_10:46
Today is my own
At 7:55 the sun rose this morning showing us all the heavy snow and winds filling the streets of Holland. I’d already been up for almost an hour and managed to scrape off the ice from my car in order to meet some friends for breakfast at the windmill restaurant.
The sun wasn’t quite out when I asked for my first cup of coffee and started looking over the menu. I always get the same thing so I don’t know why I even waste my time - I’ll have the “French Double Take”. Sunny side up eggs, links, bacon and French toast that was made as if you mother was cooking in the back.
Conversation was great - Just friends waking up with coffee and getting ready for the day to begin. Some of us didn’t have much to do other than read books and possibly brave the harsh cold and practice our shooting yet again. Others had a busy day ahead of them and were glad to have a moment of rest before having to hit the road.
One of the best things about waking up early and going to breakfast is the nap that quickly follows after it. Coming home and feeling the weight of your body pulling you onto your davenport and feeling all your cares fall from your mind.
I had a great nap and an even greater dream. One of those dreams that show you what life is all about and allows it self to be remembered even after you begin to awake from it.
After that there isn’t much more to do than just read some good books. All your muscles have been fully relaxed but still long for 20 more minutes of laying silently while listening to the wind and snow just outside the window.
My morning has started out as if I was a king - I made the calls and wasn’t apart of any type of oppressing schedule. Today is my own.
posted on November 30, 2002| 10:54 AM EST
_20:02
Thanksgiving was Good
Turkey, mash potatoes, green bean casserole, stuffing, gravy, pumpkin pie, and more food than one person should ever consume went down my throat just yesterday afternoon. Thanksgiving was a great time filled with lots of food, family, a couple naps and a movie.
Today I decided to take a vacation day from work and go play with my friends. First we went to Graaffschap Hardware and they taught us how to take our guns apart and clean them. Next we went on a hike in Saugatuck dunes and followed that up with a good hour of shooting clay targets :-)
The crazy thing is that it’s only Friday today. With the amount of time I’ve had off of work it seems like I should be getting ready to go back - but I still have 2 more days. Haha - crap that’s awesome.
On top of that it’s nice to have all my friends back in town. I don’t get to see them all that much so when we all get together it’s just non-stop fun packed good times.
Tomorrow we’re planning on going shooting again after a long awaited breakfast at the Windmill Restaurant. You know life is good when you wake up early to have coffee and breakfast with the guys.
So my 4-day weekend has indeed been a good one. None of the daily stress of having to work and then coming home to only a couple of hours of freedom until you have to go to bed for the next day - Just good relaxation and fun.
posted on November 29, 2002| 8:07 PM EST
_12:36
Dinner for Design
As some of you might already know I’m working on a new design for the
Holland Sentinel. The goal is to do it all in valid
XHTML and
CSS. Just to see if I could take what we currently have and convert it into
CSS I whipped up a
quick page that should validate.
Now that I know (I think) that I can do the CSS part - I need to come up with an actual new design. A whole new layout for presenting the information on our site.
I’ll be honest with ya and say that I’m not the designer I used to be. Not that I was ever really a full fledge designer. I could however come up with something fancy every once in awhile, but now I just feel drained out.
So for all the designers on my site - from print designers up to web - I’m asking for your help. If you feel energetic and think you have a good idea, please help a guy out.
Any payment for this project would simply come straight from my own pocket so all I can afford is to buy someone dinner for their service. Maybe even dinner for you and a friend.
All I’m really looking for is a template that I could more than likely make small modifications to.
Some sites that I’ve been looking at and possibly adapting some of their features are:
Hopefully this gives you an idea of what I’m looking for.
Please Note:
Dinner(s) will only be given out if your design is used. If we use a part of your design then you will also get a dinner out of the deal.
posted on November 25, 2002| 12:51 PM EST
_23:18
First Snowfall
Summer gives us warmth, wonderful sunsets, fun at the beach, and time with friends that are back from collge. Fall is watching the leaves fall from the trees, seeing the many colors mother earth has to offer and enjoying the perfect -
not to hot, not to cold - weather.
Today, Winter decided to peek it’s head around the corner and let us know she’s about ready to come out and play. The ground was gently covered with her white blanket and all the evil in the world just seem to rush away while thoughts of the holidays came rolling in.
It’s that time when all you want to do is sit next to a fire and read your favorite book while casually looking out the window to see the snowflakes slowly flutter down to earth.
These next couple months are going to be alot of fun. Finishing up November with our stomachs fuller than we should ever have them. Then heading into the next month with a time of Christmas lights and family get togethers.
posted on November 24, 2002| 11:35 PM EST
_9:28
1 cent emails
We all get SPAM - if you have one of those free email accounts offered by one of the millions of companies out there it’s probably safe to say 70% of your email is just SPAM. Sadly for you folks there isn’t much for you to do other than rely on the company that offers the free email
(don’t hold your breath).
If you are one of the lucky people that actually have their own domain name the you can create your own email addresses. More than likely you also have access to your web server and can install various things like SpamAssassin.
Today, while reading my various website before actually working I came across Joel on Software. A site where some guy just talks about various things on software. It’s actually a really fun site to read.
On of the things he noted just the other day was an idea for emails.
Joel’s words
Here’s what I’d like to see: a system that delivers an email for one cent.İNobody hasİto use it, but if you want to get your messages through, you pay one cent and the system delivers it for you. Every spam filtering system on earth can safely whitelist all email that comes from the one cent server, because no spammer can afford the penny times theİ19 million messages they send.
I would use it for all my email. You could even give 3/4s of a cent to the recipient as a credit to use for sending their own mail, keeping the 1/4 cent to pay for the servers. Eventually, if it caught on, you wouldn’t need a spam filter: just put all the free email in a suspect folder, and check it once a week in case some old school holdouts insist on sending you email without paying.
I’m still wondering how good of an idea this would be. For the most part your company would foot such costs - however personal users would have to put up alittle money. Interestly there’s a quick SPAM finacial calculator that will give you and idea of how much your spending on SPAM now - just by taking time to delete them.
This topic is to big for me to talk about in just one little post. Maybe I’ll write an article on various ideas/solutions to SPAM. Note that there really isn’t a sure fire way you’ll get NO SPAM. You’ll get SPAM one way or another. We’re just trying to cut down the amount.
posted on November 21, 2002| 9:48 AM EST
