• Best Friends Animal Rescue – Katrina

    It’s been 5 years since Katrina.
    Some of the most heart-filling stories come from the people that were involved in rescuing the pets that were left behind.
    Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah, was the first animal rescue team on the ground.

    Everyone that loves their pets needs to have an evacuation plan for their pets just as they would have for their other family members. Don’t let your beloved beasts get lost in the fracas of an emergency situation!

    Below is a story from their site.
    Click here to see the video.
    You can click here to order the book (I have it, it’s a beautiful book).

    On the Water

    August 20, 2010, 8:19PM MT
    By Sandy Miller, Best Friends staff writer

    Profile of two Best Friends staff who were first on the ground after Hurricane Katrina, Ethan Gurney and Jeff Popowich. Their story is unique.

    Best Friends Rescue in New Orleans after Katrina

    “Remembering Katrina” recounts, through story and image, the experiences of those who joined in the monumental effort to rescue the thousands of pets left stranded by Hurricane Katrina. This series pays tribute to the rescuers and to the animals’ extraordinary will to survive during one of America’s worst disasters.

    Ethan Gurney remembers it being so quiet out there on the water.

    “There wasn’t any wind. You didn’t hear any birds,” says Gurney, a Best Friends’ animal care specialist and a member of the Hurricane Katrina rescue team. “Any sound stood out. You could hear dogs inside the houses scratching on the doors.”

    Gurney and Jeff Popowich, now Best Friends’ senior animal care manager, were two of the first people Best Friends sent out on the rescue mission after the category 5 hurricane slammed into the Gulf Coast back in August 2005, breaking the levees and leaving The Big Easy swimming in a large pool of murky water.

    Gurney and Popowich, stationed at the Best Friends base camp in Tylertown, Mississippi, would hit the road before dawn each morning to make it to New Orleans by daybreak. There, they would launch the boat from an off ramp and go block by block looking for dogs and cats who’d been stranded in the flood.

    “We’d go through the neighborhoods listening for dogs,” Popowich says. “Once we heard one, we’d go to the house and find a way to get the dogs into the boat.”

    Best Friends Rescue in New Orleans after Katrina

    Once the boat was full, they’d take the animals back to a staging area, unload them and head back out on the water again. They’d quit at sunset, head over to the Jefferson Parish Animal Shelter, grab some food, usually an MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) or a Red Cross box lunch, then load up the dogs and cats on transport trucks and take them back to Tylertown. The days were typically 18 to 20 hours long. After a while, Popowich and Gurney began camping out in sleeping bags on the floor of the shelter which gave them a couple more hours of much-needed sleep.

    Read the rest of this entry »


  • Fairhaven Salmon BBQ Poster

    Created a fun poster for the 4th Annual Fairhaven Salmon BBQ & Sidewalk Sale.
    This will be FUN! If you are in the area, there is more info on this site: www.fairhaven.com

    Fairhaven Salmon BBQ poster by Ritama Design


  • Hamlet’s BlackBerry on NYT Best Seller List!

    William Powers is now a NYT Best Selling Author!

    It’s wonderful news and a real thrill to have a client hit the “big-time”.

    Congratulations Bill!!!!!!!

    Visit his web site for more info about Hamlet’s BlackBerry and to see if Bill will be speaking in your town, or making an appearance on radio or TV.

    www.williampowers.com


  • Client on GMA! William Powers – superstar!

    My client William Powers was on Good Morning America yesterday – they were doing a segment on”disconnected families” – people who spend a bit too much time with their faces in their laptops or smart phones, etc…and have forgotten that there are, indeed, other people at the breakfast table.

    Bill talked about his new book Hamlet’s BlackBerry and offered some solutions for “re-connecting”, like taking an “Internet Sabbath”.

    Bill is mentioned in the second page of the article with a link to his site, designed by moi.

    www.tinyurl.com/24y39qv

    The book? Yes, it’s great, get it!

    Hamlet's BlackBerry by William Powers


  • William Powers Goes Live!

    William Powers, author, Hamlet's BlackBerry

    William Powers is the author of Hamlet’s BlackBerry, a book about building a good life in the digital age.

    This was a really fun job and it’s been exciting to see our client’s career take off like a rocket!

    Pam and I created a clean crisp site for William. Of course we used WordPress! We’ve got some cool widgets and features on this site, like the auto-updating Appearances page – plug in a date for an event and it automatically goes to the “Past Appearances” section when it’s over. The Archives page (in the NEWS section)  is also a departure from the ordinary and looks

    We’ve actually created TWO sites for William, the other one www.hamletsblackberry.com will go live in about a week. William will be blogging about living a more “dis-connected” life on that site. Be sure and check it out!

    Another cool side to this project is that last summer I had the pleasure of creating a web site for his wife, Martha Sherrill, who is also a wonderful writer. This is a talented family!


  • Why an “off-site” file back-up is important

    I have 2 TB’s (that’s 2,000 GB’s) of External Hard Drive storage AND I have Virtual Off-Site Storage as well.

    Why???? Well, I love overkill.

    No, really it’s because even if  you have your files backed up on an external hard drive (which, at the very least you should) they could still be lost due to theft, fire, flood, or just plain old crashing. And losing all your stuff sucks – big time. My computer crashed a couple of years ago – nothing dramatic, I did a “Restart” because it was running slow and…..it never came back on! Luckily, I had all my applications, files, music and photos backed up on external hard drives, so I was safe. But it could have been awful. So don’t be in a position where you are cryin’ like a baby if all your data disappears! Get backed up – NOW!

    baby with no back up plan

    Here’s a good article on WHY backing up is important and why you need to do it. I read it on Top Ten Reviews:

    Superheroes need it, police rely on it and everyone that uses a computer should use some form of it. In the world of mainframes and microchips it’s called data backup or data recovery and it can mean the difference between a slight computer setback and living through your own electronic apocalypse.

    Let’s face it; our computers are a bigger part of life than ever before. We shop, work and play using computers. They’ve replaced stereos, encyclopedias, even the mailman. They’ve become journals, photo albums and canvases for our art.

    But computers aren’t perfect. Files become corrupt, motherboards malfunction, CPUs call it quits taking our precious data with them.

    The best defense is data backup software. Backing up data is vital for businesses; lost information can cause a major crisis or worse, lead to business failure. Individuals who don’t backup computer data run the same risk. While this may not cause financial ruin, it can certainly be frustrating and even heartbreaking.

    Read the rest of this entry »


  • Logo & print work for Fairhaven Festival!

    I just finished a cool job designing the logo and art for the Fairhaven Festival, which takes place on the day of the Ski to Sea Race in Bellingham, WA. The Festival has always been on the day of the race, but there was never any advertising.

    This year that’s changed and I created the logo, ads for magazines and the program, a poster and handbills.

    My client was adamant that BEER was prominently featured – apparently there was a rumor that there would not be a Beer Garden this year and they wanted to be sure and squelch that horrible gossip.

    Hundreds of people participate in the 90 mile race, with thousands cheering them on, and then everyone comes to the Festival after the race and drinks…..ummmm…beer. It’s a super fun day – so go, really.

    Below is a smaller version of the ad that will go in the Official Ski to Sea Program.
    To see more of my print work, please click here!

    fairhaven festival art by ritama design


  • 10 Simple Google Search Tips

    Just saw this on Google News – from the NY Times – I knew most of them, but learned about a couple more. Thought it was good info to pass on!

    1. Use the “site:” operator to limit searches to a particular site. I use this one all the time, and it’s particularly handy because many site’s built-in search tools don’t return the results you’re looking for (and some sites don’t even have a search feature). If I’m looking for WWD posts about GTD, for example, I could try this search: GTD site:webworkerdaily.com.

    2. Use Google as a spelling aid. As Rob Hacker — the WWD reader I profiled last week — pointed out, entering a word into Google is a quick way to see if you have the right spelling. If it’s incorrect, Google will suggest the correct spelling instead. Additionally, if you want to get a definition of a word, you can use the “define:” operator to return definitions from various dictionaries (for example, define: parasympathetic).

    3. Use Google as a calculator. Google has a built-in calculator — try entering a calculation like 110 * (654/8 + 3). Yes, your computer also has a calculator, but if you spend most of your day inside a browser, typing your calculation into the browser’s search box is quicker than firing up your calculator app.

    Read the rest of this entry »


  • WordPress TV

    Lots of great video tutorials here:

    http://wordpress.tv/category/how-to/

    WordPress TV

    WordPress.tv is Your Visual Resource for All Things WordPress!


  • WordPress 24-Hour Trainer by George Plumley

    I met George Plumley when he was speaking at the Seattle WordPress Conference. I was impressed with his knowledge and when I heard he was writing a book on WordPress I knew it would be great.
    And I was right!

    WordPress 24 Hour Trainer

    The book is easy to understand and there is a companion CD with a video for each chapter. I’ll be giving this book to my clients as part of their “project package” and will be recommending it to everyone I know that works with WordPress :)

    WordPress 24-Hour Trainer by George Plumley

    Don’t let WordPress intimidate you. WordPress 24-Hour Trainer is a unique lesson-based book that walks you through the essential parts of WordPress. Each lesson is streamlined to teach a specific aspect of WordPress, helping you to focus on just what you need in order to get the task accomplished. If you learn better visually, this book provides you with a video to accompany each lesson.

    When I got the opportunity to write a book about WordPress, I wanted to write something for the day to day users who need to quickly find an answer to common questions but at the same time be able to learn WordPress from the ground up, step by step.

    Wiley’s 24-Hour Trainer series was a great vehicle for that kind of book, because they take a lesson-based approach combined with a DVD of video tutorials.

    WordPress 24-Hour Trainer is a series of 38 lessons that go from installation to editing images to optimizing your site for search engines.  You can use it to start a website from scratch or to help you use a WordPress site that someone else built for you.

    And when I say “website” I mean website.  This is not a book about blogging, it’s a book about WordPress as a content management system for all types of websites.

    Buy it on Amazon

    Visit George’s web site too – which has great video tutorials as well:
    www.seehowtwo.com