Officially Moved

Pam and I went to the Utah DMV yesterday to get our Utah drivers licenses. We had all the required identification (old drivers license, social security card, a bill with our new address, and a DNA sample) that is needed due to the new federal "Real-ID" requirements. Since those new rules do not allow mail-in renewals, there's more people than usual at the DMV.

Our wait was only about 2 hours. We both had to take an open-book written test. I missed 2 questions, Pam missed a couple more than that. But we both passed, paid the fee, got our picture taken, and left with a temporary Utah drivers license.

This morning started out with a bit of snow, but my clever and diabolical plan of procrastination worked, as the 1"+ of snow all melted off the driveway by about lunchtime.

Still working on the 'sub-stealth' project for the FoodieFeeds site. Making some good progress. Some of the new FoodieFeed sites have interesting tips about food (in particular, BBQ), so am also enjoying visits to those sites.

Stealth Project Turns to FoodieFeeds

The 'stealth' project has gone public. Actually, the site went live last weekend.

The site is a Food Blog aggregator, called "FoodieFeeds" (http://www.foodiefeeds.com ). It's a joint project between me (the web programmer) and Larry Gaian, an old friend who runs several BBQ-related web sites (the main one is 'The BBQ Grail' at http://thebbqgrail.com . We've worked together on several BBQ-related web sites.

The site is a way to a centralized site of the latest entries from participating Food Blogs. It uses a customized process and databases to build the page. It works pretty well, although sites with Atom RSS feeds are sometimes harder to get the information from. Still working on that problem.

Also working on another stealth project related to FoodieFeeds.

In the meantime, the job search is in progress, but not much action lately. So I keep busy in the basement by working on web site programming. My PHP and MySQL skills are getting better each day.

Stealthy Work

I've been working on the new web site. Almost ready for prime time; perhaps by Monday. It's been keeping me busy; I am much less of a TV couch potato now.

No significant progress on the job front on my end. Pam did accept a position as the bookkeeper/accountant for a firm in Midvale. It's about the same commute as we had in CA. She will start next Monday.

That means that I'll be doing a bit more of the cleanup around the house. Perhaps even cooking dinners. I've had some practice, though. It was a year ago that Pam broke her wrist and elbow (different arms), so she was pretty much chair-bound for several weeks. I did all the laundry, cleaning (most of it), and soda-fetching. I figure I can handle it again.

And it will get me up earlier so I can take the grandkids to school each morning. The web projects will keep my day filled. And I've got to re-design this blog, since Blogger is taking away FTP transfer. Looks like another WordPress site will be happening soon.

Stealth Project, Jobs and More

I've been working on a new web site project. It is still in "stealth mode", so can't give too many details. But it's heavy in PHP and MySQL, and will include page view tracking and ad placement/tracking.

The ad tracking part will be built from scratch. I've looked at a couple of open-source ad management systems, but didn't find any I liked. So, I'm making my own.

The project helps keep me busy during the day (and sometimes in the evening). The job hunt still progresses; had a good interview today with a big-time recruiting company. That went well; we shall see.

As for this place: it's run by Blogger software, with data transferred via FTP to my domain host. Got a notice from the Blogger folks yesterday that they will not be supporting FTP posting of posts. So now I need to figure out what to do.

I am leaning towards a WordPress-based site, since I've been working with that for the last 4-5 months, and have gotten fairly good at it, if I do say so myself. It's another project, though, and I hadn't planned on it. I need to get that other project finished and running first.

So, we'll see what happens. Finish the 'stealth project', move this blog to a new front end, and still look for a job. That should keep me out of trouble.