Flash Burrito!

Safeway Redeems

2011-03-10T11:22:00.000-08:00

Most people know I shop at Safeway and Trader Joe's. I utilize the club card and tend to buy things that are discounted. The other day I noticed that two purchases weren't discounted like I had expected. Now, I was fairly certain about the advertised prices, but then, sometimes it's hard to be absolutely sure. It added up to $4.50 that I overpaid. This seemed over the line of what I was willing to walk away from. The problem could have been:

They listed the prices wrong and semi intentionally let the goods be bought at a higher price.
They were in the process of restocking and the shelves were out of sync with the system
I was out to lunch, misread the labels, or otherwise misremembered the advertised price.

In this case, both items were steeply discounted, hence I was pretty sure I remembered correctly. Although #2 was the likely scenario, I wrote a sternly, if not accusatory email via safeway.com's contact link. I left all my personal info so that I might have a better hope of hearing back. Sure enough they responded within 24 hours apologizing. They told me they contacted the store and that I should do the same. So today I head down to there with my receipt. The assistant manager seemed a bit concerned when I mentioned why I was there. It was the type of look where she realized it would reflect poorly on their report card. She pointed me to customer service who also seemed slightly put out. Now, I think her rationale was different. Her instructions seemed to be that she must refund the money regardless, so I was being perceived as a freeloader or someone taking advantage of the system. Regardless, she gave me the money back in cash and sent me on my way. Both were very professional and courteous.

What I would have preferred was to confirm whether or not the previous day's labels were still being advertised or not. Or, at least to know that the prices that were in my head had been posted recently. I'm don't think they checked.

So, my first impulse when I felt cheated was to never go back to Safeway again. In reality this would have worn off in a couple months. Now I feel I might lay low for a bit anyhow, so as not to be known as the guy who caused the bad report over a few bucks. I probably won't worry about it, but I hate feeling like someone penny pinching over a few dollars.

Anyhow, nice to get my money back. Although at this point there's no way to tell for sure whether they took too much from me, or vice versa.

And now on to my new project

2010-06-16T00:11:00.000-07:00

It's been over a year since I last posted here. This blog was a joy to run. It's nice to have somewhere to express all of one's thoughts, uninhibited by the rules of office work and drive to profitability. The time did come to move on though, and start a more directed site. SlapStart began a little over a year ago. It's been the place where I can write and host articles that are strictly about Start-ups. It's been fun to commit to and watch grow. So long fair Flash Burrito blog. You were fun to write for. SlapStart has replaced you with a sense of humor that is not common to the world of start-up reviews. I hope one day that it will be driven to the heights of internet success. In the meantime, I'll just keep doing what I love- writing. And in the process assisting others in their trek to greatness.

Rootkits: How to Become an Unwitting Spammer

2008-09-05T11:37:00.000-07:00

Antivirus, firewall and system cleaning providers naturally fall into the business of educating people on the hazards of various types of malicious software. As computer users become aware of the dangers looming in cyberspace they realize the need to protect their systems. We’re all familiar with some of the terms thrown around- viruses, malware, and spyware. These terms lodge nicely into the brain as some sort of fungus that we should avoid at all costs. Included in these lists is often a somewhat esoteric term, rootkits. It means nothing to the standard user. At first glance the only reason you might avoid a rootkit is because it’s included on the same list as the other known threats. If not for that a rootkit sounds like it could be something you might use to spiff up your truck. Maybe it adds a little extra horse power. Or perhaps it helps preserve a dying plant from wilting during a dry season. These things definitely couldn’t be all that bad, right?

As it turns out rootkits aren’t as docile as they might seem. In fact they’re outright nasty mean little blights. Paraphrased from Wikipedia, a rootkit is a program that allows an external user to take complete control over your computer. Since they have control of the computer they can use that power to hide their existence and carry out whatever foul deeds they intend. An analogy would be, a virus is like someone breaking into your house and doing all sorts of bad things. A rootkit is like someone having a key to your house to use at their discretion.

A common scenario is, once they gain access to your computer, they use your computer as a staging ground for attacks elsewhere on the web. For example, think about all the spam you receive in your inbox. Ever want to exchange words with the guy sending it? If you have a rootkit on your computer, it could be you.

Rootkits have other uses. Since they have full control over your system, they can do whatever the user wants. It could be an actual person accessing your computer or a bot. A bot is a program designed to do a small set of tasks over the internet. Like say, log into your rootkit compromised system, and send spam to thousands of people, hack into other systems, or other malicious activity.

Fortunately, rootkits are included in the same list of bad things that are removed by most antivirus software. Personally, I think they’re a much more compelling reason to keep one’s system up to date than most of the others. One way to circumvent the issue entirely is Scan on the Go’s pluggable antivirus device. At this point I’m lobbying for them to rename it an anti rootkit device but it just doesn't have the same ring as the former. Rootkit concerned computer users can buy one here. Use this code if you want to save $10. GBUVGQKC. Otherwise you can dutifully pay full price. Once plugged in it scans for all malicious software. I like it best since unlike application software solutions, it never needs updates.

Whatever solution you choose to keep your computer systems safe, please realize there are many affordable options out there.

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Scan on the Go: Portable Identity Theft/Anti Virus Device

2008-08-22T13:48:00.000-07:00

It wasn't so long ago that I used to use a very outdated computer, Windows 95. That machine lingered on long past the recommended shelf life. During those days I didn't bother with virus scanners as most required upgrading the computer. Occasionally I would use McAfee's free online scan which often enough found a virus of some sort. I didn't worry about it much since I didn't store personal data on the computer. I made my best attempt at cleaning the computer by deleting the offending files. Ultimately I completely purged the system by disposing of it in a somewhat proper and legal manner. In this case somewhat proper and legal can be interpreted as having the good intentions of doing so, but I digress.

Once I purchased a new computer it allowed me to stay up to date on virus software and firewalls. I document that effort here, which to my knowledge has rescued at least one computer from the pit of Virus and Malware despair. Maintaining multiple sets of software and taking the time to run all the associated scans can become a bit of a chore though. Along comes a new way to protect your computer, Scan on the Go.

Scan on the Go is a business card sized piece of hardware that connects via USB to your computer. It's currently supported on Windows and requires no upgrades or maintenance. Best of all when you unplug it, it leaves no footprint, that is files left on the computer. Simply connect it to your system and you are now protected. It comes in three flavors, Scan on the Go Basic, Active and Secure. The Basic package will run a one time scan against all threats. The Active package will remain resident in the computer's memory to continue to protect your system as long as it's plugged in. The Secure product does all of the above and will also create an encrypted tunnel for all web traffic so the user is safe to work freely on a wireless connection. It's kind of like having one's own private road on the information highway. Do you want to look at websites at work or school that are blocked? Use the Secure card to bypass the local network monitoring software.

Here's a sample usage. You're at a cafe and find a great new propeller hat that you'd like to purchase to add to your collection. Rather than charge forward and blindly purchase your selection like many of the identity theft victims around the world, plug in the Scan on the Go card first. Let it quickly complete the scan, and then make your purchase. Simple as that. In so doing you've now mitigated the threat against Viruses, Malware, hackers, keystroke logging, rootkits, phishing and Spyware. In case that doesn't make a lot of sense, it protects you from pretty much everything bad that can happen whilst browsing the web. It's also recommended to be used before sending email, conducting banking transactions, or anything you do online that you want secured.

The product retails for approximately $50 for Basic, $60 for Active, and $80 for Secure. That price includes shipping and my inexact rounding up. You'll be pleasantly surprised to be paying a few dollars less when you purchase it online. If you'd like to shave a few more dollars off the price let me know and I'll see what I can do about getting a discount code. I always wondered how people got those things but in this case perhaps writing about their product will do the trick.
**UPDATE** I found a discount code. Enter GBUVGQKC in the Amazon order form to get an extra $10 off.

They recently received the "Most Innovative Flash Memory Customer Implementation" award from the Flash Memory Summit 2008. The Scan on the Go card is sure to be useful for both business and personal users alike. See this 94 second clip they put together for more info.

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Digg: Please fix this bug!

2008-07-29T17:02:00.001-07:00

I'm a fan of Digg. I enjoy it's articles and check it every day, multiple times a day. I've cringed at the changing of ways over the years and from some of the growing pains of success. But through it all I still frequent it's pages. I get a sense of satisfaction if I post a comment that reaches over 100 diggs. I consider it a landmark achievement if I submit a posting that surpasses 10.

Just yesterday I finally migrated my blog to Digg. Now every post has it's own shining button as an emblem of it's Digg-worthiness. Given how much I've used Digg over the years this was always going to happen, regardless of whether it's the best design or not. As a technical aside, here's a great article on how to add such a button. The article is specific to blogs hosted on blogger.com, as is this one. It does reference a dated version of the template, so please substitute <p> with <b> and you're golden. Actually, you don't need to substitute anything, just be aware of the fact that it's different.

So, once I had all the buttons happily on my blog pages I went about the task of submitting the posts. Each and every one. It was really quite a chore, but in so doing I came across a bug which I'm hoping to shame the Digg staff into fixing. Here are the steps to reproduce.

1) Submit an article, any article.
2) Type in any title and any description.
3) Select any topic.
4) Type the CAPTCHA code incorrectly and submit article.
5) After error message retype CAPTCHA code correctly and submit.
5) You're now hosed.

In this case hosed is better defined as it no longer recognizes the topic you originally selected. The page will highlight the same topic but it's really just a scheme to make you believe it's working. It's not. You can neither select nor deselect it. Sometimes you can select another one but the system behaves erratically, at times highlighting both, or neither. It was quite traumatizing. I may make idle threats to head on over to Reddit or Slashdot, but we all know I'm not leaving. So please Digg, consider my humble bug report. I reproduced this with FireFox 3, Safari 3.1.2 and IE7.

Thank you Digg team for your consideration of this request.

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Yuntaa Strikes Back

2008-07-18T01:38:00.000-07:00

In early February I started a relationship. Anyone who's been out on a few dates knows that relationships in February are kind of a landmine. Should you do something for Valentine's Day? Is it too soon? And then there's the whole issue of all her girlfriends getting long stem roses from their boyfriends. There's old boyfriends who call just to say hello. In my experience February can be a pretty suboptimal month for romantic pursuits.

Fortunately my relationship was not with a woman at all, but rather a backup software product, Yuntaa. I documented my initial flutter of ecstasy and ensuing grief with the highs and lows of young love. After months of unrequited sympathies and heartfelt desire, I announced that I would no longer allow myself to long for the affections of one who wasn't emotionally available for me. I found a different resource. One that lacked the sensual appeal of my first love. It was a bit more plain if not down and out mundane. And more in my league.

As we all know, people go through various development cycles and phases in life. It turns out that software products do as well. In this case, what once was an alluring backup software solution that fell short in performing some of it's functions, now is beginning to emerge as a respectable and useful solution. The early days of youth are beginning to wear off, replaced with a brilliant and intelligent product. I wish I had the same fortune in my romantic pursuits as I have had in finding an online backup solution.

My early grievance with Yuntaa was that it didn't always work when multiple directories were selected, particularly those with long paths. It became slow and would sometimes hang. Shortly after my brief encounter with the alpha version of the Yuntaa Manager tool, it was removed from the website with the promise that it was being rebuilt. Yuntaa delivered on that promise a couple weeks ago, and I finally got to test it out. After months of anticipation it's a relief to report, it works! I downloaded and installed it, selected the files I wanted to back up, set a schedule for the backups, and hit the Synchronize button. Off it went and successfully backed up the same folders that caused it to break a few months back. Now here's a power user tip for anyone who's new to the backup world. When running backups it's a good idea to test the restore every once in a while and especially right after the initial backup. I did that and it was no surprise that it worked equally well.

A couple notes, Yuntaa has a nice pinkish emblem and all the folders and files that are backed up display that. It can be helpful and is definitely a bit eye catching. I've never seen Windows Explorer look more vibrant in my life. I actually love the colors of Yuntaa. I'm no color expert but I think of them as from a fairy tale in a distant land. In a place I can only know in dreams.

The backup speed isn't as fast as the more plain solution I used in the interim. But then, it's not an apples to apples comparison. The simple backup tool I've been using encrypts all the files being backed up, compresses them, and transferring them to their server. The restore is the reverse process. Yuntaa takes all the files and allows you to share them with others online. You can view the pictures and pick through your file system through the Yuntaa online interface. I consider the performance to be acceptable especially given all the extra features that Yuntaa offers above and beyond a backup solution.

It's nice to see what I long predicted- that Yuntaa would bring to the market a dynamic and compelling backup solution. I expect businesses and individuals will be as entranced as I am by the product offering from this exciting start-up.

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Viewing SQL statements when a page is loaded in Django

2008-07-10T13:37:00.000-07:00

Recently my business partner and I launched a pre-alpha version of our website. We were thrilled to put something online after weeks of hard work. As we started adding more data we quickly found that the page became slower than a sick dog running uphill in the rain. The need was apparent to profile our site and determine where the bottlenecks were. The usual suspect is database queries so we started there. Here's a simple method for viewing what SQL statements are executed when a page is loaded. At the bottom the same concepts are compiled into a script. Enjoy!

1) Log into django shell
py manage.py shell

2) Import these
from django.db import connection
from django.test.client import Client
from django.conf import settings

3) Set DEBUG to True
settings.DEBUG = True

4) Initialize the Test Client
c = Client()

5) Call the Page. Enter the URL you want to test. The full url used in this example would be
http://uphillintherain.com/slowSickDog/

response = c.get('/slowSickDog/')

6) View the queries executed
connection.queries
len(connection.queries) # shows the number of queries

Extra. This will display the HTML that was returned when the page was called.
response.content

Complete standalone script
# Display the SQL statements that are run when you load a
# page in Django.
#
# Setup
# 1. Make sure project parent directory is in the PYTHONPATH
# 2. export DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=project.settings
#
# Usage
# 'py logsql.py'
# 'py logsql.py > output.txt' to redirect output to text file
#
# Authored by Ben Kovitz and Steve Gibson
# http://decisionero.com

import operator

from django.db import connection
from django.test.client import Client
from django.conf import settings

settings.DEBUG = True

c = Client()
response = c.get('/databaseIntensivePage/')

queries = sorted(connection.queries, key=operator.itemgetter('sql'))
print "%d SQL queries" % len(queries)

for query in queries:
print query

For more information
Unit Testing and how to send GET and POST requests
http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/testing/#making-requests

How to see raw SQL queries that Django is running. Note that these (and those used in our script) are for the most part accurate but the actual statements are sometimes modified or escaped depending on what db and platform you're on.
http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/faq/#how-can-i-see-the-raw-sql-queries-django-is-running

Here's a fully functional profiler script that counts but doesn't display the SQL queries. It could probably be fiddled with to output the SQL statements as well.
http://www.mysoftparade.com/blog/django-profile-sql-performance/

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

6 Ways to Rid Divine Caroline From Digg Once and For All

2008-06-25T13:43:00.000-07:00

Recently I declared an all out war against the infiltration of Divine Caroline on the social networking news site Digg. Since articles on Digg are displayed in order of most popular all someone needs to do is get all their friends together and vote their own articles up. This is what I feel happens with Divine Caroline articles. Then the bulk of readers are stuck with worthless blurbs of irrelevant nonsense. Realizing the direness of the situation I'm proving this easy guide that Digg users can refer to in our collective quest to eliminate the Divine Caroline effect once and for all.

1) Recognize the problem. At first it may not be clear when a website is cheating the system to get their articles on the front page. Read the article and judge for yourself. Does this article grate against your sense of what is considered intellectually stimulating? Are you more inclined to kill small animals or scowl at scared and friendless children after reading the article? If so, then chances are then you've been Divine Carolined into reading worthless content.

2) Log in and bury the article. I know logging in just to bury bland content may at times seem like a chore. You just have to do it. It's like working out, flossing, or telling your girlfriend she looks hot. It has to become a habit, otherwise fat, plaque and nagging will slowly creep up on you. And then you'll be a toothless, obese loner with nothing but unstimulating content on Digg to pass the time.

3) Write comments on the offending article pointing out that this content is not front page worthy. The reason is that many people will see an article high up on the Digg charts and therefore think it's great. Filtering the comments with reality will help stop the lemming effect that Divine Caroline so desperately leeches off of.

4) Bury the comments that smell like insider propaganda. They're fairly easy to pick out. If you just read a totally lame composition that would best be repurposed as a psychological torture tool in a North Korean labor camp, chances are they're playing for the home team. Just click the little thumbs down on them to get them off the screen.

5) Write blogs about what you dislike most about Divine Caroline and submit it to Digg. This one is probably the most powerful. Imagine a world where every user who feels land blasted by the steady stream of ludicrosity writes a dissertation on why they despise the site. I'd like to see a week's worth of articles against them. I don't care if bad publicity is still good publicity. If they want to profit form being one large collective schmuck, I'm all for it.

6) Never forgive, eventually forget. Sites like Divine Caroline intend to be around a while. They wouldn't take lightly being eliminated from one of the premier social networking news sites on the web, even if they well deserve it. It's likely they'll keep coming back for a while. In the words of Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody's impersonator, Barty Crouch Jr., "Constant Vigilance!"

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Why I like burying Divine Caroline articles on Digg

2008-06-17T13:27:00.000-07:00

I've been a fan of Digg for a number of years. I remember the good 'ole days when technical articles frequently decorated the front page. I watched the slow erosion as the technogarble that I so loved was shuffled to the background. Replacing it has been a series of nice looking pictures, articles on any subject whose title contains the word "Ever", and yet another post on Hillary or Obama. Does anyone remember the conventional wisdom that they're all lying to us anyway? But I digress. Occasionally we'll get an xkcd comic which to me represents the last flutter of the dying community of intellectual exchange.

Also ushering it's way to the front pages of Digg has been a series of articles from the website Divine Caroline. These articles are typically provocative, play upon the insecurities of geeks, or just kind of bland. A brief tour of Digg today highlights an article on a man's size. A brief glance at (not so) Divine Caroline's website parades an article on G Spots, F spots, or whatever they're called. To your typical geek this isn't a topic of utmost importance or dare I say, relevance. Regardless, I find it crass to bumble along always and only talking about sex. (Yes, I know DC wrote an article on strange plants a while back. It was quite sub par though for anyone who wanted more than one or two sentence descriptions of those plants.)

My biggest grievance with Divine Caroline is that it seems they have a community of insiders that digg it's articles, effectively stuffing the ballot box. This community comprises a small subset of Digg's users. It's called sock puppeting, where you have two or more people who are on the same team pretend to be innocent bystanders who just happen to like the content, product, service, etc. Thus we're stuck reading Divine Caroline articles many of which aren't newsworthy. Some of these serve only as reminders that yes, we are geeks and aren't widely known for leading lives of sexual dominance. We get the point. Now go away.

I'd personally be an advocate of PlaneJaneArticlesByNerdyGirlsThatLikeGeeks.com. It would be refreshing to read something that wasn't designed to remind me of how sexually undesirable I may or may not be. Perhaps an article on how to pull your boyfriend away from video games. Or what about how to dress up for the Star Wars convention. Every once in a long while similarly themed articles have made the headlines of Digg.

In the meantime, I don't care how or why or what, I'm burying anything that hails from the Divine Caroline camp. I hereby and henceforth make it my quest to annihilate them from the pages of Digg. In so doing I hope to make way for the smart girls. Those who are able to hold a man's attention with something other than boobs and sex talk. I know they're out there somewhere. One can only hope.

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Live365.com: So long, Good Riddance Yahoo! Music

2008-05-28T00:51:00.000-07:00

I sit in front on the computer quite a bit. During these hours I've come to enjoy listening to music. Formally my preferred venue for listening to online music was Yahoo! Music through Yahoo! Messenger. I suffered this terrible fate for many long months that bled into years.

Amongst my complaints with Yahoo! Music are it's commercials, occasional programming snafus, and ultimately it's demand that I pay for it since I had used up my monthly quota of songs. Excepting the the programming snafus, these issues could be cleared up if I was willing to break down and pay for their service. Unfortunately, after using their free service I hated it far too much to pay for it.

The commercials are the absolute worst with Yahoo! Music. They run the same ones over and over again. For anyone who's used their service for any moderate duration they'll know exactly what I'm talking about. The most basic ad is some old fart who assaults you with a deep and disturbing voice. He talks about humidors and threesomes all to annoy you to the point that you'll break down and sign up just to get away from him. He comes on about every 3.5 minutes by my non scientific estimation. I shoot for the mute button at the first sign of him. The complete lack of variety of commercials will likely be discovered by Yahoo's sponsors. Eventually they'll figure out that putting ads on Yahoo! Music will result in the utter and complete loathing of their products. By the time I hear an ad for the 10th time in a row I'm about ready to tell every person I know how much I totally and resolutely disdain their product and recommend all their competitors instead. I also become a proponent of revoking their right to bear children and advocate taking compensatory measures against them. Requiring them subsist on a diet of beetles and dung is currently my preferred recommendation for recompensing society for their continued existence.

Occasionally I had some programming issues with Yahoo! Music. I'd be happily listening to one of the Gospel or Christian stations and then out of no where on comes Mariah Carey and similar top 40 artists. I took the time to submit my complaint with their standard feedback form but ran into the issue more than once. I have no problem with top 40 music, but would like to listen to the genre that I select. Having worked with software much of my life I'm sure that's not the only crossover issue in their system.

The final straw that drove me from Yahoo! Music was when the darn thing turned off. After all this time of muting the humidor guy and wondering when Mariah Carey came out with a praise and worship album Yahoo! finally decided they weren't interested in me as a non paying customer. Somehow or another I listened to too many songs and I was notified that I would get no more that month without paying up. I hit the snag a couple weeks ago and have been searching sporadically for online radio stations ever since.

Ultimately I settled on Live365.com. It offers a plethora of stations including my favorite, Pop Latino stations. Red Latino Radio is my current favorite but I look forward to exploring the others as well. Miraculously they decided not to inundate me with schizophrenia inducing ads after every other song. The only drawback I've found is that it didn't immediately work for me in FireFox. I don't mind using IE for my radio player and it helps me keep my browsers organized while I work anyway. As I type this one of my favorite songs just came on reminding that I'm on the slow road to emotional and psychological recovery from the terrors and malevolence of Yahoo! Music.

Thank you Yahoo! for turning off your utterly annoying and patience testing attempt at an online radio station. I look forward to not listening to it ever again. You took something that was made to be beautiful and muzzled it in the claws of greed and desperation. A trend that has unfortunately become the status quo for the music industry. Fortunately, other providers are willing to fill in where you so painfully and vigorously fail.

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Multipurpose Walkthrough for Escape the Room Games

2008-05-09T02:57:00.001-07:00

***Warning*** Spoilers contained below. Do not read further if you don't want to see the solution to every escape the room game you will ever play.

1) First, look underneath the doormat. You need to click it on the bottom left corner. You'll find a silver key. Take it.
2) Turn left and look at the bookshelf. When you zoom in click right up against the edge of the shelf and the wall. You'll find a piece of paper. Take it. It will have the number 51 on it. Remember this for later.
3) Click every book on the bookshelf. On the third shelf down on top of the red and green books you'll find a screwdriver. Take this for later.
4) Turn to the left again and look at the desk. Click on the underside of it and you'll see a diagram. It shows you a image of a piece of paper being held up to a mirror. Remember this for later.
5) Next to the desk you'll find a garbage can. Look in it and you'll see a piece of paper crumbled up. Take it and look at it. It has the number 10 on it. Notice that the torn edge seems to match up to the other paper with the 51 on it. Together it looks like 5110.
6) Attempt to open the door. Alas it's locked. Attempting to use the silver key doesn't work.
7) Turn left again and look at the painting. Click on the corners until it moves out the way. You'll see four screws. Unscrew them with the screwdriver and behind them is a door with a keyhole. Now use the silver key to open the door. Inside you'll find a green key and a battery. Take them both.
8) Now turn back to the desk and open the drawer with the green key.
9) Inside you'll find a locked box with 4 numbers that can be rolled from 0-9. Attempt to set it to 5110. It doesn't open! Now think back to the diagram of the piece of paper being held up to the mirror. 5110 reversed looks somewhat like 0112. Try that and voila, you're in. Inside you'll find a flashlight. Take it.
10) Put the battery in the flashlight.
11) Turn back to the door and hit the light switch.
12) Now turn on the flashlight and look back at the desk.
13) Point the light at the lampshade and you'll see a key embedded in the shade. Use the screwdriver to extract the key. It's gold.
14) Now turn back to the door, and try the gold key on the door. Congratulations! You've just escaped from every escape the room game you'll ever play.

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Mozy: A Sad Day for Yuntaa

2008-04-28T14:19:00.000-07:00

Late in the evening until early in the morning, on the 2nd of February of the year 2008, I gave my review of Yuntaa, the up and coming backup solution. I remember the night clearly, as I felt particularly inspired to employ whatever creativity I have to articulate my experience with this company that showed so much promise. They offered a variety of services that began with backups and had all sorts of nifty file sharing options as well. For me I had four simple requirements I was looking for in a backup solution.
1) Free
2) Functional- i.e. does it work at all?
3) Safe- Do I trust this company with my data?
4) Automatable- can I download a utility and schedule it to backup?

As discussed in my post Yuntaa failed miserably on the fourth point, automating your backups. Without this option a user is required to upload each file each time they want to back it up. Based upon my experience if backups aren't automatable, they aren't going to happen. Since the time of my first article Yuntaa has disabled access to their automation tool until it's fixed. Their site says its being redesigned but I suspect that's just a euphemism for, "Get the darn thing working."

Last week I stumbled upon (on Digg), the online backup service Mozy. To briefly summarize, they happily meet all 4 requirements with their offer of 2 GB of free backups for personal use. I quickly signed up and am relatively pleased with the service. Most importantly, their automatable tool works as advertised.

I haven't given up on the Yuntaa folks just yet, but then, now that I have a backup solution that works what's my motivation to switch? Most users would not. I'll check back in for curiosity's sake. I have to admit, using Yuntaa is more fun since they have awesome designers and a cool Web 2.0 feel. But then, the fact that it breaks down at it's most critical function fits my stereotype of aesthetics versus functionality. My general philosophy is first get the core functionality working, then add the prettiness around it. When you reverse the process oftentimes the functionality is always playing catchup and it may or may not get there. We'll see if Yuntaa is able to deliver on this.

And so I'm left at this sad crossroads. Good bye fair Yuntaa. Your user experience was ravishing. The caresses of your gentle 'skin' made my world for a time, seem complete. Those hopes, those dreams, were dashed upon the rocks of reality leaving me empty, broken, and without a backup solution whatsoever. I can only hope that our paths will meet again under more favorable circumstances. With that I leave thee. To wallow in the mire of despair in one's quest for greatness, and a boardroom full of happy venture capitalists.

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Eloquent Javascript: A worthy JS tutorial

2008-04-19T14:22:00.000-07:00

When learning a new computer related subject I always look for "The Book" on the subject. The Book is the de facto standard for learning that subject. Sometimes there are two books that have risen above the pack. Regardless, amongst the maze of material that can be read and researched there's usually some recognized resource that 'everyone' knows about.

I've heard it said that there is no good resource on learning Javascript. I'm sure everyone has a book that they refer to here and there but a clear winner in "The Book" race has not been declared when it comes to learning Javascript.

Recently I came across an online tutorial which appears to show some promise. Eloquent Javascript starts with the basics. Heck, it even includes binary code, which is half the reason I'm writing it up. It teaches Javascript as if it's the first computer language you've ever learned, from the ground up. It's a nice break from learning Javascript by various code snippets. Beyond that they have cool practice code interpreters built into their tutorial. Instead of having to have a separate environment up while going through the tutorials you can just type in your code right there and test and fiddle with it as much as you like.

Of the many places to look to learn Javascript, I recommend this one. It's thorough and lays a great foundation for one of the trickier computer languages out there.

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Flash Burrito Triples Profits!

2008-04-18T17:16:00.000-07:00

Early reports indicate that Flash Burrito! has beaten analysts' expectations by over tripling their profits in just a two week time span. Stunned investors were scurrying to secure a portion of this up and coming firm. One investor, Earl Meeps, was quoted as saying that he hasn't seen a company blast off like this since before the dot com fallout. On wall street there was much speculation about when they would go public and at what price. Following a series of bleak economic reports this provides a small glimmer of hope in an otherwise lackluster market. It's already been rumored that this one firm could mitigate the mortgage fallout and impending 30's like depression. Local government officials were infuriated and were unable to be reached for comment.

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

The First 68 Cents

2008-03-31T17:39:00.000-07:00

I've been working on a web development project for a while now. It started in the happy world of PHP and gradually progressed to the periphery of Python with the Django framework. My quest led to the discovery of Virtual Private Servers and being reacquainted with my old favorites, Cygwin and PuTTY. I finally got the chance to test out XAMPP and still use the MySQL portion of it. I took a break to rally for increased awareness of multilevel file structures in online email services and was reminded to stay on track with the online stopwatch utility that I sometimes use. Being the resident computer guy I gave my best stab at saving a friend's computer from viruses and spyware. I even had a poetic moment of inspiration.

My antics went largely unnoticed, (in part due to my generally shy nature), until the day I stumped for my choice in backup software. The CEO and marketing were on it like white on rice. Being the nice guy that I am I let them repost my review to their hearts' content. They probably didn't notice I have a secret freezer bag fetish and am distastefully amused by the dining habits of some of our more bestiality necrophiliac inclined friends.

I pressed on, pausing to appreciate UnxUtils and then getting back to work by generating some buttons with Cool Text. I was bailed out from the impending doom of setting up a mail server by Google Apps, which routes all our email, not to mention providing docs, calenders, and all the rest.

I read all about Paul Graham's take on Bosses and 37 Signals with their "Getting Real." Then I rounded it out with a few get out there and quit articles such as "How to Kiss the Corporate Life Goodbye" and Steve Pavlina's requisite "10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job."

And now the time has come to reveal the workings of my labor. Oh, don't forget about my Pair Programming partner who provided the technical and design expertise that helped get this site out the door nearer to the previous millennium than the next. His relentless adherence to extreme programing and agile software development kept the project moving and the design manageable.

And so we come to it at last. My finest hour. The moment of never having to work for The Man again. No more ass kissing coworkers. No more having to play the game to keep a job. And definitely no more having to finagle my way through the corporate structure while doing the least amount of work possible. No, I have arrived.

Laugh if you must.
Cry if you need.
Run, if you can.

Here it is.
Flashburrito.com

We've made 68 cents so far. Well, it's a start.

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Cool Text: Web 2.0ify your site

2008-03-23T19:18:00.000-07:00

Many people want to bring their website to the next level. They'd like to pull it out of the dull drums of Web 1.0 with it's simple graphics, simple forms and simple text and into the brave new world of Web 2.0. Such was the state of our own website in recent days. As neither my partner nor I make any claim of having graphic design prowess we were at a bit of a loss about how to spiff it up. Sure the functionality was beginning to come together but the site as a whole more closely resembled ASCII art than anything that a user in 2008 might expect. My partner actually does have some experience in graphic design but it has yet to bring any real improvement to our site. Perhaps that's more a result of our rapid development schedule but it's likely that neither of us can provide the level of design that we want.

Being a constant peruser of Digg I'm continually bookmarking sites that may one day be of interest. Over the past year I've accumulated a variety of bookmarks including sites related to buttons, logos, fonts and the like. After looking through them I found that some sites limit the color choices available, or offer a sparse collection of button variations, or are sorely lacking in their font selection. It took me a while to find a site that offered the flexibility and options I was looking for, Cool Text.

Cool Text offers Logo, Button and Font graphic generation. It has a large variety of fonts all of which (I believe) are free for corporate and personal use. It provides the flexibility to select hex values for your colors and has multiple buttons styles to choose from as well. On top of that there are various effects for your buttons whereby you can select glass, gel, 3D or other options to give your button some extra finesse. When it was all said and done I was able to generate a few buttons for our site that successfully helped us embark on the long transition to Web 2.0. I created multiple versions of the same button with gloss for display, shadow for hover, and a glow effect for when you press it. Cool Text even provides the Javascript to get the buttons to change on certain mouse events. The entire experience made me feel like a qualified graphic artist for a change.

I had one minor glitch when working with Cool Text. I noticed that the top left corner of the button had the background color rather than the foreground color. When set against the real background it created this awkward triangle effect. I was able to fix it using Gimp, my favorite alternative to PhotoShop. Considering the fact that Cool Text did the bulk of the legwork for me I had no problem making these minor adjustments. I intended to write them so they can improve their tool but didn't take the time just yet.

It's rare when I sign up for yet another site with the requisite user name and password, but Cool Text certainly gained my membership. As a result I'm able to save my designs for further review and modification. It took just a few hours to get something that was workable and I didn't have to be a particularly gifted artistically. Thanks to Cool Text our website is now beginning to show symptoms of emerging from the archives of Web 1.0. The few reflection and shadow effects are perhaps a bit trivial amidst the greater Web 2.0 movement but it's been a nice easy step in the right directions.

Cheers,

RtR
Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Google Apps Saved the Day

2008-03-13T23:28:00.000-07:00

It's time that I make a confession. One which someone reading my blog closely might have picked up on by now. Sometimes I'm critical of them and predict their ultimate demise. Sometimes I nitpick about various file structure flaws. At the end of the day however, I am infatuated with Google.

I love their services, their culture and their vision that continues to fulfill what people have been predicting for over a decade. Of note, in the late 1990's Larry Ellison, founder and CEO of Oracle, predicted the downfall of the PC for a thin client. We would all use a now obsolete technology called a Network Computer(NC). Obviously that prediction was off. Perhaps he had disobeyed the gods or was not in tune with his inner Zen. But like so many other shadowy prophets whose visions have been blurred by spiritual interference or in this case, bad technology and market conditions, the core of his message has remained true. The PC is on it's way to becoming an obsolete device. And Google is creating the software and infrastructure to bring this to fruition.

I've been working on putting together a website. I started with PHP and was quickly whisked away to Python working with the Django framework. Using a form of programming called Pair Programming my business partner and I have been steadily piecing it together. I set up Cygwin on my Windows XP machine so as to have access to a Unix like interface. We use PuTTy to access our Virtual Private Server through Linode. For our database back end we use MySQL as conveniently supplied by XAMPP.

Using extreme programing or agile programming techniques, we limited our design to a simple text file with just a list of functionalities we'd like. We prioritized the list, cutting out anything that was not necessary. This is a method of website development advocated by many including 37 Signals in their Getting Real book. From there we methodically worked down the list.

As our list of required features grew shorter and shorter there were a few things remaining before going live (or getting real as 37 Signals would say). One of these was that we needed a contact email on the website. We could have copped out and stuck one of our personal yahoo or gmail accounts up there. Both knew that that didn't work and that we wanted an email from our own domain. Ultimately we'll put up a form to collect information without posting an email address at all, but for now an email will have to do. See Getting Real for more details on that design choice.

Anyone who's worked in or around sys admin to any degree might have a general leeriness towards mail servers. They're known for being quirky, tough to set up and configure, and most of all neither of us had ever attempted to do so. We started perusing the web looking for hints on where to start. The Linode forums provided a few hints and murmurs of people who had come across the same issue, and then we found it. The answer to our woes. There was the guy who said, "Just use Google Apps". Being fond of Google but apparently not yet an aficionado I quickly start exploring what they had to offer. I'll summarize briefly. After signing up, which was free, changing a few CNAME entries and MX records, and fiddling with a few settings, I was quickly sending and receiving emails from with our domain name. It takes 24-48 hrs for the DNS changes to propagate out, but the setup was relatively short and easy as far as mail servers go. We have 100 free email addresses to work with, which should be more than enough during our startup phase. If we need more than that then it's safe to say we can afford someone to set up our own mail server. I'm able to check my email just like any gmail account. What's more, it comes with Google Docs, Chat, Calendar and a new feature called Sites, which let's you create intranet like websites for internal communications. In one easy fell swoop Google just replaced our IT staff and provided all the internal communication tools we need. Did I mention that they also offer Google Talk. So basically it includes free email, chat, calendar, phone, Google Docs (replaces MS WORD), Google Spreadsheet (replaces Excel), Google Presentation (so long PowerPoint). My main concern at this point is how do we send email from within our application. Such as when users register you'd like to make sure they own the email address they their register with. I'm not sure how or if we can integrate that function within Google's service. We'll cross that bridge when we need to.

Google Apps does come in two flavors, Standard which is free, and Premier which costs $50/user/year. I don't hope to have to use that as at this point it's just another expense. At a glance it appears to help incorporate email monitoring, maintaining dual systems and similar activities that we aren't interested in.

For now it's extremely satisfying to send and receive emails from our newly created and as of yet unknown domain. I can't help but give a passing glance at the fact that as a user I'm taking the long predicted path of the downfall of the personal computer. I don't believe it will ever go away completely, but it's utility will gradually diminish. For me, it's already has.

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Amped about XAMPP

2008-03-02T23:48:00.000-08:00

In my recent post about PHP I mentioned the use of XAMPP to make setting up one's development environment simple and easy. It's a fantastic tool for a lot of reasons, primarily it helps you rapidly deploy a development environment. According to their web site, "Many people know from their own experience that it's not easy to install an Apache web server and it gets harder if you want to add MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is really very easy to install and to use - just download, extract and start."

That about sums it up, but there are a few things to note. First and most importantly, it's not set up for production servers. In XAMPP all or most of the passwords are set to none or something low security. In fact everything is low security. XAMPP exists for one purpose- to help you set up a development environment quickly. It does just that, at the expense of providing a fine tuned secure server.

Another thing to note, I never got the mail server working in my windows environment. It comes with Mercury Mail and appears that it should send emails from my scripts. Either I failed to configure it or something went amiss with my environment. I'd be interested to hear if anyone got this working without too much hassle. I did find people with the same error in various forums, but did not find a resolution.

Also, in order to install Perl it requires an additional file for the installation, but it's as easy as the initial install. Speaking of install, that's one of my favorite parts. It gives you the option to simply unzip the XAMPP files in a directory and you're done. Well, there might be a few more steps if you don't use the installer but I always like the benefit of not messing with a formal installer. If things get messed up you can just blow the diectory away and start again. It's just that easy.

The most important question everyone's probably asking is, "What about Python development?" The XAMPP page advertises that the addons file contains Python integration. I didn't go that route but presumably it works fine. I installed Python on my system separately (and in so doing had to use an installer) but made some mods to my Apache environment and got it working. I'm sure I just followed the README instructions. When I tried to install Mod Python however the whole thing blew up. I'm not sure why exactly but that installation failed towards the end.

The one special thing for those of us using Django is that there's no need for the web server. Django comes with it's own development web server so you don't need to use Apache at all. The only thing needed is a database server and I had no problem pointing my Django system to the MySQL server within the settings.py file. The good thing about the Django web server is that it auto reloads by default every time you modify a file. Anybody remember the days of having to reboot your Apache server after every change? It's quite a luxury not to have to do that.

XAMPP server is a must have tool for all web developers. From having to fix a few bugs while on a temporary work station to setting up your ongoing dev environment it really saves you from the hassle of configuring your system.

Cheers!

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Linode: Virtual Private Server Selection

2008-02-27T13:34:00.000-08:00

So you've been writing code for months. Your Adobe Photoshop skills are honed and polished. The guys down at the pub have served as an impromptu QA staff. Now the time has come to launch your million dollar website, but just one thing is missing. Where should you host it? There's an ocean of hosting providers out there. Or I should say rather, a zoo. From Hostgator, Big Lion Host to Zebra Host someone can spend days, weeks or months, finding the right solution. Each makes promises of gigabytes of space, top notch customer support, and bandwidth levels that could host half of Google. Perhaps that's a slight exaggeration but they typically offer more bandwidth than you can readily envision using. After a little more research you may find that some charge $6/month for their service and others $6000/month. So what's the difference, who should you select and where do you start?

As would be expected people have gone before us and attempted to compile their list of top hosting companies. At the time of this writing as listed in this article titled, "The 13 Worst Web Hosting Companies...", the worst company of all is Register Fly. I guess they weren't high enough in the animal kingdom food chain. Perhaps they should have called themselves Register Anteater or Turkey or something. Of more interest might be a list of the Best Hosting Companies. At the time of this writing Lunar Pages is top gun. Now armed with your new knowledge of web hosting companies, which should you choose?

For the amateur with a couple extra hundred dollars to blow I'd say go ahead and give the Lunar Pages people a go. They offer a variety of services and it appears that at least some people are willing to say nice things about them. If they don't work out you can transfer somewhere else. As far as shared hosting plans go they seem to be as good as the next.

But hold on you say, why would it not work out with a shared hosting provider? This depends on what your needs are. Shared hosting plans offer just that, shared hosting. You share resources with a variety of other people. They install one version of PHP, Perl, Apache etc. and everybody uses it. So what if you want something slightly different. Like for instance they're using Python version 2.3 and you'd like to upgrade to 2.5. Or you require the Python Imaging Library and they don't have it. In this case you can send tech support a note and see if they're willing to upgrade. Sometimes they will, most likely they'll say no or put it off until the next scheduled upgrade. There are ways to install programs within your directory but it's difficult to configure without root access. I ran into exactly this probably and quickly began to dream of having my own server.

Those dreams were eventually modified and then fulfilled with my discovery of Virtual Private Servers. These are where they take a machine that's big and beefy and divide the system resources between a series of partitions. Each of these act as a separate machine but it's more cost efficient since they all run on the same physical box. For a website that's just starting off working with VPS's are the way to go. So then my hunt began to find an acceptable provider. I narrowed it down to a few options including Slicehost and Linode. They each offer VPS's where you can select your Linux operating system and get a clean box with root access. Ultimately I went with Linode since they provide an easy to use interface, provide a name server service, and are slightly more cost effective. For $20/month Linode offers slightly more memory than its competitors.

My experience with Linode has so far been good. I emailed tech support about a high CPU report to see if anything was the matter. They responded in a reasonable amount of time and at least appeared interested and capable of assisting with the issue. One note is that they use an older virtualization technology but are migrating to Xen Source. Xen Source, which was recently bought by Citrix, has become the industry standard for virtualization software. Linode is beta testing Xen right now and will move their entire production to it eventually.

My recommendation for anyone launching a website is to go with a virtual private server. It's just more fun. The shared hosting sites are notorious for overselling bandwidth and CPU. If you can write code you can figure out how to configure a webserver and database. I even found a tutorial on how to configure Django with Slicehost. We used it with Linode which works just as well. For all others have fun with the shared hosting zoo and watch out for the lunar animals.

Cheers,

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Python/Django: What a team

2008-02-18T14:24:00.000-08:00

Last week I described my quest to learn PHP and included some useful tools to do so. By now I expect every one of you should be an accomplished novice with that. I also indicated that I had since progressed to using Python instead. The reason for the switch was more practical and less technical. My programming partner is a Python guru and I'm still a novice with PHP. I have found that the switch has been beneficial and I recommend to anyone coding in PHP or other languages to make a similar switch.

I could attempt to go down the list of pros and cons of Python vs. PHP but I'm not as of yet and expert with either yet and wouldn't do it justice. Fortunately other people have done just that and left their notes for posterity. That link provides kind of funny list in that the original author seems to favor Python while later editors came through and attempted to redeem PHP.

My experience is that I enjoyed working with PHP more at first as it more closely resembles C++, which I'm most familiar with. Working with Python has been a bit of a challenge to get going out the gate. After a while it feels cooler somehow programming in Python though. Maybe it's because only smart people typically code in Python whereas PHP brings out all the fake geeks. Fake geeks are the imitators who have no true love for computers or software but obtained a degree in software to please their parents or change their socioeconomic status. It's great to be ambitious but when it comes to software skills oftentimes you either have it or you don't. I'm sure I'll write a post about this phenomenon at some point but for now suffice it to say, Python attracts the true geeks in the industry (as does Perl, Linux, Unix, etc.). PHP has some true geeks but also a rumored disproportionate majority of not so talented imitators. This is of course a subjective observation but one that I'm not the first to note.

For those interested in becoming Python gurus the best place to start is the online documentation along with its tutorial. The next place to look is to the free online book, "Dive into Python". Somewhere along the way go back to the main documentation and peruse the Python Library Reference. It may be helpful in understanding the examples you come across. There are other resources but I'll let the reader search for them online. Working through these is plenty.

But wait, there's more folks! Python is a great fully functional language that can be used for any purpose, but what about those of us who want to build web pages fast? Why not just use Ruby on Rails? The Python community answered these questions. The answer is Django. Django is a web framework built with Python used to facilitate many of the tasks common to web applications. With Django, by creating one class and a few extra lines of code you can create your entire database structure and all the administration pages to modify that database online. It's actually one class per table in the database, but I'm sure no one will complain. With another class and a few other associated lines of code you can create a form that will automatically check all your input data. Sure it takes a little bit of work to know where to put the logic, but the Django Documentation page is excellent. It contains a great tutorial as well as a link to the Django book. They advertise an expressed goal of making website building a matter of hours, not weeks or months and I think they're going to come dangerously close to meeting that goal. In that vein, here's an article on why you should leave Ruby on Rails for Django/Python. Possibly of more interest is this article on Ruby on Rails wiki page showing performance benchmarks. I'll just quote the summary, "Rails performed much better than Symfony. And Django performed much better than Rails."

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

What's PHP? A Beginner's Guide

2008-02-12T17:01:00.000-08:00

Some years ago I was screening a candidate for a technical support position. The job required no programming skills but the candidate had listed a variety of competencies on their resume. Amongst them was PHP. At the time I had never worked with PHP and didn't know exactly what it was. A quick web search told me it was a server side scripting language. The official definition from the PHP web site is:

"PHP is an HTML-embedded scripting language. Much of its syntax is borrowed from C, Java and Perl with a couple of unique PHP-specific features thrown in. The goal of the language is to allow web developers to write dynamically generated pages quickly."

Armed with my cursory knowledge of PHP I asked the interviewee what type of work he'd done with it. To my amazement and surprise he replied, "What's PHP?" I was beside myself with his blatant resume padding and quickly concluded the interview. As an aside and even more amazingly my manager still wanted to hire the guy because he was somebody's friend's brother's gardener's ex wife's cousin, or something to that effect. Eventually I threw that manager into the dumpster by quitting, but I digress. The candidate did pose a valuable and important question, one which I came to answer in greater depth years later.

What's PHP? There are many resources available to explore this topic. Amongst them are the PHP web site, online tutorials and books. I've outlined how best to navigate those, in particular the online tutorials.

1) PHP website. If you know nothing about PHP then the first thing you should do is go to the home base. The epicenter of the PHP earthquake. The mecca of the programming elite. Spend some time perusing the documentation gleaning as much information as you can. While you're there download and install PHP. Set up your first Hello World PHP program. If you have trouble getting PHP setup and configured with your webserver, consider using XAMPP. It's a great tool that prepackages and preconfigures Apache, PHP, MySQL and a variety of other common utilities. I'm sure I'll dedicate a future post to XAMPP. Some of the tutorials below describe how to install and configure PHP as well.

2) Online tutorials. Once you're set up and have started to get a feel for the basics I recommend the following online tutorials, in this order. Each tutorial emphasizes different techniques and styles. What I did was work through them as best I could and then worked through them again. The second time through I caught a lot more of what was happening.

a) SitePoint: Build your own Database Driven Website using PHP & MySQL
This is a basic easy introduction to PHP and MySQL. It's a good first place to start. They do use what's called multipurpose pages and eventually I became convinced that they're not the way to go. An example of a multipurpose page is a script that both presents a form and processes the data. I prefer to separate the two, but each developer is welcome to adhere to their own style. The information in this tutorial is relevant and anyone who becomes a PHP programmer will come across multipurpose pages.
b) Zend Developer Zone: PHP 101: PHP For the Absolute Beginner
This is a great all around tutorial. It covers a broader base of information than the Sitepoint tutorial as well as including fully functional examples towards the end. The author also make many failed attempts at humor which just aren't funny. That is unless you enjoy punchlines being lobbed so slowly that they lose all wit and 'punch' along the way. I'll excuse him for this minor shortcoming though since he did put together a such great tutorial.
c) PHP MySQL Tutorial
Out of all the tutorials this was my favorite. His Engrish is a little broken in places and you do have to deduce some things along the way. But he got me laughing out loud with his dry wit and dutifully covers a lot of material. Clearly he's a technical guy with little design experience. Towards the end he provides full web site tutorials including an image gallery and how to build a shopping cart.
d) Paul Staminou: How To: Code Your First Web App
This tutorial is more advanced than the others and includes a number of clever programming techniques. It's harder to follow for the complete newbie but you should work through it after attempting the first three tutorials. I recommend spending more time with this one to try to follow the code. I actually printed it all out to finally wrap my head around it.

3) Books. Once you've exhausted the free resources online it does help to purchase a book or two to give a thorough overview of PHP. The descriptions tend to be more descriptive. Ofentimes they include history and further explanation of why certain implementation decisions were made. I recommend two books amongst a sea of options.

a) PHP and MySQL Web Development (4th Edition) by Luke Welling and Laura Thomson
I didn't actually buy this book but it has the reputation of being the PHP book to get. Some people did express frustration that their expectations weren't met, but I think it just suffered from being bought and therefore scrutinized more than the other options. It was on my list of books to buy until I switched to working in Python. ;)

b) Core Web Application Development with PHP and MySQL by Marc Wandschneider
I did purchase this book and recommend it to people with intermediate to better coding experience. It's not the best book if PHP is the first programming language you're learning. It was slightly over my head at times but it challenged me to research various topics to make sure I understood everything. The other issue with this book was that it had more technical and typo mistakes than I would have liked. Regardless, this is a great book for those advanced enough to stomach it. A strong background in C is probably necessary.

With the above tips you can be well on your way to becoming a proficient PHP programmer. That way, if you are ever asked during an interview what you did with PHP, you may be better able to come up with a credible reply.

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

PuTTY: A better way to telnet and ssh

2008-02-08T15:00:00.000-08:00

If you need to log into a remote system you've probably at least once tried the Windows Telnet utility. You probably immediately regretted it as well. Of all the not so wonderful products that Microsoft is associated with this is the one tool where they may have intentionally given it a half effort. I guess they aren't too excited to see their users logging into Unix systems and want to make sure they have as painful an experience as possible. It's clumsy, doesn't resize well, makes it difficult to cut and paste text amongst a variety of other shortcomings. There was a time when I accessed multiple Unix systems throughout the day. In fact I spent most of my work week logging into machines via telnet or ssh having 6-10 sessions open at any given time. Eventually a coworker introduced me to PuTTY and I haven't (willingly) used another telnet utility since.

PuTTY fixes the resizing and cut and paste issues inherent with Windows Telnet. Cut and paste is particularly easy in that as soon as you highlight something it goes into your clipboard. To paste you simply right click where you'd like to paste the text. It also provides a session manager so you can save your settings and machine names of the systems you access most frequently. That way when you open up PuTTY you just click on the machine you want to access and it brings up the login screen. It's that simple.

A good litmus test for the success of a product is whether or not other people have built products around it. PuTTY has developed it's own such following. My favorite add on is PuTTY Tray. This allows you to minimize your PuTTY application to the system tray. It also allows you to adjust the window transparency which just makes it look cool and keeps your desktop uncluttered. I like it for the cool factor.

All in all I'm content with PuTTY as a telnet utility. It runs as a lightweight standalone executable so it doesn't clog your system with registry modifications or leave shortcut icons all over the place. You just put it in your system path and you're ready to go. A good place for it is next to UnxUtils, as described in my previous post. Despite all the great things about PuTTY I couldn't in good conscious write about telnet utilities without a passing acknowledgment of my former preferred tool, QTerm. It requires you to register in order to receive the evaluation copy of the product which I didn't do. The version I used in years past came with my computer back in the mid 90s. I recall it took a little work to get everything set up but in the end it far surpassed the measly Windows Telnet utility. In general I favor using opensource software when a viable option is available. In this case it is and you can't go wrong with it. PuTTY, a Free Telnet/SSH Client.

Cheers,

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

UnxUtils: Another way to Unixify your PC

2008-02-07T15:06:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I wrote about Cygwin and how it provides a Linux like environment for PC users. It's the real deal and does a good job of providing a full fledged emulation layer on your PC. What if you don't want to install more applications on your computer? Today I have the solution for the rest of you. UnxUtils and a couple other PC utilities.

UnxUtils are simple DOS programs that you download, extract and then put in your system path. These provide some of the Unix and Linux tools that you may miss while working on PC's. The good thing about UnxUtils is it's very unintrusive on your system. I find that I install it when I go from Unix systems to PC frequently and am always typing 'ls' on the PC or other similar commands. It spares me so much headache from having to make the mental switch between what system I'm on.

The other major utility I like is a vi utility for PC. My preferred is Vim. This can be downloaded and installed just like any other piece of software. It's the leader in vi utilities and is often installed rather than the normal vi on Unix or Linux systems. It adds some extra functionalities which are nice such as the multiple undo function and various formatting options. If you really want to not officially install anything on your computer you can use Winvi. Historically this was my vi tool of choice for Windows. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of Vim but is simple and runs as a standalone executable. Therefore you can simply put it in the same directory as the UnxUtils files and you're set. (Since that should already be in your path and the utilities serve a similar function.)

I'm sure an emacs application has been made for Windows as well. It looks like you can get one here but I can say nothing of how well it works. Maybe I'll take the emacs plunge one of these days just to see what the draw is. Until then I'm a vi guy through and through.

With these few applications and utilities you can Unixfy your PC enough to get by. No more logging into a cmd window and typing 'ls' or 'find' and then being reminded that you just can't do that here. Even more frustrating is when you're in Windows Notepad and start trying to use vi commands. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's done that. Then you're stuck trying to undo the mess you made. These tools have saved me a lot of hassle. Enjoy!

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Cygwin: Linux for the rest of us

2008-02-06T12:37:00.000-08:00

I've been working in Windows for a while now. In years past I spent nearly every day in front of little black windows- shells. It was really the heart of being a geek, to leave the happy comfortable user interface of Windows and go for the cold hard interface of shells. For anyone who doesn't know what a shell is here you go!

Now you may wonder why anyone would subject themselves to such a life. Reality is shells are so much easier to deal with than Windows. You don't have to use the mouse and wait for the window to load and get stopped all day with simple tasks. You can navigate straight to the directory you want and do any number of things faster than with Windows. I feel strangely comfortable when typing in a Unix (or Linux) shell.

So years went by and I saw not any shells. It was all Windows, no software development, no vi (a text editor for Unix), no writing quick shell scripts to solve small problems. Life was hard. Until one day my business partner suggested Cygwin. Cygwin is a program that runs on Windows but emulates a Unix/Linux environment. Now I've used Cygwin before but just didn't have a need to install it on my personal computer until recently.

When I began installing it I was faced with the option of installing various packages. I became like a kid in a candy shop and practically started clicking on every Unix utility (small program that you can run from the command line) that I could. Before I knew it I was set up to work with Java, C++, Python, Perl, and had vi, emacs (another text editor- I never used it but like having around just in case), and every other major and minor utility. It was great. 500MB later I installed everything and after a few minor configuration modifications I was set.

Cygwin has been a reminder of how helpful the Free Software Foundation is and all the projects that are developed with licenses that are open for all to use. How the creators of such products make money I do not know. I do know that Sun Microsystems recently bought MySQL, another free product, for approximately $1 Billion. I guess in some situations it works out to not charge for your product. As for me, I just appreciate being able to use the free tools and get what I need done.

For all those who want a Linux like user interface but don't have the room or desire to purchase a separate system, Cygwin is the best option.

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Let's reinvent the Wheel: The Multilevel File Structure

2008-02-05T00:50:00.001-08:00

I remember taking a history of computers class in college, or maybe it was just a side note from an upper level course. I forget exactly where I heard this spoken for the first time but the words resonated with me long afterwards. I must have heard it from a professor that went on a long winded tangent about the good 'ole days. Oh how they love to describe the times when computers used punch cards, vacuum tubes and flat file systems. Then they go on to explain how in modern times we've progressed from these and explain some of the technical changes that took place along the way.

What exactly is a flat file system may you ask? It's from the old days, like a long long time ago when the only people who had computers were the military and IBM. It was during this time, when CEO's still wore suits and could sexually harass their employees without recourse, that computers stored all their files in the same directory. That's right, everything from grandma's anniversary pictures to tax returns were all lumped together, side by side. To be realistic, back then computers hadn't reached such a personalized level so it was primarily business or technical files in the directory but the point is the same. Imagine having every file you ever created listed in the same directory. It would drive you nuts. Eventually computer users worked around this issue by creating what might be called meta directories. Within the filename they created an intelligible but unofficial directory structure. For example, we might today store a file as:

C:\Bloomberg Project\2008 Budget\Police Payouts\January.xls
In those days they would use a single file name:
BloombergProject2008BudgetPolicePayoutsJanuary.xls

Eventually everyone figured out that they needed to have directories that could store both files and subdirectories and these subdirectories could store both files and sub directories, ad infinitum. Thus the concept of a multilevel file system was formed. For many years now all major operating system vendors including Microsoft, Apple, Linux and Unix providers have implemented exactly that. Computer users have long since forgotten the dark days of flat file systems and the woes associated with storing dissimilar files within the same directory.

Now log into your Yahoo or Gmail account and tell me what you see. Look closely. Yes, that's right, it's a flat file system! Actually it has two levels. One level which can only store directories and inside them you can only store files. Note that Gmail is slightly different with labels but it amounts to the same, it's a two level file structure. This may be enough for email usage from days or yore. But what about those of us who use these tools to manage businesses and maintain many levels of contact on a broad array of topics? We're back to the old meta file name workarounds as our cave dwelling ancestors used.

321. I just counted the labels in my Gmail account and I have a total of three hundred and twenty one labels. I may have been off by a label or two but goodness, did they not realize that people might actually attempt to use their product and the multiple gigabytes of space? Many of my labels follow a similar pattern as described above:

PaidaccountsPublicsofficialsSecretdonations
This would have a few files in it. Next I would have:
PaidaccountsPublicsofficialsReporteddonations

And so it goes on down the line. 321 times down the line to be exact.

Google seems to at least have begun to realize their demise, albeit slowly. If you open up Google Docs you'll be faced with something that resembles a cross between a conundrum and the Heimlich maneuver. It does however, amongst a mess of other functions, include a multi level file structure. Yes I can create sub directories with sub sub directories each with their own array of files. This is washed down by little used options like hidden files and search views. My biggest grievance against it is that it's currently not possible (or I haven't figured out how) to create a file within a subdirectory. You must first create the file then manually move it to it's happy little subfolder. Verily I say unto you, "Not short is the time you may spend organizing the files that beith in Google docs." Yahoo makes no effort to implement a multilevel file system whatsoever.

As an aside, I do have a theory about the politics between labels and the multilevel structure at Google. I envision some late 20 something hot chick director coming up with the labels idea. Everyone panders to anything this bambetsy says so off they go with labels. Meanwhile the one 50+ year old geezer at Google who has been asked to retire multiple times finally gets to push through his multilevel file structure. The hot chick and all her little nerd minions still push forth with labels. What you end up with is a last minute multilevel file structure which is passably useful sometimes. The old guy eventually was run over by a scooter after his coffee break so it was never transfered to the Gmail system. Therefore, I'm still stuck with my 300 going on 5000 labels.

So what now? Google seems well on its way to creating an online space for all personal computing needs. Yahoo doesn't seem to care and may be happily bought by one of the bigger, multilevel file structure touting competitors. Could it be said that the difference between the tech giants is their success in implementing the multilevel file structure? Maybe that's a stretch, but what isn't is that eventually the winner of the online operating system race is going to competently and efficiently implement this very basic concept.

Note- we're aware that Google Labs implemented a half hearted version of the multilevel file structure. This is a good step in the right direction, but we feel they should go the distance and use a standard file structure like we've always enjoyed.

Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Yuntaa: Up and coming backup solution

2008-02-02T22:47:00.000-08:00

A couple years back I worked for a backup software company. That's all they did. Select files and folders to be backed up, encrypt them, and store them somewhere else. They had a very circuitous method for recovering your files. You had to remember two or sometimes three passwords. Suffice it to say, if ever anyone wanted to recover their stuff, they were typically out of luck. People paid upwards of $80/month for this service. It was hilarious, and sad. I don't know if they ever got sued, but I know they made a killing when their company was acquired. Perhaps they straightened out some of their usability issues in the meantime. I left in somewhat of a disillusioned hurry and never bothered to find out.

So years have gone by and I have very rarely run backups on my own. I was business manager for approximately a year and all that data was just hanging out on my hard drive, waiting for my laptop to get BLS'd (Broken, Lost or Stolen). I justified my laziness by telling myself that the most critical documents were in email anyway, which was true. If ever I had to recover them though it would have been a major hassle.

Recently I started working on personal projects, putting web sites together mainly. A couple times I zipped up key directories and uploaded them to my gmail account for safe keeping. This I did quite infrequently and am glad I've never had to go looking for any of my files. All the while I knew I needed a backup solution. That's when I came across this warning message which was linked to an article I was reading. I finally decided, after years of putting it off, to find a backup solution.

I began searching for a solution and it turns out that many products are free up to a certain threshold, usually around 1GB or so. For the record, I used Mashable's 5000+ Resources to Do Just About Anything Online page to find a concise list of options. If you gain nothing else from this post, bookmark that link.

You can sift through the repository on your own, but the backup software is found under Web Development Tools and then 80+ File Hosting and Sharing Sites. The list of online backup solutions contains 27 various options. I was looking for a solution that was:
1) Free
2) Functional- i.e. does it work at all?
3) Safe- Do I trust this company with my data?
4) Automatable- can I download a utility and schedule it to backup?

My first selection was Orbitfiles. They offer a whopping 6GB of free space. I think everyone else's first selection was them as well, for likely the same reason. The backups were painfully slow, and I quickly lost interest and began looking elsewhere.

My next attempt, Yuntaa. They offer 1 GB of free storage, but their website made it clear that they are a well or at least moderately funded company. From flash demos to professionally designed graphics it looks like they put a lot into their site and hopefully their product. Now the geek in me thinks, "Hmmm, since when do backups need to have pretty graphics?" It's long been my impression that the prettier you make things, the worser they work. (see requirement #2). But I trudged ahead and decided to test the waters. The user interface continues to not disappoint. You can upload files one by one online, or download their tool (which I recommend), and automate them. I even ran a restore and saw that it recovered my files just fine. Much easier than the backup company I worked for in years past.

The Catch. After testing a few small files here and there I decided that this was the backup program for me. I'll work within the 1GB limit and if it comes to it, I'll pay the fee for more. I was intially under the impression that the fee was approximately $5/month for 5GB, but maybe my memory is a bit foggy. I had just researched 27 different backup options so that's likely the case. Regardless, now it's posted as €20/month for 5GB of storage. That's about $30 USD. I guess these guys are serious. Well, the Euro gives hint to their location, Brussels as it turns out, and may explains my only minor problem.

The Bloody Thing Doesn't Work. Seriously! When I selected the folders that I wanted to back up, which was close to my 1GB of data limit, the process ran forEVER, then hung. During the first part of the process it said, "Creating file structure" or something to that effect. This is where it creates the parent folder, and then all the subfolders and sub sub folders and so on. This should be a very quick process, and it is not. I watched the data transfer with my firewall, (see Comodo in my AntiVirus, Spyware blog), and it was transferring so slow I thought I was using the slowest of all dialup connections. My connection is DSL. Patient though I am I waited for it to finish, and 45 minutes or so later it does. Once it successfully created the file structure it begins uploading data. 1 minute in, it hangs. Stuck. Stopped.

The good news. I emailed tech support describing the issue and my sadness that it didn't work out. Believe it or not, they emailed back. I replied to their questions giving them more information about the system I was on and details about exactly what I was doing. I also offhandedly suggested that if they're inclined to increase my account for helping to better their product I would be most appreciative. He replied with a few more technical details, and BAM, upped my account to the 5GB limit.

The Conclusion. Yuntaa is a well funded exciting online tool which I believe will be a leader in the backup space. They also promote other functionalities including "sharing and collaboration application". I have a vague idea what that is but really don't care. You can read more about the product as a whole in this guy's blog if you're particularly industrious with your "sharing and caring" about your files. As for me I just want a backup solution and I look forward to trying Yuntaa again. I hope the distance of file transfer doesn't make this a prohibitive solution for US based users. Given the general impression of their site I would expect they plan on targeting US markets as well. Based upon my communications with tech support the development team is working steadily and quickly to resolve any technical issues. In their defense, they're still in beta mode anyways. I'll give it another go in a week or three and I'm sure it will eventually be my backup tool of choice.

Cheers!

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Believe: The hardest thing to do

2008-02-01T17:55:00.000-08:00

Occasionally everyone needs a little push in the right direction. To rise up during difficult times. Or to find the courage to do what they what in their hearts they want to do. For such a time I attempted this poem. Perhaps it's not the end all of end alls for motivational verse, but it's my own and I offer it as it is.

Believe
Plan can be made
schedules be set
risks are allayed
with some pang of regret

Friends will counsel
give their good word
steering the ship
from waters disturbed

Hope is a faint
security in need
but safety in dock
won't fail nor succeed

The passing of time
the delaying of flight
in soon they're be no
more vision in sight

In all of these times
the heart may deceive
for the hardest of fights
is in oneself to believe

The decision has come
and it come from within
whether to risk
and risking to win

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Viruses, Adware, Spyware: 7 ways to win the battle

2008-01-31T17:40:00.000-08:00

Most of my non techie friends with PC's have a series of junk on them. These may be viruses, ads that they don't want, or whatever else that may be lurking in their system. Over the years I've developed a check list of freeware programs that they can use to remove the junk and protect their computers in the future. Here's my list.

1) No admin privileges. My top recommendation is to not operate as an administrator for day to day use. It's hard for viruses, spyware or adware to install themselves if they don't have the authority to do so. Here's the article on Microsoft's website on how to add a new user.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/279783

2) FireFox. Don't use Internet Explorer, use Firefox. Always.
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
Microsoft Internet Explorer is notorious for security flaws. I'm not so experienced as to describe exactly what those flaws are, but I trust the recommendation of those that are. And they constantly with few exceptions say to use Firefox. An added bonus is that it's faster than IE, and has a series of addons and toolbars that you may find interesting.

3) Install Yahoo Toolbar because it has Anti-Spy
http://toolbar.yahoo.com/
Now I'll be honest, since I don't like extra tool bars hanging around, I installed the toolbar into Internet Explorer. So every time I use it I just open up IE, click on the Anti-Spy button, check for latest updates, and let it do it's thing. You have to be logged in as an administrator for it to work properly, so I run it about once every week or two.

4) Spybot
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
Spybot might have been on top of the list if I was prioritizing them. This freeware gem has become the industry de facto standard on getting rid of spyware, adware and other nefarious programs lurking in your computer. After running it for the first time, click the immunize button as well. I run this as an administrator.

5) Clamwin
http://www.clamwin.com/
This is a free anti virus scanner. I typically run it as an administrator, but it will work otherwise. It's an alternate to Mcafee or similar. It lacks a few features, in that it doesn't scan all files as downloaded. But it works fine, and oftentimes freeware is better maintained and less commercialized than commercial products. Commercialized virus scanners are gaining an increasing reputation as being viruses themselves. See article posted at bottom of this post.

6) Firewall- Comodo
http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com/
Microsoft's firewall is presumably acceptable for keeping things out, but doesn't do as good of a job at stopping outgoing information. For example, if you already have a virus, you want to know that it's attempting to send data across the internet and stop it. An alternate firewall is Sygate. I throw this out there since Comodo does pop up with a lot of warnings. Perhaps that's good, but I do tire of it.
http://www.tucows.com/preview/213160

7) Virus Total
http://www.virustotal.com/
If you suspect a file to be infected then upload it here. It will scan the file using all the major and minor antivirus vendors to see if it's safe.

Those are my best recommendations. Primarily Spybot, Yahoo Toolbar with Anti-Spy, and Firefox, since most people already have a virus scanner of some sort. I'll make one last recommendation, but this is more for performance.

8) Remove junkware. Also known as crapware. This is the software that comes preinstalled on your computer when you bought it, but you never use. This just slows things down, and makes your system feel bloated. Oftentimes these programs preload every time you boot your system. To remove them, log into control panel, click add/remove programs, and remove the programs you don't use.

Here are two other lists if you really want to go hay wild on software security. You probably have a bunker dug out in the basement as well if you read on, but here they are.
List of free security related software programs
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&articleId=9026125
You can also check out this blog which contains other freeware software you can use.
http://www.jimmyr.com/blog/Norton_AntiVirus_is_A_Virus_97_2007.php

Cheers!

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Pair Programming: The only way to program

2008-01-18T02:18:00.000-08:00

Over the last few months I took a plunge. A plunge to become an internet entrepreneur. It started with me quitting my job, buying some programming books and beginning work. At first progress was slow. It was massively difficult to stay focused with nobody helping to keep me on task. Ultimately I began using an online stopwatch tool, Slimtimer, which made a big difference. I would still alternate between good weeks and bad weeks. Sometimes or even often I wouldn't even work 20 hrs a week. As I said, progress was slow.
After about four months I began to think about the possibility of coming under the wing of an expert. Someone who had roughly roughly the same goals and needed some assistance. Enter Pairing.

Pairing or Pair Programming is the concept of two programmers sitting in front of one computer looking at the same code together. What it produces is a collaborative atmosphere where one person can focus on technical details while the other can keep in mind the big picture. When one gets stuck the other may quickly see the answer. It usually results in much better code faster.

Managers aren't always quick to embrace it however. On the surface pairing sounds like you're going to cut productivity in half. I also suspect the name itself, Pairing, is too soft and non aggressive to compel anyone to use it. I must admit the name gives off the sense of sharing and holding hands rather than faster, cheaper, better code.

Fortunately for me I found someone online looking for a pairing partner. Actually, he was looking for a pairing partner whereby I hadn't learned yet that this was a defined software development approach. He was exceptionally senior and very much a promoter of pair programming. Together we have knocked out more work than the divided individuals could have accomplished.
Although much is written about Pair Programming here's my unofficial list of the benefits.

1) Better quality code.
2) Programmers get stuck less often and for less time.
3) Allows room for creative thinking while coding.
4) Less distractions including email checking, phone or coffee breaks.
5) Faster productivity which can exceed the output of two solo programmers.
6) More fun. Many cube dwellers come to resent the walls the separate them from social contact.
7) Simultaneous knowledge transfer.

In years past I avoided becoming a full fledged software developer due to the reclusive nature of the job. With pairing I think I've found the solution that will keep me on track and working steadily towards my goals.

More to come on exactly what those are. ;)

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Turkey Day on the Way!

2007-11-17T02:11:00.000-08:00

I decided to do something this year. Instead of sitting around waiting for someone to invite me to Thanksgiving, I decided to host it myself. I just went shopping today, got the turkey and all the side dishes. I'm going to have about 8 times as much food as anyone could eat. But that's what T-day is for.

The Turkey is prepackaged, preseasoned. All I need to do is take it out of the freezer on Thanksgiving day and cook it. It cooks in a bag so I don't have to baste it or anything. I'm hoping that works out. Everyone's looking forward to the apple and cherry pies. We'll probably just open up the cherry pie. Don't know where we're going to put all the food!

Hosting Thanksgiving is a big step. I'm not close to anyone in my family, and am decidedly distant from my immediate family. Those boundaries are good, especially given the extensive abusive history. But the complete lack of family can sometimes make the holidays can be a drag. This year not so the case. I'm hosting holidays at my house and bringing my family of friends to me. After this Thursday, it will be one down, one to go, then a whole 11 months before these blasted holidays come around again. Last year was great. I was much too busy to care. I think I worked on Christmas day.

Regardless, my solution for anyone feeling down since people aren't inviting them out, is get off your butt, make a plan, and host a party. Be it for the holidays or just a normal weekend event. Chances are there are many others who would love to come and then everyone wins. I know it works for me, and then I get to keep all the leftovers.

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

I Lived in a Pink House

2007-11-14T02:52:00.000-08:00

I lived in a pink house for eight years. The funny thing was, I didn't realize it was pink. I knew the bathroom tile was pink, but I got over that since I liked the rest of the house. And so I went about my business happily without giving it a second thought. Recently my landlord decided to remodel everything. They took out the carpets, refinished the hardwood floors underneath. Replaced the entire kitchen including the stove, fridge, counter, microwave, and replaced the linoleum with tile. It looks really good. The deal was that they would pay for the paint if I did the work. And so I began assisted by a girlfriend and a few other people. When we put the new tan paint up against what I thought was off white, I realized that it's a shade of pink!

Now that the pink house has been completely remodeled, I feel much better about my living situation. It reminds me of the jail in Kansas that attempted to paint jail cells pink since it was supposed to have a calming effect on the prisoners. Apparently that effort failed and they went back to the drab gray that prisoners prefer.

It is an interesting concept, that the colors around you can affect your mood. I'm more of a techie and tend to think it shouldn't matter at all. But then now that I live in a house with nice warm friendly colors it feels so much more homey. And when we were picking out colors, we tried a few that were hysterically bad. There was this Caribbean yellow (titled Burnished Sun from Kelley Moore) that was so bright you couldn't walk past it without laughing. And then we went for an accent wall in the bedroom which at one point was a silky blue. The heterosexual male in me demanded it to be replaced immediately.

When it comes to remodeling, I think I learned the same lessons as the prison in Kansas. If you're going to paint, do it with safe neutral colors. And if you're moving into a new house, check the color of the tile. If it's pink, then quite likely the rest of the house has pink overtones as well.

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

My secret Freezer Bag Fetish

2007-11-04T23:46:00.001-08:00

Recently I realized that I needed to come to terms with something. All my life I've had a secret resealable freezer bag fetish. I covet these bags, the kind where you can put something wet and sticky inside and it (hopefully) won't drip all over the refrigerator. I remember when I was young, not being entirely sure if the bag was closed and it would leak a little. Then right around that time they came out with the yellow and blue makes green series so you can be sure that your bag is closed. I thought it was the greatest thing. Lately most of the bags I come across are either clear or have the red and blue makes purple combo. It appears Glad goes with the yellow/blue combo and Ziploc goes with the red/blue makes purple.

I have to say, my absolute favorite is the double sealed bags that have the red and blue makes purple combo. It is so satisfying to have TWO seals to make sure your food is extra safe from leaking.

The truth is, I've always admired and liked these bags, but I rarely bought them. I felt they were an accessory that I could live without. But I finally broke down and started to splurge. This was in large part due to the fact that I've become a big fan of marinating meat before barbecuing and resealable freezer or storage bags are ideal for this.

So yesterday after returning from the store, I realized that I'd purchased a fourth package of resealable storage bags. I think it's time for me to come to terms with this anomalous fetish of mine. Admitting it is the first step. If you share this social oddity with me then perhaps we can form an online support group for recovering resealable freezer and storage bag addicts and admirers.

http://glad.com/foodbags/
http://www.ziploc.com/

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

The Ultimate Secret Workout Plan

2007-10-27T01:24:00.001-07:00

A lot of people have their workout regimen that they swear by. These include special diets, magic pills, supplements, and all sorts of funky exercises. There are devices for every type of exercise imaginable. I have friends who purchased elastic bands to wrap around their midsection just to jiggle their fat around a bit. I think it was supposed to help them burn the calories 'effortlessly'. Diet and exercise techniques come in and out of fashion so quickly it's hard to take them all seriously. Many of them do have merit, but the main secret of staying in shape the health and wellness industry has shrouded behind workout balls and fat blocking pills. After much research and study, I've finally found the ultimate super secret exercise and dieting technique which will get you to the fitness level you've always dreamed. With my scientifically proven methods you will drop those pounds and gain the shape and physique that will amaze your friends and significant other. Are you ready? Here it is.

Work out every day.

Ha! That's it folks. You can spend your hard earned dollars on gym memberships that you don't use, sit up machines, blow up rubber balls, leg weights, dumb bells, bar bells, fat heaters, elliptical whatevers to finally get yourself in shape. All you'll end up with is a whole lot of gym equipment that will lie around the house.

Now you ask, how are you supposed to work out if you don't have anything to work out with? Perhaps I have an advantage since I live in sunny California. But what you do is put on your tennis shoes, and go for a run, walk, hike up a hill. And you do so every day. I prefer running, but if you're overweight then going every day will be hard on your body. So speed walk. Ride a bike. Or roller blade. The main point is, you don't need to buy anything new. You take what you have and you make sure to do something, anything, every single day. You are only allowed to buy new stuff when you have completely broken, used up, and worn out all your existing equipment. If you reach this point, a funny thing will have happened. You'll have gotten past the point where workouts are work. You will find that you enjoy and look forward to them. It does happen. Runners high is the best. After you've been cruising for a while you just start to feel like you're in a nice rhythm and you get this euphoria. And once you're in shape, feeling sore from hitting the weights is a great feeling. It's not the same soreness you'll feel after going 6 months of not working out. It makes you feel alive and can become addictive.

Most people don't reach this point and hence the piles of workout equipment go unused. They serve only as reminders of the goals we did not achieve. If you can achieve goal number one, of working out every day, then you'll get in shape. You'll find you need less of the equipment. And when you do need to buy something, say a bike, it will be because you need a bike to ride, not because you need to ride your bike more. It makes all the difference in the world. The pounds will ultimately shed and all the dieting and whatnot will follow.

Work out every day. The only rule you need to follow to get in shape.

Disclaimer: I'm not a professional, please see a heath fitness instructor for specific medical advice. Also, the exception to the rule is if you are too sore and need a day to recover. This happens more often in the beginning, and you should let your body heal. Take it easy during your first few months of working out. You may have to work up to making it every day. Start with once or twice a week if that's where your fitness level is. You don't want to get hurt. BUT, you aren't allowed to enjoy the days you take off! You must be disappointed that you don't get to work out that day and look forward to working out the next. ;)

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Gmail vs. Yahoo: Woes and Wants

2007-10-26T05:26:00.001-07:00

Today I took the step of creating a new Gmail email account. That brings me up to three. I have four Yahoo email accounts that I've acquired over the years. I use them as follows.

Yahoo 1: Personal/Close Friends/Professional(Old)
Yahoo 2: General Junkmail/Business Junkmail
Yahoo 3: Personal for Myspace and other social networking sites
Yahoo 4: Total junkmail where I know I don't trust this site but need a working email address.

Gmail 1: Professional(Primary). Also used for managing my blog, Adsense, and other Google services.
Gmail 2: Used for my other Myspace account.
Gmail 3: Used as primary contact for this blogspot account.

Now I would delete Yahoo 4 if I saw a quick and easy way to do so. People might wonder why would someone have so many email accounts? It's a combination of Spam and Stalkers. Spam, we all know. If you haven't caught onto the idea of creating a separate Spam email account to use for any time you aren't sure where your email address will be stored or how it will be used, then now's the time to get with the program.

As for Stalkers, my normal professional email address names contain some variation of my first name, last name and maybe a few numbers. For social networking sites I don't want to reveal this information so instead come up with a name that's reflective of my personality without giving away my identity. These sites also smell like places that would provide Spam as well so I don't want to use my main accounts.

So the great debate is, which is better? On the whole, Gmail offers many more services than Yahoo, including word processing, spreadsheets, etc. Some day I'll write on the various Google services that I find useful. I can think of two areas where Yahoo beats Google. It has better performance and it has unlimited space. In my unscientific tests of logging into a minimum of six different Gmail and Yahoo accounts multiple times a day, Yahoo is faster, snappier and generally quicker to give me the info I want. The unlimited space is rather inconsequential. It sounds great, but in reality they both offer enough so that you won't care either way.

The one thing that both email systems fail to have is subfolders for email storage. If I have a project, let's say the Brady account, I'll end up with a series of administrative, scheduling, project management, and contractual related emails. I don't want these all to be stored in the same folder (or label, Gmail's version of a folder). So what I end up doing is creating a new folder for each account, such as BradyAccounting, BradyContracts, BradyProjectManagement, etc. This takes the computer industry back around 20-30 years to when they didn't have folders at all. Instead they had to label all files in a similar manner as what I end up doing to indicate hierarchy and relationships between emails. My question is when will either system bring us into the year 2007 with their folder management? The bottom line is, neither system works particular well for large quantities of email. With each system offering gigabytes of space, perhaps they could create a feasible system to organize it all. It's called a Multilevel File System, which is common in application based email system such as MS Outlook.

All told, both are excellent web based email services. My primary advice is, if you don't have a Gmail account, get one. The wide variety of services that come with it you will likely one day find useful or even need. But also don't completely walk away from Yahoo. You hear the occasional Gmail snafu whereby they accidentally delete entire email accounts.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/12/28/gmail-disaster-reports-of-mass-email-deletions/

Google's growing so fast I'm sometimes surprised they don't collapse and fall into the ocean. Until that happens, we can enjoy their ground breaking email service along with the associated amenities.

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Slimtimer: The Online Stopwatch of Champions

2007-10-23T19:04:00.000-07:00

Working from home can be challenging. Without a boss or coworkers to keep you on task it's quite easy to get distracted. Perhaps one day I'll admit to the many video games I play when I'm supposed to be working. Some of them are really fun and can be legitimately rationalized as intellectually stimulating. Others are just plain dumb. I remember one time when I was working at a large corporation I played hearts for 3-4 days straight. I just got so bored with the job and was wondering how long I could make it before they noticed. Eventually I quit citing that I had just played hearts all week and was too bored to continue. Instead of letting me go I got the transfer that I wanted. Funny how that works.

But now I have the set up that I've always wanted. No boss to get after me. No coworkers to exude their incompetence at every turn. It's just me and a few clients from time to time. And then before I know it, I waste 3-4 hours playing some dumb video game online.

Enter Slimtimer.

Slimtimer is an online stopwatch that tracks the amount of time you spend on your projects. When I turn on the computer, I log in to Slimtimer, press start, then start working. If I get up for a break, I press the stop button, then resume when I get back. It's a fairly effective video game repellent in that when the clock is ticking, I think it's time to work. Being a single track, one task at a time minded male probably helps too. All of a sudden Slimtimer becomes the challenge at hand and my goal is to get to my eight hours that day. (I aspire for more, but I make eight the goal.) As I watch the clock go, it spurns me to finish up the last little bit when I might be tempted to put it off until the next day. It has a few quirks. In my cursory usage it seems I need to close the browser and clear the cache to logout entirely. I tend to do that anyway so it doesn't bother me. There are other timers out there listed here, if you'd like to explore them. Actually that link has a bonanza of cool tools, not just timers. It's worth checking out. Slimtimer is free, and isn't overcomplicated with a bunch of services I don't need.

SlimTimer. The online time tracking tool that you've always wanted.

http://www.slimtimer.com
http://freelanceswitch.com/general/101-essential-freelancing-resources/

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

A eulogy for my bike

2007-10-21T22:17:00.000-07:00

Today was a sad day for my bike. I had to retire it. I don't know how many miles I put on it over the years, somewhere in the thousands. I used to have an odometer but too much riding and too much mud killed it. My bike got to the point where the back rim rubbed up against the brake every time it circled around. There were a few spots that had been deformed by being hit by one too many rocks. When going up long hills I just unhooked that brake since I didn't need it until the downhill. My riding gloves were worn to the point of being inconsequential. I only had a couple crashes of note. One of which was stopped by my trusty helmet. I don't know how I ended up landing on my head, but I tell you, riding with a helmet is a great idea. Actually I do know how I fell on my head. I was going down these steps that were cut into the trail to prevent errosion. They don't lend themselves to biking and when you have two steps so close together you might fly off. The other times I was going downhill too fast, hit a rock or a crevice in the ground, and I made like super man- right up until I hit the ground. Didn't ever damage much more than my pride, but after the first fall I decided riding gloves were essential.

My bike is like an old friend. When I'd been in a fight with a girlfriend, I went for a ride. When I was procrastinating from school, I went on a ride. When I just got done with a test, I took the bike out. If I had a few hours free on a weekend, I hopped on it for a quick spin. I remember shopping for it. I learned everything about the componetry at the time- gears, brakes, frame, shocks. And when I found the bike that had everything I wanted, I quickly bought it.

Now it's old, broken, and alone. I tried to fix the tire, but the spare had a hole in it too! I tried to realign the gears, but they are in a worse state than before I started. Looking at the broken state of affairs, and the fact that I'd have to pay someone to make it semi ridable for maybe another year, I decided it's just not worth the money. I took the seat, the seat pack and bike pump, and laid the rest aside. I'll send it to the dump, or give to someone who wants to pick through the remaining parts.

Good bye fair bike. You served me well. You stuck through rain, mud, hills, rocks, roads, winter, ocean air and beating sun. You were cussed at and never complained. You were neglected and still gave your all. We had a great ride together. And with that, I say goodbye. Know that you were loved and will be missed.

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

I want to lose a billion dollars

2007-10-21T02:16:00.000-07:00

Everyone has goals. Short term goals, medium term, and then long term goals. One thing I'd like to do at some point in my life is lose a billion dollars. I don't want it to a result of being the victim of a crime nor to die with a billion dollars in my bank account and 'lose' it to whoever inherits my money. I want it either to be the result of some business blunder on my own part, or that I gave that much away to a good cause. Both I think would greatly benefit society. To be the guy who lost a billion dollars and still woke up and smiled about it. Or to be the guy that had it and happily gave it away.

I wouldn't be the only one to go the charitable route. Charles Feeney, duty free shop mogul, has apparently given away approximately $4 Billion either directly or indirectly and is on his way to giving another $4 Billion.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/26/nyregion/26about.html?_r=1&oref=slogin. Hence being the guy who lost it all might be a good way to make the point that money is not the end all of end alls. It is nice of course. And the lack of it tends to be a problem. But the lust of it tends to be a problem as well.

Perhaps the other reason I'd like to lose a billion is because that would mean at least at one point I had a billion dollars to lose. So today, I'd like you to ask yourself, how much money would you like to lose?

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Words of the Day: Wordsmith.org Transparent.com

2007-10-20T04:52:00.000-07:00

Following the theme from yesterday, I decided to promote two services that I signed up for online. They're both a word a day services. The first is Wordsmith.org. This delivers a word in English to my inbox every day around midnight. The words tend to follow themes throughout the week, such as words relating to the legal system, or words derived from ancient forms of transportation.

The second service is even more fun. Transparent.com. This service delivers words in a variety of languages, including Spanish, French, German, Italian and Portuguese (and English as well but I think we already know that one...) I went ahead and signed up for all of them. Here's a direct link to the signup page.
http://www.transparent.com/subscribe/subscription.htm

The part I like best about Transparent.com is that it sends you a link back to their site that contains an audible recording of the word and another recording of the word used in a sentence. It's great. I haven't purchased any of the other products but one of these days I'm going to put learning a new language down as a personal goal. Currently my personal projects list is a bit full, which makes this service a nice. It's lets me learn a little bit here and there until I have time to make a more concerted effort. I'd prefer to perfect my Spanish, move on to French, which I have a cursory understanding of, and then I think Arabic might be a good choice. The reason being, half the world speaks it and I know nothing about it.

Of course, if you're not yet convinced that you should learn a new language, please refer to this Berlitz ad.

Enjoy!

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Creating Words

2007-10-19T00:56:00.000-07:00

Do you remember being a kid, maybe an adolescent, and coming up with secret words that only you and your friends knew? My friends and I used to have whole languages worked out. We'd take phrases from pop culture, movies, or maybe something an old man on the street yelled out, and apply our own meaning to them. It was like creating our own separate world that no one could enter.

As you get older, romantic relationships are full of their own lists of phrases. Terms of endearment bring a sense of intimacy to the point where calling that person their real name is almost an affront. In my relationships, being called my first name usually means that I've really ticked her off this time.

So today I decided to create a new word. Splanter. My goal is for the word to seep into mainstream consciousness and eventually be inducted into all major dictionaries. What does splanter mean do you ask? Splantering is is when you deceive someone by feigning incompetence or naivete. It can be used as a noun such as, "That guy just gave me a load of splanter." Or it can be used as a verb, "I think I'm going to have to splanter my way out of this one."

Welcome to my world. Hopefully you don't have to splanter your way out of here.

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

The dog peed on my shoe

2007-10-18T01:02:00.000-07:00

Last weekend my neighbor came home with a new dog. It's young excitable and jumps around a lot. During the day they leave it in the kennel so that it won't run a muck in the yard. All of us get along well enough and they said I could go play with it during the day if I like.

Today I heard the little guy whining because he'd been left alone all day. I took a break and headed over there. As soon as I got there he starts jumping around and before I know it, pee everywhere. I think it only got on my shoe, but then, who knows. Everything's going in the laundry now anyways.

So the lesson in life today- who's shoe do you pee on? In a job interview that you really really want are you so over enthusiastic to demonstrate your qualifications that you effectively pee on the poor interviewer's shoe? When you're on a date with your dream guy are you overly attentive and excitable and then later wonder why he doesn't call?

I'd say one of the tricks to getting what you want is not peeing on other people's shoes. Play it cool, and make them pee on your shoe a bit. Unless of course you're a cute 7 month old puppy in which case people will love you anyway. :)

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Have you ever met a smart person who was stupid?

2007-10-17T01:48:00.000-07:00

A while back, when I was in college, I had a conflict with a girl in one of my classes. We had been partnered together for a group project and the lines of responsibility weren't entirely clear. Still, I felt like I was carrying my weight and doing my best to contribute. Never being an expert at conflict resolution I decided to give it a go. I asked her if she had some time to talk, then asked her what was going on. She swallowed the opportunity to lay into me and said, "You're stupid." I was caught completely off guard and quickly aborted the effort to mitigate our differences.

Now I've been called a lot of things over the years- annoying, spastic, too loud, too quiet, socially inept, and I'm sure a variety of other cleverly crafted critiques. But stupid, or unintelligent, don't typically make the list.

Years later I was in a training seminar for work. We took a personality test and answered a series of situational or preference type questions. At the end, I was declared an ENFJ. What the heck is an ENFJ?! E is for Extrovert, N is for iNtuition, F for Feeling, and J for Judging. Their opposites are ISTP, for Introvert, Sensing, Thinking, Perceiving. Official explanation can be found here. My rough explanation is, Extrovert/Introvert- do you get energy from being around others, or from being alone. Judging/Perceiving is the difference between the person that organizes their sock drawer (Judger) and the person that thinks organization should be avoided at all costs (Perceiver). Feeling/Thinking is how you make decisions, either based upon how you feel about it, or based upon the cold hard facts. And finally, Intuitive vs. Feeling. This is how you learn and gather information. Intuitive people take a few scattered facts, connect the dots and voilà, they get it. Sensing people learn sequentially- first with step one, then step two, and then on down the line. Skip a step and they're all in a tizzy. Intuitive folks are comfortable leaving the dots unconnected knowing that it'll come together in the end. Or maybe they already get it. ;)

So here's the kicker, due to the difference in the way Intuitive people learn and Sensing people learn, they each think the other is stupid! After all those years I finally figured out why two people, both of similar academic achievement, thought the other was a dunce.

For reference, the test is known as Myers-Briggs, or Keirsey Temperament Sorter. I believe Keirsey's work followed that of Myers-Briggs, which originated from Jung. Here's one free online test I found.
http://humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm

Further Reading. (This book is thick but is fascinating.)
Please Understand Me II: Temperament, Character, Intelligence (Paperback)
by David Keirsey

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

New flowers in the garden

2007-10-15T21:13:00.000-07:00

A while back my landlord was redoing the garden area in front of my house. He had in mind to cut it back significantly, which I thought would make the house more industrial looking. I offered to plant a garden if he left it, and so he did.

A couple months go by, and still no garden. He gets after me the other day, and so after a quick trip down to Orchard Supply Hardware, I threw some mums into the ground. The whole thing took about an hour, and it actually makes a big difference. I have purple, white and yellow mums in there. They cost me 8 dollars and some change.

So the moral of the story, flower and gardens are cheap. Now in an ideal world I would have planted vegetables, herbs, and the like. But then, the mums were on sale as I was walking into OSH. I snapped them up and was on my way. Perhaps I'll post pictures one day.

For those not into flowers, let us never forget the John West salmon ad. A true classic!

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Riding Mt. Diablo

2007-10-13T20:22:00.001-07:00

Today I did something I love to do. I rode my bicycle up Mt. Diablo. It's a great ride. You start at the bottom, around 700 ft elevation and summit at over 3700 ft. I could get exact measurement but I don't care. 3000 feet is 3000 feet and anyone who rides it knows what I'm talking about. The great thing about this ride is that whenever you get tired you can just turn around, and coast back to the car. I wasn't going to let myself do that today. (I rarely do..) I rode 2+ hrs to the top on my well worn bicycle nearly falling to the ground once I got there. I (and my bike) weren't quite in shape for it this time around but we made it.

The thing that gets to me every time I go up it is the ride down. What took me hours to accomplish is undone in a matter of minutes. After all that work, it's amazing how far the top of the mountain gets so quickly. I could say something profound about that, but then, we'd have to play some inspirational music in the background and I still haven't looked into embedding music on my blogs.

In the absence of a dramatic epiphany, riding Mt. Diablo is brutal, and is worth it every time. :)

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Dork in the Pork

2007-10-13T01:01:00.001-07:00

So for those of you following my blog you may know that I'm working on a secret software project. The first two months were slow. Very slow. I had trouble getting myself to do 20 hrs of work a week. Video games, my previous job, women and life in general always seemed to get in the way. This past week I've turned the tables and have begun kicking it into high gear, up until today.

I was unable to focus. I got caught up with dishes, laundry, had a friend over tonight and watched a few movies. But now it's 1AM and I'm about to start work. Oh, I forgot to mention that part. For some reason I'm most productive during the graveyard shift. 12AM-6AM. It's crazy. The other day the power went out in the middle of the night. While most of the world slept happily through it, I was about to lose my most productive hours. I couldn't find a battery powered light so I used candles to press on. Candles are a meager light source as it turns out. I could barely read and I'm sure created quite the fire hazard.

Anyhow, here's the interesting tidbit of the day. Did you know that there's an underground restaurant in Japan that let's you have sex with your food, then they kill it, cook it, and serve it to you? It's absolutely disgusting.
http://inventorspot.com/articles/pork_your_pork_6934

OK, I bet we all wish we didn't know that. It's authenticity is thankfully questioned. Unfortunately in my understanding of human nature this has had to happen sometime, somewhere, probably during my lifetime. Maybe even right this moment. Scary!!

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Major Trauma at Safeway

2007-10-12T00:27:00.001-07:00

I just returned from Safeway. It's great to have a place I can do late night grocery shopping. Lately I've been having issues with their bag boys, bag people- bag persons we'll call them. Now I know Safeway has good hiring practices in that they try to give those jobs to mentally or physically handicapped people. The issue is with their hygiene. As I began loading my stock onto the conveyor I look over, and there's the poor kid with his fingers in his mouth! If I'm a normal person then I would politely say, excuse me ma'am, the bag person has his fingers in his mouth. Then she would dismiss him to wash up and hopefully he wouldn't do that anymore. While I contemplated how to approach the situation the checkout gal barks at me, "Paper or plastic?" I quietly say plastic as she starts running my groceries through. Before I know it fingers in the mouth bag person is loading all my crap into newly contaminated plastic bags. All the while touching each and every thing I just bought.

I just got done washing all my groceries including the cardboard cereal boxes and canned soup. Both of which look a bit soggy still but I'll manage. Conflict resolution. I either say too much like, "Screw you Safeway I hate your guts for sliming my food!", or too little, as happened today.

Flashburrito.com
Legal: Reprinting/Disclaimer

Welcome: Overview, legal, etc.

2007-10-11T04:15:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog! I initially named it Random Time Ramblings primarily because I didn't want to commit to blogging every day, hence the 'Random Time'. The 'Ramblings' part was because I was reserving the right to blog about any topic that I felt inclined. Later, I rechristened the blog as Flash Burrito!, as that's the name of the website my business partner and I have worked on. Secretly I hope to rebrand the whole thing but haven't divined a domain name that's both compelling and lies outside the grasp of squatters.

I think the bulk of my ramblings will be about technical topics. I enjoy writing about websites or software products as I tend to tinker with them quite a bit. I'll also provide a unique and critical view that may chaff a few folks along the way. In the end I hope to highlight those products and efforts that deserve praise and help provide critical insight to those that need some reworking. The goal of this blog is to provide critical feedback for software products and ultimately cause companies to reevaluate their design or implementation decisions. When I'm not doing that I may entertain with an interesting article I came across, discuss something enlightening or inspiring I realized or just provide a good old fashion comic break. It wouldn't be unheard of for me to sprinkle my blog with a joke now again. If you're ever bored prepare to become unbored here. Unless of course you find technogarble boring. Then we might be out of luck.

Feedback is always welcome. Send me a note at the email listed in my profile or just post a comment online. Currently I allow anonymous comments so you can avoid putting any of your information down if you prefer. I do that since I don't leave comments unless it's anonymous or know the person well. Now on to some legal stuff, disclaimers and so on. Enjoy your stay!

Legal: Terms for reprinting portions of this blog.
Articles of this blog can be reprinted in part or in full as you see fit, under the following conditions:
1) Please provide a link back to the blog page being reprinted.
2) Please send me a note indicating which article you're reprinting and where you're posting it. This is so I know who's interested in my blog and on what subject. It's likely that I will explore those topics further in the future and possibly direct traffic to your page.
3) Please make an effort to maintain the original context when quoting.

You can reprint up to 10 articles. If you need more than that then contact me and we'll discuss.

Disclaimer:
I will make every effort to provide true and accurate information in this blog. I am not responsible for any losses either directly or indirectly as a result of these articles. Please consult paid, professional assistance before installing or modifying software on your computer or accessing resources online, or any other actions related to topics that may be discussed. The reader also takes responsibility for observing all laws local to the jurisdiction in which they reside. In particular encryption laws vary significantly throughout the world. By reading my blog the reader acknowledges full responsibility for their computer system and any other issues that may arise associated with the articles herein.

Any similarities between persons and actual events are unintended. Names of persons and or companies may be changed or withheld when similarities exist between actual events and the events as described in my blog, in particular when those events otherwise would not be public. Oftentimes events are merged or altered to convey a point rather than recounting a historic chronicle of events. This is also done to protect the identity of any one particular individual who may feel displeased when their wily shenanigans appear to have been exposed.

Thanks!

Flashburrito.com