I remember how excited I was when I managed to get an invite for the service. Back then we actually called it Google gmail (or was it just Google mail?).

Looks like I gave away about over a hundred invites back when they were “closed” for accounts (maybe more if I deleted some, but if I did, I don’t know why all the others would still be in my sent box). Towards the end, they pretty much had unlimited invites but you still had to know someone to have them send you one.

Little did we know we’d have all the Google applications that now come along with it.

It’s the number one e-mail that I recommend to anyone these days, even though it may not be the address I always use as my return address, it’s generally where the mail gets forwarded to.

PS – I always tell people to not use the e-mail your internet provider (cable or DSL company) gives you for free, you’ll lose that when you want to switch providers. If you use that address for important things you won’t want to switch since you’ll lose that address. That’s why some people are still hanging onto AOL addresses after all these years…

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So when I went to the launch of the Space Shuttle a few weeks ago it was pretty strange. The launch was at 6:21am but my parking placard (permit) said to be there by midnight. So there was a lot of time to kill before the launch. I had causeway tickets, but the (shuttle) buses don’t even start running until 3:30 am.

The visitor’s center was crazy place. It’s just like if you went there in the daytime and everything is open: IMAX, gift shop, the “rides”, just about everything (not the bus tours around the space center). Excepts it’s dark and people are sleeping on the lawn and on benches and wherever (made me think of refugees).

Here’s the direct link and it’s also in HD.

It was just an interesting experience to be there for. I’m sure the video doesn’t share the experience properly. I didn’t get any footage of the people on the lawns, if I find some I’ll add them to the post.

Here’s a clip that I shot a minute later on the way to the car; I guess I was pretty excited when I got there, duh?!?

FYI, tickets for STS-132 go on sale in the morning at 8:45a ET on Monday, April 26, 2010. The causeway will be gone a few minutes after 9, I bet the visitor’s center will be gone by 9:30 (I think they’re about $65 and $40 each).

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So it’s been six years since I started blogging. Sometimes I blog a lot and sometimes a little but I come really close to averaging one post a day (actually about 0.995 posts per day). I’ve really been slacking lately, all the vacation days when I’ve written more than a few help pick up the numbers, but I never like it when a week goes by that I haven’t posted. This year I only did a little over 200, so I’ll try and make up for it over the next year, if I could post five different days a week, I think I’d be happier about it…

This post is a bit of a mish-mash of tech details and thoughts of blogging.

I originally started using Movable Type for the blog in 2003, I had my blog in a subdirectory of GaryLaPointe.com and changed subdirectories a few timesand then in 2005 moved it to here at GarySaid.com and left it alone.

If had a tech suggestion for anyone blogging, it’s pick a domain name and stick to it so that you don’t lose readers (and search engine links); choose something vague/generic so if you change what you blog about your web address can stay the same if you want it to. While I call my blog the same name “Gary Said…” I could easily change the title to “Lone Geek Blogging” (or whatever) but still have the same easy to remember address.

I really enjoy blogging, it’s nice to reflect on parts of my life and have to think up semi-coherent paragraphs to describe whatever it is that I’m thinking about. I try to keep most of my blog positive and remember that I don’t blog about everything in my life, so sometimes it’s not always the easiest thing to come up with a topic.

I never knew who would come read and while I’ve met a few people I really have no idea how many people I know (or don’t know) actually read my blog. The one thing I know is that I really enjoy getting feedback from people (even when it’s something short like “I thought the same thing about that”) and it’s extra special getting a link back from someone when they just mention my site or even a specific article (even if it’s just one of my money saving tips). I hope that feeling never goes away!

Since I mentioned comments, here’s some comment info/stats and then I’m going to go (the day is almost over). On average, I actually get about 1.5 comments per post, but in actuality most posts don’t get comments. Of my 3,000+ comments I’d bet that 1,000 go to the same dozen posts over and over again (my bed has 454 comments, hacking iTunes has 91 and another ten have between 30 and 100).

I almost forgot: I switched to self-hosted WordPress last December (I played with it for a bit before the switch) and have really enjoyed using it since then. I feel I can do more with WordPress with less work than I did with Movable Type. I’ve mentioned things like this in a few posts: WordPress vs. Movable Type and Things I miss about MT.

FYI – Lisa’s book WordPress For Dummies is a great resource if you want to use WordPress.

Thank you for reading!!!

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So a few months ago I installed the A Year Ago Today plug-in it shows a list of posts that I’ve done on this day (date) in the past at the top of my blog. I’ve liked it a lot, it reminds me of things I’ve done in the past so I generally revisit the posts. Sometimes I barely even remember blogging it. And sometimes it generates new traffic to the posts (most times not).

I think today is the first day that not only has there been a post from each of the year’s that I’ve been blogging but there were exactly two (2) posts from each November 17 for the last five years.

This helps me clean up my blog too: I’ll occasionally fix some links or add some tags and categories or sometimes fix something minor. Some of the categories I use now, didn’t exist when I wrote some of the earlier posts and I use tags the first few years. This results in things getting reposted to Facebook (via WordBook), generally I’ll delete them but sometimes I’ll leave them (if it’s got a photo or isn’t time sensitive). Occasionally, I’ll read a sentence and think “that makes no sense” so I’ll fix it, I try not to do this too much, it’s really about what I was thinking/feeling/doing then, but if it’s not clear it needs fixing…

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So I applied for the job at The Big Trip and the big requirement was a ninety second video to go with it. I just found out about the job yesterday and put this together this video this afternoon.

An applicant will be selected from a pool of an estimated 30,000 worldwide applicants to travel and explore various travel destinations around the United States for a period of 3 months. Their journey will be documented, filmed and aired on thebigtrip.com in mini-episode form (similar to programs depicted on the Travel Channel) for millions of viewers to view each month.

Here’s my video in larger HD quality.

Not only will the applicant we choose get a dream job, they will receive a generous salary of $50,000 USD for their 3 month journey. The traveler will be given a video camera and a MacBook to upload the videos to the internet.

Oh, and they give you an iPhone too!

With a guesstimate of 30,000 applications the odd are low, but you can’t win if you don’t play! And I do love to talk about travel on-line…

LATER: I don’t see that many applications on YouTube (part of the requirement), I’m thinking less than 500, maybe even a lot less than that, but it’s possible people didn’t add any keywords or description. Also, the requirement was to be 60-90 seconds, quite a few are a little longer, many are a lot longer (and a few are too short); I wonder if that being too long will disqualify them? Most of the ones I like are too long, I could have gone longer, as it was I had to trim it to get it to less than 90 seconds…

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This weeks Friday Question is: What’s your reaction when you receive a compliment?

If it’s something about me being nice or smart or something like that, I’m never so sure how to respond. A mumbled thanks or something is most likely.

But if it’s a compliment about my cool shoes or something like that. Then I appropriately say thank you and probably tell you more than you ever wanted to know about them.

So it’s a mixed response depending on the kind of compliment.

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The Space Shuttle Discovery is on the launch pad right now. This always excites me and still gives me chills when it takes off! You can watch NASA TV live on their site. At this point, they are in a hold and I think they are still supposed to launch in the next hour (11:59 PM EST).

I’ve always wanted to see a launch, I don’t know why I’ve never made this happen. I was supposed to go a few weeks ago to see this launch (STS-128), but they moved the date so it didn’t work out. I’ve got to make this a priority over the next year before they stop the shuttle launches.

It’s been 25 years since this ship’s maiden voyage, it was August 30th, 1984 when Discovery had it’s first launch! It was the third orbital vehicle in service (OV-103) and is now the oldest running shuttle. Wow!

Once they introduced the shuttle, I always thought they’d have some way to take passengers. I always assumed that’d be airplane type seats in the bay, like envisioned in the 1970′s James Bond movie Moonraker (anybody have an image of this?).

So let’s just plan to catch a shuttle launch in the next year, okay? Anyone have any tips on going to a launch?

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I’ve generally had pretty great health insurance. But I’ve been bothered that so many people have no insurance. This is a simplification of the benefits of socialized health ‘insurance’.

Here’s the direct link to it YouTube.

Here’s the thing: I think that some kind of socialized health will probably personally affect me negatively. I think that companies that offer great insurance will cut back a bit and it’ll cost me more out of pocket either at work or in my taxes (even if they don’t cut back, it’ll cost me in my taxes). But for more people to have better health care I’m willing to lose some of mine.

* Disclaimer: This is my view-point. I’m not very political. I’m (mostly) just sharing this cartoon and titled the post the same as the video. But feel free to offer your 2 cents on the video.

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One of the activities at the Detroit Science Center tonight was a rock wall. I’ve never done one of these and I’ve always wanted to try it! They wouldn’t let me wear my sandals, but fortunately I had some other shoes in the car. This was a blast and I’d definitely do it again some time!

I figured I better wave right away just in case I fell.

This was the point where I yelled down to check that
this was just going to let me gently fall (if I fell).
I was getting a little high and the holds were a little farther apart.

At the top there’s a button to press to ring the bell.
Can you see it up where the wire comes out?

This is me on the way down.
It was actually a pretty fast/smooth process.

I almost did it again so I could get it all on video to see how it looked. Maybe next time…..

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I’ve been having some odd dreams lately, I wish I’d been writing them down. Since my mind is blank from the ones from a few days ago. They weren’t all as strange as this one but this is the only one I can remember.

In this dream I’m staying with Heather or her father but it wasn’t a place I recognized. I don’t even want to say it was in MIchigan, but where ever I was, Dave (also known as Dave2) from Blogography was in the area and I was hanging around with him.

Dave and I are driving down a divided highway, Heather didn’t come but she’s always busy with stuff so not coming didn’t seem so odd at the time (even though she was passing up a chance to meet Dave), I’m not sure where we’re headed (the Apple store? a blogger meet-up?) but I’m pretty sure we’re not in Atlanta. Then all of a sudden some car is flipping over and I grab the wheel to swerve us out of the way (you’re welcome, Dave) and while we can’t see what’s going on, it’s like traffic is blocked by the authorities ahead of us. But we don’t really see them, so we don’t know what’s up. Dave turns us around and heads down the shoulder back to some country road that we had just passed. But we once we get there we can see traffic is halted down the side roads too.

I get out of the car to see if I can get closer to see what’s up, there were flashers so something is going on. It’s like “they” were there to block off the road before there was even an accident. As I’m cutting across a strip of field to see what’s going on, something clears up and the cars start moving and I lose Dave. Then I’m moving very fast as I’m alternating between busy roads and empty roads as I try to catch back up…

And that’s about it. I’m not sure why it ended, I didn’t feel like I woke up from the dream. Maybe it really happened and “they” wiped my mind after and they just didn’t go back far enough!

I didn’t feel so much chased as I felt in a rush or something like that. Still feel a little anxious as I think about it. Something was going on. Something conspiracy-ish.

But that’s all I have for this story, it’s been running through my head today so I thought I’d share…

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On this day 40 years ago Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. I’m not sure what else needs to be added to that statement: “We landed on the Moon”! How amazing is that?!?

Just for some frame of reference: The Moon is 238,000 miles away (384,000 km), if you were driving 75 miles per hour it would take you 3,100 hours. Keep in mind that’s speeding and you don’t get to pull over for any bathroom breaks or snacks!

Actually it took them more like five days to get there, so just dividing that out, that’s around 2,000 miles per hour (assume it took them a while to speed up and slow down).

When I was a kid, my mother purchased me a two record set of the mission. Lots of audio recordings of the launch and landing. I’m thinking there was some insert with a bunch of photos too. I played that a lot on my record player. I don’t have any idea what year she purchased that, but I’d say I was six or seven(?), and it was amazing to me!

It’s still amazing to me. Whenever I can watch a launch of some kind or another, I always turn on the TV and still get thrills and chills. I get chills just thinking about it as I’m writing this…

Photos courtesy of Wikipedia.

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Starting tonight (at 9PM Pacific) you can reserve your own Facebook vanity id. This means (hopefully) I’ll be “http://facebook.com/GaryLaPointe ” instead of “http://facebook.com/profile.php?id=736138968“.

You should be able to just go to http://www.facebook.com/username/ to get your name.

As always, you’re welcome to add me as a friend…

SUCCESS! I did manage to get my name (as above). It’s not case sensitive but I like the caps capitalized. And there is no trailing slash (“/”), it causes an error.

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Argh! Haven’t been this frustrated in a very long time…

The last 24 hours:
- I can’t sync my calendar items and address/phone numbers between my computers, MobileMe and iPod Touch.
- My main Windows machine won’t reboot, keeps resetting. Think the hard drive went.
- Accessing/syncing to my AppleTV is goofed up (that’s minor, unrelated and hacked so not an Apple issue)
- My cell phone keeps saying international roaming when I’m at home (it’s Sprint). I’m not that close to the border of Canada/Michigan.

I’ve spend more time with tech support the last 24 hours than the last 24 months. I’ve been escalated multiple times at Apple and not getting any closer. And after all the changes at my end I’m leaning towards it’s going to be a problem at their end so then I’ll have to get everything set back the way I want (a few hours ago, I’d have said 100% sure at their end, but not so sure now). They say this is a new problem and since we’re pushing 4 hours today I’m hoping it’s a unique problem (for their sake).

And I’ve wasted another sunny day

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So this is just a quick update as to what I’ve been up to. I’m been having some problem typing so here’s a video to explain why…

Here’s a direct link to the video.

So they tell me when I fractured on my thumb it’s a Proximal Phalanx Fracture but they think it’s gonna be okay. Here’s a little picture of the x-ray (click for a bigger view), they say it’s going to be fine after wearing this cast for a while bit longer.
 

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This is pretty much all the topics that I talk about. Larger means it’s mentioned more often. Closer to the top means I’ve mentioned it lately. This is based on my first five years of blogging. I usually keep a dynamic version of this page at what I talk about, but I thought I should keep a static version since it’s my fifth year blogging and I’ll probably have to start a fresh one with my new WordPress blog (coming soon).

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Wow! I’ve been doing this for five years! There aren’t many hobbies that I’ve stuck with for this long. Heck, there aren’t many jobs I’ve kept this long (only one). I did stick with Michigan State University that long (undergrad and grad school) and I collected comics as a kid for this long. Besides living with my parents, I’ve never lived anywhere but my current condo for that long. I’ve owned my current Sebring Convertible for that long too (my car before it was the same model, just a few years earlier model).

So it seems like it’s the latest stuff I’ve been sticking with the longest. Does that mean that I’m figuring out what I like beforehand and sticking with it?!? That’d be nice.

So I originally started out blogging and thinking that’d I’d try not to complain at all but that didn’t last; while I do whine I try not to do it too much. Also, I’ve always thought I’d break out tech stuff into a separate tech blog and get even geekier but that’s never happened (yet).

I’ve met more than a few bloggers and other people from social networks over the last five years which has been awesome. Not only do I get to read these folks, I get to meet some of them too! I’m sure I’ve met 25-40 different people over the last few years, I’d have to count since some of them came to multiple events. And I really hope to make it to TequilaCon this year (is there a location/date set yet?).

I blog for myself but I try to post stuff I think others will find interesting too. When I’ve got 10 topics that I’m thinking of blogging about I do try to choose stuff that I want to talk about and stuff that you might find interesting. They might not be the same post but sometimes they are.

Speaking of blogaversaries: During my first year I had changed the name and the URL a few times (that probably didn’t help with traffic). Halfway through the second year I started using GarySaid.com, changing the URL to it’s own permanent home; I think I’ll always keep this short URL for my personal blog, even if I change the title of the blog itself the address is nice and short and easy to spell. The third year I didn’t post much on the anniversary date but I posted some stat and info a few days later. Year four wasn’t the best, I just never got into gear much this past year but I did get to travel a lot which gave me some good blogging material Speaking of whining, it’s been a pretty crappy year this past year. I haven’t talked about all of it on-line much, but things started going downhill last October and I just never got back into gear. I’m sure it’s seemed worse to me because everything was going pretty awesome before that (but that might just be hindsight). While I didn’t blog about much of those issues, I’m sure it affected my blogging some…

Things started picking up a few months ago and I’ve still got a few major potholes that I need to fill. As I start filling them in, I’ll probably start talking about some of them (I just never got around to it before, I had planned to). I’m sure it’s affected the tone of some of my blogging and the blogging itself. Thanks for sticking around!

I’ll be making some changes in my life and around here; since I plan to make it better for me, hopefully it’ll be more interesting for you in the year to come…

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Just me getting into the water and climbing the big rock in the background and jumping into the water. Nothing ultra-exciting but should give an idea of the pool and jumping area…

I’m not the first person you see. I’m the guy who walks in front of the camera a few seconds into the video (and gets in). There is a larger version of the video if you go to the direct link (below). It’s not the best quality, it must have lost something in the encoding to YouTube

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So this topic has come up more often lately than usual and as I’ve been approaching the end of my fifth year blogging (with 2000-ish postings) I’ve been thinking about blogging more…

Thoughts about my blogging habits:

There are specific areas of my life I don’t blog like love, work, religion, sex and many more things. These have a huge impact on my life, but I pretty much skip over them.When I post something on-line that’s how I felt at that moment when I posted it. I might have been happy/excited/sad about something but when you’re reading it weeks (or years) later I might not be happy/excited/sad about it any more, I was happy/excited/sad when I posted wrote it. And I might not even been happy/excited/sad when posted it, that might have just been when I wrote it (which might have been days before).

I only blog the things that I get around to blogging. That might sound silly but it’s such a small fraction of my life that shows up here on the web and there are lots of things that I want to blog but just never get around to it. Some of the stories might get changed (significantly) for ease of explanation. Plus, for every post that I write, there were probably five topics that jotted down as a subject of interest and a few that I wrote a sentence or two but never finished. So even the stuff I think might be bloggable, I’m sure I post <10% of the stuff that I consider posting; that’s not even counting the other 50% of my life that I don’t consider posting). Sometimes I forget what I did or didn’t blog, I’ll write a followup to a post and I’ll get annoyed because I never put the first post on-line (or never finished writing it) so the followup doesn’t make any sense.

Some people just blog about one thing: baseball, politics, losing weight, money, etc. but they still might mention other things in their life. I’ve got it a bit broader than those examples but it’s still pretty limited as to my overall life. I’ve got some specialized blogs I’ve got more ideas for that I’d like to explore more.

I don’t blog everything in my life, my main focuses consist of entertainment (books, movies, music + television), technology and travel (and I’ve been trying to post a more photos than usual in my everyday life). Of course, I’ll talk about blogging and myself too. Occasionally I’ll post things about my day, food, family/friends, science, blogging, saving money and other things. It’s pretty rare that I mention work, dating, religion and politics. I generally try not to complain (although I do quite often with restaurants and other customer service issues) and not complaining was something I specifically avoided when I started; I figured the world didn’t need another complainer.

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Tags: blogging, customer service
]]> http://GarySaid.com/my-blog-is-not-my-life-its-just-my-blog/feed/ 3 http://GarySaid.com/silverware/ http://GarySaid.com/silverware/#comments Tue, 11 Nov 2008 01:21:02 +0000 Gary from http://GarySaid.com/ http://GarySaid.com/wpindex.php/thoughts/silverware/ I eat chili with a fork and I like my soup with a regular spoon.

I just thought you should know…

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Tags: eat, Food, fork, Please leave a comment or trackback about Silverware, click the tags below for related information or visit http://GarySaid.com/ for more posts.

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I eat chili with a fork and I like my soup with a regular spoon.

I just thought you should know…

Please leave a comment or trackback about Silverware, click the tags below for related information or visit http://GarySaid.com/ for more posts.

Tags: eat, Food, fork, Silverware, spoon
]]> http://GarySaid.com/silverware/feed/ 1 http://GarySaid.com/political-criticism-and-support/ http://GarySaid.com/political-criticism-and-support/#comments Sat, 01 Nov 2008 20:04:30 +0000 Gary from http://GarySaid.com/ http://GarySaid.com/wpindex.php/thoughts/political-criticism-and-support/ I see websites and blog posts picking on McCain (and Palin) and Obama. I see lots supporting Obama. But I don’t see many supporting McCain…

Maybe it’s just the (digital) places that I hang out? Or maybe that just says more about me…

Please leave a comment or trackback about Political Criticism [...]

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I see websites and blog posts picking on McCain (and Palin) and Obama. I see lots supporting Obama. But I don’t see many supporting McCain…

Maybe it’s just the (digital) places that I hang out? Or maybe that just says more about me…

Please leave a comment or trackback about Political Criticism and Support, click the tags below for related information or visit http://GarySaid.com/ for more posts.

Tags: McCain, news, Obama, Palin, politics
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