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I need your VOTE!
I have entered my name into GotCast to try to get on the new Food Network show called “Hopeless Home Cooks” There’sa button below to vote. You can vote once per day and there’s 19 days left to vote. Forget those girls in there, they are just farming for votes to get their acting careers off the ground, we can beat them! Just click on my picture and then on the right side of the next page there’s a button to click to VOTE.
Tuesday ~ August 08, 2008 by spencerjw Posted in General | No Comments
“SPAM King” walks from prison
So it seems an inmate from a minimum-security prison in Florence,CO has “walked out” and is being “hunted” by the FBI and the IRS. Last seen in Lakewood, CO. Be on the lookout! Courtesy of: Dvorak.org
Wednesday ~ July 07, 2008 by spencerjw Posted in Blogroll, Friends, General | No Comments
WordPress blogging from iPhone
WordPress has just released the WP app in the iPhone app store. This is a first blog attempt and thus far I am happy to say it looks like a great addition! More to come as I play around with it and test thing out. 
Tuesday ~ July 07, 2008 by spencerjw Posted in Gadget, Tech | 1 Comment
George Carlin dies at 71
This is a truly sad story, I love his comedy and his complete disregard for political correctness or care of offending anyone.
Comedian George Carlin, a counter-culture hero famed for his routines about drugs and dirty words, died of heart failure at a Los Angeles-area hospital on Sunday, a spokesman said. He was 71. Carlin, who had a history of heart and drug-dependency problems, died at Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica about 6 p.m. PDT (2 a.m. British time) after being admitted earlier in the afternoon for chest pains, spokesman Jeff Abraham told Reuters. Known for his edgy, provocative material, Carlin achieved status as an anti-Establishment icon in the 1970s with stand-up bits full of drug references and a routine called “Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television.” A regulatory battle over a radio broadcast of the routine ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
Comedian George Carlin dies at 71 | Reuters
Monday ~ June 06, 2008 by spencerjw Posted in General | No Comments
Rock Band releases “Still Alive”
Ok yes, we all know that I’m a geek, can we move on now? Coulton performs Rock Band DLC ‘Still Alive’ with Leo Laporte, Veronical Belmont and Merlin Mann. The song, for those who don’t know, was written, produced and performed by Jonathan Coulton for the rolling credits to the game called “Portal“. What a great venue to get a beautiful and funny song out there for the general public as well to help JoCo’s traction to get his awesome songs introduce to more people.
Tuesday ~ May 05, 2008 by spencerjw Posted in Gadget, Gaming, Tech, Vehicles | No Comments
Comcast port blocking
So I’ve been in contact with my email host provider all morning trying to figure out why as of this morning I can’t send out email, they’re a great email host and always quick to respond. We finally get to the point where we verified that everything is setup properly (of course it is, nothing has changed on my end in over a year). Finally the discussion about blocked ports arises and sure enough, it seems as though Comcast is now blocking port 25 for SMTP connections. So, I’ve changed it to port 2525 and everything seems to be working fine. My question is this: How can they justify just stopping traffic on port 25 without letting everyone know they are going to do it? I can’t even imagine how many people are pulling out their hair this morning because they can’t send out email and they have no idea why. COME ON COMCAST - COMMUNICATION IS KEY!!
Was this change on Comcast’s end specific to my and my IP address or was this a blanket change that is affecting more people than just myself?
Tuesday ~ April 04, 2008 by spencerjw Posted in Blogroll, Gadget, General, Health, Tech | No Comments
New Ride
So as most people know my ‘92 CBR 600 F2 has seen better days. I love the F2, it fits me great, has plenty of power and doesn’t look like it’s from the early 90’s unlike may other sport bikes from that time period. However, it has seen better days and it was time to look at why I ride and how I ride. I’m not an extremely aggressive rider and at my stage in life and with a wife and 2 kids, the last 2 years were fun with the CBR, but stressful for my wife and in the end it “was a good run”. So, this last Saturday we headed over to Grand Prix Motorsports to check out their inventory. What I found was what I had been looking for. They had a great looking ‘02 Honda Shadow Spirit 750. This bike is in immaculate condition with a few upgrades. The previous owner had added drag bars, Vance & Hines exhaust, saddle bags, windscreen and a custom seat. Everything I wanted to find in a bike except for a custom paint job, guess I’ll just have to do that myself. So, we traded in my sport-bike for the cruiser, grabbed some new boots and a new helmet. I looked over every inch of the bike yesterday and I couldn’t find a single flaw anywhere with the exception of a small scuff on the right handle grip where it looks like it got too close to a garage wall or something. In other words, this thing is in near factory shape without pulling apart the engine to inspect it. I will upload more pics I took with my Nikon this evening, but for now this iPhone pic will have to do…. ADDED PICS 4/28/08
Monday ~ April 04, 2008 by spencerjw Posted in Blogroll, Climbing, Family, Friends, General, Vehicles | No Comments
Web Developer Project Management
A list I am a part of has been discussing the issue of project management, receiving assets and copy and overall freelance client headaches we’ve all been through. One area of deep discussion is around the difficulty of getting content and copy for a clients website in a timely manner, if at all. From the very beginning I let the client know that I personally will not write copy. I will provide them with a writer to do the work for them for a fee or if they want to provide the copy they can do so as long as they hit their deadlines as well. I personally use an Extranet (Basecamp) to assign To-Do’s so that the client is notified of due dates and other tasks that need to be completed. It keeps me on track, the client informed and greatly helps to push the client to do their part. However, this works about 50% of the time, maybe a bit more. So in our discussions someone has chimed in on a process that they have either seen or used in the past that I think is worth of blogging about, his email is below: Quote: Khan How do you present the pricing to the client? If you have a basic line item pricing plan: HTML Programming - $800 That’s a great start. Now for the doozy: Project Management - $2500 Client: “What the hell, why $2500 for project management?” You: “I get that all the time. Here’s a typical project plan sheet” [slide over sheet of paper that outlines all the tasks that need to be delivered and on what date] Client: “Doesn’t seem like that would warrant a cost of $2500!” You: “I hear what you’re saying, but you’ll be surprised at what an impact it has on being able to deliver the project on time.” Client: “What do you mean?” You: “Well, you see this date here, March 24th? I need all the content from you on this date, so I’ll need to call you on March 17th, to see if you’re on track to get me that because I intend on being done with this project by March 24th. It’s that sort of follow-up that I’m accounting for.” Client: “That seems a bit much!” You: “I tell you what. I’ll amend our contract to say that you’re not on the hook for this $2500, contingent that you meet all the dates on this schedule with your deliverables. If you miss the deadline, you agree to pay the project management contingency fee.” You’ll need to modify that script a bit, but you get the idea.
I am going to implement this into my process from here on out, this could really be beneficial in making sure the client holds the same responsibility to their project as I would.
CGI/PHP Programming - $1250
Graphic Design - $650
Tuesday ~ February 02, 2008 by spencerjw Posted in Blogroll, General, Tech | No Comments
Super Tuesday Voting Results
Here’s the link for the Google Map/Twitter mashup.
Tuesday ~ February 02, 2008 by spencerjw Posted in General | No Comments
iPod integration with the A3
One of the cool features of my A3 is the iPod integration with the stereo system. Granted it’s not the best interface, but at least it works with my iPod and I don’t have to have a bunch of cables strewn all over the place. The dock is in the glove box and has adapters for all sorts of iPod versions to keep it inn place and from disconnecting. Makes it real easy to just slip it in and out without having to really lean over and see what you’re doing. right now I have my 2 gig iPod Nano in there. I can put my iPhone in but then I’d not be able to answer calls unless I pulled it out and they don’t have adapters to hole it in there real well.
The stereo display shows 6 CDs as if it were looking at the changer (which would be in the same spot as the iPod dock if I had that option) and each of the first 5 CDs are my Playlists that I created. The 6th CD is just my entire music library on the iPod.
There are of course drawbacks to the system, quite a few actually. First off, the display can only show you up to 99 songs but it will continue to play past song 99. You can’t tell what track you’re on unless you know the track number and there’s no display of the track, artist or album name given. when you choose to “Mix” a CD or all CDs the display returns to Track 1 and counts numerically which at first made me think the Mix feature wasn’t working. But it’s shuffling up the songs and just reporting back the number of the shuffled list you’re currently listening to.
With a large number of songs on a 2 gig (much less a larger iPod) the 99 song display limit could become a problem and scrolling through the songs isn’t very quick if you want to get to a song that’s in the higher digits.
Guess I need to rework my playlists and just have on the iPod the songs that I really want to be listening to, no sense in keeping songs on there that I just *might* want to listen to.
Wednesday ~ January 01, 2008 by spencerjw Posted in Blogroll, General, Tech, Vehicles | No Comments