Category: Just Saying …

Returned from a quick trip to California for the anniversary of our son’s death. We left on Monday by car, making the trip from SLC to Sacramento via Interstate 80. Nothing much to report on that drive, the weather was partly cloudy when we started out at 8 am. Highs in the 50-60 range, and a bit of rain west of Lovelock (NV) (a nice cloudburst helped clean all the insects and dirt off of the car). A bit of rain as we exited Truckee (CA) heading over Donner Summit, where the light rain turned to a bit of light/small snowflake, but nothing sticking and no road problems. We rolled into Foresthill (CA) at the home of my cousin Bob and his wife Sue about 630pm. An uneventful trip.

A nice visit with Bob/Sue, along with a home-cooked meal. And the obligitory look at their computer, which needed a bit of fine-tuning. I removed expired anti-virus programs, and installed Microsoft Security Essentials, removed a couple of problematic programs, installed all the MS updates, and did a full Security Essentials scan to run overnight. And a recommendation to add some more memory – the computer is about 5 years old, running XP, and had only 512M RAM.

The next morning, Pam and I drove down to Rocklin to her favorite Waffle House restaurant for breakfast. Then to the local store for some flowers to take to Erica’s (2nd daughter, died shortly after birth) grave in Rocklin, and Jason’s grave site in Newcastle. Had to dodge the sprinklers there, so didn’t stay long.

Then back down the hill a bit on a search for the elusive Golden Grain Marinara Sauce, Pam’s favorite. (On our last trip to CA, we bought 15 jars, and we were running out. It’s not available in Utah.) Much to her dismay, we found out that Golden Grain is no longer making that sauce. 

Back up to Foresthill to grab Bob/Sue to take them out for Chinese food in Auburn (CA). While I am not a big Chinese food fan, it’s one of Pam’s favorites.

On Wednesday, we visited my Aunt June (Bob’s mother) for a bit, showing her some scrapbooks of Jason. She gave us some stories about her mother, and the Baxter (CA) cabin that was built by her father (my grandfather) in the mountains around 1938. There were some good memories to share about the cabin’s early days.

Then we stopped by the Newcastle Cemetery to clean Jason’s grave marker (no sprinklers this time), then back down to Rocklin area for some shopping (mostly at Pam’s favorite scrapbook stores, although one of them had gone out of business). An extended stop at the Barnes/Noble bookstore and a few other places.

Then to Round Table Pizza in Roseville for the main purpose of the trip, a get-together with some friends and family to remember Jason’s death date (or “angel day”). Pizza for all (Round Table is one of our favorite pizza places), some scrapbooks to look at, and a chance to meet with those that we don’t see often now that we are living in Utah.

Thursday was travel day back home. The weather this time was mostly clear and cool, not much traffic, and nothing of significance on the ten hour drive. We got home about 700pm, so were able to relax a bit.

Today was outdoor day – I mowed the lawns (front/back), then washed the exterior windows and hosed off the driveway. Once that was done, I’ve been doing some work on the various web sites. Some work for clients, and some minor enhancements to the CellarWebAds site (a free and easy way to display ads on your web site). There were some new sign-ups for FoodieFeeds (a great place to get your food blog fix), and I looked at some of the food blog sites via FoodieFeeds  (there’s a good one for cinnamon rolls, and how to BBQ a tri-tip).

The weekend arrives. Not that that’s any different for me than any other day. It’s been sort of restful after yesterday.

Wherein I did some minor modifications for CellarWebAds to make it slightly more efficient. And then, since it was nice outside, I grabbed my boots and the weed whacker and cut down some of  the weeds on the empty back lot in the back yard. Cut down about a four-foot wide swath, in which the weeds are growing very nicely. Then some trimming work around the edges of the lawn, and started mowing the front yard. I got the front and sides done by lunchtime, so took a break to wander off to the golden arches (they have my favorite orange drink there).

By the time I made it through the road construction area back to the house, there were some dark clouds to the east that were rumbling a bit. I started on the back yard mowing, and mowed while hearing the rumble of thunder as the storm grew a bit closer. I finished the back yard, and sat on the covered back patio, and about ten minutes after finishing, it started raining with a bit of small hail. I enjoyed watching that for a bit until it started to get a bit too cool.

I also worked on the garden area on Thursday. We went to a local nursery and grabbed some more tomato, cucumber, and strawberry plants (which were cheaper and better than the ones I previously got at the local big-box store). The tomatoes and cucumbers I planted a couple of weeks ago didn’t survive the cold weather; I planted them a bit too soon, and didn’t get the plastic tent over them fast enough. So I removed the dead plants and planted the new ones.

The strawberries I planted a couple of weeks ago were just fine, though, so added nine more plants to that area. Then I fashioned some chicken wire to protect the berries from the local winged marauders. The weather is turning warmer, so I have good hopes for plants that grow.

Today has been sort of low-key. Some more work on CellarWebAds, a minor tweak to FoodieFeeds (a site for food blogs; the recipe for Strawberry Shortcake Cookies looks quite interesting), and some work on a new project.  And a new digital background for this place.

The “Stealth Project” I’ve been working on for a few months is now ready to un-stealth. Presenting “CellarWebAds”, an easy way to display ads on a web site.

I’d been looking for a way to put display ads (graphic images) on a web site without hard coding them, and a way to track the views and clicks for an ad. There’s some free and not-so-free solutions out there, and I tried many of them. But they just didn’t work right for me. They were too complex to run, and hard to integrate in a web site. After spending a bit of time looking at other non-solutions, I decided to write my own. Besides, I wanted to learn more about PHP and MySQL.

So, I’ve been working on CellarWebAds, and it’s ready to be foisted on the world. If you look on the right side of these pages, you’ll see a few ads at the bottom of that right column. Each time you view these pages, a different set of ads will be displayed in a different order. CellarWebAds makes it easy to add display ads to a web site. Only two simple PHP commands are placed on the web page (it even works in a WordPress widget). These commands perform complex functions on a series of database tables that specify the ad to display.

An administration program is used to add the necessary information to the database tables in order to display the ads. As each ad is displayed, a tracking counter table is incremented. And a ‘click’ on the ad increments a clicking counter. Those counters are used, along with a rate table, to create a bill for the advertiser.

I think it is a quite simple way to integrate ads on a web site. You’ll find all the details at the new CellarWebAds.com web site.

The best part of CellarWebAds is that it is free (although we will accept donations). CellarWebAds will work on any web site (even WordPress), and is quite easy to install and implement.

So, that’s the “Stealth Project” I’ve been working on the past few months. The next step is to get CellarWebAds installed on some client web sites (especially the ones that I am part-owner of). And then some nice little unobtrusive ads.

Check out CellarWebAds, and let me know what you think.

Our oldest daughter, Christine, had her birthday today. I am not allowed to tell you the actual number, but the two-digit year of her birth is a natural progression of the month/day of her birth.  She’ll probably mention the nice start to her day on her blog <a href=’http://stickyfingerprints.com’>StickyFingerprints</a>.

Pam and I met for lunch with her three youngest children plus her sister Stacy. Then everyone except me went off shopping for a bit (I lucked out there). I wandered home, and went outside to fix up the plastic covering over the garden area, since the weather dweebs are predicting lows of about 30 tonight. Colder today — some very minor snow flurries in the area, which is normal for this time of year around here.

Other than that, I stayed inside and worked on the Stealth Project’s web pages, along with the two ecommerce sites I am working on.

The next few days will be busy. Tomorrow, I am volunteering some time at the local Deseret Industries (thrift-shop), and then Saturday will be helping out a a fellow church member’s funeral, getting the chair and tables set up.  There will be a large crowd for his services, since he’s lived in this area for his whole life and has a large family.

Much progress on the “Stealth Project”. The programming is done, and the documentation (for those that read it) is completed. The demonstration page is ready. Next step is to finalize the installation package, plus finish up the web site pages.

Did some work on an OSCommerce web site for a client. A bit difficult, as it’s hard to work around the add-ins put in by the previous web guy. OSCommerce can be a bit convoluted in how it is coded, and how you add features to it. A lot of code modifications, and some add-ins are better organized than others. OSCommerce doesn’t seem to be very well maintained, although their web site seems to indicate a newer version is in progress. So anything that is done with the program is a bit difficult. But I am muddling through it.

Another project is adding e-commerce to a partner site. I’ve decided to go with ZenCart, which seems to be built better, and has more of features that are needed for this application. It also looks a bit easier to modify the look-feel of the store. I think that modifying ZenCart will be much easier than OSCommerce.

And I got some outside work done also, so I don’t turn into a pasty-faced geek (any more than I already am). The lawns got mowed on Monday, and I put another round of fertilizer on. (Although, on retrospect, those two things seem at cross-purposes). I also did some more planting in the garden. Grandson Dane (3) helped me plant some pea seeds. I then put a plastic tent over that garden section, since the weather here is turning a bit cold. The tomato plants seem a bit stressed with the cooler weather; it may be that they were planted a bit too soon. The strawberry plants don’t seem to mind the weather; there are a few blossoms on those plants.

A busy next few days: more on the stealth project, client web sites, some volunteer work, and some support for a church member’s funeral on Saturday. In retirement, I am still keeping busy.

Helped out the oldest daughter today by being the designated driver for children to/from school while she helped out a friend by watching their children. Not a big deal, glad to do it. The children are always excited to see me each morning as I take them to school.

An extra treat this evening, as I was able to attend the 2nd-grader’s little concert. There are a lot of 2nd graders at that school – close to 100, I think. They were all very energetic as they sang some western songs. Then it was cookies for all afterwards.

In between the taxi work, some more web coding for minor enhancements to <a href=”http://www.foodiefeeds.com”>FoodieFeeds</a>, and a bit of work on the “Stealth Project”. As part of that, I successfully performed my first three-way left join of the data tables.

All of that while the weather outside was frightful – short bursts of snow interspersed with a little rain, wind, and sunshine. Typical spring weather around here. Everyone thinks that April means Spring, but I recall going to the cabin in the mountains of California one Memorial Day, and leaving early because of a snow storm.

As I told the pizza guy, if it was nice every day, we’d be in Hawaii – where we could complain about the occasional short rain storm in the afternoon.

Storm being imported from the left coast. Requires excess winds. Will turn colder tomorrow, with a bit of snow in the forecast. Just the usual spring storm, nothing to get all excited about.

Had a problem with a tweaked back nerve yesterday. Ice and heat made it tolerable. So I spent most of the day ‘geek potatoing’: in the recliner, heat pad alternated with ice pack, watching TV, and keeping track of things on the Interwebs.

(Sudden thought: someone needs to invent an electric heating and ice pad. Heat alone is not the best for a muscle ache, and ice packs get warm after a while. So there’s a million-dollar idea for you. I expect to see one on the shopping channels soon.)

The back is a bit better today, so was able to go into the “CellarWeb” basement to work on some web programming. One is the “stealth project”, which is entering the documentation phase. And another project is an enhancement to <a href =”http://www.foodiefeeds.com”>FoodieFeeds</a> to make it a bit more efficient in how it gathers data.