Connor Michael Guymon

Connor Michael Guymon was born at 12:09pm weighing in at 8 pounds and 1 ounce and measuring 20 inches. He has a full head of hair no chin and what seems to be the first appearances of the Guymon nose.

Click here to view ALL of the photos

Here's the story:

Heather emailed me at work around 4:45pm on Tuesday July 28th letting me know that she talked to her doctor who set her up to be induced at 6:00am on Wed July 29th. Just as I was finishing up my projects for the day and sending out an email informing everyone that I wouldn't be there tomorrow. I got a phone call from Heather telling me she would really like to go eat at Chili's one last time as a family of a one child household. Ten to fifteen minutes later at 6:00pm I get a phone call where Heather said, "Change of plans, my water just broke I need you home NOW!"

So off I went, I got there and Lyndsee Bates was nice enough to take Hannah for the night, and the majority of the next day. So I had enough time to grab a few things and throw them in a bag and give Hannah a few hugs goodbye.

Then off Heather and I went to the hospital, we got there at like 7:00pm. They ran a check to make sure that her water did REALLY break, after the test came back positive, they began hooking Heather up to everything and getting her prepped and ready to have a baby. She was already having small contractions regularly and was already dilated to 3 and a half centimeters. So the doctor chose to just let her go and see how everything developed.

The first plan of action was to make a decision about putting Heather on petocin to speed up the contraction & labor process or not. That was supposed to be done at 11:00, but actually didn't happen until an hour or so later. They didn't end up putting her on petocin until 4:00am when although her contractions were getting worse she wasn't really progressing as far as being dilated or any closer to being able to actually push.

So we sat and waited and waited and waited... Lucky for us Heather's BFF Heidi Fling made the courageous voyage from San Antonio to help entertain Heather.

They started the petocin at a very slow drip, and so nothing really progressed although her contractions got closer and closer together and more intense. Heather said they were at a 5 on the pain scale, but she never appeared to be in pain, only said it was uncomfortable. So she asked for an epidural, but that wasn't until almost 10:30am on July 29th. Which was over 16 hours of labor. Heather was super happy and content with her epidural, and everything was much more calm and relaxing then. About an hour later Heather started saying she was feeling some pressure during each contraction, and thought maybe Connor was finally starting to move down. So she told the nurse, who didn't ever actually check her in anyway, but rather said, "Well let me know when it is a lot of pressure."

Thirty minutes later the nurse and the doctor came into the room to check to see if Heather was any farther dialated, and when the doctor lifted up the blanket Connor's head was sticking out already. The doctor said, "Whoa you are having a baby, DON'T MOVE, BREATH, LAUGH, TALK, or ANYTHING!" He ran out of the room pulled in his tools and everything sat down, and Connor immediately fell out, and Heidi was nice enough to cut the chord for us, and off he went to the sidelines to get measured, and cleaned. I began snapping photos and enjoying the moment, and thanking heavenly Father for blessing us with a beautiful healthy baby boy!

IQ font = Awesome

"When a car inspires a font to a group of designers, the result, as you can see above, is necessarily surprising.

Check out the website
Download the font
Enjoy™

4th of July

We made the hop, skip, & jump on down to San Antonio to meet up with Mom (Grandma), Mark, Maile, Marissa, Michaela, Matt, & Ethan for some good ol' family FUN time! I made sure to remember our camera and even better I actually captured some great memories.

Other than Ethan grilling up some killer steaks, making a trip to Walmart, and a bargain hunting trip to Big Lots with Mark it was just good ol family time spent indoors. We did try to make a trip to the park but the girls only lasted about 20 minutes. After 5 minutes they were asking to leave saying, "It's hot & we've been here for FOREVER!"

Enjoy™

Hide & Seek

Good, Great, Greatest

Lately I've been thinking a lot about what goes into being good, great, or greatest at something. So I came up with a few ideas. The tricky part with this is how the words, "good", "great", & "greatest" are very relative in their definition. What I mean by that is, the definition of all of these will vary dependent on the person and their given experience with whatever they are applying the word to. You also have to apply the element of opposition, you can only know sweet by also knowing bitter, but then your degree of what you consider sweet will vary dependent on the amount of sweetness you have experienced. So yeah, this is a pretty complicated subject as you can see, but let's just take this little journey, and feel free to chime in with your comments and we will see if we can come up with something memorable in the end.

GOOD:

To be good at something I feel that you first need to learn the fundamental aspects of that something. As an example let's use basketball, although this can be applied to almost anything. So to be a good basketball player first you must learn the fundamentals of the game. Once you have a solid comprehension of the fundamentals I feel you are well on your way to being good. The next step is to actually practice, and by practicing you slowly begin to make progress. The more you practice the better you become.

GREAT:

To be considered GREAT, I feel you need to not only have a solid foundation of the fundamental aspects that govern whatever you are striving to be great at, but you also need to have an added degree of focus. This focus involves a higher degree of practice. You also must begin to find people who are already great or even greatest and begin to emulate them. I remember as a kid I began trying to play like my favorite basketball players, as well as my older brother. I would see him (or them) do different moves and then start practicing them. Gatorade didn't chose to use "I Wanna Be Like Mike" as their marketing campaign for no reason you know? Thats also why people wear "WWJD" wristbands as well. Trying to emulate Jesus is never a bad thing.

Even applying this to web design, I am always looking at the people who I feel are great or even greatest and then I try to emulate them not as people, but as designers.

GREATEST:

I think to get to the greatest category it comes down to your level of commitment, focus, and most importantly the details. The majority of guys you see in professional sports or the Olympics eat, sleep, and drink their sport. Just look at how hard Michael Phelps trains for example:

"Bowman actually started training Michael Phelps when the Phelps was still 11 years old. He pushed Phelps to swim at least 50 miles each week. According to him, kids at that age, is able to increase the size of their hearts and lungs in ways that no longer possible later on. The larger the heart and lungs, the bigger the aerobic engine. Phelps has been training almost 5 hours a day and 7 days a week without any rest day. Bowman admitted that he has trained the star to the extent that Phelps has little time or energy left at the end of the day for anything except to eat, sleep or occasionally watch the television. Phelps has to swim on his birthdays and Christmas too. He probably has missed some of the things he should have enjoyed at his age, but he has probably gained much than what he has missed. By the way, Bowman was a college swimmer before he became coach and he has a degree in child psychology. That helps, I guess.

Click here for the full article

The thing to be worried about when you are looking to be in the greatest category to me, is you really need to think about your priorities in life. In all reality the only things I want to be greatest in are being a father, & a husband. When you chose something like a vocation to be greatest in, you really are sacrificing a lot of other aspects of your life in order to become greatest. Most insanely successful individuals go through countless divorces, and have poor relationships with their children and family. It's all due to the amount of focus and commitment you have to have to reach the level of greatest.

If your vocation, sport, or hobby is that important to you, then I suppose it is all worth it. To me I would much rather be considered the GREATEST dad, or the GREATEST husband. So to do so, I believe I have to stay focused on what it is that makes a person the greatest dad, or husband.

CLOSING REMARKS

That is why I am more than happy with simply being great at designing websites, or basketball for that matter (if I can even be considered great that is). I am not saying that ALL people who are in this greatest category don't have great relationships with their families. I'm also just not confident that you can truly be greatest at more than one thing. Perhaps this only applies to me, and my capacities.

I do feel like in regards to web design I am at that stage where I am constantly trying to analyze what makes other web designers great. I have also changed the way I look at the world in general. When I go to the grocery store I am constantly looking at package designs, posters, and displays for different aesthetic aspects, and how effective they are. When I drive down the road I pay close attention to each and every billboard, as I sit in the mall while Hannah is playing I sit and stare at the Dillards logo and get irritated by the poor kerning of the letters. When I watch TV I pay very close attention to most commercials and the little details involved such as the fonts used, colors, music, camera angles, cinematography, and more. Similar things happen to me when I watch a movie, even my basketball watching experience has changed since I now over analyze the graphics on the screen. How they display the score and other statistics throughout the game. I flip through magazines not only to read the articles, but also to enjoy the layout and graphical elements of the magazine in general. I try to figure out what type of grid was used in the design of the magazine. There are countless other ways that my attempts to become a better designer has changed the entire way I see and interact with the world. Like I said, that to me is the only way to become great at it.

I am also constantly looking at web galleries, and almost stalking each and every web designer I feel are some of the best in the world. I visit their blogs on almost a daily basis. I subscribe to different design related magazines and do my best to read them from cover to cover.

I just hope I never allow myself to focus more on design, or basketball than I do my daughter, soon to arrive son, and wife. I think back to my youth, and how I did similar things in regards to basketball. My junior year I began shooting at least 100 three pointers a day, as well as 50 free throws. If I would of known what I know now, I probably would of gone the extreme route of Michael Phelps, because at that time in my life basketball and being successful was almost everything to me. At least I told myself that, I didn't have the focus and work ethic to quite back it up. I think many times people want to be great so bad, but don't want to actually put in the work necessary to obtain it. Mostly because they see someone that is already at that level, and don't pay close enough attention to see what that person actually did to get to that point. They just see their fame, money, & talent and covet it.

What are your thoughts?

Growing Up

Heather took Hannah to get her picture taken. I decided to go back into the archive to see the change from last year to this year. My little girl is getting all growed up on me...

It's just sad as a parent you have to just sit back and slowly watch the innocence and purity of a child slowly get stripped away as they get pulled away into the beautiful struggle that is life and our pursuit to find happiness.

Celebrating Four Years of Life!

Back on Saturday May 23rd we had a swim party for Hannah. I made a website to send out as our invite, which I thought was a good idea. It was a way I could flex my design muscles at the world, and also what I felt was a conveniently simple way to both spread the word and allow people to have a constant reference to go refer to. We placed a "wish list" on their with links to the actual product or examples for the many times we get asked, "What does Hannah want for her birthday?" We also placed a very simple contact form to allow us to get a head count so we knew how much cake and drinks to supply.

The website didn't seem to help with ANY of these things. Perhaps we sent it out too early, and maybe we should of shot out a second email blast as the date got closer, but then we didn't want to seem like we were BEGGING people to come. Some people showed up that didn't email (which we were still VERY happy you came!). Others emailed and didn't show up. Everyone still asked the inevitable question, "What does Hannah want?" Oh well it was alot of fun to design, and I mainly did it for myself anyways.

The party was a HUGE success, not everyone showed up that we had hoped would be there (Grand Dad, Nana, Jacob, Caleb, Matt (Heather's brother), Kari, Mark, Maile, Marrissa, & Michaela, Emily, Seth, & Asher) but everyone that did show up seemed to have a good time, and Hannah had a blast. We appreciated ALL of the presents, and the wonderful conversations and company. Hannah is still talking about her party!

So I know it's late, but I finally got around to uploading ALL of the photos from the party so click on over to check them all out!

Bing?

There are plenty of other blogs and sources critiquing the functionality and efficacy of Bing, so what truly brings us all here today is the sad, awful, unforgivable mutilation that has been done to these four poor letters of the Latin alphabet.

—By Armin

TypeKit

As a Typekit user, you’ll have access to our library of high-quality fonts. Just add a line of JavaScript to your markup, tell us what fonts you want to use, and then craft your pages the way you always have. Except now you’ll be able to use real fonts. This really is going to change web design.

—Introducing Typekit

Now this sounds VERY promising, something I am VERY excited about!

Don't Chase Money

"Don't go after clients because of the money. Be sure the client fits your culture. Angelo says, (of David&Goliath) "We look at our client partners as an integral part of the brand. They're as much a part of our place as anyone here."

words by: Julie Prendiville Roux in an article published in the Communication Arts Interactive Annual 15

I don't think anyones primary goal in business or in life should be money. When you REALLY think about it, everyones primary goal in life is to be happy, so why not make that your primary goal in business as well. If you are thinking, "money will make me happy." Well that is a sad and slippery slope to be on, because you will never make enough money for that to REALLY happen.

Which is the fastest browser?

The tables and charts on these pages are compiled from thousands of Peacekeeper results from users all around the world. The figures are updated as new results come in. The table below shows how the five major browsers score in Peacekeeper. For each browser we show you the results from the current release and the latest beta build. Most people will be better off using the stable release but there are always people, like us, who have to have the latest of everything.

Yet another reason why not to use Internet Explorer. Make the switch to a better, faster, & more efficient browser today! Don't be fooled by merely upgrading to Internet Explorer 8, because Internet Explorer isn't keeping up with the rest of the browsers out there, so although IE8 may be somewhat better than IE6 or IE7, it still flat out SUCKS when compared to the competition.

If you are using a PC I would suggest switching to Google Chrome or Firefox. If you are using a Mac, just stick with Safari, although I seriously doubt anyone using a mac is actually using Internet Explorer for anything but testing. If you haven't upgraded to Safari 4, you might want to check it out though.

FUNday!

Perhaps you have either seen me write this on my Facebook status, or you might follow me on twitter. Either way I've been getting a lot of people interested in this whole FUNday and what it is all about. You see back when I was in highschool I always remembered Fridays being this special day, you had TGIF on television when you got home from school, often times in elementary school Fridays were reserved for watching a movie, and you also got to look forward to a fun filled weekend in which Friday was the day to kick start it all off. Since graduating from school Fridays slowley become just another day. So when I moved here to Austin, I decided to make Fridays special again. It all started with me just casually greeting my friends at Practice Cafe with a "Happy FUNday" as aposed to the usual "Good Morning."

That slowly has evolved into me finding new ways to set Friday apart from the rest of the days and make them FUN. My favorite color is red, so I started wearing red sox, and a red shirt to help set the mood, with only a few exceptions I have also worn a pair of red shoes to work as well. I'm also a huge fan of fountain drinks, so I usually will try to run by the gas station and pick up a cold refreshing cup of goodness on my way to work. While at work I always try to stay focused on making it a FUNday. Many times that means listening to some FUN songs while I work, doing something different for lunch, or tuning into Layer Tennis when it is going on.

So I would love to invite each of you to also join the movement. This doesn't mean to adopt my same exact practices, but instead just find the little things you can do to help boost your mood and set the day apart. For me it's the color red and a fountain drink, most likely for you it is something else.

Happy FUNday!

Summer Fun in the Sun!

May 4th I got home from work and noticed 1.) Hannah & Heather were outside playing 2.) There were an abundance of kids swimming in the pool. So I said, what the heck, and asked Hannah if she wanted to go see how cold the water was. So we ran over there and I thought the water was still a tad bit cold for my taste, but Hannah was loving it. So we ran inside and threw on her brand new bathing suite. So that has officially kicked off our Summer fun in the sun!

Above is actually a video I took on May 5th, which was actually our second and longer day swimming (which was also the day I actually remembered to grab my camera).

Click your way over to my Flickr page if you'd like to view more fun photos of Hannah in the pool.

Space Walking

First I thought she was doing some sort of an interpretive dance, but later she informed us that she was "space walking"

Enjoy™

Lessons of the Heart

Oh when the wild was all covered by snow,
I forgot the colours that the grass tend to grow.
Oh the trees were all leafless,
And lifeless and black,
And I wondered if the leaves could grow back

For your heart is like a flower as it grows,
And its the rain, not just the sun that helps it bloom,
And you don't know how it feels to be alive,
Until you know how it feels to die

The lyrics of Noah and the Whale are so good, I always enjoy to constantly be reminded that life is about both the good and the bad, and that we must have the bad to know the good. The bitter to appreciate the sweet and so forth.

The Beauty of Forgiveness

The beautiful thing about forgiveness is that it can be given freely to all without asking anything in return. Forgiveness does not demand an apology from an offender, it doesn't require justice to be served, nor does it require forgiveness to be reciprocated. When we forgive ourselves as well as others who may have offended us or wronged us we are able to make the first steps to becoming happy.

James E. Faust said:

“Forgiveness is freeing up and putting to better use the energy once consumed by holding grudges, harboring resentments, and nursing unhealed wounds. It is rediscovering the strengths we always had and relocating our limitless capacity to understand and accept other people and ourselves.”

"Most of us need time to work through pain and loss. We can find all manner of reasons for postponing forgiveness. One of these reasons is waiting for the wrongdoers to repent before we forgive them. Yet such a delay causes us to forfeit the peace and happiness that could be ours. The folly of rehashing long-past hurts does not bring happiness."

In order to forgive ourselves and others we must become humble, and selfless (un-selfish). One of the best tools I have learned in the forgiving process is to apologize even when you don't feel as though you need to apologize.

It is funny to me that through becoming selfless we are truly able to find ourselves. This being a difficult process by the very nature of man. I believe C. S. Lewis said it better than I when he said:

“The moment you have a self at all, there is a possibility of putting yourself first—wanting to be the centre—wanting to be God, in fact. That was the sin of Satan: and that was the sin he taught the human race. Some people think the fall of man had something to do with sex, but that is a mistake. . . . What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could ‘be like gods’—could set up on their own as if they had created themselves—be their own masters—invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come . . . the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”

I began to first comprehend this concept during my time in brazil, but it didn't truly sink in until I locked eyes for the very first time with my daughter, and it only has been magnified during the past 3 (almost 4) years of her life. Dallin H. Oaks expressed it recently in a talk he gave about "Unselfish Service" where he said;

"...the sacrifice parents make for their children. Mothers suffer pain and loss of personal priorities and comforts to bear and rear each child. Fathers adjust their lives and priorities to support a family."

I recently tweeted, "Unselfishness is the pathway to happiness." while listening to Dallin H. Oaks talk I began to connect the dots where forgiveness and unselfishness are interwoven and connected. Whereby you can not forgive yourself or another without being unselfish, likewise you can not be unselfish without forgiving yourself and others.

I believe the one single emotion we all strive for in this life is happiness. Sadly the majority of us fall into the natural trap that C.S. Lewis described as being "the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy."

Enjoying the Sound

Lately I've been listening to Noah and the Whale both at work and in my car. Hannah is even a fan, requesting we keep the song below on constant repeat while strolling down the ave. Their music reminds me of a Wes Anderson film, which is basically me saying it's good!

"On the surface the name Noah and the Whale seems to be a mashup of biblical stories. In reality it’s an homage to Noah Baumbach’s film The Squid and the Whale. If you only listen to Noah and the Whale’s single “5 Years Time” you’ll think they were a sunny quirk-pop group. In reality their music is a tasty cake made from many ingredients, from twee to shoegaze. What’s that old expression about judging a book by something?"

here's the full story


Enjoy™

Dr. Appointment

She was wearing a pink toy stethoscope around her neck as she looked straight at me with her blue eyes and said, "Don't call me Hannah, call me Dr. Appointment."

SXSW Interactive: Day One

Well I left work around 12:30 and had to deposit my paycheck and then headed downtown to the Austin Convention Center (ACC). It took me awhile to find a place to park, and walk to the ACC. I walked and chatted with two guys who flew in from Australia, and would of stuck around with them if it wasn't for the fact that I still needed to check in and get my badge. So there was this HUGE virtually endless line that I had to get into. Two hours later I had my badge and my bag of swag and was on my way to my very first panel (what should of been my second) "Oooh, That's Clever! (Unnatural Experiments in Web Design)" by Paul Annett of Clearleft Ltd.
Paul gave a very entertaining and inspirational presentation. He started out by showing a video he made and posted on YouTube (as seen below)

He froze paused it and showed a clip that caught a lot of peoples attention of a part in the trick where it appears that he is holding two cards in one hand (when he should be holding one). So people began to feel like they figured out the trick and knew this little secreat.

He then compared that to little secrets in design such as "the arrow" in the "FedEx" logo (in the white space created in between the "E" & "X").
His next example was how his company Clear Left threw up this landing page for an idea they had for some software called Silverback. If you resize your browser window on their site, you will notice an interesting 3-D effect with the vines. This small little detail (that most people would never noticed) caught the attention of a few web designers who twittered about it and in one day their site received over 20,000 hits and half of the people signed up to receive updates. All this happened before they even had an actual product.

He then went on to show a ton of other examples of small little hidden gems people place on their websites that when found become these little secrets that people can't help but brag about knowing and spread the word.

My second and last panel of the day was AWESOME! It was a panel by Alex Bogusky of Crispin Porter+Bogusky (they are the advertising firm behind such things as "The Truth" campaign, Burger King ads, Volkswagen, & Mini) called, "Plan B: Can an Ad Guy Bring Bike Sharing to America?" It was kicked off with a FREE red or blue T-shirt that were passed out right before he grabbed the mic.
So he started out by talking about his company and how they are different from other advertising companies. how many offices & employees they have, and went through different solutions they came up with for companies. He started with "The Truth" campaign and how up until that point whenever people would market or advertise to kids negatively about cigarettes they would focus on 2 things, "They are un healthy" and "Gross." After questioning their target market they started to realize taht the youth didn't care if cigarrettes can kill you, and they didn't think they were gross. So they had to had to convince these people to take a different approach without actually proving to them that their idea would REALLY work. The main theme of his presentation was, "Sticking your nose where it doesn't belong."

The meat of his panel consisted of him telling us how the idea of bringing "Bike Sharing" to the US came about, and how it was very humble beginnings, and how after just talking and throwing out ideas with different people, that lead to getting in contact with someone else who lead to another person and now they have started the program in 4-6 cities as B-Cycle.

Two of the more interesting things Alex Bogusky said came in the question & answer portion after he was done with his presentation. Someone asked where he felt marketing was headed in the future. He then candidly said, "I have no clue." He went on to say that back in the day people were telling him that in 5-10 years there would be NO MAGAZINES (something I still here today) and that VHS was going to take over, because people would much rather watch something that read it. Here we are in 2009 and although magazine subscriptions are declining, they are still very much around, with brand new magazines still popping up all the time. Anyways he then said something that was right in line with my personal philosophy not only on marketing/advertising but also life which is, "I only look 15 minutes into the future."

Because in all reality it is virtually impossible to try and predict what is going to be happening in 5-10 years. There are far too many variables involved in these types of things. I mean for all we know Global Warming is going to swallow us all up in 5 years and there won't be ANY marketing at all...

Anyways I always try to stay grounded in the present. I don't want to spend my life looking in the past at, "what could of been." Nor do I want to look too far into the future at, "what could be waiting for me in the future." But rather I would like to just enjoy TODAY (I could go on and on with this subject so I will stop now).

The other thing he said was an interesting quote,

"Be the change you want to see in the world."

So that was day one of SXSWi (south by southwest interactive). I'm looking forward to a full day tomorrow jam packed with some potentially inspiring panels as well.

Why Mormons Build Temples

"Throughout history, the Lord has commanded His people to build temples. Temples are literally houses of the Lord. They are holy places of worship where individuals make sacred promises with God."

Comcast Goes Juno

Comcast went all Juno on us in their newest advertsing campaign, by singing parodies of a quirky little song by Kimya Dawson called "Loose Lips" (I was going to post the song here, but the last verse isn't very family friendly. They edited the song in the movie, and I really wish I could find THAT version somewhere, but click on the link and it will send you to the song if you want to hear it.) from the movie Juno and I like it. Not like it matters since we live in Time Warner land and don't have the option of having Comcast, I do enjoy watching their commercials, BUT I sure do miss The Slowskys.