So enraged at the bailouts I bought myself a nifty yardsign from cafepress. I’ve had several passerby’s knock on my door and ask where I got it. Even a few cars stopped and inquired.

Last Friday night we had just crawled into bed (was a rough week), and there was a knock at the door. It was one of those "Are you kidding me?" moments. Anyhow I went to the door. As I approached it I heard my next door neighbor lady giving a scolding. Now I was curious.

I turned on the porch lights and found her surrounded by 4 teenage boys, and she was still ripping them a new one. She spotted a strange vehicle parked along the road and had observed the teens yanking and ripping my sign from the ground. She basically arrested them, and brought them to my door. Most of them had a "ruh-roh" look in their eyes. She had asked them if they knew what "restitution" meant. One of them who seemed to care less what happened to them attempted to answer.

Then it dawned on me. It was getting colder, and the leaves on my silver maples finally fell, and I have been incredibly busy with life lately. Perfect! I suggested to the young men that 1/2 hour of raking from each of them would cover the expense as well as the inconvenience. However, it was late at night. My neighbor reminded the boys that she got their license plate. I asked them to return the next day on their honor to come and rake. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had my share of mischief in my youth. So in a way I was thinking "awww you are sooo busted". Then I thought about the $30 the sign cost me, and how I don’t work for someone else to throw my work away. So then I was getting upset, especially since the sign was specifically about bailouts.

Much to my surprise 3 of the 4 showed up while I was at work. My wife handed them all rakes and away they went. I just want to say how proud I am of the young men who showed for their correction. These boys will go far in life if they continue to abide by such morals (which certainly means they don’t fit the bill for a congress person).

My wife gave them all bottled water. My toddler even went out and talked with them. One of them was aspiring to be a dentist. Funny how it struck me. At first I could care less.  After the whole thing was finished I realized it worked out exactly how it was supposed to. No bailouts for them, no grudges on both parties. Just facing the music, like men, and moving on.

As for the one that had no spine… I’m quite sure that he will someday be forced to grow one, but it’s too bad that it will probably be in a much severe way later in life. If he doesn’t learn life lessons now, he’ll end up in congress.

I’m so glad there are people like my neighbors and that there are young men like this.

• blackfday.com
• blackfriday.info
• bfads.net
• gottadeal.com

How much shopping will you be doing online this year?

I’ve found the novelty really wears off after about 2 minutes when it comes to shoveling snow and raking leaves (we live on a corner lot). The lot is a size thats small enough that it doesn’t really require a tractor mower. We have 3 silver maples that tend to hang on to their leaves until early December depending on the weather, and that is rarely predictable in Wisconsin. The trees are large and provide wonderful shade in the summer for the entire house, and they are nice to look at. In the spring they litter the yard and the gutters with helicopters. In the fall the leaves cover the land but not all at once. Some are from neighboring parcels.

It’s hard to get a nice weekend to rake where I’m home, and most of the leaves have fallen. Often if the maples haven’t lost their leaves it’s futile to get out there. Not knowing if it will snow soon (never know in WI) this Saturday seemed like the time to get out there. The best thing about the project is the family time.

(The day after raking)

A few years ago I invested in some ‘lattice’ type covers for about $0.98/foot. I tried it out on one section because if they didn’t work well, I didn’t want to remove the entire length of the house. They worked fine for the first season. But now in the spring the helicopters fall into the slots and stick there from the sap. It looks like I’m growing a garden of helicopters in my gutters. They keep larger leaves out, but twigs and smaller debris gets gummed up in there from the sap and I have to remove them, clean it out and replace them again. My advice: don’t bother. It’s just easier to get up there 3 times a year for about 2 hours cleaning them out.

I’m too cheap to opt for the ‘leaf guard‘ or ‘gutter topper’ type devices. Have any of you had experiences with these? Do they truly work as promised? I’ve heard some pretty pricey quotes on them, and I just don’t trust them.

Fall, leaves, raking

In this day and age one sometimes wonders who is behind what media is pushed for success. Who are the ‘experts’ that push and market a movie that flops? What are they thinking that we will like? Enter MediaPredict. MediaPredict is a site that allows people to predict the success of new media.

The site is basically a media rating game. After registering you are given $5,000 play money. You use the money to invest in media you think will succeed or fail. It’s played much like a stock market where you can even short sell. The value of the stock(media) is a value based upon others buying and selling the commodity. This represents it’s probability of succeeding out in the world.

(Dashboard – My first purchase)

It appears that MediaPredict is relatively new. The choices available to work with currently seems limited to new publishers, books, music artists, and a few television sit-com pilots.

The media can be just about anything ranging from books, movies, music and television. Up and coming, and mainstream media is included in the system. Here is an example of a music artist;

New music artist
• - Will the artist get a record deal?
• - If the artist has a deal what are it’s chances of success?
• - Will a single reach the top 5/10/100?

There is a deadline or time limit for each ‘project’. Obviously there are dates for record releases and such.

Features I’d like to see
I couldn’t find a way to add another source of media to the site. So for now it seems that only MediaPredict has the power to add/remove new media. I hope this can be changed in the future.

I would like to see MMORPG category added to the list or tag cloud of choices.

Another feature that would be nice to have is current media, and the prediction of it’s future from now. There is a lot of media and sites out there that started of well, and began to stink after a few episodes or albums. One hit wonders.

Features I don’t want to see
Social networking within MediaPredict. There is already no value to any positive gains you get from playing the game. You win fake money that can’t be used for anything other than bragging rights or just feeling nice about participating. The game itself is interesting. But to add social networking with equally useless winnings and badges is a total turn off for me.

I’d like to see MediaPredict stick to what it is. I think they’ve got something here. Maybe MediaPredict should add themselves to their own market ;)

In a nutshell it’s a story of a little girl in Russia who had an accident that maimed her face. The Russian hospitals are either corrupt, or rediculously expensive. I’ve spoken personally with Mert and Katya who are undertaking the task of getting her assistance.

They have already brought the girl to the states once for plastic surgery donated by a local doctor here in my home state of WI. She needs to have more. I set up a page on this site dedicated to helping her. If you are interested, Angel’s page is here.

I haven’t done any donation or charity campaigns except for when I went to help Katrina victims a few years ago. I’m actually a bit curious how much I can help through this. It’s worth a try because I believe it’s a worthwhile cause!

Upon searching for this part I came across Internet UPC Database. The site is actually a hobby of it’s creator. It allows users to register, logon, and add UPC’s all the time to it’s database. The site claims to have begun it’s work in 1999 so it’s database is pretty full. As of this entry the total items entered were at 839,904. You can view the rest of the stats at their site.

Sure enough I found the product’s information I was looking for right away. What I wonder is how the information is validated. Since there is only a guideline on the data entry.

upc

<html>

   <head>

   <!-- disable return key -->

   <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">

	   function checkCR(evt) {
		   var evt  = (evt) ? evt : ((event) ? event : null);
		   var node = (evt.target) ? evt.target : ((evt.srcElement) ? evt.srcElement : null);
		   if ((evt.keyCode == 13) && (node.type=="text")) {return false;}
	     }

	    document.onkeypress = checkCR;

   </script>

   </head>

<body>...

</body>

</html>

javascript, forms, return key

I had since forgot I did so. Last Thursday when I arrived home from work a discreet brown envelope arrived from Microsoft with my name on it! Heres the goods!

I’m always leary of upgrading anything, especially an OS. I hardly have enough time to upgrade, let alone troubleshoot or “un-upgrade”. But I was curious and also a bit excited. So, I decided to upgrade my laptop. Shortly after throwing in the disk I was presented with the agreement screen, along with the new looking backdrop.

Next I was presented with an option to use the upgrade advisor (optional) to see if my system had what it took. Of course it required the .NET framework to be installed in order to use it. This I really disliked. It forced me to the web to install it. This makes me wonder if I wasn’t yet connected, if it would offer to install it from the disk? After some blinking and flashing the advisor gave me the go-ahead.

Shortly after accepting this and proceeding with the upgrade Vista ran a compatability check on my hardware to see if there would be any confilcts. Most of my hardware seemed to check out. The items that didn’t were dell specific. At this point I wondered if Dell is aware of this. I also wondered “Why isnt the OS just backward compatable?”.

I had a loading screen for about an hour and a half with a note on the bottom stating “It can take a few hours to upgrade your computer”. Good thing I had other things to do!

If finally loaded. I knew right off the bat my Dell programs weren’t working right because the volume keys worked, but the visual display of it on my screen did not. It was getting late and didn’t have too much time to look it over really. I looked quickly at the nifty 3D screen chooser, and the new look of the explorer. It also came with a few gadgets running by default. It seemed to have more of a Mac look and feel. Especially explorer. It also seemed to have a larger memory footprint.

I did have a moment while trying out an MMORPG where the system suddenly shut off. When I turned it back on, there was some text on the screen complaining of temperatures, and something possibly blocking the fan. Never have seen this before. I’m guessing it has a lot to do with the dell BIOS, or software talking with Vista properly…

Vista, Windows

I think it’s worth the entry just to hear his findings.

Why did I start beginnercode.com? It first started out of curiosity. What was the point? To me it first seemed almost like a personal diary. But as time moved on I realized I could use it to share any of my programming or tech experiences with people who were maybe looking for the same information. It’s been a while since I’ve written any programming related posts lately. My family life has taken more precedence. However, I haven’t lost interest!

There is much to write about. So much web, so little time…

Contests, iPod Shuffle, Survey, Free Stuff