I know that I have not posted actively much lately, so I thought I would briefly share this video. The past few months, I have gone to several concerts and discovered some brand new bands. This band, Vampire Weekend, is one of my girlfriend’s favorites. We went to see them just over a week ago, at Meriweather Post Pavilion. Just thought I would share a little bit of it. This video is hosted on YouTube, adjust the quality setting to the highest that your connection can handle.
Category Archives: English
Golf, My New Sport
Lately I have started taking up golf, and I am so glad that I did. There are so many reasons. When I was in high school, I was interested in golf, and tried it out once in Alabama when I was at a family reunion. That was when I realized how truly difficult a game it is. In those days, I was too impatient and impulsive to stick with it.
Fast forward 25 years later. Nearly one year ago, I became a member of my local Elk Lodge . A lot of the Elks members appear to be avid golfers, and at the lodge the Golf Channel is often on the satellite TV. This piqued my interest again. I remembered enough of my previous experience, that I knew it would be difficult and not to expect too much too soon, but being in my early 40s now, I have a little more patience.
Here is where the Elks jumped in to help me. Golf is an expensive sport. Art Walker, one of the other Elks members, told me he had a set of clubs he wanted to get rid of. He did not accept any money for them, and he gave them to me, bag and all! They are very good clubs, and I am not even sure how much money this saved me, but it must several hundred dollars at least! I also play on public courses, and usually for 9 holes each round at this point, which saves me money, too.
Another friend from the Elks named Kevin McMahon gave me a quick orientation on the driving range, enough to get started. Then I started going out to the Needwood Executive Nine course, which is part of the Needwood Golf Course, with David Johnson, who is another friend from the Elks.
It must have been March or April when I started playing, and on average I play two times per month. I took my first golf lesson in May, and right after that I played in the charity golf tournament that the Elks hosted. I just took my second lesson, and now I play the Executive Nine at 7:00 AM almost every Saturday morning (I have done this for the past couple weeks at least). It is now becoming part of my routine, and getting out and walking a little is great! This golf course is in the Derwood area of Rockville, which is really close by, and yet is surrounded by beautiful nature, including lakes and forests. Have a look!
For me, Golf is the perfect mix of my love of nature with a competitive sport. Even more than that, I can play it closer to home and not have to drive for hours (as I do when I go hiking), and I know a lot of people who enjoy playing it. It is much more popular and well-known than some of the other sports and pursuits that I have taken up.
Bugs Fixed
I have just repaired some problems that I had been having with my website. First of all, I changed to a different Google Analytics plugin, because it was conflicting with my photo galleries. The program that tracked visits and sent them to Google Analytics for analysis caused the photo slideshow program to not work. I have fixed that now, and everything works perfectly.
Also, I moved a smaller version of my photo to the sidebar and put a slideshow on the front page instead. I think that makes it look more dynamic.
Now, enough of these finicky details. Time to start blogging!
Website Improvements
Since my website has been up the past several weeks, I discovered some problems which I have now, for the most part, fixed. My photo galleries stopped working, and apparently that was because when they synced, some of the ID numbers changed. I redid all my photo galleries, which also improved the layout and made the images full-framed instead of cropped in ways I did not like.
The Highslide slideshow program, which makes the photos pop out, does not work except in the sidebar, and I’m aware of this and I am working on it. I think it is a conflict with the plugin that tracks my visits through Google Analytics.
I will shortly reformat the opening page to have a slideshow of various things in my life and move my headshot photo from there to the sidebar.
Welcome to my Brand-New Website!
Hi there! My website www.daviddougherty.net is back! It is new, improved, and totally revamped. My previous website was way out-of-date (I had not added any content since maybe 2003), and was hand-coded in HTML the old-fashioned way. Now I’m on WordPress, which is a fantastic content management system, and I have a new hosting provider, Hostmonster, which is both cheaper than Yahoo, and far less limiting in its options.
I invite you to take a look around! In the past year I have done a lot of traveling, and soon I will add some blog posts about my trips. If you want to get to know me better, I invite you to check out my pages about my various interests. I know that it is a lot to wade through, just look at the parts that interest you! I enjoy sharing photos of my travels and activities, and I hope my blog can become a great place for me to reflect and discuss various issues!