Personal

May 18, 2008

Commute.

Ok, folks here’s the deal on this one. I get a lot of rib-poking for arriving late at numerous functions. My daily commute takes about 13 minutes, which, if I’m running late results in about a 13 minute tardy to the workplace.

My thought: What if there was a way to speed up the commute process – compress it, if you will. What would a 13-minute commute look, feel, and sound like – if we were able to squeeze it into 60 seconds.

This video is a close approximation by most accounts. 🙂

[flv width=”320″ height=”260″]http://video.ryantcollier.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/workcommute.flv[/flv]

May 11, 2008

Happy Mom’s Day!

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mom’s in the world!

I wrapped up a fairly productive weekend with a freshly made pizza for Sunday dinner. To begin, I started with a whole-wheat crust and pizza sauce, then chopped up fresh basil and combined 2 coursely chopped garlic cloves and spread over the pasta sauce. Next, I spread mozzarella cheese over the sauce and topped with some diced vine-ripened tomatoes, sliced black olives, tangy red-pepper pepperoni, and finally some more of the basil-garlic blend.

12 minutes at 450, then another 2 minutes under the broiler and I ended up with a delicious Sunday-dinner treat!

My last business class test is this week. I can take it online anytime between Monday and Wednesday – though I’d much rather take it sooner rather than later. There’s a good chance this will be busy week for me and the days are already flying by! I can’t believe it’s almost the middle of May already! Nuts!

I’ve achieved a great deal on my board of “Things To Do,” including a complete re-design of my photography site Ryan T. Collier Photography and performing some long-overdue maintenance on the site as well. There are other items that I can’t disclose right now, but I will talk about them very soon! 🙂

Overall, a really great, relaxing weekend catching up on Lost, yard work, and taking care of my wife (who recently had her 2nd foot surgery and is recovering nicely). The next few months are exciting times, and I look forward to writing and sharing them with all the guests who drop by to read up on my daily musings! 🙂

Cheers!

May 8, 2008

School is out. Kind of.

Howdy folks, it’s been about a week and the blog is way overdue for an update. Hopefully you’ll all forgive me after I fill you in on the last week. 🙂

I finished my last 4 papers for the two business classes I was taking during the spring semester, last weekend. I have only a test for my BUS-104 class that I’ll take on May 12. I ended up with a 123% in my Entrepreneurial Studies class – though there might be a glitch with the online system the school is using. If not, kudos to me!

Other exciting news: I filed my Articles of Organization for my limited liability company which effectively made my photography a legitament business on May 5, 2008. Not exciting for most, but quite exciting to me, as I begin to implement my business plan and start marketing my photography business.

Finally, I wrote a few months ago about submitting an application to be on the show, “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” well kiddies – today my application is going in the mail! I’m not sure how long it will take to receive a response, but I’d guess that I’ll hear something within a few weeks. 🙂 Keep your prayers coming!

With school done, for now, I hope to have a little more time to keep up the posts on the blog for everyone. Keep your feedback coming too!

April 30, 2008

Rochester Film Fest

So, I decided to take a break from writing my last BUS104 class paper and go on a date with Keziah to the opening night of the Rochester International Film Festival. I’m actually blogging from inside the theatre while we wait for the film to start – very exciting.

I’m not certain I can include pictures in my remote blog posts but I’ll try if I have time. The film we’re seeing is Helen Hunt’s directorial debut, “Then She Found Me.” I know the film screened at Sundance earlier this year but I never heard if it. Should be interesting!

Here we go!!

January 3, 2008

A Cold, Frosty One…

Day that is.

It was warmer this morning at mid-night than it was 8 hours later, when I left for work.

Remind me why I choose to live in the Northeast section of the United States.

This morning at 8am, the temperature in Fairport (a suburb of Rochester, NY) was 6ºF (-14ºC).

Now, I’m no stranger to cold weather, I’ve lived in the Northeast my whole life – first as a child in Erie, PA, then moving to Rochester when I was 19 to work at a CBS affiliate. Incidentally, kids, if you have even the slightest notion of working in television as a career, allow me to redirect you away from making one of the most horrific decisions of your life.

You will work like a dog.
You will make no money working like a dog.
You will work weekends, making no money working like a dog.

Fortunately, I was only subjected to this abuse for a little over 9 years before finally getting out.

My wish for you is that you learn from the past mistakes, or misfortunes whatever the case may be, of others and choose greener, less dusty and burnt pastures as a means to an end.

If you hear the words, “Bachelor of Communications” from your school guidance counsellor – leave the room. It’s a trap. Don’t become another one of Skinner’s rats searching for a piece of educational cheese.

Do yourself a favour – listen to those who have been there, done that.

Anyway…

It was another day “exciting” day for me at work. Fortunately, there was only 1 commercial to work on. This allowed me to dive into my blog 🙂 I also retouched a photo for a friend of my wife and, I laid out a financial plan for the next several months.

Keziah also forwarded me a link to a new undergrad business program at RIT which looks like a program I’d be interested in applying for – after I attain my associates.

That reminds me, I need to run out to the bookstore to buy books for my classes which start on January 22.

I’d run and do that tonight after work, but:

1.) It’s ridiculously cold out.
2.) I have a date with paint tonight.

I’ll push it off until tomorrow or the weekend 😉

It’s 5:15pm, and I’m heading home!

About 8 hours later and we’re about 95% done with all the painting in the house.

It’s 1:15am and I’m heading off to bed.

January 2, 2008

Paint.

For what seems like almost a year now, my wife and I have been renovating our town-home. Mostly small scale, such as ceiling fans, lighting fixtures, and light finishing work.

We first started in March 2007 with the renovation of the kitchen. The least favourite of the 5 rooms in the house, this kitchen was God-awful. Try to imagine light-purple, almost periwinkle-coloured walls, ragged with an Oz-like green.

Kitchen – Before

Ya. It was pretty horrid.

Also working against the interior decor, was fluorescent lighting – a bane of mine. Why anyone would consciously opt to install fluorescent lighting anywhere in the house is beyond my comprehension – but to decide that the kitchen would be better served with this less-than-a-lighting solution hanging overhead is just plain stupid.

Alas, it was “out with the green-cast monster” and “in with soft, incandescent.” We also tossed in a dimmer for added control as well as a task-light above the sink.

However, the LARGEST improvement (and much more time consuming) was the paint.

Red, with bone-white painted-trim along the window casing. As a final touch, I decided to rip out the antiquated baseboard moulding, and install natural wood moulding in its place. I just realized that we never took an “after” picture, so I’ll try to put that up shortly.

Flash-forward 10 months.

With wedding plans taking priority over the lessor, we decided to use our Christmas break as a time to rekindle our home renovations.

Our outlay was spent mostly on paint. Lots of it.

Our goal: Update the master bedroom, living room, and all hallways.

Over the break, we accomplished about 80% of our goal, leaving only part of the hallways naked and shivering.

Today, we inched closer to achieving 100%, having finished all but 7 small sections of wall from the interior corridors of our home.

Tomorrow evening we should come very close to completing the job, leaving only finishing work to be done on Friday or the weekend.

After we finished up painting for the night, we set off to design a label for the CD of wedding music Keziah made for her cousin Clint and her dad.

It was somewhat of a last-minute job, which I hate – especially so late in the day, but I digress.

In bed by 2:00am.

January 1, 2008

Happy New Year of My Blog

With a new year comes a renewed commitment to branding myself and discovering who I am as an individual.

The past 365 days have been a whirlwind of thoughts, emotions, planning, early breakfasts with friends, travelling, and marriage!

To better involve myself in the day to day, and to serve as a break from the mundane and routine, I’ve decided to put forth a concerted effort to develop, write, and manage my blog.

Sounds easy enough, right?

I thought the same. It isn’t until you sit down at your keyboard that you find a myriad of other things that you could be doing – instead of writing down daily musings. I give much credit to those who have not only maintained their own blogs, but who have done so for several years.

My hat is tipped to you all. Nice work. Well done you.

What will my blog serve to do? What is it’s purpose?

The purpose of my blog will be to document my daily happenings, thoughts, feelings & emotions, as well as elicit those same properties from visitors who crawl my blog.

I’m interested in hearing your comments – so please leave them!

If you see that I have skipped writing for a day, or worse have stopped altogether, please send me an email in all-caps. Shout at me like our mothers used to do for playing with gasoline and matches.

Another function of my blog will be to further market myself, my talents and abilities. I will do this through the use of various electronic mediums, including photos and movie clips posted on my web site https://ryantcollier.com.

But, most importantly, my blog will serve as a grounding stick, keeping me anchored to a goal I set for myself. I can easy gauge how well I am achieving that goal by how many posts I have come March, June, and on my 1-year wedding anniversary.

My success in attaining this goal will be directly related to my determination to succeed; limited only by my own free-will to do just that.

Here’s to the new year of my blog!

Cheers!

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