Happy Mother’s Day
After us three boys had grown up to the point of driving ourselves places, Mom would always tell us to “Behave, be careful, and buckle up” as we headed out the door. Every time. The Three B’s. It got to the point that sometimes, when we were leaving, we would tell her.
Eventually, Mom stopped reminding me to do the all important B’s. I don’t remember if they gradually came to an end, or if it happened suddenly. I don’t even know when it happened, but ultimately, it did.
I know Mom didn’t stop telling me because she loved me any less. She still wanted me to be safe, both in and out of the car. And I was, of course, still expected to keep my actions in check and behave how I had been taught to. All of the emotion and care were still there, but the words, The Three B’s, were gone.
I’ve never asked her why. I’d like to think that they stopped because she knew she could trust me to at least try to make good decisions, even if they didn’t always work out. It sounds good, anyway.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! Thanks for everything you’ve done for me over the years, especially the behaving, the being careful, and the buckling up part.
The Weird Neighbor
Julie made me promise that I wouldn’t let myself become the “weird neighbor” at our new house in Caldwell.
You see, shortly after Julie and I started dating, I was living in Bethesda. I told her that I always felt like the weird neighbor. I just didn’t seem to fit in. All the other houses on the street were filled with families, and my house was filled with me and my two dogs. They all seemed to have normal working hours, and for me 6:00 AM could be quitting time and starting time on two consecutive days. And that’s not even mentioning the time that I was stalking around my house at night, shirtless, with a 12 inch dagger.
I was sitting at my desk and kept seeing lights outside my window. The closest house on that side was a pretty big lot away, just before a dead end and a small forest. The strange part was that it only seemed to happen when I was looking the other way. After ten minutes or so of this, and figuring that it was just a brat kid from somewhere in the neighborhood, I decided to poke my head outside and tell them to knock it off.
I was shirtless because it was a hot evening, and the house didn’t have air conditioning. The dagger, which I use as a letter opener, was of course for protection, just in case it wasn’t a local punk. The threating lights were, of course, lightning bugs.
Yep, I was the weird neighbor. I’d like to say that this was the only thing I did to alienate myself from my neighbors. I can’t, but I’d like to. So, when we bought the house in Caldwell, I gave my word that I would try to act normal, and I was doing pretty good, until a couple weeks ago.
Mom and I had been planting a few flowers in front of the house, and had turned up a bit of dirt and a lot of earthworms. I naturally placed the worms gently back into the flower beds and instructed them to get back to work fertilizing and aerating. I mean, I’m happy that they are there and everything, and they are more than welcome to stay as long as they like, provided they pull their weight.
I took a quick trip to the hardware store to get some mulch, and when I got back to the house there were four or five robins hopping all around the flower beds, treating my worms like a $5.99 All-You-Can-Eat Las Vegas buffet. Naturally, I jumped out of the truck and started trying to get rid of them, waving my arms and shouting, “Get off my worms! Get off my worms!”
I think I’m just going to start introducing myself as “Brock, the Weird Neighbor,” just to make sure there isn’t any confusion.
Remembering Dad
I have a unending stream of fantastic memories of my Dad. Once, when we were road tripping with the Phillips family, there wasn’t enough room for all of us and all the luggage in the station wagon we were taking. Dad built a huge luggage box to put on top of the vehicle, painted it bright yellow, and as a finishing touch, put a huge smiley face on the front of it. I don’t know for sure, but I think that was the same vacation that, completely unintentionally, Dad walked out of a McDonald’s without paying.
Building stuff for 4-H woodworking projects. The first time I accidentally swore in front of him. Those two happened at the same time. In all fairness, I thought I had cut myself.
My favorite memory of Dad didn’t happen that long ago. August of last year, not long before we found out how sick Dad was.
He and I had spent the day working on replacing my back porch. It had been a long day of work, with him cutting deck boards almost as fast as I could get them screwed into place. We were both just about done in by the drive home. About the time we hit Seneca Lake, we pulled up behind a truck hauling compressed air cylinders of some sort. The license plates were from Louisiana, I think. That or Mississippi. Either way, the driver was a long way from home.
The guy wasn’t going very fast. He never got much above 45, and when a hill or a turn came around, he was down to 25 or 30. Dad, patient as ever, just fell in behind him without even thinking about passing. After a few minutes, Dad said, “This poor guy is lost.”
Once we made it to Baileys Mills, after about twenty minutes and probably five or six variations of “this poor guy is lost” from Dad, the truck pulled off to the side of the road, and Dad pulled right in behind him. The guy, about 70 years old or so, got out of his truck and slowly made his way back to our driver’s side window. He asks Dad, in a thick southern accent, “Sir, I was wondering if you could help me.”
“I’d sure like to,” replied Dad.
And that pretty much sums up Dad.
It didn’t matter if you were his son, or a stranger from a thousand miles away. You might just need lead to a gas station and pointed towards Alledonia. Or you might need a new back porch. It didn’t matter if he had something else he wanted to do, or if he was just tired and wanted to go home.
I’d sure like to. No promise that he was going to be able to help you, but he sure was going to try. No guarantee that he even knew how to do what you needed, not that it really mattered because he could build or fix most anything, and what he didn’t know how to do, he would just learn. Then he would help you.
Even if he had just spent his whole day helping someone, he still had time to help someone else on the way home.
Tomorrow is the 3C’s Cancer Support Group’s annual walk, and this year it’s being held in honor of my Dad. They are fantastic group that helps cancer patients of Belmont County with money for gas to get to doctor’s appointments and chemotherapy treatments, groceries, utility bills, you name it.
Just about anything you might need a little help with. Just like Dad.
Four Down, One to Go
Looks like the first of my Twelve for Twelve that’s going to get completed is brewing five beers. The pale ale is gone, but not forgotten. The blueberry bock is very close to being gone as well, which is good, because the witbier is ready to drink. The lager has been put into lager, and the raspberry wheat has been ordered.
I can’t thank Julie enough for buying me the kit to get me started on this. I’m loving it and want to upgrade to a 5 gallon kit. Austin Homebrew Supply seems to have what I want, but if anyone has any suggestions as to any other place I should look/consider, let me know. I don’t want to drop a couple hundred bucks just to be disappointed that I didn’t get what I needed. Specifically, I think I want the Deluxe Brewing Equipment Kit. Any thoughts?
Ah, beer, my one weakness. My Achille’s heel, if you will.
–Homer Simpson
E-commerce Dogpile
Ok, so it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything here. Bad for my Twelve for Twelve, but I guess the positive is that business is good and so I’ve been covered up without much time to post.
Most of my time recently has been spent working with a local client that runs an online business. We’re redesigning the entire site, moving it over to WordPress, and bringing the shopping cart from an outside provider to one we provide. The final desired result being that the website will be integrated with an inventory management program, allowing the client to keep track of their stock and customer orders. It’s been a huge challenge, considering that they offer, so far, over seven thousand product combinations and we’re no where near done adding everything they offer. It’s also been crazy fun.
But, anyway, other projects besides this one are starting to slow off a little now, so I will hopefully have time to update this more in the near future. Either that, or my goal to post 104 times this year will be in serious jeopardy.
Flower Beds, Paint Prep, and Plaster
So, I spent the day working down in Caldwell on the house. I didn’t do much work outside, but did take a few minutes to clean out the dead tiger lily leftovers from last year. Absolutely stunned by how much dead crap these things leave behind. I guess it is quite possible that it was two years worth of crap, as no one was in the house last spring. I was happy, though, that I could just yank the junk out and didn’t have to cut it with pruning shears, which of course I didn’t have with me.
The rest of the late morning, early afternoon was spent inside. I went through a tube of painter’s caulk getting the dining room ready for painting. I had never heard of this before buying and starting to work on the house, but it is great. It fills in all those little gaps around the older moulding and doesn’t have to be primed before being painted over. The only bad thing I discovered today was that the moulding is going to have to be painted to make it look good. After getting a good look at it, I realized that the last painter didn’t do a very good job at keeping the white wall paint off of the stain. Still, though, I think that we’re going to keep the current base moulding in place, and add some crown moulding to the room once everything else is done. Should look awesome.
Last on the to do list today was to measure out Shannon’s room for what I thought was going to be drywall. After getting done measuring everything I still had a little time left before I had to get back to Barnesville to watch the Ohio State game, so I figured I would rip out a few panels of the horrible blue, fake wood paneling that’s going to be replaced.
What do you know, I found very patch-able, although horribly ugly in color, plaster underneath. The last picture doesn’t do the nasty peach color justice. It’s awful, but still, fixing some plaster is going to safe lots of money compared to hanging drywall. All in all, a pretty productive day. Now all I have to do is learn to patch plaster.
Beautiful Blueberry Bock
After weeks of waiting, my second home brewed beer, Blueberry Bock, is finally ready to crack open. This home brewing thing is really making me learn self-patience. I hate waiting.
First impressions is that it’s pretty good. I was expecting a bit more blueberry flavor, nothing that I was going to be knocked over by, but figured it would be relatively noticeable. It’s a pretty subtle blueberry taste, though. If i didn’t know what was in it, I probably wouldn’t be able to pick blueberries. Still, all in all, pretty good.
The nice part is that the bock is bottled in pint bottles, as opposed to the quart bottles that the Pale Ale was bottled in, so it’s a little easier to have a beer and not commit myself to having to drink two pints. I think that when I bottle the Witbeir, I’m going to bottle a couple in quart bottles, but most in pint bottles.
Twelve for Twelve Update: February
Two months down, ten more months to complete my twelve. Here’s how I’m doing.
Abysmal Failures - So, no progress on any of:
- Go zip lining
- Learn AJAX
- Take Julie and Shannon camping
- Hike 30 miles
- Watch the sun rise over the ocean
…but I’m ok with these. Four of them are summer goals, and I’m figuring the AJAX learning for the fall.
Incomplete Successes – The other seven items, I’m pretty happy with the progress on:
- Run 500 Miles – 19.41 miles in February, for a total of 21.83 miles. Would have been more with better weather. I hate running when it’s cold. I really hope that hate will translate to me getting this done while it’s still warm this summer.
- Release 12 premium WordPress themes – Earlier last the month I launched 10T Themes and have since released two premium themes, putting me back on track to get to 12.
- Try out Drupal – Yep. Trying it out. Haven’t given up on it yet, but I’m not all that impressed so far.
- Post to blog twice a week – Eight posts in February, reaching the twice a week average for the month. So far for the year, this is the 12 post out of a required 104.
- Complete 100 hours of Pro Bono web design – I have yet to pick up any other takers on this, but I do have two museums, the Monroe County River Museum and the Baker Family Museum, that have been on board for two and one years, respectively, that I’ve been donating the design time, and will continue to through the year. Still, even with both of them, I’m only at 2.38 hours.
- Say “Thank You” to anyone in military uniform – One for one last month. This is, by far, my favorite of the twelve to do.
- Brew five different beers – And this one is my second favorite. One beer being enjoyed, one will be ready on the 7th, and one being fermented now. I’m going to have this one wrapped up by the 4th of July.
So, there it is. As far as I can tell, I’m at a total of about 10% complete, and still rockin’.
Shortened URL Security
If you’re anything as close to as paranoid about online security as I am, every time you see a shortened URL, like http://bit.ly/AAGooR, the first thing you wonder is “Will the website on the other end of that shortened URL be safe?” If you’re not at all paranoid about online security, time to get wise.
URL shortening services usually provide you with a way to find out where a shortened URL points. For Bit.ly and Goo.Gl, you can add a “+” to the end of the URL, so the very ambiguous http://bit.ly/AAGooR turns into http://bit.ly/AAGooR+, which tells you that it points to 10twebdesign.com and not some malicious website.
The problem is that the way you find out where a shortened URL points varies from service to service, and with over 300 shortening services (and counting) out there, keeping them straight is impossible. So how do you stay safe?
I give you longurl.org, which takes any of those shortened URLs expands it back out again so you have a little better idea of what you’re getting yourself into. It will, at the very least, give you the site’s title, full URL, keywords and description.
If the URL it spits back is “google.com” you’re probably in pretty good shape. If it’s “thiswebsitegivesyouavirus.com” and you decide to click through anyway, I hope everything works out alright.
Rumer-Loudin Website Relaunch
Been having a pretty busy week, and hadn’t had a chance to post an update on this, so I thought that I would do so now. I’m just pleased as punch to announce the relaunch of the Rumer-Loudin, Inc. website. The website is a nice mix of a traditional ‘marketing’ and a lot of great information about heating and air conditioning, geothermal, energy efficiency, and more. The site also features the ability for customers to submit, and website administrators to moderate, testimonials for the business.
I’ve been working with Kellie, who I got to know through the Barnesville Area Chamber of Commerce, and it’s been a really great experience. Maybe the coolest part of the whole experience is that Kellie’s huge on marketing, and is really interested in being involved in producing content, news posts, and such for the site, which usually translates to really successful websites.
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