A few weeks ago we were checking out the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore in town since I'd never been there before. We waded through the typical old tile, vanities, sinks, and even a few microwaves. Then we found a table -- probably the coolest tables I've ever seen.  It looks like a buffet, but pulls out to be a dinner table to a length of just under 7 feet long! At first look, the price tag seemed a little pricy, but after some research, it turns out that it was well worth it.

I had to go back the next day they were open to purchase it, figuring it would fit into the back seat of my ION. Unfortunately, I was mistaken by only about two inches! So the helpful ReStore clerk helped me lift it onto the truck, where we tied it in with my jumper cables.  I have since put the bungees and ties back into my trunk. I've never driven the roads of Fond du Lac so slowly in my life nor do I plan to ever again.

For a while I've been trying to come up with a safe and easy way to catalog my movies. I have quite a few of them and often forget if I have a specific season of Dexter or Psych. This catalog needed to be both easy to populate and easy to view on the go. So I started playing with the Amazon Product Advertising API as it would let me look up movie data on amazon and store it locally in my own database for fast access on-the-go. No typing the actors, movie length, and description. Sounded good to me. Only one problem: I was not familiar with creating the API signature type that Amazon required.

Quite a bit has happened since I've moved from South Carolina to the dying metropolis of Fond du Lac, WI. So much in fact, that I haven't even bothered to write anything. Alright, maybe not really, but still... Here's a quick update on the projects I've been working on and the things I've been up to.

It's with a partially sad demeanor that I'll be leaving South Carolina in just 15 days. It's been a long — very long — three and a half years here. Had some experiences, did a lot of lazing around, but now I'm off back to the frozen north and couldn't be more excited.

There's been a lot of "Top Lists" around the internet lately. And their completely random like "Top 53 new websites for designers", or "Top 18 reasons to dance on your head". Keeping with that, I've composed not one, but two top lists.

Recently I got involved with a volleyball group in Myrtle Beach, SC. It's a bunch of B-level people of all ages getting together 2-3 times a week playing some semi-competitive ball. We play in the sand, on the beach, on the grass, and in the gym. There are even times when we have some tournaments.

A few of us decided that we need a website to communicate when and where to play, links to volleyball equipment, and all around camaraderie. We tossed a quick site up using Weebly and actually got some traffic to it!

I was told not too long ago by someone that the year 2007 brought about a rather large change to the working masses. That change was that the number of service-based jobs out numbered that of production jobs. Now whether this is due to robots from the Robotic Uprising of the Late 90's, or that the majority of the population is too busy or too rich to worry about learning how to do things themselves isn't quite known. But no matter how you answer that question, an even larger one comes up, "Is the customer always right?" I'm sure everyone's heard that expression before — probably from working in retail or for some older gentleman when they were young — "The customer is always right, even when he's not." But in today's society of extreme specialization, can we still opperate productively by that same principle? Can we trust that the consumer (or client) isn't out to just get a superior service for an inferior price? And once we do believe the consumer/client isn't out to just get a deal, do we push for their education through our experience and expertise or simply give them that for which they are asking?

It's been a long haul, but my latest and greatest project is ready to go live. I've joined up with a great friend from college (follow her twitter feed @lynndro) to start a full-service interactive business that focuses on young company branding.

We both decided that the typical 8am-5pm lifestyle was not in our best interest and we could make a better impact on the world by being our own bosses. Sure, that's easier said than done, but we've taken that first step and have become a recognized business in Houghton County, Michigan

I'm pretty new still when it comes to cakePHP, but there's a few things that I've noticed in my limited exposure that screams a developer created this. Throughout my job I learned that my foremost expectations of "web developers" is completely not true. I was under the impression that everyone in web development (whether they focused on design or development) could build a fully dynamic website. Sure, people focusing in development may make some odd design and layout issues, but he/she would still get the job done.

Ever had the need to move blog data from one platform to another? If you've ever worked with clients or more than one blog before, you're sure to have your own favorite blogging platform. Maybe it's MovableType, Blogger, Wordpress, or maybe even BlogCFC. If you're lucky enough, maybe you'll be moving from one platform to another that's made by the same company. Six Apart at least at sometime owned or operated MovableType, Blogger, Vox, and LiveJournal, and typically have a really easy way of porting data from one to the other. Wordpress has a couple of nice tools to importing from other platforms as well. But what I have noticed is that many of these platforms lack one major import tool. And that's the one from what was the only ColdFusion Markup Language blog, BlogCFC.

Over on Jesus is my Sword this weekend was a post wondering if websites should be thought of as software and free updates should be expected. It felt to me like he was saying that they should be expected. I don't think that same way. I'm much more under the opinion that a website servers a specific purpose now and that anything other than potential security issues should not be "given" as a free upgrade.