SonnyPortacio.com Online

SonnyPortacio.com is now online. On this site you can also find a link to some pics from our Kazakhstan trip.

Learning new things

This was a great weekend. It started off by sleeping in (always a good start to a weekend in my humble opinion). Mom (France) and Sandy's sister, Sheryl came over with Joshua. We had a small birthday celebration for Sandy, we shared pictures from our Kazakhstan trip and Joshua got to learn the wonders of a super-soaker squirt gun.

Sunday we went to the later church service because Sandy was going to serve for the first time in the Children's Ministry. Sandy has always enjoyed working with kids, she did so for several years at her church in Florida so I'm sure she going to do great and fit in just right! The sermon was good. Larry was the one who taught. It was about a Family Makeover (Ephesians 6: 1-4) and the roles of parents and children. He did a great job of giving examples and making it practical.

After church we headed out to visit with my mom. We gave her some of the Kazakhstan gifts that we had brought over (chocolate, a little felt camel, etc.) and took her out to lunch. During lunch we showed her some pictures from our trip on the laptop. After lunch we headed out to do some geocaching. (My mom LOVES geocaching!). Afterwards Sandy and I spent some time at the zoo and headed home.

Once home, I put the final finishing touches on the PodCacher website. I learned a lot trying to figure out how to get our podcast "live". Success! I love learning new things!

Back from Kaz / New WebSites / The 4th

Kazakhstan Emblem

The 4th, 2005

We've just gotten back from our trip to Kazakhstan. We've got lot's of stories and and (of course) photos to share. I will create a website with the photos and some explanation of our activities. While out there I also recorded audio. Sandy and I recorded an audio journal almost everey day of our visit. It contains our reflections and thoughts of our experience. I was also able to capture 5 stories that were written and presented by Kazkhstan educators as part of our program. I'll be working with these audio files, adding sound effects and music in post production and creating CDs for distribution.

I've created 2 new web sites: podcacher.com and sonnyportacio.com. The PodCacher website will be devoted to geocaching and podcasting (hence the name). Podcasting is the big rising star and buzzword in technology right now. Apple just released iTuned 4.9 with podcasting. This has really exploded the podcasting community. Sandy and I will be putting together periodic podcasts discussing gear, paperless caching, favorite caches, etc. Another idea is to create a "PodCache": We will create a podcast with specific directions to a cache. No GPS required! Not sure where this will go or what it will lead to, but it sounds like fun.

Sandy and I went down to San Diego bay to watch the fireworks for the 4th. Knowing that it was going to be a traffic jam zoo, we took our bikes on the roof of our car. We parked a decent distance away, rode the bikes in and locked them up and I snapped some photos. After the last fireworks, as predicted, a traffic zoo. Sandy and I got on our bikes, scooted out of the traffic, got to our car and easily drove out of there. I need to remember the "anti-traffic bike trick" for times just like these.