I really should post more here, but I have been keeping up my own site-based Wordpress blog at CosmicEchoes.org alive and busy with postings, videos, audio and more.

I did earn that Associated of Applied Science in Electronic Media Production in May, and just finished, two weeks ago, my next to last semester here at Central Wyoming College, with another 18 credit hour, 4.0 GPA chunk o'school.

Enjoying the holiday break by catching up on web projects, graphics design, and some business projects. After this coming semester, I'll have my Associates of Applied Science in Web Design, and start on my bachelors degree in Emergency and Disaster Management. My last posting many months ago mentioned Jacksonville state, and I've since found that Upper Iowa University has a new EMA degree, as well as a masters in Homeland Security...and BOTH degrees can be earned completely ONLINE. Plus, UIU is associated with my current college, here at CWC, and I can stay here, work on the UIU classes, take some of the lower courses here, and still be working here at my current job, and maybe even still be part of the CWC Student Senate.

Time will tell. For more of what's been going on here in Central Wyoming, visit my Cosmic Echoes website above.

Take care, and happy holidays...

Rich

Back after a long delay .... some of you have probably been running that infamous line from the movie, "Dances With Wolves", thru your minds over and over again....

"Now why don't he write?"

- (in reference to, for those who may have missed it, the bleached skeleton of a victim of native american vengence and scalping, laying in the grass of a sunny afternoon)

No, I'm not dead...or even mortally wounded...

In case you were wondering, I've been REALLY BUSY with college again.

(better have been! geez....*9* months since your last post here!)

Being a middle-aged old fart, with a wife and two of my kids -ALL of us- in college at the same time is nerve wracking, to say the least. Annie and I are entering our fourth full semester, and both of us took summer classes as well.

I'll be getting my Broadcasting (Electronic Media Production) Associates of Applied Science Degree on May 13th, 2005, and will be breathing a BIG sigh of relief when I take that walk across the stage.

I'll be the first in my family to have earned a college degree on my dad's side of the family. Dad (1936-2000) came within one semester of getting a Bachelor of Science degree from Texas A&M but dropped out in the late 1950s when we kids started being born. He tried going back to get those last few classes, but never did finish the degree, even though he worked nearly 40 years as an electrical engineer at Texas Instruments.

I'll have worked my royal buttocks off in getting this first degree, and will be back next fall after this May graduation to continue my work on my SECOND degree...this one an Associates of Applied Science Degree in Web Design, a degree taking a bit longer as CWC only has one Web Design instructor, who also doubles as the college's webmaster.

Annie will have earned two associates degrees during this same time frame, including English and Social Science, and daughter Laurie will have earned both Theater and English Degrees by then.

Next year, our youngest son Kenny, (visit his website at http://www.kennyfleetwood.com ) will be coming to college after he graduates from Riverton High School, to work on degrees in music.

He already has done tremendous work on his own, getting his first DEMO CD done last fall, and writing more than 40 songs, with lyrics and music, as well as playing several concerts at local venues... including producing a multi-band concert night at the Riverton Fairgrounds to raise money for the Asian Tsunami Relief fund of the Red Cross, sponsored by the Riverton Library, Coca Cola Bottling Company of Riverton, the Ledge Coffee House, and the Armory.

He was invited to sing at the Wyoming Mens Choir event in Gillette on Jan. 16th of this year, with 170 men, making the largest men's choir ever in the state. He also sang the national anthem at the High School's basketball playoffs last month as well, and is a member of the Riverton H.S. Jazz Band, Concert Choir, AND Jazz Choir. He's also played parts in two college theater productions, and is practicing for an upcoming role in the next production here on campus.

He has his own recording studio setup in his bedroom, with hi definition microphones, multichannel recording hardware, his own PC with multitrack editing capability, and his collection of acoustic and electric guitars, midi keyboard, and amps (we've helped a little bit with hardware needs for him).

He spent most of the fall contacting record companies nationwide with a letter campaign seeking permission to forward his DEMO CD to them, and got contacts back from Brand New and Victory Records, and has found an advocate in a friend of mine, who spent 3 decades in the music world (country music), who still has contacts all along the east coast. Maybe Ken will hit it big sooner than he thinks...he sure has the talent.

Anyway, enough about the family, the degrees, and parents...

School for me has been exciting, enlightening, and EXHAUSTING.

Up to now, I've been working three part time jobs (tutoring, doing an overnite DJ radion show on 100,000 watt KTRZ-FM, and working master control at Wyoming Public TV three nites a week for the graveyard shift) to make ends meet, while taking between 16 to 20 hours of classes a semester. The homework load has been incredible, the labs for web and media ungodly in requirements, and the completion of the past semesters VERY much looked forward to.

Just what have I accomplished here at Central Wyoming College, since walking out of McDonalds in Worland on June 1st, 2003, to seek my destiny, after taking the final straw from a tyrant of an owner/operator, who made threats to my livelihood and family's future for not working 100 hour weeks anymore?

Well, the summer of 2003 was spent at Worland Cleaners, where I made $100 more a week as a Plant Manager, than I did as a General Manager at McDs.

I decided mid-July to go back to school, if the funding and student loans could be worked out. They were, and the last week of August, 2003, the family and I moved from our little old, drafty rent house in Worland, to a two bedroom dorm on the CWC campus. My wife Annie joined me in going back to school full time, and Rob and Laurie took classes as well.

I've done a lot of good, made a lot of friends, and done EVERYTHING I didn't do at college the first time around (1978-1986 at Richland Community College in North Dallas).

I've sitting on a 3.89 grade average, after getting my first 2 B's last semester (I *was* taking 20 hours of courses, and working those 3 jobs, mind you!), and have been on the Presidents Honor List three times, and the Deans List once.

What have I accomplished with my school work?

4 new student oriented websites, for the entire student body of just over 2000, here at Central Wyoming College.

A series of college student recruiting videos for the college, to help make future students aware of some of CWC's many programs.

A full 20 hours of music shows producted, directed, and edited for the college radio station (think space and ambient music).

Several full length video productions of campus events, including the September 2004 convocation with Gerry Spence (2 hours), the 2004 Theater Department medeviel "Madrigal Feaste" (2 hours), and the January 2005 Wyoming Men's Choir in Gillette, Wyoming (1.5 hours, 170 men, 6 songs, two cameras, one operator....me).

One new fully realized website for the SurvivalRing Online project - http://www.myfalloutshelter.com , done for my Dreamweaver/Fireworks class project.

Two visits to Cheyenne for Wyoming Public TV to televise State Government events, including last July's special session, and this years opening sessions and State of the State Address by the Governor. I got to meet Governor Dave Freudenthal twice (see a pic of him and I shaking hands in his office with the Wyoming State Seal behind us on my SurvivalRing homepage at http://www.survivalring.org ), as well as the speakers of the house and senate, and my local state representatives, while roaming the floors of the house and senate running cables and checking connections, and then running the audio board of our satellite truck during live digital broadcasts.

I have made the National Deans List, the American Scholars Award, been initiated into Phi Theta Kappa National Honor Society, and was one of only two people from our campus to be nominated by the CWC Student Senate for the Wyoming Community College Council Commission's Student Leader award (7 campus's statewide, so I'm one of 14 nominated, and we leave Monday for Cheyenne for a special get together on this), and I have voted as a Central Wyoming College Student Senator for Spring 2005 by the student body. Not bad for an old guy, huh?

I'm also president of the CWC Web Development and Tutor Clubs, President of the Alpha Chi chapter of the Phi Theta Kappa, and participate heavily with CWC Student Activity committee each week. And, in my *spare* time, I'm the campus geek, fixing other student's computers, or saving them from virus infections. It's nice to feel wanted.

Lot's of stuff sure has been going on, ya say? Yep...you could say that.

After we finish our coursework here in Central Wyoming, we are making plans to head back south to warmer climates, as the cold here has put Annies bad hip through major stress. We're looking at Jacksonville State University in Alabama as a possible next stop, where I'd like to earn my Bachelors Degree in Emergency Management, with a minor in Public Safety Telecommunications.

This program is one of only a dozen or so listed in FEMA's Higher Education Program website as offering 4 year degrees in Emergency Management, and I think this is where I need to be. We'll know for sure in a year or so.

There....I think that ALL the above should cover the "nine months" of missing bloggingness on this site...I'll try to be more timely in the future.

There's much more to come, and many more things to accomplish. SurvivalRing is about to go places even *I* never expected.

Thanks to ALL OF YOU for hanging in there thru the thick and thin, and I hope that you'll keep coming back for more.

Rich
Sunday Morning....SuperBowl 2004

Hi, all...

Things are going swimminly here in Central Wyoming. School is out for a week or two, work is still keeping me busy, and small minor annoyances still pop up now and then, but otherwise, all is well with the world.

More new files have been added to the Civil Defense Now download section, and all the broken links are being fixed. I have also been working on the NEXT generation of SurvivalRing, with entire new sections, new navigation layout, and lots more online resources for you. Still in development is a database system for searching, listing, finding, and reading ALL the hundreds of megabytes of authentic civil defense and homeland security information that we have online right this very moment. It is going to be amazing, I promise.

Probably the greatest news is that the SurvivalRing Radio Program is coming close to being a reality. Since November of last year, I have been working part time as a radio announcer at a REAL radio station ( KTRZ in Riverton, Wyoming ), for the VERY specific reason of getting real world experience in writing, producing, recording and actually BEING a live radio host.

Of course, KTRZ is "only" a 100,000 watt FM station, and I'm "only" of the three main DJs, covering the 8pm to 5am shift, and certainly not least, our station signal covers "just" one-third of Wyoming...but I consider it swell training for my MAIN goal, of being "the source" of online preparedness and survival information with downloads, links, audio, and soon VIDEO. SurvivalRing Radio is going to start small, but eventually will have full archive of available shows, either in MP3 format, or streamed.

Topics? You name it...if I've mentioned it on the site, in emails, or in articles, it will be covered on SurvivalRing Radio. I'll be interviewing all those same folks you've heard about for years, but without the sensationalistic, opportunistic angles that Art Bell or similar talk show hosts have used in years past. My goal, Facts...not Fiction.

My return to college is going great...a 4.0 grade for the fall 2003 AND spring 2004 semesters, which put me on the President's honor list at Central Wyoming College, as well as invited to join the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society...something I *never* expected. I've also been named to the National Deans List, and named an All-American Scholar by the United States Achievement Academy. With this kind of luck ( and continued hard work, obviously ), I hope to get a few scholarships to get even farther with my college goals. To top off this great turn of events, I just added "another" part time job to the list of current projects of "Richard's Career Enhancement Plan for the future".

Starting a few weeks ago, I'm training as a "Broadcast Assistant" for Wyoming Public TV. It's only 10 to 18 hours a week, but it's simply one of the most astounding opportunities I've had yet to get my foot into the door of the media world. WyoPTV is based here at the CWC campus, where I'm taking classes, and almost 90% of the state gets their public television signal from us. My job is to sit in Master Control, maintain the logs and update them, grab shows from the main PBS satellites for rebroadcast, keep tabs on all the sat signals, servers, and video players, and even all the tapes for all the shows on a weekly basis. In other words, I am responsible for the "entire" Wyoming PBS network when I'm on shift. How often does ANYONE get the chance to learn skills like THAT!

And probably the my most favorite news, and best thing yet for EVERYONE...my tax refund came in, and I have finally, after almost 40 months, been able to upgrade to "state of the art" computer power. My laptop, which I replaced with another used system last summer ( exact same make, model, speed, etc) with GREAT thanks to many of you who sent donations, and allowed me to be able to continue working on all the projects, is going to be put to rest ( meaning, sold on eBay). My new system, purchased as "factory recertified", via an online computer discounter I've dealt with for a couple of years now, is almost 3 gigahertz in speed, has 160 gigs of harddrive space, a DVD burner, CD Burner, 512 meg of ram, 128 meg video card, USB2.0, firewire, TV tuner card, and more, gives me ALL the power needed to create, edit, produce, market, and burn any and every video project I can come up with, create all the audio needed for the radio show, and literally handle ANY digital project I can dream up ( and believe me, you don't have enough waking hours available to hear MY list). With the 80 gig external harddrive, and 52x external CD Burner I bought for the laptop staying with the new system, I can burn twice as many CD's, compile DVD data CD's of unbelievable content specs ( like half a million pages of documents on ONE DVD data disk with 4 gigs of storage), and have ONLINE and AVAILABLE nearly one quarter of a TERABYTE of info at my immediate disposal.

In other words, yes, things are going well. This new system, with extended 2 year warranty, and without a monitor ( I have 3 unused 17 inch moniters sitting around the dorm ), cost me only $900, and with my sale of the good laptop, the dead laptop, and the laptop accessory cards (USB 2.0 card, Realport Ethernet cards, etc.), I'll have less than $500 cash invested in this powerful system.

Selling the laptop was the deal I made with my wife to enable me to get the new system, and still be able to use our refund and pay on all our other monetary needs ( 4 out 5 family members in college, one approaching wedding for my oldest son, minor car repairs, etc.). The incredible power of this system, and sheer speed, will let me get that oh-so-behind scanning of all these HUNDREDS of unscanned civil defense documents sitting here in sealed boxes, DONE...faster, easier, and yes, better. You will be the recipient of the new documents, which is the BIGGEST reason for upgrading with the focus on POWER.

As always, you're continued support and interest of EVERYTHING I do with SurvivalRing, is why I KEEP doing it. If it can be done, and it helps folks to learn ANY aspect of how to better take care of themselves in good, and bad, times, I will do what it takes to make sure EVERYONE has a chance to know about it.


Richard
richard@survivalring.org

(Sun just came out...bright and clear...hopefully enough to melt most of the snow from our first winter storm of the season late last week...only 12 inches of snow 8^p )

Wowsers...what a past couple of weeks! First illness, then loads of homework, then mid-terms, then a huge snow storm. Doing better with all, so I am catching up all the little things I've been missing, including this BLOG. Hope you missed me.

Classes are doing well. 3.85 average right now, on 17 hours of credits, so I'm happy. WebDev club is slowly growing, and we've had corporate support from Macromedia, Microsoft, O'Reilly, and McGraw Hill publishers, with more in the pipeline to come. I've sent out a press release thru the college to hit the local papers in the next week or two, and we should have an influx of members bring the meeting attendance level up quickly.

There is also a new club starting up to create a campus newspaper, which oddly enough, doesn't currently exist( the paper that is), so I jumped on the wagon and will be helping edit, then doing the layout for printing...great skills building, some interesting work for my future journalism career, and it also opens up the door for JOURNALISM SCHOLARSHIPS, which I am definitely going to need to reach my goal in of Bachelors ( and maybe even Masters) degrees in Journalism.

Websites are keeping me busy also. The page count for the WebDev club website is over 130 individual pages. I am also creating a new subsite for the Student Senate and all Central Wyoming College campus clubs, that will offer multiple scripts for EACH club, at CWC Student Senate and Clubs. This site, when done, will push 150 pages in size, to begin with. Yes, I am very good at site design and architecture...planning is one of my biggest strengths. It's going to be quite impressive, though I'm not yet at the point of doing a fully dynamic (such as PHP) system, that is a future goal. This site will use server side includes (SSI), , and a few other semi-dynamic tools to make it smooth, but it is an upward move in my web progress, and a great resource for every single student (1800 plus) on this campus. I did talk with the college webmaster yesterday about getting a server set up for the student body, and running it thru the IT department's high speed net portal, but the entire IT department is in reorganization, so we will probably wind up with the full site on a remote host such as Hostrocket.com when done.

Finishing up a business site for my ex-boss, and just got a call yesterday to put together a small site for an employee of the college, for his son's white water business, which will help a little bit for grocery money.

Speaking of which, my part time work study job vanished week before last, so I am currently looking for off campus work to take care of bills. If you need any web work, graphics design, or anything computer related, PLEASE give me a shout. I'm quick, cheap, and know what I'm doing.

Personal projects right now include research into the federal grants program, and I've found the grant I need to pursue my civil defense document archive project to completion, but I need to become a registered non-profit entity first. May take a while, but I hope to make it happen. Taking SurvivalRing Unlimited to a 501(c)3 non-profit organization has been my goal from day one, and I know more about it now than I did even a few months ago. Wish me luck with it.

Gotta run to class...ten minutes until my WinXP OpSys class, and I get my mid term exam score then, so I don't want to miss that.

Look for more later...

Richard

(Cold wind blowing last nite...and me stuck up on a 50 foot high scissor lift, videoing a football game...without enough warm clothes...ARRGH!)

I've had some "blog" issues the past couple of weeks. My class/work/lab/sleep schedule is wound tighter the Rush Limbaugh after a trip to Florida. I've tried posting using BLOGGER's online post system, and after a lengthy addition being finished, and all the stuff ready to go, I hit "post", and my content simply "vanishes" from the screen, and since I haven't hit cntl+c tp copy into memory...it's just gone...so I get "pist" when I hit "post" now. In my worried state, and impending "whatever" on the schedule, I would not have time to start over again.

Anyway, had many things to add both times, and now that I have time, some isn't coming back to mind as fast as I'd like it to...( the sorrows of being an old man...at 43).

Good things going on at school this week. My new webdev club is up and running. First meeting this week...handful of students...but had short notice after getting the meeting place AND the college senate approval of the clubs charter.

I did get it added to the college website front page this, last week, and next week, it will be in the campus newsletter as well. With signs posted on a the bulletin boards across the quad and in almost every hallway, we should get something good going here as far as membership.

The even better news is that I talked to the Academic Vice President, J.D. Rottweiler (yes, that's his real name) and after a short but stirring speech by me regarding "getting outside interest in the web development curriculum", I have the ok to open the club/users group to the general public.

Being one of the biggest campuses in the whole western half of the state of Wyoming, as well as one of the biggest population centers in that same reqion, we can effect quite a bit of positive influence in the computer/internet arena through some really concerted efforts. I am looking forward to this challenge immensely.

I've added a few more changes to the club site, got registered with the corporate sponsered user group programs at Microsoft, Macromedia, O'Reilly, SAMS, and many others, and we'll be getting some great evaluation software, free books, and so on to make the club a RESOURCE, where there really isn't any in the state that I know of.

On the home front, my youngest son, Kenny, played his first paying gig at a local cafe in an acoustic guitar concert in Lander, with his two bandmates, Sean and Jason. He did well, in an 18 song set, that lasted about almost two hours. He and Sean wrote over half the songs themselves, which is quite impressive.

I shot video of the most of it ( problems with one of the tape caused me to miss some of it). Will try to get a couple of songs digitized and on the site someday soon.

With my contacts here on campus, I will be able to get Kenny and his buds into the recording studio to get a few tracks cut before the holidays, and will help him get some CDs cut to pass around at future concerts.

Enough for now...running the business lab this afternoon (on a saturday) and have to get ready to shut it down in a half hour, so I'll sign off. (This post WILL get uploaded first try...I hope).

Richard

( Sunset approaches on this windy, warm evening...as autumn is setting up for a possibly hard winter...if you believe the Farmers Almanac...)

Long weekend past. Mostly working on homework and some computer projects. I finished filming all the shots for my first video project for electronic media production, and only have voiceover work to do before final editing and first rough cut of the finished project. In media practicum, I have knocked out my first two audio mixing projects, and have the efx for the third one done, putting me about 2 weeks ahead of schedule there.

Got the ok to create a website for the Central Wyoming College radio station, and have quite a few of the graphics done, except for the masterpiece I am going to create in 3d rendering for the main page. The station's name is "The Stargate", and it was named BEFORE the movie of the same name came out. It's a light jazz, new agey format station, and is mostly computerized. SO, the station logo/artwork is going to be somewhat etheric, yet earthy....think the movie Armageddon's logo, but without the flames and impending doom, yet lots more stars and galaxies.

The web geek club I am chartering is going forward. I finished the by-laws, and turned in the list of members already interested, and that should be turned around and we should be able to go live next week. Have the website laid out and halfway done now, and it is going to be a fun project.

Got to sit down with Steve F. today, the college's webmaster/programmer. Spent two hours configuring removable drives to use in the business computer lab that I am a tech in for part of the week, and successfully set up on the system MACROMEDIA Studio MX, Apache Webserver, PHP 4, and mysql. All configured and ready to start doing the writing, editing, programming, and updates to get the college site moving forward and lightning speed. AND I am getting paid in REAL money for this work, PLUS will be getting independent study college credit towards my degree for this work.

Lastly, the radio station project I am going to be cranking on in my own time is figuring out how to stream a radio station that is NOT already on the internet, within the confines of the college's bandwidth limites for ANYTHING streaming, and the hardware and cost I am going to have to work with. Basically going to be doing it from scratch...should be quite an experiment, but a perfect opportunity to learn how to do it myself when I get to the point of my very OWN radio station.

In other words...this really is the time of my life...

Will post again soon....

Richard

( Nice weekend, sunny and warm. Now, a front approaches from the upper northwest, and Isabel comes from the east 1800 miles away...someone's gonna get wet)...

Missed posting Monday...sorry. Thought about it, when I wasn't near a computer.

In my classes, got my first video script done along with a shot list, the grand tour of the college TV station ( homebase for ALL Wyoming Public Television stations), the audio production room, and the video production room.....an UNGODLY amount of electronic toys for a geek such as myself to play with, much less earn a college degree with. MY mind is racing with all the infinite possibilities.

Playing with Photoshop 7 in Multimedia...steep learning curve. Used to using Paint Shop Pro, V.7. Similar power, completely different interfaces...

The CWC WebDev Club is a go. Got the forms, have almost all the signatures and first members lined up, doing a table at the college INFO FAIR tomorrow, between classes, and the club by-laws and first pages of the website pretty much done. This, I think, is going to be a BIG event for me in this turn thru the rigors of college. Not often someone gets to charter a NEW club on a campus, from scratch.

Will be putting the first pages together on my site, at this URL...

http://cwcwebdevclub.survivalring.org

...if you get a hankering to check it out.

Gonna run now...getting dark and I have a long way to walk home across campus...almost 400 yards back to the dorm!!!

Cya tomorrow.

Richard