Sunday, April 27, 2008

Jay: Happy Birthday

To blogger Sgt Hook.


08:18 AM | Birthdays • (0) Comments • Permalink

Jay: Happy Birthday

To blogger Denis of Cootiehog.


08:16 AM | Birthdays • (0) Comments • Permalink

Jay: Happy Birthday

To blogger Darren Rowse.


08:11 AM | Birthdays • (0) Comments • Permalink

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Jay: Henry Being Lively



08:30 AM | Kids • Pictures • (1) Comments • Permalink

Jay: Poor Henry

He had one of his worst breakouts last night.  What changed?  We gave him pear juice as a replacement for apple and grape.  It should be safer.  What I gave him wasn’t watered down as much as we usually do.  Traditionally the purpose of juice for us has been to make water taste better for the kids.  Luckily, he has always liked plain cold water.

The thing is, after deciding it had been the pear juice, with a chance it could have been beef, pork, or some random thing (caught him sucking on a raisin at one point, snagged from where it had fallen from the table to Sadie’s chair), it turned out Sadie had left a cup of strawberry milk on the floor where we wouldn’t see it readily, but Henry might easily have gotten into it.  That’s candle to moth.  I took Valerie’s cup away before he could drink any coffee milk from it, disappointing him at one point.  If he finds them he will drink from them.  It’s time to make the girls drink at the table, period.  They’ve already gotten used to eating only at the table with few exceptions.

None of which explains why during the night I started itching like crazy, and haven’t entirely stopped.  That could mean something that bothers me is bothering him, so is it food we both ate, soap I used, or what?  Or is it coincidence?

On another note, Deb found dairy-free margarine, the trick to which was getting the “light” variety, completely soy based.  It’s not very good, and expressly says not to use it in cooking, but at least it’s something.


07:13 AM | Food & Cooking • Kids • Medical • (1) Comments • Permalink

Jay: Happy Birthday

To attorney Brad Sultan.


06:35 AM | Birthdays • (0) Comments • Permalink

Jay: Happy Birthday

To blogger Tiger Russell.


06:33 AM | Birthdays • (0) Comments • Permalink

Jay: Happy Birthday

To blogger Rick Mahn, who is 40 today.


06:29 AM | Birthdays • (0) Comments • Permalink

Friday, April 25, 2008

Jay: Getcher Fresh Hot Domains here

There are a bunch of domain renewals coming up, and since we won’t actually want them all, I thought I’d mention them, in case someone would like to snag any of them.

All the bizosphere domains are expiring, and at the time I was cajoled into getting the standard set of four Real Cheap.  Which they aren’t so much, on renewal.  Frankly, I still love the name and brand enough I’d rather keep them all, but I’d be willing to let go any except bizosphere.com.  The others are .biz, .net and .info, with the last being the one that will summarily get dumped regardless.

On the carnival-related front, I have:
carnivalofbusiness.com
carnivalofcapitalists.com
firstcarnival.com

I wouldn’t mind keeping them, but they add up.  Oddly, I’m probably most attached to, or consider most valuable, the last one.

For quite a while, the plan for the business to supplement and ultimately replace my work for XTreme Computing centered on the name Geek Practitioners.  That was inspired by the commonalities I saw between doctors (general practitioners) and computer service people, especially generalists who might diagnose fully, or know enough to refer you to a specialist.  The obvious marketing angles centered around medical themes.  To this day the Welcome to Help color scheme derived and mutated from what I had in mind for GP, based on available colors of scrubs.

This is how there came to be a blog at geekpractitioners.net, while geekpractitioners.com is the root domain on hosting that I took over for welcometohelp.com, and use for bizosphere.com and some others.  The blog wound up with the name, while the slogan turned into the business name, taking an entirely different approach, which is still evolving.

A bunch of domains I bought that derive from “geek” or “gp” and medical/emergency oriented initials or terms are expiring, by way of explanation of the next ones:

geekemt.com
geekhmo.com (HMO=Home, Mobile, Office)
geekcpr.com
geekfirstaid.com
gphmo.com

I might not ditch them all, depending on coolness and brevity and cost.  The last one sounds meaningless, but is short as domain names go.

Heck, I don’t see any more that are due to expire in May and June that I’d part with readily.

One I have that I’m torn about is ellisfamilyband.com, which I snagged because I couldn’t stand it being left available and the band in question only having a MySpace page.  What I didn’t realize was they had theellisfamilyband.com, which has the distinction of ignoring the standard rule of shorter is better.  Thus my annoyance many years ago when I got bzmoms.com for my sister-in-law and she was annoyed it wasn’t bzmomscrafts.com or bzmomscraftsandmore.com or whatever her preference was.  Now you’d grab them all and redirect them as desired, but then it was very expensive.  Anyway, it’s sitting there redirecting to the other domain, making absolutely no sense for me to own, but being something that ought to be in the family.  By June 18 I’ll have to decide, depending on cost and available funds at the time.

Obviously I’ll renew the business domains, or those used for blogs that do or can make ad revenue that way more than covers the normally modest cost.  Under most circumstances, it’s well worth paying to retain a domain so someone else doesn’t own it instead, just in case, to use it later or to have it sitting there, being of value.  The “of value” thing appears not to be what it’s cut out to be sometimes, considering the difficulty I’ve had selling the no brainer valuable xtremeware.com domain.  Even so…

So there they are.  Any interest?  The ones I mentioned will either get a reprieve or be abandoned, so I’m going to be interested in parting with them somewhere between free and very cheap.


09:39 PM | Blogging • Business • Geekery • Money • (0) Comments • Permalink

Jay: Happy Birthday

To blogger Rosemary Esmay, who is 40 today.


11:06 AM | Birthdays • (0) Comments • Permalink

Jay: Happy Birthday

To blogger Stephen Green.


11:04 AM | Birthdays • (0) Comments • Permalink

Jay: Happy Birthday

To former legal secretary Laurie Ahearn.


09:14 AM | Birthdays • (0) Comments • Permalink

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Jay: Preoccupied

I was working on a post about recent work experiences, but decided I’d cut to a this and that post and save the other for later.

Things got more interesting again with the baby.  Henry is apparently allergic to milk.  He got into a sippy cup one of the girls had, got a meaningful amount, and where it dribbled down his front, he got contact hives.

So we are up to milk and presumably milk products, with it all the clearer the big incident was cheese-related, bananas, apples, grapes, juice of the above, apparently broccoli, and I could swear I’m forgetting something else.  The seems to be able to eat/touch column includes rice, oatmeal, potatoes, chicken, beef, pork, butternut, carrots, and sweet potatoes.  We’re reasonably confident about pear.  He tasted Valerie’s cranberry strawberry juice today with no obvious or immediate consequences, but hard to say.  The girls aren’t going to be easy to train.  I got cranberry specifically because we know apple and grape juices are bad, and in case it’s good for Val’s urinary system.  At the same time, wanting it so tasty she drinks plenty and stays hydrated.

Good thing he loves rice cakes.

This means Deb is back off dairy again, and I’ll avoid it for cooking anything we’ll all eat.  We really need to find margarine that contains no dairy products.

I have so much on my plate, I’m lucky to slip in a post.  I had a crazy, way underpaid bit of work Sunday and Monday.  I helped someone with a computer speedup and de-infestation yesterday.  Apparently I have some big fans at the old stomping grounds.  The bit of work yesterday might lead to more.  I have some work we’re calling tech-marketing that I need to ramp up and spend some real time on, getting a handle on it.  The cool thing is it reminds me of my favorite college class, which was named management seminar, and was a graduate-style case course on strategic management and, by extension, business development.  It’s like being handed a case to work on for real.  There’s some writing work still pending, which I need to check on, status-wise.

There’s everything being made interesting due to the baby’s medical/diet issues.

There’s an ongoing, fits and starts reorganization and cleanup of the office and the house generally, purging stuff we don’t need, traveling a bit lighter.

There’s the project of thanking all the awesome people who donated to us recently, which is up near the top of the priority list for today.

There’s marketing.  It looks increasingly like I may be able to piece together a living from this and that, and may be able to do that and spend a lot of time on the home front, while Deb has the potential of some supplemental outside work.  However, the marketing includes of her, on the idea we can both do this and that without more than part time or hit and run outside the house work.

So that’s the stuff I’m working on or concerned with, that may mean a post is slow to appear if it’s somewhat extraneous.


12:15 PM | Blogging • Business • Food & Cooking • Geekery • Games • Job Hunting • Kids • Medical • Money • Totally Random • (4) Comments • Permalink

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Jay: American Idol Top 6

This was a better week than I might have expected.  Certainly it was clear cut as to who was bad and good.

David Cook, Syesha Mercado, and Carly Smithson are the top three, though opinions might vary and cases might be made as to what order they would be placed in.  Syesha showed where her niche is and bought herself a nice career, even if she somehow went home this week.  She performed the song amazingly, while singing it nicely.  David showed us just how good his voice actually is, singing straight this time.  Carly belted Jesus Christ Superstar, if not perfectly, well and having fun.  I could quibble with a couple instances of wrong words.  Deb hadn’t seen the original, which I watch regularly, thus knowing the words.

Ironically, David Archuletta was good enough this week, human enough, I typed his name before remembering I always call him the Achoo-Bot.  In a twist to the other David singing straight, he made a theater song into pop that you could imagine hearing on radio, even if on a station at the mellow end of the spectrum.  I never like him, but this week he was likable.  Yet he falls clearly at 4th in my book, which is why the gap between the four and the bottom two is so wide.

Brooke White and Jason Castro are clearly the bottom two.  I believe they do switch to two at this point, incidentally.  They were so bad, especially Jason, and at that I didn’t think he was as bad as the judges thought, if one of them isn’t going home, it’s a travesty.  Dial Idol had Carly handily at the bottom, but they have been hopelessly inaccurate, so that means nothing.

We’ll see what happens tonight…


08:07 AM | Music • TV • (3) Comments • Permalink

Jay: Happy Birthday

To Lorraine Lynch.


08:01 AM | Birthdays • (0) Comments • Permalink
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