The weekend is sadly over but the results of this weekend are still with me this Monday morning. My muscles are sore and sleep is something that I haven’t had enough of since the weekend before. The roof isn’t quite finished yet but thanks to a bunch of buddies, I got half of it done.
Half done, however, doesn’t give justice compared to the intense hours I’ve put into this project already. Thursday was an 8 hour day, Friday I put in 13 hours on the roof, Saturday was another 12 hour day that started at 5:00am and I still can’t say I’m done with it all. Looks like I’ll be working on it this week - every day after I get out of work at five (sigh).
posted on July 28, 2003| 9:09 AM EST
For the past couple of weeks I’ve been putting it off and the one weekend I had planned to do it - it rained. Finally I started watching the weather and began to research what all I would need to re-roof my house.
I decided to first get some estimates and see what they felt the job was worth. After getting over 4 proposals back, each estimating over $4500.00 - I decided to give it a try and do everything myself.
Having the Dutch blood that I do, I couldn’t even imagin parting with that much of my money.
What was I thinking
Five hours last night and seven hours today I find myself wondering why any human being would ever want to roof their own house - let alone someone elseís house. The amount of manual labor is literally back breaking and my hands have never felt so beat to hell as they do right now.
The one nice thing is being able to look back and have the ability to say, “Yup - I put up that roof.”. In the mean time, I’m finding out how much of a wimp I really am and how horrible computer people are at manual labor.
All that said - It’s very satisfying and I feel more like Michael Landon on Little House on a Prairie than I ever have before in my life (man that guy is tough).
Update: Taking an hour break
It’s way to hot to be putting shingles up so I’m taking a 3 hour break to let the sun go down a bit. During this little break my dad sent me an email that linked to a rather funny Linux Switch movie called - “Whatever the hell you want”. I’d suggest you check it out if you’re in need of a good snicker.
posted on July 25, 2003| 4:01 PM EST
The eternal struggle to find complete peace with your documents, files, email, music and overall life is something humans have been searching for since the beginning of time. I myself have been trying to find the best practice of file organization for close to 4 years. The only thing I’ve been able to conjure up is smart tree structure naming conventions.
Whereas this is quite useful and productive, it’s also very difficult because it requires (1) alot of your time making sure things are archived correctly and (2) a constant self-reflection on your life to make sure you’ve covered all the areas in which you may have information.
Recently I read an article called “The Next Great American Newspaper”. The article explained various forms of information archiving and what we are doing now and what we should do in the future.
It’s a rather amazing article and goes into various detailed thoughts of converting to this new sort of file organization.
Scopeware is a company that seems to be the closest to what David Gelernter talks about in his article. Their philosophy is based on the basic premise that information should be woven into a flowing narrative stream with a past, present and future that you can tune in from anywhere. Information should mirror the structure of your life, not the structure of your computers and that it should be presented in a form that reflects human recall: time, type, look and essence.
With somewhat of a different look on file organization, The Brain came out with a product called PersonalBrain. PersonalBrain features a dynamic visual interface of thoughts that contains it all�your files, Web pages and applications�all linked the way you think!
I tried the PersonalBrain system a couple years ago and had a great time with it. I ended up moving away from the tool because it was a pain to reload onto my PC’s every time I reformatted my machine (which I do alot).
Both systems, however, are amazing and are working very hard to make file organization a much easier task. There are many other systems out there like these and each pull something different out of the usability pot. I haven’t seen one company come up with the one perfect solution - so at this time it’s more of what suits your fancy.
Someday we’ll hopefully see Microsoft, Apple, or Linux come out with their own research on new forms of organization but I haven’t found anything from them yet - Do note that I haven’t spent much time searching either. Until then we’ll keep on the path we are currently on and hope that we can remember what we named that one file back on that one day.
posted on July 23, 2003| 10:04 AM EST
It’s probably been over four years since we were first introduced and from the very start it seemed almost magical. We spent hours together that seemed to only last minutes and worked on projects as if we had the same goals. Of course there were those hard times when things just didn’t seems to make sense - but we worked through those times and we’ve become better because of it.
I guess that’s why it’s so hard to say goodbye after all this time. It’s not that I’ve forgotten our wild days together but you’re just becoming old and there’s so many things out there that you just can’t do anymore. It’s not that you don’t try - it’s just asking too much of you to be something you’re not.
What makes it so comforting is that you gave it your all in this relationship and you never once decided to just give up. In fact - most of the time it was something I did but you didn’t care. You always explained to me what I had done wrong and helped me to better understand you.
You showed me the world and brought me to places that many of us only get to in our imaginations. You’re amazing but always let me take the glory for what you always did.
That’s what makes a true friend and that’s exactly why selling you is making it so hard. At least now you have a place to go and someone to welcome you. They’ll give you you’re own room and love you as much as they can.
I know that you’ll love them but it’s important to know - you’ll always be my first computer and you’ll always be the one that taught me everything I know. I couldn’t ask for anything more in a companion and couldn’t imagine anything better.
Thanks for the good times - I’ll miss you.
posted on July 21, 2003| 10:03 PM EST
If you haven’t already heard by now from the millions of voices on the web - AOL decided to kill Netscape. According to Mozillazine:
“AOL has cut or will cut the remaining team working on Mozilla in a mass firing and are dismantling what was left of Netscape (theyíve even pulled the logos off the buildings).”
As sad as this is, it’s really not much of a suprize. It’s something that we’ve all saw coming ever since AOL signed a deal with Microsoft.
It’s not really a huge deal for me because I use Safari on MacOSX and Opera on my Windows machines. Sooner or later I’d like to try out some of the other Mozilla Foundation but I’ve got a lot of web work in-between me and the other “things I want to do” me.
On top of this issue I can pretty much guarantee ya that you’ll have to start paying for your browser(s). I give it a couple years but no more than 5 with how fast things have been progressing. Right now you already have to pay for ad-free Opera ($35.00) and I’m pretty sure other companies will follow this same business practice.
We’ll soon have to buy our browsers in packages along side our office applications and virus protection software. In the mean time people will continue to just use whatever they are given on their new computer - never even thinking about other options and ones that could make their over all user experience a much better one.
posted on July 16, 2003| 9:40 AM EST
