Sometimes, I make bad shopping decisions when I’m drunk. I’m willing to admit that. With that in mind, I wonder if that ever happens to people with a whole bunch more money to spend. The past week, Microsoft made an unsolicited bid to buy Yahoo!. My guess is that Steve Ballmer was sitting around with a fresh bottle of scotch, browsing for a good game of backgammon to play online when he found Yahoo! Games. As he went on a spree of victories–owning the kid’s room, he drank more and more until he realized that he really wanted to own the kid’s room. So, he sent Bill an email letting him know his decision, then dialed up Jerry Yang with his proposal.
Hey, it could happen.
Lillian Vernon coupons
I found this cool site called LogoYes where you can use flash to create a sweet logo. When I was playing around with it, I decided to sort of invent a company that I have been toying around with called Fox Interactive Development. I don’t know if it would actually work because it might be associated with the television studio of a same/similar name, but a slight adaptation would be all right. It’s pretty awesome, and although I have absolutely no design skills, it was terribly easy to whip it together. It starts with the option of choosing an image for your company: Hi-Tech, Bold, or Flair. They have a pretty expansive selection of artwork to use in your logo and a nice selection of fonts to fit whatever feeling you’re trying to convey in your image. After you finish your logo, you have the option of seeing it on business cards, which might be one of the most useful features of the site.
The entire process only took a few minutes, but the results look like something that I’ve seen designers spend a lot of time working on. With a little time to ponder and maybe some sketching, this is probably the most effective way for non-designers to put together branding for a new business or a revamping of an established business. And, with 100 free business cards, this is a pretty good investment. So, if you’re looking for logo design, check out LogoYes. The above thumbnail is a screenshot of the development area near the end of the project.
A week or so ago, I was browsing craigslist and saw a ‘curb alert’ for a desk down by Ali’s house. I recommended that she just take a look for me, but she was pretty insistent that if I wanted it, I should probably check it out. So, we hopped in the Fit, drove a couple blocks to where it should be and found a behemoth of a desk. 
It’s a big, sturdy, nice desk but it’s quite heavy which made it quite the task to squeeze into the mini-minivan. But, we ended up getting it inside, Aaron and I lugged it upstairs and now it resides next to my old desk, giving me a lot of workspace. Finally. As you can see here, I’ve got the dual monitors set up (though I need to get a DVI to VGA converter to make use of the whole scene). But, I’m pleased and thankful to craigslist for a schweet free desk that I would have paid a decent amount for.
I’ve got a weight set that I think I’m going to put up on craigslist soon. It’s just sort of taking up space and there’s a gym in the backyard that I can get a membership for that would be more advantageous, I think, because of the variety of exercise equipment.
January is shaping up to be a pretty slow month, as far as I can tell. Finances should be in order, current projects will be done, football will be ending/over, the weather will be miserable, and the holidays will be gone so I’ll be looking to spend more free time around the house gaming, reading, and webworking. To combine two of those, I think I’m going to see if I can finish my ColdFusion Certification Study Guide by the end of January and take the exam sometime in February or March. I get a bonus at work, which would be cool, but it would be pretty nice to have that on my resume. So, bust out the pens, pencils, paper, monitors and such. Hopefully the gaming doesn’t distract me too much.
The last week was wonderful to relax from some stressful weeks of work. But, I’ve finished up a few projects and I think the paychecks should, hopefully, be coming in within the next couple weeks. Just in time for Christmas shopping. “Hooray!” says the family. I think in the next week, I’ll probably get back on the horse and get some additional stuff done and maybe work on some personal projects. I really need to start planning and building the rebuild of this site and the new meetrusshall.com site for my portfolio and such.
drug rehab
Last month, Benny and I were working on Hoggy’s website and I got to do the ColdFusion coding to handle the menu, graphics, and some other stuff. One of the coolest things I got to play around with, though, was Google Maps integration. You can do some pretty cool stuff with them. For this project, we just did a mashup to show the location of each restaurant on a map, and delivery areas for the locations that delivered. I think they turned out pretty well. Originally, I wanted to include it in a lightbox (check out the menu food pictures) which basically makes it pop up in the same window while the background fades to a translucent black. But, it wouldn’t display the custom icon and I didn’t have the time to sort through the code to try to fix it. But, yeah, if you’ve got time and want to play around with a pretty cool technology, do a search for Google Mashups or make your own Google Map. Also, I want to try playing around with Yahoo!’s maps because I hear they might be easier and are friendlier to ColdFusion. We’ll see.
term insurance
I hate the phrase, “procrastination is like masturbation… In the end, you’re only f***ing yourself.”
It’s true, for the most part, but it just bothers me for some reason. Sometimes, I have horrible issues with motivation. If I don’t have some sort of deadline, I’ll usually put off ’til tomorrow what could probably be done today. I opt for video games, movies, fun, and the like over reading, work, cleaning, etc. I always have the intent to do those things, but I never follow through. People say to identify what motivates you to do things and that’s how you’re supposed to plan to get things done. But, what if the things that motivate you aren’t pressing issues?
Money is a motivator for me. But, that won’t help me when I need to wash dishes. If anything, not doing the dishes will save me money, so I should skip that.
Deadlines are a motivator for me, but that just pushes me to procrastinate until I think I won’t have enough time left. Unfortunately (or fortunately, perhaps), the fear of something coming up and making me miss a deadline isn’t enough of an issue to make me plan ahead. I think I could make fake deadlines work. Or, maybe mini-deadlines on big projects. I like to accomplish tasks and cross things off of my list, so this could be a decent process.
Necessity is the real motivator. The need for money. The need for food. The need for a job. So, how can I better accomplish things that aren’t real necessities, how can I become one of these overly motivated people? I’ve got the drive to pile on tasks and handle them, now I just need to get the stuff done.
Maybe I’ll reward myself with some Van Halen tickets. Joke.
After going in early today–I arrived around 8:15–I wasn’t sure how late I’d have to stay. I ended up being there until about 8:15 tonight. The weird thing is, it’s not that bad, and I could have stayed even longer if I needed to. I got one project finished and made some progress on another. I probably could have worked on the second project for another couple hours, at least. I started to notice a little bit of a drag at the end, but it wasn’t too bad and I probably would have caught a second wind at some point. I guess this isn’t so bad, but it is kind of strange to think that after working 12 hours, I would have continued to work (and am now doing some personal web stuff) until who knows when. If it wasn’t for the structure of set work hours, I would easily put in over 40 hours each week. I think the fact that I start at 9 and am done at 6 each day keeps me on track and keeps me from overdoing it.
This post sponsored by: drug rehabs.
