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My experience with Maryland absentee ballots

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

Just some brief notes on my voting experiences with absentee ballots in Maryland. The instructions for requesting a ballot appear on the state's Election Board website. There is a PDF form to print out and return, but interestingly you can submit the form via email or fax, and you can request the ballot ...

A Tale of Two Upgrades: Ubuntu 11.10 vs. CyanogenMod 7.1 Alpha on HP TouchPad

Monday, October 17th, 2011

In the last week or so I ended up upgrading my main PC from Ubuntu 11.04 to 11.10 and hacking 32GB HP TouchPad with the newly released CyanogenMod 7.1 Alpha (aka Android 2.3). I must say that the Alpha, unsupported, potentially lethal, etc. CM7 hack for the TouchPad runs smoother ...

How Small Retailers Survive by Offering Better Service

Thursday, August 18th, 2011

One of the recurring themes that often comes up in debates about sales tax on Internet sales is how big impersonal companies like Amazon tend to kill small local retailers on price alone. However, I recently had two experiences with local small businesses which leads me to believe that a ...

Laziness, not Mediocrity is Enemy of Greatness

Monday, August 15th, 2011

"If he was not the laziest, he would have became the greatest" - Sergey Lukanenko, False MIrrors There is a quote that often gets thrown around about mediocrity being the enemy of greatness but it is not mediocrity itself but the laziness and complacency that it causes. When we settle for ...

Lawsuit against Adam Meister to be Dismissed

Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011

I blogged before about a Baltimore City councilwoman, Belinda Conaway, suing a local blogger for defamation and libel because he accused her of living outside the city and posted real estate documents she herself signed to prove it. Now comes word that her lawyer will be filing for dismissal. The ...

How Writing Things Down Declutters Your Brain

Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011

I ran across recently a blog post which references an interesting lifehack concept called morning pages. According to Julia Cameron who mentions this concept in her book, morning pages is a habit of writing out three pages of prose every morning about anything currently on your mind. What is interesting ...

Simplify Your Keys and Your Life

Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011

I have been reading Zen Habits recently when I ran across his post about simplicity hacks. One of the recurring themes in personal development and personal finance blogs is the concept of simplicity - simplifying your personal life and possessions, by getting rid of things you don't need. I was reminded ...

First Harvest from Our Garden

Wednesday, July 20th, 2011

Earlier today I pulled out the first vegetable that was ready from our garden. It is a small turnip, about 6" long and 1.5" wide, but it is perfectly sized for our chicken soup. There are 7 more out there which I will be pulling out very soon and putting ...

The End of an Era

Monday, July 18th, 2011

The NY Times is reporting that Borders is liquidating itself, closing 399 stores and firing over 10,000 people. This is a second largest brick and mortar book chain in the US, with the biggest (Barnes and Noble) not doing too well either. Reports are trickling in that publishers are getting ...

Review of Paypal’s Mobile Check Capture Service

Sunday, July 10th, 2011

Being that none of the banks I currently use support remote deposit  (taking photos of checks and uploading them instead of bringing the physical checks in), I was very interested to hear that PayPal finally added check deposit ability to their Android app. This post covers my experiences with that ...