Category Archives: Ramblings

Just me and my mouth.

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running with a time limit sux

I don’t mean a time limit, like in a competitive environment. I mean like “Okay, I got 30 minutes before my son’s tutor is done and I have to get back!”

I’ve been a serious, steady runner since 1994 when I was working in a family owned running shoe shop during my college years. It was great. Then when I got my first job in an office, I ran on my lunch break (yes, our office did have a shower). So I got used to running, or at least being out of the office for one hour every day. I ate at my desk or in my office. I did this for years and have seen the Atlanta area change over time with some really big changes!

Since I’ve been out of the office, I haven’t run as much as I would have liked. I am trying to change that and I am trying to get out whenever the opportunity presents itself. Today was one of those days. I got done with an interview at a local recruiter and was able to get back home in time to get my son off to see his tutor at the library. I donned my running attire and we took off. I planned on doing 3o minutes, and as you might know from my previous posts, I am big on running with a HRM (heart rate monitor).

So, I am out beating the street and feel the overwhelming pressure of the 30 minute ceiling. I worry about being late and my son getting done with the tutor and him worried that I am not there. I actually planned it so if I did run 30 minutes, I’d be back 15 minutes before he would have been done as a buffer.

I started to think at how this sort of limit is much more stressful than say, trying to run three miles in 30 minutes, or even running a competitive race. I began to think back at how I used to feel when I had to get back to get ready for a meeting or a phone call. I felt the same way. When I am running in a race or trying to beat a specific pace, I am really trying to beat myself or improve my time. I have no illusions that I am going to win a price in my age class so I am out there for myself. But today, I was running to beat the clock because others are counting on me.

When I run, it’s my form of mediation. It’s my therapy. It heals my soul. I think about my muscles and how they’ve been conditioned for running for over 10 years. I think of them as a worn in, efficient system. If you have ever seen a steam boat engine, you might know what I am talking about. When I run, it’s when I have my “A-ha!!!!!!” or my “Eureka!!!” moments.

But not today, since I was so consumed with getting back within 30 minutes. Don’t get me wrong… I did have a great run as the weather, although chilly, was beautiful, and I did have a couple of minutes of deep thought, but it was missing the calming, introspective spice I was so looking forward to.

My therapist says, “Awareness is more than half the battle” and she’s right, of course. Having this awareness, I guess, is sort of an “A-ha!!” moment, just maybe not the one I was hoping for.

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responsible email marketing… for real estate professionals

I felt compelled to write this post since I have been getting SO much SPAM from real estate agents and brokers here in Georgia.

A long time ago, I used to work in the Abuse department at a large ISP, so maybe I am a little over sensitive about this, but then again, maybe the advice I am about impart can really help someone trying to do a legitimate email campaign.

I am a licensed real estate agent, and a member of the Dekalb Board of Realtors. Somewhere, someone sold their list of members to “advertisers.” I have two email addresses that I have used for real estate and either the Board of Realtors or the MLS service I subscribe to sold the list of members.

I used to take a great offensive to all the SPAM I got to my email addresses; flyers, listings, etc, that I used for my real estate endeavors. My sister-in-law is my broker and she said, “That’s just the way it is.” So I didn’t give it much thought, beyond making the email as SPAM.

But then I started to think about it, and as usual, that’s the problem.

I run my own mail server and I was getting tired of the SPAM that was coming into it that were “real estate flyers.” so I decided to explicitly put these jokers in a blacklist. I’ll name the domains I am blocking here:

# Real Estate Spam
amillinois.com 554 Spam not tolerated here
sellflyer.com 554 Spam not tolerated here
amgeorgia.com 554 Spam not tolerated here
sendflyerstation.com 554 Spam not tolerated here

I am running postfix so if you are familiar with it, this is the structure of the blocklist.

So, the majority of SPAM I am getting is from these domains. If you go to each domain’s website, you will see that they do not appear to be legitimate websites. Either the main page is not set up or requires a username/password to view the root documents. Legitimate emailers don’t have anything to hide.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t fault the agents sending this out. Rather I blame the so-called emailers for this. It is clear, that the real estate agents that employ these bozos are either inexperienced in email marketing or lured in by there prices. I have NO DOUBT that these agents are good people with the best intentions and that these so-called email marketeers are misguiding them.

These email marketeers do include a list to unsubscribe from, but bases on their unaccessable websites, I simply don’t trust them. I am worried that if I click on the link to unsubscribe, I am only confirming my email address for more spam. I think of these guys as fly-by-night and it makes me nervous.

So by being “internet-savvy” and a real estate professional, I offer these suggestions to be an effective and Internet friendly email marketeers:

  • DO NOT let someone send emails out on your behalf. Make the effort and do it for yourself so you completely understand how the whole process works.
  • Do your homework. If you are thinking of working with an email marketeer, make sure they are on the up-n-up. A quick Google search can give you a lot of info. Be sure to check Google Groups to see if the outfit you want to work with is in the net-abuse group. If they are, move on.
  • Just because people are a member of an MLS listing service or a Realtor Board, they may not want to see your listings for a 2BR/1BA condo on the other side of town. Doesn’t it make sense that a real estate professional will already have access to the MLS listing service? Why send them SPAM?
  • Do your homework, part II. Make sure the email marketeer is legit. By offering an unsubscribe list, will that user be really unsubscribed? Or will that user just verify their email address for more Viagra and Xanax SPAM.
  • Be smart about who you are sending emails to. Are you simply just blasting your email to everyone? If you have a listing on the NW side of town, how about just blast your listing (via email) to those agents only in the NW? Does your email marketeer allow you to send to a subset of customers based on location if known?

My gut tells me that everyone is fed up with this and simply marking this sort of email as SPAM, and thus it just sort of disappears into their SPAM folder. But how effective is that? Are your readers just marking your emails as SPAM? That’s bad, right? Does your email marketeer have some way for you to gauge the return on investment for your email campaign? If not, you need to find someone who does.

With Craigslist, a free service, how can you determine how effective your email campaign is? Craigslist is FREE and people GO there to view the postings. As an effective real estate agent, you might want to post to Craiglist AND do an email campaign. How do you do it?

I think you have to use a legitmate email marketeer that gives you the tools that you need to measure your potential success, and allows you to be a good internet citizen.

I have had the distinct pleasure of meeting the MailChimp guys and i was floored by their technology, but also the length they went to, to make sure their clients are good Internet citizens. I like these guys and their tech is top notch. At my son’s school, they use Constant Contact as the email method of communication. While I really like the MailChimp guys, my personal experience says that both of these providers are on the up and up.

If you are really in the dark about this, contact me and I’d be happy to consult for you. At the very least, I can point you in the right direction towards getting the best ROI on your LEGITIMATE email campaign. Just don’t buy into these emails that claim a massive amount of coverage. The best you’ll do is have your email address added to the clients’ SPAM rules.

There is no question that an email campaign can be effective, but if you take the extra steps I mentioned here, you be ahead of 80% of the competition.

With more and more buyers going online to research, the client is going to be more and more Internet savvy. Any agent that can “speak their language” and embrace the future will be ahead of those agents who are trying to catch up.

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do you even know what the T5 is, mon freue?

What a lame title. I wrestled with what to name this post. I also have a lot to write about. I am still in the job hunt mode and have a couple of promising interviews. I get the feeling, when it rains it pours and I seem to be more busy now than I was when I was employed. That’s cool, though, since I have learned so much and met so many cool folks over the last month. But, I do need to write about a couple of things outside tonight’s post.

  • Over at Guy Kawasaki’s blog, he posted the Avenue A Razorfish 2008 Digital Outlook Report. A lengthy but very informative read. Guy is great. I have a subscription Entrepreneur magazine where I first became aware of his columns. I follow him on Twitter and know people that know him. He’s one of my heros!
  • I’ve been hacking away on drupal and CSS. Cool stuff.
    • If you are interested on what I’ve been working on, you can check out the preview of the IIAM website here.

Okay, now that’s out of the way, (and I really do plan to post individually about the above points), I can get to what’s been burning, or itching in my mind.

My friends know that our family has a 2003 VW Eurovan GLS. We have three kids and the massive space the Eurovan allows is certainly something we enjoy. Here’s the history lesson. 2003 was the last year Volkswagen brought the Eurovan in the U.S.. In the rest of the world, the Eurovan is called either a Transporter or Caravelle. Our particular body style is referred to as the “T4.” After 2003, VW introduced the highly coveted T5 model everywhere but the U.S.. Here’s some links to support what I claim:

Over at vwvortex.com, a forum where I frequent, there is much disdain that one can not buy a T5 here in the U.S.. Here in the U.S., you have the Ford F150 as the most common vehichle, but everywhere else, if you are looking for a VW T4 or T5, you’ll be surprised to see how popular and common the VW van is everywhere.

So, I was besides myself last week when I saw a T5 in person. I posted about here on the ‘vortex:

You have no idea how this made my day. I think the number of people in the U.S. that have seen a T5 on the road here can be counted on one hand. Regardless, there is no question that German engineered high efficiency vehicles are desired here.

So, I don’t think a T5 is likely here in the ‘States anytime soon, but there are some options that are on the horizon. First, Volkswagen is supposed to launch the “Tiquan” sometime in May. Rumor has it a 40 m.p.g diesel version will be available later this year. I sent an email to our local VW dealer for confirmation but haven’t heard a thing.

I like it.

VW and Chrysler did a joint venture for a minivan. Reviews are mixed. The EV purists decry this as an obscene mockery. Personally, I try to envision how our family of five will fit into it, (for example… I recently checked out the new Honda Passport and was surprised how small the interior was compared to the Eurovan).

I’ll admit I like the look of it. I’m not crazy about the Chrysler drivetrain, but we’ll see. I want a diesel something fierce so whichever comes first, I’m more likely jump on.

So, the next question most people ask me is why do I want a VW diesel so badly? I had a 1985 Mercedes 300D, affectionately named “Gunther” (if you must know, our Eurovan is named “Klaus”). For an 1985 auto to get 24+ mpg was a real treat. I have come to love the sound of diesel engine. And if my testimony isn’t enough to sway you, the last time I checked ( and I need to double check this) the VW Jetta TDI was number three right behind the Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight, (both hydrids) on the EPA’s list of most efficient cars.

I’d like to close out by including a few pics of the T5 and our T4.

It should be noted that I bought new, black wheels for our van so it looks even more tougher than it does in the picture.

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one too many cabanossi

Yesterday, Valentine’s day, was a good day. After I dropped off the twins at pre-school, I wanted to find the German butcher and bakery near our house. We had been going to one European butcher nearby that we loved. In fact, it’s just like I remember growing up in Chicago. Patak Meats in Austell is unbelieveable. If you haven’t been you got to. Now, rumor has it the ex-butcher from Patak went to open his own place, called Weinerz. Our German friends said they prefered it to Patak so I have been wanting to check it out.

So, I found it. I stopped by Bernhard’s, the Germany bakery and picked up a loaf of German Sourdough Rye bread. The loaf weighed about 5lbs. Then I went over to the butcher and picked up some cabanossis, German ham, and a couple of beer brautwursts. I spent less than $10.

Then to top off the German morning I was having, I went to Aldi’s to pick up some other stuff. I got home, gave my wife her roses, and we both ate cabanossi’s and had a ham sandwich with some mustard; what a great way to start the day.

But I digress. I have been spending most of my time over the last few days becoming something of Drupal expert. I have volunteered to be the webmaster for our son’s school’s website. The website has potential to be a very effective portal. The PTO, teachers, and administration want to be able to post items to the site and have blogs. I looked at Joomla for awhile and finally I happened to see Drupal mentioned somewhere. The more I read about it the more I was convinced this could provide the solution I was looking for.

The last few days, I’ve been getting into theming Drupal. I modified an existing theme using mostly some heavy CSS. Remember when I said I learn best when I have a project? So, I was surprised to see how much I’ve learned about CSS in the last three days. Being obsessed and not having a job helps, but I have learned tons. I also found a whole bunch of great resources, but not just on CSS but also web design and XHTML. It’s been a great time.

When I was in art school, I love typography. When I was in art school, it was before computers were common place. When I was in art school, the Mac Quadra 800 just came out and was over $5k. But I still loved type and type faces. I was really good at kerning and even today, I like to do my own kerning in Photoshop. So one of the things I am really excited about is doing interesting things with type utilizing CSS. I think this is going to be very exiting for me.

In my reading of SEO one of the things that is recommended against it using images for content. To put it another way, if you have text in an image, that text will not be indexed by the search engines.

In my mind, using CSS will allow me to do some of the things I enjoyed about type in the print media, but have it rendered in a web browser.

My stomach still hurts after finishing off that last cabanossi; I don’t eat like that very often.

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be a savvy shopper

I like to think I am a “savvy shopper.” What I mean is, I like to find a deal… but nothing cheeses me off more than being taken advantage of… or the thought of being taken advantage of.

When I was in college, I worked for a large “big box” retailer when they first came to Atlanta. I had felt like I had sold my soul to the devil. It was awful. What I really hated, was being instructed to push “extended warranties” to anyone. “Keep a stack of the extended warranties in your back pocket… If you see someone looking at a VCR try to get them to sign up…” or “I’ll give everyone a $50 gift card if you sell five extended warranties today!” Like I said, it was awful. Now everyone knows a couple of people who have really benefited or were thankful they got the extended warranty… I’m not posting about extended warranties, folks, if you love ’em or hate ’em, I could care less.

But I think I realized one of my character faults. I think I am pretty savvy, certainly not naive when it comes to all sorts of things, but…

While I’ve been on the job hunt, I posted a portion of my resume on various job boards. In my online job profiles, I use a Grandcentral number to I can screen my calls. From my profiles on these boards, I get probably about five or six “offers” about being an insurance salesman… oh wait, a FULL COMMISSIONED insurance salesman. I mark those as spam. And then, probably about three times a day, I get emails that start as:

Dear Jeffrey ,

Recently I viewed your resume online, and I felt you would be an excellent candidate for an opening we are trying to fill based on your technology background. A brief job description about the [ENTER GENERIC IT JOB TITLE HERE] job is included.

Or this:

Dear Jeffrey ,

After reading your online resume, I feel your technical/science background may make you a solid candidate for an opening we’re trying to fill. I’ve provided some basic information about the [ENTER GENERIC IT JOB TITLE HERE].

The email goes on and offers some enticing facts about salary and benefits. And there is a link to an “online profile” to fill out that has some crazy URL that has my email in the URL. So by simply clicking on the URL I have verified my email address… and a quick Google search would indicate by filling out the “online profile” I would just open myself up to more harassment.

Before you say, “Hey Pabian, this is more of your solarflare, conspiracy mumbo-jumbo, isn’t it?” or before you ask me if I am wearing a tin-foil hat, let me show you the most recent domains sent to me, using either one of the above emails:

  • acareerwithjobsourcegroup.com
  • careersatjobsourcenow.com
  • careerswithusajobsite.com
  • connectionjobsource.com
  • fast-tracked-careers.com
  • findyourcareerusacareers.com
  • findyoursolutionsathiringchannel.com
  • findajobatusajobsite.com
  • head-start-jobs.com
  • jobsatusasite.com
  • jobsicareersource.com
  • jobsourcesitenow.com
  • jobconnection-source.com
  • nationalhiring-solutions.com
  • searchathiringonline.com
  • thebesthiringsolutions.com
  • us-careersite.us.com

Update 03.01.2008:  I updated the list from 10 listings to 17.  I’ll continue to update as the emails come in.

And that’s what’s left in my trash box which goes back a week. And I don’t want to mark these as SPAM as legitimate offers might get filters.

So tonight… I get a call from a potential employer about a job I am actually really excited about. But there was this gnawing feeling in the back of my head. Something about it raised a red flag and I feel I am about to be sold an “extended warranty.” I got so paranoid, I started to regret my acceptance of an interview. Sweat started to bead on my forehead, the muscle in my right shoulder started to twitch…

Utimately, after checking around, I decided that I don’t need to worry. Lately, I’ve been more surprised by keeping an open mind, so now I am looking forward to my “interview” late next week. But in the meantime, if you need some life insurance… give me a call.

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Ruby, SEO, and CSS… or how I spent my time off…

If you have been following along, you’ll know that I’ve been out of work since October.  I’ve been really busy, though.  I’ve enjoyed spending time with my children and my wife.  I’ve worked on projects around the house, (I made a bench out of scrap lumber), played around with technology (getting around to all those software updates I’ve been putting off), and I’ve been hitting the books.  Oh yeah, I’ve been doing some consulting on the side, too.

One of the things I really wanted to sink my teeth into was the whole Ruby on Rails things.   It’s been a while since I did any heavy lifting in Perl or even shell scripts for that matter.  I used to be into PHP before version five, but with most things, if you don’t use ’em, you loseWeight Exercise them.  Now, it’s not completely wasted.  I can open a script in Perl and PHP and quickly figure out what’s going on and make changes to suit my needs, but writing something from scratch really made the rusty gears turn and cobwebs fall away.

One of my biggest challenges is coming up with a project to do.  There are so many “solutions in a box” out there by fantastically smart people released as Open Source.   It’s an easy temptation not to reinvent the wheel.  Okay, so back to Ruby on Rails.  I bought a book, that turned out to be pretty crappy.  Except I didn’t know it was crappy, I thought I was too dense to grasp it.  Then I had a friend explain the whole MVC framework.  A light bulb went off and I began to understand concepts that I hadn’t seen before.  The book was still a crappy book, but now I had better direction in trying to find a book that I would personally find useful.  I did.  I found two both by the Pragmatic Programmer series. They got to me.  I understood it.  And while I lack sheer experience, I know enough to be dangerous.  I know where to look in a reference to do what I want.  I also know how to search for answers based on my questions, (sometime you got to know how to ask).

In a completely unrelated conversation with a new friend, we were talking about web design.  He said, “Oh yeah… we use CSS for everything.  You know, instead of using tables and frames like they used to in the old days.” Like in the “old days?”  Was I really living in the old days?  HTML was one of the first languages I had learned.  I think that was around version 3.2 and I had one of those “Teach Yourself HTML” books.  And while I wouldn’t consider myself a complete master, I had chops.  But… this comment made me rethink myself… What did he mean “instead of tables and frames?”  I stopped using frames years ago.. but tables?  I used them all the time.  What on earth did he mean?  I became obsessed.  Now, I knew about CSS and how to change colors and fonts and alignments… but what was this… what sort of wizardry was he talking about.

Seriously, I became obsessed.  I tried to read all I could on CSS.  I found more crappy books.  Nothing gave me the answers I wanted.  Until, that is, I found the O’reilly book and that changed my life.  I got it, it was clear… crazy and zen-like webpages polluted my mind.  I can’t wait to get into some hight-art CSS’ing.  I have found what I was looking for… the missing piece in my webdesign toolbox!

This is all very exciting for you, I am sure.   If you manage to stay on this page, then you are in for a real treat.  One day, when I was the bookstore, a guy came up to me and asked if I knew anything about the Internet.  I smiled sheepishly and said something like, “Yeah, I know a little about it…”  It turned out, he was a contractor, like a handyman-type of contractor and he had a website.  He was interested in SEO (Search Engine Optimization).  His “web guy” didn’t know anything about it, so he decided to take matters in his own hands.   We talked for a while and I tried to recommend him a book.  I found one, leafed through it and said it looked pretty good.  He asked if I had a card, and I said I didn’t and we parted ways.  I was worried I had given him a bum steer so I looked up the book on Amazon and I was surpised to see it was one of the highest rated books on SEO.  I felt good that I gave him some decent advice.

Since then, in my job search, I’ve seen posting after posting for “SEO Experts” so I figured this would be a skill I should learn about.  I was able to find the recommended book at the library and I just started reading it.  You know, I thought I knew a lot about that, but I was very happy to see  that I had lots more to learn.   I’ve enjoyed this book and am going to make some changes to my website, (as it is, I wasn’t far off.  When I view my stats for my website, I was surprised to see how highly I rank in the search engines for topics covered here!).   Am I an expert yet? No, I’m not.. but I think I know a heck of a lot more than a lot of people… read on…

Another thing I have been enjoying, is that I took over my son’s school’s website.  I didn’t do the initial design, which is very good and using CSS, but I did have to get up to speed on it and understand someone else’s code.  I got in the habit of using Subversion to keep whatever I am working on.  The few websites I have been working on, are all stored in my Subversion repository.   I make my edits and then upload my new pages, and then commit everything to subversion.

Now, to gain some additional features, we are moving the school’s website to a new hosting provider, and the new provider allows ssh/shell access.  I’ve used this before, but I had one of those “A-ha!” moments.  If I have shell on the server, why can’t I use subversion to publish my changes on the site?  Sure enough, it works!  It works like this:

  • I have a separate SVN server.  On my laptop, I keep a local copy.  I make all edits on my laptop, verify my changes, (since my laptop is LAM(R|P)), upload my changes to the remote site via FTP, and then commit my changes to SVN.

Since the new provider  has SSH access, I just realized my life is so much easier.

  • I make sure I have the latest revision on my laptop. I make my changes, test them, and commit to my SVN server.
  • On my new webhosting provider, I SSH in and change to my site’s DIR and run “svn update” and viola! Site updated!

Okay, I am sure there are a ton of people doing this and I didn’t make any sort of breakthrough discovery.  But, this IS cool, since I am midway in migrating between providers.  It does make my life easier.

I also got into CMS (content management systems).  I have committed to moving the schools website to a CMS system since so many parties need to updates specific sections.  But that’s another topic entirely and I am going to have to do some hand-holding on this one.

Oh, and I did mention I was doing some consulting.  I enjoy it.  I’ve made some people really happy with my contributions.  So much in fact, my wife and I are in the baby steps of starting a business.  I think for right now, it is on the back burner until I find a steady job; we need benefits.

My final point on is that my experience is somewhat unique.  I worked with some of the smartest and creative people I have ever met in my life.   I’ve been inspired by them and learned from them, but back in the day, I did some hump-busting, too.   In my time off, I’ve discovered that my sweet spot is some balance between creativity, technology, and problem solving.  That’s what I like.

And in case you are interested, I am listening to “Ian Brown” right now.  He’s great!

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Fedora (fc8) releases a new kernel

… and saves me a ton of work.  Tonight, I got the notification that there was a new kernel in FC8:  2.6.23.14-107.fc8.  If you have been reading a long, you might know I was trying to roll my own kernel and modules to get my super-compact wifi usb dongle working.  Well, tonight’s kernel release includes the elusive module, zd1211rw.ko AND my sounds is working, so I am really good to go.

We’ll see how the suspend / resume works on my laptop, since that’s been a little goofy.

I got to say I feel a little put off since I’ve put so much reading into how to build a customer kernel, modules, and recompile various the modules via the SOURCE rpm’s; sprms’s.  So a good learning experince nontheless, but I am just happy that it appears that it will work.  I can spend less time polishing my hammer!

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what’s your inspiration

I’ve written in the past about things that get my creativity going. I think in my last example, I went on about Mel Brook’s History of the World, Part I. What a great movie. There are other movies that just knock my socks off. Young Frankenstein is an other example of a super creative movie. I’ll admit, I love anything that has well done, double entendre. I even like it more when I say something that is double entendre, and half the people get it, and the other half have blank looks on their faces. Hilarious… Okay, I’ll get my mind out of the gutter.

Innovation and creativity are funny things. For me, I find it can be a balancing act. There have been times in my life when I feel like I am on fire and I am really being innovative and rocking. Then, something happens, and it feels like a punch in gut and I get “thinkers block” and I am paralyzed. In the past, this paralyzed feeling has in some cases lasted years. For example, I used to try to work on my Mom’s house when I lived there. Nothing would work and I felt like a worthless handy man. I eventually gave up trying to do things around the house. Years later, I realized my shortcomings as a handyman were really lack of experience (naturally) and the builder took a lot of shortcuts. When my wife and I bought our first home (which was built in 1947), something clicked and I became the handyman that I always wanted to be.

When I was in high school and in college, I worked on my own cars. Then something happened and I became an inept mechanic and I felt like I had no business under the hood. When I had my old Mercedes diesel, (I still wish I had that car), something happened and I was back under the hood changing glow plugs and brake pads. Now, with our modern cars, (a Volvo and VW Eurovan), I am back to changing brakes pads and rotors and saving thousands of dollars in dealer repair costs and offering to help others with their cars.

Sure, part of it is confidence, but I don’t think that’s just it. I remember when I read “Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” and the only thing I remember is how the author said something along the lines of “I have a motorcycle, it makes sense to me to understand how it works and to learn how to work on it” and he said one of his friends just let the repair shop deal with the problems.

Part of it, is also just being willing to try it… figure it out… make it work. I’m lucky. My wife tolerates my experiments. I heard her tell the kids one day, “Don’t worry, Daddy can fix it. Daddy can fix anything.” Wow, not only was that a boost in my confidence, but it showed me that my family thinks I can fix anything! I felt like a Super-fix-it-man!

I’ll give you another example how this translates into my life. If you have kids and pets, you probably already know the value of a carpet shampooer. I’m not talking the professional kind you rent, rather the consumer grade ones. We’ve had one for about six years. The hose, that allows you to use the hand attachments broke where the handle tilts back. We can easily afford a new shampooer but otherwise the unit still works really well for cleaning the carpets. The other night I was out for a run and it happened to be trash night in our neighborhood. Someone was throwing out a newer version of the shampooer we have. My first thought was, “Cool, maybe I can use that hose…” and I went and gave the discarded shampooer the once over. As I titled the handle back, I saw that the hose ripped in the exact same place so I wasn’t interested.

My point with all of this, is that… well I don’t know. I guess since my family thinks I can fix anything, I feel like I can.

Back to the creativity and innovation thoughts… The other night, I was watching TV with the kids. I was really tired of cartoons so I was trying to find something we could watch, (deep sea creatures and sharks are always a big hit with the kids). In a rare occurrence, we tuned to catch the very beginning of the Pink Panther movie. I grew up with these movies and remember seeing them in the movie theater in Chicago with my Grandma. I forgot how clever and creative the beginning segments are. I’ve always like the Pink Panther cartoons. He’s very expressive and can make you laugh without saying a word. So the opening credits were great. The kids loved it. It made me think where I got my sense of humor from.

Over at Chris Brogan’s blog, he’s got a neat post about the “Bucket Meme” and it was something I was going to write about here, but my time is already short this morning so I’ll have to get it in the next post.

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what’s the story, wishbone…

Man, I haven’t updated in a while but I have been dying to post something.  You know, I keep having ideas that I want to write about, then I start a draft, and either whatever I started to write is just plain wrong or I come to realize it just isn’t as important as I thought it was.   Oh well.

I’ll just shotgun all the updates I have.  Usually, I tend to write more about these topics as time marches on.

First, I feel like I lost a good friend.  My iPod died.  It really died.  I had a 40GB 4G iPod.  It was actually a HP iPod; you remember when HP resold iPods?  Me neither, it was a speck on the historic iPod timeline.  Well, I loved it and literally used it every day.  This year, the hard drive started to make click and whrring shoulds. I could bang it on the table, (don’t laugh… I read about doing that in a forum) and it would work.  Now, the hard drive is crunching and the iPod isn’t booting up.  Oh well.  Once I find a new job, I plan on getting an 8GB Nano since I like to run with my iPod.  I would like to try the Nike+ product.  A good friend told me it was really cool.  I figure that and a heart rate monitor might really make for some serious training. (Rumor has it, you don’t really need the Nike+ shoes… any shoes will do.)

I’ve been playing around with Munin and Nagios on my laptop (which is running FC8).  Again, I started to write a page about getting Munin working with Fedora and SELinux but I still don’t have it all worked out.  However, I am becoming more knowledgeable about SELinux in troubleshooting.  That’s cool.

I’ve also been continuing my Ruby on Rails education.  I love it.  I really want to be an expert.  I got a couple of personal projects on deck that should really help me solidify my foundation.  I just wish I had more time these days.

I split a crap load of wood with a log splitter (not the hydraulic kind, the kind you swing, over and over).  It felt great to do some work like that.  And now we just need some nice cold weather here in Atlanta, so we can have a fire.

We got some nice, new wheels on our 2003 VW Eurovan.  Anyone want to see pics?

I have, I guess what you would call a 2nd interview with a really cool company tomorrow, (Friday).  Wish me luck… these guys are really cool and I am totally blown away by their tech.   It would be a dream job.

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it’s all crab grass and clover

Lucky you, two posts in a day.

Tonight, I took a trip down my memory lane.  I used to be really into a band called Bongwater.  I don’t remember how I first heard of them but I do remember the first time I heard their CD.

Bongwater is made up of Kramer and Anne Magnuson.  Yes, that’s right.  Anne Magnuson… that’s what I said.  You’re probably wondering why that sounds familiar.  She’s an actress that was in many movies in the 90’s including “Making Mr. Right.”  I never saw it, but knew she was in it.

With the invention of the iPod and owning a decent set of earphones, I hear things in my music that I maybe hadn’t heard before; more background sounds, someone talking, a riff, etc.  So listening tonight to Bongwater was a real treat.

I don’t think I can do it justice to describe it.  Kramer is a genius and Anne sounds really good.  The songs are complex as they are clever and it’s unlike anything else I’ve got.  Sure, there are similarities but the music stands out supreme.

I used to listen to Bongwater when I was in art school working on my BFA in graphic design.  This was in the early 90’s.  Typically I’d be up almost 24 hours and this would be a perfect thing to listen too in that state of mind.  So listening tonight I am reminded of the creativity behind this music.   It is really creative and produced with such regard, it’s very impressive.  I can only suggest you check it out in Pandora.

I had seen B.A.L.L in the 80’s in Atlanta at the Metroplex.  Kramer was the drummer.  At one point in the show, he simply got up and left.  I think he went to get something to drink and the band played on realizing he was gone I think one song later.  I felt it was like an honor to have seen him.  At that point in time, I thought of him as one of the most prolific and creative people I had every heard about.

I had also seen King Missile here in Atlanta at the Masquerade.   At that point in my life, I had worked at a record shop and the girl who was our label rep at the time was going to have John S. Hall crash on her couch. I was invited to go but was with my little sister and felt like it would have been irresponsible to take her.   John S. Hall and Kramer did a spoken word album called “Real Men.”  Great stuff.

Kramer had a record label called “Shimmy Disk.”  I went on a bend to buy anything I could find on Shimmy Disk.  I got a pretty impressive collection and have all the Bongwater CD’s.  Since I worked in the record shop, I was able to order anything I couldn’t find locally and get my employee discount.

Kramer’s Wikipedia page is a really good read.  I remember when he dropped out of sight.  I always wondered what happened to him.  As I read the page tonight, I was really happy to see that he is still around and successful. I’m sorry that he had some hard times but in the pictures on his site, he looks really happy and I am genuinely happy for him.

I was really interested to see what other bands Kramer was involved with.  They are all bands I really like.   To quote wikipedia:

Mark Kramer, known professionally as Kramer, is a musician, composer, performer, record producer and founder of the NY record label Shimmy-Disc. He was a member of such diverse musical entities as Butthole Surfers, Shockabilly, B.A.L.L., Bongwater, Ween, Half Japanese, The Fugs (1984 reunion tour), and Dogbowl & Kramer, and he also performed regularly with John Zorn and other improvising musicians of New York City’s so-called “downtown scene” of the 1980s. His most notable work as a producer has been with bands such as Galaxie 500 (whose entire oeuvre he produced), Low (whom he discovered and produced), Half Japanese, GWAR, King Missile, The Tinklers, Alice Donut, Danielson Famile, Will Oldham’s Palace Songs, Daniel Johnston, and the hit single for Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, Urge Overkill’s “Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon”.

I was also very surprised to see what else he had been up to.   It was interesting to see his involvement in the whole “Slowcore” movement.  I have always liked Low and have seen Ween (before they had  drums, keyboard or bass), numerous times so it was cool that this is all interconnected.

One of my most prized possessions is  a CD someone gave me.  It’s called “Smack My Crack” and is a various artists compilation.  There is a Butthole Surfers song on there that is not anywhere else, (best of my knowledge), and I remember reading somewhere that Kramer was in the band when their song was recorded for the album.  I can see it.  The song is great.

smack_f.jpg

As I read these Wikipedia pages, my jaw drops as I see how much Kramer has touched or influenced over the years.  I also find it slightly eriee that 80% of the music I really like has some connection to Kramer.

Kramer, I love you, man! sniff sniff