I never know if that's Goings On or Going Ons. The latter sounds pretty silly so we'll go with Goings On.

Besides the normal every day personal trials and travails that everyone has to deal with and I won't bore you with here, I've been busy with a full load of consulting work in addition to my AccuWeather work. I really need to update the portfolio - or at least my home page - but here's a little of what I've been working on:

State College Evangelical Free Church
This is our church, and I've been working on a new website for a while now. I've had a lot of organizational help from the church, and a capable hand has leant some much needed assistance with the podcasting/mp3s in the messages section. Like all websites it's a work in progress and will continue to grow over the coming months. I'm actually thinking about creating a Facebook tie-in but for now that's on the wish list. Speaking of Facebook, Alert Reader and Sometime Computer Geek/Social Networking Empress Tammy (who may or may not be my wife) actually has a Facebook page! Feel free to add her to your friends list, and leave a message on her "wall." You should be able to find her here.

No Kidding, Me Too!
No Kidding, Me Too! is a nonprofit organization comprised of entertainment industry members designed to educate Americans about mental health issues. It was founded by actor Joe Pantoliano, who has been in a billion (with a "B") movies and television shows. I liked him best as "Cypher" in The Matrix who was (minor spoiler coming look away before it's too late oh no) the baddie on the crew of the Nostromo. MSNBC did a great interview with him here that explains why he's involved in this particular area. I designed the site for the Artemis Group (another agency designed the logo.)

PSU Medieval Technology and American History
I worked with the Artemis Group on this project as well - Penn State received a grant from the NEH as part of the We the People initiative. The site was selected for inclusion on the NEH list of the best online resources for education in the humanities, which is very cool. To put this in perspective, not one ninja made the list, and ninjas are very dangerous, particularly when roused or needled about their garb.

Posted by Carl at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

There's really not much I can add to this, so I'm going to quote this article at PhotoshopSupport.com:

I bet you didn't know a Pantone color could satisfy the need for reassurance in a complex world, didn't you? Now you do. Go out and buy a extra large jar of Pantone 18-3943 Blue Iris today. You won't be sorry.

Here's Blue Iris, in case you would have trouble picking it out from a line-up:

Posted by Carl at 9:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I redid the CarlSchaad.com site, which (ironically enough) can be found at carlschaad.com. I did this primarily to take advantage of Web 3.0 technology. So now, not only will the site feature shiny updated examples of what I do between 11pm-2am, it will also toast your bread, take out the garbage and cut through a (leather) shoe. Just don't, you know, stand too close.

I hope that all of the blog readers in Maine who were watching the Canadian model have either returned to their homes or finished boarding up. By way of a tropical update, WSI has downgraded their hurricane total slightly. I suppose that makes sense, but it seems like cheating. Sort of like betting on an NBA game. Can you adjust your total right through the season?

I have a few more tweaks on the site, but in the meantime feel free to email me with embarrassing typos and other grammatical faux pas. (When I was a wee child I heard "faux pas" and thought it was ;fo paws" which is just silly but there are 1,090 hits for that on Google.) (You know you want to go check that now, don't you?)

Posted by Carl at 11:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Pictionary, for those of you not in the know, is a tool of the devil created by Hasbro. Well okay that's a little harsh. I actually enjoy Pictionary, except for the part at the end where I (and my team member) inevitably lose. We had some friends over last week and we played Pictionary. Whenever you play Pictionary you have to have a partner, and this partner is almost always your spouse, as it is terribly bad form to say "Ooh! Let's all exchange spouses for this game!"

My spouse is Alert Pictographer Tammy, who ordinarily draws and guesses with the kind of mental acuity reserved for Mensa members. However there were at least two incidents in this particular game of Pictionary that probably sank our chances at victory although I'm not actually saying that or blaming anyone or being bitter. I will let you, the Alert Reader, decide.

The first incident involves an "All Play." This is where every team gets an opportunity to drawn the same object, and whoever can guess it first wins. (If it's your turn and you win, you get to roll the dice and advance. Otherwise you lose the turn and it advances to the next team.) I thought I had this one nailed, and here's what I drew:

You can now play along at home. What did Carl draw? Was it:

A. A Daisy
B. Jimmy Hoffa
C. A Fire Extinguisher
D. None of the Above

If you guessed A CLOWN you would be right! But Alert Interpreter Tammy just stared at the paper unable to guess CLOWN. CLOWN. Again, I am NOT BITTER. Just for the record though that line underneath the CLOWN is me beginning to drawn arrows AT THE CLOWN because aside from drawing fire engines and big feet and squirting flowers and bottles of seltzer that was about as good a CLOWN as a person can draw under pressure.

That was the first incident, which I will forever refer to as the CLOWN INCIDENT and everyone will know exactly what I mean or I will go into painful detail to explain what I mean including taking this picture out of my wallet and passing it around because yes I am saving it forever. The second incident involves this picture by Tammy. This was not an All Play and I had all the time in the world to guess it:

Give up? I almost did, until I had the paper turned for me (whoops!)

Ah ha! I bet you think you know what this is. Is it:

A. A Wing from KFC
B. The Southeast United States
C. Washington D.C.
D. Jimmy Hoffa

If you guessed MARYLAND you would be right! Look again! That's actually Maryland up there! Now, it wasn't the fact that I didn't get this right that was particularly disturbing, and I mean disturbing like you come home at 2 am and open the garage and there's a man standing there dressed like a scarecrow and holding a gigantic scythe disturbing - no, what was really disturbing is that Alert Cartographer Tammy insisted I should have gotten this immediately!*

So, I guess I'm not going to shock you when I tell you that we lost. Not only did we lose, but we lost big. I mean, really big.

Jimmy Hoffa big.

*The Blog Hero wishes to add this late-breaking disclaimer for his own personal safety and say that Alert Artist Tammy did a far better job at drawing, overall, than did her graphic designer husband and that really, if she had just had the good sense to trade spouses at the beginning of the game she would have won. But that still doesn't look anything like MARYLAND.

Posted by Carl at 10:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

AccuWeather.com now offers video that you can embed right in your site. For example:

Here's the video for State College. You'll note that the presenter (Melissa, at least when I posted this - it will always pull the most up-to-date forecast) does NOT mention snow at all. Not a bit. Nope.

If you'd like video on your website, take a look here at the AccuWeather.com NetWeather site.

Posted by Carl at 2:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I haven't been updating the blog with my latest consulting work, which unfortunately flies in the face of my plan to claim some sort of blog-related tax deductions at Starbucks. (GREAT Banana Bread, but not really fond of the nuts.) (The nuts in the Banana Bread, not the nuts at Starbucks.) I have number of pieces I can add here and to my portfolio, but that sort of thing usually falls way down on the list, after "family," "work," "consulting," "blogging," "lawn-care," "defending myself from the cat," and "deciphering ancient maya texts."

However, I just finished this pro bono piece for the local pregnancy clinic

and I liked how it came out. I'm rarely satisfied with anything I design for very long, so I expect in a month or so I'll be reviewing old posts and will say "Why did I put THAT in there!" It's the life of an idealistic perfectionist. Rarely boring.

Posted by Carl at 10:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I designed a few cups for a local bagel store. Shop. Bagelry? Anyway; I love their bagels. So I was really jazzed when this job came along, especially since they're paying me in bagels. Okay I made that up. But that doesn't sound like a bad idea. I wonder if it's too late to get some sort of lifetime bagel deal. I mean, I can put away a lot of bagels in my remaining years, particularly if I'm making the effort. ("YOU again? Weren't you in here fifteen minutes ago?")

Posted by Carl at 12:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The title of this post is actually a clever play on words, which is something I normally don't accuse myself of. Okay I just ended that on a preposition, sorry about that. One of the things I wanted to do here was talk about the other things that I do since they're sometimes amusing. My alter ego blog, which was somewhere between 37-39 and rhymed with "ago," wasn't a good place to do that, mostly because I would be beaten to death with the Nerf® bat if I tried it. (Experiencing Giddy Feeling from new found freedom. Okay, I'm better now.) So here's something I put together for a Penn State department:

So what's the really really tiny tax deduction? Well, actually there isn't one, but if I talk about consulting related things here then I should theoretically be able to deduct SOMETHING. My thought is that I can write these posts from Starbucks, and deduct the hot chocolate I buy. OR, I could write these while eating golden delicious Twinkies, and maybe deduct that. I guess I'm not terribly gifted with the tax thing.

One of the interesting things about being a web designer, besides the Bigfoot conventions, is learning about a variety of businesses and disciplines. For example: Nanotechnology. I've already learned that this involves extremely tiny things. I mean, even smaller than a dime. Sometimes these things are so small that they require special imagination to see. Or squinting. Well, I'm still learning.

No word yet on whether or not they like this first design. It may be, um, too big. We'll see.

Posted by Carl at 8:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Chuck E. Cheese creeps me out a little bit.

I don't just mean the guy (or gal) in the suit. The whole thing seems like a Disney experiment gone horribly wrong. I mention all of this because the kids love visiting Mr. Cheese, and so Saturday as a reward for completing their year of home schooling (Connor is three assignments away from being done, and loves homeschooling so much he's working as slowly as possible to prolong the enjoyment) we went down to the Great Metropolis of Altoona and the house of Cheese.

I know it seems innoculous enough: kids get tokens to play games, and in doing so earn tickets they can cash in for Valuable Prizes. I bought a dinner package, which was four drinks and a large pizza with extra tokens. I elected to get the Super Saver Package&trade, which included over 100 tokens for only $215 dollars. Fortunately I had a credit card with me.

So while we ate our pizza the kids were trying to find the game that paid out the most tickets. This took Connor about 4 minutes. He found a game that would pay out 19 tickets on average. So our visit involved me handing out ten tokens at a time (you have to make these things last, you know) and then having the kids run out to the games and then back again with a fistful of tickets. (Hey I saw that movie! That Clint Eastwood is crazy.)

Meanwhile we sat in the area with the audio animatronics - a "band" that would whir to life every ten minutes or so. There would be bad jokes, and a song or too, and then the lights would turn up and the band would wind down, like air slowly leaking from a balloon. Or Frosty melting after his hat was removed. Or like Hal getting shutdown. Or, well, you get the idea. And after taking a short break they would stir to life again and start the whole thing over.

After the kids had spent all of the tokens we had to fight two more battles: the "Counting Your Tickets in the Ticket-Counting Machine" battle, and the "Shopping Battle." The former went much better, as the parents could control how fast the tickets were fed in the machine. Even at 1,000 tickets it didn't take too long. But the latter was grim. The kids now had 500 tickets to spend on whatever their heart desired, as long as the suggested manufacturer's retail price was under 75 cents. While the kids were looking at the whoopie cushions, stickers and plastic slinkys, I was calculating what kind of things we could have bought if we would have just gone directly to Wal-Mart. It was grim, but then again what about the fun! The thrill of the hunt! Hitting it big on some arcade machine and seeing all of those tickets spit out!

I think next year after home schooling we'll go somewhere more normal; maybe Vegas.

Posted by Carl at 5:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

For Christmas Cassie got a DVD of Sky High. It's a Disney film but I didn't buy it for her. Actually, I didn't even know it was on her "Christmas List." Her grandparents got it for her. She ended up watching it over and over again and loved it. I actually got sucked in during one of the showings, and I have to say it's a great movie. It's cute, fun and clean - apparently a rare mix these days.

One night while I was surfing I looked up Sky High and didn't recognize any of the kids in the movie. That made me curious, and I hunted around and ended up at Danielle Panabaker's website. Danielle was the co-star of the movie, playing the romantic interest of the main character. She was also a super-heroine that could control plants. (Ah. Super-heroes, you say. It all makes sense now...) The website was good but I thought I could make it look a little cleaner. So I found a contact and emailed, offering my "pro-bono" services.

A quick aside: this is proof, Alert Reader Tammy would say, of how I would never stop working if I hit the lottery. Of course I won't since I don't play the lottery, but that's another story. She insists I have this "work issue" that crops up like this from time to time. I say that it's more of spotting a need and filling it. Of course, there are a lot of websites out there so I probably won't be finished any time soon.

In any event, the contact wrote me back to take me up on my offer. So I started working on a site, and suggested I could redo her sister Kay's site at the same time - which I did. Meanwhile, both Danielle and Kay sent autographed pictures to my kids, which they were thrilled about.

I finished the sites recently. There's are some screen captures below, and you can find Danielle Panabaker's site here and Kay Panabaker's site here. In addition to being gifted actors, they're both apparently brilliant. Kay, for example, has a college degree at 15. At 15 I think I hit 1,000,000 points on Activision's Laser Blast. I even took a picture of it and got the Commander's Patch. Okay you can stop laughing now.

Posted by Carl at 1:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A compatriot of mine (whom I won't name but his first name rhymes with Bleve and his last name starts with "M" and ends in "ummey,") and I designed a flash app for the new Discovery Channel series "Perfect Disaster" which coincidentally also describes my work study, finances and auto mechanic skills. I've never trademarked it though, so I suppose they're free to have it.

You can find the app and information about "Perfect Disaster" (the Discovery Channel series, not my finances) on their website here. I'm working on getting permission to let people freely use the app on their site. It's pretty easy; you just need a little code.

Posted by Carl at 2:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)