On friday I recieved a phone call from my Mother, my Grandmother had passed away early friday morning, everything had happened so fast that the family was caught off guard. When Grandfather passed last year there was some warning and time to prepare, it was sad but not wholly un-expected. This was different, and I'm still adjusting, I don't think it's fully settled in yet. Next week I'll fly out to California, spend some time with my folks and as with all my grandparents I knew carry them to their final resting place. There will come a day when I will carry my parents there as well, and much later (I hope) my children will carry me to lay with the rest of my heritage, for me it's an act of respect and honor.

My Grandmother was an interesting person, she was a habitual vitamin popper and as a kid staying summers with her, I was never sure what was in those things but I always suspected it wasn't good. I can remember watching in awe as she would take a literal pile of them every morning, and of course none of the grandchildren where immune!, I never had a problem taking pills but some of those tablets I'm sure where meant for livestock and not little children. I remember her as rough and tumble, awnry, funny and touching at times, Grandfather was her foil in life and together they kept each other in balance. She had a laugh that I can still hear to this day and made... well let's face it, she was not the best cook! As a kid I distinctly remember eating Buckwheat pancakes and thinking...'How could you mess pancakes up??'.

Despite all that, she loved her Grandchildren passionately, sometimes that would emerge in ways unexpected. But even when it was hard to take it was because she loved us, as I grew older our relationship changed and to this day I distinctly remember her telling me that I was 'A big, kind, gentle man' and that more than anything else before or since has effected me. It's something that I have passed on to my sons, and it's something that I hope they pass onto theirs. My Grandmother impacted me in many ways, she was not always the most easy person to get along with but I can tell you that in many ways she helped make me the man I am today.

To this day I'm still hurt over my Grandfathers passing, and the irony of life is that during his service I shielded her from the sun and got to have a little quality time with her, I wish it was more. She thanked me for what I wrote about grandfather here and I spoke to her a couple of times in the last year, but life has a way of pulling us out of what's important. And now I will meet her again, less than a year from our last meeting to lay her to rest at the same place that I laid my grandfather to rest. Irony can be painful.

Life is seldom fair, but with determination and peserverance we can make a difference, Grandmother was a nurse for many many years, she was always there to help. And even when it didn't seem like it, she always loved us unconditionally. She was wise, she was funny and I will never be the same because of her, and isn't that how it should be?. I'm sure right now she and Grandfather are talking and having a great time, they loved each other fiercly and I'm positive their is great rejoicing in heaven. I say this last part with humor, but I can just her now saying something like... 'Ohhhhh Fred!!!' in exasperation, and you know what? that makes me feel a little better.

It's been a while since I did an update, over the holidays I moved into a new job and have been adapting to that change in my life. I have pretty much finished the shop, the only remaining issue is going to be air conditioning for this summer. But every other piece is done and I even have wood in stock for building.

However with the advent of the new CNC machine, I've been re-tooling a good number of my processes and working on making tools and parts for others as well. While I'm not making much money, every dollar that we get doing CNC work is going towards an upgrade of the machines software, we are also working on introducing a new site in the next month that will allow builders to buy parts and jigs from us, it will be a seperate enterprise from Patriot Guitars. For now I'll just leave it at that. :)

Also we have moved a new hosting site, you won't see any difference now but ther are some pretty big changes coming. I have more control over my environment now and my intention is to add a good deal more substance to the site, some of the things planned are:

I'm super excited about all the changes, we spent a good deal of time and money revamping our logo, we even made new headstock logos for the guitars. I think it was money well spent, and I can't wait to get it all online. As well there are guitars to be built and I'll be posting lots of new pictures as I try out some new designs..

On November 1st 2006 I lost one of my biggest hero's, he wasn't famous, he wasn't rich, and I don't think I ever told him how much his wisdom shaped my life. At 95 years old my Grandfather was man that I don't many could match in stature and accomplishments, some of the high points of his life are:

All of that is very impressive, but what I remember most about my grandfather was his cheerfulness, there was nothing so serious that he could not make a joke out of to make you smile. He told great story's and could take as well as give out any practical joke, the summers I spent working with him on the ranch in Nevada are probably the best times of my life. Words cannot express how giant a figure he was in my life, he wasn't shy about giving advice and I learned to take his words to heart, to this day I do everything to the utmost that I can, something I watched him do over and over. Even simple things like cleaning a window where done with precision and pride, I didn't know it at the time (I was 12) but little things like that would later drive the way I approached work later in life.

I have never in my life run across another person quite like him, and I think it's to our detriment as a society that we don't have more people like him around. There was something about his generation that gave them a presence, that made them stand out. Maybe it was the Great Depression, or World War II, whatever it was it's gone and I've not seen it again and it makes me very sad. He left behind a Wife of 89 years, four children, 11 Grandchildren and 14 Great Grandchildren, we all miss him terribly. Everyone who knew him respected and loved him, and that I think is his greatest legacy, because whether we know it or not. As his Grandchildren he impacted our lives, with his humor, his wit, his smile and mostly his unending love.

Summertime 2005, I had taken some time off work and traveled up to the Hapsburg area of northern California. I was going to attend a guitar setup class given by Harry Fleischman, I remember Harry being very gracious, I learned skills that I still apply to this day when setting up a guitar. It was for me the highlight of that year, the very next day I sat in my cubicle at work and tried to absorb the news that we had been acquired.

That started what we termed the year of change, it's been well over a year since that monday morning. And up until Friday, October the 27th my future remained a large unknown in my life, during that span of time we have endured the following changes:

We've had lot's of internal things going on during that time, emergency room runs, kids going off to school, making new friends, and trying to start Patriot back up. It's been fun, harrowing and maddening at times, Michelle and I took some time off in the early spring and traveled up to the Mcall area of Idaho. That has been the only real vacation we have had in a long long time.

At the end of September I gladly took off two months to stop, recharge my batteries and decide what I wanted to do from this point on. I considered a number of options, and finally decided that I was good at being an engineer. I like the work, I enjoy the challenge and I like working with technology. I've done this for so long now that I was at first concerned that I had burned myself out, but after a lot of thought on the issue I decided there must be something wrong with my brain because I still love doing it.

Since my time off I've been talking to two different companies about employment, I ended up with two offers which sounds like a good position to be in. But from my viewpoint it made the choosing all that much harder, when I went to work for Macromedia in 1999, I did research on the company, I checked out everything I could and because I had done contract work with them I knew how they treated their employees. In some ways it was a no brainer decision, having traveled all over the country and working with a number of very high profile companies, I knew what I wanted. This time out however, I was faced with jobs that I did not have any kind of real look into, I had to go somewhat on faith.

After a great deal of soul searching, on Friday, October 27th I made my final decision. Come the first week of december I will be working for Crucial Memory as a CRM engineer (sound familiar? ;). Michelle and I celebrated friday evening, and finally brought the dreaded year of change to a close, I can breathe again finally. I think the deciding factor for me was how professionally everything was handled on their part and how great the team was, it's not often that you run across 'real' teams that can laugh and work together. That I think more than anything else sold me on Crucial, not to say the other company wasn't great as well it's just that when I met the people at Crucial I really connected, and more than anything else that's was makes working worthwhile.

So much has changed over the past 18 months, my first time in Idaho was the day Karan, Joshua, and I drove here from Concord. We have grown to love not only the state, but the people and the little town we settled in, to us it's small town America at it's best. Finally we can close the book on our year of change, it's time for us to move on. There is so much left to do, I'll have another update by the end of the week, there have been a great deal of changes in regards to Patriot I've been so busy with that I have not shared, here is a sample:

I'll post another at the end of the week, there is a great deal of work to be accomplished this week, I have to get busy or it will never get done :)

All throughout this year our number one goal has been to finish the workshop so I could start building again, it's been been an incredibly busy year for us and it's hard to think that we are now almost 3/4 done with it, time is so fleeting. We had originally slated June 1st as our rollout date, then July, but a series of setbacks prevented us from finishing. It's been incredibly frustrating at times, one minute your working at a breakneck pace and then next your waiting idly for a back-ordered part to show up. Building this shop has been like putting a giant puzzle together with some of the parts missing or not showing up until much later, we've changed our plans more times than we can count, run into problems with vendors and other businesses providing services and been constantly frustrated by the dreaded 'backorder' status on critical items.

All that being said as of August 7th, the workshop is now ready for building, it's not completely finished but there is enough done that I can start building guitars again. The major components are in and as of the week of August 8th I'll be ordering building supplies to get the shop back into action, some things like Glues and other items didn't make the move from California so I have to order new supplies. Along with that I allowed my stock of guitar specific items to dwindle before the move so all that has to be stocked up again (I however have grown a very large collection of sides, backs and tops for building). So you may be wondering what my first project will be??

That requires a small story to explain, you see one item that I really need for the new shop is a new table saw, my old one is about 12 years old now and is starting to show it's age, I use it constantly and for the first time I've had to make a number of repairs on it. So in my research for a new one I visited our local Woodcraft store, after talking with the owner for a while we hit upon the idea of me teaching a class on how to build a string instrument. I'm always up for a new challenge, but you only get three days!! what can you possibly build in three days?? There's only one answer to that question:

A Ukulele From A Kit!!

It's the only thing small enough and easy enough to actually build in a short time frame, so there you have it my first project is a Uke!!. I've been wanting to build one for quite a while, so now's my chance, I'm actually going to build 2 of them, one plain from the kit and then one inlaid and done like I would do a guitar. I will be adding them to my lineup of instruments next year at some point (but not from a kit mind you). I've very much looking forward to teaching a class on this, it's good exposure and should be a blast.

Beyond that I have a long road ahead, there's a Hawaiian guitar that's waiting to be finished, a new dreadnought for my brother (he gets the first of the Dallas line), a double neck guitar (12 string on top and 6 string on bottom) done in Koa and the first of the lexington guitars, not to mention I also have a classical waiting to be built. It's a tall order and a bit overwhelming but I've built enough guitars that I know exactly what needs to be done, I just have to get busy, I'll be posting updates and putting a new section in the gallery called "Work In Progress". At the same time I'm working on a new bracing system that will debut on the Lexington, that guitar will represent everything I've learned about building guitars up to this point, it will feature a number of new innovations that I have been planning out for a long time now. When it's close to being finished I'll give more details about what I have planned and what new innovations it has.

I've had a year off from building, in that time my company was acquired, I moved my family from California to Idaho, we bought a new house, Michelle started a new job, my sons now both drive (gads!!), I've re-furbished an entire kitchen on my own. We renovated a good portion of our new home and I've built what I've been told now a number of times is the dream woodworking shop, we have fallen in love with both the people and the state of Idaho and made some good friends here, I bought of all things a used boat so we could go fishing. I'm hoping that things will slow down next year but somehow I doubt it, I hate complacency and it's not very often that we just have an idle day (they do happen though). And there's still more to do, we have not even touched to upstairs portion of the house, in fact the downstairs is still not finish and that needs to be done first! After reading all that I think I need a nap.

So back to the shop for a bit, when I said it's not finished let me clarify by pointing out what we have done:

I will post pictures later in the week of the shop in detail, and then a final set when we completely finish working on it. I start building guitars tomorrow (starting with the ukulele), it's taken a great deal of effort and time to get to this point but it was worth the wait. I made some shelves today and and when cutting the MDF I turned on the dust collection system, normally I would be sprayed with MDF dust and there would be a cloud in the shop, but with the new system neither happened. That to me was worth the price of admission alone, I despise more than anything else in the world cutting wood and having it sprayed all over the shop and into the air. It gets into your mouth, your nose, it covers everything in a fine dust... well no more!!

Now off too building!!!

I'm not sure what it is about updates that makes them so hard to write, I think it's just finding the time to sit and write for a period of time without interruption, our lives are so busy it's a challenge to find time to devote to penning news.

This is going to be a long one, there's so much going on that even I'm amazed as I look back over the last couple of months...
First let's start with the situation at my real job, at some point in July or August I will no longer be employed, without going into too many details it has to do with our decision to move too Idaho and some political wrangling on the part of management. To put it another way, there have been no less than 4 direct requests to keep me on permanently which have all been turned down because I chose to work remotely (even though there are in fact other people doing the same thing I'm doing). I've had time to think about it and in reflection I think it's really for the best, on my desk is a little plaque that reads the following:
"Lack Of Planning On Your Part, Does Not Constitute An Emergency On My Part."
I can't remember ever working for a company where the simple act of planning was so mismanaged, I'm not bitter just really astounded at how bad it really is, so from my viewpoint this is the close of a great chapter in my life. With Macromedia now gone it's time to move on to something better, I have some options and some offers and we have been planning on what my next move will be, when that's been decided I'll pop out an update. For now I'm focusing on Patriot and have started working on some new projects.

Let's start with the shop, firstly I removed all the pictures of the old shop and updated them with pictures of the new shop, you can see them in the gallery section, I added lot's of comments as well as new images.

In the last update I showed a picture of the plans I was working on for the shop, as I write this almost all of those plans are done or just on the verge of being finished, that includes the following changes:

We had a 4x10 shed built on the side of the house, we move the condenser for the air conditioner to the back of the house, filled in it's little pit with cement and after some extra remodeling on the shed, moved it into place. Then I insulated the shed to shield it from the weather and to sound proof it, in fact it has 1/2" of foam backer in the back wall to keep the noise from going into the main house. It was a ton of work but it was worth every bit, no longer do I need to make room in the shop for a dust collector, air compressor, tone wood or blueprints, all of that now goes out to the shed where it will stay dry and warm and free up lots of floor space for me to work in.

We hired an electrician to come in and run a 220 circuit in the shop, at the same time we added extra receptacles so I would have enough plugs for all the tools. Then we had him re-wire all the big tools to run on 220, it's like night and day in the shop, when used to start the table saw it would actually dim the lights, now it just fires right up and runs like a top :)

I installed more lighting than I will ever need in the shop, after doing research on the subject I did my usual and went over the top, we installed 8 75Watt 8 foot light fixtures in the shop, when you turn the lights on it's like walking into the sun!! I'm sure if I left the door open they could see the shop from the space shuttle, I used to have lights scattered here and there with lot's little lamps for detail work. There's just no need anymore, the spot lamps hardly even show up when you turn them on :)

We sold the old Delta dust collector and purchased a Penn State Temptest Cyclone, this thing is the monster of dust collectors, it's 2.5 horsepower running a 220 volts, the impeller is 14"!! and it pulls 1450 CFM (that's cubic feet per minute). I swear I could easily suck a small animal into this thing, the first time we fired it up we all stood back (while of course *I* had to flick the switch!), it sounds like an F-16 taking off. The goal is to cut down on the dust in the shop as much as possible and save my lungs so I can one day be an old man (don't need to worry about the grumpy part)...

We had a sink installed in the shop, it seems like such a simple thing but I'll tell you that it's the most used item in the shop right now, instead of having to go into the house to wash my hands when I'm done working on something I can do it right in the shop. Plus when we paint or need to clean something the garage sink is there for that purpose, so the kitchen sink stays nice and clean.

Right now all that's really left is to run the dust collection pipes, they will be here in a week or so, I had Penn State lay out plans for the shop and then I used that as a basis for what I wanted to do, I upgraded where I felt it was needed. It will probably a week or so to run all the new pipes. Beyond that we are planning on adding storage to the shop, I'm still in the planning stages on that, but once that's finished I should be able to start building again. It seems so long ago since I was able to build, but this time out I'll have a killer shop. When I get it completely finished I'll post an update with all new pictures...

Now for what I consider to the fun stuff.....

After a great deal of thought and planning we are taking our guitar building high tech, I have been researching CNC machining for a couple of years now. I've never seen or been impressed with any home built machines and the cost of commercial machines is so high that unless your have vast resources you can't afford to really get into CNC. In my research I found a company called K2 CNC, I kept an eye on them and last year they released a machine that was within my price range, was big enough to use for guitar building and had the tolerances that I wanted.

This is probably the most expensive thing I have done yet for the shop, it's a little staggering the amount we have invested in being able to automate some of the guitar making tasks, here is the current list of items we have purchased to make this dream a reality:

A KG-3925-G K2 CNC Machine, it has a cutting area of 25"x39"
A new high end PC to run the milling software that controls the machine
We are using Rhino 3 for the 3d Cad modeling software, this is a high end modeling package.
For the CAM (computer aided modeling) we are using Rhino Cam.
Because I'm modeling in 3D I upgraded my desk PC, I upped the memory to 2 gigs, added a second 20.1" monitor and bought a high end graphics card that speeds up 3D rendering and modeling chores.

If it all sounds expensive, your right it is. We could have done this on a tighter budget but I didn't want to spend the money and then start running into all types of limitations so, in the long run all this will be used for more than just making guitars. I won't say too much more than that, but with CNC you can create the same part over and over and be within .001" accuracy, this opens up a whole new world to us, I do plan on using the CNC to make things like rosettes, necks, inlay, bridges and other pieces.

I have also started doing video editing and producing, it's something I've always enjoyed and it's opening up new ideas and possibilities for us to explore. I have been thinking more and more that there is a need in the building world for a well rounded video on building guitars, right now it's just an idea but it's one of things that won't go away :)

There are other video's out there but I've been thinking of something that would not just show how I do things but how other builders approach their building as well, like I said it's just an idea right now....

If your interested in seeing a trip Michelle and I took at the end of April in northern Idaho, I've posted a video here of our trip, I must make one disclaimer though. None of the music is from any of my guitars, the songs just happen to be some of my favorites and I though they would be great with the images we recorded during our trip.

I think that about covers it, I hope that the next update I send out I'll be able to show not only the finished shop but some of the new guitars that are currently waiting for me to start building on.

It's been almost two months since my last update, it's been a very busy two months for us here... And it's been pretty eventful, we've had three runs to the emergency room, two for Michelle and one for Joshua.... First Michelle had a super migraine that required some heavy meds, then she got a serious ear infection and down to the ER we went again, finally about 2 weeks ago Josh woke us from a dead sleep with a kidney stone. I'd like to visit the ER once at a normal time so I can see what it looks like in daylight :) Fortunately everything turned out ok and we are all still in one piece...

We finally got the shop unpacked, I'm sure I'm missing some tools but I haven't figured out which ones yet!.... I also got my edge sander from Grizzly, it's a great looking machine and I can't wait to get the electrical outlets installed so I can play with it (it requires 220v). I've got most of the tools on mobile bases and have drawn out plans for what the shop will look like, we are currently bidding on contractors to build us a small add-on to the house that will store the dust collector and air compressor. We looked at a number of options, talked to a lot of people and finally decided that adding an extension to the side of the house was the best option overall. If you want to see my initial sketch of the layout it's here.

I'm still planning on building my own custom workbench and cabinets for the shop, first the construction work so I can hook up the dust collection and air compressor, then build the cabinets and get everything located. Finally the workbench and I can then start working on guitars again. I've also been doing a good deal of research on CNC machines, I have 3 picked out and am weighing options. One issue is where I will put it, the other is getting past the initial cost, and the final one is finding the time to learn all the ins and outs of doing CNC work. We have spent more time than I intended planning out ideas and doing research, as I've said before I want the new shop to be 'right' the first time, so even simple things are getting planned out. As well I'm somewhat in a holding patter until I get certain things located in the shop, I absolutely must have the dust collector up and running and the air compressor hooked in before I start working out there. So right now I'm working through the bids to build the addition to the house, as I make progress I'll update the site.

Outside of that there is not much else to report, I'm still working for Adobe at least until June, there have been a number of discussions about keeping me on but so far the people who need to make that decision have held fast that I'm a transitional employee. I intend to ride it out as long as possible and then sit down and review my options and see where I want to go next, I have seen a number of requests for engineers who understand E-Commerce, databases and can actually code, so there's work out there if that's what I want to do. Still not sure at this point, I might make a run at just building guitars but it's such a tough business to make money in, I might possibly advertise that I do repairs and see if I can make money doing that. Once the shop is running I'm going to start placing ads in the local papers to get my name out, start local and then go global later :)

It's been a while since I updated the site, I've been busy renovating a house, adjusting to a new company and unpacking countless boxes. 2005 went out with a bang, we finally found a house we wanted, we bargained like merchants to get the price down and the week before Christmas we had the keys in our hands. One reason we got such a good deal was that the previous owners had not left the house in very good shape, which was fine with us as we had plans from the moment we walked in the door with the real-estate agent. She had reservations and tried to talk us into a house that had a more modern design but Michelle and I saw hidden potential and stuck to our guns, in the end we ended up with something that to us is the perfect house.

So starting on Christmas day we had the following done to the house:

So now to the guitars... which is what this site is really about...
I have a number of items on my list for the shop and for my building schedule, the list so far is as follows:

I've added a mailing list to the site so any updates can now go out through email, it's far more efficient to do it this than to keep checking back for news. To sign-up go here and add your email address to the form at the bottom, you will be take to a subscription page. Once finished you will get a notification email confirming your subscription, I expect to be sending out updates every couple of weeks.

It's 8:40 Pm Mountain time, I'm sitting at a small table looking out a sliding glass door, my view is from atop a small bluff looking out into the city of Boise. It's quiet, the air is cool and the lights are gently flickering in the distance. For the first time in a long time I'm relaxed and content, unlike the Bay Area there's no hustle and bustle here, no motorcycle engines screaming, no neighbors driving by playing their rap music for all to hear.

We left sunday morning at 5am and arrived here around 3pm, the trip was long but overall uneventful, despite having to deal with a cranky toll booth attendant on the Benicia bridge everything went as planned (it was in some ways a fitting end to our life in california). The cats came out in one piece and the housing provided for us is clean and comfortable and provides a great view of the city from a distance. So far so good.

This evening we found the local Hooters and filled our desire for their fabulous hot wings, I take a fair amount of ribbing for my love of the place but it's honestly not the girls, it's the food that I love. Boise we are discovering is a mixture of old and new, downtown has a number of old buildings with little shops and places to eat. The meridian area has all kinds of new modern development, with all of the latest stores. The best part for us is that everything is within a 15 mile distance, that sounds like a lot but since traffic is so light it's no problem to get around.

Michelle arrives tomorrow, she finished out the house today, got a final walk through and sent all the information off to the landlord. She's had the hard end of this move, having to deal with packers, movers and house cleaners, and then she faces the same drive we had getting here. But I can't wait for her to show up so we can get started on searching for a new place to live. There are so many possibilities here it's mind boggling, we have only started to discuss options, I have started working remote, my future with my company is still up in the air but at least I'm working for now while I can working settling down here. There is a very cool looking guitar shop here that I am dying to visit, as soon as time permits I'll head over and see what it's like and introduce myself.

The shop is a question mark for us right now, we are considering two possibilities:

So for now I'll leave it at this:
No matter what happens in the coming two months, with my job, with our housing search. I feel like I am home, and I'm ready for whatever life throws my way, my #1 desire is to get back to building guitars, I have one sitting here with me and the more I play it the more I realize how good it really is, that's saying a lot because it's my nature to criticize my own work. The fit and finish are really good on it, it plays well and it sounds good, I'm not sure what else you could ask for?? This may seem obvious to those around me but I'm starting to realize that I am really good at doing this, there are things that I can do better, but that's part of growing and learning but what I have now is just as good as anything else I've seen out there. Now my goal is to notch it up and take all of it to the next level, this downtime has given me the fire again, I'm going to push myself to build on the foundation I've laid with my current guitars. Hopefully I can do more than raise eyebrows this time, I'm shooting more for the mouth open look this time around ;)

October 23rd, 2005 - 6:30am....

I'm sure I'll start the day by complaining about having to be up so early, coffee will be my only saving grace and probably save the lives of my family members, by that time the plan is to have all my personal belongings packed up, that includes my clothes, laptop for work, toys and my collection of tone woods and some braced tops that I want to protect. Along with those I will be packing 1 Dog, 2 upset Cats, 1 noisy Bird and a mouse named Fuego. The suitcases of two children along with their personal crates of toys, cards and games and finally two of my offspring who claim to own the suitcases.

All of this will be packed, pushed and compressed into our F150 Pickup truck, we will be on the road and moving by 6:30 come hell or high-water.

Our destination is Boise, Idaho, centered in the heartland of this country, home to potato's, open spaces, cattle and about half the people who left California before it self destructs from the inside out and becomes a provence of Mexico.

This is our journey to start a new life, I was born and raised in California, all my children where born here as was my wife (technically they where all born in Bakersfield, but let's not go there or I'll have to up my medication to Keith Richard levels). The movers will appear on saturday and start what will be two very long days of packing, they return on monday the 24th to finish up and then will load their truck on the 25th. To keep the animals from doing something stupid like trying to escape from our clutches we will be packing them up, administering nerve calming drugs and taking them on a 12 hour drive to a place they have never seen before. Now I'm beginning to wonder if *I* should actually be getting the nerve calming drugs and not the animals!!.

Both my GPS and the various map programs have calculated that it will take us 12 hours to arrive at our destination, it's a little over 600 miles from Concord Ca, to Boise Id. But I know that with some creative reading of the speed laws in Nevada and Oregon I can cut about 2 hours off that time. My motto is simple, it's not illegal if I don't get caught. I've also decided that stopping is for sissies and bathroom breaks are optional and at my discretion, it's not that I'm trying to set some new land speed record it's just that after about 10 hours the chances of me ejecting a child from the truck goes up exponentially! The animals should be fine since we will be giving them dog and kitty valium, they will be scratching clouds and chasing butterflies while I sit and listen to a chorus of 'Are we there yet?'

Despite all this, I have mixed feelings about our moving this time, we spent allot of time planning for this, we know in our hearts that it's the right decision and people who we know and trust have confirmed that with us as well. But we moved to the Bay Area 6 years ago, I started with a company that I spent 2 years on the road trying looking (while I was doing contract work for Mustang) that's now being acquired, I had always intended to retire from it at some point. I'm not being fired mind you but because of the acquisition there's no guarantee that I will even have a job when it's said and done. This time around Michelle used her talents and found a great job with a large company in Boise, our one goal in all this was that if for some weird reason I lost my job we could live off of her salary.

The hardest part is leaving our friends, over the years we have made some very good ones both from work and in our personal lives and we will miss every single one, I will also be working remote all the time so I will no longer have the weekly interaction of my co-workers. We loved to hate the Bay Area, I can tell you without any doubt we will not miss the traffic, commuting, congestion and prices. But we will miss all the good things we had here, friends, the apple store being 15 minutes away, Fry's computers, the food (the bay area has some of the best in the nation), the ability to find just about anything within a 30 minute drive.

But with all this I will tell you that we have no regrets, this is the right move for us, I'm already considering going back to College. Because I no longer have to commute I have more time for my family and more time for myself, we have even talked of opening a repair shop for guitars. This is the part that has me so excited, we have the resources now to do allot of things we have only dreamed of before. Michelle is going to a company where they know how to treat their employees right, and she will do very well, I'm coming from a company just like and I know from 6 years of being there that she will surprise even herself.

So about Patriot Guitars.....

With all this on my plate obviously making guitars is going to have to take a backseat for a little while, we have to find a new location, get everyone settled and then start setting the shop back up. I'm using the downtime to finish out some of my new designs, I have a number of new things on my list that I will get started on as soon as things are rolling again:

For the past two or three years we have been watching the state of California descend into a nightmare of runaway costs, everything here is more expensive and it's even worse when you live in the Bay Area. Estimates are that this is one of the top 5 most expensive places to live in this country, so for some time we have been weighing options and looking at alternatives to living here.

We have finally decided it's time to move out of this state, we are going to be settling in Boise, Idaho... Now before you ask 'Why Idaho??' let me explain...

When we started talking about moving we looked all over the United States, we where tempted by some of the small towns in Kansas, we looked at Washington state and through all of this the one state that we kept talking about was Idaho. So after doing lots of research we discovered that Boise has a booming tech sector, the cost of living is very low and they still have all the modern things we have come to expect living out here in the Bay Area.

Michelle is taking a job with a firm in Boise and I will be continuing to work for Macromedia and hopefully Adobe, for us it's a win/win situation. We get a steady income with Michelle's new job and we can afford to live there comfortably without killing ourselves to make ends meet. So for now the shop will be packed up and in transit until we can find a new residence and settle in, my first priority will be setting up the new shop and getting things in order so I can start building again. it's put a kink in our short term plans but we think that long term this is the right move for us, I will continue to update the web site and we work through the moving process.

Wish Us Luck!!!

After spending some more time on the site, I addressed some of the display issues with Opera and Firefox, I'm not sure if it was an IE issue or something strange in the new browsers. Regardless when the site was viewed in anything other than IE some of the images did not line up correctly, I did some research and added detection code that now determines what type of browser you are using and makes small adjustments to the site based on that information. If your using a browser other then the three mentioned and have issues, please drop the webmaster (me :) an email with as much detail as you can and we will look into it.

It's been a busy couple of weeks, I spent a day with a photographer, a bunch of guitars and a really expensive camera and the result is a great set of photos for the update to the site and some artwork that I can use for doing advertisements in the near future. With the photography done my next item was the web site, it was in serious need of a face-lift and some portions never worked like I wanted them too, so I spent an entire sunday re-skinning the pages and adding a new color scheme, I also replaced the old menu system with a new one that uses drop downs as opposed to the old buttons. I always hated the way the old gallery worked, it was never very intuitive and what's the point of posting pictures if the interface makes it hard to view them, but I had other more important things to do so I left it. Well not this time, I decided it HAD to go. In it's place is a new flash enabled gallery that allows you to scroll through everything in a nice clean interface. I also wrote a help screen for the gallery to show all it's new options. The models page got a facelift, , with more information and better pictures. The players section is all new and replaces the artists section (I decided players was a better term ;).

There's nothing that I have not touched in some way on the site, I've spent a lot of time tweaking and refining to make the site have a more professional feel to it. I wanted something that would last for a while (the original site lasted for over a year so that's pretty good) and would not require a ton of editing to add new sections or updates too. So I've laid all the groundwork so I can spend more time in the shop and less editing HTML pages. Along with all this I finally have some good shots of the Flag guitar posted in the Gallery and some of the Snakehead as well. It was delivered to it's owner and is now out and traveling around the bay area doing performances.

For the time being I have trimmed down the builders section of the web site. I was not happy with the old one and I'm in the process of re-writing it to have a cleaner look and be easier to navigate (I'm thinking of a flash interface) with better pictures and descriptions. It should return in a few weeks.

On the building front I have set a pretty aggressive schedule, in the queue are the following:

Well Healdsburg is over, we had a great time meeting everyone and made a bunch of new friends in the process, it took us a week to just recover, of course in that downtime I started working on new designs nd projects! I also took some time to work on the shop and get in back in order and added some new items to it, I'll post pictures of it shortly in the gallery section.

I've also started to update the site one piece at a time, there's a lot here that I want to update. By now you should have noticed that I updated most of the images on the web site, along with that I made some updates to the models page, this is just the start. I have a whole new layout I'm working on for that area and will post it once I get all the details ironed out. We are also working on not only selling shirts and hats but we will start carrying various items for guitarists and things that we find useful to us, we will be carrying Dean Markley Alchemy strings and I will be adding some custom jig parts for other builders. We also have a photo shoot scheduled with a local photographer to get a new fresh set of stock pictures, specifically we want to update the gallery and do some advertising in some of the players magazines.

With all this happening I have started working on new model we are calling the 'Lexington', I won't say too much other than it's based on the Martin 00 series of guitars and will have a number of new features we have been researching.

We finally decided to make a last ditch effort to go to Healdsburg, the last two weeks have been a flurry of activity, we made it to the show and are having a blast. We have met some really great people and some really great players, I've been able to meet some of my guitar building hero's and between the Flag Guitar and Snakehead we have gotten ALOT of very positive attention. Both guitars went out for pictures to be included in a new book about guitars and art, lots of pictures have been taken of both and I've answered more questions about fanned fret guitars than I ever thought possible. But it's all worth it, we are getting our name out there and people are getting to see our work. We had intended to take some time off after the show but instead we will be making some major updates to the site which will include: