Updates Archive

4 Aug 2008 - First Boat Ride: Sidney had her first boat ride a little over a week ago when we all went up to Diamond Lake in Michigan to visit with Grandpa at a "cottage" he rented on the water. A fun weekend was had by all. I think Sidney is half fish as it's a fight to get her out of the water. Abby enjoyed the weekend too having her first camp out with her daddy and her uncle Dave and it went suprisingly well.

Check out all the pictures here!

1 Aug 2008 - More Photos!: It's been a long time coming, but as we settle into our new house I am finally finding some time get caught up on our photos and make more regular updates. Last night I finally got the pictures from our March trip to Santa Barbara for Lacie's wedding posted. You can see them here. We had fantastic weather for the trip and we had a great time while we were there.

Of all the pictures I took, these two here are my favorites. I've really got something for sunset pictures.

In addition to slowly getting caught up, I was actually able to get a head in my studio at the house for practicing since it seems I lack a patient model. Meet Peggy my new assistant. I think most people are creeped out by Peggy, but she is really helping me to figure out some different lighting setups and she allows me to take my time and think about what I am doing.

That's all for today. I really just wanted to share the Santa Barbara photos with all of my loyal readers.

28 Jul 2008 - We're Still Alive!: Just wanted to drop a quick update and let you know that we are still alive and kicking! It's been a busy summer but we are getting settled in and I am getting caught up on my much neglected pictures and gallery. You may notice the gallery is a bit empty right now. I have just moved things, they aren't gone. I am trying to reorganize my photos and catalog them so I won't have to do this again. I've hit the point that I just have too many and a terrible system to deal with them. Stay tuned!

10 Jun 2008 - Happy Anniversary: It's been eight wonderful years. It's hard to believe how fast time has flown by. It just keeps getting better every year and I couldn't imagine having spent that time with anyone else. I look forward to many more years to come.

5 Jun 2008 - Settling In: It has been a very very busy couple of months. We have been in our new house now for a few weeks and all is going well. The second floor is pretty orderly but the main floor is still filled with obsticles. Slowly though we are getting there. Sidney loves all the new space both inside and out. I think it has finally allowed us to break free of our addiction to Elmo. She still gets her fix, but it doesn't have to be on every second that she is awake.

We had some houseguests a week and a half ago. The Killian's graced our new house with a memorial weekend vist. A good time was had by all.

I know my photo of the week is far outdated and there have been no updates to the gallery, but there has just been too much going on to get any real post processing done. I have a gazillion photos to go through and upload when time permist. I know you are all just waiting to see them, but believe me when I say that I am waiting to see them as well.

More to come soon! I promise!

5 May 2008 - Homeless: I imagine you have been wondering why it has been so quiet around here lately. Well it has been a very hectic time for us the last couple of months. As you know from previous updates our house was on the market. Well it went quick and we closed on it last Wednesday. So for the last few weeks we have been scrambling to pack while keeping the rest of our lives together. Moving once children are involved is not a pleasurable process. We have been out of the house now for a week and we just finished up packing this last weekend. We got lucky and found a fantastic new house that should serve as our permanent residence for many years to come. We will be closing on this house tomorrow and the process of cleaning, painting and unloading will begin. So right now we are homeless. We may be living out of boxes, but we are not living in one. We are fortunate enough to have obtained a room at Sidney's daycare. You might better know that as Mom and Dad's house. We moved in there about a week ago and it has made the moving process so much easier. We plan to stay about two more weeks as we clean up and unpack at the new place before we are ready to settle in at the new ranch. Stay tuned for pictures of the new digs and an update on the moving process.

3 Apr 2008 - And...We're Back: Turns out Grandma wouldn't ship Sidney to us and we missed her too much to stay out there, so we came back. In addition to missing Sidney, after 4 days driving a Toyota Prius, read that as "Ginormous Pile of Junk", I was missing my Evo dearly. So we are back home and back in the grind. It's been a busy few days and we have some great news coming soon!

28 Mar 2008 - Top of The Morning to You!: It's about 7:30am here in Santa Barbara, I'm sitting outside with my laptop and my coffee looking at the calm morning sea. I don't think it can get much more perfect than that.

Jen and I are here on a mini-vacation to attend the wedding of an old college roommate of hers. This may be my last update to you all as I am not sure if I can return back to Indiana from this natural beauty. Hopefully Grandma will be able to part with her Granddaughter and stick her on a plane to come out here and live on the beach with mommy and daddy...

23 Mar 2008 - Happy Easter!: I hope everyone is having a healthy and happy Easter. My apologies to family this Easter as we were not able to travel due to the bug that's been going around our house. As you know it started about a week ago with Sidney, then about the time she got feeling better Mommy came down with it. Shortly after Mommy got better, I came down with it and after spending a day with the most horrific nausea I am feeling a tad better, but that comes with a certain tradeoff. I'll spare the details of the tradeoff and just let you know that I am far from feeling up to par. Sidney and Mommy went to Grandma's house for Easter dinner, I hope to get some left overs.

On a more possitive note, we have come to agreements with a buyer for our house. Closing is scheduled to happen on April 30th. Keep your fingers crossed that it all goes as planned!

14 Mar 2008 - Who Needs Sleep?: Lately the Haughs household has been one of a lack of sleep and a lot of crying. Poor little Sidster has developed a nasty little bug. Monday night she started acting as though she didn’t feel too well but she wasn’t too fussy. Come Tuesday morning she was back to her normal smiling self. Bedtime came early Tuesday night, but didn’t last long. About 10:30pm the fun began. From 10:30pm to about 5:00am she was a vomit machine. About every 15 to 30 minutes up came some more of Tuesdays evening’s dinner. It was a long night of little to no sleep for everyone and a lot of laundry. Fortunately for us we have the most fantastic daycare, Grandma! Grandma, or Nanny as her grandkids call her, came to us Wednesday around noon to help out so I could head off to work and Jen could get a bit of rest. Wednesday night was a bit milder with much less vomiting and more sleep. Not much more sleep though, just a couple of uncomfortable hours. I spent some time sleeping on the hardwoods with Sidney as did mommy. Come Thursday morning Sidney was running a fever and still vomiting. Off to the doctor we went for another checkup. As often happens to Jen when she is in a vomiting spell, we ended up at the hospital for a nice IV of fluids. After finding out we would be staying the night, we determined it best for one of us to head home and get a decent nights sleep in preparation for a long day on Friday. That parent was me. Jen stayed with Sid and I returned home to keep the dog and the cat company. Now here it is Friday morning and Sidney is getting some fight back in her. Her blood work is looking good and the doctor just wants to see her keep some food down before we go home so I imagine it will be mid afternoon before we get to venture back to our humble abode. Nanny is here again and Sidney is sleeping in her arms. All will be well once again in the Haughs household in just a few short hours.

On a side note, it seems as though we are destined to be a one cell phone family. Many of you know my trouble keeping a working cell phone whether it be me leaving it out in the rain or smashing it in a car door or Sidney drooling on it, they just don’t seem to last long in my hands. After contemplating obtaining a PDA, the iPod Touch was very appealing, and purchasing a new cell phone along with the ball and chain that is a contract, I finally made the plunge into a smartphone. No I didn’t get an iPhone. Since I get a discount at Verizon through my work and most everyone I work with uses Verizon resulting in free mobile to mobile, I decided to shop there. A few bucks later I walked out with a Palm Treo 755p. This thing is fantastic. The p stands for Palm versus a W for Winders. I think you all know by now that if I can avoid obtaining anything running Windows I will. So back to the point of this story. During this week’s ordeal Jen was on the floor with Sidney with her coffee at her side and her smartphone, a Moto Q on her lap. In comes Sadie all excited and happy to knock the phone off of Jen’s lap and into the cup of coffee. So here we are back down to one phone. Lucky for us Jen got the insurance on her phone, something I decided was a smart thing for me to do as well, and it will be replaced before long. I figured that was worth sharing.

More updates on Sid to come soon!

10 Mar 2008 - For Sale: Its official! Our house is on the market. Wish us luck.
Check out the photos HERE!

4 Mar 2008 - Tell me what you think: I've added a comment feature to the above POTW (photo of the week) section. Try it out and let me know what you think of the photos I post. Don't forget you can use the Contact tab above to be heard!

I still haven't finished the California trip pictures. I know, I know. Soon! When they are done I will post up about the trip and the trip's activities.

21 Feb 2008 - Home Again: "Daddy went to California and all I got was this stuffed sea otter."

I had a fantastic trip this past weekend visiting Mike and Shelley in the beautiful state of California. The trip went quick and I am now back to the daily grind. I thank them for their hospitality and for showing me a great time. I have a couple hundred photos to sort through over the next couple days and when I am done I will post a trip recap.



21 Feb 2008 - New Feature: As I work through my photos from my recent trip to the Wild West, I thought it would be cool to have a "Travel Log" of sorts of the places I have been. A wall map with pins in it seemed like the perfect template, so after a quick search on Google I came up with something similar. Check out the My Travels link that can be found by navigating to the Interests tab above. Give it a look.

11 Feb 2008 - Countdown to D-Day!: I arrive at San Jose International in

3 Feb 2008 - Another Month Down: Last time I updated Sidney had four teeth. As I type this now she has SIX! She continues to amaze us more and more everyday. Her current favorite word is “dog” and if you ask her what a dog says she will demonstrate it to you. She’s all smiles and a joy to be around.

As Sidney grows our house continues to shrink. Everyday it becomes more and more apparent that its time to move on. We’ve begun the adventure of searching for new digs and once again we find ourselves immersed in sticker shock. Fortunately for us as buyers the interest rates have dropped and people can’t sell their houses for what they want so we should get a decent deal. The flip side of that is we need to sell our house too. Hopefully five and a half years ago we made a good investment when we bough an 80 year old house in a somewhat historical area of town. It would be nice to make some money on this place.

In addition to looking for a new house, I’ve begun the task of digitally archiving all of our old film. I picked up a Nikon Coolscan V on ebay in new condition and the quality of the scans exceeded my expectations. I highly recommend this scanner to anyone undertaking a similar project. I find it easier to share images with people this way and it offers the piece of mind that our memories are safe. There will be more updates on this in the months to come. I am sure I will find some entertaining images!

Last weekend I spent some time in the garage giving the Evo some much needed attention. In addition to some TLC, I finally got around to replacing the head gasket. It’s now running top notch and I can’t wait for the weather to warm up so I can get it dialed in. I’m hoping to get it on a dyno soon and get some real numbers to see what its really putting down.

As you can tell, we’ve been pretty busy lately. But I did get a late Christmas gift to myself. Back in August I ordered a Milt Sparks Holster after several weeks of researching and trying other products. I'm not a fan of Kydex and its hard for us skinny guys to find a comfortable good quality holster. At the time I ordered it their backlog was six months, but since everyone raves about their products I thought I'd give it a try. Here it is six months or so later and I now have my very own hand crafted Milt Sparks Holster. The quality is top notch and it was worth every penny and the six month wait. I am very pleased with the quality and comfort. I now see why everyone raves about them.

Now its getting late and I have rambled on a little bit about everything under the sun, so take care and come back soon!

9 Jan 2008 - Four Toofs: Wow is it the 9th already? It seems like New Year's was just yesterday. Things have been busy in the Haughs household but I thought I would stop in for a quick update.

As you might have guessed by the title, Little Miss Sidney has FOUR teeth now! All are on the bottom in the front. Number four just broke through last night and it looks as though we have a couple top teeth about ready to pop out as well. I am looking forward to this stage to pass as she does not seem to be enjoying it. If she will ever sit still long enough I'll snap a couple pictures of the pearly white smile.

There have been some late nights here making updates to the site. Take a look at the tabs above and you will see that they are complete. There are some changes to be made to my research page and some content I'd like to add to the hobbies section, but construction is nearly complete! Have a look around while your here.

30 Dec 2007 - Holiday Recap: Well the holidays are over, except for new years and I imagine I will sleep through that, and its almost time to head back to work. I know, some of you more unfortunate souls have already been back to work, but I have a few more days of being lazy and hanging out with Sidney. As always, the holidays were both hectic and enjoyable around here. We left town on the 22nd to spend time with Grandpa Artusi and the Kilians.

I didn't have much chance to visit the first couple of days as I was immediately put to work setting up and installing new computers and a new wireless router. After some choice words with Windows Vista, I was able to get the new computers to work. I don't know what the programmers at Microsoft are thinking, but Vista took a HUGE step backwards in wireless networking ability. The range is acceptable on an unsecured network, but if security is enabled Vista can only handle it for about 10 minutes before it drops the link and you are forced to reboot. I don't know about you but I can't work like this. The plus side is I was finally able to find all the drivers to put my laptop back on XP. I really do miss my Powerbook and its superior operating system.

Enough of that! Uncle Jaren and I finally had a chance to play cameras on Christmas Eve. For those that don't know, Uncle Jaren purchased a Canon XTi and was more than excited to try his hand a portraits. I brought along my brand spanking new AB800 and soft box. If your wondering, I opted for black and not the pink! We setup a simple black backdrop with the AB800 and a flash mounted in an umbrella as seen here. After throwing my "Nifty Fifty" on Uncle Jaren's XTi we shot some pictures of Abby, Sidney and Aiden. The results were a HUGE improvement over my previous portraits. The softbox made a world of difference and the speed of the AB800 is beyond words!

Christmas Morning we woke up at the Artusi Household to a tree surrounded by presents from Santa! We had a nice family breakfast followed by the pleasure of watching Abby open presents and Sidney steal bows and ribbon! Of course Santa didn't forget about us either. In the afternoon we made the journey home and my family came to visit. Samantha was in a delightful mood despite awaking at 4:30am and was ready to unwrap her gifts and play some Wii with Uncle Dave! Sidney didn't want to be left out and grabbed her Xbox 360 controller and joined in the fun, clothing optional for 1 year olds of course!

After a long day we finally got some rest about 9pm. The following day all three of us were exhausted and we did nothing but relax and enjoy the company. Jen had to return to work on Thursday so Sidney and I hung out for the rest of the week and took down the Christmas decorations in preparation for the end of a nice vacation.

I expect there will be no more updates until the beginning of the New Year. With that said, I wish you all a very happy and a very safe new year’s celebration. Don't forget to make a resolution that you can keep!

21 Dec 2007 - 4 More Days!: Only a short few days until Santa makes his visit. Are you ready?

I had some down time so I finally have the links page up and working. Its nothing special, but it will grow with time. I also took some time to cleanup the photo gallery and do some organizing. Enjoy!

16 Dec 2007 - A Great Weekend: We had a wonderful weekend, this past weekend. As you know from previous posts this was Sidney's first birthday. Sidney and I started the weekend off early and tried to do some Christmas shopping on Friday. I say tried, because we were not successful. Sidney just wanted to run and play, so every time I put her back in the car she arched her back and we got into a wrestling match trying to strap her back in. Without failure, when we would arrive at our next destination, it was time to put our shoes and socks back on. After a couple stops I gave in and we went home and played.

Saturday morning we woke up to three or four inches of snow and a forecast of freezing rain to come. Fortunately, this was not enough to deter our out of town guests from attending the celebration! Sidney’s grandpa arrived early and ready to party and the Kilian’s arrived shortly there after with a ready to party Cousin Abby!

Complete with a Cookie Monster Cake and plenty of presents, the party was a huge success and could not have gone better. Sidney dug into her first birthday cake like she hadn’t eaten all week. Both her mother and I had a great time watching her make a mess.

Sunday was equally enjoyable as Grandpa came over for breakfast before heading out of town and the Kilian’s hung out for lunch. This offered Sidney and Cousin Abby a full afternoon of play time. Aidan was his usual quiet and content self, hardly making a peep and smiling whenever he can.

Sidney, Jennifer and I cannot thank everyone enough for a wonderful weekend and all the wonderful (and noisy) gifts that Sidney received. We look forward to spending time with all of our friends and family again here in just a week for the holidays! Until then, enjoy some Holiday Lighting courtesy of our neighbors up the street.

15 Dec 2007 - A Quick Funny: Today is the big party day for Sidney. The weather is not the nicest for those coming in from out of town, but I think we will all survive and have a good time.

In my preperation for this afternoon's festivities I was just out running some errands. One of those errands was a stop at Fed Ex Kinkos to ship a couple items I recently sold on ebay. This is the quick funny of the day.

I walk into Fed Ex Kinkos and ask the woman at the counter if they had a box that was about 12"x12"x14" or a little larger. Here is how the conversation went word for word:

Me: "Excuse me, do you have a box about 12"x12"x14" or just a little bigger?"
Her: "We have a 14 square and a 16 square"
Me: "Hmmm, 14" would work, but I'd prefer a 14" cube box over the square."
Her: "These are just square, we don't have cube"
........

I had a hard time holding back, if you don't see the humor in that then just stop reading. Maybe its my dry "technically correct" humour here or maybe its just the lack of a need to have an advanced degree in mathematics to work at Kinko's but I just thought that was the funniest damn thing I have heard all week. Jokes are great, but real world funnies such as this just make my day.

14 Dec 2007 - 1 Year Old!: Happy Birthday Sidney!

13 Dec 2007 - Photo Of The Week!: Through the magic of MySQL and PHP the Photo of the Week source code is working. Right now I am only displaying the title and the image for testing and its more of a photo of the hour for testing too. But within the next day or two the P.O.T.W. section will be done and you will see a new photo along with new details every Monday automatically with zero effort from me!

Tomorrow - December 14th, 2007 - will be Sidney's FIRST birthday! I am sure you are all as excited about it as I am! In the interest of having family around, we are not having the party until Saturday afternoon, so stay tuned first of the week for some news on the party and some messy cake pictures! To celebrate her birthday on her birthday I am taking the day off and she and I are going to go Christmas shopping for Mommy!

7 Dec 2007 - A New Look: It’s been some time in the making, but the new version of haughs.net is now live. As you can see we have changed the site around quite a bit. It’s not completely done, but the blog and the gallery are working. Coming VERY soon (I promise this time) will be a photo of the week, news archives and the above tabs along with a few bonus items. We may be on hold for a week or so with the holidays arriving and you may not see much going on from the front end, but rest easy we are working hard to increase the content of haughs.net.

We have our Christmas tree up and tomorrow we will be decorating it. This will technically be Sidney’s second Christmas, but this will be the first with her active. It will be interesting to see how the decorations survive the holidays. Today she figured out how to climb up onto the chair and ottoman all on her own. Sadie was not too happy about this new discovery as that has been her safe haven the last few months. I suppose she is just going to have to get used to it. We need to get our rest for shopping and decorating, so I will leave you with your thoughts.

Thanks for visiting.

30 Nov 2007 - At Last: Unless your blind, in which case your not missing much, you will have noticed the style of the site has changed. Its not quite as "advanced" as what we were going for before but its simpler and quicker to update. The only thing this page is missing now is links. You can click on the above picture to get to the gallery for now. After we get links on this page, the other pages will follow utilizing the same style. Stay tuned!

28 Nov 2007 - Another Month Ending: Another month is fading away and so much has happened. Too bad the happenings haven't included an update to haughs.net. Haughs.net is going to go to a simpler format, something easier to create/maintain. For a little peek inside the last month I invite you to visit jarenkilian.com and see what we have been up to.

29 Oct 2007 - Slacking Bad!: And by bad I don't mean good. I am sure you have noticed there have been no updates in a very long time to the site. I have been extremely busy with life lately. Things are going well, but family and work keep me pretty busy and while I haven't forgot about posting some sort of a quick update, I have just haven't found the time. The gallery is in a state of neglect also and as winter draws near the time to correct all of this gets closer. Please be patient and check back soon.

24 Sep 2007 - Deevo: It’s been a busy week. Updates have been neglected due to life. There have been some new pictures uploaded and many more to come as I get caught up on my library of photos to fine tune. Last week I spent some time in Michigan for work; it seems the fall colors are already "coming out" in the great white north. I am sure we are soon to follow.

In addition to the required work travel, I have been busy around the house trying to get my to-do list back in check. This weekend was spent picking up a mess in the garage and giving the Bronco some TLC so that it can be sold and Deevo can get a new clutch. The time has come in this man's life where his family and work are more important than his toys and I must move on for the time being and spend my time wisely. There will be time later in life to collect toys (I hope). But for now there will be no shortage of toys between Deevo, photography (I love pictures of the little one) and shooting.

I am sure the word "Deevo" has you all wondering what it means? Well I am not going to tell you in this update. I will let you think on it for a while and see if you can figure it out before I spill the beans!

18 Sep 2007 - Nothing New: There is nothing site related new to announce today. I know it doesn't seem like much is going on but there is a lot of work happening on the back side to get the site to where it needs to be. Soon there will be visible changes to the user side of the site to make it more exciting!

15 Sep 2007 - We've gone live: Major progress has been made! Thanks to Mike Melchior and Shelley Potts for their help in making this possible. We have HUGE plans for the new look and feel of Haughs.net! Please check back often while we continue the construction. Plans are to have a daily photo blog to the right of this message as well as the news your used to right here in this very spot! Stay tuned for updates.
For now why not try moving your mouse around the various text and pictures at the top of this page and see what happens!

14 Sep 2007 - Excuse The Mess: Welcome back! Thank you for visiting our site. We are currently undergoing a major restoration/renovation. We had difficulties with our old host and have been forced to move to a new home. We are much happier in this new home, however some Ones and Zeros were lost along the way. Please stay tuned as we plan to be 100% opperational shortly! In the mean time why don't you check out our Photo Gallery and see what's new over there!