Springtime: A late update in the wake of computer-driven discourse.

My first foray into the world of video blogging has not been a graceful one... For reasons previously unknown, Mac-asaurus Rex (my mac pro) has not played well with others. When he first met my ipod and iphone (yes i am an apple fanboy) he didn't want to sync with them. All he really wanted to do was reformat them and leave them blank...

Last week when I was attempting to upload my first ever video blog entry, Macasaurus tried to erase the firmware off of the Flip video camera. I didn't really appreciate that very much, so I sought some counseling from AppleCare. Several hours and a dozen restarts later, Macasaurus was still bullying a whole neighborhood worth of peripheral devices. The AppleCare people suggested I take him to the Apple store where they could test the hardware... seemed reasonable to me except for the fact that a faulty hardware exchange means mandatory 4-5 day vacation in Cupertino for Macasaurus and while I'm sure he would appreciate the break, I'm in the middle of a massive redesign for the Women's Ski Jumping movement; five days away would leave the walls crashing down and the sky falling.

So I decided my best option was to keep the peripherals away from Macasaurus until I have a break in design work and can manage without the horsepower for a few days... And then last night I found myself reading the Apple forums and found a group of other Mac Pro users were having the same problems. And that led me to an article that suggested restarting the machine without the apple-provided keyboard usb extention cord attached and resync the peripherals... which was followed closely by the heavens opening up and ensuing rapture.

The proverbial thorn in the lion's paw... at least as far as I can tell... a $2 usb extention cord bringing my macasaurus to it's knees. Problem solved for now... My computer works but my Flip video blog is gone...

This Spring has been a busy one, albeit a very good one. I've had a multitude of sponsorship obligations to tend to including several lengthy photo shoots and fashion shows (insert Zoolander joke here). Outside of that, I've been cranking out design projects one after the next. Right now, as I mentioned above, I'm doing a total aesthetic redesign for Women's Ski Jumping USA. It has been an awesome opportunity to direct a total concept to completion rebrand. Last week I directed a photo shoot with several of the athletes and produced a splash page for their site (http://www.wsjusa.com - only the front page is my doing) that will remain until I complete the entire site.

I've also been busy with my crew at Ecker Hill Middle School. It has been a crazy spring in terms of the weather and we've spent most of the days indoors playing dodgeball and various other games. Last week we even had a freestyle jump-rope competition. In our time inside I've also developed a serious quiver of pitches for kickball; my change-up has been known to actually stop... This Tuesday will be our last day of school before the summer break and I may move over to the Boys and Girls Club for a few months before school starts again.

Training has been up and down, as it usually is for me this time of year. Motivation can be tough to come by when its snowing in May. But things are progressing. This past Monday I ran for 4.5 hours and yesterday I managed to run for just over 5 hours. These long workouts have become the backbone of my own training. This next week will my first large volume week (~25 hours of total volume) and will be a good test of where I am. If I can put in quality hours through the whole week, it should set me up very well for the rest of the summer. I wasn't able put down 25 hrs in a week until August last year, so this is a definite progression.

Thats all for now. Keep your fingers crossed and hopefully next time my video blog will work out!

JT high up on the ropes course during one of the few nice days we've had at school.