MitchRoss.com
Pastor's Husband, Geek Dad

A few months back my wife & I thought it would be fun to go with a group of friends out to Lake Michigan for the weekend. We did some research online, and chose to rent a house right on the coastline of Lake Michigan. It was listed through Shores Vacation Rentals - which is a part of the Shores of South Haven Realty agency.

This was a huge mistake.

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Votes: 17 - Rating: 0.53

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I'm a computer guy. Always have been. I got my first Commodore 64 around the age of 9, and started getting paid to do computer work at 13. Over the years I've worked for a number of companies- some big, some small.

Like most computer guys, I'd done a lot of side work for family, then friends, then friends-of-friends.

Then one day I found myself with a severance package from my last employer, plus a lot of free time. I decided to take the plunge and start my own business- full time. I would be my own boss & the captain of my own ship!

Over the next year, I learned some valuable lessons.

1) People didn't hire me for my technical knowledge.
My clients didn't care how uber l33t my skillz were. They didn't care if I had a degree. They didn't care if I could whistle a connection tone to a 9600 baud modem.

There were small-time competitors of mine that had vastly less technical knowledge than I did, and they were making a killing. Why? well....

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Votes: 21 - Rating: 1.14

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We had a Traveling Consultant Guy (TCG) at work. He's from Goergia, and is working in Michigan for a few days. Quotes below are from him, me, and a random Co-Worker (CW). All quote below are out of context.

TCG: Hey, you're right! This resteraunt does look like like a house!
CW : That's beacause it is. The resteraunt's behind you.

TCG: I asked the resteraunt how much bacon they go through. They said they cook 45 lbs every week.
Me : Wow, what does 45 lbs of cooked bacon look like?
TCG: It looks like heaven, son. It looks like heaven.

TCG: What's the Michigan Malitia?
Me : Well, it's... it's people who hate the government with guns.
TCG: Oh, in Georgea we call them "people".

TCG: I don't have the patience to make mead. It takes litterally 2 years. I want to get drunk now.

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A while back I rented a storage unit. There's tons of these places around, so one is as good an another, right? I stored some stuff there. Time went by. I paid on time. Every now and then, I would go to the unit and slowly move stuff back out.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, one day I dropped by with my truck & trailer, ready to do a major move out from my storage unit.

I pull up to my unit, and... that's odd, that's not my lock. I tried the key anyway, just for kicks. Obviously it didn't work.

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Votes: 22 - Rating: 1.68

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Recently my employer had an on-line "health & wellness" program, which included a form where you fill out stats about yourself, and it gives back a proposed diet & exercise plan. I entered my stats. Height, weight, gender, yadda, yadda.

According to the first steps of their analysis, they said that I was moderately active and slightly underweight. That's not news to me - I've never in my life weighed over 145 lbs.

I went through the rest of the on-line process, and it had a plan all laid out for me. The web site was going to change my lifestyle for the better. Change my diet this way, exercise that amount, and after 12 months I should reach my goal of losing 18 pounds.

Wait a minute - I'm underweight, and they want me to lose 18 pounds?!?

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I've got an old shareware DOS utility called STREE that's still floating around the Internet, and it occurred to me that there's no official site to support it.

It's a program to calculate the total size of files, by directory, for your whole drive. At the time it was something that was very difficult to do, and I could only find 1 other program that even came close to the functionality I wanted.

Well, the years passed, and I never did port it to Windows. There are now a lot of very good utilities out there that do a better job.

My last release was in June of 2000 - and shortly later I released the whole thing (with Turbo Pascal source code) into the public domain.

In the interest of allowing anyone who might still be interested in STREE, I've got links to the last released version with source below.

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Votes: 20 - Rating: 0.25

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Do me a quick favor, if you would.

Over on the right side, see that "Top Rated" list of posts? Some of those were posts that I thought were under-appreciated, so I gave them a single vote of "10". My thinking was that the next person to come along would vote them down to a more realistic rating. I know not all of those "10" posts I made deserve a "10" status.

Having said that, I see that several people have been rating posts out there as 10's - thanks for vote of confidence!

Here's what I'm looking for. Check out some of those best posts, and rate them with what you really think the quality is. I want the real best to float to the top- not just the ones I liked. Some readers have been entering ratings - thank you! Keep going! But for those of you who haven't yet....

Please, tell me I'm lame. Vote up the good stuff, and down the lame stuff.

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Votes: 18 - Rating: 0.56

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Time for Topic #2: Getting traffic, measuring traffic.

I've tried a lot of different ways to get more traffic. Here's what worked for me, and what didn't.

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Votes: 19 - Rating: 0.53

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