Entries from January 2006 ↓

Here’s the latest on Knight Ridder. A 20% improvement in EBITDA? First reaction: Ouch. Second reaction: Gimme a break.

my birthday…I had a fantastic time with Shannon and the kids. I got stuck into writing a fun article on our blog that Shannon edited for me later on while I was at work. After some trepidation on the topic I took off and pecked out a good post in short order.  From there we managed to get out of the house and go down to Okeeheelee Park for a little adventure.

We rented a canoe, threw John and Julia in the middle and paddled all over the place for an hour. Julia was a little uncertain about the boat but she didn’t complain. John was right into it after just a couple of minutes. He called the buoy’s what sounded like bootie, which gave us quite the chuckle.  After that we were inspired to make an impromptu run down to the Publix to get some supplies for a quick Bar-b-q. We got back to the park and grilled up some chicken and burgers and downed a couple of Peroni’s – much to our delight. The kids had a blast feeding the seagulls and we all felt so glad to have spent such a nice time together.  Today was the kind of day you fantasize about all the time when the mood is high, the company is great, the sun is warm and your belly full. Cheers!

Good God I’m old (as of 63 minutes ago at least). Oh well, like a guy told me tonight after I said something about getting older, “It’s better than the alternative.” He has a fine point.

So, THANK YOU for this gift of life, Shannon, my kids and family and the noggin between my ears and this vessel that I’m occupying at present to shuttle me from place to place. I’ve led a fortunate 37 years and I’m deeply thankful for what I have been given.

Humbly

Julian

a Brit company is now enabling live searches of a users mobile phone via the built in GPS features.  The service, called World-Tracker is scary but also interesting.  Seems like all you need to do is send the phone a text message and have the person reply and then you have them in your location spy tool.  I have a feeling this won’t make it in the U.S.

The site features companies who are utilizing the product to track their fleets, something that I understand larger companies have already been doing for a while here and overseas.  Of course, this would enable companies with outside sales people or any company with outside reps to see where they are.  I sure wouldn’t want my company knowing where I was at anytime. Shudder.
Here’s a link to the story.

Today our Florida Family will celebrate my upcoming Monday birthday and much more importantly, Kristen’s send off to Zambia, where she will spend two years as a Peace Corp volunteer. I hope she has a great experience like my Uncle Ron did when he went as a young man. Shannon and I used to work with a nice guy in Miami, Jacques Hart, who really enjoyed his time in the Corp in South America. Kristen wrote a beautiful poem on her blog the other day that was very touching. Great, inspired piece from a talented writer. I hope that Zambia isn’t too much. I am sure that it will be shocking to her to be in a true third-world environment for the first time. For this to be her first trip overseas will certainly set the tone for future travel and adventures. If she hangs in for her two year tour I have no doubt that she will be an even better person for it and hopefully leave the last of her doubts about herself behind! I know they will be impressed with Kristen’s intellect, intensity, drive, desire to contribute and have fun and her ability to analyze people and situations. Best of luck Kristen, we send you off with love and god speed.

Five years ago I met Shannon Marie Seery. Life since that time has been adventure, risk, reward, failure and never ending love. Despite how hard it has been to have step families and move across the country (for both of us) I do believe we’ve all done our very best and have been so very fortunate despite the setbacks.

We celebrated on Tuesday the 17th of January by going to Gaucho Rodizio in Lighthouse Point that Jenna got us a gift certificate too. We didn’t notice the infinity like shape in their logo until we arrived. It was a Brazilian steakhouse – the kind where they bring around spits of meat and they slice a piece off at your table. You have a disc on your table that you turn to green for more service and flip over to red when you need to take a break. We had such a nice time sharing our meal together and talking about the last five years. We spoke of our gains and losses but it was all fondness and love that we felt. We have come through the other side – we have worked for it but we knew it was worth it. We have two beautiful children, a business that I believe is set to take off this year and most importantly our health and happiness and love.

I would love to see us spend some time like we did towards the beginning of our relationship where we spent more time in hotels, bars, hanging out and otherwise ignoring the world. That was good – very good and I believe, repeatable.I love you Shannon. I know this little comment isn’t reflective of the depth of feelings I have for you, but it is a testament none the less.

We were so happy to see our check come up 8′s and 13′s when we finished our wonderful meal. The time on the ticker read 8:08PM and the total was $113.58!.

You are a beautiful, intelligent and kind hearted women with an amazing ability to make me feel more happiness than I have ever felt before. You are a great drunk, you’re great sober, you’re great mad and happy and excited, you taught me to love roller coasters and to let the house be dirty in favor of experiencing people and places. You are grounded but don’t lack the ability to dream and despite that you are no where near as crazy as I am you never judge me harshly for it. Thanks for an amazing five years and I do pray that there will be so many more adventures of Shannon and Julian, side by side, riding off in to the sunset with kids in tow, roadies in the console, our sticks in the back of the truck and the warm sun whipping the hair around our panoramic grins.

I’ve just finished mucking about installing an open source ad server called phpAdsNew. Within an hour I had the application set up on my host and connected to my database and ready to serve ads. It took a little poking around the documentation to get my first ad to serve but a little patience was all it took. It’s funny to have led teams of people and vendors through three different major ad server migrations over the course of months and to now essentially mimic the core process in 60 minutes.

As for the ad server it certainly appears capable, nothing that you would confuse with a full featured paid system but more than adequate for running sponsorship ads on our company blog.

I REALLY like that you can set ad text in the ad server application (this is the text that reads ‘Julians.name Sponsor’ right below the ad. In my experience with enterprise ad servers this wasn’t an option – you could code it in to your ad tags but that increased file size so we avoided it (performance and cost issues). Many content management systems address this but it’s much easier to populate it in the ad server since customizing the message is useful.
My only complaint is that the UI for the software seems to hiccup on the Mac. I’m surprised by this since the app is supposed to be stable in Mozilla and I rarely see differences between FireFox on the PC and Mac platform.

For now, you can see my live test on the bottom right of my sidebar of Julians.name where I have an MMC ad running (and IAB standard 125X125 that I ripped off CNET). Go ahead, click on that ad. The company will no doubt take the free traffic. I think I need to change the sponsor text to read “Looky Looky!”

I was at John Prince Park in Lake Worth last week with John and Julia when a water truck went by with the words ‘NON POTABLE WATER’ written on the side. In many ways this warning on the water truck reminded me of Web 2.0. Surely I jest. No, not at all. Web 2.0 is one of those annoying, insider terms used by geeks inside the Valley and other points similar to describe the next round of web tools, services and products. I don’t think Web 2.0 says that very well and because it has such range people get confused as to what ‘it’ is. So, I thought this list might help.

Go ahead, TKO yourself on this 2.0 list.

The latest news is that CNN is getting in to the action with their own venture.

In Dad’s recent correspondence he has mentioned being glued to the Tellie watching the Cricket tests from Australia. Today, when I picked up the Palm Beach Post there was a feature on local Cricket clubs here in South Florida – which are apparently very popular and numerous. The best one happens to be right here in West Palm Beach, called the Atlantic Cricket Club (note that their site seems to be down at present). The Florida League page is here. They have a former pro bowler from Jamaica, Glen Anglin, who is my age.

Reading the article made me want to get out and play. Sounds like they value commitment to the game, over skills, so you never know, I might be able to make the team if I tried out. On the other hand when you have a former pro playing on your team and you’re also the #1 team in South Florida it would seem my chances would be slimmer. Cricket is as much a social and strategic game as it is athletic and it’s a game that really tests your nerves and focus since it is played over a long time period. I was never a good bowler when I played as a kid in Australia (though no worse than most of the neighborhood drongos I played with). I was a decent batter however, and a good wicket keeper and slip. Defense is a critical and very large part of cricket so being good at those positions, rather than a more visible bowler, is a good thing.