Louie Vidmar » Life

Posted from 30,000ft

lvidmar — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 03:04:05 +0000

Taking advantage of free inflight wifi provided by gogo (for smartphones only) posting using the WordPress 2.9 mobile app.

Flew down to San Jose and rode with my parents (who flew into San Francisco) to San Luis Obispo for my Aunt’s wedding. I was the official photographer for the ceremony. Weather cleared up nicely for the big day, and didn’t get too hot. Sunday the next day was really nice and quite warm. I got to bury some cousins in the sand, but sadly didn’t get a chance to try surfing.

Sunday night we headed to the bay area and did the touristy stuff on Monday. Went and visited the Full House house in San Francisco, My old college roommate who works at google gave me and my dad an abridged tour of his workplace, small software company, you may have heard of, went shopping at the Apple Company store at 1 infinite loop, and drove by Steve Jobs’s old house in Los Altos. Then it was back to the San Jose airport, and here I am, blogging at 30,000 feet (not sure how high we actually are, just a guess).

New Job, for now…

lvidmar — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 17:13:04 +0000

After Labor Day this year, within 3 days I was interviewed, hired and started my first day of work as Technical Support Specialist III for Sheldon High School in Eugene. The school runs mostly Windows 7 with some XP computers, and everything is managed on 3 different versions of Windows server. Needless to say this will be a learning experience for me.

Also, as has been in the news this week, the 4J district and Unions are fighting over whether to add back furlough days as work days, which due to budget shortfalls, would mean they would have to lay off over 100 workers (mix of classified and certified). They of course let the newest hires go first, so we’ll see if this lasts past December 17.

Learning Things

lvidmar — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 08:02:57 +0000

I graduated this past June, and with that (in about 2 weeks), comes the loss of my student job I’ve had for the past 2-3 years. During that time, I’ve dealt with many headaches, grown admire and respect many of the people I work with.

The major I’ve been working on for so long was in Digital Arts, and I found out about 3/4 of the way in that I probably should have been a Journalism major. It was too late to change, so I made the best out of things, took many diverse classes— from photography, to digital music, writing for media (a journalism class), to advanced video effects & compositing, I even took a class on programming circuitboards!

Now that I’m out of school, looking for jobs, I’m having to re-learn some things I’ve taken for granted, and teach myself new things that I wish my education would have covered. Things like personal marketing / branding, professional networking, and more recently this week, logo design. While I have a lot more flexibility doing these things for myself currently (as opposed to a class assignment, or in a professional context for a client), I’ve also come to appreciate the semi-structured nature of the classroom. I also look forward to the opportunities to work in a professional realm working with clients in real-world scenarios.

Nine Months

lvidmar — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 07:39:37 +0000

I keep thinking about my blog and it keeps sitting on the back burner. It’s not for lack of things I could be talking about, shit in the past 9 months, I’ve…

competed in a city league ski racing league, and our team won the whole season
had the worst Christmas ever #christmasfail08
been [positively] excited about a presidential inauguration
played a UO officially sanctioned flip cup tournament with the club sports olympics, and we WON
broke a slalom ski
went from 5 down to 2 e-mail accounts, and one of those may be going a way soon
met a girl, her name is Angela, many of you have even met her by now
graduated from college!!!!!!!!!
successfully survived a road trip with Angela through 9 states
- Yellowstone, Ren Faire, Badlands, Wall Drug, SLC, etc…
partaken in a few dancing lessons (ssssh! don’t tell anyone!)
somehow convinced Angela to buy a Mac
dealt with 2 flat tires in 2 different states I don’t live in, and neither one on my personal vehicle
turned 27
competed in 9 waterski tournaments in 6 different states, and waterskied in a 7th state
- including Collegiate National All-Stars for slalom+trick, and AWSA Western Regionals for 3-event (and qualified for but didn’t go to AWSA Nationals)!
upgraded my wordpress blog, twice, without posting anything
volunteered with a church group on a construction project
bought a Playstation 2 from a thrift store for $12.50 and repaired it myself
sold my old DSLR and bought a spiffy new one, and taken thousands of photos with it
attended a number of concerts
given up on my football team, due to some unFavreable circumstances
finally started getting my online portfolio and résumé up-to-date

…and some other stuff too, I assure you. But now that you’re updated on my life, maybe now I can get this site fully back on track again?

General Tso’s Chicken, finally success

lvidmar — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 08:06:41 +0000

In what seemed like destined failure once again, I finally had a successful batch of General Tso’s Chicken. I believe this was my third or fourth attempt from scratch (+1 attempt using sauce from a bottle). The first hint I was in trouble was when I realized I had no corn starch (used as a breadding), so I used pancake powder. Then when mixing up the sauce, I realized I didn’t have any red wine/cooking sherry. Instead I used a little bit of white wine vinegar with some water, and a little bit of Berry Splash Crystal Light powder (weird, definitely. but it came out just fine), and a little extra soy sauce. No onions? No big deal, though it is a key part of this dish, I was mainly concerned about the sauce coming out ok.

Tiny bit of back-story. General Tso’s Chicken is one of my favorite Chinese dishes, especially at Maple Garden near campus. I’ve never seen any other resteraunt make it anywhere near close to the way they do, and I have no idea what it’s supposed to be like, but it’s damn good. So it’s been a goal of mine for the past 3 years or so to figure out how to make a decent batch of it. I’m getting closer… I’m guessing another 2 attempts and I’ll have a recipe worthy of sharing.

What are you doing up at this hour?

lvidmar — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 10:41:06 +0000

That’s what Toni asked me about 2hrs ago. Followed by:

Me: getting my calendars set up to sync through google
Toni: sounds exciting there
Me: you have no idea
Toni: lol
Toni: you are an odd one

Anyways this is fairly brilliant. Google Calendar is the brains of the operation, where the data is stored and whatnot. Sure I exported most of my calendars straight from iCal, but then I set up the calendars to utilize Google Calendar’s new calDAV service (Google’s instructions). So now I can edit events on my iMac at home, the iMac at work, even on my iPod Touch, and it’ll sync up to the gCloud, and back down to my computers/iPod, and essentially be the same everywhere.

Caveat here is regarding the iPod Touch. I only see the “live” calendars when using Google’s mobile interface, the Apple Calendar interface needs to get plugged in at home to sync. Same with posting, it if i post to Apple Calendar, nothing goes live until I plug & sync at home. And obviously Google Calendar needs to be within earshot of wi-fi access.

This is all acceptable though, wi-fi seems ubiquitous enough for when I’m hopping between computers, and when I’m not (say, when I visit the family cabin in Minnesota), the iPod Touch will be the only device I have for keeping schedules, so it’ll “just work”.

The one thing I don’t understand, is why do each of my Google Calendars need seperate CalDAV accounts in iCal? This is makes it a pain the ass to set up, but after the fact is mainly cosmetic (see image above, and click to enlarge).

Hmm.. ramblomatic blogger? I’m going to bed.

Mint Lake Open

lvidmar — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:40:21 +0000

Thinking maybe I should start doing tournament recaps after they happen, so I can look back at the performances at the end of the year. Anyhow, here’s my first crack at one.

I’ve skied at Mint a few times, but only at the Emerald Valley’s Northwest Championships tournament. This was the first one where our club wasn’t as required to do the work. I still helped out with scoring and judging, it helps to practice at a variety of locations, learn the quirks of the computers and whatnot.

22nd ANNUAL MINT LAKE OPEN
TourID: 08W133C
Yacolt, WA
7/12/2008 to 7/13/2008

Slalom Rd 1: 4 @ 58k, 23m
Tricks: 810 pts (personal best!)
Jump: 64 ft (personal best!)
Slalom Rd 2: 2H @ 58k, 16m (personal best!)

I also took some photos from the site (click image above for gallery):

Epic 4th of July BBQ

lvidmar — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 08:52:32 +0000

Fantastic Four

lvidmar — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 22:52:34 +0000

Continuation from the third roll, the fourth was also shot at Fern Ridge reservoir.

Towards the end of the “shoot,” we wandered over towards the playground equipment and took some interesting shots.

I’ve decided to keep using the school’s EOS Elan 7, and the recommended TMax 400 film for the foreseeable future (for the purposes of this class). I didn’t like how my Rebel K2 winds all the film and exposes it in reverse.

Once, Twice, Three Times a Maybe

lvidmar — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 14:17:32 +0000

Working my way though these photos for class. I need to pick 6 to print I think. I feel I’ve got quite a few interesting ones, but narrowing down which ones fit in the context of the assignment may be tricky. We’ll see.

This is the third roll, and the first in a series of 2 rolls taken near the Fern Ridge Reservoir in west Eugene. David and I wandered around, and climbed up an embankment. Took pictures of small animal skeletons on the ground, of the horizon, and birds in the sky, among other things. What do you think?

These were all taken with the EOS Elan 7 using TMax 400 film.