I was playing around with my Dreamhost control panel recently and noticed that there was a new one-click install for activeCollab. Being the curious sort that I am, I figured, “I’ve got unlimited domains, and practically unlimited disk space, what’s one more?” and installed it. It’s great. It’s still pre-1.0, but there are enough features, and it’s so well designed, that it’s very usable. I’ve started using it to keep track of the side project so when I’m bored and need something to tinker with, I can tinker towards something instead of just watching TV.\
Today, I added all the stuff Jen wants to do to the house (not surprisingly, that list is a lot bigger). I now get what all the GTD‘ers are talking about. It makes me feel a whole lot better seeing everything in sections, with proposed due dates and milestones. It now doesn’t seem impossible. There’s a lot to do, but with my handy-dandy copy of Home Improvement for Dummies, I think I can do a lot of it myself.\
So, if you have Dreamhost, give it a shot the one-click way. If you don’t, go download it and give it a shot (umm, you should be fairly comfortable installing things on your webserver and setting up databases… if not, go get a Dreamhost account – can you tell I like Dreamhost?).\
If you don’t have an account and want one, if you enter the promo code lawver_dreamhost when you sign up, you’ll get a 10% discount on any of the level one or two accounts. Why? Because I love Dreamhost and I think you will too.\
Yes, I know this post feels kind of spammy, but both things are really cool, and they both make me happy.
Author: Kevin Lawver
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Keeping Track of the Big Idea
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The boys
Random stories:\
I got tired and dizzy playing ring-around-the-rosie with Brian, so I transitioned us into a new game: I would dance in one spot while he ran around me. This morphed into us just dancing. At one point, I got really into the music and started getting crazy. I ran my fingers through my shoulder length hair and pulled upword, so my hair was standing on end with my fingers tugging to the beat. A moment later I looked down and saw B pulling on his short hair too, trying to dance the way I was.\
Brian turned down a chocolate chip granola bar for an apple & cinnamon rice cake at snack time. The boy is whack. Maybe he pulled too hard on his hair.\
Max started and finished his first fictional chapter book today, all 235 pages. Hurray! This makes me deliriously happy. -
Hi!
I got into a minor car accident on the way home from the store yesterday. Everyone is fine, though I was a little sore after a few hours and had trouble sleeping since I couldn’t lay on my side. (Brian didn’t suffer any effects at all and Max and Kevin weren’t with me. Really, Mom and Dad, we are fine.) It was a relatively minor accident, but I did end up with one bruise- on the top of my foot opposite-from-the-impact-side. Weird, huh?\
Honestly, the worst part was waiting the hour and a half it took for the police to show up so the cop could file his report and I could take my bored, hungry, tired, and cranky 2 year old and my melting popsicles home. After a few minutes, I popped open that box of popsicles and let Brian chow down. The accident was totally my fault. I stopped at the stop sign, looked both ways, didn’t see anyone coming, and then went. But apparently there was someone driving where I wanted to be, cuz he smacked right into me. I even got a ticket, which I am not going to contest.\
Oh but really, the worst part is the damage done to my van. I love my van. It’s mangled near the driver’s side door and front wheel and and groans and complains about being opened and closed. All four panels on the driver’s side need to be fixed. We seem to have taken care of the paperwork and insurance without too much hassle. The insurance adjuster freaked me out by “thanking me for my honesty” and I “helped him do his job more easily.” I was all, WTF does that mean? Kevin tried to explain that he is probably used to people being extra verbose and circumspect. Whatever. I just hope we can still afford to send our kids to college after our rates go up.\
The other driver works for a car dealership and was driving a customer’s car. Oopsie. I hope things are ok for him at work. He was nice. Very, “These things happen” and “This is a dangerous intersection, they need a light here.” He reminded me a little of my dad. About three weeks ago, he (the other driver) was rear-ended and his personal car was totaled. Bad luck for him. I sent him a cookie basket at work. Poor guy.\
Mmmm, now I want cookies. Who has one for me? -
Wading Through The Inbox Sea
The final tally was 1,100 unread e-mails this morning. I’m a quarter of the way through, and it’s kind of shocking how many of them are completely useless and not worth reading.
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So Ends the Vacation, Not With a Bang, But Crushed Ice!
I took most of last week, and today off from work. Did we go anywhere? Nope. Did we do anything exciting? Not really. It was mostly to catch up on all the house stuff that got put on the back shelf while I’ve been either out of town or working ridiculous hours. Oh yeah, and I took a couple naps too.\
Although we didn’t go anywhere, we did get a bunch of stuff done:- I bought a new vacuum cleaner, put it together and we “vacuumed the hell out of everything”.
- The boys and I cleaned up all the toys and stuff on the main floor and put everything away.
- We cleaned up the basement (again, all the toys put away, and I think we vacuumed).
- Donated a bunch of baby stuff to Goodwill
- Recycled two computers and a broken monitor
- Got the oven fixed (woo-hoo, I’m makin’ brownies!)
- Got the ice maker fixed
- Made a lot of progress with ruby on rails
- Spent a lot of time with Brian just playing. I love this age. Both of my kids skipped the “terrible twos”, and I’m very happy about it. Brian is fun to be around, happy and loves to play games. He chases us around the house, tries to tickle us (I have to get him saying, “tickle, tickle, tickle” recorded), and then will sit and cuddle much longer than Max ever would. The kid’s a real joy to be around.
- Took the boys to Dairy Queen
- And, I let my e-mail pile up. I checked it once a day through web mail, but unless it felt “life threatening”, I didn’t respond, and I didn’t even open most of it. On Thursday, I pried open the laptop and downloaded most of it so it wouldn’t pile up on the server, but I still have almost ~~400~~ 500 unread messages on the server, and about that many sitting on the laptop. Tomorrow morning is going to be fun.\
It’s back to work tomorrow.
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Progress on Rails
I’ve been playing with Ruby on Rails (I wrote about my initial adventure already) in the basement while watching Big Brother and tonight, I’ve actually made real progress!!\
Maybe it’s being on vacation and not compulsively checking mail every five minutes, but I got the login stuff working, and I can actually create real records, submit them and then see them! I’ll work on updating them tomorrow night, and then on to the second model.\
When I get closer to being sure that I’ve got something I’ll actually launch, I’ll spill more details, but I think it could be a lot of fun. It’s built around something that’s really popular, but totally underserved by both large companies and the startups considered to be in the whole “Web 2.0” thing. Hopefully, it’ll fill a niche that’s not been filled yet, and I won’t make a mess of it. So far, so good.\
Maybe this would go smoother if I actually learned Ruby… -
Not Another Teen Show
Kevin edited the actual Veronica Mars promo into my post below to make it even easier and more tempting for you to watch. Isn’t he fabulous? What a nice husband.\
And now that you’ve all seen the promo, and I know you all have, you can believe me when I say: THIS ISN’T A MELODRAMATIC TEENY-BOPPER SHOW like Dawson’s Creek or 90210. I seriously think that having the lead character in high school (now she’s in college), made pimping this show that much harder. The masses have written it off without even seeing it. But you can become one of the enlightened! Say no to mass-ly writing-off this show. Watch it for yourself this Fall on Tuesdays on the new network, The CW.\
P.S. Hee, I got Tim interested through the promo. And his wife watches the show, so she should have been the one to talk him into watching it. Go internet! -
PayPal Seeks DOM Nerd for Unobtrusive Servitude
I got an e-mail from Steve Ganz asking if anyone knew any javascript wizard who need a job. I met Steve at SXSW and he’s swell (he’s also on the microformats discussion list, which is also a +1 in my book). He’s looking for a javascript expert to help take PayPal out of the 90’s and into today (his words, not mine).\
If you’re interested, go bug him. And none of you guys who work with me better leave, or I’ll hunt you down. -
Veronica Mars
Yes, it’s that time again. Time to start pimping the awesomely awesome Veronica Mars. Here is the great promo that was shown at Comic Con a few weeks ago. It really shows what the episodes are like, unlike most commercials made by Evil Promo Bastards. (You can spare a minute, right? It’s not like you’re working hard right now. And I promise I won’t tell anyone that you took this quick break.) Clicky clicky clicky so you can lookie lookie lookie or, just watchie watchie:
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Orcagirl Reels In The Shots
One of my other new favorite Flickrers, Orcagirl takes spectacular (and frequent) pictures of killer whales. They’re not always this dramatic, but they’re always worth looking at. It’s like getting a slideshow from National Geographic every day. Enjoy!