Petra Gregorová

It’s been another eventful year for me whether it came to my professional, but mostly personal life. I did some traveling, meeting new people or reconnecting with old ones. I also had to make some life altering decisions & probably for the first time in my life I put myself ahead of everyone else in order to be happy in a long run.

It’s been hard on me in more than one way, but am glad and thankful that I have found the strength to do so. I am so grateful for all the people that helped me through all this or even opened my eyes and gave me strength to follow through. During trying times like these, it always warms your heart to know that there are and always will be people in your life who will love you no matter what… who’ll love you unconditionally, and all that is priceless.

As we all know, we all live our lives the best way we can and have our own hurdles that we need to go through or pass. Unfortunately, my mom had to go through another one less than two weeks ago when she unexpectedly lost her husband. It saddened all of us and took us by surprise. Everyone who knew Jožko, will remember him for his great spirit and always smiling no matter what state of mind he might have been. We all miss him dearly.

I wish it was under different circumstances, but this event brought me to a decision to go home sooner than expected. It might have taken more than a week for my work to approve, but now it’s official that day after Thanksgiving, I will be flying out of Seattle to go home to spend Christmas Holidays with my family and friends in Bratislava.

I will be working during the week, but still will try to mingle with my friends and have some fun. I would love to travel some too but only time will show if any of that will work out.

Tags: bratislava, family, slovakia

YES, I’ll be back for another year of An Event Apart, after attending two years in a row An Event Apart Seattle 2007 & An Event Apart New Orleans 2008, but missing out this year due to some economy crisis and my personal life events.

I’ve been wanting to go to Boston for the next one no matter what the line up of speakers would be, but when I found out that for the first time ever that there will be A Day Apart, I knew that I’ll have to be there. Whether my work will pay for it or not, I had to make sure to make this happen!!! I mean I would be dumb to miss out on a full day workshop about HTML5 and CSS3 with Dan Cederholm & Jeremy Keith. A full day workshop that I’ve been wanting and even brought it up to Jeffrey Zeldman himself during a lunch at AEA in New Orleans where he sat at my table. Consequently, the second I knew that my wishes came true, it was a no-brainer that I had to be part of this & I will be…

So, besides signing up for two days of geekiness presented by only the best and my mentors in the industry like already mentioned Jeffrey Zeldman, my CSS guru Eric Meyer, always funny but mostly very resourceful Andy Clarke, also known as “Malarkey“. I will be delighted to see Aarron Walter again, as well as Jared Spool, Jeff Veen. In addition, I will get to listen for the first time to Ethan Marcotte who also co-wrote Handcrafted CSS with Cederholm and Designing with Web Standards (3rd Edition) with Zeldman, which both I got obviously and read by now.

No need to add anymore as it should be obvious that not only I will get my money worth, I’ll have three days to spend among the best and learn from them as much as I’ll be able to absorb. So, I am happy to say that I’M BACK An Event Apart, so be ready for me!!!!!

Tags: aea, cederholm, clarke, conferences, css, html, keith, marcotte, meyer, seattle, veen, zeldman

For those who know what I am talking about, yes… it is that time of the year again when we, thousands of Standardistas, want to show support for accessible, semantic web content. After participating last year, I knew that when the time will come for 3rd Annual – Blue Beanie Day, I will be back again. This will be my second year joining, after the first one that was so successful. I mean, I even got the props from Jeffrey Zeldman himself for my efforts.

This year it will be on November 30. Everyone can attend, regardless where you live or what you do.

It’s easy to show your support for web design done right. Beg, borrow, or buy a Blue Beanie and snap a photo of your mug wearing the blue. (Or get creative with Photoshop). Then on November 30, switch your profile picture in Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, (and any other social network) and post your photo to the Blue Beanie Day group … watch for more information coming soon.

You don’t have a blue beanie or your Photoshop skills aren’t the best? Don’t sweat it! You can download a blue beannie from Jeffrey Zeldman’s blog that was provided Kevin Cornell and create your own avatar.

So, what are you waiting for? If you didn’t know what to do on November 30, 2009…. well, now you do!!!! Join us for 3rd Annual – Blue Beanie Day on Facebook or Flickr.

Tags: blue beanie day, facebook, zeldman

Still can’t believe that I did in fact got to meet the Luke Perry that I used to watch during my teen years back in ’90s on Beverly Hills 90210!

How did that happen? Well, I came to work like any other day, bright and early before 6:30 A.M. As I was pulling around our office building, I noticed a whole bunch of trailers. Couldn’t tell whether they were unloading or packing after an event that might have taken place over the weekend.

So I just went in, and started to go about my day while here and there tried to figure out as coworkers started to come in, what might be happening. Then I hear that it was a film crew. However, it took almost till lunch time till I found out what it was. One coworker came up to my desk and told me that since I enjoy to stalk celebrities that Ii might care to know that there is Luke Perry outside of our building filming TNT TV Show “The Leverage“. Continue Reading »

Tags: Luke Perry, pictures

I didn’t realize how much I use right-click button on my mouse on daily basis, till it all of a sudden wouldn’t work. At first, I would blame it on my computer, but once I realized that it wouldn’t work only in Firefox, I started to wonder what was really happening…

I started to poke around the web, till I came across a possible solution after reading Right click not working in Firefox 3.5. According to this post, Yahoo Toolbar is causing this issue because

Firefox 3.5 is not available yet in the Ubuntu repositories for an automatic update.

This made sense, as I just upgraded to its latest version and that was when I noticed the issue. Even though I love my Y! Toolbar, I didn’t have to think twice to ditch it as I can’t live without right-clicking my mouse, the geek I am!!

Tags: firefox

It has been a while since I posted anything about what I’ve been up to. Last year went by fast, I don’t even know how but I am glad it did. It wasn’t the best or my favorite year. Well, maybe attending NKOTB concert in Tacoma, WA. That was FUN!!!!

However, other things didn’t seem to work out as they’ve been planned like having Paul’s mom over for Thanksgiving. She had to cancel last minute, then we got stuck in Portland over Christmas, instead of going to see everyone in California due to snow storms. Nevertheless, I ended up making my mind about coming to visit my family and friends in Bratislava, Slovakia after almost 1 and 1/2 year for an entire month. Continue Reading »

Tags: slovakia

This is my first time in Portland since 1999, when we’ve got snow that not only sticks but has been hanging around for more than just a day. Not only that, but the entire city and surrounding areas seem to be all upside down. Normally I wouldn’t care, since I would finally have a white Christmas. But we were supposed to be in Oceanside, CA since last night. So far our flights has been canceled twice. We are now on schedule to go tomorrow, which should be a trip from hell. Traveling from Portland to Medford, from Medford to San Francisco and from there to San Diego. Maybe I shouldn’t complain too much, since a lot of people got it worse. We are at least home, in a warm house while a lot of people are stuck at the airport or hotels.

I just have been looking forward for this trip, seeing grandma and grandpa, as well as the rest of Paul’s family. Now it is starting to look like that we might end up staying in Portland for the Xmas holidays.

Tags: pictures, portland

Well, finally I found some time to sit down and write up a little update on what is new with and in my life. In my last post I mentioned about a career change. After almost a year of working for Providence, I made the difficult choice of moving on to work for a local agency downtown Portland.

After the last two weeks with Providence, I got to work at ISITE for three days before Paul and I took for a week-long getaway to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. We’ve had great time, did some fun activities, did a little sightseeing and got to meet some people. We stayed at RIU Palace, which was an all inclusive resort. It was gorgeous place with amazing views and many places to relax.

On Monday we decided to get out and do some of the activities that were available in the area, so we went for ATV’s. Since I was too afraid, we rented a double, so I wouldn’t have to ride one all by myself. It was more fun than I expected, and I even got to ride it for a bit, but I must say that only flat surfaces were my friend. We drove it through some hills, on uneven surfaces and ended up on a beautiful beach where we had about an 90 minutes to go off on our own. We rocked the outfits pretty good, like some bandits
Continue Reading »

Tags: vacation

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I am back, after one week with more news and updates. I must say that I have had last few months, but mostly weeks pretty emotional and spiced up with various good or bad events that I was faced with.

…and one of those was concerning my job. After a lot of thinking and going back and forth, I’ve decided to resign at my current job and accept another offer from ISITE Design in downtown Portland. I’ve heard great things about them, which makes me anxious to get started and show what I can offer as well as have some fun along the way. At the same time, it is sad to leave Providence, since I’ve had made some great friends there.

Now I just need focus on what is ahead of me and look forward to it, which I am.

What a day, or last couples of days, I must say!

On Sunday, as I was reading up on my younger sister Martina’s Facebook wall, I first found out an exciting news that she got engaged, but right after that I found out that her grandma has passed away.

And then today, bright and early in the morning I found an instant message on my MSN messenger that my long time friend Christa, who I’ve met in Chamonix back in 1996-1997 has passed away this past Sunday at noon at the age of only 34. I was in shock and didn’t know whether this was joke, or just simply wanted for it to be one.

I knew that she’s been battling leukemia since 1997, when she first got it but had gone through chemo and received a bone marrow transplant years back, which seemed to help. Christa has been always athletic and so full of energy, that you just can’t seem to help it from not being upset about what she had to go through, as well as her friends and family.

The last I got to see her was back in 2005, when Paul and I were flying through Copenhagen to Slovakia for Christmas. We had less than a two hour layover there, but she came to the airport to see me and meet Paul. It was so nice to see her and talk to her in person after such a long time. She looked great, as always! I just simply can’t believe that I will never be able to see her big smile again.

Tags: friends, pictures