Yesterday was a really good one. I had a great meeting with a new client. Taught two great kids piano. Kids had great days at camp. Bubs went over to his buddy Timmy’s house for some lake swimming off of their dock. Viv channeled her inner muse and made some art and then played piano with me. After their Mom picked them up for the weekend, I pedaled over to Rachel and Chris’ lakeside home for some beers and pizza. I definitely need to get back over there with Bubs, Viv, and Abbe with me – they would have had a blast.

Small Business/Tech Links…

• Google+ Hits 20 Million Users, Gender Ratio Begins To Even
• 6 Smart Steps to Mastering Engagement with Your Target Audiences
• 8 Powerful Twitter Marketing Tips
• HOW TO: Integrate Google+ Into Your WordPress Site
• Make Your Own Subscription Service: Introducing Memberly

Funny/Interesting Links…

• Animals drawn poorly on cocktail napkins with lasers shooting out of their eyes
• All space shuttle missions, in 8 minutes. (SLYT)
• Tooth Fairy Affair
• Sesame Street/Beastie Boys mashup
• Ding Dong, DADT is dead.

I had a decently productive day yesterday – plenty of coding done and did my best to stay cool in this oppressive heat. Bubs got out of camp early due to his arm not being healed prior to the consent for the 1 mile swim paperwork due date. So I pedaled down to pick him up and we headed off to the cheese shoppe to see Abbe and have a midday treat together (some chocolate fondue). I am always smiling when I see the piles and piles of bikes around the Lakes during camp season. And this is a very small bike area in the picture below of Bub’s fishing his bike out of the pile. It’s crazy when the kids are heading from one beach to their next activity. It’s as if all the world has ended and the only thing that survived were kids on bikes…

Later, our good friend and ninja car mechanic Chad, from Chad’s Complete Auto Repair stopped by to work on Abbe’s car. Although Layla (Chad’s adorable little girl) and Viv had fun having a dance party, Abbe’s car is not looking real good. Dead battery (expected and already replaced), two broken belts, and the scary one – a cracked exhaust manifold. We will start the candlelight vigil for Abbe’s car over the weekend.

Movie Review…

Biutiful – wow, after seeing a cornucopia of genres in I Love You Phillip Morris, I would not have guessed the next film I would see would actually top it in number of plot lines so easily – but yep, Biutiful absolutely did this. Bardem is as expected, excellent. He portrays a thug, single father in Barcelona discovering he has terminal cancer. He tries to make peace with every part of his life including making things better for the Chinese and Senegal immigrants he has spent his criminal career exploiting and putting in harm’s way. He also tries to hide his condition from his children and his family (oh, I forgot to mention, his unstable, alcoholic mother of his children is sleeping with his brother). Oh, also, Bardem’s character Uxbal, has the ability to speak with the recently departed. This might sound like a hodge podge of just too much going on – but this is a dense, intelligent movie. It’s beautifully shot (and it shies away from showing the beauty of Barcelona that you might be accustomed to seeing) and unabashedly real. Excellent, excellent film. I have the King’s Speech in my queue, so I’ll reserve my decries of how Bardem and this film were robbed of awards, but wow, this was impressive.

Small Business/Tech Links…

• How the Smart Grid Will Change Your Life
• Google+ Profile Hacks: Users Get Creative with Photos
• Small Business Social Media – Where Do You Start?

Funny/Interesting Links…

• Holy Maury Mother of God
• Guillotine Guys
• Parenting. Illustrated with crappy pictures.
• Mimic Octopus
• A love letter to the space shuttle
• Pop-Cultured Currency
• Why looks your grace so heavily today?
• Senator Franken shames homophobic imbecile

First day of Medford Lakes Summer Camp is here. The kids are mostly raring to go. Bubs is going to be helping out in the crafts section indoors for the first week of camp until he gets his cast off next Wednesday. We met the arts and crafts directory and assistant this morning and Bubs is going to be in good hands – super nice people and Bubs can be a really good helper. I’m sure come Wednesday Bubs will be ready to get on his bike, try some archery, go fishing, and get in the water… you know all the stuff he was excited about in the big kids camp.

During our trip to Pa, Abbe’s Dad inadvertently backed into my truck and knocked my headlight a little bit. We stopped for a replacement bulb and then discovered we got the wrong bulb even though the part number matched. No biggie though. I’m hoping I can get the right halogen bulb today and then see if Chad can take care of the broken housing on my turn signal (the low beams on the driver’s side is the only thing non-operational).

The other problem I will be dealing with today will be my water heater pilot not igniting. Abbe went to shower yesterday and discovered we had no hot water. After unwrapping the water heater and trying the pilot a few times with no spark, I’m going to have to call in the pros. It looks like it’s the piezo ignitor that is failing. It appears that the previous homeowner replaced it once before. I really hope this isn’t a bigger problem.

Small Business/Tech Links…

• Google Web Fonts v2 Released

Funny/Interesting Links…

• Video Time Machine
• Tinkatolli

So after discovering I had all of my times wrong for the day, yesterday turned out alright. I ended up riding my mountain bike to and from the Music, Art, and Wine Festival. While there, I of course stopped in and got a chocolate covered cheesecake on a stick from the Carriage Trade Cheese Shoppe; ran into Tim, Mel, Emma, Abbie, and their very big pup, Angus; ran into Viv’s art teacher; and later had a few minutes to say howdy to Dana and the kids. I then pedaled home, got my softball gear on and headed to batting practice. Immediately following practice, we headed over to Wilson field for a pretty decent game. Taking advantage of the hard infield, I knocked a couple of base hits and played pretty well in left field.

I got home and hopped into an (yeeesh) ice bath to hopefully speed the healing of a newly pulled left hamstring (it had been the right side that I kept re-injuring), sprinted into a hot shower, and then studied with Bubs for his language arts test. It felt good to unwind with a glass of wine and Abbe at the end of the day, but another good one for sure.

Small Business/Tech Links…

• The Introvert’s Guide to Marketing With Video

Funny/Interesting Links…

• The Cloud

Both a big meeting for a new project fell through (rescheduled for next week) and a big project that I was hoping to win fell through yesterday, but you know what? I had a great day. The weather was absolutely perfect. I rode bikes with my daughter to school in the morning. I did a lot of great work. I found time for a 3.5 mile run. My son gave me some new artwork for my office (it’s a stingray he painted with corks – I love it, looks so Pacific Island-y).

I helped my son study for his social studies test. Viv, Abbe, Bubs, and I rode our bikes down to Beach 3 for a picnic dinner at the lake. Yep, a great day. Something made me feel at the end of the day – you’re doing it right.

After I blathered on about making some changes to my workplace, I never returned to the subject to let you know how these adjustments have worked. For shame. Anyhow, I am extremely happy to report that the ergonomic alterations have truly paid off. I have not had the thumb/wrist pain since switching to an ergo split keyboard and mouse. My neck and shoulder have been feeling much better as well. It took a solid week, but my typing is about the same speed with a few more errors here and there. I bought a yoga ball, but I really needed the large as opposed to the medium (new big one arrives today or tomorrow). But I have been spending about an hour a day on the smaller ball – I kind of feel like my seven year old trying to drive a car when I’m sitting this low at the computer, but it does feel pretty good to change up my seat once a day.

Small Busincess/Tech Links…

• 8 Reasons Every Ecommerce Site Should Get Serious About Video
• Website Redesign Best Practices – Part 3

Funny/Interesting Links…

• Like A Boss of the Day
• I vow right here, right now, to never use Auto-Tune again. I’m onto something that I think is bigger and better called ‘The T-Pain Effect’. –T-Pain
• RIP: Jack Kevorkian – this man served as a lightning rod for a very controversial issue, dying with dignity and I am very grateful he raised the questions he did. Some might call him Dr. Death, but I think he did a lot for passing peacefully.