Here fishy fishy fishy…..

Posted on July 6, 2008 by Joel

Doug and Kathy came over for dinner and brought the fish tank and all the paraphernalia.  We are now the proud owners of 8 freshwater guppies and other assorted fish, plus a fish tank and stand, etc.  It’s sitting in our living room now.  The last time I had fish, I was 3 years old, and living with my parents in an apartment in the Bronx.  As my parents tell the story, I went into the fish tank, and put all of the fish onto the floor to play with them.  We never had fish again.

Kathy & Doug over for dinner Our fish aquarium

Joshua is 3, and is very excited to have the fish.  So excited, he keeps trying to put his hands into the fish tank.  Why do I feel as if history will soon be repeating itself with the latest generation of Ipes?

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The land before good children’s movies

Posted on July 5, 2008 by Joel

Ugh, we watched The Land Before Time, an 1988 animated movie from Don Bluth, the same fellow who produced The Secret of Nimh.  I’m glad I’m not allergic to corn, because this movie was corny and just terrible.  Thank goodness it was only an hour and 9 minutes of slow torture.  My wife and I spent the entire time rolling our eyes.

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A lazy July 4th 2008

Posted on July 4, 2008 by Joel

Ah, nothing better than a 3-day weekend.  Well, that’s not true.  I do appreciate the rare 4-day weekend (e.g. Thanksgiving.) Yesterday, due to unforeseen circumstances, I ended up working from home.  There was an early dismissal, but it didn’t matter to me working from home.  Ah well, at least I beat traffic.  I’m in Pennsylvania for most of next week, and I think I have everything I need to be on the road, minus an extra hub/switch.

We’re keeping it simple this weekend.  Last night, we went to picnic and settle in to see the fireworks.  I have to tell you, it was the easiest trip ever, since the fireworks were at a nearby park that is just walking distance away.  For the first time, we didn’t have to find parking, or battle it out to slowly get out after the whole show was over.  While everyone slowly made their way out under police direction, we pushed two strollers, and were home in 10 minutes.

Speaking of the picnic, Nums made pita bread and baba ganoush for appetizers, beef shish kabobs for the entree, with potato salad on the side, and fresh fruit for dessert.  We traditionally break out the shrimp cocktail, but we didn’t want to leave Josh out of the fun. (Because of his other food allergies, we’re staying away from seafood until he’s older.) It was all very good.

Joel & Lily relaxing on July 3rd Nums & Josh relaxing on July 3rd

Oh you want to hear what was weird?  As we were walking to the park, we walked by some woods, and we saw that tomcat that I mentioned earlier on Monday?  Well, he was chillin’ out on the grass.  Then we noticed 7 other cats all hanging out there too.  I think the tomcat is the gang leader of a cat gang, and we stumbled onto their turf! Needless to say, we strolled quickly on.

Today, we’re just chillin’ at home.  Tonight, we’re watching The Land Before Time, which is an old 80’s animated movie for Josh.  For the grownups, we’re watching Atonement, unless we fall asleep.  Relaxing at home is hard work.

I definitely think WordPress is interesting, and I’m still playing around with it.  I’m trying out different plugins and themes, but I’ve already had my first complaints or criticisms about the redesign.  To each his or her own.

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Joel’s Emotional Intelligence (EI)

Posted on July 2, 2008 by Joel

Ever heard of Emotional Intelligence (EI)? We had an interesting all-day session on Wednesday at the office about EI. Turns out that my social style is “The Expressive Style.” I found the session useful, but similar to a class I took through the IIA a few years ago. Reading up on the Expressive was rather on the mark about my personality, and helped me understand myself a little better. That’s the first part — to have self-awareness. After that, you learn to use that social style in the right way, an eventually learn how to work with other people who are of the other styles. I’m actually glad we took the time away from work to do the class.

Here are some highlights about me (from the book we got):

  • Focus their attention on teh future with intuitive visions and outspoken spontaneity.
  • Be imaginative and creative.
  • Make decisions quickly, based on feelings and opinions.
  • Be warm and approachable, yet competitive for recognition and involvement in relationships.
  • Generate enthusiasm.
  • Behave in stimulating, exciting and fun ways.
  • Behave in flighty, impractical and overly emotional ways.
  • Make mistakes and have frequent changes in direction and focus because of their desire to act on opinions, hunches and intuition, rather than facts and data.
  • Use time in an undisciplined manner.

Determining your style is based on what your Ask-Tell behavior and Control-Emote behavior are. I’m more Tell and Emote, so that’s how we arrive at Expressive. Based on my test results, I emote alot (meaning my mood is written on my sleeve) and I like to tell people about my opinions (but I also like to listen almost just as much.) I apparently have a tendency to interact with others in a spontaneous manner, and can be a form of competition wherein I quite frequently become the center of attention (I am an attention hog at times.) I also view myself as a warm and open person whom others will applaud as the source of a light-hearted atmosphere (I try.)

I also apparently see dealing with details as a burden to be avoided. It is more pleasant to encourage interactions in which others will assume that responsibility. You know what? It’s true. I like facts, and will collect them, but up to a point. I’d rather have someone do the dirty work, so I can make a decision.

Finally, some other highlights on my “style.” In working with others, I am frustrated when they cause delay by taking time to assure themselves that a course of action is comfortable. To me, their data gathering is largely unnecessary. A good choice will validate itself as you go along. I do think data gathering is important, but I feel if you have enough to make your point, move on already. Maybe I don’t dig deep enough after all. Food for thought.

I also supposedly offer opinions readily, but can give the feeling that I am expressing ideas and attitudes “off the top of my head.” Thus, I can appear disorganized and ill-prepared in situations calling for a systematic approach.

Those were the interesting highlights. Definitely gave me some insights into myself, which helps me understand a little bit more about what makes me tick.

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Horny Cats

Posted on June 30, 2008 by Joel

As much as I like cats, for the past few weeks, this very vocal, possibly horny, tomcat walks around our neighborhood and yowls for a long while. I dunno, maybe he’s lonely, or Timmy is stuck in a well, or maybe he’s very proud of his sexual prowess in his cat bed, I couldn’t tell you. All I know is that it’s really friggin’ annoying night after night.

The weekend was pretty quiet. I worked late Friday, and Num’s mother came over for dinner. My parents came over to visit Saturday afternoon, and came bearing food, which is always appreciated. After church on Sunday, we went to finalize the menu for dinner after Lily’s baptism in August. The rest of Sunday was mundane taskwork and resting.

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Posting video, Vimeo style!

Posted on June 29, 2008 by Joel

I started both the About Me and Videos page. I’m trying out Vimeo at the moment, and we’ll see how it works out. The challenge is still to find free time to get the videos converted, but at least I’ve found an interesting service to post them to.

For your viewing pleasure, my first attempt at video on Vimeo: Josh reading one of his favorite books to Lily.

Goodnight Moon from Joel Ipe on Vimeo.

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Site updates, watching TV, and living with fish

Posted on June 28, 2008 by Joel

Ah, the weekend has finally arrived.

I don’t know if anyone noticed, but I converted the April and May 2008 galleries. You know, I haven’t really heard from anyone about the redesign. If I stay up working on this site, and no one checks it anymore, does it really matter? Maybe I shooed everyone off after months of little activity or life. I know what would attract everyone back — Pictures of old men playing basketball with monkeys in dresses. Not just any types of monkeys, mind you. The skanky ones.

Thank goodness for DVRs. Whenever one of us is feeding Lily, we’ll hit the Tivo and find something to watch with one hand while we use the other to hold the bottle upright for her. There’s nothing new to watch these days, so we’re recording new-to-us stuff, or shows we haven’t watched in a long while — Friends, The Practice, etc. I’ve been watching old reruns of Quantum Leap, various Star Trek series episodes, Stargate SG-1. I’m personally looking forward the return of summer shows like Burn Notice and Stargate Atlantis.

Burn Notice

Burn Notice

We’re thinking of getting an aquarium. My friend Doug got some deals on tanks, gravel, etc, from a pet store going out of business in his area. The big debate was freshwater vs. saltwater. I like saltwater fish, but I’ve been warned they’re very difficult to maintain. Freshwater fish are easier, but they aren’t too exciting. Hmmm, unless I get salmon. Or, seahorses. Lots of smart seahorses. Which have the ability to merge into Mega-Seahorse when the world is threatened by the evil…. geez, that would be the worst children’s animated tv show ever.

The good news is that the audit is drawing to a close. I see the light at the end of the tunnel. BTW, I’m in Pennsylvania next week, but at least it’s a short week, being that Friday is July 4th. I’m also looking forward to our annual July 4th “Yo, we’re classy. Check out our classy picnic spread.” picnic. Burgers? Hot dogs? Puh-leaze. This is the one time a year we get hoity-toity with our…. picnic cuisine.

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Josh goes to preschool, and George Carlin died

Posted on June 23, 2008 by Joel

Ready for the big news? Josh has moved up to Preschool. More big news, and I’ll credit my wife. Josh is nearly potty-trained. It’s been nearly 2 weeks, but he’s wearing “big boy underwear”, and he hasn’t required a diaper during the day or night. It’s fairly amazing, and yes, I’ll credit my wife for consistency. I want credit too for participating. I felt validated after she gave me a gold star for effort.

George CarlinI can’t believe George Carlin died. That’s sad. I used to watch his comedy routines on HBO after I got introduced to his comedy via recordings on cassette tapes that my friend Doug gave me. He will be missed. In honor of George becoming a footnote in American legal history — Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television.

I’ve fixed up the Photos page, but I will have to find the free time to slowly convert all the galleries from April 2008 and earlier. I’m not particularly in a rush, as I have enough complexity in my life right now. The only reason I’m redesigning this website is because I could a little mindless distraction in the evenings to help me unwind. Also, it’s teaching me something different.

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Joel is finally redesigning his website

Posted on June 20, 2008 by Joel

Has it really been nearly 6 years since I started joelipe.com? Really? Six years? No wonder I’m so tired. I have some good, better, and best news.

Good news: I’ve started working on the last 20+ days of photos since May, including visiting the Philadelphia Zoo, and our trip to Ocean City. However, as I started editing photos, I realized this was going to take forever. If you remember from yesterday’s entry, I was now debating using a 3rd-party service to save myself some time, at the lost of some customization. I’ve selected Google’s Picasa. It seems to be the best course of action to outsource at this stage. Why do I need to spend so much time manually resizing photos, creating thumbnails, and adding to tables? Better these days to automate and save those blood, sweat, and tears for….. everything else to do around here.

Better news: I’ve already converted May 2008 photos, and I’ve put a temporary link on the Photo Gallery page until I figure out how I’m converting this all. I’ve started uploading June 2008 as well. I’m eventually planning or just considering converting all of 2008 at this stage. I’m thinking that I’ll stop breaking out all the photos by categories (Family, Friends, Trips, etc.) It became a little annoying when I had 2 photos in the Friends category, and 39 in the Family category, and keeping track of dates. Now, I’m just going to group it all by month.

Best news of all: What the hell, this site is due for an overhaul. I’m going to slowly redesign the site using css again, and dust off the old prototype template. I’m not going to touch the archives, but going-forward, time for some fun.

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A little bit of everything

Posted on June 19, 2008 by Joel

What a busy few weeks it has been.

I recently upgraded to Firefox 3, and it’s pretty good so far. I installed a cool extension called PicLens which lets you view photos and movies in a free-flowing wall of media, similar to Apple’s CoverFlow. You can also zoom in and out as you search, and activate movies to watch them right then and there. Check out the website. It also works on the Flickr, YouTube, etc. I think it’s neat.

Having finished Good Night, and Good Luck last week, we’re now watching Entourage Season 1 through Netflix. What a great show. We’ve finished the first four episodes, and waiting for the next four.

I have so many photos and videos to upload, I don’t even know where to begin. 🙁 Maybe I should finally concede to move to a Flickr or Google Picasa or other service.

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