It’s been a while since I blogged anything. I’ve been very busy. Here is my update of what is going on in my life.

RawVoice
Been very busy working on a number of projects as usual. We are about to launch a new web site on Monday, January 14, 2008. If things go well, we’ll be launching some new service each Monday for the rest of the month. We’ll see if I can keep up.
http://www.rawvoice.com/

Spaceblue
I reprovisioned the server the day after Christmas, I am happy to report that I finally have everything on-line and running strong. I quickly got the crucial items on-line. I mainly had to get web stats and a few other little things setup after the new year. Setting up the new server took much longer that I anticipated since I switched from using Apache to Lighty web servers. It is paying off though, the server is handling the same amount of traffic without using all of the system resources.
http://www.spaceblue.com

PodCamp Ohio
I’ve been leading up the charge to organize PodCamp Ohio. Over the past month, we’ve secured a venue location and launched the web site. I am pretty happy with the core podcasters participating, they are really on the ball and have no problem taking charge of items they are good at. PodCamp Ohio will be on Saturday, June 28, 2008 from 9am to 5pm at the ITT Technical Institute in Hilliard (just west of Columbus), Ohio. More details are available on the web site.
http://www.podcampohio.com/

Association for Downloadable Media
Last fall I was elected Chair of the Measurement Committee of the Association for Downloadable Media. The entire process is exciting. I purchased a copy of Roberts Rules and have been slowly coordinating all of the members of the committee. After 12 people joined the committee, I was looking for the board members to set a limit to the size of the committee so it would not become too large to manage. The consensus of the board is to allow as many ADM members to join the committees as possible. I understand the motives, as the podcasting community is oriented in a way that encourages participation, it just makes managing the committee that much harder. I am up for the challenge and started devising ideas how to manage the situation. My position as Chair of the Measurement Committee could not be more perfect for the Association since I have both a technical background with Internet Engineering and vast experience with measuring podcast downloads.
http://www.downloadablemedia.org/

The House
Dad was in town two weeks ago when I was about to fix a shower leak. The work started with Dad reminding me to buy the tool recommended to remove the faucet cartridge in the documentation I printed out. A couple of minutes later, I broke the cartridge trying to remove it with pliers. Lesson learned, still listen to your parents! At this point I think Dad was convinced we would have to call a plumber, but my plan was to buy the removal tool and a screw tap. My plan worked luckily, with the help with an extra long screw replaced in the recommended tool. The rest of the process of installing the new cartridge went smoothly. I am happy to report the shower no longer leaks! If any family or friends need to fix a Moen shower/bath leak, let me know cause I have the recommended tool to remove the cartridge. Definitely don’t try to remove it with pliers!

San Giorgio Pasta Choo Choo Wheels
I told Heather a long time ago about Choo Choo Wheels Pasta and she looked at me rather strange. Two weeks ago I came across a package of San Giorgio brand Choo Choo Wheels and snagged a box. Sam Giorgio is my preferred pasta brand. The back of the box has a recipe for spaghetti meat sauce, so I thought I’d give it a try. I don’t have all of the details here, but the main ingredient are 2 large cans of whole pealed tomatoes, 2 small cans of tomato paste, 2 teaspoons of sugar, 1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese, graded and 1 pound of ground beef or sausage. I used a 1 pound roll of Bob Evans Italian Sausage. Cook the sausage, then mix everything except the Parmesan, bring to a boil then cook on a medium/low heat for 30+ minutes. When you are ready to serve, add the Parmesan, which will thicken the sauce. I like thick sauce, so stumbling upon this tip has revolutionized my spaghetti sauce making abilities!

Anyway, the sauce on the back of the Choo Choo Wheels box was awesome and so far is the closest thing I’ve been able to get to taste like real home made spaghetti sauce the way Grandma would make. She would cook the sauce for hours and have 3 different types of meats in the sauce. It is the standard which I use to judge all other sauces. Funny how that works.

What’s Next
I’m going to restart my Compiled Weekly podcast. The recent work I’ve been doing moving blogs around for RawVoice and reconfiguring the Spaceblue server with Lighty has given me a lot of content ideas for the show. I got a lot of knowledge to share about Lighty and tips with server management. I got just about everything automated so I don’t have to manage anything now.

We got a quesadilla maker as a wedding gift. We made some earlier in the year but this was the first time we got the ingredients to make good ones. How do they look?

This was the first time I tried rice from a can. It was horrible and will never be doing that again. Next time I’ll take the time consuming route when making the rice.

Apparently the song has been in the CTS commercial for over a month now and I was unaware of it. I just saw the commercial for the first time tonight and practically flipped out. Oddly, it’s as if the cars finally caught up with the music, the riff was placed in the ad at just the right time.

If Cadillac wanted my attention, they sure got it now. I hope the band is getting well compensated and possibly inspired to write a new album.

Hum Fan Site: http://www.h-u-m.net

Cadillac Commercial: http://www.cadillac.com/cadillacjsp/footer/downloads.jsp

I saw a few weeks ago the announcement that Gmail now offers IMAP support. For those who don’t know what IMAP is, it is a protocol that allows E-mail applications such as Outlook, Thunderbird or Eudora to store copies of E-mail on the server. IMAP existed before webmail and was the ideal way to manage E-mail if you had to access it from multiple computers.

Two years ago Google offered hosting E-mail for specific domains, meaning I could use Gmail for mandato.com. I quickly saw two advantages to moving my E-mail to Gmail. It allowed me to remove a resource from my web server and gave me superb SPAM filtering. I signed up as soon as I found out about the service and have been a very happy Gmail for your domain customer since.

With the recent addition of IMAP support, I can now return to using an E-mail application on my desktop. This allows me to compose messages without having to rely on the web browser.

I’ve been closely watching the next version of Eudora, code named Penelope. They recently released a beta version of Penelope/Eudora 8. The new Eudora is based on Thunderbird. All of the add-ons available to Thunderbird are available to this new version of Eudora. So if you like the clean Eudora interface and the reliability of and options available in Thunderbird, you will feel right at home with this new Eudora.

I am happy to announce my personal blog and web site has been re-designed. The previous theme was well over 2 1/2 years old. What do you think of the new design?

I recently started organizing and planning an event called PodCamp Ohio for 2008. So far everything is coming together, I couldn’t be more pleased with the progress.

The week before Thanksgiving, I started a Google Group and invited some podcasters who were previously interested in a PodCamp Ohio for 2008. Within a week the Google Group lit up with lots of participation. We’re having our first on-line meeting tomorrow night (Thursday) and our first meet-up this Saturday.

For those who are courious, PodCamp is an event for podcasters and bloggers to meet and learn from each other. Each PodCamp varies but typically they include tables for sponsors to hand out swag, a commons area for socializing throughout the day and plenty of 1 hour sessions where bloggers and podcasters talk about specific topics.

Web Site: www.podcampohio.com

The tentative date for PodCamp Ohio is Saturday, June 28, 2008. If you’re a podcaster/blogger or interested in either, please come. The PodCamp should be very educational.

Heather and I made our first Turkey today for Thanksgiving. We got a 7 pound Honeysuckle brand that didn’t have all the extra stuff inside of it. We rubbed olive oil with a touch of garlic, thyme, salt and pepper all over the turkey before putting it in the oven. We then cooked it at 500 for 15 minutes, then we put the temperature at 325. We glazed 3 times at about every 45 minutes. The turkey took about 3 hours to cook.

I did some shopping for Thanksgiving last Thursday and came across a display of a new Winter Chex Mix that contains a variety of coco flavored snacks mixed together. All I can say is WOW!!! This has to be the most delicious snack I’ve ever randomly tried. And I try a lot of these new snacks that float on the ends of the isles.

Looking at a random portion from the bag, there are about a dozen tiny marshmallows blended with 10-15 coco flavored corn/wheat chex, pretzels, vanilla bread stick and, my favorite, yogurt covered chex.

This stuff is awesome. I am going back to the store and picking up a half dozen more of these Holiday Chex Mix bags. Anyone visiting over for the holidays is in for a surprise this year!

When I saw this, I instantly had a nostalgic flash back! One of the few computer games I’ve ever played and enjoyed, Lemmings is a mind thinking game that everyone who calls themselves a nerd should play at least once in their life time. Now it’s available on the web! I am not exactly sure how it was converted, but the first 4 levels I played are identical to the original game.

Link: http://www.elizium.nu/scripts/lemmings/

I am not sure if this version of Lemmings is legitament or if someone illegally hacked it and put it on their site. For those who are interested, you can buy a copy of the game for Windows by searching amazon.com or ebay.com for “Lemmings & Oh No! More Lemmings”.

I’ve been doing some small home improvements the past few days.

Earlier in the week I installed a mop organizer in the pantry. The organizer works great so far and it freed up a lot of space.

Mop Organizer:

Yesterday I finally got around to replacing the broken drainage pipe for the sump pump on the side of the house. What a pain that was. I had to go to both Home Depot and Lowes and I still couldn’t just get 2 feet of pipe. I did get a deal at Lowes though, I got an 8 foot 3.25 OD drainage pipe for $3, since it was mostly damaged. Sadly, I’ve only used 8 inches of the pipe, so if you know anyone in need of some 3.25 OD drainage pipes about 1-3 feet long, let me know.

Before:

After:

And we’re ready for Halloween!