A picture of my new workspace. Notice how I have room for my primary computer work on the front side of the desk. But there's also room for things like taking apart and testing computers on the side of the desk. And theres all sorts of filing space. And best of all, theres plenty of extra space all the way around my monitors. So upgrading to much bigger screens will not be a problem. Me likey.

Train's can't do steep hills. So the bridge to get up over the river and into NYC is super long. And pretty tall too. It was more dramatic in person.

A tree crane. I want one. No, I don't have any trees to take down. But I still want one.

This is what the inside of a modern water bed looks like. Totally different from those old 70's style waterbeds.

So which one is the "nice" one, and which one is the "shitbox"? I just can't tell. Flat-towing is a funny thing. It always seems like it wouldn't work, yet apparently it does because people do it all the time. But that little Geo must have a bitch of a time pulling an entire other Geo. Yikes. Maybe the guy can start up the one being towed and tie a string to it's gas pedal... naw probably not a good idea :)

So that round orange blotch in this photo, above the unusually bright spotlight on this building... thats the Moon. Its not a lens flare. The thing to the left of the moon, that's apparently a lens flare (or a UFO). It looked pretty awesome in person, but through my phone's camera, it's kinda meh.

Have you ever bought something using paypal, been ripped off by the seller, and had PayPal tell you "tough luck" when you tried to get your money back? Well PayPal/eBay got sued, and now you can file a claim to get your money back!

They sent out emails to all paypal users. The emails looks mostly like SCAM emails, but I took a closer look and they appear to be totally legit. Plus the forms you have to fill out don't even ask for any sensitive info, like account login information. So it seems to be the real deal.

So if you've been scammed by someone, and paypal refused to give you a refund (they've never given me a refund for any problems I've ever had), go to this web site and check it out:
www.steelesettlement.com

I submittied two paypal transactions, that are actually for the same seller. Send me dead items about a year apart. Hopefully I'll get that money refunded. only 3 and 4 years late...

Also I don't keep money in my paypal account anymore for the interest. I have one of those ING Direct Orange savings account that is currently getting higher interest than paypal. And more importantly, it's FDIC insured. Paypal is nothing. They could at any moment decide to take your money and cancel your account and there's nothing you can do about it. Lets just hope ING Direct doesn't crash like all the other banks :-O

If you REALLY hate paypal, you can always check out www.paypalsucks.com/

This is what 2110 CDs look like, in 14 boxes. Of course I zoomed in a little which kind of flattened the perspective blah blah blah there's more boxes than it looks like. That's a lot of CDs. And I get paid $1 per CD, which is nice. That many CDs is about 33,600 songs. 83 days of continuous music. That's a lot of music. And I didn't see one CD that I wanted to take a copy of. Not that I would have ;-)

I have so much stuff listed on Craigslist right now, I figured I'd share it with the world.

Most of it is left over bike stuff from all my recent upgrades.

My Orange Hardtail Kona Roast Frame with Custom Gyro: $225
boston.craigslist.org/nos/bik/634039123.html

My Silver Maverick ML7 Frame with BB, headset, some other stuff: $1300
boston.craigslist.org/nos/bik/633534054.html

New set of Hayes HFX 9 Carbon Brakes: $250
boston.craigslist.org/nos/bik/635444823.html

New Maverick DUC32 Fork and WTB/Mavic Wheelset: $1200
boston.craigslist.org/nos/bik/641148726.html

New SRAM X-9 Trigger Shifters: $80
boston.craigslist.org/nos/bik/641048076.html

New Hutchinson Barracuda 2.3 Tires: $75
boston.craigslist.org/nos/bik/641039115.html

And some non-bike stuff too!

Wood Coffee Table/Cabinet: $25
boston.craigslist.org/nos/fur/635435761.html

Some Old Lego 9V Train Tracks: $13
boston.craigslist.org/nos/tag/641203741.html

Also, we finally switched to RCN and cancelled Comcast.

For a few dollars less per month, we get:
10 MBit Internet (vs 5 MBit on Comcast)
Digital Cable with ~100 extra channels (vs just basic cable with Comcast)
Tons of Free HD Channels (Including NESN!!!!) (vs just broadcast channels like Comcast)
A static IP with NO port blocks (vs a dynamic IP and call after call from Comcast Customer Intimidation [security assurance] department)

Yes including NESN. If your HD TV has a built in HD tuner (QAM tuner), you can get Red Sox games in HD, for FREE. You don't need a box from RCN, they don't encrypt any of the basic cable HD channels. Now we are getting "DigitalVision" which I assume is digital cable. So you might not get NESN HD if you just get super basic regular cable. But if you get regular digital from RCN, YOU CAN GET NESN HD. I don't understand why they hide the fact that you can get all these HD channels for free. Especially NESN HD. RCN could really steal a lot of customers from Comcast in Red Sox Nation if they advertised this bonus!

Don't forget to join this Facebook group if you hate comcast:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=15135185550

Hehehehe

So, I made a new page on one of my websites. The website is www.whatsmyip.org and the new page is pixels.whatsmyip.org

It's a Pixel Ad websites. PixelAds work like this:
You pay a flat rate for the advertising space. In this case, $1 per pixel for 10-by-10 blocks of pixels.
Then you supply me with your artwork, your website link, and a short tag-line, and you get added to the pixel grid. What makes it a good deal is the time the ad runs for.... forever! Not actually forever, but a very long time. My pixel grid is going to stay online until at least 2016, probably longer.

Now what makes it such a great deal for me? Well there are 10,000 available ad blocks. So if I sell them all, I make $1,000,000. Minus about $30,000 in credit card processing fees. Then about 40% of that to taxes. So lets call it a clean $580,000 in my pocket.

But the real good news is even if I sell one block, I'll still make money. And that one person would get all the exposure :-) Hopefully this gets at least a little popular, and I can sell at least a bunch of blocks.

That will really help me buy that Maverick ML8 I've been feening for since last spring...

So the other day, I jumped in my car and my odometer said 11,111 miles. That's like hitting a slot machine that has 5 rolls instead of only 3. So I screamed for joy and reached under my dashboard. But there was no wave of gold coins flowing out. Then I remembered that I was in my car and not at a casino slot machine, so I drove to work.

The end.

The beer commercial where he breathes fire and sneezes on that cat . . . while cats on fire are funny, that commercial was kind of predictable. Worthy of mention but nothing special.

The Audi R8 commercial, with they put the 'head' of the car in the Italian guy's bed. That was awesome. That was a scene from the Godfather right? In the movie it was a horses head and he was covered in blood. That was funny stuff.

And the Pepsi commercial was good too. With everyone falling asleep, then they drank pepsi max and started the head bobbing. Even LL Cool J was there bobbing his head, and Chris Kattan from A Night At The Roxbury (SNL). Really funny.

The movie "Wanted" looks lame.

The FedEx 'carrier pigeon' commercial is kinda funny. Giant birds throwing cars around.

SoBe Life Water. Lizard gets a drink and turns into MJ in the Thriller video. That was funny. Hmm was he a MenuLizard? :-P

Justin Timberlake getting his ass kicked. Or Andy Samberg in drag. I don't know which was funnier but that was one funny commercial! For pepsi btw.

I'm watching a commercial for Canada right now. The country. WTF. Silly Canadians, vacations are South, not North.

A Bridgestone tire commercial with a deer in the headlights at night. Then up the road, Gene Simmons holding a giant snake, standing on that same foggy road at night. Then even further up the road, Richard Simmons on the road at night, doing aerobics or whatever. It was really funny.

The baby using e-trade commercial is good. And BTW that was a white apple pro keyboard he was using :-)

The new Adam Sandler movie looks REALLY funny. Don't mess with the Zohan. He's a funny guy but I've been waiting a long time for a movie as funny as Happy Gilmore.

And there you have it. Oh wait, one last thing. I need a picture for this entry. Well I don't NEED a picture but it should have one. And I have the perfect idea, the girl from the Victoria's Secret commercial (Adriana Lima).

Check this out. One of my customers has it. Its a chair made out of bungee cords! Its pretty cool. And its really comfortable, but only if you sit right in the middle. It the edge and ouch!

http://groups.myspace.com/stonehamconanfansnotcrazy

Yeah I made a MySpace group. Its a group for Stoneham residents that are fans of Conan O'Brien, but whom are not crazy stalkers. Just regular folks :-)

hahahha

I just watched the movie Knocked-Up. Hilarious movie. Go see it. There was one scene that I thought was weird though. When they were looking at a map of sex offenders in their neighborhood, the map looked familiar. The second time I watched the movie, I paused it and looked close. It says "California" on the screen, but it is clearly a map of Boston & the southern suburbs. Look at the map to the left (clicking on it will enlarge it you know) and there is no doubt about it, those are our roads, exactly! Funny stuff!

I made a few updates to this site today. First, I added many of my YouTube videos to the 'Videos' tab. Second, I added an RSS feed for Blog Comments. I think this RSS feed is working. I'm not sure, since my homemade feed reader chokes on it due to it's own weaknesses. But I think they will both work fine in a regular RSS readers.

Cool summer nights lead to tons of fog off the lake. I've seen it much worse than this, but still this is a whole lot of fog.

1) My original business cards from 2002. I made my logo in Photoshop! Using layer styles! How foolish.

2) My new card, printed with VistaPrint. Viewing the full 1200 DPI scan, I could see that the magenta and yellow of their CMYK printer wasn't aligned, which partly explains why the color is so far off. Also note how the card is too small. And (i've been over all this in my recent VistaPrint posting) the white background is much yellower in person than it scanned to.

3) My new card printed at Swifty Printing in Arlington. The resolution of their printer seemed a little low, but otherwise the card came out far superior to the VistaPrint card. The white is so bright white, and the red and black in just jump right out at you.

4) The back of the card. I thought it would be a nice touch.

The new cards feature my new MacFixer logo. The new logo is all vector art in illustrator. The text is solid red. The loop is solid black. And the text shadow is solid grey. Also, by popular demand, my name is on my new card. And my mailing address is off, because no one will need that. That is, unless they are mailing me my money, but my mailing address is on my invoice.

Wow, what are the odds. Today date is 7/7/07. And I just opened my email program, and I happen to have 7,777 emails in my personal account. Now that's an odd coincidence. Its 4 am so I'll have to wait till I wake up to know if today really is lucky or not. Then again, I am watching a Family Guy marathon, so there got to be some luck going around right now.

This is pretty neat. 3 pictures from my cell phone joined together in Photoshop. Beaver Lake, Derry, NH. Still frozen but it won't be long now. Time to clean the boat :-)

Heres what Beaver Lake looked like Wednesday. Notice they tire tracks. They are not from me, but I'm hoping to get my go kart up there possibly this weekend for a little ice driving :-)

I was driving to Malden today and came across this on Highland Ave. This is so cool! It looked even cooler from the side but I couldn't get a picture from that angle. Seems impossible that a sheet of snow could fall off a car like this and not shatter into a million pieces. Very cool.

Its 72° out. Its January 6th. Clearly we broke the world. But for now, it's not so bad. I want to go swimming.

Ever wonder what the Prudential looks like at night, from Memorial Drive, on a crappy cell phone camera? Probably not but whatever, this is what it looks like.

So, I learned something new today. Have you seen those stickers on cars that are black, then blue, then a black stripe? I've been seeing them a lot lately, as I asked this part time cop girl if it was anything police related, and she said it means the owner of the vehicle is a policeman. I then asked if getting one of those stickers would get me out of speeding tickets. She kind of didn't answer me, and just said don't get the sticker if I'm not a cop. So I'm thinking the answer is yes. Either way, I know what they are now.