jeffpollard.net

I guess the carrots aren't working..

The carrots must not be working. My eyes are failing me again. But, the good news is that I'm headed to the optomitrist tomorrow morning. Yay! I love new contacts..It's so neat how everything INSTANTLY becomes so crisp and clear. Amazing.

So, because of that, I'm off to bed early...err..earlier than usual. Have a great Friday!

Hello? Cold? Are you out there somewhere?

It looks very strange outside. It's kinda foggy. But, it doesn't really look like fog. It actually looks like it's snowing. But I know it's not. how do I know this? Because I got hot wearing long-sleeves today and ended up just wearing a t-shirt for most of the day! Hello? It's the end of November. It's supposed to be cold..you know...snow, ice, sleet..COLD???? This always reminds me of our 6th grade science class where they taught us that if global warming continues, winter will be as warm as fall and spring. Jeez, I never thought I'd actually see it happen.

Unfortunatley, Olivia has come down with a cold. She's pretty snotty. So, send her a get-well email, if you have time.

I decided to start doing different things with my webcam. Mostly because I'm kinda tired of it staring me in the face everyday. Not quite sure what I should do with it, but I'm open to suggestions.

I knew yesterday was gonna be huge for CustomTacos. When I went to bed last night, it felt like Christmas Eve. i knew I was going to wake up and be able to check the stats to see how much traffic the site actually got. Normal days for the site have been around 10-12,000 accesses. Yesterday, it was around 50,000 accesses. Pretty exciting. It looks like things have calmed down a bit today, so i would suspect that I'll be back down around 15-20,000. One thing I must explain is that when I say 15-20,000 accesses, I don't mean that 15,000 people visited the site. You see, when you visit any given website, your web browser downloads all of the graphics and the page itself from the web server. Each of those files that your browser downloads is considered an access. I suppose a better gauge of traffic would be to count the number of page hits instead. In this case, I went from around 450-500 page hits to around 1100. That came out to about 430mb of data transferred from my server. This is a little alarming, considering that my monthy transfer allowance is 8gigs. I guess if it gets out of hand, I may have to look into hosting some of the images somewhere else.

Come one, come all!

Something happened today that I've been waiting a while for. No, I didn't get another raise or promotion, or win the lottery, of spontaneously find $24,938 on 12th street behind the green dumpster. No, CustomTacos finally caught the attention of some 4x4 Tacoma owners over at the Tacoma Territory website. Amazing. And they came. They came in packs. (Don't bother finishing that phrase, Brian) And best of all, they played rather nicely with the 2wd gang that's already regularly interacting in the discussion forum. Ya know, looking back on it, I'm kinda glad it took the 4x4 guys that long to come to the site. It allowed the 2wd guys to establish themselves and get to know one another. Even though I'd love the site to be equal when it comes to off-roaders Vs. lowered crowd, I have a feeling that the site will probably always have a slight lean towards the latter...mostly because of my interests. But, I could be totally wrong. One thing is that I've already been told that maintaining a peaceful Tacoma website with both lowriders and 4x4 enthusiasts is not going to be possible. Just you wait and see.

Work. Did I go to work today? I think so. Did I do anything? Not really.

Olivia helped me make a stunning discovery at dinner tonight. She said it best: "Your brain works on a 'need to know' basis." What she meant by this is that I can sit here and spit out the model numbers of many SCSI cards that Adaptec has on the market right now. I can spout off almost every model Macintosh ever made, along with some (usually pretty close) specifications. I can write webpages (with ONE HAND!) in raw HTML code and envision how the page will look before I actually view it. But I can't remember what I had for dinner last week. I can't remember exactly what day is my parent's anniversary. Sometimes I think I'm losing my mind. Then I spout off the dimmensions of the wheel and tire combo on my truck. Wheels: 17x7 w/ +42mm offset. Tires: 205/40-ZR17.

Do I really have to go back?

I feel like a school kid on the last day of summer vacation. I know what's coming tomorrow morning. I'll wake up tired. I'll eventually drag my butt outta' bed and into the shower. I'll woof down a bowl of cereal and then hit the road. Work will be complete chaos. Something will most likely be wrong. A server is out of whack or some other catastrophe will tarnish any hopes of a peacful morning.

Ahh..but you know what? I kinda enjoy it.

Today was...sortof productive, as I expected. I took yet another stab at my bumper. No dice. I chopped away at my fender where the bumper wasn't quite fitting right. It kinda helped, but didn't solve the problem. It still just doesn't quite fit right. Strike three would mean "You're out" to most. Not me. But it definitely wasn't a "third time's a charm" experience.

I did do some minor updates to CustomTacos, but not as much as I had hoped. One thing I did that actually wasn't planned is the addition of a desktop wallpaper page. Too bad I won't be able to get an accurate reading of how many people actually download the images.

Looong Weekend..but not over

*burp* Here I am. This has been an awesome extended weekend. And I guess it's not over yet, thankfully. I've still got tomorrow, although I'm not quite sure what I'm gonna do with it. Perhaps I should make a list. I enjoy making lists. And they always keep me on track. For example, I'll share with you my to-do list I made for working on my truck today:

Make sure my rear lug nuts are snug


Install my new front bumper and valence


Shave down my front bump stops a little more


Install my old headlights

You can see how much progress I made. I was able to pull my bump stops out, but my new hack saw wasn't much of a match for the hard rubber bump stop. As far as the bumper is concerned, It's gonna need some more work...and probably the original side mounting brackets from the bumper, too.

Here's my tentative to-do list for tomorrow:

Work on some Resurrection Auto web stuff


Clean out my receipts drawer (yes, I keep all of my receipts!)


Do some general CustomTacos maintenance


Call a few aftermarket companies to inquire about CustomTacos advertising/partnership

Hmmm..Can't think of any others. Most importantly, I've gotta watch the Price is Right. It's a tradition.

Christmas buying is finally well under way after some normal communication frusterations. It seems like it happens every year. Either two people buy the same thing for somebody or the person buys the un-given gift before they receive the gift. It's hard to prevent it from happening. Good communication is the only remedy. If I was a master programmer, I'd create a web system for my family to use that would keep track of what everybody is giving everybody for Christmas. So, for example, if you were logged in as me, I could see what everybody is giving everybody else, but I couldn't see what others are giving me.

Woo HOO! I'm Free!

Ahhhh, it's vacation time at last. I went ahead and told everybody that I was taking Monday off, too so that I'd have a 5-day weekend instead of that measly 4-day thing I would have had. Actually, since they told us all to go home at noon today, it's really a five-and-a-half-day vacation. Not too shabby. I'm looking forward to it.

Ok, so I've got this really awesome, brand new 4x4 Tacoma bumper & valence that I won on eBay. I forget if I mentioned on here that I tried to install it last weekend with no luck. It turns out that Toyota changed the bumper mounts on the Tacoma between the 97 and 99 model years. Bummer. So, I used one of my favorite online junkyard networks (Junkyarddog.com) and put in a parts request for both right and left bumper mounts for my new bumper. This is a great service...and if you're ever looking for a part for your car, I'd HIGHLY suggest using it. It takes your request and then forwards it out, nationwide, to it's network of salvage yards and they contact you if they have the part you need. So, I received an email first thing this morning from some junk yard in New York. They have the brackets I need..but they wanted $39 EACH for them. That's $80! So, I decided to call a local Toyota dealership to see if I could get them cheaper. Nope. Toyota wanted $41.99 each for them! But, I figured that I already have the bumper and I might as well finish what I've started. So, I decided to purchase them locally from the Toyota dealership, just in case they're not the correct parts. Taking it up the tailpipe again, but..It'll be worth it. When I got home with the new brackets, I held them up to my frame and it looks like they're gonna be a perfect fit. I won't have time to install them until Saturday.

We're heading out for Portsmouth tomorrow morning for Thanksgiving. It'll be nice to spend time with my parents and grandparents. I don't get to see them very often. Special thanks to Eric and Kelly for taking care of Gizmo while we're gone. Hopefully Gizmo will decide to be nice to Eric after this. Right, Gizmo? Oh wait, I forgot. He hasn't figured out how to get on the Internet yet.

Take the goods with the bads..

You always hear people say "Take the good with the bad", right? Well, I'm taking it. Taking it up the tailpipe.

The past few days have been pretty stressful at work. Lately, it seems as though there are LOTS of server problems (some self-inflicted, some uncontrolable). But, it all adds up to frusterated users who come screaming to me about their problems. Truthfully, I really want to help them. But, in most cases, there's not much I can do. It all comes back into the hands of our network guys. Which shouldn't be a problem. Except when they're too busy to take the time to solve an issue completely. What I'm getting at is this: There's no closure. A problem happens. The network crew "looks into it". A week later, I ask if the problem has been fixed. Has the project been completed? Usually, the answer is something along the lines of "Oh, no, I never got to the bottom of it, I got distracted with something else." Now, I gotta give our network crew some credit. They work their asses off. I'm starting to wonder that there just isn't enough of them to get the job done correctly and in a timely manner. Every time I bring this up to others in my department, I feel like I'm just bitching and moaning. For example, I'd love to see our help desk do more than answer the phone, ask if they've rebooted, and then log the call into the system for a tech to take care of. Then what, may I ask, is a help desk for?? I've always though of a halp desk as tier I support, and if they don't know the answer, they pass it off to tier II support (the techs). This clearly isn't the case and people are starting the get frusterated. My biggest frustration is that there's no effort being made to learn. Learn why a Mac stalls for a few minutes when it can't find a server at startup. Learn how to locate a print queue and check to see if it's stopped. Basic stuff...not rocket science. Apathy. It runs deep @ Martin.

Here's some AWESOME news: I've got center caps on my passenger-side wheels! Nope, they didn't magically show up tonight. I ordered them through a local custom shop that promised me they'd get the right ones. Yeh, I had heard THAT line before. But, much to my surprise, I called today and the dood on the phone described the center caps he was holding as having a "chrome door knocker" in the center of the cap. That's it! I rushed out the door at 5:30 and drove halfway to BFE to their store. They only charged me $14.95 each for them, of which I will demand that Firestone refund in full ASAP.

The truck is driving awesome. The only bad thing? It's loud. With my exhaust ending just behind the cab, it's really loud in there. I guess I'll be needing to look into extending my exhaust (somewhere!) in the near future.

Tomorrow's Wenesday. Hopefully, we'll get off work early, although I have a feeling that I might stick around and get some stuff done.

Hey man..is this thing on?

Whew. What a wacky weekend. It was definitely NOT ordinary. But, I'm glad. Otherwise, life would be boring. And my blog would be boring because I'd just ramble. Much like I am right now.

The big event of the weekend was the meteor shower Sunday morning. Eric and Kelly came over at 4am and we headed through the intense fog up to Patrick Henry High School in Ashland to view the shower. The fog ended up being so think that we couldn't see the sky very well. It didn't help that there was a strobe light beacon nearby that flashed once per second. I took the one of the agency's DV camcorders with us to try to capture some falling stars, but all I got was the audio of us all talking about random stuff while we froze for almost two hours. Oh, and me acting like I was in the Blair Witch Project (click the photo at right for that bit of nonsense).

Today was highly-productive day for me. After sleeping it off until noon or so, I worked on some long-overdue freelance web projects while I watched Jeff Gordon win his 4th Winston Cup Championship. Amazing. I also made some progress with some odds and ends with CustomTacos.

Now that I have the truck back, my work schedule will finally be back to normal and I'll get an extra half hour of sleep every day. Yay!

Oh, by the way, for a complete (beginning to end) look at my new C-notch on my truck, check out the photo gallery I made. Pay special attention to the last few photos of the finished product. I'm EXTREMELY happy with the quality of the work. Shawn did a remarkable job and it was well-worth waiting the extra few days.

It's baaaack...

Well, I picked up the truck from Shawn tonight. It felt REALLY weird to drive it again. It drove pretty well, though. It was too dark to shoot any photos tonight, so look for some tomorrow. The notch looks AMAZING.

More to come...

If you build it..they probably won't come

Well, the iMovie training class was a total flop as far as I'm concerned. It's not that it didn't go well, because Tommy and I did a good job explaining how to use the software. No, the problem is that hardly anybody showed up. What's frsuterating is that we've had TONS of people asking us to teach them how to edit their own movies..and when we finally hold a class, nobody shows up! So, I'm through with trying to hold training classes for a while. As far as I'm concerned, if people ask me how to use use iMovie, I'll simply tell them they should have been in the training class on November 15th. Now, it doesn't help that the Agency held it's annual United Way auction yesterday. But, that really shouldn't have interfered with it too much.

I came home from work totally exhausted and took about an hour and a half nap. Much needed. In fact: more needed.

Did you know that there's going to be a huge (once every 33 years) meteor shower this weekend? Yeh, I heard about this on the radio the other day. Early Sunday morning, Earth will be passing through the tail of some comet or something (I dunno, Jennifer and Dad are the space nuts in the family. Maybe they can correct me). Olivia and I had already started talking about getting up around 4am to watch the shower and now it looks like we're going to get together with Eric and his wife to watch it. They say that hundreds and thousands of meteors will fall every hour. Should make for a good show. Perhaps I'll take the Agency's DV camcorder out and try to capture some of it.

And, for those of you wondering about the truck: I finally called Shawn yesterday to find out the status. He got to wisdom teeth out late last week, which kept him from getting much work done over the weekned, and then two more out either Monday or Tuesday. Poor guy. I told him that I understood that he had to get his wisdom teeth out. He says basically all he needs to do is put the bed back on it and it's done.

Quake'in it..broadband-style

Folks, if you were on the Internet somewhere between Ricmond and DC last night around midnight, you probably felt a disturbance in the 'net. You see, packets were flying wildly between those two places, carrying messages like "Woo hoo!" and the sound of gunfire and rocket blasts. Brian and I finally both freed up our busy nightly schedules and Quake'd it out. It was pretty cool, except I think we have some bugs to work out. We're gnna try again tonight using my server as a dedicated server. If you're interested in getting in on the action, let me know.

Work was crazy as usual. We have the next batch of leased computers getting ready to go back. Not exactly sure how many it is, but we'll be getting at least 5-10 new PowerBooks and 20-30 desktops to replace those whose time has come. What a pain. The good side is that I'll probably go ahead and upgrade to a new 667mhz Titanium with a 48gig drive. Schweet.

Well, our big iMovie training class is today. Tommy and I have been working hard on preparing for it. I hope they get somthing out of it. I sincerely think that most of our creative people are thirsty for this kind of knowledge and making movies is right up their alley.

I'm a real dork

With work being a little slower than it has been recently today, I made some strategic phone calls to try to solve some ongoing issues and make some contacts for CustomTacos.com.

First, I called SuperBuy tires and demanded that they refund my money. The reson I use the word demand? Because I've called twice before today and asked that my money be refunded for the center caps that they never shipped me. And the reason they never shipped me? Because they received the wrong ones from Enkei. Big surprise.

I then called Enkei direct, got a part # for the center caps I need, called a local warehouse who referred me to a local shop, who ordered them from the local warehouse. He says they should be here in 4-5 days. To make sure he ordered the correct ones, I emailed him a close-up photo of one. We'llhow this works. I'm pessimistic..but I have good reason to be. When you've gotten the run-around this many times for such a simple request you tend to get this way.

So, then I decided to call EL Prototypes and LC Engineering (both are aftermarket Toyota performance parts shops/makers). I didn't get anybody, but someone SHOULD be calling me in the next few days. I'm trying to make some contacts with vendors to work out some kind of banner-swapping or partnership.

So then I got a wild hair and called McMullen Publishing, the company that publishes Minitruckin' magazine. When the operator answered, I asked to be connected to Mike Finnegan. Mike Finnegan is an associate editor of Mini Truckin' and just happens to have one of the baddest Tacomas on the scene. He is admired not only because he works for the bible of the mini truck community, but also because his truck is pretty awesome. To my amazement, he answered the phone. Panic ensued. I felt like a 13-year-old kid asking a girl to the middle school dance. I'm pretty sure I sounded like a complete dork. I told him that I just completed a website that was right up his alley. I proceded to explain the site to him, and then gave him the URL. I also asked if he would give it a plug in the next issue of the magazine, to which he agreed. I then asked him if he would mind being the featured truck of the month next month on CustomTacos. He agreed to that and emailed me some photos of his truck. He was really down to earth and denied that he's sortof an icon to other Tacoma owners. He said that he would drop in on the site from time to time and chat with everybody.

I got off the phone amazed at what I had just done. Thinking about it now, it seems pretty dumb that I was nervous about talking to him because I know he's just another person like you or me...but it's strange. It was like meeting Leo Laporte. There's nothing really special about Leo (other than he's really nice and smart), but I had basically the same when I met him the other weekend. Anybody else have any insight on this?

Tonight, Adobe's fine product, GoLive made my life a living hell by stalling in the middle of uploading my index.shtml to CustomTacos.com, resulting in a 0 kilobyte file on the server, a locked up and unresponsive GoLive program, and no backup. *&^$#%@^#%$&*())&^%$#%%$^^&&* Luckily, I had another copy of the index that was close enough to the current version that I modified to use. Lesson #194: Backup your website every other day.

At long last!

Here we go.

My sincerest (is that even a word??) apologies for not posting very in-depth entries for the past couple weeks. To be rather honest, CustomTacos completely took over my life. But guess what? I'm here now. Tired, still..but here.

So this weekend was the finale to my recent custom-truck-website-building insomnia. Brian came down from NoVa to hang out with me and Mike. We played Quake 3 Arena, traded some MP3s, and oh yeh, worked on CustomTacos.com.

friday night, I stayed up all night until 7:15 am putting on the final polish so that it would be ready in time for my November 10th deadline. I caught about 4 hours of sleep, then we woke up and went to Waffle House for breakfast. Yum! Then, we spayed up until about 4am Saturday into Sunday morning, and I caught about another 5 or 6 hours of sleep.

So, the site is up and I'm really happy. It's really gratifying to go on my site and see people who have never met asking each other questions and interacting. Very cool. And as with all things, the site isn't done. It'll never be done. I've already got a to-do list longer than the original idea list for launching the site. I'm shooting for the stars, baby! Even if you're not into trucks, I invite you to take a look around over there. You may find some interesting conversations.

Another exciting event today was my bumper and valence arriving. YAY! It looks like the guy whom I purchased it from on eBay doesn't know how to properly package a CHROME bumper so that it doesn't get scratched, but after looking closer at it, I think it'll be fine. It seems strange the have a new bumper for a truck that's not even in my zip code right now.

Speaking of which: everybody keeps asking me: "Did you get your truck back yet?" No. And you know what? I'm really not worried about it. olivia thinks I'm being too passive or something about this, but my take on it is just this: If I continually call him and bug him about it, he'll most likely rush the job and not do his absolute best work. So, I'm taking a patient, hands-off approach. We're making it Ok with one car, so why get upset about it. This is where I apply my "Good things come to those who wait" theory. Try it sometime. It works. :)

When all else fails..

Well, I had this big plan to post a big review of my weekend..but I seem to have run out time and energy. Figures, right?

It was an exhausting weekend, and I promise I'll tell you all about it tomorrow.

Until then, take a look around CustomTacos.com

Not quite my intended audience, but...

It seems like the closer we get to the holiday season the busier everything gets. Work gets busier, traffic gets a little heavier. Or perhaps this is all just my imagination.

I found out yesterday that at least one person from the Agency has checked out this site. I guess this means I can't say bad things about those studio artists anymore...Hi Jill! So in the spirit of Jim Carey in Ace Ventura, Pet Detective: "Go ahead...snoop around!" They may even find out things about me that they don't know.

So, it's Friday. I've got roughly 24 hours to live up to my promise of having CUstomTacos ready to roll. I'm close. I suppose that I can't expect to have everything perfect for the first day, but then again, how many people are really going to visit on the first day? We'll see.

It's good, it's good

Well, things haven't gotten any better, but they haven't gotten worse, either, so that's good.

So here we are. Thursday. I've only got tonight and tomorrow night to get everything into some kind of working order on the site. I'm glad I set a deadline for myself because it's made me work that much harder to make sure it's done on time. And, with any project like this, it probably won't be exactly where I want it on opening day. There are always things to be improved. I do wish I could find a good user profile system that allows users to create a little profile with the specs of their truck and upload images of it. I'm very jealous of the Owner Profile system that Street Source magazine has in place. It's perfect. Perhaps I should just email them and ask what they use. I have a feeling it's something they developed themselves.

Drowning in my own...work

I've come to the stunning conclusion -now get this- that I'm drowning in my own work. Imagine that. I'm about two projects behind at work (mostly Intranet stuff) and three projects behind in freelance web work. And, believe it or not, this is something new. Sure, I was busy before. But my head was at least "above water". This is (yet again) one of those times when "if there were only a couple more hours in the day" applies.

I just keep promising myself "It'll get better..It'll get better..."

Oh wait. Where'd it go?

Progress continues on the truck:

Things are shaping up nicely. Shawn says the truck should be ready late this week. He keeps apologizing for it taking so long, but I'd rather he take his time and do a good job than rush through it. I'm pretty excited, though.

My Pal Leo

What a weekend. Sorry about the lack of updates since Thursday but it's been a busy few days.

Friday was yet another crazy day at work since I was the lone Mac guy. Tommy was out both Thursday and Friday moving into his new house. Even though I'm pretty sure he doesn't visit here, congrats to him.

Olivia and I stayed up super late (4am) Friday night into Sat. morning. She was working on her halloween costume for a party that we were to attend Sat night and I was working vigorously on CustomTacos. I spent no less than 5 hours trying to solve a programming problem that affects 5 or so pages of the site. There goes the 80/20 rule that Steve Hanes always trues to teach us.

We were supposed to leave Saturday at around 11am to head up to Northern VA to stay the weekned with Brian. We didn't end up leaving until 2pm. The main purpose in heading up there this weekend was to go to the CompUSA to meet TechTV's Leo Laporte on Sunday. He has originally been scheduled to come and meet fans the weekend after Sept. 11, but canceled.

So, Sat. night we went and got some food and swizle sticks at Friday's and then went and saw Monster, Inc. at a nearby theater. AWESOME movie. I really enjoyed it. It never ceases to amaze me what the people at Pixar come up with. Just as with Toy Story (I and II), there was an "intro" cartoon before the real movie. This had us all rolling in the aisles and received a round of applause from the entire audience when it was over. Amazing. The movie just plain rocked. Go see it. Trust me.

Sunday morning, we woke up at around 11 to head over to the Fairfax CompUSA. There was already a line almost out the door when we got there at 12:30. Leo arrived at 1:00 and took his place signing autographs and taking photos with fans. I brought my Airport Base Station for Leo to sign. When he saw that's what I wanted him to do, his eyes lit up and he said, "Those things rock, don't they!" He signed my Airport, "Jeff- Airport Rocks! Jeo Laporte". He also signed a post card and one for Olivia that read: "For Olivia- Sorry about Jeff Leo Laporte" He was just as friendly in person as I expected, if not more. I really can't put it into words, but it was just so neat to finally have met him.

We spent the rest of Sunday at a local park on the Potomac and at Brian's watching "Swordfish".

I decided to take today off from work, so if you don't see me on my webcam, that's why. I'll be spending the entire day concentrating on making leaps and bounds on CustomTacos. My goal is to have the site up and rolling on Saturday. Should be interesting.

Recklessness

I'm crazy. I'm reckless. But I'm good at it.

I keep all of my finances organized in Quicken Deluxe. In fact, I don't even touch my checkbook except when I absolutely have to write a check, and I never ever use the ledger in there anymore. Quicken just makes it easier for me. Especially since I can synchronize it with my Visor and carry it with me everywhere.

Anyhoo, I opened Quicken last night for the first time in more than a month. It warned me "You haven't launched Quicken in over a month. You may want to check your system clock to make sure it's correct"

"No, Quicken, I don't think I'll be checking my system clock tonight. There's nothing wrong with my clock; I'm just a reckless fool."

The funny thing is: even after not checking it for that long, it still balanced out to the penny. Amazing.

Well, here we are. The day after Halloween. The world is still here, and that's a good thing. And I've got a deadline to meet. Progress is still continuing on CustomTacos, but as with any web project I play with, there always seem to be huge roadblocks in the way. Roadblocks such as: How do you include a "exec cgi=/foo.cgi" in a .php page?? Can you? I spent more than two hours researching that problem last night. If any of you are PHP geniuses, please chime in. I'm stuck.