BioRUST Forums - Blogs - The Not-So-Secret Life of an Aging Hockey Player by stiney51 http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/ en Sun, 22 Nov 2009 02:05:26 GMT vBulletin 60 http://forums.biorust.com/images/misc/rss.jpg BioRUST Forums - Blogs - The Not-So-Secret Life of an Aging Hockey Player by stiney51 http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/ At long last http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/115-long-last.html Mon, 19 May 2008 21:56:55 GMT Well after 2 1/2 long months of twiddling my thumbs, spending a lot of time with my kids, doing work around the house and fumbling around trying to find freelance work I officially am back to work! Today I received and accepted an offer that will allow me to continue to pretend to be a graphic... Well after 2 1/2 long months of twiddling my thumbs, spending a lot of time with my kids, doing work around the house and fumbling around trying to find freelance work I officially am back to work!

Today I received and accepted an offer that will allow me to continue to pretend to be a graphic designer while working in the hockey industry. My new job will allow me to work out of the house and perhaps is finally a chance to realize my dream of building the ultimate destination hockey retail site. More on this to come, but it's good to be back! ]]> stiney51 http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/115-long-last.html Sacked http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/93-sacked.html Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:33:30 GMT Well go back a few months and you'll see a now useless blog post referencing my perfect job.

I was laid off yesterday with no notice, not severance and not even enough respect from the owner to have the stones to tell me himself. Our company had been fighting for some capital to make up for some really poorly timed large scale expenses (2 new retail store buildings and a new warehouse facility to name a few). The owner (who I reported directly to) kept painting a rosy picture of funding that was essentially in place.

Turns out he was dead wrong and had to lay off nearly all of the employees. So instead of coming to our office and telling myself and the web programmer himself (both of us were recruited and reported only to the owner) he sent 2 of the other company managers to do it.

So now left with no job and only my accrued vacation pay as financial padding, I'm off to dust off my resume, call a few networking contacts and set to finding a suitable replacement job and some freelance work to make sure I can continue to pay my mortgage. ]]> stiney51 http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/93-sacked.html <![CDATA[I'm an Addict.]]> http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/89-im-addict.html Tue, 05 Feb 2008 15:59:02 GMT Now it's not quite as bad as it seems, but I find myself jumping from one online addiction to another. For a while it was Biorust, but sadly I've drifted into a bit of obscurity on here. I started spending way too much time on Jellyfish.com smack-shopping. If you haven't been there, don't go. It's like crack. Lately it's been obsession with my fantasy baseball sim league. Hours and hours of research on which 9 players to select in the draft. Now that the draft is over, it's "how can I improve my team with a trade." Kind of sad really when you step back from it.

So many things I should do with my time. Work, freelance, play with the kids... must resist the urge to re-visit my addictions, but it's sooo hard!! ]]> stiney51 http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/89-im-addict.html Old Dog Learning New Tricks http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/85-old-dog-learning-new-tricks.html Sat, 26 Jan 2008 03:34:40 GMT Well after years of being too lazy and not truly needing to learn it, I'm finally venturing into the world of learning Flash. My boss envisions a very clean, homepage to our new website, and he wants to see movement, rotation and other things that would be difficult to do without using Flash.

So why not? I can learn how to do it. I am skilled enough with computers and technically minded enough to learn enough action script to be dangerous.

The nicest thing about it is, that this will add another tool to let me garner paying freelance work, and even better, my company is paying for me to learn it.

So at long last I move past the static pages and animated gifs and into the world of multimedia designs and figuring out ways to make our evolving website "cooler" as my boss puts it... ]]> stiney51 http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/85-old-dog-learning-new-tricks.html A Tale of 2 Business Cards http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/76-tale-2-business-cards.html Fri, 07 Dec 2007 13:08:13 GMT I've been working on a new business card design for our company for a while off and on (low priority) and finally finished it. Had the quote in hand, samples etc, approval of the design etc. and bam! "can we do a different card for these employees?"

Sure.

Enter the new problem. Here I have a design done for the parent company (The Mercantile Group) and now I have to come up with a new card for the sub company (Pure Hockey) that has its own look and style but tied in with the original design.

My solution? Same card back for one and similar colors for 2. Keep the fonts close enough. I'm pretty happy with the results on the computer, but we'll see what the printed versions look like. Going with a "silk" instead of a flat stock and putting a dull varnish over everything since there's so much ink coverage.

Comments are welcome since they haven't gone to print yet.
Attached Thumbnails
Click image for larger version Name: bc_TMG.jpg Views: 35 Size: 54.2 KB ID: 19   Click image for larger version Name: bc_PH.jpg Views: 38 Size: 54.9 KB ID: 20   Click image for larger version Name: bc_back.jpg Views: 27 Size: 28.7 KB ID: 21  
Attached Files
File Type: pdf bc_TMG.pdf (441.5 KB, 130 views)
File Type: pdf bc_PH.pdf (130.0 KB, 120 views)
]]> stiney51 http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/76-tale-2-business-cards.html Conflicted http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/71-conflicted.html Wed, 21 Nov 2007 13:44:06 GMT I tend to be a very happy guy, so part of me hates posting things like this, but then again it's healthy to talk about stuff that makes you uncomfortable...

3 days ago my wife called me from work (she works in a hospital). An old co-worker of hers had come in to the ER with an infection and ended up not making it (apparently she didn't have a spleen to help fight the infection). She was 30 years old (same age as my wife) had a 3 year old and a 4 month old (our kids are 20 months and 8 months). Needless to say this hit home very hard.

On the one hand I'm very sorry for this person's family and especially for her kids. I met her once and she was very nice, and from what my wife tells me she was the type of parent who would do anything for her kids and talked about them all the time.

Now on the other hand, part of me is fighting to stay disconnected from the story as I did not know this person or her family. I'm afraid this stance is winning over here and I don't know that I like it. I mean you can't change what happened and dwelling on things never helps, but shouldn't I feel more remorse that someone my wife knew who had a loving family died so young?

Perhaps that uneasiness is enough of a tribute. After all it has made us more thankful for what we have.

I'll be more cheerful next post, hope I didn't bring others down with me. ]]> stiney51 http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/71-conflicted.html Jinxed It.. http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/65-jinxed.html Mon, 12 Nov 2007 22:23:16 GMT Well, I should know better than to post a streak anywhere... We got crushed last night in hockey (lost 9-2 despite leading for half the game). Not a complete collapse until late in the game, but so much for going undefeated. No big deal really, but we look to get back on the winning side of... Well, I should know better than to post a streak anywhere... We got crushed last night in hockey (lost 9-2 despite leading for half the game). Not a complete collapse until late in the game, but so much for going undefeated.

No big deal really, but we look to get back on the winning side of things with 2 games this coming weekend.

Is it sad that I find more to post on my hockey team than design lately? Stuck in monotonous image processing for a little while trying to fill in all the images on our latest project here:

Guido Frame Gallery:

Having to photo each corner sample, size it, crop it, produce 3 sizes then create a composite full frame out of the corner piece. Thank god for those nifty photoshop techniques I've picked up over the years.

Comments are welcome on the site (including criticisms). :-) ]]> stiney51 http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/65-jinxed.html 1st Place http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/64-1st-place.html Fri, 09 Nov 2007 12:58:43 GMT Our hockey team won again last night making us 5-0-1 on the season putting us in first place for the first time ever. Not bad for a team that finished 4th in the league last year and 8th the year before.

We've really gelled as a team and seem to be digging down and catching a break. Most teams have at least 1 stand-out player and our team is kind of the exception, solid defense and goal tending combined with a hard-nosed offense that might not be flashy, but keeps the pressure on.

It feels great to be in first. It's been a long time since a hockey team I was on could say that. I once played an entire season in Youth hockey without winning a single game. This is definitely better.

To add to the enjoyment, I scored my 5th goal last night. Not bad for a defenseman who specializes in blocking shots. ]]> stiney51 http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/64-1st-place.html Reputation Points http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/58-reputation-points.html Thu, 01 Nov 2007 16:24:33 GMT Now I don't really care about reputation points on here, it's nice to know people think you're helpful, but beyond that, I've seen people with huge reputation points that really don't contribute as much as others with lower reputation points.

In any case, I happen to look down today and noticed my reputation points as of this post stand at 51.

I just thought I'd take a moment to celebrate such a great number. :beer: ]]> stiney51 http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/58-reputation-points.html The Elusive 6th Star http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/53-elusive-6th-star.html Tue, 23 Oct 2007 11:39:07 GMT I have about 3000 songs in my iTunes right now and about 2000 of them are rated by me on a 5-star scale (mind you I've deleted a lot of 1 star songs too):

1 Star (Going to be deleted 'cause I'll never listen to it)
2 Stars (not horrible, but don't care for it either, ok to shuffle through)
3 Stars (decent song, kind of a catch all good song category)
4 Stars (very good song)
5 Stars (Great song)

Now it's relatively easy for a song to obtain a 4-star rating, currently 384 songs have 4 stars. There are tons of very good songs from a wide range of musical tastes including 28 songs from my extensive Jimmy Buffett collection, 11 songs from my large Iron Maiden catalog and a dozen songs by pink Floyd.

The 5th star is pretty difficult to obtain. Only 50 songs are in this category with Metallica holding 6 slots (this one surprised me actually because thinking back I wouldn't have guessed they'd snag that many).

So recently I was thinking "what if iTunes had a 6th star? who might get that?" So here's my list of 6 songs I own that I'd give a 6-star rating to. I selected only the songs that had the most feeling in them and that were delivered by the artist so well that it just made you lose yourself in the song. Only 1 of these songs has received much acclaim, 1 is a live version and 1 probably hasn't been heard by most (if not all) who read this post.

In no particular order:
6. One (Metallica) - hands-down their best song ever. The feeling of hopelessness that this song catches is unreal.

6. Colorful (The Verve Pipe) - Certainly not their most popular song, but delivered so well.

6. Jack The Lion (Harvey Danger) - This song is pretty unheard of, it was never radio-released in my knowledge, but listening to it nearly brings a tear to my eye every time. If you haven't heard it, then give it a listen.

6. Dirty Glass (The Dropkick Murphys) - I'm particular to the version of the song sung with Kay Hanley (formerly of Letters to Cleo) but the fun and bitter feud between the 2 characters in this song is a great fit to the hard-edged style of the Murphys

6. All Around Me (Flyleaf) - This song is very new to me, but struck a cord right away. The range by the singer both draws you intimately into the song and then shouts to the world her feelings.

6. Trying To Reason With Hurricane Season (Jimmy Buffett) - The live version of this song off "Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays" really puts a good song (the original) over the top. Now Buffett is not a great singer or guitar player, but he's a great storyteller. This song is a great example of that.

I'm sure I'll look back on this and my feelings will change, but there's my 6 songs that get the elusive (and non-existant) 6th star in iTunes.

Honorable mention goes to these 5.5 star songs: Welcome to the Black Parade (My Chemical Romance), Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd), Grey Sky Eyes (Carbon Leaf). ]]> stiney51 http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/53-elusive-6th-star.html <![CDATA[Adventure orange & border hell]]> http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/43-adventure-orange-border-hell.html Thu, 04 Oct 2007 03:07:26 GMT We took advantage of the weekend without the kids (seems so long ago, but I've been really busy) by painting our living room. Let me start off by saying anyone who ever considers putting up a border or wallpaper in a room should be dragged out and beat with a large rusty wrench.

Our room only had a border on it, but the one wall with the gas fireplace might as well have been carved into the sheet rock. That wall alone took me 6-8 hours to do and the section with a border was only 8 feet long or so... Thank god for captain morgan and the lovely concoction of spiced rum and diet coke. Also thank god that most of the longer side wall borders came up in 1 piece taking a fraction of the time of that fireplace wall. If it hadn't I was going to rip the wall down and start new. It would have been less work after all.

Back to the paint. My wife picked out a color she loved for the two smaller walls, kind of a tan/light brown that reminds me of a very light caramel. It goes really well with the fireplace and nearly matches the grout on the brick. The rest of the room needed a bright color because the old blue was sucking all the light out of everything. Enter a friend's wedding announcement that was on a orange backed paper... Why not it looks like it would go well. We then proceeded to get swatches and narrow down the selection to one called "Adventure Orange."

This was a big step since it is a much bolder color than either myself or my wife would normally pick. I've recently started liking orange-ish rooms though. We went to Home Depot and had them mix up the color for us: "It sure is an adventure..." the HD employee told my wife.

After priming, painting, painting some more and putting most everything back in place (we rearranged the furniture to change things up and focus on the fireplace a bit more), we have a very bright and cheerful room. It's a bit bold and we are getting used to it, but once we scrounge up some money to get a few more things on the walls and some decent curtains it should all come together.

The short end to this long story is that despite having 2 days sans-kids my hope to get some rest was replaced with the exhaustion of 2 days of genuinely hard labor. Next time someone offers to watch the kids, I'm just going to go to the beach or find someplace with a nice hot-tub to relax in. ]]> stiney51 http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/43-adventure-orange-border-hell.html Productive Week? http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/36-productive-week.html Fri, 21 Sep 2007 17:04:50 GMT I finished the design of the product page for our new hockey website (I'll post screen shots when we get the thing to a working demo stage) and I designed the look of the review page. Both relatively small projects in the grand scheme of the whole site, but every piece counts.

The rest of the week has been tied up with trying to deal with google to update all of our store listings (never fun dealing with a immovable giant that is purposely meant to be vague, spoon fed and anti-workarounds), dealing with a newspaper on getting an ad and schedule setup (which took far too long) and dealing with mountains of trivial minor tasks that always seem to add up to eat away the day. Overall, I'm a bit disappointed at the progress, but encouraged because I really like the look and feel of everything.

This weekend? I think about it not at all (if possible) and I enjoy the first weekend alone with my wife for over 8 months and the first one with her not being distracted by pregnancy or recovering from in in over 2 years. Thank god for grandparents willing to take a 6-month old and an 18 month old for 2 days. Let see if I remember how to sleep in, what it's like to eat a hot meal and what it is like to do things around the house without a toddler clutching your leg.

My goals for the weekend: Sleep in tomorrow and Sunday, get the living room painted and that's about it. Anything else is just gravy. We'll work on next week's goals Monday. ]]> stiney51 http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/36-productive-week.html Best Job Ever http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/32-best-job-ever.html Wed, 19 Sep 2007 11:26:43 GMT A friend of mine just recently got an offer for what might be close to his dream job. Working in his field (programming) on something he loves (fantasy sports). This got me thinking about myself and my ideal job. Honestly I wonder if I'm in it... Not many people truly love their job and look forward to going to work. At least not many people I know do. They find a job that pays them well enough and is tolerable, then they find reasons they keep going back to it (like the people, like the pay etc.).

Now I'm an eternal optimist about most things. The glass might be half full or even a quarter full, but someday soon it will be getting filled up to the brim... That attitude allowed me to start my post-college career doing inventory finance and being happy enough doing it. A series of strange coincidences led me to meet my wife, decide to move to Southern NH and to apply for a web design job I had no business getting that was for a hockey retail company. Well it turns out my print design and love for hockey landed me the job despite my minimal to no experience on the web. That was 7 years ago and I was grossly underpaid, but discounts on equipment and the ability to see all the new stuff right when it came out made it worth while.

Flash forward 7 years and I've been through a bankruptcy, the firing of all but 5 people in the company, a company/owner change & re-hiring, a downsizing to just myself and 1 other person and move out of state for operations, a complete change of job/companies and yet somehow here I am. Sitting 3 floors up from my original office with a good friend working for another Hockey retailer with a much better salary and a lot more creative license to do what I think works well.

The ironic thing was with each of those seemingly bad things going on (including the bankruptcy and firing of all but 5 people and then the operations move and firing of all but myself and the programmer) I kept getting raises and finally got to a point where I feel I am being fairly compensated.

I don't know if it's Karma, help from a higher power, luck or just my own doing. I guess more likely a combination of many things but I truly feel I have the best job right now.

Working in design, flexible schedule so I can spend time with my kids, decent pay, getting to work in the hockey industry, 8 minute commute from home, having a good friend along the ride with me and a boss who's enthusiasm helps keep you striving for doing more than just churning the same stuff out.

Some say "good things come to those who wait." I say good things are already here, you just need to recognize them and then more good things will be right around the corner. ]]> stiney51 http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/32-best-job-ever.html Refreshed http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/28-refreshed.html Mon, 17 Sep 2007 12:49:18 GMT What a great weekend. Got a few things done around the house on Saturday, watched a decent (but sad) movie that night with my wife. If you get a chance watch Bridge to Terabithia. It was really different than I expected but still very well done. Yesterday (Sunday) we decided to take the kids out... What a great weekend. Got a few things done around the house on Saturday, watched a decent (but sad) movie that night with my wife. If you get a chance watch Bridge to Terabithia. It was really different than I expected but still very well done.

Yesterday (Sunday) we decided to take the kids out to the local town fair. We ended up spending the whole day, some but not a ton of money and took a bunch of pictures of my daughter on her first ever fair rides. While there I took her into a fenced off animal petting area (mostly sheep, goats and chickens) which was fun and we went to the circus which was much better than expected for a small tent at a state fair. Both of the kids liked seeing the giraffes and lions too. Good thing we've got a digital camera, because at their age they won't remember the day for long (18 months and 6 months). I think I will (at least until Alzheimer's kicks in), but they probably won't.

The day was capped off by my first hockey game of the year. We lost, but I felt pretty good considering I haven't skated since April.

It's got me in great spirits and ready to get cracking on those designs... Now if I can only stop posting to this blog and get to work, we'll be in good shape. :-) ]]> stiney51 http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/28-refreshed.html Procrastinating http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/24-procrastinating.html Sat, 15 Sep 2007 03:16:31 GMT I work for a couple companies and therefore have a number of different tasks and styles to deal with. My current project is to design the face of our hockey company's internet retail site.

Not a huge deal, I've done it twice before for other hockey retail sites, but this one is different. We're looking curring edge more content and more information than previous sites.

Each time I start a process like this, it's easy to throw out a bunch of ideas and then fall short of achieving them. This is one time I'm bound and determined to outdo anything I've done before, so it has me cautiously approaching this daunting task. I find myself more and more looking for things to distract me at work, putting off what I need to get underway. I convince myself that everything I'm doing either needs to be done or is a way for me to grow as a designer.

Often it is really the case, but more often it is merely a way to not charge right into things. Next week (since it's Friday night) I bear down and get some serious work done, but for now I just look back at another week gone by without enough work getting done.

If anyone has suggestions to avoid this, let me know because it's never a great habit to get in to. ]]> stiney51 http://forums.biorust.com/blogs/stiney51/24-procrastinating.html