Chomer Speaks

Robert Scoble has some interesting thoughts about curating data on the web in a post (see link below). I think that there are some very useful thoughts in this post. Stuff that developers out to look over and see what they can glean (including me)!

http://scobleizer.com/2010/02/22/coming-soon-the-disruptive-molecular-age-of-information/

It may seem surprising, but I am actually excited about getting a new garage added to the back of our property. It’s a rather utilitarian building, right? A place for your car, maybe the lawn mower and some other gardening tools…

But my wife and I are jazzed about the whole thing! We are 46 and 47 years old and both of us have never owned a garage or had one at our disposal to use. Ever! So that’s about 30 years of  us driving and 30 years of us having to come outside in the morning on a cold Midwest winter day and scrape the snow and ice off the car. That’s 30 years of digging our cars out after a big snow storm. And that is about to end!

We finally saved up enough money to buy a garage and looked up some contractors on Angie’s List. We went with the contractor Garage For You (http://garageforyou.com/).

When I called them initially and left a voice mail, it did take them several days to get back with me. But, as of this moment, everything has been moving along just nicely.

August 20th

We signed the contract for a nice 2 1/2 car garage. We put down an initial $1000 to get things going in the form of a personal check. And they submitted a request the next day to the village we live in. The village had told them that it takes approx 2 weeks to process a request, and that is how long it took.

Tuesday, September 8th

Roughly two weeks later, we had an old crumbly ashpalt parking  pad in the back, they came and ripped it all out using a front-loader and good-ol’ hard work.

Wednesday, September 9th

On this day, they spent a good amount of time building the form for the garage’s new foundation.

Thursday, September 10th

The village’s inspector approved the form-work for the concrete.

Friday, September 11th

The actual concrete pour occured. I saw the beginning of the pour, but I wasn’t around for the whole thing. My mom, who was around the whole time, told me how the contractors worked for hours with the concrete. When I got home, the concrete was poured, and the forms had been removed. There was still a pile of gravel on one side of the new slab, and piles of dirt on the other side of the slab.

Saturday, September 12th

Without us calling the company about it, the crew foreman came back and cleaned up the pile of gravel and the dirt. My wife and I wrote out a check for half of the remaining balance and mailed to Garage For You as requested.

Wednesday, September 16th

Got a phone call from Garage For You that they would be coming the next day to build the garage. Neat-o!

Thursday, September 17th

Very early, a truck dropped off supplies for making the garage. It was nearly everything needed except for the garage doors, the trim, and the electrical items.

A little later, 5 guys came and toiled away all day and got most of the garage built!

• All the walls and the roof were built.
• A seperate truck came and delivered the garage doors.
• The large and the small garage doors were installed.
• Garage door opener was installed for large garage door.
• The service door was installed with its lock.
• The window was installed.
• Allot of the vinyl siding was installed (some of the back remained unfinished).

Friday, September 18th

Late morning (I believe… I’m writing this on the 24th), two men showed up to finish up the vinyl siding and install the roofing. They also cleaned up all their construction scraps. This is all that happened on this day.

Tuesday, September 22st

A couple of men showed up rather late and began installing the white aluminum trim and gutters. They got most of it done, but not all.

Wednesday, September 23rd

Trim guys showed up rather late again but finished the trim and gutters. It looks nice! My wife thinks it looks too nice for the neigborhood!

Electrician and assistant showed up very late in afternoon. They were supposed to have been here at 8:30am. They did get allot done. They had to dig a narrow trench from the house to the garage to run the power. I did not have garage power connection yet since there was not a garage on the property before. Not suprisingly, getting the hookup from the house to the garage to allot of time. Only a little of the conduit and wiring in the actual garage itself got finished.

Note that on my contract it stated that I was getting one outdoor outlet on the outside of the garage. The electrician knew nothing about it. I called Lisa at Garage For You who called the contractor to straighten things out.

Thursday, September 24th

Lisa called me to tell me that the removal of my old rusty shed would probably happen Monday or Tuesday of next week.

The electrician came and finished the electrical work.

Monday, September 28th

Ricky, the owner of Garage For You, came out early and put in some anchor bolts that were missing.

Village building inspectors came and signed off on both the building and the electrical work.

I’ve noticed something. At least I think I’ve noticed something! There are people out there who look for neglected blogs and post spam comments on them. I can see the logic: The comment will get posted and since the blog has been neglected for some time (no new posts by the blogger), the said blogger will not be checking.

This means that the comment with its link to who-knows-what will stay on the blog with ligit posts and comments and, in their minds, increase Google rankings, and click-throughs to their site(s).

Well, just so you spammers out there know: When someone posts a comment (even on a neglected blog), I get an email. The comment itself  is usually vague and innocuous. But I don’t stop by looking at the comment, but I look at the URL supplied. I have to say, that on allot of them, if they aren’t spam outright, they have a spammy feel to them. What do I do with these comments? If its “iffy,” I simply delete the comment. Otherwise I mark them as spam.

Advise to spammers: How about working hard to create real content that people would actually want to come and look at without you being sneaky!

I can imagine though that there are lots of abandoned blogs out there that are prey for this technique. Blogs which the owners no longer check. Its sad the sad little games that people play.

I think Steve Jobs would be happy with me. A little more than a year ago I bought a Macbook and an iPhone. I’ve bought iLife ‘08 and iWork ‘08 (in 2008). I’ve bought Finalcut Express. I’ve put down $100 to be an iPhone developer.

More recently (this year) I’ve bought a nifty 24″ screen iMac. Nice! Much easier for my 47 year old eyes to read! And, I bit the bullet and bought Adobe CS4. That suite is expensive! Yikes!

What mainly am I trying to do with all this Apple goodness (besides have fun)? I want to write a nicely written App for the iPhone and have it selling in the App Store!

I like my Apple stuff. Though, sorry Steve, there are things I still like about Windows better, things I think are done better. I might write a post on that some time.

If you’ve been following the news lately, its enough to get one really depressed. Not just what a bunch of clueless wall street clowns are doing with our bailout money, but the new stimulus package with all its little “surprises” inside… I wonder….

Changing the tone here. Yes, changing the tone of this post right now!  What about focusing (for just a brief moment at very least) on something light-hearted and silly.Do you like puns and other word-play? Are you a twelve year old boy who never grew up? May I suggest some light reading? I’ve got a book for you to check out that, even if its not your cup of tea, you probably know a few of your friends who would enjoy reading this little book of silly poems.The book is called:  I Lost My Underwear Today: And Other Flights of Imagination

The author’s pseudonym, “Colonel Korn” is dubious, but hey! Kids of all ages will enjoy this book, though some of the plays on words may take a little thought to get. My recommendation: get this book and check out of reality for a few minutes of fun every now and then. I think this makes a great gift for people who like to play with words. 

I got one of my books on iPhone programming from Amazon.com. The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook by Erica Sadun. It’s been about two days now. I’ve been pouring over it at home and riding the train to and from work. I am finding it helpful. Will I realize my dream of getting an app in the iPhone App Store?

Obama has won the presidency. I think it is cool that an African American has done this. Been checking out CNN’s web site for the latest info. A note about their web site: they need to do something since with every page-load it seems everything locks up for 10-15 seconds. Not a good user experience! I’m not guilt free since my blog regularily generates a couple of javascript errors for each page load (though most people probably don’t notice cuz they don’t have debugging turned on in their browser)!

It is amazing to me sometimes how one minute I can be focused, working away towards achieving some goals… And the next minute I can be paralyzed emotionally and find it to get even the simplest things accomplished. Feelings can be a bear to deal with can they?

I have accomplished stuff… but it is easy for me to get discouraged.

• Got all three of my workbenches put together in the basement. The area is still a complete mess. Just looking at it floods me with discouragement. Allot of the stuff piled up in this area is not mine and I don’t relish figuring out where to put it or negotiating with the owner in an attempt to get it tossed.
• Got books on Amazon eCommerce API. Looks good, but I’m not jumping in deep on this yet.
• The books I’ve ordered in programming the iPhone and hacks in movie making (the ones I am most interested in) have not come yet. Some are not available yet. But, in my opinion, the others should have shipped from Amazon by now.
• I got my bathroom exhaust fans… now I need to hire an electrician to install them. This should go a long way in getting rid of the problem of damp walls and mildew.
• I’ve been toying with my WebRenegade web framework. But actual  work is hard to come by due to those irrational emotions.
• I spent quite a bit of time trying to get a successful install of mySQL on my PC at home. So far no luck. This has been trully frustrating!

Well, writing this makes me feel a bit better.

Let’s see, I had let the anti-virus software on my home PC go to seed (translation: it expired). Well I finally got it updated.

Photoshop is freezing up on my home computer at startup. I’m trying a few things to fix this. This is a royal pain! I need to use Photoshop.

I am a Generals: Zero Hour fan. This is an RTS game from EA Games. Since installing a service pack lately for Windows XP, the game minimizes a couple of seconds after starting it. I can click on its icon in the task bar and it come back up and everything works fine there on out. Could it be that something in this service pack is what is wigging out Photoshop? It is an old version. Hmmm. I want to finish trying my “fixes.”

Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted to my blog here. There have been a few storms in my life I’ve had to work through. Things have relatively settled down now and there are various projects that I am working on, some having to do with this site!

One thing of note is that due to certain changes in my life now, I am free to move out of the area I’m in (if I so choose). If I wanted to interview for a new job would I be prepared? I’ve had a little site:  http://orville.chomer.com/ which contained information about me and included my resume to download. When I checked, the site was down! I had been messing around months ago with it and forgot all about it!

Time to get serious here. So, lately, I have been working to get this simple little site operational and accurate. My resume needed updating/correcting. This little site is coming but its not all there yet. I’m planning on making this my main focus in my personal project list until its really professionally done. Wait till you see the final version of the header/banner for the site — its not like anything I think you have ever seen!

I’ve also been working on a re-design of chomer.com. Instead of being static like the previous version, it is fully dynamic. If you are looking at my site now to see those changes, sorry, its not there yet (its on my local box). The site allows for both articles and blog posts and will use a back-end MySQL database to handle all the content. Once this is up and running, this Wordpress blog will go away. Before that happens, I will be copying all the contents of all my blogs to this new blog system.

The new system also uses heavy AJAX control using my Renegade Ajax framework. I am using this period to help shake out any issues that are in this framework. The application server I am using to write my new site software in is my favorite: ColdFusion MX (of course). I do have plans, once the site is finished and been in operation awhile… getting all the kinks out… of writing a new version in PHP and providing it for free to the community. If it comes out the way I see it in my head, it will be better than anything I’ve ever seen. Definitely better than anything I’ve seen for free for sure!

Furnace Room
Our furnace room has been a mess for a long time now. I’ve dreamed of having some sort of workbench down there. Well, after going to a cool show put on by MAKE magazine at the Chicago Science and Industry museum, getting a subscription and a best projects book, I got inspired. In the front of the book was a section on setting up a workbench! I’ve got enough room to set up an L-shaped work area made up of 3 benches which I bought at Menards. The instructions were a little shakey that came in the box with the first one I assembled but I learned a few things along the way. I am thinking about filming a video tutorial on assembling the workbench and eventually placing it out on YouTube. We will see. One project in my new MAKE book is building a Stirling Engine. I’d like to try that out on my new workbench(s)!

Right now I’m sitting in on a session at the Chicago iPhone Dev Camp on using Objective C. Fortunately this is non-NDA information.