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Checkout Sarah Barlow on the BluBlog! How awesome is she!
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
W - New York
Ok so I made it to NY! I like New York. Especially this time b/c I don't have a ton of things I have to do and I'll be able to hangout with my friends more! So I came to check in and the lady says "sorry your card was declined." It's so embarrasing when that happens (especially when the girl is cute) and I don't carry any balance on my card so I always know that it's Queensberry. Every time they charge an album it locks up my card because they are in New Zealand and I don't like to use other cards b/c I want the miles but I might have to because this is just annoying and they don't even notify me when it's locked up so the way I have to find out is to have a purchase declined and then I call them and they unlock it. Lame. Gary keeps telling me to go American Express.
Ok well...all is good now.
DJ
Monday, October 30, 2006
Ha Ha!
Everybody always gives me a hard time because I book my travel arrangements so last minute. So of course being that I leave for New York tomorrow night I waited until today to get a hotel and since some of my friends were staying at the W in Times Square I wanted to stay there too but last night there was no availability but today there was so I called and booked my room and I'm very excited to stay there.
I typically like the Westin better than the W if I'm gonna be working but the W is fun and the W is where I got the idea for a business card that's punched.
All hotels in NY are pricey and they have so many hotels there you'd think they wouldn't cost so much. 4 nights at the W costs almost as much as a months rent. Gnarly.
Haha! As I was posting this Missy Carl just posted below that I was gonna be sleeping in a public restroom. :P
Good Day
Yesterday was a great day. I stayed in OC after the wedding and then met up with Dane Sanders in the morning at Rock Harbor. I miss hanging out with Dane because he always talks about important stuff. Conversations with him always leave me challenged to think and act in new ways.
Then we went over and saw his awesome family and his new second home! Seriously! This thing is decked out with a flatscreen, full kitchen, 3 beds and tons of other cool stuff!
...and then!!! I came home and found my kitchen looking like this! WHOA!
Now some of you might be thinking "yea - that's a sink DJ" but ya see I haven't seen my sink in a long time because when I'm traveling a lot I tend to let the cups stack up a bit and I have PUG groups and homegroups for my church come and meet at my house and so there is usually like a ton of cups in my sink but Kristin Renee washed everything! Amazing! I was so happy.
...and now I gotta get a hotel for NY because I leave tomorrow and I heard there is some big race out there so all the running people have booked up all the rooms.
Then we went over and saw his awesome family and his new second home! Seriously! This thing is decked out with a flatscreen, full kitchen, 3 beds and tons of other cool stuff!
...and then!!! I came home and found my kitchen looking like this! WHOA!
Now some of you might be thinking "yea - that's a sink DJ" but ya see I haven't seen my sink in a long time because when I'm traveling a lot I tend to let the cups stack up a bit and I have PUG groups and homegroups for my church come and meet at my house and so there is usually like a ton of cups in my sink but Kristin Renee washed everything! Amazing! I was so happy.
...and now I gotta get a hotel for NY because I leave tomorrow and I heard there is some big race out there so all the running people have booked up all the rooms.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Another Year
Four years - wow - I can hardly believe how God has guided this journey. Yesterday closed out another year for me so I've been reminising a bit...
I've been thinking a lot about how every three or four years a huge change occurs in our life...elementary school, jr. high, high school, college, marriage (for some :) and so I've noticed the urge to continue that pattern in many of my friends. Over the past year many, almost all, have left their jobs and become self employed or are thinking about it and others have gotten married.
This is an exciting time and I'm excited as well because although I haven't had a career change or been blessed with a wife my business is changing a lot. I've tried to control the weddings I shoot for the past two years and next year my goal is to hold it to 10, I have 9 now so we'll see if I can be disciplined about that. I really want to be careful about shooting too much because my relationships do suffer and I recognized that this year with only shooting 20 weddings. My time in community and fellowship with all of you was limited and that's a big priority for me. I also have learned the value of just spending time thinking because when I spend too much time doing I find myself offering less of value.
So next year I'm planning to revisit those "Why" questions that I often talk about because they are the important ones. They are the questions that I believe really shape who I am and it's too easy for me to get trapped in the "How" questions and never get back to the purpose of why I'm doing what I'm doing.
I want to encourage you, no matter where you are in your business, to take some time to ask some of those "Why" questions because if you find those answers first you will find that the "How" questions get answered a lot easier.
Blessings,
DJ
I've been thinking a lot about how every three or four years a huge change occurs in our life...elementary school, jr. high, high school, college, marriage (for some :) and so I've noticed the urge to continue that pattern in many of my friends. Over the past year many, almost all, have left their jobs and become self employed or are thinking about it and others have gotten married.
This is an exciting time and I'm excited as well because although I haven't had a career change or been blessed with a wife my business is changing a lot. I've tried to control the weddings I shoot for the past two years and next year my goal is to hold it to 10, I have 9 now so we'll see if I can be disciplined about that. I really want to be careful about shooting too much because my relationships do suffer and I recognized that this year with only shooting 20 weddings. My time in community and fellowship with all of you was limited and that's a big priority for me. I also have learned the value of just spending time thinking because when I spend too much time doing I find myself offering less of value.
- I spent the 1st year of my career learning "how" to shoot and then shooting anything and everything because I loved it.
- I spent my 2nd hear learning "how" to get work.
- I spent my 3rd year learning "how" to handle that work.
- I spent this past year learning "how" to get free from that "work" and get back to shooting for the love of it.
So next year I'm planning to revisit those "Why" questions that I often talk about because they are the important ones. They are the questions that I believe really shape who I am and it's too easy for me to get trapped in the "How" questions and never get back to the purpose of why I'm doing what I'm doing.
I want to encourage you, no matter where you are in your business, to take some time to ask some of those "Why" questions because if you find those answers first you will find that the "How" questions get answered a lot easier.
Blessings,
DJ
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Basketball Game
Trying this post again...
This past week has been so great. I got a lot of work done and I also got to spend a lot of time just hanging with friends and I think Gary Fong has figured out the perfect balance of work and play...Gary and Missy were in SB and you can see some fun videos on his blog
...and tonight I was on my way down to OC for a wedding tomorrow and Deyl and Paige called me up and invited me to the Clippers game and so I called up Shyla and we went to watch some basketball! It was so fun and here is a video of Shyla talking about basketball but I could tell her mind was really on the upcoming elections.
and here's a video of the highlights from the game.
This past week has been so great. I got a lot of work done and I also got to spend a lot of time just hanging with friends and I think Gary Fong has figured out the perfect balance of work and play...Gary and Missy were in SB and you can see some fun videos on his blog
...and tonight I was on my way down to OC for a wedding tomorrow and Deyl and Paige called me up and invited me to the Clippers game and so I called up Shyla and we went to watch some basketball! It was so fun and here is a video of Shyla talking about basketball but I could tell her mind was really on the upcoming elections.
and here's a video of the highlights from the game.
jacked
I somehow jacked my blog and I can't delete those posts. They don't even show up on my lists of posts.
...and it keeps giving me errors when I go to post.
Sorry about that.
weird
...and it keeps giving me errors when I go to post.
Sorry about that.
weird
Thursday, October 26, 2006
TSA
TSA stands for "Toothpaste Stealers of America" and it is such a hassle because I fly somewhere for one day and they take my toothpaste and so I have to go and find some when I get to wherever I am going. Then I fly home the next day and they take that tube as well so I have to go get more when I get home.
...so I went and got a ton of little tubes to keep here at the house so at least when I get home I will always have toothpaste and I think the little tubes you can sneak by easier as well. I think 3 ounces is the biggest one you can take and these little tubes are only one ounce.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
What a Rush!
Well the last couple of days have been a rush!
I left on Monday to head to Utah for the IPPA convention. Monday night was really cool because the Pictage PUG was meeting there so I got to see so many friends and ride on my first Harley! WOW! Jennifer Grigg ( Jumanjijuice ) took these awesome pics!
Here is Shannon Hodson giving me my first ride on a Harley!
and me and Dustin Izatt at the PUG meeting!
Me and Pepper! Oh how I love Pepper!
Then they had an auction to raise money for the IPPA group and they auctioned 3 Showit Apps and brought in over $500! How cool is that!
Then on Tuesday I had a chance to talk and show some of the latest RAW processing tips and tricks as well as give my four ways to "Get FREE" in your life. Unfortunately I couldn't stick around for long and had to be on a flight 90 minutes after my talk ended :( which was a total bummer because everyone there was incredible and I would've loved to have stayed. I flew back to shoot some engagement pics and it went great and then it was straight to the PUG group that Chris Humphreys was running. He walked everyone through his new Livebooks site! (it's not released yet) but I heard it was really cool and has some great functionality!
...and then I went to sleep and OSP GOT ATTACKED! Ahh! :) ...It's a good thing we have Matt Antonino around to ward off the powers of darkness! This is the biggest pic I have of Matt. I woke up to an email from him telling me how he had been defending OSP and I logged in to see how he had hacked the hackers! I was laughing so hard!
The hackers had cracked my password (like you see happen on MySpace all the time) and were messing around with stuff and so Matt cracked their password and started deleting their accounts! haha! Brilliant! I had the the guys at Invision Power Board check everything out and they did some cleaning up right away (within minutes actually - I was incredibly impressed at their response) so everything is back! :)
Tonight is Janey's birthday party and tomorrow I got invited to share my story at a business class up at Westmont! When I got this email I was very excited because when I dropped outta college pretty much everyone said you're gonna fail, not in those exact words, but I got a lot of pressure to go back and everyone kept saying you can't do this and you can't do that so I must admit it feels pretty good to be headed up there.
Ok...now that it's 4pm I guess I need to get to work. :)
Rock on and once again Long Live OSP!
DJ
I left on Monday to head to Utah for the IPPA convention. Monday night was really cool because the Pictage PUG was meeting there so I got to see so many friends and ride on my first Harley! WOW! Jennifer Grigg ( Jumanjijuice ) took these awesome pics!
Here is Shannon Hodson giving me my first ride on a Harley!
and me and Dustin Izatt at the PUG meeting!
Me and Pepper! Oh how I love Pepper!
Then they had an auction to raise money for the IPPA group and they auctioned 3 Showit Apps and brought in over $500! How cool is that!
Then on Tuesday I had a chance to talk and show some of the latest RAW processing tips and tricks as well as give my four ways to "Get FREE" in your life. Unfortunately I couldn't stick around for long and had to be on a flight 90 minutes after my talk ended :( which was a total bummer because everyone there was incredible and I would've loved to have stayed. I flew back to shoot some engagement pics and it went great and then it was straight to the PUG group that Chris Humphreys was running. He walked everyone through his new Livebooks site! (it's not released yet) but I heard it was really cool and has some great functionality!
...and then I went to sleep and OSP GOT ATTACKED! Ahh! :) ...It's a good thing we have Matt Antonino around to ward off the powers of darkness! This is the biggest pic I have of Matt. I woke up to an email from him telling me how he had been defending OSP and I logged in to see how he had hacked the hackers! I was laughing so hard!The hackers had cracked my password (like you see happen on MySpace all the time) and were messing around with stuff and so Matt cracked their password and started deleting their accounts! haha! Brilliant! I had the the guys at Invision Power Board check everything out and they did some cleaning up right away (within minutes actually - I was incredibly impressed at their response) so everything is back! :)
Tonight is Janey's birthday party and tomorrow I got invited to share my story at a business class up at Westmont! When I got this email I was very excited because when I dropped outta college pretty much everyone said you're gonna fail, not in those exact words, but I got a lot of pressure to go back and everyone kept saying you can't do this and you can't do that so I must admit it feels pretty good to be headed up there.
Ok...now that it's 4pm I guess I need to get to work. :)
Rock on and once again Long Live OSP!
DJ
Monday, October 23, 2006
Utah! IPPA
So I'm out in Utah for the IPPA convention and unfortunately it's just a 24 hour trip but it's been incredible so far! I arrived and found out that Brody (who just got a snappy new website) and the whole Pictage PUG and TONS OF OSPers were meeting in the same hotel as the convention! WOW! What a treat to meet everyone!but now it's off to bed...and I'm presenting at 8:30am! YIKES! Which is actually 7:30 for me....and guess what - I'm the second speaker of the day! Ah! They start at 6:30! This is so not "hippyville" (as my brother calls Santa Barbara)
:) I'm super excited though - everyone here has been great!
2nd best thing about being on the road - roomservice!
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Y Blog
I want to ask everyone out there why you have a blog?
...and if you don't - why not?
There are no right or wrong answers and I think many of us have different reasons for using blogging technology so if you had to narrow it down to the main reason why you DO have a blog or the main reason you DON'T have a blog what would that be?
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Your Words
I spent yesterday down at Pictage chatting with Jeff Jochum, Sara France, and Shyla and it was great! One of the things we talked a lot about was language and how words have such a great power to unite or divided people.
Then on the way home I was listening to a presentation by Tony Robbins and he was talking about the same thing! ...and how we have the power to change the way we feel and the way we act and the way others feel and act simply by taking some extra time to think about the words we're using.
Then on the way home I was listening to a presentation by Tony Robbins and he was talking about the same thing! ...and how we have the power to change the way we feel and the way we act and the way others feel and act simply by taking some extra time to think about the words we're using.
Friday, October 20, 2006
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Change
Woodrow Wilson once said,
"If you want to make enemies, try to change something"
Isn't that true. :) Don't we all hate change. I know I sure do. I have also learned the importance of understanding changes before wasting energy pointing out the negative affects of change and instead I choose to focus on the positives of any change I'm presented with. I also give any change time before declaring it good or bad.
I kind of chuckled this morning when people saw the 60 posts that I added with my sneaky little friend, the Blog Pirate, and I really wasn't surprised by the immediate resistance to this new feature which I think will be a great addition to OSP.
So rest assured that OSP is not going to be overrun by posts from every blog or news source in the world. Currently it's pulling from 5 sources. Colon and Becker (who post a couple of times a week), Godin (who posts daily), Google Business News (5 or 6 posts a day) and DP Review (usually a couple of posts a week).
So we're looking at very few posts a day. I added some at the beginng to give it some depth but I think we will all do ourselves a favor to wait and give changes on OSP or changes in our life a chance before immediately finding the few reasons we don't like it and working to build resistance to it.
:)
DJ
"If you want to make enemies, try to change something"
Isn't that true. :) Don't we all hate change. I know I sure do. I have also learned the importance of understanding changes before wasting energy pointing out the negative affects of change and instead I choose to focus on the positives of any change I'm presented with. I also give any change time before declaring it good or bad.
I kind of chuckled this morning when people saw the 60 posts that I added with my sneaky little friend, the Blog Pirate, and I really wasn't surprised by the immediate resistance to this new feature which I think will be a great addition to OSP.
So rest assured that OSP is not going to be overrun by posts from every blog or news source in the world. Currently it's pulling from 5 sources. Colon and Becker (who post a couple of times a week), Godin (who posts daily), Google Business News (5 or 6 posts a day) and DP Review (usually a couple of posts a week).
So we're looking at very few posts a day. I added some at the beginng to give it some depth but I think we will all do ourselves a favor to wait and give changes on OSP or changes in our life a chance before immediately finding the few reasons we don't like it and working to build resistance to it.
:)
DJ
Blog Pirate
Check this out! The Blog Pirate is so cool! I guess he goes around to blogs and grabs the info and brings it to OSP for us so we can talk about it. I think this is perfect because I've found blogs to be really difficult to have conversations on because they only notify the blog owner when a post is made.
The two blogs that the Blog Pirate is grabbing right now are Mike Colon's and Seth Godin. Both are great blogs. Seth Godin is marketing guru and I just read one of his books called "All Marketers are Liars" and it was incredible and now I'm reading two of his other books "The Big Moo" and "Small is the new Big" which are both awesome as well....and look what Seth says in both of them.
"When you bought this book, you also bought the right to photocopy as many pages as you like, as many times as you like, go ahead and make five hundred copies of your favorite story and send them out via interoffice mail."
Seth Godin is a master blogger and Word-of-Mouth marketer and so that's why he gives stuff away for free and that's why I buy all of his books. He's brilliant.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Slideshows
Slideshows are so powerful! I think I've gotten a dozen emails in the past day of people just raving about the power they have not only to totally stoke out clients but also to get clients to become evangelists!
Liana Lehman has a special place on her site where she puts all her shows for people to enjoy and I think that's really smart because they really are fun to watch and it helps turn your website into an experience and something that's entertaining and not just informational.
...and Andy Martin just sent me this email about this slideshow! What a wonderful thing to be a part of and look how this slideshow is blessing these people and how it's also giving them a way to pass along Andy's name. :)
Rock on!
DJ
Liana Lehman has a special place on her site where she puts all her shows for people to enjoy and I think that's really smart because they really are fun to watch and it helps turn your website into an experience and something that's entertaining and not just informational.
...and Andy Martin just sent me this email about this slideshow! What a wonderful thing to be a part of and look how this slideshow is blessing these people and how it's also giving them a way to pass along Andy's name. :)
Rock on!
DJ
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
WHOA!
Deyl just posted the gnarliest video from the earthquake in Hawaii. It shows lots of smoke and lava and it's cool.
CLICK HERE and watch!
:)
CLICK HERE and watch!
:)
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