Don't Back Down

The growing is now three-quarters of the way along, and this time I'm not quite so late to the checkpoint. I'm still running a bit late, because my camera is still wanting to act up a bit more than it should, but it's not as bad as it was at Checkpoint 2. In any case, there's only one week left (I'm sure that everyone is glad to hear that!), and this mustache is really starting to get going.

Whether you are growing yourself, or just sitting on the sidelines, Mustaches for Kids is working for a good cause. The donations that they raise go towards all sorts of programs, and perhaps most importantly, you have a choice in which ones get funded. The longer you wait, the less choice you will have, as that's just the way that these things work. The page currently shows that 77% of funding has been received for this goal - $19,412 out of $25,000. In other words, there's plenty of donating left to go (and I'm sure they will accept donations after the goal is met), but the choices may be getting fewer and far between as we reach the finish line next week.

Read "2008 Mustaches for Kids: Checkpoint 3" »

No, I'm not talking about Tom Petty. Frankly, I didn't even see him. As soon as the first commercial break was over, I flipped the channel to Spike to catch the MLE Championship. You can watch it on Spike's web site, if you dare. I'm still deciding if I'll plug it into this post or not. I think that I probably will, but I'm just not sure. Let me talk for a minute first.

If you have caught the prior MLE Chowdowns, then you have some idea of what to expect. The Turkey Bowl at Thanksgiving was awesome. The Table Enders were actually the best, chowing down tubes of cranberry sauce. But this was the championship, for all the marbles. With the awesome Kobayashi out due to his still-present jaw injury, the question was whether Joey Chestnut would be able to finally conquer Pat Bertoletti on Spike. So far it hadn't happened.

Read "The Best Super Bowl Halftime Show Ever" »

Not long ago, I ran out of Claritin, and it took me a few days to get back to the store and pick up a new batch. Since it was the middle of winter, I figured I was safe to go for a few days without - I mean really, how much pollen can there be in the air in mid-January? If it's not safe to go without Claritin then, when will it be safe? I guess the safe answer is "never", because after I went a couple of days without, I felt like I had had my brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick (bonus points for anyone who knows where that comes from).

While I've been on daily medication for a while now for epilepsy (first Dilantin and later Zonegran), and I am well aware of the consequences of not taking that medication every day, I wouldn't think that an allergy medication could cause such severe pain. Of course, I can't say with complete confidence that the pain came from the (lack of) Claritin in my system either, but after I picked up a new bottle and started taking it again, the pain went away. So what else am I to think?

Read "What Do They Put in Claritin?" »

I've mentioned before (more than once, in fact) that I don't much care for social networking. This could be for two reasons. Either I just don't get it - a distinct possibility - or because I'm just not very social - also quite possible (in fact, quite possibly even more likely). For one reason or another, I haven't really managed to get into Twitter, though I've tried a few times. I want to like the service, but I just couldn't get into it. I finally figured out that the problem wasn't so much that I didn't like it, the problem was in how I was using it.

The other day as I was chatting with a friend (not on Twitter), I mentioned my confusion, and he pointed me to a series on the use of Twitter from Jennifer Laycock of Search Engine Guide. At this point, I should mention that Search Engine Guide, and by extension Jennifer, are customers of mine in my Movable Type Consulting business. But that doesn't mean she doesn't know what she's talking about. In any case, she has so far put together three parts in her series (one, two, three). It's worth reading, but ultimately all it did was get me moving in the right direction. I had to find a good client to really get attached.

Read "A Good Twitter Client Makes All the Difference" »

Much of today, twitterfeed has been down. Which is okay - it just means that my blog posts don't get into my Twitter stream (just one of the reasons I don't like depending on third-party services). Last week, John Chow announced that he had set another new record, with more than $30,000 in income. Unforunately, if you haven't read the report, you may not be able to do so, because his site has been responding horribly of late (at least for me). I don't know what's happening for John - if it's a problem with his server, his software, or if he's just bogged down because of the latest numbers.

Frankly I don't care that much because I keep up with his blog through Google Reader, so I don't often have cause to visit. I only happened to notice that things were slow when I went to look something up, and realized that it had happened last week when I did it as well, so it seems to be an ongoing issue. Or it could be related to my own ongoing issues (but I don't really seem to have much of a problem with other sites). Whatever the case, it underscores the importance of keeping your site running.

Read "The Importance of Uptime and Availability" »

After the third checkpoint last week, I was getting a little antsy for this to be over. Like I mentioned, it really wasn't the 'stache, as I don't mind it much. It doesn't itch nearly as much as a beard, it's just that I'm not a mustache guy. I'm just not much for shaving (as I've already said more than once), and I think more than anything, I like variety - having to keep to the schedule - at least as much as I have - is probably worse than anything else.

So it is with no small amount of relief that I announce the finish of the 2008 Mustache for Kids competition. The actual event won't be over until the Sweetest Stache is judged at 6:30pm on Friday night at Madison's Bar and Lounge, but I already told you that I wasn't much for the whole schedule thing, so consider this my official completion announcement. You can check out my final entry, as well as the details of my donation, below. Enjoy!

Read "2008 Mustaches for Kids: The Finish Line" »

It seems that Microsoft Office Accounting Professional (2007) has a small problem. Actually, I'm not an accountant, so there may be more than one. But in this case, the problem is that once you have moved past the end of a year (here, 2007) and started entering items in a new fiscal year (2008), the accounting package doesn't want to let you enter any complex journal entries any longer. If you want to enter a single line-item transaction, it's fine and you don't even notice it. That's great, and the way that I prefer to go. But unfortunately, every once in a while, I have to enter something a little more complex, perhaps spanning two accounts on one side of the entry and one on the other. You can do that on a simple one-line transaction.

At that point, you have a problem and you get the message that says "A Voucher No. on the lines may only be used once per fiscal year". I had actually seen this message before (and I don't recally what that one was for - it may have been the same thing), but I managed to get around it somehow. At this point, I needed to enter an adjustment for last year, and 2008 is well under way. So I needed to figure a way around it. For those who are asking, Quickbooks isn't a solution at this point. I am getting there, but it won't happen in the next couple of days, when I need to have things turned over to the accountant, and that's when I started digging. The good news is that it's fixable. The bad news it that you have to do a little work.

Read "A Voucher No. on the lines may only be used once per fiscal year" »

Most of the work I do as a Consultant is for Movable Type. But I also work with TypePad, and I've actually seen some increasing activity in this area, most notably from larger companies who may not be ready to run their own MT installation and just want to get something ready and roll it out quickly. For this, TypePad is the perfect platform. It may not be as flexible as Movable Type, but it does offer you plenty of power in a nice interface.

What it doesn't do is give you a few tools that would make things run much better. Though comment pagination was announced a while back, and archive pagination came along afterwards, you still can't paginate your main index (though the code has been added). In fact, you'll find that some customers - even those who pay for the most expensive accounts - can't even use the pagination features that have already been announced! But pagination isn't the only feature missing from TypePad.

Read "What Would Make TypePad Really Rock" »

Perhaps this is in reverse order, since I first mentioned what would make TypePad really rock, but hey - those are the things that I run into every time I use TypePad, so they were foremost on my mind. This next batch of items are things that are high on my list, because I get them a lot, but I don't necessarily see them every time I log in. They are just little nitpicky items that I'd like to see go away.

In all honesty, it would probably be better to address these first, because like most things, it's the little things that will get you. In life, you can often deal with the largest of problems, yet you're only too happy to let the small stuff build up and build up until you just can't take it any more. This list is all about the small stuff. The items that you only see from time to time, but that - if fixed - would make using the service just that much better.

Read "Now, What TypePad Could Use to Make it Better" »

Now that I've mentioned what would make TypePad really rock because those features are things that I run into every day, and also came up with a few features that would make TypePad just a bit better with some features that I run into, but perhaps not quite as often, you might be thinking that I don't like TypePad.

That's actually not the case. In fact, the more I work with it, the more I like it. Sure, you can't do PHP on TypePad, and using PHP makes managing sites easier. But you can use SSI, which is awfully close. In fact, since you use the blog name in SSI calls, all you have to do is substitute one blog's name for another in the SSI and you suddenly have a module that you can easily include on multiple blogs. This isn't quite the same as having a module that you can include from multiple places, because you can't actually parse the content for template tags, but it's close. It isn't Movable Type, but there's a lot to like in there.

Read "TypePad Does Have Some Great Features" »

With the announcement earlier this week that Wal-Mart is going to be placing Redbox DVD vending machines in many of their US stores, I figured that it was time to see if any of them had made their way to Charlotte yet. A little over a year ago, when Peter mentioned Redbox on his site, I checked to see if there were any in Charlotte, and at the time, there weren't. Now, there are a few, mostly at Harris Teeter stores.

So we decided to try out renting from one of the machines to see what it was like. Overall, the result was decent. The idea certainly has merit, but there are certainly a few ideas where it can be improved. Being able to rent a DVD almost on impulse is pretty cool. I mean if it didn't have some chance of success, why would just about every store have stacks and stacks of DVDs that you could buy on your way out the door? The main thing that we noticed was in time. That is, it needs to speed up the process just a bit. Other than that, it was a decent experience.

Read "Redbox DVD Vending Machine" »

It seems like I just can't seem to get rid of an annoying error that crops up every once in a while where I'm unable to delete AVI files through Windows XP. To be fair, I should probably elaborate and say that I'm unable to delete AVI files through Windows XP when I'm using Windows Explorer. Were I to use the command line, I'm sure that it would be just fine.

I think that I might have finally managed to lick this problem - though at this point I'm really suspecting that it has just gone into remission, so I don't know for sure. If you've seen it, then you know what happens. You try and delete (or move, which involves a delete) an AVI file and you get an annoying message telling you that the file is in use. You can kill the file handle using something like Process Explorer, but it would be so much better to not have to worry about it.

Read "Error Deleting AVI Files in Windows XP" »