Day In The Life of Baz

Since I’ve confirmed my new job, it’s time to look for a new apartment. Since I don’t know anyone who lives down in Plano I have to do my searching online. When Lava got her first apartment in Fort Worth we were totally blind. We just went down to the stress where she works, then just started driving around. We ended up at a few places that weren’t too bad, but they were totally out of our price range. We went to one place and got one of those Apartment Locator brochures. That was a Godsend. We simply called up the lady on the number gave her our prefarably address and our price range and in about 20 minutes she called us back with a list. We knocked out a few based on price, a few more based on distance, and actually went to see three and then we made a decision.

Thinking back now, especially after the experience I’m about to describe, we were crazy. I decided to do a lil’ bit of the same. I looked up a few locators gave them my price range and the exact location of my job and waited. I was very disappointed with the results though. I got listings that were over 15 miles away and a lot even above my price range.

So I decided to go with old faithful and go online. I hit Rent.com, put in my address and did a search. This is when I realized that the combination of Plano and my price range didn’t really go together. I upped it by $50.00 printed out a list and went a hunting. I got down there today and went straight to the first place on my list. The list was rather short. Plan B was to do what we did for Lava, and just drive around, yeah right. Plan A backfired badly. Currently, the complex I live in is regarded as cost effective or a pile of crap, or at least that’s what everybody else says. I don’t really have a problem with it, except that the maintenance guys take their precious time and never come to fix stuff when I call. Apart from that I’m fine with it. So, since this is all I know, this has been my benchmark for what I’ve been searching for. I figure I can’t do any worse than what I’ve been living in for the past three years.

Popularity: 7%

Download of the Day: CamStudio (Windows) - Lifehacker

Download of the Day: CamStudio (Windows)
AdblockWindows only: Can’t bear to explain to Dad again how a bookmarklet works? Record a short video demonstration using screen recording software CamStudio.

This is a very interesting program which I have actually used. It basically records screen action as they are being performed. You can record an AVI which you can converto to a Flash file as needed and of course these files are emailable.

See where I’m going with this? For those of us who have explained to parents and even to clients how to perform certain actions over and over and over again, we now have a way out. This might even work with Jim.

Popularity: 10%

AVING USA - Global News Network

Laser mouse working on the glass panel
[AVING-KOREA] <Visual News> Royche, Korean retailer of A4Tech, is introducing ‘Glaser Mouse X6-79D’ in Korea market. As the name indicates, this laser mouse can work on the glass panel. Unlike regular optical mouse with radiant red light, this laser mouse offers improved tracking with high resolution.

I think we need some of these in the computer labs at school. A couple years ago we got these nice shiny new desks. They look really cool and everything but with one problem: they are too shiny for the optical mice we have right now. I have a new ritual every time I walk into a computer lab: I walk over to the printer and search for a discarded sheet of paper that I can use as a mousepad. You may ask why not just use the mousepads we already have? Well they are too shiny also.

Hey, what are you going to do?

Popularity: 8%

In the world of web design you often come across people who don’t exactly know what they want. And that is usually a good thing for you because you can then charge them for the minimum and increase based on “added features”, which they should have seen up front, but they don’t always. This has the slight problem of having a contract with an indefinite time period.

A time period is usually scheduled for delivery of the product in the contract. This ensures the buyer that the product will be delivered in a reasonable time frame so that you don’t keep extending the job for not real reason. One thing I’ve learnt, however, is that you need to also specify a time frame that the user has to review the work and ensure that everything is to his liking. You absolutely need this if you’re not charging by the hour.
This is the problem I ran into a couple weeks ago and I’m still trying to get out of. I did a website for this guy a couple months ago. We agreed on a fixed price because it was supposed to be an easy enough job: a nice static layout, not much PHP, a Gallery, etc. A prototype was done in about three days. He was amazed by the quality of the website and had nothing but praise. Everything is good right? Wrong. He now had to burden of supplying content for the website. To make a long story slightly less long, this took a couple of months, and he only supplied pictures for the gallery and content for one of the six pages (not the home page). Now you may be thinking what does that have to do with me if the guy’s website
is empty, he paid for a design and that’s what he got right? Well I would agree with you there, but the problem was he had not yet paid the balance on his bill.

Popularity: 10%

Phew,

I was really getting a little bit worried here, but EggDisk is back up.

Popularity: 7%