Hernandez Life

Why Blog?

Rick — Mon, 12 May 2008 06:30:41 +0000

You may have wondered why I, or anybody blogs? This is from a group called “common craft” who excel in explaining things:

Rachel’s 2008 Wingding

Rick — Thu, 08 May 2008 14:15:45 +0000

Sunday April 27th saw us attending Rachel’s birthday party at Club Mud, a place where they do ceramics, among other things. Lots of children, paint flying everywhere, screaming, laughing, pizza, soda, & cupcakes, what else can a kid want. Amazingly nothing got broken.

Click HERE or on the photo below to see pictures of the festivities, plus a few from Rachel’s actual birthday.

Passover 2008

Rick — Wed, 07 May 2008 04:20:10 +0000

On Saturday April 19th Phaedra and I had a Passover Seder at our home with Eva, Anthony, their children, Aunt Irene, Aunt Liz, and Jonathan. We had good food and good company. Click HERE to see photos of the night, plus a few bonus outdoor pictures of Casa LaPreta from the next evening.

Mark Is At It Again

Rick — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:00:01 +0000

At the time these photos were taken (April 10th), Mark’s wife was expecting and we threw him a baby shower at the office. Since then, on April 16th, baby Paige Mackenzie came into the world.

Mark posted some photos at the following:

http://gallery.mac.com/runforacure#100045

Click on a photo above to go to the galery

LaPreta Family Disney Vacation

Rick — Tue, 06 May 2008 03:23:08 +0000

Sorry I haven’t been keeping up with this blog. It’s been a busy time for me. I’ve been greatly expanding my presence on the internet (click Hernandez Life Design if you’re interested), but now I want to get back to my beginning, this blog. Over the rest of the week you should see 3 or 4 more postings with what’s been going on in our lives. First up — The LaPreta Family Disney Vacation.

End of March, Eva, Anthony, and the kids drove down to Orlando for a fun filled week. They rented a house with a pool near the attractions and had a blast. The LaPreta’s came back tired, but also tanned and full of great memories. Click the photo below or here to get to the password protected photos of the whole family (don’t worry there is a hint if you forgot the password).

P.S. I only found out last week that the links to our photo site were broken. All is fixed now, easier to access. and much faster. To see all our photos go to photos.hernandezlife.com.

Arthur C Clarke Has Past Away

Rick — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 05:52:29 +0000

All time great science fiction writer Sir Arthur C Clarke, author of more than 100 books, has died today in Sri Lanka at the age of 90 after a cardio-respiratory attack. Born in 1917 in England, Arthur C Clarke had lived in Sri Lanka for more than half a century. He came to popular fame in 1968 when the short story The Sentinel was made into the film 2001: A Space Odyssey by director Stanley Kubrick. However he made his first mark on this world during World War II when he published a visionary paper detailing the conditions of placing a satellite in geostationary orbit. He was paid about 20 dollars for the theory that launched a multi billion dollar industry.

Clarke always wanted to be allowed to make three wishes. Peace in Sri Lanka, evidence of extra-terrestrial life and for the world to adopt cleaner forms of energy. Recently at his 90th birthday, confined to a wheelchair due to the effects of childhood polio, Clarke said “I have no regrets and no more personal ambitions”.

Other notable books included:

Childhood’s End
Rendezvous With Rama
Songs of Distant Earth
Against the Fall of Night
The Fountains of Paradise
City and Stars
Expedition to Earth
Islands in the Sky
Nine Billion Names of God
Earthlight
Against Infinity
A Fall of Moondust

He will be sorely missed!

Pssst: Hey dude, I got Macs…

Rick — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 07:05:50 +0000

If you like deals on used computer parts, new, used, or refurbished Mac computers and notepads. Need a manual that you lost for that Mac Cube? Looking for an unlocked iPhone, or a hot pink case for an iPod Nano. Then have I got a place for you! MyAppleComputerAuctions.com

Are you into Teapots?

Rick — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 13:42:56 +0000

If you like deals on unique, distinct, collectible, fun, or just plain weird teapots, you should head over to a new site, MyCollectibleTeapots and check them out. They also show a collection of teas and tea cups & saucers.

Until you’ve read our reviews…

Rick — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 09:32:10 +0000

My friend Dmitry and I are collaborating on a new website devoted to reviewing stuff available through the internet. it’s called DontClickIt.com. So far we only have six or seven articles, but it’s growing daily. Our most recent review is about an upscale baby furniture store called PoshTots. Other reviews cover: TurboTax (software), Busted Tees (interesting t-shirts), and PhotoStamps (it’s really cool, thanks Aunt Liz).

As we say on our ‘About Page’:

DontClickIt.com is dedicated to reviews, news, and information, about the best of what is available on the internet for your pleasure and edification. Started in January 2008 as a joint venture between ALEXUSBIZ Corps and HernandezLife, DontClickIt will be your number one stop for all the latest info on what’s worth reviewing on this crazy. mixed up, network known as the World Wide Web.

Yes, our purpose in setting up this website is to make some money, but don’t let that stop you from checking it out. Just click here.

$5 off SmugMug! (Oh, and family-only website reborn)

Rick — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 06:28:42 +0000

OK, as any of my friends can attest, I’m an Apple fanboy. I’ve worked on Apple computers before there was a Mac, and I’ve just about owned every model of Mac PC they have come out with, except the notebooks and the $10,000 Lisa (although I have used one). I’ve owned a few iPods, an iPhone, I’ve even been known to pay for their software. I love iWeb and .mac, but their web servers are as slow as ~~the Post Office~~ molasses. That was one of the reasons I originally moved this web site from Apple to HostMonster (highly recommend them). I’ve spent the last month trying to make this site faster, and now over the last few days, in a quest for speed, I’ve moved all our photos, both this site’s and our family-only site, from being hosted on Apple, to being a series of galleries on SmugMug (family site ones are still password protected).

There are some downsides. iWeb was a wonderful tool for creating web sites. The integration of iPhoto, iWeb, and .mac, made it real easy to put a sophisticated and complex gallery of photo albums up on the web. I will also miss the nifty mini-slideshow widgets iPhoto could produce (I have kept a couple cause I like them so much).

However it was really really slow. If you were using Internet Explorer as your browser (you really should get Safari or FireFox), or were connecting through DSL or (God forbid) dial-up, well then, you probably gave up on my family site. I apologize for that. That’s what, after a bit of research, led be to SmugMug. You have to pay for the service, but it is a very small yearly amount for the ’standard’ level service. Sure there are free sites like Flickr out there, but your viewers have to put up with advertisements, and a not as nice interface. Plus SmugMug is really fast. If you are ever interested in using their service, I can get you five dollars off by using coupon code zUHZEirkZ6UDQ in the ‘Referred by’ field on the signup form.

SmugMug gives me unlimited photo storage, so besides now having private backups of all my pics, the public galleries contain many more pictures than before. Also if you see a photo of mine you truly like, besides downloading it for free, you can pay to have it professionally printed ($0.19 for a 4×6), you can even have it made into a mug, an apron, a ceramic tile, keychain, or a slew of other choices. Just so you know, the prices are reasonable because I’ve chosen not to recieve any proceeds from these sales.

So in closing, there have been allot of behind the scene changes on our web sites, plus I had to notch up security in response to a hacking attempt. If you find anything broken, a link not going were it is suppose to, a missing picture symbol, an out right error message, please email me and let me know so I can fix it. Thanks for reading hernandezlife.com

P.S. For the family-only galleries, the password is the same and you no longer need a userid.

Click photos to go to gallery.

Ten Of My Very Favorite Photographs

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