Friday Morning

Posted on March 30, 2007 by Kirk M

Somewhere around 7:00 AM:

Awake…ummpf!

Eye’s glued together…open…

ouch…

close again…

better.

Up…wander to bathroom…clean teeth…

remove cat from back…put on floor.

get dressed.

To the kitchen…coffee…get cereal from cupboard…

remove cat from cupboard…put on floor.

to the computer.

Eating breakfast…reading news….

remove cat from waste basket…toss onto floor…

he enjoys that.

Need tissue to wipe gummy eyes again…put down cereal bowl…

wipe…

better…

remove cat from cereal bowl…

put in bedroom.

Time’s up…make lunch…cat inspects…

approves lunch.

Time to go.

Thank God it’s Friday!

Have a great day.

Technorati Tags: humor, morning, cats, friday

More Spam Protection Added

Posted on March 28, 2007 by Kirk M

Spam, spam everywhere and not a moment to think. I swear, if I could monetize the amount of spam comments that’s been thrown into Akismet’s queue lately I could quit the day job. So when my daily comment spam had grown from a mere 20-30 per day to 50 per day then 70 and now above 100 on a daily basis I started to want for another anti-spam type plugin that might help things out a bit more.

You see, each spam comment coming into the blog, even if it is caught by Akismet or Spam Karma 2 which I use as a backup in case the Akismet servers get the hiccups, uses up a wee bit of bandwidth. Now multiply this wee bit of bandwidth by a factor of 100 or more and the wasted bandwidth per day starts to add up. Now my “spamment” count per day is nothing compared to some of the more popular blogs out there where the count can run into the thousands or better per day but the increase is steady so I’d much rather catch it before it gets out of hand.

Remembering that I once read something about another popular spam bouncer that stopped the spam at the doorstep so to speak, I wandered over to the lady who knows all, Lorelle on WordPress, to find the article I read a month or so ago and found what I was looking for.

As of now, I’ve had Bad Behavior 2 installed into the backend of Just Thinkin’ for about 5 hours and as of just a few minutes ago when I checked, this plugin had thrown 67 spam bots off the premises before they got within 10 feet of the door. Bad Behavior works by denying automated spambots access to your PHP-based website which is the way a WordPress blog works. Now of course not all spamments are caused by spam bots—some are actually human too but I have to believe this group of flesh and bone “spam-i-diots” are in the minority which so far has seems to have proved out since Akismet has only had to catch 2 spamments that got through to the 67 thrown off my lawn.

So now that I have all these spam hating goons hanging about the premises keeping the rabble out I’m going to turn off the math equations for the comments thus relieving the frustrations of my many readers of having to rewrite their comments or giving up altogether when they miss doing the math (I’ve been caught like this myself on other blogs I’ve commented on, arrggh).

So here’s to a spam free world that most likely will never come until people decide to grow up and stop making other people’s lives miserable just because they can so until then…let’s go stomp some spam.

Technorati Tags: spam, sk2, akismet, bad behavior, spam karma

A Square Cut Carpenter

Posted on March 25, 2007 by Kirk M

I had a friend of mine once refer to himself as the best square-cut carpenter in the business. As long as it was right angles and the occasional 45 degree, he could build a house and he built plenty during his time. He also canes chairs and restores old trunks as well so he may have been understating his talents a wee bit but I understood where he was coming from.

I, on the other hand, have always been a no-talent carpenter that has managed to scrap and crawl his way into the fine art of the square cut level—apprentice only, with myself as my own mentor. In fact I recently bought myself a table saw since doing fine carpentry with nothing but a hand saw just wasn’t cutting it.

Uh…sorry about that.

Now every once in a while my honey requests of me and my two saws and various other implements of destruction; a project, that I could possibly build for her quilt shop. Out of those requests have come two folding walls, one of which was turned into a lighted display for her stained glass items, a L-shaped counter for her customers to stand in front of, a yet unfinished set of frames for two of the aforementioned stained glass items and the latest—a table runner display stand.

I do enjoy making these items for her because she does so much for me without my ever asking and without complaint. I don’t think I’ve ever had to ask for anything at all really so doing these small projects is actually a joy for me. Except for those frames. They have 45 degree angles at the corners and something to do with depth of groove vs length vs angle vs something else and…well…

I’m sure I’ll get those two pieces framed by Christmas anyway.

So here’s the latest project to come out of Kirk’s Square-Cut Carpentry shop:

She drew out a template for me and after a day of constructive cursing, here it is. I do realize that this particular piece of square-cut whiz-bang includes round holes which doesn’t exactly qualify as square-cut but I get crazy once in awhile.

Now those for those frames.

“Honey…Can you cut me some angles?”

Update 03/28/07:

The above quilt rack has been taken to the quilt shop and put through various quality control and functions testing and has been certified Long Meadow Farms ready! (I’m so proud)

I’ve included the official “Certified” photo that was taken as the testing was completed with the rack “fully loaded” with table runners standing next to the “Old Timer” which was the first and only one to qualify when table runners were first produced.

Now to get those those frames glued together….

Technorati Tags: long meadow farms, display stand, table runners, carpentry

Performancing Metrics Returns

Posted on March 24, 2007 by Kirk M

It seems like Performancing has not only got it’s steam back up after the boiler went cold awhile back but old familiars like the revamped PFF blog editor has recently returned under the new name of Scribefire and now it seems that the new crew at Performancing has everybody’s favorite metrics system back on line as well after it’s demise around the beginning of this year.

Performancing Metrics was most likely the all time favorite metric system available for bloggers who wanted a statistics service that was tailor-made for blogs and it offered the most features out of all of them at no charge to the user. It came as a bit of a shock to all when it was announced that Performancing Metrics would be taken down due to the fact that it had grown too big to handle for the resources at hand and was sadly missed indeed among those who had depended on this fine statistics engine. Ironically enough, I had just gone over to a self hosted WordPress install and was ready to sign up myself when the everything hit the fan and Metrics disappeared.

But no longer apparently. I have been a Performancing member for about a year now and although I haven’t written much content to date, I do check in faithfully every few days to see how things are going along and this morning when I banged into the site (much to my surprise) there was a new tab in the header of the main page called pmetrics and believe me, I didn’t waste any time checking it out.

And So…

As of 11:00 am my time (east coast USA), the new Performancing Metrics has been percolating on my blog compiling all that wonderful data that will show me exactly how many readers I don’t have. That’s okay though since the blog the service is hooked to is my personal blog that rides on no specific road but rather wanders about as it pleases. Still, having the metrics system I thought was gone forever back where it belongs gives me a good feeling that the Performancing group is back on top of things and working hard at getting the job done once again.

Like the new ScribeFire editor, Performancing Metrics apparently was sneaked out with no fanfare or announcement on the site or at least none that I could find anyway. I could be wrong here about the lack of fanfare and I’m sure they’ll let me know if I am. Meanwhile, I’m going to thoroughly enjoy being a member and using their metrics system to my advantage (grin). And I won’t hesitate to pony up the highly unreasonable (grin again) amount of $14.95 for the yearly subscription to the Premium service for the couple extra features (and more to come) even though my site hardly warrants it.

Heck, it costs $$$ to keep this kind of metrics system going which is the main reason it died in the first place. I’m going to make damn sure it sticks around this time by doing what I can to help.

Good deal all around for all I think, yes?

Technorati Tags: Performancing, Performancing metrics, pmetrics, metrics

Affordable Solar Energy Coming Closer to Reality

Posted on March 23, 2007 by Kirk M

I don’t know about the rest of you but I’ve always yearned to tell my utility company; “Here’s my last bill and payment…now go pack sand!”. Of course sitting around in the dark isn’t exactly what I had planned for the weekend so I go around turning off lights and shivering in rooms with no radiator (only two and one happens to be the bathroom) because I refuse to use the small electric space heater we have. Then there’s the dream about a rack of inexpensive, highly efficient solar cells silently flowing power into the power cells in the basement and watching everyone else pony up the dough every month to their utility god.

Such ecstasy, what a dream.

Ah, but alas…with a small solar power unit of the size that could easily power a small, single wide trailer running anywhere from 10 to 15,000 dollars a pop, the thought of what it would cost to run an entire house is not to be considered.

Perhaps not too much longer though. A recent breakthrough may be bringing the reality of an affordable solar power setup to the working man and woman just a bit closer than it is now as stated in the excerpt below:

Australia- A new type of solar cell, the “Sliver Cell”, using razor-thin strips of material, has the potential to revolutionize the global solar power industry by dramatically reducing the amount of silicon required, the most expensive part of solar technology today.
Using innovative manufacturing techniques and cells less than 70 microns thick, the process requires 90% less silicon, yet delivers greater efficiency than current photovoltaic cells, and cuts the costs of production up to 60-80 percent…

Source: Good News Network – Skinny New “Sliver Cells” to Slash Solar Costs by 60%

A 60%-80% cost reduction? Bring it on I say, bring it on. I can see the last utility bill heading out the door now with my message tattooed across the envelope in great big looping letters.

Now let’s hope I live long enough for this great new technology to make it to the USA

Technorati tags: solar power, clean energy, environment

The garbage man cometh on Friday

Posted on March 23, 2007 by Kirk M

A short piece of prose:

The garbage man cometh,
Hmmppff…
Must be Friday

Thank you

Have a nice day.

To The HMS Tireless

Posted on March 22, 2007 by Kirk M

To the crew who lost their shipmates and families who lost their sons under the sea, my heart felt condolences and understanding go out to you. My thoughts are with you during this trying time.

From one who knows,

Kirk M. Blanchard, FTG1/SS, USS Silversides/SSN 679–On board: 1979-1983

Technorati Tags: HMS Tireless, submarines, submariners

A word from work.

Posted on March 21, 2007 by Kirk M

Just a short note here…

For various personal reasons I haven’t mentioned this blog at work at all basically because it’s a part of life outside of work and with all the problems with my health the past year or so, it’s also coming to be very therapeutic as well and I tend to keep my personal life separated from work with a passion.

Although I’ve cobbled together a few posts on what I’ve been going through health-wise and all my marvelous adventures in wonderland (the VA), I have purposely and hopefully kept them rather light in content since most folks really don’t need to hear about the down and dirty of it all and I don’t need to be rehashing it either. So keeping it on the light side helps me as well when things start getting hard to take which tends to be coming around more often these days.

So work is work and the rest is mine and that’s where this effort has stayed until today.

One of my co-workers had taken a look at my blog during lunch and wasn’t I surprised to find an email waiting for me this evening from that very same co-worker. It appears he had taken the time to use the Contact form on the blog to drop me a note expressing his support in my effort here in his own unique way. Not something I would have expected but it does lift my spirits some and that’s always a welcome thing indeed.

Meanwhile, this exercise in blathering shall continue unabated, meandering about from one place to another according to the whims of the day and how I happen to feel about them.

Whatever may come.