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.

When I was in middle school and some of highschool I had these dreams of being a video game designer or a cartoon artist. So I’d always come up with random characters, monsters, weird people things. Well I thought I’d kick it old school today and play with some monsters. I can’t tell if he’s mean and angry or scared and about to cry.

What chall thank?

I’ve had a bit of a struggle finding a way to see <a href=”http://thedarkknight.warnerbros.com/”>The Dark Knight</a>. The day before it opened I walked into the Imax theatre to buy a ticket for the midnight show, only to find out that it had been sold out for 2 weeks. Since I was sold out I bought I ticket for the next available showing, which was 4 days later. Sadly, I had to take someone to the airport so I missed that show.

But finally last night I got to see the film. We went to the regular theatre, cause I was just tired of waiting. But even at the regular theatre, the 8:30pm show that we were planning on going to was sold out. It was like god didn’t want me to see this film. But since the 8:30 was sold out we bought tickets for the 9:50pm show. FINALLY…we have tickets…and I’m not gonna miss the show. I told doan we have to get there early if we’re gonna have a decent seat. So we show up about 40 minutes early, but there were even more surprises. I line around the theatre to get into our show. No worries…I don’t care if I have to sit in the front row I’m gonna see this film.

We ended up about 4 rows from the front in the center, so it was a pretty good location. It was obviously sold out, but everyone there had the same…I can’t wait to see this movie…emotion. This was the first time in a long time that I’d been to a packed theatre, that someone didn’t annoy me. Normally there is a baby or people talking, cellphones, something, but that night everyone was focused.

I’m just gonna throw it out there. BEST COMIC BOOK MOVIE EVER MADE! I’m sure some people are freaking out about that statement, but in my opinion this was full on perfection. I was much more a fan of Batman Begins than any of the other Batman movies. I loved the older ones, but they were a cartoon movie, and Batman Begins was a real movie. I mean Bruce Wayne became a ninja vigilante…how cool is that? With The Dark Knight it was more of what I’ve grown to love with Batman Begins. It was a great movie, with cool gadgets, vehicles, and some amazing technology that I’m sure gave some code geeks some interesting ideas.

On top of being the best movie I’ve seen in a long time, Heath Ledger was an amazing Joker. I know everyone says Jack Nicholson made the joker, and I’m not saying he wasn’t great. I’m saying the Batman movie with Jack in it was a cartoon, and Jack was a clown that killed people. Heath however was a crazy mother fucker. He came off like a realistic crazy madman with all kinds of issues. There was a scene where the joker gets thrown off a building and all you hear is him laughing. That’s some crazy shit…laughing at the idea of death. Heath will always be the Joker in my eyes from here on out. It’s just sad that if there ever is another Batman movie (which I hope there is) Heath Ledger wont be around to add more Joker to the screen. I really hope that they don’t try to come out with another movie, and have someone besides Christian Bale be the Batman. I hate when movies do that. Which was another reason I wasn’t a big fan of the older Batman movies. You have to stick with the crew, or it just doesn’t flow as a sequel.

Anyway…I think this is the only movie review I’ve ever done on my blog, and I really hope that I didn’t give anything away. I just had to let you know how badass this film was. If you’re in the small % of people that haven’t seen it yet. GO SEE IT! It’s worth it.

The Dark Knight

…and I’m a little late. It’s pretty sad…it’s only day 3 and I’m already late. I have a good excuse though, I was busy all day with work, and then I went to see the dark knight…which was AMAZING! Anyway…here is sketch 3…which is kinda a self portrait of myself. I’m gonna have to do another one of these in a few hours. I’ll try not to be late this time.

Anyway…here it is…let me know what you think. I’m gonna take Miller’s idea and video one of these and put it up. But that’s gonna have to wait til Doan gets back from florida…cause my camera doesn’t do video. Until then…late.

I’ve always been fascinated with games teaching kids. Tricking them into thinking they’re playing video games when really you’re teaching them these crazy mathematical functions, without them even realizing. It’s pretty dope. Anyway I just found this game called TOTEM DESTROYER, and I’ve been playing it for the last 30 minutes. I got a bit addicted to it. It’s pretty cool and simple. You blow up blocks without knocking the little gold man to the floor. The blocks fall as if they would in real life, so it’s basically teaching you all about physics, weight shifts, and gravity.

TOTEM DESTROYER

Where was this stuff when I was a kid. What level can you make it to?

I don’t know if you guys ever knew, but I’ve always called myself a portrait painter. I’ve always drawn faces…and I even spent my entire senior portfolio drawing nothing buy eyes. There is just something about a faces and eyes…you can tell what kind of mood someone’s in just by looking at their face. And that’s what I love. It’s so expressive.

With that said here is sketch 2 of the 5 minute sketch project. I might mix it up and do something other than a portrait, but then again…it’s what I love…so I might not.

Let me know what you think.

So I’ve been an artist pretty much my whole life. Drawing, painting, sketching, ruining, breaking you name it. I was doing it. But over the last 3 or 4 years my artist side of my life has really faded into the distance. I don’t want to lose my chops so I’ve decided to create a project for myself.

The project is called SKETCH. The plan is I’m going to sketch “something” for 5 minutes everyday for 30 days. And from there I’m going to take a photo of the sketch, upload it, and then combine them all into a photobook. I’m doing this for a couple of reasons. 1…I’m a big believer of use it or lose it. And I feel like I might be losing some of it. So I want to get a little crisper as an artist. 2…I just want to feel creative again. Doing corporate work day in and day out can really get to me. And doing this…even for 5 minutes…makes me feel creative again. Who knows…maybe it’ll make my corporate work even better.

So above is the first sketch from the project…next to my phone counting down the time. And below is a little closer view. Let me know what you think of the idea, and be sure to check back daily for my updates.

Wish me luck.

Dear Yahoo,

I’ve paid your premium Mail Plus option for almost 4 years now. And the only reason I’ve paid it is so I can check all of my mail in one place. And that one place is my Mac Mail App, where all of my other mail from my websites, gmail, and internet provider all work seamlessly…for free. I’ve debated this for awhile, and the only reason I haven’t dropped yahoo was cause it was the first email address I have ever had. A lot of my contacts have and still use that email, but because I have to manually go to the website to check my mail…I never get the messages. It’s just FUCKING ANNOYING! And the time has come to say “I’m done with you.” So as of today I will no longer be checking my Yahoo Mail rhernandez88 [at] yahoo.com. So if you still use that email…don’t anymore…cause I wont be checking it. If you need to get a hold of me please use the free and easy to use ray.hernandez [at] gmail.com.

It’s a sad day. I’m deleting my first ever email address from my life. I just want to add that this isn’t about money…cause it’s not expensive. It’s about principle. Free is the new black, and when your biggest competitors offer the same service, and some would say better service, for free. Then you should too. That’s all I’m saying.

So goodbye my old friend. Maybe one day you’ll come to your senses…and we can be friends again. But until that day. PEACE!

Sincerely,

Ray Hernandez