Our European Adventure with a Start in Paris, The City of Lights

Posted on Tuesday August 2, 2016 by Jacob Campbell.

Family European Adventure 2016 - Paris

It has been a fly by trip so far. My mom, my aunt Geralyn, my cousin Larissa and her boyfriend Shane, and my aunt Barbara and uncle Allen all have made her way over to Europe. Our first stop has been in Paris, the city of lights. It is a beautiful city, with amazing architecture, different little neighborhoods each with their own feel, wonderful architecture, and so many different people.

My mom and I left from the Pasco Airport to Seattle Tacoma Airport where we met up with the rest of our family. Then it was a 10.5 hour flight with a nine hour time difference (yes, we are living in the future). We have been walking a ton. I thought that it might be interesting to share how far we actually have been walking. I have been wearing my Apple Watch (which I absolutely love) the whole trip, so I have a pretty good idea of how far we’ve been walking each day so far.

Miles Walked Each Day

The number of miles I have walked each day so far as a part of the trip.

A picture of my first meal in Paris, taken at the Le Nemrod.

We arrived in Paris after leaving Friday morning at 8:30 am on Saturday morning. It took a couple of hours to wait to go through customs and we found ourselves a taxi to our hotel, Hotel & Spa La Belle Juliette. The hotel is somewhat expensive, and much more expensive then any hotels that I would generally choose, but it is very chic with beautiful small rooms with iMacs in every room that double as a TV. After checking in, we were hungry and headed to Le Nemrod to get some food and then made our way to a giant beautiful park to wander around a little bit. The Jardin du Luxembourg is absolutely a wonderful place to go, and really felt very much the epitome of what I imagine when I think of France. There was wonderful statues, old men playing chess and Bocci Ball, and many people just passing time with each other at a slow pace.

A photo of people playing chess at the Jardin du Luxembourg.

After wondering around the park for a couple of hours, playing some Pokémon Go (yes, you have to catch them all) and finding some pizza for dinner we made our way back to the hotel to relax and sleep after a sleepless two days.

Sunday, was a busy day with so many views of the city and little adventures along the way. We made our way to do some shopping and pick up some produce at the Mouffetard Market. Rue de Mouffetard and the market that is nearby is a little get away from modern life with cobble stones and small little stores all around. After doing a little shopping and resting our feet a little bit, we made our way to the Panthéon in Paris. I will be posting a bunch of pictures from our trip on Facebook (and I’m sure I’ll share a link on here in the future), but the internet that I’ve mostly found has been fairly slow and difficult to upload. Just making this post with a couple of pictures has been a challenge.

A panorama shot of my family (although, they aren’t paying attention) in front of the Panthéon.

The Panthéon is a building in the Latin Quarter in Paris. It was originally built as a church dedicated to St. Genevieve and to house the reliquary châsse containing her relics but, after many changes, now functions as a secular mausoleum containing the remains of distinguished French citizens. It is an early example of neoclassicism, with a façade modeled on the Pantheon in Rome, surmounted by a dome that owes some of its character to Bramante’s ‘Tempietto.’ – Wikipedia

A photo from the base of the Eiffel Tower.

I got the opportunity to climb to the top of the Panthéon and take some really great shots of all of Paris. We walked down to the Zig Zag Café where I got the opportunity to try some Escargot for the first time and then we made our way to the Cathédrale Notre Dame. Absolutely one of the best cathedrals that I’ve seen in my various trips. By night, we went to see the Eiffel Tower, and shared a bottle of some tequila as we walked home and so many laughs and fun times with my family.

Monday was a trip to the Louvre Museum, some Jazz at Sunset Subside and sharing some checha at the Isis Café. Today has been mostly a relaxed day, and giving me an opportunity to share a little bit of our adventure with all of you. Here is looking forward to more stores as we go through France and Europe for the next couple of weeks. I will also be posting some photos to Facebook, so look forward to that.

Tracking Trainings Using Drafts and Launch Center Pro

Posted on Friday November 14, 2014 by Jacob Campbell.

A couple of weeks ago, I spent some times further diving into Drafts and Launch Center Pro. Both are amazing applications for iOS, and have greatly improved my productivity and ability to get things done. I have been absolutely loving my Milage Tracker that I put together, and use it multiple times a day (and find that it makes it so I don’t forget to track). As I have written before, I’m a big fan of using plain text files and Markdown.

Several years ago, when I started working at Tri-Cities Community Health Behavioral Health Services, and attending various trainings post MSW I started keeping a word document listing all of the various trainings that I attend. If you work in an industry that requires documentation regarding trainings received, hopefully you have started doing that too. I since have change my system around. I now have a plain text file that I keep on dropbox which has a listing of every training that I have received (whether that be in agency or for some sort of professional development certificate). As I have been looking towards applying for my LICSW and having my ESA which requires so many clock hours, I decided that I wanted to also have an easy way to calculate how many CEU’s or Clock Hours without combing through my long text file of all my trainings. I created two CSV files which I could open in Excel or Numbers and have calculate the total number of hours easily. The problem is, I didn’t want to have to write entries sometimes three times. I also wanted to be able to add these entries either from my phone or from my iPad easily when I get to the training. Never having to worry about it again.

With so many iOS automation tasks that I do, it starts in Launch Center Pro (LCP) for me. I have a main entry that collects data in several prompts (you can install it). The content is as follows:

launch://x-callback-url/clipboard?text=[prompt:Review=[prompt:Date], [prompt:Training Title], [prompt-num:Number of CEUs or Clock Hours] [list:Type|Clock Hours=Clock Hours|CEUs=CEUs|Both=Clock Hours and CEUs], [list:Type of Units|Ethics= Professional Law and Ethics|Suicide=Suicide Assessment Treatment and Management|General=General Continuing Education Credits|None=|ESA Suicide=ESA Suicide Prevention Intervention Training]]

It creates a final review prompt that includes text regarding the training date, the title of the training, the number of hours, and the type of hours (i.e. Professional Law and Ethics or Suicide Assessment Treatment and Management).

I have this LCP action in my “base” actions folder along with a couple of different actions related to my trainings. All of them send the contents to Drafts for different actions. One action posts the clipboard to an action that appends it to my Clock Hour CSV, one to my CEU CSV, and one to my text file. I then have a main action that calls all of the other actions and let me select if I want to post it to one, two or all three of the actions.

The two actions that I have which append to my Clock Hour CSV and my CEU CSV files are very simple and just append to the files. There are two actions to append to my overall text file. One action takes the comma separated data and uses some JavaScript to split the text at each “, “ and return the text with each section as a new line. You can install the drafts action or see the JavaScript below:

// Function to Parse Comma Separated Value Text
// Jacob Campbell -- http://jacobrcampbell.com/

function parseText(s){
    var temp = new Array();
    temp = s.split(', ');
      var result = "";
      var i;
    for(i=0; i<temp.length; i++) {
        result += temp[i] + "\n";
    }
return result;
}

// Commit content to draft

var text = draft.content;
draft.content = parseText(text);
commit(draft);

The drafts action then passes that data to another action which takes those new lines and adds it to a template page that has the following information:

## [[line|2]]
* __Date__: [[line|1]]  
* __Location__:   
* __Facilitator__:   
* __CEU / Clock Hours__: [[line|3]], [[line|4]]  
* __Duration__:   
* __Certificate of Completion__:

Each of the the parts that say [[line|n]] takes that line from the draft and puts it there. I then add the last little bit of information (i.e. location, who facilitated it… etc) and I’m all done.

What is amazing, is I can write it once in LCP, have it post to both CSV files and then prepare it for posting it to my text file with only typing minimal text. I have taken it to another level, and have made some OmniFocus task templates that I can post and remember to follow up and see if I have received my confirmation form for my clock hours.

If you have the need to track your clock hours or CEU’s its a pretty awesome system, and I’d highly encourage you steal what I have put together and change it for your own needs.

Mileage Tracking Form and Launch Center Pro

Posted on Saturday August 30, 2014 by Jacob Campbell.

On my favorite podcast, Mac Power Users I feel like I’ve heard about Launch Center Pro a number of times. I’ve thought about purchasing it a number of times, because I really like the concept automation. I’ve kept putting off purchasing it because I didn’t know exactly what I would do with it. I use Drafts all of the time on my iPhone and my iPad, and it’s always seemed like enough.

I was reading Dr. Drang’s article Late to Launch earlier today, and decided that I did need to buy Launch Center Pro (LCP). I figured that it was ok, because he is late coming to LCP too.

Basically LCP is an iPhone / iPad app that launches other applications or does tasks within those application. It also gives interaction for IFTTT (which I talked about here), which opens up so many other possibilities.

In reading Dr. Drang’s article, I decided that I needed a simple way to track my mileage. Whenever I go in between schools at my new job, I can submit for a reimbursement for the gas and wear and tear on my car. They don’t require a listing of miles driven, but from one building to another building (the school district dictates what the milage is between buildings, for those people who tend to drive circuitous routes). For last month, I went through my calendar and tried to pick out the days that I drove between different buildings. I’m excited about my new system using LCP and think I will save myself time. One of my co-workers told me that she never has time to fill out her form, so maybe I will have to share this with her.

For all of the non nerds out there, this might sound kind of complicated, but really it is not, and it’s kind of fun to put together. I’ll walk you through what I did. Basically I have an action in LCP that opens two lists which I select from which schools I’m drive from and to, sends those as a row in a Google spreadsheet, and then at the end of the month, IFTTT sends me an email with a link to the spreadsheet to remind me to copy and past it onto the correct from.

New Action Screen

A screenshot of the new action screen blank and ready to be set up. iPhone mock-up thanks to Pixel Den

Completed Action

A screenshot of my completed action. You can have it go through and make a list, or add text or a number. iPhone mock-up thanks to Pixel Den

List in Action

A screenshot of my list in action. Two clicks and I’m done… iPhone mock-up thanks to Pixel Den

The first step is to create a new action in LCP. I just went through their action composer, found the IFTTT trigger, had it complete a Trigger Recipe with Values. I named my Recipe “Mileage Tracker” (I had to name it the same thing when creating my recipe on IFTTT). Then I set two values as “input with a list.” I made list items of each of the schools that I might go from so that one list is the school building I was leaving and the second would be the school building I would be going to.

My IFTTT Recipe

Then the IFTTT magic starts. It sends my answers to an IFTT recipe where it appends a spreadsheet in Google docs to add the new data (along with the date) to cells in the the spreadsheet. I made a second IFTT rule sending my work email an notification every month on the last day to complete copy and paste the values from the Google Docs to the appropriate spreadsheet and turn it in to receive my reimbursement.

After I got it all working, I was super excited. It feels amazing to know that I can track my mileage with a couple of clicks on my phone and I won’t ever have to worry about it again. I might have to think about making it based on location… but we will see so that I don’t even have to click anything on my phone.

Is My Mac Magic?

Posted on Sunday August 17, 2014 by Jacob Campbell.

A photo of my MacBook Pro taken as I was writing this post at Starbucks off of 390 in Kennewick...

This last week, I had my last day at Tri-Cities Community Health Behavioral Health Services, and my have started some of my training for my work at the Pasco School District. I’ve also still been spending quite a bit of time preparing my class lectures for the Heritage Courses I will be teaching. All that being said, its still a really busy time right now. I figured I’d share some of my geekary from last night that I put together. One of the benefits of being a geek is that can make my computer do magic tricks sometimes, and save myself a lot of hassle and time (although it also means that sometimes I spend a significant amount of time doing things that don’t deserve that much time, but that’s neither here or there).

The reason I am so in love with my mac, is some of the amazing software and things that I can do with it, that just weren’t possible on a Windows PC. I just downloaded Keyboard Maestro - KM, a really powerful and amazing piece of software. I’m very excited to see what I can all automate with it on my mac. I’ve put together a couple of what KM calls macros. The first one I did was in apple mail to make keyboard like shortcuts. I’m not going to write about about it, but I did the same as described Stack Exchange.

I love my Apple TV, and even like the little four button remote that comes with it. I like to use it even when I’m given presentations as my clicker. The only problem is that it always tries to control my mac. We will be sitting on the couch and watching Chuck, our current show of choice on Netflix, and you click a button and it turns on iTunes or click another button and the volume on my mac goes up and down. It’s a bit of a pain to toggle the IR remote on and off. It’s kind of hidden in the system preferences. If you are turning it on and off, it might look something like this short screencast. While it doesn’t take way to long, it is kind of an annoying process, and KM can come to the rescue. It wasn’t too hard to set it up and automate the process. I created a keyboard short cut that goes though the whole process with minimal needs for me to do anything when turning on and off the remote.

Basically here is what it does:

A screenshot of my Keyboard Maestro’s macro for toggling the IR remote.

1. Click ⇧⌘→
2. Open “Security & Privacy Preferences Pane”
3. Pause for 1.5 seconds (so that it has time to open)
4. Click the gatekeeper lock to unlock the advanced settings
5. Pause until “Advanced button is available” (waiting for me to put in my password)
6. Press “Advanced…” button.
7. Wait for user to (I have to click the check box and pair the IR remote).
8. Click the “Ok” button
9. Re-lock the gatekeeper.
10. Quite the system’s preferences pane.

It makes me feel a little bit like my mac does magic for me, so beautiful. You can see the short screencast.

Now, I can just click a couple of keys, and turn on and off my Apple TV Remote when I’m teaching… easy as that.

Who Said Traveling With a Toddler Was Easy

Posted on Thursday July 24, 2014 by Jacob Campbell.

Disney World Magic Kingdom Entrance Sign to Lake Buena Vista Hotels

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.

– Colin Powell

I’m a firm believer in preparation and planning. I’ve been told that I’m hyper organized and spend to much time preparing. While this might be true, I find that preparation improves my life in so many ways and that I end up making much better products (whether it’s my individual clinical work with my clients, the classes that I teach, or just fun traveling). I think that this is even more true when it comes to parenting, outings with kids, and other fatherhood related topics. When it has come to my travel adventures, I’ve always been uncharacteristically unplanned.

On Saturday evening we flew out of Seattle / Tacoma International Airport with well laid plans. We thought that taking a red eye flight would mean that Mateo would be sleeping and that the flight would be worry and stress free. It started out looking great. He was running all over the airport, super excited about meeting all of the new people that were everywhere. I talked to one of the workers for Alaska Airlines and they were able to hook us up with an extra seat (we didn’t buy one because he is still young enough to be a lap seat baby). Even once we got on the plane, he was doing excellent. About an hour in to our four hour flight, we had thought that he was going to fall asleep, but then it took a turn for the worse.

Mateo started to get super fussy, uncomfortable, and unhappy. He cried loudly on and off for probably a total of two hours of the flight. Minnie described that it was like a nightmare. It all turned out just fine in the end, but it was hectic when there wasn’t much that you could do to make things better.

The whole team from both the Pasco Discovery Coalition and Prosser CIA .

We made it safely to our hotel, The Hilton at Lake Buena Vista, which is a really nice hotel. When we arrived, at 6 something in the morning, we found out that they had given away our room because we didn’t check in yesterday. I had to wait until somebody from the Pasco Discovery Coalition came down and verified their card for us to make up to the room. After a little sleep, everything felt much better. The weather in Florida has been on and off rain and thunder storms. Which I find somewhat annoying and somewhat fun.

We went to Downtown Disney) and got a bit to eat at the Earl of Sandwich) and made our way back to the hotel to relax some. During the days I’ve been attending the CADCA Mid Year Conference and Minnie and Mateo have been hanging out poolside (which Mateo loves). We’ve had the opportunity to go to the Magic Kingdom which was a lot of fun. My phone was dead almost as soon as we arrived. In the evenings we’ve mostly been hanging out with other coaltion members. My conference has been really good. There has been a mixture of some really great sessions (especially one session on working with coalitions in Latino communities), and some that weren’t so great.

Probably Time to Eat My Wheaties

Posted on Saturday July 19, 2014 by Jacob Campbell.

One of Michael Jordan’s boxes of Wheaties.

Well, it’s almost two as I am decided to get up because I couldn’t shut my mind off, so I decided to get up and write. Just one of those nights when you just can’t unwind and fall comfortably into a deep and restful sleep. Currently we are in Puyallup and getting ready to go to Orlando Florida for CADCA’s 2014 Mid Year Conference. I’m super excited, although somewhat worried about how Mateo will do on on the red eye flight tomorrow night. Here’s hoping that he sleeps.

As I sit here thinking about how I can’t sleep, I’m reminded of the Wheaties commercials from the 80’s and 90’s:

I feel like maybe I haven’t been eating enough of my Wheaties lately, if by Wheaties I mean not overwhelming myself with having too much on my plate, keeping everything organized (generally in a GTD fashion). It feels like I just have so many things that I have coming up this fall and things that I need to get ready for.

You better eat your Wheaties.

– Michael Jordan

With changing jobs to the Pasco School District, I have a PRAXIS II exam that I need to start studying for, along with a training and just getting ready to change positions. Along with that, I am still trying to manage my current clients, follow up with all of them before I transition and determine if they will be transferred to a therapist, to whoever gets hired as a new case manager, or if they just need to be closed.

More than the PRAXIS II, I’m also going to be eligible to take my test for my clinical social work license this fall. While these tests and changes are in the back of my mind, they are not anything that has priority right now. My focus the last couple of weeks has been the two new classes I’m going to be teaching at Heritage this fall. I taught case management last Fall, but it was an online course. I decided that it would be a better format to have it be an in class format, which means I’m having to go through and revamp the course completely. I am really excited about it, and have really enjoyed my time teaching in the past, it’s just a lot of work.

Going to Florida for a week is going to be a lot of fun with some great learning experiences, but also feels like a lot in the midst of everything. You can rest assured that I will be writing up some posts about my time there and the conference. I might even be able to get around to the book that I brought with me to read, but we will have to see about that one. I can say one thing for sure, when I get back, I’m going to have to buckle down and eat my Wheaties.

Positive Life Transition, Did Somebody Say Summer

Posted on Monday July 14, 2014 by Jacob Campbell.

My son, Mateo, at my mom’s for the 4th of July after playing in the sprinklers.

This weekend we got the opportunity to go boating for the first time this year. While I’ve been able to BBQ a couple of times, it was the first thing that we’ve done all summer and spring that really felt like summer. It was really great, although I’m a lit more red for the ware (don’t worry, my redness tends to turn into brown every year). You can even check out some photos from our boating extravaganza.

The Tri-Cities has been experiencing extremely high temperatures, with it expected to be up to 106 on Wednesday. With all of my thoughts about summer, and how summers have changed since I was in college, I’m really excited to announce a pretty big change in my professional career.

Starting in the middle of August, I’ve turned in my notice at Tri-Cities Community Health that I will be terminating my employment there. I’ve been working in their Behavioral Health Services department as a case management and therapist for the better part of three years, you can check out my resume if your interested. It’s been a really great experience. I have great co-workers, enjoy working with my patients, and have really learned a lot. That being said, working for a community mental health agency is difficult and fraught full of really high case loads and paperwork demands.

I’ve accepted a position with the Pasco School District as a mental health therapist. I’ll be working at the elementary school and middle school levels leading groups, doing individual assessments, coordinating with outside agencies, and more. I’m very excited for this position, and have been ready for a change. Other than the fact that I’m sure I’m going to love the work, I’m really looking forward to having a school schedule and spending more time with my family and friends.

Ever Wonder How You Can Play Video Games and Get Paid

Posted on Sunday June 15, 2014 by Jacob Campbell.

I’m not much really much of a gamer. I own a Playstation 3, but it hasn’t been plugged into my TV for probably almost a year. I did enjoy playing Grand Theft Auto IV and Assassin’s Creed. I recently listened to In Social Works podcast with Michael Langlois: Gamer-Affirmative Practice: Today’s Play Therapy.

Mike Langlois has a blog called Gamer Therapist. While I’m not super interested in video games specifically, I have for a long time been interested in the interaction between mental health treatment and technology. The reason I originally bought a mac is wanting to learn how to create some iPad apps related to mental health treatment. While I still haven’t learned Objective C (well, now it would be better to pursue SWIFT), my practice has been greatly been improved by technology.

I’m not sure if I’m going to bring my playstation into the office anytime soon and start implementing it my practice. It is an interesting avenue to pursue and look into.