Brian Webster - Blog

The last few weekends, I’ve been able to spend quite a bit of time in the woodworking shop. This is a great get away for me.

On Saturday, I completed a mission style table for my living room. It is located by my front door, where I kick off my shoes. This area always looked messy, so I decided to try to fix that. Here is the result.

The inspiration for this table came from a table featured in WoodSmith magazine. I made some very major changes to those plans to make it better fit my needs.

A consideration in sizing this table was that it had to compliment this mirror, which I built last winter. It hangs behind the front door, and provides a place to hang coats.

The plans for this mirror came from an earlier issue of Woodsmith Magazine.

Now, I’m looking at the stand my TV is sitting on, and am thinking I see another upcoming project

This week Ames held a special election to determine whether we can do a bond issue to build a new aquatic center. It passed, approximately 75% yes!

The aquatic center is something that Ames desperately needs. We have a couple of swimming pools now, but they don’t have the slides, toys, etc. When some daycares take kids swimming, they travel to one of two small towns close to Ames, because they have newer, better pools. It’s unusual for people to go from a bigger town to a much smaller one for services.

The best thing about getting this new aquatic center is that it will give the kids another option for something to do in the summer. In my mind, this is a good way to help keep them from getting into trouble.

Some of you know that I enjoy woodworking in my spare time. I find it’s a good way get my mind off work for a few hours. It gets me away from e-mail/web pages/phone/IM etc. for a while.

One of my most recent projects was this mission style clock. The clock is about 2 feet tall and 14 inches wide. It can either mount on a wall or be used freestanding, as seen here.

This particular clock is special because it was donated to a benefit auction for a friend who was seriously injured in a car accident last winter. Pam - I miss your contagious smile and laughter!

The main purpose for this blog is to document things I learn while doing web development. This will be a successful endeavor when I can point new developers to this site, and tell them these are things I’d like them to be aware of when doing their own development projects.

Most of my work recently has been in the ASP.NET development environment, so that is where many of my topics/example will come from. Don’t let that scare you off. Although I work in .NET, many good development techniques apply to other development environments as well. In addition, I will also write about many topics that have nothing to do with .NET at all. From time to time, you will even find some posts that are not development, or even technology related.

To be really successful with this blog, I need to hear from you, the reader. Comments are encouraged.

I feel like I’m stepping into a great unknown. Can’t wait to see where this journey will take us…. Here goes!

About a month ago, I was on top of Sandia Peak in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with some friends from Alabama. Being a bunch of technologists, the topic of blogging came up. Two of them have fairly active blogs, and the third doesn’t blog yet. When asked why, he said because nobody would want to hear what he had to say, a lot of eyes rolling was the response. Then they asked me the same question, I gave the same answer. Wow, if looks could kill.

I had been thinking about starting this blog for a long time. Thanks to encouragement from these friends, Anne (Anne’s Spot) and Greg (Network Redneck), I decided to write a list of possible subjects for a blog. I thought if I had over 20 items, it might be worthwhile to start a blog. Who’d have thought that list would be 50+ items long. Some of those are big topics (MOSS, ASP.NET, Web Standards, etc.) others are simply a single post, like this one. Others may never see the light of day. With that, this blog came to be.

Jonathan, I’ve started one. We really want to hear what you have to say as well.