I’ll quick explain the premise: Shay has been putting out a daily vlog (called the SHAYTARDS) surrounding his life and family for past couple years and so this video has much of the several hours leading up to the event.  Its all good stuff, but I think really from the 11:20 point on is where it hit me most as it follows his wife and family running and catching up with him at various points during his race.

This guy was fat and overweight and goofy; I started watching him years ago because he was funny.  That was his shtick; fat and funny and he got popular on YouTube because of it.  But as he posted videos each and every day, I got to “know” him, well, as much as you can know a guy watching a few minutes of him and his family on YouTube every few days.  And I got to really like him, or more accurately look up to him for so many more reasons.  It became less about how goofy he could be, but instead more about his charisma, his love for his family, his awesome relationship with his wife, his ambition to try something new and not be afraid to change jobs, uproot his family, and take risks and do what he loves, his determination to get out of debt, and obviously, the most outwardly facing characteristic, finally lose the weight.

The daily vlogs have shown how much he loves and values his family.  Sure, I know no family is perfect and they probably have their fair share of bad times and arguments but its about minimizing those bad times.  But as I’ve watched things in these videos over the years, there is no way you could fake it, that good and for that long.  I look at him and his wife, Katilette, and yearn to have that type of relationship.  They support each other, root for each other, and most importantly laugh with each other and its wonderful to watch.  It was amazing to watch the video when they declared themselves debt free (to Dave Ramsey of course) just over a year ago… not only was it awesome to see them finally succeed in their financial goal, but you could see the deep love for each other, it was beautiful.  I also admire the way he stands up and represents his religion.  He is Mormon, makes no secret about it to his fans, but also doesn’t press any of his views or opinions on others and respects and loves others and their opinions.  He genuinely loves others.  And further, with moving to California with his family, where it might be easy to get caught up in the more liberal lifestyle and let some of their family-values suffer, he has made it a point to ensure his kids continue to be brought up in their faith.

Over the years he struggled with his weight, as can be seen very publicly as it was well documented in his videos.  I could see he was a normal guy, with all the same struggles everyone else has.  Fighting with working up initiative & drive, wrestling procrastination, etc were all things you could see him work through.  But he finally was able to get it together and do it, and it culminated with this video of him completing the LA Marathon.  It was awesome to watch, especially if you’ve seen many of the videos leading up to it with him losing weight and actually training for it.  But the video does an awesome job, especially towards the end, showing you the things he said years ago when he was heavy, the struggles he faced, and what he wanted to do…. and he finally did it.  And I’m proud of him.  And seeing how proud his wife was of him was beautiful and touching and I can only hope to have someone that proud of me someday.

I hope not someday, but today, I can have the inspiration and determination that Shay Carl Butler does and be able to set and achieve my goals the way he seems to be.  To love his family with everything he has, to not be afraid to try new things, to have the drive to get up every morning and work hard at each and every thing you do because it could be your last so you need to make the best of it.

So I say thanks to Shay Carl for everything he’s done.  Some may think its small, and I guess in the grand scheme of things, it is…all he’s really doing is living his life.  But he’s a great example to others that if even a few men (and women) can aspire to also be, the world will be a little better off because of him.

To begin with, it doesn’t step on the toes of Spotlight. While Spotlight is a good search tool, I do like to use it for certain things (at least for now), Google Quick Search Box allows you to override the Cmd+Space shortcut, or use a different one (Cmd+Cmd), which I prefer.

Secondly, the interface is awesome. Its pulling information from apps on my machine, documents, and then provides options to search the web, dictionary, etc. You can even use shortcuts before typing, like Cmd+0, which will focus your search on Google Images, for example. And when you are searching for a directory, you can actually browse to that directory, and continue to drill down to a file and open it (or inspect it, email it, etc) all from within the interface.

Lastly, it integrates with Google Apps (like Gmail, Google Docs, etc) and Twitter so you can search those things too, right from the desktop.

It really is very well done. I recommend it to everyone who uses a Mac. I do use Google Desktop on my Windows computer, and I haven’t checked for an update recently… but I am off to do that now because I hope there is a Windows version of this, or an update to Google Desktop. Nice job, Google.

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Obviously some technical glitch in the system, but they appear to have already corrected the issue a few hours later so everything is all better now.  But seriously, its gotta be a pretty big glitch to thing Rainbows and Unicorns may harm your computer.  I mean, c’mon!

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

There is also a pretty funny guy, kinda sxephil’s “sidekick”, at least he started out that way.  Shay Carl, funny goofy fat guy jumping around, but he has a sort of redeming quality about him.  Check out his YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/shaycarl.

Lastly there is this comedy duo from Washington, Barats & Bereta, that I have been actually following for a couple years now.  Really funny guys, their skits are awesome.  Check them out here.

If you’ve got any really funny people you follow on YouTube, MySpace, or elsewhere, let me know.

Now, 2008, got a family, taking lots of pictures, listening to music, surfing the web…the computer has become a central part of our household.  It sits in the middle of the house.  It was time for a fun, easy, cool computer.  I debated with getting a high end gaming machine but after discussing with the wife, I really am not a hardcore gamer.  So long as I can play a decent game here and there, I’m fine.  I use the Wii (and maybe an Xbox 260 someday) for my main gaming.

So we decided to foot the bill and get an iMac.  A nice 20″ beauty.  Sits perfectly on the desk, fits great.  It was a bit more expensive than I’d like, but it truely is worth it.  But, we got that Federal Rebate Check…I should thank Bush for my iMac I guess.  So its great, a nice break from Windows.  I use Windows all day, and don’t get me wrong, I think Windows is just fine.  But OS X is just a breath of fresh air.  So I got my mac, and I love it.

The other ClearType fonts that come with Vista: Calibri, Cambria, Consolas, Candara, Constantia and Corbel, are pretty nice as well. I specifically like Consolas for programming, its a decent fixed width font that looks nice in ClearType only. And I think Calibri is a great replacement for Times New Roman. Its a sharp looking font that I think looks good.

It went pretty well. I decided to do it myself to save some money and I enjoy learning about and doing those types of things myself. I took a week off in the summer and went at it, 5 or 6 days straight. I did a little bit of work before hand on a couple of weekends, buying some wood, digging out and flattening the plot, putting together the floor joists. That was about it, until the solid week of working on it. I purchased the plans online from a site called hometime.com. Specifically the plans I purchased are here. Not bad, for $8.95 I received three very large professional-grade blueprints, with 5 different size layouts. We chose 10×16. They were pretty easy to follow. I would definitely recommend them.

I think it came out well, take a look at my picture album. At various times throughout the week I had my neighbor up the street help out, my neighbor next door and my father came in from Buffalo as well. It definitely wasn’t easy, but now after its built and stained, it feels good to have built it. We even decided to tweak the plans ourselves and throw the door on the broad side as opposed to the end. I think it looks much better that way, and the door can now be seen from our house and it gives it a nice touch.

After it was built my other neighbor hollered over to me “you didn’t build a shed, that’s a barn!” Yeah, I’d have to agree, it was a bit bigger than I anticipated. I knew how much floor space I was getting, but man, its tall. There is a lot of storage up top inside. It’s really great, I am extremely proud of it. And thanks to the drive of my wife and the help of my friends and my father, it wasn’t too bad to build. And now we’ve filled it up and my wife can park in her garage, and I have a spanking new shed to throw my stuff in and put a work bench in someday…hopefully soon.

Safety image from a pool filter manual instructing the user to release the pressure in the pump before removing the top of the filter.

It was quite an experience. First of all, I had never been to the West Coast of the United States before. I’ve always stuck to the East Coast, and even then, I am not too well traveled. So it was pretty neat to fly across the country, and to add to that, we were bumped up to first class on the way there…very nice.

There were a ton of people at this conference. JavaOne is pretty much the “mecca” for Java developers and it stood up to that label. There were tons of vendors there pushing there latest and greatest products and tools. The keynote was cool, got to see some nice presentations on the new announcements from Sun, like JavaFX, OpenJDK, etc. You can see what was covered here. Overall, there is some cool things being worked on at Sun.

The Technical Sessions were very good as well. Our days were booked, with sessions from 9:30 AM until 9:30 PM, and even later some nights. There was alot to cover! But we went to topics ranging from the web tier, to EJB 3.0, to JSF, to Shale, to JPA, to Real Time Java 2.0, JavaScript frameworks like Prototype and Script.aculo.us, as well as AJAX and all the possibilities with that. It was alot to absorb in just four days.

All of the stuff I am very excited about, there are some up and coming things in java that I am looking forward to. It was nice to see all the good things that are happening in the Java world. One can get to focused on tasks and projects at work and so you put your blinders on to get it all done and don’t get to see all the neat things that are being done out in the community that can allow developers to make better applications with better tools.

I hope to attend next year, but we’ll see. The budget has to accommodate it and the moons of Jupiter may have to align as well. Also, it might be good to spread the experience around and send different developers. We’ll see, although I would love to go.

Oh, and I snapped some pictures of the conference as well, and then on the last day got some pictures of the San Francisco bay area landmarks. Most people wouldn’t consider it a landmark, but we also were able to stop by the headquarters of digg.com, one of my favorite sites. It was pretty cool; saw some of the developers as well as Dan Huard, site admin of Digg. Enjoy the pics!