BrainFuel

Have you ever wondered how the Star Trek Enterprise avoids all of those stars when it’s going at Warp speed?

Oh, and did you know they put 41 Christmas trees in the White House? That’s a lot of trees. No, that’s a forest!

I visited my folks in Kalispell, Montana over Thanksgiving and convinced them to sign up for broadband cable Internet – amazing thing is, this town of like 20,000 now has as many choices as anyone for hi-speed internet: DSL, wireless, and cable. My mom, who has never touched a computer in her life (even though I grew up with them all around) finally went online yesterday, she said. She was checking out Cold Water Creek, which is a clothing store for women based out of Sandpoint, Idaho, where I was born and spent the first 5 years of my life without electricity or a toilet in the bathroom. (sorry to digress) She said the site was easy to use and she found her way around quite nicely. BTW the company has a bunch of positions listed on monster, including Senior Designer. If you want to live near the great outdoors, that’s the place to be.

The photo? That’s Big Mountain, a ski resort in Whitefish, Montana… Vann’s, which is an electronics retailer based in Missoula, is offering a ski trip contest which you might like to enter. It seems they’ve now got one of the best ecommerce stores for electronics online, and even partner with amazon.com. One more note: my first web job (at 17) started in a home office on a cliff overlooking Whitefish Lake, visible in the photo. Even though the startup only lasted a few years, it’s good to see others are succeeding in tech from semi-remote locations like this!

Check out this car illustration my friend Gary Smith made (entirely in Adobe Illustrator).

Sometimes in my job I get to be a fly on the wall. On Tuesday I was asked to take photos at the hospital (for a medical related web site we’re doing). Being that photography is my hobby I frequently am asked to take photos, especially recently for some reason. I only do it if I know I can do a great job and have fun at the same time.

So I arrive at the hospital not really knowing what to expect. All I knew was I was taking photos in the cath lab. Turns out I got to take photos of a surgeon inserting a stint and balloon into a blocked artery. I even had to get decked out in scrubs and a put on a x-ray shield. Watching the whole procedure made me think about how much I love my job. Sure it’s stressful some days, and the work is challenging, but compare sitting in a cube 9-5 pushing paper around. It wouldn’t be the same.

In my job I get to learn all about different types of businesses. I get to work with the owners or senior executives and ask them all kinds of questions about how they do business. Stuff you wouldn’t ask people normally. All in the name of “understanding the client.” And they tell me stuff they wouldn’t even tell their employees. Like what price they get their products for from China, or what their annual revenue is, and also about their business plans. Of course, we keep it all confidential.

So the point is, the more I do this the more I love my job. It’s different every day and always interesting. Not to say sometimes I hate my job. Sure, everyone does at some point. Right now I love what I do.

Check out the great Flash intro on the Tyson web site. It’s fun, clever, and has a whole twist to it that’s slightly refreshing.

Things you can ship safely without any packaging:

Can you think of any others? Can you tell I started with tires and it went downhill from there?

We’ve been doing a lot of work with a local branding agency in town and one of the sites they built was Coleman Spas (a couple of years ago). I really thought the design was quite excellent and so I’m posting it here. The Coleman site doesn’t have the same appeal (although it’s not terrible).

I sent a friend of mine an instant message and I asked him if he had seen any snowmen lately. Considering we live in Phoenix it’s highly unlikely.

His answer: “Yeah, I saw one. He was running, screaming down the street, yelling at the top of his lungs ‘I NEED A FREEZER! GET ME A FREEZER.’”

Haha, reminds me of the Calvin & Hobbes slideshow (375kb PowerPoint) with all of his snowman comics.