Chris Hammond, Father, Husband, Car Guy, Developer

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Chris Hammond is

a father, husband, developer, geek, car guy. The Director of Training for DotNetNuke Corporation. To learn more about Chris check out the about me page.

I use Strava to track my bicycle rides. Below you can see my recent activity.

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Chris has gone awol, nah he’s just crabbing in Half Moon Bay

Chris Hammond

09.06.11

So if you are anything like my mother you probably are wondering what the heck has Chris been up to lately? Well, I am not AWOL, just busy!

I spent last week in Lincoln Nebraska at the SCCA Solo National Championships, what’s that? Car racing. How’d I do? eh, not worth mentioning where I actually finished, but I did get to see friends I haven’t seen since Nationals in 2008, the last time I attended. I couldn’t really believe that I hadn’t been since 2008, but that is the truth, with the move to Colorado in 2009 and then California in 2010 I just didn’t get to go. I’ll have more blog posts/videos/photos from Solo Nationals in the coming week.

When I got back from Nationals I spent two days catching up with Natalie and Jacqueline. Sunday we headed into San Francisco to get out of Half Moon Bay and see some things. We didn’t do much, but had a nice brunch in the Presidio, drove around Golden Gate Park, and walked around near Fort Mason. Here's a photo from a lookout point at the Presidio

This morning we went to Olivia's first birthday party in San Carlos. Check out some of the photos from the party. Saturday Natalie and Jacqueline went to Sophia’s birthday party as well, photos here.

After the birthday party today we had a few folks over for a crab fest. A couple of weeks ago I had a crab dinner at a local restaurant and was kind of grumpy that I paid $22+ for half a pound of crab, so I decided that we should have our own crab dinner at our house. We had the Strohls (4), Jeff Seeling (1) and Heyward and Julia (2) over for dinner tonight. I picked up some crab from the Half Moon Bay Safeway. It was $7/lb, cooked, cracked and cleaned. I had gone to the Half Moon Bay Fish Market on Sunday to see how much it was there, I thought it was a good deal at $10/lb cooked/cleaned. I am glad that I went to Safeway this morning before the party to check things out though, the Yelp reviews for the Fish Market made me start to have second thoughts. Safeway turned out to be great for this dinner.

Basically we took the crab from Safeway, put it into foil lined and covered pans with a small amount of water in them, and put them on the grill for 6-9 minutes. I think they turned out great. We had 5 crabs, probably 12 lbs total, and it seemed to cover the 8 of us, though I think only 5 or 6 of us actually ate crab, in the future I’ll likely do 1 per person if we do this again. I only took 2 photos tonight, was too busy cleaning and having a good time with friends!

This week I have a lot of catching up to do on work! It was great to have the week off, but I feel like I am now way behind at the office!

A California Update

Chris Hammond

03.22.10

So things have been really hectic lately, so blogging has taken a backseat. So here’s a brief update on what’s been going on. I’ve been in California for almost three weeks now, minus a few days back home in Colorado for my Birthday. Work at DotNetNuke is going great, I enjoy being back in an office again (after working at home the past 7 months).

I’ve been staying in a hotel this whole time, switching locations after my trip to Colorado so that I could test how I would handle commuting. So far so good with commuting. I’ve been driving about 26 miles each way the past few days, which takes about 40-45 minutes around 8am. On Friday leaving 40 minutes earlier it only took me 25 minutes, so I am going to give that a shot again Monday to see what traffic is like.

Finding a place to live hasn’t gone as smoothly as I would have liked. We were surprised to learn that the rental market on the peninsula is competitive! So far we’ve only actually applied to one place, not getting selected. There are a number of places available, though most of them aren’t what we are looking. We’ve come to accept that we’re going to have settle for about half the square footage of what we have in Colorado. I found a couple of places today that I think are interesting, one that I am really hoping works out. I’ll post more info if it does!

I’ve decided I’m going to sell my 18’ car trailer. We towed it out here to California and it’s in storage. I figure I am not going to be racing much over the next year, so holding onto the trailer isn’t something that is going to be necessary and paying storage fees on it doesn’t make too much sense. I’m going to put it up on Craigslist later this week.

Back in Colorado the house is still on the market. We’ve had 14 different showings in the 6 weeks it has been on the market. We’re hoping that something happens with it this month, we’re working on lowering the price right now. If something doesn’t happen this month we are likely going to rent the place out for a year or two. I figure that putting some money into a mortgage will be better for us than simply paying rent out here in California for a few years and not getting any equity out of things.

Yesterday I got to have a little bit of fun, after being frustrated with the housing search. I went to dinner with my best friend from 8th and 9th grade when we lived in Riverside California. Back in the day Jaysen and I were inseparable. I have only seen him a couple of times since we left Riverside back in the summer of 92, the last time being a few days before Natalie and I got married in 2006. I met him and his girlfriend in San Francisco last night for dinner. We had a great time catching up. I spent the afternoon driving up the coast and taking photos.

I have a ton of photos to go through, though I am not sure when I’ll get to them! Here are a few that I have uploaded. (you can see more on my California 2010 page)

Going back to Cali, to Cali, to Cali

Chris Hammond

01.04.10

It’s been a year since I was last in Cali, and I’m heading back! What’s the big deal? Well I half consider California home, even more so than Missouri even though I lived in MO for 14 years. I spent 6-9 grades, and 11-12 in California, in both Southern and Northern California. I got married in California, my brother lives in California, and quite a few of my friends do as well. So any chance I get to go back I look forward to.

This time around I’m heading out to the Bay area for a few days of DotNetNuke Training with a client, I’ll be there later tonight training Tues thru Thursday, and then flying home on Saturday. I’m going to visit with some friends from high school Friday night at a little dinner get together I’ve arranged. I’m also hoping to check out the DotNetNuke offices in San Mateo on Friday while I’m there.

I’ve yet to decide what camera(s) I’m taking with me, I’d like to take both DSLrs but I don’t want to carry them both. If I had a flash attachment for the 5D Mark II I would leave the old Rebel at home, but I currently don’t, so I need the Rebel if I want to shoot any flash shots of the gathering Friday night, though I guess I could just use the point and shoot for that.

It looks like 2010 is going to be another busy travel year, I am headed to Rhode Island next week for 2 days of DNN consulting out there as well.

Stay tuned for some pictures of my Cali travels later this week.