Month: August 2005

Maybe I need some calisthenics. I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. I’d like to take a full day, or better a week, and devote it to jump starting a physical fitness program for myself. Instead I’ll force myself to take several juggling breaks where I’ll juggle with my exercise balls–3 tennis balls filled with lead shot and wrapped in electrical tape.

…because I made cup cakes.

…because I got off my duff.

…because the sun is shining.

In a belated tribute to Douglas Adams, over 1,500 dolphins have recently gathered off the coast of Pembrokeshire. Echt has the picture.

I am not certain that I can live up to Michael’s challenge this week.

1. Go to Google’s Language Tools.
2. enter the following line into the translate textbox:
   Susan Hughes’s mom is nice and cool
3. Translate from English to Spanish
4. Copy the translated text, and translate it back from Spanish to English

With apologies to Susan. Thought you might enjoy a little Internet fame.

I am well on my way to becoming a bitter old man. Due to economics and time constraints I continue to see opportunities and be unable to act upon them.

I owned a beautiful domain name once and because I was dead broke at its renewal time I let it go. A squatter grabbed it up and sat on it for years until someone purchased it and turned it into a beautiful example of what I intended it to be. I should move forward and use it as a lesson to not procrastinate on developing the domain names that I do own. I still have a hard time not being bitter about it.

My wife and I were in Ohio and visited a franchised store that we thought would be extremely successful in West Town Mall and fun to run to boot. I even made a phone call on it however the startup costs were out of my league. That store is now in West Town Mall and I bemoan it.

I see a real estate oppportunity. I’d need tens of millions to make it work. I’d quadruple the money.

So why not get some venture capital? Why not find a backer or angel? Why not get investors? Because it takes money to get money. You have to be politically active and know people. You have to do due diligence and write business plans and presentations all the while feeding your family.

I don’t think I’ve made a big enough deal about Blingo. I now use Blingo 80% of the time reserving my trips to Google for speciality things like money conversions.

Blingo now has a blog. What is Blingo? Blingo is a search engine that returns the exact same results as Google (since it is powered by Google) but gives out prizes (currently limited to the United States, I think).

You don’t need to sign up to search. But if you sign up as a Blingo Friend when you win, so does your friend!

Spy Journal Tech Tips alerted on Blingo in December of 2004.

(reprinted from Spy Journal Blog Tips)

…because last night I had a date with my wife.

…because, disquieting as it is, I’m facing my demons.

Album is done and I nary made a dent in the mail. This Friday is an evil deadline. The world shall try to crumble under my feet.

Next album for productivity: XTC: Skylarking. Task: quote a job.

Got behind on the mail again. 

Let’s tackle the mail to the sounds of Black 47’s Fire of Freedom. When the album ends I change task. While the album plays I am not allowed to slip off task.

Thank you Rasita! Had she not mentioned that my feed was down I never would have fixed the problem. Turns out my feeds to the Rocky Top Brigade had stopped and many readers went without my life influencing bits and bytes.

The probem turned out to be laziness. In one post I decided to turn on Blogger’s Compose tab and cut and paste from MS Word to Blogger. MS Word’s xml is horrible! And conflicted with Blogger’s Atom feed. The MS gibberish has been removed and everything returns to "normal."

Student: I’ll never reach the end.
Master: Just get over the next hill.

…because Tommy had a fantastic birthday party at Ben & Jerry’s. Tommy is thrilled! The manager ran the party and did an exceptional job! We tie dyed t-shirts (and they all came out great! Matching the personalities of the makers.) When we took out our rubber gloves I spoke up, "So, any of the adults thinking Howie Mandel?" to which the store manager said, "Howie who?" We all laughed and he said, "No, seriously!" And my mother-in-law laughed and called me an "old person." Good moment!

…because I made major headway on fixing a closet that has been neglected since September 1997.

…because we are getting some pleasant and much needed rain.

Celebrating tommy at ben and jerrys

SayUncle shows us a cartoon from Time on intelligent design. Nice perspective!