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.

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. 

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, I’ve sent a message to Val again about my missing DVD. She’s going to work on getting me a copy finally (I ordered it months ago). I don’t think that the problem is Val herself, most likely it is the people she hired to distribute her DVD.

I’m looking forward to getting it Val! Love your show!

Problems come in bunches:

• A bird is building a nest in a vent for my attic (the grate popped out). You can hear him in the ceiling of our bedroom. I’m trying to get a handyman to fix the problem.
• My neck and shoulders are really bothering me and doing something about it is really a hassle. And, of course, when you feel bad, things that are a hassle seem to be even more of a hassle than they really are!
• My external hard drive (1TB) for my MacBook is not powering up at all. This is really a drag (I’ve only had this thing a month or two).
• The project I’m on at work is just a mass of confusion and corporate politics. Man do I hate this thing!

Just doing a little venting…

I’m paying to have a link to my blog on USA Today’s web site. I was given different topics to select from. I had to pick one of the topics to list my blog under. I put it under Technology. I wish they had an Eclectic topic. That would be more relavent. I’m interested in technology so I write about it. But I’m interested in lots of things and I will write about those things too: health (I have health problems), interesting places or people, etc. Maybe some day there will be an Eclectic topic!

My sister told me of her frustration in finding certain information on the internet. She told me how much work she put in digging up the information and how it was too bad that someone didn’t provide a site under said information. “Why don’t we create the site?” I asked her.

We started brain-storming and came up with our idea. I signed up for an Amazon web service. I’m not telling you which one right now because at this point, I want to keep my sister’s and my ideas a secret!

Needless to say, the service going down like that did give me some pause. It also made me think about the design of my site. The whole site will not be on Amazon. The new site will be on my web host and use the Amazon web service in question.  What will happen on my new site if the web service has gone down? I need to take that into consideration.

What information do I cache? Can our users still get some things done on the site if the web service is down?