Twev1701.net 2002-2012

My Current Desktop 02-01-12

Trev — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 04:11:46 +0000

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Simpler Was Better

Trev — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 07:24:24 +0000

I don’t know why but I have been thinking about web services that have gone the way of the dinosaur lately. Of all the web services that have come and gone, the one I miss the most is TextAmerica. What was TextAmerica? It was a photo sharing site. More specifically, it was a moblog hosting site. It was simple, it was sleek, and it did its job just fine.

TextAmerica was a place where you could just upload photos from your phone via email and it would simply display a thumbnail with the title. That’s it. No tags, no location data, no sets — just your pic and a title. It not only made uploading pics easy, but it made it addictive as well.

I have been a Pro member of Flickr since 2006. I have over 3,000 photos on that site. And yet lately, I haven’t been uploading pics because I just don’t feel like going through the hassle. The method of uploading has been relatively unchanged since 2006. That’s a royal pain the in the ass. I want a system like TextAmerica where it’s simple and works beautifully.

I downloaded the desktop version of Picasa tonight with the thoughts of maybe moving onto that platform to post my pictures. I’ll play around with it more tomorrow night. I could go back to Buzznet, the very first service I used for a moblog back in March of 2004, but that really seems extreme considering I left them because they really started to suck. I just logged back into my account over there and they’re not much better then they were when I left in 2005.

I am off on Wednesday and Thursday. I think I may have to devote some geek time and investigate this issue further. Either way, I have a feel this was the last year I pay $25 to be a Flickr Pro member.

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That Was Short Lived

Trev — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:58:29 +0000

My stomach is back to ripping itself apart and I once again find myself on the toilet. I should have known better… No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Hungry Like The Wolf

Trev — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 08:15:11 +0000

My life is run on irony.

My wide and I have a mutual agreement when one of us is sick: one sleeps on the club and the other gets the bed so each person can get a good night’s sleep. Last night I got the bed, so tonight I have the couch. I finally get to sleep only to be woken up about 20 minutes later by my stomach. It was an intense pain. Sitting up, I realized it wasn’t nausea. It was actually hunger. Not having much to lose, I ate a muffin and a handful of tortilla chips. Much to my surprise, they tasted great. It would appear that I finally got my appetite back. However, now that I have eaten, I’m wide awake. So now I’m sitting here, catching up on the past 2 months of ‘Sanctuary’ on the DVR, waiting for the first shift to get to work so I can call in sick. I’d actually consider going in if it wasn’t for the fact that A) my shift start in less than 4 hours and I haven’t slept yet and B) even though I feel fine now that may change once my body Tatars to digest the food I just ate. So, I’m going to call in and take an extra day off.

For me, I’m going to watch another episode and then call into work.

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Down and Out

Trev — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:40:37 +0000

Well it’s finally happened. The sickness I have been fighting for the past 2 months has finally won. Unfortunately to win, it did have to call in reserve troops in the form of a very nasty stomach virus. Nearly half of our store called in sick with it yesterday, and I have a feeling the other half (me included) called in sick today.

Right now the virus is somewhat at bay I am not giving it any ammunition. I haven’t had anything more than a handful of crackers to eat in the past 20 hours. Also, I haven’t had anything to drink in over 12. This has kept the virus from emptying out my system, one way or another, like it was for several hours last night.

Unfortunately, it looks like Jess maybe coming down with the bug now. In fact, both of us are on the couch right now, huddled under blankets, watching ‘Captain America’.

As for a return to work tomorrow, this is questionable. It really all depends how I feel. I do get a distinct feeling that I may be taking a 2nd day off so that I feel better for our planned ‘date night’ on Friday.

For now, it’s back to the movie.

The Gauntlet Today is not going nearly as well as I had...

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Celebrating 10 Years

Trev — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 06:05:11 +0000

2012 marks the 10th Anniversary of this site. There’s a long story about how it started off as Twev1701.com, then was FORCED to move to Twev1701.net. If you’re really that interested, you can read about it here. What’s more important then that is that it’s been around, regardless of the name, for 10 solid years.

Back when I first started the site, a program like WordPress didn’t exist. What I used back then was a series of scripts called NewsPro. It work very well except for one very important things — no database. All of the posts were stored into one large file that was then parsed and displayed on your site. This was fine for me back in 2002 when I was making mindless posts about this and that. However, I soon realized that it was a mistake the first time I moved to a different program. None of my old posts were transferrable. In fact, this would be true for a great many years. It wasn’t until I moved to MovableType that I had a true database backend. Luckily, when I finally settled into WordPress, I was able top transfer all of my old MovableType posts over. It’s taken many years and searching various hard drives, but I have managed to salvage a good number of posts from my pre-MovableType days. Unless I find some great unknown file somewhere, the earliest post I have a permanent record of is from April 21, 2002.

So what is a guy to do to celebrate the 10th anniversary of this site? I’m honestly not sure. So, I decided to have a little fun. I went back and grabbed a bunch of old headers that I still had from the last 10 years of site designs, and loaded them up into this design. Every time you load a new page or refresh the page, you’ll get a random header form the past. I even dated marked them with their debut date so that you can see when it was from. This was actually a fun, if not daunting project. It was a great going back and looking at not only all of my old designs, but through all my old files as well.

So what’s in store for the next 10 years? Who knows. I started this site because I always wanted to own my own site that was controlled 100% by me. I never imagined back in 2002 that it would still be around 10 years later. I think I’ll close out the first decade of this site fittingly with this…

New Design In Almost 3 Years In part of my quest to return to ‘normalcy’ after...
What To Do? Now that I have finally found a medication that is...

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2011

Trev — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 07:31:51 +0000

So how did I fare in 2011? There were certainly ups and downs. Let’s start off by looking at the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year.

Top 5 Things I Want To Work On For 2011

Improve my time-management skills.
Take more trips with my wife and son.
Make more home repairs/improvements.
Spend more time with friends.
Try and cut out big chain restaurants from our eating habits. If we do eat out, make sure it’s a locally owned establishment.

Out of all of those goals, I am very proud to say I accomplished 2 1/2 of those. I took more trips with my wife and son this year then I have in the previous 2 years combined! I also made more home improvements by remodeling our living room with new moldings, paint, restoring vintage door hardware, and new laminate flooring. As for the 1/2, that would be eating at less big chain restaurants. When it comes to pizza, we eat 100% locally owned. However, when it comes to other food, we’re about 50/50. Not too bad considering the mide-boggling amount of chain restaurants in our area.

As for 2012, I am not setting any major goals. There are lots of projects I want to accomplish, but I’m not assigning them like you would a goal. What gets done, gets done.

As for 2011, it was a certainly a year of ups and downs. In my opinion, here are the top 5 best things about 2011.

Taking Jackson to see the ‘real’ Thomas in Phillipsburg, NJ. Not only did he get to see him full size, but he got a 20 minute ride as well.
Taking not one, but 2 trips to the beach. Why? On our first trip, I got to show my son the ocean for the first time. On our second trip, I got to show my nephew the ocean for the first time. How often does one man get to do all of that within 30 days?
Seeing my wife finally realizing her dream and being hired as a music teacher. Of course, this story has a pretty shitty ending, but she was at least able to live her dream for 6 months. How many of us get to do that?
Watching my son grow up. Yes, I know this is something we all get to do as parents, but it amazes me to no end how smart and ingenious he is. I love him more than anything else on this planet.
Last but not least by any stretch of the imagination, I am grateful for my wife threatening to leave me this summer. That single act motivated me to seek help for my anxiety/depression that I have lived with almost all of my life. I was always able to keep it hidden, but after 25+ years of doing so, I could no longer do it. I am now on daily medication that let’s me appreciate the ‘little things’ in life rather than being a nervous nelly all of the time. Yes, I still have my bad days, but the good days greatly outnumber the bad.

Oh, one last thing. 2012 is the 10th anniversary of this site. I have some pretty cool things planned to celebrate throughout the year. If you’ve been a reader for a few years, I think you’re going to enjoy what I’ve got planned! :’)

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A Cold Start To A Day Off

Trev — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:41:36 +0000

An Unexpected Holiday Start Jess and Jackson have been away since last night. Jess...

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I’d Say Winter Is Finally Here

Trev — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 03:27:14 +0000

And it’s not kidding around!

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One Of Those Days

Trev — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 03:35:25 +0000

Today was one of those days where all I wanted to do was crawl back into bed. I got very little sleep last night partially do to a night filled with very bad tartness dreams, and staying up a wee bit too late watching ‘Breaking Bad’.

When I did finally get out of bed this morning, I found that I had overslept by about 10 minutes. Not a big deal, but this put me on the rush.

Once I got to work, I found that my anxiety was slightly out of control today. This usually happens when either I have bad stress dreams or not enough sleep. Unfortunately, I had the pleasure of both last night. Trudging through the day, I finally left and made my way home…only to remember that I was out of green tea. Off to the grocery store I go!

After a quick grocery run, I return home to an equally tired wife and a napping son. I put away the groceries and quietly land my ass firmly onto the couch. After sitting there for about 10 minutes, I can no longer keep my eyes open. It’s not even 5pm and I can’t fight it anymore. I curl up in a blanket on the couch and close my eyes.

I am the. Woken up by my wife 3 hours later. Apparently I had just slept 3 hours and didn’t really mean to. Yep, I was tired all right! So I get up, have 2 bowls of cereal for dinner, and watch some DS9 with Jackson. A good night all around!

For now, I’m off to take out the garbage and then head to bed with my lovely wife. I really need to get more than 4 hours of sleep tonight!

Sleeplessness Tonight is a typical night for me. I’ve been in...

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