I’ve been rather busy lately and there has been some pretty major changes in my life that have had me doing other things that just seemed more important than updating my website.

A few things that I’ve been up to or that have happened recently:

Yes, this is my backyard in DALLAS TX, if you can believe it!

• I am no longer in Mississippi! I’ve moved to McKinney, Texas which is just north of Dallas. Kim and I bought a wonderful new home and we’re working new jobs and trying to learn a whole new area – boy Dallas is large!
• Speaking of jobs, I am now working at Texas Instruments as consultant for their front end development team. What you see at ti.com is what I am doing. Specifically, I am responsible for site updates, interface elements and overall user experience. It’s quite challenging working on what is easily the largest website I’ve ever been involved with.
• We recently lost Amy, my middle-aged boxer which fell to a sudden heart attack. It has been very tough dealing with her loss but slowly we’re getting used to her not being with us anymore.
• I ended up winning photo of the week on the Canon Photography Forums and then ended up winning photo of the month which means it will be included as one of the photos in a calendar to be published at the end of this year. The photo that won was this one, which is one of my favorite photos.


Now in Texas - wow!

• Speaking of photos, my passion for photography has only grown recently and I am thrilled to have found numerous photo groups here in the Dallas area and I have been attending group events and meeting some wonderful fellow photographers. One of the great aspects of living in such a large metropolitan areas is that there are lots of like-minded people and many more resources available.
• Another photo related item is that I’ve finally launched my dedicated photography website at LambertPhotography.com! I am pretty pleased with how it turned out, but it has just launched and would love any feedback if you’ve got ideas, complaints, whatever, I’d love to hear them.

We’ve just gotten back from a nice but short mini-vaction that we took with some good friends to my aunt’s condo in Perdido Key, Florida. It was a wonderful weekend of excess and we thoroughly enjoyed the time away. We enjoyed some fine dining at a few different establishments and even got a glimpse of Kid Rock and Rev Run who were apparently in town for the weekend as well. Of course any time in Orange Beach would not be complete without a trip to the infamous Florabama bar – in which we took in the local sites and flavors, having a blast gawking at the local party-goers and other assorted lounge lizards.

In other news, we’ve been been watching a few movies lately, and I am really getting psyched for a few upcoming movies, namely Indiana Jones and Batman. I saw some new publicity stills of Heath Ledger as Joker over at Slash Film and I am convinced that this movie is going to seriously kick ass. As for Indiana Jones, I’m starting to get nervous as I saw the most recent trailer and I noticed lots of stupid slapstick and painful comedic lines that were reminiscent of Temple of Doom which pretty much goes down in history as the worst movie ever. I am still holding out hope that they may revive the series without ruining it but honestly I am going to be going in with little hope and see what shakes out.

As for the boob tube, we’ve been watching a new series on Discovery called the “Alaskan Experiment” which pits four teams of ordinary folks having to survive in a very rugged Alaskan environment for 3 months with nothing but the very bare essentials. It has been a very interesting series to watch as I’ve been bantering about how they should do a Survivor show in some sort of cold setting as the typical tropical locations have gotten old and uninteresting anymore. Although there is no game show element or prize involved with this, the show seems much more real and the people involved are engaging enough to make you want to follow them without having to resort to petty squabbles and sex-laced scanters with bathing suited bimbos starving on a beach and fighting about who is sleeping with whom. It’s got us hooked and I encourage anyone to check it out.

Lastly, on the web front, I am deep in the middle of a much needed re-design of my new employers’ website. I also just launched the new City of D’Iberville website. Although it is still incomplete in several areas, their old site was so horrible that we just had to take this one live sooner that I had liked to. I’ve also got the City of Ocean Springs site in development which is going to be a rather large project. Both of these designs are taking local city websites into a new realm for the Mississippi coast. Historically, the Gulf Coast has been several years behind the rest of the country and in the case of the web, I’d venture closer to ten years behind at least. I’m trying to change that, one site at a time and while it’s slow going it has been pretty rewarding seeing old antiquated websites get a more modern refresh and use technologies and techniques that don’t seem to exist on any other websites in the region. We’re not only doing it better, but we’re doing it right in every instance that I can get away with. Sometimes it’s tough convincing our customers why things should be done that way since they’re not always the most informed or abreast of current styles and movements on the web.

Anyways, enough for now – I’ll post more, as I get more time.