When I started I was a little nervous. It was my first time starting a new job in 6 years. I was excited though as it brought me back to web development. Did I know SVN? Nope. jQuery? Nope. But I knew how to code HTML and CSS along with some PHP & JavaScript.

Over the past year I’ve learned a lot about jQuery and that has been one of the best things for me. jQuery is powerful and really makes a web developers job easier; if done right. I also now know how to use SVN. I use a GUI for some of it, but I can do most of it via command line too, like a real Nerd.

Facebook application development is another area that I’ve moved into. I really didn’t know a lot about it a year ago, but, as of this posting, I’ve launched two Facebook apps and worked on many others. I’m quickly becoming a Facebook Nerd.

I’ve dipped my fingers into a lot of other projects as well. HTML5, mobile, Grails, Zend, and Expression Engine just to name a few. I love all the things I’m begin exposed too and the people who help me learn along the way.

Not only am I learning code, but I’m also learning how to lead projects. That includes managing the work and the developers. This is something that I’ve wanted to do for years, but haven’t been given the chance. So far it’s going good. I worry about every little piece of the project, but I’m sure I’ll become a little more comfortable as I go.

The Nerdery has been a great place for me over the past year and I’m still excited to come to work every day. It’s the people, the projects and the company that make The Nerdery a great place to work.

I’ve been an official Nerd for a year now. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

Thankfully I have all my Christmas shopping done. I did most of it online again this year, but I tried to buy stuff in stores. It just seems like so much work. Plus I went to Wal-Mart this year. It just amazes me how such a big and popular retailer can have the worst stores. Even the new ones are dirty and I feel like I’m going to catch something just walking down the aisles. The downside to online however is that my packages haven’t all arrived yet. Soon though.

I am excited for Christmas though. It’s Lily’s third Christmas and this year she’s two and has a good idea of who Santa is and what’s going on. She’ll be so excited, if not overwhelmed, by all the gifts. We’ll do one weekend at home and then another at the grandparents. So she’ll have two overly exciting weekends. Plus I’m sure she’ll get tons of stuff. Hopefully things Dad like to play with too.

Lily with Santa & Mrs Claus

One thing that I would like, but isn’t happening this year, is a white Christmas. Call me old fashion, but I like snow in December. They keep saying there’s going to be a lot of snow this year, but would have liked a little before Christmas. Heck, I’d be fine if it snowed November, December and January and then all melted in February. I just think it makes Christmas a little bit more festive. Plus we’d like to go sledding.

If I don’t get another post in before Christmas, I hope everyone has a great holiday and enjoys spending time with those they love.

Here comes the holidays, ready or not. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

The greatest thing a family can hear from their soldier is “I’m coming home” and lots of families are getting that gift this year.

Welcome back and thank you for all you’ve done.

Welcome Home Troops originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

Daycare Day

Lily started her new daycare today and she was very excited. It was a bit like sending your kids off to school as she had her little backpack, supplies and some new clothes. She was going someplace new with lots of other kids, toys and the unknown. Ok, so maybe it was more Mom and Dad that was nervous about the unknown, Lily was just excited.

When I dropped her off she was as happy as can be. She was showing off all her stuff, playing with all the toys and just having a blast. I said goodbye and all was good. Turns out, she was good all day long. She did extremely well and is ready to go back again tomorrow. Hopefully every day is as good as the first.

This is now Lily’s 3rd daycare; well the way I count.

She started off in an in-home daycare which worked out really well in the beginning. When she was a baby she didn’t need much more than someone to watch over her and give her some attention. However, as she grew, it became apparent that she needed more attention and more learning opportunities which her current in-home didn’t provide.

Over the summer Grandma, my mother in-law, took care of Lily 4 days a week in our home. They cooked, cleaned, went to the library, the beach and did pretty much anything and everything. I don’t have any idea how Grandma did half the stuff she did with a toddler but she made it look easy. It was great though as Lily learned so much. The one on one attention was fantastic and the help around the house was nice too.

Now that summer is winding down, Lily is starting at a daycare center. The center is more like a pre-school where she’ll do a lot of learning and enhance her social skills. There are quite a few other kids her age so sharing and taking turns will be very important.

Lily now has her own cubby, she’ll have a show and tell day, music days, reading time, arts & crafts, field trips and just continue to learn so much. This is a perfect match as she wants to do more and wants to be kept busy.

We’ve toured lots of different daycares, seen many different setups and finding the right one is always hard. However, I think we’ve found a good one that will help our little girl grow for years to come.

Daycare: In-home, at home and now a center. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

It started out with Uncle Josh visiting on her birthday. That’s pretty special as he was in from California. Josh gave her some plastic food so she could feed her dolls and pretend she was cooking like Mom.

Uncle Josh

Then she had the weekend with just Mom and Dad. She got plastic plates, bowls and cups to go with her plastic food and she loves to play with them. She also got some Elmo things and other fun toys. Plus we had ice cream cookie sandwiches!

Cups and Toys

Dinner with her dolls.

Since it was her birthday weekend, we took her to Edinborough Park to play in the bouncy house and the maze of tunnels and slides. We also went to not one, but two, beaches to play in the water.

Giant Slide

A very fun weekend for sure!

Her second birthday party was this past weekend with the grandparents and family. A second birthday means more presents including a kitchen, some very cute clothes and toys. Plus what’s a birthday without cupcakes; Elmo cupcakes!

Elmo Cupcakes

Lily's Kitchen

After that, it was time to run around outside and burn off some of that sugar and play with the family.

Family Time

We also took some time and went out to visit the cows on my parents farm. Lily loved feeding them, seeing the corn and all the different things. Grandpa Tom even took her on a tractor ride which she thought was a ton of fun.

Riding in a Tractor

We are extremely blessed to have our families close enough that Lily can go and experience different things. Animals at the zoo are fun, on the farm is even better!

Lily

It’s hard to believe that Lily is already two. She’s growing up so fast and it’s amazing to see how much she’s grown and how much she has learned in just two years. She’s an amazing little girl and we are grateful to have her in our lives.

Cupcakes, Cows, Presents & Water originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

Swim Lessons Certificate

Today was Lily’s last day of swim lessons.

The 1 month program was just to get her comfortable with the water. She learned some things and got exposed to quite a bit.

She even got dunked under the water a few times. One of these days she’ll learn to close her eyes and mouth first, but that hasn’t happened yet.

The next stage of swim lessons isn’t until she’s like 5 so we might re-do this class in a year or two just so she continues to learn.

Interestingly enough, the certificate has her name spelled incredibly wrong. I don’t even know how they could be so far off.

Lily has completed her first swim lessons. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

First off, the design. You’ve probably already noticed it. That is unless you only read this via an RSS reader. The new design is focused more on CSS and less on images. The images that I do have are mainly CSS sprites. The fonts are bigger, there is more white space and the focus is on the content.

Second is new hosting. Unfortunately my site was causing an issue with the previous host and I was to often getting suspended for using to many resources. Because of that, I felt that moving would be good for both parties. Don’t get me wrong, loved the old host support, but I hated being that problem site. Plus the new host is half the hosting cost. Lets hope it works out as well as I hope! Ohh the new host is Tiger Technologies.

Third is TwisterMc.com is now 3x bloggier. Every now and then I get this idea to start a new blog on some random topic. Over time I end up with so many blogs and not so many posts. So, I combined two of them into my main blog. Thrillify, a Minnesota theme park blog, and FluidDad, my daddy blog, now all live here.

Don’t worry, you won’t get 3x as many posts. Thrillify was getting like 3 posts a year and FluidDad a few a week on a good week. Don’t expect a content flood.

Those are the three main changes that have gone into place.

I’m still not done with the design, but it’s in a good spot and I’m very happy with all the changes. Next up is more posts! I’ve got lots of topics in my head, I just need to get them out.

TwisterMc – New for 2011 originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

From here on in, it’s all about simplification.

More details to follow, but feel free to take a look around and let me know what you think.

Hello? Is this thing on? originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

This all started because my site got suspended yesterday for using to many server resources. I thought that was odd as I didn’t have a spike in traffic or any new posts. So I started looking for other possibilities.

When looking though the site I found that my subscribe to comments plugin (the original) was capturing thousands of spam emails. I had over 6000 and I think spammers were just attacking it.

So I got a new subscribe to comments plugin, one that was up-to-date and it helped me clean out the bad emails.

I then went into phpMyAdmin and stared poking around in there. Turns out there is all sorts of information from old plugins; such as Ultimate Tag Warrior. Remember that one?

I also found out that Akismet was saving all spam comments, or at least a lot of them. Nearly 3k there that I blew away.

I also dropped tables for plugins that I no longer used.

Plugin developers really have to write uninstall scripts as this is ridiculous.

Overall I feel my database is in better shape, however I’m not sure if I deleted anything important. If so, I have a backup.

This isn’t what I wanted to spend my evening and early morning hours on, but if it helps the server run better, then everyone wins.

Cleaning up the database. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

I found out yesterday that iPhoto, when integrated with Flickr, alters your sets based on iPhotos limitations and doesn’t let the user know.

I’ve been using Flickr for years and have been very happy with it. Once Lily was born the number of photos I uploaded increased dramatically. I’ve now got nearly 900 Lily photos, all in one album.

A while back I got iPhoto ’11 (v9) and was very excited for the Flickr integration. I hooked it up and realized that iPhoto allows a max of 500 photos for a Flickr set. This meant I couldn’t use iPhoto to continue adding photos to my Lily set. I was disappointed, but I left the integration anyways as the backup was nice.

It wasn’t until yesterday that I realized that nearly 1/2 of my Lily photos were gone from her set on Flickr.

I panicked! For a moment I thought I had lost hundreds of my daughters photos that I uploaded to Flickr. Yes, I had them on my machine, but how did I lose so many online?

Then it hit me, all I had left in my set was 500 which was the same as iPhoto’s limit. Turns out when iPhoto’s max is hit, it removes the excess images from Flickr as well with no warning to the user!

The good news is that iPhoto merely removes them from the set, it doesn’t delete them from Flickr. So I had to go into iPhoto, remove the Flickr integration, and then go into Flickr and add all the photos back into Lily’s set.

I’m not sure who at Apple thought that limiting an album/set to 500 was a good idea, or better yet alter Flickr’s photo sets without getting buy-in from the user, but this is a huge disappointment. iPhoto has now lost some of my trust.

Don’t trust iPhoto with your Flickr photos. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

Our vacation to Bonita Springs, Florida was a lot of fun. We got to hold an alligator, ride on air boats through the Everglades, feed a giraffe and we had more than enough food and drinks.

While there was a threat of snow in Minnesota, we were relaxing by the pool in the upper 80s. Instead of cereal for breakfast, we had a breakfast buffet. Every dinner had multiple courses and the bar was always open. We were pretty much spoiled from the time we arrived.

It was nice to get away, just me and the wife, and it’s amazing that my wife won this trip for being a stellar employee!

We did have to sit though a few business meetings, but that was a small price to pay for a free vacation!

You can see more of our photos here.

Alligators, giraffes, food and a good vacation. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

I was doing fine for a few days. Granted it helped that Lily was sick and I had to sleep with her a few nights and that took away from my computer time.

However I found it difficult to live just on the iPad.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the iPad and think it’s a great machine. But it lacks advanced controls that you get on your computer and multitasking is pretty much non-existent.

What I found especially hard was blogging. Writing a post was easy, getting media into the post, formatting it and adding links was painful.

The good news is it works great for email, reading RSS feeds (as long as you don’t want to share the stories), games, Facebook, Twitter, weather, news and things like that.

I did like the simplicity too and the lack of real multi-tasking is nice at times. Do one thing and do it well is a nice philosophy.

For me, I’m to use to doing many things at once, copying & pasting & sharing things, saving out photos, creating graphics and lots of random stuff. It just took much longer to do them on the iPad or was to hard to get done. I am a nerd/geek after all.

The iPad is still the coolest gadget I have and I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but it’s a supplement to my iMac, not a replacement.

Life on just the iPad doesn’t work for me. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

What better than wild animals in their natural environment? Cute animals in the comfort of the indoors

Cute animals at the petting zoo. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

Well I’ve been going through my old CDs and deciding which ones to get rid of. If I’m on the fence about any, I just import them into iTunes so I know I have them if I ever need a flashback moment.

Here is some of the stuff I hate to admit but I saved.

One Week by Barenaked Ladies

Livin’ La Vida Loca by Ricky Martin

Show Me Love by Robyn

No News by Lonestar

I’m No Superman (Scrubs theme) by Lazlo Bane

Wonderful by Everclear

Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous by Good Charlotte

Zoot Suit Riot by Cherry Poppin’ Daddies

I’m sure I’ll find lots more ‘treasures’ along the way too!!

Music I hate to admit that I saved. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

There’s nothing like sitting down for dinner and spending a little time with the family.

Family Time originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

WCCO was reporting 12-15 inches possible, KSTP said 6+ and most other stations were reporting a major snow storm.

Now we are a day away from the storm and what are they predicting? 2-4 inches say most stations with a few thinking as much as 5 or as little as 1.

This is why I don’t trust the weatherman.

Now I love the weather. It’s unpredictable, its beautiful, it’s powerful and it’s ever-changing. But I’ve learned over the years that you never trust a forecast more than 2 days out.

If you want to know what the weather is going to be like tomorrow, check the forecast. Want to know what the weather is going to be like next week? Guess.

To many times I’ve gotten excited about an upcoming storm only to see nothing come of it.

I’ll continue to watch the weather and enjoy the possibilities of what may come, but if we get bent out of shape over what might be, we’re getting ourself all worked up over nothing.

Enjoy today, think about tomorrow and worry about the future when it gets here.

And that’s why I don’t trust the weather man. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

The first thing I forgot was that I’d have to update my theme to make them work. Not only adding the custom function, but also writing the code to figure out if a post was a custom format or not. Then styling those differently as that is the whole point behind custom post formats.

So far I’ve got two custom post formats setup: quote and image. I think they look pretty nice, but they are not perfect.

For example, on my image post, it looks great on the site, but those reading via RSS got a HUGE image. I’ll have to play with image sizes and see how to make that better. Sadly the image size is an issue that’s not just magically controlled.

I really like how my quote post turned out, yet I could have probably done that before post formats too.

When it comes down to it, custom post formats are nice, but you still have to figure out how to make them look, and work, like you want them to.

I’m still a big fan of Tumblr’s simplicity and hopefully I can get everything updated around here to work more like I want. I just want it to be easy for me to create and share different types of content and have them showcased in a way that makes them different from all the rest.

Has anyone else tried out the custom post formats? What do you think?

Testing out WordPress custom post formats. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

It took many years and many feet of snow, but I’ve finally given in and we got our first snow blower.

I picked it up at Lowe’s earlier today and it barely fit into my car. But it rode in the passenger’s seat quite nicely.

It turns out snow blowers are harder to find in February than you’d think. They’ve all been replaced by grills! I first stopped at Home Depot and they only had two left; and they were way to big.

This little guy should work well at clearing our drive way and, more importantly, the end where the snowplow plows us in.

If this next storm hold out, it should get its first run tomorrow!!

We now own a snow blower. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

I ordered a few things from Amazon the other day and they decided to ship them to me in three different packages so that I could get them sooner; which was really nice since I didn’t have to pay more.

On Feb 9th I got notice that package 1 shipped. Feb 12th package 2 shipped. Feb 13th package 3 shipped.

Package 2 arrived on Feb 14th and package 3 arrived on Feb 15th. But where is package 1?

According to my tracking number, the status is ‘Shipment Accepted’ with an expected delivery date of February 15, 2011. It said that on the 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th.

On the 18th I tried to call USPS. Unfortunately all I got was automated messages and no way to get a live person. I then called a few post offices and no one answered.

Finally, after a half hour, someone I called actually answered the phone! A real person! They said my package hadn’t arrived at USPS yet. It was probably at FedEx as they ship things together sometimes. The only thing they could do was tell me to wait.

Annoyed by this whole situation I was complaining on Twitter. Shortly after I mentioned FedEx, @FedexAl responded to me asking how they could help. I explained the situation and they asked for me to email my tracking number in and they’d see what they could do.

WIN!

FedEx, by at least acknowledging my existence and making an effort to help, made me happy. I actually felt like someone cared; unlike all the automated messages at USPS and offices that didn’t pick up the phone.

FedEx confirmed that the package was at a post office in Minneapolis and had been there since February 11th. They even gave me the local phone number. Of course when I called them, no one answered. I did get voice mail so I left a message and am hoping someone will call me back.

I still really don’t know where my package is, or when I’ll arrive, but having a real person try to help makes a big difference. FedEx took the time to acknowledge my issue and help, even though it really wasn’t their problem.

Thanks FedEx!

FedEx rocks at customer service while USPS fails. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

I pass three of these on my way to work and they help me decide which path to take.

Some days they say it’ll take me 9 minutes to 35W via 494 and, even when I’m stopped dead in traffic, it eventually loosens up and an within about 9 minutes, I’m at 35W.

Other days, when it says it’ll take 26 minutes, that’s a good indication that I need to find an alternate route.

Thanks to Mn/DOT for installing these freeway signs as it makes my commute much more informed, which makes me much happier and less road ragey.

Freeway Drive Time Signs Are Amazingly Accurate originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com