Archive for February, 2008
Friday, February 8th, 2008
Why Can’t America Vote Right?
Democracy in America is in trouble. For some reason we can’t figure out how to cast votes and count them without blunders, inaccuracy and stupidity. Worst of all, a consensus seems to be forming that computers or electronic ballots are to blame, and that the solution is paper-based voting. Here’s my proposal.
Democrats’ Nightmare: Elite Superdelegates may pick nominee
If neither Illinois Sen. Barack Obama nor New York Sen. Hillary Clinton manages to pull decisively ahead in the next few weeks, the nomination could depend on the convention votes of 796 party leaders, or superdelegates, who are free to ignore the preferences of Democratic voters.
Analyzing the Internet Collapse
When the Internet suddenly collapsed early last Wednesday across the Middle East and into India, it provided a stark reminder of how the Net’s virtual spaces can still be held hostage to real-world events.” And showed “the fragility of the Internet at its choke points.
What This Recession Nonsense Really Means for Us
Recession, shmecession. Everyone keeps blathering on about the dwindling dollar, the deflating markets, and an economy that is sure to dissolve into something obscenely dire any day now. But what does that all really mean and what exactly are we supposed to be doing about it?
10 Mistakes People Make When Starting a Business
What are the common mistakes that new entrepreneurs make and how can you avoid making them yourself? Here is our top 10 list of mistakes people make when starting a business:
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Posted in Business, Current Events, Internet | No Comments »
Thursday, February 7th, 2008
I took this little video today before we were attacked by the dog. We were in a good mood, but that was ruined by a true idiot. I guess I am still venting.
Anyway, there is a pretty nice little river that runs parallel to the road we walk on. We can hear it for most of the way up the road. It actually keeps the road about five degrees colder than the rest of the area. About a week ago, this stream was totally covered with ice. Not so much anymore.
Here is the video…
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Posted in Travels | No Comments »
Thursday, February 7th, 2008
Laura and I decided to go for one of our nice walks again today. The temperature was in the 40s, so we figured it would be nice to get out of the house. We went out to the driveway and I remembered that I forget my pepper spray for the bear. I usually bring a stick too, but haven’t done that in a while. I ran back into the house and grabbed the pepper spray and we went on our way. Sometimes, I feel like one of those granola types…you know, with the walking sticks and everything. I try not to come off like that.
We made it down to the corner and made a right, towards the river and the little pond we like so much. Usually, we will make it all the way to the end of the road and turn around. I think that makes the walk a full three miles. That’s a pretty good exercise day, with all the hills and everything. We walked a bit further and I decided to take some video, since I brought my video camera. That’s probably why I initially forgot my pepper spray, I was so focused on remembering the video camera. I did take some video and will post it in my next entry.
For some reason, Laura decided to keep walking. I guess she was in the zone. I finished up the video and had to run to catch up to her. When I finally got up there, I told her that the one part on my body that feels the most tired from the run is my shins. Isn’t that weird? We continued on and walked past this house with three barking dogs. Every time we walk by this house, we have to put up with these dogs barking their asses off at us. They are tied up to trees and have no shelter. We can’t figure out why these people own these dogs. All they do is bark and it seems like no one is taking care of them. Perhaps it is the old “protection” thing. You know, the “I have a house that no one in their right mind would rob, but I need three barking dogs anyway” kind of house. They really ruin the whole road. I am sure the neighbors love it. Now, let me tell you, these are not three little poodles, they are three large black lab mixes. They are always trying to get loose to do who knows what. Again, we walked past them up to the pond.
We finally made it to the pond and began our walk back down the road. We made it almost to the driveway of the barking dogs and Laura said, “Do they have another one? I see one in the backyard.” Right at that moment, I heard a “snap.” Then, right when we got to the driveway, I saw this big black dog barreling down the driveway towards us, barking like crazy. My first thought was that he would stop at the edge of the property line and just bark. Well, as it turns out, he ran right towards us, barking and snarling all the way. I was standing in between the dog and Laura and Holly (our dog). This dog tried to get to Holly to apparently kill her. He ran to my left, when I realized this might be a good time to use my pepper spray. I took the pepper spray out of my pocket and sprayed the dog as he was circling around me trying to get to Laura and Holly. I think I only got his side, because he continued to make it around to Holly. Laura kept trying to shield her. She was probably also wondering what the hell I was doing because she had her back to me. The dog got around and bit Holly in the back. I turned around and kicked the dog in the side and sprayed it in the face. Laura was in the process of trying to lift Holly up so she could use her legs to kick. The dog ran back into the driveway all the way to the house. I saw the dog use its paws to try to clear its face of the pepper spray when it decided to come back for another round. He ran back, barking all the way and when he got to the end of the driveway, he stopped and I gave him another spray, which didn’t reach him. He turned around and ran back to the house, when again, he decided to come back for another try. I was still standing there with the pepper spray, so he turned around and stayed there.
Needless to say, we were a little shaken. We walked back to the house and I called the police. They told me they would contact the dog control guy so he could come out. I told them that this dog was nuts so they should really send a cop out too. The dog control guy came over to our house and I gave him the information. Then, he left and went up to the house. He told me this was the second time this week the dog got loose. Then, the cop came to our house and I gave him the information. He then left and went up to the house. When he came back a little while later, he informed me that the owner wasn’t home, but the kids tied the dog up. Later this evening, the dog control guy called me a few times and let me know that this guy was going to get a bunch of tickets. He was getting one for not having shelter for the dogs, for having one of them loose, not having them registered with the town and some other stuff. I told him that I want to see the rabies paperwork and for the guy to apologize to us. I am also going to file a complaint and go to court. Can anyone say, “Jerry Springer?”
I decided that it would be good to continue to walk on our favorite road. I am going to be a little more prepared this time. If we are going to be living here for the next year or so, I am going to buy a few cans of bear spray. The cop told me that’s the good stuff and can shoot up to 30 feet. Here is what I am thinking of. Also, I am going to start carrying my bat. If this ever happens again, I swear I am going to blind the dog and club him to death. I’ll even chase him if need be. I really am not going to put up with this crap any more.
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Posted in Ramblings | 9 Comments »
Thursday, February 7th, 2008
If anyone remembers what I said back a few months ago about getting a new car, it was that I really wanted GPS navigation. Well, with the car I got, if I had added the GPS navigation, it would’ve raised the price around $5000. Now, I wanted the GPS, but I’m no fool.
Since I got the new car without the GPS, I still had this thing nagging me in the back of my mind. For the past few weeks, I have doing a little research. I found a pretty good GPS system for a good price. I bought the Magellan Maestro 4000 GPS Navigation. I initially found this model on Circuit City’s website for $399. It was on sale for $349 and then on sale again for $329. I thought that was a pretty good price, until I looked on Buy.com and found it for $229.88. That’s about $100 less. What is that about? Anyway, the GPS arrived yesterday.
I have to say, GPS is just about the coolest thing out there. I really didn’t think it was going to be this freakin’ cool. I did a little driving around with it yesterday. After I put an address in it, the little box on my dashboard would talk to me. Now, remember that I have never used one of these things before, so I am still in awe. I can’t wait to try to get lost…it won’t let you.
There are a few reasons why I decided to get this model. One was the price. For the 4.3″ screen, the price was lower than a bunch of other ones. Another was the way the maps look. I don’t like those “cartoony” maps that many other brands use. Also, the ratings were ok. The lower ratings came from those weird tech people who look into every feature something has. I usually use about two features out of one hundred. I think this model was a good choice.
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Posted in Automotive, Technology | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 6th, 2008
I opened up my new Coopers Home Brew kit last night and got to work. I was pretty excited to see how I should put together the ingredients. I had already watched the DVD that came with the package on YouTube, so I was a bit familiar with what to do.
There was something that came off as a bit confusing. In the can with the beer type and yeast packet, came one set of instructions. Then, in a booklet, there was another set of instructions. Then, the DVD offered very similar, but different instructions. I know that each type of beer will have it’s own instructions, but I really wasn’t sure which one to follow. Really, the only thing that was different was whether or not to stir in the yeast. One set of instructions (the one that I was following) said to sprinkle the yeast on top of the mixture (wort) and immediately seal the container. Then, the video said to sprinkle on the yeast and immediately stir it in, then seal the container. Unfortunately, I didn’t stir it in. I had to go back later and agitate the container to stir it in. I know how sensitive yeast can be, so I have my fingers crossed. When I woke up this morning, the air seal thingy up on top of the lid was bubbling, so I know there is some fermentation going on.
Here are some photos of what it looks like…
Basically, you mix together the concentrate, sugar, water and yeast and seal the container. Then, you have to keep the mixture between 21 and 27 degrees celsius. That’s the best temperature for the yeast to work. You have to keep it that way for 4-7 days, until the bubbles stop. Then, you have to check the mixture with a hydrometer to check it’s alcohol content. After that, bottle the beer and wait a little more. I will write more about that when I get to it. For now, I am just hoping that it ferments properly.
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Posted in Food & Drink | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008
Oh, how exciting. I always forget how thrilling it is to vote.
Tonight, Laura and I rolled down to the fire house to exercise our civic duty. We walked in saw a few people in line and the usual women working the polling station. They are very nice people. Usually, I wake them all up with my humor. Yeah, I’m the tall redhead.
I went first…signed my name in the book and pulled the big red handle. Then, I made my vote and pulled the handle in the other direction. Laura was right behind me. She did her thing and walked out of the booth. We made a bit of small talk with the ladies and left. What a fun thing to do.
Unfortunately, for Laura or me, we canceled out each others vote.
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Posted in Politics | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008
I came home from a short trip to the post office today to find my Cooper’s Micro Brew Kit was sitting in a box on the front porch. I was instantly full of glee. I was also gleeful. Being full of glee and gleeful at the same time is great.
The box is pretty big. I guess it has to be to hold that big six gallon beer bucket. It’s also kind of heavy, but not too much, I would say about ten pounds (or a stone, as they say in England).
Here, take a look…
This is the big box. Do you see how happy the people on the box are? It might be because they are from Australia, but it also might be because they are drunk, like I am going to be from six gallons of beer.
This is inside the box. About sixteen bottles came loaded up over to the side and there were more inside the jug.
Here is a photo of one of the plastic bottles.
This is a picture of what was inside the big jug. There was sugar, some bottles, some beer mix and a bunch of other stuff. I plan to make my first brew tonight.
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Posted in Food & Drink | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008
As you may already know, for the past few weeks or months, I have been in the process of migrating all my websites over to a new hosting company. All the sites are now over and running smoothly. Among others, I have five websites that are almost identical…only the content and look is different. The database tables, structure and files are the same. I moved three of those sites over to the first server and migrated the other two over to the second server.
The first three websites were up and running very quickly and have had no issues. Strangely enough, when I went to import the backed up databases for the last two websites on the second server, I got an error reading something like, “Key length is too long on line 26.” The support guy at the hosting company was kind enough to change the database collation to “latin1_bin,” from “UTF8,” which allowed for the database import with no problem. Well, until a few days went by…
I began getting emails from my sister, Stephanie (who does all the customer support for those websites) about people complaining that they couldn’t login or properly search the websites anymore. For instance, if they tried to search, “Jay Gaulard,” about 5 results would return. If they tried to search, “jay gaulard,” about thirty results would return. In other words, the websites had become case sensitive.
I called the hosting company who was at a loss. Then, I submitted a support ticket to the developer of the software. The developers returned the ticket and informed me that the hosting company had changed the database collation to “latin1_bin,” which was binary and thus case sensitive. They told me to change the collation to a non-binary collation to fix the issue. Neither of us knew if this would really fix anything after the fact.
Now, one thing to remember is that you can easily change the collation of your MySQL database when it’s empty. You can even change it when it’s full. The problem is that you will only be changing any new tables that are put into that database. Any existing tables would need to be changed manually, along with all the table columns. So, that’s what I did yesterday…for about six hours. I changed both databases to “latin1_general_ci” (which stands for case insensitive). I also changed all 268 tables and over 1000 columns in those databases. This was not fun. Actually, it sucked.
The outcome is that both websites are now functioning properly, which is a nice thing.
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Posted in Websites | No Comments »
Monday, February 4th, 2008
Today was a good day to install a new dishwasher. Good thing too, because our new one showed up this morning. I would say this has been a long time coming and almost didn’t happen. Luckily, while we were in the kitchen place in December, we made the decision to get one. I think it was the right choice. The strangest thing is now I feel like I’m living in my mother’s house. The kitchen feels so “legitimate.” I mean, we are so used to washing dishes by hand…I guess I just feel spoiled, that’s all. Even the sound of the dishwasher feels like when I was growing up. You know the feeling…having a conversation while wiping down the counter tops at night, listening to the hum of the dishwasher. It’s weird.
Ok, so here are some photos of the installation. I would first like to say thank you to Rob and Paul who both offered to come over and help install this beast. It needed to be wired and plumbed, but when I found out how easy everything easy to do myself, I just couldn’t help it. Onto the pictures…
This is the Frigidaire dishwasher we got. It is a no frills model. We got it for $230, which was the cheapest one in the store. I asked the sales guy what the difference was between this one and the others and he told me basically features and sound dampening. I told him we would take this one. I don’t need the thing to scratch my back, I need it to clean the dishes.
This is the hot water feed that comes from under the sink right next door. This fitting came with the dishwasher installation kit I bought from Home Depot.
This is the rest of the kit (braided hose) after it is all together. Sorry for the blurriness.
This clear hose is the drain hose that goes up and over the dishwasher and then attached to my drain hose I bought last week. I clamped the two together with a fitting.
This is the wiring I ran from the breaker box, under the house and up through the floor in back of the dishwasher. The wires just attach to the two wires that come with the dishwasher. The ground gets screwed right to the dishwasher. The wiring is attached to a 20AMP circuit breaker in the box. It’s very simple.
Here is a nice view of underneath the dishwasher, if anyone cares.
This is the fitting I got the other day. I talk about it in this post.
This is the almost finished product. All I have to do now is to put the base plate back on and peel the protective film off the black door. We already ran two loads in this bad boy and are very pleased. For a dishwasher with virtually no sound insulation, it’s fairly quiet. It doesn’t use much water at all and does a great job cleaning the dishes and silverware.
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Posted in Home Improvement | No Comments »
Monday, February 4th, 2008
I was in Home Depot over the weekend getting some stuff. I was in the molding aisle when I overheard some dude talking to a nice couple. We were all in the same boat…looking for molding. The dude and the couple were talking about recycled materials used in the molding…I think. Then, somehow they got onto the shopping bag issue. You know, the bags at grocery stores and Wal-Mart stores.
The lady mentioned something about how you can recycle your used bags at the grocery stores. This is something I learned only a few weeks ago. She also mentioned that the store will actually give you a credit if you bring your own bag(s). I thought that was pretty cool, but have never experienced it myself.
Then, the dude starts talking about how so many recycled products are more expensive than their non-recycled counterparts. He said that it boggled his mind why that is. He continued to ask why in the world he would pay more for a recycled product when he could get the non-recycled product for less. He again said that his mind was boggled. It was even confused. I, being the guy who just spent almost double the regular cost for paper towels and toilet paper (100% recycled), was eager to jump in. I wanted to tell the man that by purchasing the recycled products, he was doing something good for the bigger picture. But I didn’t. My urge faded away when I realized my words would be lost on him. He kind of stuck me as the type of guy who was set in his ways. Being the “tough talker” he was, I most likely would’ve come off as some liberal San Fransiscan. From my experience, many of these Home Depot shoppers I come across, don’t seem to have rational views on societal issues. I walked away thinking of how stupid he was.
By the time I got to the end of the aisle, I realize that he did have a point. Most people are heavily influenced by what’s in their wallets. If this recycled product thing is ever going to take off, the producers of these products have to stop punishing people for buying them. Isn’t it weird that so much stuff out there that is good for you and good for the planet costs twice as much as all the junk that isn’t? Things are a little backwards, in my opinion.
Anyway, Laura and I went shopping at the local expensive Hannaford that night. We brought two of our reusable tote bags with us. When I arrived at the checkout area and the nice lady noticed we had two of our own bags, she credited us five cents each. I know that isn’t much, but I thought it was pretty cool. The whole way home I kept on talking about how I was going to write about it.
When we arrived back at the house, I was still thinking. I mentioned how neat it was for stores to reward people for using their own shopping bags. Then, as I was entering the house, I remembered an article that I read the day before. It was about how, in Dublin, after a tax was introduced on plastic bags, their use dropped 94%. I began to think about the fact that I never once saw anyone else in Hannaford with their own reusable shopping bags. I am sure people use them, but I have never seen them. Strange. Perhaps rewarding people for using their own bags is good, but punishing them for not is better. After all, a 94% reduction is plastic bag use is something to write home about.
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Posted in Environment | 2 Comments »
