The right work center is so important.

Ya know..  many years back I had a Steelcase desk that included what was called a "typing return" on it's side..  The desk height was 30" from the floor and the return was 26" from the floor and was the perfect height for long hours of keyboard work..  I even brought it to TX with me when I moved here but my Huz got me a new and improved one made of particle board by Sauder which later met it's demise. (Typical of today's put-together crap...)

Todays desks have those shiftily little pull out thingy's but they always jiggle, wiggle, and slide out of place so I thought I would look to see if I could find a suitable desk accessory to a return for my desk. Yeah right.. fat fucking chance... no way..    I did find this little printer table from Satco on Amazon but when it arrived I realized that it was going to be more like typing on a TV tray table on wheels.

Strangely enough, a couple years ago Wynn bought this thingy called a "grooming table" when we got Keiser our doberman pup so we could easily file his nails, manage his coat etc. not realizing how obedient he was going to turn out not needing it.  So it got folded up and set aside.

Well low and behold, I was doing some work with some fabric out in the back yard and needed a quick table to work on so I pulled it out and I was shocked to see with the legs compressed the table was much lower than the usual fold up tables you see around town in the office community.  I got out my tape measure and sure enough it was perfect twenty six inches from the floor.

Now all this might seem odd but trust me.. if you do lots of typing on a 29-30" desk all day you'll soon have painful wrists and the beginnings of carpel tunnel in no time.  Having the right ergonomic typing height is key to working efficient and since I used to type 142wpm (about as fast as most people speak) before my motorcycle accident I was accustomed to working with correct typing posture cuz typing was mandatory for my job when recording what a support client is saying over the phone. 

Anyhow, I digress...   So a couple years ago I bought this black glass piece of shit to use as a desk return with a stupid pull out keyboard tray and the damn thing always looked filthy. (don't ever get gloss black, trust me)  No matter how much I de-cluttered and wiped the place always looked dank. 

So today I got a wild hair a crossed my ass when my new printer thingy came only to find out it was too dinky.  I tore apart the glass piece of shit and replace it with the dog's grooming table and wow..   I have more floor space, I have the proper typing height for long hours of work. I have a sweet doberman snuggled up at my feet and everything is just an arm's reach away..

Now when you consider that most of the put-together office furniture is made in china these days, you'd think that someone out there would be sick and tired of not having a desk capable of sitting at the correct typing height all on it's own right?  Duhhh... doesn't take a rocket scientist.   And ya know what, I'll bet that today's American college graduates sat at a desk in school that was lower than 30" themselves but became to fucking stupid to care.  It's easier to go to a doctor and whine or take a pill for that sore wrist instead right? 

Oh well, I'm good. In addition to that, I have three 13" x 14" mouse pads across the work area and I don't need to fuck with using a stupid 6x9 Office Depot mouse pad cuz the whole damn work area is a friggin' mouse pad.. Cool huh?  My grandpa taught me years ago to "work with your head not with your back" and to always think things through knowing that function is far more important than fashion.

Crazy Times at the Wagners

Jeez. what a crazy week this has been.. First Wynn got pissed off at his publisher and decided not to use them for his latest book. Instead he's going to self-publish and go it alone with the help of a friend who's main biz is marketing.

Next, we got fed up with the friggin' DirecTV service and how it freaks out each time theres a damn power failure. Worse we called the buttonholes to come and add a second DVR for the living room and instead of coming on the requested install date they called while we were on the Amtrak train to Chicago last August and never bother to call to set another time.

Vonage was charging me $73.33  for our home phone line and the MysticWays line so it was time for a change... 

We decided to go with the Time Warner "SignatureHome" plan giving us internet, TV, two DVR's, and Phone service... On top of that, I went to the Rad Shack (RadioShack) and bought a MagicJack Plus to replace the second line for MysticWays which I hardly ever use.

So they guy comes on Saturday and the ripping and shredding begins...  Wow... We had Time Warner CableModem before but this new little guy is way faster than the other one. One problem we had which I had to work on all day was the re-assignment of our IP addresses from 192.168.1.xxx  to 192.168.0.xxx causing all the static addresses for our printers and specialty devices to be modified. Lots and lots of work but well worth it.  Kinda hard to print out sales order when the address on your computer doesn't' match the address on the printer... 

And of course all the MysticWays stuff has to be changed with the adjusted phone number and Vonage had to be called to cancel the expensive monthly bill. Was I really getting 73 bucks outta them?  Not likely... buhhh bye... 

The beauty of all of this is one bill, one company, one provider... for the monthly stuff.. and for the occasional inbound MysticWays calls one dinky annual bill.  Short and sweet...   Best of all, I can watch TV in the living room and record stuff on the DVR instead of having to kiss a certain someone's ass to do it for me in the bedroom.. LOL

It's amazing how we've been hacking and slashing expenses the past few months but really enjoying being at home together and engaging in our day to day stuff. 

When you think about it though,  one call from my mother and thee calls for MysticWays really isn't worth $73.33 these days.. I mean that comes out to $18.34 per call!  Nuhhhh Ughhhh! No Thanks...  love ya mom, but......

I think with all the $$$$ I'll be starting to save, maybe I can set up a savings fund to get my Honda Scooter in the shop for repair.  Heck, Wynn and I even talked about ditching the Truck and the Corvette and replacing it with something better on gas and if we need to haul something that bad we'll call a friend with a truck or hire someone or even rent one from the local Home Depot. It's just foolish to have all this wasted opportunity around here if it's not being used. 

Old Blog Entries Copied Here

Hi there... Well I got tired of messing with WordPress and thought I'd just take the easy route and use Google Blogger instead. I mean after a while it's more important to record my diary of thoughts and not focus on making shit pretty so here goes..  Below you'll find a copy of all my old WordPress postings. I thought I might as well move them here for old time sake so here goes:

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Lots of Home Improvements This Week

Posted on January 21, 2012 by OaklawnRick

Well, this week has been a busy one for me… When we bought the house 13 years ago the back porch came with an indoor outdoor carpet over the concrete and though it’s been very durable for many years it was beginning to have shredded and rotted areas.  I decided to pull it all up and clean up the glue areas followed by painting it gray with concrete stain that I’ve used throughout the years on other parts of the back yard.  Well it was truly a success and now it will be much easier to sweep and keep tidy. I also found this really cool spray paint from Krylon Called fusion. It has the ability to spray on plastic surfaces and it binds itself so that it doesn’t scratch off easily. I painted the terra-cotta colored  stairs with a gray and now they match the patio very closely.

Now, for the past three days, I’ve been working hard to finish painting my little bathroom that’s off the bedroom. I started this project about a year ago bought the custom mix paint which turned out to be a kelly green and also used a very very bright yellow for the trim. But with all the projects and stuff that we got involved in with the fish tank, there never seem to be enough time to work on my painting project. Well amazingly enough, it’s back in progress and so far it’s really coming along nicely. At 1st, I was nervous about the darkness of the green paint in so me and my friend Tom decided to go one shade higher and it was a damn good thing we did. My biggest fear was the fact that the room is so small and painting it with a dark green like Hunter green style would make it appear almost black in low lighting. So I guess all this turned out to be a really good thing.

Ready for the new year…

Posted on December 29, 2011 by OaklawnRick

I’m really looking forward to the new year and all kinds of positive changes. I spent a week building my video legacy on my personal webpage and although it was a lot of work it seems to be a successful endeavor.

I’ll be really happy when Facebook gets their crap together because I’m really getting tired of all these changes that keep happening without any warning. I mean don’t get me wrong, change is good, but at some point it’s nice to at least know how to prepare for it and these guys don’t seem to put much effort into that phase of the changes.

Yesterday was also a big day for us as we purchased 45 gallon jugs of salt water for wins new aquarium which will contain his coral reef and  our existing fish.

Even though Cisco is no longer making the flip video camera it still works very well with my Macintosh and associated software. Now that I have a place to display what I have recorded I think it’s can be even more fun to access the stuff in the future. Sure it would be nice to put stuff on YouTube, but the problem there is you can’t post videos that are longer than about 20 min. and within a certain size ratio. To me it makes much more sense to store the stuff in a folder on my hosted website. There, I at least have the ability to download the entire site for clean backup and burn it on a DVD for future storage. Best of all, I don’t have to deal with all of their size limitations.

So I think is going to be kind of cool.

I also got an update to my DragonDictate software which allows me to type all the stuff out by simply talking into a microphone. Through the years it  has gotten very stable and you don’t have to spend hours training it like he used to. Kudos to the programmers.

Jingle Bells – Music Smells, Robin Laid an Egg

Posted on December 15, 2011 by OaklawnRick

Ya know, about 12 years ago there was this wonderful company called MP3.COM had showcased weekly ‘indie’ groups and also had this magnificent thing called ‘Music Locker” where you shoved the original music CD into your computer and once verified, it put the music into your locker without wasting time uploading (assuming it was in their library already)

The iTunes MATCH system isn’t anything new but just history repeating itself. Sadly though, Yahoo and CNET took over MP3.COM and destroyed the concept. I used to love going out there to learn about new performers and get free songs. If i really liked them, I’d go back and purchase the entire album. But Noooo, the greedy bastards totally fucked up there. Believe it or not, I have music cuts from some artists that were killed in a plane crash before they went to production which you’ll never find in the music world today!! Not even on the P2P pirate areas either.

Most people on the effing radio today don’t even know how to play a genuine musical instrument without the fake loops from a computer riff. Worse, the scramming and whaling and Yo Yo Yo all sounds the same. Where’s the true emotion? Yeah like a song that doesn’t consist of lyrics that complain about how you did me wrong and what a piece of shit you are.. <sigh>

And why the fuck do they keep remaking an antique over and over and over and over again? How many versions of Silent Night do we need till someone figures out how to write “Silent Morning” instead? Oh that’s right.. it’s easier to Copy than to Invent right?

Our 2011 Xmas Newsletter

Posted on December 13, 2011 by OaklawnRick

2011 Family Newsletter

http://www.oaklawnrick.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/2011-Family-Newsletter1.pdf

This is our annual XMAS 2011 Newsletter that we sent to all our friends. It’s posted here for those we don’t have updated addresses for.

2011 Family Newsletter

Aren’t there other geeks out there?

Posted on December 13, 2011 by OaklawnRick

All these years I always wondered how there could be so many OSX and iDevice owners out there but none of them knew how to make a friggin web page. Even with the free goddamn iWeb program built into OSX iLife. They could figure out how to use FaceBook but ask them if they have their own site and they haven’t a clue.  So let’s see…  if you’re not producing movies, and/or managing photos and not doing office stuff, this just about leaves social web sites no?

Geez, I’m 50 years old and figured I’d be left in the dust by now when it comes to new creative and artistic stuff.. but ask these bozos to write a complete grammatical sentence and they can’t even do that in high school. Then, offer to mentor and teach and there’s no interest in learning.  Wow… Ok.. it’s not disrespectful, it’s just MEH, of no interest to them.  I wonder what this means for their future.

So all of our factories go over seas and nothing new gets done here except lots of complaining while 3rd world countries make the toilet paper we wipe our asses with. Wow, such a concept huh?  For 35 years, Bic pen made their famous Bic lighters in Milford, CT the same two form factors. Today, Bic has come out with a new “Bic Click” with a total new look and guess what? It’s made in Spain not Milford Connecticut. My mother worked for the goddamn company for 30 years and now she’s retired.  So should I be angry at Bic for this?  Nope..  They had ideas and they made them come true even though they couldn’t afford to do it in the USA.  Would kids today want to work in a factory making Bic lighters?  Yeah right, Dream On !!!

Today’s projects. Woo Hoo

Posted on December 10, 2011 by OaklawnRick

Rise and shine at 7:45 and brrrr is it cold outside…  Damn, I’m so proud of all the work I’ve done on my website fixing things and getting it all in order. Today I have an stranger project. I’m going to retrofit my new Cuisinart 14-cup food processor so that I can lift the large feed tube and put things inside without disengaging the safety lock.  Why? cuz it’s a pain in the ass trying to find little cucumbers that you don’t have to cut in half when trying to make thin slices and no, I’m not stupid enough to tick my fingers in with the blades when it’s running. This puppy is way bigger than my Kitchen Aid but the safety features make it less useful and I’m devising a plan to change that.

Twas two weeks before Christmas

Posted on December 7, 2011 by OaklawnRick

Kitchen Office

So here I am sitting in my kitchen on my MacBook Air farting around fixing broken links on my personal website and realize that there was a shitload of broken things for almost a year that nobody ever brought to my attention.. Not even family members (but most of them are purely addicted to Facebook so who can blame them?)

In any case.. now that me and Wynn moved most of our stuff off the Windows Server platform and onto LINUX Apache instead (which probably doesn’t mean Jack Shit to you) I thought it was high time I focus on my creative legacies and clean up things.  Since I now use RapidWeaver for my web design and store the master files in my DropBox account I can use any of the computers in my home and not be tied to only one.   I was even somewhat surprised that my hubby didn’t pick up on some of the broken things either but these days, he’s been so busy with writing two queer romance novels and also his price and joy coral reef in the bedroom which has had it’s share of SNAFUs leaks and stuff.

I guess the majority of all this started when I canceled my OaklawnM4M google account which had ties to many of the web content using their free hosting stuff… Guess this teaches ya to make lots of backups and have back peddling breadcrumbs in the event you find yourself needing them later.

Well, I decided to use the blog thingy here in RapidWeaver as kind of a one stop shopping to hold all my goodies in one place using one system as much as possible so we’ll see..  Nobody reads this shit but me anyhow from what I can tell so no worries…

In the future I want to learn how to use WordPress for my blogging stuff but right now I don’t know if my brain has the energy to focus on learning something new from the ground up without spending countless hours or even days trying and testing and trying and testing and trying again etc…  Not with all the other cool stuff going on but maybe later.