I found a cool site with a new Sci-Fi short story every day for a year.

I used to be hooked on a fiction site that I can’t quite remember the name of, but they had three books being written simultaneously with one chapter being published each week as they were written. A couple of the stories finished, then the authors started flaking out and not publishing, and after a while the site was stale for months. I hope that doesn’t happen with this one – some of the stuff in the archives is pretty fresh.

In particular, check out The Horsemen Of Carnaby Street

I found a very cool site recently – http:\\www.lifehacker.com

Especially like the Essential Freeware “Geek to Live” post they had this week.

Open source and freeware have come a long way, baby.

Especially when dealing with plumbing. I’m working on the last piece of plumbing in the house that’s not functional yet, the master bath shower. Lots of time spent correcting the tile around the valve, grouting and grinding, everything finally ready to turn on and uh-oh. Wait a minute. When I turn on the valves, the water comes on. When I turn off the handle, the water still runs. That’s not good. Shut the water off to the house, take it all apart, and find out that things feel a little lose, but nothing looks obviously missing. Put it together again, and it still won’t turn off.

Next stop, internet. Good news – this is a common problem if the installer doesn’t remove the rubber seats and springs before soldering the valve into the wall. That sounds like a safe bet for the problem description. So tomorrow I’ll call the company and see if they can send me replacement parts and we’ll resume shower installation next weekend.

But that’s not a big time delay as I found out I’m about two feet short on window trim (I’ll try to pick that up tomorrow too) and I still need to finish caulking in the tub base and shower base tile. And hey – this has been a work in progress for about nine months already, so what’s the big rush?

New rules for me on the web – it all needs to be free. Keep an eye on the badges at the bottom of the sidebar if you feel a bit stingy yourself.

I’m not paying for hosting anymore, not paying for domains, not paying for database support, etc. etc.

So to bring Inside the Mindless back to life under my new rules, I need to reconfigure a few sections and incorporate things as blog posts instead of stand alone web pages. Blogger supports a cool new feature (new in the last 3 years anyway) of being able to edit a post date. This means I can put up the writing so it will present in a chronological order.

The first section I’m going to bring back are the Rants, Ravings, and Ramblings. I’ll assign them to their origional posting dates, and work out a directory of Posts of Interest later.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted – just over 3 years actually. Why the long hiatus?

Been busy.

My daughter is three years old now, and since my last post I’ve moved twice, most recently into a house that I (and my partner and our roomate) have done a lot of work on.

Yes, that is the builder and I the day before the front porch was torn off by a determined pull with a pickup truck. The house looked like that on the outside for about a year. Looks much better now, but we’re still not done.

So with all this going on I haven’t been working so much on old projects – like blogging, motorcycle building, paintball, or seeing my friends. I’m finding a new balance in life, and it’s not easy to do. But there are things that make me smile, and things that warm my heart, and even an idea or two that really get my interest focused – just not at the same level as years past.

So life is different. Very different.

The Whirlwind rages on – I’m just a leaf in the storm.