Archive for January, 2008
Tuesday, January 15th, 2008
I feel like I haven’t been writing all to much lately. I don’t know, sometimes I start writing and writing and writing and sometimes I don’t.
I think it has something to do with all this year-end business stuff. As the years go on, the pressure gets ratcheted up a bit. I even found a gray hair on the left side of my head today. That’s pretty strange, because I think I saw some gold ones in there too. Perhaps I won’t go gray…I’ll go gold. People can look at me and say, “Yes, he’s the man with the gold hair over there.” I guess there is a gold lining to it all. At least I’ll be worth a lot of money.
Also, it’s getting a little colder out again and inside the house is looking all too familiar. Boy, those warm days really woke up the neighborhood. People were outside walking around and everyone seemed to be in a better mood. As I always say, I like Winter up until about half way through January. After that, Spring can come early. The only problem is that I freak out at the first drop of sweat. A few days ago when it was 60 degrees outside, I began to sweat. I didn’t like that. So, the dark days of Winter will last for a few more months.
I wouldn’t mind have a good game of Frisbee though. I love Frisbee.
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Tuesday, January 15th, 2008
Facebook IS Buying Plaxo
I’ve just heard from a source that Facebook is “one hundred percent†buying Plaxo. This follows up on at least one previous rumor saying the same thing. While there are reasons to be skeptical, here’s why it could make sense.
Monkey Controls Robot Using Only its Mind
Recently, neuroscientists at Duke University announced that a monkey in North Carolina had managed to make a robot all the way in Japan walk using only the power of its mind.
Forget oil, the new global crisis is food
A new crisis is emerging, a global food catastrophe that will reach further and be more crippling than anything the world has ever seen.
Mortgage Lenders Do Not Deserve to Be Rescued By Tax-Payers
The U.S. government is working to develop several different programs meant to stave off foreclosures. Although policymakers claim that these programs are for struggling mortgage borrowers, it is obvious that the real goal is to bail out mortgage lenders. The question is: do reckless lenders deserve to be rescued?
Black Holes Spin Near Speed of Light
Super-massive black holes — isn’t that a song by Muse? Anyway, super-massive black holes may spin at speeds approaching that od the speed of light.
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Monday, January 14th, 2008
Everything You Know about Eco-Friendly Cars is Wrong
Setting the Record Straight on Hybrids, Electric Vehicles and the Smart
$1 per Gallon Cellulosic Ethanol from Waste!
General Motors and Vinod Kohsla have invested in a new company promising to produce ethanol from any organic substance (grass, newsaper, tires, agricultural wastes) for as little as one dollar per gallon.
Breaking News: Greenpeace win battle against Japanese fleet
Greenpeace activists are claiming that they have managed to chase the Japanese whaling fleet from its hunting grounds in the Southern Sea (for now)…
Even Republicans Agree Rush Limbaugh Is Obsolete
Particularly when it comes to his head-in-the-sand stance on global warming, Rush Limbaugh is part of an old, tired machine that even conservatives are growing tired of.
Newsflash: Time May Not Exist
Physicists are confounded about how time actually fits into the universe. One theory is that “time may be an approximate concept that emerges at large scales—a bit like the concept of ‘surface of the water,’ which makes sense macroscopically but which loses a precise sense at the level of the atoms.”
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Monday, January 14th, 2008
Yesterday, we heard that it was going to snow overnight. I think we were supposed to get a few inches while NYC and Boston were supposed to get hit pretty hard with up to a foot of snow.
Laura and I were watching TV when I asked her if it was snowing. I think it was around midnight when she told me it was. I got up and stood outside on the front steps. I think the nicest thing about the snow, especially late at night, is the silence. I love to hear the flakes hit the ground. The neighbors had their driveway light on, so I could see how much was falling.
I walked inside and, half kidding, asked Laura if she wanted to go for a walk. She didn’t say no all too quickly. I think she gave me a weak excuse. I was sort of kidding anyway. While I was sitting on the couch taking my shoes off, she came out and said, “I’ll go with you.” Oh, how neat.
As we were walking down the road, I asked her when the last time we took a nice night time walk in the snow was. We couldn’t remember. I mean, I remember doing this stuff when I was a kid, but those days are long gone. Now, everything is work and thinking about work. It was very nice to be outside while there were no cars on the road and everyone else was asleep. It’s such a different world.
This late night walk came right on the heels of a great daytime walk we took yesterday. That one went for a few miles. On the way back, when we were almost home, I thought to myself how I didn’t want the walk to end. That’s the sign of a good time.
These walks are very therapeutic for me. If you haven’t noticed, I get kind of stuffed up during the Winter and a bit frustrated at things. I think I am going to make an effort from now on to walk more. In addition, Holly likes long walks. After all, she is a snow dog.
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Monday, January 14th, 2008
I just wanted to write a quick note to introduce my latest website, FlyLeeg Free Classifieds. This website is a twin of my earlier FigLeeg Free Classifieds. Of course, there will be some differentiating features in the future, but for now, these sites are very similar.
Give them a try and enjoy.
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Saturday, January 12th, 2008
As you may already know, I listen to HGTV while I am working. I like the channel, especially the show “Ground Breakers,” because it has to do with dirt.
There are a bunch of other shows on throughout the day that I am not all that interested in. They are usually cutesy little shows with people playing with doyleys and things like that. I am not into painting little pictures and putting them into the house. I like construction.
You may have heard me rant about all the stupid words the HGTVers have made up through the years. Some of these words include, “space” instead of room, “organic” for anything earth tone, “craftsman style” for anything that exists outside of California and now “drama” for a point of interest. Let’s add some “drama” to that corner.
I really hate these words. I feel like the people on these shows are trying way too hard to push some sort of language on us normal people. Maybe it’s not even so much the words they use, but the fact that they use them all of the sudden. One week we’ll be fine and the next week we’ll have two dozen weirdos saying, “Boy, this space has really been enhanced by the craftsman style and organic flavors. I still think we need to add some draaaaama to that wonderful little snicker of cuteness.”
Man oh man.
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Saturday, January 12th, 2008
Again, I read the writing on the wall.
One of the companies that created some of my website applications recently put a web poll in their forum. They asked how we users feel about having the next upgrade (and every one thereafter) only work with PHP5 and up on our web servers. I didn’t know what to think. I believe I was running PHP 4.3.8 on a few of the servers and some other version of 4 on the other servers. I didn’t know how all of my 30+ websites would respond to a PHP upgrade.
To find out, I did a little configuring in the .htaccess files on two of my websites. By doing this, I automatically brought the version up to PHP 5.2.4. If things blew up, I could easily bring the version back down to PHP4 by taking that line of code out of the .htaccess file.
Well, I tried it out and everything worked fine, except for two little files that an outsourced developer created for me. I contacted him and he fixed the issue rather quickly. Since I knew things would be ok, I went ahead and had one of my other servers upgraded to PHP 5.2.5.1. After the upgrade, everything worked fine on all my websites.
So, what is the difference between PHP4 and PHP5? You can click here to find out.
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Saturday, January 12th, 2008
I was sitting here last night, when I noticed that my new blog here finally had a Google PageRank. I was pretty happy about that, but there was one tiny problem. The PageRank is a 1.
Remember back when I told you that I switched this blog over to a new domain name? Well, back then, this blog (on the old domain) had a PageRank of 5. I did a simple 301 redirect for the entire blog in the .htaccess file, pointing it to this new domain. I figured that the nice PageRank I had earned over the years would follow me to this new domain. Guess not.
I did notice that the kwaree.com domain still has a PageRank of 5. That’s weird, because all there is over there are a few static pages that never change. So what’s all this about the size of a website, the frequency of updates, etc…? I know of a very specific factor that heavily affects PageRank, but am not ready to share it just yet. I am still doing some research.
I took a look around all my sites. They all pretty much stayed the same, except for one. That one dropped a point, which is disappointing. I looked at a few blogs I know of. One got hit pretty hard and lost 3 points. Man, is this PageRank update about hitting blogs?
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Friday, January 11th, 2008
Network Solutions defends frontrunning-to stop frontrunners
Network Solutions has been heavily criticized for its new policy that automatically registers domains to itself once a user searches for it. The company has now responded, saying that the policy is a “security measure” meant to protect customers from real domain frontrunners.
Adobe Photoshop Tutorials – Best Of
An overview of professional step-by-step tutorials which can enrich your design skills and improve the quality of your works.
Social Blogging Platform Profy Launches in Alpha
Today, we get a new blogging platform from Russian/San Francisco startup Profy.
Google Processing Over 20 Petabytes of Data Per Day
Google currently processes over 20 petabytes of data per day through an average of 100,000 MapReduce jobs spread across its massive computing clusters.
Understanding Search Engine Penalties
Why is your celebrity blog being penalized? Find out here…
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Friday, January 11th, 2008
The other day, Craig and I decided to meet for breakfast in Newburgh. I thought this was a great idea, because we haven’t seen each other in quite a while. He had to pick up some parts in the area, so it was easy for us both.
I had a pretty uneventful drive to the diner. I took Interstate 84 East and got off the Newburgh exit…right before the bridge. Once I was off the highway and rolling to a stop, I noticed someone standing at the end of the off ramp holding a sign. As I got closer, I realized it was…I am not even sure what to call it. Here, I took a photo…
I think he may have seen me taking a picture of him, but I couldn’t help myself. The sign he was holding read, “Homeless, please help.” Now, if I was a better citizen than I am, I surely would’ve pulled over to give him directions to the diner I was going to. I mean, if he looked to his right, he could’ve seen it. If I was an even better citizen, I would’ve gone to the diner and picked up an employment application and brought it back to him.
This whole thing got me wondering…how should a person respond in a situation like this? The first reaction for a lot of people is to get mad and blame the person for being in the position they are in. I mean, aren’t the rest of us working our butts of trying to make a living? How can we be expected to help someone who is in perfect working order (I mean, he was standing there and got to that spot himself) who we think isn’t trying as hard as us?
You know, when people are young, they are taught all sorts of stuff…one thing we are taught is to help people. If we listened to our parents, we all would’ve pulled over to help this person who saw standing there asking for help. Somewhere, sometime, as we were growing up, we all changed. Not many of us help all that many people anymore. Sure, if we know who you are, we will help, but not so much for strangers. I oftentimes think about what happened to us. Why don’t we help anymore?
One of the big things with me is anger with certain situations. I remember a few years ago, I was reading a newspaper and there was an article about “Habitat For Humanity.” This has always been one of my favorite programs. I did have a little tiff with them a few years ago though. As I was reading the article, I learned that the person these wonderful people built a brand new house for was a local single mother of three. There was a picture of her standing there in the driveway with her three children. Off to the side, was her boyfriend. He was a dirty looking, skinny fellow standing there…smoking a cigarette. Hmmm, that made me think. Mind you, this was after the big increase in the price of cigarettes. I thought about how nice it was that these people now had a nice house to live in. Then, I pictured that skinny little dirty boyfriend sitting in some donated loveseat, smoking a cigarette and maybe drinking a beer. That kind of peeved me because I am not sure if he had any blisters on his hands from helping with the construction of the house.
Perhaps, through the years, we noticed that more and more people who ask for help, do things in their lives that we don’t agree with (and cost money), such as smoking, drinking, drinking soda, eating potato chips, driving gas guzzlers, shopping at Wal-Mart for junk, etc…
I am not sure if I told you this story already. One time, I was in the local Hannaford buying some groceries. As I got in line to check out, I noticed a family in front of me using food stamps. I was thinking about how hard up these people must be to be using food stamps. To be honest, I don’t even know what food stamps are, but I do know you gotta be kind of hard up to use them. I thought I shouldn’t judge them. Then, I noticed what they had on that little conveyor belt. I saw all this name brand stuff. It all looked very appetizing. I looked down in my basket and noticed a bunch of Hannaford brand things. Wait, I did have name brand tofu. I guess that could make up for the name brand “oatmeal cream pies” they were buying on discount. Whatever. They left and I started putting my stuff on the conveyor belt. What I didn’t notice was that the father had left the store a few minutes earlier to pull the car up. I saw a minivan pull up and park in front of the store. I noticed the family walk toward and stop at the minivan. I noticed them put the groceries into the minivan. Then, I noticed that the minivan was only a few years old. I looked out past their late model minivan at my nine year old Honda Accord. I thought to myself, “Hey, the family using food stamps has a nicer car than me.”
I know, I know, I shouldn’t complain. Who am I to judge people who are in need, especially when they smoke and drive nicer cars than me? Well, at least they eat better than me too. Man, I feel myself turning into a conservative. I remember I read somewhere a few years ago, something like this, “If you aren’t a Democrat in your twenties, you are heartless. If you aren’t a Republican in your forties, you are an idiot.” If was something like that.
Well anyway, Craig and I had a nice breakfast. I left and he left. On the way home, I was on the phone with a realtor and Craig called me. I couldn’t pick up, so he left a voicemail. He told me that he saw the bum I was talking about. He said, “Hey, I just passed by your bum…he was drinking a beer.” Enough said.
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