Sunday, August 3rd, 2008

I’ve had a half dozen blog posts waiting in the wings lately, but at this point I think it’s better to just combine them into one ‘what’s going on’ post, rather than 5 or 6 separate posts. Enjoy.

Mass Transit

Over the past month or so, I’ve really started to try to ride MARTA to work every day. So far, it’s been fairly successful, and it has saved me a lot of money in the process. Now, there are problems with this decision. The main issue is that fact that I live in North Fulton - not exactly MARTA country. To get to work using mass transit, I have to drive 7 miles from home to the park/ride station on Windward Parkway, take the bus to the North Springs station, then ride the train to the Buckhead station. From there, i walk the mile or so to work. As you can see, it’s not exactly a commuter’s paradise. However, if current gas prices were to hold, I would be saving around $70 a month on transportation costs. That doesn’t even include the decreased wear and tear on my car, so it’s not a bad deal at all really.

The funny thing is, due to the awful traffic that exists on 400, it takes nearly the same amount of time to drive from Alpharetta to Buckhead as it does to drive to a station, get on a bus, drive to a train station, take the train to Buckhead, then walk a mile to work. Sad, but true.

While MARTA is far from perfect, I do like avoiding the stress of sitting in traffic in the AM. I replace that with reading news on my iPhone, listening to music, and reading books. It’s also nice to take a little stroll in the morning on the way to work. I always feel a lot more relaxed and ready to go when I get in now. Hopefully the daily afternoon thunderstorms don’t ruin this for me. I figure that if I can make it through August okay, I’ll be on easy street after that.

finding a house / apartment

Speaking of Alpharetta’s insane distance from downtown, Michelle and I have started talking about finding a place to live in the spring. That’s obviously very exciting news for a number of reasons, and I hope that we do end up a lot closer to downtown than where we’re at now. She works up in Alpharetta, so I’m sure we wont’ be too far south, but anything is an improvement. I’m hoping for somewhere in the Sandy Springs area, near the MARTA line, to keep up my good habit. It’s still a ways away, so we’ll see what kind of places we find. I am excited about getting out, closer to Atlanta, and living with my ladyfriend.

football season

With the start of August comes the excitement over football season. For the third year in a row, Erik, Bonnie, and yours truly will be attending GT football games this fall. However, to add to the wonderful addition of Michelle from last year, we have now brought in the duo of Rick and Becky, further bolstering our tailgating crew. We have basically the same seats at last year - which I thought were pretty solid for the price. I think after a year of learning from our lack of tailgating gear and experience, we’re now ready to rock.

Last.fm

I’ve gotten hooked lately using Last.fm, and I recommend you jump on board as well. It’s a really neat way to keep track of what your (and your friends’) music listening trends are, and to get personalized recommendations based on those trends. I’ve found a number of smaller artists that I’d never even heard of, and it’s really nice to use the software to listen to your ‘radio station’ - a personalized internet stream of music you’ve listened to - at work. You can even listen to a ’station’ of your recommended artists using the software, so it’s a neat way to check out new artists before buying. Join, and add me!

MobileMe

With the release of the new iPhone software a few weeks ago, Apple released their MobileMe ‘cloud’ (I hate that word) service. Now, calendars, contacts, bookmarks and emails modified on your phone are (nearly) instantly reflected on the me.com website, your desktop computer(s), and other iPhones if you have them. Even though the service has had some uptime hiccups so far, I haven’t really experienced much of it other than the first day (where NOBODY could get online). The main reason that I bring this up is that I’ve changed my default email address again. You can reach me at daniel@danielandrews.com or cdanielandrews@gmail.com, but they’ll just forward to daniel.andrews@mac.com.

July notes and news, over!

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Posted on August 3rd, 2008 | No Comments »

Thursday, May 1st, 2008

At some point over the past year or so, I have noticed signs along Georgia 400 that say ‘Hospitality Highway’. At first, I thought this was some sort of program established for highway cleanup, but I could never be sure. A few weeks ago, Michelle noticed another one of the signs, so I looked up “Hospitality Highway via Google. Boy, I was in for a treat.

Georgia 400 is henceforth to be known as the Hospitality Highway, a corridor of highway stretching from Atlanta up to the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Apparently, the site of my daily commute is more than just a road to some — it’s a marketing opportunity, and one that should be exploited to the greatest amount possible.

For example, I direct you to the suggested itinerary section of the site. It’s here that you can learn how to fully explore the quaint southern charm of suburban Roswell, Alpharetta, and Cumming. The activities outlined in this section are laughable to any local North Fulton resident, but that doesn’t stop the writers of this site. Part of Day 4’s schedule includes:

Rise and shine! Get your motor running with a complimentary breakfast—offered at many of the Alpharetta hotels. Then drop by the Alpharetta Welcome Center in the heart of downtown for a glimpse into the charm and vitality of the city. Pick up a local Calendar of Events to find out what’s happening in town. The Welcome Center is the best source of information on nearly all that the area has to offer.

Spend the morning at the Honda Rider Education Center where you can take beginning, intermediate or advanced courses for street or dirt bikes on Honda’s own courses. Be sure to register for this popular experience beforehand.

How charming!

The tour takes you all the way from the north end of the highway strip, down towards the toll road in Buckhead. And it’s chock-full of corny things to see and do around town. I just want to remind everyone that the GA 400 corridor is simply suburbia. Tons of it. There is nothing ’southern’ or ‘fascinating’ about 30 minutes of traffic no matter where you want to go, a Publix on every single corner, and a Starbucks every quarter mile.

So if anyone asks you how to get to Alpharetta, just tell them to take the Hospitality Highway — but don’t forget to stop along the way and make a memory that will last a lifetime!

Posted on May 1st, 2008 | 2 Comments »

Saturday, March 8th, 2008

So, I finally took the plunge, came up with a name, bought a domain, ordered business cards, and did all of the paperwork necessary to get the ball rolling on my very own shiny new (side) business. I’m really excited to have more control over expressing my creative side, along with making some extra money to boot. The ultimate plan is to grow my own business and run that full-time within the next 2-3 years, but for now it will be a side project that I work on along side my current job. So, without further adieu, I present to you SquareOne Web Design.

I anticipate my workload increasing steadily over the next year or two, to the point where I can then quit my job and do this full time. The nice thing about my current full time gig is the fact that I get one weekday off in the middle of the week. This gives me ample time to focus on other things, and will allow me to ramp up to a second full time job. However, for now at least, it’s all about building contacts, building a portfolio, and getting a workflow of my own so that when the time comes, it will be a seamless transition into my own gig.

Why am I doing this? While some it goes back to frustration at my current place of employment, it has been my plan to own my own business by the time I was in my 30s for quite some time. So really, this is a natural progression for me on the way to that goal. I feel like I have the talent to compete just fine with other small design firms around here, and should be quite successful once I get in the swing of things. I’m really excited about the prospects of working from home full time at some point in the future, which is something that’s definitely realistic in the line of work I am pursuing. On top of that, I kind of love web design. So, if I can do this full time, on my terms, I’m going to be a happy camper.

So, please check out the site and let me know what you think! It’s going to be kind of bare until Michelle and I work on the text, I finish all of the minor changes I want to make to the site, and I get through with my first round of clients … but I figure why not launch now and get the word out. If you’re in Atlanta or the Southeast and need web design work done, don’t hesitate to look me up. I’m giving 10% referral fees to friends and folks in the early goings (maybe until the end of August or so), so if you know anyone who needs web work done, send them my way as well & and there’s some money in it for you.

I’ll be chronicling my successes and failures here as well, but I am also planning to start focusing more on web design articles over at the SquareOne web site, and more general stuff here. So maybe you guys will luck out and not have to read as much html-related stuff anymore.

Technorati Tags:
businesss, web design, announcements

Posted on March 8th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

Friday, February 8th, 2008

If you live in Georgia, or the Southeast in general, you know about the drought that has been affecting the region for the past year and a half (really longer, but it’s been serious during this time period). There have been a number of lawsuits (and prayers) related to the issue, but no resolution has been reached yet between the states (or between man and God, it would seem). Basically, the Chattahoochee River runs through northern Georgia, into a lake (Lake Lanier, roughly 50 miles north of Atlanta) that supplies the sprawling area with water. Well, the river then continues through the metro area, then south into Alabama, then to Florida, and finally empties into the Gulf of Mexico. The states along the way lay claim to their section of the river, so the entire southeast is jockeying for an extremely hard-to-acquire water supply.

Lately, there has been a new development. Georgia is trying to lay claim to a part of the Tennessee River, north of the state. The basic idea is that Georgia alleges that back in the 1800s, surveyors mis-reported the state line, and actually have a claim to a very small southern portion of the river that snakes into the Peach State. From The Tennessean:

This isn’t the first time lawmakers tried to reopen the argument. The resolution traces attempts to resolve the dispute as far back as 1887, when North Carolina — another border state involved in the dispute — authorized its governor to appoint commissioners and a surveyor to meet with neighboring delegations over the boundary.

More recently, Georgia legislators urged the governor in 1971 to launch joint surveys with North Carolina and Tennessee, but the border fight was never settled.

Georgia has eyed the Tennessee River for generations, but its interest has grown with the recent drought. Some influential politicians here have suggested using old-fashioned horse trading to work out a deal.

Of course, if Georgia were able to lay claim to part of the river, they could then tap into the huge river’s water supply and help get some relief to Atlanta citizens. I doubt we’ll see any sort of resolution on this any time soon, but to me it is a glimpse into the future. One day, probably not too far away from now — people, states, cities & nations are going to be increasingly belligerent towards one another in an effort to secure the remaining resources (water, oil, coal, etc) in a region. This is the start of these types of conflicts. This time, at least, it’s between neighboring states.

Edit: Because Wonkette is funnier than I am, read their take on the Georgia-Tennessee water issue.

Edit 2: Map of the area in question:

Posted on February 8th, 2008 | 2 Comments »

Tuesday, October 4th, 2005

I’m basically moved into my new apartment after a few days of insanity. Ever since Thursday of last week, I’ve been going non-stop, between school stuff, moving out of my old apartment in Orlando, and moving up to Atlanta this past weekend. Once I got all of my stuff settled in, then began the fun task of buying and moving new furniture to replace the older stuff I sold in FL. There are a few holdovers (most notably, the love seat from Caribou), but a lot of my stuff is newish. (pics are below)

Still have lots of odds and ends to pick up, but I’m pretty pleased with the place so far. My apartment complex is very nice, very wooded and very secluded. It’s pretty close to a lot of stores in the area - the mall is about 2 minutes away, the highway is about 1 minute, as well as grocery stores, Home Depot, etc. The Vinings village is about 5 minutes away, with all of it’s fancy-schmancy restaurants and whatnot, so I’ll have to give that place a whirl as well.

Work starts tomorrow, so it’ll be nice to settle into some sort of normalcy.
(more…)

Posted on October 4th, 2005 | 19 Comments »