jake the spud has left the building

Some good things end, others, well...

2008-10-23T23:29:00.000-07:00

I started this blog primarily because a friend of mine was using hers to promote her jewelery-making business. At the time she was following other hip and trendy bloggers who inspired her to look beyond her extracurricular work life and into her real life. That in turn inspired me, and well, this blog began. Shortly afterward, I recognized the usefulness of having my own blog dedicated to my work as a technical communicator, web programmer, and multimedia aficionado, and hence the idea to merge my business and personal sides was born. While I managed to move my Tablet PC Blogs pages into the new system, I didn't want to move this one. Many of the ideas I expressed here were so blogger-specific that it didn't make sense to move them elsewhere. This deep-thinking, tech-loving, writer, artist, musician, husband, father, and average joe now travels his headspace in a different world. Truly, Jake the Spud has left the building.

Spam poetic?!

2007-07-30T20:18:00.001-07:00

I don't usually like to promote spam, but I received this today and burst a gut reading it!

Enjoy!

<blockquote>
Hello my friend!I am ready to kill myself and eat my dog, if medicine prices here ([website address removed]) are bad.Look, the site and call me 1-800 if its wrong..My dog and I are still alive :)
</blockquote>

The age of the "cute" 404 page

2007-04-18T15:35:00.000-07:00

I've been busy. Really busy. Still, I managed to catch the Massive Technology Trade Show and Conference in March. While the presentations I saw were really good, I was inspired, to say the least, by Kate Trgovac's talk, a crash course on social networking tools, including but not limited to blogging, tagging, professional network sites, and virtual worlds.

On a whim, I checked her current blog entry and had to laugh at the thought that we are entering the age where user-friendly design is going haywire. Forget M$'s "friendly error pages"... this one takes the kate! (I mean, cake!)

Just for fun I went to find an error page on Kate's site, and she doesn't have anything installed. I guess even she realizes the silliness of the whole idea.

For more fun, check out MY linkedin profile if you dare!

The Da Difference

2006-05-23T07:14:00.000-07:00

My wife and I were going to see United 93 on Friday. Unfortunately, the opening night of The Da Vinci Code pre-empted the late show of the 9/11-based movie. Fascinating. A retrospective look into a real event isn't as hot a seller as a ficticious, (and to some, blasphemous), re-writing of the origin of Christianity.

We entertained the idea of seeing it but the earliest available showing would have brought us home over an hour later than our third choice. While I like staying up later than the average bear, my wife, on the other hand, would have turned into a pumpkin long before Tom Hanks made his Eureka! discovery.

Personally, I don't have a problem with the DVC as entertainment. Where I stand, the story has as much credibility as an historical work as This is Spinal Tap a documentary on the life of a rock band. Do people believe all bands are as messed up as the spoof? Of course! People even form bands and mess themselves up just to be like the characters in the movie, completely unaware that they are being idiots.

Will people accept the details of the DVC as fact? Probably no more so than those who buy into the most common theme in entertainment: the indomitable will of the human spirit. To believe that I am the source of everything in my life, rather than the recipient of a choice my Saviour made for my sake, is worse then asking the simple question of whether the DVC is true.

At least DVC is open and honest with its stand, even if considered wrong. The "if it's gonna be, it's up to me" attitude has subtlely worked its way even in Christian circles. We've accepted a form of godliness but deny its power; we've taken responsibility that should rightfully be God's.

The da difference between all belief systems and Christianity is simple: Other systems impose their rules for living, and reward only those who follow them completely. In contrast, Christianity establishes its rules for living, and rewards all who believe in Jesus with His Spirit, that the rules will be enforced internally.

Romans 8:14-16 reminds us: 14 Only those people who are led by God's Spirit are his children. 15 God's Spirit doesn't make us slaves who are afraid of him. Instead, we become his children and call him our Father. 16 God's Spirit makes us sure that we are his children. 17 His Spirit lets us know that together with Christ we will be given what God has promised. We will also share in the glory of Christ, because we have suffered with him. (CEV)

That in itself makes all the da difference to me.

Does United 93 truly honour the families?

2006-05-07T19:27:00.000-07:00

I got a spam message this past week from Motive Entertainment. They wanted to explain the controversy of the 9/11 feature film United 93. I remember shortly after the event, a book about the passengers banding together to overtake the hijackers was written by Lisa Beamer, housewife, mother, and widow to passenger Todd Beamer.

Out of courtesy, I thought I'd search for any response from Mrs. Beamer on the film. My eyes teared over as I read an editorial published Apr 27 2006 written by David Beamer — Todd’s father. The title says it all: “United 93 The filmmakers got it right.”

Here’s the link sent with the original email I received: www.U93.org. I know what I believe. You owe it to yourself to see what you believe.

When it rains, it pours!

2006-05-04T20:28:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I started taking my family to a new church that’s closer to home. We had a great send-off from our old church and now we’re totally plugged in. It was definitely God’s will to move: all the confirmation signs are there. We have a great relationship with the pastors and other members of the congregation, and our friendships are growing by leaps and bounds.

Strangely enough, a lot of the people we know in this church are involved in an online network marketing system called Quixtar, (formerly Amway). Actually, to hear them talk about it, Quixtar is just the vehicle — there are actually several network marketing systems built around the Quixtar distribution machine.

What makes this strange is that when I met my wife, she was involved in the World Wide Dream Builders organization, which at the time used the Amway business model that eventually migrated to Quix. In fact, she was introduced to our previous church by a contact she met at a large WWDB function. Our old church was full of people involved in some form of Quix, mostly WWDB.

After five years of marriage we pulled the plug on our Quix affiliation for a number of reasons. To name only a few:

I prefer to buy from a range of product lines, and Amway products aren’t part of that
I work in Logistics, and understand the law of diminishing profits due to increased middlemen
The products are too expensive, due to the increasing numbers involved in the distribution chain
The bonus cheques are a pittance until you really move a lot of product

The way I explained it to our upline when accused of misunderstanding the business model: “The system cannot continue to function when everybody is a part of it. Somebody, somewhere down the line, has to have a separate JOB in order to bring new money into the system and pay all the residual bonus cheques of those who have gone on before them.”

I thought we’d escaped the whole AmQuix thing when we went to a different church, but because there are 1/5 the amount of people in our new church, the percentage of people involved in Quix appears higher compared to our old church.

That said, I’m highly appreciative of the fact that the people in our new church aren’t pushy — at least so far.

However, I have a personality that seems to attract all varieties of network marketing schemes, especially AmQuix. I have been approached or introduced to the product line for as long as I can remember:

My aunt let us try the kit because her friends were involved
My best friend took me for coffee to meet his prospective upline (he didn’t sign)
My then-girlfriend, now wife, had me drive her to product pickup and attend various functions over 5 years
On one of our first dates, I met a past friend from high school who was playing pool with his upline, a guy my wife knew about
Another guy who was a real upstart in high school became high up in the business
A guy I met at a swimming pool approached me, apparently by mistake, and took advantage of the contact to tell me about “the business”
A fellow member of a volunteer choir had the entire gamut of products in his overnight bag
While browsing the bulletin board at a grocery store, another browser just started prospecting me out of the blue
(I’m pretty sure I saw this guy just a month earlier drawing the circle plan on a napkin for someone at a restaurant)
The various people at my old church
The various people at my new church

And now, as a shocker completely out of left field:

Tonight, a guy who I met years ago at one of those fancy functions my wife dragged me to, who used to be high up in the WWDB system, called me on behalf of a friend of mine to introduce me to the INA variant of the Quix business model

What is it with Quix? Why can’t they just leave me alone????

Though I’m not usually political...

2006-01-10T23:39:00.000-08:00

I'm so sick of politicking. I would rather have had two elections at the same time back in the summer. This winter election stuff is a real piece of work. Still, as I was doing some research on the local candidates, I had to chuckle at this bit on James Moore’s blog. James is the local Conservative representiave for my region. (Nice guy. Answers email.)

Dated: Jan 6/2006

“ Visit the Liberal campaign site for B.C. at www.teambc.ca and click on ‘Delivering Results for British Columbia.’ ‘Coming Soon’? The campaign is only over a month old, and the Liberals have only had 12 years to ‘deliver,’ but I guess we'll go ahead and wait for them to spin their non-existent accomplishments for B.C., such as: years of inaction on softwood, ignoring the leaky condo issue and CMHC, no senate reform, no new laws to fight grow-ops, no effort to combat crystal meth, no legislation on street racing or auto theft, no accountability or plan for the west coast fishery, no support for dredging on the Fraser River, no plan on port security, all talk and no action on the Pacific Gateway, total abandonment of the pine beetle epidemic.... the list goes on. Anyway, I’m looking forward to their list of non-accomplishments for B.C.”

The Liberals have long since updated their site to fix this oversight, but what a faux pas in the heat of probably the most dangerous campaign of their careers. I sure hope that Canadians get smart and realize that we can’t continue letting politicians rob us blind. One party will spend our money ensuring they have pensions (while we have none), while another party will continually waste money on issues of little relevance to a broad majority of the population.

One such trivial waste of cash was the redefinition of marriage. When there are so many other issues of economic and social import that have first-hand impact on the lives of you and me, the current regime spent countless hours bulldozing an issue that should never have surfaced in parliament.

Wise up Canada. Look into the parties and review their platforms. Check out the character of the candidates running in your riding. Make sure you elect the person who best represents YOU. Canada deserves to see democracy live!

The amazing disappearing act

2006-01-06T15:14:00.000-08:00

My friends have come to know (and, I hope, love) my tendency to get so involved in what I’m doing so as to “vanish” off the face of the earth for awhile. That in itself is not so strange as when I eventually reappear, I do so in a BIG way. This time is no exception. I last blogged in July, and it’s now January.

The BIG entrance? I’ve started focusing on a new technology: tablet pc computing. Check out my ’nother blog at http://www.tabletpcblogs.com/blogs/jakethespud/

I’ll work on updating this one over time as well, but with all I’ve got going on....

See you online!

Mr. Holland's Memories

2005-07-11T00:30:00.000-07:00

So I am not completely up on the deaths of many people whose work I admire. In an earlier post I mentioned that I only recently discovered that Larry Burkett, financial mentor to many Christians through his work with Christian Financial Concepts (which now operates under the name of the ministry merged with it, Crown Financial), passed away a few years ago. Tonight, I made a similar discovery while watching Mr. Holland's Opus.

First, let me say that Mr. Holland's Opus is an extremely inspiring film. For me, especially, because it's about a musician with dreams of grandeur settling for a day job. Just like me. What's not like me is that Mr. Holland's day job as a high school music teacher offered a level of interaction to influence a generation. Several generations.

What does a movie have to do with real life? Apart from the montage sequences that guide us (like a compass, a symbol often mentioned by the high school Principal), the believability of the characters and their situations, and the storyline elimination of the arts, music, and drama budget causing the retirement of teachers of those subjects, I would have been willing to say that movies and real life are similar but distinct.

Fortunately, the composer of the soundtrack to Mr. Holland's Opus decided that the very real situation prescribed by number-crunchers as a solution to the education systems financial woes decided that he could no longer be silent. Mr. Michael Kamen, a brilliant composer responsible for the soundtrack to Robin Hood, Die Hard, and Highlander as well as many others (he even worked with Metallica), started the "Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation" several years ago to provide funding toward music programs in the USA.

Over and above the emotional realism in the movie, the fact that Mr. Kamen would address the very real budget-cut situation in the world today makes me stand up and salute the man for his willingness to do something about the problem.

I am saddened, however, to hear that Michael Kamen passed away in November 2003. Fortunately his memory lives on at www.michaelkamen.com and through the Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation.

Maybe Fashion Ain’t for Everybody

2005-06-20T09:45:00.000-07:00

The latest metrosexual fashion statement for the business elite is men wearing pink shirts. Note that usually by the time I find out about a fashion craze it’s already been and gone. As high-tech and avant-garde as I may sound sometimes, I often proceed with caution and let others test the waters before jumping in.

An example, speaking of water and jumping: I remember a time years ago when I traveled with some friends through the interior and we made a pit stop at Rock Creek. We watched a group of kids jump off a bridge into the water to counter the sweltering heat. A twenty-foot jump would scare the socks off most people, but these kids did it with no fear. There was, however, one little guy no older than 8 who was scared to jump in.

I asked him, “Can you swim?”

“Yes,” was the reply.

“All your friends are jumping off and none of them are getting hurt. If you don’t do it, you will wonder for the rest of your life ‘what would have happened if only I did...?’ You owe it to yourself to do it at least once.”

He stared down at the water for a moment which I’m sure must have felt like an eternity. Quizzically he looked up at me, “Are YOU gonna do it, mister?”

Not one to refuse a challenge, I switched to my trunks and jumped in.

I say all this by way of introduction that I would not even have considered jumping off that bridge had I not the empirical data to support doing so posed no serious hazards to my health. Had some kid smashed his head on a rock, broken an appendage, or gotten snatched by an undercurrent I probably would not have been so secure in my decision.

This morning I was in the herd of office workers stampeding from the train, forming an inpentrible wall at least 10 people thick racing for the station exits. Some poor soul in his mid-20s looking all cool and business-like with his business briefcase, business slacks, business shades (indoors, no less), business sport coat hung over his business shoulder, and business pink shirt was slammed into the wall at every attempt he made to get on the train we just left. Eventually he managed to work his briefcase on the train before the doors slid shut on his arm.

I now have empirical data to support that nobody takes seriously a man wearing a pink shirt. I think I’ll stick with blue.

From the Mouths of Babes

2005-06-01T13:21:00.000-07:00

Today was a pinnacle day in our home. I placed my daily call from the office and had a lovely chat with my wife. My timing could not have been more perfect. She had just finished securing the straps on both our boys’ diapers, and they were also all dressed and ready for business. Then my 22-month-old decided he wanted to talk on the phone.

My wife gave the phone to my baby son, who sat there and listened all the while being prompted by both his mommy and me to say something. You could hear a deep thought welling up in his belly. Just like the sound a camera flash makes as it builds up enough charge to light a room.

Finally it came, (and very much well worth the wait) — “I love you daddy”.

Aw, who wants to go back to work after a momentous event like this?

Surprise! I'm back!

2005-05-16T21:04:00.000-07:00

Last night I watched the movie Remember the Titans for the first time. It has now become the number one movie for me to watch whenever I feel sorry for myself. BIG wow. Reality, meet Truth. You won't always get along but you'll be better off in the long run.

------

More fussin' with Blogger's mind

2005-05-11T12:14:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine was having problems aligning inline images with space betwixt in blog posts using the blog composer. Some ideas we tossed around included:

image tags one per line (in most cases should render with space betwixt)

spacing out the images inline with space

spacing out the images inline with

defining inline style rules for the images

setting the images in a table

invisible spacer GIFs

I'm sure there are more methods to try, but most of our efforts were stripped out by blogger, namely the   trick and the <style> temporary redefining CSS rules fix. I guess I could modify the template itself but where's the fun in that?

In practice the table allows for the content to scroll over the sidebar if necessary. Depending on desired effect, it works. I'm placing my bets that the inline style rule will work the best.

Other than that there is really nothing to report on my super-secret website project. Mac browsers actually work better at rendering certain things than PC. Unfortunately, Mac browsers under OS9 actually fall apart when loading flash movies because the flash always sits on top of all other content. Try navigating a dropdown menu behind the header bar. Eww.

Flash offers other weirdness as well, which warrants the possibility of a complete entry devoted to that.

No Time Like the Present

2005-05-05T08:21:00.000-07:00

After the last entry I really felt like turning off my computer and moving to some small rural community without electricity, running water, natural gas, or even a toilet. The non-technological hermit lifestyle became increasingly more appealing as I fought with getting a website to maintain basic functionality and appearance with minimal scripting on the two latest incarnations of IE on the Mac.

Web developers like myself hit pay dirt with the x library freely availalable from www.cross-browser.com. Michael Foster is a genius, and he gives away his code as a forum for sharing ideas, so long as any improvements or modifications to his library are also freely shared.

I should report to him the one small glitch I stumbled on while working on this project: IE/Mac 5.0 - 5.1.7 (the latest on OS9) doesn't seem to respond to the cross-browser variant of document.getElementsByTagName; or at least not when used within the function built to select all the elements by stylesheet class name. As sifting through tagname elements is probably the only DOM-based methods that all later generation browsers can handle fairly consistently, I broke down and used this method instead of the x function.

And voila: the website now has drop-down menus and rollover images, all triggered by a window.onload handler that finds elements of particular classes and assigns onmouseover and onmouseover event functions to them. Even on IE/Mac for OS9.

It's funny how Apple was so far advanced on the Mac for practically everything, including the integration of a classic OS9 interface within OSX, but IE/Mac 5.0 - 5.1 doesn't respond the same way as IE/Mac 5.2.

Next is to figure out some tricks to get Flash to display properly across platforms. Now even transparent areas block out the screen content behind them. That's not right.

The war isn't over yet.

Take My Mac, Please

2005-04-26T12:04:00.000-07:00

A couple of entries below I alluded to a new project I'm on which is taxing both the Windows AND Macintosh sides of my brain, and it was really starting to make my head hurt. It's like the very notion I might not win my war against these browsers made me more determined to get it done. The browser war is hardly over, and if you think the casualties in this war are the specific browser manufacturers themselves you are sadly mistaken.

The common practice in standards-based web markup is to separate content from presentation, and to develop for the most compliant browsers first, adding hacks to fit the quirks of more rebellious browsers. That way we can use one style sheet with a couple of tweaks as opposed to a different stylesheet for each browser. However my problem was that while Mozilla Firefox and IE6 rendered my CSS/javascript code perfectly, Netscape 7 didn't. NS7 was the standard to base on, and it didn't work.

On the Mac, Safari was even worse. I had some hidden layers that appeared when you rolled your mouse over sections of the screen, but there seemed an invisible box in the middle of the screen obstructing the view when they popped up. Like what was up with that? At least ie5.2 worked not too badly. Strange, considering ie is supposed to be the rebellious middle child on all platforms.

I was just about ready to give up all hope and post a generic version of my lament to my favourite CSS forums, when in my quest to simplify my scripts I stumbled on the position: static descriptor. To this point I had only used absolute or relative. Little did I know that static is what I needed for this to work.

Armed with this new weapon, I regained my courage and waged war yet again, and with even more determination plugged in my position: static descriptors and I WAS VICTORIOUS. My CSS and javascript now worked on IE5.5 (wow), IE6, NS7, MozFF1.x, IE5.2/mac, AND Safari!

(*** BIG APPLAUSE, CHEERS, HOOTS HOLLARS, AND OTHER CELEBRATORY SOUNDS HERE ***)

But as I said earlier, the casualties in any war are rarely the leaders of the countries, but the civilians. Some (like me) who set out for battle, and others like yourself who are faced with rebuilding from the damage. The enemy wasn't aware the war was over and they lobbied yet another attack. Macintosh IE5.1 - my javscript doesn't work, and the positioning of certain elements looks plain terrible.

Well, time to suit up again...

We Walk By Faith And Not By Sight

2005-04-24T12:35:00.000-07:00

I'm growing more aware of what 2 Cor 5:7 says to me. About this time last year it felt like in all my praying God kept silent. But my Jesus is faithful. I continued to press in even though it felt He was ignoring me and He showed up. Now when I pray I sense His loving presence right here with me.

I'm Gonna Be In Pictures

2005-04-21T12:11:00.000-07:00

Well... has this ever been an eventful year so far! And it's only just beginning. I was commenting that I can't believe it's already the end of April, but wow. Not only do I find myself in the middle of a web project that is taxing every cell of both sides of my brain (Windows AND Macintosh) but at my day job I was asked to join three of my co-workers as staff trainers, teaching end users how to order goods on our new ordering system.

So on the day we went to be trained as trainers, a guy in communications snapped a few pics of the session. Because of intellectual property rules their department needs to obtain model releases for all photos depicting specific individuals. This brings a flurry of emotions.

On the one hand, the I-type in me feels a sense of gratification that I am in one of the selected photos for the article being printed about the trainers. On the other hand, I was mortified to see how fat I look in print. Fortunately, the D-type in me gets over this stuff relatively quickly, so this entry is much ado about nothing.

For more information, check out the following links:

In addition to the disclaimer in the sidebar, I am not affiliated with Crown Financial, though I have followed their daily radio broadcasts since they merged with Christian Finanical Concepts. I was really surprised that I didn't hear of Larry Burkett's death in 2003, and that I had to find it on a website while searching for these links.

Quick & Dirty Metric Conversion

2005-04-20T09:38:00.000-07:00

More options will come as I play with this. This was more a test of what blogger allowed me to post. I only do simple javascript-y things though, so I hope they don't lock out the little features they allow. I'm not dangerous. Honest!

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...And yet I can't turn away...

2005-04-20T08:59:00.000-07:00

OK. I admit it. I'm addicted to coffee from Starbucks. (funny how their name wasn't in my phone's dictionary. I'll have to add it). If you're in a generous mood I only drink toffee-nut long americanos with room for cream. Usually large sizes. Ha! Beat the line today.

A little test of Blogger's Capabilities

2005-04-19T14:03:00.000-07:00

Okay. I tried to play a little game where I created a unit of measure converter that used javascript, and I tried to post it in a blog. Unfortunately, blogger.com is smart, and doesn't allow the <script> tag in posts. So I thought I'd get around it by writing my code inline based on user actions. Unfortunately, it couldn't post those either.

Then I realized that I may just be having difficulty with my web host mysteriously losing the ftp account I'd set up for blogger to use. We'll have to see how the support tech's experiment is going.

Note: I think this metric convertor thing is so cool, I'll give it its own blog entry. For now, enjoy this little inline javascript test:

Why in the world do I stay up so late?

2005-04-18T01:16:00.000-07:00

Today was an amazing day. Full of worship and revelation with lots of time invested in my family. After supper the computer time was mine. I found out that a css/dynamic javascript drop down menu script I hacked together doesn't work for Netscape 7. Strange, considering it worked well in Mozilla Firefox AND IE6. I was already told that it didn't work on a Mac at all, so I've got loads more work ahead of me.

Through the W3C validation pages I learned I forgot to close my </head> tag. How stupid was that? No wonder lots of browsers kakked.

So. The reminder is, I should STOP CODING WHEN I CAN BARELY KEEP MY EYES OPEN. I obviously worked too late when I hacked the parts together that I got sloppy. Of course, this rule does not apply when it comes to cleaning out my email folders or installing new blog software on my server. Those tasks can be done irrespective of my ability to see the screen clearly. Like now.

Delight yourself also in the Lord, and

2005-04-17T12:50:00.000-07:00

He shall give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4) - I always thought that meant as I fell in love with Jesus He would make all my dreams come true. Today through Pastor Cheryl God showed me He first must replace those dreams and desires with His, and then He moves to make them happen.

And God created them male and e-mail

2005-04-17T00:01:00.000-07:00

This blogging thing is too cool. The day after I set up my first blog site, the server went down. Blogger.com were fixing a bunch of things and it caused some server glitches. Now they've fixed it, and I even got a personal response to my support request about emailing blogs. So... let's see if their little helper trick worked. Because, well, I'm male. Males like toys. Email is a toy. To be able to email and have my writing posted immediately is a very male-thing to do.

Edit after the post: Yep. It worked, but the line breaks looked really funny. I'll have to reconfigure the emails to work with it

Sweet Serenity

2005-04-14T03:20:00.000-07:00

I am so proud of myself. After the last 7 months in our Celebrate Recovery program I finally got the idea to commit the entire Serenity Prayer to memory. Not the 4-line version. Not the version extended with the gruesome "stash the bodies" talk. The real one, that in all its simplicity expresses profound truth unlike any other text.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace. Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is and not as I would have it.
Trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will, so that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with You forever in the next. Amen.
Usually attributed to Reinhold Neibuhr (1926), but this site explains how Neibuhr came across the quote.

As I write these words I am reminded that with each day comes the freedom to make sense out of the chaos of yesterday. Why should I wait on tomorrow? Today's as good a day as any.

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