Oct 31

Can’t believe I didn’t post anything in October. Oh wait, I did. Hah. More to come as always…

written by Ben

Jun 30

Oh, life. How you make things difficult. No, not really. I’m just being hyperbolic. But there is a bit going on…

  • Work continues. Banking is interesting right now. At least loans are picking up a little bit…
  • School starts up again. My third (or fourth if you count the introductory survey) class begins tomorrow. I have some pre-work to finish up which I’ll do after publishing this post.
  • Travel plans continue. I’ll hopefully be heading back out to Iowa in late July/early August for the State Fair. Then Dallas and Norman, OK in early October for U2 at the Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium.

Quick update, I know. I have some long-form post ideas but those will have to wait….

written by Ben \\ tags: , ,

Apr 05

I responded to the following “update” on Facebook…

Facebook | Emily Hinc-1.png NEW

Here is the response:

Even so, it saddens me that equality must be forced onto people. Desire to be equal should come from within, not be rained down from above. I think you know as well as I that—if an amendment to the state constitution were put to the people of Iowa that reversed this decision—it would pass with a generous majority. (Heck, people voted against “equality” in California—California!) All this will do is allow for a lot of people to flock to Iowa in a few weeks to be “married” only to have that union invalidated when the decision is ultimately overturned. It’s actually kind of sad.

That’s all I’ll say about this for now.

written by Ben \\ tags: , , ,

Feb 28

This is not a real post. It should be but it’s not. I’m writing a paper right now. That’s why.

written by Ben \\ tags:

Jan 11

It’s been ten days and already a lot has happened in 2009. I’m now a graduate graduate student at Lewis University. I finally got all the photos from my October 2008 trip to Colorado onto Flickr (ok, actually that was late last year but still…). My employer has changed and now I work for “National City now a part of PNC”. And I finally upgraded this blog to Wordpress 2.7.

I plan on writing a longer post on my trip – maybe a bit of a narrative – and of course embed slideshows of the photos I took. I have a lot of raw video to go through as well but I’m waiting for iMovie ‘09 to get it all put together. I really want to use some of those cool new map transitions – Indiana Jones style!

written by Ben \\ tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Nov 29

My eight-year-old cousin came in for Thanksgiving from Texas. We had a great time. Here are some photos of our Turkey Day.


written by Ben \\ tags: , ,

May 30

I feel I’ve been neglecting Luminary Blur for a while. Normally I’d blame it on procrastination or disinterest or really good TV shows (how about that Lost finale). This time, however, I’ve got some good reasons.

  • Building a podcast network. Yes, a network. “Doesn’t a network require more than one podcast,” you ask. Indeed it does, and I’m proud to say that the Kwinix Podcast Network now features two regularly produced podcasts. The first is The Switchcast, which amazingly is up to four episodes with the fifth coming any day now. Mac vs. PC, OS X vs. Windows, iPhone vs. Windows Mobile. It’s always a lively debate and I anticipate more intense discussions as the launch of the 3G iPhone is almost here. The newest addition to the network is Dinner Voyeur, a fine dining podcast featuring Scot T. Kokandy. While the first episode was a solo effort, Scot is looking forward to bringing more collaborators into the mix to create some lively discussions around the finest restaurants in Chicago (and beyond). In fact, if you know of any establishment that begs for Scot’s podcast treatment, send him an e-mail. Finally, to create a more “unified” feel to the network, I’ve created an intro that identifies our shows as belonging to the Kwinix Podcast Network. I’ve embedded it below for your listening pleasure—don’t worry, it’s only eight seconds long.
    Kwinix Podcast Network Intro
  • Building a website. This is something I used to do a lot and wouldn’t mind doing it more often. I’ve become quite a Joomla expert (I’m currently building a new version of my mom’s Pella Community Day Care site) so when my old college roommate asked me if I was interested in deploying a site for Gonzales Regal Miniature Dachshunds, I jumped at the chance. The site is done for the most part and the first litter has arrived.

I guess that isn’t too much but these two projects have really taken up a lot of my time for the last few weeks. I hope to continue to develop both my podcasting prowess as well as my website development expertise. Thanks for journeying with me.

written by Ben \\ tags: , , , ,

Dec 28

Tomorrow I leave for Iowa to spend my New Year’s Eve with family. I’m especially excited to be going at this time due to the upcoming Iowa caucuses on Thursday, Jan. 3rd. In fact, my parent’s town has been the subject of several recent news stories. I just missed both Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson, who were in Pella this morning. Perhaps there will be more high-profile visits coming up over the weekend—I wouldn’t mind seeing any of the candidates although it would be cool to see some of the higher-profile ones, including Hillary Clinton, John McCain, or Barack Obama.

Due to my time away, I may not be updating until the new year. But look for pictures/videos at that time.

Happy New Year!

written by Ben \\ tags: ,

Dec 25

Just got back from my two-day Christmas marathon with my Illinois-based family. I will be heading out to see my actual family (Iowa-based) on the 29th. I’ve posted a Picasa slideshow embed after the jump of our Christmas Eve gift exchange. Video should be added soon.

Also, Happy Christmas to all…hope you got everything you wanted and more!

Continue reading »

written by Ben \\ tags: ,

Nov 20

I’m heading out of town tomorrow afternoon for a nice restful Thanksgiving in Pella, IA. Therefore I probably won’t have much time to post a proper blog entry until Saturday (and I think I have a good idea for one brewing) so I’ll attempt to communicate my activities via Twitter since they are aggregated here anyway.

In other news I just read that Facebook will be removing the “is” from its status updates. All those clever work-arounds Brett Terpstra figured out for MoodBlast? Might not matter any more. Pity, because they were very very useful. Personally I’m looking forward to MoodBlast 3—seems that a lot of changes are afoot.

MoodBlast

written by Ben