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Kim, Amanda, Art and I went up to Snoqualmie pass this Saturday to snowshoe around. I started to get worried on the drive up that there would be no snow, but fortunately there was just above the pass elevation level. (more…)

• Reading: Modern Database Management, Seventh Edition

I’ve just completed my first batch of Mr Beer. I’m a little disappointed with the taste of the beer, but I realize that the West Coast Pale Ale beer included with the kit that I bought isn’t the kind of beer I normally like. I like something a little richer and darker. It basically tastes like Coors Light, although after drinking a bottle I like it better than Coors Light. It’s got a nice, light, flavor and the aftertaste is very slight. (more…)

I haven’t made a cent since the first day. If anything this AdSense experiment has shown me that writing almost completely for myself, unless I have people reading this using RSS feeds that don’t register as a page view in the AdSense stats. Of course, I started of mostly writing this blog for myself, followed by friends and family, so I’m not surprised that my traffic is so low.

I think to make AdSense worthwhile and effective I would need a blog about a specific topic, and then I would have to do some work to get links to the blog, join networks, maybe have some sort of marketing campaign. In other words a lot of work.

You can get an interesting comparative sort of idea of how much your blog might be worth in advertising based on some numbers from AOL’s purchase of the Weblogs, Inc blog network. I was surprised that my former political blog www.ministryotruth.com was worth about $5000 according to them. Of course, it really isn’t worth that if nobody will pay me for it, but it goes to show me that I had a few more links than I thought. It was too much work though and it didn’t turn out to be as collaborative as I had hoped.

• Reading: Monsters and Magical Sticks: There's No Such thing As Hypnosis by Steven Heller & Terry Steele

I never wanted to have ads on my website, but I’ve become a big fan of Google’s AdSense ads. I’ve actually found the targeted advertising to be sometimes useful instead of being a distraction – like advertising normally is. (more…)

• Reading: Truman by David McCullough

Someone knocked on our door tonight for a free window audit from Statewide Windows. In addition to the free audit we get a $25 gasoline card. Sounds like a good deal to me since I spend nothing, get someone to tell me about energy efficiency, and they give me $25 in free gas. The company looks reputable online, so we’ll see how it turns out when they come to do the audit. I’ll update here.

Update October 22nd, 2005. A sales lady named Cindy came to the house and measured our windows and gave us a presentation on windows. The UniFrame window that only Statewide sells was very impressive in the demo, blocking a ton of heat (supposedly R10 value), and being very well made. We have a window in our downstairs bedroom that is too small to make code since it’s a slider, which only allows half the window opening to be used as an egress and the whole opening just barely would be big enough for code. We wanted to replace that anyway, but Cindy told us our upstairs bedrooms weren’t big enough for code. So we got price quotes to replace all those windows and expand our downstairs bathroom window. The quote looked really, really good, so Kim and I talked about it and decided to just get it done, especially since they offer a “success discount” of 11% if you place your order that night. However, she messed up her math. The quote ended up being about 70% more than the original. We were exhausted at this point as we had been talking windows for 4 hours and just wanted to go to bed so we agreed to the price knowing that we had three days to cancel the contract, so we just signed it and went to bed.

The next morning I measured the upstairs windows and found that they were just barely code. One of them had an opening that was just over 5.7 sq feet and the other was less than 5.7, but was on the ground floor and more than 5 sq ft. This code mistake and lack of knowledge, combined with the higher price that changed on us gave us a bad feeling and we decided to cancel the order. Kim called and said that we wanted to cancel and Cindy said okay, but didn’t bother to tell us that we had to send a notice of cancellation in by certified mail. It’s a good thing I read that before the date that I needed to make the decision.

Overall it seems like Statewide has a good product and is a good company, but the make a decision now sales tactics and pricing raising math errors were enough to make us reconsider doing business. Perhaps in the future after we’ve done some more research we’d consider statewide, but I have a feeling that their prices may be a little higher than I’m willing to spend.

Update October 25th, 2005 Despite calling Cindy twice to say that we wanted to cancel, faxing in a copy of the request to cancel, and sending a certified letter yesterday (which to be fair I doubt they’ve received until today), someone from Statewide today stopped by and put their sign in our yard and wants to setup a time to do the precision measuring of the windows. I’m hoping this is just a mistake in the paperwork and not another pushy business tactic.

Update November 1st, 2005 My money was all refunded no problem. I’m planning to shop around and get some more bids before I go any further with this project. I don’t know enough to make a good decision yet.

When I tell people that I’m fasting on my birthday weekend they look at me like I’ve said something sacriligious. “What about drinking and cake?” they say. I’m happy to pass that up to feel healthier. Besides, I had plenty of cake and pie last weekend and I eat pretty much every day, so I won’t miss it a for few days – much. (more…)

I used another one of my coupons from the awesome Chinook Book for a 2 for 1 massage at the Ayurvedic Health and Massage Center, which is really just one guy named Andy Warren. I haven’t had a professional massage in forever, but boy does it do me good. He does kind of a Swedish – Ayurvedic style massage, which is relaxing and seems to go by too fast, but what massage doesn’t? I think I prefer a deeper and less gentle style, but I’ll have to get one professionally to find out. I know that I like it when Kim walks on my back, so I imagine that it would be hard to get too deep a massage without wearing out the masseuse’s hands.

Kim’s also getting an Ayurvedic consultation since she’s become interested in that since we went to Kripalu. She’s also been reading some books by Deepak Chopra. It bothers me to hear it called a science, but it certainly is a way of life that’s been around for a while and I’m sure is a healthier lifestyle than most Americans practice today.

I’ve got a nasty, nasty cold and Alka-Seltzer Plus Effervescent Cold is the only thing that I’d found that helps. I think it’s the bubbles. However, either it doesn’t work as well as I remember, or this cold is tougher.

The approximate travel route

My friend Brian has been traveling through Peru and Bolivia, doing all sorts of cool stuff that I’m jealous of, and he’s documenting the travels with a lot of great detail in his blog (not to be confused with the comically teenaged blog by a different Brian Alexander). I wish there had been such a good way to share my travels when I was in Egypt or China.

I really liked one of his latest entries about his trip to the mines near Potosi. I can’t wait to see pictures.

I realized after these weeks of reading his blog that I really didn’t know the geography and had little idea where he was, so I put together a little map of his travels so far and the order of cities that he’s visited. I wanted to just use google maps or something like that to make the map, but they haven’t mapped out much outside the U.S. and Europe, so I just drew it on a little jpg. I may have misread or missed something, but this is the list of cities he’s travelled to:

Peru

• Lima July 19
• Arequipa July 21
• Puno July 24
• Uros Islands July 26
• Tequile Island July 26

Bolivia

• Copacabana July 29
• La Paz July 31
• Coroico Aug 2
• Rurrenabaque Aug 4
• Pampas Aug 8
• Trinidad Aug 15
• Santa Cruz Aug 17
• Bermejo Aug 22
• Cochabamba Aug 23
• Punata Aug 23
• Sucre Aug 26th
• Potosi Aug 29th

We went to my company’s picnic yesterday at the Point Defiance Zoo – for about an hour. (more…)