You know how you start to feel like you know someone a little bit cause you watch them on tv so much.  Well that’s kinda how I feel about Chip Foose and Chris Jacobs.  I watch overhaulin, rides, poweblock tv and any other custom car show on tv.  And I kinda feel like I know their taste, and what they’d think about certain projects.  Well that’s what scares me.

So why do I care what Chris Jacobs will think?  Well he’s a Mopar guy.  And Mopar guys really just want respect from other Mopar guys. I’d like to consider myself a Mopar guy.  I remember being about 5 years old, and my dad saying the car we should restore together would be an old 1969 Road Runner.  So I’ve always had a thing for the Mopars.  My first car was a 1989 Dodge Ramcharger, and it’s that car that Doan bought me that I’m working on customizing that I’m worried about what Chris Jacobs might think.

So here’s the deal.  Mopars (dodge) vehicles are known for having very hard to find parts, and pretty much no aftermarket parts.  What does this mean?  Well it means working on an older Dodge Ramcharger is pretty much impossible.  Even finding people to work on it can be a problem.  I went to Austin Speed Shop, but they only work on cars from 1963 and older.  I went to Killer Rides, but they didn’t know what to do with the truck either.  The only shop that’s had an idea for the Ramcharger is Hot Rod Jim’s who wants to put a whole Corvette rolling chassis under the truck. And here is where the “Chris may hate me” thing comes in. The only thing anyone can think of to make my truck the way I want it is to make it a frankenstein and put a ton of Chevrolet parts under the truck. Which a lot of Mopar people may want to shoot me out back for doing.

So there in lies my problem. They make so many aftermarket parts for Chevrolets.  Seriously I could just run to the store right now, and buy every part I need for my truck.  The only problem then is that it wont just fit cause it’s not made for dodge.  So even though I can buy a ton of parts, I’d still need someone to customize all the parts to fit on my truck. Which is why Hot Rod Jim’s idea of just replacing the whole chassis with a corvette one would make bolting all those easy to find chevrolet parts that much easier.

So I don’t know what to do.  Maybe you guys have some ideas.  Or maybe you know of a shop that could do the work for me.  Hell maybe you know Chris Jacobs and you can ask him if he’ll hate me if I frankenstein my truck. Here are all the things wrong with my truck and what the ultimate goal for it is.

So here’s what we’re starting with:

And this is what I’d like it to resemble (not exactly just “the look”)

But it’s not just about the look.  I want it to look like a 1989 Ramcharger but to drive like a 2009 Ramcharger (if that existed).  So a whole new front and rear suspension, engine, transmission, rear end, wheels, tires.  Basically all the modern parts just squashed into an older truck. I know it’s all about having a plan and not just buying a bunch of parts, so here’s what I’ve come up with.

Front Suspension – From Scott’s Hot Rods

Rear Suspension – Ride Tech

Intro Wheels

But even though these parts look like they’ll do the job.  They still aren’t mopar parts.  And I will still need a shop to customize all this so it fits in my truck.  So it’s a plan, but it may not be the best one.

I’m open to suggestions on the engine and transmission.  The goal for that is to have enough power to pull a trailer and a boat, but to still get the best MPG’s as possible.  Cause I want to drive this truck everyday.

So anyway…that’s my rant about my truck project.  It’s almost been a year since Doan bought me the truck, and I haven’t done anything with it yet. Mainly due to the lack of a plan.  So unless you guys have some suggestions or unless Chris Jacobs will want to kill me for doing the above.  I think I’m gonna go with the suspension above.  Then from there go to the body work.

Sorry Chris.

So I’ve been using the TwitterFox extension since it came out.  I really like having applications I used daily built into my browser.  Since that’s where I spend most of my day.  And that’s also why I need someone to help me build ThunderFire.  But that’s another post.

Anyway, I’ve been using TwitterFox for some time now, and really like it. But I’ve never really liked the themes or lack of themes that it came with.  At first you just had the baby blue twitter-ish look.  Which was pretty damn ugly.  And now that they’ve been bought or partnered or whatever with EchoFon you have a grey and a black theme.  And I don’t want to sound like a dick but I really don’t like them either.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like they are bad, they are just kinda boring.

So rather than just bitching about it, I decided to do something about it.  After a couple glasses of wine last night, I decided to go ahead and design a couple of themes that I’d be happy to use.  I finished them up just a second ago, and sent them over to the guys at EchoFon.  I don’t know if they are gonna trash it or what, but it would be pretty damn cool to have some themes I did thrown into their extension.  -hint- -hint-

Anyway…here’s what they look like.  These aren’t anything crazy fancy either, cause I do realize there’s not much you can do with a box.  I just prefer a larger icon, larger font, brighter colors, and some clean backgrounds.  So that’s what I did. Let me know what you think.

Grey Theme 1 – “Gravy”

Blue Theme – We’ll call it “The Lazy River”

And the Grey Theme – AKA “McGruff”

We’ve been lucky enough to find some really cool friends here in Austin.  We work out at a place called CATZ, and most of the trainers there have become some of our best friends.  Scott, one of the trainers, had a birthday party and everyone went all out with the costumes.  I thought I’d share.  See all the photos

Well as you probably saw, my site has been down for a couple of weeks.  This was due to some leak in Dreamhost where someone was able to inject spam links into all WordPress blogs.  Pretty much it sucked balls, and I had to hire someone to move all of my domains from Dreamhost over to Media Temple.  Oh and this wasn’t an easy process.  Not just because of the amount of stuff I have on the old server, but mainly because the Dreamhost server was so slow, that I couldn’t connect to it most of the time.  This made the process take forever.

But thank god, I’m finally on a blazing fast Media Temple Grid Server and I couldn’t be happier.  Thanks Tej for your hardwork.  And sorry to everyone that I host your site, or to you people that just wanted to see my pretty site :)

Hope this never happens again.  F&$^ Dreamhost!

The end.

What do you do when you’re not gonna drink at new years?  Well you bowl…of course. This year nobody wanted to drink, so we put ourself on a 2 and a half hour long waiting list to get a bowling lane at 300 lanes in addison.  First let me say that 300 lanes is the most amazing bowling alley I’ve ever seen.  You walk into a pool hall, go through the fancy restaurant with lounge couches and chairs, and then make your way to the black-lit bowling lanes.  It’s half club half bowling alley.  good stuff.

So since the wait was so long, we only got to play 2 games.  But it was still a good time.  Not as good as some people…Amber…but we can’t all be as amazing as her.  Below is a few pictures and a few videos.  Enjoy.

(wait for it…the image animates)

First off…MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Just the other day, me and doan were talking about how she had never seen me without facial hair.  It got me thinking, and I’m pretty sure that 95% of my friends haven’t.  I mean unless you went to Poteet High School (the didn’t allow facial hair) with me then more than likely you haven’t seen it.  This all made me feel kinda weird.  I haven’t shaved my face in 10 years.  That’s just weird.

So I decided I’d start 2009 off clean.  I’m gonna eat better, not drink as much, stop drinking sodas, and I’m gonna start the year off clean shaven.  I was gonna shave my head, but I thought that might be pushing it.

Anyway happy 2009!  Comment and let me know what you think about the first time you saw me with no facial hair.

If you have an iphone,  you know that not having copy and paste is FRIGGIN ANNOYING.  Well pastebud, is out to change all that for us normal iphone users.  I know unlocked phones have cool stuff, and tons of things we bitch about not having, but it’s nice that finally some simple things are finally showing up.

What they say PasteBud is:

pastebud enables round-trip copy and paste on your iPhone or iPod Touch, between the two applications that matter the most: Mail and Safari. And through a clever combination of web services and bookmarklets, it does it without requiring a jailbreak or App Store download. Watch the demo, or hover or tap on each screenshot in the following flow for details.

Demo
PasteBud Demo – iPhone copy n paste

I’m so glad I stumbled upon this site when I did.  I haven’t laughed this hard in a long time.  The scary thing is that the 2000 picture…looks EXACTLY like I did when I graduated.  It’s scary.  You guys should yearbook yourself and show me the pictures.

I can’t wait to see what Obama can do. I will say that I feel really positive about what could happen.  I’m always skeptical when it comes to politician’s promises…but this time…I kinda believe he could really make a change.  Only time will tell.

I bit off a bit more than I could chew on this one. My thought was to do something really clean, and fill in a lot of space with black. Well clean lines takes a lot more time than loose lines. It’s pretty white…sorry about that. Now I know…keep it dirty :)

I know I know…6 days in and I already messed up my project. I suck…I realize it. I was thinking about the project I just had a lot going on with the Social Media Camp, Mashable Party, and client work it’s just been crazy busy. So with my excuses thrown out there…I’ve decided to change the rules on this project. Since I’ve already messed up my 1 sketch a day…I’m going to do 30 sketches in 30 days.  This month I’ll have my 30 sketches, but some days I’ll have to do more than one sketch to get myself to the goal number.

Oh and my pen died. Which sucks cause it was a really good pen. I had to just find one sitting around the house, and I really hate how the ink goes on the page with this pen. I’ll have to buy a new one tomorrow.

With all that said…here is sketch 7

And here is sketch 8

Okay, that’s a little harsh. It didn’t actually save my wedding, but it did save my wedding ring. Let me explain how crazy my life almost became without social media. It’s gonna be a little lengthy, but I want you guys to really know what happened.

——————————————

Me and Beau launched MyBabyOurBaby.com in mid-february, but I haven’t had a chance or really the balls to get out there and show it off. I recently moved to Austin, TX where there are tons of techy people and events going on almost every week. So I decided it was time to man up and look around for what’s going on. I ended up finding Austin 3.0’s blog which just happened to have a list of events going on this week Social Media Camp and the Mashable party were all going on the following day so I decided I had to pull an all day-er/nighter and go to both.

Social Media Camp was awesome. Erica ran an amazing camp, and there were quite a few really great presenters. Yoono, Dell, and Giovanni & Whurley just to name a few. Everyone there was really friendly.  People just made it a point to shake your hand, and ask where you work. I had some interesting conversations with a ton of people, and made plenty of business contacts which is what I really wanted to get accomplished.

So now that I’ve made some friends/contacts it’s time to drink. So we headed over to the Mashable party at Buffalo Billiards and start to get our drank on. The night is going great. There is an open bar, free food, and tons of people. So same as before, walked around and met a few more people. Until I ran into an old highschool friend. I hung out with them for a bit, before the beer got to me. I had to umm…relieve myself. So I took a quick stop at the restroom (I realize this is gross,but it’s an integral part of the story) where I happened to run into Pete Cashmore. I finish up, take my ring off, and wash my hands. From there me and Pete walk out and make our way through the crowd. By the time I get to the bar, I realize that my ring isn’t on my finger. I start to freak out. I start moving bar stools in case it fell on the floor and have some of my new friends help look around on the floor. It was about 15 minutes later, after a quick chat with security, when I realized that I left it in the bathroom. I run back only to find my engagement ring is gone. Sweat instantly starts to run from my forehead.

This ring is pretty special. Not only is it my engagement/wedding ring, but it was bought for me on the side of the road in China. So it’s not replaceable, by any means. So at this point I’m freaking. I walk around checking everyone’s finger, asking everyone if they’d seen it. Obviously they hadn’t, but most people told me they’d keep an eye out. About an hour and a half of searching, and I had given up. It was gone, and my soon to be wife was going to be so upset. I felt horrible. Just as I was leaving, I told Michael Cummings about the situation. He had been taking photos of the event, and I asked him to keep an eye out while he was shooting people. He said he would, and I decided to go home. My great day had pretty much been ruined. It was my fault, I forgot it and left it in the bathroom. I called my fiance, Doan, on the way home. I told her what happened and I could just hear the pain in her voice. She was hurt, which hurt me even more.

So here it is the next day, and I’m reading everyone’s tweets and blogs about how great the party was. All it’s doing is reminding me about how I lost my wedding ring. It’s about 3pm, and Beau sends me a couple of links of Michaels photos from the Mashable party. I take a quick look, and then get the crazy idea to go through all 318 photos of the event. And check everyone’s hand to see if there is any way I could find my ring myself. About 45 minutes in…I FIND IT. I see a guy posing with friends and he’s wearing my ring. It’s pretty obvious. There aren’t a lot of rings out there with a screw and a bolt welded to a band.

So here’s where Social Media comes into play. I quickly twitter that I lost my ring at the Mashable party, and posted a link to the photo asking if anyone knew the guy on the right. Within 5 minutes I had replies back leading me in the right direction. And oddly, all of this lead me back to Austin 3.0 where I first found out about the events. Kristine who runs the site, was in the photo as well. So I emailed her through the blog next. She quickly replied with “No worries, I found your ring. You can come pick it up at Conjunctured at 5pm. I run to the car, sit in traffic, and finally make it there. There it is, just as crazy and shiny as the day I got it.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Poking around on Flickr, clicking through a few blogs and then a few messages on Twitter later and I had tracked down my wedding ring. I couldn’t believe it really – I think it’s the best (definitely the most personal) example of the power of social media I’ve seen or heard of yet.

Thanks so much to Beau, Kristine, Michael Cummings, and everyone else who helped and re-tweeted my message.

Today I decided to

sketch my lil dog Kola. He’s a long haired chihuahua, but I didn’t have time to put in all the details of his hair. Still got the crazy big eyes he has though. Still rolling with the project…it’s actually getting fun.

What yall thank?

I keep forgetting about the project until pretty late in the day and today was no different. It’s 11:24pm, so I barely made the deadline. But without any adu, here is the sketch 5. Without an idea a portrait just comes out. So here’s another portrait.

I am thinking about how to get a ninja out of this, but thats a lot of black in 5 minutes :)

I have to say though, I do feel like I’m getting a little better with every one. Not with the sketch exactly, but just with the process of putting pen to paper and the ideas I have in my head. Seems like this project is working.

I got my generation 1 iPhone a few weeks after it launched, so it wasn’t an issue. No lines, no wondering if it was gonna be in stock, nothing. With the 3G iPhone, I knew there would be lines the first couple of days in major cities, but had no idea there were still lines.

I just took Kola (my dog) for a walk, and since we are lucky enough to live in a mall type area with an apple store he normally gets a good walk and I get to window shop. So as we walked up toward the apple store I saw about 50 people standing in line. I asked an old woman in a wheelchair what was going on, thinking maybe it was a in store concert or something. I obviously shouldn’t have asked an old woman in a wheelchair about anything dealing with computers, cause she asked her son and he said with a…are you an idiot look on your face…”iPhones of course”.

I’ve been going back and forth between getting the new phone. With the cell plan prices going up, at&t thinking of charging you more for too much internet usage, and these stupid lines. They’ve made my decision for me. My generation 1 iPhone has the new software with all of the new apps, and that makes it fine by me. It’s not like you’re getting much anyway. How about they add the normal things that most cell phones have. Video, sms an image to a friend’s phone, or even receive video and image sms from your friends :) maybe Generation 3.

Lines are stupid.