OK night before christmas. Did the church pagent thing with the family at our church Trinity Episcopal. The kids were great my daughter was Gabrielle and my son was a sheep. At the end the congregation was supposed to sing joy to the world as the processional hymn but the organist didn't pick up his cue or he was waiting for a different one. Even after Father Larry said we will now sing the processional hymn we didn't start. So I did! I was even close to the tune.

Sometimes you just gotta go with it. I got a pat on the shoulder and some thanks for getting us started when the service was over. Joy to the world was always one of my favorite tunes in all its incarnations. Good thing I didn't go with Jerimiah was a bullfrog.

OK so my favorite watch is made by Aquatech. It's cheap, 6 or 7 bucks at Walmart, and lasts a fair amount of time I usually get a new one when my son has hit it with a hammer, he likes to do that sort of thing. My first one cost me 2 dollars at a convenience store in Oregon and lasted nearly ten years.

The thing is that I always lose the little slip of paper that they call the instruction sheet so that when I want to change something I have to fiddle with it or find one on the net which isn't easy. Well to make it easier I've put another one up on the web at http://www.skartdesigns.net/aquatechwatchmanual.pdf. I will add it to Google with my favorite free add tool submit express and if you could find it in your heart to add it to your links I'd appreciate it.

just got back from a stylin Thanksgiving vaca. One thing that was kinda neat was that on the way back some of the scouts in Conneticut were giving away coffee and donuts and sometimes hotdogs at various rest stops.

Did a couple of events today. First the Resource Hub annual awards meeting which was nice. No beer but the food was good. The people were mostly local business folk and pols. That's understandable since the Resource Hub is a resource for growing local businesses.

After a short time schmoozing there, I made my way over to the Shipyard Brewery for the Metro launch party. Talk about a breath of fresh air. It was a tantalizing mix of models intellectuals, entrepreneurs, and artists of all kinds. The beer was good, too.

If the magazine holds up to it's potential Franklin McMahon and Josh Shea will have done an outstanding job of showing Portland that cool and hip can be the same thing.

Been doing a betatest for Lightscribe. It's a cool piece of equipment that burns the label right onto a laser sensitive coating on the disk. Burn the data flip the disk and burn the label it's pretty neat.

been listening to the first few disks of the grateful dead beyond description on Windows Media Player They are really tasty. The extras alone are worth the cost of the set, 12 cds for 150 or so, which of course is the point. If you are a deadhead you probably already own the albums in one form or another. So of course you wouldn't buy them unless they had something on them you didn't already have like a lack of scratches and hiss.

Well go forth and purchase them if you got the scratch. The jams on Blues for Allah reminded me why I liked the dead so much in the first place. They will bring tears to your eyes.

Just did a spell check on that last entry and the word blog wasn't recognized!

OK so I went to Church this morning and they read the story of the loaves and fishes from Matthew. Well when I heard this story the first time they loaves and fishes came from a kid and in Matthew they come from the disciples or at least the kid isn't mentioned. Well there have been a lot of changes to the service and a revision of the bible since I went to church on a regular basis but I thought that this was a bit to much. I had always thought that the kid was something special. He had the faith to give up his lunch to Christ and poof the multitudes are fed. Well there were some logistics involved so that the 5000 could be fed but they were fed.

It turns out that the kid is in John. The apostles were human after all and humans tend to see things from an individual view point. One leaves in the kid, others don't.

I do feel a little better and maybe I should pay a little closer attention to the books. Course if I really wanted to have some say over all this I could go to seminary and try and build a flock. But I think I'll just stick to my blog for now.

Maine has been redistricted. A lovely and painful process to be sure. I just spent way to much time trying to find out who is running for what to represent me. I found out I was right about my senator, Ethan Strimling, but wrong about my rep, Glenn Cummings. As a web designer it really annoys me when politicians don't have web sites or don't do basic search engine optimization, but that's mostly me looking for work. Still it's not like it's hard to put one up and have a few people link to it.

Anyway here is a page to find out which candidates are running for what office in Maine.

Just a reminder that there has been some redistricting in Portland, Maine. I have set up a list of polling places in Portland, ME, at http://vote.skartdesigns.com. There is also a link to confirm your district and precinct.

just got my blood donor card today. wish they had noted when I'd last given blood on the back. Oh well I guess I can call em up and ask.

This is just an email to see what mailbots are phishing my blog and see how long it takes them to send me stuff. So if you send blogemail@skartdesigns.net an email, I probably won't respond. I probably won't respond if you email me at this address either. Probably won't see an answer from blognot@skartdesigns.net either.

October NetPM at Lightship Telecom

Well after a short absence I was back at a Mesda NetPM last night. This one was at Lightship Telecom's data center. I really love the smell of a server farm. It's sort of like new car smell for me. It says power, it says information; and knowledge is power. Is raw information really knowledge? yeah but it's not wisdom. I guess the power comes from the use of the use of the information. And knowledge isn't wisdom, and certainly power isn't wisdom. Wisdom isn't power ... but I digress.

Saw some fun folk there. Mark Ford showed up. He is doing some neat stuff at UNE with patient simulators. That is machines that pretend to be human patients not machines that pretend to have patience. I left early and still people were coming in.

The food was good and plentiful. Finger sandwiches, and brownies. Corn Chips and salsa. assorted sweets. other tasty stuff. give it a 3.9. I like more along the lines of chicken fingers and deviled eggs still it was quite tasty.

Beer didn't run out. It was shipyard. Give it a 4.1. Could have been a bit more varied I'm drinking Sam Adams these days.

I had a good time and they did a good job. It's always nice when one of their execs greats you as you come in with a smile and a cool light up pen. Overall give it a 4.1.

Well it finally happened, I put some gas in my tank and went in to pay for it. When I came out they had raised the price 2 cents. I guess timing is everything.

Church on Wednesday

So I went to the Holy Eucharist service at my church, Trinity Episcopal, in Portland today. It's not well attended in the middle of the week so they hold it in the chapel off the sanctuary.

It's really nice. Kinda tight but it's a whole service with three readings and a sermon. The sermon is interactive. I don't know if it's supposed to be but with that few people in that intimate a room it becomes a discussion rather than a lecture.

Course I'm always hurting for cash. So I'm always praying for more for me or least enough. I get home and there is a letter saying that one of my debts has been waived. It's not exactly a check but I'll take it.

I went to talk to the Preacher, Larry Weeks, about some stuff the other day. I mentioned that my daughter was going to start the violin and asked if he had any thoughts about someone who had an instrument we could borrow. He said he would look into it. Couple days later another friend of ours comes up with a viola for her. OK it's not a violin but we're pretty pleased and the school has someone to play viola.

One of the readings today talked about faith and that with faith the size of a mustard seed one could command a tree to fly into the ocean and it would obey. Course you want to be careful about asking for things like that cause sometimes that means that the tree isn't the only thing that flys into the sea, see recent conditions in Florida, but I digress. Point is have a little faith and things will turn out alright.

OK so heard a really powerful show from American Radio Works today. It was about the 9/11/2001 attacks and the hearings this past spring. Listen to it on the net well there is a link to it there. Turns out that Public Radio really is worth listening to and supporting.

just added comments let's see if it worked

OK so XP sp2 downloaded the other day. No problems here. It recognized my current firewall, ZoneAlarm, and disabled the windows firewall. It did do some funky stuff with Norton but that was just to say that my av program wasn't working when it clearly is.

I absolutely love the popup blocker in IE that came with it.

I run a pretty stock system with no real twist and turns so your results may differ but SP 2 is working for me.

Of course the pop up blocker just blocked the spell check on this post which made me jump through a few hoops to turn that off. I a tad disappointed in that because I thought that it would work with popups caused by clicking on stuff. Hmm perhaps I spoke to soon.

Still it's not giving me loads of trouble and I know where the switch is to turn the pop up blocker on and off, tools>Popup blocker>Turn on/off, so that's not so bad.

I was just listening to MarketPlace on Maine Public Radio and they were talking about Super Chefs. It seems that when Wolfgang Puck sold his pizza to another company, the quality suffered somewhat. That happens sometimes.

When I was working for LL Bean, there was a legend that Eddie Bauer had written to LL Bean after he had sold out to Spiegel. He warned Bean that if he sold to another company that his vision would be trashed. Seems he was probably right Spiegel filed for bankruptcy in the last few years and Bean is still expanding. That expansion in itself may not be in line with LL's original vision but that's another story.

Anyway I guess the point is that there is a reason people say selling out is a bad thing. On the other hand if someone wanted to use some of my art for some hyper commercial purpose and pay some obscenely large price, I'd totally be down with that.

OK so you need to check out the Paper Napkin Blog.

Paper Napkin is an email service that will send an auto rejection to anyone who sends an email to anyaddress@papernapkin.net. See the website rather than sending an email cause the rejection note is there.

Went to Bob's Discount Furniture the other day. 

It's a pretty neat place.  Besides having lots of comfy furniture, they have a large coy pond at the entrance and what they call the on the house cafe in the back.  Free cookies, coffee, ice cream, pop corn, etc.  They have a video game room and a hd television running movies all day.  Not sure if they'd let me stay and watch the movie while eating their food but I watched the Wizard of OZ for a while.  If I find myself with lot's of time I may just go there and watch a whole movie. 

I mentioned this to a friend and he asked me if the furniture actually was inexpensive and I said I didn't know as I hadn't priced furniture for a long time.  They have 18 locations from Conneticut to Maine so they have some buying power.  Me, I went for the free eats.

Picked up a couple of hitchhikers today.   A young couple somewhere between 16 and 25 years old.   I almost didn't pick em up cause I was just going into town but that turned out to be where they were going too.

I asked them what they did and they said that they road the rails.  All the people that I've talked to that did that stopped as soon as they could because they just didn't like getting beat up.  I mentioned this to them and they said they hadn't had any problems.  I hope they remain lucky.

Anyway I was able to take them where they wanted to go, the South Portland Memorial Branch Library.  They were really grateful and it just made my day. 

Did you know that the South Portland Municipal Golf Course has its own library branch or rather South Portland Memorial Branch Library has its own golf course.  I think that's really neat.

OK so this is kinda cool. 
 
There is an owl, horned?, living on a roof at the corner of state street and cumberland across from the Y and Gateway in Portland, ME

MIFF

That's the Maine International Film Festival.  Went to the Celebration of Maine Film Makers and met some neat people.  Sidesitters was shown.  This time it was in with some stylin flicks.   Bob Barancik showed one of his movies, Blues for Kafka.  It was a nice piece of short film. 
 
There was also chair porn, no people just chairs.  It runs until Sunday and is worth the drive to Waterville.

Happy fourth of july. American indepence day. Woo Hoo!!!



See the fireworks!

Best kept secret in Maine.
Saving money on the turnpike and traveling up the coast.

The Turnpike and 295 have changed. see a pdf from the Maine DOT and an article at the Portland guide at About.com.

The turnpike used to be 95 to 495 to Augusta then back to 95. Well it turns out that it’s now 95 all the way through. With just a little inside knowledge you can save yourself a little cash and continue to travel up the coast on an interstate, rather than head inland some. It’s even a straighter shot to the capital.

You can leave 95 onto 295 into Portland at Exit 45 old Exit 7 for free. From there you can avoid any tolls up to Augusta. You also get closer to the coast.

Did a promo gig for Big Orange Productions at Walmart the other day. I was handing out Cott soda. A good time was had by all. Always good to give away stuff.

Did you know that Walmart has an emergency list of things to do. It's color coded. Both riots and media crisis are coded yellow.

Speaking of giving away free stuff. I just joined Freecycle.org kinda neat place to find a new home for stuff.

First Friday in Portland
at Running with Sizzors

Ah art openings, free food free booze people with a clue. Odd how I seem to like that combination. Running with Sizzors at 34 Portland ST did not disapoint. I came and left early but the beer looked like it would go on all night and the food was more than just cheese and crackers. Hot wings and oranges and apples all sorts of good stuff.

Oh yeah there was art, too. My friend, Daniel Minter, invited me. He is one of the resident artists there and his work amazing. Earthy authentic done with feeling. I like it.

The owners work was interesting she said that she had never painted dancers and yet dance that is an extradinary graceful motion could be seen in all her work. Sorry don't remember her name. But the art, all the art is worth seeing.

Show up, it's worth the time.

June NETpm and summer begins in Portland

So once again Mesda has done it. Along with The Stafford Group they provided a outstanding tech friendly networking opportunity and a chance to eat and drink some fine fare.

The beer and food didn't run out. It wasn't just the standard finger sandwiches. It was spanakopita, nuts and other tasty tidbits.

Charlie Summers showed up as special guest. He's a republican running for congress in Maine's first district against a long time incumbent in a democratic district in a year that had one of the biggest turnouts at a democratic convention. A tough gig no doubt but one that he apparently has done successfully before on a smaller scale.

All in all a rating of 4.2. A diverse selection of food and beer. A group of people with a clue. And some good ideas. What's not to like.

Afterwards, Lee and I went to the Clown. We were a bit late but they let us in. Wasn't that lucky. I was lucky enough to some very nice work and meet the artist June August. Be sure to hit the site and check out the samples of her work in the June show.

The first Thursday of the month is usually a good time.

I just scored 756 in spades

April Fools NetPM

The Mesda folk did again. The NetPM at the Portland Business Center was pretty darn pleasant. The beer didn't run out and the people didn't disappoint. The food was a bit skimpy but what the heck. They got a really neat idea going there and space seems to be running out so check em out fast.

Rating

Overall 4.0 I mean the beer didn't run out and that's gotta be worth something but golly something more than cheese and crackers would be nice.

golly time does fly. Check out efficiencymaine.com a site from the folks at the Maine PUC wanting to help everybody save money and energy. Check out the calculator to see how much you can save by using compact florescent lights. You have to change the values to get it to work which is a bit of a pain but what the heck.

Spring is on it's way in Maine. The other day walking back from Big Sky Bread, no web site yet but I'm working on them when you go in ask if they have a web site, I heard a pigeon and a fly buzzed by my head. I'm taking those as good signs that Winter is almost done.

Course, it's probably just a tease and we're gonna get hit with a massive snow storm in a couple of weeks.

Just read the updated terms of service that come with AIM. Did you know that by using AIM

By posting or submitting content to this site, you:

grant America Online and its affiliates and licensees the right to use, reproduce, display, perform, adapt, modify, distribute, have distributed, and promote the content in any form, anywhere and for any purpose;

that may not be that unusual in free collaborative software but does that mean that anything I use AIM to say to transmit, something like check out this new jpg of the my art, may now be used by AOL?

And they also claim not to be responsible for any of the content on the links they provide. So if the screen saver they are promoting from freeze actually hijacks your start page to freeze.com, see below. It's not their fault that somebody from whom they are accepting money is actually spyware scum.

I guess they gotta make their money somehow. Optimizing graphics so they load faster but look horrible doesn't seem to be working well enough for them.

Eliot Porter at the PMA

Went to the Eliot Porter exhibit at the Portland Museum of Art tonight. Boy talk about something to get your creative juices flowing. It reminded me of why I went into photography in the first place. Go and see it. It is truly amazing.

Went to the ash wedsnesday noon service today at my church, Trinity Episicopal, on Forest Ave. That was kinda cool. Gonna do better for lent this year. Last year pretty much just phoned it in except for the last week. I really like communion. bread, wine, presence of the lord what's not to like.

Now I have a big black cross on my forhead.

I did a stupid thing today. I downloaded a screensaver from freeze.com. Note the lack of link. It immediately hijacked my homepage to freeze.com. I downloaded it from an advertisement on AIM. Man you just can't trust anybody these days. Thank goodness for spybot s&d. Course I did have the don't allow homepage hijacking checked and it happened anyway. So I had to go in an uncheck it to change the homepage back to where I wanted it.

February NetPM

It took place at Troubh, Heisler & Piampiano, P.A., a local law firm. It was a new experience for all. No Beer! Art! The food was pretty good and the mix of folk was superior. OK so the people with a tech clue are good to hang out with, I wouldn't trade em for anything, but there were artist's and business people and people who recognized me because I'm an actor not just a web designer not that there's anything wrong with that.

It was a combination art show and NetPM. The offices are big good looking just what you'd expect for an up and coming law firm. There was talk of them doing it again in an even bigger setting. Look for it. The art was good. The people were interesting.

The Ratings

Food 3.6 OK so it was essentially cheese and crackers and little deserts. Very tasty but something that starts at 5 and ends at 8 really should have something more substantial. And c'mon if you put out a cheese ball put out a knife to cut it with. Maybe some meatballs or chicken strips would make good protein that isn't too messy.

Drinks 4.0 No Beer, But really good wine. Pretty good.

People 5 Lot's of interesting folk. Really pleased that I went.

Venue 4.7 Ample room. Robust art. A professional yet comfortable place.

Overall 4.2 I had a really good time. Missed the beer and protein though.

OK so this is kinda funny. I just dropped my keyboard and it hit the mouse and the you cannot drop an item onto the task bar message came up. Sometimes you just gotta love a good coincidence.