Yellowstone – June 30, 2014

In this post, we continue this summer’s adventure trip to Yellowstone with day 2. This leg of the journey we traveled north on the west side of the loops from Madison Junction and stopped at Gibbon Falls, Artist Paint Pots and spent the majority of our time in Norris Geyser Basin.

The below gallery contains the best images captured on our second day in the park. The slideshow should start automatically, if you see an image you like, you  can mouse over it to show the parts that don’t display in the viewer, or you can click on it and the full image will pop up. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed shooting them.

Yellowstone – June 29, 2014

This summer’s adventure was a trip to Yellowstone. On our first day we traveled south from Madison Junction along the west side of the loops making it as far as southeast as Old Faithful with stops at Firehole Canyon Falls, Lower and Midway Geyser Basins, Firehole Lake Drive, Upper Geyser Basin and Biscuit Geyser Basin.

The below gallery contains the best images captured on our first full day in Yellowstone National Park. The slideshow should start automatically, if you see an image you like, you  can mouse over it to show the parts that don’t display in the viewer, or you can click on it and the full image will pop up. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed shooting them.

 

Texting While Driving: VW Drives The Message Home

VW illustrates how dangerous texting while driving can be.
Texting While Driving: Volkswagen drives the point home.

Volkswagen shows just how dangerous texting while driving can be by demonstrating to a crowded movie theater just how much can be missed in a blink of an eye by mixing high tech cellular gadgetry with big screen cinematography. Continue reading Texting While Driving: VW Drives The Message Home

SEO Providers: 3 Tips For Choosing The Right One

Don’t Close That Deal With A New SEO Provider Just Yet!

Choosing the Right SEO Provider
Before you close the deal, make sure you have the right SEO provider.

You’re looking for a new SEO provider. You are not entirely sure what SEO and Social Media are or how they work, but you know you need them. How do you decide who to choose as your SEO provider? Many people still feel there is a certain amount of snake oil and mysticism behind this inexact science, and for good reason. There are plenty of unscrupulous SEO providers offering SEO packages that are nothing more than a merge document with a predetermined list of keywords mixed with your primary metro and a list of your products. They then plug this cookie cutter document into your website and consider it optimized with no further work necessary. This “set and forget” method might give you the basics to get you started, but by no means is this a long term SEO strategy. Continue reading SEO Providers: 3 Tips For Choosing The Right One

Ford C-Max Solar Energi Concept Under the Magnifying Glass

Ford allowed its C-Max Solar Energi concept to be placed under the magnifying glass, literally.

IMG_4447

On May 29, 2014, the Blue Oval manufacturer held a media luncheon and Q&A session at their Irvine Showroom to showcase the Ford C-Max Solar Energi concept vehicle and discuss the “future of electrification.”

First, let me point out that Ford is very upfront about this being a concept in the strongest definition of the word. This is no pre-production mockup to tease what may be showing up on next year’s auto show circuit, merely a design exercise to see what could be done to push today’s technology into tomorrow, albeit a somewhat Continue reading Ford C-Max Solar Energi Concept Under the Magnifying Glass

Google Self Driving Car, Ready or Not

Google Self Driving Car
Are you ready to be driven in Google’s self driving car?

Today the Google Self Driving Car Project posted a video called “First Drive,” showing a small group of people who are among the first people outside of Google to experience a car that drives itself. What was rolled out of the trailer looked something along the lines of a cross between a Fiat 500 and a Smart For Two with a blender mounted on top, and prompted one participant to exclaim, “Isn’t that cute?” As any car aficionado will tell you, cute is not the adjective we hope to hear when describing the physical representation of our psycho-mechanical lust. But let’s face it, without a steering wheel, Google’s automated car wasn’t designed for us. Continue reading Google Self Driving Car, Ready or Not

Watch Your Assets: Keeping Relevant in the Work Place

The company you work for is nothing without your assets, and neither are you. It’s your assets—your skills—that got you the position in the first place. Whoever made the hiring decision saw how they could utilize your assets to achieve the company’s goals. But those skills that got you hired may not be enough to keep you employed.  If you don’t maintain your assets to be as sharp as possible; keeping abreast of changes in your industry, monitoring the competition, and polishing your marketability, they will become dull and of little use to your employer and you’ll find yourself either discarded or being replaced with a newer more up to date model.

These skills go beyond those you use on a day to day basis to achieve your employers goals, they also include the well-honed implements you used to land that job. These assets are just as important to keep sharp and polished as the rest of the items in your toolbox. Your contacts, networks, associations, and social profiles such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ and Twitter among others, are just as important to keep up to date. You should be sharing items in your social networks that demonstrate you are an authority in your field, and networking with other influencers and professionals in your industry. At no time should you ever put these tools on the shelf to devote all your efforts to your employer’s task before you.

Over the last year or so, that’s exactly what I did. I had withdrawn from my online social presence as work became more and more demanding. My Facebook page became a scrolling haven for regurgitated memes, my Twitter account a dwindling record of places I checked into less and less frequently as the shared check-ins from FourSquare fell by the wayside, and Google+ was just a catch basin for posts that could be shared across all three networks. But duty called, and I answered, ready willing and able to do whatever needed to be done, for the company that I was sure would take care of me as well as those as dedicated as I was, took care of it. My mistake.

Go ahead. Laugh. I’m laughing at myself.

Sure, I had been burned before, but I was naive enough to believe this company was different. They touted their own version of the Boy Scout Law, you know, “trustworthy, loyal, helpful…” But this company promised integrity as well. Upon hearing upper management talk about integrity in company meetings it was hard to believe they weren’t sincere, so like a runaway teen in a religious cult, I not only swallowed the Kool-Aid, but I helped mix it as well.

However, I am not here to bad mouth this or any other company. The fault here lies with me, not with them. Their loyalty is to their shareholders and the bottom line. It’s business, period. What I am here to tell you, is that like your employer, you need to watch your bottom line as well, if not better, than they watch theirs.

What you need to remember is that these tools, all of the assets you provide for your employer, are yours! Not the product they create of course, but the tools used to create the product. They are only on loan to your employer for as long as they feel the need to rent them, but like any rental item, the upkeep of those tools lies with the owner, not the renter. The benefit of performing this regular maintenance will serve you two-fold: Not only will you continually prove your value to your employer, but you will also be showing your peers outside the company what a valuable commodity you are, and perhaps improving your bottom line before your company improves theirs by securing a more lucrative job offer.

Don’t become irrelevant in your job, or in your networks. Keep your tools sharp and in good working order. Watch your assets. In doing so they will be ready when it is time to loan them to the next renter, and more valuable. Stay current and stay relevant. There will be other renters looking for the latest and the greatest, and there is nothing wrong with raising the rent when it’s time to sign the new lease.

Joy Ride in the Sierras

Mustang Xing... Double Yellows and Other Lines
Mustang Xing… Double Yellows and Other Lines

When the demands of our hectic everyday lives become too much, a road trip through the Sierras can be just the release needed to unwind and re-center. On a recent trip to Sequoia National Park we came upon some tourists who were looking to do just that.

As the distance between the front of our vehicle and the rear of their’s rapidly shrunk, it soon became apparent that they had lost themselves on the General’s Highway, the main road that travels through the park and on into Kings Canyon.  They were two gentlemen driving a yellow convertible Mustang, who were meandering all over the road… I’ve seen picnic baskets with less weaving.  So we settled into a nice 30 mph pace on the 45 mph twisty two-lane road without passing lanes and began speculating as to where they were from. The car was obviously a rental, and they had luggage, not camping gear, piled in the rear seat.

We had narrowed the occupants down to Europeans who had previously driven nothing larger than a vintage Fiat 500, and to them the Mustang must have been as bloated and cumbersome as an Excursion is to the typical mid-size sedan owner which explained their inability to keep the vehicle on the non-head-on collision side of the double yellow line. We also surmised that they lived in the city and had never seen a mountain road, because the Mustang could obtain speeds of near 50 mph in wide open straight-a-ways. Unfortunately these are few and far between and our happy-go-lucky tourists were much more likely to be travleing at 15 mph on even the widest of turns.

But there was something else starnge. It seemed to take two of them to manage the gear shift. Each took turns leaning toward the center and reaching across and with each motion, the car would veer even further to the left or the right. Odd. Especially since this was obviously an automatic.

Just as they seemed to finally get the shifting situated, and picked up the pace to a respectable rate, we approached a section of one-lane road that was controlled by a signal which would alternate between east and westbound traffic. While we waited for the eastbound traffic to clear the driver hopped out of the Mustang and began talking very loudly in a foreign language, which I still say was European, as he began to adjust his loose fitting shorts… and wipe his shirt… and then wash his hands… and legs… and… ew. That wasn’t a gear shift the passenger was shifting was it?

Look fellas, the Sierras is a great place to get  release, but that’s not what we had in mind. We appreciate the tourism dollars, but save the peep show for the hotel room, and leave the “joy riding” back in your home country.

Suddenly texting while driving doesn’t seem quite so bad. Someone wanna pass him a wet wipe?

 

Undocumented Speeders on the Rise

Suzuki SX4
Suzuki SX4 Sport Hatch – a car recently involved in an undocumented speeder sting by CHP.

There’s a growing number of people who are being treated unfairly by the unjust laws in our country and action should be taken immediately to give them amnesty rather than persecute these poor souls any further. The plight of undocumented speeders on the highways and byways of this great nation are many. They take to the road seeking a better life than the clogged commuter lanes and congested freeways they have to commute upon in their homeland, and only speed on open roads because it is so prohibitively expensive and difficult to qualify for a racing license in order to speed legally.

Undocumented speeders, the politically correct term for illegal speeders, just want better commute times so they can spend more quality time with their families and get to work on time to avoid losing precious pay to hourly wages.  They come from generations of undocumented speeders, some going back to before the automobile was invented and they actually raced horses through the dusty, boardwalk-sided dirt streets of the old west. Because those streets were raced upon by their ancestors, they have every right to continue to speed illegally on the streets of America today.

It would be a simple act of congress to reform the process for becoming a legal racer in the United States. An amnesty plan to forgive all those speeding tickets received thus far, a racing license to make all the undocumented speeders legal, and of course free race tracks and cars should be issued to every community. In addition, special classes on speeding should be taught in schools to help explain the adversity that undocumented speeders have had to overcome. But conservatives and opponents to speeding claim that in doing so, these speeders would take away jobs from NASCAR, F-1 and NHRA drivers to name a few.

Meanwhile, on the mean streets of the U.S., law enforcement officers have taken to racial profiling, pulling over and stopping vehicles driven by people who appear to be of race descent, even if they were not speeding at the time and have never been under suspicion of being racial before. With budget cuts in states like California, speed traps are becoming ever more common as the stewards of the empty state coffers see an increase in shaking down undocumented speeders as a  means of increasing state revenues.

It’s a sad day when for generations your family has sped on these lands, and the current inhabitants prohibit you from doing the same as your fathers, and their fathers before them. Please write to your congressman and ask for the persecution of undocumented speeders to stop. Amnesty and your tax dollars to make speeding legal is a much more humane way of dealing with the issue rather than burdening these poor helpless speeders with traffic fines and the threat of losing their driving visas. We’re a better nation than this. We welcome the tired, the poor, the hungry… and even the speeders.

God bless America.

Freeway Liberation Day

Happy Freeway Liberation Day!

Yesterday, as thousands of Southern California high school and college seniors walked the aisle to “Pomp and Circumstance,” and set off to celebrate their new found freedom (enjoy it while you can, the summers are only going to get shorter from here out!), they set into motion the machinations for an even more noteworthy occasion,  “Freeway Liberation Day.”

Yes, today was the day that all those know-it-all “adultlescents” are too hungover or stayed up too late to wake up early and jam the roads of So. Cal. with their “I can text and drive, those accidents only happen to other people” attitudes and various other forms of mobile and audio distractions that populate their cars. Speeds of 70 mph were achieved on some of the most congested freeways across the southland including the infamously notorious CA-91. It was a great day to be late for work, because odds are you could make up the time. I did.

So hat’s off to the Class of 2011, and thanks for a wonderful Freeway Liberation Day! Join me in thanking a few of the class valedictorians:

You in the Nissan Sentra… the one who’s going 60 mph in the fast lane because you’re too busy talking on your handheld device while semis in the right lane pass you until the guy behind you tries to get around you and then you speed up. Yeah, that’s not gonna create tensions and the potential for an accident. Didn’t miss you. Happy graduation!

Blonde bimbo in the VW Beetle? So happy not to have to try and navigate around you as you put on your eyeliner this morning. Glad you weren’t here today! Happy graduation!

Oh, and Honda Nation boys? What a peaceful commute at even 70 mph to not hear your lame-ass fart can exhaust as you have to floor it to weave in and around each and every semi in an effort to get to class on time, yet never seem to gain enough ground to get out of earshot with your “please say excuse me” sounding exhaust. So nice not to hear you! Happy graduation!

Corolla S drivers, one and all: I know you know better than me because I admit it, I no longer know it all, but that S doesn’t mean shit… or maybe it does? Thanks for staying the Hell out of the fast lane for once, no you cannot keep up with the flow of traffic in that car despite the S. Wish you weren’t here! Ooh! Wish granted! Happy graduation!

Yes, there are many others, and I invite you to leave well wishes for your favorites in the comments section below. I hope your Freeway Liberation Day was just as happy as mine was. Unfortunately, like every holiday, I will have to pay the price tonight on the commute home as the class of 2011 once again take to the freeways to embark on another evening of partying and begin the process of mucking up the roads once more–only this time, with parchments that they believe confirm that they really do know it all.

God help us.

Writer, Photographer, SEO Consultant