June 2008 Archives

The Harley-Davidson Owners Group has come up with a concept they declared Million Mile Monday. They set aside June 30, 2008 as a day to get everyone out on their bikes. The goal was to collectively try and accumulate one-million miles worldwide. The miles could be pretty much anything. Some would use their bikes to commute while others had planned a long journey that would incorporate this date into their plan. At the end of the day members were invited to log into the H.O.G. web site and enter their miles. It is a cool idea really. What better way to remind people how great it is to ride a motorcycle than to get them out on the road. Hopefully it would also increase the total number of riders on the road for at least a day. This should in turn make other drivers more aware that the motorcycle population is not a niche market but is much more mainstream than they had previously imagined. Perhaps then drivers would be more conscientious than they have been in the past.

I should never be allowed into an electronics store or a computer store unsupervised. There are just too many gadgets and I have too many ideas to be trusted to not come out of one of these stores without spending too much or bringing home something new and unusual. As I documented yesterday I was going to need some new parts in order to make the necessary repairs around the house. I am usually ok going to Home Depot or Lowe's by myself. Well ok that might be debatable especially after the whole rewiring the house and adding home automation fiasco of 1999. By the way, the switch explosion was not among those that I had previously messed with so this one was not my fault. That's my story and I am sticking with it.

I should learn never to open my mouth. First it would mean a lot fewer nights spent sleeping on the couch. Second I would probably find myself in a lot fewer weird and unusual situations. In this particular context I would have had a much easier day and I wouldn't be in nearly as much pain. A few days ago I noted that Trina and Whitney had left town leaving Tiffany, Dakota, and me at home to fend for ourselves. I also noted that part of the challenge that I had was to find something for Dakota to do so that he was not so bored. Yeah, that was a really bad thing to say. No sooner had I written that then the entire universe started to crumble around me. Ok, maybe not the whole universe, just that little piece that Trina left me in charge of during her absence.

With Trina and Whitney out of town that leaves me home with Tiffany and Dakota. Tiffany is now working full time so rarely do we even see her with work and then going out with her friends. That leaves me and Dakota at home. There is nothing quite like having an eleven year-old boy around to make you realize how old you really are. That kid has nothing but energy. The depth of that energy is diametrically opposed to the shallowness of his attention span. Approximately every 5 minutes he has to tell me how bored he is and how there isn't anything to do. That wouldn't be so bad but I am really trying to get some work done and the last thing I need is to stop and try and find something for him to do. And it's not like just anything will relieve the boredom. Oh no it has to be highly entertaining. There is no way I could possibly suggest that perhaps he could clean his room or possibly empty the dishwasher. No chores are definitely not on the list of fun things to do. As a result he is practically driving me crazy. So tonight I decided we all needed a break.

I sat down to begin composing this blog entry. The words just seemed to start to flow and I was feeling pretty good that this was going to be a great post. I had finished the first couple of paragraphs and decided I would re-read it to make sure it sounds ok. I was pretty darned happy with it. I went out to look at a previous entry thinking there might be a good hook from something I wrote earlier. It was at that moment that I realized that I had just written the first two paragraphs from a June 24th entry. No wonder it sounded so familiar. I thought that just meant that I was in the zone and focused. Now I realize that I am having a side effect from the medication they gave me for my bronchitis. I hate when that happens. Writing while on medications is definitely different than what normally happens when I write. Usually I can almost visualize the words on the paper and I feel as though I am just a scribe to some higher power that is guiding my words. While on meds I feel more like I am wandering around in a daze surrounded by fog. I'm definitely going to have to pay closer attention otherwise some of these posts are going to sound like Jethro Tull lyrics which I still believe he makes up as he is singing the songs.

For as long as I can remember I have had asthma. My parents and I chose at a very early age to not let this be an inhibitor to leading a normal life. I was much too active to try and relinquish that freedom and I refused to allow the ability to breathe stand in my way of having fun. This plan of action does have risks and inherent danger especially if you choose to be active in sports. My parents always made sure that my medications were fairly regulated and that I had an inhaler with me at all times in case something should arise during a game. I never quite know what is going to affect my asthma so therefore I just need to be flexible and prepared for the unexpected. The problem is that sometimes I am not real good at noticing the early warning signs of an asthma attack. I can get much too involved in a game to let my body dictate when it has had enough. This has led to some very close calls. I remember in high school while playing basketball I began to feel a shortness of breath coupled with a slight wheezing. Rather than calling time-out during a crucial sequence I chose to wait until a break in the action. Unfortunately that break did not occur before the game ended and by that time I was in dire straits (and I don't mean the band). My inhaler would not work in that sense and instead my mother rushed me to the hospital for an emergency treatment. It was a costly mistake on many levels.

"Bleep, bleep, bleep" Almost on reflex you reach over and smack the alarm clock hoping that this time it will be the death blow that will put it out of its misery. Every morning it is the same thing; a perfectly good dream is interrupted by that alarm clock. You think to yourself, "one of these days I am not going to have to listen to that thing. One of these days I am going to have a day all to myself without anyone telling me what to do." It's funny; you've been saying that since you were a teenager. Back then the alarm clock was beckoning you to get up and get ready for school. Ah, those were the days. As if on cue the alarm is silenced and instead music begins emanating from the speaker. You lay there being serenaded by Gloria Gaynor as she sings, "I Will Survive". That somehow seems appropriate this morning and you wonder if that song was meant for you or for the alarm clock that you nearly destroyed again. Maybe today won't be so bad after all. Even before you could complete that thought the disc jockey ruined the moment when he said, "well there's an oldie goldie we haven't heard in a few decades." Great that is just what you need; another 'punk kid' reminding you that you're not getting any younger.

Social networking has gotten a lot of press recently. As the Internet continues to mature people try to understand what it can be used for and how it might add value to their lives. One niche that began with the younger crowd but soon reached mainstream was the blog. Blog which is short for weblog began as a way for someone to maintain a log of information on the web. It was just a few short years ago that if you interviewed the typical person on the street they would have no idea what a blog was let alone tell you that they had one. People were still getting their feet wet on the Internet and having a web site made up of a few static pages was seen as a luxury for the rich and technically advanced. I remember when I first built Now Hitting. It was primarily a series of static pages that I hand coded with individual styles. I had what would probably be classified as a precursor to a blog that I called "Diary of a Diehard". This was again hand coded but allowed me an area where I could write small entries about baseball and specifically the Arizona Diamondbacks. This was one of the more popular aspects of Now Hitting and drew by far the most visitors to the site. It was also one of the more painful areas to maintain as I had to create a new page per entry and I was coding each of them by hand. Not really the most efficient use of my time but I could definitely see value in it.

I thought I would start with a continuation of yesterday's entry and give you an update on how it went at the Grand Canyon State Games. Both Trina and Tiffany had registered for events in Track and Field. The track meet was located at Mesa Community College in Mesa (it works out better to put the college in the city it is located otherwise people get really confused). Events were to start at 5:30 PM and check-in was to begin at 5:00 PM. After spending the morning at the Sports Authority watching as Trina tried on various shirts and shorts, I was definitely ready for something a little more exciting. Trina was especially nervous since she had not jumped competitively in over a quart of a century. She loves it when I put it in terms like that. Add to this the fact that she had not trained at all for this event and her anxiety levels were extremely high. Tiffany on the other hand was the poster child for coolness. Competing at a high level has become old hat to her and she was just enjoying the idea of being able to high jump with her mom.

Late last evening we received a call from our oldest daughter Ashley. Last year she decided that she was going to get back in shape and lose the weight that she had gained since going to college. She has been diligently working on that and is now probably in the best shape of her life. She looks great and feels even better. During her high school years Ashley was a pretty good athlete. She was a triple jumper on the track team and to this day holds the freshman record in that event at the high school. With all the success that Tiffany has had during her high school track career; Ashley had once again gotten the competitive bug and wanted to compete. Living in Utah she found a state competition that among the events featured track and field. She entered the meet and competed in the long jump and the triple jump. She called to tell us that she won both events. We were very proud of her and were excited to share in her news.

Growing up with the last name of "Summers", this was always my favorite day of the year. I mean how many people can say that they have a day that commemorates them for the next 3 months? Not only that but even Mother Nature pays homage to you by making your special day the longest day of the year. According to scientists and the Farmer's Almanac this is the day where the Northern Hemisphere is tilted more towards the sun than at any other time of the year hence there are more hours of daylight on this date than any other. The days from the first day of winter until today have gradually gotten longer while the days from today until the first day of winter will slowly get shorter. Given this information it is important to take full advantage of this day and live it up.

As I arrived home from work I was greeted by a flashing light. That's not to say that an LED was sitting at the door, it's cord wagging waiting for me to arrive to play with it. It just means that as I walked through the living room I happened to glance over at the telephone answering machine and noticed the flashing light that indicates that there is a message waiting. The answering machine is an interesting device. I have now successfully lived through an era that began before this device was invented. I distinctly remember getting my first answering machine after we were married. I remembered the sense of freedom that I felt knowing that I no longer had to worry about being home or missing a call. Now if I was not at home someone would be able to leave me a message and I could return their call after I returned. It was an amazing feeling, quite liberating to say the least. I look at that now and think how pathetic my life once was that I would get excited about something as simple as a telephone answering machine. Now we take that kind of technology for granted. We have voice mail or a similar capability built into nearly all of our personal communications devices. Still, there is just something alluring about seeing a flashing "messaging waiting" button.

There are certain days that are life changing: the birth of your child, the day you get your Arizona Diamondbacks Season Tickets, and the day you get married immediately come to mind. My kids are now reaching teen age years and the baseball season is now two and a half months old so that must mean that I am going to be talking about anniversaries. Today marks 27 years since my wedding to Trina. It seems so much longer than 27 years and I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way especially if Trina happens to be reading this. What I mean is that really we have known each other for much longer than the time we have been married. I met Trina during my sophomore year of high school at Skyline High School in Idaho Falls.

I have been a big fan of Mozilla for as long as they have been in existence. Before that I was part of the Netscape crowd and worked with them on browser development even before Netscape Navigator 4. Early on I did some work on the Thunderbird project and Sunbird. During my time at Motorola I was a member of the Netscape Customer Council and worked closely with their server development teams integrating the Motorola PageWriter two-way pager into the Netscape environment. In fact I hold a patent for that work last I heard. So as Mozilla worked on the open source code that would become Firefox I was right there rolling up my sleeves. Firefox 2 has been my default browser since it was released. And while it has had its share of issues over time my loyalty has not wavered. That is not to say I wasn't looking forward to its replacement. I was waiting rather impatiently to put it to the curbside and use something that was a little more memory friendly.

Our middle daughter Tiffany begins college this coming January. She has just finished High School graduation and is now trying to earn money to afford to go to school this coming winter. Recently she was accepted into Brigham Young University - Idaho which is the campus in Rexburg Idaho as opposed to Provo Utah. There are pros and cons to going to BYU-Idaho. On the con side BYU-Idaho does not have the collegiate sports programs that the BYU-Utah campus has. This means that she will not be able to compete in NCAA track like she hoped. On the pro side the campus is slightly smaller than BYU-Utah and therefore has a closer student body. She will also be able to share an apartment with her sister Mallorie who will be a Senior during Tiffany's Freshman year. This of course could be a pro and a con in itself depending on how much sister stuff they can deal with. When the kids graduate from high school my gift to each of them has been a laptop computer. It is nearly impossible for a kid to survive in college without their own computer and many colleges are now requiring a laptop for several classes.

Father's Day is always an interesting day at our house. It has evolved a lot over the years of our marriage. It began as a simple day where things just kind of flowed. When the kids were really young we usually celebrated with a handmade card and perhaps breakfast together. As we collected more kids and they got older the celebration got a little bit larger and more involved. Trina would work with the kids to make sure to take each of them shopping and allow them to pick out something for their dad. This usually meant that I received a very eclectic series of presents ranging from stuffed animals to art supplies to colorful shirts. As the kids are now starting to get old enough to start leaving the house for school the holiday continues to evolve. Now I usually get an e-card along with a note saying that they are poor college students and if I could please send money they would be happy to send me something (assuming I send enough money since they had things to buy too). It's not just about the gifts though.

After the fiasco I experienced with my sites being taken down I am now starting to realize that I need to get my sites moved to a different provider. I have begun research to try and find a new hosting company. A hosting company with servers that are a little more robust and technical support that is a little more technical and a lot more available. The problem I am finding is that a lot of the places I am finding do not offer the level of hosting that IX Web Hosting does. I have their Unlimited Pro plan which allows me to have an unlimited number of domains on my account. I am also given unlimited data transfer and unlimited disk space and 16 dedicated IP addresses. I'm not naïve to believe I am actually given unlimited anything but for what I have there have been no complaints when I consumed 11.5 GB with a couple of photo shows I did online. Most of the plans I am finding from other service providers they allow only 4-6 IP addresses and other restrictions that could be difficult for me to live within. I am beginning to think that shared hosting may not be the answer.

I really don't like Friday the 13th. It is not that I am superstitious, ok maybe I am just a little but you've never had to live through a 15 game streak where you couldn't hit a ball if your life depended upon it. It's funny, I am college educated and my IQ has been measured in the 140 range yet I still cannot get over the fact that luck plays such a part in life. Personally I don't think luck happens as much as it is a manipulation of circumstances by the observant. In a lot of cases you can make your own luck just be watching everything around you and making the right choices at the right time. That of course means you need to maintain a higher level of concentration and consciousness than most people are willing to devote each day. Still, it is possible. But before you think that you can manipulate everything in your favor let me assure you that it isn't quite that easy. Take today for example. The events that transpired with regards to my web hosting could never have been anticipated nor could they have been controlled.

This week the price of crude oil reached another all-time high which in turn means that we will be paying more for fuel in the coming weeks. This has not been anything new, this upward spiral in energy prices has been going on for some time. As a result we are now seeing gas prices above the $4 gallon. Where it once cost me $25 to fill the Honda it now takes $60 to do it. And don't even get me started on what it costs to fill Trina's Suburban; I about have to take out a second mortgage to get gas. The thing about it is that I understand why prices are the way they are. The cost of crude oil is up. This means that every process or processor downstream of a barrel of oil will see their costs increase hence they pass those costs on to the next step until finally the consumer bears the brunt of the increase. I may not like it but at least that makes sense and I would expect that to happen.

Like most people on the planet I am concerned with global warming. I am also concerned about the level of pollution and waste that is accumulating on the planet. Clearly weather changes are afoot and things are different than they have been in the past. I am not yet ready to drink the Kool-Aid that is being served by the environmental groups. I have not been shown a significant amount of scientific data that would lead me to conclude that man is the one responsible for these changes. I am not naive enough to believe may is blameless I just think that there are more factors at play here than the generalizations that have been given by the media. I do think we are too wasteful and do not take into consideration the finite number of resources this planet has. But I also think that we don't know enough about the weather patterns over the course of the life of this planet to know whether we are seeing a change due to man-made problems or if this is a normal occurrence that happens with some sort of regularity through the millions of years this planet has been around.

It's funny how we seem to take things for granted that just work. You never think about it, you just kind of expect that stuff works the way it is supposed to. Take for example the light switch. If you walk into a dark room you reach for the light switch. You just assume that when you flip it then the lights will go on. If for some inexplicable reason the lights don't come on you immediately think it is a personal problem. You check to make sure you flipped the right switch or that you flipped it in the right direction. If the light continues to be difficult and not work you then begin looking for a replacement light bulb since that has to be the problem. It is only after exhausting these efforts that you finally conclude that perhaps there is a malfunction with the electrical infrastructure. Why is that? I think it is because we have become so accustomed to the fact that we have energy on demand that we are shocked when we find that is not the case. I remember as a kid growing up in Idaho, it seemed like the power went out every week. It probably wasn't that often but it sure seemed like it. In that environment you never took electricity for granted. You were just grateful when you had power. Since that time the electrical grid has become much more stable and my expectations are much greater that the power is always on.

Today marks day one of the Apple World Wide Developer's Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco. It was a year ago at this conference that Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the world to the iPhone. Since that time the iPhone has achieved near cult status as *the* smart phone to have. Anyone who fancies themselves as hip had to have an iPhone on their belt or in their purse. It wasn't just that it was cool to be seen with one, it was that it changed the way people looked at cell phones and how they were used. The interesting part about the iPhone was that it really wasn't that revolutionary. Most of the features contained within it were already available on other devices. What Apple did was to package these various features together and surround them with an elegant user interface. They then enclosed it in a sexy looking package and the world flocked to their doorstep. In the days leading up to the release of the iPhone there were people camped out at the local AT&T stores waiting for a chance to buy a cell phone. When was the last time people got that enthusiastic about their cell phone? Clearly Apple had hit upon something. Despite all of the hype surrounding the iPhone, the product wasn't perfect. There were missing features that users clamored for. Now 12 months later the hype around the iPhone has returned. Everyone anticipated that during his keynote address today Steve Jobs would unveil the next generation of iPhone.

Trying to get Trina interested in the Harley-Davidson Night Train has been an uphill battle. A lot of that may have to do with the way she was introduced to the bike. After the initial shock she did briefly think it was kind of cool having a husband that rode a motorcycle. But in my typical fashion I completely blew that when I offered to take her for a ride. She agreed and we mounted up to take a short ride. It seems that we have a difference of opinion as to what short actually means. My theory was you leave and come back on the same day. Trina on the other hand thought it meant a couple of miles to the store and back. This difference of opinion combined with the fact that the Badlander seat was definitely made for passenger comfort made for a very long ride for Trina. When we got home she was pretty sore. She was sore at me and sore in general. The good thing about that ride was that I got a new seat, one that had a much more comfortable passenger area. The bad thing was Trina refused to ride with me anymore. It looked as though I was destined to be a single rider. But recently things began to change.

I grew up in a small farming community in Idaho. At the time I thought I grew up in a big city in Idaho but it wasn't until after I graduated from college and moved to Arizona that I realized that the entire population of my home town would fit within the confines of Chase Field and it would not be a sell-out. I then had to come to grips with the fact that I was from a hick town in Idaho. Living in Idaho was kind of like living in Bedrock with the Flintstones. I take that back, even the Flintstones had phones even if they were made of rocks and shells. There were places in Idaho that did not get telephone service until this century. We did however get television. Not cable mind you, that would have to wait until my senior year of high school before that arrived. No, television in our day consisted of 3 channels: NBC, ABC, and CBS. Wow, I sound so old when I say that. My kids would say I wasn't really living at that point; it was more just a matter of survival. They may be right. Whenever I go back to visit my parents I feel as though I stepped into a time machine and am teleported back into the dark ages. I half expect to turn the corner and see them burning a witch at the stake or something.

I have come to the conclusion that I have a serious personality deficiency. This of course is not news to anyone who knows me or my wife Trina. Trina has been telling people for years that I have a lot of defects but I had until now chosen to ignore her comments. This of course has led to numerous occasions where I have ended up sleeping on the couch because I happened to ignore the wrong comments. In this case I am here to publicly admit that I have an issue. For some unexplainable reason I am a complete-ist. It doesn't seem to matter what it is, it has to be completed and consistent. It was first brought to my attention by my lovely wife Trina who expressed her frustration with me and light bulbs. I cannot deal with the fact that a light bulb has ceased to work. I don't know why but that really bothers me. I have to immediately replace the defective bulb. That's ok if we happen to have a spare bulb in the house. But if we don't, I can't rest until a replacement bulb is gotten and the bad bulb eliminated. That may not sound like a bad thing but light bulbs seem to choose the most inopportune times to die. For example, you get up on a Sunday morning where you have promised your wife you will go to church with her. You turn on the bathroom light to get ready and a vanity light blows out. You go downstairs and find that someone used the last spare bulb leaving you without a new one to put in the socket. You can no longer even think about church as you have a light that needs assistance. You therefore run to the store leaving your wife at the door thinking she was going to church but instead ends up at Home Depot in the bulb department as you try to decide if the longer life bulbs really do last longer or is that just a ploy to make you buy more expensive bulbs. At that point is where Trina is most apt to bring up my "issues" which she is now documenting in their own special notebook.

With my decision to move to Joomla! 1.5 began the long and arduous task of identifying what would work, what would not work, and what possibilities I had to make things cooler. I started out downloading Joomla! 1.5.3 and installing it on a test box so that I could begin exploring. I also began looking over the various templates that are currently available for Joomla! 1.5 to see if there were any I could use as a jumping off point. One of the great things about Joomla! is that they have a huge user community that is very active in the development and use of this Content Management System. When they began developing Joomla! 1.5 the developers opened up a contest for someone to design a new template that would be included as one of the standard templates out of the box. The Joomla! Forums managed the template contest. After several months of work the user community voted and a winner was chosen. One of the less obvious benefits is that all the templates that were entered into the contest were made available for download by the user community. This provided a great abundance of code from which you could learn or in some cases it was an opportunity to find a template that would be perfectly matched to what you were looking for.

Just over a year ago I began planning the migration and updating of Now Hitting. This was necessary since the Arizona Diamondbacks had decided to change their colors from Purple and Teal to Sedona Red, Sonoran Sand, and Black. I'm not going to get into my feelings on the subject of the color change, those have been written about ad nauseum on Diary of a Diehard. The point was that I was faced with the task of updating a system to change the color scheme and potentially the layout. In a Web 2.0 type of world, this wouldn't be a problem. You would simply open up the cascading style sheet (CSS), make a few changes to the color values and wha-la, a new look and feel with minimal effort. Yeah, that's great but unfortunately Now Hitting has been in existence since 1998 which predates much of the internet technology including CSS. Ten years would place the original Now Hitting somewhere in the Mesozoic era probably in the Triassic period. I was definitely dealing with a websiteosaurus of epic proportions.

Given my devotion to baseball, I typically try to minimize the number of projects I take on from April through October. Customer service is extremely important and I like to be able to devote as much of my time as I can when I take on a new project. There are times though when my worlds collide and I find myself having to accept new development work during baseball season. That usually will require a lot of very long days that include work, baseball, and development. These activities can consume roughly 21 hours a day. I'm usually ok with that since I rarely sleep more than 4 hours a night so what's an extra hour right?

I had previously written about my shopping adventures trying to get a Wii Fit for my kids. Since that traumatic episode I have shied away from anything having to do with this device. Well that and the fact that the Arizona Diamondbacks have been in town for a 6 game home stand has left me with very little free time. The Wii Fit box had been set down next to the television and literally forgotten about until Dakota uncovered its existence. Since that time all I have heard was his pleas to set up this device so he could play. I swear, I really need to stash things in better places until I have enough time to deal with things after baseball season is over. Finally I could not take it anymore and I allowed the kids to set up the Wii Fit. I was hoping that telling the kids to go for it would dissuade them. I further assumed that setting up a Wii Fit would be too complicated for mere children to understand and therefore give me a little extra time. I was wrong on so many levels.

I'll freely admit I am very biased towards digital SLR cameras. The capabilities they provide are just so much better than what can be found in a point and shoot camera. Not just the ability to change lenses to meet your shooting needs but in the other features as well. The larger sensor sizes in the DSLR cameras provide better noise management especially when using higher ISO settings for lower light shooting. The ability to have a hot shoe flash that moves the flash further away from the sensor plane is also a huge advantage as it results in fewer red-eye pictures being taken. I have never been a fan of red-eye reduction flash since all it really does is pre-flash to fool the eye. The problem with this is that the subject thinks the pre-flash is the actual picture so you end up many times with people moving or closing their eyes since they think the picture has been taken. That drives me crazy. But for all the benefits of a DSLR there is one thing about them that can be troublesome, their size.