Day 120 - 2010

Well it is Friday, looking back on the week again and trying to summarize what I have accomplished. For one I finished my wall drawing, I guess that counts for something.

Finalized the web broadcasting setup and successfully broadcasted Chloe’s performance via the iPhone, all for free tools and services.  Click on the side bar “Live”.

Now you can not only hear the radio stations, watch them live (actually you were always able to do that, but it gets increasingly more popular) : http://www.kiddlive.comhttp://www.kiddnation.com, or http://www.ustream.tv/wbap ?????

GREAT STUFF online: Design your own logo online http://www.logoyes.com/ awesome,cheap and fast.

BTW

What the h… Sometimes I wonder what goes on in peoples head (more than ones actually). People impersonating police officers. Thanks to the internet and unrestricted purchasing of official insignias one can get all the tools a police officer would have – what are they thinking? So the tip to prevent being taken advantage off was to ask for picture ID, call 911 to verify that the police car is real. What are the chances of doing that? Get pulled over by an officer who thinks of verifying it? Internet services who broker or offer services to get investors. Who is filtering or verifying them? I just ran across one from Saudi Arabia (or so they say) offering a really good deal (if it is to good to be true – it is). The verbiage was a dead giveaway, he insisted on strict confidentially to start with, lots of flowery this and that… I did notify the service and ask them to take this guy off the list.  Why can the service not block ISPs known for that kind of scam? The ISPs are clearly identified by several anti scam services and readily available on the web. Investors who ask for more than 50% of your business. It is very clear to me that they want to protect their money or profit. But if somebody asks for a small amount (in this case $300k, yes that is a small amount) he should not give up his business for that. He might as well ask for $3 million, same difference. Once the shares of the business are given up you are the mercy of the investor who, in most cases, does not have much insight of what you are all about. You might as well get a job. Investor presentations. How in the world would you be able to present to potential investors a complex operation in less that 15 minutes?  You can, but does the concept reach the people who are listening to ten or more at any given meeting? Being wealthy does not necessarily mean that he or she is a mind reader. We always assume that this person has to be smart since this person is rich, which is true in some cases. It is like reading a newspaper, read the headlines – read the story. I guess that what the elevator speech is supposed to be. Advertising works the same way – good lines don’t make good products. All the social and business groups. Similar to network meetings, everybody tries to sell their stuff. Given that the business networks are helpful for advice from many angles, the rest is more or less the same old concept. I have to wonder what a college student can offer in terms of “Why most businesses fail within five years”. It must be a copy and paste since the experience is just not there (two month on the job – expert) and there has been plenty of research done in this area , I can read up on that on the internet if I’m interested. Do we really need to know or speculate on how we search for information in the future? It used to be the library, then the limited services for data on a network (no internet yet), then along came the internet and everybody became an expert. Besides who cares as long as you get good information. Investment Bankers. This has been bugging me for a while now. You have a fortified network at an investment banker, yet there is no security on who can walk around in the office as a guest. The procedure for depositing money or withdrawing money is done the old fashion way. Get a check enter it in the system. Which, by itself, would be fine. But it is NOT acceptable if the checks are displayed all over the counter for public viewing if you are there to withdraw or deposit money in person. It would be easy take a snapshot of the checks which contained check numbers (duh), names and addresses. Does anybody care about this? There is more, but those are the once which bugged me the most for right now.

Quit smoking progress Day 20.2:  almost had it…

Day 119 - 2010

It was a great game last night although the team fell 0:7 to seven – it was not a slaughter as they expected, as a matter of fact they held the opposing team to ZERO runs until the fourth inning.

GO TITANS

The initial web broadcast test worked well, then I turned the camera but the screen did not turn with it. The battery held out for one hour, so now I know.  Looking forward to tonight, should be great.

Tune in at 7PM http://www.ustream.tv/channel/live-from-sanders

Had a great time with Chloe playing Monopoly, Max was the banker (part time). We will continue this game for a while

BTW

Travel information Note on a travel itinerary: IMPORTANT NOTE: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has implemented the Secure Flight program. To enhance the security of air travel, this program requires the airlines to collect and transmit specific passenger data to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). The required data is: -Full name as it appears on government issued ID (i.e. Passport, Drivers License) -Date of Birth -Gender -Redress Number (if applicable) I understand that this is important, but who decides who’s “specific” data needs to be transmitted?

Quit smoking progress Day 20.2:  Still working on it…

Day 118 – 2010

At least the sun is out today, still chilly. 

Getting more emails, facebook connects from people I worked with.

Last nights dinner was pretty good, it was good to see familiar faces again.

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BTW

don’t know yet more on that later

Quit smoking progress Day 19.2:  Still working on it…

Day 117 – 2010

Started to workout every day now.  Lost 2 pounds the last three days.  Continues efforts are made to redefine the abdominal muscles.

Still trying to get funding.  In touch with an investor in Europe, we will see…

The TYMNET annual meeting is being defined in San Jose.  The date is set for September 5, 2010.

Lots of responses back from all the Tymnet colleges, awesome.

BTW

I have nothing more on that later

Quit smoking progress Day 18.2:  Still working on it…

Day 116 – 2010

WOW, it is Monday again.  Rainy and cold today.  The practices for tonight are cancelled due to the weather forecast.

Work out is labor intensive as usual, the grocery shopping is more fun thanks to the grocery app. So is the music selection which slowly but surely are re-defined by Pandora.

BTW

Work out assistance It does work.  I downloaded a great app from iTunes for the iPhone, it is called Fitness.  Skeptical as I’m I wanted to try it before I write about it.  Not only does the app track every inch of your body and assess the weight, body fat, etc, it gives you personalized exercise plans.  I have been following several plans for different parts of the body and it seems to work.  Once a week I train with a personal trainer, but with the app as a guide, my muscles get the same workout.  Given that you follow the recommendations of course.  As with all statistics only time will tell of the progress.  I just wish the developers would hook a diet process in to their app, then it would be complete. So the search is still on for the all in one app.

Quit smoking progress Day 17.1:  Still working on it…

Day 115 – 2010

Sunday.  A day of relaxing? Or chasing after all the things neglected during the week?
Medieval Times today.  Great entertainment all around. They have down to a “T”. Two to three shows at times. My son absolutely loved it, cheered on the red knight as loud as he could.

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BTW

Quit smoking progress Day 17.1:  this is just #$%^ …

Flash Components - Flash 3D Carousel XML - Ultimate 3D Carousel AS2

Flash Components - Flash 3D Carousel XML - Ultimate 3D Carousel AS2

Day 114 – 2010

Big game day again.  Softball, Soccer, Basketball, Softball, Party  …

Soccer: We lost by one goal, however, the boys were just outstanding.  Great plays lots of chances, we had 28:19 shots on goals and should have come out a winner – need to work on closing the deal.  Max was great in the goal and prevented several goals.  He got hurt in the second half and had to replaced.  Click on dragons for pictures from the game.

Go Dragons !!!

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As a result of his injury Max missed the basket ball game.

Chloe had a great game too, I was not able to go since I had to get to the soccer game.

Abby’s game was pretty good, but they lost as well (check out the page for more stats)

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BTW

Apps Other pet peeves include the available apps as they are called now.  The majority of them are extremely well thought out.  They either come free or for $.099 to $1.99 and up.  Can’t complain about that.  But why stop at the single use development?  A score app for softball records only one inning, why not one game with an upload option?  Grocery lists are great, but why can’t they interface with a meal app or vice versa (some meal apps have a grocery list function as a separate function)? If a calendar can save into multiple calendar file types, why not exporting or importing data as such?  Online spreadsheet or documents are easily created and incorporated into websites or blogs, why then have online apps which are tight to one technology marvel?  There are several great apps which allow to upload to facebook or other social networks, but that only serves one purpose – sharing information and not reuse it. I realize that not everybody wants or uses it, however, if it is an option it is the users choice. Are we at the “not sharing” or “not compatible” between software again?  I thought the trend invoked years ago was to have a platform where software data can be easily exchanged – a step backward? I will research that topic a little deeper, perhaps converting one of my software writing attempts into an app.  More on this to follow.

Quit smoking progress Day 16.1:  one More time …

Day 113 – 2010

Jeez the fiddling.  Added some plug ins and upgrades, there is always something. 

Baer had surgery yesterday, she came out of it alright.  One of the bumps turned into a major incision.  Now she has a 3 inch gizmo cut on her left shoulder, it is going to take forever to heal. What you do for your best friend.

Baer is doing so so, while Oreo is lounging on the chair

BTW

Cell phone service I was thinking (here we go again, working without tools) the other day about the timeline when cell phone service will become obsolete.  Yes you read right.  Here is the progress on that:  Way back when there were modems at various speeds, 2400 bps was revolutionary. Then it advanced to FrameRelay to ATM (to state the more popular once).  This scenario was replaced by the IP protocol. The access to the internet went from hardwire to WiFi, the personal computer is almost replaced by laptops, which I favored every since they came out. Now the cell phone is a more popular user interface than the laptop.  Parallel to that, we had the land lines, cell phones, car phones, the G services which is now at 4G.  GSM and other protocols in Asia, South America etc where there and more flexible when it came to switching to various other networks. South Korea now has a wireless network which allows you to connect from anywhere to the internet. It is setup similar to the cell phone network. You are always ON.  How long will it take before it hits the United States?  I understand that there is a test bed already.  Sprint is working on something which is going beyond 4G.  So, again, how long before we are always on?  Once we are there, why do we need cell phone service?  All of the newer phones are already wifi enabled and connect to the internet.  Skype is a free app which can be used to do Voice over IP (it is the more known one), therefore you don’t need cell phone service, period.  The question is how will the providers change it so they can benefit from it.  Similar to the access to the internet people use either cable service or satellite service, are the cell phone service providers turn into that?

Quit smoking progress Day 15.2:  force it …   One more incentive to quit – the prices just went up $.021

Day 112 - 2010

The game was not rained out.  My daughter hit the first homerun of the season for the team and for herself.  It was amazing, perfect swing and the ball just kept on drifting towards the outfield, then it was the fence.  Way to go !!!! 

Of course we were screaming so loud and almost falling of the bleachers that I forgot to take a video, @#$%^&.  Anyway here is Abby’s score, notice the little dot in the fourth inning on the top right hand site it is the HR.

Basketball spring season started, so here he is practicing:

I started going through some of my pictures from way back when and created blogs with travelpod.  Thanks to the features like date and time on the digital photographs I will be able to pinpoint the travel dates fairly accurately.  I took a lot of pictures, others laughed, of little stuff which comes in handy now. I always documented the pictures or trips, even when they were slides (remember those?).  I would use a highlighter, mark the route and attach yellow notes on it with the departure date, miles driven etc.. Centuries later this really comes in handy to place the pictures with a date.

Here is a slideshow of a trip you can put together online for free. I tested it by just adding 300 + pictures to it and let it run.  Of course I will revise it to reflect the actual trip, which led to Japan first and than Australia and back. The other thing I have to do is to figure out how I can get my TRAVEL page on this site incorporated with the new travelpod blog.

This travel slideshow of Peter Pfude’s trip to Sydney and Ashburn was created by TripAdvisor on Friday, April 23, 2010 at 1:57am UTC. Peter traveled 15,692 kilometers (9,750 miles) on this trip.

Day 111 – 2010

Rainy day today mid, low 50.  

Hopefully the activities today will not be rained out.

 

BTW

investing in a startup There are many people with brilliant ideas out there in the real world.  However, with the bust of the internet bubble ten years ago, investors are very cautious with their money when it comes to online businesses.  What was easy money based on a great rate of return once, is now viewed with caution. However there are exceptions to the rule, some of which are not very clear to me. One of the examples is facebook. Mark Zuckerberg who founded it in 2004 is now a multi Billionaire. So how did he get the initial money?  Did he have a great business plan, like everybody and their mother is preaching to have? Or did he just present the concept and got the initial 1.3 million dollar funding?  I guess at the end he only knows.  In the meantime, Microsoft invested $240 million, The Samwer brothers from Germany added millions to it, another $60 million from Billionaire Li Ka-shing, Hong Kong for a total of $716 million.  Facebook valuates itself as a $15 Billion company with around 500 million visitors every month.  Those numbers are mind boggling.  So, the question is, besides the amount of visitors mainly between 18-25 years of age, what exactly is it that makes facebook special to draw numbers like that? The other example is plentyoffish.com. Founder Mark Frind.  No investors, not a public traded company. Markus is basically a one-man band running a website that, by his latest traffic figures, is two and a half times bigger than digg.com. Digg.com gets 200 Million page views per month, but Markus says plentyoffish gets 500 Million: “The site(plentyoffish.com and Forums.plentyoffish.com) serves ~500 million pageviews a month and does so using 1 DB server and 1 Web Server which is a far cry from the industry standard of 300+ servers for a site of this size.” Digg uses 3 web servers and 8 small database servers.  Asked how many hours he puts into his site on a daily basis he replied: “It is around 2 hours of work a day and that stays steady because as the site grows i automate more and more. Some of that work I get my girlfriend to help me with, she is far more diplomatic when answering mean emails. From what I can tell i should have no problem running it by myself even if it gets to 3 times its current size.” Now he’s in the NY Times bragging about his $10M a year in profit: For anyone inclined to daydream about a Web business that would all but run itself, two other details may be of interest: Mr. Frind operates the business out of his apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia, and he says he has net profits of about $10 million a year. Given his site’s profitable advertising mix and independently verified traffic volume, the figure sounds about right. So what is the difficulty in obtaining money these days for an idea?  Does anybody listen anymore?  Does it depend on who you know (of course)?  Did those guys just show up at the right time at the right place? If so, let me know where I have to be… Any answers to this question is more than welcome.

Quit smoking progress Day 14.2:  #$%^&* Do over  :{

Day 110 - 2010

Wild life in the suburbs

Soccer practice was good, the boys are working really hard

BTW

I have nothing More on that

Quit smoking progress Day 13.1:   Still working on it  :{

Day 109 - 2010

It is MONDAY:  New energy new opportunities

Progress in the wall mural

Finished painting the bathroom, boy, there are too many corners and edges in this little room, but it looks good. 

It was fun watching the little ones playing softball.  There is so much more to learn, but they have a lot of fun doing it.  The parents, myself included, are a distraction by yelling out to them what to do, mass confusion all around.

BTW

job hunting More on that

Quit smoking progress Day 12.1:   Still working on it  :{

Day 108 - 2010

Fiddled too much already with websites.  However, I was able to manage to improve on the icons for the tabs.  Some of the templates don’t have the right icon, others are lousy renderings of gif files.

Need to finish my wall mural before I loose interest. picture to follow

Here is the beginning of it:

BTW

Roads I wonder why it is possible to have roads for high speed traffic in Europe which don’t crack or have pot holes the size of Manhattan, and not here.  It does not really matter if it is summer of winter, there are cracks in the road which eventually turn into pot holes.  Then there is a repair crew which simply pours tar to seal them.  Why not have the roads made solid in the first place?  Is it to create repeat customers?

Quit smoking progress Day 11.1:  Rats :{

Day 107 - 2010

GAME DAY - our first soccer game

It was a windy morning, chilly to say the least.  The field was definitely better than the practice field at Eagle Ridge. We started of with a dynamic offense which exploded during the first ten minutes and scored the leading goal.  Our defense displayed a solid wall and only allowed four shots on goal. Three of the shots successfully defended by our goal keeper.  Late in the first half the opposing team charged on the left side with a brilliant pass to the center and scored the equalizer.  We were outplayed on this play. Our team had eight shots on goal during the first half, displayed control over the mid field, passed the ball to the outside, and above all defended early and efficiently.

The second half was a mixture of bad calls, missed tackles, and not holding positions.  The opposite team had ten shots on goal versus our eight, four of which only happened during the last fifteen minutes.  During the first fifteen minutes we were doing well, the passes arrived at the right spot, the defense attacked early and with success.  We scored the leading goal, just to be called back as a controversial off site call by the referee.  After that, several bad tackle calls, corner kicks being called as goal kicks, or vice versa started to demoralizing the boys somewhat.  There seemed to be confusion on who is playing what position. We came to a screeching hold.  In the confusion the goalie missed an easy ball, and towards the end the defense allowed the opposing offense to do a solo run almost into the goal. 

Nevertheless, I think it was a good start.  The boys played well and implemented the passing game.  We will work on the positioning, passing, offense and defense positions during the next practice games.

Visit the site for more info about our team.

It was a sand storm.  All throughout the game the girls had to battle the wind.  They put up a good fight, it looks like they are coming together.

Visit the site for more information about the team.

The little one’s team tied at 0:0.  The pitching machine is still not working, but as long as the girls have fun that is all it counts.

BTW

Referees

Quit smoking progress Day 10.1:  what a struggle :{

Day 106 - 2010

It is the end of the week, the kids don't have school today. YARDWORK!!!!

Get the kids involved to clear out the front beds, put down mulch, plant new flowers and mow the lawn.

BTW

I have nothing

Quit smoking progress Day 9.1:  Still not getting the hang of it :{

Day 105 – 2010

Good game last night, the other team tied the game in the last inning.  The game was called due to time expired.

 

Tidbit from the Post Office.  Apparently the addresses are being verified and relabeled.  However, some of the labels are covering the address – where to go???

Oh boy, one of the rare occasions where I don’t know what happened.  I locked myself out of the car. !@#$%^&*((*&^%$#@@#$%^&**&^%$##$%^&**&^%$#@

Great soccer practice tonight.  I think the guys will do just fine.

BTW

Not today

Quit smoking progress Day 8.1:  Work it , work it <:o(>>

Day 104 – 2010

Design Tip for curtain rods.

Let’s say you want to put curtains up above your sliding glass doors to replace the boring vertical blinds but you don’t want to spend a lot of money on the curtain rod (yes they are expensive and never long enough).  Wooden once, 96” long, cost somewhere around $80, smaller once which extend out to up to 120” run about $40-$50.

Go to your local hardware store in the plumbing section and get a 1.5” or 2” ,or whatever thickness you want,  PVC pipe.  Find the end pieces you want as well as the rings (they sell them up to 1 5/8”).  In the wood trim, chair railing section you will find the hangers ( most likely you need to drill a hole in it, if you don’t have the tools, find a carpentry shop to get it fitted to the thickness of the PVC pipe).  Next go to your arts and craft store and get the matching plastic paint.  Cut the PVC pipe and spray paint it.  Total cost less than $50 for a curtain rod YOU like.

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A couple of days ago I mentioned the speeding of Police Cruisers.  Happened again today in a 35 per mile zone. Me 35, him who knows …

on the site strip but on the cell phone…

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Here is a cheap way to advertise.  Letter stickers at Staples, total cost $4.69, impact: priceless.

Here is the outlook for today:

Finished painting my living room, it looks great.  However, it was a balancing act to get to the middle walls because of the vaulted ceilings.

BTW

Programming One of my favorite things to do for the last 25 or so years.  It is a huge challenge to visualize code, yes there are visual programming tools out there, I use MS Visual Studio (FREE even if it is NOT WYSIWYG) or SeaMonkey (FREE)   for HTML layouts.  Ever since I switched to aspx, Visual Studio is indispensible. There are many (too many) experts on the internet with tips and tricks, etc. All of them are valuable resources since the approaches differ.  This is also a problem if you are doing some research because of the volume of suggestions or solutions (ASP101 has been my favorite resource for a long time now).  I found a good tip yesterday which made a lot of sense, then I tried to use it and discovered that even fifteen rows of code can have several bugs in it, in this case one of them was a simple misplacement of the end quote “/”.  I remember COBOL (kids read all about it, it is a historical artifact), one forgotten period and you were hunting for hours.  Debugging is much better now and mistakes like that are easily found. I want to get into iPhone or iPad programming, perhaps my HomeOrganizerPortal program will find use there. The apps are the ones who drive that whole phenomena of the ixxx generation, and there is no end to it. Although many apps turn out to be just a waste of time, they are cheap to try and spawn off more ideas of usage.  It is somewhat a joke that at $.99 for a piece of software people are complaining about this and that irrelevant to providing feedback to the developer -  functionality and debugging are the key words in getting it right the first time.

Quit smoking progress Day 7.1:  Still not getting the hang of it :{ but it is getting less I’m down to 7 a day.

Day 103 - 2010

The kids had a blast last night as softball.  They rallied to tie the game in the last inning.

The programming  ….  LOL

Yard work today, I’m afraid that practice is going to be rained out AGAIN.  Yard work is rained out so is the soccer practice.

BTW

Children’s obesity The White House recently put out a poll about children’s obesity and what can be done about it.  I read some of the comments and I’m shocked how little responsibility people take.  Always waiting for the government, or any other public organization to react.  Yes, this is were our money is supposed to work, our interests being protected, the future of our country taken care of, but it is not. Here is what you can do as a parent: Pack School lunches Create a healthy meal plan (tons of free information on the internet) Exercise about 20 minutes a day Plan: take the time to plan it out.  One hour on Sunday will save you time during the week DO IT – take responsibility for what you have created

Quit smoking progress Day 7.1:  Still not getting the hang of it, but it is less than yesterday   ;]   :{