Ryan McFarland

If you have spent a few hours with me and my friends in the last six months you’ve noticed that a few times an evening the conversation turns to beards. I’m a bit torn on the category that i should enter but i have a good idea for a beard. I’ll probably end up doing something that uses my whole face but doesn’t require long growth.  Perhaps the freestyle beard category — although i’m sure i’d never win.  To the right is a silly image and a good description of the new beard category that i’m trying to get Earl to enter in — the Alaskan Whaler. Here are all of the categories that will be in the Anchorage competition.

I was just doing some stumbling on the web and found Jon Dyer’s blog where he chronicles his attempt to wear as many beard and mustache types as possible.  He’s using the diagram below to guide his sculpting.

Prepping for Juneau

Originally uploaded by zieak

Today we stopped by Frank and Angie’s and picked up a Thule cargo box for the roof. When we got home I worked on stripping copper wire that I have accumulated and prepping brass and aluminum to be sold as scrap. I tracked down a place that does buy some scrap metal and they are close to the ferry terminal so we can unload the metal immediately after we arrive.

We’re taking the fast ferry so it only takes about 4 hours to get there. We leave Friday and will be back Tuesday. Seth and Khanh are also coming. We’re staying with Bern and Wendie in Douglas.

We have reservations for dinner at the Hangar on Friday night. I imagine we’ll hike Mount Roberts, ride the tram down, tour the brewery, and fill the cargo box with toilet paper from Costco.

I mentioned my rotation through hosts in the past and probably sounded pretty happy right now.  I am.  But i was happy with my previous hosts until i shopped around and saw what others were offering.  Maybe it is time for me to start looking for feature-rich but cheap web hosting again.

Some seem to offer significant one-time perks like Yahoo or Google “credit.”  I really need the ability to host unlimited domains because of the number of sites, forwarded domains (ever go to zieak.net? or cenamartin.com?), and spur of the moment start-ups that will fail in the next day.

I definitely need an intuitive and fast web interface, easy setup for SSL certificates (for security enabled sites), and… well, that seems to ba about it.

In related news, Zoom Bikes now has changed the site format to a blog.  The site still needs to have a custom template fleshed out but there are some neat things posted (and quite a few things that are regurgitated from this site.

Alaska HD TV

Originally uploaded by zieak

Today I was interviewed by the guys behind alaskahdtv.com. They were coming through town from Wrangell to LeConte. They are thinking of giving SEAtrails a plug on one of their productions so gave me a few minutes to promote the system.

I showed them around town a little but we only had two hours so barely scratched the surface. Hopefully they’ll be back for a longer visit next time.

I had to buy a few parts for one of my DJ lights.  $8 total in parts.  They only ship UPS.  The bill to ship them up here was going to be over $40.  These two parts can fit in a padded envelope. I swear, i could make a small fortune doing freight forwarding in Seattle to Southeast Alaska.  Just take the package and put it in the mail.  So i had them mailed to Kevin (they are being mailed from Los Angeles to his address near Los Angeles).  Here’s the final amount.

I’ve moved my web projects around to a few different hosts.  It isn’t just about finding cheap web hosting. You also need to worry about uptime, features you might use (my last shift was made because i wanted to do more with PHP) and convenience. You also might need to worry about bandwidth limitations, storage space, email, sql and other perks.

I love that my current host uploads things like Wordpress that make me able to update my installation with just a click.  I don’t have to download and upload and backup and all that.  It does make me a little lazy but that’s what computers do right?  They make things easier.  Computer use wouldn’t have exploded if we were all using DOS.  If web browsing was still just text based i would probably still need TV for entertainment.

I have come to not even read my writing most of the time - I just scan for some red squiggly underlines.  I digress.  I love that my current host has “green” servers.  They buy carbon credits to offset their CO2 contributions.  I think there is a whole world of profit to me made in that realm.

I have a few sites that i’ve been working on… I should unveil them shortly.

It has been quite a while since i made any new and significant projects.  But my old ones can still earn me something.  Check out the Instructables Book Contest.  They are holding a vote for the best Instructables to include ina new book by O’Reilly publishing.  Feel free to vote for mine!

Many of you know that i plan on building another bathroom downstairs.  When we divided the house to make the apartment (in-law apartment that is) we lost the downstairs bathroom which is critical for our frequent entertaining.  I plan on converting the boiler room into a bathroom and sauna.

But i also have plans for the upstairs bathroom too.  I’d love to bring the roof down the front of the house and extend the bathroom toward the road.   We don’t have a bathtub upstairs and thus the main part of the house does not have a tub.  Perhaps a step up to a raised tub area with a jacuzzi or maybe a jetted tub from Small Baths.

In the home imrovement shows that i’ve watched while hanging out in hotel rooms, people have deducted big points from homes without master baths.  It would take a major remodel to make the bathroom upstairs dedicated to the master bedroom.  And after doing that then the “spare” bedroom users need to go downstairs.  That doesn’t make sense.  Fortunately for me, we won’t be having some random real estate broker coming by to tell us what we should be doing with our house.

This project will wait a while.  I’ll definitely get the other bathroom done first — we do need a place to shower while working on the “master” bath!

I just went to leave feedback for the seller of the trailer hitch that i bought on eBay.  This little pop-up appeared.

As a frequent seller on Amazon i can attest that buyers can be complete idiots at times.  Sellers are blamed for shipping delays or delivery failures even when there is proof of shipping the item.

I agree that it is nice to not have to worry about retaliatory feedback though.  In my case the feedback is perfect.  The seller went above and beyond to get my item to me and make everything all-right when the shipment was weeks late.

I took a little online Credit card debt quiz and it turns out the I’m a little wiser than i expected about debt, bills, and credit.  I scored a 93% overall (without cheating - many of the answers are easily available online).  Some of my answers were valid last month and others valid next month.  My current “sort of debt free” status is difficult to qualify in some of the multiple choice answers.

If i took the quiz next month I should score a little better in the credit section.  A few months from now i’ll do better in the life plan section.  I don’t know if my budget score will ever increase though!

The test is done in stages with the questions in different categories like you see above.  After you complete the quiz there are comments that help you know where you can improve your knowledge and credit savvy.

At the very end you can even compare your score to those of a similar demographic and from your location.  I’m not sure how accurate this is or if it is of much value.  But the feedback they give on your answers to the questions is quite valuable and considerably accurate in my opinion.  Check the BillsIQ Quiz here.