./janella.com

I’ve been feeling under the weather since Wednesday. I haven’t been to work, fighting this stuffy-head-congestion thing that is bugging the heck out of me. Hopefully, I’ll start feeling better soon, as my days at eGain wind-down and I start the job-hunting process.

My last day on the job is Wednesday. I’ll work on the site here and there if possible. There are only a couple more albums to post, so more pictures need to be taken soon

Hello again! Welcome to the new layout for Janella.com. Yes, I know: changes again? Well, it has been a couple of months since I’ve done something to the pages, right? There are some new albums posted, listed under the new album pages (for some reason). Check them out. I’ll be posting a couple of others soon enough.

Also, the latest browser versions would be best to view the pages. So this means that you should be using either Internet Explorer 6.0, Netscape 6.1, or Mozilla 1.0. Please don’t forget to comment on any changes you like or hate. But most of all enjoy the photos and thanks for visiting.

I was just notified my services are no longer required at eGain Communications. My job ends on August 7, 2002. Strangely I don’t feel that bad about not having a steady flow of income from a source other than Unemployment Insurance! I think it is time to move on and look for something else. We’ll see what lies ahead.

Nice day today. Not as hot as they said it would be. Hopefully, the rest of the week will be fine. Today we had an impromptu Good Cooking episode with Lotte, Fina, and John. Pictures, as always, will be posted at a later time. I’ve been trying to organize some items on the website to best navigate through several layers of pictures. Once this is done (in about three weeks if given enough time) I’ll be able to post regularly again.

Staying up pretty late tonight. I’m just enjoying the last two days of vacation. I’ll write a little later about what happened during my vacation. Right now I just wanted to test out the new structure of the pages to see if this blog makes it through. I put the pages in the password protected area because too many non-members were emailing with silly questions or just plain spam! Anyway, going to go to bed now.

Wow, what a weekend. Kayla had her annual dance recital on Saturday. I got to try shooting pictures with the N80 and 800-speed film. I was really worried it wouldn’t come out but they did. I just need a better telephoto lens I think? The picture scans (cd rom) didn’t come out great compared to the prints so I may have to delay posting those pictures. Sunday found us in a park in Santa Cruz for Rex’s parents' 50th anniversary! I felt weird being a video/camera guy but wanted to capture a lot of the things I shot. I took a lot of pictures and should have those available by the week’s end. That’s it for now.

The class didn’t go too well last night. I’m having problems with printing pictures correctly. I’m getting a little discouraged. Thankfully the class is almost over. Only two weeks left! I’m also worried about this weekend. Tomorrow is Kayla’s dance recital. I’m going to break out and try taking pictures with the N80 and 800-speed film, since the lighting will be low. I’m just fearful that the pictures won’t turn out. Well, they only turn out fairly well with the digital camera. Hopefully, all will go well. Sunday, well more on Sunday later.

Lastly today, my company had an auction, selling some overstock computer items for dirt prices. I picked up a Dual P3 450 with (supposedly) 512 MB RAM, 3 x 9GB hard drive SCSI 2 setup. All for only $150!!! About three years ago, they say, it was built for $5000. I think it is still in good working order. If I can get it up and running I may just be running Janella.com off of it. I’ll let you know how it goes also. That’s it for today…

well, I’ve been on vacation since thursday, which was an interesting day in itself. I helped someone get into an accident on that day. how did i do that you ask?

well, kayla was over. we decided to go get my truck washed and then go to blockbuster to find a movie. well, i took the wrong turn off of mary and headed to blockbuster before going to the car wash. as we took a left to make a U-turn, i noticed a honda hatchback civic in front of us. well, it was stalled and i had someone behind me. so there was no way around it. i put the truck in park, turned it off, and asked kayla to sit in the car. then i went to help push. to make a long story short i pushed the car, but the person behind the wheel didn’t really know how to drive, and they ran into a parked car. ouch.

Well, I gave in to the Blog. I wanted to be able to update this portion of the website from wherever I may be (e.g., work, school, home, Europe ;)) so I jumped on the Blogger bandwagon. It’s actually a pretty cool tool for updating news/journal/diary-type stuff. I guess I could also go on a freehand rampage about the state of the world or television or something. I might just do that shortly. The photography course at De Anza is winding down. One project is due this week, and I think the last one is next week during finals! I already signed up for Photo 2 which should prove to be interesting. It covers the use of filters, lighting (both flash and spot), different camera types, and other projects that stretch the mechanical side of photography. Now I need to work on seeing the image, which I think is a big weak point of mine. We’ll see what my final grade is in a couple of weeks. For now, that’s it.

Introducing the new home page! This is where I will mainly write things that I think are interesting, but in reality, might be boring to you. What you will find here also are site updates. I decided to remove the Babble and Photo Journal sections, combining them into the easier first page. So you don’t necessarily need to scroll through the long list in the photo gallery to find out what is newly posted. I’m working on changing the photo gallery listing. Any suggestions are appreciated.

what’s the story….. I purchased janella.com as a fourth anniversary present for farrah. janella, if you didn’t know, is farrah’s middle name.

the genesis for this gift was her dislike of her yahoo! e-mail address (fjc_76). being the computer guy i am i figured it would be cool to have a @farrah.com address. unfortunately, that domain name was already taken, but janella wasn’t. i then plopped down the $$ for the name. and so was born not only an e-mail address but a web site!

janella.com was originally created using FrontPage 4.0. then i moved to use Macromedia’s Dreamweaver 4, Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7, and Arles Image Web Page Creator. i dabbled a little with PHP and PostNuke. Now it’s back to Dreamweaver with PHP.

the early pictures were taken with a Kodak DC-240, a 1.2 megapixel digital camera. the latest pictures have been taken using a Sony DSC-70 3.3 megapixel digital camera. we’re also getting into the SLR kick (see Project Journal). we are currently getting our hands dirty trying to scan older pictures. those will make it on the site when they get done.

the goal of janella.com is to share pictures of our family and friends with our family and friends. we hope you enjoy looking at these pages as we have enjoyed putting them together.