So I like to think that the way Rowling ended the series leaves it open to other authors to come in and pick up where the 7 books left off. There certainly is room to do so (what, with the last chapter being 19years after the fall of Voldemort…). I think further proof of this is evident in the chat JK had with some fans online (well, more like she answered submitted questions) most of which were dealing with the futures of several of the main characters.

There have been other sagas to allow this (star wars is one of the most prolific) and the HP story line could be one that is profitable for many over a long time. It certainly is open to the rebuilding of the wizzarding world, discussing how the characters get to where they are at the end of the last chapter (How does neville become a professor??).

Some of the things JK says in the chat (Ginny is the captain of the Holyhead Harpies, the all witch Quidditch team…) would make great story lines in themselves. Plus what happens to the trio’s children as they embark upon their time at hogwarts? While I would like to fancy myself a good enough writer to pick up a quill and fill in these blanks, I think I will leave it to some one better qualified…

Three weeks ago I took the plunge and upgraded my laptop from Windows XP (I have an ubuntu install on there as well) to Windows Vista Ultimate in order to check it out and make sure it will work with the software we use here at work. After hearing about messy upgrades and the tightened security in Vista, I was a little leery of the whole process, but I was surprised by the ease of upgrade.

The upgrade was seamless, the laptop went from windowsXP to Vista with out any problems. I have had to upgrade several drivers (mostly video drivers) and reinstall some of my software (itunes and an ISO mounting program) in order for it to work correctly but otherwise it worked well. A couple of clicks disabled the security prompts (which weren’t that annoying to be honest…). I did not find though that vista was a vast improvement over windows XP.

The laptop in question is just over a year old, it is an HP Pavilion dv8000 model, dvdrw, 1gb memory, 2 100gb Harddrives, an ATI Radeon Express 200M video card, 1400×900 display and an AMD Turion64 cpu (the thing rocks). Ran XP wonderfully, runs linux like a champ. Vista seems slow and clunky at times. I do like the gadgets (though they don’t always work correctly) but it takes longer to boot and startup than it did under XP which is not an improvement. The overall gain in the gui isn’t that great when compared to XP or KDE or Gnome under linux (I actually think I prefer KDE with compiz fusion to the vista aero).

Am I upset I wasted the time to upgrade to vista? No. I can always reinstall XP (I still have the discs), though I wonder if it will free up the license for Vista so I can install it elsewhere… do I think everyone should upgrade to vista? No. Unless you’re buying a new PC, then it only makes sense to buy one with vista on it. Would I recommend Ultimate? Possibly, though if you’re using it in a strictly work environment, go with Business Plus or whatever and for home, definitely pick up the MCE Edition…

I do too, Timmy, I do too.

I’m not old (well, I’m 29…) and I have little use for their product, but its not their product I want to talk about. Value Stair Lifts has managed to make a nice, clean site that is easy to navigate and informative on their products. most businesses would be good to do the same.

The site is not over powered by images, does not confuse the visitor and allows you to contact them for information with out leaving the front page. Something few business sites do these days. The simple layout of the site (menu on the left, main content and some other content on the right) are a simple layout that relay the important information. Even pricing was easy to find on the site.

If I move to the UK and I need a stairlifts installed I’d call them.

I had a nokia e62 and I loved it. Using mobile exchange, it would sync with the exchange server and sync my calendar, contacts and email as they changed. It was small, and light and it had an awesome battery life (it lasted for over 30 hours, 26 of which were spent on a barge a mile out at sea…). But recently, I had the opportunity to upgrade to a Blackberry Curve and I did. Here’s how I feel about it.

The Curve is smaller and lighter than the e62, it has a camera on it and a trackball for navigating its interface. Its sleek, well designed and it has a ton of useful features (did you know that there was a version of google talk for the Blackberry??). The only issue I have with it is the lack of native exchange support. My email, contacts and calendar still sync, though i have to use the blackberry exchange services, which don’t exactly operate like MS Exchange Activesync. This and the lack of decent themes are the only down side to this phone so far.

The picture quality is quite good (I just need to stop shaking my hand…) and yea, it sends email ok. Battery life seems to be about normal, I get a little more if I log out of gtalk on it…. Its a nice, compact smart phone that works. Over all I’m happy with it, but I’ll give it another week or two before I decide if I’m going to stick with it or not.

It came on Saturday. I wasn’t home, but fedex dropped it off anyway. We were out of town (we went to Charlotte, NC to see the Lion King, the play not the movie) but it was waiting for me when I got back. The lawn needed mowing and the girls needed to be put to bed, but once that was taken care of I was able to settle down for the evening with HP and the Deathly Hallows.

I have to say, while it was a good read, I was a little disappointed by the outcome of the book. The people who were killed off in the book were not who I expected, though the outcome of the book was what I expected, the way it came about was not. It was interesting to read though, how Rowling left it open to more books in the future. She did do a nice job of wrapping things up and explaining things through the use of devices we had seen in the previous books as well as explaining more of why things were the way they were and showing that even ultimately bad people could change.

Before the book came I started rereading the series, I was almost through with book four when I read book seven, so I think I’ll finish four, read five and six and then reread seven, a little slower this time, to pick up everything I missed the first time around.

So I did it. I ordered the last HP book from amazon last week, it will be at my house on Saturday. I’ve had several discussions with my siblings about how I think it will end and whether or not I think dumbledore is alive, harry will dye and if snape is truly evil (which I think he may turn out to be…).

Unlike my sister and her children though, I elected not to spend my time at barnes and noble for the release. I figure I have better things to do (sleep) and I can wait 12 hours for the book to come via the post. I will read the book (I’m rereading all 6 of the previous ones now), and I’ll probably like it. Does it matter to me who lives and who dies, not really, though I think it would suck for harry to make it this far and die.

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So I’ve been looking at online diet sites lately. Not because I need to loose weight (at 6′0″ and 130lbs, I could, as my sister puts it, eat a donut…) but because I bet that many of the diets that help people loose weight, would help me gain weight. Besides, if I start eating better and working out (ok, walking…) I might actually sleep better and feel better and become a nicer person right? Well, virtually all of the sites around charge you (any where from 19.99 a month to 30.00 a month plus startup costs). If you’re on a good diet thats working for you already, these sites probably won’t offer you anything you can really use. Thats where MY Fitness Pal comes in to play.

A free calorie counter, My Fitness Pal charges nothing, and claim that they’ll continue to provide a free service. At the moment, that seems to be quite true and it will be interesting to see if it continues to stay that way as the site gains in use. There are no ads, and you can even opt out of the weekly(?) email when you register.

Once in the site, there are no menus or suggested diet’s or exercise routines. Simply a way to track the calories you’re intaking and the exercise you’re doing to help counter that. They provide graphs and reports so you can chart your gain/loss over time which is nice and the site, while a little bare isn’t really bad to look at or navigate. The calorie counter is fast and easy to use and will teach you the nutritional contents of what you are eating, and consequently, how you can make better food choices.

There is a forum that is surprisingly spry and in use (something rare in a lot of cases), where you can talk with others using the free site and gain insight in to dieting and exercise. I would caution though that there does not seem to be an abundance of licensed help, so take what you get with a grain of salt (don’t listen to anyone telling you to go on a water only diet for three weeks… sure it will work, but you might look a little like Nicole Richie after a while…)

All in all, if you’re looking for a place to keep track of your calories, or to find out just how much you’re eating in a day, check out My Fitness Pal.

I’m in the preliminary stages of considering opening my own online store for backpacking gear. In addition to working out how to become a reseller for several of the manufacturers, I’ve been looking around at shopping cart software. The software offered by ashop is among the best I’ve come across so far, with a couple of minor drawbacks.

The customer interface on the shopping cart software is fairly straight forward and easy to follow. It allows for the customer to get information about the items, see a picture, read about it and select from a number of options. It works fairly well in both Firefox and IE (7) and is really eye pleasing in its basic form and layout.

The cart software does require that a customer create a login or login to an already existing account, something that is pretty standard these days among shopping cart softwares.

I was a little put off at first with the admin area when I wasn’t able to use Firefox to login. I don’t know if this is due to some special code they’re using or just because they have a checker in there to make sure that you’re using IE 5.0 or greater, but the fact that I cannot use the admin section in Firefox is a little alarming (since its the second most popular browser today). If the shop section works in both, the admin section should as well.

That being said, it is fairly easy to admin items, add items, check stats on items, send newsletters, look at order status and some other options. For more information, check out ashop shopping cart software and try their demo. The nice thing is that they have demos of both the shopping cart itself and the admin section and they offer a trial period. Pricing is by the month as this is a hosted solution (you host your shop on their servers) and is inexpensive if your shop is actually selling items. For those looking for a self hosted solution, this may not be the best thing for you, but give it a go with the free trial.

Some of my more avid readers (do I have any?) know by now that I do contract work for Melrose Pyrotechnics and a couple of other Professional Fireworks Companies (melrose is by far one of the best). I handle the Friday Night Fireworks for the Atlanta Braves games and shoot some other shows for them when they need me too. Usually the 4th of July is a busy time for me and this year was no different. Except that, since the Braves were out of town this year, I was asked to take my Crew down to shoot a barge show at Daytona Beach.

Under the best possible circumstances, this would not have been an issue. Even under some of the possible circumstances, this wouldn’t be any worse than a normal 4th of July show, and it was looking like that was going to be the case again this year, until I lock the keys in the truck.

Let me explain. I drove down to Coco Beach on Monday, July 2nd (after a half day of work) and got to the hotel at about 10pm. Met Corey there and checked in, went to sleep. Woke up around 7am to drive an hour (one way) to pick up our equipment truck. We get the truck, stop by lowes to pick up 25 bags of playground sand, and head to the port (which, by the way, is a royal pain in the ass to get in to). finally get to the barge around 11:30am.

We pull up and are greeted by something that resembles a rusting pile of metal floating on salt water. The barge was 120′x45′x7′. Compared to the other barge in port (that was for the Coco Beach show less than two miles from port) ours was tiny. It would be like comparing an H2 to a Mini Cooper (with our barge being the Cooper). Needless to say, we probably should not have been out at sea on the barge we were on.

Set up went ok on Tuesday, the rain held off and we had everything set by 4pm (which is good for a show of this size). I get a call that because we have to leave so early in the morning, they want to drop the product off that evening so it is already in port when we get there in the morning. Thats cool, so Jason, Joey and Corey head back to the hotel to clean up, while I catch some Z’s in the truck waiting on Marty to drop off the product. He comes and goes and just after him and I move all the product to my truck, the Three Amigos come back (except that Joey couldn’t get in to port because he had an unauthorized passenger with him…).

I get the keys to the truck from Corey (along with my car keys), move the truck to a parking space and write a note for the dash with my contact info. Mind you, I lay the keys down on the seat of the truck before i slip the note on the dash, turn and lock the truck door and close it. Before it clicked shut, I realized that the keys were inside. By this point, my face looks like Brad Pitts in Ocean’s 12 when he realizes that Catherine Zeta-jones took his cell phone.

So, we call Ryder Customer Support (who are very helpful by the way) and they dispatch someone to come unlock the truck. An hour later, he shows up (after a huge hassle at the gate to the port) and tries for the next two hours (in a pouring rain) to unlock the truck. After trying unsuccessfully with the fat slim jim he has, he calls in his buddy thomas (which is another hassle) with a smaller slim jim and has it open in three tries. Get the keys, head to the hotel to shower, grab a bite at waho (waffle house), and hit the walmart to stock up for Wednesday.

After a brief sleep (6 hours) we head back to the port, load our product on the barge, find out we have to have the fire chief of Port Canaveral inspect the barge and the permits (even though we’re shooting the show in daytona…) and we’re finally underway.

Mind you, moving 7 miles an hour, for 77 miles, is an 11 hour trip (one way). Captain Brian, the tug captain, was surprised that we were going to be on the barge and not the tug, and he warned us that if things got rough, he might not be able to help us much…

Out side of rough seas (4 foot maybe) on the trip up (I was sick several times) preventing us from working a steady pace, the weather on the trip up was fairly good. It wasn’t until we were finishing up as we sat held off the pier at Daytona Beach that things got rough. about 20 minutes before the show, a fairly good size wave (10 to 12 feet) came up over the front of the barge, destroyed the shelter we were supposed to use to shoot from and wiped out half the display. At that point I called the show, and the next day, news reports would report it as everything from the product was ruined to the display was washed in to the sea.

Captain Brian tried his best to get us off the barge, however, as it was not a “rescue” the Coast Guard would not come out and the tug could not get close enough to the barge to get us off safely, so we had to ride back to Port Canaveral on the barge, with nothing but clear plastic tarps to protect us from the wind and rain. It was a long night.

We get close to port about 8am and the port authority is weary about letting us in to port with the mortars still loaded, until we impress upon them that they’re safer loaded than having the product laying out on the deck. We finally pull in to port around 10:30 am. Twenty Six hours after we left, with out having fired a single shot. We still have to unload the show, which, other than the lightning storms around us, is fairly routine.

The crew worked hard and I’m proud of the way we handled the whole process, it could have been a whole lot worse (of course, it could have been tons better). Had we been on the bigger barge, we might have had a show…

More Photos from the 4th

Related External Links

• Púrpura » Blog Archive » Vintage 4th of July Postacard
• Barge of Death returns on a beautiful Sunday morning « The Railfan …
• Monday Kickstart – Daytona | Transworld Motocross
• Fireworks and Thunderstorm Phobias in Dogs | DOG BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS

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