Our Personal Blog

If you tried visiting our blog in the last few days and were redirected automatically to a anti-virus site, the issue is now resolved. We’re sorry if this occurred to you. Hopefully you weren’t a victim of the anti-virus site.

It turns out there was an issue with the version of Wordpress we had installed that allowed someone to hack in. Argh. It’s been a common problem, apparently. If you are running Wordpress on your servers, you should upgrade. Also, check your .htaccess file for malicious code.

Nerd-talk is now over. I’ll keep a closer eye on things and hope it doesn’t happen again.

UPDATE: Ok. More nerd stuff. If anything, I put this here for my own reference in the future.

Once you’ve updated Wordpress to 2.6.3 and are using Live Writer, you might encounter an issue connecting to your Wordpress blog. If that’s the case, this solution worked for me (found here).

————–
This is caused because something (a plugin ? my webserver (IIS) ? something else ?) decided to add UTF-8 BOM to the XML-RPC response. Result : the xml response is 3 bytes longer than expected, which causes the xml response to be truncated.

Solution : find the class.IXR.php file (under wp-includes), edit the file, and look for

function output($xml)

FInd the line that calculates the length 
$length = strlen($xml);

and replace it by

$length = strlen($xml)+3;

Save the file, and try again. Problem should now be solved.

Well. It’s 11:15pm Sunday night. I returned earlier this evening from the Twin Cities where I spent the weekend with Burrows. The primary reason for going was to make it to the Coldplay concert on Friday night. Through JT’s mad Ticketmaster Skillz, he was able to secure us four 9th row floor seats. Wow! Incredible seats for an incredible show.

From their energetic onstage presence, to their creative use of the arena’s space, the Coldplay concert was really a fantastic show. JT was able to take some pretty sweet pictures. I hope to share those with you soon. In the meantime, I’ve posted the few decent pictures I was able to take along with a few others from the weekend.

Concert aside, it was great to hang out with my MN buddies again. Saturday was a good ol’ classic afternoon of movies and hangin at Dave’s place. Just like the good old days.

Wow. This post is really overdue.  Over two weeks ago, I went on the third and final day for the vvi shoot I mentioned in a previous post. Cody, Nate, Greg (the client liason) and I drove the 2.5 hours to small town Emmetsburg to grab some footage for a recent project. Thankfully, the weather was cooperative enough for us to get what we needed. Here are some photos from that trip.

While being on a shoot all day can be quite tiring, it’s certainly been a blast to see other parts of the country that I normally wouldn’t see. Also, it’s been great to spend time with my fellow co-workers and get to know them better.

Click here for a link to the album.

The election is finally upon us and man will I be glad when it’s all over.  No matter who wins, it will be good to finally move forward.  I’m amazed to see people become uncharacteristically divisive and upset if someone doesn’t see things their way.  Doesn’t it seem like the presidential campaigns have been going on for years?  Oh, wait – they have.  Election exhaustion is enough to drive one to drink.  In my case, that would be a tall glass of lite chocolate Silk soy milk.  Because no matter how wacky things get, there’s one thing that makes me really happy about the election season…

…the Snoopy glasses from my childhood.  Those ears!  That bow tie!  That toothy grin!  Who can resist his charisma and charm?  I wonder if he will get any write-ins on the election ballot this year?  I remember when we got these from the grocery store at my great-grandpa’s cabin when I was a kiddo.  I rediscovered them with great excitement while unpacking boxes when we moved to Sioux Falls.  They have now become the first glasses I grab out of the cupboard when the dishes are clean.  You know those dishes.  The ones that make you happy to use.  The dishes that makes even the most ordinary meal of mac n’ cheese or a reheated slice of leftover pizza just a little more special.  Every home deserves a happy dish.

Here’s to a fun Halloween.  To a respectful and civil finish to the election season.  And to our future, whatever it may bring.  Cheers!

Last weekend our friends Mike Burrows and Melissa Spear (or as I like to call them, M&M) came to visit.  They are officially the second round of guests to stay at our house and we were honored they drove out to see us. 

Melissa and I had some girly home spa time and the Mikes got in some good Xboxing. 

We made a fabulous breakfast.  Melissa made the eggs, Michael made the bacon, I made the toast, and Mike Burrows made a lap.

We took a walk down to the now infamous McKennan Park to pay a visit to The Potato Man.  Here’s a picture of Michael chasing Riley chasing Mike Burrows around the Tree of Life.  Good thing Riley couldn’t catch Burrows on the playground.

Then on to Falls Park on the Big Sioux River, to the place where Sioux Falls gets it’s name.

The Mikes used to work together and shared an office, and Melissa and I were coworkers at IB and cubical neighbors.  It’s great to be work-friends and friend-friends.  And examples of maturity for the young boy who took our photo in front of the falls.

Since we used to work together, a trip to Sioux Falls would not be complete without a stop by Michael’s new place of work, VVI.  Mike Burrows got back to showing Michael how it’s done. 

Mike Burrows’ alter ego, DJ Brunch, sized up VVI’s neighbor, DJ Jammin’ Jewels.  DJ Jammin’ Jewels claims to be “the PROFESSIONAL Difference.”  I don’t know about that.  DJ Brunch is a pretty professional guy.  Just look at the professional point to his finger as he shows Michael how it’s done.  We may have to have a DJ-off to know for sure.  Suits and ties required, of course.

All in all it was a good trip.  We gals got to catch up and the guys got to be nerds.

Yep, their gang sign is 42.  Big nerdy kudos to you if you can figure out why.  It’s the secret of life, after all.

Thanks for the visit M&M!  It brought some Minnesota wacky “normalcy” to our South Dakota life.

In a prior post I talked about our visit to a nearby farm for scouting. On Thursday and Friday we returned to the area for 2 full days of shooting. I was on-hand to assist with gear, but was able to take photos in the downtime. On Friday afternoon we visited a farm nearby that had all sorts of old equipment laying around. The amount of textures to photograph were plentiful. While tiring, it certainly was a great experience (plus I got to learn a bit more about the agriculture industry).

Here’s a link to the actual web album, or you can look through them below.

There’s a special tree in the center of McKennan Park that I can’t help but stop and marvel at it’s beauty.  I call it “The Tree of Life,” because it reminds me of the tree by that name in Walt Disney World’s Animal Kingdom park, pictured below. 

This tree, however, is a real live tree and was dedicated in 1922 “In memory of all who served in the World War.”  Amazing to think of all the history this tree has seen.  It towers over all the other trees and commands respect.  Here is the McKennan Park “Tree of Life” in all it’s autumnal glory.  Majestic.

I’ve had to show our trash company who’s boss this week.  We’ve only lived here two months but they’ve forgotten about us over and over again.  They actually picked up our trash on Wednesday as they’re supposed to, but our recycling sat in a soggy heap on our front lawn for two whole days.  I’ve called them three times between yesterday and today.  First their recycling truck broke down and then they forgot us again.  While I was having lunch today I heard a noise outside and looked out the window to see the garbage man loading our carefully collected recycling into the back of his big garbage truck with all the other regular trash.  Then he grabbed our trash can, attached it to the back of his truck and drove away.  Ack!  I called the trash company and they brought our can back about an hour later.  I cancelled our service yesterday and switched to a new (hopefully better) company, but we’ve prepaid through the end of the month with this original company so we’re sticking it out.  Who knew trash could be such drama?