Archive for December, 2004
Tuesday, December 14th, 2004
There! Finally!
Finally! I figured out how to change the background of this blog page. This feat has eluded me for a long time.
Tomorrow I have a meeting where we will talk about using web publishing systems similar to the one that produces this blog. Only we’ll be talking about how we can use those systems to produce websites that connect with university students in Bratislava.
While I probably would have spent a lot of time anyway playing around with this blogging software, I am encouraged that the knowledge I’ve gained in the process will help me do my job!
No Comments » - Posted in General by Jerry
Tuesday, December 14th, 2004
Blog name change
Every once in a while it had occurred to me that the name I gave to this blog, “Get a Life….,” would come across negatively to anyone reading it. I made the name before I had even fully understood what a blog was and before I made my first entry. At the time my impression of a blog was an online journal in which navel gazing 20-something’s exposed their emotions to the world. Yet I wanted to learn what blogging was all about since 20-something’s (university students) are our target audience.
Since then I discovered that I like the whole idea of blogging, and I’ve come to realize that only some people use their blogs for navel gazing. Furthermore, while it may be flattering myself to think anyone would be interested in my life, I know I am very interested in mundane details of others’ lives. And I have seen that this blog is really like an open email to our family and friends. (Even so, Cathy regularly harasses me. She’ll say mockingly, “Dear Diary. Today I …..”)
So as I had the occasion to start a new blog (more research), I had the occasion to find a new name.
Cathy came up with “Small Adventures.” It may still change again. Maybe I’ll just keep changing names as often as I post new entries. (No, I won’t. That would confuse the search engines like Google.)
The point is that if you felt that “Get a Life” was a comment directed at you, it wasn’t. It was what I thought of myself as I starting this blog.
2 Comments » - Posted in General by Jerry
Tuesday, December 14th, 2004
Vienna Team Trip
We just got back from a trip to Vienna, Austria with our team. Each year Dorsey’s team (Dorsey has the hat) takes a trip to Vienna for team-building. We have a great time laughing and eating together on the train and at the Christmas Market by Vienna’s City Hall. The bratwurst alone is worth the trip!
1 Comment » - Posted in General by Jerry
Monday, December 13th, 2004
I’m hooked
It’s 1:15 am and I’m still tinkering around with my development blog. I am happy with the progress I’ve made, and the whole system is much easier than I thought. It looks like other people write the code and semi-normal people simply use it.
Only it’s not that simple. And I’m not that normal.
1 Comment » - Posted in General by Jerry
Monday, December 13th, 2004
I’m hooked!
It’s 1:15 am and I’m still tinkering around with my development blog. I am happy with the progress I’ve made, and the whole system is much easier than I thought. It looks like other people write the code and semi-normal people simply use it.
Only it’s not that simple. And I’m not that normal.
No Comments » - Posted in General by Jerry
Monday, December 13th, 2004
Return to Szecheny Bath House
Yesterday after work I went back to the Szecheny Bath House with a few friends. My first visit to this place, a half marathon race event, was marked by confusion. This visit was marked by satisfaction! My friend, Dave, had been here and knew how to get around. We started out in the outdoor hot pool (shown here), went to the sauna, on to a mineral pool, and then back out to the outdoor pool. Very relaxing. If you are in Budapest, and you have time, I’d recommend a trip to the spa!
No Comments » - Posted in Hungary by Jerry
Monday, December 13th, 2004
Flickr
This is a test post from 
, a fancy photo sharing thing.
1 Comment » - Posted in General by Jerry
Monday, December 13th, 2004
Christmas Concert Season
Today we finished Christmas Concert Season. Our kids had four between them both. Today the girls’ choir had two concerts; one at Danube International Church, and the other at the Budapest Marriott.
Here, our daughter played the marimbas for one of her concerts.
Click here for a recording of the Girls’ Choir, featuring our daughter’s solo line (a little hard to hear) at 1:13 into the recording.
No Comments » - Posted in General by Jerry
Sunday, December 12th, 2004
Christmas Concert Season
Today we finished Christmas Concert Season. Our kids had four between them both. Today the girls’ choir had two concerts; one at Danube International Church, and the other at the Budapest Marriott.
Here, our daughter played the marimbas for one of her concerts.
Click here for a recording of the Girls’ Choir, featuring our daughter’s solo line (a little hard to hear) at 1:13 into the recording.
No Comments » - Posted in General by Jerry
Sunday, December 12th, 2004
Development blog under way
Well, the installation was easy. It will be the formatting that is the challenge.
Take a look at the initial results here.
I’m thinking about scrapping the current look of hertzlers.com and replacing it with this type of interface. That is, if I can figure out how to manipulate it. Looking around the community of people using WordPress and reading their comments makes me think I’ve stepped into the wrong world. These are all programmer types. They speak in code.
If I could acheive something similar to this I’d be happy. Never hurts to dream a little…
No Comments » - Posted in General by Jerry
Sunday, December 12th, 2004
The Adler
I quit the guestbook thing and did this instead.
I know this will also do Flickr photos.
1 Comment » - Posted in General by Jerry
Saturday, December 11th, 2004
I added a guestbook to Hertzlers.com - for me, an achievement!
In the course of helping my son create his website I have learned new things myself.
First I added a bulletin board to hertzlers.com. It was really easy to add, but formatting it to look like the rest of the site seems impossible. And it consumed my only database that I get with my hosting provider. So I deleted it and moved on to the next challenge.
That was a guestbook. Again, it was super easy to add, but I still haven’t figured out how to get it looking like everything else. I suspect it’s not worth the effort either. [Later I removed it so I could install the next thing.]
My ultimate goal is to see if I can run blogging software on our site. Currently this blog is created and managed through www.blogger.com. Their service is easy to use and free, but it’s also very slow and often unavailable. I’m considering WordPress, a PHP-based blog package.
But after today’s experience with these other two PHP-based (scripting language) features, I’m doubting that I have the horsepower to make it happen.
No Comments » - Posted in General by Jerry
Saturday, December 11th, 2004
Hello world!
Welcome to WordPress. This is the first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
1 Comment » - Posted in General by Jerry
Friday, December 10th, 2004
drewster has a website
Both our kids have wanted to create their own web page before, but tonight my son asked if he could put something up on our hertzlers.com site. He has already learned the basics of building online animations, and I had an old, unused copy of Dreamweaver, a website authoring program by the same company, so I set him loose. After just a couple hours he’s on his way toward making a website for himself and his friends.
To start with he made a simple “under construction” page and posted it to his new website, drewster.hertzlers.com. Stop by later and visit his site.
Yes, Dad is proud.
No Comments » - Posted in General by Jerry
Friday, December 10th, 2004
Return to Szécheny Bath House
Yesterday after work I went back to the Szécheny Bath House with a few friends. My first visit to this place, a half marathon race event, was marked by confusion. This visit was marked by satisfaction! My friend, Dave, had been here and knew how to get around. We started out in the outdoor hot pool (shown here), went to the sauna, on to a mineral pool, and then back out to the outdoor pool. Very relaxing. If you are in Budapest, and you have time, I’d recommend a trip to the spa!
If you want to read more about spas in Hungary, the site where I got this photo from, www.spasbudapest.com, has lots of good photos and information.
(Photo is from the gallery at www.spasbudapest.com)
No Comments » - Posted in General by Jerry
Wednesday, December 8th, 2004
Want Gmail?
I have six more GMail account invitations to give away. Leave a comment if you want one, and make sure you include your email address.
If you run a website, you can return the favor by adding a link to my site, www.hertzlers.com, on your site.
1 Comment » - Posted in General by Jerry
Tuesday, December 7th, 2004
The Adler
Our favorite restaurant, The Adler. We went there last Saturday with our friends, the Sponslers. It’s just a 10 minute walk from our house, and they have the best dessert and cappucino around. All the waiters know us there and are very patient with our bad Hungarian. And they all speak English anyway, so we’re off the hook.
3 Comments » - Posted in Hungary by Jerry
Monday, December 6th, 2004
Public Service Announcement: Backups - What would I recommend?
When I started writing about the need to back up critical data, I was about halfway into the post when I realized that I neither had a simple backup solution myself, nor did I know of one! I partly wished I hadn’t brought the subject up to begin with, but since I started it I kept on going.
Here is what I would recommend. Buy a USB disk and use MS Briefcase to backup files.
The only problem with this solution is that it won’t backup a large number of files very well. To backup a large number of files you will either need to use several briefcases or use MS Backup and a large secondary hard drive.
Here’s how to get started:
A. Locate and organize your files. Deciding what you should backup is a highly personal decision. Here are some suggestions:
| • |
Bank records and other financial information |
| • |
Digital photographs |
| • |
Software licenses you purchased and downloaded from the Internet |
| • |
Music you purchased and downloaded from the Internet |
| • |
Personal projects |
| • |
Your e-mail address book |
| • |
Your Microsoft Outlook calendar |
| • |
Your Internet Explorer bookmarks |
Finding where your computer applications store these files is the difficult part.
Hint: Within each application that uses a data file, see if you can save a copy of the data using the “Save As” feature. If the nature of the program allows you to do this, it will indicate where it goes to save its main data files by default. Your data files will most likely be in the same place.
1. Buy a USB drive. You can get a 512Mb USB drive for $50. This is a link to a 1Gb USB disk from Newegg.com for $136. I can’t say enough good things about Newegg.com.
2. Plug in the USB disk to the USB port on your computer and create a briefcase on it. Open My Computer then open the drive associated the the USB disk (”Removable Disk”). In the white space of that window, right click, select “New” and then “Briefcase.” When you open that briefcase for the first time a tutorial screen will pop up explaining how to use it.
3. Drag the files you want to backup into the briefcase. If you are unfamiliar with how to do this, here is a link to a tutorial for Windows Explorer from Duke University.
4. Synchronize the briefcase whenever you want to do a backup. When you open the briefcase there will be a button you can click that synchronizes all the files in the briefcase.
Once you get more than about 50 - 100 files in a briefcase, synchronizing takes a long time and can sometimes be incomplete. You can make several different briefcases to get around this problem.
If your backup needs exceed a solution like this, you’ll need to use a more advanced backup solution. If you have a CD burner, you can make backup copies of things that don’t often change (like digital photos), but keep in mind that CD’s have a limited life-span. “CD rot” will set in eventually.
One final idea: Web hosting can be as inexpensive as $4/month from companies like Parcom.net. For that price you get 500 Mb of storage on their servers. Even if you don’t create a web site to reside there, you can use their servers for backing up your data! But why not put up a website, register your own personal domain (like hertzlers.com), and start using email services at your own domain while you’re at it?
No Comments » - Posted in General by Jerry
Monday, December 6th, 2004
George, make it stop!
When we arrived in Hungary during the summer of 2003 the US Dollar was worth 235 Hungarian Forint. The Forint is tied to the Euro. Last year at this time the Dollar was worth 200 Forint. Last month it dropped to 182 Forint. That’s a 23% drop in our purchasing power. Ouch. Mentioning this at all would be unvarnished belly-aching if it weren’t for the reality that God meets our needs regardless of exchange rates. Nevertheless, our hope is that 2005 sees higher interest rates in the US that might increase the Dollar’s value.
2 Comments » - Posted in General by Jerry
Saturday, December 4th, 2004
socks
It’s hard to get socks here. At least the kind of socks my kids will wear. So we’re asking Cathy’s sister to bring over socks from the US when she comes at Christmas. That doesn’t seem right. People wear socks here, too. But it’s one of those things not worth fighting a battle over, so here we are ordering US socks.
What’s even worse is that I actually took a picture of my kids’ dirty socks so I could send it to Cathy’s sister!
No Comments » - Posted in General by Jerry
Saturday, December 4th, 2004
Two new blogs; MSN and Parsons
My friend, Zeljko, told me that MSN is now offering free blog sites at http://spaces.msn.com. I took a quick look, and it looks good. Rather than just a blog roll, like this one on Blogger.com, they offer a home page, photo page, links page, AND blog page. It’s more like a free website without all the advertising. If you are considering starting a blog, try MSN’s and let me know what you think.
Another friend of mine, Drew Parsons, started a blog. Drew shares an office suite with Tom and I. Stop by his blog at http://theparsons.blogspot.com and leave a comment.
No Comments » - Posted in General by Jerry
Saturday, December 4th, 2004
Public Service Announcement: Backups
I said I’d post something about HOW to do backups, in addition to explaining the need.
The problem is that I don’t know of an easy way to do backups. That’s probably why so many people don’t do backups; they don’t understand how, and even if they did, it isn’t easy.
So before you quit reading, compare the effort involved with learning how to do backups with the pain you’d have if you lost everything on your computer.
First, let me explain what I do. The links below point to “How To” articles for what I mention.
1. On a semi-daily basis I backup my critical data to a Zip disk with the help of a “Briefcase.”
Several years ago I purchased a 250Mb capacity Iomega Zip drive and a few 250Mb Zip disks. I use the Briefcase feature in MS Windows to keep files on my computer synchronized with files on this Zip disk. This keeps me current within a day or two if I lose my hard drive (or accidently delete all my data which I did once.) Once this was setup it was very easy to use, and it only takes a minute.
2. On a monthly basis I backup my photo files to our home computer.
A year ago I bought a 120Gb hard drive ($80) and put it into our home computer as a second hard drive. I copy photo files from my laptop to this hard drive via Microsoft peer-to-peer networking. (I haven’t found a reasonably straightforward “How To” article for setting up a home network yet. If you know of one, leave a comment.)
3. On a monthly basis I backup my work files and some personal files to a computer at the office using Microsoft Backup.
Our office’s network administrator has served our staff well by making a backup computer available. The primary purpose is to backup work files, but while there is space, it is also available for select personal files. I use Microsoft Backup for this. The key ingredient in this is an available hard drive that is accessible from my computer.
4. I synchronize much of my personal information (managed with MS Outlook) with my Palm i705 handheld computer.
Since this is the easiest way for me to backup personal data, I try to keep as much information as possible in my handheld computer. Whenever I synchronize with my PC, all that information is backed up. I have a program, CryptInfo, for securely storing passwords, credit card numbers, and other important information. It runs both on my PC and my handheld. All the rest of my contact records, memos, appointments and task items are synchronized with the rest of the data on my handheld.
I am probably a bit too paranoid and obsessive, but in 15 years of using PC’s to make life easier, I have never lost critical data.
What would I recommend for a normal (i.e., not a geek) person? I’ll give that some thought and post another entry later.
For now I’m off to help a friend with his computer problems…..
3 Comments » - Posted in General by Jerry
Friday, December 3rd, 2004
from my phone.
today i learned i can send email from my phone to my blog!
1 Comment » - Posted in General by Jerry
Thursday, December 2nd, 2004
Public Service Announcement: Backups and firewalls
I just read an article that made me cringe; a reminder about how vulnerable unprotected Windows XP computers are on the Internet. Read it here.
If you connect your Windows PC to the Internet, make sure you also run a firewall of some sort such as Zone Alarm. Zone Alarm is free for personal use. If you have Windows XP, make sure you install the free upgrade to SP2 (Support Pack 2). SP2 provides the same type firewall function as Zone Alarm. To do this just point your browser to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com.
Secondly, backup the data that you can’t afford to lose. My dad told me never to risk money you can’t afford to lose. The same applies to your data. Don’t risk data (by having only one copy of it) that you can’t afford to lose. Make at least one other copy of your data and better, make two copies. Store one copy in a separate location from your computer and the backup copy.
How often should you backup your data? As often as necessary for what you are willing to lose. I can recover from losing a couple weeks of financial data and photos. But I can’t afford to lose all my financial information or photos - or contact information, communication history, financial information, passwords, work, etc.
How to backup your data? I’ll write more on this in another post.
Recently I made a new motto: Never trust your computer.
That may sound odd, but it’s absolutely true. Having a computer is like having a friend in the Mafia. They can be very helpful, but you never know when they’ll turn on you. It’s not a matter of if you will lose data, but when.
3 Comments » - Posted in General by Jerry
Wednesday, December 1st, 2004
Two steps forward!
Tonight I had two positive steps forward.
1. I drove my mostly repaired van home. Before resigning ourselves to buying a new car and running the one we have into the ground, we got a second opinion. They didn’t find any problems with the transmission differential and fixed the first round of problems for $300. That’s a lot less than our other estimate!
2. The new rabbit hutch design is working. No smell, no mess, and it’s easy to clean.
