The Column

Motto:  I'm going to call Ratcatcher to trash this Copper This is likely the last post I will write before Melissa and I go on our vacation to celebrate our 1-year anniversary. I'd say you can expect the next one in a little over a week, and you can expect it to have pictures and maybe some stories. Everyone has always told me: "Oh, man, college is the best time of your life. You'd better live it up because you'll never get the chance to experience anything like that ever again." In a way, that's true. I'll never experience college again... but there are tons of things I'll never get to experience again. Their actual <message> isn't so much "carpe diem" as it is "middle school is terrible, high school sucks, college is awesome, and everything after that sucks". I'll tell you what: Not in my experience. Middle school <was> kind of rough... but only really due to internal factors. Everything you thou...

Motto: You Can Survive Anything for Just 10 Seconds! Melissa and I went on our first real bike ride yesterday. We went on a 2.92 mile jaunt around our neighborhood, with one stop at Chipotle. It was my first "bike ride" in years. It was really fun! Hopefully we've got plenty more good days for these left before it gets too crazy hot. I've had two vehicles for some time now. MK1 has had a full-fledged trunk monkey for a while now. As of Monday I can say that MK2 is getting there (also thanks to Tony from Christmas time). Here's what they look like... MK1 trunk monkey: Leatherman (not pictured) Tarp Duct Tape Towel Various First Aid Bits Headlamp Lighter Electrical Tape Pens Post Its Emergency Blanket Rope Playing Cards Locking Pliers Bungees Tire Pressure Gauge Flashlight Phillips/Flathead Combo Gear Ties Gloves MK2 trunk monkey: WD-40 Poncho Locking Pliers Regular Pliers Groove Joint Pliers Bailing Wire Paracord Towel...

Motto: Zen Mode Engage I have decided to learn more about computer science. I've done some "coding" for several years, but it's pretty much always been using the same language, using the same environment, using mostly the same functions for mostly the same type of problem. As a starting point, I've decided to take the Udacity courses that lead to their "Front-End Web Developer" nanodegree (note: I'm just auditing the courses, not getting a nanodegree). I've never really touched HTML or CSS. I only "sorta" know how webservers and websites actually work. I want to expand that knowledge and learn to build cool stuff.  If the Front-End Web Developer courses are fun, I'll move on to the Full-Stack Web Developer courses. If those are fun, I'll do the Data Analyst courses. My surface-level goals are to learn how to create a website, possibly move this blog over to my own domain, and possibly create a "Life Tracker 3.0" ...

Motto: You Don't Exercise because You Have Energy, You Exercise because it GIVES You Energy Today's post is about two mostly unrelated things: Social Networking and Fitness. Social Networking: To me, social networking for the longest time meant "Facebook". Since that time a whole crop of things deeming themselves "social networks" have come and gone; and I tried out many of them. Twitter. Path. Tumblr. Google Buzz. Foursquare. LinkedIn. Instagram. Pinterest. Vine. Diaspora. Google+. They have all had their highlights, and their low points. The one thing they all have in common is that they aimed to become a place where you could go and see "what's happening" with your friends. You could hear their opinion on some current event(Twitter), see a picture of their coffee (Instagram), and see what projects they claim to be working on (Pinterest). Enter Google Hangouts. Hangouts is not posed to its users as a "social network". It...

Motto: Step 1 - wake up Have you ever been in a mood for an extended period of time? I'm talking like days here. I have been lately. Melissa is walking around dressed up like Bruno Mars right now. Google announced the "Chromebit" earlier this week. It's basically an HDMI dongle that turns whatever TV you want into a Chrome OS computer. The device itself looks like this: The tech blogs are not covering this in much detail. When they do talk about it, they generally talk about Google flooding the market with "devices for your TV". It is confusing, though. Should my TV have a Chromecast, an Android TV box, or a Chromebit plugged in to it? Regardless of that question, I think this thing is just a really cool idea. Hulu Plus on Chromecast was giving me some trouble the other day, so I plugged my Chromebook into my TV and set it out of sight. At that point what I had was essentially what this thing will be... and it was pretty cool! ...