Sharon and I were enrolled in Dixie State College since last Fall. Sharon completed her Certificate of Visual Technologies, and I worked on my Bachelors of Computer Science, with an Emphasis on Visual Technologies. This resulted in us being in many of the same classes. That was a lot of fun because we got to help each other out with homework and remembering when things were due. Believe it or not, she helped me a lot! I am so proud of Sharon and all of the things she has learned and done this past year. She also started a photography business this year and has made amazing progress putting her portfolio together. You can see her site here: http://www.enchantedwindowphotography.com

I was reflecting just the other day about how much Sharon has changed since we were married last April. She had no interest in photography or computer things, and now she is a Photographer and has a Certificate in Visual Technologies! She even knows how to make Flash movies, Web Sites, and write programs in code! It boggles me how fast of a learner she is.

I would be remiss to not make mention of our 1 year anniversary. It is mind-boggling how fast time has been flying. It really doesn’t feel like a year has already passed. We are getting ready to move up to Provo at the end of this month, and we are both SOOOO excited to finally get our own place and start school up there. Sharon will be going to BYU  to get her Masters in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). I will be going to Utah Valley University to try and finish my Bachelor’s in Computer Science. We are both very excited about this.

We are planning to go traveling in December to Australia to see Sharon’s sister, Ivy, graduate from her University in Adelaide. So we’ll be saving our pennies and dimes for that.

I was accepted to take part in Google’s Summer of Code 2010, and will be developing a module for Drupal 7’s new Commerce platform. I am really excited to be an ‘employee’ of Google, since it’s long been a dream of mine to work for them.

My business endeavors have been flourishing, and I am keeping busy every day with some new project. There really never is a dull moment (unless you consider programming dull, haha).

Kendall will be graduating from Hurricane High School this month. This means that all of the ‘kids’ will be done with High School! Amazing again how fast time flies. We will all be in Provo this Fall, because Tyler will be back from Mexico and attending BYU, along with Kendall and Chantelle and Sharon. So that should be fun.

Anyways, I will try and update this blog more often since I will be a bit more free this summer!

This week was really good, and we finished it off with a Pool Party/Halo Fest at Paul & Nikki’s house. It was a blast! Next week we are planning on going hiking at Bryce Canyon with Chris & June and Paul & Nikki. It is going to be a lot of fun, and we are all excited about it. Most of us have never been there, so it will be a new experience.

Tyler came down for the weekend and it was really great to get to see him again. He recently cut his hair really short so it looked strange at first, but now we are all used to eat. Mom cooked a nice big meal for him and also cleaned up Chantelle’s recently vacated (and EXTREMELY messy) room for him to stay in. It was great having him around.

Sharon and I taught our first lesson in Nursery, and it went pretty well. It is always exhausting looking after 10-12 kids, but it is fun too.

Well, that’s about all I can think of, and it’s getting late, so enjoy this movie:

My VT 1300 class is really starting to get old. The teacher seems to go off on tangents WAY too much, and then on tangents of tangents, so in the end, we end up listening to a lot of stories and history, but don’t really learn much. In the first 2 weeks of the class, we haven’t learned a single thing it seems like. We haven’t even had any assignments. I took this class because I was really interested in learning some Design Techniques and skills that I can use in my work and on my personal projects, but up until now have been disappointed.

I have been keeping really busy with my work, working every day of last week even between classes at school. I have two big deadlines on Tuesday so I am really trying to squeeze them in, and I have also been working on my personal site, MoneyScripts.net, as well as brainstorming and coding a new PrestaShop module which I plan to release this week. So it’s a lot of things, but it is good to be busy, and I hope that I will continue to be blessed with lots of work in the future. I also hope that I will be able to find new ways to create recurring income streams by launching new personal web sites. I have a number of ideas, just need to find the time to do them.

This week I hired someone to do some of my work for the first time. Nikki Yoder, a talented Web Designer and the wife of one of my best friends, Paul, did some work for me. She did a perfect job, and I hope to continue using her in the future when I get too much work. She is really good, if anyone is interested, feel free to check out her portfolio: Artistic Element. She is just starting out as a Freelancer, so she needs to find some good clients.

Yesterday Sharon and I went to the local celebration, Peach Days. She took some pictures and I suspect she is writing a blog post about it, so keep your eyes open for that one. Sharon has really made me proud this last week, she has been keeping up with her school work and also doing home chores like laundry and cooking and making the bed. It really is nice to live with her. She is learning how to code HTML in one of her classes, and she is such a fast learner. She was scared at first that she would never get it, but I think she is a natural. She has a lot of talent, and I can’t wait until I can get her to make some designs for my future web sites! Haha.

Today we both went to Nursery, and it was a lot of fun and a lot of work at the same time. Those kids have so much energy, it is hard to keep up. Kendall and Mom both bore their testimonies during Sacrament Meeting, and I was really impressed with both of them. It especially hit me how mature Kendall is, an how grown up he has become. I am really proud of him, along with my other two siblings and my mom.

In summary, I am loving school, it is a lot of fun and I LOVE to learn new things. I am looking forward to doing more things with Chris & June, Paul & Nikki, Ben and some other friends in the coming weeks.

I am working on getting a Bachelor’s Degree with an emphasis on Visual Technologies. I am taking Visual Technologies 1300, which is mostly about design principles and strategies. It is pretty fun and I am learning a lot about why Ads are set up the way that they are. I tested out of Visual Technologies 1400, which dealt with XHTML/CSS Web Development, something that I have been doing professionally for the past couple of years. I am trying to test out of Information Technology 1100, which deals with the hardware and operating systems of computers. I am going to have to study a lot this week to be able to test out of it. Another class I am taking is Information Technology 2400, Introduction to Networking, which deals with the hardware and software of computer networking. It is interesting. I am also taking Computer Science 1410, which is a follow up to Computer Science 1400, a class I took 5 years ago at Dixie. The problem is that when I took it, I learned C++, and they have since switched the language to Python. So I’ve had to do a lot of catch-up to get to where the rest of the class is. But now that I’ve caught up, I think the class will be pretty easy from here on out. Last but not least, I am taking History 1700, which deals with American History. It is a 2.5 hour class every Monday night, so it is quite a grind. In addition, since there are so few classes, we have to read a TON between classes. I had to read 115 pages this week in the history book. Each class deals with 2 chapters in the book, including the first one. Tests usually cover 4-10 chapters each. We have to do 30 chapters this semester, with only about 12 classes. But I suppose it is better to take at least one hard class this semester.

I am also trying to work as much as I can during the week. I have Tuesdays and Thursdays off (all of my classes are MWF), so I try and do my work on those days.

Sharon and I are also trying to finish things with the USCIS Adjustment of Status we are working on. There are more and more difficulties, and they keep wanting more evidence of my ability to financially support Sharon, which is difficult to prove since I am self-employed. Any prayers would be much appreciated^^

Sharon and I are both happy that school is here and we are busy again (well, I was busy before too, but she wasn’t so busy). I will be sure to keep everyone updated on our lives, working on my Sunday blog posting goal.

Sharon and I will have two classes together, so we are both really excited about that. We can help each other study and do the homework. Sharon can make sure that I don’t procrastinate my schoolwork too much as well. I will still be working as much as I can while going to school, so I put all of my classes in the mornings and early afternoons of Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. This leaves Tuesdays and Thursdays open for me to work, as well as evenings of the rest of the weekdays. It will definitely be busy, but I think we are both ready for a change of pace from the lazy summer days.

It rained last night, which was a pleasant change from the usual dry heat we’ve been seeing. Summer is still here, but Fall is just around the corner. We are both excited about the changing weather.

This week we went to Chris and Jieun’s new house to hang out with them and check out their new house. It was very nice! It has a nice pool and jacuzzi in the center of the complex, and the apartment is spacious and nice. We swam, ate and played games with them and Paul & Nikki.

Another random thing that happened this week was my tire blew out on the way to St George on the highway. We were going to Sharon’s first Ballet lesson, but we had to turn around and go home when it blew. Luckily, only the surface of the tire came off, and the metal mesh underneath was still intact. The tire still held air, so I was able to drive the car home slowly. The next day, I took it to Tire Pros and bought two new tires for the front (the other one was starting to fray as well). Then I went down to St George to get the Alignment done (it was out of alignment). All in all, it only cost about $240 for everything. It is good we got it done now though because we will be driving a lot more to and from school. And after the alignment and new tires, the shaking that would happen at higher speeds has stopped.

Yesterday, Sharon and I decided to head up to Springdale to see the various shops there. We looked at a few gift shops and some art galleries. There is some really amazing arts and crafts up there! Sharon and I really had a blast looking at all the cool things there. We ate lunch at Sol Foods by the entrance to Zion National Park before heading back. It was really nice to take an afternoon and just stroll down the street and enjoy nature a bit as well. We felt like tourists even though it was only about 30 minutes away.

Well, that was pretty much our week in a nutshell. I am excited about tomorrow, although I’m not excited to wake up so early (our first class starts at 8, and the school is a 30 minute drive away). I’ll be sure to post next week with all the details of our first week of school!

School starts on the 24th for Sharon and I. We are both really excited. Sharon is going to be getting a Certificate in Visual Technologies or something, and I am going to be working on my Bachelors for Computer Science. Sharon wants to get her Masters Degree in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), so we are planning on heading up to Provo to attend Brigham Young University next Fall 2010. We are excited about that.

The days are getting shorter and (slightly) cooler, and Sharon is excited for Fall’s approach, so that she won’t have to be so hot. I keep telling her that once she sees how cold it is, she will be wishing for Summer again, but she doesn’t believe me (yet). We will see what happens.

We are still waiting to hear back from the USCIS on the status of our Adjustment of Status application, so any prayers you could offer in our behalf would be much appreciated. We had to go down to Las Vegas twice already for Finger Prints (the first set weren’t legible).

This last Friday, we were invited to St George to eat lunch with Uncle Toby and Aunt Carrie, who were driving through town. It was really nice getting to see them again and hear about their lives and stuff. They treated us to IHOP, which was delicious.

We are planning on a few trips this year, but still have to better plan them. Among them are:

• Bryce Canyon
• Albuquerque, New Mexico for the Balloon show in October
• Salt Lake City for a Mission Reunion in September
• Boerne, Texas for a Family Reunion during Thanksgiving

We’ve had an eventful summer, taken a lot of trips, and done a lot of things, as you can see if you go read Sharon’s blog (while you’re there, check out the new butterfly in her signature, done by yours truly^^). I have been staying busy with work, doing a number of projects, including launching a new personal project site, MoneyScripts.net, which is a place where I can sell my Drupal Modules. It has been fun, and I’ve been working on it on the side for the past couple of months. I hope to keep adding more modules to it as time goes on this year.

Well, that’s our lives in a nutshell! I am making a goal to start making weekly entries again (on Sundays), so stay tuned for the next edition!

This post is to get all of you who are reading this to go here: Sharon on MommyModels to vote for Sharon! She is number 10 on the right, so just click and vote. If she wins, she will get a free photoshoot. That link also has some REALLY gorgeous pics of her for the photoshoot she had, so regardless of whether you want to vote, you should go check it out cause the pics are amazing! Here is a Preview:

One of the Photos from her Photoshoot

There are numerous ways to make money on the Internet these days. One of them is to make a popular site with lots of good content, and earn money either by charging people for membership or running ads. In my experience, the best way to make real money is by charging members a monthly subscription to access your site. Imagine if you have 100 members of your site, and that each one pays $10 a month for membership. That’s already $1000 a month residual income! Would that change your life? It would certainly help. Of course, a good site needs to be maintained, updated, and cared for. There are some tricky parts to consider when trying to make a successful membership site.

First, you should consider carefully the content you will have. It should be something original, something good, something that the users can’t get elsewhere for free. The users have to want what you are giving. This is the part I can’t really help you with, but I CAN give you some good pointers. It should be something you are interested in, because this will help you enjoy updating the site, and increase the quality of the content. It should also be something that many people are interested in, so that you can have a good audience. Preferably, it should be a niche that is not already overrun by competitors as well.

The next step is to decide how to make the site. In my experience, it is by far better to use an existing open source CMS (Content Management System) like Drupal than to build a site on your own or hiring someone to build it for. The reason I suggest Drupal for the basis of your site, is because Drupal is the fastest-growing open-source CMS today. It offers thousands of custom modules which you can use to get your site going without doing much coding. I use Drupal exclusively in all of my projects now. It can be customized to fit any site design needs.

The final step is setting up a way for the members to pay you. You need a way to control the content you have so that only paying members can see the ‘premium’ content, and you need a way to sell membership. In the old days, people would just manually add memberships or just put a password on a directory and email the password to people who pay. We are in modern times now, and there are much better ways to do this. What we want is a system that will dynamically grant and remove access to site content depending on the payments it gets from a user. Drupal already has a robust User System and Node Access system, which can both be used to this end.

One thing that Drupal lacks is a good Paid Membership module. Users can either spend hours and hours adapting the existing Ubercart or Ecommerce modules to fit their needs, (and usually having to settle for less than what they envisioned) or paying for a commercial module which will fit their needs perfectly out of the box. The problem is that, until recently, the commercial modules that exist were all very expensive. That is why I decided to make a new module to handle Site Membership Paid Subscriptions, which I will talk about later.

To control who can access what content on your site, you need an Access Control module. There are a few good choices here, such as the Taxonomy Access Control, Content Access, and Node Privacy By Role modules. Using these modules, you can set up your site so that only members with a certain role can view certain content types, or categories. This is the ideal way to do this. You can make, for example, a new role called ‘Premium Member’ and give that role access to the premium content on your site.

Next, you need to be able to sell the Premium Member role to users. This is where the module I mentioned earlier comes in to play. Drupal Paypal Subscriptions allows you to sell membership to your site using Paypal. Paypal is the best option for collection payments, since so many web users already have a Paypal account, and if they don’t they can still pay with a credit card through Paypal. What this module does, is it integrates your site with Paypal’s Subscription functionality, allowing you to sell recurring site membership to your users. You can define any number of Subscriptions for your site, setting the Price, Length, and other terms, including up to 2 Trial Periods, and specify which role should be added when the user signs up and removed when the user cancels his/her subscription. The Drupal Paypal Subscriptions module is easy to use and basically works out of the box, with minimal configuration on your part. You don’t even have to set up anything in your Paypal account, it is all configured straight from Drupal. You can also track payments and subscriptions with the module as well. Paypal Subscriptions is available for purchase from MoneyScripts.net.

So, if you are thinking about making a Paid Subscription website, I suggest going for a Drupal User Roles + Access Control + Paypal Subscriptions setup. You can have a membership site up and running in no time at all!

Sharon started her Photography Class this week at Dixie College, it is a part of the Community Education Program. She is WAY excited because in her heart Sharon is a student. She would go to school her whole life if she could. Sharon and I also did some fun things this week, like on Friday we went up to Provo with my mom to watch my brother Kendall play Tennis for State, and she wanted to meet up with an old friend, Vicki. Tyler came to watch Kendall play too, so it was good to see him again. Afterwards he gave us the grand tour of his apartment and his new (to him) ‘85 BMW. We went to see a movie (Taken) later with my mom at the $2 Theater. We also had a nice meal at Panda Express.

Sharon and I also went out Saturday. We went to eat at IHOP (I LOVED IT) and then went to play Miniature Golf at the Laser Tag place. It was cool because it was all in a black-light room, and it had lots of cool art work and fun things. We also got to see a Classic Cars show and then went to a movie (Watchmen, it was so bad we left half-way – seriously no plot and bad language and violence, if you haven’t yet seen it: don’t).

I had to give a lesson in Elders Quorum this morning, and it went pretty well. It was about ‘The Power of Forgiving’. Many people had good comments so it went by very smoothly and I was only able to get half of it done. It reminded me of when I used to give trainings to Missionaries on my mission.

Well, I suppose that’s all for this week. I’ve been working hard and things are getting caught up with my work, which is a big relief. I also have been working on the Adjustment of Status forms with Sharon, and we are getting close to being ready to send them in. Hopefully Tuesday or Wednesday. It will be a huge relief once we get those in as well. This summer we are planning on doing fun things with my friends, Paul, Nikki, Chris, Ben and June. Fun days are comin’! And Sharon is going to Hawaii in June to visit her friends there before they graduate.

We still haven’t sent any Thank-You cards, which is really sad because Sharon does have a lot of time during the day >.> I’m looking at you now Sharon with a strange look on my face, you’ll know why later when you read this! I am probably spelling things wrong because I’m not even looking at my keybiard or screen.

Random Pictures for this week:

Sharon and I at Weeping Rock

Is she really that sad to marry me? Haha. I love u babe~

Paul got his Associate’s Degree! Congratulations!

Sharon is a natural!

I love nature!!

Fun in the Park

Go Fish is an intense game

That’s enough for this week, to see more cool pics of the Picnic and hike and other stuff, be sure to check out Sharon’s Blog, it is always much better than mine^^ Until next time~