As a sales forecaster for a large ceramic tile manufacturer, the housing market heavily influences our sales. Looking at CNN today, I found this interesting bit of information. The only question is which one is more true.
CategoryPersonal
It is that time of life again. The one where you have to lose all the weight that you put on while being lazy. I seem to go through it every couple of years. It is mostly because I neglect working out until I can’t stand to look at my self in the mirror. It is really not that bad, but I think that everyone has their limits when it comes to physical appearance.
I am hoping this time things are different for me. I am hoping to go about it differently than I have in the past. Usually, I stop eating and exercise like crazy, and at the end I am so tired of that I start eating horribly again. I have also decided to create a page here that shows my weight loss. If you it start creeping up, yell at me. I am not doing what I need to do.
The cool thing is that chart is all built by WordPress. It is a plugin called FotherPlot, but I have done a ton of customization on it. I have added custom chart name and custom post type support to it, and I can build a chart off of anything in the WordPress database now.
So back on topic, the page has been added to the Menu above, and here is a link Diet Progress. I am about 30 lbs heavier than when I got out of college. Sitting behind a desk all day will do that to you.
This is a pretty cool equation.
After all this time, I have never known what the plans are for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center. I found this link on Twitter, and I thought that I would post it here. It is pretty cool to see how they are going to remember those people that lost their lives almost 10 years ago.
It is our failure to become our perceived ideal, that ultimately defines us and makes us unique. It is not easy, but if you accept your misfortune and handle it right, Your perceived failure can become a catalyst for profound reinvention.
He said this during his commencement speech at Dartmouth. You should watch the video. I wish that he could have been the speaker at my graduation!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmDYXaaT9sA
In an effort to increase my space on Dropbox, I am creating this blog post to let you know more about it. Dropbox is a free service that allows you to get access to files from any computer that you need. You install software on the computers that you would like, and it syncs the files between those computers for you. This is extremely helpful when you need to take files with you, but you don’t want to hassle with a USB drive. They give you 2GB of space for free, and you can earn another 250MB by getting familiar with the service. I need more, but I don’t want to foot the bill. So I am asking for you to sign up. If you use the link below, I get more space, and you get to use a service that will make your life easier. If you don’t want to install the software on a lot of computers, there is web interface that you can login to. It has all your files, and you can work on them that way.
Here is the link:
http://db.tt/197fdRo
The key thing to take away from this that Dropbox is awesome! If you don’t have it, you are missing out an a great tool. Finally, the link gets me more free space when you sign up, and that makes me really happy. So–Sign Up!
I am sure that most people have seen some of these, but I just wanted to post the link out there for those who haven’t. They make some of the craziest food concoctions that I have ever seen. The older ones were the funniest, but they are all worth watching.
At Church yesterday morning, I saw this video, and I really liked it. I just wanted to post it up for some other people to see. I am sure that a lot of you have seen it, but I am sure that you wouldn’t mind seeing it again.
A few months ago, I started playing a game called minecraft. I didn’t get into it much because you couldn’t play on the same world on all of your computers. You had to keep separate worlds for each one that you played one, and it didn’t seem like the way you should play. I wanted to be able to work on one world no matter where I was. In an effort to solve this problem, I have installed a MineCraft server on one of my virtual private servers (VPS). I have several, and I have one or two just sitting around so I figured why not give it a shot.
I have installed Craft Bukkit. I am running the latest stable release, and you can check it out at http://bukkit.org. They are building a pretty cool system over there. They allow you to modify the game by installing plugins. These plugins can do a number of things, but it allows for people to make changes without having to change any of the original source code. It is a perfect solution for giving you more flexibility without making it so complicated that a novice would have trouble doing it.
At this time, I have installed three plugins. One lets me restart the server remotely. It also restarts the server when there are issues. Another one allows a player to give himself whatever he needs. The last one is for world editing. I am not that familiar with this one, but I am learning how it works before I allow anyone else to use it. I don’t want them to bring down the server because they are throwing commands at it that it can’t handle. It is just a small VPS!
At this time, I am looking for more people to play. We currently have three players, but we are not that active. I would like more people to join so that we can do some more cool things. I would love to build different theme sections or a castle or something. I don’t really care about fighting all of the monsters in Minecraft. I just want to build things out of 1×1 blocks. It is just a lot of fun for me.
If you want to play, send me a message using the contact form. I will more than likely send you the information on the server so that you can get on there and play around. It is a lot of fun, and it is sort of addicting. Please keep in mind that you are going to need a pretty powerful machine to get this working nicely. This old notebook that I have can barely play it. There are times when it is smooth, but I can’t have more than one program open. If I do, the computer almost dies. I am hoping that the developers will find some way to improve the performance on earlier machines.
-Drew
After a late night trip to CVS, I have to write out somethings that just do not make sense about how it works.
1. They give you free money to spend at their store, if you buy certain items. For example, I purchased a bottle of mouthwash that was on sale for $3.99. When I purchased that, I got $3.99 back in extra bucks. It is a pretty good deal, but there is no way that they can make money.
2. All of the CVS coupons can be used on any item. If you get a coupon for $1 of candy bars from the automated machine, you could use that on mouthwash. I did this, and I get the mouthwash for $1.99, and I still got the $3.99 in extra bucks.
3. They have their Claritin 5-pack on sale for $1. This is just a good deal.
4. I got a Reese’s peanut butter cup, a 4 packs of Claritin ($4.97/5-pack), and a bottle of mouthwash ($5.98) for a grand total of $2.95.
This is a great deal, but it makes me wonder one thing. How is CVS still open? They have to know of the flaw in their coupon system, but they are too lazy to fix it? I would not hold on to my stock with them, if I had any.
Here is another funny story about CVS:
A friend works there, and he lets us know that the Blue Bell half-gallons are ringing up for $1. Are they supposed to be on sale? No. They just ring up for $1. They call all of the other stores, and they realize that it is happening everywhere. All you had to do was scan your extra bucks card. Of course, I took advantage of this great offer, but it makes me wonder. Blue Bell half-gallons sell for around $6. That means that CVS lost $5/half-gallon on ice cream. This was not a one day event. It happened for a week. I wonder how much money they lost in just this area.
When you look at the scope of the loss, it probably means nothing to them, but I am not a huge fan of anyone who throws away money. I am happy that they did save me some money, but any company that throws it away is not going to be open for long. However, this is not the case with CVS. There is almost nothing that can be done to close them at this point. They are huge. I am pretty sure that their corporate goal is to have one store for every two blocks in the country. If you think about it, how many stores are close to you? I think that I can travel to about 10 within a 10-mile radius. I think that is a little too close.
Either way, I would choose them over Walgreen’s. Just because over their screw-ups that give me a great deal.
© 2015 Drew Clardy