shorepound.net

Here’s a shot from Father’s Day June 21, 2009:

It was so freaking hot on Sunday, I was desperately trying to tuck for a little shade but unfortunately, the waves were just too small. The wind was blowing mostly west/northwest, so it was similar to the Santa Ana winds out west: hot, hot, hot! The waves were tiny, but we made do. This is Florida, we’re used to it.

Filmed mostly in Jacksonville. You can see images of the city throughout the video, and even a few images of Jax Beach (Freebird, Ocean Club) and the boardwalk. I’m stoked and proud to be a Jacksonville resident. How cool!!!

Look for the Mike Watt cameos as well…

Yesterday morning we loaded up the cooler & Momma’s board and headed to the beach to meet up with the Stewart family. Mom got straight to business and D quickly followed suit. The two played in the surf for near an hour, and then decided to take a break.

Throughout the day Donovan was out of the water for mere minutes. The rest of the time he was either swimming, body surfing, boogie boarding, surfing on a boogie board, or surfing on Mom’s longboard. He’s really getting quite good, and thus, he’s enjoying it more. So much for grad school!

I pushed him into a few waves later on in the afternoon, and luckily Lep had his camera out and documented this awesome sequence of Donovan charging the shorepound. He stepped off of the board with style and grace without falling. It was a sight to see!

I am a very proud Dad right now.

Back in 2007 I recorded Donovan (then 4 years old) kick pedaling all by himself. It only took a week or so of training to accomplish this:

Donovan Skates!

More recently, just a few weeks ago we had some friends over, one of which had a 8 year old girl that would absolutely rip on anything you gave to her: long skate, short skate, bike, anything. Donovan saw this and of course he had to show what he could do. Before that time, he had not had really tried skating the long board. Well, he did that day and now he’s hooked.

Here he is, showing his Arnold style, just last week:

Check out shorepound from 2002:  shorepound.net from 2002

This past weekend, we all packed up for a swift and compendious trip to Mt. Dora to suprise Mike Gill, father of my long time college buddy Josh Gill, on his 60th birthday. He was very suprised, and happy to see us all doing so well. Saturday night we talked story until after midnight, and Sunday morning we sat around for a few hours just talking and laughing about just about everything.

Donovan was quite taken by Mike and Nancy’s dog “Chase.” He is a mixture of American Bulldog, and English Bulldog. He is quite possibly one of the sweetest, funniest dogs I have met. Among his many tricks and quirks, the one I managed to capture was his proclivity to chasing and hysterically barking at a stream of water being sprayed from a garden hose.

Here is Donovan spraying the hose, and Chase feverishly trying to ‘catch’ the fleeting water with his mouth. I wish I could have recorded sound bites from this event. It is truly something to see AND hear.

Donovan and Chase

This is just too funny!

Oh if you could hear this!

This was a great end to our trip. We were smiling all the way home, thanks to Chase.

Much Love to the Gill Family!!!

I upgraded to WP 2.7 on the shorepound server. Took me long enough!!! Look for new features and a new theme coming next week!

Friday I started a ticket to allow a user to edit a custom content block in a rails application that allows users to create their own web sites. If the user had created a content block during the sign up process, the content block should be editable before the user publishes their site. Easy enough.

I added some conditions in the sign up process directing users to different actions based on the status of their content blocks, like so:

- if business.content_blocks.size >= 1
%li{ :class => step_completed("custom", business) }= link_to("6. Custom content", edit_business_content_block_path(business, business.content_blocks.find(:first).id))
- else
%li{ :class => step_completed("custom", business) }= link_to_step("6. Custom content", "new_business_content_block_path", business)

Testing this code in my browser did not give me the same results and testing in the console. The console would return 0 with business.content_blocks.size so I thought I had everything done. But in the browser, the if statement was still allowing the next line to run. I racked my brain to figure out why.

Finally, I discovered in the content_blocks controller, the beloved before_filter.

before_filter :load_new_content_block, :only => [:create, :new]

The create method in the controller renders the new action if the save method has not fired, so basically the controller was building a content_block object on page load, but since it wasn’t saved, I could not see in the console.

I removed the new action from the before_filter shown above and my error was gone.

Rails is fun for n00bs and l33t’s alike!

This past weekend our happy little family loaded up the 4Runner for a weekend of primitive camping and more live music than you can imagine at The Harvest of Hope Festival located at the St. Johns County Fairgrounds, a mere one hour drive from our home. Here is a short recap of the weekends events. Please enjoy!

We left the house Friday March 6 2009 at around 1 pm, and had located our camping ‘area’ by 2:30. We had to park a 1/4 mile from our campsite, and our truck was packed to the gills with supplies (The Arnold’s know how to camp!). After we parked, we grabbed our tickets, our clothing, and our tent. We registered, got our wristbands, and found our spot. Our truck was AT LEAST 1/4 mile from our site, and we still had tons of gear to carry and set up.

The camping area looked like a make shift tent city. As far as you could see there were tents haphazardly arranged amongst small scrub oak trees and palmettos. It was an eye opening scene. Mind you the camping area opened Friday morning at 9 am, and when we got there at around 2 pm, the area was more than half full, and with us, hundreds more people were flowing in. Some bands were starting to play, but the artist we wanted to see on Friday wouldn’t start until 10 pm.

We set up our tent in a prime location that we picked ourselves, strategically positioned so that we would have plenty of buffer space around our tent for cooking and general privacy. We put our clothes in the tent and went back to the truck for the cooler. This is where things got interesting. I figured Julia and I could carry the cooler to the site, and her and Donovan could have a snack while I went back to get another load from the truck. Great Idea Dad! Everyone was on board. Well, Julia is a mere 90 lbs and her hands are not as big as mine, so carrying a humongous cooler full of food, ice, and beer was just about impossible. Luckily, there were plenty of friendly folks around, and we had a couple guys help us get the cooler within 20 feet of our site. Julia and I handled the rest.

I took a short break, then went back to the truck for the bed, pillows, and blankets (My plan was to get things in stages so that while I was away getting more stuff, Julia could set up camp with what I brought). I got as much as I could carry with two hands (pillows, blankets, and a blow up mattress) and made my way back to camp (this is my 3rd trip at this point). By some stroke of luck or gift from God, a man with a bike and trailer rode past me in the parking lot and asked the crowd if anyone needed assistance getting to camp. I immediately flagged him down, not even worrying about the cost. I loaded what I had in the trailer, then politely asked if we could go back to the truck; he obliged. So we loaded his trailer and headed back to camp and unloaded. He told me that they can’t charge a fee, but that they accept tips. Since my load was so large, and I still had another load in the car, I gave him $20 and asked if we could do another trip: he said yes. I can’t even explain how this saved our trip. I would have been so exhausted that I would have missed one of my favorite DJ’s spinning LIVE at an outdoor music festival.

Finally with all of our gear at the camp, we set up and started enjoying the event. By this time darkness was falling, so we started getting ready to cook dinner: HOT DOGS ON THE GRILL! Yum. We put on warm clothes and cooked and ate dinner. We relaxed and had a few drinks and some snacks, and decided it was time to head in to the festival and see what it was all about.

Our site was a stone’s throw away from Stage 2 (there were 4 stages) so when we were tired or what not, we could easily see/hear whoever was on Stage 2 without even leaving our chairs at camp. We walked over to the festival and explored the sights and sounds. Most of the artists playing were unfamiliar to us, so we did some shopping at the merchant booths. I bought Julia and I each a shirt from the Merchline booth This one is mine:

And here is Julia’s:

Donovan of course was enjoying the sights and sounds, but was perplexed that he was just about the only person there that was not at least a teenager or older. He was a trooper though. His spirits were lifted with a few rides on the carousel:

Now it was time for what we came to see (on Friday anyways): Girl Talk. He made an awesome performance. You can’t really see much from the pictures (again, it was packed) but he had a bunch of people from the crowd come up on stage with him dancing and straight wylin’ out.

We could not make it through the whole set, as Donovan was getting a little tired, but it was awesome none the less. We headed back to camp and D, without saying a word, went to bed, and went straight to sleep. We did not ask him to. We did not suggest it: he just did it. Julia and I had a night cap, then called it a night ourselves.

I had a hard time sleeping, being that all of the campers were mostly young and without child. At one point, at around 4 am Saturday morning, I had to get up, and get out of my tent, and very sternly tell a few kids to be quiet. I won’t say here exactly what I said to them, but they didn’t even make a peep after that. I was the hero as everyone else was tired of their antics as well.

Saturday at around 8 am Donovan woke and was ready for more fun. I let Julia sleep in, as I was starving and ready to make some breakfast: bacon, eggs, and hashbrowns. I was feeling really exhausted from lack of sleep, but we managed to get out and see some more shows and let D ride some more rides. I took a bunch of pictures on Saturday with my real camera, and hopefully TheFamilyJulz will post those. Here’s the only picture I have from during the day Saturday:

We didn’t really shower the whole time. Donovan and I ‘rinsed’ at one point, but for the most part we were covered in dirty, sweaty, grime. I was still very very tired for most the day Saturday. We had turkey sandwiches for lunch and continued to relax. Donovan and I played catch for a while. We went back and forth to the festival, but for the most part we were waiting to see punk rock legends, ‘Bad Brains.’

We cooked an early dinner consisting of grilled chicken thighs, hummus and tabbouleh, and pita bread. It was wonderful. We made our way back to the festival to see The Bouncing Souls. We really enjoyed that set as well. Next up was Bad Brains. They were absolutely incredible. I was worried that HR and the boys would be so old that they couldn’t shred like the old days, but they DELIVERED. Here is the best shot I could get on my phone from the Bad Brains set (we were too far away, place was PACKED):

We listened to as much of the set as we could, then headed back to camp to unwind after a very very long 2 days. It didn’t take Donovan long to succumb to exhaustion:

Julia and I opened a bottle of wine to finish off the day, which was a real nice treat.

You can kind of see our set up in that shot. Julia has better shots on my camera at home. Let’s hope that she posts them. Bo and Kelli Dillard came to spend the night with us Saturday, so it was kind of nice to have some company. Bo’s band Onslaught Dynamo played that day, and Kelli came down to see Bo play, along with many of her favorites. We all shared some wine and some stories before calling it a night. Again, tired tired tired.

Sunday morning was a great morning. I again cooked breakfast, but this time for 5! Julia made mimosa’s and we ate and drank and shared some more stories. It was a wonderful morning. Bo and Kelli ventured to the festival, while Julia, Donovan and I hung around the camping area relaxing and playing. Here is a shot of our set up:

Notice the ‘Arnold’s’ sign. I made that. ;-) After we rested up, we ventured to festival to see another one of my favorite bands, Tokyo Police Club. They put on a great show, and were actually able to get fairly close to the stage. Here they are, rocking:

By this time we had it pretty much wired: Eat breakfast, relax and play, head to festival, see music, let Donovan ride carnival rides, go back to camp for food and drinks, repeat. This is how the rest of the day went. The next band we saw, which I was highly anticipating, was AWESOME. Donovan loved it. He sat on my shoulders during the set, fairly close to the stage. Here he is, the man himself: MURS.

After MURS Donovan did some more carnival rides and games, then we went back to camp to snack and have some drinks. That wasn’t quite enough though, so we walked back to the festival for a little treat. We had been cooking our own food for the entire trip (aside from Donovan’s corn dog addiction) until this point. We had seen a booth offering Gyro wraps at a reasonable price, and we figured it was now time to share one. It was divine, and devoured. Back to camp we went in anticipation of the final evening. Finally it started cooling off, so we put on our warm clothes, and headed to the festival to see Black Kids (local Jacksonville Dance Rock band). They were excellent:

Next up, and our final set to see up close, was the legendary KRS ONE. He rocked the house, playing plenty of recognizable classics. We really enjoyed his set.

We headed back to camp, cooked up some pork chops and hot dogs on the grill, ate and headed to bed. It was a nice end the the weekend. Most folks had been leaving throughout the day, and by the time we got back, the camping area looked nothing like it did before. When we arrived on Friday it was tent city, and by Sunday night, it was really empty. I was dreading the pack up, being that the truck was a 1/4 mile from our site. I woke up Monday morning, mustering all of my strength to start the long haul to and from the truck, anticipating many, many trips, and many hours of work.

When I opening the tent door and looked outside, I nearly jumped for joy at what I saw: vehicles in the camping area! Friday this was not allowed as it was not even possible because the amount of people and tents in the camping area, but Monday was a different story. I got our truck and parked it out front of our site, and loaded up. We were home by 11 am or so, and began unloading, washing, storing, and organizing our gear. We were mostly done by 2 pm, which left us the rest of the afternoon to relax and recount stories from the weekend with neighbors and friends.

It was a great time, and I can’t wait until next year to do it again. I am sure I left out many details and probably some important funny things about the trip, but at least you get the gist of it all. Much love.

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I love you so very much and I will call you later this evening. I hope you got your package and I hope you are having a most wonderful day thus far!