Justin Wright » Events

It’s 2010 Already?

Justin Wright — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 18:21:49 +0000

Can you believe it’s already 2010? I sure can’t. I can’t believe it’s been a decade since we said goodbye to the awesome 90’s.

Anyways, I just wanted to say cheers to the new year, I hope everyone had an awesome New Year’s celebration. I had an awesome time celebrating in downtown St. Petersburg with some of my friends from high school (@kcmiller85 and @eg53).

A Look Back At 2009

One of the nice things about celebrating a new year is looking back at what you did the year before. 2009 was an eventful year for me and I managed to do a lot of things. Here’s a few of my highlights from last year:

Moving To Austin – Austin was an awesome city and I had a lot of fun living there for 6 months.

Meet Happy – We managed to get the coolest puppy ever in Austin.

The Haircut - Normally haircuts aren’t that great, but this one resulted in me cutting off ALL of my hair. It was a good move, though I’m not sure what will happen to my hair this year.

1 Year Of Self-Employment - Celebrating my first full year of self-employment was a big step for me.

Moving To Florida – Although I’ve only been here a few weeks, I’m really enjoying the weather and the beaches here in the Sunshine State.

Set Your Goals For 2010

If you haven’t set some goals for the year, now is a good time to do it. I have a feeling this is going to be a great year for everyone and a lot of great things are going to happen.

I’ll be blogging about some of my goals in the upcoming week, since I always seem to accomplish more when I put them in writing. Also, stay tuned for some pictures from around Florida.

Photo Credit: Optical Illusion | CC 2.0

A Look At The 2010 Ford Taurus

Justin Wright — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 19:05:05 +0000

If you missed by post a few days ago, I talked about a Ford Tweetup that I co-hosted last night. Ford had a few people from their social media team there as well as the 2010 Ford Taurus.

I must say, it’s one heck of an improvement over the Ford Taurus I remember. I remember the one that looked like a turtle on the outside. Here’s my review of the new 2010 Ford Taurus:

The Exterior

The first thing I noticed was the look of the Ford Taurus. It’s so much different than I was anticipating. It sort of looks like a cross between a Lexus and an Infiniti. Here’s a few shots I took of the exterior:

As you can see, it’s a pretty sweet looking car. Especially since it’s a full-size car instead of a sport compact. If I were looking to get a full-size car, I’d actually consider the Taurus (the SHO model that is).

The Interior

The other thing that really surprised me was the interior of the Taurus. I’ve always considered American made cars to be rather plain and boring on the inside. Which is the main reason why I’ve always liked import cars. I remember riding in a mid 90’s Mustang and the interior reminded me of a Ford Ranger.

Luckily, Ford has done a complete overhaul on the Taurus. This car was equipped with everything from leather seats to a Sony sound system. Plus it has a ton of new features like key-less entry and start, Microsoft sync, and a bunch of other stuff I didn’t have time to fool around with. It even has hand shifters on the steering wheel if you like shifting the car.

Here’s a few pictures of the interior:

As you can see, the interior is pretty slick for a full-size American made car. It looks more like a Corvette than a Taurus.

Test Drive

Besides looking at it, I also had the opportunity to take the Taurus for a spin and see how it felt on the road. It took a while to get used to it since I’m not used to driving, especially a full-size vehicle. But once I got going I loved how it felt and I couldn’t believe how quiet it was on the inside.

It has some cool features such as a radar system, which automatically adjusts your cruise control speed if it detects a vehicle nearby. It also has lights on the mirrors that let you know when it’s safe to merge lanes. Very cool.

The model I drove was the SEL, so it wasn’t super quick. But I’d love to drive the SHO model (Twin-Turbo) sometime to see how that thing goes. It looks pretty quick in the videos I watched.

Awesome Event

Overall, it was a great event and I had a lot of fun checking out the new car and learning more about how Ford is using social media. It’s really interesting to see how different companies are using social media to target their potential customers.

For more pictures from the event, check out the 2010 Ford Taurus gallery.

Ford Taurus Tweetup This Sunday

Justin Wright — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 20:36:18 +0000

Hey everyone, I just wanted make a quick note about an event I am co-hosting this Sunday. Ford is bringing the new 2010 Ford Taurus to Austin to let us check it out.

Here’s a quick summary of the event from the Facebook Page:

Join Mike Crowley, Ford’s marketing manager for cars and crossovers, and the 2010 Ford Taurus at Opal Divine’s for a fun meet up.

Mike will be joined by our blogger co-hosts and the 2010 Taurus and will be available to answer questions about the 2010 Taurus and Ford and take you for a test drive.

There was also a Beer and Blog Austin meetup scheduled for this Sunday, so I decided it would work best to merge them together.

Here’s the details for the event:

When: Sunday, August 2nd at 5:30 PM

Where: Opal Divines on 6th Street

RSVP: Click Here

Opal’s will be having some food and drink specials and they also have free wifi.

So if you love Twitter or blogging, I highly recommend checking it out! It’s going to be a great time.

Update: The hashtag for the event will be #fordtaurus.

Me Eating A Grasshopper

Justin Wright — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 18:32:44 +0000

Last night I went to an awesome party that had all sorts of things going on. I’m still working on getting my photos up so I thought I’d share a quick clip of me eating a grasshopper:

Stay tuned for a detailed post about the party later today!

Back From #wcdfw09

Justin Wright — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:50:04 +0000

I Made the drive back from Dallas last night and managed to make it in one piece. Overall, WordCamp Dallas/Fort Worth (#wcdfw09) turned out to be an awesome event where I learned some awesome things about WordPress.

I met some awesome people (including @sivori, @claygriffiths, @grantgriffiths and @plagiarismtoday) and learned about the future of WordPress from @photomatt.

If anything, it gave me a big boost in motivation to keep on going and try as hard as I can at blogging. Plus I managed to hand out a huge stack of Zoopmedia business cards which is always a good thing.

The only downside to the whole trip was me not winning the MacBook Pro they gave away. I did get an iPhone case though so I’m not complaining.

Happening This Week

I thought I would also use this post to focus on some upcoming events here in Austin. I’ll be attending both events so come check them out and look for me.

Wordpress Wednesday

When: July 1st at 9 AM
Where: Central Market Cafe (Second Floor)
RSVP: Go Here

The Social Media Rockstars meetup group will be meeting once again to talk about blogging and WordPress. It’s an awesome group and a great place to meet fellow bloggers and learn some new things about blogging.

Beer and Blog Austin

When: July 5th at 6 PM
Where: Opal Divine’s Freehouse
RSVP: Go Here or send a tweet to @beernblogaustin

The Beer and Blog Austin Chapter will be meeting again to drink some beer and chat about blogging, WordPress, and anything else on our mind. It’s only our second meetup so the more people the better. We still need help marketing as well so feel free to spread the word.

Recap Of WordCamp

Over the next week, I will be posting about the things I learned and summaries of presentations from the WordCamp event. The majority of them will be over at the ZoopMedia blog but I’ll probably squeeze a few in here as well.

The first post, Using WordPress As A CMS, is already live so go check it out. It’s got some great information about plugins.

Austin Kickball League Is Underway

Justin Wright — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:44:32 +0000

(Photo by calmenda)

Last night was the season opener for our Austin kickball league, which is being put on by the Parks and Recreation crew. It’s a great time and a fun way to meet new people. Best part of all is that a lot of the players drink beer, wine, or booze during the games (myself included). It’s the perfect combination of two very unique sports…

The only downside is beer doesn’t taste as good when it starts coming up as you round third base. I guess it’s the price to pay the game.

1-0 So Far

We started off with a big win beating Project Mayhem 10-2. My team did an awesome job and worked perfectly as a team. My girlfriend had a good hit that brought me home and I managed to squeeze in a triple and bring a few runs home. I had a blast and can’t wait for the next week to roll around so we can play again. I have a lot of confidence in our team and think we can compete with all of the teams.

When & Where

If you want to check out a game or two, feel free to stop on by. If you come wearing TBD apparel (read the teams below) I might even hook you up with a free beer.

The games are played every Wednesday night from 6:30 Pm until 9:50 PM at Gillis Park. If you are not sure where that is, it is located at 2504 Durwood Avenue. For more information about the park, check out the Park Profile page.

The Teams

Here is a breakdown of all the teams in our Wednesday night league:

Bust-N-Balls
Juevos De Miercoles
Grass Kickers
Project Mayhem
TBD
Clam Club
Pilsnerds
Triple Star Kickers
Where My Pitches At

The bold team above is the team my girlfriend and I are on. If you didn’t get the joke, it basically stands for “To Be Determined.” It’s pretty funny, especially since I overheard the team we played talking about how they weren’t sure who they had to play. They actually thought it was TBD.

Personally, I think Where My Pitches at is also a brilliant name. However, word on the street is that they are really good so that’s a matchup I’m looking forward to.

Each week, I’ll post a recap of our games so you can follow us on our road to the perfect kickball season. Wish us luck!

National Trails Day Was A Success

Justin Wright — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 20:31:05 +0000

I just got back from National Trails Day and it was a blast! We managed to pick up an entire dumpster worth of garbage and hauled it out to the parking lot. It was amazing how much stuff we were able to pull out.

The dump site we cleaned up was located a good mile or so inside the green belt so it took a lot of lifting and dragging to get the bags out. Luckily, there were about 25 members in our group and we worked as a team to relay the garbage bags along the trails.

We came across one snake amongst the garbage but luckily it was not poisonous. A few volunteers also spotted a scorpion hanging out near the garbage.

Other than that, the clean up went really well. We managed to complete it in about 3 hours which was pretty good timing.

The After Party

Besides having fun picking up garbage, we were also treated to an after party that turned out to be pretty cool. The food was catered in from The Salt Lick and best part of all…they had two kegs of beer! And not the shitty kind like Bud Light, instead they had an Ale beer from a brewer here in Austin. Very cool.

They also had a live band playing music for a few hours and a few places including REI had some tents set up with drawings and giveaways.

Barton Springs

Along with the after party, every volunteer also got a free pass to Barton Springs Pool. I’ve been by the pool twice now but have never actually gone inside.

Here is a picture of what it looks like inside:

I plan on doing a more in depth post about Barton Springs Pool in the near future since I have a few pictures and the place is awesome. I’ve never swam in a creek/natural pool with a diving board before.

It turned out to be an awesome day of helping out and having a blast. I hope to do a lot more events like this in the future.

Tomorrow Is National Trails Day

Justin Wright — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:40:12 +0000

(Photo by R.B. Boyer)

If you happen to live in Austin, you may have heard about National Trails Day happening tomorrow at the Barton Creek Greenbelt. Volunteers will be helping to keep Austin beautiful by doing various projects.

Here is a quick overview of the event from the Austin Parks Foundation website:

The National Trails Day Service Project is a joint conservation effort made possible through a partnership of American YouthWorks’ Environmental Corps, the Austin Parks and Recreation Department, the Austin Parks Foundation, the Hill Country Conservancy and Austin-area REI (Recreational Equipment, Inc.) stores.

300 Volunteers Are Already Signed Up

Although the projects are all full, they are still accepting general assistance volunteers to help with various things. If you are interested in helping out, make sure to be there at 7:00 AM (30 Minutes Early) to get registered.

Schedule Of Events

Here is a breakdown of the day and what you can expect:

Registration: 7:30 AM
Safety Talk: 8:00 AM
Project Duration: 8:00-11:30 AM

Once the work is completed, there will be a National Trails Day Party featuring food from Salt Lick and live music. Also, every volunteer will get free access to Barton Springs Pool all afternoon. I can’t wait to take a swim in it.

Here is the schedule for the after party:

Volunteer Lunch: 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Volunteer Celebration w/ Live Music: 12:00 PM -3:00 PM
Free Swim At Barton Springs : From 12 PM On

I look forward to helping out tomorrow and will do a recap post of the event later this week. Hope to see some of you there!

Moving To Austin In A Few Weeks

Justin Wright — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:17:54 +0000

(Photo by Velo Steve)

If you haven’t noticed, it’s been pretty quiet around here for the last week or so. The reason is because I have been swamped with getting ready to make the move to Austin, Texas. The plan is to leave on the 28th and it is rapidly coming up. It seems like this month is going to fly right by.

Anyways, my apartment is starting to look like the picture above. I always seem to forget how many little things are involved when it comes to moving. Packing up your belongings is the only the beginning. For example, here are a few things I have done this week already:

Sign Up For Internet Service (And Cancel The Old One)
Get Renters Insurance
Setup A Utilities Account
Change My Health Insurance Plan
Forward My Mail
Change My Address on 200 Different Websites (Give or Take lol)

Unfortunately, there is a lot more to do yet. On a good note, we did get the apartment we wanted which is going to be a very short walk from downtown. It’s also on the river so I plan on getting involved in kayaking once we get there.

Besides getting ready for the move, I have also been doing as much work as I can as both a web designer and a blog consultant. It’s really nice to know that my job is going to make the move with me. It sure beats moving somewhere with absolutely no income what so ever.

Looking Ahead

I plan to squeeze in a few more posts before I leave, so keep an eye out for them. Once I make the move, I will be writing A TON of posts as I start to explore Austin and check out new places. I also have a trip planned to Dallas in June to attend the WordCamp event there, so I plan to take notes so I can share anything I learn there with all of you.

I am also going to resume Digital Nomad Radio starting in June. It sort of got put on hold but I really like doing it and I heard a lot of good feedback about the show. I’ll even have an awesome intro when the next episode goes live so keep an eye out for that.

PS. If you’re a blogger and would like to do a guest post over the next few weeks, feel free to email me. You will get a backlink to your own blog(s) so it’s a great way to reach a new audience.

Great Urban Race: The Aftermath

Justin Wright — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:10:49 +0000

The Great Urban Race

If you missed my post last Thursday, I talked about the Great Urban Race coming to Phoenix this past weekend. I had pretty high hopes for doing good in the race (I don’t know why). Anyways, now that the race is over and I have all my pictures off my camera, it’s time to break down the race.

The Start

The race started at Sliders in downtown Phoenix. If you don’t know where that is, it is right next to Chase field (Diamondbacks stadium). From there, I had no idea where the race was going to take us. We were given an envelope at noon with the clues in it but no one was allowed to open them until the race started.

Once we heard the speaker say the race had started, I ripped the envelope open and pulled out the sheet with the clues on it. At first glance, the only thing I thought in my head is “we’re screwed.” I know very, very little about downtown Phoenix. Especially when it comes to parks, statues, and museums. I also know nothing about the bus schedules or the light rail so I knew that was going to be a challenge.

Clue #1

The first clue we managed to get done was by far the easiest of the day. All we had to do was find a popsicle stick with a joke on it or get a job application. We chose the job application since I haven’t seen a popsicle in years. My girlfriend ran into a Starbucks while I sat outside Googling away on my iPhone.

Clue #2

From there, we headed north down Central Ave. until we got to the Farmers Market. We had to find an artist there and get a drawing from him. After hitting up the information booth, we managed to find someone that knew who we were talking about. So the guy lead us (along with like 10 people following us) to the artist. He drew up a quick sketch on a piece of paper and gave it to us.

So far so good…

Clue #3

Heard Museum Statue

Once we got the drawing, we continued on our way north towards Honey Bears BBQ. Along the way, we managed to solve another one of the clues. The clue said “it exists today because of Maie.” At first, we didn’t have a clue what the hell it was talking about. But after doing some Googling we managed to figure out that Maie was the first name of the person the Heard Museum is named after.

Once we knew that, we had to stop in front of the museum and take a picture of both of us standing in front of the statue you see to the right.

At this point, we figured we were doing pretty well. Except for the fact that we had already ran/jogged/walked over 2 miles and still had 8 more clues to take care of.

Clue #4

Wow We Look Special...

This was the first mistake we made of the day. We skipped clue #7 (see below) which happened to be right behind the museum. Instead, we made our way north to Honey Bears BBQ.

Once we arrived there, we had to eat a piece of corn on the cob as fast as we could. Then we had to snap a picture of both us holding the completely empty cob.

I realized right after moved on to the next clue that I should of just picked up an empty one from the garbage and snapped a picture. I’ve touched worse things in my life. And that one thing might have put us in the top 25.

Clue #5 & #6

The next stop on the list was Encanto Park. There were two clues on the sheet that were both found in the same place so that was a good thing. The first thing we had to do was go through an inflatable obstacle course. I think it took me about 15 seconds to get through the whole thing.

Once we both finished the obstacle race, it was on to the gunny sack race. We each had to put one leg in the sack and then walk to a line and turn around. This took about 30 seconds to complete.

Both of these clues were really easy. The only downside is that getting to the park took forever. Not to mention coming back from the park. Unlike a lot of the other teams, we did the whole race by foot. No buses, no light rails, and no car rides (we’re badass).

Clue #7

As I mentioned before, the next clue ended up being behind the museum. Therefore, we had to walk all the way back East to get that clue done with. If we hadn’t of missed it we could of ran all the way down 7th avenue to the next few clues and would have easily been in the top 25. You win some and you lose some.

Anyways, clue #7 was found in Monterey Park. I tiny park I have never heard of. Once we got to the park, we had to figure out some ring game where you had to get them apart. It just so happens that my girlfriend used to have one of them and she was able to do it in like 10 seconds. We easily passed a few groups by getting done so quickly.

Clue #8

The next clue was sort of a miracle. We were originally going to skip this one but we ended up getting stuck on a stupid puzzle and had to skip that one instead. What was the clue? To find a jukebox and take a picture of 5 people standing in front of it.

Anyways, after we got done at the park we started running down 3rd Street since we knew that Clue #9 was in that direction as well as #10 and #11. Along the way, we happened to jog right by Hooters. We figured they might have a jukebox so we ran inside and asked one of the girls. As it turns out, they did!

The only problem was that the jukebox was in the back room where the girls change and whatnot (stop thinking dirty). She said other people had asked and that they told them no but guess what…they decided to let us go in the back! Here is the picture we managed to take:

My Girlfriend Wasn't Happy Because Her Hand Was Bleeding

Clue #9

The next clue was to find was a statue of a woman holding another woman (I think that’s what it was). I used to work downtown and remember seeing the statue a few times but could not for the life of me remember where.

Luckily, I managed to come across a similiar statue in Google images on my phone and knew it was the same place. The place ended up being the Herberger Theater Center which was right by hooters. So we jogged there and had a lady playing an instrument take a picture of us in front of the statue.

Two clues to go!

Clue #10

The second to last clue was a word scramble. We had to reorder the letters to form a word. Luckily, we had solved this earlier on in the race and already knew where we were going. We had to find the Orpheum Theatre and take a picture standing underneath the sign. Once we found it, we then had to find someone to take the picture for us. Here is it:

Standing Outside The Orpheum Theatre

Clue #11

And last but not least, the final clue of the day. The good news is that this one another really easy one. We basically just ran down the street a few blocks and had to find some volunteers that were working for the race. They stamped out sheet and we were done!

We just had to run about 7 blocks back to the finish line. Except running wasn’t going to happen. We had already covered about 10 miles and both of us were dying. My legs were on fire and I was sweating like mad in my jeans (it was like 88 degrees).

The Finish Line

Once we made it back, we were surprised that we were not in last place. For some reason were thinking that we took a long time but we did pretty good. We ended up taking 41st place with a total time of 3 hours and 5 minutes. After looking over the results today, I realized that we were only 12 minutes behind the 25th place team. Damn it! We were so close. You can see the results page here. Our team name was Sailor Jerry (the best rum in the world).

Overall I am still happy with our results. We didn’t use any transportation like most of the teams did so I feel good about that. I have a feeling we covered about 11 miles on foot for the day which is why yesterday I couldn’t even get out of bed. I literally felt like I got hit by a truck.

Another thing we did was looked up all the answers ourselves. A lot of the top teams had people on the phone looking up the answers for them which I think would have taken away from the fun of the whole thing.

It was a great time and I really encourage everyone to give it a shot if the race is coming to a city near you. Lots of fun!