Joe and Jamie's Blog

Jamie and I quit as of today.
[claps, applause, cheering, other supportive noise]

Sunday night was our last one, sometime around 6:00 pm or so. No this wasn’t a mother’s day gift, we decided awhile ago that the weekend that school ended we would stop. I am stopping mostly for the wrong reason, but hey the important thing is that I am stopping. I basically can’t afford the $150 a month per person. Yup that’s right $300+ a month down the drain, well more like down my lungs. With the recent gas prices it’s just stupid to continue on such an expensive habit. Also come June 3rd, New York State is increasing the cigarette tax $1.25, bringing it to $2.75 of tax per pack. Right now I pay on average $5 a pack depending on where I get them. That extra $1.25 (if it isn’t more at the store level) is an extra $75 I would have to shell out each month for the both of us. Let’s put this in perspective again. $375….that’s my car payment!! I could pay it off twice as fast when I quit if I wanted. See more here on the cigarette tax increase for New York State.

I’ve quit before cold-turkey so it won’t be an issue for me, but Jamie may need some assistance breaking the urges. I won’t ever pick it back up as long as Jamie doesn’t go back to smoking like last time we attempted to quit. She kept sneaking them in there claiming she had to cut down first (which I will admit she did, but still).

I came across the NextGEN Workpress Plugin tonight. I was looking for something to do a nice gallery or slide show for pictures on the blog. The plugin can be found here. So far I am having an issue getting the thumbnail pagination to work, but if I leave it showing all the images in the post you can click on it and the pagination works for the full image size. It’s pretty cool. To see what it can do/looks like, go to the link above and click on FAQ.

These are some of the features:

• Sortable Albums : Create your own sets of images
• Upload a Zip-File with pictures : Upload pictures in a zip-file (Not in Safe-mode)
• Watermark function : You can add a watermark image or text
• JavaScript Effect : Use any available popular image effect : Thickbox, Lightbox or Highslide
• Multiple CSS Stylesheet : Use a nice shadow effect for your thumbnails with your own CSS file
• Slideshow : Full integrated flash slideshow
• TinyMCE : Button integration for easy adding the gallery tags
• Sidebar Widget : Show a slideshow, random or recent picture at your sidebar
• Language support : Translated in more than 15 languages
• Upload tab integration : You have access to all pictures via the upload tab
• Tag support for images : Append related images to your post
• Meta data support : Import EXIF, IPTC or XMP meta data
• Sort images feature

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there. Today we planted some new annuals outside to spruce up the backyard for spring. It’s what we do every year for mother’s day weekend, it’s what my mother considers her present. I have some pictures below of all the nice flowers.

On top of that, Jamie and I painted some more in the attic (finally did more with that project) and also my father and I ran the electric from the basement to the attic so we could splice in the line up there and add a second breaker. We first had to drill the hole between the walls and get it downstairs, following a CAT-5e wire we ran a few years ago as a guide. We miscalculated the first hole by half and inch and put a hole in the corner of my sister’s ceiling, but we patched that with some Plaster of Paris and re-painted it.

We used Romex SimPull 600VA wire to a 20 amp breaker, pretty standard for a bedroom load. Apparently the idiots that wired this house put 1/2 of two rooms on the second floor and the entire third floor all on the same circuit breaker. You’re talking 3 air conditioners over 5,00 BTU’s, 2 TV’s 3 computers/laptops, clocks, lamps, monitors, laser printers, etc, etc all on the same breaker. PRETTY darn silly, but not our fault. We discovered this last summer when my sister got her air conditioner. She never had one before so once she had hers on, plus the addition of my laser printer and it’s spooling, the breaker tripped whenever you tried to print a page. We had to remember to turn off the lights or the a/c before printing. But this is all rectified now. Oh and while we were at it we pulled a backup CAT-5e line just in case I ever need it if I remodel the house network or put some storage servers in the basement.

I decided to come up with a name to place all the sites under. If I ever start to make some profit off of these websites I will actually register the company, but for now it’s fun to just pretend I am one. I’ll eventually get my butt down to the proper place to officially make it a registered business.

I started to create a simple site to just put links to all my other sites on as well as explain a bit about the company and why I started all this, as well as some contact info. I need a good logo made, but I don’t want to ask Jay because he will probably charge me $100 a pixel, and that’s the friend price! =P

www.hanniganwebcompany.com

Today I took my last final of this semester. I am glad it’s finally over and I can get back to my normal life and have time to myself. No more bull crap essays and assignments where I learn nothing until the end of August.

Since I am going for two degrees I have to take two more bogus classes in Science and what they call a transfer class. To take the easy road out, I took intro to Chemistry which I already took in 9th grade and passed with flying colors, and for the transfer class I chose General Algebra. Yes, read it again algebra. Not advanced but regular old x+2=4 what is x? kind of stuff. I can’t believe it’s a college level class. How can you get to college and not know algebra??? Not to show off but I was doing calculus in 11th grade and was doing pre-algebra in 4th grade. I can’t wait to see how dumb everyone else in class is, it’s my only enjoyment out of taking bull crap classes.

I am highly considering changing the name of the blog to Joe blog…..Jamie NEVER posts. She says she doesn’t have the time, but I think she needs motivation and all of you wonderful bloggers to tell her how much fun it is. She doesn’t know what she is missing.

I had some free time really late last night while Jamie was studying. Rather than surfing the web or watching boring TV I decided to deploy five more sites.

I finished my series of what I call “everything” markets where you can search and buy everything and anything. Pretty soon I will start the more direct sites, like pets or sports, but that takes more time with filtering the categories correctly.

Check them out and support some good sites.

Hover over the links to see a site preview, courtesy of the Snapr Wordpress Plugin.

www.Bargain-Market.US

www.Overstock-Market.US

www.Sale-Market.US

www.Web-Market.US

www.Your-Market.US

and of course the first one, www.My-Market.US

The sites were just created, so any comments on things I should change at this point will help!

Yet again, another crappy weekend. My uncle died early this week, leaving this weekend full of trips to Brooklyn and out to Long Island for the burial. It’s sad to see him go, especially at a young age of 59. What’s even worse is that his daughter (my cousin) had her first baby just 2 days before he died. He was so sedated with medication that he never even got to see her. Such a shame and it really hits you hard when you think about it.

He was buried in Calverton National Cemetery in Long Island which is a Military cemetery. My uncle Jamie served in the Air Force when he was young, 1968-74. He officially died on April 23rd, 2008. Ironically, it was just 3 days after my grandmother’s 1 year anniversary of her death (she died 4/20/2007), so of course my entire family was already distraught. I will say that the funeral was very nice. He was given a military funeral (not the whole 21 gun salute deal, but still a funeral conducted by the military). It is amazing the detail and precision they put into everything they do. When they folded the flag that laid on his casket there wasn’t a single crease it in. The guy had proper snappy arm movements and a certain specific way he had to hold and present the flag for approval to the higher ranking person there. It was just amazing to see it in action, plus the respect and dignity for someone who served 30+ years ago and didn’t die in active duty.

Rest in piece Uncle Jamie, we will miss you.

Enough of the sad stuff, time to go eat some pasta, write a report that was due today (oopsi) and upgrade this blog to Wordpress 2.5.1 Gee, I wonder what hour of the morning I will be up to tonight….