Month: July 2002

What the heck, here’s my blogchalk

Google! DayPop! This is my blogchalk: English, United States, Kirkland, Norkirk, Tim, Male, 26-30!

What’s that all about? Well, as explained on the site:

I miss … a region-sensible blog-search engine, [which] would make easier for me to know blogs owned by people that live near my home, and then, increase the possibility of real meetings. What would probably end in new and great friendships.

After seeing this kind of hard mapping implemented by people at NYCBloggers.com and watch to the rise of WarChalking (in my opinion, an idea that best express, today, the beauty of large public networks), I noticed a possible way: if all bloggers mark their sites with a special sign and geographic information, maybe it would be possible to improvise such searching system.

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Getting started

First day at work. I’m a little nervous. Needless to say, expect very little if any blogging today.

Quick house update (couldn’t let the opportunity pass): the floor guys are just about done and the plumbers are starting this morning in our second bathroom (we’re ripping out paneling, fixing a hole in the wall, and replacing the senior citizen-unfriendly clawfoot tub with something a little easier to get into and out of). Unpacking is going well so far except for one broken dish–which unfortunately was a piece of porcelain we hand carried back from Capri and never got a chance to use. We might be able to glue it back together.

We got stuff

I was very excited to be actually mowing my own lawn with my own lawnmower this morning, while our floor guys were laying down the final coat of finish on our new floors. I had just finished showering and changing when I heard a big truck outside. Yes, our stuff had shown up with no warning at all!

Fortunately, we had enough room in the rest of the house and garage to hold all the stuff. Our living room is basically set up and Lisa is thrilled to have TV. I think this might conclude the hardcore “houseblogging” I’ve been doing for a while. Thanks to all of you for putting up with me as I go through this transition.

iRock or not iRock

Doc Searls sez that the iRock should let you select any channel on the FM band. I have one of those. It cost about $20 at Best Buy, and is called the SoundFeeder.

As always, though there’s a trade off between features and ease of use. This thing has a four position switch, to let you select between four ranges of FM frequencies, and a dial to let you tune precisely within that range. Or sort of precisely—it’s not really precision engineered or anything, and sometimes the signal drifts a little.

Driving on a long trip can be an exercise in patience. As you drive in and out of range of different stations, the frequency you chose on the SoundFeeder will inevitably get interference. Then you have to find an empty spot on your tuner and fiddle with the SoundFeeder again until the signal comes in—using the two controls without taking your eyes off the road is pretty tricky.
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pilgrimage

Thanks to Tim for mentioning my pilgrimage trip a few days ago. The trip, to the Borderlands Ranch in South Dakota, was part of the youth program at my church, for which I have been a leader during the past two years. I’ve posted my journal from the trip if anyone’s interested in reading it.

Convergence on metaweblogs…

UserLand just released an implementation of the MetaWeblog API for Manila. This is pretty cool—this API is more robust than the Blogger API and is supported by both Manila and Radio.

Coincidentally, I’ve just been playing around with the API for some of my existing scripts. Updates as I go. It’s a faster learning path than the Manila API, since I have a local server in which I can investigate the code and problems as they arise.

Happy birthday

The 226th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, also known as Independence Day. Did the Founding Fathers really know what they were getting into? Today should be a day of quiet reflection as well as celebration, especially after everything that’s happened in the last year.

The Broadband Fairy came!

…and it only took a couple of hours to get everything working!!! 🙂

After failing to get Lisa’s computer configured owing to some obscure binding problems and a firewall conflict, we tried to install the broadband software on my machine, to learn that there was a flaw in the script that tried to redirect my browser to finish the registration and it was pointing to the wrong URL. Plus my proxy server settings had to be set manually to finish. Once I got that straightened out, it was a piece of cake.
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Why are the Dodgers, Ikea, and CNA all criminals?

… because, according to the Wall Street Journal, they violated the Trading with the Enemy act. We’re just now finding out about this thanks to a FOIA lawsuit filed by Public Citizen and the Corporate Crime Reporter. According to the Journal, “Treasury is planning to make such settlements public on a regular basis.”

Unusually for the Journal, they also point out who’s not been charged: Dick Cheney.

The Treasury’s latest list didn’t include Halliburton Co., Dallas, the oil-services company formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney. Halliburton opened an office in Tehran in 2000, when Mr. Cheney was chief executive officer. When the news became public last year, the company denied its office violated the U.S. law.

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Back from the pilgrimage

My sister Esta has returned from her pilgrimage. Apparently there were some eventful things: bad connection, super late arrival, cows in the road, “Bagging the Rush,” etc. Good things, too: sounds like there was lots of spiritual growth happenin’. Her leadership experience on this trip makes most of my business experience look tame.