imroot.com

So my wife commented last night that my blog hadn’t been updated in a while. Which was true. So here is an update on why I have been so silent recently.

1. I have been stripping down my 1965 Mustang in my spare time as I am getting ready to put it in the shop to start the frame up re-build. I’m about 75% done…cars sure have a lot of parts!

2. Been burning the midnight oil. I can’t talk about it publicly yet. But I just haven’t felt like blogging after getting done with all that.

3. Gotten in some good road and mountain bike rides. The most I have done was 30 miles, but that was on the flat pavement of the Silver Comet Trail. I did 20 miles on the roads around my house, which are definitely not flat. I’m trying to work up to the 27 mile Beautiful Back Roads ride on Sept 20.

4. Relaxed on Labor Day weekend, I don’t think I really touched a computer for a few days, which was nice. We had some family in town and Steph, Stacy (Steph’s Sister), and Shane (my brother) ran the US 10K Classic on labor day.

That’s it until I have something more profound to say.

While reading the history of ICanHasCheezburger.com i found out that they run a site call engrishfunny.com. You know, all those funny foreign mis-used words. They have an RSS feed, which is great. I had tried to get one from engrish.com a few weeks back. I did eventually find one that some guy had built by doing screen scraping. But it is nice when a site actually plans for the RSS feed, or RSS Food as is the case with engrishfunny.com!

Check out the screen shots associated with this article: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2327429,00.asp

“New gOS”, so I guess if you rip off Mac OSX you can call it “New” now. Come on Google, I thought you were supposed to be an industry leader….give me something “New”.

At your typical .com office, you have a bunch of people who sit around and work on computers all day. Over the years this leads to many people carrying some extra baggage. InternetSafety.com is no exception.

So back in May the idea was hatched to run a “Biggest Loser” style competition at our office. We split up into teams of 3 (with an optional 4th person as a coach) and participation was 100% voluntary. Each person would set a goal weight, which would be combined into a team goal.

The winning team would be the one that came the closest to their goal or exceeded. The company put up $250 per person for the winning team, and $100 per person for the second place team. We ended up with 5 teams:

Fatty McButterPants.
Gut Busters.
Butter Halves (was supposed to be Better Halves, but there was a typo, this team is wives of some of the employees)
I Can See My Feet!
Interdimensionally Transcendental (supposedly means bigger on the inside than the out).

The competition ends on Tuesday. While the first and second place teams will take away cold hard cash, overall it has been a great success, with hundreds of pounds of weight lost across our office. Everyone who has lost weight, and gotten a little healthier is a winner. Or executive leadership is really excited about it. Everyone is so slim we can give them smaller cubes now!

I personally have lost about 25 pounds. I didn’t really consider myself “overweight” before the competition, but am very happy with the results.

This week was the 4th week I have spent in San Francisco so far this year. The amazing thing to me, is that there is still new stuff to find. Some cool stuff I found this time:

Taylor Street Coffee - A little hole in the wall breakfast place, really great food, and a unique charm to the place.
Taqueria La Cumbre - The birthplace of the “Mission” style burrito. Ate here on Wednesday since I wasn’t in town to BBG as usual.
ATT Park - Got to watch the Braves whoop up on the Giants.
Japan Town - Cool Japanese Shopping Mall, and a cool furniture store where I could have dropped a ton of money.

Ok, so I have a question to pose to my readers about blog spam. There is this guy named Luke Gilkerson, who is on the payroll at Covenant Eyes (a competitor to InternetSafety.com) who is paid to go around blogging about their products. As you know I started a new Internet Filtering Blog.

About a week ago Luke posts a comment on this post: Number of URL’s In An Internet Filter Database: Does It Matter?

Filtering is a great tool, but it’s not the only kind of software out there. Have you ever heard of accountability software? Accountability software is specifically for adults who want to guard where they go online without any blocking or filtering. Combined with filtering, it’s a great Internet safety solution for the whole family. If you want more info about it check out my post “Is Filtering All There Is?” - http://www.covenanteyes.com/blog​/2008/06/12/is-filtering-all-the​ re-is-introducing-accountability​-software/​ Also, check out - http://www.blog.cantufind.com/20​08/06/24/covenant-eyes/​

The a week later he comes back and posts another comment on this post: New Consumer Internet Filter - Livia Web Protection

Filtering is a great tool, but it’s not the only kind of software out there. Have you ever heard of accountability software? Accountability software is specifically for adults who want to guard where they go online without any blocking or filtering. Combined with filtering, it’s a great Internet safety solution for the whole family. If you want more info about it check out my post “Is Filtering All There Is?” - http://www.covenanteyes.com/blog​/2008/06/12/is-filtering-all-the​ re-is-introducing-accountability​-software/​ Also, check out - http://www.blog.cantufind.com/20​08/06/24/covenant-eyes/​

Same exact comment on two posts within a week. I had seen this same post on another blog, so I dug around online, and found the same post on these other sites. Sometimes he will add a sentence to the beginning of it.

Blog Mommas
Parental Tech
The Other Criminal
José María Gómez Hidalgo’s Blog
Yahoo! Anecdotal
Gowanus Lounge
Laura Earnest’s Blog
Christina Quick’s Blog
Keeping Kids Safe Today
Real Life Solutions
Topix
Ed Tech
Bill Mullins’ Blog
Your Fun Family
Ronald Daniar’s Blog

So my question for you all, is do you think this is blog spam? Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

It blows.

I started a new blog at www.insideinternetfilteirng.com, it will be industry related stuff. If you use google reader, here is the feed url: http://www.insideinternetfiltering.com/feed/

As the people who see me a lot will know, about a year ago a friend of mine nearly killed me by taking me Mountain Biking at Blankets Creek. I don’t know if it was the endorphins from the near death experience, but I was hooked. Oddly enough I don’t blog about cycling much for some reason. I guess it is because I would rather spend my time riding than blogging.

After borrowing and breaking two of my friend’s bikes, I decided it was time to get my own. I purchased a Specialized Rock Hopper from Outspokin Bikes in Woodstock, GA. I have been riding a couple of times a week on average for almost a year now. Now I take my friends out to the trails and try to kill them.

Anyway, this post is supposed to be a post about Outspokin. As much fun as Mountain biking is, some days I just don’t have the time in my schedule to drive the half hour across town to the trails, so I wanted to get a road bike. This way I could just take off from the house and ride. I went up to Outspokin and talked to Josh, who showed me through the different price points, and talked about the different frames, components, etc. They really know their stuff.

In the end I found a bike I liked (Scott Speedster S20), but they couldn’t get it in my size anymore for this model year. They ended up making me a good deal on a Scoot Speedster S10, the next model up from the one I liked. They did this just because they wanted to keep me as a customer. Which is probably the biggest thing I like about Outspokin, the way the treat their customers. They create a sense of community through great customer service, much the way all business was conducted prior to the invasion of the big box retailers.

Outspokin is on Main Street in Historic Woodstock, and in my opinion you won’t find a better shop in our area. Check them out.

Previously on “Now I Remember Why I Don’t Have A Phone Line!”, I called AT&T only to find out they have a 55 minute hold time. So I requested an automated call back the next day.

They called me back right when I asked them to and within seconds I was connected to a customer service rep. Who asked “What phone number or account number are you calling about”.

I replied “I don’t have a phone number or an account with you. I am calling because I moved into a new house a year ago, and never had a phone line installed, however there is still a large PVC pipe and wires sticking up in my front yard that I would like to have removed”.

AT&T, “I can help you with that, what is the phone number at that location?”

Me, “As I started the call by saying, I don’t have a phone line at all, so I don’t have a phone number.”

AT&T, “Oh so do you use this line for high speed Internet only?”

Me, “No, there is *NO* (said slower for emphasis) phone line connected to my house at all, we just use our cell phones. However, there is a PVC pipe and some wire sticking up in the middle of the yard that has never been removed because I didn’t have a phone line installed?”

AT&T, “Do you know the Area Code and first three digits of a phone number in the area”.

ME, *thinking*, “Um 770, and 529″ (my brother used to live not to far from here and that was how his number started).

AT&T then collected my address, cell phone number (she finally caught on to that), name, etc. She said they will send someone out. So now….the waiting game.