Chad Skeeters

Northwoods Ice

2008-12-16T17:43:00.003-06:00

As part of my 30th Birthday Party I rented the an ice skating rink for an hour at Northwoods Ice. I confirmed by phone the date and time with David Ramsey the manager at that time and then went in to pay a few days later.

Upon arriving David told me that he had accidentally scheduled me for the wrong day and that the day that I wanted was already booked. I was disappointed, but understood that mistakes happen.

While I was there I told David that I wanted to bring in a laptop and play music that we could skate to. I also specifically asked if we could pump up the volume because I remember the fun days as a child having roller-skating parties with fun DJ'ed music.

When the time rolled around, I brought my laptop and one of the young workers there tried to assist me in setting up the system. Neither of us could get the system to work. After I had spent about 15 minutes of my hour goofing with the system the assistant came up to me and said that one of the other workers told her that the system hadn't worked for a few months and that they didn't tell her about that because they wanted to see if she could get it working.

So... we finished our skating and games in dead silence. I still had fun, but was disappointed.

Upon complaining to David and asking for a small refund in the amount of *his* choosing, I was dismissed. He informed me that the sound works on both rinks and that the music working is not part of what I rented even though we had a verbal agreement. It would have been nice if he had told me that he would ask his staff about the problem or that he would make sure that his staff was properly trained so that this wouldn't happen again.

I just wanted to skate to music and renting the rink wasn't cheap. It's frustrating to me that people have so little common sense and business sense when it comes to dealing with people. I understand that I signed a contract and I'm sure legally I have no recourse, but that doesn't mean that its in their company's best interest for their customers to walk away with a negative impression.

Atlanta Trip

2008-07-15T10:30:00.004-05:00

I went to Atlanta to meet with the owners of Geo Product Solutions and they let me stay over an extra day to check out Atlanta. I made a video of my trip and used the theme of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou given the awesome aquarium there.

This is a beefy video, if your internet connection can't handle it, you can try the lower bandwidth version I posted on youtube.

Shiner B.A.S.H 2007

2007-01-26T23:06:00.000-06:00

I did it. I signed up with Team in Training to cycle from San Antonio to Shiner, TX. It's called the Shiner B.A.S.H. It's about a 90 mi ride which is why training begins next week if I'm to be ready for the ride in May.

Team in Training provides coaches and extra vehicle support during the ride in return for raising funds for cancer. I probably don't give enough anyways, so I signed up knowing that I would get coaching and encouragement for an amount I was willing to give anyways. However, if you would like to donate to blood cancer research and relief, you're more than welcome. Team in Training must give 75% of what's raised, but I'll contribute at least 25% of what's donated so that 100% of your donated dollars goes to the cause.

Donate Now

Personal Finance / QIF / Scottrade Rant

2006-11-29T17:55:00.000-06:00

I signed up with Scottrade months ago. Now that I have several accounts (bank/401k/trading), I figured it was time to setup a money manager like Quicken or MS Money. I'm running a trial edition of MoneyDance because it's pure java, cheap, and has the features I need.

Anyways to set fidelity NetBenefits, my 401k provider, I had to download the qif files and import them. The file is text based that lists transactions broken into action, amount, security(text only no description), ... Unfortunately, the Buy action "NBuy" assumes that you are taking money from the account and buying shares, but since there is no money balance in my 401k, the correct action should be ShrsIn or BuyXfr. ShrsIn worked for me so I just replaced all and it's relatively accurate. The other trick is to input the ticker symbols into the securities that are created so that the yahoo stock price plug-in can update the value of the holdings. This must be done from Tools edit securities in MoneyDance.

Scottrade on the other hand is designed to fund and buy from the funds you've deposited. They have two history files, one for financial changes and one for trading changes. After importing both into my account, it was perfect except for $150. After looking through the data I guessed that a redemption fee was charged that accounted for the difference. After talking to the representatives at Scottrade a fee was applied but no transaction was logged for that fee.

I'm a realist so I figured that these types of accounting errors are going to happen so my main intent in talking to them was to alert them that not logging a transaction in that case was likely a programming mistake and to make them aware that it was important to their customers. Their response was unfortunately that redemption fees "don't work that way" and therefore will not be included in the log. Furthermore I should be aware of the fees and adjust my program manually. I told her that I thought it didn't make sense to provide a list of transactions if some are omitted. She agreed in general, but gave no indication that the issue would be given any further attention.

It's not worth the fees for me to switch brokers, but I would definitely prefer my financial institutions to accurately report the history of the account. I don't know if other brokers have similar problems or not, but in case anyone is considering scottrade, they should know about this deficiency.

In summary, I was able to get a lot of this setup because of my technical know-how. In general I think it's a shame that this isn't all worked out by now. I think the main issues are a lack of a well defined public standard and poor implementations. It's almost not worth having it setup because you have to double check the numbers against the website anyway.

My first road bicycle

2006-07-02T11:37:00.000-05:00

Well, it's done. I bought my first road bicycle. It's a 2006 Fuji Roubaix Pro.

I may not get it for a month since I'm trying to make it to Kansas for a while. I bought it from a very small shop near rudy's on I-10 called Joe's Pro Bikes. Joe is the only one that works there which makes it nice because I can always deal with Joe. Joe has a ton of riding experience and is very vocal about what he thinks you need and don't need.

I probably am just going to ride for recreation, but I like going fast and want to see improvement in my abilities.

Beach To Bay

2006-05-22T11:25:00.000-05:00

Just ran beach to bay this weekend. I enjoyed it a lot. There were between 6 and 7 thousand people that participated. It is a relay marathon with six legs. I ran leg 5 (the shortest one which was 4 mi) in 45 minutes. I'm pretty happy with that result since I'm not a distance runner and didn't train that hard. Actually I only ran once and I'm not sure how far. Anyway it was a lot of fun hanging out with friends on the beach. We got in some great sand volleyball. Our team (ROAMINS 5:8) finished in 687th place according to the results.

Financial Sites

2006-04-06T21:24:00.000-05:00

Get Rich:I will teach you to be rich.

Get Poor:Give Us All Your Money.

Any more, please share in the comments.

USB Autorun.inf

2006-04-06T15:54:00.000-05:00

I've had some issues in getting my USB key to automatically run programs when it started. Once I put Autorun.inf in the root of the USB drive Windows XP would recognize it but ask me what I wanted to do instead of running what I had for open in the [autorun] section. After hunting around on the net and a little trial and error I settled on this.

I want to have pageant and KeePass loaded off of the drive, but if I've removed the drive and the programs are still running, I don't want to re-run them anyway. In stead I just click on startup.bat which I created that starts both programs.

I found that using shell would this allows me to selectively run one program that's on my drive by right clicking on the drive in My Computer. Here is my Autorun.inf


[autorun]
open=
shell\KeePass\command=programs\KeePass\KeePass.exe
shell\KeePass=KeePass
shell\putty\command=programs\putty\putty.exe
shell\putty=Putty
shell\tw\command=programs\ShellRun.exe tiddlywiki\index.htm Running TiddlyWiki
shell\tw=TiddlyWiki
shell\pageant\command=programs\putty\pageant.exe \rsa\putty.PPK
shell\tw=pageant

here is my startup.bat file


start \programs\KeePass\KeePass.exe
start \programs\putty\pageant.exe \putty.PPK

Utilities - KeePass/Tiddly

2006-04-06T15:38:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to mention that I've found two other utilities that I like enough to use.

The first on is KeePass. It allows you save your usernames and passwords in an encrypted database. The program is small and can be run off of a usb key. You can save what the window title is that needs a particular password and if you have it running it will automatically enter in the username and password with any combination of tabs, spaces, enters and static text; just by hitting CTRL+ALT+A. If the title of the window isn't specific enough, you need to maximize the program from the systray and select the account and click CTRL+V which will type the login and password.

The second utility is called tiddly. It's a wiki that doesn't require a server. You just need you allow ActiveX in FireFox or IE and it will resave itself. That's right all of the code is in one html file and each wiki "page" (tiddler) is just a div in that file. It doesn't save versions of each page, but it keeps track of the date each tiddler is added. Each tiddler consists of a title, the body and a del.icio.us style tagging field. You can then open all of the tiddlers that contain a particular tag. This would be a good idea for mainstream wikis! Plus you can edit a tiddler with a quick double click on the text. Saving is just as easy with CTRL+ENTER.

Media Monkey / Picard / AllOfMp3

2006-03-28T16:12:00.000-06:00

Just thought I'd share that I've finally replaced Winamp. I'm now using MediaMonkey as my primary mp3 music organizer.

I'm also using Picard to tag music which I have quite a bit of now. It writes ID3 tags and renames files based on the MusicBrainz database. See my tutorial/walk-through.

That tutorial was created with wink.

I also found AllOfMp3. You can buy a song for a dime or an album for a dollar and you can choose ogg/mp3 and the bit-rate. It's legal technically, but I'm sure no money goes to the artists. I'll still be using iTunes for supporting artists, but I don't have an issue downloading music that's not available on iTunes or I just want to give a friend a link to an album where he can download it and check it out before he buys.

Screencasting

2006-03-18T16:32:00.000-06:00

If don't know what Screencasting is, you need to read about it.

There is a free program called wink that is very cool. If you compare that with $450+ for Captivate, you'll agree that this is the way to go.

Interesting google statistics.

2005-12-22T12:41:00.000-06:00

Google's Zeitgeist

Finally a bnode with a URI

2005-12-22T12:39:00.000-06:00

What a great slogan.

Benjamin Nowack's blog

Tap Tap... 2

2005-12-10T10:29:00.000-06:00

Google Base

2005-12-07T09:19:00.000-06:00

Google Base is basically a big database available to everyone to add and search data. I suspect that it is powered by their BigTables program that sounds very cool. You can use it to sell your car or keep track of you pets medical records.

These guys have written a program to find FOAF data and put it into google base. Here are some examples.

My real FOAF file:
http://goobsoft.homeip.net/chad/chad.rdf

My google base FOAF info:
Chad Skeeters

With Location to google maps
Leigh Dodds

Personally I think the information is more useful in actual RDF form, but for searching and indexing, nothing can match google's performance.

Renting vs. Buying

2005-12-05T22:58:00.000-06:00

Have you ever been told that you're throwing your money away by not owning a home? Ever wonder how true that is?

There are many good reasons to buy a house like having more of space, or being able to paint the walls without asking the owner. However if you are not interested in those advantages and want to know if it's a good finantial investment, the answer is "It depends." Mostly on what percent you house will appreciate per year.

With property tax, tax deductions, compounding interest, the task of figuring out whether buying a home is a good investment is difficult. I've created a spreadsheet that will simplify the problem.

It looks at the amount of equity gained in two scenarios. The first being buying the house that you want, the second being renting a property that you are also comfortable, but investing the difference in cost into whatever (REITs, Stocks, TIPS -- Just specify the percent you think you'll get). If you plug in all the variables, it will tell you whether you'll be better off from a strictly finantial aspect.

What it doesn't account for

You just have to have a house next year, but the interest rate has doubled. Should have bought a house last year.

The real estate bubble bursts

You didn't put in realistic numbers

You spend 20G on decoration because its "your home"

probably a whole lot more.

Perpetual Motion

2005-12-03T20:32:00.000-06:00

If you like studing energy you might be interested in the concept of Perpetual Motion. I found a page documenting the History of Perpetual Motion and Free Energy Machines.

Though it's not perpetual motion I think we really need to give credit to TI for making a calculator that will work, as long as there is light. That's not forever, but that's a pretty long damn time. You also have to give credit to the people that make watches that are powered by swinging arms. Credit also has to out to Toyota for making the Prius with regenerative brakes. Check out their newest developments.

Organizing information hierarchy or Relational System

2005-12-03T20:11:00.000-06:00

I've thought a lot about whether things fit into a hierarchal model or a relational model.

If you don't know what I'm talking about things that are hierarchal can only have one parent. Examples are basic file systems on computers. Microsoft is working on WinFS to fix even that.

Mostly I think things should go towards graphs, we just need the tools to get there. This is an interesting quote on Gopher vs. http.

"what we would be gathering to discuss"

The Greys

2005-12-03T20:05:00.000-06:00

Another interesting slashdot article. Could the Greys be using SETI@home to take over the earth?

There is a nack for finding articles that wil have funny comments in them. This was definately one if them.

You can thank me for this information (Score:5, Funny)
by WormholeFiend (674934) on Monday November 28, @09:31AM (#14128538)

As official Earth contactee for the benevolent Betelgeuse civilization, I have been told to warn you that the evil Andromedans are using the SETI program to keep a fresh list of potential abductees for nefarious experiments.

They also recently developped antitinfoil penetration technology, so those of you who are using this means of protection are now vulnerable.

These beings will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of your colon!

Consider yourselves warned.

Funny Slashdoters

2005-12-03T19:44:00.000-06:00

Slashdot is a great place to get news. They really do have stuff that matters. Of course I read all of their news through my RSS aggregator SharpReader which I highly recommend to everyone. The only news site I like better is PlanetRDF which probably won't appeal to you unless you are really geeky.

Slashdot is also a great place to read funny comments. Everyone seems to race to get a comment in quickly and hope that it gets rated highly by other users. Here is a geeky example from Dante Shamest in the heated debate about open source software.

I submitted a patch to fix the Firefox name bug, on the basis that it's hard for someone to tell that it's the name of a browser. I suggested renaming the browser to something more marketable, such as Internet Explorer Improved or Internet Surfer or even Free Money, Click Here!.

Got no replies. =(

If you read the article, you'll notice at the end the typo "open sores" instead of "open source". They won't let him get away with that.

He should get that "open sores" PC checked out. That doesn't sound good at all.

I hear you can get that type of problem if you don't practice safe hex...

We don't use the phrase "safe hex" any more. The more PC term these days is "safer sectors".

If your PC is giving you open sores perhaps you should stop rubbing up against it so hard.

Anyway, if you are at work and need some geeky amusement, check out a Slashdot article. You can search the text for "Score:5, Funny" and usually find some pretty good stuff.

Tap Tap...

2005-11-29T19:57:00.000-06:00

Is this thing on?