Minivan: Fully Loaded

I shop online a lot.  Besides food or household supplies, I tend to buy everything online.  Especially electronics.  And over the years I have not really had any bad experiences.  Sure I have had defective items, but for the most part my experience has been good. 

Now I also have been fortunate to buy most everything from reputable sources such as Amazon or NewEgg, but there have been a few times I have almost clicked the button on a website advertising a way better deal.  For some reason my spider sense always stopped me, and after reading this article I am glad it did! 

I admit that most of my online shopping has been guided by word-of-mouth; be it a review from a blog I respect, or from a close friend or relative.  It is scary to fully realize the scams that exist out there, and even worse that people can be lured right into them from reputable sources such as Google. 

I’m not naive.  I know that crooks are everywhere. You learn that quick growing up.  I do my research and try and go with my gut on things.  But not everyone is as cautious, and the reality is, some of these online fraud sites look VERY legit.  Yet they are actually being run from someone’s apartment or other rundown building (if you can even find their physical location at all!).

So be careful where you shop online.  Understand that search engines like Google make their money by selling search results, so if Google returns a website offering some amazing deal over the more well established and known competition, be suspicious and do not assume Google endorses them in any way.  In fact, put Google to use and research these websites and see if you can find complaints.  Chances are you’ll learn really fast if they are scamming people or not.

When it doubt, trust your instincts and buy from someone you trust.  Even if it does cost more.

Ok, I just finished upgrading the engine to this site and all seems to be working.  So far I haven't noticed any issues with the content or the page layouts.  If you run into a problem, please let me know.

For those that have been coming to this site via a link directly to http://www.allsop.ws, you will likely notice a speed improvement.  This is because you are now redirected to just this blog part of the site and are no longer being subjected to the DotNetNuke infrastructure.  I gave up on DNN because I have no desire to really learn it enough to tune it. 

So, I again urge everyone to link directly to only http://www.allsop.ws if you want to stay routed to the most current content.  The other sub sites I have played with will fade into the nether eventually.

Mom: "Cailyn, go brush your teeth"

Cailyn comes back down the stairs a few minutes later

Mom: "Cailyn, I asked you to brush your teeth please!"

Cailyn: "I did!"

Mom: "Then why is there still chocolate on your face?"

Cailyn: (with a sigh) "Mom, I brushed my teeth, not my face!"

After doing a little research, and getting recommendations from co-workers, I decided to try out Smugmug.  This is an online photo sharing service and so far I really like it.  It is late and I am tired, so I don't have time right now to explain why I chose this service over the many other (often free) options. 

In a nutshell, this service interfaces very nicely with the workflow I now have for photography, and they partnered with my hosting provider which made routing to them as a subdomain super easy.  There are other reasons, but those where big ones.

I'll update this site with a direct link, but until then you can always check out http://photos.allsop.ws (or click on the following picture to browse the first gallery I have uploaded).

Over the next couple weeks I am going to be updating this site some.  I’ll be attempting to upgrade to the latest blogging engine software and I also have some new changes in the realm of video and photos I plan to make.  

In a nutshell, I found (not surprisingly) that I don’t have the time or desire to keep up the infrastructure I originally went with so I am ditching it.  The blog will remain, but my media sharing solution will be handled by services already established that do a great job.

Stay tuned...

Tanner:  "What's for dinner Mom?"

Mom:  "Chilli Mac"

Tanner: "What?"

Mom:  "Chilli Mac" (a little louder this time)

Tanner: "What?"

Dad:  "We're having Chilli Mac dude!  Open your ears!"

Tanner:  "They are open...your ears are just bigger Dad!"

Well it has been a really nice break these past few weeks.  Since I had a month of paternity leave earlier this year, I didn't end up burning up my usual amount of summer vacation time.  As such, I took the past 3 weeks off and I am really glad I did.  The weather here has been pretty crazy (snow wise) and not being forced to commute through it was nice.  But tomorrow things go back to normal.  At least for me.  The kids still have another day of school off (beats me why). 

Overall our Christmas was very nice.  The kids made out like bandits and are already bored with everything they received.  Overall we scaled back the number of gifts simply because the kids have so much and they never play with it much anyway it seems.  We plan to go through their toys and give away a bunch of stuff they really no longer care about or need.

Jody and I made a deal not to do anything specific for each other this year, and instead we teamed up and did a few things as a combined gift.  The big one was an overhaul of our bedroom closet.  We ripped out the simple wire shelf and hanger set, and we replaced it with a simple do-it-yourself closet config using ClosetMaid parts purchased from Lowes.  Nothing too fancy, but it does give us more hanging space and better organization with the shelves and drawers we installed.  It was an all day project and quite a bit of work.  I wish now that I had taken a before and after picture to better show the difference.

Overall, 2008 was a good and a not so good year.  Losing loved ones and attending funerals fall into the later category.  Welcoming a new baby into the family definitely counts towards the good.

Here are some pictures of the kids from our New Years Eve party.  It wasn't much of a real party, but we did let the kids stay up and welcome in the new year with the traditional chocolates and apple cider variants.