Beau Jackson

Now here’s the kind of picture you don’t usually see of yourself:

my brain

It’s grown quiet around here.  I haven’t had a lot to say, and what I little I have had to say has been said in one or two sentence blurbs on facebook.  Have you ever wondered what makes a “killer app” in the computer world?  I think it’s the ability to waste time.  The app remains “killer” until somebody finds a business case for it.  Think of: e-mail, instant messaging, web-browsing, etc.  I think facebook is on to something.  It’s a great place to waste time (particularly with Mafia Wars).  I’m not sure I can imagine a business case for it, but I suspect someday a few years from now, everybody at work will be required to have a facebook account (or something similar).

Following the theme of my post title, I’m shifting subjects.  I suppose most people are familiar with “word clouds” or “tag clouds”.  These are the little clusters of words in different colors and fonts and orientations that graphically represent some set of text – maybe a document, maybe all the tags on a blog, etc.  Turns out there’s a place you can make your own for free called Wordle.  And just to show that I can still string two thoughts together, Wordle is a great place to waste time too.  Just for fun, here’s a word cloud of this post:

word cloud

Jumping again, I’m a failure as a mechanic.  I just though everyone should know that.  I replaced the starter on my tractor…tractor still doesn’t work.  I replaced the fuel filter on my lawn mower.  Lawn mower still runs roughly.  I hate cars, and I’m thinking about adding tractors and lawn mowers to that list.

I had to travel for work for the first time in several years (first time ever for this employer).  The trip was high-stress with a customer that was in crisis mode.  We got things fixed – all’s well that end’s well…but the flight back home sure sucked.  Our flight was delayed by 3 1/2 hours, consequently we missed our connection, consequently we spent the night in Minneapolis.   I think I logged 50 hours of work over three days, and I think I logged about 10 hours of sleep for the same three days.  Ugh.  Even in the Army they gave us four ours a day.  Some of that was my own fault of course, and some of it was just not sleeping well away from home.  File me under “not a business traveler” I guess and call it done.

Enough rambling.  Time for bed.

Ok, so I’ve been quiet for a long time.  I’d like to say that’s only partly my fault.  I had actually intended to post over a week ago, but when I tried to login to WordPress…nada.

I searched for a fix and found lots of suggestions, none of which worked.  Finally I tried renaming my plugins folder and voila!  I can login again!.

Turns out the real problem was a plugin I use(d) called fGallery.  Well, not using it anymore!  So, for the time being if you click on the Pictures link at the top, you’ll get a lovely little 404.  I’ll see about finding a replacement for fGallery in the near future.

So, I’m officially in the web hosting reseller business.  Allena and I took on a couple of new projects, and the people needed hosting, and since we were going to have to set it all up for them anyway, we figured we’d be better off becomming resellers.

So, if any of you loyal readers out there (heck, I’m not picky – I’ll take the disloyal ones too!) need web hosting, or want to change your web host, well just drop me a line and I’ll set you up with a good deal.

I don’t usually blog about work, because it seems like it can turn around and bite you on the butt if you ever say anything uncomplimentary. This is worth sharing though.

There are a couple of people that I work with that have been practical jokers. Recently they both went on vacation at the same time (coincidence). Here’s the payback: