Your Own Personal Google

Sweet! You can now create your own personalized Google homepage.

You can have it show your Gmail, news headlines, local weather, stocks, and a few more things. Now if they would only add display of customizable RSS feeds.... Then I'd actually change my startup page . Posted by Chris on 5/20/2005 01:26:00 PM :: Permalink   

Big Brother's Barcode

You know that big barcode on the back of your Driver's License? It's called a 2D barcode and can hold about 2000 bytes of data (much more than 1D barcodes like UPC codes and more than magnetic stripes used on credit cards). Ever wonder what data they've encoded in it? Well, now you can use
The SWIPE Toolkit and find out.

Unfortunately, NC encrypts their data, so I wasn't able to decode mine, but you can view their interactive map and mouse over different states to see what data is recorded on the driver's licenses. Posted by Chris on 5/18/2005 10:55:00 AM :: Permalink   

Operation Declutterize a Success

The yard sale is over, and it was a success. I really don't see how anyone found a park as most of the morning there were cars parked on both sides of the street for as far as I could see. We had lots of people buying stuff and then saying, "Now if I could just find my car..." I guess there's good and bad to big neighborhood yard sales.

We did better than last year and made about $412 and Delaney and Victoria made enough money selling drinks to buy the Robots they wanted, Fender and Rodney Copperbottom.

I had a life-sized cardboard standup of Michael Jordan for sale. It's one of those Gatorade promotional displays. Several people were interested in it, but it didn't sell. The funniest thing was to hear people refer to him as "Michael Jackson" and "Shaq". The woman who called him Shaq just kept saying it over and over and I couldn't bring myself to correct her.

Then, just minutes after we had boxed up the stuff that didn't sell, a dump truck arrived with twelve yards of mulch for us. The mulch mountain.

Labels: family

Posted by Chris on 5/15/2005 09:20:00 PM :: Permalink   

Gmail and Firefox Just Got Better: Greasemonkey!

<begin infomercial>

So you probably think Gmail is pretty slick and Firefox has changed your browsing experience. But you can make them better. In fact you can enhance and customize your browsing experience even more. You need Greasemonkey.

Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows your browser to run scripts to customize the web page you are viewing. This opens up all kinds of possibilities. You can write or customize your own script, but you can also browse the script repository and just load up what other people have done.

I heard about this a while back and saw some amazing things with Google Maps (like a sort of online virtual tour of a downtown area) but that was still quite complicated to implement. Today, I found the one killer script that makes Greasemonkey worthwhile to me, even if I only run this one customization. It's a Gmail Delete button!

I use Gmail a lot, but I don't save every email message as Google would like. This makes my search results more relevant. Gmail lets you delete mail but there's no keyboard shortcut for it and you have to use the drop-down menu... until now.

Get started with Greasemonkey. Make the web your own.

</end infomercial> Posted by Chris on 5/13/2005 01:50:00 PM :: Permalink   

Yard Sale

It's time for the annual neighborhood yard sale. We'll be selling off some more of the pile of stuff we've accumulated over the years at ridiculously low prices. Most things are $2 or less.

Stop on by. You might find some treasure in our trash. So to speak.

Labels: family

Posted by Chris on 5/13/2005 10:35:00 AM :: Permalink   

There's No Such Thing as a Free Frosty

This weekend you can get a free Jr. Frosty at Wendy's. No purchase necessary. Just ask for it and you get it. Sounds simple, right? Well, yesterday I figured out how they can afford to do this.

I went to the drive thru and placed an order that was clearly for two people. Or I suppose it could be for one person that just likes to order two of everything instead of just getting a bigger size. As Victoria and I pulled up to the window, I politely asked for "extra napkins". This is key because you can never have enough napkins on-hand when feeding a 2 year old in the car.

The man told me, "They're in the bag" as he handed me the bag of food and turned to get my drink. I looked in the bag and identified *ONE* napkin which I pulled out to use as a visual aid in explaining my situation.

"No, this is just _one_ napkin. I asked for EXTRA napkins," I retorted. Surely by now he has seen that there are two of us and one of us is harnessed to a car seat.

"Oh, here you go," as he handed me T-W-O napkins.

I drove off.

So there you have it, the mystery is solved. Wendy's plans to save tens of thousands of dollars by shortchanging you on paper products and continuing to charge for "extra" sauce packets. I hope you enjoy your Frosty this weekend, but you better be careful with it -- they're stingy with the napkins! Posted by Chris on 5/12/2005 09:58:00 PM :: Permalink   

How much could one tree possibly weigh?

I mean, come on, how much could a 10 foot crepe myrtle possibly weigh? It can't be that big right? Three or four guys and gravity should be able to get it off the truck, right? Enter Mr. Reality....

We've been planning some more landscaping and it just worked out to be a Mother's Day project. The logistics of coordinating the purchasing, pickup, delivery, tiller, and lots of manual labor proved to be a challenge. But all of that was simple compared to unloading this one tree. We ordered about 30 plants, including the crepe myrtle pictured here and a couple of cherry trees of comparable size and a red maple that was even larger. Thankfully, it was too late in the season to dig the cherry and maple trees, so the largest we actually received was this crepe myrtle. And it was a beast.

When we arrived at the nursery, the workers expertly packed the small pickup truck's bed with everything but the crepe myrtle, wrapped it in a huge sheet of burlap and pinned it together with a score of tire puncturing devices (nails). "What about the crepe myrtle?", we asked.

"Oh no. Big tree. Take whole truck. We load with machine" we were told.

"How big? It will fit in the truck, though, right? How much does it weigh?"

"Yes, it will fit. Maybe 600, 800." with a smile.

"Pounds?!?! How many guys will it take to unload it?" we ask.

"I dunno. We use machines."

Great. Thanks. So we deliver and unload the first truck load of plants the largest of which was a 20 gallon dogwood. Then we head back for the crepe myrtle. Not having seen the tree at this point, we begin to rationalize that he must have been using some other unit of measure or he'd never actually weighed one. The tree couldn't be that heavy. It was only 10 feet tall and the root ball couldn't be bigger than a couple of full grown men. Right?

So this guy gets in a Bobcat and chains the tree to it, hoists it up in the air and slowly lowers it into the sinking pickup. As they secure the tree, we ask them "So how much do you think this tree weighs?"

"Probably 800 pounds."

Uh oh. That's two votes for 800, now. "How many guys usually unload it?"

"I don't know. We use that," he says, gesturing to the industrial strength Bobcat with the hydraulic arm. After wrapping and tying it down, he suggests, "I'd remove that tailgate. The tree might bend it."

Huh. That hadn't even entered my mind. A tree too heavy for the steel tailgate of a pickup truck. What have I gotten us into? We drive off, *slowly*, as I begin to worry about snapping an axle in a pothole on the way home in my friend's nephew's truck. And then we begin to over-engineer the situation. And call for help.

After many ideas and after removing the tailgate, we decided to put two 2x4's under it and slide it to the back of the truck. Then we slid it off and let gravity do its part. The idea was that the 2x4's would drop down and make a ramp for the root ball to slide down. In reality, the rootball snapped one of the boards and came down faster than desired. But it was unloaded and intact.

After much preparation work on Saturday, four guys came on Sunday and planted the tree in under half an hour. Before lunchtime, they had planted everything else as well. It looks great and Melissa will be able to enjoy this Mother's Day present (some of the plants were "Mother's Day" azaleas) for a long time.

Now I've got to order a load of mulch...

Labels: family

Posted by Chris on 5/09/2005 10:24:00 AM :: Permalink   

I'm aquiver with anticipation

My Treo 650 arrived! But it's at home and I'm at work. :-( Posted by Chris on 5/02/2005 01:52:00 PM :: Permalink   
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