As I was browsing around on the net this morning I realized that I haven’t updated this site in well over a year.  The last year has managed to keep me very busy and left me no time to be able to practice writing on the blog.  Here’s a look at what I have been up to over the last year both at work and in my personal life.

Work Related Happenings

General Pacific Conservation
G.P. has kept me very busy at work dealing with all kinds of wonderful new things.  In May(ish) of last year G.P. launched their new conservation department that focuses on water and energy conservation products for utility and contractor customers. I worked on building this department a new e-commerce site at www.gpconservation.com that allows individuals to purchase our conservation products using a credit card online. Due to the SEO and code I put into place on the site, this quickly become the highest traffic site that G.P. owns. If you need any CFL light bulbs or a new water heater , then you should go check it out.

The conservation department also started doing a fair bit of business putting together energy savings kits for utilities and mailing them to utility customers. To make this affordable for the utilities I spent a great deal of time learning the ins and outs of the United States Postal Service and how to get the best deals when shipping boxes. Over the last year it feels like I have become an expert in this particular field, however the time and effort has really paid off for the company. Now a year later we have been able to mail out thousands of packages to residents all over the northwest and it only cost us a fraction of what UPS or FedEX would have charged.

Just a little over a year later our conservation department has expanded twice in terms of individuals and good opportunities help the department continue to grow.

Weberz Hosting
Weberz has been awesome. We have so many things going on around Weberz that it’s very hard for me to put them together where someone else would actually understand it. We have been working on adding IPv6 to our network, server virtualization, and a new hosting control panel. I would go into more details about these things but many of them depend on another project that hasn’t yet been released. More news will come on this…

We have also been focusing a lot of energy on marketing Weberz to get some more customers. Lately we have giving away some free hosting to good companies and sites that can help us build our search engine rankings to obtain more customers. Keep an eye on the Weberz blog for more information about our hosting company and it’s network.

 Personal Life Happenings

The last year has been very big as far as the home life is concerned. First we took a couple of trips..

The So-Cal Tour
My Wife and I took a trip from our Portland lives and drove down to southern California to visit San Diego, Anaheim, and my sisters family in Modesto. In San Diego we got to visit Sea World, the San Diego Zoo, and the San Diego Animal Park. Sea World was awesome and we participated in one of their “special experiences” where we got to interact with the dolphins. It was pretty neat but I am not sure it was worth the money.

The San Diego Zoo was pretty neat as my Wife and I are big Oregon Zoo go’ers. It was nice to see some of the animals we dont have here locally, however I don’t recommend trying to do the entire zoo in one day. There are a lot of hills to walk up and down and the zoo is massive. It certainly can be done in a day but you’re definitely going to be tired.

The San Diego Animal Park was pretty great. If you’re going to go here definitely use one of their ”special experiences” such as the photo caravan tour. The park is larger than the zoo and a large majority of the animals are kept in large habitats that are acres in size. You can view these habitats by going to overlook areas they have setup, however the photo caravan was a much better way to go. The photo caravan drove us into the habitats where we can to see the animals come right up to the back of the truck where you can take some pretty amazing pictures. On the photo caravan we also we able to feed a giraffe and a rhino.

Once we were done messing around in San Diego we met my Wife’s parents in Anaheim and spent a week goofing off at Disneyland and California Adventure.  Always a good time!

The Seattle Tour
I have lived in Portland for 30+ years and never took the time to go see Seattle when it’s only 3 hours away by car. In Nov my Wife and I drove up to Seattle to visit her cousins and her sister. We had a great time and visited some of the tourist attractions that Seattle has to offer. We spent some time walking around the Pike Place Market, of course my wife had to visit the first Starbucks, and we also went over to visit the Space Needle. All this was fun and we will have to go back soon so we can see some of the other great things that Seattle has to offer. In general we just had a great time hanging out with Sam, Knud, Elise, Shawn, and Dana.

Puppy Crisis
Besides our trips we also had to deal with a puppy crisis which just sucked. Anyone who has heard me talk about my dog Diasy knows that she isn’t the brightest crayon in the box. For a basic run down, Daisy is a AKC registered black lab who is small, can’t swim, and doesn’t like water. Yes, we are sure she is a lab.. Thanks for asking.

Well Daisy decided she didn’t want to go to obedience class one morning so she decided to jump out the window of the car while we were driving down the road. Yeah, I know. I’ll continue when you quit laughing… Done? OK. So when she hit the pavement she shattered her Patella, knee cap. After an emergency surgery, and thousands of dollars later, she had a rod bolted through her leg for 12 weeks and had to be helped when walking around. Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep a 2 year old black lab from walking? Now after all the surgeries and exercises she is back to around 95% of where she was and the doctors couldn’t be happier. The only time she has a problem now is when she tries to run for too long of a time period. This is just something we will have to keep an eye on for as long as she is around, which better be a long time.

Paul Richard
The last thing that has happened over the last year is that my Wife has given birth to a beautiful baby boy. Paul Richard Rolfe was born just over a month ago and weighted in at 8lbs 3 ounces. Currently he is at the unique age where all he does is eat, sleep and scream. Here’s a picture for those that haven’t seen him yet..

Moving Forward
I think going forward here for a bit we are going to have some technical how to articles being posted to this site.  I am doing some very exciting things with Weberz at the moment and have noticed there’s a distinct lack of articles on the net to help. As I figure some of the things out, I will be adding documentation here so it will help others in the future.