Why is it that every children's keyboard I come across has the most annoying and imagination-inhibiting feature sets-- most notably "demo" or "songs" buttons that play complete sets at the touch of a button?

I can't stand seeing bright, intuitive children sit back and let the machine do the work when they discover the little "song" buttons, so I decided to disable this little keyboard's "demo" buttons.  All that remain now are notes and single-shot sound effects.

So it was time to install another round of cabinet child-safety latches so Dominic wouldn't go through everything he shouldn't be in.  Kids.. 

Here is a photo progression of how I installed them on a drawer.  There's also a photo of one of the cabinets-- those are a bit easier, but in all, it's a pretty simple system to master in the first place. I hope Dominic doesn't think so.  ;)

Oh Where to begin!

But I had already begun-- last year. I made a prototype Christmas yard decoration which spells out a backlit "JOY," and, on Christmas Eve, even the Baby Jesus' silhouette illuminates. It was constructed out of cardboard, lights, and lots of duct tape. It turned out pretty decent, but alas, it was not weather-worthy, and it was too late in the season to rebuild it properly.

We had a nice media event at the County Courthouse to show off some of our recent achievements in IT. The bulk of the presentation was for the public wireless access blanketing the courthouse and online legal library access offerings, but the wiz-bang that shone for the media was my docket scroller*. Cool stuff-- incidentally, my big mug takes up half the screen in this KBTX video clip:

See the article at KBTX.com

See the video clip directly (media player)

I was thrilled to earn the responsibility build a kiosk for the Brazos Valley Veterans Memorial, the gorgeous memorial commemorating Brazos Valley area veterans with their names beautifully engraved in granite around a sculpture. The outdoor kiosk serves as a name-placement locator utility, and is housed in a very classy, open-air pavilion shelter designed by Eric Wivagg. Stanton Ware provided the interface's main design and layout as well as much of the content. My multi-hat role was project coordinator, UI developer, Flash/Actionscript programmer, database developer, and coordinator of kiosk hardware donation, painting, and installation.

I am so excited about some of the things I'm working on.. And I believe in sharing and giving back to the various communities from which I have gained so much wisdom and experience. This web site is my little bit of horn self-tooting and imparting of knowledge. enjoy.