I created a Desktop Wallpaper Calendar for the month of October 2009.  I’ve never done this before.  I think it came out pretty cool.  I have two different versions – one as a JPG without the frame and one as a PNG with the frame. With the PNG, you can add your own photos underneath and resave it.

Here is what my desktop looks like

Download the correct size for your screen or iphone. Just click the download link and RIGHT CLICK – SAVE AS and save the image to your own computer.

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Came across this quote this morning and thought I’d share…

I was playing with my husband’s iphone last night to see what apps he had installed.  I noticed he had the Sci-Fi Wire app installed that displays the latest in SciFi news.  So I of course clicked it. :)  The very first post I saw was 17 amazing sci-fi themed cakes… WOW!  Some of these are really cool… well all of them are really cool.. but some are REALLY intricate… wow…  My three favorites are

The Death Star

The Borg

And Minias Tirith

Check them all out at 17 amazing sci-fi themed cakes.

A new blog design has been LONG overdue… This time around I decided to really “design” something instead of my usual boring basic blog design.

I spent about 2-3 weeks creating the design in Photoshop.  I worked on it here and there.  I think it came out pretty nice.  After that, I spent about a week or so coding it – on and off.  In the past, I would usually find a free word press theme that I liked and tweak the code/design of that theme.  This time, I started with a completely blank wordpress design.

I came across a post on wordpress frameworks on Smashing Magazine.  I downloaded about 7-8 of them and took a look at the code to see which was more my style.  I ended up using one of Anna Linea’s frameworks as my starting point.  Along the way I learned some new coding tricks – and some old tricks that have been around for awhile but I was ignorant of.  I find that I like “designing” as much as I like “coding”.  It’s been so long since I’ve done both and I definitely enjoyed myself.

So what you now see is my “final” product.  I didn’t bother doing any cross browser checking so I have no clue how this looks in older browsers.  Hopefully not too bad.

Well the time has finally come… the time to say goodbye to the dedicated server. I can’t believe I’m blogging about this – admitting it to myself was hard enough.  Maybe putting it out there for everyone to see will help me move past it.

After some soul searching and serious thinking for the past few weeks, I have decided that I need to get rid of my dedicated server. In the next couple of weeks, I’m going to be moving my personal websites to a shared environment and getting rid of my hosting clients. I still have a few from the RTech days – like 5.  But I simply can’t afford the server anymore – for the first time in almost 10 years. My online “business” isn’t really a business anymore… economy or poor choices or laziness or whatever… the fact is I am not making enough money to cover the server anymore. And that has been incredibly hard for me to admit to myself let alone blog about it… So I’m going back to basics for awhile which means getting rid of most of my business expenses including the server. The few hosting clients I have just don’t cover the cost of the server for the year and my income isn’t doing that either anymore.

I have been running some form of online business since 2000. I started with web design and then grew it to be more of a small biz hosting service. hosting got way to stressful for me. As more and more of my clients were starting to make good money from their websites the need to be able to offer real 24/7 support increased. And by the end of 2004 after losing hard drives on 3 different servers it was time to call it quits. I probably could have grown the biz by adding staff but the reality was I didn’t want the stress that comes with running a hosting business anymore.

Since then I have been focused more on designing and for the past 2 years, I have put A LOT of money into getting a licensing business off the ground… and it just isn’t getting there right now. I honestly think we put the horse before the cart and went wild with spending instead of growing the biz a little first. We had “licensing educated” people tell us that we needed to invest a lot upfront – money to trademark , money for lawyer contract, money for “coaching”, money for tradeshows.  HA!  Maybe the trademark and the contracts piece was worth it but I think we spent way to much money on “coaching” which didn’t end up paying for itself – in my opinion – and we probably didn’t need to exhibit that first year like we did. A lot of the coaching was just common business sense and often on phone calls I would get frustrated because we weren’t learning anything all that new.

I have always built foundations before spending a lot of money to grow my businesses but in this case I spent goober money without having a base to support the everyday expenses of running it. A hard lesson for me I guess. Decisions that if I had to do them over again I would choose differently. We dug ourselves a huge hole and have been trying to dig ourselves out during the worst economy in my lifetime. So I made the decision to go back to grass roots – somewhere I haven’t been since I started my first online business in 2000. I’m getting rid of all my heavy business expenses including the server.

Back in April, Rick and I finally cleaned up our personal finances and they have stayed cleaned. We paid off our car, our HELO, refinanced, and put our expenses in order.  I even blogged about it – here. We are now living on a cash basis and only charge gas each month. I really do not want my biz expenses creeping into our personal finances especially now that they are back on track. We still have a few bumps every now and then and are learning how to be cash base again but I can’t and won’t go back to the financial nightmare we had been living for the past 3 years.

So… this means that my biz expenses have to be drastically cut to the point where any money I bring in can start paying down that debt not just breaking even.  So for the first time in almost 10 years, I am going back to shared hosting which trust me has not been an easy decision at all for me.

I have been looking at HostGator as a possible host to transfer to. I still can’t believe their plan and I’ve always been of the opinion that those plans fail. However, they have been around for awhile and are not fly-by-night. I’m sure there will be bumps in the road – like servers going down because the load is crazy… but if I’m just hosting myself, it’s not a such a priority at this point. They seem to have a decent reputation and have been around awhile. Cost is just a bigger concern for me right now. Anyway, I am planning on moving all of my personal accounts over to them within the next few weeks.

As an aside to all this – When I was at my cousins wedding reception this past Sunday, my aunt made a comment to me that in the moment I laughed off.  But it’s been nawing at me over the past few days.  I had told her that Jeanine was going to have to start looking for freelance work outside of KV because KV was just not bringing in money right now.  She said “Yeah, she needs to find a way to earn real money and stop playing business with you”….  hmm… I’m sure she didn’t mean that in a hurtful way but it has made me stop and wonder if that is what I look like to my family – outside of Rick who has always supported me in whatever I’m doing.  I’m “playing business”??  I have NEVER thought that EVER.  In fact, I have always considered RTech incredibly successful for just being a little company that a stay at home mom raising twins who were under 4 at the time.  I created a business that I eventually turned around and sold.  Not for a crazy sum but for a few tens of thousands.   I built something that someone else saw enough value in to want to buy it.  That has to count for something.

Part of me is sad and frustrated with myself that it got to this point.  The other part is actually happy because it’s like a fresh start.  I have reinvented myself before and I can certainly do it again.

Back at the beginning of July, Rick and I started the P90X workout from Beachbody.  I had seen infomericals for this program a few times over the past 6 months and wanted to try it.  I knew it would be tough and I wouldn’t be in the best starting shape.  However, the idea that the workout was all about weights and muscle confusion – and had a workout style more like what I was looking  for – really peeked my interest.

After the first week of the program, I showed Rick and told him I thought we should do it together.  We both need to lose weight and are quickly approaching the BIG 4-0 number (which as Rick kindly reminds me often, I’ll hit it first).  Our bodies have slowed considerably during the past 10 years and I felt (and still do) that if we don’t try to get our weight and eating habits under control now, it’ll just get that much harder as we get older.  Rick agreed and so we started working out daily – together.

Every night when he comes home from work, we put in the next CD and workout.  At first, I thought this would screw up our dinner schedule – since the workouts last usually an hour.  But over time, I figured out that I could plan dinners around the specific workout.  So for instance, on plyometric days, I’ll make something like Chili that can cook unattended while we work out.

Over the next 60 days, we developed into the daily pattern of working out regularly.  Friday is our day off.  If you read the P90X website or forums, you’ll see it mentioned over and over that P90X is not supposed to be a weight loss program.  It’s suppose to be a muscle building program.  This concept worked for me during the first 60 days… by day 61, I was actually getting very frustrated as I had not lost more than 5 pounds.  Now I know I had gained serious muscle.  My legs felt the best they ever have – even when I played basketball.  However, my brain has a way of creeping in and creating self doubt and disappointment.  I had ONLY lost 5 lbs – and I’d been doing this craziness for 60 days??  That was too sad for me.  By this time in the Body for Life program, I had lost 15 lbs.  I was starting to feel really burned out on the program.  Rick had lost about 13 lbs by this time.

Now, I know all about muscle weighing more than fat and you can’t judge your progress by the scale – take measurements, yadda yadda.   Actually I had been and I knew I lost inches.  But I still had not lost a pants size and that was frustrating.  Too frustrating for me.  I started feeling like I needed more cardio in the daily routines.

I went off to start researching cardio routines and almost bought the Biggest Loser’s set.  But then I went back to Beachbody to review their workouts and saw that they had just recently released a new program – INSANITY. I watched the video and was immediately impressed.  THIS was what I was looking for.  A serious cardio workout.

Now, Rick and I are not in the best workout shape.  We realize this.  In fact, when we started P90X, we had to skip about 30 minutes of the 90 minute yoga CD because we just couldn’t do it.  By the end of the first 60 days, we were completing all the CDs and were pretty decent.  We could stay with the workouts for the most part.  We do have to modify some of the exercises because our bodies just can’t do them – like the guitar player jump.  That one is just not happening with my body.  But overall, we were able to do the exercises and keep going even if at a slower clip than the video.  I could even get through the entire Yoga CD – which incidentally is one of the hardest CDs to do if not the hardest – yoga is tough.

Anyway, I figured we’d apply the same philosophy to INSANITY – go as strong as we could and modify as needed.  I realized that we wouldn’t be able to keep up with the intensity level of the people on the CD at first – maybe never.  But if we could do the exercises with some modification the program would work for me.

We took a week off in between P90X and INSANITY – which really helped my body recover however it makes that first week getting back in the workout groove all that much harder.

So last Tuesday was our first day of INSANITY.  The first day, you take a fit test and record your results.  There are 7-8 exercises (can’t remember exact count) and you record how many reps you can do in a minute.  With this program, you take the fit test every two weeks – which I really like – to track progress.

Remarkably we were able to do the exercises (just not at the same intensity level as the people on the CD but still at a high level of intensity for each of us).  By Thursday, my calves were hurting. I mean screaming!  Not sure why they didn’t hurt like that during P90X but they were tightening up and making it difficult to walk.  So we rested Fri, Sat and Sun and gave my calves and Rick’s thighs a chance to recover.  My calves were back on track yesterday so we continued with the program.

Thus far it’s been exactly what I had hoped for.  Real cardio – intense cardio exercises – but ones that we do at our own pace.  We do push ourselves and feel the burn for sure.  But we are definitely not in the shape those people are in.  I also don’t think we could even have started INTENSITY had we not done P90X first.  This is an intense program for sure.

I’ve been impressed with the program and myself. Shaun T is definitely different than Tony Horton.  Each has their own ways of motivating and their own styles.  I like them both.  I’m definitely excited about INSANITY.  And it’s sure good to be working out again after a week off.  I think we had developed a dare I say it – a habit – and when it wasn’t there it was really strange for us.

At any rate, I hope to drop 15 pounds over the next 60 days.  After that we’ll go back and do P90X again and then maybe a combo of both.  We are trying to come up with a life routine where we eat better and exercise regularly. It’s amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it.

If you’ve never heard of these programs before watch the video clips below and check them out.

Here is an intro video to P90X

And here is an intro video for INSANITY

On Thursday Rogue (our black lab) went off to be spayed.  For a regular dog, this can be a traumatic experience.  That seems predictable and normal. But for Rogue…

We got Rogue when she was 8 weeks old.  Since that time, she has been ingrained so much with the family that that animal can NOT be by herself for one minute without whining.  It used to drive me crazy but I have gotten used to it in the last year.  We used to be able to let out Bandit (our first black lab) and he’d go lay outside for awhile and enjoy the sun/shade and just being outside – without barking and causing a scene.  NOT ROGUE.

Rogue goes out and does her business and then immediately makes a beeline right back to the door.  And there she sits and begins her whining campaign to come in the house.  If we are outside she is fine.  But God forbid she is outside by herself for any period of time and the whining and crying begins.  I will say that because I had a hard time dealing with this quirk of hers initially (read that as a lot of yelling out the window to stop whining), she has been forced to develop a more patient “sit and wait a little bit” stance before the full onslaught of whines begin.  I think she can make it to 5 minutes before I hear a bark to be let in.  So I’ve just adjusted and she has adjusted.  In the morning, I will either wait for her to be done or walk away and start my coffee and come back and let her in right away.

Now, take this mindset into being away from us for a day and a half….  When I picked up Rogue at the vet yesterday, the lady at the front desk told me that Rogue was quite vocal on Thursday after her surgery.   Now I read “quite vocal” as the polite way of saying “she was annoying as all hell and would NOT shut up and drove us crazy all day long”… but for obvious reasons she wasn’t going to say exactly that to me.  They had told Rick when he dropped her off that she would sleep all day after the surgery. Riiiight.  He told them that he thought we might have to come and get her early because she has major separation anxiety.  Suffice it to say we were right and she whined and barked all day – no sleeping and no resting.

Last night the kids stayed with Grandma for a sleepover.  We thought this would give Rogue another 16 hours or so of not being pestered by the kids – maybe she’d even sleep.  HA!  While she was thrilled to see us, she really wanted to see the kids.  Throughout the night she woke us up several times with her whining.  At 2am, Rick thought she might just be in a lot of pain and we gave her another pain pill.  She settled for a bit but in another hour or so she was back at it.  So Rick got up and went in the back room and laid down with her.  Yes… laid down with the dog.  LOL!  She did settle down and I didn’t hear her again until 8am or so (we get to sleep in when sleepovers happen).  Rick said that she was fine as long as she had physical contact laying next to him.

This morning the kids have returned and Rogue has been estatic.  By the way she is acting you would never think she was spayed two days ago.  We are going to have such a hard time keeping her calm for the next two weeks.

She does seem very relieved though.  Enough to be calm for a brief period… this is what is happening as I type this

She seems content – enough to maybe get a bit of rest today.  Maybe.  Hopefully.