Author: RTOlson

POWAY — Although the anniversary has come and passed, I’ll be celebrating my 10-year high school reunion tonight.

My early enthusiasm to see everyone again is slowly giving way to trepidation. It may surprise some of my loyal readers, but I wasn’t the most popular kid at Poway High School.

Without a circle of close friends, I’m largely going to the reunion to see how everyone has changed. I’m an observer so I know I’ll have a good time on that score alone.

One of my regrets is that I won’t be able to be in two places at the same time. Roswell High School choose this night to have their reunion as well. Having transferred to Poway in 1994, I don’t know if I would be welcome there, but it would be great to see some familiar faces if only for a night.

It’s a big reunion weekend. In addition to the Poway and Roswell events, my parents are attending their 20th reunion in SLC.

All these events hearken back to an earlier time. I recall some of the things that I was when I was 10 years younger. Obviously life doesn’t always live up to expectations, but I wonder about all those days that went past.

One of the things that our organizer is providing is an e-book of photos and people’s updates. I had to condense 10 years of my life down into a few paragraphs. It was tough but this is what I came up with:

The decade since PHS has been a messy blur of challenges, most positive.

I went to UCSD, graduating in 2000 with a B.A. in Communications and minors in history and theater.

After stints as a cafeteria worker serving the Chargers, working for a dot-com and temping, I launched my career as a reporter.

From 2001-2004, I was at The Daily Mining Gazette in Houghton, Michigan (avg. 180 inches of snow per year).

Returning to California in 2005, I’m working at the Enterprise-Record in Chico. In addition to writing, I’m spearheading the paper’s efforts to expand Web reporting.

Music remains a part of my life. I play clarinet in the UCSD Pep Band. Spun discs as a college DJ. I’m often found singing karaoke at various Chico nightspots.

Currently single, I’m hoping to star in the next edition of “The Bachelor.”

For more, check out http://my.rtomedia.com

It’s pretty concise of the bright highlights of the past 10 years. I’m off to check some old yearbooks and to get ready. Here’s hoping they have karaoke. 😀

It’s killing me how often a crucial feature of MySpace is offline. Two weekends ago, their whole system went down because of an L.A.-area blackout. It’s understandable, although a service so large should be prepared for such eventualities.

Tonight, their log-in is disabled.

It’s frustrating. If it’s not the log-in, the search is down or it’s a specific user’s profile.

I would be careful if I were MySpace. Users may be willing to forgive some things, but these sporadic and all-too-frequent outages can be a massive turnoff.

It took Google nearly two days to process, but it finally spit out the new video I produced over the weekend.

Not really, but it seems like an appropriate title because I’m continuing to experiment with Google Maps.

This trial run is hampered/enhanced by the fact I don’t have too much Javascript experience. I’m leaning really heavily on Google Maps API documentation page. Still I’m enjoying gleaning a little bit about the language’s syntax and some other ins and outs.

It definitely makes me want to experiment more.

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And while I’m not really at a crossroads, some of my friends are as they move on to bigger and better things. Best of luck to them as they move to new jobs or new houses.

Just got a Google Maps API code. Let’s take it for a whirl:

Edit: Well, Blogger didn’t seem to like my code so I removed it. I’ll be working on the test page instead.

There’s been a lot of discussion about the renovation of Chico’s City Plaza. The city placed a video of what the completed park will look like on its Web site. Unfortunately, the video is in Windows Media — unviewable on the Mac I have.

So here it is after being uploaded to Google Video:
Edited out link on Aug. 31, 2006 — I removed the video from Google Video because I’m using my account for work-related features.

Just a quick shout-out before Melinda and 749 other Poway senior graduated on Wednesday night. Good times.

POWAY — When I was young, I liked watching the weathermen on Salt Lake City newscasts. I guess it was because they were funny, they stood in front of computer graphics and seemed to know what was going on.

I guess I identified somewhat with them, but I was probably more interested in my Legos. However, one family took a three-year-old child’s love of TV program one step further with a NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” birthday party. The Washington Post was all over it with a June 15 column.

Henry Schally’s parents wrote the PBS production for photos and some other items. The WaPo published a photo of Henry wearing a Lehrer birthday hat in front of one of those cakes with a publicity photo on it.

I don’t know what it all means, although I’m curious. Even Schally’s parents admit that it’s not the most exciting program on TV, but their son apparently loves it. I, for one, would be interested in seeing how little Henry turns out in 15 years or so.

Thanks to the county political party that sent me their recommendations yesterday on who to vote for in the primary election … nine days ago. Me thinks this isn’t an example of where slow and steady wins the “race.”