Awesome

Sunset this morning when arriving at work. The photo doesn't do it justice.

Web Designer?

I may need to get my title changed from web designer to multimedia designer or something... Here's my latest work for Ash.

Testimonial Video:

This is what I shot in Arizona. It's now all edited and live on the Ash Website. I got direct compliments from the CEO, Co-president, and VP:

https://www.ashbrokerage.com/share/cm/about/testimonials.php IntraNet Tutorial:

It's all built in flash. All together I think it was about 22 hours of work. I recorded the voice over at home using the condenser mic LF used as the vocal mic. I still hate the sound of my voice. There are several sections. If you only watch one, watch "production tools". That one's the most elaborate. And "departments" is interactive. I also designed the Intranet that it is featuring, which will launch next week. You'll see pictures of the old intranet in all its ugliness during the tutorial. http://www.rpbenton.com/flash/walkthrough.html

Trip to Tucson

So it's a few weeks late, but here's the pictures from the trip to Arizona. We traveled to the Loews Ventana Canyon Hotel in Tucson. Flying there was nice because 9 Ash employees flew out together.

These are the pictures of the hotel from up a hiking path. The hotel is built into the mountain side.

The hotel is halfway up a mountain. Here's a view of the top.

Even though it's in the desert, they have some cool water features:

The desert is a nice place to visit, very scenic - but by the end I missed grass and normal trees.

The front of the hotel is pretty impressive:

And the pool is even more impressive:

Breakfast on the patio:

The inside of the hotel was very lavish. Here's the lobby:

And the biggest cactus ever:

So that's pretty much it. I don't have much to say about the event itself. There was a lot of semi-boring presentations, some good food, and long days. Overall, it was pretty cool to be a part of it.

And then a week after those pictures were taken, I was looking at this:

Yes, that is frost. We had our first frost on October 1. Quite a contrast to the 98 degree desert. This winter is going to be fun...

Apples to Arizona

Saturday:

We went to the Johnny Appleseed Festival (Johnny Appleseed is buried in Fort Wayne). It wasn't really our thing. It was really crowded (like 5,000-10,000 people?) and contained a farmers market, historic type stuff (trapers and traders), old style food, etc. We walked around and left without doing much. Then we went to out for a late lunch, came home and watched some tv and called it a day.

Sunday:

We were up at 4:30 to drive South to just above Indianapolis for Kelly's Triathlon. She totally rocked it and set 3 personal records. Read her report here.

Tomorrow:

I'm off to Tucson, Arizona for my first ever business trip! This is the hotel/resort. It's pretty much luxary, but don't be too jealous...i'll be working hard the entire time. It's our company's "Summit" to reward our top producers and establish relationships with important new ones. I'm going as the videographer to capture everything and get interviews with people for future promotions. Should be interesting...

seventeen cents

I owe a major update with pictures from the past 2 weekends. But until then, I had to comment on gas prices. Yesterday when I went to work, gas was 2.32 (pause for the jealousy of how cheap our gas is). But when I went home, it was 2.49. That's a big jump for one day! So my question is, was our gas just way too cheap and caught up a bit, or did gas go up about 15 cents for everyone??

Ash Brokerage Website

Take a look at https://www.ashbrokerage.com/

Notice the ugly color scheme. Notice how you can't click on much without getting a prompt to login. You can view contact, about, and careers at the top. Click on contact. See how tiny the map is? Click on a star, then try to click on a different star. Often it doesn't work. Read the about page - does it explain what Ash Brokerage does? Check the careers page. Notice how it only lists open positions.

You should also be able to view news items - although there is talk about making them accessible only after logging in. So if you ignore that section...that's it. You cannot get to any other content.

Look around, become frustrated by the website, and make a mental note. In a few weeks, it will look and feel very, very different.

Comments

I figured out that I had comments set to registered users only. So if you've been trying to leave comments all along and had trouble - now you can. So what are you waiting for?