something new

We'll I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to keep my blog, I think Cheris and I will collectively author http://paulandcherisvreeken.blogspot.com/. But until we decide what we're going to do. I'll post up some pix of the last few months.

 

My Dad putting in window in our house while I'm high on pain pills from wisdom teeth surgery/dry socket pain. Thanks again Mom, Dad, Amie!

 

afterward, HUGE difference!

 

Me w/ chubby cheeks/bruising from surgery.

 

I got older, again. Pop quiz, how old am I Cheris?

 

Riann's learning new tricks, raspberries, chin licking, The Jetsons flying car noise, etc...

 

I'm parting out my '79 VW Rabbit, using the good parts on my '81 diesel rabbit.

She plays peek-a-boo any chance she gets. Lots of fun!

 

Tell me what you really think of Halloween, sheesh kiddo!

 

Thanksgiving morning, I can't be around all that chaotic cooking and I had to show Kyle the dunes!

 

Kyle came up from UT, we're glad it worked out - even w/ the crazy midnight run to Preston.

 

I GOT EGGNOG!!! yeah buddy...

 

Amie got older, good job Aims!

 

Things got crazy, Riann ended up w/ a pierced ear and a tramp stamp. I can't remember how it happened. Must have been all those mocktails I had.

 

The next day we went off-roading and got stuck behind a broke-down f*rd. Still had fun but missed appointments due to yet another dumb f*rd driver.

A couple days later we sold the 4Runner, it will be missed.

 

On the way home from off-roading, we saw this

 

so it was ALL worth it, f*rd and all.

That's all folks!!

business is growing...

Well, I haven't posted here in a little while cause I've been working a lot on the business and getting some things squared away for my friends wedding (Robert Lewis) in utah. It's kinda funny but I've had a few people from europe contact me about doing some jobs for them. Nothing has been huge news but I'm surprised all the same. Anyway, here are a few things that i've done recently.

A flier I did for the company the bought out my parents business.


Another one for them.


I guy who runs a Soccer camp in UK.


A college kid in UK, the vertically sliding knobs in the center are seperate files because he needed to be able to animate them in a video he's making. Should be cool!


And this is what i've been trying to get finished before Roberts wedding.

Thunder storm!

This is what most of the storm looked like to us. I had the camera out for about 30 minutes or so. There are a couple of Sequential shots of the actual bolt... growing... traveling... I don't know what else to call it. You'll see!

oh yeah, we're taking pictures through our rain streaked front window so the pix are not crystal clear.



1st Frame - This is what the camera caught I think before it tried to adjust to the blinding light. Pretty cool, just the bolt as it first came out...



2nd Frame - This is after the camera adjusted a little, still darker than it appeared to the naked eye.



3rd Frame - This is just about what Cheris and I saw while we were watching... I'm pretty sure that bolt hit the road in front of our house... about 50 feet away. It seems to be on this side of their trees. Don't miss the little bit that shoots out to the right and then heads straight for the ground... i'm pretty sure it tagged out mail box. Because the plastic bucket that had all the rocks in it to steady the mailbox was all busted out on one side the next day.



1st Frame - This one is cool. The path it travels makes no sense, but sometimes it seems to backtrack.



2nd Frame - You can tell the majority of the energy went up off that first little cluster then to the right.



3rd Frame - Now the bottom spot isn't as bright as the upper part, like the energy ball moved.



4th Frame - Now the bottom spot is completely gone!



5th Frame - A second branch comes off..



6th Frame - That one splits a couple of times...



7th Frame - Then that branch disappears, just before the whole thing disappeared.



This is what all those frames look like combines... This is what Cheris and I saw with the naked eye... but I remember it being MUCH brighter!

Death of a comedian...

...and I'm not sad about it!

Whore-hey Carleeeeeeeen (i'm not sure why but the name George always makes me think in Spanish).

George Carlin died recently. You may remember him from... well, maybe Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure circa (scratch that, I hate that word) that came out about 1990. Funny movie, but he was severely censored from his usual potty-mouth. The reason why I'm not too sad about his death is because he wasn't a very good guy. When they played the little tribute thing about him on CNN (flipping through channels) he didn't say one good thing about the U.S. Now, I understand the hippie and neo-hippie movements - sorry, "liberal" and "progressive" (*while wagging finger* says, "No name calling" with a heavy dose of sarcasm) but to make a living off of publicly bashing on the U.S. is not cool in my books. Again, I know it's the cool thing right now, but GROW UP!

That's it, another one bites the dust, and I'm not sad.

The End.

Hammock

A recent photo I did for myself... just wanted a new background so I took the best of these two pictures





And created this one... yeah, I added a few thing. How does the beard look?

It's funny 'cause it's true...

Funny joke

"There are only 10 types of people in this world- those who understand binary, and those who don't."

So, do you get it?

(yes i'm a nerd, bitE me!)

Update time

So I've been working my brain out to get all my niche stores up and running... come to find out that one of them is #3 on google... in just 2 weeks of being set up! Sweet! Another project of mine has been to get The Vreeken Family Forum up and running as well. It's just a stock layout - for now - but i'm glad it's off the ground and family is registering slowly but surely. It will be nice to have a place we can go without worry of ads, spam, and immaturity... well, scratch that last one :)

I've been stewing on some political stuff lately too...

#1) Just want to say that this whole debate on "is mrs obama fair game or not" is crap! She's a part of this political process and she should be questioned like any other citizen, what the problem is!? We don't HAVE to know all her positions on all the issues because she's not running for anything but we should be able to discuss any and all political topics with her. I don't think it's right to attack her personal life (or any candidates for that matter) but on politically important issues, we have the right to ask. Case closed!

#2) Drill for more oil & produce new energy technology. I've seen some pretty cool electromagnetic and gyroscope engines that COULD be better, and cheaper than all the stupid freakin inefficient "hybrid" cars. Hybrid - give me a break! Buy a Geo, not a hybrid! Also, I'd like to buy a residential wind turbine to harness Rexburg's notorious wind, but they're freakin expensive!!!

#3) Countrywide sucks!


...and I'm out...

My rant about LOST

So Cheris and I have been attempting to catching up on LOST over the past few weeks. We just started watching the show, from the beginning, online... in HD! It's pretty sweet, very clean on the monitor I have. Anyway, it's funny to see all the places they've filmed that Cheris and I went to on our honeymoon. I just wanted to post up a few pictures for comparison.


A scene from LOST, that's supposed to be in Korea when Jin proposes to Sun on a bridge in front of a Temple. It's actually on O'ahu HI about 30 minutes from where they shoot all the Valley scenes (see below).


This is from when Cheris and I went to the "Valley of the Temples, Windward Mortuary."


They've done a lot of scenes in Ka'a'awa Valley, the golf course scenes, pretty sure when they're driving around in the VW Bus it's here, and just some other random hiking scenes.


You can take a tour here, it's called Kualoa Ranch and it's about a 2 hour drive from Honolulu. It's overpriced in my opinion but a fun once-in-a-lifetime type thing to do.


This is a shot from LOST when Kate and Sawyer are swimming and retrieve the case with the guns in it.


It normally looks like this on any given day. The area is called Waimea Falls/Valley/Bay. It's a nice walk to the falls with loads of trees and flowers to take pictures of. The bay is one of my favorite places to swim on the North Shore.

Hope you enjoyed the pictures, feel free to ask any questions about locations, price, etc.

Paulitix

This goes out to anyone who is as frustrated as I am with the "Election year politics." I'm finding it very hard to get behind any of these candidates. I, like most republicans, aren't real thrilled with the mccain option and the thought of another clinton in the white house is enough to make me sick. So that leaves obama... but there are plenty of things about him that I wouldn't like in a President. I'm almost at the point where I want someone horrible in office just so people can see that President Bush isn't as bad as we've been led to believe. I mean, honestly, I know it's very "in" to hate the President and all the cool kids are doing it but it's just not the truth. There are so many positive things, HUGE positive things that just haven't gotten the media coverage or haven't been talked about enough for people to understand the whole situation.

This whole debate on oil and why we don't do this or that... it's pretty funny to me. In an economics class I had a while back we were talking about farming and the strategies that farmers have to use to make sure they position themselves correctly for the market swings and I got to thinking about that same situation with oil. Let me run this little scenario by you real quick - Right now everybody believes we are so "dependent" on "foreign oil" and that we couldn't live without it. But, I think it's a brilliant long-term strategy to "use up" all the other countries oil resources (without touching ours) so that when the time comes, we've got a nice stock pile and can sells our for a nice premium. Now of course there are a ton of other factors that could come into play in this scenario, but what if? The point is that the news tells us what to believe, and right now, I ain't buyin' it.

What's driving you nuts?

Thought this was interesting

Cheris was watching Oprah today about the whole Warren Jeffs FLDS Polygamy thing and I remembered that someone from work said that he had confessed to his brother in jail... so naturally I search youtube.

Here ya go!

Warren Jeffs Confession - He's NOT a prophet and never was.

Iron Man

Cheris & I went and saw Iron Man yesterday. Awesome! Make sure you stay until after the credits because there is a little secret for you. GREAT casting I have to say. Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges, and Terrence Howard were perfect for there parts. It's interesting, but understandable why they chose the Middle East bad guy versus the original Asian bad guy (staying w/ the times I guess) from the comics. I know, I sound like a huge nerd for knowing all of this but IRON MAN ROCKS!!! He's almost as cool as Transformers, and Gambit (X-Men, though not in the movies[yet]). Okay, so yeah. Go see it. Let me know what you thought.

It Starts

So it begins, I've officially purchased my domain (in pre-publishing stages now) and am in the process of building up my portfolio and doing research on ways to advertise. I'm also going to be looking locally for some freelance work and hopefully getting some work from family and friends that I can use for marketing purposes... and some income as well. I know this isn't a very long post, but my focus is elsewhere (ie, wordpress, dreamweaver, stock photo submitting, monetizing blogs, maybe some BANS, AHHHHH! gotta start somewhere).

what's new

So i've been home sick from work the last two days, and when I'm not sleeping I'm trying to educate myself and get closer to starting my business. My wife and I have been working on the idea for a year or two and we've made some decisions recently. We would like to be able to have some extra income to supplement my unstable (commission only) income and make it so she doesn't have to go back to work. The place I work is great, I'm just not very good at what I do yet. I'm getting a ton better but sales isn't easy, it takes a lot of repetition to do my job and I don't handle that very well. To make the situation even worse, when I finally made the decision to give it a complete 100% effort, I get sick. In all the sales books i've read, the successful people talk about getting road blocks like this right when they're about to break through. I think that's exactly what this is. Once I get back to work, I'm going to be so frustrated that I missed a few days that I'm going to push really hard and do well. I just hope that I don't run out of steam.

remodeling

It's all down hill from here! We've finished sanding the baby room and we're half way finished with patching the office walls from all the gouges. At this point we need to prime the baby room and then paint. We need to finish in the office so we can do the same thing. Then we have to buy new carpet, i think we're going with a freize (sp?) of some kind and we're hoping to hear what the status is on our windows soon. We're getting Millgard windows because they're top of the line and we're getting a good price. After that we'll probably rip out all the carpet, vacuum really well because all the dust from sanding, and replace the pad and carpet. We're not too sure on whether to paint before or after putting in new carpet. We'll probably paint before and then if anything happens we'll touch it up after. The other thing we need to do is the flooring in the kitchen and replace the cabinets and counter tops as well. Then when the back rooms are all done and the kitchen is cleared we can move everything out of the living room and texture, prime, and paint in there as well. So the lesson we've learned from this house is to never buy any house that has been wallpapered, let alone with FIVE LAYERS like our house. Anybody want to come over and help?

newbie

I'm finally doing it, I'm starting a blog... well, I guess I started a blog but this is my first entry. Hopefully this will be a good place for family and friends to check on what's new with Cheris and I... and soon, Riann. It should be any day now. Cheris has already started a blog which you can find at paulandcherisvreeken.blogspot.com. We'll see how it goes!