About a month ago my friend Tim invited me to be the “conservative” co-author of his blog, Dammit. I was initially hesitant to accept because I didn’t want to disappoint him the way I’ve disappointed myself here, but I realized that I needn’t force myself into a daily, or even every-other-day, posting schedule. Tim’s matchless daily work on his blog wasn’t something I wanted to step on even if I did have the drive necessary post that regularly, so a loosely bi-weekly interval between my posts seemed a good middle ground.

I’ve enjoyed writing for Tim’s blog immensely, and I’ll be continuing to do so. I suggest you read the blog as it stands, so I’m not going to link directly to any of my posts, be they past, present, or future. I will post the occasional plug for Dammit should anyone take a backroad on the Interwebs and wind up in my driveway, looking for directions.

I can’t emphasize enough how refreshing Tim’s work is in my eyes. He deserves a much larger readership than he currently has, and I hope he has the endurance I could never muster to keep going until someone with sufficient enough a following gives him the exposure that he deserves.

Beer Lists

Greg, a friend of mine out in Chicagoland, introduced me to a really cool website earlier last week.  RateBeer.com is something I’ve been looking for, on and off, for quite a while now - a place to keep track of and evaluate the beers I’ve sampled.

Part of it, I guess, plays into my love of lists.  I attain a great bit of satisfaction from putting items into order - debating within myself (or with others) the merits of each particular item, ordering them, and then fine-tuning the list.

As an aside, my friend Sean (yes, the one who recently became a daddy) and I took the majority of an afternoon at work hashing out, in our minds, the greatest rock bands of Classic (1960 - 1985) and Modern (1985 - present) times.  This was brought on by our discovery that Syd Barrett (the founder of Pink Floyd) had died, and we actually wound up staying late to use the entire white board in our office to write out lists and eliminate candidates.  We went about this quite dispassionately, and I may or may not eventually post our findings.

Back to the subject at hand, I’ve spent part of the last week rating the beers that were at my immediate disposal.  My fledgling list (some of the guys at rate beer are up in the thousands of beers) is just what has been at hand for me to try, and neither comprises staples of my larder (Alaskan Amber) or beers I’ve specifically grown to dislike (any Anheuser-Busch products).  I’m also pretty excited about the site because it’s going to allow me to really pinpoint my tastes in beer.  There are a few hard and fast rules that I’ve already established, such as wheat beers generally making me sleepy, but part of the lure of the site will be learning more about myself.

If any of you are already using the site, or if you’re interested in joining me over there, let me know.

Tallahatchie Bridge

Remember the 1967 Bobbie Gentry hit “Ode to Billie Joe”?  One of my most vivid memories from early childhood is hearing that song for the very first time.  The song has always haunted me, and I’ve always thought the Tallahatchie Bridge looked something like this.  I bring this up because the song became a massive hit in late July of 1967, and as such, birthday wishes are in order.

A Plug

I’ll occasionally peruse Arts & Letters Daily, which is a a great place to find some of the best thought-stimulating writing available on the Interwebs.  On tap today: 27,000 year-old Modigliani-style cave paintings, why we secretly hate Garrison Keillor (which was interesting for me to read for my own purposes), why we read the novels we do (which features this quote: “We found that men do not regard books as a constant companion to their life’s journey, as consolers or guides, as women do… They read novels a bit like they read photography manuals.”), and finally, The Tyranny of Blog: Enemy of Thought.

I’ll see you all here Monday morning.  Hope you’re having a great weekend.

I just committed the Cardinal Sin of the computing world.

I had a few links to track down to have everything just so, but before I went to find them, I didn’t save my update, which was 75% complete.

And, just because the world seems to be conspiring against me (and everyone else I know) this month, Firefox crashed. Of course, I have session recovery, but my update was lost forever.

I have only myself to be frustrated with, and I’m unspeakably so right now. I’ve got an Op/Ed column due in two days that I should be working on instead right now, but now that is put off another 45 minutes, at minimum.

I’d eventually like to make this a space where I write a few thousand words each time I update, but it’s a goal I’m going to have to work up to. Tonight is an annoying, but fortunately, rare hiccup in the greater scheme of things, and my field activity will hopefully start dwindling significantly in the next month.

A Diversion

Regardless of how settled you are, Find Your Spot is an incredibly fun way to pass a half-hour or so. After taking a brief survey of your preferences in weather, location, activities, and the like, the site gives you a list of cities and small towns which best reflect the type of community you would prefer to live in.

I take the survey periodically to see how my results fluctuate, and invariably there are a few that consistently make the list. Here’s how my results looked tonight, with places I have been to in bold, regulars on the list italicized:

1. Carlisle, Pennsylvania
2. Duluth, Minnesota
3. Grand Rapids, Michigan
4. Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
5. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
6. Ann Arbor, Michigan
7. Madison, Wisconsin
8. Rochester, Minnesota
9. Saint Cloud, Minnesota
10. Omaha, Nebraska
11. Rochester, New York
12. Ames, Iowa
13. Albany, New York
14. Hancock-Houghton, Michigan
15. Chicago, Illinois
16. Plymouth, New Hampshire
17. Cedar Rapids, Iowa
18. Sioux Falls, South Dakota
19. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
20. Kalamazoo, Michigan
21. Milwaukee, Wisconsin
22. Erie, Pennsylvania
23. Altoona, Pennsylvania
24. Spearfish, South Dakota
25. Iowa City, Iowa

Looking at that list, the upper Midwest and Pennsylvania are both very well represented. Perhaps it’s something having to do with the Great Lakes, but I just can’t imagine living anywhere else in the country anymore, though having a vacation home in Colorado would be awesome.

For the longest time I thought Duluth was the perfect city for me - good climate, astounding natural beauty, plenty to do outdoors - but I’m not quite certain if I’d even place it as my number two anymore. Obviously I’m excited to move to Madison (which I haven’t heard anything but good things about), but other cities could eventually become equally attractive. I keep hearing really good things about the new Pittsburgh…

On omission from the list is San Diego, which is intentional because of geographic location. If it weren’t in Southern California, San Diego is a city I might find myself growing to enjoy enough to live in. However, unless it finds a way to magically extricate itself from commuter and cost-of-living hell, that will never happen.

How close do you come to what you expected to be your top choice?

A Plug

If you’re at all a fan of sports, or if you fancy yourself a bit of a fashionista, slide on over to Paul Lukas’ incredible blog. Paul’s eye for minutiae would do Sherlock Holmes proud, and his writing style is fresh and pleasing to read. Learn why purple is the most evil color in sports (even as a fallen-away Viking fan, I can’t believe this), track the originality-exterminating logo creep so common on today’s uniforms, find out why major league catchers paint their fingernails, and stop by Lukas’ favorite soapbox - socks. Sites like Lukas’, who also writes/has written for ESPN.com, Salon.com, The Village Voice, and The New York Times, are why the Interweb is so much more than a economic or research tool.

I was looking for a video of a modified Jaguar XJS autocrossing today (it was mentioned in an article of Hemmings Sports & Exotic Car magazine, of which I am a subscriber/avid reader) when I came across this video.

I sat and chuckled for several minutes afterward, not only at the situation, but at the reaction of the guy filming and those around him. Then I got curious (the sidebar next to the video mentions that the Zip Feed Mill was the tallest building in South Dakota at the time), so I went and dug for more.

Here’s the story:

The Zip Feed Mill was built for Ridley, Inc. in 1956. At the time of its construction, it was the most modern and advanced mill in the world. At 202 feet tall, it was also the tallest building in South Dakota, a title it would hold for almost fifty years.

The mill finally ceased operation in 2000, but it would stand for another five years until redevelopment in downtown Sioux Falls would require the felling of the giant mill to make way for a new office/restaurant/retail complex along the Big Sioux riverfront.

A local man, Jeff Scherschligt, organized an event to raise money for charity near and dear to his heart, the South Dakota chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. You see, Jeff’s daughter, Sara, had been diagnosed with MS the previous February, just before her 20th birthday.

In demolishing the state’s tallest building, Jeff saw an opportunity to make a contribution to finding a cure for MS. He organized an event, Boom!, selling raffle tickets for the honor to push the button setting off the demolition, selling souvenir t-shirts for the occasion, and selling tickets to VIP viewing locations, complete with concessions. The raffle raised $25,000 alone, and the other various endeavors, plus a few corporate sponsorships, pushed the total to nearly $140,000.

All was set for the event. The demolition company, Dykon Explosive Demolition, had prepared the building, severing the structural supports on the west side of the building, drilling holes into the supports on the east side, and packing them with explosives. The idea was to set off the charges on the east side, tipping the building into a vacant lot.

The local media had set up 13 cameras to cover what must have been the biggest thing going on in South Dakota that day. Jeb Huisman, a finance officer from a town close to Sioux Falls who is battling MS himself was selected by the winner of the raffle to push the button detonating the explosives.

The time came for the building to come down. At the end of the countdown, Jeb pushed the button. The explosives blew, dropping the building thirty or so feet and tilting it to the east.

And then it stopped. The building settled into the basement and stubbornly refused to fall over, a testament to the construction company who built her half a century ago. It would eventually be knocked down by the more traditional wrecking ball method, but, as Ron of Ron’s Log put it “Now it looks like the tower of Pisa, except it’s square and is a feed tower in South Dakota.”

You can find complete media coverage of the event here, though I should mention that those of you with slower Interweb connections (read: dial-up) might not want to try to watch any of the video footage. I was laughing through most of it because I knew how it would all turn out.

Jeff Scherschligt, the guy behind the fundraiser, had the best outlook on what was a bit of a disappointment for some spectators.

“When it comes down to it and you relate it to MS, first of all it’s a very unpredictable disease. You don’t know what’s going to happen and obviously this was a very unpredictable event today. Number one. Number two is, as we’re trying to demolish MS, we’re going to find that its [sic] not a very easy disease to demolish. This may be a message in some way.”

There are a few good photo archives of the mill, one here, another here, if you’re interested to see more.

Apparently this made national news, as I even found an article on signonsandiego.com (the San Diego Union-Tribune’s website).  But since I hate the Union-Tribune (reading it seriously makes me want to gouge out my eyes with those little coffee straws), I never heard about it until now.  I imagine it was bigger news in the Midwest than it was out here, anyway.

You know those online personality quizzes designed to fill the time between the first coffee break of the day and the first restroom break of the day? There’s one over at BBspot that has been there for several years, the Which OS Are You? Quiz. I’ve taken it several times over the years with varying results (usually Red Hat Linux or HP-UX), and while the format has never changed, it’s a rather fun one to re-visit occasionally. One of the questions on the test is “For software, nothing beats a…” with the following choices:

1. Good utility (think anti-virus software)
2. Killer game (self explanitory)
3. Program that does exactly what it should
4. Cryptic series of 1s and 0s

I’ve been expending quite a bit of effort this week customizing my Firefox, and that question from the test hasn’t been far from my thoughts the whole time. I originally remembered the third choice as “killer app,” meaning application, but the wording of it doesn’t diminish what I’m trying to express - that Firefox is simply one of the coolest applications out there.

Period.

Up until now, I’ve been running a fairly normal version of Firefox. I had one extension, Tab Mix Plus, installed, and the only theme I use is Brushed 0.9.9.7. My friend Chris has been talking about various extensions on and off for a few weeks, so I decided the other day to go check out what was available.

I wound up downloading an additional five extensions for both my personal and work computers.

SlimSearch is a very clever little add-on. Did you just read an article which mentioned a concept you’re a bit fuzzy on? Simply highlight any text in your browser, right click, and scroll down to the SlimSearch menu. You’ll have a variety of choices at your disposal - a standard Google search, a Google Images search, an Urban Dictionary search, a Wikipedia search - the choices are numerous. It might only save you a few seconds in load time and typing, but having the ability to open a reference in another tab while continuing on in the article seems pretty neat to me.

My second download was All-In-One Sidebar, an app that drew inspiration from my old browser of choice, Opera. AIW Sidebar allows you to control downloads, extensions, bookmarks (favorites for the IE crowd), themes, and much more. You can even view source code and other websites in the sidebar, a useful tool for web developers.

AIW Sidebar, in the spirit of Firefox, is very customizable and can be hidden to allow the user to view a website at his chosen browser size. Hearty thumbs up for the programmer who came up with it.

I read a large number of blogs and other websites on a daily basis, and sometimes it becomes quite confusing and daunting to catch them all. I have RSS feeds to the majority of my haunts, but I didn’t really have a way to organize them until I downloaded Wizz RSS News Reader.

Much more than simply devoted to news, Wizz RSS can be configured to organize and search for updates on all your RSS feeds. I’ve included a photo example to illustrate what I’m talking about:

A larger version (for the curious among you who want to see what I’m looking at without straining your eyes) is located here.

The first thing you’ll notice is my Brushed theme, a bit of a takeoff on some older Mac interfaces, specifically the pre-iTunes 5.0 “Brushed Metal” style. I like it for the compact buttons and monochrome look, as the standard Firefox theme is a bit to gaudy for my Bauhaus tastes.

Just beneath the address bar is a tool bar with a variety of controls for Wizz RSS. I can click any of them to configure some portion of my RSS feeds (Wizz RSS has integrated into AIW Sidebar, which you can see on the left margin of the browser window. Inside that sidebar are the RSS feeds, broken down into categories I’ve made myself.

At first I needed some adjustment to get used to the intrusion of the sidebar into my surfing area, but now I don’t really notice it that much, even when using my personal laptop, which doesn’t support as high a screen resolution as the brand-new gear at work.

I don’t need to keep the sidebar open, however, because Wizz RSS has integrated another nifty feature, the Watch List. If there are blogs or other sites which I’m particularly an avid fan of, I can simply add them to the “Watch List.” At a regular (and customizable) interval, Watch List checks to see if any of my watched sites have been updated. If so, the green border around the Watch List portion of the tool bar turns red. I can then right-click that part of the tool bar and view the updated items, which keeps me from constantly having to cruise by or hit F5 to refresh the sites in other tabs. Very invisible, yet oh so useful.

On the far right side of the same tool bar is ForecastFox, an add-on which displays the current and future weather conditions for just about any place imaginable. I’ve currently set it up to give me four different areas, Winona, Chicago, Camp Pendleton, and Ramadi, Iraq. Every minute ForecastFox cycles to one of the four specified areas and gives me the current weather, upcoming evening or morning forecast, and the next day forecast. The green circle is a mini Doppler radar, and if I put my mouse over it I can view the updated weather radar for the area. Pretty cool.

For those of you who are wondering, it’s scheduled to be 120 degrees Farenheit tomorrow in Ramadi. It’ll be hotter in August. Trust me.

The last add-on was Update Notifier, which automatically searches for updates for Firefox and any of my associated extensions. If there is something I need to upgrade, I’ll get an alert, saving me the energy of searching for new versions of my extensions or theme.

If you’re not using Firefox already (and I hope that only applies to a few of you), consider making the switch. The customizability and durability of Firefox ensures that you will have a personalized experience and will be less susceptible to online tomfoolery. Even something as minor as tabbed browsing or pop-up blocking will be light-years ahead of anything Internet Explorer is offering.

A Question

If anyone reading this is familiar with the Johnny Cash album “Last Gunfighter Ballad” (Columbia, 1977, catalog no. 34314), could you please let me know what you thought of it? My friend Tim asked after it (specifically, the title track), but I hadn’t heard of it until he brought it up.

Apparently Tommy Cash, Johnny’s younger brother, appears on the album as well.

The album isn’t listed on Amazon.com, leading me to believe it’s out of print. Hopefully one of the music aficionados that stop by here can expand on this.

Search Engine Results

Chris, who hosts my site, made mention of the fair number of hits I get for “carriage return” searches. This site currently comes up as the 14th result for a “carriage return” query on Google. MSN Search has lists this site as the 30th result, while Yahoo places it second, right after the mighty Wikipedia.

The above information is completely narcissistic and probably only amuses me, but after Chris mentioned it, I had to put it out there. If carriagereturn.org ever becomes available I might just purchase that and redirect it here.

Site Statistics

As I write tonight, I am closing in on 1000 visitors and 10,000 page views since I purchased the carterhayes.org domain. 1000 visitors is a fraction of what one of my favorite bloggers, Aaron Gleeman gets in a day, but for a no-name guy just throwing his unsolicited thoughts and opinions out there, and without any major blogroll exposure, it’s a significant landmark.

I’ll hit 10,000 page views before 1000 visitors (perhaps even today, if traffic is good). What that means is quite a few of you make the effort to stop by here and read what I’ve posted on a regular basis. You have my most heartfelt thanks for your readership. I can’t adequately express what your individual feedback and support means to me, but trust me when I say writing for this site, knowing someone will read it and perhaps take something away from it, is something I look forward to every week.

Upcoming WDN column

Though I’m certain 99% of you are already aware I’ve been invited to write for the Winona Daily News as an Op/Ed columnist, I thought it would be worth mentioning that my second column will run this Sunday.  It’s available online (just access the Opinion page) for those of you outside the Winona area (like me).