Tonight will be my last night playing music at Kito’s Kave for the summer.   So now i’ll have weekends to go camping, work on the house, help at the bike shop, and maybe complete some other projects that have been neglected.

Check out my retro CD wallet on Instructables.  It is in response to their Office Supply Challenge and i made it from a few 5 1/4 inch floppy discs, a hole punch, scissors, and a few binder rings.

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While in Juneau with my parents i went on a bit of a shopping spree.  The last of the stuff i bought arrived by barge and i picked it up today.  The haul includes…

Six five gallon buckets of asphalt driveway sealant and a squeegee to seal and protect our one year old driveway.

A table saw that i tried putting together last night but the blade is not aligned properly.  I called the store i purchased it from and they have not yet resoved the problem.  I knew i should not have bought the one with the open box that was on sale.

A new Whirlpool washer and dryer.  Front load.  These will replace ours and our “old” ones will be installed in the apartment.  This does mean that i’ll need to route water, a drain, and electricity to the closet that they will be in but it should make the apartment even more attractive to long term renters in the future.  In our laundry room we’re going to install counter top and a sink.  I saw that putting a laundry sink in increases the value of the house by $500 or so.

A new toilet, light fixture and faucet.  These are for the new bathroom that we’ll put in the boiler room/workshop.  The current plan is to convert the space into a half bath with a large sauna that has a shower in it.  I guess that will make it a full bath.  Or maybe 3/4 bath – whatever.   I’ll really need to get the shed finished up in order to move my stuff out there so there is space to get the downstairs bathroom built.

A pressure washer.  I’ll need it to clear off the driveway before sealing.  I also need to wash off the deck and re-seal that.  Someday it would be nice to pull the porch roofing off and wash it and we plan on repainting the house soon too so a good washing would be nice to start off that job.  I think this will come in handy for the bike shop too.

With my move to a new computer i’m having to install my favorite and essential programs so i figured it would be a good time to compile them into a list for the next time i have to go through this.

• Flickr uploader – makes uploading to your Flickr account easy
• Firefox – it’s just a good browser
• Thunderbird – my email client of choice
• miFiles – FTP program
• Dreamweaver – for website coding
• Fireworks – for graphic design and photo work
• Open Office – a Microsoft Office substitute
• Screenprint32 – for screen caps – but Vista doesn’t need it
• WinAmp and the SqrSoft crossfade plugin – to play music and use for djing
• Quicktime player – only because my Nikon records in .mov format
• Express Rip – For easy recording from CD to mp3
• Palm Desktop, hotsync software and my essential Palm programs

Like many people, i use Google’s webmaster tools to help monitor some of the statistics for my website. Since zieak.com is a personal site i don’t fret over the errors too much but i have a feeling that the cleaner the results the happier Google and those finding content on your pages will be. Looking at the summary screen you can easily see if there are problem areas.

Hopefully the Google bot was successful with a recent crawl and are in Google’s index. Let’s take a look at some of the errors that zieak.com is giving Google.

HTTP errors: It tells me that the domain name can not be found for something that starts with “http://www.zieak.com/cgi-bin/axs/ax.pl?http://www…” I used to have to manually put that bit of code before the second “http” in order to track outgoing links. Since i am using a plugin that works with WordPress to add the AXS tracking information on the fly i had to manually remove the AXS code from all of my posts. Every now and then Google finds one i missed so all i need to do is log into my admin panel, manage posts, do a search for part of the destination url, and fix the link by removing the AXS code.

Not Found: Because i used Blogger for years and then converted to WordPress some of my internal links from one post to another are wonky. I need to manually change a link from this “http://www.zieak.com/2004/06/dead.html” to this “http://www.zieak.com/2004/06/04/dead/”. This does require me searching for the incorrect link with one browser window and finding the correct link with another to edit the post with the erroneous link.

URLs Restricted: Some web sites don’t want Google prowling through all of their pages so they disallow their bots from poking around. By finding links that are permitted to the site (usually the main page) then you’ll be sure to keep the Google bots happy.

I have bitten off more than i can chew. With the 4th of July looming, work projects hammering away at me, and the prospect of getting a bike shop opened within two weeks (one week of which i will be in Arizona for) i am feeling a little overwhelmed. Oh well, less play and more work for a while!

1. Technorati Authority: 102 (down 1)
2. Google Page Rank: 4
3. Alexa: 891,019 (down 21,403)
   
4. Silktide Sitescore: 8.3
5. Page Strength: 2 (up .5 but still broken)
6. Feedburner subscribers: 20
7. SocialMeter: 330 (down 1)
8. BlogTopSites: 206 (up 38)
9. How much my blog is worth: $57,583.08 (down $564.54)

The online financial software Yodlee Moneycenter added First Bank of Alaska sometime in the last few months.  I hadn’t used their service in months but now that it is grabbing Bank of America data along with First Bank information i’ll be back to seeing my net worth and knowing my balances by looking at my phone with Splash Money and at any web terminal also.

Today the news will spread through town so i may as well post something here.  Mike Tozzo and i have been approved for a credit line to allow us to purchase the inventory and tools of Petersburg Cyclery.  We have a spot downtown picked out and the business will sell and repair bicycles and also sell bike accessories and sporting goods.  I’m going to be the silent and somewhat invisible partner so i like to go by “ninja partner”.  Mike will run the shop and be the mechanic (after he is done at the newspaper) and i’ll be in charge of purchasing, inventory, advertising, invoicing… all the administrative stuff that i can do at night and on weekends.  We think we have figured out a fair way to calculate the salaries and hopefully we’ll manage to turn a profit sooner than the third year.  We still need a name so we can get a business license and all that jazz though.  Any ideas?  We’re going along the lines of Devils Thumb Bikes and sporting goods (where “and sporting goods” is in much smaller letters) but everything from The Bike Shop to Mike’s Bikes is open for consideration.  It would be nice if we could point out that we’ll carry more than just bikes though.  Any name ideas?

The other day Cena got out one of our Valentine’s Day gifts – a Get Lucky in Love Lottery Game.  The tickets say to scratch off one heart from each row; what, where, and when.  We scratched off a few and for when we got “The Month of May”.  Then we realized you were supposed to scratch these off on Valentine’s Day and they served as coupons.  So out of curiosity we scratched off all the hearts.  We relized that with this lottery coupon you actually could get Maid for a Day in a Hotel.  That would suck.

As a mammal i have the pleasure of having hair.  Plenty of it.  Sometimes the most efficient way of grooming is plucking.  Especially nose hairs.  About half the time that my fingers are in my nose i am attempting to pluck a hair.  The other half… a bug flew up there.  Sometimes i use a Leatherman to pluck those nose hairs.  Today i hit my record.  Eleven.