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For those who don’t know, my wife is currently pregnant with our 2nd child. She’s about 8 weeks along, and really going through some tough bouts with nausea. On Monday morning, she had some bleeding and went to check it out with the doctor. The doctor said to have lots of rest and try to relax, because it happens sometime. She was fine that evening, and yesterday.

Well, this morning, I was at work, and my wife called me, saying that she’s got some spotting (bleeding), and that it was continuous, and she also had shoulder pains since a few days ago. I rushed home from work and took her to a doctor, who then proceeded to tell her to get an ultrasound. We feared an Ectopic pregnancy due to those symptoms.

About 3 pm this afternoon, after the ultrasound, it turned out that the baby is fine, and the bleeding was probably due to the placenta trying to attach itself to the uterus (? .. correct me if I’m wrong here, not a MD ). Whew, that was a huge relief, and we’re so thankful that the child is ok.

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Well, I’ve been playing around with Photoshop for a few days, and have come up with a simple design (it’s probably the best I could do at my very basic skill level :). Here’s a screenshot of it, please let me know what you think, any comments are welcome.

The hard part is trying to integrate it to Nucleus. I’m still a bit lost with the relation between skins, templates, and the include files, but hopefully I can get this done within the next week or so.

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Thank God for a beautiful weekend. As we drove out to Marineland on Saturday, it looked like it was going to rain quite a bit, but it turned out to be a nice day for a stroll in a park. It was a bit hot and humid in the afternoon hours, but quite bearable. The annoying part was that our camera ran out of batteries :(, so I didn’t get any pictures at all. I used a friend’s camera to get some shots though, will probably ask for some of them from her.

The Beluga whales are quite interesting, they seem to play for photographs. Everytime someone calls out to them or tries to take pictures, they seem to strike some ‘poses’ for us, which was quite cute and interesting, and they make lots of funny ‘babylike’ noises too. There were a lot of Beluga’s as oppossed to 3 of the killer whales.

But it’s quite awe inspiring to look at these creatures up close and personal, especially through the underwater viewing area where you get to see the actual size pass by you right in front of your nose.

Overall, it was a fun activity; my son had a lot of fun, taking the chance to skip his naptime. But once we left at about 5, within a minute he was fast asleep in his car seat (record time! + miracle ), and at night he just slept without waking up in the middle of the night at all. Maybe we should do this kind of trip every week just so he sleeps

Technorati tags: Marineland

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Yippee… we’re going with some friends to Marineland tomorrow. Hoping to see some big fish jump around in water and splash people

Not sure if we’ll spend the night yet, as hotel prices are quite expensive for this weekend.

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It’s been an interesting week, and it seems that I’ve accomplished some things this week.
Here’s some of the highlights:
- Take 2 project management online courses offerred by where I work
- Learned quite a bit about Nucleus skins & themes
- Learned a bit of Photoshop
- Designed a simple site for a friend of mine

I guess the most important thing is that I’m not procrastinating as much as I used to, due to the 2 week breakthrough pilot. Whenever I have the urge to do nothing, I make up my mind and push myself to accomplish something, and it’s kinda refreshing because now I find that I have motivation to keep moving along.

Next week’s target:
- Complete some more project management online courses
- Get to know Photoshop even better so I can improve my design skills (my current skills are horrific, and that’s partly why I’m a developer and not a designer )
- Try to come up with a design / logo for this blog

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Sorry I didn’t post any updates on the last 4 days of the project. The whole family hasn’t been feeling well and I spent most of my time helping out around the house and/or resting.

But I did manage to get some work done. Played around with Nucleus and managed to get it up and runnning on this site, played around with skins and templates, and right now am trying to create a simple design for this site using Photoshop. It’s interesting because I’m not really a good design person (that’s why I’m a developer ), but at least I’m gonna try and come with something up before the end of the week. If that doesn’t pan out, then I’ll try get one of my buddies to design something for me.

Overall, the pilot has got me off my bum and has me moving forward to a larger goal of earning income from online ventures, and I would recommend it to other people who have the same problem as me (tons of ideas, 0 action).

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Hi everyone, welcome to the new DR’s Corner. I’m currently in the process of trying to modify how the site looks and feels. In the meantime, please bear with me throughout changes and experiments.

Any suggestions and comments are very welcome.

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I’ve finally decided on a host: Site5.com. They’ve got a good reputation on forums, and decided to give them a whirl.

Also registered my domain name DarrickRochili.com, but haven’t set up anything on the site as yet. I’ll probably setup either a blog or site there within the next day or two.

My next hurdle is choosing a blogging platform, I’m quite torn between Nucleus, B2Evolution and . More research would probably be the order of the day. I might use Mambo for my Content Management System.

Technorati tags: Nucleus, B2Evolution, TextPattern, Mambo

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I got this response from Tris Hussey of Larix Consulting.

>1. Would you be able to share some of the lessons you have learnt
>during your time in this business.
>
>
The most important lessons I’ve learned is having a really good RSS reader is essential, practise your writing, and keep yourself organized. Pro bloggers live and die by the amount and quality of information they have at their fingertips. Nothing beats practise for improving your writing. As you gain more clients, you’re going to need to get and stay organized. This is easier said than done, of course.

Another really important part of this job is building good relationships with other bloggers and industry insiders. Nothing beats getting a hot tip to make a killer blog post/article.

Work on your blogging voice. Make sure it is natural and comfortable. Forcing yourself into a voice that isn’t you will make your writing seem stiff and stilted.

>2. How long did it take you to build up your business to the point of
>achieving pretty good income?
>
>
That is an ongoing process ;-). It takes at least six months I think. My first “real” pro blogging gigs started in December 2004, it’s June 2005 now and I’m now starting to get outside enquiries and come in and I haven’t initiated.
A key part of this is making sure you have a solid blog of your own that you write for to show off your range of skills and topic coverage. Also don’t forget to both link to and announce/promote your clients. This gives visitors a way to see your range of work, and spreads the Google juice around.

>3. Would you be able to recommend other people that I should also talk
>to, to get some more insight and knowledge about being successful
>online?
>
>
Paul Chaney, Jeremy Wright, Arieanna Foley come to mind right off. They are all easily Google for contact info…it’s a great way to see what they are working on too!

Technorati tags: Tris Hussey

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I’ve been scouring the Webhostingtalk Forums to try and find a good and reputable host, and have narrowed it down to 2 of these:
- Site5 or
- Reseller Zoom

I’ve found out throughout the years through experience that it’s not easy finding a good webhosting company, and that’s why I’m doing as much preparation as I can this time, so I won’t be disappointed.

Technorati tags: Hosting

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