Sorry I've Been Away

Sorry I haven't posted in a couple of days. I'm sure that you are all glad to know that they didn't keep me in the jail on Friday. Things have been a little nutty around here. Alot has been going on since Friday.

I guess I'll start with my trip to the Alexander County Correctional Facility. The prison is new. I think that they just opened it within the past couple of years. It was my first time to go into a prison. It was a pretty strange experience at first. Fortunately we didn't have to go too far to get to the prison's furniture plant.

It was an amazing operation. There within the prison was a fully operational furniture plant. It had new high quality equipment and everyone was busily working at their assigned tasks. We got a full tour of the facility. I was very impressed with the quality of the workmanship and the materials that they were using. The vast majority of the pieces that they were making were solid wood. They even use dovetail joints in the construction of the drawers. The spray booths were awesome. It was a very well appointed facility. Next door was an upholstery plant. The inmates working there were assembling and upholstering office chairs.

In my discussions with the administrators there I learned that the prisoners that work in the unit are extremely conscientious - many working harder and with a better attitude than people on the outside working in the same jobs. I asked Randy (one of the administrators) what he attributed that to and after some thought he told me that for most of the guys working in the plant this was the first job that they had ever held and the first thing that they could point to with any pride at all. I also learned that the inmates have to go through a hiring process to get into the program. They have to apply and be interviewed just like they would for a "real" job.

At this stage in the inmates' incarceration most of them aren't given the job hunting training that they will need later, but as they get closer to their release dates this training will be given. I learned a couple of other things about the program that I wish could be addressed. One involves the procurement practices. At present NC is a low bid state which means that the materials that they are purchasing could come from anywhere. I wish they had it set up to be more favorable to NC businesses. I also wish that the operations could expand so that the products made by the inmates could be sold to a wider market. At present these goods can only be sold to the government and not-for-profit organizations like churches, etc. I realize that with the loss of manufacturing jobs in the state this could be some unwelcome competition, but with a little thought I believe that it is a problem that could be overcome.

When you realize that North Carolina's entire Correction Enterprises is totally self-sufficient due to the revenue generated by these products, and when you realize that the recidivism of the inmates involved in the program is 35% lower than the state average, it is hard to understand why anyone would not want to expand the scope of this operation and its market to gainfully employ every inmate whose behavior would allow them to participate. I can envision a scenario that would be profitable to domestic industry and provide enough revenue to make the prisons themselves self-sufficient. It would also generate enough revenue to fund restitution for the inmates and generate a nest-egg that would allow them to get off to a good start when they re-enter society. I'm guessing recidivism numbers would plummet.

You really wouldn't believe all of the products made through Correction enterprises. They make everything from stainless steel serving lines to full color outdoor banners. And if their rules were a little different they could make even more products. So that was my trip to jail.

Saturday I spent the day going through my blog archives and trying to get the labels updated on the posts that I made before such things existed. I got about halfway through the old blogs. I'll wait for another rainy day before I do the last 83.

I also had to do some cooking for two community-based Christmas parties thrown by families in my church. You can check out Conspiracy of Kindness to find out more about this. I made date balls and sausage balls for he parties. They turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself!

Saturday night was band practice for church. That is always a 2 or 2 and 1/2 hour deal. We usually go ahead and set up for the service on Saturday night, which takes 30-45 minutes depending on how many people we have to help. I had thought Saturday night would be a good time to have the practice because we could set up and actually practice with the instruments that we use on Sunday, but it really hasn't turned out that way. By the time that the week is over and we have set up all the equipment, everyone is tired and no one feels like practicing! Oh well, I was trying to save us a night. OK. I say save US a night, but it just ends up saving ME a night. I still end up going over to set up on Saturday night anyway.

Oh yes, I almost forgot, I also wrote an Advent post for the church blog over at Conspiracy of Kindness on Saturday. I can see that trying to keep up with writing an in depth devotion every day between now and Christmas isn't going to be an easy task. If you find that I'm not posting enough over here to keep you satisfied this month, go and check out the other blog. It should have new material every day.

Sunday was church, of course. We had a really good worship time I thought. I really sensed the Lord's presence on the song Consuming Fire. I believe He answered the prayer contained in that song for us Sunday morning.

There must be more than this -
O breath of God come breathe within.
There must be more than this -
Spirit of God, we wait for You.
Fill us anew we pray.
Fill us anew we pray.

Consuming Fire, fan into flame
A passion for Your name!
Spirit of God, fall in this place.
Lord, have Your way,
Lord, have Your way with us.

Come like a rushing wind;
Clothe us with power from on high.
Now set the captives free -
Leave us abandoned to Your praise.
Lord let Your glory fall!
Lord let Your glory fall!

Consuming Fire, fan into flame
A passion for Your name!
Spirit of God, fall in this place.
Lord, have Your way,
Lord, have Your way with us.

Tim Hughes © 2002 Thankyou Music CCLI # 3818569
License # 2647180

Anyway, it was a great service.

Then, just a couple of hours later, the party began. As guitar player for the StillWaters Jazz Band, I had my first gig. It was pretty fun. We were set up on the balcony of my pastor's house playing for the party goers in the living room below. We play a Dixieland New Orleans old school jazz style. It is a lot of fun and my first experience with the style. I have already begun to learn alot and I think that my playing has kicked up a notch or two since we started practicing. I'm still not BB King (a long way from it), but my horizons have definitely broadened. I actually soloed in front of people. What was funny was the solos that I felt the best about when I was practicing were the ones that I totally messed up live, and then I nailed several attempts that I made soloing on songs that I hadn't worked anything up for. Go figure. We have another gig next week.

So, that was my weekend.

Today I got back to work on the old Joomla tutorials. I finished them up and then went looking about to see what else I could find. I did find another tutorial site, but just wasn't in the mood to deal with it right now. So instead I went and looked at template sites. Well, actually site. I found a site that has some professionally designed templates that already look very similar to what I am trying to create. Why re-invent the wheel using my head as the hammer? $50 sounds pretty reasonable right about now to get something that I won't have to fiddle with very much to make it work. Of course, I am not such a great fool as to believe that this will solve all of my problems, but I do hope that it will shorten my development cycle by at least 2 weeks (more likely 2 months.) I would really like to have something marketable by the new year. More and more I realize that is probably an ambitious goal, but you have to have a target or nothing gets done. There is also a 2 hour Joomla seminar going on at the local community college on Thursday that I might check out. Based on what I've seen I can't imagine someone being able to teach me much in 2 hours, but if it is free (or at least cheap) it may be worth the time investment. Every day I'm learning something new!

So that is what's happening in my neck of the woods. Hope everything is going great in yours!

iHay CARAMBA!

Well, things MAY be moving forward again on the website... MAY. My friend DavidP sent me a link to a good Joomla tutorial today that is proving to be very informational. (And he also sent me a link to the mental hospital at Broughton just in case that doesn't work!)

I must say that I do feel vindicated somewhat after working through some of the tutorial. There is absolutely NO WAY that I would have been able to figure out what I was doing on my own. If Joomla is the most user-friendly CMS software available I certainly don't want to see or use any of the rest of it. I wonder if part of the difficulty is that I am familiar with Windows programming standards. Perhaps this software is adhering to Unix standards? Regardless, the software is not intuitive at all.

I come back to my earlier lament that this would be so much easier if I knew HTML. But I don't, so I have to make do with what I do know, and I'm learning new stuff every day. I even learned a couple of new Windows tricks today.



DavidP, I already owe you at least a case of Little Debbie Nutty Bars and a gallon of whole milk. It may be a truckload and a cow by the time this project is finished! Thanks for your help.

This One's Gonna Be Short

Perhaps you are wondering why I am posting at 3 in the morning. Me too. I was busy working on the website and, well, you know how those things go. I finally got to a stopping place a few minutes ago and foolishly went to check out the blogs. It's not quite an addiction, but I want to make sure everyone has something to read with the morning coffee.

This whole website thing has really bogged down. I think that the technical documentation for the software that I am trying to use was written by savant chimpanzees on a banana-induced fructose buzz. I am beyond frustrated.

I have at least figured out how to make parts of the web page in one program. The problem is I am having a hard time figuring out a couple of things: #1 Why isn't the FTP transfer working correctly? #2 Why can't the design program that I am using find an internet connection? #3 How do I make the CMS software talk to my design software? and #4 Why didn't I go ahead and check myself into Broughton when I came up with this hair-brained scheme? Those are the basic questions as of now. I have loaded Joomla and a couple other programs on the server that I think will be of use, but I have no road map and, frankly, I may be trying to drive to Hawaii.

I think I am going to try to bribe all of my developer friends with pizza and beer - or if they're not into that, whole milk and Little Debbies! Heck, I might even go so far as to offer all four! Maybe not all at once, though. Ewww.

Website Coming Along Nicely

Well, I have made some good strides forward on the website. I am learning a lot. The thing that seems to take the most time so far is the layout. There is really no way around it. You have to take the time to think it through and to think about how many layers deep you are going to go. I am realizing that this could be very time consuming... and that it will be easy to make mistakes that will leave buttons unlinked and stuff like that.

Yesterday I created the second-tier pages for the website and learned how to link them to the homepage. Today I did the layout for the second-tier page for Real Estate and created one set of the third-tier pages for that section. Tomorrow I'll be working on the second (and the much larger) set of third-tier pages for the Real Estate section of the website.

I started working on the news section of the site yesterday, but discovered that I didn't like the format of the newsreader that I have. I'm going to have to find one that has a better layout. I also have to find some search code to help people find what they are looking for - especially on the real estate part of the site. I have a module in the bundle that I got with my web hosting, but I don't know if it will do what I want. This would be so much easier if I knew HTML.

Of course, there is the concern that I may be doing all of this using much more memory and bandwidth than is necessary (or prudent). And there is the nagging conviction that I am probably doing some of this the hard way. That was definitely the case 2 days ago, when I had to manually lay out a grid on the worksheet to assist in my layouts. (I had to do it manually because there isn't an automated way to do it, but I ended up sticking with laying out every 10x10 pixel block far longer than I needed to.) I abandoned that approach today and things went a bit faster.

I showed the site design to my dad yesterday and he was really shocked by what I had accomplished. It was very gratifying to receive his praise for what I had created.

Well, I will be continuing on. My goal is to have a functional website done by the end of the month. Perhaps that is a little aggressive and optimistic. I hope not. I need some revenue!

Thanks for reading and thanks for your comments. Have a blessed day!

Building A Website

I have spent all day on the computer. I am in the process of trying to build a website for a business venture that I am working on, and I am finding it to be a bit more challenging than working on the blog. I am learning a lot, but it is slow going.

More than once today I have wanted to throw up my hands and figure out a way to pay someone to do it for me. However, just a little while ago I managed to put some things together that started to look respectable. Granted, I am going to have to figure out how to change the page size to finish making it look the way I want. Oh well, another adventure awaits tomorrow.

In the midst of my frustration this afternoon I decided to Google "cool websites" and spent the rest of the afternoon going through Time's top 50 of a couple years ago. At the very least I saw that you don't have to have a visually impressive website to make the top 50. What I am going for is "user-friendly meets visually-appealing and hooks up with bandwidth-lite."

I am becoming more and more convinced that there really isn't any extremely user-friendly software out there. None of the software that I have been using in the development of this website has been intuitive at all. I have had to resort to reading the help menu to even be able to begin. I guess we can thank Microsoft for that . They have managed to get away with releasing crappy software with more bugs than a New Orleans crack house for so long that more and more companies are wondering why they are spending money on QA. As an out-of-work QA guy, I'm trying to not be bitter about it.

And speaking of the help menus... it is as if they were written by Nepalese kindergarteners and run through an internet translator. The subject-verb agreement is atrocious, the grammar is bizarre, and the spelling often doesn't even approach reality. Seriously, you'd think that someone would actually read back through it before they put it out there for public consumption. I guess they figure that no one reads the things anyway. But as clunky as the programs are you have to read the helps just to make it go!

Hopefully, we'll make better progress tomorrow. Time will tell.