The Chronicles of John Trammell

For the holidays, my cousin, Amanda, came down from Portland, Oregon, and we always do great things when she is in town.  This year, she decided to take me paintballing along with her sister, Krystal, and her dad (my uncle), Darrel.  My sister also decided to come along and give paintball a try. I was excited to try paintballing, but also a little scared for the sport.  I decided to step out of my comfort zone and give it a try.  I had a blast, and was glad i went that day. We went to a new place that opened just two weeks ago in Colton called Tombstone Paintball Park.  When we first pulled into the park, and drove past some of the fields, I started to get a nervous feeling that I wasn't going to like paintball, and that I was going to die.  We arrived right at 8:00 AM, when the park opens, so we can prepare for the first game which starts at 9 AM.  We registered, attended the rules presentation, and prepared our equipment.  Before long, the paintball staff was forcing us to hu

Hi Everyone, I have decided that I shall post all my Social Networking information as well as other ways to contact me, for I have many different ways of communication, and i love to use them all.  Everything is below! Google techdude4h@gmail.com Myspace http://myspace.com/j4hdude Facebook John Trammell  |  Create Your Badge Twitter http://twitter.com/JohnTrammell Blogger http://johntrammell.blogspot.com AOL Instant Messanger jwt4hdude Deviantart jwt-photography.deviantart.com  Xbox Live Gamertag Agt Washingtub So all above are ways to follow whats going on with me or get into contact with me...woot

     From Friday November 6th to 8th, I was at the 2009 California 4-H State Leaders' Forum at the Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove near Monterey, California.  This conference is for 4-H Volunteer Leaders to come together and attend workshops that will better improve their leadership skills, give them project ideas, and have some fun. This conference was a very enjoyable conference, and I can't wait for next years.      My parents and I flew up late on Thursday night into San Jose, and stayed at a hotel just around the corner.  When we got to the hotel we where staying, I was shocked at the quality of the hotel.  Over the past few years, I have traveled a lot for work, 4-H, and personal reasons, and when I stay at a hotel, i normally stay in a higher up hotel.  It was a change to go back to the basics, but I got used to it.  At least there was internet.  The next morning, we checked out of the hotel, picked up another leader from the airport, and headed on the h

Hi everyone,     This is my new blog.  I have been blogging a lot on myspace.com over the past few years, but over the last year, myspace's popularity has gone down, so this is a wise decision to move over to Blogger :) To view my other blog, go to   www.myspace.com/j4hdude

In this blog, I have decided to share with you how I grew to be the photographer I am today.  Over the past few years, I have always had people ask me how I got involved into photography, and ask for some pointers.  I have been studying photography for a good portion of my life, and it isn’t going to end any time soon.  It all began 14 years ago, in 1995.       December 4 th , 1995 was my very first photography project meeting with my local 4-H club, Arroyo Verde 4-H Club, in Highland, CA.  With that first meeting, I learned how to how to take care of camera equipment, and how to begin looking around to shoot better photographs.  I received a camera from my parents, which was a 110 Instamatic Camera.  The camera didn’t have any real settings, but it was a good camera to begin composition of a photograph.  With a growing interest in the field of photography, created a demonstration presentation called “How to Take Care of a Camera?”, and I presented it at the 1996 San Bernardino Coun

Hi guys,  it has been a few months since I have had any activity on my blog.  I figure I give you an update of how things are going.  Well, first off im sick right now   and I have been since for the past 5 days.  I am slowly but surely getting better. School started, and work schedule went back to normal, and that has been the main part of my time these past few months.  In the 4-H world, had a few meetings.  Things are looking great for the Teen Involvement Conference.  I am on the planning committee for the 2010 State Leaders' Forum, and I finally got the logo for the conference done and two possible guest speakers for the events. This past weekend I was in Davis for two meetings.  Friday was a work meeting and Saturday was a Computer Corps meeting.  The main thing about that meeting was to restructure the team, so one thing that has changed is that we renamed the team to the California 4-H Technology Leadership Team.  It is going to be very exciting to see all the new member

Two Weeks after I had returned home from visiting Emily in Indiana, she arrived in Southern California to chill with me for 8 days.  Originally, she was traveling out to chill with a friend at his parents house in Long Beach.   Their friendship went sour, and decided that she and I will just chill, for we didn't want her to waste the money of a plane ticket.  This has to be the most traveled trip while Emily was here in California, and it was very tiring.  Barton Flats Camping Trip      With the short notice of Emily's plans changing while she was in California, my parents where not too happy about the situation, and said she isn't allowed over at the house.  So I needed to find something to do to where we would have a good time, and not have to pay tons of money for a hotel room.  Around the same time that Emily and I where chillin the entire time she was in California, Jane contacted me asking if I would like to join her and her boyfriend for a camping trip in Barton F

Last weekend, I have decided to begin geocaching again, as a stress releaver from homework, school, and work; and that every Sunday I would go geocaching unless I have an event or meeting or weather didn't premit it.  Today, Rebekah was bored, and wanted to chill, so I took her on her first geocaching adventure with me throughout highland.  We found our first geocache no problem.  Our second cache of the day, we weren't so lucky.      I thought the cache was hidden at the AAA in Redlands, so I parked my car over there.  The coordinates kepts us going to the hotel parking lot next door.  We ended up finding the cache in the base of a light pole ( a typical location for a cache to be hidden) I took the log out of the cache, and placed the cache and the log on the wall near the dumpster.  The good thing was noone was around so we where safe to grab the cache, except there where video cameras.  As I was about to sign my username on the log, the hotel manager and the assistant came

Since high school, I have been focused on aiming for a degree in Environmental Science, and have a career within the environmental field.  For this spring semester, I started thinking that getting a degree in environmental science isn't the path for me, and I should keep the love I have for the natural environment more of a hobby then a career.        By the time the semester was over, I was very unsure what I should get a degree in, and I spent the entire summer thinking of different things that I am really good and enjoy.  Near the end of the summer, when i was in northern California for a work trip, I reliezed that everything that I do so well is things i do for work and the 4-H Youth Development Program.  I decided I would want a degree that would allow me to do the same type of things I do for work and 4-H, but make a living off of it.        After talking to many people, I narrowed down what degree I wanted to get to a B.A. in Public Administration, and that I will transfer

The 2009 CA 4-H State Leadership Conference was held at UC Merced from August 6th-9th this summer, and this year's theme was It's A BIG Deal.  With my 7th time at SLC, this year was different then any other year, for I was there for the CA 4-H Computer Corps (as always) and also for my work the 4-H Military Partnership/Operation: Military Kids at the State 4-H Office.  This year was one crazy year, but everything went real smoothly and was a great success.      My sister and I drove up to Merced on Wednsday, the day before the conference, because I didn't want to wake up super early to get up to SLC, and be all stressed out about everything.  We left the Inland Empire at noon and got to Merced at 4:30.  We stayed in the same hotel that I stayed when I took Emily and Scotty to Yosemite in July.  After getting settled into the hotel, we went to eat at applebees, then chilled the rest of the night in the hotel room watching Viva La Bam and surfing the web.      The next day,

I flew from Ontario, CA to Phoenix, and then headed from there right off to Indianapolis. When I got into Indianapolis, Emily picked me up and we took the hour drive north east to her home town of West Lafayette. It was amazing to see how green the state is, with tons of grass, farms, and forests as far as the eye can see. It was defiantly a different change of pace compared to suburbia of Southern California. The houses out there are so different then ours. Lots of them acturally give a more lived in feeling rather then our structured almost the same looking homes. Emily's house is huge, and has an good amount of land. Lets just say if her house was in LA, it would be worth a million and a half dollars. The first day was basic, met her parents, chilled, showed me around her town alittle bit, then went to see Hangover with her and a friend of her's named James.       One of the best things about traveling is trying new food places, and I have to say, Indiana has some good pla

For the third year in a row, I went camping to Yosemite National Park in the Sierra Nevada Mountains with my aunt (Maria), uncle (Darrell), cousin (Krystal), and John (Krystal’s future husband).  I treated this trip a little bit differently than the past two trips, for one of my cousins, Amanda (Krystal’s older sister), was unable to make it this year, due to enlisting in the National Guard, and she normally is the person I was able to do many things with during the trip since she didn’t have other things she had to do.  Every night I stayed up past everyone else and wrote down what happened that day and things I was feeling.  I have decided to type these journals’s out and post them for my blog of this year’s trip.  This trip is the only week in the entire year I mostly disconnect from the outside world, which included internet, using the phone, news, work, 4-H, and other day to day responsibilities.    Day 1: May 31 st , 2009               I slowly woke up to my phone alarm at 6:30a