Ryan & Amanda Keefer's Personal Site: Cycling, Family, Tech, Music, Software & Game Reviews, etc.
// February 29th, 2012 // No Comments » // General Posts
Welcome to February 29 — a day that doesn’t exist but on about 1 in 4 calendar years.
Check out the video after the jump for a great visual representation and explanation of the leap year concept. If you have the time, check out some of the author’s other videos. They’re all good, informative and amusing.
// August 10th, 2011 // No Comments » // General Posts, Personal Crap
With the recent redesign of Keefer Madness, it’s time to do some house cleaning of the site as a whole. Seeing as our beloved Beagle, Bongo has been deceased for a fair amount of time, I thought it was about time to archive his page from the site. Not wanting to completely destroy the page though, the contents now will reside as a post.
Since putting up this current version of Keefer Madness, I basically have the Blog now. For years, the blog has been the focus of the site, but I was reminded recently that I had lost some other areas of the site. It’s been on my list of things to do, but I was recently inspired to flesh out some of those lost pages, and what better place to start, than with Bongo.
We still miss the little guy to this day, and we are wanting to get another dog, though it hasn’t happened yet. In our search, he’s definitely been in every comparison, and we may not be able to get another Beagle—because of those comparisons. So far the Beagles we’ve met haven’t held up to the personality and cuteness of Bongo.
Regardless, read on to view the contents of what was the page dedicated to Bongo.
Bongo is our old spoiled purebred Beagle. I first adopted Bongo when he was roughly 2 years old. Bongo, then known as “Bo,” was surrendered by a hunter. Bongo’s past inspired Grinning Beagle to write a children’s book story about his past entitled, “That Dog Won’t Hunt.” Following the publishing of the book, our ol’ Beagle has been immortalized as a stuffed animal.
Bongo has had his share of ups and downs in our household. He had real issues when Amanda moved into the house, even cornering
her, teeth showing when I was away at my part time job. Amanda was scared to death of the spoiled Beagle who considered himself higher up in the pecking order than her – a relative newcomer to the pack. She basically gave me an ultimatum – her or the Beagle. In a way, Bongo, was giving the same ultimatum. But, I came up with a compromise, and ultimately, a much better solution for the whole pack – Bark Busters, an in-home dog trainer that helped us in just a few sessions, make Bongo a calmer, more confident Beagle hound.
When our current house was being built, and our old townhome had been sold, we stayed with my parents who have a bloodhound, named Sadie. Bongo was introduced into our home by the Tri Beagle Rescue, warning he was best in a single family home, and Bongo proved it as the bloodhound pupped, well hounded him. Much like his mother, Bongo can tend to get grumpy. He got tired of Sadie quickly and was ready for his new home as much as we were.
The toughest situation was at the current house, when our failing fence.. well failed. In the middle of the night, I let him out to use the restroom, only to after a couple minutes later realize he was gone, through a malfunctioning side gate. We scoured the neighborhood, and I was heartbroken when we couldn’t locate him. Luckily, Amanda came home later the next day early for lunch to post lost dog signs.
Hurt, he had somehow dragged himself back to our backyard and collapsed against the house. After a gutcheck moment of thinking he had collapsed and died in our backyard, the Beagle opened his eyes slightly and whined to Amanda. I don’t think either of us had been so relieved. After a rushed visit to the vet and a few days of recovery, his personality returned and our cuddly beagle was back.
A ton of pictures of Bongo can be found in his photoset in our Flickr account.
// March 22nd, 2011 // No Comments » // General Posts, TiVo Bytes
It’s been so busy both at work and at home. Keefer Madness sadly almost always is the barometer of how busy it is for me — personally and professionally. Regardless, I’m, trying to get a short post out here and in future days.
This quick post is in regards to what used to be one of my favorite tech gadgets of all time. The post linked below is based on rumor, but I gotta say I’ve been pretty jaded and sour or TiVo as of late with their lack of innovation, their slow development cycles, and the distancing of themselves from customers who are on anything but the latest round of hardware. We’re on a TiVo HD and a TiVo dual tuner (SD), and it seems we’ve been all but forgotten as customers. Regardless, here’s the latest round of rumors — all of which will only benefit the Premiere hardware.
// December 3rd, 2010 // No Comments » // General Posts, Local (Raleigh Durham), Personal Crap
So I got a fairly unique chance today to head out near Mebane, North Carolina to the The Conservators’ Center, a non-profit that has a lot of unique animals. They describe themselves as:
Conservators’ Center is a nonprofit organization that preserves threatened species through rescuing wildlife in need, responsible captive breeding, and providing educational programs and support worldwide.
iContact has volunteered with them many times, assisting in a lot of tasks. Today’s had to do entirely of the prepping of two buildings for Kinkajous to live in during the cold months of central North Carolina. My half of the team were in charge of setting up the innards of the building for Aleco and Abigail. We created all kinds of obstacles and playthings to stimulate the little nocturnal guys throughout the winter months.
Throughout the day as we worked, in the distance, we could hear the calls of the lions, coyotes and singing dogs — a very unique and cool experience. Here we were in a rural part of North Carolina, about an hour away from
While helping out the little guys was a lot of fun, the real treat was the way we ended the day — with an insiders’ tour of the facility, including the closest we’ll ever get to lions, tigers, and a bunch of other big cats and even a pack of wolves.
It was a very impressive and fulfilling day. When our little one is a little older, I’d love to take him out to see all the animals, though he’s already starting to get a kick out of animals already at 14 months. I’ll try to post a gallery of photos tomorrow to show some more of these beautiful animals.
// September 9th, 2010 // No Comments » // General Posts
Here are some nice/funny cycling jerseys that make a statement — front and back. Sadly, I think some of them may inflame smart asses behind the wheel more than educate and inform.
// September 3rd, 2010 // No Comments » // General Posts
This is an oldie, but a goody. It’s Led Zeppelin Friday here, and we were just talking about Dave Grohl’s performance.
// May 20th, 2010 // No Comments » // General Posts
Everyone in and around the cycling scene has already seen this earlier this morning, but wanted to post it too. I’m really disappointed, and it’s just another in a long series of athletes cheating. It also makes you question who else currently competing is guilty. Lame. Just Lame.
// April 19th, 2010 // No Comments » // General Posts
Sounds like it won’t be long till all those admin panels/dashboards in WordPress blogs start seeing update options for the third full version of WordPress. It addresses one of my continued major concerns with the platform — losing customization changes when upgrading themes through the use of child themes. I’m not sure exactly yet how that work, but it’s good to see that coming.
The other thing that I hope WP introduces sooner rather than later is to allow some sort of staging area when you are looking to change themes of an existing blog, but the new theme isn’t ready to go yet. It’d be great to work on it without making it live to the world (or having to create a separate install of WP to do so).
// April 5th, 2010 // No Comments » // General Posts
I like tech, and LED technology has fascinated me for many reasons — its efficiency, its low-power consumption and the fact that it’s still relatively new and developing. Now since I’m a Tar Heel, and our season’s long since over (even if you count the NIT). So while many in the area will be pulling for the Blue Devils tonight (Go Butler!), I thought it’d be nicer to reminisce about a happier time in Tar Heel history — one year ago when the Tar Heels had a triumphant rise through the 2009 NCAA Tournament, winning it all.
As tradition dictated all celebrating Heels local to Chapel Hill, there was a massive herd of people taking over a few blocks of Franklin Street. Local LED manufacturer Cree pointed out the 2009 will be the last celebration without LED tech overhead, taking the orange glow to a cleaner white glow. Here’s to many celebrations under that glow!
An LED Flashback: 2009 NCAA Basketball Championship Celebration on Franklin Street
// February 25th, 2010 // No Comments » // General Posts
Anyone who has seen the “Planet Earth” high definition series on the natural wonders of this big ol’ planet has been taken aback by the wonders it captured. It seems that next month, the producers of that series are following it up. I’ll be interested to see how they top the first breath-taking series.
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