People,

Here is a piece is a piece advice. Learn keyboard shortcuts. They will revolutionize your life. The less your hands have to leave the keyboard to go to the mouse, the quicker you can get your computer task done.

Almost every computer program has shortcuts, and they are worth knowing!

the common shortcuts

These Shortcuts work in nearly all programs

I like to refer to the next shortcuts as “The Trinity”. KNOW THESE!!! Shame on you if you have to use the mouse for this ever again.

• ctrl+x = Cut.
• ctrl+c = Copy
• ctrl+v = Paste

more goodies

• ctrl+n = New
• ctrl+w = Close
• ctrl+s = Save. (Knowing this shortcut will help you save and save often. You never know when the power is going out!!!)
• ctrl+a = Select All

THE browser shorcut

Here is the ultimate timesaver!

When you are surfing, here is a shortcut that save you tons of time. In fact, this is one of my favorite keyboard shortcuts of all time! When you are typing in a website with “.com” as a suffix, give the ctrl+enter shortcut a whirl. Here’s how it works.

If you are going to http://www.cnn.com for instance, simply type “cnn” in the address bar and then hit ctrl+enter and your browser (IE or Firefox/Mozilla/Safari/Netscape) will put the rest of the URL in the address bar for you. I LOVE IT!!! How Exciting. If you make this shortcut a part of your surfing you will save a ton of time and effort. Don’t laugh. This is a great shortcut. USE IT!!!!

There are a lot more, and I suggest hitting the F1 key and search Help for more “Keyboard Shortcuts”. Master these, and I will get back to you with more.

What is up, I just got back from Ocean’s Twelve…loved it! It has received some bad press, but I thought it was great. I love how Steven Soderbergh directs. His movies always looks soooo cool. It was really fun, and it was a departure from Ocean’s Eleven. In Eleven everything was so elegant and “Golden”. In Twelve, every thing has a rougher look to it. It has a lot of handheld camera. Positively delicious.

If you didn’t like Eleven, you probably won’t like Twelve, but if you are a big fan of the first one like I am then I bet you are going to like it.

They had a lot of fun with After Effects. There are a lot of freezes in the movie where they put words up on the screen. In the first movie the graphics in the movie were very minimal. In this one however, they are in your face. I thought it was fun.

David Holmes did the soundtrack for this movie, and just like the first one it lays an infinitely groovy foundation for what is on the screen.

I know I am sounding like a fan boy, but …. I am I really like both Ocean’s. If you liked Eleven … see Twelve. If you see it in Rogers, you will see it projected through their Christie DLP Projector. Digital Movies… fun… oh wait DVDs…. but that isn’t the same… I mean, I don’t have a $125,000 projector at home…….yet.

MurDog Out!!!!!!

By the way, I want to give a shout out to my lovely and awesome mom!!! Happy Birthday. I love you, Megan loves you, Mary Hadley loves you, Wyatt loves you, and Sophie boy (our cat) is basically indifferent.

I hope to have a little more regularity when it comes to blogging. I have been Uber-busy for about the past month. Every year around Christmas, I help Crossland Construction put together their corporate Christmas party. It is great fun, but it takes up a ton of time… Time usually devoted to other pursuits such as blogging, and Halo 2. I have been lagging severely in both lately. (I went on Xbox Live yesterday and was absolutely LIT UP by everyone. I have got to get some practice in.)

Anyway, back to the Crossland thing, we put together (Josh G and I) over 50 videos. That is a ton! We helped them put together an awards banquet a la MTV Music Awards. Pretty cool.

Imagine a room of about 700 rowdy construction workers and their bosses. It is no easy task keeping them occupied for 2 hours much less interested. It is quite a task.

This year we did a Pimp My Ride/Overhaulin’/American Chopper theme. We even put together a short 4 episode Mock TV show called Pimpin’ Your Truck. We took one of the Crossland Supervisor’s trucks and pimped it out while video taping the whole process. It turned out surprisingly good.

Needless to say, after all that editing, I had no energy for blogging. But, Now I am done, and I am back. I hope to do some serious blogging over the holiday season.

Dog OUT!!!

Wyatt loves trains. All 3 year olds.. well who am I kidding.. all guys have fixations, things that we spend in ordianate amounts of time thinking about. Wyatt, my son is no different. He loves trains.. In case you missed that, HE LOVES TRAINS. A couple of weeks ago, we took him to see The Polar Express. It was the first movie he ever sat all the way through. (And, that includes a little 12 - 15 minute movie we saw about the making of chocolate at Hershey Park last month.) The train held him in rapt attention.

Well yesterday, we were able to do something for him that he will never forget. We had his birthday party on a train ride from Springdale to Fayetteville. It was a Christmas train. Wyatt loved it.

The really bad thing is, I had already promised my time to someone to help out on a project that is due VERY soon, and I couldn’t go on the train ride. I saw the pictures though, and I am so excited for him.

I did get the project done earlier than expected, so I did get to come home in time for the cake and playing with the little man.

We will have to do that again.