Death by Platypus

Some old shots from the winter I never got around to publishing. We have cute kids…

Last spring was a whirlwind of outdoor adventures all over central Texas. I think we went to a different state park every weekend for a good three months. This year, not so much, as we’ve been getting stuff done around the house, working, and just staying closer to home. But we did get out to a couple favorite places earlier - Bastrop and Palmetto state parks.

Here are some cute kid shots. I’ve got some other some other shots from the adventures on Alpha Dog - Bastrop and Palmetto.

Quinn taking Tyler for a ride	Tyler tries mountain climbing

Quinn is not to be outdone	Anything you can do I can do better…

Brave girl	Out for a walk

Coveting thy brother’s Camelback	The explorers take a break

Hooray!! Tonight at midnight the ACL Fest 2008 lineup should be announced! It’s my favorite day of the year (well, except for maybe the first day of the actual festival).

So as usual, I’ve slipped back into non-posting. Been doing other things in the evenings lately, including working on some recent shots. I never posted a blog update, but I finally put some 2008 work out on the site. Most recently, Susan and I have been going out after the kids are asleep to shoot around Austin at night. I’ve gotten some HDR and other shots I’ve been really happy with. Check out Downtown Austin and UT Campus (devoid of students thanks to Spring Break).

The weather this week has been nuts.

• 51 degrees - temperature riding to work on Monday
• 91 degrees - temperature on the ride home
• 31 degrees - temperature riding to work on Wednesday
• 61 degrees - temperature riding home

Still catching up from all the fun over the Holidays (now two months ago). Just before Christmas, we took the kids out hiking at Pedernales Falls. It was a beautiful day, and we had a nice time walking around by the falls. What really made the adventure was walking down stream a ways until we got to some of the more rocky areas. The kids had an absolute blast scrambling over the rocks and exploring the entire area. Tyler and Piper even did some caving!

It was so great watching them have so much fun climbing around, and being so aware of where their limitations were - no bumps or bruises the entire day!

Doing some fishin’	The first few steps up the rocks

The taste of success!	The little cavers

Quinn in Zen Meditation	Practice

Tyler makes a death-defying leap!	Quinn takes the more conservative approach

Will they do it or not?	Tyler can’t resist

Heading for home

My recent lack of postings has to do largely with my new job. I am now just over one month into it. Things are going about as I should have expected them to, which is to say that it’s sometimes very good, and sometimes very frustrating. I tend to be a little bi-polar the first two months in a new job, until I start feeling more comfortable with everyone and my new environment. So many days I come home feeling like I am fitting right in and making an impact, and other days I wonder whether I made the right decision at all.

Even though the company is 8 years old and has 80+ people, they still have the startup mentality. Lack of structure, Herculean efforts, flying by the seat of the pants… They’ve got some really smart people, and because of that, they succeed with this approach. Fortunately, they’re making strides to become a more “mature” company this year. That’s actually the part that’s the most exciting to me - not the client work, but the opportunity to really help establish some structure and process. It’s funny since getting away from bureaucracy was one of my main motivations for making a switch. But despite how extreme it got at my previous employer, there are still a lot of really good ideas to bring over.

The pace while at work is crazy. This is largely due to the above-mentioned lack of process, but also because of our own ability to generate new business. We grow conservatively to avoid the typical agency process of growing & shrinking as the work load fluxuates. While this is great for avoiding needing to lay people off, it also becomes difficult as hiring only occurs after everyone has been overloaded for a while. We’re in one of those tight spots right now, and for me personally, there’s been a ton of new business to participate in, while still leading one of our largest clients and trying to really learn my team and plan for our future. Fortunately, the crazy pace doesn’t usually carry over into the evening hours, but it does make for some very stressful days. Ultimately, I think I will like this once I’m settled in and more confident in what I’m doing. But for now…

My team is also very interesting. I went from managing 5-7 people in my previous role to managing 12 currently, with hopefully two more coming very soon. That also includes having two managers under me. This is an interesting change - less direct management of the team and more focus on helping the managers (both are new to people managing) grow their people. The team has a diverse background - some product management, MIS, marketing, project management… They’re all really bright and eager. They’re all really young too - I’ve never been in a role before where I’ve felt so OLD. There is much to work on, that in itself is a bit overwhelming. Focus & prioritization will be huge challenges for me this year.

Anyway, I logically know this is a great opportunity for me, and it’s all that I was asking for when I decided to make the move. It’ll just be a matter of time before I really get past the doubts, and get my head out of the way of my success.

I used to get spam comments on my blog somewhat regularly - maybe once or twice a week. Not a big deal, as Wordpress queue’s all comments from new sources for your approval before posting on the site. In the last month or so, I’m now getting probably 30+ spam comments a week. And most of them make absolutely no sense whatsoever. Why? Why even bother - the comments are so obviously spam that not even your typical moron is going to think they’re from real visitors. What’s the point?

Quick post - I’m off to Detroit for two days this week to visit a client. Checking the weather, I saw the highs are 20 and 19 degrees, which made me stop to think - “is Detroit part of Canada?”  No, those are farenheit… I forgot how cold it could get. Hopefully, I still own a jacket.

I still haven’t been to see the show yet, but my parents sent over some snapshots of my photos up at the Walker Gallery: