Home page for Douglas Kiesling
Doug Kiesling – Weather Paparazzi
Back home from Denver where Neva and I attended the National Storm Chaser Convention along with meeting people for her company at Steamway International. It was great for both of us since I was able to put names to faces for the people she talks about at Steamway and she was able to meet my friends and put faces to names in storm chasing. We had a lot of fun up in the mountains and learned a lot about new weather geek stuff.
Neva and I are in Denver for the National Storm Chaser Convention. Yesterday we went snowmobiling up in the mountains with Chris, Tony, and Jason and had a great time. Until this one couple that were a hazard to everyone else since they did not have a clue what they were doing, stopped on a blind curve next to a pretty big cliff.
Tony ended up driving off a cliff to avoid the idiots. I have to give him some shit about it so here is the photos.
Just a quick update. Were playing up in the rocky mountains for Valentines Day. Here is a quick photo of Neva and me at Freemont Pass, 11, 318 feet above sea level.
Ok I am just doing a quick update because I’m going to head back out into the blowing snow and shitty weather.
Here is some photos from today.
I finally was able to get in contact this morning with the last remaining Hurricane Katrina evacuation returned mail person that I have been looking for, for over 2 years.
Sandra found the blog and then found me and gave me a call. We were on the phone for about an hour talking about what we both saw and how messed up everything is down in the land of NOLA.Back in 2006, she ordered a DVD and it was returned by the post office as being no such number and unclaimed. I put out some posts last year looking for here to try and get the dvd to her since I my merchant account would not even let me refund the money to her.
Now, I’m repacking the DVD and adding in some extra DVDs for her and shipping it back to here new address in MO.
Also, other big changes.
The new personal website is almost done. Neva got a look at it last night and its looking pretty sweet. This is not the BNVN site, this is my personal site. Lightningboy and WeatherPaparazzi is coming back for Spring 2008.
All of my video is moved to the BNVN site but the blogs and the still photos are now going to be on the new personal site.
And the best part is that it is all organized. The goal is to have that site up and running this week. I’ll post more when it’s up and running.
Ok so you found the new site. I’m very busy with the update and learning this new complex software and hardware. Stay tuned for a lot of updates while I learn this new setup.
My Fishing License 🙂 Neva brought me ice fishing with here soon to be sister inlaw Tina, Tina’s Dad and his cousin. Wow, that was fun but lame. Lame because we did not catch anything but hella fun since we got to hang out on the lake all day. It was a first for me for ice fishing since I finally got my fishing license and a first for me driving on the ice.
It was kind of like the show Ice Road Truckers with driving out on the ice for the first time. The fishing hole was about two miles drive out on the lake chain of Horseshoe lakes and we got to drive in the cold with the windows down and the doors open just in case the ice broke. I was told the ice was over 14 inches thick so it was fine.
Happy new year folks, today I finally made it home to my place. It was the first time I made it back home in almost a week and it kind of seemed strange at first. Almost like I was out of town or something but it took a few minutes to settle in.
When I opened the living room deck blinds, I was amazed at what I saw. ICE. One was over 6 feet long
I kind of felt like the guy in the time machine movie where he comes back and there is dust on everything.
Well it’s time to get back to work for a couple days and take care of stuff. Got some house cleaning to do and a stack of stuff that needs to get a looked at and taken care of. Since everyone is doing year end recaps, here is mine.
2007 was the year that I was able to kill the past and come back to life.
I was able to change gears for my company and do something else for the most part.
I lost a bunch of weight but found that I need to keep working out all the time to keep losing it and keep it off.
I finally got the new BNVN website up and running to get a lot of the stuff automated. And now working on the new lightningboy site. I learned that I got to stop helping so many others and just help myself with work too or I will go broke.
I said good bye to some people, good riddance to others, and hello to a lot of new friends and found the woman of my dreams. All in all, 2007 was a great year. And in 2008, my goal is to lose more weight and keep chasing the dream.
Avoid the business drama that seems to run wild in storm chasing and follow my own advice which is. I’m not here to impress my competition with my work, I’m hear to impress the clients. So I’m just going to be dropping out of the chase lists and forums for the most part and just focus on my job and my work. Too many people need drama in their lives to feel complete, and that’s not me. I just want to see drama in the view finder then go home and relax.
Happy New Year Everyone.
Today I went out to play in the snow while Neva was busy cooking. It was one heck of a traffic jam… I hate traffic jams…
Ok, I got a few people giving me a heads up about the lightning footage on the ABC 20/20 travel myth special tonight.
Yes, I have know about that for about a week now and was working with the producers of the show since last week and wrapped it up yesterday.
The story was pretty cool and they used almost a minute of stock footage from one of the stringers and myself for the story.
Now comes the hard part, billing and invoice b.s. I’m still working with several clients to get paid on the past due stuff. But that is the joys of running my own business and being the boss.
I have to laugh when people think I just sit around all day goofing off. I added up the work hours in one week and it was 97 hours in one week working on video editing, collections, sales and chasing down the weather and shooting video. But with Neva at my side kicking me in the ass to get stuff done, everything is good and getting a lot of stuff done now.
Well, I got to go and take care of the laundry now. She is still out Christmas Shopping while I work here at her place. I have a sneaky idea that she is stopping off to her parents house to drop off whatever she buys because she knows I will be snooping 🙂
Ok, off to make the bed and get some sleep.