Author: James

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A little 4.4 mile walk to the WTC

Slept in today (okay, I had stayed up watching really crappy movies, but that requires sleeping in, right?) and instead of diving right into computer related work stuffs, I thought I’d take a quick walk, maybe find some food, and then come back to do the computerating.
Tribute In Light - NYC September 11, 2007 Well, I’ve finally realized that I’m more interested in walking around Manhattan than actually finding food and walking home. Other than eating, the only real goal I had was to find a BofA and get some cash from the ATM. Bank of America should be ashamed of their bank locations feature on their website. Of course, I didn’t check it out in Internet Explorer so maybe it works there.
So, here’s the walking route I ended up taking today as I made my way from Greenwich Village to the World Trade Center site and back.
As you can see, a mere 4.4 mile route (however getting lost inside the World Financial Center might have doubled that amount!) with the best part being the temperature today. Somewhere from the mid to upper 40’s was just a lovely break from the sub-freezing temps earlier in the week. And walking north along the West Side Highway with the setting sun warming the path made that mid 40’s temperature feel a bit warmer.
And now, back in the apartment with Superbowl supplies purchased:

  • Scudders Corn chips (cause they were less expensive and had far fewer ingredients than anything from Tostitos)
  • Opted for the Tostitos Salsa since it was convenient and half the Dagastino’s price!
  • Otter Creek Copper Ale Because I’m a big fan of trying new wines and micro brews
  • Some sliced turkey for sandwiches!

Now If I can only find the remote control and some epsom salts for soaking my feets! Hope you’ve had a great weekend and are looking forward to a wonderful week of opportunity!

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Book Review "Me: Stories of My Life"

Stories of My Life, Me My review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
Stories of My Life, Me by Katharine Hepburn
Almost finished with this one. From the few interviews I’ve seen of Ms. Hepburn, most notably, the one from the Dick Cavet show (I believe in the 80’s?), her writing style is very much like her speaking style. Late in her life she was very staccato with her speech, and her writing in this book was very much the same. Almost as if she simply audio recorded the book, someone transcribed it, and they print and bound it.

This is definitely not to say there is not good bits of information and anecdotes of her life. There is. Just be prepared for a tough to sustain read.

View all my reviews.

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Sharing my thoughts with you

For just over the past year or so, I’ve been using this domain, Jamesdkirk.com solely as my online contact, resume/portfolio, and my personal OpenID provider website. Surprisingly, for having no “real” content, on this domain, I learn today that the site has a PR of 3. Not a big deal, obviously, but still interesting, nonetheless.
Most of my regular blogging gets done at my other site, BoldlyGoing.com, and that will continue, as I search for that site’s “focus”. Here, however, I’m hoping to begin to capture my personal thoughts, ideas, concerns and things I’m grateful for in my life. This site will hopefully help me to get into the regular flow of posting content. Eventually, I also hope to eventually capture the events of my life, both in time forward, as well as going backwards as far as I can remember.
So, come back if you will and interact. Get to know me, as I get to know me better by sharing with all of you. Or just subscribe to the RSS feed and stay tuned!

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Twitter is broken. Thanks @JamesKirk

Will Norris takes a screen grab of me breaking twitter

Twitter, originally uploaded by willnorris.

Has twitter always had the “blog this” option right from their web pages? I thought at one point I had added a GreaseMonkey script that would allow that to happen.

Anyway, this image was captured by our friend Will Norris, just to show his gratitude at my tweet of exactly 140 characters. Unfortunately, most of those characters were not broken by spaces, causing any page that my tweet showed up on to be jacked all to hell!

Taking bets on how long it takes the great folks at Twitter to fix this with an overflow: hidden in their css (or some other equally groovy solution)

Geesh, and I was just trying to be me. At least I’m not known as Glitch, hey Joseph?

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Lake County Historical Society

Lake County Historical Society
The Lake County (of California) Historical Society was actually a legacy client that was brought into Boldly Going Enterprises, LLC entity when we formed our business at the beginning of this year (2007). I had originally taken on this non profit project at extremely generous rates solely due to my desire to help the organization to get its online presence back in order. Their previous site had been up since 2003 and still had “latest events” from the middle of that year! But these things happen when an organization has a volunteer or member that has some or a lot of skills to use in aiding the group, and then at a later time finds they need to focus their personal time and energies on other things. Unfortunately, for the group, they find themselves at the mercy of the member and can only hope to find a way to extricate themselves as soon as possible.
When approached by the society, I initially considered just volunteering my time and serving resources. I realized, however that two things were likely to happen if I had chosen that route. One) I could get busy with BGE work, and the organizations site and online missions would suffer. Two) if LCHS didn’t have some monetary “skin in the game”, they might not appreciate what they were getting and take for granted me and the services I was donating. In the end, I opted to make a proposal to them that would be “very, very” fair to them, and even allowed them the opportunity to pay for the work over a period of time, thus lowering the impact on their non profit budget.
The most unique aspects to take away from this site is that we’ve set them up with some simple, yet effective e-commerce capabilities using PayPal‘s web developer knowledge so they can sell online the inventory of books which is a staple of the groups income. Also, their membership can sign up and pay or renew online now. Prior to this, renewals were all done offline, with repeated notices at meetings and using snail mail. Now, most members with email are notified and they are able to automatically pay for their memberships online.
The next phase for LCHS is to take their huge number of historical photos online. We’re talking about something in the nature of 10,000+ photos that have been in a digitization mode for a number of years now. After exhaustive research, I was able to find Smug Mug and even able to get them a free “pro”-level account due to the fact that the great folks at SM will give accounts away to certified 501c(3), non profit organizations.
We are in the process of working out how to best utilize the Smug Mug system to enable LCHS the opportunity to offer those images up to the public for sale. The amount of time I have spent in the SM system thus far allows me to highly recommend SM to any individual, organization, or anyone that might want to profit from the sales of images they own or control copyrights to. While we’ve yet to set up the linking from the LCHS site into their SM account, you can get a great sense of some of SM’s capabilities by checking out the LCHS Smug Mug page. Enjoy!

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You really want to see this website…

and then you want to probably buy the book. This was a very light and fun way to spend 5 minutes. Give it a whirl, and then let our readers know your thoughts on the site concept, the book, whatever!

No One Belongs Here More Than You

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The Real Value of 69.90

My Suburban was ready to start getting packed. I had retrieved my 6’x12′ open box trailer from the welder (where repairs to the tongue had been made). As I was backing, backing and rebacking the trailer down my steep front drive towards my garage, I suddenly heard something different sound-wise coming from under the hood.
Now you have to understand that while I’m no rocket scientist, most of the operations of a motor vehicle are pretty straight forward from a common sense, mechanical point of view. Complications do arise with computer interactions and what not, but the “mechanical” aspects of how motors operate have essentially stayed the same since Ford started the wheels a rollin.
Anyways, after popping the hood I discover that all of my power steering fluid is coating the interior of my engine space (and subsequently dripping down the driveway of the house I am trying to move out of and sell :'(
So, being the “save a buck” and “do it yourself, like real men do” kind of guy that I am, I went to Kragen’s (my favorite autoparts store). They are usually very helpful, and the individuals I usually consult with were not in that day so I went it alone. Purchasing what I figured were adequate parts, I went home to make the repair. What I hadn’t accounted for was the 1500 to 2000 psi of pressure that is exerted through the power steering hose and how that would simply blow through the rubber repair patch that I had painstakingly applied.
Well, at this point my options were to buy a kit for $10 or so that calls for cutting the high pressure hose, inserting a male:male fitting into the two cut ends of the hose and clamping it down on both sides, or I could go to the local mechanic that I trust, by the way, and see what it would take to get the right part installed.
As fate would have it all it “took” was $69.90 parts and labor and about an hour and a half of my time. I value my time pretty highly, so let’s just say that the entire “job” cost me in the neighborhood of $250. But that $69.90 cash out of my pocket is so incredibly worth the piece of mind that I won’t have to think about it as I make the 1,000 mile trip from NorCal to AZ late next week (pulling a trailer, no less!)
Have you had auto repair scenarios like the above? I often repair my own vehicles and do most of the maintenance work on them as well. Makes me feel more connected and in touch with the mechanical aspects of how they are running at any given moment. But I have more stories like the above, as I bet you do as well. I’d love to hear some of your stories of how you discovered that spending just a few dollars was so much more effective than doing it yourself. Please share!
~Go Boldly!

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TOMS Shoes

This is precisely the spirit of sharing that we love at Boldly Going, and Tom has created the sort of company and powered it with the vision to give, and do great things as a result of the companies success. If you have a couple of moments check out the promotional video embedded below, and then join us in purchasing your next pair of shoes from Tom’s Shoes!
TOMS Shoes
And if anyone has a pair, share with the rest of us what the experience was like for you, how the shoes are, and generally how you felt about the process. Thanks!