EmptyHighway

For months... hell...for years I've been wondering and playing with various ways to answer the question, "How the hell can I organize and keep better track of all of the interesting web sites that I find in my daily web surfing?" For a time, I kept a blog roll on this site, but I found that to be distracting to the overall content and wasn't a good way of finding the links when I needed them.

Enter del.icio.us. if you haven't heard about it, get with it. It will change the way you keep and find information on the web, of the ordinal of google. Right now the service is free, and Beelerspace, has a great article on how to get started with del.icio.us, since it isn't well documented by the creator.

I first heard of it over at kottke.org. (Kottke himself is a wealth of interesting commentary and links so, if you haven't stop by, stop by sometime. I often find it inconceivable how he can find time to write and post about SO much.) Tracie mentioned, "..yea, I've been using it for a while, when I shared my discovery last week (frequently I'm late in finding these things as I spend way too much time just reading news and looking for work opportunities recently).

Go take a look at My Del.icio.us
and see my growing collection of links. I haven't added the majority of my links yet, and it will grow daily.

The creator joshua schachter deserves acres of kudos for del.icio.us and memepool. Del.icio.us is one of those many ideas and creations that might you think, "Now if only I'd thought of that."

So it's green. For St. Patty's. although now it's not St. Patty's. Deal with it for a bit. In transition. Night

Still not quite where I want this to be, but it needed a change. A little spring cleaning. Put your feedback in the comments.

What's wrong with an email that looks like this?

Answer:

Why would a multi-million dollar company like PayPal, whom I may have an account with, address me as "Dear Customer"?

Because they aren't PayPal. Read what PayPal has to say, and stop yourself from being conned.

Take a look at the email below. I've recieved 3 of these in the past week. When I click on the "Follow this link" for the oldest one, imagine this, no web site comes up.

If you see and IP address (looks like this http://210.78.22.113) in your address bar, like the one below when you click on the "Follow this link", be very wary of filling out that form. In fact don't. On top of the fact that the site isn't even https, which would use a secure certificate and 128 bit SSL, to prove the website's identity.

If you've filled out a form like this. Call your credit card company and stop that card!

And it never ceases to amaze me how one can stumble upon good resources or tutorials on the web in the strangest places. I'm learning SQL for and ColdFusion right now and I happened upon this off of Sumit's home base. Who would've have thought?

Indeed I have connections in Microsoft. Our friend Sumit Basu...Dear Sumit...

Sumit Basu does not need these glasses, but it's nice to know he's doing interesting work. Too bad it's in rainy, cold, grey (hey wait a sec, that sounds like Boston) Seattle, WA.

Three weeks ago, we decided enough is enough, and that it is time to get a new car. Coincidentally this coincided with the anniversary date of our receipt of a "free" car from my Mom and Stepdad. That car is a 1994 Hyundai Elantra, within a few months the brakes went completely out, it failed inspection, and we found out it needed a new engine. As some say, nothing is free and if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

A few months later, doing fine without a car, yet tired of burning our hope and prayers on surviving the fearful trips to and from NYC on the Chinatown Express (Fung Wah or Travel Pack bus in our case), we decided perhaps we should: a) get the hyundai fixed, b) go with zipcar (which wouldn't help us on our long trips to the nether regions of the Northeast and hopefully South and West Coast USA) or c) brave 4 years of debt and buy a new car.

After much hemming on hawwing on both sides, we chose the more debt route. Before I prattle on too much. Here is the winner of our contest (mind you this photo sucks so I'm providing a link to the manaufacterer's site so that you can see the coolness of our choice). We picked a 2003 Mazda Protégé5.

Here is my bad photo, I'll replace this with a better one when I get a chance.

How did we decided on this car? Did the fact that I used to be a proud owner of a Mazda Protégé have anything to do with our decision? How did our competitors fare? What was the buying process like? How did we survive? Are there any car salesman or dealers out there that don't deserve to die?

All these questions and more will be answered soon. Stay tuned.

I need to upgrade Moveable Type so I can install this; which will help me post more photos, easier. Well, ideally. We'll see.

Funny,
I've spent the past few weeks setting up MT for other people and organizations, but I haven't bothered fixing mine. well, thanks to the help (finally) of someone at our webhost who finally changed the permissions like I asked.

One of about 4 or 5 I correspond with. But I won't go there just yet.
Anyways, they are still no WebCoreLabs, who actually answers the phone during business hours. A real person, no joke.

I'll update this post with the fix.

Now, I have to go because my roomie and my girlfriend have both told me to go to bed.

This thing is pissing me off

reading recent posts on a group forum that i'm a part of reminded me of the "good old days" of bulletin back in college...how i yearn for the dollar prompt.
(it was basically a way to see other people's comments on certain topics by typing esoteric commands into a black screen.)

now mind you, i'm not much of a poster. i definitely tended to lurk around discussions and read the volleys going back and forth, but there was some sort of "netiquette" that people followed. There were definitely the "flamers", people who would pick a fight just to get a rise out of other readers. without fail, someone would get SO offended at a post that a huge argument would errupt between 5, 6, 7 people/groups about sex/classes/tenure/politics you name it. at first it was disconcerting to read all of these vehement arguments that were basically out there for everyone to see.

but then i realized...it was just a way for people to blow off some steam. it's the nature of the medium. you can get all riled up about some person's point of view b/c you can't actually see them/hear them. but stepping back and realizing that this happens - made me read everything with a grain of salt. i'd see the people who had posted the most outrageous things the next day, around campus, in the dining hall, but i didn't judge them on the things they had written. or at least i tried.

i know that i've written posts in haste and anger that i later regretted writing or wish i had said better, but it was out there for everyone to read. this is still a form of communication that i'm still learning how to articulate myself through (as with other things too.) hopefully this blog (and my other blog) will help me do that. ;-)

Wow, I always knew tumblelocks were easy to pick, but this is ridiculous. Thanks to the musings of another fine Texan.

The idea of sponsorships flexing their $$$, by paying young naive (or even old ignorant) websurfers to build fake weblogs to pitch their new product makes me sick and I'd hope that bloggers will remain as smart, as the ones I frequent, seem. And stay the hell away from this sort form of marketing, urban legand, dishonest, con-man crap.

Last night, I had a distaste in my mouth after reading the SXSW Website Competition Award Finalists, especially the Personal/Online Diary section..but I already commented on that here,.

And after reading that post by Doug MacClure over on EmptyBottle.org I recalled that I forgot to write about how much this realy irks me. Well, now I have, or at least I've started.

Hey, howdy there! Yep, we've run out of asphalt and oil and have to start building some highways with good ol' creativity. Being from Texas I know there are some very creative people in the world and would like to hear from them. Take our current President for example.

Thats right, folks in Texas, like me, appreciate embellishment and tall tale tales. While I encourage that, and enjoy it sometimes, I also want to hear what's really happening out there beyond all the highways, car traffic, and Governmental Embellishment. Under the hum of highways there's a deep breath and the start of a revolution. You can start right here on our very own empty highway. Join us and offer suggestions today. This is your highway. This is a place for dialogue and discussion of whatever comes to my or your mind.

For now, please excuse the default design of this Moveable Type powered blog, although it's better than many web pages I've seen. I am working on a more personalized design and wanted to get started with posting and writing immediately. That's part of what this thing is all about right? Ease of publishing. And thus far it's great.