26th
AUG
All I Got Was A Pen
Filed under Grown Up Stuff
Yesterday Aj and I took a big step in our lives. We signed closing papers on our house! The title company gave us copies of all the documents we were to sign a day ahead of time so we could look over them, and come prepared with questions — if we had any. We didn’t so the signing began.
The escrow officer we worked with was great. After signing the first document she chastized me because I didn’t sign with my middle initial. She made the whole experience very relaxing and pain free. I looked at my watch for the date a couple of times, and she said that she’d take my watch away from me if I did that too much 
Apparently she’s done that before.
When we were done, she told us to keep the pens as a “parting gift”. Woohoo, I just signed a mortgage and you are giving me a congratulatory cheap-o pen. Don’t I feel special. And that was it. No keys, no big explosions of fireworks and loud music and people dancing in the streets. Just us walking back to the car, each with a pen in our hands. How anti-climactic is that. No keys or nothing. When you buy a car you get to drive off with it, and I was looking forward to taking my new house out for a spin around the neighborhood, squeeling the tires some just for good measure.
Well, everything went through fine and Aj picked up the keys a little while ago. Yes folks, we are now homeowners. Man…I gotta buy a lawnmower.
23rd
AUG
Isn’t That Just Plucky
Filed under Technology, Tools
Considering I tend to take semi-pride in my level of geekiness, there is a considerable amount of new technologies and innovation that I find out from my wife. I find that fitting though, as I think she would make a wonderful research librarian. She loves doing research and finding new things online, and she uses that talent to find things that she thinks I might enjoy.
Well, today she found a new one for me, Pluck. From my limited time playing with it tonight, Pluck is a decent cross between Bloglines and del.icio.us. It’s similar to Bloglines in the way you can subscribe to and organize feeds. It’s similar to del.icio.us by the fact that you can also store links. It differs from del.icio.us because it stores the links in the folder structure used by the feeds rather than by tags.
You can run Pluck one of two ways. You can run it as a web app, like Bloglines and del.icio.us, or you can install an addin to IE or an extension to Firefox and run it as a browser app. I started out by trying it as a web app, but the interface operated rather slowly. Once I got the Firefox extension installed it is now working like they probably intended it to.
On my initial review I think that heavy users of del.icio.us will not like going back to folders. I never got into del.icio.us that much. I think I only have 10 links there. I am a moderate user of Bloglines, and my wife is a heavy user. While the interface is very similar, it might take me a while to consider leaving Bloglines for Pluck. All in all, Pluck is definitely worth a closer look.
11th
AUG
I’m In What?
Filed under God Type Things, Grown Up Stuff
As a kid you might hear that you are in trouble, in a great class, or in line to get your hair combed for lice by the school nurse. Well, where I (and my wife too) am is this place called escrow. That is right, we are in the process of buying a house. It’s been a long road since we first started looking at houses back in February. When we first started there were a bundle of houses that fit into our price range, but as spring came (and went) then summer came the houses we could afford became fewer and fewer, to where now I don’t think there are any.
Ours is a place in SW Dundee, and we are reciting one of our favorite phrases…we are just “holding it loosely.” This phrase originates with a pastor at church, Steve Fawver. We were in a small group with Steve, and he would suggest that we hold things loosely in regards to plans or expectations of the group. Aj and I have taken this on, in a sense, to the plans and expectations for our lives. Eeven though things continue to progress with the purchase, we are holding the timing and final outcome loosely. Even though we are in escrow, and the outcome seems to be certain, we are trying to be calm about it when the paperwork doesn’t go as quickly as we’d like it to. Even though I’m a pretty laid back guy, I can get frazzled when it comes to the timing of important things. The longer things stretch out the more stressed I become. Hold it loosely, hold it loosely, hold it loosely…and dog-gone-it, people like me!
11th
Add the Sense Up to Make Cents
Filed under Technology
So, I signed up for Google’s AdSense program a little while ago. I’ve talked with some others who have done this, and they have been very successful in making some serious cash with this. So yesterday I decided to take a look at see what “revenue” I had been able to generate since signing up. $0.06! Yes, that’s right…I have “earned” a whopping 6 cents! I went into this expecting to make next to nothing (and $0.06 fits into that category), but it seriously made me laugh to find that I had earned 6 pennies. It would cost them at least twice that just to mail a check to me, let alone the cost of printing and stationary for the check and envelope. If you want to know what Google has to say about “6 cents” click here. Looks like I can expect my first “payout” in about 5.3 years
9th
AUG
When Computer Games Go Too Far
Filed under General, Technology
This is just a little bit weird.
8th
AUG
Keeping Your Old Computer Useful
Filed under Technology
I saw this great post over at Tech Soup today. It talks about how to extend the usable life of your computer. I’m currently doing this with the computer that I’m trying to setup as a file/print server for us at home. I bought a Western Digital 120GB hard drive for $20 (after rebate), I had a spare AGP video card laying around at home, I just bought 512MB RAM on eBay (a nice increase from 64MB), and just added an ATA/133 PCI controller card from eBay. When it’s all said and done, I’ll probably have spent $80 to upgrade a 7+ year old computer and extend it’s life for at least another 3 years.
8th
What’s Your Major Malfunction?!?
Filed under Red Sox
Today, over at Surviving Grady, he posted a transcript of what R. Lee Ermey would say to the Red Sox concerning their current play. Good times, indeed.
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- jschwanz: tons of NASA links on that list, very cool to see them embrace it January 4, 2009
- jschwanz: list of gov't persons/offices on twitter http://bit.ly/RvYZ January 4, 2009
- jschwanz: Tweet Benefits: @timage bloged today about Figuring Out The Benefits Of Twitter. Here’s what he has to say.. http://tinyurl.com/78f5ev January 4, 2009
- jschwanz: I really like WordPress 2.7, the changes from 2.6 are excellent; quick edit and FTP-less plugin install are my two favorites at the moment January 4, 2009
- jschwanz: @timage nice post on using Twitter January 4, 2009