Author Archive

Shorpy, History in HD

I absolutely love old photos. Thanks to Dan Cederholm for the link to Shorpy.com. These photos are just amazing and really tell a tale of the history of our country.

Shorpy is a blog about old photos and what life a hundred years ago was like: How people looked and what they did for a living, back when not having a job usually meant not eating.

Many of the jpegs on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs, 20 to 200 megabytes in size) from the Library of Congress archive. (To query the database click here.) Most were digitized by LOC contractors using a Sinar studio back. They are adjusted by your webmaster for contrast and color using Photoshop CS3, a process that can take around an hour per image.

2008
09/11
CATEGORY
Photography
2 comments

Do Not Use HostOnce for Web Hosting

One of my clients uses HostOnce to host their web site. Recently, something happened on the server that causes a username and password dialog box to appear when you pull up my client’s web site in a browser. This is unacceptable. So I go to the HostOnce web site (I’m not even going to give them the favor or linking to them) to try to contact them. I create an account and submit a help desk ticket. They do not have a phone number listed to contact them. A week goes by and they still have not responded.

Yesterday I was testing the site again and found the my client’s site was completely down. So I go back to the HostOnce site and to my surprise their site was down as well. This is just not acceptable. Even if my client does not raise concern with this, I will. My client is a private school and the new school year begins in just two seeks. This is not a good time for their site to be down because returning students and potential new students could be trying to access the site for important information.

I took the initiative and referred my client to GoDaddy for new hosting. I have other clients that use GoDaddy and they have excellent customer service, great pricing, and awesome features on their hosting plans. Plus I had them pay for a domain transfer so that GoDaddy will have control of the domain and to point it to the GoDaddy DNS servers.

Now I just need to wait for HostOnce to respond to the domain transfer request. I hope they do this faster than they respond to the help desk tickets.

I have no problems giving credit to businesses which I deal with that offer great services. But if I’m not happy with dealing with a company, I will let many more people know about the bad experience.

Host once seems to be an Australian company. Their address that is listed on Network Solutions is:

HostOnce
PO Box 8016
Oakleigh East, Vic 3166
Australia

2008
08/19
CATEGORY
Writings
32 comments

Ikea is a bag-free store

I happened to spend a lot of this weekend at Ikea in Baltimore. I’m not a frequent Ikea shopper so I was not aware of this until check-out but Ikea is a bag-free store. At check out I was asked if I’d like to purchase a bag to use for my items. They had boxes available if needed, but no plastic bags. This is actually a pretty cool idea. I just used the cart to get the items to the car and returned the cart. No plastic bags needed or wasted so it is better for the environment. I believe some grocery stores are similar where you can purchase a bag to use for shopping at their stores. Now that I was actually confronted with this decision I may look at changing the habit for saying “plastic bags are fine” when I check-out. Just trying to do what I can to help the environment.

2008
08/11
CATEGORY
Environment
Writings
2 comments

Living in the City

The reason I moved into the city of Harrisburg was because I could find a decent house to buy for a good price. It definitely helped me purchase my first home. And at the time it was just a few blocks from work. But that changed.

A few weeks ago I was talking with my boss who recently moved into the city himself. He said that Harrisburg offers all the problems of living in a city without many of the benefits of living in a city. I completely agree. And here is my list of pros and cons of living in the city of Harrisburg.

Pros:
1. Inexpensive housing.
2. The river is beautiful.

Cons:
1. Taxes are high.
2. Public schools are horrible.
3. Lack of family oriented establishments.
4. Lack of coffee shops with decent hours.
5. Roads are always in poor shape.
6. Serious crimes.
7. Lack of spring cleaning for trash pick-ups.
8. No grocery shopping in the city.
9. Parking (I need to pay for a parking permit in front of my house)

There are probably more but these are the ones I could think of off the top of my head.

After living here for a few years I’m anticipating my next move. It will probably be to Camp Hill. But before I make any decisions I will need to speak with my Realtor and get some suggestions from him. I’m thinking this may happen within the next year if I can do it.

2008
07/24
CATEGORY
Writings
2 comments

My New Puppy

Terry III

I bought a puppy on Saturday! He is a yorkie-poo. A mix between a yorkshire terrier and a poodle. I picked him because I am allergic to dogs, but with this mix my allergies really aren’t that bad. He doesn’t shed hair like other dogs. And he’s such a quiet and relaxed puppy. He loves to be held and cuddled with. And now he likes to run laps in the back yard and play fetch.

2008
07/08
CATEGORY
Writings
2 comments