Friday evening (OK, I realize I’m late), I ordered some stuff from Amazon (my wife signed up for Amazon Prime) and low and behold, some of it arrived today, Monday. I also ordered an armband for my iPod Nano at the same time and it also arrived this morning. Of course, all of this is with free shipping. I feel kind of bad at getting free expedited shipping, but if merchants are offering it (or we’re paying a little for it with Amazon prime), I’ll take it!
Something wrong with this?
Yesterday we took a walk up the street to the shopping center to goto my mailbox at the UPS Store. As we walked up, we passed the local Boy Scout troop setting up their annual Christmas tree lot. Something seems quite ironic about that to me; Christmas trees require a lot of energy to harvest, transport to lots (and then homes) and then requires energy to recycle. I picture Boy Scouts doing all that they can do to help the environment; this doesn’t seem like the right way. When I was a scout, my troop collected Christmas trees for recycling.
I’m not saying that the troop is doing anything wrong and know how strapped troops are for cash; I’m just saying that if you step back for a second, it just doesn’t seem right.
(For the most part, I support what the Boy Scouts do as becoming an Eagle Scout is one of the things that really changed my life. There are some policies that I can’t believe in, but I won’t get into them now.)
What is an SUV?
Yesterday I borrowed my dad’s Ford Explorer to pick up our screen door that was getting repaired and getting a doggie door. I had never driven his vehicle before and boy was I in for a shock. I drive my Toyota Highlander or my wife’s Honda CRV, both of which are considered SUVs. Neither of these cars (I’ll call them cars as they are built on car bodies or so I’m told) rides anything like the Explorer. The Explorer had a hard truck ride that was quite uncomfortable. I guess if you’re used to a truck, you don’t realize how bad it is. The next time I look for a vehicle, I definitely want it to ride as well as the cars I drive, but have the space I have now (even a little more as long as the ride doesn’t suffer).
(The Explorer is just enough longer and wider to get the screen door in; it just wouldn’t fit in my Highlander.)
Longer commute
This summer was one of the slowest times I’ve had in the 5.5 years that I’ve been self employed. While there have been ups and downs, I actually considered taking a job in an office. I went through the whole interview process and was offered a position, but ultimately realized that I couldn’t give up the flexibility I have being self-employed and working from home. While it is possible to be employed by someone else and have flexibility, this job didn’t afford it.
Seeing how hard things were on me and that working from home was getting tough for me with my son around a lot, my wife offered up our guest room for my office. This room is about 315 square feet and in the very back of the house. For the most part, we have been using it for storage over the last 4 years. I gladly took her up on the offer, had a little work done to remove some cabinets and a sink, had some tile put in where the cabinets were (to match the rest of the floor), painted it, ran some Cat6 to 2 walls for Ethernet, moved in my furniture and presto, a new office!
I’ve been in here about 1.5 weeks and really enjoy it. It’s pretty quiet and easier for me to work. The main downside to it is that there is no insulation in the ceiling, so it is a bit toasty now and will be cold in the winter. However, I positioned my desk right under the fan and there is a room A/C unit that I can use. Another downside (and hence the title for this article) is that my commute is now a bit longer; I think it takes me about 45 seconds to get to work.
Pictures for your viewing pleasure:
Jack of all trades, master of …
In my line of work of being a contracting software engineer, I have to take on many different types of projects, some in fields that are foreign to me or touching parts of the operating system that I have never used before. I’ve had to learn a lot to get things going. For example, I learned how to setup and maintain Linux machines (thanks to Phil Karn for helping me first learn Linux for a work project) and learned how to administer a Mac OS X server.
So with my ability to adopt to lots of different projects, I sometimes ask myself, what am I good at? Turns out, I’m pretty good at tackling whatever is thrown at me. I don’t like doing anything half way and do my absolute best to become an expert at something because in many cases, my clients wouldn’t come to me if someone else was already an expert!
Doing a quick search on Wikipedia gives the full quote to the title of this blog entry.
No more mowing
One of the things that has bugged me about our backyard was that the grass was always dead. Now that Aiden, our son, is walking, I wanted him to people able to play on the grass. My parents had EasyTurf installed, and I was pretty impressed with it. So, we had it installed on our backyard. Today was the day it got installed. I’m pleased so far as it is green and I don’t have to deal with it anymore! While this wasn’t cheap, it doesn’t need to be watered (I’m doing my part to conserve water) and has a pretty long life. Hopefully in a few years I’ll still be as pleased with my purchase as I am today.
Disappointing car
Last year we bought my wife a new Honda CR-V as her Honda Accord wasn’t going to cut it when our son was born. I stared driving her car a bit and really enjoyed driving it. I started looking the Acura RDX as it was a step up in terms of options from the CR-V and drooled. While I wasn’t looking for a new car, I could dream. After driving my wife’s car for awhile, we soon realized that it was a bit small once you pile in the baby stuff and that our next car might have to be bigger. My Toyota Highlander is a little bigger, so it will work fine when we need to pack in more stuff like Aiden’s wagon.
However, I still look at new cars online and have been convinced that the Acura RDX’s big brother (last year was the RDX’s first model year), the MDX would be the car for me if I was in the market for a new car. Two years ago, I wrote about the ideal car. The car has all the options I want, the room I’d want, and almost meets my requirements for my ideal car. Last year’s MDX model disappointed me with respect to its gas mileage, so I was hoping that the 2009 would do better. The EPA estimates for it are 15/20 with 17 combined. Ouch! The Acura web site indicates that the EPA changed the calculations in 2008 and you shouldn’t compare it with older estimates. The RDX does slightly better with 17/22 and 19 combined, but those figures are just awful. Why are they so bad? My guess is that they put an engine in the vehicles is far too large for what is actually needed. Do I need a car with a turbocharger or 300 HP engine? Of course not. So when can I get the car I want with mileage ratings at least in the mid 20 MPG? It doesn’t seem like it should be that hard.
Maybe next year.
Taking things for granted
I’ve been working from home for almost 9 years (9 years this month) and have been self-employed for more than 5.5 years. Things have been pretty good for me, and I’ve been reasonably happy. Recently I had the opportunity to change the status quo in terms of my work. After a lot of thinking, I realized that I have things pretty good; I control my own hours, I get to work on my own projects when I want (within reason as my own projects don’t pay the bills), and to some extent I control what I work on when (prioritizing projects based on what interests me). I’ve taken things for granted and didn’t completely know how good I’ve had it! Are there things I’d like to change? Of course. Working out of my house sometimes would be nice, but I can’t justify the expense of an office as I wouldn’t use it all the time. Would it be nice to work on one project all the time without having to do a context switch? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
Sometimes I complain about my work (doesn’t everyone?), but my hope is that after this week’s re-evaluation, I can do a better job at doing my work and not complaining. If I get paid, is there a reason to complain? While I do take a lot of pride in my work and try to steer my clients in the right direction, the old saying “the customer is always right” might just be the ticket to my happiness!
Amazing customer service
In contrast to AT&T’s customer service or lack there of, my wife had a great experience with Amazon’s customer service. She purchased a case of Teddy Puffs for our son and when we received them, the expiration date was less than 6 months away. The boxes we have bought in the store expired about a year after we bought them. Amazon quickly refunded our money (about $32) and said we could keep them as they can’t take back food. I was amazed at the response as AT&T won’t give me my $20 back for their mistake (I still haven’t heard from a supervisor). My only recourse will be to fight the credit card charge.
In any case, Amazon is definitely the first place we’ll look to shop.
Unacceptable anti-spam system
A user contacted me about an issue this morning (basically a corrupted download of ReceiptWallet which most people would just re-download it and be done with it) and when I replied to the message, I got an anti-spam challenge that sent me to a link. The link brought me to the following form:
First off, on my web site, I say that I don’t click the links to verify that I’m a human (I did this time because I was curious). Second off, look at how much stuff they want me to fill in. This is completely unacceptable. Is EarthLink’s spam filtering not as good as Google’s? Google’s works quite well for me and I don’t have to inconvenience people with this kind of baloney. When are people going to learn that these challenge and response systems just piss people off. I had my own system many, many years ago and stopped using it as it prevented legitimate people from sending me email.