Wordpress is probably one of the best Blogging tools available. There are several other software tools available to be sure, but Wordpress has always made very fast, efficient and elegant software for blogging, that in my opinion, it’s one of the best.

So, big upgrade? Well, I’ve been running a 2.x variant for some time. I’m not a full time blogger as I still just do it for personal reasons and for the “old fashion” reason some started theirs back when. As a personal journal. That’s it.

While I do have some people stop by every once in a while, it’s mostly friends and family members. I’m also sure that if someone is looking for me, they’ll do a Google search. My intent was for anyone interested to find this blog. That way, a) you could contact me if you’re an old friend, b) just looking to learn more about me and/or c) just looking to see who else has this name or uses the name Shane.

There’s really nothing complicated here.

Oh… back to the upgrade. Well, I jumped right into the newest Wordpress 2.5. The upgrade was, well, uneventful as upgrades go. This is my first post under the 2.5 admin tool set.

Posted: March 30th, 2008 under Blogging, Technology.
Comments: none

Recently, my great uncle, Adolph, passed away. He had lived a full life and was well respected. He was a stand-in grand father on many occasions. Since I am originally from South Texas and now living in the Northern Colorado area, as well as recently in-between jobs, timing is a bit tough to get down there for the memorial.

To add to the situation, he wanted to be cremated and have a simple memorial. So, instead of killing myself to get down there and beings that I come from a long line of “frugal” Germans, they simply asked that we all write some words about Adolph. Below is what was read at the memorial. Various family members had an opportunity to write some kind words and I heard it was a great service.

… I remember the most, about my Uncle Adolph

I may be 1,000 miles away, in my 40’s, busy with life, have kids of my own, but I often have reflected over the years about the times I spent with my Uncle Adolph.

- Fingers on ribs, counting until I laughed…
- Bouncing down dusty dirt country roads in an old green pickup truck…
- Long cane poles sticking in dirt with line draped in an arch hooked to a red & white float lazily drifting around in circles…
- Squishy, smelly mud oozing between toes after a good swim in a stock tank..
- Lots of minnows swimming in a large barrel just off the back porch…

These are the things I remember the most….

- Chickens and roosters, gathering eggs from nests, chasing lambs & goats, petting the Guernsey cow and drinking the freshest milk…
- Sweet corn, fresh okra, juicy watermelon, crisp cucumbers….
- Drinking sweet red wine, even though I wasn’t 21…
- Soft hair being snipped with scissors and the buzzing sound of electric clippers…
- Smells of oils and after shave, old spice, I think…
- Slapping of cards and clinking of dominoes and words like shooting, moon and canasta…

No judgment, no respecter of persons, treating everyone the same, giving, fun, big kid himself, story teller, full of life, patience, laughter and easy to be around…

These are the things I remember the most about my Great Uncle Adolph!

In recent days on our own little suburban plot of land, we’ve attempted to grow cucumbers and melons, gotten a few and even had some pumpkins that were worth keeping and carving. I easily reflect and remember back to those days when I was a kid gathering fresh stuff from the garden, collecting eggs and being tickled as a youngster. Seeing a big smile and always with the story and a sly grin… pulling my leg I think.

I only hope that he knew what an impact he had on those around him…

Son & Nephew first…
Now, Husband, father and uncle myself
I’ll miss you, Uncle Adolph, but I have such great, fond memories….

Love Shane

Posted: March 14th, 2008 under Personal.
Comments: none

This past weekend was to be a “belated” Christmas gift to the Cooper family. We’d held off on a few things this past Christmas. Not that we have big gift giving extravagant events, but we kept it “simple” this year. However, since we all love music, especially concert going, we thought we’d kick the winter blues by seeing Linkin Park, again. We’ve seen them in concert before and they put on one amazing show connecting with the fans and really putting it all out there.

So, back when the tour announcements were made back circa Nov/Dec of 07, Jodi was on her laptop hitting buy the moment the tickets went on sale. Rather than get just …any… seats, she decided to get the “Hot Seat” package which included exclusive front row seating, hospitality room and special LP gift, it was suppose to be special so we could enjoy ourselves AND be right there near the action.

Friday, Feb 29th, leap day and we’ll just pretend really never happened, we took off for Albuquerque New Mexico to attend the concert. Road trip!!! 7 hours later, we pulled into our hotel, had dinner and got some rest. The plan was to hang out most of Saturday before picking up the tickets at will call later. Our first order of business was shopping at Trader Joes! Closest one to Denver. We then took a side trip to Petroglyph National Monument to check out the trails and Indian drawings. Then down to Old Town for a light lunch made up of Mexican food and cervesa. Nice easy going morning.

The afternoon went down hill from there. Back at the room, Jodi just happened to stop by on the Linkin Park web site to check out some music videos and see about the venue we were heading to later. Low and behold, only to discover that LP had canceled. Not only was Albuquerque canceled, but they had to cancel El Paso as well. Chester Benefield, the lead singer was sick and couldn’t perform. Bummer.

Jodi and Dylan were extremely bummed out about this situation. Of course, now we had the prospect of heading home and not getting to see the show. We quickly packed our stuff, checked out of the hotel and started our road trip home. Needless to say, it was 7 hours of solid gloom in the car. I don’t think we even turned the radio on once. No music. Although, on the bright side, it was a really great drive. New Mexico desert is beautiful at sundown and the vista’s we took in were spectacular.

I guess the moral has two points of view. One, performers are just people and subject to illness like everyone else and we shouldn’t hold it against them. Second, when you travel for a schedule event, show or otherwise, it’s a risk pure and simple. There are no guarantees sometimes you have to take the highs with the lows. Sure, it stinks that they canceled, but that’s the risk you take and the way it goes.

Posted: March 5th, 2008 under Music, Personal, Travel.
Comments: 1

Colorado, winter and change in life can really make life “interesting”. With the life altering change last year of leaving Vertis, “formally”, going into winter was a bit foreboding both financially, socially and “what am I going to do every morning”-ly. After leaving Vertis and going “Independent” our life and routine changed fairly drastically. First, I was home all the time, which drove Jodi crazy at first and then the seasonal car business we started earlier dwindled to a crawl.

After 20 years of trudging off to an office, I found myself waking up, getting my coffee and marching down the hall to my computer and our home office. While I still had several Vertis deployments to wrap up, which requited some travel, for the most part, I found myself at home. With finances tight, I did everything possible to insure expenses were kept to a minimum. Jodi and I refrained from dinner out, extra-curricular activity and the like. Intrusion on Jodi’s space was an understatement, so I mostly went to the shop to give Jodi some breathing room. She’s been a stay-at-home mom for 14 years and the past 2 years working from home as a virtual assistant and bookkeeper for a few local business. So, having me around was a drastic change in her routine as well as mine. I adapt well, but she doesn’t. Although, I have to admit, after 9 years with a nice private office overlooking the Flat-Irons, I also wasn’t use to another “being” just 2 feet away, breathing, much less tapping away on a laptop and drinking coffee. Keeping to myself seemed like a good idea. On the other hand, vocalizing her annoyance was how Jodi coped. And… so it went.

Fast forward to February 2008. Back in January, I started the process of looking for a full time position again after taking a “sabbatical” from October to December, after the projects died off at Vertis through that time period. With that short breather behind me and taking a hard look at my past career and interest, I decided to focus on one particular position that suites me well. Sales Engineering or Technical Sales. My forte’ is customer engagements and since I recognize that I’m a “builder” not a maintainer, look for new challenges, quickly ramp up and engage with customers, build confidence early, work well with sales executives and communicate complex concepts and needs back to development teams, I felt that pre-sales, contract assignment and post sales work is probably best for me and any future job opportunity. Plus, add the fact that I have a very broad base of technical knowledge and interest, I knew companies could use my skill set.

It’s been interesting to say the least after 16 years in some capacity at Vertis getting my assignment changes through internal “who-you-know” processes and communications rather than hitting the pavement. It looks like I stayed with one company doing one job for many years, but in reality, I wore many hats and worked for different bosses, just received compensation from the same “organization”. However, the most recent position was a bit longer than usual.

Now I’m in the “thick” of the process and find myself looking forward to both a new opportunity and more importantly towards spring. Usually, any major move I’ve made in the past was in the fall. Not sure why, but that’s the way it always turned out. Now, I’m looking at a late Winter early spring change and I’m really looking forward to diving into a new challenge.

Why else is spring looking so good. Well, after such a “dry” and fortuitous winter, spring is looking hopeful and I know less stressful. Besides, I’m frankly tired of the cold and I love being outsides in shorts, short-sleeved shirt and enjoying the sun. While winter offers the suns rays, it’s still cold and this year has been no exception. Today, Thursday Feb the 28th was nice and warm and brought the promise of spring. Therefore, it felt like spring is near and I’m waiting for it and a new position to arrive!

Posted: February 28th, 2008 under Personal.
Comments: none

My “two-hour” wait at Ferrari of Denver turned into about an hour. I’d barely started getting some work done when the service coordinator, Mark, came over and said the car was ready. Of course, it’d helped that I’d taken the entire console cover off and all they had to do was replace the main shifter, reset the shifting cables and voila’. However, they had me come back and gave me a few pointers on exactly how to install the reverse gate lever, the gear ball and boot.

With everything back in place, I took off and really noticed a difference in the shifter. I was stiffer and felt much tighter. Before, I’d had a bit of an issues with 3td and 4th as their dead center of the double H pattern.

Got back to the shop and started reassembling the reverse lever, wiring and cover. It was actually another 2 hour chore as the console fit’s just right and there are two wiring harnesses that have to be reinstalled. One is the emergency flashers, which when disconnected, do not allow the regular blinkers to work. Initially, that entire switch fell apart, springs and plastic bits et al. It was NOT cooperating and kept falling apart. Couple of gluing sessions later and hand wrestling blindly, I was able to get it all buttoned back up and ready to go.

Initial Installation at Ferrari of Denver. They performed the main installation for getting it home. Once back at the shop, I focused on putting the console cover back on the main shifting area.

Various Steps in the process of resetting the reverse shifter lever and preparing the shifter for final console installation.

Finished and ready for a test drive!!! First problem… reverse gate cable needed adjusting. Took it all apart, again. Remeasured the cable assembly and put it all back together.

Second problem… something kept catching during a 2nd to 3rd shift. It worked fine, but I could hear something catch and being paranoid, I took it all apart. Again. This time, it was small piece of cable housing that had cracked. No big deal. Little cutting and it was gone. Just some plastic that didn’t affect anything.

No problems. So, now of course, I’ve had to drive it around for a few days to “check-it-out”.

All back to normal!!!! Well, except for the driver, still abnormal, but with the weather so nice, I can’t wait for spring and summer. Spirited mountain driving is calling.

Posted: February 13th, 2008 under Cars, Exotic Cars, Lotus, Personal.
Comments: none

Well, I’ve owned my Ardent Red 2005 Lotus Elise for almost a year and a half. Short of the engine issue right after I purchased it, nothing major has gone wrong with it. This past weekend was a different story.

I decided to take it out for a short spin. Several friends of mine were going to be down town having a beer or two and I was invited. So, I figured, I don’t drive the little guy much so off I went. I was running a bit early and not in any big hurry. Sitting in the fast lane on I-25 right around 144th, I down shifted from 5th to 6th to over take a car and found a loose shifter in my hand. Basically during the shift, something had come loose at 75mph and now I found myself with the car coasting in neutral. Fortunately, I was right at 144th exit and took it to coast as far as possible, hoping to at least get close to the Lowes.

Since I had no tools, my plan was to purchase a screw drive at Lowes and take off the cover to see what was up. I wasn’t able to coast the entire way, so after stopping in the slow lane and putting on the emergency blinkers I was about to set off on foot when a passerby stopped to give me a push. That push turned out to be several blocks due to the entrance to the Lowes parking lot not being on the main road. He was kind enough to get me all the way to a location with a light so I could see.

About an hour later and two purchases, screw driver and a flash light to see with, I found the metal (aluminum) rod had actually broken in two. With just the main shifter housing, I was able to shift enough to catch 1st, 2nd and 3rd. Enough to get home.

Next day, I tore into the shifter to see what happened. Photos are more informative than anything.

Long story short, I started doing some research, initially thinking I’d get an after market shifter. Well, turns out, the only shifters available are “performance” shifters and it requires replacing the entire housing and to the tune of $2,500 plus. After more research, I discovered this was a recall item and called Ferrari of Denver.

I’m now there awaiting them to install the replacement kit. Getting down here was interesting. Since it’s nearly an hour drive and using what’s left of the shifter would have resulted in gouging out my palm, I decided to try the ole “vice-grip” shifter method. Worked great. Now, it’s not something I’d recommend for “spirited” shifting, but it worked great for taking it “nice-and-easy”.

Posted: February 12th, 2008 under Cars, Personal.
Comments: none

Xmas was a little different this year. With starting a new business and not having as much time and money as in the past, we decided to have Christmas “light” this year. However, we didn’t sacrifice “FUN”. Our one big gift to the family and really for Dylan was Rock Band.

Jodi and I spent a few days looking for it only to find it was THE popular game of the season. Just having been released, it was a bit hard to locate. However, at Best Buy in Longmont, the sales guy told us a secret. Best Buy in Ft Collins had a few and that they were sending everyone there. So, off we went and got our copy.

Fast forward to Dec 25, just a few days ago. Instead of wrapping the entire box, Jodi wrapped parts and pieces and on Christmas Eve, we gave Dylan the choice of picking one of the few gifts under the tree. Fortunately, he picked the one small box with the Gave DVD enclosed. After that, we brought out the big guns, err… boxes with the drums and new guitar. Since we were Guitar Hero Veterans, the new guitar was cool to check out as it had more of a “real” look than the old white ones from GII and GIII.

So, after setting everything up, The “Basement Nerds” were born. Well, actually, Dylan and Jodi had formed it in GIII, but they now allowed me to join their band in “Rock Band” and now I get to play along. Such an honor.

Fun doesn’t really describe how that game goes. We’ve had our share of fun, but there’s been some bickering as well. We’re not sure who needs to go to rehab first. It was suggested that I go get clean since I couldn’t keep up last night after a few glasses of Vinno.

Hopefully we’ll stay together and not break up. Wow, our first band and we’re already fighting after just 3 days. Cool! Feels like The Basement Nerds is the real deal.

Posted: December 27th, 2007 under Personal.
Comments: none

I should have taken my laptop in a long time ago??? What was I thinking???

My MacBookPro was purchased in May of 2006. About a month after making the purchase, the left cooling fan began to grind ever so slightly, nothing major, but it made enough noise to be annoying. That lasted about a year. Approximately, around May (1 full year after initial purchase) the fan began to hum and grind much louder. I actually downloaded some software to see what the RPM’s of the fan were and turns out, it would surge to over 5,000 RPMs when it’s suppose to run normally around 500 to 900 RPMs.

Around that same time, i experienced a serious melt-down after doing a simple update. Turns out, i had to completely rebuild my hard-drive with a new OS and fortunately, I had a sprinkling of backups on an external Firewire drive. It was still very painful, but I managed to get through it.

On or around mid-summer, it started acting weird again and yet again, it died, causing me to completely rebuild. This time, I wasn’t so lucky as I had just used the Firewire to rebuild Jodi’s laptop not less than a week before and had wiped all of my backups. The plan was to get the automated backups running again, but I was yet again lazy and didn’t get it started in a timely fashion.

After much pain and suffering, rebuilding from memory, it took well over 3 weeks to get it back to any semplance of normalcy. I still find things to this day missing from that install and shrug and hit the side of my head with a DOH!!!

Fast forward to November 9th, 2007. It literally died yet again. This time, it limped for a day or so, but by the Saturday the 10th, it was officially freakin dead and I decided to just let Apple have it back. So, I booked an appointment with the Genius Bar over at the Applestore in Boulder for Sunday the 11th at 10:45AM. The soonest they could see me when I went online Friday night.

Fortunately, I had everything backed up and on Friday, while it “limped” along, I was able to get it turned on in target mode and copy anything I was worried about over to the external Firewire drive using Dylans iBook. All was well and I was confident that I had everthing for when it would be back on my desk in a few weeks and I’d be ready to get back to work.

In the meantime, I confiscated Dylans iBook and moved a few critical items over, temporarily using his little faithful iBook. First things first, I found I couldn’t open anything of significance. I suppose that’s due to it only 256mb of RAM. Yuck!!! It’s a wonder Dylan could get anything done.

So, off to BestBuy I trot and purchased him a 1gb RAM chip… back to the house, installed in less than a minute and I was back off to the races. Ah…. RAM breathing room. His little laptop chugged along as I pounded away using FireWorks and Photoshop. Wasn’t as fast as my MacBook, but it was working, more than I could say for my laptop. I pretty much used it heavily most of Sunday, Monday and Tuesday working on several web sites, updating our Rental site and preparing some graphics for the gift certificates we’d been planning on marketing via email. I was getting pretty settled in and planned on using his iBook through Thanksgiving, figuring Apple would take a week or so, then blame the delay on the holidays.

Here’s where I got blown away. First thing Wednesday, TODAY, I got a call from the Genius Bar over at the Applestore. My laptop was back and I could come by and pick it up anytime. They informed me that they had to replace the entire mother-board and install a new hard-drive, plus they installed the latest OS, 10.4.10… all good as new. All that in 3 days, with two shiopments to and from California.

Okay, I was VERY pleased to say the least. While it’s been a pain in the backside, I usually CANNOT do without my laptop. I use it 7 days a week and being without it for a few days is just never a good time. I’d always figured I’d just wait until it physically blew up and quit working. Well, that’s what I did, suffered through for 3 whole days and voila’ it’s back and seems to be running like a champ.

Dylan gets a full gig of RAM out of the deal as “rental” on his iBook and I agreed to replace his keyboard, which he’d spilled some liquid substance on and has been using an external keyboard. All-in-all, he made out like a bandit. I was still able to get work done for 3 days and I rearranged a few things on my desk and added a one of the new cool flat keyboards offered by Apple. $49 bucks for a wired version. I remember when these use to run $79 and they weren’t this nice. This thing is quiet and has a very small foot print on the desk.

So, now I’m asking myself, why the H-LL didn’t I take it in sooner and just bit the bullet? I’ll never know.

Now, it’s back and I’m off to restore all of my important data and get back to work.

Posted: November 14th, 2007 under theMac.
Comments: none

This past Saturday night we threw a Halloween bash. Technically it was in celebration of our first full year in business as we had just purchased the Lotus and the truck last year at this time and already had the business in startup mode. Even though we didn’t technically rent our first car until April, we were still in business prior to that.

So, to celebrate, I brought over our working cars for display. Really just to show them off to the neighbors and friends who were planning on coming to the party. We decided to bring over the cars that worked the hardest all summer. The Lotus, Porsche and Mercedes are all owned by Jodi and I. The Lamborghini was our first “Investor” car and owned by Paul Piciochi. He’s been very generous in letting us use the car and I believe he benefitted from the arrangement as well. I kept the car in Tip-top shape all summer by meticulously detailing it every chance and by keeping it in good shape for when he needed to use it.  Now, it’s for sale. So, to make an offer, shoot me an email. Email Shane.

The Lotus and Porsche were the two most popular cars all summer. The Porsche was great for top down fun and the Lotus was, well, just freakin fun to drive. Our Mercedes made up for a lot of lost time towards the end of the summer and is still Jodi’s favorite car. She refuses to let me get rid of it. In fact, after the party Saturday night, we’re keeping it at the house. It has no immediate bookings, so might as well stay here for her to enjoy.

As far as the party goes, it was another rousing success. All of our close friends attended and many dressed up. We ended the evening by taking the cars back to the shop, slowly. At 11pm, you don’t want to attract any attention by the local police, which were out in abundance. After tucking them in for the night, the party wound down with our closest friends staying until late. (There were a few really close friends that had to leave early, so in case they’re reading this, you’re still the best for coming early and dressing as a  “MEOW”…

Were now into fall and have a few bookings for the sports cars, but it’s winding down. I just acquired a Range Rover Sport from an investor who’s out of the country most of the year. I’m in the process of detailing it and it already is getting booked. Even the H2 is getting booked, so hopefully these two cars will help during the winter.

Until next time…

Shane

Posted: October 30th, 2007 under Personal.
Comments: none

As we enter fall, which is in full swing here, we’re noticing the rental business start to slow down. Fortunately, it’s not completely dying or we’d have some issues. However, we did save for a rainy day during the summer peak. The hotel Concierge are still a good source of referrals as they are sending fall travel business our way. Weddings and other summer events are slacking off. So far. Truth is, we anticipated the fall slow down, so it’s no shock.

Fortunately, with the slower period, it offers me more free time to work on other aspects of our business that NOT related to cars, building web sites for local small business’s. I have connections in the community that have asked me to revamp their site or get a new one going on/off through the summer. However, with the focus on Altitud Dream Cars, it’s been all about time.

Repeat customers are going to really help during the slower times. We’re finding they’ll call at just the right time to reserve a car. Fortunately, they’re aware of our service offerings and it’s easy to simply update their information and deliver a car. We LOVE repeat customers. I think it lets us know that we’re doing something right and that we’re offering a good service.

We’re all about good customer service and offering a boutique solution to peoples needs and desires. Marketing is still tricky and spending money in the right area can be something that’s a bit of a hit-miss proposition. Operationally, we have our processes & procedures down and of course, our customer service is beyond reproach. Now, to just get more customers to understand and use our service.

As the holidays approach, we’ll be working on several “Gift” campaigns for those looking to give something different to the car lover in their life or for an experience gift. I’m thinking about providing dollar amount gift cards, like Altitude Dollars or something along those lines. We’ve tested packages and they get sticky. Weekend packages and/or more than one day packages never fit anyones schedule and variations are expected. So, we’re thinking about going with denominations that can be redeemed rather than a “day with”. The gift giver buys a day with the “lotus” only to find out they’d rather go with the “Lamborghini” and have asked if they could pay the difference. So, cash value may work better. We’ll see.

That’s business…

Shane

Posted: October 25th, 2007 under Personal.
Comments: none