Katie and I are busy patting ourselves on the back over here. While it may look odd to anyone who's looking in our windows, it feels good. In the past year we've been able to save just under $900, and save hours of useless surfing.
Two main things have kept us from heading back into the deep, dark pockets of the cable industry:
1) Hulu.com - they offer most network shows we watch, anytime we want. Our home theater PC allows us to watch Hulu on our HDTV with limited commercials.
2) Over the Air (OTA) HD channels - we also bought an outdoor HD antenna for watching our major local channels. We get ABC, NBC, CBS, 3 LPB stations, FOX and a few other stations for free (and did I mention in HD?).
As you can see, we still watch TV, we just do it more intelligently (at least that's the way I think of it). We have what the cable industry has yet to provide - a la carte programming. We pick and choose what we want to watch, and get to watch it when we want. It's a logical approach. I don't want to watch '1000 ways to die' on the Spike channel, or any of the 23 other hours of the garbage there, so why should I be paying for that channel? Now, I'm not. Someone else is going to have to subsidize Spike, MTV and We.
Anywho, good luck to anyone else wanting to drop cable and save some money, it's been good for Katie and Me We've made it a year longer than I thought we would without cable.
I stumbled into trouble today – a looming deadline as well as a complicated problem with no win-win solution that I can see.
In this case, I need the ability to allow the end-user of our software (a web-based document scanning app) to define certain aspects of how this software will operate. This means letting them set up their own list of Document Types (Invoices, Checks, Bills, W-4’s, etc.), Document Statuses on each of those Document Types so they could recreate their office’s workflow. We also decided (late in the design process) to allow the user to add as many indexes as they want for each Document Type… and this turned out to be the tricky bit.
This means that a user can define an index called Invoice Number on the Invoice document type, and when they scan an Invoice, they type in an Invoice Number. This way, when they want to find this document later they can look it up by Invoice Number. They can create as many indexes on each Document Type as they want. They could also create indexes to allow them to look up that Invoice by the person who received it, the account number, the date it was received,etc.
So, being the smarty pants I am, I whipped up a couple of additional tables to account for this scenario -described, albeit not exactly, as follows:
Simple, right? Well, it turns out that it’s simple to create and to insert data into, but pretty rough on the person who’s trying to get data back out (unless my brain is just friend and there’s a simple solution). When the user searches for a Document, they can add as many indexes as they want. So, I have to dynamically create a query that will match any number of name and value pairs, in addition to any other search criteria a user might select (Date Scanned, Document Type, etc.).
That’s where I’m at today… trying to figure out a good way to find the documents in our database based on one or more Name/Value pairs. In looking around on the internet, it looks like I designed myself a sort of EAV (Entity Attribute Value) model… though a slanted a bit to better fit the relational database model.
Just about every article I read on the internet trashes the idea of storing an EAV model in a relational database (which is what I’ve done here), trashes dynamic SQL (what I’m considering using… though, not because it’s the most prudent choice) and basically dirties the name of anyone who considers it. Consider me dirty.
I’m looking at a bunch of solutions, none of which look promising and staring a deadline in the face that I’m unlikely to meet now. It’s an ugly day… but I’ll make it.
Cover - Black Crowes - The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
Original - The Band - The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
Since we've moved from North Bossier down to Shreveport in South Highlands, I've learned quite a few things about home ownership. The least of the lessons learned involve lawn care. They are as follows:
A year ago, I finally learned the value of #3 -paying someone else to do a job I hate. Shortly after, I learned #4 - being selective about who you pay for those jobs. I hired someone who had done work for our neighbor in the past, and needed work. He did a good job at first, but slowly started to miss spots or not weedeat from week to week. So, we parted ways.
This spring, I started back to mowing again but kept noticing my neighbor's lawn across the street, which was now being cut by a lawn service. It always seemed to be cut and trimmed well.
I talked to my neighbors and found that they've been using Baber Lawn Service. Soon after, I contacted them and have been happy with the results. No missed spots, no nonsense. I come home from work, the grass is mowed. That's an awesome feeling.
So, anywho... the point of the post was really just to offer that advice for anyone else who shares a hatred of yard work. Hire someone else if you're able... and if you're in Shreveport, call Daniel at Baber Lawn Service (Contact info below).
Phone: (318) 424-1728
Cell: (318) 588-0805
Cell: (318) 754-1487
Why is there no Grocery Delivery service in Shreveport? Surely there are other people like myself here in town that have come to despise going to Walmart or Target. Surely those people also have disposable income ($10 per delivery to spare). It's a small price to pay for not having to get out in the 107 degree heat and fight the crowds for hot pockets and toilet paper (must buy in pairs).
I tried to do the math on making a successful go at starting a delivery business in my off-hours. I ran into a couple of problems.
1) I don't have enough energy. It may be that I don't sleep well at night or have sleep apnea... I'm not sure. Either way, when I get home from work I don't want to do a dern thing that resembles work.
2) See #1
The thing is, I think it could work here. It could work like this:
1) Create a website that listed a large selection of available items, with their prices and pictures. (Companies exist that will provide a database of food items with prices and pictures).
2) Allow users to register and purchase groceries at your prices (hopefully priced between walmart and brookshires prices). If the order is placed before 3PM, it will be delivered the next day. Add $10 for orders under $100, 10% above $100.
3) Have the website print a master list of groceries ordered by 3PM, combining all orders into one big list. Shop Sam's and Walmart, etc. for all items.
4) Bring groceries home, split into individual orders.
5) Refrigerate necessary groceries.
6) Deliver groceries the following day.
The main thing someone would want to do would be limit the delivery areas initially. I imagine that targeting an area like South Highlands (small, upper middle class area) would be a good way to fine tune the business.
If I were a college student with the ability to create this website, I'd be all over it... but I'm not. I have a full time job, bills to pay and little energy. It doesn't seem like it would take much... a website that can accept credit cards, a decent size car, grocery skills, a few ice chests, and a heavy heap of time and patience.
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It must be nice to be rich, or CEO or politician and have a team of knowledgeable advisors to give you advice. When you have an idea, you can run it by a few people and get informed opinions at each step of your decision making process.
I, on the other hand, don't fit into the CEO, politician or rich category. Most of the time, I just run decisions by the dog and if he doesn't argue against me, I proceed. It's no brain trust, but it'll do in a pinch.
This past weekend, I came up with another business idea (not new, just new to my city). I ran it by the first line of defense against fruitless labor and thoughts, the family and a friend or two. After receiving a decent response from most, I realized that I still needed some insight that I probably couldn't find without finding someone who's tried something similar, or just trying it for myself.
Normally, I'd turn to the internet in situations like these (finding products,travel destinations, factual information,etc.) , but the internet doesn't offer what I'm after here. I need a decision engine, and I don't mean Bing (sorry Microsoft, but the phrase doesn't fit the functionality). It really would come in handy for all the ideas that pass through my mind.
Oh well, my ADHD will probably take over in the next few days and I'll be on to a new idea. I should probably just focus energy back on my existing side projects, and getting them up to 100% before moving on... but a brain trust would still be cool to shoot ideas past every once in a while...
Sometimes, work has its benefits. Rarely, I know, but sometimes work really comes through for me... like it did today.
On Friday, we upgraded our PC's at work to these sweet new Dell Optiplex 960's... it's hard to believe that Dell is making something that's worth getting excited about, but these are nice. The cases are aluminum, the buttons feel nice, and even the keyboard is an improvement over the 755's we had before. The main thing to get excited about is the fact that they are beasts... 64-bit machines with Quad core processors, 8 gigs of RAM... the works.
This upgrade meant that our old computers were going to have to be dealt with, so I asked about whether we could buy one and sure enough my boss agreed to sell me my old PC (on the cheap). The nice thing was that since I've only been at my current job for 9 months or so, I had a much newer PC than anyone else (by a full 2 years or so). So, today I brought home my old work machine - a Quad Core machine with 4 gigs of RAM, a DVD burner, 500GB of hard drive space and a 256 MB ATI video card. It may be old Tech to my employer, but to me, it's a swanky new development machine.
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