Why Even Debate?

Every time I look up from the computer either:

• Bush is talking about how Kerry says it's "The wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time."
• Kerry is talking about how he has a plan to get out of Iraq
• Bush is stating that the best way is to remain offensive
• Kerry is stating that he knows first-hand how difficult war is
  

Speaking objectively, Kerry does appear to flip-flop somewhat when he speaks about Iraq, but not to the extent that Bush would have you believe. Bush has obviously been coached on constantly bringing up specific topics, as he is incapable for thinking for himself. Kerry made mention that Bush was hasty in going into Iraq, however, failed to mention the lack of the weapons of mass destruction Bush claimed that Saddam Hussein had.

I think everything would have remained the same had there been no debate. Unfortunately it seems the debate has already taken place in all of the television ads we see every day. The debate has not addressed anything that wasn't already mentioned in those 30-second ads. It's rather sad that the ad campaigns as much insight than the debate. I was leaning more towards Kerry before the debates, and since the debates were useless, this has hardly changed. Besides, Bush can't pronounce nuclear, and that really scares me.

Hurricane Jeanne

Well, we survived yet another hurricane. Of course, Jeanne decided to come the weekend just after I removed all of the shutters. It didn't take too long to put them back up this time, as I have more or less become an expert. Although I managed to gouge my knee on one of the panels, I'm glad to say that was the worst damage we suffered. Why must these storms always come on the weekend???

Doom Boardgame

I don't even know what to say about this. Ummm... Why?

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/52737

Inc.com | The Ultimate Mobile Office

A friend at work sent me this great quote. We recently had to move into smaller cubes, so it certainly hits close to home. Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert says:

"The latest thing in office design is densification. It's widespread. It's everywhere. Here's how it works: you take an office cubicle and shrink it so you can get more people in the same floor space. When I saw that happen firsthand while I was working at Pacific Bell, I thought, 'Well, it's just because we've got this situation. We need to move people in.' But apparently densification is being discovered all over. Managers are looking at the cubicles and realizing, 'Hey, if people will put up with this, then...' There's no logical limit to how small a cubicle can be. You're going to see a point where offices will be so small you'll have to poke your arms through them and wear them as a suit. You'll solve the dress-code problem at the same time."

Updated Links

I've updated my links page: http://jsierra.net/links.html. I've made the list a bit shorter. I also moved links to friends' sites to the sidebar, right below the main menu. Be sure to check out their sites if you haven't already.

Gmail Notifier

My cousin told me about the Gmail Notifier. It's a tray application that notifies you when you have new Gmail. This app is actually written by Google. Be sure to check it out if you have a Gmail account.

New Static Page Builder

Well, there were some additional features I wanted to add to my site that I could only do with PHP so I've done some additional development. I'm now generating my static pages with PHP. You can view the source code I use to generate the pages here: http://jsierra.net/sample-page-builder.phps.

Thanks to Geno for inspiring me to learn a little PHP. If you're interested in learning more about PHP, there's a really nice windows help file available for download at http://www.php.net/download-docs.php.

Got Gmail?

For those of you that do not have Gmail yet and eagerly await the full release, do not fret. I have a few invitations left to give away. As a reward for frequenting jsierra.net I will give away my remaining Gmail invitations to anyone who asks. Just email me and let me know where I should send the invite to.

For those of you that don't know about Gmail, it is an excellent free email service brought to you by the good folks at Google. They provide you with 1GB (yes, one gigabyte!) of mail storage, along with an easy to use web interface to access your mail. They do have machines that scan the contents of emails in order to display content-relevant advertisements when you read your mail.

Although this has stirred up some controversy, it's all part of the agreement when you sign up for your account. I find it rather silly that individuals complain about privacy issues, as no one is forcing them to sign up for the service. If you do have concerns about privacy, do not sign up for Gmail. However, I'm sure it will not be long before other free email providers copy Google and develop similar policies to display content-relevant advertisements. It won't be the first time Google has been imitated and I am certain it will not be the last.

Van Halen

The Van Halen concert was awesome! It was truly amazing to listen to Eddie Van Halen play live. Juan and I had a great time. I look forward to seeing them on their wheelchair tour with David Lee Roth in 2014.

What a Beautiful House

Check out this real estate ad and see if you can find something funny in one of the pictures.

Van Halen Rescheduled

Well, at least Hurricane Frances did one good thing. The Van Halen concert was supposed to be last night and has been rescheduled for Saturday. It's a good thing too. I wasn't looking forward to coming into work hung over today. At least now I can look forward to being hung over on Sunday instead. Hopefully Hurricane Ivan stays away long enough for Eddie and the boys to play a few tunes before they evacuate.

Google AdSense

Continuing with my unending loyalty to Google, I'm now a participant in Google AdSense. Basically, Google pays me for displaying content-relevant advertisements on my web page. Bwana told me he tried signing up for it twice, but didn't have any luck. They may only cater to Blogger members, I'm not sure. I'm still experimenting with the placement of the ads. Please feel free to provide any suggestions you might have.

If you're interested in participating just visit https://www.google.com/AdSense. They review the accounts each month, and if you've exceeded $100 worth of click-throughs, they will send you a check. I'll probably receive my first check in 2015, but I figure it's worth trying out. Also, if you haven't joined Blogger yet, what are you waiting for?!?! They will even host the site for you for free if you don't have your own web server.

jsierra.net v2.1

I decided it was time for a new look on jsierra.net, so I selected a new Blogger template. I selected Snapshot Sable, written by Dave Shea. I think it has a really nice and clean look to it. With a little bit of work, I was able to write a relatively simple script to dynamically build other pages with the template.

The script splits the main index.html file into two parts, one for everything before the main data section and the other for everything after the main data section. This will make maintaining my site a bit easier and also make it easier to use other templates in the future. I use SSI (Server Side Includes) to generate the page. Here is the code in resume.shtml:

<!--#exec cmd="relative/path/to/buildscript/buildscript.sh resume"-->

And the code that is in buildscript.sh:

#/bin/bash

#Path for all of the data files
datapath=/absolute/path/to/datafiles

#Split the files
csplit /var/www/html/index.html /"<\!-- START MAIN SECTION -->"/ -f$datapath/front>/dev/null
csplit /var/www/html/index.html %"<\!-- END MAIN SECTION -->"% -f$datapath/back>/dev/null

#Remove the unneccessary second half from the front split
rm $datapath/front01

#Display the pages. The file containing the content
#to be displayed in the main section of the webpage
#is passed as a parameter to this script.
cat $datapath/front00
cat $datapath/$1
cat $datapath/back00

#Remove the files generated
rm $datapath/front00
rm $datapath/back00

I placed the following two search strings in the main index.html to indicate the top and bottom of the main section:

<!-- START MAIN SECTION -->
<!-- END MAIN SECTION -->

In order for this to work, you will have to have SSI enabled on your web server as well as the proper access to create the script and data files. The ability to create static webpages is a feature that Blogger lacks, so for now I'll create static pages in this manner. If I ever change the template again, all I have to do is place those two search strings to indicate where the main section should appear on the webpage.

Photo Gallery Up

I finally created a photo gallery and put it online. Now I just need to put some photos on it. I found out about this nifty PHP program called Gallery, through a friend of a friend. Thanks Lenny! So far I just have some pictures of the S2000 in the gallery. You can visit the gallery at: http://jsierra.net/gallery. More to come soon!

Hurricane Frances

I spent all day Thursday putting up hurricane shutters at my home as well as my Sheila's brothers' homes. In the early afternoon, we went to Rick's house to help put his up. His were the worst ones, as they had to be mounted from the outside of the house, and he has two stories. We didn't even finish them all, but we wanted to move on to some of the other houses before we lost sunlight. We came back to my place and finished putting them up here. I had covered two windows prior to help arriving, and the three of us put up all the rest in about an hour and a half.

By this time we were becoming shutter installation experts. We put up Juan's (one of Sheila's other brothers) in about three hours. His weren't too bad, because the panels were very light. Fortunately, we were able to mount his from the inside, as we were with mine. We spent most of the day Friday in darkness, and went out every now and then to cure our cabin fever. It was getting a bit windy, but we didn't get the really bad weather until Saturday.

Saturday morning we went to Sheila's parents' place to have breakfast, only to learn that they had lost power just moments before we arrived. Sheila's dad has a propane stove and so we were able to cook up the food we brought. We almost set the porch on fire, despite the multiple warnings Alex Penelas (Mayor of Miami-Dade) gave us about using barbecues indoors. Since we were in Broward county, we paid Alex no mind and did as we pleased. Perhaps next time we will use a "caja china" on the porch.

Sheila's parents came over to our place for a little while, before we ended up losing power ourselves. After sitting in the dark for about 4 hours we went over to her brother's place and spent the night there. Fortunately, we didn't lose power there. Sunday things were a bit more calm and we returned home. We saw many uprooted trees, fallen branches, and leaves while we were driving around. Everything was fine back at home and power had been restored.