Putting the Pro in procrastination

Just about anyone who is self-employed has come face to face with the procrastination beast at one time or another, if not on a regular basis. We are faced with this plague more often than others in the workforce because not only do we have to actually do our work, we also have to dream it up. We are self-directed - we wear many hats and have to plan and come up with our own assignments.

One of the ways I fight the beast is to procrastinate productively: If I start to surf RSS feeds I've subscribed to instead of finishing the redesign of my website, I stop surfing, get up from the computer and go do a couple of stretches or some car maintenance (check the oil, check the tire pressure, wipe down or vac the interior...).

Or if I catch myself spending too much time organizing my e-mail folders, I write and post a brief article to this blog. You get the idea.

Hope this helps, Joey!

U.S. Never to be energy independent?

Saudi royal Prince Turki al-Faisal, said "I'd hope that the general public in the United States would be wiser than to be deceived into thinking that the U.S. can ever be energy independent."

Meanwhile, we Yankees have outlined a plan on how to "eliminate our current imports from the Middle East and Venezuela within 10 Years." The Infidel Insanity (arabspeak for Yankee Ingenuity) includes upping our fuel economy standards by unleashing more than a million plug-in hybrids by 2015. The plan includes "a new $7,000 tax credit for purchasing advanced vehicles" and establishment of a national "low-carbon fuel standard."

Prince Turki is the latest in long line of stellar intellects whom have made other such predictions:

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
"X-rays will prove to be a hoax."
- president of the Royal Society, William Thomson, Lord Kelvin

"This telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication."
- Unknown executive, Western Union

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
- H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927

"Television won't matter in your lifetime or mine."
- Radio Times editor Rex Lambert, 1936

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
- Ken Olson, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
- Decca Records on rejecting the Beatles, 1962

"...the Japanese auto industry isn't likely to carve out a big slice of the U.S. market."
- Business Week, August 2, 1968

"$100 million dollars is way too much to pay for Microsoft."
- Unknown executive, IBM, 1982

"It is hard for us with, and without being flippant, to even see a scenario within any kind of realm of reason that would see us losing $1 in any of those transactions"
- AIG Financial Products Credit Default Swaps, 2007

[Vista is]"...the safest and most secure OS on the planet today."
- Kevin Turner, chief operating officer for Microsoft, 4/6/2009

Feel the fear...

Feel the fear, and do it anyway! I've used those words many times during my life.

But there's an overeducated boob that thinks they can register, copyright and patent that phrase. Bollocks. I use it all the time, I just used it here, and I will keep on using it without attribution when- and wherever I please.

Sosumi! <raspberry />

Book review: Build Your Own Database Driven Website

Build Your Own Database Driven Website Using PHP & MySQL
by Kevin Yank


Paperback: 373 pages
Publisher: SitePoint; 3rd edition (October 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0975240218

If you already dabble in html but want to stretch your brain a bit to design and build a dynamic web site that generates pages from a database then this is the book for you.

It is short, instructive and easy to follow. All you need is a Windows, Mac or Linux computer and the ability to follow instructions: Kevin Yank's tutorials are unusually clear and concise, and assume only the most basic web authoring knowledge on the reader's part.

The knowledge I gleaned from this book has already netted me thousands of dollars in additional business, as well as the pleasure gained from learning new skills and techniques.

Enjoy!

Lazy SEO/SEM

Learned a couple o' neat thing about SEO from a pro at one of the parties yesterday:

1) Make the organic SEO elements (title, metas, repeated text) different for each page of the site.

Seems obvious in retrospect, but when I create sites I generally ask my customer for one search phrase then simply apply that phrase to the entire site. And though historically that technique has been getting the job done it is now better practice to customize the SEO words and phrases for each page of the site.

2) Page rank can go up and down simply because of the search engine database (or datacenter) that the front end is accessing at any given moment.

There again, as an IT guy who's fairly well read, I should've put two and two together and realized that Google, Yahoo, MSN Live et. al. have enormous datacenters scattered hither and yon across the globe because a) redundancy is survival and b) load balancing is the only way to handle millions of queries at a time. And that affects the results returned for both paid and organic links.

'nuff said.

Birthdays and stuff

What does a lazy guy do to celebrate someone's birthday? Especially two someones, on the same day, in the same place, at the same time?

And no, they aren't twins. They are husband and wife - nice folk with different interests, genders, etc. Only their birthdays are paired.

And that's when Amazon and K-Mart come to the rescue! Woo-hoo! Pre-wrapped! Double-hoo! Please sir, may I have some more?

The Shell and the Editor

Just another shuffling post...getting used to the UNIX way. OK, so I wanted to remote in to the UNIX laptop from any other computer on my network, PC or MAC. Due diligence indicates that the easiest way was to install TightVNC server on the UNIX box and any viewer on the clients.

Installed TightVNC from one of the packages on the FreeBSD 7.1 CD. One caveat: The installation will stop and ask for a Diablo Caffe file. I followed the instructions outlined in the error message and the rest of the installation was uneventful.

For detailed help on the installation and configuration of the TightVNC server, check out this great tutorial over on FreeBSD Diary.

That's not my cup of fur

While exploring the goodness that is FreeBSD I discovered that it doesn't (natively) support my wireless card. All is sadness in the land of no NDIS wrappers...

BTW, Mac OS X runs on BSD. I'm just saying.

Clicky is here

Just received my clicky keyboard. It's a 1990 IBM^® Model M, beige with a curly gray detachable cord. US$29, cheap thrill. Took me back to my first go-round at University, where we had IBM stuff — big iron.

It's built like a tank. No BS, this thing weighs more than my laptop. Large, solid, doesn't move or rock at all. The keys use steel springs instead of the little rubber bulbs found under most keyboards, so everything clicks when the springs pop! Very nice audio and tactile feedback.

Neater thing: No Windows key, lol. Now, anyone got ideas on how to put a FreeBSD label on it?

Lazy LIT

"(T)he best drink in existence...the effect of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick."

A Long Island Ice Tea (also known as "Adios, M**********r") is the closest thing on Earth to the fabled Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.

Therefore, in the interest of enlightenment and posterity*, here is the mixture. YMMV.

In a chilled shaker combine crushed ice and

Vodka
Gin
Clear Rum
Clear Tequila
Triple Sec
Sour Mix


1 oz.
1 oz.
1 oz.
1 oz.
1 oz.
1 oz.

Shake until frothy, strain over rocks into a highball glass. Add a splash of Coca-Cola for color. Garnish with either a cherry or a slice of lemon.

Cheers!

______________________________
*Because the only mixed drink that anyone under 30 seems to know about is Vodka & Redbull.

Selling Stuff the Lazy Way

So I'm raising some cash 'cause I want to buy a new PC. Well first I need to get rid of the old PCs, right? But who wants teh olde compooters, specifically G3 Macs and two beige-box PIIIs? Gotta use teh internets!

1. Research current prices for the old Macs on eBay & Craigslist. (BTW, the beige box PCs are practically worthless...)
2. Take nice pics of the Macs running DVDs and OS X.
3. Post on Craigslist 10% cheaper than competitors.
4. Profit...maybe. TBA!
   

Switching tabs in Firefox/FreeBSD

As you know, lazywrites doesn't want to use the mouse...it's too much of an effort. And when I open a bunch of tabs in Firefox in Windows XP of Mac OS X I can flip through them by pressing Ctrl+Tab on the keyboard. KDE/FreeBSD, on the other hand, thinks I want to switch desktops. Feh. The work-around? Use Ctrl+Page Up or Ctrl+Page Down. Ta-da.

Free Stuff

Wow. Just wow. I love free stuff. So instead of buying Vista, I got UNIX. Weirdness on top of strangeness installing FreeBSD on the ol' Dell Inspiron 4100. Couple of things:

1. FreeBSD may not be for the lazy...
2. ...but it can be installed pretty easily

Got the sound working, and KDE working in due course. How to? Here ya go, lazy folk...

The sound is an on-board Intel pcm thingie. Put the following in /boot/loader.conf:
snd_ich_load="YES"

If you like it GUI (and who doesn't) ya gotta install KDE. Once KDE is installed you should log out of root and login to the mere mortal profile (i.e. plain vanilla user) you added during installation. Create a file called .xinitrc in your home directory, open it in any editor and add this: startkde

Type startx at the prompt. Ta-da!

That's all folks.

Lazy Sunday

Too lazy to get up. Just thinking about hacking away at selling stuff...and starting a blog about hacking away and selling stuff.

So I downloaded FreeBSD a couple of days ago. Just to put it on an old lappy that's running XP Pro and dual boot the thing. But I'm conflicted, 'cause I want to sell a bunch of stuff, including the old lappy. Meh.