I Miss My Girls!

Hi Liz! Hi Madi! I miss you so much! I decided to put up some pictures so you don't forget me! 

Remember when we ate the giant pizza?

Or when we went to eat Mexican food for Daddy's birthday? 

Remember how much Madi loves to play with the camera (and her Daddy)?

Grandma Debbie loves Madi! I think Madi loves Grandma Debbie, too! 

Remember how we played with Daddy's computer? 

We took fun pictures together at the motel. 

What a silly Madi (and a silly Daddy)! 

Liz, remember when you went for a big adventure in New York City with Daddy? We stopped and had lunch together. Pizza and strawberry milk. Mmmm! 

Daddy loves to read books to his sweet girls! 

Madi is peeking over Daddy's shoulder!

Madi says, "Let me see that camera!"

Liz' first day of PreSchool! 

Remember how Daddy loves to tickle tummies? 

What a sweet Madi. She loves Daddy kisses! 

Oh, she gives kisses, too! 

Remember when we went swimming at the motel? 

Okay, Fine!

I will succumb to much peer pressure and do a post about family stuff. :) 

Liz has been taking dance classes twice a week for the past two weeks. She started well after the rest of the girls, so she's a little bit behind, but she's picking it up very quickly. They normally don't let the parents watch because it distracts the kids, but they had a special preview day on Thursday where they allowed us to come see them for the last 20 minutes (of the 90 minute class). 

Karla wasn't feeling well enough to come so I was doing double-duty with the video and still cameras to try to capture the event for everyone. I then came home and hooked up the new video camera to the computer for the first time and used iMovie for the first time in many years. (They have made MAJOR changes to the program since the last time I did anything with it. I don't know nearly as much about it as I used to, so forgive the rough editing.) 

The theme is kind of cheesy, but it's nice because it's just a drag-and-drop process. 

Enjoy! 

Consulting

I started a small business consulting firm/practice/thing today. I haven't determined a business name yet, and I'm far from incorporated, but I met with my first client. He's been described to me by many people as the "unofficial Mayor" of their town. (As far as I can tell the town is actually governed by a HOA-style board.) He is, without question, the most connected person I've ever met. I drove around with him a week ago and he showed me the area and everywhere we went he'd see several people who know him by name and ask when they can get together again. 

He is in the process of taking over a business. Due to non-disclosure restraints I can't say too much, but basically the business is quite profitable, having grown 100% since he started with them one year ago, but the whole operation is such a mess than he can't take it any further without serious help. There are two businesses, multiple families, and a church all mixed in the financial disaster. So they are making money, and they have cash on hand, but determining how much cash belongs to which organization is a near-impossibility. 

In the course of the first real day of inquiry about the business he has already directed attention to what I'll be doing next. While I'm working on his business he is actually working on mine! He has my next client already lined up for me (I met them last week; a sign business that also does graphics, videography, and marketing; we will DEFINITELY get along), and wants to know more about me so he can better sell me to more clients. 

If I didn't need immediate cash flow (and if I didn't know they have cash on hand) I would do this pro-bono because he's so incredibly connected and so actively trying to help me and my family. I was expecting to move out of this big family compound/plantation and into an apartment, but the jump start he's giving me makes me think we may be able to get into an actual house instead. 

Sorry no more personal, family posts. It really is quite busy. But at least I fixed the internet connection! 

- Jon 

P.S. I have a few ideas I'm working on for the business name, but I'm open to suggestions. Please leave a comment with any ideas. Again, I'm focusing on long-term strategic planning and marketing (both the common sense involving sales & advertising and the truer meaning involving product/service selection and client relations.)

kgb_ Highlights

I know I'm not supposed to, but I have to! Here are some REAL questions people have asked on kgb. (Text your question to 542542; all answers cost 99¢. Standard text messaging rates something something.)

"How fast can I legally go over the speed limit?"

"What is the world's record for the largest baby penis?"

"Is it a law in Texas that if a dog bites anyone in a vet's office, the vet must put the dog down?"

"What does Andrew look like?" This one was funny because the auto-filled answer explained the appearance of female genitalia. Must be the most common question  in the form of "What does ____ look like?"

"What's the best thing to tell a girl when you want her to be your girlfriend?"

"How do you say *#@! in Japanese?"

"What is a rusty spoon?" (DO NOT GOOGLE THIS!)

"Should I stay with Ryan?"

"If a 13 year old boy spurms with a little bit of blood is it normal or shud he stop [obvious word removed for the sake of young readers]?"

"Is the government wiretapping all of our phones?"

We're allowed to do humorous responses when the context allows (obviously I can't give the guy a documented answer), so I responded, "kgb would love to answer this question, but we have reason to suspect this is not a secure line." 

It's 2:15 am. Time for bed. 

Disturbing

I did about 9 hours of kgb answers today. Well, last night and early this morning (it's 3:30 am). 

The first while was not very busy, and the answers were varied. But the last 3 hours have been nothing but perverts and awkward teenagers who are curious about their bodies (and the bodies of the opposite sex). And curious about sex. And curious about alternatives when sex isn't available. And curious about statistics for all things genitalia. And curious about my genitalia. And curious if "herpes is really a big deal? Can I die from anal warts?" I'm not making this stuff up. At all. I took screenshots of a few that were particularly priceless. 

Fortunately kgb has a set of auto-answer things we can just click to give a canned answer like, "We like a challenge but choose to not answer this one. No charge." 

There is a database where we can grab previous answers and throw them in. We get half pay for those, but they're very fast and actually far more profitable. But it's disturbing to do a search in the database for the terms in the late-night questions and see just how many previous answers there are in the database. 

Mind you this service has been around less than a year, and the auto-answer technology is even newer. (They call it Otto Hansa. Clever, 'eh?) 

Anyway, time for sleep but I dread it because of the mental images I've been given today. 

Pray I find a real job very soon. 

Oh, best question of the night: "My boyfriend spends all his time on kgb. How do I break up with this deadbeat?" I would have loved to have seen her boyfriend get that text on his screen and look over at his girlfriend. 10¢ per question, dude. Put the computer away and pay attention to her. 

G'night.

New Job

Sorry I haven't posted anything in a while. It's been really busy. I've been sorting through thousands (tens of thousands) of old photos to identify ones that would be good to sell as stock photography, then editing, then setting up a workflow to submit them to multiple stock photography sites. It's a lot of work, but once set up they are available for sale forever and could potentially provide some residual income. 

I'm also starting a new job today for kgb. (Apparently you're never supposed to capitalize it; I assume that's so it isn't confused with the KGB of the old Soviet Union. If they didn't want to be confused with them, maybe they should have picked a different name?) 

I'm a Special Agent. That means I sit around in my jammies and answer people's questions that they text to 542542 (kgbkgb). Try it sometime. It's rather entertaining. (Answers cost 99¢ each. Regular text messaging fees may apply.) 

I get a whopping 10¢ per answer if I do the research, or 5¢ if I use a canned answer from the database. If I work really hard I might be able to make $6/hour! 

So, yeah, it's not about the money so much as an interesting outlet for my unique ability to find basically anything online and remember nearly useful (but apparently not worthless!) trivia. 

Maybe the next time we all get together we can play Trivial Pursuit and I'll be my own team against everyone else. We'll have a blast. I'm sure you can't wait. :) 

Check out some of their commercials: 

http://542542.com/videos

I'm planning on making a much more realistic version that I'll post on YouTube showing what kgb agents really look like. (Maybe I'll wear the same outfit as the chick in the "loser wears my outfit" commercial.) 

Edit: I'm not supposed to blog about questions people ask, and make fun of them and all that, but I have to share this one: Were Jesus' remains ever found? Um, hello?! He was resurrected. What remains did you expect to be found? 

Blogger Trick

Okay, I've been doing all sorts of editing and designing for many years. Blogger's tiny edit window drives me nuts. It took me a few minutes of googling to find it, but I found someone with a WONDERFUL solution:

this guy figured it out

He wrote a javascript, um, script that will resize your editing window to just barely fit in your current browser window. All you have to do is bookmark the link he has clearly labeled, then open an editing window and choose that bookmark. It doesn't navigate to a new page, it just fixes the current one so you can actually see what you're doing. (Moving pictures around is particularly obnoxious in the tiny window.)

Enjoy!