I’m sure you have read them all today and probably have more to go, but here is mine. A look back on 2009 which for the most part was a great year.

It started off with a bang, lots of amazing projects, travel planned and overall couldn’t ask for more. For the first part of the year I stayed home and worked but come April I was off to Flash in the Can in Toronto for probably the most exciting conference I had ever attended.

Fast forward a few more months and I was in Orlando meeting up with my family and friends, even met a friend all the way from Singapore which was a great time. Sadly 2 days later I was locked away in bed with the flu that I caught on the flight down so this vacation was cut short quickly. However soon after I was back home it was on the road again (literally a road trip) to Owosso Michigan for the 2009 Train Festival. The bonus of this trip was being able to ride on the Morning Daylight, the most elegant steam engine that is still operating (for show) to this day.

Then we come to September or what I call the most extended vacation of my life. I first flew over to Colorado to stay with some good friends and transform into a hiking, exotic-food-eating, shooting redneck and it was a blast. Then it was off to Las Vegas for Photoshopworld were I got to meet up with much of the PhotoshopCafe family. These are guys I have worked alongside for years but only now got to meet. To say it was a great time is an extreme understatement.

The last trip of the year was back to Florida for a pre-Christmas celebration with Disney, friends and family. I got to see the Christmas party at Magic Kingdom and visit pretty much every Disney park in that week. Once I got back home I continued the Disney fun and went to Disney on Ice.

Even the last day of 2009 was amazing. I trekked into Boston to see Dane Cook perform at the TD Garden and it was awesome. The travel an volume of people in the city for First Night couldn’t put a damper on the show and i’m glad I got to go.

Okay so that is pretty much a travel recap of 2009, but I did actually work too. This year had its ups/downs with that. I got to work on a few learning applications for schools, some forensic e-learning applications and even a drivers ed application that is used by huge companies to train their employees. I also launched websites for a bar in New York, a social networking site, a few forum rebuilds and even some work for an industry leading wedding book company. A special thanks to my freelance friends, Philip (PNeal) and Ryan (Spooky) for their amazing work during some of these projects.

So there you have it, 2009 in a few paragraphs. I am anxiously awaiting 2010 and all it has to offer. Feel free to comment or ask questions about these projects and travels and i’ll answer anything I am able to.

See you next year (tomorrow).

Another quick snippet.

How to restart a Linux server using only the command line.

Start by opening Terminal (Mac) or Putty (Windows) and enter the following, then hit ENTER.


/sbin/shutdown -r now


Warning: Always make sure the -r is included or the server will simply shutdown. Forcing you to manually reboot it. Unless your host provides something similar to Rapid Reboot (ServerBeach).

Starting today (Monday) I am going to be making some pretty serious life changing choices in my work and after-work lifestyles. Okay, a little back story. I have been working on evaluating my working habits, client communications and general daily processes.

Okay, so now you are likely wondering, why the change? Well its simple really, I have been involved in some pretty stressful projects over the last few months and the daily stress has been mounting up. Last weekend I spent both days relaxing and spending time with family and then did the same this weekend.

I noticed this evening I have been much less stressed, generally more productive and all around in a better frame of mind, so that is why I have decided to start this process now. The “Band-aid” approach is because any other form will be abandoned in a few short days and I want this to work out. I have about a month before I leave for Photoshop World which of course means lots of work in a very short amount of time, so I figured now is the best time to push the idea.

Have any of you perfected a working process or other general daily task strategy? I would love to hear about them.