It’s very possible that I’ll get that construction worker tan this summer. Ever since the weathers been nice enough to warrant outside activity, I’ve been working on my yard. I’ve turned into one of those obsessive people that spend their whole weekend and half their paycheck on their lawn.
This type of addiction was probably seeded when my Grandpa hired me at a young age to mow his lawn. I would go over at least once a week (sometimes twice) and make that lawn look amazing.
Of course I didn’t start out as this expert yards men - it came with constant lecturing on the RIGHT way to take care of a lawn. Now, years later, all this drudged information has seeped into the very veins that make me function. I now am obsessed with getting ride of crabgrass, dry spots, thatch, grubs, and getting beautiful birds to play around the yard.
I didn’t learn all of this listening to my grandpa though. A lot has come from countless hours in my very own lawn and just as many at Lowes and Lowes.com.
The site is amazing with a huge How-To Library, Interactive Workshop and online help. As for the store - the people were helpful and didn’t mind helping me carry out cart after cart of fertilizer, grass seed, mulch, hoses, sprinklers, shrubs, flowers, shovels, weed killer, and whatever else may have fallen into my cart on the way out.
So I have all this stuff and growing knowledge of what makes a good lawn. Is my lawn perfect right now? Not yet, but it’s only the beginning of spring. Give me some time and gallons of water and I’ll get there.
Right now I just love the fresh air and the hard work in putting a lawn together. My weekends have changed from sitting at my computer for hours on end to being outside and getting my hands dirty. It’s a good feeling and it keeps me energetic.
So maybe with all this working outside on the lawn this summer, I’ll finally get that hard worker tan I’ve always wanted. It will be quite different than my normal, g33k sitting in the basement on his computer all day tan.
posted on April 27, 2003| 11:43 PM EST
A weblog system now a days would be almost worthless if it didn’t have all the extra bells and whistles. Some allow you to skip the HTML lessons and just help you get your information online. Others do that but also let you dig into it’s guts to make it your perfect tool for publishing online.
As for this guy - I didn’t have all these nice little tools to do what I wanted to do. I had books and various sites that taught me how to program my own tools. Most of which I was to lazy to actually get around to writing. Over the span of time I started to use my first Weblogging Content Management Tool called Greymatter.
Nobody talks about that system anymore because Noah (the original creator) found photography and didn’t continue with the software. Hundreds of people like me migrated to the system and many like me hacked away at it until it finally did what you wanted it to do.
Now, new ideas are floating around the web and people are doing more with these tools at hand. One of them being RSS Feeds. RSS isn’t something new - it’s been used in various instances since its birth in 1999 by Netscape. Recently, however, RSS Feeding has grown exponentially with the rise of webloggers.
If you remember me saying earlier in a round about way - My system is old. It’s not that I can’t easily upgrade but it’s the time I don’t have to do it. The other part of it is that I still like writing everything by hand. I have a love hate relationship with Content Management Tools. They work beautifully and can save you tons of time, but I still like typing away on Notepad or BBEdit and seeing everything come alive.
With the growth of RSS, I’ve decided it’s about time I start figuring out what it was and how to do it. Last night I came up with theParagon.ORG’s first RSS feed.
It was amazingly simple but I know there’s much to learn. Right now I write my feed by hand but hope to automat it soon enough.
For those of you using NetNewsWire - feel free to suck in my feed for the time being. Hopefully I can keep up with it but will note that it may go away. Right now I’m just learning. Until then - have fun and having feeding :-)
posted on April 25, 2003| 12:08 AM EST
I like to hang out at JP’s Coffee shop about once a week and grab a latte and some chatter from passing friends. I also like to spend a little time playing on their free DSL Internet connection and get into the guys computer that’s sitting right next to me.
Today I bumped into JP’s computer(s) and litterally looked over everything that had. I saw how much they pay for coffee/items and what their profits are on each cup of joe they sell. Amongst that I saw performance reviews and the music that they play overhead in the shop.
If you’re in any sort of business, security shouldn’t be something you skimp on. Any home user for that matter as well.
So instead of telling them that I just hacked their computers I decided to freak them out a little more and put text file in every major folder they had telling them about their open network. Hopefully they get the point.
posted on April 19, 2003| 2:17 PM EST
It’s late Friday night or early Saturday morning (depending on how you look at it) and I still haven’t gone to bed. This is my favorite time of the week because it’s the furthest from a working day you can get.
I usually spend my Friday nights coming home and relaxing on the couch for an hour and then make plans with other friends to see what’s going on. After hanging out with friends for a couple hours - usually until midnight or so - I start working on all those projects I’ve wanted to work on the whole week.
This doesn’t just include updating my website but reading various articles, researching new technology, scouring the web and finding out fun little things, reading books, and whatever else I can think of to do.
I try not to work on any client projects on Friday nights because I need at least one night of relaxation. Saturday’s are pretty much filled with the same details as my Friday nights, unless I have client work.
Luckily I don’t have anything to work on this weekend and I get to spend it with some old buddies from Chicago and Haiti.
I might even go to Craig’s Cruisers to hit a couple balls in the batting cages. I’ve slowly began to love the feeling of connecting with a baseball and hearing the crack or ting of the bat as it flings the ball far off into oblivion.
So now that you know what I usually end up doing - what do you do?
posted on | 1:57 AM EST
Yesterday we found that our trusty stove had baked her last pizza. After being left on all night, by one of my other roommates, the stove just didn’t have it in her to keep alive any longer. We had absolutely no budget for this but the more pressing issue was - “How are we going to make our Jack’s Pizzas?”.
The only thing we really could do was start talking to people around Holland that might be giving away their stove. This is where I was introduced to the dark side of Holland.
I began the next morning wandering around Holland to different stores that made money by selling such items we had just lost. The first store I went to was a local shop and I was greeted nicely by a young woman that was probably a year or two older than myself. She cheerfully asked if she could help me find anything - to which I began to explain my story.
I explained how I didn’t have much money and if I did I would truly spend it here at this fine store. I explained that I live in a DoubleWide trailer with a couple college buddies and our stove just died. We have no money and need to find a stove, or something comparable, that can make us Jack’s Pizzas.
She seemed to understand and with a subtle look around the store I was motioned to follow her into the back. There I saw lines and lines of stoves that were incredibly market down. These were stoves that they really didn’t want to sell but would if they had people like me.
This cheerful woman understood what I was getting at but wasn’t completely clear on my exact needs. I needed a free stove - once again, I live in a DoubleWide Trailer with some college buddies.
After re-explaining this she went to get a guy out of the back-back. I talked with him for awhile and after a couple attempts of being told that these stoves were good for the money he figured out what I was really looking for.
With the same scan across the building that the young woman had only minutes earlier he said he had an idea. At this point the young woman asked if she should leave for this. I didn’t really want her to leave because I wasn’t quite sure what was going to happen. I mean, I was in the back-back of this Holland store that I had never been to before and I was about to make some sort of deal with a man that could easily have passed for a serial killer.
He proceeded to explain the term ghetto stoves and what they had to do with me. Basically he had a guy that would get me a stove within a certain amount of time.
I didn’t know if he was joking or if this was for real until he took out a piece of paper from him pocket and told me to give him my phone number. I decided that it would be ok to offer this type of information and with that - our deal was over. I was to expect a phone call.
There’s more
That was the first brush with the dark side of stove purchasing and my next stop to Lowe’s was going to show me my next.
To make the long story short - I waited for a while until this guy in the stove department finished his high ticket sale. I began to explain my story to this rather large and friendly African American man when he interrupted me halfway through.
“You want a free stove - right?”
He said it so firmly and with a small smile that the only thing I could do was be completely honest and say; “yes, I am”.
This man proceeded to survey the Lowe’s store just as the young lady and creepy looking man had just a half an hour earlier. It’s as if I had just asked someone if they had any drugs for sale.
The guy muffled into the air that he didn’t have anything right now but if I didn’t mind coming back after midnight there might be a stove sitting in the back that I could pick up.
At first I thought that this guy was personally going to drop a stove off the back of a truck but he proceeded to explain further. Often people purchase new stoves at Lowe’s and they need to get ride of their old stoves. They tell their customers to just drop them off in the back and they’ll take care of them in the morning.
“We have no idea if there will be an appliance there in the morning or not.” explained the man. “If there just happens to be someone that picks these items up before us then who’s to find out? You may even get lucky and get a nice stove from a family that’s trying to keep up with the Jones’s and only keeps things for a couple years.”
After a couple more minutes of explaining the do’s and don’ts of how I should go about picking these items up, I thanked the man and left the store.
I tell my roommate, Dave, the story
I really wasn’t sure on what we should do. It sounded like we might be getting some really good deals but it also seemed rather creepy at the same time. Dave suggested that we try going to Sears and trying to see what type of deal we could get over there.
After a quick lunch at Quizno’s to discuss everything we headed on over. There we were greeted by an older lady, probably in her mid 50’s, and we began our story. After a couple minutes through she smiled and told us to follow her.
She was a sweet old lady - The same sweet lady that reminded you of your very own grandma. She began to explain that she knew what it was like to not have any money and whereas she didn’t have anything for free, she did have this stove for $100.00 that was origionally marked much higher.
She said it was her best price and probably the best deal for us. Dave and I both looked at each other and realized it was a much better feeling to get an honest stove. Not one that we may go to jail for in some form or fashion.
We agreed that the $100.00 stove was a good deal and told her, she had a sale. She happily rung us up and had a nice gentleman help us load the stove into our truck.
We ended up having to pay a little more than planned but we felt much better than if we had gone with one of our other options.
So the DoubleWide has a new stove. It’s a pretty stove and it warms up our Jack’s Pizzas nicely. We’re happy and confident we made the right choice.
posted on April 12, 2003| 11:25 PM EST
