wysereeser.com

Damn. I just went downstairs and looked to see what kind of electrical panels we have in the basement. This sucks. Did I mention we have two of them?

Federal Pacific Electric FPE Panel Breaker Hazard Summary

So I realize I havn’t bothered to post anything here lately. A friend and I both have online journals, and started out posting pseudo regularly, but interest has faded. Other things to do that take a higher priority. Oddly enough, I learned this past weekend that another individual from my church spends a little time on a regular basis making posts to his own online journal. I went back as far as May of 2003, he’s been pretty regular.

So that being said, I’m trying to get up the motivation to re-invent myself a little and get going again. Everyday there’s something interesting to stumble across my biggest paranoia is the degree to which personal information that’s posted online can get used ‘against’ me (or my family). Angie and I’ve been posting semi regularly to our log of Nathan and his adventures and accomplishments. At some point I’m thinking I should secure that area so that any online creeps can’t get to it.

But a little fear shouldn’t stop us from giving a few updates, on random things we’re interested in right? We’ll see how long the motivation lasts.

Bumbling around online, and came across this. My educational origins are not in the computer science realm, but I’m gradually trying to make a transition there. And too be honest, this stuff frightens me and makes me pause and wonder if I shouldn’t consider trying to focus energies in an alternate direction.

So its been soooo long since I’ve made a post, it actually seems embarrassing to try and do so. I could make up some sort of excuse like, “OH! I’ve just been SO insanely busy that I haven’t had the time.” or “We moved.” or “I was really really sick.”, but none of those things would be true. What’s more, what to talk about? I’ve realized more and more that there is so much information sometimes to try and disseminate that its hard to keep up.

One particularly interesting note, I learned that David Wiley has joined the google(Creative Commons) organization, and dropped development of his own google(Open Content) liscense. In doing so it prompted me to take a couple minutes and include the CC liscense in the lower right.

Changing topic, I’ve also looked long and hard on occasion for some sort of image/video/media gallery type plug-in for MovableType, but haven’t been able to find anything that would work well. I have a repository type PHP/MySQL application that’s fairly primitive, but might lend itself toward modification to accomplish this goal. There are better online photo albumns out there, but I’m interested in something that would allow for a multitude of media types and the posting of descriptions/comments relative to each. Who knows, maybe this will be the motivator to start rolling again.

So I’ve noticed that the time between my posts has become less . . . and less. . . Its becoming cause for concern.

I keep seeing these advertisements for *Shaft* on TV every now and then, I can’t help but think the following quote is great.

I may TAKE you down, . . . but I’ll never LET you down.

Every holiday season, I’m asked the question, “So…what do you want for Christmas?”. Do be honest, I think I have enough stuff (and I think other family members have enough too). A good quarter of the stuff I have I don’t use enough of in my mind. But the question still exists and if I say *nothing* or choose to get family members nothing those relationships will be hurt.

Either way, buynothingchristmas.org, is a cute site that tries to encourage the perspective of *not* buying anything this Christmas season or at the very least limiting the amount of spending on gifts.

They provide some interesting alternatives, most of which involve making the gift yourself. I doubt I’ll be able to completely resist the gift buying/receiving this season, but it gives me more to think about throughout the coming year.

Every now and then … my patience completely evaporates. Lately I’m convinced technology does nothing more than to raise our collective blood pressures. Why you ask? It all comes down to one basic fact in my mind. People promising something will *work*. A few examples:

1. A vendor product we purchased to check out (i.e. evaluate) for the purpose of helping rapidly convert existing PowerPoint materials into the dynamic web-multimedia born format many of us love, Flash. The means by which this feat was accomplished was through the vendor taking a variety of *freely* available code from various sources, and adding their own to bring it all together to accomplish this single goal. It works great, maybe once or twice. Then I have to close PowerPoint, or logoff and restart in some cases, to get it to do it again because the variety of errors appear “at random” and the vendor doesn’t really have a solution for it at this point, pushing the reponsibility off onto one of the components they are dependent upon.
2. In effort to help me move my experience in Java along, I’m taking an introductory class. We’re currently playing around with a Java application that will send mail. The instructor tells us to be sure to use the mail server specified when we’re at school because it won’t work otherwise (I’m paraphrasing). However, after repeated tries of trying to figure out what the syntax error might be in my code to get my simple text message sent I give up and come home. Only to try it out at home (using the mail server of my ISP) and have it work the first try. Needless to say before I left the light started to dawn on the instructor that perhaps the mail server administrators have done a better job preventing mail relaying. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the class. But the instructor decided that he should conduct some more testing to set the class straight.
3. With interest rates so FREAKING LOW, my wife and I are trying to do a little refinancing and rearranging of debt. I thought I would make a large payment online toward an existing educational loan. An easy thing many of us have done before (making online payments). However at the critical moment of hitting *Submit*, my browser is suddenly unable to make the connection with the site. So now I have NO idea whether or not the $1k I tried to submit made it or not. And I dare not try again for fear of possibly killing our bank account with another large payment. So now I have to spend extra time trying to figure out if the payment I sent actually made it or not.

I’m whining, I realize this. But am I wrong for expecting that something will *work* when someone tells me it will? I’m probably just as guilty through some of the efforts I’ve undertaken. But still…..

Ahh….I feel better.

I mentioned this before, but I work for a vague branch of the UW System. As such my work computer is part of the university network. Somewhere along the line that is the connection between my system and the *web* some serious caching is going on. When I view my own personal web page from work, the last entry I see is from 9/11/2002 (which is a little weird). This means that I have to take it for granted (until I check it from home) that my post here is working.

This is a normal annoyance I’ve pseudo learned to live with for the moment, however, it got me thinking that to what extent do many of us through our daily *surfings* are actually seeing what the intended site creator/maintainer wants us to see. When I scan the various learning online and technology postings and sites, how am I suppose to know whats current and what’s not (if that’s a concern). What if the information I’m reading is highly technical in nature and has the possibility to effect other people’s lives (say like an airline mechanic). He/she misses an update to a particular specification, and as a result makes an error based on incorrect information because of a justly designed network that was designed for efficiency (as it should have been).

This is pseudo old news, but Kia is offering a certificate for a free copy of Lord of the Rings DVD with a test drive. I don’t need the car, but the DVD however…..