Well, here we are at the end of another 30 days. I don't know if it's because I have so much other stuff going on, or I'm just running out of things to write about, but this was the hardest year so far. For those of you following along, I hope it wasn't too painful -- I tried to keep it interesting.

Like last year, I have a few ideas that didn't make it into the rotation, so you can probably expect to see those pop up in the weeks ahead. But I won't bother resolving to write more often, since I know that never works out for me. So we now return to our regular sporadic update schedule. Until next year, see ya around the 'net. Maybe next year I can convince Dixie to join me with her shiny new blog.

What do you get when you cross a child's door with a refrigerator? A door that any kid can use to show off his best work. This is a simple project you can do with your child (it takes less than an hour), and then eliminate the need for tape or stick-tack for hanging those masterpieces.

You will need an old tape measure and some magnets. You can probably find these at a dollar store. You will also need a pair of tin snips, a screwdriver, and a drill. Start by disassembling the tape measure and cutting the metal tape into lengths that fit the door. Remember to leave enough extra to wrap around the outside edges of the door -- this way your screw holes will not show if you ever decide to take the strips down. You might want to round off the ends with the tin snips so there are no sharp edges. Then drill a hole in each end of the strip, and attach them to the door. You will probably want to countersink the screw holes so that they fit flush and won't interfere with the closing of the door. Also be careful not to crease the tape measure too much around the corner of the door, as the metal is brittle and might break.

Once your strips are in place, grab your magnets and put up your favorite artwork or photos!

The three most important people in my life came home from their trip to Florida, and I am so happy to see them. It was getting pretty lonely around here. Trips to the beach, trips to Gatorland -- it sounds like they had a great time. I'll share some photos soon. But for now I'm just happy to have my little family back under one roof again.

Today's the first day of summer, and it felt like it too. Hotter'n Hades. I spent the day (and most of yesterday) doing yardwork -- what was I thinking? This was a fairly productive weekend, but I didn't get everything done that I wanted (as usual). I can't believe the year is almost half over. The weeks and months just fly by.
It must be the kids' fault -- they are growing way too fast. I can't believe Noah will be five in a few months, and our little diva is already a teenager in her mind.

Well, thanks for indulging me. As Ferris Bueller said, life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. Consider me stopped.

I can't let these 30 days go by without saying something about the story that has everyone talking. Everyone has their own theories about how to clean up the disaster in the Gulf. And the blame game has been played by everyone as well, with no clear winners. I'm not going to jump into any of those debates, but I did have a couple of observations that I'd like to share.

First of all, I'm surprised by the reaction (or lack thereof) by all of the other oil companies. Besides being hauled in front of Congress to testify, there hasn't been a lot of communication from your Exxons and your Shells. I guess that's to be expected to some extent, their first reaction was probably to sit back and see how bad the backlash against BP would be, and let them take the initial brunt of it. But we're sixty days into this catastrophe, and I can't believe that BP's peers haven't stepped up and took a more prominent role in the cleanup effort. It would be outstanding PR for them, to come together, form some kind of "dream team" of engineers and leaders, roll up their sleeves, and then take the slow motion walk into the fray, like Bruce Willis and his roughnecks in Armageddon. But that hasn't happened yet (to my knowledge). And I'm surprised, because the CEOs of all of the other oil companies have to realize that if they don't jump in and do something voluntarily, the government is going to make them do something they probably won't like very much. Oh, and it won't be cheap. So it is in all of our best interests for them to solve this problem on their own, because the government's regulatory reaction to this mess is going to cost them a fortune, and they will certainly pass that cost on to us. Get ready for five-dollar gasoline.

Which brings me to my second observation. We have not seen the customary increase in gas prices in the run-up to summer, as we usually do this time of year. Gas seems to be about the same price it was all winter. Why is that? Could it be because an oil company that raises gas prices with the Gulf clean-up as a backdrop is likely to wind up on the list of America's Most Hated, right along with BP? Can we presume that gas prices will remain flat for as long as pelicans covered in goo is the lead story on the news every night? Just wondering what that will mean in the long term. If we make it the entire summer without significant increases, the oil companies will have to come up with a new perennial excuse for summer's higher prices. Or maybe they will just have to admit that it's all a scam.

On one of my recent journeys down the Wikipedia rabbit hole -- you know what I'm talking about, when you look up something in Wikipedia and one of the links on the page draws your attention, and you click on it, and then repeat until you are seventeen pages and at least a dozen knowledge domains removed from the information you came looking for -- I wound up on the page for aqua regia (don't ask) and stumbled across this interesting tidbit of history:

When Germany invaded Denmark in World War II, the Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of Max von Laue and James Franck in aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from stealing them. He placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute. It was subsequently ignored by the Nazis who thought the jar—one of perhaps hundreds on the shelving—contained common chemicals. After the war, de Hevesy returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The gold was returned to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation who recast the medals and again presented them to Laue and Franck.

I thought that was simply amazing and just had to pass it along.

We celebrated Father's Day a week early this year, and spent the day with the grandparents. Dixie got me the yard cart that I've had my eye on for a while, and the kids benefited from this purchase as they got a mini-hayride (minus the hay) around the yard before having fun in our mini water park. It's not Oceans of Fun, but hey, what do you want for fifteen bucks?

A year ago I wrote about the electric car from Zenn Motors that was on the verge of becoming a reality. A year later, it doesn't appear to be any closer to real, unfortunately. I'm pretty bummed about that, but I can't say I'm surprised. The promise of an electric car has been made and broken my entire life. Please click the picture to see an ad from Hot Rod Magazine for an electric hybrid car that GM was promising. Also, please note the ad appeared in 1969!

So yeah, electric cars are coming. Just like the flying car, the personal jet-pack, and video phones. Those technologies have been on the horizon my entire life as well, and we are no closer to them today than we were during the Johnson administration. It's not that I've given up hope completely. Nissan is now taking reservations for the Leaf, the Chevy Volt is right around the corner, and of course if you have the dough, you can always drop $100K on a Tesla. So the cars are around, but you still have to ask yourself the question, why has it taken so long?

Welcome to the third annual Running of the Blogs! We've called it 30 Days of Blog in years past, but that title isn't terrible catchy, so I thought we could use a new name for it. In fact, I might even register the domain name and turn it into a NaNoWriMo kind of experience. Running of the Blogs evokes images of frightened tourists being gored in the streets of Pamplona. That's kind of how it feels -- you know if you don't keep running, writing something new every day, you are likely to be impaled by the horns of ridicule and derision for having failed in your attempt. I've said it in years past, I have a lot of respect for bloggers who manage to crank out a quality product day after day. It's not easy. But once again, I am accepting the challenge. So, here we go again. Tighten your red sash. On your mark. Get set. Blog!

We had our first salad the other night from our garden and it was great. I can't wait for all of the other crops -- peas, carrots, and even cantaloupe! Yum!

Yeah, I know I'm a week late, but I had to post an update on our square foot garden. Dixie did a great job getting all of our crops planted and now we are only a few weeks away from having some delicious home-grown salads with dinner. Yum! Stay tuned for the first harvest...

We picked up Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening book last year with the intent of planting a small vegetable garden, but never got around to doing it. But this year, we are off and running! Only a couple more days and we will have our seedlings in the ground, and we will finally have a use for all that compost we've been making for the past year. Stay tuned for the planting...

[This is the final part in a series on building your own HTPC]

The primary reason I set out to build a Home Theater PC was so I could get rid of DirecTV. I've been a subscriber since 1999, and I've never had any complaints about their service, apart from the incessant rate hikes. I've made a few successful attempts to stave off the endless increases. A couple of nasty letters and a few hours spent on the phone with their "Customer Retention" department have worked in the past, but I'm just tired of having to fight that battle. Their rates have doubled since I first bought the service, with no noticable improvement in the content. I still have a single decoder box, no built-in DVR, no premium channels, and I'm paying $60 a month for the dozen or so channels that I watch on a regular basis. Couple this with the fact that the satellite feed, while digital, is not HD, so the over-the-air local channels look and sound a lot better and it's just not worth it. So bye-bye DirecTV!

Another reason for tackling this project (besides being a geek and just wanting to try it) was to see how much I could consolidate the jumble of hardware and cables in my living room. A stack of boxes that used to include the satellite decoder, TiVo, DVD player, and a Roku has been reduced to just two devices: my A/V receiver and the PC. So this is a significant improvement. The software interface has been simplified as well. The Boxee interface (see image) now includes the DVD, Netflix streaming (under Apps), and all other content that used to be served up by Tivo (Photos, Music, recorded shows and movies). I think a single interface is an improvement too. Now, if Boxee just had a built-in PVR, it would be absolutely perfect.

But the solution I've come up with is not too bad. Pressing the green button on the MCE remote launches Boxee, and the blue button starts the GB-PVR software. Once the PVR has been configured with season passess for your favorite shows, there isn't much reason to call it up unless you just want to watch live TV. The shows are dumped to a location that Boxee is configured to scan, so new recordings should automatically show up in the Boxee interface for viewing. The one encumberance that I can't eliminate at this point is that Boxee will not delete anything. So once you've watched a show, the only way to delete it is from within GB-PVR. This is a minor inconvenience, and I believe it is a planned enhancement for a future Boxee release, so it should correct itself eventually.

The PVR interface is different from TiVo, but seems to provide all of the same functionality (including a To Do List). I did not previously have dual tuners in my TiVo, so that's a huge improvement by itself. There are frequently two shows on at the same time that we want to watch, and now we don't have to miss them anymore.

Overall, I have been impressed with the performance of this rig. It seems to have plenty of horsepower to spare -- even when recording two shows simultaneously, and watching streaming content, CPU usage hovers around 50 percent. I had concerns that the hard drive might be too small (and I'm sure some day it will be), but with about 60 shows and 3 full-length movies on it right now, it's only 33 percent full. It also runs completely silent -- I have to lean down and put my ear right in front of the intake to hear the fans at all. The remote takes some getting used to, and I'm still considering alternatives that would provide mouse and keyboard inputs, because there are times when you need to type something into a search box, for instance, and Boxee's virtual keyboard is at least as painful as TiVo's. Or maybe I'll just wait until the Boxee remote (unveiled at CES in January) becomes available. In the meantime, there is a Boxee app for the iPhone and iPod Touch that I really like, but I don't really want to be wearing out the battery on my Touch just to have occasional keyboard access.

I am pleased with the results, and I think anyone who builds this rig will be too. If you have any questions, or run into any problems with the instructions, please leave me a comment below.

When you start the research, like I did, on building your own Home Theater PC, you inevitably come across a page or two that claims to give you all the information you need to build the "ultimate" rig for yourself. Some of these pages do provide a wealth of valuable and useful information, but none of them (that I've seen) actually provide you everything. How do you define everything? Well, if I'm going to make the leap to a HTPC, I'm probably doing it for one of two reasons (there may be more, actually). You either want to build one for the fun of it or just to learn how, or you may be choosing that path to escape the burden of your current cable or satellite company. Coincidentally, NPR just did a story yesterday on the number of people who are starting to tell their providers to take a hike. If it is the latter (like myself), "everything" is defined as the path of least resistance. That is, cost is not the primary driver, as I recognize that if I use it long enough I will eventually make my money back in the savings I will enjoy after I tell my provider to go pound sand. Cost is second to the time and hassle factor of setting up the system. This means that "everything" is not only a foolproof hardware configuration that has been tested, but step-by-step instructions for installing all the necessary software as well.

So you're about to read a page that provides you all of that. I know this is a incredible claim, but when I set out to do this, I promised myself I would do it right, and I would keep detailed notes so that I could then provide this information to others. This is truly a turn-key system -- no bullshit. You buy the hardware I have listed, you follow my instructions for installing the software, and you will have the ultimate HTPC. You will be out $500, but you will still have your sanity. And your hair.

So how do you define ultimate? Well, at the time of this writing, ultimate means a confluence of several established platforms as well as integration of emerging and future techologies. The ultimate HTPC isn't about specs. It isn't about raw CPU horsepower. It isn't about bells and whistles. It is about performance, but without sacrificing aesthetics. The ultimate HTPC will replace cable/satellite as your primary source of television content. There are sacrifices implied in that statement. You are ready to say goodbye to premium channels (like HBO and Showtime), although most if not all of their content is made available on DVD at some point. You are ready to say goodbye to a lot of second-tier channels, although the same is true of most of their content, and a lot of it is also available online. The ultimate HTPC will also replace your standalone DVD player. By the way, my design is not Blu-Ray capable. Blu-Ray, in my opinion, is a solution in search of a problem. It's an industry conspiracy to steal our money, and I'm not participating. If you're like me, standard DVDs are just fine. The ultimate HTPC allows streaming of Netflix movies as well as any other internet content that is consumable through a web browser. The ultimate HTPC is also capable of storing a significant amount of content -- both PVR-style, as well as traditional movies ripped from DVD.

So those are my criteria: use over-the-air HD as the primary source, play standard def DVDs, stream all known content from the internet, and hold at least 500GB of video content either internally or through Network Attached Storage (NAS). If this sounds like the kind of system you would like, and you have the money, here begins the journey.

[Continued in Part II, The Hardware...]

If you are a regular visitor to planet snewpy, you may never have been aware that you were simply in orbit around the planet, and that the planet's surface below was also buzzing with activity. An experiment in political philosophy has been ongoing for a couple of years, as the planet's residents have been busily solving the world's problems and discussing current events, and we are now ready to open up that experiment to the rest of the universe. If you enjoy talking politics in an intelligent and respectful manner, you are encouraged to board the shuttle to the planet's surface and join the debate. Everyone is invited, whether statist or anarchist, liberal or conservative, socialist or capitalist, and all ideas are welcome! Come join us, won't you?

If you want to "go green" for environmental reasons, that's great. If you want to do it for financial reasons, that's great too, but what I've discovered is that it might be difficult to quantify exactly how much you are saving.

I've been waiting since last year to calculate the savings from our solar water heater. I put together a spreadsheet comparing electricity and natural gas usage over the 12-month period before the installation, and the the 12-month period after. What I can say is that our monthly electricity usage increased an average of 20% over that time, but our natural gas usage decreased by 31% -- almost a third!

Those numbers are encouraging, however, it is difficult to put actual dollar amounts on them, and determine the cost savings overall. Since utility rates fluctuate in general, and have changed dramatically in the last two years in particular, it is hard to say whether a change in our monthly bill (either up or down) is a result of the system's performance, or just arbitrary rate changes. The calculations are further complicated by the fact that we've chosen to lower our thermostat slightly from last summer so our air conditioner has been running more this year than last. So the "green vs green" challenge remains unsettled, but I will continue to monitor it and report whatever I find.

He we are at the end of another 30 days. I won't talk about how difficult it was -- I think I covered that last year. And I won't make any vague promises about how I will try to increase the frequency of my posting, because I did that last year too, and we all know how that turned out.

However, this year was not as hard as last year because I had started jotting down ideas to write about weeks beforehand, and I ended up with more than thirty, so you can look forward to seeing these surplus topics in the coming weeks.

Thanks to all my regular readers and commenters, and if you were a new visitor to my blog this month, I hope you found something interesting. See you next June! We now return you to your regular blog update schedule.

It's been a month of fits and starts, but our new patio is finally coming together, and yesterday offered a break in the ridiculous St. Louis heat, so we were able to enjoy it a bit.

We bought the furniture set at Sam's, but we almost didn't get it. We saw it there on a Friday evening, and we liked it, but we weren't quite ready to commit to buying it, so we asked how many they had in stock. Five was the answer. By the following evening, we were sure, so Dixie headed back to buy it and they were all gone! I never would have believed that they would have sold five of these sets in a 24-hour period. So we ended up with the floor model, which was even cheaper due to a few irregularities with the set.

Now we're just waiting for cooler temperatures. Hurry up Fall!

Last year at this time, almost to the day, I was remembering George Carlin after his passing. Yesterday, the universe reminded me once again that I'm old with the passing of two icons from my youth.

Although I did watch Charlie's Angels, like all other pre-pubescent males did back then, I never had Farrah's iconic poster on my wall (I had Lisa Hartman's instead), and I wouldn't say I was ever a huge fan of hers. Michael Jackson was another story.

I, like millions of others, watched his supernatural dancing skills. I watched the world premiere of John Landis's Thriller video on MTV. Even back then when MTV still played videos, that was an event. I was crushed when his St. Louis concert date was cancelled during the Bad tour of 1988.

So yesterday, we were at the pool when the news broke on the radio. At first it was a shock, but I don't think it effected me like it has some people. One girl at the pool, who looked to be about 14 years old, said, "why isn't anyone upset that Michael Jackson JUST DIED?" Well, if this were 1989, I would have shared her grief. But for me, and the millions who grew up with him, who watched him on the Motown 25 special, where he defied the laws of physics and walked on the moon, that Michael died a long time ago. So this news just brings to an end a period of mourning that had, frankly, gone on far too long.

I usually save links to post to my other site, but these don't really fit that well, so I thought I'd share them here.

One is called Fantastic Contraption, and it is completely addictive once you figure out how it works. This will definitely appeal to any engineering types out there, and probably to a lot of others as well. In each level of the game, you have to use the tools you have and a rudimentary appreciation for physics, to build a machine that will accomplish a given goal. Check it out.

The other is a complete waste of time and Internet bandwidth called Upside Down Dogs. The site is completely pointless as near as I can tell, but if you're a dog lover, some of the pictures just have to be seen. Enjoy.

Last year we bought a Wii. Shortly after we downloaded the Internet Channel for it, one of its biggest limitations became apparent. The Wii ships with an ancient version (well, ancient by computer standards) of Adobe's Flash player. This version works with some web sites, but most, like Hulu, require a more recent version. So it's impossible to watch flash videos from these sites. This is supremely inconvenient, and largely negates the value of having Internet access on your TV in the first place.

I am not alone in this sentiment. I really didn't realize how widespread this problem was until I did a Google search for "Hulu Wii" and saw how many sites are devoted to talking about ths conundrum. Forum posts, rants, online petitions. A huge number of people are interested in this topic. But the point was really driven home when I went to one site that promised a step-by-step tutorial and got rickrolled. You know an internet topic has a following when it becomes a target for Mr. Astley.

Sadly, Nintendo seems to be ignoring this tsunami of discontent among its users, and has not responded to two years of requests for an Adobe upgrade. At this point, it appears likely they will release a new platform before they make this seemingly small improvement to the existing Wii.

I told a few people last week that I was planning a reunion for members of my 8th grade class, and their reaction was something like, "8th Grade?!?" Is it that unusual? I don't know. Maybe it is. Is it unusual because people don't generally have reunions for that? Or is it unusual because it's the Class of '82 and we're all old?

One thing that I will recognize as unusual is that our school was K-8, so I spent 9 years of my life growing up with some of these folks, and a few of them I even went on to the same high school with, so they've been a part of my life for a significant number of years. Although it is sad that we lose touch with people over the years, life gets in the way, I suppose. And that's what makes reunions so fun, right?

Everyone brought their kids, and we had a great time reminiscing, looking at old photo albums, and telling stories. It's so interesting to catch up with people you haven't seen in such a long time, and see the different paths that people take in life. I am thankful to everyone who was able to come and make the day so enjoyable. I hope we can do it again sometime.

Last week I wrote about our new trees. We bought them from Schmittel's Nursery in Maryland Heights, and paid them to install the trees. The installation was complicated by the fact that two of the trees were 5-inch maples that are very large and very heavy. They could not use the normal wheelbarrow or hand truck to move these trees -- they required heavy machinery, like a Bobcat, to get them into place -- which meant that I had to take down a section of our fence to get the machine into our yard.

After one false start, when they postponed the install due to weather, they came out a week later to walk our yard and see if it was still too wet. At the time, I was impressed with their concern for our yard. The gentleman who came out said several times that they didn't want to tear up our grass. He also said that they would use a piece of equipment that had tracks instead of wheels because it wouldn't leave ruts in the yard. He decided to delay the install two more days just to be sure the ground was dry enough.

Well, that was a Monday, and I was at work when they showed up. As it turns out, they did not use the tracked vehicle. They used a plain old Bobcat instead, and it did, in fact, leave ruts. Everywhere. There were a number of places where the grass was completely torn up. They acknowledged the damage, and offered to make a followup visit to fill the holes with topsoil and grass seed, which they did. Prior to this, I called to tell them that the two big trees were starting to lean, so they staked them and put ropes on them to keep them from settling crooked while they were there.

The worst part of the install, however, was that they dumped a couple of yards of soil from the holes they dug over our fence onto the creek bank. This is not an unreasonable thing to do, however, out of the hundred or so feet of fence along the back of our yard, they chose the one and only gate as the place to dump the dirt. Yeah, the gate. You know, the one place where someone is likely to walk? What kind of moron does something like that? And it just so happens that I have constructed steps into the creek bank below that gate so it is easier to get up and down. So when I called, I complained about that too, and I asked them to clean up their mess. Somebody showed up that day and scraped a bit of the dirt around with a shovel, but most of it is still there, and my steps are completely buried.

Now the people at Schmittel's that I talked to, either on the phone, or in person, were very nice, and seemed committed to customer satisfaction. The people who actually showed up to do the install, well, that's another story. It is very disappointing, and for this reason I would not recommend Schmittel's to anyone.

In addition to the updated spice rack, we also recently remodeled the basement door. Dixie has had the idea of turning it into a chalkboard ever since we moved in, and it's finally a reality. She sanded and primed the door and then painted it with chalkboard paint (that you can get at most home centers). Then I cut trim for the border and put a new doorknob on it. It looks pretty cool and the kids love it!

I've written about electric cars before, but for a while now I've been following what I consider to be the most promising entry into this market. The current offering from Zenn Motors is little more than a glorified golf cart. Classified as a Neighborhood Electric Vehicle (NEV), with limited range, and a top speed of 30mph, it is intended to fill a fairly small niche market.

However, their new car, dubbed the City, has the potential to be a game changer. The reasons, as I see it, are the price point (in the mid 20Ks) and the powertrain, which relies on some groundbreaking technology from a company called EEStor. The company's name rarely appears without the obligatory adjective 'secretive' and they don't even appear to have a web site. But I guess when you claim to be developing a new ultracapacitor that will revolutionize energy storage on the planet, rendering batteries virtually obsolete, there is some incentive to play your cards close to your vest. Either because you have trade secrets you want to protect, or because it's an elaborate hoax.

I don't want to believe it's a hoax, and neither do Zenn Motors, since they have purchased a significant stake in the company and the future of their own company is riding on this. I want to believe they can do everything they say they are going to do. And I, for one, will be among the first in line to buy one of these new cars, if they ever come to market. How can you resist a car with a top speed of 80mph and a 250 mile range that recharges in under 10 minutes, and never needs gas? All for about the same price as a conventional gas-guzzler? I want one. Will it ever be a reality? Only time will tell...

A couple of months ago, I posted this photo of Noah. We took an old laptop (and I mean *old* -- the screen is hanging on by one hinge, and it won't close anymore) and installed the latest edubuntu load on it. For those not familiar with it, edubuntu is an educational version of the ubuntu Linux operating system. It comes with a variety of educational games and puzzles for kids, and that, combined with PBSkids.org, is about all you need to keep a three-year-old happy for an hour or so each day.

Noah has already gotten remarkably proficient at using a mouse, and knows how to type his own name to login. So beyond the computer skills he is learning, I spent some time reflecting on what it means for my child to be on the Internet now. He will grow up never knowing a world without the Internet. That is not terribly unique, of course, there are a lot of teenagers running around now that fit that description. But the internet he grows up with will be vastly bigger, more advanced, and presumably more sophisticated.

I can't even imagine what the technology will look like when he is my age. But my kids, and the kids of their generation, are the ones that will build that technology. They will stand on the shoulders of the giants that preceded them and change the world. Not all of that change will be good, but I look forward to seeing what my little ones will contribute.

Between increasing state tourism and boosting consumer confidence, we were already doing our part to stimulate the economy, but now we are funding infrastructure projects too! Eat your heart out, Obama!

We have talked about it ever since we moved in, and now we finally have our patio. It still needs some steps and and some furniture, but we are waiting for our federal bailout to be approved before we do any more.

I just want the record to reflect that I coined the term "Facebook guilt." A couple of months ago when the term first occurred to me, I Googled it and got nothing. Nada. Zip. Today, in preparation for this post, I Googled it again, and there's a whole slew of blog postings that now include it. Doesn't matter. It's mine, interwebs. Back off.

Like everything in life, there are aspects of Facebook that I like, and aspects that I don't like. But I will say that the things I anticipated not liking about it have not really presented themselves, while the things I don't like were completely unexpected. For instance, it's been nice reconnecting with people from my past with whom I've lost contact. But the flip side of that coin is that there are people from my past with whom I am perfectly happy to have lost contact, but there they are, nevertheless, staring me down on my request page. There are also people I barely know who want to be my friend. I'm not sure this represents an actual breach of etiquette, or just my personal policy, but I don't add anyone that I don't actually know. If I've never met you face-to-face, or if I couldn't pick you out of a police line-up, I'm not likely to add you as a friend. Sorry.

The guilt comes in with the seemingly endless parade of games, quizzes, gifts, doo-dads and widgets that I find myself assaulted with. If it were Facebook sending me these things, I would have no problem deleting them (indeed, I would have closed my account by now). But it's my friends who send me these things and I can't tell if they are being sent directly to me, as you would a thoughtful gift, or blasted to their entire entourage, like a form letter. Either way, I don't like to say no to my friends. But it's time for some tough love. No, I don't want to join your gang and help fight your Mafia war. There, I said it.

The last bit of guilt comes from simply not checking in often enough. Sometimes I go a whole day without logging in, and I feel like I'm letting my friends down by not observing their online antics. Sorry everyone, I'll try to do better. It's not you, it's me.

An internet meme is like the ultimate inside joke. There is usually some prerequisite knowledge you must have before the joke is funny. I like the knowyourmeme.com site, because if you haven't been following a particular meme (or don't know what a meme is), they do a good job of explaining it all.

One meme that I find particularly funny is the Xzibit Yo Dawg meme. You'd have to watch the video to understand it. I can't explain why it's funny to me, other than the sheer absurdity. But just looking at the photos submitted by users usually has me in tears laughing. So I had to submit my own.

I don't usually post teh funny here (I have a whole other blog for that), but I just had to mention the recent craze in literal videos, and one in particular that had me rolling. I added it to my favorites on YouTube, so you can check it out there.

It's been a year since I last wrote about the torturous sewer project that transpired in our back yard. There is one final chapter in this saga, however, that I wanted to document here for the benefit of anyone else who might have to deal with MSD.

A few weeks ago we replaced the trees that MSD took from us, and foolishly hoped that they would honor their verbal agreement late last summer to pay for one of them that was not in our original contract. When my wife contacted Steve Welnick on April 27, he had nothing but spiteful comments for her about how difficult we had been to work with during the entire episode. I responded to this inappropriate behavior with this letter to his supervisor, Allen Muehlher.

I don't know why I expected anything different from a bunch of government bureaucrats. If you are unfortunate enough to have MSD schedule a project on your property, I hope your experience is better than my own. (But I wouldn't hold my breath.)

I'm probably going to regret this, but I signed up for another 30 days of punishment. Last year was a lot more difficult than I anticipated, but this year, I have taken the precaution of jotting down ideas in the weeks leading up to today, so I am hopeful that I won't be struggling for topics towards the end of the month.

I would love to have the time to pontificate here every day, but it's not in the cards. I really admire the folks who make a living at blogging -- I know there are a few out there. Once you have established an audience, and are actually generating revenue from your writing, it's not that bad. But you have to spend a long time writing every day for free, before any of that happens. I can't afford to commit that much time to it. But one month out of the year, I can live the dream, and pretend that I have millions of readers out there. So if you're with me, leave me a comment, and I promise you will enjoy the next 30 days.

Of course Google is ubiquitous, almost synonymous with the internet itself. So much so that Google has become a verb. Well, if you haven't heard, a new semantic search engine is now available on the web. It's called WolframAlpha. At first glance it seems very different from Google. I recommend the overview video -- it's pretty interesting, if you have ten minutes to kill. If not, just type in your first name for a quick example of the kinds of data that are available.

If it were up to me, I would have come up with a better name for it. Saying you "WolframAlpha-ed" somebody just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Josie celebrated her first birthday today with a fabulous cake that Dixie made. Photos are available in my album.

As we did with Noah, we took pictures of Josie every week over the past year, and here they are.

Last summer when I wrote about our solar water heater installation, I was anxious to see how it would function during the winter. As an example, right now it is 10am, and 29 degrees outside, and the temperature sensor on the panels currently says 111 degrees. Overall, I have been surprised at the number of days that the system has come on, and it consistently pumps out water in excess of 100 degrees when it does run.

I just created a Facebook account. I'm not proud of it, but it's out there. I've been resisting the siren's call for years now, because I just didn't see the point. I figured it was just a fad (you know, like grocery shopping online?), and I'm still not convinced it isn't -- they said AOL would last forever. But it has stuck around long enough that just about everyone I know has an account now. I was in line at the post office the other day and overheard two gentlemen in front of me (who had to be about 10 years older than me!) discussing how they had used it to reconnect with some old high school buddies.

Okay fine, Facebook, you've shamed me into joining, but I still don't see the point. I don't need you to host my web site (obviously), or to store my photos, or my videos, or any of that other stuff. I realize some people do, but I don't. Now I have yet another account and password that I have to keep track of and I'm going to feel obligated to login every so often.

I thought at least I could connect with a couple of people with whom I've lost touch over the years. They show up in Google searches, but without an account, I've never been able to view their profile. Well, guess what? I just went searching for one of those people, and their profile still doesn't show up!

So you had better be on your best behavior, Facebook. I will have no qualms about deactivating my account! Everybody knows that Facebook is for old fogies, anyway, and I'm not sure I want to be lumped in with that crowd just yet.

This was the year I finally did it. I built the haunted house in my garage. Many thanks to my patient wife Dixie who put up with several weekends of my Halloween-induced insanity. It took a lot of work, but it was so fun watching the reactions of the kids going through it. In the end, I think it was worth it. Here's a short video showing some of the construction and then the final product. I hope you enjoy it.

I can't believe it's been over a month since I wrote anything. All I can say is things have been a little hectic. The month of September was a complete blur. I decided this was the year that I was going to go ahead with my Halloween plans for the garage, and so most of my free time last month was devoted to that project. Between that, some last minute travel for work, and some personal things going on that I won't get into right now, I woke up one morning and it was October. I barely posted any pictures last month!

Well, things haven't slowed down much, but I refuse to let another month go by without posting something, so here we are. The garage project is coming along nicely, and the kids continue to ignore our demands that they stay little. I'm sure that's only going to get worse, so I promise stop and take a breath every so often, or else I'm going to wake up one morning and they will have left for college.

I must offer many thanks to all of my family and friends who threw me a surprise party over the weekend for my 40th birthday. I had no clue that the party was for me until I walked in and the crowd yelled "SURPRISE!" Special thanks to my wonderful wife Dixie for organizing the event. I was truly touched to have so many people that mean so much to me help me celebrate. Thanks to all of you!

Well, here we are at the end of 30 Days of Blog. It was fun, but I must admit that this turned out to be more difficult than I initially thought. Just finding the time to write was enough of a challenge, but finding interesting topics to write about was also difficult at times. I was trying not to sacrifice quality for quantity, but I'm not sure I was entirely successful over the course of the entire month. I'll leave that for the reader to decide. I will no longer be posting everyday, but going forward, I would like to continue posting once or twice a week. I hope you have enjoyed, and continue to enjoy, reading.

When Josie was only a week or so old, I never would have guessed that we would have gotten a picture like this. Noah just wasn't into the whole big brother role, and his actions toward her were what you could only call agressive. But he has mellowed quite a bit, and now he even seems to like her, and her face lights up whenever she sees him. I know it won't last forever, but it sure is sweet while it does.

Fridays are the hardest. Whew. When I accepted this challenge, I wouldn't have guessed that one day would be harder than the rest, but Fridays have turned out to be more difficult to find something to write about than the remaining days of the week. So yeah, I'm cheating. It's actually Saturday and I'm pre-dating this entry. And it's not really about anything except the difficulty of finding something interesting to write about every day. My hat's off to the talented bloggers out there who manage to crank out a quality product day after day. Yeah, I'm cheating. So sue me.

If you came of age during the 70s and 80s, and had cable TV, you undoubtedly watched Carlin at Carnegie. Probably many times. I know I did. I think I had the entire thing memorized at one time in my life. Everyone has certain pop culture icons that influence their childhood, and for me one of the biggest was George Carlin. I can't explain it, but I always felt a special connection to him. Needless to say, the news of his passing this week saddened me -- moreso than I would have expected. We will miss you, George.

We hosted a little shindig today for the whole family so everyone could meet the newborn babies -- our daughter Josie and my cousin Laura's daughter Becca. We had a sprinkler set up, Stomp Rockets, and of course Noah's Hummer is always a hit. I think everyone had a good time. A few pictures from the festivities are in my album.

Looks like I might have spoken a bit prematurely last month when I said that the end was in sight. Since the contractor has been negligent in watering the new sod that they laid down in our backyard, most of it has turned brown, and I'm not sure it will come back from that. I called MSD about it on Monday when it first appeared, and they sent two rubes out to water the dead grass. They then proceeded to leave our gate open when they left. So MSD got another call about that. I really don't see why treating your customer with respect is so difficult.

There was a brief period of Internet history after bandwidth was sufficiently plentiful, but before YouTube came along, when email servers everywhere were bludgeoned by the weight of funny video traffic. You remember these, right? Enormous attachments that clogged your inbox, most of which you didn't have the proper codecs to even watch, and of the ones you did, most were not funny? Yeah, those.

But among the chaff, there were a few classics. One of which I just referenced in my entry about Linux. But hunting that one down (on YouTube, of course) made me remember another one that used to make me laugh. Who remembers Intellitoast!?! It's STREAMING!! Classic.

I spent today catching up. Catching up on work around the house. Catching up on writing. But most importantly, catching up on some serious play time with my little man. He is a bundle of energy, and always ready to play catch or play cars, but today it was Stomp Rockets. Simply put, it was a good day.

We took Noah and Josie to the circus today. Noah got the biggest kick out of it, he was so charged up during the show. He kept clapping and bouncing up and down in his seat. Josie, of course, slept through it.

The circus has really gone high-tech. The lighting and sound was really excellent, and the special effects (pyrotechnics and big screen TVs) were more than I expected. It is definitely more than just elephants walking around in a circle these days. But the animals are still a central part of the show, as are the acrobats and daredevils. It really is an impressive show. I'd recommend it, and you'll especially enjoy it through your kids' eyes.

As I mentioned previously, I was considering installing a photovoltaic system this year to offset some of our home energy costs. But the PV systems are still quite expensive. Even with net metering, it could take decades for a system to pay for itself, and as the fine folks at Missouri Solar Living pointed out to me, something close to 15% of your home energy costs is your water heater. So a much more economical way to save money is to replace your gas or electric water heater with a solar powered one. So that's what we're going to do. I will continue to post updates on this project, so stay tuned.

A month or so ago, there would have been no way that our daughter Josie would have passed out asleep on the floor this way. She was pretty fussy. No, strike that, she was uber fussy. Actually the word fussy is insufficient to the task of describing her. But we figured that was just how she was, and that we would have to learn to deal with it.

Then one day in May, she stopped eating. She was inconsolable. We tried everything. Finally our pediatrician directed us to take her to the emergency room. After a series of tests, looking for everything from a hair tourniquet to a lacerated cornea, her urine test came back with a bladder infection. We were staying the night at the emergency room.

They started her on broad-spectrum antibiotics. It took a couple of days to grow the culture and positively identify the bacteria. We were expecting it to be one of the usual suspects of internal infections, like E. Coli. But on the day we were anticipating bringing her home, the doctor dropped a bombshell on us. It was a nasty little bacteria called Enterobacter and it was going to require seven days of intravenous antibiotics to be sure we killed it all.

So, we did what any family of four does when they find out such news, we bought a Wii and hunkered down in our hospital room for another week. To make a long story short, our baby's fussiness was a result of the pain from her bladder infection. Now she is home and pain-free, and she is a completely different baby. We are very thankful to be getting to know our new daughter.

If you've ever been to AmIRight.com, you may have seen one of my favorite misheard song lyrics -- Creedence's "bad moon on the rise" in some people's ears turns into a "bathroom on the right."

Speaking of bathrooms, it's only taken six months, but our bathroom remodel is finally coming to an end. I got the room painted. Gray. Well, actually, no. It's not gray. They don't sell gray paint anymore. They sell "Pewter Mug" or "Porpoise." I blame the J.Crew catalog. At some point in the mid-90s, they stopped selling purple sweaters and started selling only "Eggplant" sweaters. It's been all downhill from there.

When I graduated college and started working full time, it was a bit of a shock initially. You never realize how much free time you have until it is gone. I thought I was busy in college. I was double-majoring, carrying a full load of classes, running a radio station, and I was a Resident Assistant in the dorm where I lived. It seemed like my days were pretty full. It wasn't until I started working 40 hour weeks that I realized how much time I had in college to simply goof off and do whatever I wanted.

When I made the commitment to having a wife and family, I knew that I would have even less free time. Finding a few minutes just to do something like writing this blog is a challenge. But the sacrifice of free time isn't as much of a shock because it happens so gradually, and as I look into my daughter's eyes as I write this, and she smiles up at me, I know it is all worth it.

One of my friends from college (who blogs at the curiously named site Numb Trolley Bus) has issued a challenge to his readers. Sure I'll give it a shot. I'll put my new toy to the test, and let's see if I can manage to blog every day in June, shall we?

I actually have a couple of topics that have been stacking up in the queue, so this will give me an oppportunity to clean house a little. See ya on the other side...

It has only taken seven months, but end of the sewer project in our backyard is in sight. We finally had three or four days in a row without rain so they could come out and lay our new sod. Our backyard is almost back to normal now. We are still waiting for them to come and replace our fence (which they damaged during the project), and then we will see if Steve Welnick (at MSD) is a man of his word or not. He promised, although only verbally, to replace one of the trees on our property that the subcontractor destroyed. I'm not holding my breath.

Josephine Mae was born tonight weighing 7lb, 14oz, 20 inches long, with a full head of hair. I'm glad Dixie didn't have to endure 17 hours of labor again, like she did for Noah. There are pictures of Josie now available in my album.

I migrated my site this week from one hosting company to another. The time had come to leave ReadyHosting.com and I can't say that I will miss them at all. In fact, they just plain suck. I should have left years ago, but the hassle of switching hosts and domain registrars is enough incentive to stay, even when the service you are receiving has long since become intolerable. The final straw came a couple of weeks ago, while I was attempting to get their tech support to help me with an upgrade to Movable Type 4.0. MT has never worked quite right on their servers -- it can't send email -- and so I thought if I upgraded to the latest version the problems I have seen would go away. It became obvious very quickly that the problem wasn't with MT, it was ReadyHosting's servers. And their totally incompetent tech support staff, who refused to do anything to help, and furthermore closed out all of my support tickets without consulting me first.

Their tech support was never great, but a couple of years ago they started outsourcing it to India (or some other country where English is clearly not a first language). I never dealt with them via phone, which is probably good -- their grammar was atrocious enough without having to deal with their lack of pronunciation skills. And they had the nerve to sign their emails with very caucasian sounding names, like Anthony Jones, or Ashley Smith. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against a company outsourcing their work force -- our government frequently makes these kinds of business decisions unavoidable -- I just wish they would treat their customers with a little respect and not try to BS us into believing that we're getting something we're not.

So I have moved on to a company that had pretty good online reviews called AN Hosting. So far, they have been adequate. Their sales staff worked quickly to set up my account, the transfer of my domain took longer than it should have (just over a week), and migrating from a Windows platform to Linux carries with it a whole set of issues, but it has been going fairly smoothly so far, and I haven't had to call on them for help yet. I hope this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship. If not, you can be certain that you will hear about it here.

I sent an email to AmerenUE asking for more information about net metering, because I couldn't find anything on their web site. I also asked about the procedure for installing a residential alternative energy source. I was pleased to receive a prompt response from a Lisa Cosgrove who said:

I think 2008 is finally the year to pull the trigger on a grid-tied photovoltaic system. Since Missouri's net metering law went into effect January 1, and the IRS's tax credit for solar energy systems expires December 31. Stay tuned for updates...

For the first time in my almost twelve years at Boeing, we were given the day off due to the snowstorm that pummeled St. Louis yesterday evening. By comparison to the snowfall I remember as a kid, this storm wasn't that bad. But it's the most snow I've seen at one time in recent memory. Noah helped me shovel a path on the driveway. I think he's still trying to understand what snow is exactly, but he appears to like playing in it.

They are a subcontractor to XL Contracting who is the prime contractor to the Metropolitan Sewer District (MSD) in the ongoing sewer project in my back yard. So their level of accountability is what you would expect from a sub to a sub, which is to say, none at all.

The digging began on Halloween, and within a few days, J & J had arrived with their equipment to begin boring a 488 foot tunnel underneath highway 270 which is adjacent to my property. Our representative at MSD went out of his way to let us know they were doing everything they could to save the tree in the southeast corner of our yard. Despite protests from J & J that it would make their job too difficult, they were ordered to work around the tree.

As you can see in the surveillance video (yes, that's right MSD, the whole project is being videotaped!), the crane is having to swing out across my fenceline (away from the camera) in order to move the dirt out of, and sections of pipe into, the pit. This was apparently being complicated by a different tree (on my property), and so the fine workmen of J & J fired up their chainsaw and removed it. Well, they cut it down anyway. They didn't remove it, it's still there leaning against the tree next to it. I guess they were determined to tear down a tree. Whether it was the one next to pit or not didn't matter, but some tree had to go.

I placed a call to Steve Welnick, who is the Division Inspector at MSD, to voice my displeasure with this act. Steve seems like a nice enough guy, but I have the same amount of respect for him that I have for any bureaucrat at any government agency, which is to say, none at all. So we will see if he lives up to the agreement he sent me in writing that says MSD will notify me from now on before any trees are removed from my property.

Dixie and I had our 20-week ultrasound today and we are thrilled to announce that it's a girl! We have a lot of work to do on the nursery now, and other preparations to make, but we can't wait to meet you Josie!

The sewer project continues with a grotesque scar of a road cut through the woods adjacent to our gate. In a matter of weeks, the fence will be disassembled, and our yard will cease to be recognizable.

Denis St. John, Vice President of XL Contracting, stopped by the other day and left his business card so we could contact him if we had any questions. That would have been a welcome gesture, if he actually had his phone number on the card, or returned any of the messages I left for him at his office. Strike one against XL.

With a single stake in the ground, the massive sewer project that I wrote about last year begins. Our local sewer district has hired XL Contracting to perform the work outlined in this ordinance.

The trenching and tree-cutting has already begun in our subdivision, but they haven't made it to our yard yet. A four-foot tunnel is being dug underneath highway 270 and the entrance is going to be under our backyard, which is going to require a 20x40-foot hole 15 feet deep to drop the boring machine into. Not to mention the trench for the 18" line they are replacing. Our first impressions of XL have been good, but we'll see how things go. We are told this will be a four month project, so stay tuned for updates.

Before shot:

For my birthday this year, Dixie bought me an introductory glassblowing class at Third Degree Glass Factory. It was beastly hot, but it was a lot of fun and I learned a lot. Our instructors, Mike Hayes and Ben Klein are very talented and were willing to help all of us newbies learn the basics and create a souvenir. You can see the slightly wobbly shot glass I made. If you live in the St. Louis area and are looking for a unique experience, I highly recommend the six hour intensive class. But you might consider signing up for it in the winter instead of August!

[I submitted this article to Damn Interesting in hopes of becoming a periodic writer for them.]

Three hundred and fifty million years ago, the vast area between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians was covered by what we now call the Colorado Sea. The sea is thought to have extended from Mexico all the way up into the Arctic during the Cretaceous Period. Over millions of years, the accumulation of calcium, magnesium, and other minerals on the ocean floor formed deposits of limestone, shale, and chalk so enormous that today, in some cases, they are the size of entire states. In fact, limestone is mined in 92 of Missouri's 114 counties, and Kansas is home to one of the world's largest chalk mines.

Limestone is used in everything from pharmaceuticals (antacids, like Tums, are almost 100% powdered limestone) to the building of roads. Farmers use limestone to neutralize the acidity of their soil, and limestone has extensive use today as a raw material in Portland Cement. Limestone is everywhere and it is used in everything. And we have the ancient Colorado Sea and millions of years of compression to thank for its plentifulness. In Missouri alone, 75 million tons of limestone products are produced each year -- that's about 10 tons for every resident!

In the late 1800s, mining of limestone began in the Kansas City, Missouri area. At that time it was primarily quarried, however, by the 1950s, leaving usable subterranean space started to become an aim of miners. They used something known as the "room and pillar" method of hard rock mining which left a grid of twenty-five foot square limestone columns to support the weight of the "roof." In between these pillars are tunnels, some of which are sixteen feet high and forty feet wide.

One particular mine called Bethany Falls was purchased by the late owner of the Kansas City Chiefs football team, Lamar Hunt. His development company, Hunt Midwest Real Estate, has turned this mine into the World's Largest Underground Business Complex™. Called SubTropolis, this massive complex is 160 feet beneath the surface, contains roughly seven miles of illuminated and paved roads (along with miles of railroad tracks), and currently has five million square feet of occupied office and warehouse space, with millions more still being developed.

One of the largest tenants is the US Postal Service which uses the large and climate controlled space for the storage of stamps for collectors. The space also houses thousands of Hollywood's classic movie reels, including the original "Gone With the Wind." Many other spaces are filled with libraries, computer labs, and other commercial office space, and it is even home to the nation's only sanctioned underground 5K and 10K races, the KC Groundhog Run. Everyday more than 1500 employees report for work at the bottom of the Colorado Sea for over fifty different businesses located in the SubTropolis complex, where the weather is always 70 degrees and overcast.

After searching for the phone number that appeared on the postcard I received (1-800-376-7044), I discovered this site and this site. This scam has apparently been going on for a while. A company that sells auto warranties sends these postcards that are made to look official (despite the atrocious grammar) to mislead people into calling the phone number and "renewing" their expired factory warranty. Mine didn't even have a return address! Nice try.

As an aside, I can't tell you how happy I am to see that my Department of Motor Vehicles has sold or given away their database of personally identifiable information for presumably every driver in the state of Missouri. Thank goodness they don't have my real address either.

[Update July 25, 2007] I just got another one of these scam letters in the mail. This one was on letterhead that said "Dealer Services" and was signed by a "Russell Garland, Senior V.P." Same deal, different phone number -- this one was 1-800-607-8786. The fine print on the back did have a couple real addresses though. I guess it's possible this one's legit, but unfortunately for them, there are too many scammers in their line of work.

[Update Nov 1, 2007] It appears the fine folks at Dealer Services in Wentzville, MO are a busy lot. If these comments are to be believed, they are also behind a huge phone scam centered around another phone number (1-609-948-0971) which has called my cell phone twice in the last two days.

I took today off work and took Noah to the St. Louis Zoo for the first time. A good time was had by all. I think the giraffes were his favorite, but he liked the elephants too. He didn't really know what to think about the peacock we saw. We rode the train and had some Dippin' Dots ice cream and he fell asleep in the car on the way home. Pics are up in my album.

Welcome to my version of the milk carton photo. These are people with whom I have lost touch over the years, and despite my occasional attempts to locate them, they have remained wrapped in cyber-obscurity. So I figured I would conduct a little experiment and let Google do some of the work for me. If I mention these people, and their names get indexed, then maybe someone who knows them might run across my site and tell them that I'm looking for them. Who knows? It's worth a shot.

First up is my roommate from college, James Crawford. He was a journalism major and I heard at one point that he had moved to Chicago and was working for a newspaper up there. But it's just as likely that he's in a methadone clinic somewhere. Good luck to ya Jim, wherever you are!

Next are two crazy wankers who were both RAs with me in Wolpers Hall. Steve Elliott is in front and Steve Waller is in the background. I keep expecting to see Steve Elliott show up on American Idol because he was quite a good amateur singer, but then I remember that he's as old as dirt (just like me) and they wouldn't take him. Steve Waller graduated from medical school, so I guess he's a doctor now. God help us all.

Lastly is the entire Resident Assistant staff from Wolpers Hall. I've kept in touch with a couple of these guys, but if not, you know who you are. Pictured are Brian Huck, Jay Hall, Albin Quiko, Brian Duperrett, Justin Spellerberg, Joe Ruzicka, myself, and Kelson Monks. If you know any of these losers, tell'em to contact me.

Everyone's favorite Hallmark Holiday is just around the corner, so I felt it was time drag this old page out of mothballs. To help you celebrate this year, here's a little top 10 list for ya:

Top 10 Things A Guy Would Like To See Printed On Candy Hearts:

Do you have your own domain? If you're like me, you like getting feedback from visitors to your site, but you hate getting spammed. Also, if you have a crappy hosting company like mine, they've probably disabled sendmail on your server, so you can't even write your own Perl scripts to send feedback. Until now.

A while ago I realized that my feedback form didn't need to actually send me email. Since my browser has a built-in feed reader, I could just create a special RSS feed on my site for visitor feedback. Thus was born FEEDback.

FEEDback is a Perl script that I wrote for this purpose that I figured others might benefit from, so now I'm making it available for download.

Instructions for customizing it are included in the file, and you can see an example of how it works on my contact page. If you have any questions, or suggestions for improvement, feel free to leave me a comment.

Where does the time go? It seems like he was just born a few months ago and now Noah's a year old! Photos from his birthday party are now available in my photo album.

Dixie made good on her promise to take a picture of him every Saturday since he was born. It was a great idea, and now we have a photo album by which to remember his first year of growth. Maybe I'll post them too, when I have a chance.

They say that the years come and go even faster as they get older. I sure hope not. This one was fast enough for me.

You never know how much crap you own until you have to pack it up and move it somewhere. The old homestead was starting to get a bit crowded and we needed some room to expand, so we started house-hunting back in July thinking we would just look casually for a while (maybe a year) before we got serious.

Wouldn't you know we found the perfect house in a matter of weeks. So we began the whirlwind process of obtaining financing, and negotiating contracts, and selling our old house. About thirty days later, we had a new house.

The night we closed on it, we started the demolition to remodel the kitchen. Six weeks later, the kitchen was functional again, if not completely done. But it was good enough to live in, so we moved in just in time to celebrate Noah's first birthday (pictures are coming soon, I promise!). And now the unpacking begins...

...that I stepped off of the bus in San Diego, California, at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, and stood on the yellow footprints. Minutes later my head was shaved, and I began what had to be at least 36 continuous hours of processing (paperwork, urine tests, etc.) before I was allowed to sleep.

I remember being teased by one of my drill instructors for my initial enlistment of six years. When he saw my military ID, with the discharge date of 14 July 92, he quipped that they wouldn't even have cars anymore when I got out, that I was a "Buck Rogers" Marine. Six years seemed like a long time then, but when I got out, it didn't seem that long.

Here we are twenty years later, and it still doesn't seem like that long ago really, until I stop to think that if I had stayed in, I would have retired yesterday. Retiring at age 38 is certainly appealing enough, but in retrospect I can't imagine my life without my wonderful wife Dixie and my little Noah-man. I definitely chose the right path.

Today marks the fifth anniversary (or birthday, if you will) of a little experiment I started called Dat Ain't Right, and to celebrate I've relaunched the site in blog format. This should make it a lot easier to update, which is something I've struggled with for a long time.

If you already know about DAR, but haven't been there in a while, I encourage you to visit and visit often. You could even make it your homepage! No, wait. You might regret that. But definitely bookmark it. And tell your friends about it!

It's hard to believe that our little man is going to be 5 months old this week -- the time just flies by. As a parent, you are torn. On the one hand, you can't wait to see them grow, learn, and experience new things, but on the other hand you hate to see the time come when you can no longer cradle them in your arms.

A wise man once told me that you cannot know the true meaning of love until you've had children of your own. I think I would have to agree.

This month marks 10 years that I have had a presence on the Internet, and I've chosen to celebrate this milestone by revamping my site once again. I hope these changes make the site easier to navigate (and easier for me to update so that I'll actually do it more often).

Despite having scheduled ourselves to have labor induced at noon that day, Dixie went into labor at about 2am Saturday morning. Seventeen hours later, at 6:45pm, our beloved son Noah Michael was born -- he is 9 lbs, 7 ozs, and 22 inches long! Mother and baby are doing absolutely great! Pictures are now available in my album.

Well, that was back in '02, and I put it up on my site and promptly forgot it was there. Until today. If you're a Cathedral veteran, you won't like it much because it doesn't quite follow the rules. But if you're jonesin' for a game, and don't mind the computer cheating, here you go. If you're a newbie to the game, you probably won't want to play this version due to the cumbersome user interface on this Java applet. In which case, you should go buy the game, and then harass your friends and family into playing with you, like I did.

We've reached the half-way point. At twenty weeks our baby is starting to look less like a blob and more like a baby. There's a lot of work left to be done on the nursery, but we still have time to get it all done. Hang in there, baby! Mommy and daddy can't wait to meet you.

Dixie and I are both thrilled to announce that we are expecting in October. We started telling friends and family this week. Dixie rented a fetal doppler from BabyBeat.com and so we've already recorded the little tyke's heartbeat. We have truly been blessed.

As you may have already noticed, I'm working on a complete redesign of the site. Please be patient while I work out all of the details.

A recent article on the Kansas City Star's web site brought the phenomenon of Toynbee Tiles to my attention. If you have not yet heard of this intriguing global mystery, take some time to explore it. This is a picture a friend and I took of one of the two such tiles in downtown St. Louis. The text in the red border at the bottom reads, "You must make + glue tiles. ¡¡You!! You must make + glue tiles!". Yeah, I know... I'm working on it.

Welcome to Home Improvement Hell. If you own your own home, you are already well acquainted with this place. The simple weekend project that metamorphoses into a full-scale renovation -- the scope of which would make Bob Vila get down on his knees and cry. These projects entice you with their simplicity, drawing you in like a siren on the seashore, only to dash your hopes of accomplishment on the jagged rocks below.

My problem is I spend too much time watching TLC. After spending a Saturday morning watching a marathon of Hometime or Trading Spaces, I convince myself that I can run to Home Depot and pick up everything I need to add a wing onto the house, and have it done before dinner.

The lesson to be learned here is that nothing is ever easy. Nothing. This page contains what will surely be a series of pictorial essays on how these simple ideas can snowball due to unforeseen circumstances.

The Plenum From Hell
Finishing the Basement
Backyard Improvements

Recently snewpy.com was honored by the St. Louis Web Developers Organization with an award for 3rd place in the Best Personal Web Site category. I am very grateful for the recognition.

On September 11, 1998 the car I was driving was involved in a serious accident with a bicyclist. Despite what the local paper reported, the cyclist broke both of his wrists and needed stitches in several places. For those of you who are into bike riding, please read this cautionary
tale. It could save your life.