Surfing The Web So You Don't Have To
I mentioned before about my idiotic car troubles, one of the issues being its knack for overheating. I crawled underneath the car, the radiotor house was a bit loose, but it was still overheating. Took it to the Subaru Guru, and the radiator was cracked (saw the split after he removed it — a nice little five-inch crack). So $230 later (which wasn’t too bad, actually), I’ve got a new radiator, and a much cooler running car.
Now just have to make sure the rest of the car holds up.
I’m kind of hoping Shannon wasn’t right (though she’s not the only one that’s told me these things come in threes, so I’m due for something else wrong with my car). So what’s happened so far?
So I’ve got a perfectly functional Kirkland/Costco battery if anybody needs one.
I’m kind of hoping the law of threes does take place, as then, in theory, something good will come to take their place. So maybe my car will break down entirely, and then I’ll win a new one in a contest? Yeah, that’s the ticket.
On other personal news that seems to be bogging down this site lately (I’m sorry), I still haven’t heard from the school, and I’m still having issues with a client, but hopefully those will wrap up soon and put a little less on my mind so I can focus on some other projects and start putting more entertaining content on this site.
And I don’t even know where my daughter’s going to school.
As I briefly mentioned last week, I’m trying to get my daughter transferred into the Ensworth Elementary school district. We’re technically closer to the school (note that Google maps doesn’t have complete road data for that area, so it’s off a slight tad — here’s Ensworth’s address) that we are to Juniper, which is what district we’ve been assigned (we’re about a block away from the Ensworth district). After calling and calling and sending e-mails back and forth, I finally got to talk to the Ensworth principal today (really nice guy), and he still couldn’t tell me anything other than “the numbers are still coming in” and “we’re at the top of the list if we let anybody in” (as we got our application in long before anybody else did) and that there’s about a “50/50 chance.”
I would think that two weeks before school starts that they’d have more of an idea as to what’s going on. Our daughter is already convinced she’s going to the new school, so she’ll be terribly disappointed if she’s not going there and will have to go to Juniper or get home schooled (which my wife isn’t ready for, but said she’ll do it if she has to go to Juniper).
So right now, I have no idea where she’s going to school, she’s not registered anywhere because I’ve been told to wait until I get confirmation before registering (though now they’re telling me otherwise). This isn’t like I’m trying to move to a district across town like some folks are — I’m trying to move our daughter to a school that’s closer to where I live. Ugh….you wouldn’t think it would be this difficult, would you? Being hung up in the air like this is stressful — which the principal acknowledged, too — but I don’t have much of a choice.
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This project has been sitting in my “to-do” list for quite a while, but after cleaning up my desk here a bit, I decided I better do this before our next concert season comes up. This involves music notation questions and solutions for a score I’d like to produce for in memory of a percussionist who passed away a few years ago, so I’m putting this in the extended entry for this. Feel free to skip if this is totally out of your league or over your head, or click below if you’re interested.
Note to self: If you ever see one of this big moths flying around the house, make sure you turn off all the halogen torch lamps in the living room. Otherwise, when they’ll fly towards the light and when they hit the bulbs of the stupidly hot, burn the hell out of you if you touch them lamps, they go *poof* in a nice little cloud of smoke and stink of rotten, burnt, flesh.
Moths are attracted to our lamps. Moths are dumb, and smell really bad when burned to death. Now excuse me while I go air out our house from the latest victim.
When you do what I do for a living, there are just times that you want to completely just step away and turn the computer off for a while. That why you frequently don’t see posts on this site on Fridays or Saturdays. It’s my days off work, and my days to just avoid my computer, chill out with my family, and take a break so that when I am forced to sit in front of this machine again, I’m in a better mood.
After the events of today (including the mess that inspired my earlier post), I had to step away. I turned off my laptop here at work, packed it up in my bag so I didn’t have to even look at it. I went outside, took a quick walk around the block, and came back to my office. Upon arriving at the office, I realized how little I wanted to turn that computer back on and I realized how dirty my desk and office were since I didn’t have my laptop covering up things. So I went back to our housekeeping department, grabbed some rags and some sort of all-purpose cleaner whose name I can’t remember, and started cleaning. I cleaned up my whole office, even scrubbing down my phone (there was a lot of gunk on there). I dumped out my desk drawer on the floor, realized I probably have more writing utensils than anybody in the building, and cleaned it out, too. I got out some business cards I was looking for, put them in an area where I could actually see them, and now my desk is much more organized and clutter free.
Now, a couple hours later, my office is sparkly, I’ve put up with the crap from the girls in the office who think I’m a slob, and I’m back to work.
So what do I do first? I blog this entry. Now maybe I’ll get something done. Really. I promise.
Maybe I should just shut this thing off again…
I’m doing my first huge “on the side” web design and programming job for a company up in Portland. I’m most of the way through the project at this point, and the guy running the show for the client is being a real piece of work. I’m dealing, primarily, with an old college buddy and good friend up there, but, for the most part, the project isn’t going very smooth. Between client changing his mind at the worst times, assuming I can read his inner most thoughts, putting his employees in the middle of it, etc…, it’s just been a real mess. I’ll be lucky to break even on this whole thing (because I had to sub-contract some of the back-end programming that was out of my league).
I did this because my friend that works there said his boss was riding him about it, so asked if I could help them out. It was more of a handshake deal, because I had the confidence from my friend that things would work out fine. Neither he, or I, expected the mess to come out like it did, and because it was more of a handshake kind of deal with just vaguely written service agreements, I’m getting bitten in the backside.
So here’s where you guys come in. I know a great deal of you out there are Web programmers, services providers, consultants, designers, etc… . I’d appreciate it greatly if you could send me a sample contract that you use for these types of things. I’d also be interested in getting contracts from folks who do systems and IT services (building and repairing computers, networks, etc…) as I do that quite a bit, too (it’s much easier, as many of those folks are local). If you could e-mail them to me at jake [at] utterly boring [dot] [com] that’d be just dandy. Thanks again for your help, everybody.
(And yes, I know there are sample templates out there online for this type of thing, I’d just like to know what real people are using.)
Sunray Vacation Rentals is hiring for several positions such as Front Desk Manager, Reservationist, Maintenance, and Housekeeping. Check out our jobs page for the details or e-mail me directly if you have any questions about the company, as you’ll be a co-worker of mine (which could be considered a benefit or a detriment — your call).
Had quite the shock when I was driving home today. I exit the parkway daily at Revere and Division. As I coming around the corner, about to cross the railroad tracks, there was a man and his bike laying on the road in front of me. The guy wasn’t moving. I stopped my car, immediately threw on my hazard lights, and went down to see what was wrong. He was a man in about his forties, and his head was cut up pretty bad in the front and in the back. I called 911, told dispatch where we were at, and a couple of other folks driving by helped divert traffic a bit at the busy intersection (it was about 7:30 at the time — I can only imagine if this were at 5:00).
I went down closer to the man to make sure the cuts weren’t life threatening, and made sure that nobody made the attempt to move him. I had no idea how he got there and I’ve taken enough first-aid classes to know better than to move him. Heck, it could’ve been a hit-and-run for all I knew. But as I got closer, it looked like the bleeding wasn’t anything major (nothing that needed me to try to put a stop to it), so somebody in another car just got the guy a pillow for his neck (against my better wishes) and we waited, talking to him to make sure he was all right.
As I got closer to the guy, asked him a few questions, I realized what had happened: the guy was drunk. Other cars said they didn’t see anybody hit the guy, they just saw him fall off the curb. Regardless, 911 was called, ambulance and police showed up, they did take him to SCMC as he was banged up pretty dang good and I’m sure they want to test his blood-alcohol level. I’m sure he’s fine, but he did smell of something fowl.
But there you guy, ladies and gentlemen: A textbook BUI, or “Biking Under The Influence.”
As many of you know, I manage the Bend Blogs site. In my search for software to power it, I wanted something that was PHP-powered, and preferred a MySQL back-end. I also wanted something simple, and I came across lilina. It’s simple, and it works, but not as cleanly or as nicely as I’d like. Version .7 is powering the site right now, and I considered moving the site to a more up-to-date lilina-variant.
At this point, however, I think I’m just going to ditch lilina. Why? Because with a bit of work, I can get the whole thing working as an actual blog, powered by MovableType (which is far easier for me to work with), displaying local blog posts as blog posts on bendblogs.com with comments, permalinks, archives, etc… , as well as a combined RSS feed for all. How? With reBlog, which I REALLY wish I would’ve found a few months ago when I threw bendblogs.com online.
So expect an overhaul of bendblogs.com sometime in the near future. Otherwise, if anybody has a blog I should add to the site, let me know. I’m up to 91 right now, and I’m sure I’m missing some (I know I’m missing some, as some folks requested their site not be listed, which is fine), but if you have any to send over, comment here.