yr old hacker with a bot-net his daddy gave him for christmas. Then there was the blackout of all apps, exept tweetdeck thank goodness. But now you have greyed out my submit button on twitter.com and have turned my tweetdeck application into mush.

Further you have not posted why this has happened on either blog.twitter.com or status.twitter.com where you told me before to look for information. This time I believe it to be your fault as I can get to the website and browse around but cannot submit tweets.

Please know that this in now way means I am leaving Twitter. I love the service when it works. This note is a simple request to try and understand why this is happening and hopefully understand how you are going to better your service so that this does not happen again.

Now to try and figure out how we published post around before twitter… oh yeah I’ll Digg it!

Thanks
David Bates

update: at 10:30 I was able to tweet again… It looks like this storm has passed! let’s hope it doesn’t happen again.