New House

So for all of those who don't follow me on Twitter or Facebook, earlier this month Heather decided she wanted to start looking for a house. I was a bit reluctant because of what happened the last time we decided to check it out. Initially we were pre approved for far more then we wanted to spend, we also got a really good percentage rate of 5.6%. Another great selling point was the fact that right now the government has a First-Time Home Buyer Tax Credit. So Heather decided to initially look at houses on her own especially since she is home during the day and I'm at work. Then once she found some she really liked she would have me go back and check them out later. So her first day out she found a house she fell in love with, she looked at a couple more the next day, but none of them stood out to her as much as the one from the first day.

So we went out and looked at the house together (on Friday Aug. 21st), and I also loved the house, so we decided to make an offer, and a couple hours later they accepted it!

We had the house inspected today, and the Inspector said the house is in terrific shape! The foundation is good, the air conditioner is 6 years old & in good shape, the water heater is 3 years old & also in good shape, and the roof is less than a year old. We took the opportunity to take some photos of the house to show it off!

11 Random Facts About Michael Guymon

Eleven years ago today my Mom, my brother Ethan, and I gathered around my Mom's bed to say a prayer before we left for school. When the prayer was over the phone rang, and my Mom answered to hear that my father had rejected the machine that was helping him breath and had suffered a heart attack but they were able to revive him and asked that she come to the hospital. My mom hung up the phone and gave us the news, and asked if we wanted to go with her or go ahead and go to school. I had made up my mind a few weeks earlier that I wanted to have only memories of my father awake and alive. So I chose to go to school and Ethan chose to go with my mom.

My last memory of my father was right after I got back from a trip to Utah to visit my brother. While I was gone, my dad began having more trouble breathing on his own and had to return to the hospital. When I arrived he was awake and in good spirits, I stood beside his bed staring at him laying in an uncomfortable bed in a crowded room with nothing but a small white curtain to provide him with some privacy. His face was covered with a plastic oxygen mask, to which I said something to the sound of, "I'm surprised they were able to get one of those masks custom made to fit over your BIG nose."

And we all stood around and laughed. Shortly after that we had to leave, and my father told me not to worry about him, and that he would be fine. He said he was feeling better, and doing better. He gave me a hug to which if I concentrate I can still feel to this day, and told me that he loved me and took hold of my hand and stared me in my eye and told me how happy he was to see me, and how happy he was that I came to visit him. The very next day he took a turn for the worse and had to be forced into a coma and placed on a machine which breathed for him.

By the time I got to my second class of the day, which was Art class, I walked through the door and placed my back pack down on my desk and pulled my chair out and was about to sit down when a lady came over to me and said I needed to go with her. We walked back through the door to the bright sunlight and when the door shut on the other side stood John Durnford (who was my bishop at the time) who started out by saying, "Shane, I'm sorry but..." and I knew exactly what had happened. Before I left for school my mother told me she would call and let me know if anything else happened....

In memory of that day here are 11 Random Facts & Memories About My Father, Michael Guymon

1.) My father tried hard to stop drinking caffeine, but he had difficulty giving up Cherry Coke, which he drank in the form of a fountain drink in a black Texaco cup on a daily basis. He began referring to Cherry Coke as "Cherry Water", because throughout his campaign to stop drinking caffeine he also tried his hardest to rally the rest of us to join him. So when he saw me drinking a coke, or worse yet a Mountain Dew, he would give me a hard time. I would then ask, "What are you drinking?" and he would say, "Oh this... This is just cherry water."

2.) My dad was obsessed about us leaving lights on in the house. He was constantly circling the house turning off lights we left on and he would say, "If I had a nickel for every light you guys left on..."

3.) Almost every night you could find my dad roaming the house in his underwear and a flash light making his way to the air conditioner to make sure it was set to 80 degrees. Anytime it wasn't we would ALL have to hear about it the following morning. If you happened to be sleeping on the couch while he was on his way he would lean over and shine the flash light directly in your face asking, "Who is that... Oh it's you Shane!"

4.) My dad was VERY cold natured one of the reasons he chose to hang his hat in south Texas. So year round he would wear a jacket, cowboy boots, and a cowboy hat.

5.) He refused to turn on the air conditioner in the car because he firmly believed that the air conditioner didn't function until the car was moving at a speed of 60 mph or higher. Boy was that fun when the entire family (8) piled into our Ford van for a trip in the middle of the Texas summer.

6.) Similar to Batman my dad wore what we all referred to as his "Utility Belt" which held just about anything and everything a normal person would NEVER need. Some of the items were a pocket knife, glasses, pens, keys, and who knows what else.

7.) Despite Michael Jordan's greatness next to his brother Jimmy, Jerry West remained the greatest player to ever throw a leather ball through a round metal rim.

8.) My first job was my dad paying me 2 cents a minute to tickle his head. It is looking like I might have to do that to finally get someone other than my Mom to tickle my back or head (thanks to Heather deceiving).

9.) Often times I had to make my dad a bowl of ice cream. The problem was my dad was very picky about his ice cream, and sometimes it would take me 3 or four times to get it right. He loved Bluebell chocolate ice cream covered in a lake of Hershey's chocolate syrup. However the ice cream had to be somewhat melted as well. So I would scoop the ice cream out, then pour chocolate syrup over it and carry it over to him to find out if I had enough chocolate syrup or not, and to see if the ice cream was melted enough.

10.) He had a recurring nightmare that he once shared with us, that he would be playing basketball and standing at the free throw line in the middle of a game with tons of fans in the crowd. He would throw the ball as hard as he could towards the basket and it would barely reach the dotted line in the middle of the paint.

11.) My dad was a very quiet guy. He mostly kept to himself. For example, when we would eat out as a family as soon as he was finished with his food he would head straight to the car to wait for us. Even at home, whenever we ate together as a family as soon as he was finished with his food, he would head straight back to his room, regardless if it was just the family, or if company was over eating with us. If we went to a wedding reception or other get together you could always find my dad sitting all alone in the corner out of site.

Two Weeks: Grizzly Bear

Two Weeks - Grizzly Bear from Gabe Askew on Vimeo.

Beautiful music, and an amazing video. What is more amazing is the fact that this isn't even the actual video.

"This is a fan video I've been working on for a few months now. Not to be confused with the official music video which is really cool. Hope you like it."

Here's the actual music video for a comparison.

A Few Movies I'm Looking Forward to Hitting My Local Theaters

Alice In Wonderland

Because I LOVE Tim Burton's vision on movies, I've always been a fan of the original Disney cartoon, and beyond that it flat out looks DOPE!

District 9

I'm a sucker for Sci-Fi alien movies, I'm sorry I just am...

Holmes

Ever since I saw "Johnny Be Good" and "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" I've been a fan of Robert Downey Jr. I'm also a sucker for detective movies, and it's Sherlock Holmes.

The Book of Eli

I do my best to watch any movie Denzel Washington is in, so you combine that with my obsession with movies about the future, and well you got a giddy little boy inside of Shane that is dieing for this to hit the big screen.

Where the Wild Things Are

About a month before I found out that they were even making a movie, Heather bought Hannah this book, and for about a month straight without fail Hannah asked me to read that book to her before she went to bed. While reading the book Hannah would sit on her bed and play with toys and it always seems like I was reading it to myself. Until one night randomly she started just blurting out word for word what was written on the page as I was reading. She had pretty much memorized the entire book word for word (let that be a lesson, even when you think kids aren't paying any attention THEY ARE). I just started cracking up. This movie hits theaters right around my 29th birthday, so I told Hannah me and her would go see this on the BIG screen for my birthday, and she is super excited, as am I.

Despicable Me

I just like animated movies.

The Goods: Live Hard. Sell Hard.

Jeremy Piven is a pretty funny dude, plus the every time I see the trailer I just start cracking up throughout the entire thing.

Inglourious Basterds

I'm not a HUGE fan of Quentin Tarantino (the only movies I've liked of his are: Kill Bill 1 & 2, Jackie Brown, Sin City, & Grindhouse), but I am a HUGE fan of Brad Pitt, and do my best to see any movie he is in. Based off of the trailer, this movie looks funny, quirky, bloody, & AWESOME!

Tron Legacy

It's Disney, about the future, & animated.

Brothers

Because I like Natalie Portman, Tobey Maguire, & Jake Gyllenhaal.

Stop following directions and start designing

"Of course it is totally understandable to take the ideas of those that pay our bills as gospel. But we should also be reminded that those same people hired us for our expertise. If they just wanted someone to follow orders, they’d probably have hired someone else."

Read the entire article.

Her Morning Elegance

Oren Lavie - Her Morning Elegance
by IgnitionVM

One of the better music videos I have seen in a long time, the song isn't too hard on the ears either.

Hannah Can Swim

Hannah finally got brave enough to swim around in the pool with a flotation device, which was REALLY exciting for us, because I really want her to learn how to swim with as much time as we spend in the pool during the summer.

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™