Blog Notes & Tools
Been a while since I have done one of these and I may just have enough information to make a really good long winded post as you all know I like to do. I have several tools that I have been using of late that I really like, a few things to complain about with a couple of tools, and a few notes about blogs in general that I would like to make. First off, my hats off to a couple of different folks (I am sure you know who you are) of late whose site I have visited and I had to ask what they were running as the CMS/backend for the system. In both cases they were running Wordpress and in both cases it did not have the feel of a blog, but rather a really nice full blown site. If you have not heard it yet, my prediction is you will see more and more of that in the next six months and Wordpress itself will evolve into even more of a full blown CMS system expanding much beyond the realm of its birth, the blog-0-sphere.
I admit that once again I was hitting a roll and got stuck with to much to do. Maybe the first day or two it was because I was being a little lazy, but then I had a crazy schedule both at work, after hours, and especially over the weekend. I realize that some of that schedule is my own fault – as I know I have hard time keeping a narrow focus. After all variety is the spice of life or something like that. Crazy last weekend is past though. I am feeling like a pin cushion that is being used for an assault rifle target practice – for an entire regiment no less – at the office. Next thing I know a full ten days have passed since my last post.
Over the weekend I had the opportunity to see a concert that I had been trying to catch for sometime and the stars finally alligned in heavens correctly for it to occur. Willie Nelson played a show at the summer outdoor concert series at Horseshoe Casino and Resort over in Indiana just across the river from Louisville. It was a perfect ending to a good early summer day that had started with the afternoon at Churchill Downs, later watching the Belmont and realizing I had the winner and the trifecta, and then the playing and singing to one hit song after another of Willie in the outside air as the sun slowly set behind the hills to our west.
I hope that someone listened to me over the last week. I watched with anticipation to see if Rachel Alexander was going to be entered into the Belmont and was a little surprised when over the weekend before Jackson said NO to her running, without even waiting to Monday as had been indicated. That was a bit of a bummer, but even before that I had started telling folks that the fresh legs of a breed for distance horse in the Belmont might be the one to watch for versus either Rachel or Mine that Bird. When I looked over the early possible field I really liked Summer Bird, a half brother to Mine that Bird and had put $5.00 wager on him to win in a bet pool that was before the field was even set and locked the odds on that win at 25:1.
Readers may recall a couple of weeks ago, I complained about a suspected update to Explorer causing a bunch of crashing in my browser of choice, Mozilla Firefox. I had quipped that it would not surprise me if something was amiss there, based on the timing of that last updates from which source and when things starting to go wrong. Since then, through some various methods I had reduced the number of hangup and lockups to a substantially less number, but they, the lockups in particular, were still happening enough to be concerned. Thanks to a friend on Facebook, kudos to you Drew, I have been vindicated somewhat in my original thought on the matter.
What I got here is a prime example of great government intelligence. What I am about to say is unbelievable in the best of times but given that this is a stretch of road that is maintained by the Commonwealth of Kentucky it becomes even more appalling. The fine commonwealth has recently been discussing just how budget shortfalls are going to met, debating cuts to services, increases in fees (another way of saying tax in a very thinly disguised wording), and even looking at the possibility of a looming special session to figure it out. Granted there has been some trickle of money starting to come in from the federal aid packages and maybe that explains the following:
For the few of you that were reading this a LONG time ago you may recall my confusion and questioning of airline mathematical principals way back when. Basically, they had leg A to B to C cheaper then just leg B to C by itself, on the same plane. Apparently I need to expand that theory to cover the entire travel based industry though based on my recent experience with hotels. I continue to be baffled, but read on and maybe someone else can explain this basic math to me that I can not seem to grasp.
This is a total rant – so be warned – sometimes I just got to rant about something that is bugging me. What the heck has happened to customer service of late? Take a step further, when was the last time the customer actually was right according to the establishment. So I am going to share a couple of experiences of late and see if what you all think.
Of several things that I have noticed of late is the seeming price creep and amount of expense that I have had recently on my lunch dining experience. Combine that with a similar creep in my weight again and I decided I have to get motivated and do something about it. A quick observation that came about with some conversation from a friend is how I really do not mind that $2.00 – $4.00 lunch that you can get around at various places, especially if you watch just a little bit and are willing to be flexible on given days.
In the last week or so I have started having a lot of crashes, lockups, and blue screens of death on my system. I had been trying to figure things out and had looked at several things. The error reporting kept suggesting it was a problem with an out of date USB device driver, but that was not the case. Everything was up to date, which was another it suggested might be the problem. I was grasping at seeming straws to find a solution.
