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It’s been almost three weeks since the LIB build-out, two and a half weeks since I officially learned I’m gonna’ be a dad, a week and a day since I returned from LIB and, it’s a week into our move at Distinctivefabric.com.

Well, I think this last stretch has really taken the cake…as far as my regular scheduling antics are concerned, these few details have all been chock full, round-the-clock, full-on, life-changing things; things certainly do unfold in three’s.

The new fabric base of ops is coming along really nicely, so much so that I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see a renewed interest in it’s livelihood not unlike the early days, it’s really been fun. And when I haven’t been plowing through the tasks here at our new space (co-housed w/the rest of the Catalyst gang), I’ve been tackling the early steps of pregnancy with Tristan. It’s not been ’till just yesterday that I could start to take a few minutes and address some post-LIB tasks…looking forward to the post-wrap-party-thing coming up.

And now finally, I’m headed off tomorrow for my first on-site visit to the solar hosting provider I’m running my Green Gurus dedicated server out of. I’ll be headed down tomorrow mid-day with Ryan Wartena for a fun inspection of their ops and a little powwowing with the crew there at AISO, hoping to dive back into the solar hosting biz early next week and knock out some major issues before leaving early next month for Portugal, for another Do LaB job.

Realistically, these days will soon come to pass as memory at least a little while anyway with the pregnancy coming on strong and then delivery and child care.

Humph. Strange days indeed…curious to watch it all unfold.

p.s. oh yeah: was gonna’ try to ramp up some things with the Collective Council this month too…hmm, we’ll have to see about that.

With so much happening at Lightning In A Bottle this year, I wanted to take a minute to share some final instructions for any of my friends or contacts that I haven’t been in daily touch with regarding festival details like ticketing system, emergency calls, etc.

If you’re one of these people not in daily contact with me on these issues or are but still have questions, please read on below for some final instruction. My time is uber-tight at the moment between final planning for LIB, an emergency container pack job for The Do LaB’s Portugal job/trip, the Distinctivefabric.com build-out and move into its new space, and some miscellaneous details like trying to find a new home with my girlfriend and still somehow maintaining time for the usual with my duties on the MINC board and as a Sugar Shack collective resident.

Needless to say, the last three are falling behind to varying degrees, for which those involved have my genuine apologies, but this scheduling mayhem wasn’t unforeseen, my life is what it is.

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Hello friends-

Hope everyone’s plans for LIB are coming along nicely! I’m really excited to connect with everyone on site, it’s going to be an amazing experience this year…just a few things to get out of the way and be totally clear on.

If anyone is planning to arrive at LIB before the gates open Thursday at 4pm, you will not be admitted unless you’re on the early arrival list.

If you’re not yet on an early arrival list, then most likely you don’t need to be as you plan to be there after the gates officially open. If for some reason you were planning to be on site before the gates open and are not signed up through the official volunteer channel, then please contact by 10am tomorrow (Thursday), to arrange these details.

For those speaking on a panel, please send me your preferred email to be used in conjunction with your event entry, details will be emailed to you, I believe (most likely with a link or print-out). Details on this still haven’t been made completely clear to me, so please bear with us as we’ve got a completely new system via Beticketing.com this year. I will make sure that the final details on this are made available to you as soon as possible…

If you have any final questions about entry, panel details, or any other needs, please be sure to email before this Sunday. I’ll be out on site as of this Sunday and will have limited time/Internet access to address last minute questions.

Please, please, please do your best to wrap things up in this time-frame: I want to take care of everyone’s needs and requests, but can only do so much, especially once we roll into high gear for build-out on site next week.

Also, once next Thursday night/Friday morning rolls around, I will more than likely be unable to reply to calls or text messages. If you absolutely must contact me and have already left a voicemail or text message once, please refrain from leaving others. If you’re at the gate and have a TRUE emergency (like your ticket print-out doesn’t work or for some freak reason you’re name isn’t on some list), then have someone with a radio there try to reach me, as I’ll be more likely to get a walkie call at that point.

Again, please do your best to finalize any details you’ve been putting off or were unsure of, now. I want to make both our experiences with this event from here on out as seamless as possible!

Thanks for your attention and cooperation with all of this. If you’re already receiving instructions from another Do LaB/LIB staff member, please just stick with them from here on out.

The snapshot shown here isn’t a complete picture of my life right now, but it’s pretty close.

I recently had to pack up the bulk of my personal stuff from storage at my internet fabric store’s warehouse.

I moved it all to the Sugar Shack, where I’m living, working and otherwise spending 2/3 of my time these days (it’s a great little microcosm), with the help of some my roomies from there, one of my biz partners Josh, and my closest confidant, Tristan. In the process I tweaked my back the worst I’ve ever done…getting too soft these days, way too much time on the computer, but that’s another post entirely.

So today while one of my roomies Ryan Wartena had another powwow with his Watts Up America buddies, I figured I’d get around to sorting through the mess that is my life in storage below the floor upon which I’m writing from.

Having made the migration from Sugar’s formal dining room to its warehouse (really just a glorified garage with loft space upstairs), I quickly set to work on the bare essentials of my new office: desk, chair, shelves, computer, soundsystem, and power. And let me say just how great it feels to be seated again in my own sacred space, which is really what this is largely about for me.

Check out these pics out to see what I mean. Here’s one in case you don’t:

Anyway, as I said in my Twitter post, now I’ve just got to get about 400+ lbs of books upstairs, sort and shelve. And the finishing nicknack touches. Then the art, lighting, window shade… Okay, so far from done. But it’s a great start at bringing the level of focus, detail and order to my life that I need, especially these days since I’m doing way too much still.

*Note: I’ve had the little soundsystem you see above since I was 13, talk about conservation, heh?

From my Green Gurus consulting company’s blog today:
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Green Gurus is on the prowl for some new tech-driven team members.

Our team is comprised of a wide-range of talents from sustainable energy systems designers, feature film miniature and mechanical engineers, sustainable architects, Second Life programmers, and a host of other skills. Our projects range from multi-thousand person events, to on-air consulting, to feature films, to eCommerce, to manufacturing, and much, much more.

We’re well connected and very active in the Los Angeles underground modern tribal scene (cliche yes, but it fits the part), utilizing a vast range of science, technologies and metaphysics.

Here are our current task priorities:

1. Our site: GreenGurus.net

We’ve got to nail down a site design fitting of our name and team’s skills. We’ll have a much better conversion rate in closing new clients if we get this locked down.

2. Our keyword domains

We’ve got around 500 domains, most of them green-themed: We’re looking into monetizing a bunch, selling some and building out others.

3. Green eCommerce platform

One of our other companies, Distinctivefabric.com has an extensive, proprietary code base that we’re looking to overhaul into a green eCommerce platform and then license and/or sell.

4. Solar powered web hosting

We’re working towards our own solar powered data center chain, but until we’ve raised the money to put that together, we’ll be running on a dedicated server through AISO.net, configuration with them happening right now, should be up and running within the next week.

If any of these projects appeal to you and you think you’d like to explore a potential partnership with us to help manifest any of these items, then please let us know. We’re only able to pay through profit-sharing, performance-based pay and/or sweat equity right now. Assuming we get our site up to snuff, we can really start creating some exciting and meaningful compensation opportunities.

We continue to receive steadily increasing inquiries, have got some great natural page ranking on Google, especially under “green consulting” search terms, our team member’s individual projects and companies continue to complement our own here, and much more.

You are adept in any of these programs/languages/CMS:

PHP, MySQL, Python, Perl, Ruby, RoR, Ajax, Java/JavaScript, XML/XHTML, Drupal/Joomla/etc., WordPress (including installs), Apache/Debian, Photoshop/The Gimp, Illustrator, Quark, InDesign, AutoCad, Maya, Flash, ActionScripting, API interfacing, version control systems, Unix, ProTools, Logic, Ableton Live, and any other language or science you’re competent with in producing results.

You have experience from school and/or on-the-job training, can provide live and close to or fully completed projects online, have a working/proficient understanding of iterative, agile and atomic coding techniques/philosophies, and are otherwise a bad-ass online.

Preferably: you work in open source, off a Mac or Linux box, but have some working understanding of PC to get around should the need arise; live within the US, ideally w/in CA > Los Angeles…if not, possibilities still exist. Telecommunicating okay.

Please submit any relative content, links, resumes, or other media format…just be creative, inventive, entrepreneurial, and socially/eco-conscious in your approach to contacting us.

2007 was an amazing year of growth and change, on many levels; also, this year’s end saw my one and only Golden Birthday:

(Check out the rest of my birthday pics from at the Edison)

The year started out with a 3-week visit home after my mom broke her arm, shortly after New Years 2007. I spent almost 2-weeks at home with her to help out with her rehab, got her set up with a new Mac, and generally just spent a lot of quality time catching up with her and some of the other family members.

I then bounced down to Florida for a week-long visit with my Dad, step-mom and some old friends from the River: Tim and Doug.

Then it was back to Cali to return to work on Dianovo, but I just couldn’t get back into it or much of any other work: I was uber home-sick and caught up in the slow-pace that the East Coast so often is. So I decided to pack up my things and move back east, but first stopping back over in LA again to dump said stuff in storage and prepare my other business for my departure. But not surprisingly, I got caught back up with my friends and loved ones in LA and decided to push off my departure for a few months.

I hopped back on board hardcore with The Do LaB, for an amazing few months of work on Coachella, then Lightning In A Bottle, the Beverly Hills White Party, and then it was into summer with a 2.5 week long trip to Guatemala. My time there gave me a lot of opportunity to reflect upon what was important to me and what I wanted to pursue personally and professionally. So when I returned to LA in early June, I began in more earnest, to work on both my romantic relationship and professional path.

I continued working with The Do LaB, resumed work on Green Gurus and continued work on my relationship. Then in mid-summer I went back east again (and therein lies a constant theme for me and home) to help head up the Green Spot construction of The Do LaB’s lumi pods and towers at the Virgin Music Festival in Baltimore, followed up by another visit home.

While at home again, I heavily re-visited my passion for the outdoors as it related to my old job at Hidden River Adventures and my future plans for Rivertribe, but realized it still wasn’t time for that pursuit; I still needed something more from my investments living out West. So after some much needed time re-connecting to the river with some great kayaking trips, I headed back to LA.

One of my investments or more aptly, reasons for moving out west, was school. So the first thing I did was re-enroll in school at SMC for the fall semester. Then I headed up another gig for The Do LaB at the Future Ape festival, followed by one last get-away before the start of the school: this time back to Santa Cruz to watch my old house and base of operations for Dianovo.

Then it was a head-first dive back into school for an intense 3.5 month-long semester in computer science, design and programming; an intense and seemingly appropriate step with regards to my romantic interests; followed by a long-awaited move into the Sugar Shack, then my foray into local politics, the loss of my oldest friend Charlie, and continued work on Green Gurus.

I also worked on the last few gigs for the year with The Do LaB, at the Global Mala Project and a random job for Goldenvoice. Also during the last half of my semester, I started counseling for the first time in years, to help kind of clear some of the noise in my head from everything that year, followed by a renewed start in work on my longest running romantic relationship, through couples counseling (which has been a great decision).

Another big event of the year was my first surgery, in which I finally went in and had a lumptectomy performed to have an overly uncomfortable and ample-sized cyst removed from directly beneath my left nipple; the surgery was flawless and there was very little pain involved afterwards, thanks to the great job performed by my doctor.

While there have been countless other events and random bits of interest from this year, nothing is more noteworthy than the pending sale of my first internet venture. The sale was posted back over the summer and negotiations have been taking place on and off for the last few months with several different parties. Now it looks very close to happening, perhaps within the first month of this new year, so I have been doing a lot of work to prepare for this possibility, both for the business itself and my own well-being; it’s definitely one of the biggest, most life-changing steps I’ve had to prepare for in a long time. But I definitely believe it’s time to make this change and what better time then at the start of the new year?

So as this year starts to unfold and all the previous year’s seeds start to yield their fruits, I look forward to the work in store: for my companies, myself, my family, friends, and the world. I am going to make this my best year ever and I hope you are able to do the same!

Much love and blessings for everyone’s prosperity, health and happiness.

As December comes to a close, my first internet venture wraps up its fourth year in business and prepares to enter its fifth.

Wow. Let me just say that again, so it starts to actually sink in…our fifth year.

It’s been a great couple of years getting our operations together and have only begun easing off from startup mode over the course of this year. Some of its customers might have noticed in this time, that our fabric selection has been trimmed back a bit and that the rate of new fabric additions to the site have slowed down too.

Well, rest assured that this isn’t permanent but just a time of reflection that we’ve taken to better assess the health and direction of our company, where it stands, who its core customers are, and much more. It’s been an interesting year as we’ve come to realize just how integrated our company and its website into the world of internet fabric sales, DIY-ers, Mom-and-Pop shops, designers, and many others. We’ve got a great core customer base which certainly shows in our day-to-day sales.

One of the great things about running an internet-based store, rather than retail, is the flexibility it offers the company in its operations. Early on in our operation, we experimented with a number of different methods for nearly every aspect of our operation. But at least one area that’s remained consistent is our commitment to serving our customers, as best we can. We totally pride ourselves on this and think it’s one of the qualities that keeps so many of them coming back, so regularly and consistently.

Regardless of anyone’s reasons to continue shopping there with us, it’s been a real pleasure to continue serving them all and I know I look forward to the years to come as we continue to explore new avenues for growth and fulfillment of their fabric needs.

Yesterday marked the 5-year mark until 2012.

And now it seems, everything’s lost its meaning: school, work, relationships..everything just seems kind of blah. Or, maybe, I’m just completely fried from the last 3.5 months of one-too-many things vying for my attention and energies.

I started school full-time, while running one existing company, started up another, continued work for another that I’ve been involved with on and off over the years, ended one relationship, started another, moved into a intentional, urban community, lost my oldest and best friend to a fatal accident, started my initiation into local politics, had my first-ever surgery with one of the countries best for…a lumptectomy, started counseling, ended short-lived new relationship, resumed other on-and-off again of 5+ years, began discussions and negotiations of potential sale of first company, started couple’s counseling in attempt to sort fact from fiction, and am now entering in on full-on negotiations for potential sale of said, first company.

Whew. I need breather or, a vacation from living for awhile…yeah, that would be nice.

What’s next on the horizon? Hmm, time will certainly tell.

While trying to keep myself awake through an early morning class today, I decided to check in on Distinctivefabric.com’s Google keyword “fabric” ranking.

What I found was sorely disappointing, as the DF site has slipped from its 47th-53rd position (in regards to its placement with a generic “fabric” search) to 157th!

While it’s not a complete surprise that it’s slipped down, it is that it’s slipped that far. Not sure if the meta tags currently plugged in on this site are considered (keyword) stuffing or not, but if so, it sure would be nice if we’d been given a chance to edit our keyword list before being flushed down the cyber-pipeline.

If anyone has a minute to peek at ‘em and give me some feedback, I’d really appreciate it!