Daily Links and Thoughts

• Kill the wabbit! -Happy Birthday Mr. Bugs. Which reminds me that I need to get the first volume of the Looney Toons Golden Collection which should have the Rabbit of Seville on it.
  
• I finished reading the rest of the new comics. I still have some of the end-stories to read but now that I am finished with the main parts ... I am eagerly awaiting the next one. Also, according to Wikipedia (which as my mom loves to point out, you can't trust ;) ) ... these first 7 are part of around 30 in total. Lets hope its true!
• Captain America Shield - Genius.
• Baby Carrots - (not to be confused with baby corn, baby corn is the devil!) I have almost eaten through a decent sized bag of these. Yes I have to pinch myself when buying them b/c I know they are more expensive for no other reason than convenience, but hey, if it gets me to eat them, I don't mind. Granted, after dipping them into ranch dressing ... the health benefits may be limited ... but they are SO good. :)
• On the work front .... its getting down to the wire for my time at my current client .... which means all kinds of little things that "need to be done before I go" are coming out of the wood work. Fun! Also, those consultants who would have had reviews during the middle of the year at my old company all got salary "adjustments" effective July 1st. I am still not 100% sure what I was adjusted to or in light of, but lets just say the actual pay increase was not noticeable. If they come around with decent real raises at the end of the year, and this was just to tide us over until then, thats fine. If not, and this adjustment was them adjusting me to what they thought I "should" be making .... thats not cool. Also, even though our years of service was carried over to the new company and we are all supposedly equals now .... a summertime bonus was given out to all employees who have been with the new company since the start of the year. Not including employees from the buyout. Double Fun! On a better note, since June was my 2-year anniversary with the company, I now get 5 more days vacation which is nice. Its accrued, but that equates to an extra half day a month or so.
  

Hurray For Drug Tests, RSS, Halo, and Steven King!

I get to take a drug test in an hour or two for my next client. Hurray!

Satirical statements aside, here are some random interesting links and articles I have accumulated over the past week or so.

• WiFi Umbrella - From a common sense point of view, this one is pretty ridiculous. If you want to know the forecast but don't have the time to type in http://weather.com, change the TV channel to your local weather stations, and can't spare the time to look outside and think ... maybe you deserve to be wet. From a tech perspective, its kinda cool. The company also offers small dev. chip sets you can embed in your own devices so that they can be internet aware which is kinda cool. Hurray for internet toasters!
• Photo-Mosaic Mirrors - Pretty sweet concept. I have been thinking about my own photo-mosaic project a fair bit lately and may start in on it again soon. Its one I would really like to finish or get to a decent stopping point.
• Wind Powered Lights - I am not 100% I haven't posted about this before but I really like this idea. So much so that I originally had a similar idea back when I was driving back and forth to UD every holiday. I thought that all wind from the cars and trucks driving on t he interstates could probably power lights along the highway. Another miss opportunity ;).
• Coder or Cannibal - This was a fun little test back several months ago. Em got a kick out of it.
• Flip Video Camera - This looks like a great way to be able to take digital video on the cheap. Most digital cameras today can take a limited amount of video but it would be nice to have something that could take longer shots without costing an arm and a leg. Something like this would be great on a vacation assuming you had a laptop to download the video to periodically during the day or at night.
  

I have been using Google Reader for a few months now and love it ... but I have a problem.

Hi, my name is Ben and I am a starred RSS feed addict. [Hi Ben!]

Over that time I read countless articles from all of my subscriptions but ended up starring 600+ more that I wanted to read or thought looked interesting but didn't have the time or interest to read then. Well this past week (while in Cinci without a wife and much else to do but play Halo and work) I have been attempting to go through my many starred articles and turn over a new leaf of only starring articles I truly want to read later ... and actually following through. I have un-starred a couple hundred in that time and have read a large chunk of those ... but there are always more!

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Other than reading articles, lately I have been spending my free time doing a whole lot of nothing productive. Mostly watching TV, talking or playing Halo (we have another company game night next week, I had to refresh my skills ;) ).

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On an up-note, a coworker of mine brought to my attention some very serious news that I was not aware of. Evidently, Steven King has worked with Marvel to bring several stories from his Dark Tower series to life in comic book form - The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born. The coworker is a collector of comic books and had read the first 5 (there will be 7) and said that he loved them (despite having not read the books) and that the 6th was coming out on July 4th. Thats not all, he also offered to seek out copies of all the books for me if I would pay him for them. Indeed I would, and indeed I did. I am now the proud owner of the first 6 and I have to say there are great!

The illustrations are fantastic. The majority of the stories are taken right from the book but focus on the early life of Roland. There are some liberties taken on the order of events or exact details as compared to what I remember of the books but its flows well and is a nice addition to the series. From what I have read there is some "new" material in the comic book series but I haven't gotten to anything big new (just a few details that might not have been in the originals but hinted at). Overall I am very pleased. I got through 2 last night (it takes a surprisingly long time to read them and look at all of the pics) hopefully another couple are on tonight's agenda.

Apartment Projects

3 projects I have been thinking about for the new apartment...

1) Balcony Herb Garden

Pretty straight forward. We now have a nice balcony that gets a decent amount of sun (but not too much) that I would like to take advantage of. I am thinking about either getting several medium sized pots or maybe one or two longer boxes to plant some herbs and other veggies in (peppers maybe?). I am still in the very preliminary stages of researching this (what to plant, if the time of year will screw up anything, how much will it cost for everything including soil, fertilizer, tools, etc...) but am pretty excited about the prospect of having fresh and cheap herbs to cook with.

2) "Upright/Vertical" Balcony Bike Stand

This may be hard to describe, but I want a bike stand that will hold both of our bikes "upright" on our balcony. By upright, I simply mean that the back tire should be on the ground and the front tire directly above it (vs in front of it on the ground like a normal riding position). We have decided to store our bikes on our balcony for the warm weather months b/c there isn't a plethora of inside storage space and our balcony is a decent size. By putting them upright, they would have a pretty small footprint.

I have seen several solutions online, but none fit my needs exactly. Something like this achieves the upright approach and is nice since its free standing (we have siding on all of our exterior walls, which means no bolting or screwing into the building) but isn't "upright" and I am not sure it would fit on our balcony.

Something like this is exactly what I am looking for, but needs to be bolted to a wall, which I can't do. These, and these, are similar but only hold one bike at a time and still need to be bolted to a sturdy vertical surface.

My current thought is to possibly build a stand similar to those that are used in the first example but buy a couple of the last wall mounting hooks to attach the bikes (thus freestanding and vertical).

Granted, the more I look at it, the more it seems like it could be more $$$ and time than is worth the small amount of space saved ... but I press on!

3) Nifty Photo Hanging System

I saw this on some random home improvement show several months ago. Basically, the guy used a single rail/edge mounted high up on the wall near the ceiling. From this rail you hang thin wires or something like fishing line down. Finally, on these lines you attach hooks which you hang your photos or frames from.

Yeah, its a fair bit more complicated than just banging a nail in the wall ... but it allows you to slide the wires left/right wherever you want as much as you want ... and the hooks on the lines can move up and down. So your left with a system where you can mount a ton of pictures in any arrangement you want and then change it completely without any tools or more holes in the wall.

I found some hardware for doing this on a couple of websites (similar to this). I think I could make a custom rail system that would be a fair bit cheaper (just some decently hard molding and some hooks that can clip onto it) but the price for small wire clips (here) are nice at a buck a pop. Granted I would have to purchase a fair number of them, but at least its reasonable. And if I could fashion something myself or get them at a local store, it would be fine.

I plan on for sure doing the garden. Possibly doing something to hang the bikes on and probably something for my photos (maybe not my initial idea but something else) Who knows. Wish me luck.

AHHHH!

A video I took at the Newport Aquarium which I have been meaning to try and put up on here but my client's web filters block Google Video. I have to say, putting the video online was a piece of cake ... just have to watch out for what you put online :).

I have to say the aquarium was worth going to once. Not the biggest I have been to, but decently laid out and with a good selection. The buy-1-get-1-free ticket we had made it perfect.

Moved to STL and back again

We are officially moved. :)

And I am back in Cincinnati for the next 2+ weeks. :(

The past few days have been full of packing, moving, unpacking, and trying to get settled. Thanks to a ton of help from friends and family everything was moved without any problems. And besides from being a rather expensive few days, everything went off without a hitch. Almost everything has been unpacked at the new place and I am sure Em will get to the things that are left quickly. Our new place is really nice. Yes its a bit on the dated side (the cabinets are ugly as all get out and the carpet is a bit old) but its a great location, has all new appliances including a washer & dryer, way more space, an newly renovated pool/club house/fitness center, and is cheaper than our old place. Its a 3rd floor, 2 bedroom apt. with a large eat-in-kitchen, a small storage room with the washer/dryer and utilities and decent sized bathroom. Oh, and its got the best fake-stone wall covering outside on the patio. ;-).

Before I had to leave to come back to Cincinnati yesterday, Em and I didn't get a whole lot done that wasn't related to the move other than picking a new addition to the family. Unagi is our new beta and will hopefully hold down the fort as the man of the house while I am gone :). He looks similar to our first fish, Frank (RIP), but has a lighter body and blue fins.


I would have posted sooner but as of this morning we still don't have phone/internet in the new place. I ordered home phone service and DSL a while back for the new place to be setup on Monday but it came and went and nothing was turned on. Tuesday we called and found out that the previous tenant had failed to turn off her service so ATT wouldn't install ours until she did. Well, according to them, it should be on today, but I don't fully understand why they couldn't just change the service assuming I was willing to pay, but whatever. Friday, we are getting DishNetwork installed. This will be my first time trying satellite. Their rates were a fair bit better than cable and offered more for the money so we are going to try them. According to the guy on the phone there won't be a contract and minimal install fees so thats good. I still don't know/understand how they get the cable inside from our patio ... anyone know this?

I will be spending the next couple weeks in Cincinnati finishing up work on at my current client and staying with some generous coworkers. One really nice thing is that my commute has been cut down to under 10 minutes. I still have to figure out what I will be doing in the evenings besides studying for my web services certification (a number of us are going to study together and take it in August which will be helpful), trying to get my work done and playing Halo 2 on my coworked HUGE HD tv. If any of you Dayton-ites that read this are interested ... I was thinking about coming up either this weekend or next. Let me know if you will be around.

The pictures in this post are from the new apt (please pardon the mess, they were taking at random points during the moving process) as well as a couple from the butterfly exhibit at the Krohn Conservatory. I have more that actually have butterflys in them .. but they are still on the Mac in STL.

Physical Move Almost Done!

Update coming soon ...

We got all of our stuff packed, loaded, moved, and unloaded without any problems.  Now we are just trying to get everything unpacked and letting everyone who owes us money, or we owe money to what our new address is.

Moving has officially started

Last night, with the help of a coworker, we picked up the moving truck and got our two couches outside. After he left, Em and I got the bulk of our furniture out into the truck ... which means just lots of boxes and securing everything left for today. The 'rents should be in town late afternoon and I am taking a half day.

Its pretty crazy to see all of your worldly possessions in a single place. On the one hand, it looks like a TON of junk. On the other hand it seems really small, given that its pretty much everything you own.

On an side/un-related note ... the iPhone comes out today. I would love to get one but they are way too expensive. According to a coworker, there are already 26 people in line at the local mall waiting to get one. Craziness.