Last thursday my mother and I started the day by trying to clean my grandmother's attic out. There was so much stuff that had to be divided in between piles of keepers, goodwill and garbage. We managed to sift through lots of stuff before it got to 90 degrees and we had to prepare for my Dad and Uncle's birthday party which started at 7PM.

Our floor guy finsihd the floor over there too. It looks a lot better than the crazy 50s rainbow fleck lineoleum that used to be there.




My grandmother had collected 3 boxes of bows. I wonder what kind of special event was just about to happen.





I didn't get any pictures of my Dad and Uncle's birthday accept this one at the new grill. I spent more of my time making sure that everything was working and that food was ready and dishes were clean. I think my mom or brother has more pics.





(e:twisted) - does your friend need this toaster

Someone had a really good night or a really bad night on Franklin

So I get a message from Artvoice today:

Basically, we've just about outgrown these T1s. Our traffic has been gradually increasing, and we're hitting near max bandwidth during peak times. Not only that, but we really want to start pushing on-line video... so 3mbits of bandwidth just isn't going to cut it. To top it off, our contract for the Ts is up anyway.

They are moving on to some crazy high intensity web stuff to revolutionize their site which requires them moving to a colocation facility that supports 100mbps connections with a TB of bandwidth. Wow, whatever that is, is going to be crazy intense.

What it means for me is that I could move to a co-location facility with a virtualized server (pronounced headache and drama) or move my dream baby server that we all purchased somewhere else.

Time warner has nothing to offer me.
Their best small business package is 7mbps down/768K up which is lame. I tested it and we go over that all day long. Not to mention it also costs $149.99. For the server, download speed isn't nearly as critical as upload speed. It didn't help that when I called the business line, they didn't know the phone was off the hook and spent about 10 minutes making fun of other customers in the background. Talk about stupid business model.

Verizon FiOS
Verizon has amazing deals but only with FiOS which is not available at my house yet. It seems like they only have in in the country and in select suburbs. The best they could do without FiOS was 1.5mb down/768k up using DSL. That wasn't going to cut it either.

Luckily, I know someone who live in FiOS land. The prices and speed for the business accounts are insane

$99.00 for 20mbps/5mbps
$139.00 for 20mbps/20mbps
$239.00 for 50mbps/20mbps

Those speeds almost sound like some magic future that I didn't believe could exist - at least not in that price range. I think the first account at $99.00 would be good for me.

The most I paid for estrip in the past was $49.00 per month but it was a lot slower connection and the headache of co-location hosting with support in India. I would rather die than live through that again. Seriously all the time I wasted would cost more money now.

So I talked to Verizon and they promised me if I put the account in my name but at my friend's house, then when it comes to my neighborhood I could just move the server there which is in fact my dream.

How are the other companies going to compete with Verizon now that FIOS is out? Is time warner just going to go out of business? I mean FIOS TV is also on its way or already out in some areas.

Sorry about my lack of blogging. I promise to update more soon. I have slowly been working on estrip7 - yes estirp6 was finished and never released. In the new version your blog page has much more space. ALl your personal info and links to the different views of your blog are on the left. Your blog now around 600 pixels wide is in the middle allowing for larger pics.

At the right is going to be the latest entries list, chat and some new secret stuff not there yet. Not sure about which themes will move over or if I will allow people to mix custom themes for their own blogs. We will see. Anyways, don't give up hope - I have just been so busy with work and backend stuff.

It will also have a more more robust API for hosting your blog content elsewhere.

For those of you that missed it, you missed a great time. The best part was the appetizer of bacon wrapped crab claws and robert's mojito mix.

Phillis, if you read this, tell Robert I have his tupperware jug. Seriously, you should start a journal.

Bacon Wrapped Crab Claws
(e:mike) and I decided to just take bacon wrapped shrimp to the next most fancy level. They were so freakin' delicious. The form factor was very similar to bacon wrapped chicken wings There is only one link I could find for those which makes me think they are way under marketed.

Requires one package of bacon ($5) and one pound of crab claws (~$20) First defrost crab claws, cut yummy bacon in half strip sized, wrap around crab claw and broil on low for 10 minutes ish.

In their stages of cooking






Mikey likes it



I think for the first time, I actually got to spend some quality time talking with each guest. I specifically had a great time talking with (e:vincent) and (e:metalpeter) about "touring" niagara falls shady style.

Also, for once I am also not so mega hung over from the party which should make the parade today a little nice than usual.

And onto some totally unparty related items:

We turned Dave's room into a library.


Why do people add clay to give their hair a washed yesterday look when they could just not wash their hair today?


Seriously, the sign really does make a difference. One person actually bumped it.


At the end of the night (e:tinypliny) drank a some of this pretty tea and then I saw she published something at 5:30am which leads me to believe that it was very caffeinated, lol.

I taught digital media arts for a long time on macs at Canisius as some of you might remember I became so accustomed to saying, hold down the apple key and press ...

Today I was helping (e:matthew) learn some photoshop stuff on the mac and I said hold down apple plus shift. His response was, where is the apple key? At first I was thinking, just look but then it really hit me there is no freakin apple key on the new mac keyboard. I have no idea what would posses such a marketing and image driven company to produce new keyboards without their logo on it. It makes no sense. I mean they always had them and windows keyboards have a windows key. Its weird because it says command, and there is the traditional command symbol for mac, but why not just use the apple logo. I mean what does that command symbol really mean?



The iphone's missing text editing feature Give me my clipboard
While I am on the apple rant , I am totally excited about the new iphone and am sure I will buy one just to go back to 3G speed but have the safari mobile browser. The question still remains, why no freakin select, cut, copy, and paste functionality. It is the backbone of digital copy creation. I don't know how they are really going to say it is enterprise ready without that. So much of corporate email involves editing text heavily and cut , copy pasting parts of one email in to another, or parts of web text into an email or other web page. Same with blogging. I find it ridiculous to tye a long entry without using digital editing. That is why I went from having like 1000 mobile blog entries to have about 0 this and last month. PLEASE APPLE ADD CUT, COPY, AND PASTE to the iphone firmware?!

P.S. It is really hot out and I went to the gym three times this week, ya!

Sorry (e:imk2) and (e:jim) but this is a anti-smoking rant.

I get it, smoking is addictive. I smoked cigarettes before but cancer is deadly and smoking significantly raises your risk of cancer. Its a simple equation. Cancer is so in you face at Roswell that I would think it is almost impossible to not think about. I quit as soon as I started working there (e:paul,32381)



I makes me crazy that these Roswell workers smoke right in front of these no smoking/smoke free environment signs. The thing is those signs are for St. Jude's not Roswell. The Roswell people know not to smoke on Roswell property so they smoke at some other non-smoking property where they cannot get in trouble.

I made this to help myself quit. Maybe it will help someone else.

Eating is good. Eating alone is not.



However, I am sick of eating alone at a big table. It is really depressing. (e:matthew) doesn't eat very much and (e:terry) eats early so by the time I get home from work I eat by myself everyday.



I realized today that I have an affinity/necessity for blue boxed medicine. Is this just a coincidence?



We have some really pretty Irises in the garden. Here are purple, mixed and yellow. We have more varieties in the backyard.

Seriously, I do nothing that would qualify me as an athlete. Then I decided to join Allentown Athetix. On monday (e:terry), (e:matthew) and I went for the first time. Before we went I read their website that no one ever got athelte's foot there.

In more than nine years in business, no one has ever contracted athlete's foot. Okay, we wouldn't eat the pizza slice that fell on the floor, but we might think about doing that!

And as I mentioned in a previous blog the lockerroom is seriously the cleanest I ever saw, so one night when totally sweaty - I took a shower without sandals and now seriously I have Atheletes foot, which I definately did not have before. There is no where else my feet could have gone. I don't ever go barefoot outside. So there you have it - remember to always wear protection, bare footing is never safe, no matter how hot and sweaty you are.

Plus one
Bedroom, bathroom and kitchen/fridge space - the roommate is gone! Now visitor season can begin. While Dave was the best roommate we had, sorry Nameless Bitch but he didn't always steal my food, lol - it is going to be nice to have just us at home so that I can begin to exhibit the craziness I surely inherited from my dad, ;) like talking to myself and singing silly songs and so I don't have to put pants on to run down to the kitchen to grab water or whatever.

It is so weird to all of a sudden have so much more space. I never really got to explore that space because since we bought the house there has always been someone in it.





Minus One
Today I had such a bad crohn's day - if that is what's killing me. Usually, I am fine - in fact the whole last week I kept thinking maybe it was gone and then wham. I was sick all day so bad that it was like having the flu. I have gotten really good at dealing with being sick but it's kind of depressing. At one point it was so bad I wanted to just go home and sleep but then I got involved in some long term conference call about some crazy SQL drama.

I was so depressed about my life for a bit. Not like any emergency medical thing but I realized what the fuck would I be without my meds. Would I just be someone who died at age 30ish. My body is so fucking pathetic. I wish I could just buy a new one and export the good parts the way I transfer between computers that hold my code.