2007 in Review (Part 3)

A few other things happened in May…they’re not really a big deal or anything…just worth mentioning. The lease on my Honda Civic was almost due, I hit a moose and totalled our family van, and I finalized the purchase of the other half of our house (the side my Aunty Sharon owned).

The lease coming due meant that I was looking for a new vehicle. A brand new Toyota RAV4 was my choice. For anyone who’s gone for a ride in it, you’d know that it’s a great vehicle and a monster in the snow. I’m very happy with it. It is an epic vehicle.

Hitting the moose changed my outlook on life again. I didn’t have a scratch on me and the van was totalled. I had glass in my hair and down my pants, but no cuts or bruises. God must have something else in store for me otherwise things would have been different. A few days later I heard of a lady who was driving a smaller car who hit a moose driving slower than I was…she died in the hospital.

(That’s two life changing experiences so far in 2007, for anyone who’s keeping track)

I bought the other side of our house, and my aunt moved out and bought a condo in Westgate, but I didn’t move in. I remained in the basement suite of my parent’s side of the house and began to rent out my side to some family friends who are building their own house in the Hart. So, things were working out alright. Double payments on the mortgage each month and some help to save for Australia in the summer of 2008.

As June approached I started to focus on two things: Teen Camp at Camp Morice and the feasibility of going to the Bahamas in November.

I was pretty excited to direct the teen camp at Camp Morice. There was a lot of planning to do in order to have everything ready because after all…you pretty much have to plan for every minute of the day and have contingency plans for if/when the weather is not co-operating. Not to mention the pressure of making the teen camp the same as it has always been but also make it new and exciting at the same time. I put a lot of pressure on myself, but that’s just who I am…I like to do something to the best of my abilities. So, during June I made up a short slideshow from past teen camps:



Between Adam, Roberta, and I…I think we took over 2500 pictures during the week of Teen Camp 2007. I’ve uploaded a whole bunch of them to facebook, but for all of the readers of this, I put some up on picasa web albums as well. They can be found here:


We also did a really cool skit called “The Backpack”


Much more fun to follow....

2007 in Review (Part 2)

(continued...)

So, now I’m on my way back from Toronto, working on my laptop creating a small website. You see, Plank Creative gave me some specs for a small website before I left Toronto…so I began work right away. By the time I landed in Prince George later that day, I had finished the first version of the website and had, in essence, made enough money from the website to pay for my plane ticket to go there in the first place. Not to mention the fact that I can write the flights off as a business expense. Yes, I arrived back in PG feeling pretty good about myself.

Upon arriving back from PG I was presented with an opportunity to give a quote for a website for a company called AllNorth. The site was to be called Design Standards and was to function similarly to their existing site, except work all the time and provide more features. I won the contract and ended up working on the site for over 4 months along with the help of my good friend Tyler. It was a huge learning experience for both of us, and after it was all over I was happy that I got the chance to do it. But, I don’t think I’ll be looking for a contract like that again. It’s more fun to make sites that look and act cool than it is to do a whole bunch of coding (at least, that’s my preference). I like making things look pretty. So, that’s enough about Design Standards I think…it was a huge part of the year, but not all that interesting for you to read about.

April marked a new era in my life. From this point onward I started to look at the world around me in a different way. Thinking back on it now, I realize just how profound a change it was. It allowed me to see the world around me in a completely new way. You see, in April I bought a Canon Digital Rebel XT (semi-professional camera), and now everywhere I go I am looking at the world around me trying to capture its beauty. I see things I would not have seen before…I look at things you see every day and turn them into something spectacular (or at least I try). I love the way that it has transformed my life. The best investment I have ever made by far.

In April we had the ThinkFast and the DYC where I took over 1500 pictures with my new camera. Here are some DYC pics.

http://picasaweb.google.com/dycprincegeorge/DYC07

As May rolled around, I found myself working 3 jobs: SIS, Money Concepts, and Nata Reforestation. Nata needed my help to keep their seedling shipments on track for the upcoming tree planting season, and all that is managed through a website so I could do it from my office at the Coast Inn. This was also the month that Tyler started working for me on a contract basis. He was helping me create the Design Standards website application that I was talking about earlier. Let me tell you, I took great joy in being able to pay Tyler large amounts of money for him to do something he’s good at: programming. It was great.

(to be continued...)

Powered by ScribeFire.

2007 in Review (Part 1)

Well…I’m thinking that another “Year in Review” is in order.

Let’s begin.

We’ll start off 2007 with a lot of new things happening in my life. For those of you who remember, I started two new jobs at the same time: 1. working for the family business keeping them going with technology, and 2. starting my own business Sonic Interactive Solutions: Specializing in Web Design and Video Editing.

Now, January and February are the busiest months for financial planners because everyone is thinking about RRSP’s and taxes and stuff and have until the beginning of March to invest in RRSP’s and get a tax break for the previous year (ie. get money back on their tax return instead of paying money on their tax return). So, I ended up working pretty much full time hours at Allan L Johnson Financial Group (even though I was only supposed to work part time…but everything works out…you’ll see).

I also got to work on making my own website for SIS. I wanted it to be an amazing website…it needed to stand out and be something that makes you say, “Merde, I want this guy to make ME a website!” (pardon my French). And so, www.sonicinteractivesolutions.com was born. What an amazing investment of time it was. It has proven to be my single most effective advertising tool. Since then, I’ve made sites like:

• www.campmorice.com
• www.bnac.ca
• www.vapormusicgroup.com
• www.parkslaw.ca
• www.pgysa.bc.ca
• www.pghm.ca
• www.andrewjohnson.ca
• www.macscustomimports.com
  

And a computer application website for keeping track of engineering schematics that are custom tailored for various engineering projects. It’s called Design Standards, but I don’t have a link to it because it’s not open for the general public to access. But I’ll get a little more into Design Standards later in another post.

Now, let’s see, where was I? Oh yes, I was working full time for the family business and full time for my own business. During the first couple months though, I didn’t make much money through my own business. But as time went on and I finished my website, Peter had some ammo to let someone in Toronto know about me and my new website business. He connected me up with a graphic design and promotions company called Plank Creative and they immediately got me to start working on a website they’d been designing for The Vapor Music Group. At this time, I also found some super cheap tickets to fly to Toronto, so I booked them and made arrangements to stay with Peter in downtown Toronto for a few days in March. While in Toronto, I got to do something that I haven’t done for more than 7 years: Participate in a retreat. Yes, I finally got to be a participant and have a good time and not worry about anything. Just show up and retreat. It was lots of fun for sure, but it was also a challenge. I only knew Peter…I had no idea who the other 50 people were and I was going to spend a whole weekend with them. In some ways it was a lot of fun because it forced me to step out of my comfort zone and get to know
people because I had to. But, in other ways, it was very draining for me…I’m not an extrovert…I don’t get energy from that kind of stuff. Needless to say, I slept very well each night of that retreat, but that is to be expected at a retreat. Anyways, I got to visit the CN tower and see some things in downtown Toronto. It was grand. Here are some pictures from the retreat.

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/supersonic.johnson/RetreatInTO

That’s it for part 1. I’ll continue with part 2 soon.

It's my Birthday

It's my birthday today, and I got to thinking about the last year. I haven't posted much on my blog.....mostly a result of that book-something-er-other website. But I've found that writing really helps to keep me focused on what's important in my life and reflect on the things that happen or are going to happen. So, I might do a little more posting for personal growth purposes. But, just out of curiosity, how many people still look at my blog?

It would be awesome if you could post a quick comment to say you look at it...just so I know. I'll give you one week to do so, then I probably won't look at the post comments again. So, you've got until January 20th 2008.
Andrew

Powered by ScribeFire.

Wow....it's been a while

I just noticed the date of when the last time I posted....wow....quite a long time. I've been a bit busy, but I think I've also lost the Blog luster. I enjoy writing things and reflecting on what's going on in my life, but for whatever reason I haven't found the drive to do it on my blog. Probably a side effect of being on Facebook. But anyways, for anyone who still reads this, here is a bit of an update:

I have been working with some dynamic image gallery technology and decided to make my own dynamic gallery in order to work out the bugs and find a way of making a sell-able image gallery for my website clients. SO, I bought a new web domain and uploaded a dynamic gallery to it:

AndrewJohnson.ca


Pretty cool to have a domain that is your name. Anyone else want one? I can make that happen for you. Anyways, I added the dynamic gallery to my site, a video gallery, a graph of my running times, and a few other things.

Meanwhile, back at the farm Andrew is organizing trips, budgets, and money to go to the Bahamas in November and Australia next July. Lots to organize, expensive trip, and all that needs to be done right now because of contention for flights to get to Australia.

Other News
I'm teaching two courses at UNBC!
Macromedia Dreamweaver MX NOV 21-DEC 6/07 --Want to learn how to make a website?
Macromedia Flash MX APR 3 - 17/08 --Want to learn how to make animations or dynamic websites?

And I'm helping out for a video editing course with Tony Donovan:
Beginners Digital Movie Making Course APR 9 - 23/08

Lots of cool stuff going on. More to come for the Bahamas trip....More to come for the Australia/World Youth Day trip.

Adios,
Andrew

Powered by ScribeFire.

Too much on my plate

Well I must say that I've got a lot going on right now which is why it's been so long since I've posted. Maybe too much going on. I've been taking on too much I think and it's beginning to really wear me down. I don't think I've had more than 1 day in the past month where I didn't do anything to do with websites for that day. And I can't even remember the last time I got to bed before midnight. I'm really happy with how successful things are with my business, but it's really affecting me right now because of all the other things coming up. I'm actually getting a bit nervous about Teen Camp at Camp Morice because I don't have everything planned out and it's kinda getting close....I am totally capable of making it a fun camp with what I have organized right now, but I want it to be something a bit extra...I want it to be inspiring....even if it's only inspiring to one person at camp that would be fine. But I feel like I haven't done the best I can if I don't put some more time into it. But I can't put more time into it right now.....if anything, I should give myself a day off....but that's a bit hard to do as well since the clock is ticking and the project I'm currently working on is supposed to be finished before Teen Camp.

I'm just at a bit of a loss right now. Hopefully an evening off will sort things out and I'll have renewed energy in the morning.

Something cool

This is totally cool. I'd love to get a hold of someone to buy this for me.
Action Camera - I Want One Of Those

Nobody updates....

Just an observation, but it seems that everyone has migrated to facebook to keep people updated on what they are doing. Probably because it's easy to write a couple one-liners on there and get the point across. Most people just aren't into writing a huge post anymore....I'm one of them. It just seems like I'm too busy, but then again I've spent countless hours on facebook looking at pictures and other peoples profiles....I could have spent that time writing some amazingly long blog posts and still had some extra time on my hands. But that's ok. I am not ashamed to admit that facebook is addictive and that I check it at least as often as I check my email. It's actually an impressive site. The way they've set things up...it's very smooth and easy to use. You can click around from profile to profile in a matter of seconds checking what people have done and who they've talked to. It's revolutionary how it connects people. People that you almost totally forgot about all of a sudden add you as a friend and POW, the memories come back. Very impressive. The whole 'events' thing is pretty amazing too. Type up what you want (where, when, how, why...), click a bunch of check boxes for who you want to come....hit send and BIFF, everyone knows about it. Another thing....it sure helps me remember names of people....here I am browsing through a friends photo album that they've tagged, and I see all these people in the pictures...I recognize a bunch of them but forget their name.....but since the photo's are tagged, I can see their name. And the next time I see them working in Starbucks, I can say "Hey Iliana! How are you? I haven't seen you since highschool!" And just like that, that person feels appreciated...and important....and good. All because I remembered her name. And I remembered her name because of facebook. Amazing.



But ya, I just checked all the blogs on my link bar and only one had updated (Tyler), so I thought I'd have to comment. As another comment, Tyler didn't even really update his site, it was his friend Simon who posted on Tyler's site for him.



Anyways, back to work I guess. Enough procrastinating.



Andrew

Powered by ScribeFire.

The New Camera

We'll I've invested in a new camera. It's been a long time coming...I've wanted a camera like this for more than a couple years. Basically, once Peter got his, I thought it was the best thing ever. Finally, now, I've saved enough to buy it. It's a Canon EOS digital Rebel XT and it came with two lenses: an 18mm-55mm wide angle lens, and a 55mm-200mm zoom lens. I've already taken a bunch of pictures with it and I foresee uploading them to my Picasa account soon. I'll keep you posted.



Now all I need is some free time to use it. I'm sure it will be put to good use at the DYC next weekend.



Anyways, that's just a quick update....I'm actually supposed to be somewhere right now so I better go.



Congrats to Jane for not having to pay $5000 (US) in taxes.....that's a blessing.



Andrew

Powered by ScribeFire.

T-Shirts for SIS

Hey there....I just came from Capabilities where they are making up SIS t-shirts for a boys 9-10 soccer team here in Prince George. I was really excited to see how they turned out. I got them to change the 3d Robot dude into a cartoon-like robot with only 2 colors (white and black) and then the color of the t-shirt will be royal blue. The eyes and belly button will not be colored, so the blue from the shirt will show through. Anyways, it looks really cool and I can't wait to see how it looks on the soccer jersey. Also, I've check into things, and managed to get my Tree Planting bosses son on my team. Ya, just excited about that and had to share.



Andrew

Powered by ScribeFire.

Into the big time....

Well, it's official....I had a meeting at AllNorth today to finalize the project that they want implemented. I'll be the one creating the website and hooking it up to their database. It's a pretty big project and I anticipate it taking a couple months to finish. I just met with Frank last night and gave him some things to do (in anticipation of being awarded the contract). So that's great to be able to employ one of my friends to help with this project. I'd probably give Tyler a bunch to do if he didn't have to finish his masters within the next few months....but that's OK, I foresee being very busy over the next year and being able to give both him and Frank a bunch of work if they are interested. For now, I'm relaxing tonight and I will start to attack the website tomorrow and see how far I can get. My plan is to run at this thing head first and get as much done as possible. For all the geeks reading this ,that means that I will be reusing as much technology as possible in order to reduce design time and increase efficiency through the use of the ASP.NET 2.0 framework and it's inherent modules which will provide me with the classes and object-oriented models to inherit all my functionality.



Anyways, I'm super excited about this new contract and what it means for my business.



All I need now is for Simon to figure out how to make money from a blog, and I'll be made in the shade. (after he shares that knowledge with me that is...)



Anyways, that's all for now.



Adios,

Andrew

Powered by ScribeFire.

Big MONEY

Well...apparently my blog is worth a few bucks. I don't know just how it's calculated and I don't have time to ready exactly how it works, but it's cool. And, I'm super happy that if somehow I could sell my blog, I would more than triple the amount of money I currently have in my bank account.

My blog is worth $2,258.16.

How much is your blog worth?

powered by performancing firefox

Some updates are in order I guess

Well now....I guess it's been a while. Here's a little bit of what's going on.



The class that I was going to teach at the university (Introduction to Marcromedia Flash MX) has been canceled because there is not enough people registered :-( But I guess that's OK...It will free up more time for me to do other things.



I'm just getting started on a big project for All North Consulting. It should take quite a while to do (maybe 2 months), so I've asked Frank to give me a hand. I'm going to meet with him soon to start some planning (so Frank if you're reading this...now you know we have to meet). I'll post more about this as things progress.



I just met with the Prince George Youth Soccer Association (PGYSA) to see about creating a new website for them. I think it will be a fun site to make, and the site they have right now is seriously lacking in content (mostly 'under construction' pages). They're having a board meeting tonight to go over my quote and sample sites and should be able to give me the go-ahead sometime soon.



I finished a site for the Frontier Apostolate which is up and running right now. It allows FA's to register and gain access to each others information, and there is also a discussion forum for anyone to join. There is still more to be added to the site, but I've set it up so that the webmaster can easily add to the site. Overall, I think it's a pretty clean and tidy site.



So as you can see from above I've been super busy with things at work, but I'm really enjoying it.



More things coming up:

• Think Fast (this weekend March 24-25) Should be a good time.
  
  
• DYC (April 27-29) I'm working on the opening slide show, opening ceremony "special presentation", and a special skit for the reconciliation service.
• Alumni Golf Tournament (May 24th)....always a good time.
• YC in Edmonton (May 25-29) this is tentative, but I might be driving the bus there....

There is also something else that is happening right now, but I can't elude to it until more things solidify....but it has to do with my business.



Cheers,

Andrew

powered by performancing firefox

New site

I just finished a new site last weekend. I'm pretty proud of it. Hopefully I'll be able to make more sites as custom as this one. It was pretty fun.

http://vapormusic.com

AJ

No More Bugs...Send me a message

I fixed the bugs in the website for the contact us form. It will now send me a message if you type some things in. I'm using GoDaddy.com for my hosting and they seem to block a few things which made getting the contact form to work quite the headache. Oh well.

I'll put a real post on here later.

Andrew

And Now...Without Further Adieu

Sonic Interactive Solutions has launched!

This is the name of my new company. The focus of what I'm doing is going to be web design, but I would also eventually like to find some clients who need some video editing done.

Any feedback about the site would be awesome. The contact us page doesn't really work right now, but I hope to have the bugs worked out later this afternoon.

Hope you like it!

Andrew

Comments need to be made

OK! I just have to comment on some of the blog subjects my friends have been using:

Visit'd
Blackberry'd
Name'd
Rankin'd
Engaged'd

Come On! You're making me sick. Enough already.

Sorry, I'm just in a complaining mood today....

"Ciao'd"

Andrew

The Year In Review (part 4)

Firstly, I've got a link to a video slideshow that I made for the Italy portion of my trip to Europe. We met up with a bunch of my family from Canada and the US in Rome and went on a private bus tour from Rome to Sicily. Here is the video.

Next, I guess some people already know, but I'm currently working at Money Concepts in the Penthouse of the Coast Inn of the North. I am working at Money Concepts Part time and I've just started a web design company. I'll keep you posted on the name as soon as I can get it approved and I get my business licence. I just realized the other day that I'll have to make myself a company webpage if I'm going to be a webdesigner. I guess it will have to be pretty sweet too...if I want people to be impressed.

I guess there was one more significant thing that happened in 2006. My cousin Noella came to Canada for Christmas. Her birthday is December 25th (hense the name 'Noel'la). She turned 17 this year and until she arrived in Canada, she'd never seen snow before (other than on TV). So being in Prince George was quite the shock to her system. But we still managed to do a bunch of super fun things while she was here. We did as many 'Canadian' activities as we had time to do: outdoor skating, snowshoeing, snowboarding, cross-country skiing, snomobiling, and snowball fights. It was tons of fun.

I didn't get to take too many pictures or video, but I'm planning on putting it together for short slideshow. The challenge now is to find a great song.

Anyways, I've decided conclude this year in review marathon with some things that I've learned over the past year. They're simple sentences that have a lot of meaning:

• Live simply so that others may simply live.
• Work to live, don't live to work.
• God is God with or witout me, but who am I without God?

So that brings you up to the end of 2006.

Adios,
Andrew

The Year In Review (part 3)

(continued...)

As promised....here is the link to the video slidehsow I made for the first portion of Tony and I's trip to Europe. I will post a link to the slideshow I made for the Italy portion later.

Upon returning from Europe I had to start looking for a job. Most people were asking me if I was going to start subbing as a teacher. I was a little hesitant to say yes because I didn't really feel like it was the right thing for me. After a lot of deliberation, I decided that I would put teaching on hold for a while and pursue some other things that had been on my mind. I spent part of every day looking for a job in Prince George that I might like. There were several places that I thought were pretty good and would be what I like to do: UNBC, The Airport, The Northern Health Authority, Shaw, and NoraTek. Lucky for me, a teacher from the University moved away a few weeks before he was supposed to start teaching a Web Design course using a program called Dreamweaver....so, with the help of Tony Donovan putting in a good word for me, I managed to scoop up that job. It was a 5 night Continuing Studies course, so there wasn't too much to prepare for...I just had to make sure everyone was making progress and learning the program. In the process of teaching Dreamweaver I began to realize how much I like doing web design. I started working on a new version of the Camp Morice Webiste and found that the day would slip me by without even noticing. It was pretty fun.

I actually got interviews at Shaw and NorAtek as well. The Shaw people were looking for an installation guy (which means pulling wires and installing cable in other peoples dirty houses), so I wasn't really interested in that. And NorAtek brought me in for a 3 hour interview and offered me a job a few days later for $16/hr full time working from Tuesday to Saturday. I would be doing tech support on the phone and driving (using my own car) to clients workplaces to fix any computer problems they might have. They also told me that I would be doing some web development, but infrequently. It seemed like an OK job, and a good opportunity to learn a lot more, but the pay wasn't really what I wanted it to be and the work schedule would have interfered with a lot of the extracurricular things I like to do. I don't want to live to work...I want to work to live. Work should be something I enjoy doing, but it should not be the main part of my life...it only needs to be a piece of the puzzle.

Up until the NorAtek job offer, I was considering starting up my own web design company. And after the job offer I was thinking that NorAtek would be a 'safer' choice for me because I would be guaranteed wages and hours; starting up my own company would bring no guarantees and it would completely rely on me to make things happen. Now, don't get me wrong....I know I have what it takes to be successful...I just thought that the NorAtek job would be a lot easier.

Now, at about this time one of the employees at my dad's Financial Planning office (Money Concepts) got accepted to be a firefighter in Fort St John (his dream job). So, Money Concepts was now short an employee. I approached my dad and asked him how many of the responsibilities of that job I would be able to take over if I were to come work there. He said, "Probably a little less than half...but then you'd be around for tech support and other things as well.....why?" After he said that the wheels were turning in my head an in less that half a second I had everything figured out. I proposed that I come work for Money Concepts part time and then take the other half of the part time to develop my web design company. I could even use the same office for both jobs. That way I could have some guaranteed hours in order to pay the bills and live comfortably, and all the money I make from the web design company would be a bonus (or part of my retirement...whichever way you want to look at it). I should probably note that living on a part time job is pretty easy when you've been a student for 6 years and figured out how to live with just the basics.

I will wait to the next post to reveal which choice I made....

(to be continued.....)

The Year In Review (part 2)

(continued...)

Later in June I got a phone call from a man who wanted to meet with me...his 22 year old daughter had somehow heard about me and he wanted to interview me to see if her and I were a good match (!). She heard that I didn't want to play the dating game, that I was single, and that I could cook. I guess that was enough to get her intrigued. I didn't really have anything to loose, so I agreed to meet with her dad so he could see what I was like. I kind of took it as a chance to interview him about his daughter as well. After a couple meetings with her dad, he decided that her and I should meet because he felt we were compatible with eachother (!). So we went on a few walks and talked about many things. The cool but weird part was that we were talking about really deep and meaningful things (not things like "how was your day?" "what did you do?" "did you hear about this movie?"....). The conversations were pretty deep but we still joked a bit and talked about funny things. So, all the while, I'm thinking...we make a pretty good match. But that wasn't what God had planned for her and I. A few weeks later she got accepted to a university in Australia and would be leaving mid-August. She felt that God wasn't really giving her a green light to start a relationship with me, so we agreed to remain friends and try to keep in touch. But it was quite the experience. I actually gave a talk at teen camp about this little episode.

The next big event that conspired in the life of Andrew was Camp Morice Teen Camp 2006. This camp was a memorable one for two different reasons. 1. each camp seems to get better each year and this camp was no exception...it was by far the best I've been to. 2. I had to start looking at the week through the eyes of a director because next year I'll be directing the camp (along with some other amazing individuals). The teen camp pictures can be found here. It was really a fun week, but was a bit weird without Peter there...he's been out at camp every year that I have except last summer.

At the end of July, my friend Julia from Germany came to visit. In August of 2005 we were billited in her hometown in Pflochsbach and she kept in touch with some of us through email and MSN. The plan was that she would come to Canada first and then when she flew home Anthony and I would fly back with her to Germany and begin our month long European trip. And so it was. She came to Prince George for a few weeks and then went to Kitimat for a week and then travelled with Anthony and I to Vancouver to catch a plane to Europe. During Julia's stay, she travelled over 5800km on the road, met more than 70 new people, and saw 14 cities, 2 bears, 2 grey whales, and 2 killer whales.

So then comes the trip to Europe. Here is the short form: Prince George-->Vancouver-->Victoria-->Vancouver-->Frankfurt Germany-->Praque Czech Republic-->Brno Czech Republic-->Dublin Ireland-->Naas Ireland-->Edinburgh Scotland-->Rome Italy travelling south to Sicily-->London England-->Vancouver-->Prince George. It was an amazing trip. We were so blessed to be able to go. The crazyest part of the whole trip was the accomodations and food while we were on our 10 day family reunion bus tour through Italy. We were in 5 star hotels most of the time, and the evening meals were absolutely rediculous. I gained 9 pounds in 10 days...just to give you and idea of what the food was like (keep in mind I can't gain weight to save my life). I made a short video slideshow of the first part of the trip and I'll post a link to it in my next post....

(to be continued....)