Whew!

I just spent two hours importing ten years worth of my blog posts into Blogger from my custom blog software that I had written way back in 2010 and hosted on a server in my basement. All I can say is thank God I don't post that often!

There are definitely some casualties like broken links in general and to image galleries, enlarged images no longer available, lost alt image tags, and a few assets like videos I had stored locally. After an XML import I still had to touch each post by hand due to weirdness with XML encoding, CSS styling issues, and missing assets (images). I'll probably revisit some of the posts to re-link image galleries and missing files but I it's a really good start.

Regardless of the missing assets and bad links I consider the move a success! Woohoo!

Adventures in hosting

I pulled my home server offline a few weeks ago. Quite frankly after 10 years of listening to the ~8-10 cooling fans whirring 24/7 I was slowly starting to lose my sanity. So to that end I've transferred my DNS to this Blogger instance. I still have to figure out how to port ten years worth of my old blog posts into Atom format to show up here. That should be fun /s.

I love old houses...

My house was built in 1926 and apparently some plumbing under the concrete dates from around then. Some food got washed down past the garbage disposal which blocked up the drain. A bottle of Liquid Plumber, a bottle of lye, much plunging, a kitchen flooded with greenish/black water, and a sprung leak in the pipe later I found out that a clay pipe under the foundation collapsed. So much for the spare money I had been saving for a trip to the Berea gun show.

They (Ace Building & Remodeling) ended up having to rip out the concrete, replace the pipe, then backfill it and cover it with new concrete. It was all done in one day but unfortunately it took me almost a week to determine that I needed it done. A week without a drain sucks more than I thought. Dirty dishes everywhere, can't rinse them, can't throw them in the dishwasher, and can't cook since the pots and pans will be dirty all over the place.

Once again I'd like to thank the original idiots that worked on my house for not putting in any sort of access point to run a snake, not using the proper PVC fittings underneath my sink, and not elevating the dishwasher output line (all of which have been corrected now).

Nifty pictures here.

I'm back

I just got back from attending the Internet Retailer Mobile Commerce Forum 2010 conference in Chicago. Internet retailers from around the country gather to discuss mobile marketing and technology strategy as it relates to the mobile web. Speakers included mobile executives from Walgreens, Fandango, Travelocity, Rhapsody, Crutchfield, Finish Line, and ShopNBC to name the more mainstream presenters. The overall theme was marketing centric and not as technical as I'm used to, but I did take away information pertaining to topics such as apps versus mobile sites and prioritizing mobile site features.

I have been to Chicago before but as with this trip I barely had any time to do much "touristy" stuff at length. I did get to check out Navy Pier, Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., and get some sweet Chicago deep dish pizza from Giordanos. I never knew that Bubba Gump was a real place that was actually created for (or after) Forrest Gump was released. The tables actually have license plates on them that say Run Forrest Run or Stop Forrest Stop to indicate if you need something from the server.


Other than that I just took some random urban shots around town as I was walking between places. All of the pictures I took can be seen here.

July is my new favorite month

I just had two pretty awesome weekends back to back. I met an awesome new person who just so happens to not mind taking me with their family out on the lake. We watched the Lakewood and Cleveland fireworks out on Lake Erie for the fourth. I got a few "so-so" pictures while I was out with my Droid that can be seen here.

We also checked out the Bodies exhibit downtown on East 4th. I had already seen it a few years ago in Toronto but that sort of thing is fun to see more than once. I definitely liked it better in Toronto. For one thing, the Cleveland exhibit didn't even have the cut away side view of the pregnant woman (Toronto did). The other two things that were worse about the Cleveland exhibit were: 1) they tried taking a souvenir photo on entering as if you're entering Cedar Point or something and 2) they had people menacingly following you around the exhibit supposedly to "help" you but really there to make sure you didn't touch anything or take any pictures (there were no such people in Toronto).

We then went out on the lake again this past weekend and just tooled around swimming and went up the Cuyahoga river. The tall ships exhibit was also in town so I got some pretty cool pictures of them as well. This time I had my "real" camera which sadly takes better pictures at 3.2mp than my 5.0mp Droid camera. I found out these past few weeks that it's true that the company you keep definitely makes any experience that much better.

Wat?

I haven't updated in awhile and I guess some sort of major things have happened since February so why not?

• I changed jobs some time back in April after being at the last place for two years. It ended up being good timing because they ended up closing the entire office permanently on May 14th. The picture on the right is my new office at my new job taken with my Droid.


• I'm single. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing. It definitely helps in the finance department. Of course if I actually start dating there goes that money.


• I got a new car - a 2011 Hyundai Sonata. It's no BMW but with my job being a good 30 miles away I needed something way more fuel efficient than 18mpg.


• I found out I have jerks for neighbors who reported building code violations on my house. Because I didn't already drop $70k into my house or anything and was working on the rest when I could get the money... Let's just say it's been worked out and they didn't accomplish anything.


• Birthday at Brasa again. Awesome.


• Got a new roof put on the house. That was a nice $5000 I'll be paying off for the forseeable future. This was not related to the code violations: it was just badly overdue and leaking.

Steak on a Stone

I forgot to mention in my previous post that I had lunch at this place called Steak on a Stone in North Olmsted yesterday. This is a pretty sweet concept. From their site:

First we heat our volcanic stones to over 750 degrees in our specially designed oven for 6 to 8 hours. When they come out, they are placed upon our stoneware dishes that help to keep the meal warm while the outer dish remains cool to the touch.

Then we place your meal selection directly upon the hot stone. This extreme heat sears the food and seals in the natural juices and flavor of your food. You then simply slice a piece off and by placing it upon the stone, cook each individual bite to the wellness you enjoy.


Basically when they give you the steak to eat the top and bottom are seared and cooked already but the middle/sides are still raw. You cut slices off and individually cook each piece. I'm not one for working for my food usually but it was really good and no more effort than cutting pieces off a steak normally. The cut of meat and flavor easily beat out any Texas Roadhouse, Longhorn, or Outback steak (not that any of those are exactly high quality... just sayin'). The bill for a dinner steak, a lunch chicken sandwich, two sodas, and two desserts was $49. Not bad considering the quality of the food.

Ice festivals and home shows... oh my!

I recently went to the The Great Big Home & Garden Expo 2010 and the Medina Ice Festival 2010.

The Home & Garden Expo was interesting and all, but I'm not sure it was worth the $11/person (and that was with an online discount) + $6 parking to get in. I wanted to see more futuristic homes for that kind of money. They only had three or four model homes setup and they weren't laid out any different than the nicer stuff you'd see in Home Depot or Lowes for the most part. The link to the gallery above shows some of the outdoor gardens that were pretty cool (and other overall shots).

The Ice Festival was somewhat neat (checkout the pictures in the gallery linked above) but our interest didn't last very long. It took maybe an hour or so to walk around and see everything. The works in progress were very rough and it seemed like they wouldn't be done for hours. While I realize art takes time I don't have that kind of patience when its 28 degrees out. The saddest little snowman ever that was just chilling on the sidewalk was kinda amusing though.

Happy Halloween

I have no big updates to speak of right now. I just got back from an uneventful week long trip to Boston for ecommerce software training. Aside from the inside of the hotel and one or two restaurants I saw nothing of Boston so I don't have a single picture from the trip.

Check out my mad pumpkin carving skills on the skull pumpkin to the right. It won't win any awards but not bad for ten minutes of last second work. Several kids commented on how cool it was. I took a pretty cool night shot of all of the pumpkins we had out that you can see if you click the image to the right.

We had a fair amount of trick-or-treaters this year having gone through 7-9 bags of candy. It lasted from 6PM-8PM with the streets being all but empty around 7:30PM.

Another day in paradise

It's been an eternity since I posted something and a lot has changed since my last post. The highlights:

• I'm still at the same job and was promoted to "Manager of Development" from "Senior Developer" in January. It came with a substantial raise and management responsibility of off shore resources.


• I broke up with my previous girlfriend in December and have been going out with a new person for about seven months now.


• I'm heading to Minneapolis for one day for a technical meeting with a new Fortune 500 client


• I'm heading to Boston again in August/September to get trained on our soon-to-be-released ecommerce product


• I bought a sweet museum quality wooden ship because... I've always wanted one (and just look at it!)


• I sold my Xbox 360 and Wii and finally admit I am done with console gaming (except my PSP). I'll stick with a PC for gaming from now on.


• I still don't have a Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter account.


• I signed up for AT&T U-Verse IPTV service and absolutely love it. I passed on their Internet service for now since I had bad experiences with DSL in the 90s.


• I had my porch torn down and rebuilt this summer (it was practically falling down). Now all I need to do is get a new roof, paint the whole house, get a new driveway, fix a hole in the side of the garage, and finish the basement.

Rafting

I went white water rafting in West Virginia for the first time this past weekend. Four of us stayed in a cabin in the middle of the woods for two nights and rafted for one day. The cabin was nice with plumbing, electricity, and air conditioning (but oddly no phone). It was also quaintly located in the middle of "did you hear a banjo?" country between two mountains at the end of a one and a half mile "mule trail", er... "road".

The rafting was awesome and the scenery was fantastic. It just sucks you can't bring a camera to take pictures of it because you pretty much are guaranteed to lose it in the water or up against a rock somewhere. We hope to go again next year for possibly two days since one day just didn't seem like enough. If I can find a way to encode it, I may post a the short DVD video of the trip that we purchased. Here are some pictures of the cabin and surroundings in the meantime.

Tea Party

I just spent the last week in Boston, but it was for software training so I didn't really get to see much of the town. They're so high tech in Boston even their TVs run Windows 98! Not really, but for some reason the hotel's pay-per-view system apparently was down all week and apparently runs Windows 98. The picture to the right came up every time I turned my tv on all week. Click the Win98 TV to see the few pictures I did take in Boston.

The only "Boston" thing I had a chance to do was go to a Red Sox vs Twins game at Fenway Park. It was fun and all, but it being around 99F out cramped like sardines with eight people I didn't know (it was also the first day of training) hampered the experience.

On the way back to Cleveland, my license slipped out of my pocket at the TSA checkpoint. It either fell on the floor or in a plastic bin by the metal detectors. Do you think they'd let me go look for it? Nope. Do you think they'd offer to look for me? Nope. Offer for them or me to go through the empty bins quickly to get it? Nope. What did they offer? "Get the hell out of this federal security checkpoint now or you're going to have a problem" spoke a stubby, bald, and little napoleon-complex prick. To avoid becoming a nightly news headline I left the checkpoint, but returned with a Massachusetts State Trooper to help get my license. The trooper spent about 30 seconds in the TSA office before declaring "I wouldn't go in there, I'd call the lost-and-found on Monday". Something is seriously wrong with this homeland security crap when I can't even get my driver's license back and state troopers are afraid to confront TSA agents.

New! Improved!

I was bored today so I decided to do a little "cleaning" around this site. For starters, I finally got into the 21st century and added an RSS feed (the icon underneath all the left menu items.. and also to the right of this post). I also updated the free software list since some of links were outdated (AVG), some if it just sucks now (Password Corral), and some other free software I've been using for several years wasn't on there (KeePass, Paint.NET, Irfanview, IE7Pro).

I've got a new server coming to replace the dual 800Mhz tank this site has been running on for the past few months. It was only $300 (including tax & shipping) and the specifications blow the current one out of the water: dual 3Ghz Xeons, 2GB RAM (to be upgraded), EIDE controllers (instead of old school SCSI standards) and a functional USB header for external storage.

I love Craig's List

You know you've reached a certain age when you get excited about a vacuum cleaner. I just got a Dyson DC07 Animal off of Craig's List for $100 cash. It's not so much that "Yay! I just bought a vacuum!" as "Yay! I just bought a $500 vacuum for $100!". The guy that sold it to me only owned it for three months, used it like three times, was moving clear across the country, and was selling everything he owned rather haul it across country (something about owning a house here and a house there).

For the most part, the Dyson lives up to almost all of the hype. We vacuumed the entire house with the old vacuum, then went back over it with the Dyson. We filled the Dyson's canister up... three times. Pretty impressive/nasty ;)

And for no particular reason, I give you the Benny Lava video

Did it again

Well, I did it again: I changed jobs. My first day was April 14th as a "Senior Web Developer". I don't reveal company or people's names on this public blog, but as far as the company goes they're a downtown interactive marketing company that has been around since 2001 (with offices in several other U.S. cities). They were recently acquired by an international (also several U.S. offices with a major R&D location in India) software company. My primary focus will be implementing an existing web content management system and transitioning to a newer more robust system over the next several months. I've only been there a week and find myself overwhelmed with the workload, and that honestly makes the days fly by which is always nice.

As far as other stuff I went skeet and trap shooting for the first time a couple weeks ago. The trap shooting was awesome... the skeet shooting not so much. I definately need to upgrade from a pump action shotgun if I start going more often though.

I just don't learn...

Deja vu! I'm just a glutton for punishment: I paid $12 to go to the Cleveland Auto Show today. This year it was hyped as "the largest auto show in North America". There was hardly an exotic car to be found. I didn't see a single Bentley, Aston Martin, Rolls Royce, Lambourgini, or Ferarri. Maybe I just missed one or two buried in a corner somewhere. Not only were there no exotics, but the manufacturers didn't even bother to bring any cool or interesting concept cars. Cars you've seen a million times that are now hybrids don't count as concept cars. I wanna see crazy go-cart-esque shapes or solar panel arrays or something from the Jetsons.

Cleveland has dealerships for every domestic brand plus the more expensive stuff: Jaguar, Mercedes, Land Rover, Porche, Audi, Infiniti. What is the point of this show? At least at the dealership I wouldn't have to fight Ma and Pa Kettle and their kin just to see what the dashboard looks like.

The one thing I did notice at the various booths is that gas economy on alot of high end cars sucks. Several DOHC V6 Jags and Infiniti's I looked at got something like 21HWY/17CTY MPG. Really? Seriously? My 4000lb, 7 year old, 4 liter V8 gets 19MPG on average.

p.s. I took a single picture of the only car I considered worth it - a Lotus (pictured to the right).

Suuuuuuuuup?

I know it's a long time since my last post because I forgot the password to get in and add this post. Yep... that long. What's happened since October? Let's just make a list:

• Xena tore her ACL and needed ~$1400 in surgery
• Christmas - Got an XBOX 360 and new upscaling DVD burner/player. Put up a tree for the first time ever.
• Didn't get to go to Canada because between my house and my car, I managed to end up flat broke this year - and the exchange rate (lack thereof) sucks
• Got woken up by Xena at 1:30AM a week ago to find 4 Parma police cars and 6 cops wandering around the yard (never did find out why). The picture of Xena to the right is because she's my hero for actually waking us up to alert us of "intruders" in the yard.
• I volunteered myself into some side programming work

It's 2:20AM and that's all I'm gonna write, but the Christmas colors in the banner had to go.

New Site Home (kinda)

Thanks to a junked server from my employer this site is now hosted on actual server hardware with a server operating system (Windows Server 2003 Standard). It's only a dual P3-700 with 2GB of memory, but if you're reading this, then it's obviously getting the job done. It also doubles as a great BitTorrent server ;)

I have dumped Verizon after having been with them off and on for ten years. When it comes to handsets they just flat out suck. Rumors of cool new handsets abound, then every other craptastic carrier (AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile) ends up getting the handsest first. My "new every two" came up in June and Verizon didn't have a single new Windows Mobile phone out. I waited for these losers until a week ago, and finally jumped to Alltel with a PPC6800 phone. So far the customer service, signal, and pricing is great... so SEEYA Verizon.

Waste of Cleveland

I hit up the Taste of Cleveland today. If this "festival" or whatever it is supposed to be represents the diversity within our city, then we sorely lack it. There were multiple pizza places, a few bakeries, a handful of BBQ places, and one or two culturally diverse places: New Orleans style, Japanese, German, Indian (as in India, not Native American). We had some food from Schnitzel House (schnitzel sandwich), an Italian place (a 12oz bowl of pasta), and a bakery (Canoli and Strawberry Cream dessert), plus two sodas. The food was alright, but nothing spectacular or unique. The worst part was it was a complete rip off for barely two "meals": $6 parking, $10 in entrance fees, and $30 in food tickets. I don't know why I keep going back to this thing every year.

Since my last post I've gotten a couple new geek toys. My shiny new Toshiba X205-S9349 as my primary PC and a Logitech Harmony 890 Universal Remote (thanks to my awesome girlfriend!). I love the laptop, but as far as Vista vs XP my advice on Vista is: don't bother. Even if you can get Vista to work 100% with all of your existing software and hardware, the only technological advancement it has over XP is Direct X 10, and right now there aren't any really mind blowing DX10 games out (but they're coming...).

Corky

So things ended up not working out at my job after a year. Life goes on. In some ways it's a blessing in disguise, because I will now be employed by a former co-worker's company. I actually turned down an offer from another area company to take this position... I feel it was the right choice.

In my spare time (re: boredom) I've picked up interest in my Sony PSP again and modded it to the latest "open firmware" so that it can play NES/SNES/Genesis/PS1 and a slew of other ROMS on it. When I'm not mashing away at Mike Tyson's Punchout on the PSP, I've taken a liking to watching The Sopranos. However, after A&E jacked up their scheduling of the reruns, I've taken to ganking all the episodes off of tvtorrents.com. I love that freaking site. It's like having Tivo... without having Tivo. Any episode of most any show past or present can be downloaded on a whim. I've gone back and caught Southpark or Family Guy episodes that I missed on air. As Tony the Tiger would say... they're greeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeat!