May 2007 Archives

First off, allow me to correct myself. Yesterday I said I would be doing "LinkTos" and I compared them to "Blog Drive-Bys". My mistake . . . actually these are just going to be links to pretty much anything I find and decide to post here.

They may very well be blogs, but they may be other things that I find and want to share with anyone who visits or reads. So I am going to, more appropriately name them, "Things I found" until ( or if ) I come up with something else.

Got a problem with a shoplifting teen? I don't. Well I don't have any teenagers yet. But if I did, I might find this article a helpful resource.

Tired of using your regular email address for things you may ( or may not ) wish to continue receiving? This service allows you to set a temporary email address that is good for 15 minutes.

Born before 1980? Me too. If you watch the evening news you'd wonder how we all survived. Reminisce about some of the wonders of being born before 1980.

101 of George Carlin's greatest quotes.

Need to lose some weight fast. I'm a bit skeptical, but here's a guide to losing 20 pounds of fat in 30 days.

OK, maybe I've understated a little . . . When I started this blog I had a little idea and the means to follow through with it. In looking back at the last four months or so, I'm not particularly satisfied. The idea was alright, I just think that my implementation could have been better.

What could I have done better?

1. More follow through on scheduling - Lately it's been hit-or-miss as far as when I'll post on any given day.
2. Better definition of topics - Here again, it's hard to tell what I'll post when I do.
3. Better planning and preparation - I rarely write posts ahead of time. I often try to research topics for lengthy posts, but time prevents me from doing good research.
4. My blogroll needs work - I link to a lot of stuff, but I'm not sure how well it's paying off. It could also better represent my interests.
5. Better marketing, promotion and networking - I sometimes do make a good effort of visiting and commenting on others' blogs. That has served me well, I need to do more of it.
6. Too few posts? - I'm not sure about this one. I know that posting too much can drive people away. I've omitted feeds from my reader because I never have the time to read all of a feed's posts in one day. These are few and far between, however. But I do think I could manage more than one post per day if I tried, and specifically for certain topics and days.

How to fix it

1. Pick a scheduled time that each post will be posted by.
2. Refine topics and coordinate with my schedule.
3. Get ahead of schedule and stay there.
4. Refine my blogroll and better coordinate with topics.
5. Visit a wider array of blogs and utilize more networking opportunities.
6. Post more frequently

I'll elaborate more on this as time goes by since Wednesdays are going to be set aside for blogging topics. However, after looking at the way the traffic for this blog tends to go and some of the topics that I think will be productive, I've decided ( tentatively ) that my schedule will be:

• Monday - DVD or TV
• Tuesday - Web 2.0 / Tech
• Wednesday - Blogging
• Thursday - LinkTo's ( My version of the blog drive-by )
• Friday - Anything humorous
• Saturday - Random Photos ( perhaps videos, too )
• Sunday - An open day. Anything goes.

Although I wonder who's watching what, they both like looking out the window . . . from the random photo series.

Sometimes it's difficult to really come to conclusions when you take a look at the way your site's traffic patterns play out. Generally speaking, my site doesn't really have as much traffic during the weekend as it does during the week. With that in mind, I'm going to prepare for a couple more business idea posts for next week so that by the end of next week I'll be in a position to make a decision.

The first part of this equation has already worked out. My son not only brought up his reading grade, but he also brought up all his other grades and brought home straight As. Admittedly, I'm not one of those kinds of parents that demands exceptional grades. He's normally a B student, but does outstanding work in math and a couple other subjects. Needless to say, he received the reward that I told him he'd get.

His new web site is up. He's started a couple blogs and a few forums for Runescape and other games. Stop by and check it out if you're interested. I'm hoping it works out well for him. That leaves my old domain open for me to do something with it since I'm still paying for the hosting. I hate wasting money so I need to get something going over there.

Anyway, I have a three day weekend so I'll be doing my best to enjoy it. I hope you do the same.

I would never have the patience to be a pet photographer . . . from the random photo series

As any regular visitor to this blog knows I am in the process right now of choosing a business idea that I think not only fits me and my interests, but also is good enough to provide a perfect replacement for a regular job and the income it provides.

So far I've taken a look at building a social networking site and a social bookmarking/ ranking site. They're both fairly good ideas that are fairly popular right now. Either of them would probably fit into my interests well and provide a decent return on the investment of my own time and money provided they are successful and competitive with other offerings.

However, I still have a few other ideas I'd like to look at before I make a final decision. As for now, and the reason for this post, I want to take an opportunity to look at an entirely different view of this decision. I'd like to address the whole question of "Should I do it?" as opposed to "What should I do?"

The main motivation for this is a few articles that have popped up on my radar over the last week or so suggesting that I'm way past the prime age that could be indicative of whether or not I'll be successful at this little venture into the uncharted waters of entrepreneurship.

Tomorrow is the kids' last day of school. Unfortunately my son has the virus that was kicking the crap out of me last week. We kept him home today and most likely he'll be home tomorrow. I feel really bad for him. As a kid I know that the last day of school is always one that is almost as highly anticipated day as Christmas day. The thought that you have the whole summer ahead of you with nothing more to worry about than what time after 9 or 10 you might just roll out of bed is pretty cool. The kids won't be doing that, however. We've signed them up for a summer-long sports camp. Yes, it's kind of a "day care" solution to the fact that my wife work during the day now. But it's better than what they did last summer.

Ultimately, unless their friends are around ( which isn't always the case ) they spend the day whining about how hot it is or how boring it is or . . . insert random complaint here. So they'll spend the summer with kids their age staying fit and busy.

But back to the title . . . I spent this evening getting things going on my son's new website because I have every confidence that he has met ( if not surpassed ) his promise to bring his reading grade up while maintaining his other awesome grades. His hosting package came with something called Community Server. It's a pretty nice ASP.Net application that allows you to create a thriving community complete with blogs, forums, file downloading and photo sharing. He wants to build a community around an online game he plays - Runescape. He envisions selling ads and making buckets of money. Never let it be said that I tried to stifle his entrepreneurial dreams. After all, he earned it. I made sure that it was set up so he could play around with it and mess with this and that tomorrow since he'll be missing his last day of school. Hopefully he'll feel up to it. If not, it'll be ready for him when he's feeling better.

The next category of business idea I want to throw around is that of social ranking and bookmarking. I think it follows well with my previous post because it is also an extension of the social networking category.

In the past I have been a little critical of sites like Digg. Better put, I have been critical of the presumption that there exists a mob that can behave as a filter in a civilized, democratic manner that reflects good taste so much so that I would count on it to recommend good news stories. My beliefs haven't changed. I still don't think there is a system or body of people that can do that and satisfy the masses. However, the problem is very interesting to me and one that I wouldn't mind tinkering with.

The idea that people will visit a particular website, contribute content freely, and then go so far as to categorize it and rank it is pretty good when you think about it. This takes a lot of the stress of the owner to produce content. The primary caveat being that a large community forms and quality content and ranking becomes the norm. As far as business ideas go, this isn't too bad. But, we need to dig in a little deeper and explore.

And on my off days I wrestle bears - from the random photo series

Yesterday I announced the beginning of a series that I am employing to define a project I will begin working on very shortly.

I'm going to look at a variety of ideas in an attempt to weed out those that either don't suit my preferences or those that just don't make sense. The first category I'm going to look at a bit is social networks.

Social networks are extraordinarily popular right now for a variety of reasons. However, it's kind of important to differentiate between broad social networks and niche social networks. While this definition may be similar to others', this is solely my definition or distinction between the two: A broad social network is a web service or web site in which the sole purpose is networking in and amongst social circles. The network allows for the collection of friends and facilitates communication through individual "identity" pages or messaging. Messaging may also consist of blog-like or forum-like posting. I would put sites like myspace and facebook in this category.

A niche social network is a web service or web site which utilizes the components of social networking around a central interest. I can think of several examples of this model. For example Flickr (photography), YouTube (video) and MyBlogLog (blogging). So which would be the best option if I were to build one?

As someone who has been working in the tech field since before the whole dot com boom, it has always been my desire to go on my own. I began working in this field because I wanted my own business. Not that being employed in this sector is the path to entrepreneurship, but I had a real desire to learn from the ground up how to do it.

I've had a lot of ideas along the way. As anyone will tell you, however, an idea is not enough. I've seen a few of my ideas ( or variations of them ) implemented by others. Some worked out well and others have fallen by the wayside. There's nothing worse than coming across, for example, a new website that does exactly what you had in mind and knowing that you could have done it. Of course there's always those old and faithful excuses to fall back on:

• I didn't have enough free time
• I didn't have enough money
• Somebody's already working on that idea
• I need this . . . or that . . . or few other things to make it work
• That domain name's taken
• Add your own here

No more excuses

As life would have it, things change. Last week was no exception and my family is preparing for another change. My wife, who has worked for about 16 ( or so ) years as a nurse, has a new opportunity she has desired for quite some time. This opportunity has a few trade offs and benefits, however, as most do.

First off . . . my wife has generally only worked weekends. Monday thru Friday she never really had to get out of bed for any particular reason except to work on crafts or play Internet spades. However, in the event of a school break or a sick kid, there was always someone at home. That will change since her new job will require that she work daytime hours during the week.

Weekends . . . it was always kind of difficult to really enjoy the weekends as a family. With my wife at work every weekend we always had to schedule activities knowing that she would probably not be able to be there unless she managed to get the day off - without pay. It will be nice to be able to plan our weekends without that keeping us apart.

Will someone think of the children . . . In the past we only used day care right after my son was born. I was still an undergrad ( and working full-time ) and my wife worked 12 hour shifts as a nurse. So we used a part-time day care for those days we couldn't cover till my son was about 2 years old. When my daughter came along I had just started grad school and I stopped working to be Mr. Mom. We've never had the benefit of living near family, although I would much rather have family watch over my kids if I can't. Without jumping up on a soapbox, allow me to gripe about how expensive it can be. I'd love to write a long, bitchy post about how our society isn't set up to foster families . . . but what would be the point?

Overall, I expect it will have a positive effect on our household. Of course, some minor inconveniences along the way will rear their ugly head from time to time. But the one thing that I can expect is that we will always get through it. We always have. Above all my wife really deserved this. She's been a nurse working the floor, pushing pills, and dealing with the generous helping of crap that nurse's have thrust on them for a long time. She will now get her shot at being the boss - a Director of Nursing for an independent care facility. I fully expect her to rise to occasion.

If there was ever any doubt that Tony Soprano is a murderous, selfish pig . . . last night's episode clearly removed that from my mind.


He's an easy guy to like from time to time - just as any good, well-intentioned sociopath trains himself to be. A charmer on the surface . . . but watch your back. Tony always has had this thing about weakness.

Chris did the worst possible thing he could have done when he mentioned the drugs last night. Who knows, had he not brought them up Tony might have helped him. In the end, however, we can see that this is eating him up from the inside-out. He has guilt dripping from every possible part of his body.

But don't let it fool you. Tony's life of debauchery and self-indulgence hasn't missed a beat. You would think that the guys dumping their asbestos into the wetlands would leave a trail of some kind?

Tony's getting a bit careless. Don't you think?

Skipper, at My Life Starts at Forty-Two, anointed me with the coveted Thinking Blogger Award. I'm not sure I really deserve it. I admit I have moments in which words of thoughtful wisdom may flow freely from my fingers and grace the pages of my website. But, by my own admission, they are few and far between.

All too often it is so easy to post something short, funny, or just plain irreverent than it is to compile an essay worthy of the blogger-spotlight. With that being said, however, I do have a short series that will be a little more thoughtful in the future. I'm going to try and pull something together this weekend and be ready for it to start Monday. According to the rules I must list five other bloggers who also are Thinking Bloggers. That would be:

1. RT at Untwisted Vortex. He works really hard at his blog. What's more, he obviously thinks through his decisions about how he implements his blog.
2. Head Coach at Can't Coach That. He makes me laugh. What's more, he puts enough thought into his posts so that I don't have to think too much to enjoy them.
3. Gabrielle at Tech Chick Blog. It's more than just a cute girl blogging about technology. What I think is best about her blog is her dedication and immersion into the social scene that the Internet has become and the passion with which she pursues it.
4. Kassindra at And To Think . . .
5. Misa Gracie at My Life My Opinions My Blog

If you've been tagged for this meme the following guidelines apply:

1. List five people that you wish to award with, "The Thinking Blogger"
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. You may display, The Thinking Blogger award image or the silver version if the gold one does not match your color scheme. This is not mandatory however. The Thinking Blogger Police will not raid your website should you choose not to.

Just in case you're not getting incredibly bored with information from our trip to Nebraska . . . North Platte is rich in railroad history. At the city park, also named after Buffalo Bill Cody, are a couple preserved locomotives. This is one of them - a freight and passenger train built in 1943 and retired in 1961. It's the only one of this class on display in the world and known as "The Challenger 3977" - from the random photo series.

No. I'm not posting about stormy weather, flooding, or any other natural disaster type stuff. I've been sick - like a damn dog - for the past few days.

I stayed home yesterday and slept the majority of the day. I went ahead and went to work today since I haven't accrued and sick days yet. David, my director, told me that I can go ahead and use sick time. I thought that was a pretty good deal.

However, this means I will start with a deficit and have to pay it back with any sick time I earn.

Thankfully I don't get sick very often.

It would appear that authorities from the state of Nebraska have decided to extradite me from Kansas to appear before a judge for a long list of charges. Quite honestly I really don't know what this is all about. But I guarantee I will get to the bottom of it before long.

To add to the disgrace I've been notified that Paris Hilton will be my cellmate. My wife has informed me that, "If that bitch brings a video camera you better keep your clothes on!!"

I've been waiting for The Sopranos to start getting a little better. Obviously they are trying to build a lot of tension for a really climactic ending.

Chris is a little over the top. But, you have to hand it to him. To be that drunk and still be able to place a shot right into a guy's forehead. I would have expected him to miss by a mile. The question is, when is he going to try that on someone else like Paulie or perhaps even Tony? I think they are trying to get us to expect that Chris may go to the feds to get even with Tony.

Adriana keeps coming up. While I was watching I couldn't help but expect that Chris was going to spill the beans about her several times. But he didn't. But will he?

I never expected AJ to split with his girlfriend. It's really got him all screwed up. After last night, we see that he does kind of enjoy the suffering of others a little more than I expected. I had predicted that AJ might go into the family business. After seeing his reaction when he and his buddies decided to punish a guy who owed a little money - I may have been wrong about him not having the constitution to for this line of work. And if you remember from last season, AJ does like the mobster life. He likes the respect it commands, the money, the drugs, and the women. You do have to kind of wonder a bit, however. With all the emotional turmoil that Tony has been going through with Chris and his desire to go into the movie business, his fistfight with Bobby, and the lack of anyone to really be his protege . . . Tony may welcome AJ because I really think he's looking for something like this in someone he thinks he can trust.

Tony's conversation with the feds was a little strange. I wonder where that's going to take us? Any thoughts? Predictions? I'm not sure what to think at this point. But I expect the retaliations and violence is going to start picking up considerably. Who's going to be left standing is anyone's guess as far as I'm concerned.

My good friend and fellow shutterbug Aleah took this picture this weekend. As you can see, Kansas has been getting hit pretty hard with strong storms and torrential rain on ground that's already soaked. What's more, you can clearly see, if you look to the top right of the picture, that this storm is clearly rotating - something we don't like to see. Luckily I didn't run into anything like that during our trip home. Fortunately, we made it back in one piece from North Platte around 7pm last night.

I have discovered that Jeeps are not the most aerodynamic vehicles on the road when facing strong winds on the interstate. The better part of the drive back we faced gusty side and headwinds that made the trip a little stressful. I have a boatload of pictures I want to share with all my readers. I'll probably be posting them, one at a time for a while as I get around to cropping them down. I uploaded them to my desktop computer last night, but haven't done anything with them beyond that. After watching the Sopranos last night, I went to bed with a booming thunderstorm to serenade me in my quest for some well deserved sleep.

I spewed some cynical, sarcastic stuff about my kids yesterday suggesting they would make the trip here unbearable. I have to hand it to them. They were really good kids. I only had to do, "If you don't cut it out I'll reach back there and . . . " one time.

Since I left my camera at the motel room, we need to make the rounds a little bit and take some pictures of stuff. I'll share them with you as random photos over the next few weeks. My heart goes out to the people in Greensburg, KS. We caught a little bit of that storm on the way here. The drive here was very gray and rainy.

While we haven't yet left, so far it's fairly sunny. I hope it stays that way and we have a nice, safe trip. I would really, really hate to get caught out in the middle of no-man's-land, the entire family stuck in the Jeep, while an intense storm was raging all around us. Not my idea of a fun, family trip.

As you read this I'm more than likely trapped inside my Jeep traveling west ( or quite possibly north ) on my way to North Platte, NE. My wife has family there and it's been quite a while since we've visited. As a matter of fact, I think the last time we were there my daughter was roughly two years old. She's nine now. The last time we were all confined to a moving vehicle for more than a couple hours the kids were six and four.

If there are any parents reading this then you probably know how that went:

"Give it back!!"
"No!"
"That's mine"
"Dad, tell him to give it back."
"Shut up! It's not yours. You gave it to me."
"I did not!" "Daaaaaaaaaaaaaad!!" And on and on and on and on.

Start cynical, fortywhat!!?? sarcasm

But this time, the kids are older and more mature. I'm quite sure we won't have any of that kind of stuff going on during our six and a half hour ( one way ) trip.

End cynical, fortywhat!!?? sarcasm

I'm brining a rubber mallet just in case.

I've not used the Scheduled Post option in Movable Type before, so we'll see how that works out since I scheduled this one for Saturday morning. As much as it may shock and surprise everyone I've been informed that there is, in fact, a Starbuck's in North Platte. Believe it or not! So I may very well be able to have my Venti White Chocolate Mocha and blog my little heart out.

Looks like there's a meme flying around.

BigSibling has tagged me in his post about, "Five reasons why he blogs." I know I'm probably going to look a bit like a anti-social, pretentious blogger-guy. After all, I've been invited to participate in a couple of memes here and here. However, due to time and changes in my life, I've decided to pass on those opportunities.

The main reason I decided to answer this one is because . . . well . . . I already answered this question back in March. So it's easy enough for me to just throw the link out there and be done with it. I mean, us fortywhat!!?? guys really appreciate things that are nice and quick and easy to do. It gives us a lot more time to ponder the meaning of life and what's on TV and why there's hair growing in places in places that never had hair before and disappearing from the places it should be.

As for the tagging part of this little exercise - if you're reading this post and feel compelled to respond . . . then by all means, contribute. It's a fun thing to do, makes you think, and you'll enjoy the links back to you. It's like having a backyard full of hot cheerleaders jumping on trampolines.

Ok, maybe not that good, but you get the idea.

I mow them over and they come back. Another installment in the random photo series.

This evening I stopped by a blog that I tend to visit on a fairly regular basis. I couldn't help but want to comment on the post, Why 15 Million is a Big Number, on many different levels.

The post makes a reference to another post at A VC. Of course, as things tend to go in the blogging world, the post at A VC certainly wasn't the starting point. It appears that the bubble has burst - that bubble being blogs. Evidently, there are somewhere around 15 million blogs. I guess, because some people tend to start up a blog and abandon them entirely, Technorati tracks a much larger number of blogs.

It is this disparity that seems to be driving the controversy. After all, how many people do you know who started a blog but didn't seem to follow through when it came to posting regularly? Personally I don't feel that this indicates that any bubble has burst. There are a multitude of reasons that people may not follow through when starting up a blog. So, while this is clearly a demonstration of conjecture and speculation, I don't mind building on a few examples that began at Virtual Economics and even illustrating a few of my own.

Well it's been two days at the new job.

Thinking back on my last post . . . I believe I said something to the effect that, "I wasn't really excited." It's a good thing because I would have set the bar pretty high and I'd probably be a bit disappointed by now. The only excitement I've seen in the past two days was today around 3pm. Without any warning whatsoever, an alarm begins wailing. It was if someone had pulled up right outside the door to my community office in a police car with the siren piercing the normally quiet office environment.

Evidently there was a tornado warning for the city of Topeka and a few surrounding communities. We were led out into the hallway where the alarm was much louder and continued for what seemed like forever, but it was probably around five minutes. After 45 minutes we were finally given the all clear. As people began to file out at either end of the hallway, I decided to take this picture with my cell phone. It's a bit grainy, but it gives you an idea of what it might have been like down there.


I haven't really said a lot about where I work, but suffice it to say that it is a public place.

Given the threat of tornadoes this time of the year, the response is to take anyone in the building and on the property into the basement hallway as well. If a non-employee decides they do not want to seek shelter in the basement, they must abandon the property entirely. Since my office, well . . . my cubicle that is . . . which happens to be in a "room", is in the basement and has no windows I have no idea why I need to go stand in the hallway. But, I've only been there for two days, so I won't start bitching just yet.