Musings from Joel

Understanding the real value of a Blogging

montytx — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:47:42 +0000

I am a reluctant blogger. I always thought blogging was for people who had little better to do and no life. I am quickly seeing the light on one of my sites. I am a virtual real estate tycoon, if you will, I own over 80 sites and make a decent living off of advertising. But, most of my sites are small, around 10 pages and drive little traffic. I recently made a New Years resolution, I want to blog 3-5 post a day on my remodeling how to site and I want a dozen videos on my remodeling youtube channel. So I have pressed myself hard to do 3 blog post a day. I haven’t made it every day but I have maintained momentum. The results are very encouraging. Traffic has ramped up 4x from roughly 40 hits a day to approaching 200. My goal is a 1000 right now. Advertising is already up from almost nothing to something worth mentioning. Lastly, I have a manufacturer tweeting about my site to their customers. All of this in 30 days.

This all proves the theory that content is king on line and I am aiming to dominate the remodeling niche within a few years, see you at the top.

Margaret Hill Hunt Bridge to No Where

montytx — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 23:54:32 +0000

It’s a stunning bridge to see as you head over on I-30. You can’t argue that it dominates the sky line when you are heading East or West on the South Side. But, where does it go? I know everyone loves to talk up Oak Cliff and how quaint it is and somehow it always comes down to Bishop Arts and just how neat it is. Oak Cliff is filled with old homes. I love old homes myself and live in a prairie style house closing in on 100 years old, but lets get real, this bridge goes no where.

Ridiculous Cost of The Bridge

Costing $130 Million and counting, this bridge dumps onto Singleton Blvd, which is a dump if I’ve ever seen one. This street is a shit hole, and why they opted to put a bridge to it has far more to do with this cities dysfunctional politics than anything else. How you can place a gorgeous bridge over a questionable river and have it dump into an area with such great businesses as Huerta’s Garage and the Taqueria across the street is a travesty. Maybe I need to get a used car from Abra Motors, or a something else from one of several dozen run down industrial arm pits located on this street. But, fear not, go down a few miles and its more of the same crappy industrial shit, pretty much we spent 13oM installing a sexy bridge to Harry Hines.

I suppose some dipshit in city hall figured, “build it and Neimans will come, ” trust me, Neimans ain’t coming anytime soon to this area nor is anyone else. It will take decades to turn that part of town around. By then the bridge will be rusting and costing us more to maintain it. Of course, I have always thought Oak Cliff would be better off at the bottom of a cliff anyway. There is absolutely nothing down there to sustain that area. That is also due to this cities politics of the past. I am sure all the ” save oak cliff” people are going to be upset that I expressed my feelings. They can go drown their sorrows at a Chilis, Walmart, Target, Neimans, Old Navy or Whole Foods… if only they could find one in their own neighborhood. At least I can pull a permit to build a bridge on Jefferson.

Google fixes multiple id login issue

montytx — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 22:22:51 +0000

I have a Google hosted mail account for my remodeling business. I signed up before they started charging people through the nose for the service so I am lucky enough to not have to pay for it. It allows me to check my email through a gmail interface and email people from my remodeling domain no matter where I am, it works great with my Droid phone, too. The problem is I also have a gmail account and with the roll out of Google+ I gained some great features, but I lost the ability to log into both of my accounts at the same time in the same browser. I was switching back and forth for about a week until I decided to run Chrome on another screen so I could see my remodeling email account as well as my gmail account (in Firefox). I’m not sure how this problem slipped by Google, but it did.
Well, it would appear they have finally fixed it after several months. Simply clicking on your email address in the upper right and then account settings you will see an option for “Multiple Sign Ins.” Select it and agree and you are good to go. You will have to do this for every account that comes through Google (ie.. multiple gmail accounts, or app accounts).
Hopefully this will help someone else out.

How I removed my harmonic balancer

montytx — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 22:42:32 +0000

Removing the harmonic balancer on any car is akin to trying to skin a cat with a hairbrush. To accomplish this Herculaneum feat you need massive leverage, fire and a mouth like a sailor.

I did this about a month ago with my Lexus ES300 and thought I would post the how to here and the video. The bolt that holds a harmonic balancer in place is quite large and about 2″ long. It generally will be rusted in place and if, like my car, yours has 150k in miles, then the screw has been screwed down even more with time.

Things you will need:

Rent or buy 1/2″ large breaker bar ( 3 feet ought to do it. Autozone has them for free with a deposit)
Extension rods to bring the clearance out enough to work with the breaker bar. I used 2 12″ to get the job done.
A jack to leverage against
A high temp torch, no cheap ‘ole propane torch will do the work
A breaker bar to hold onto the harmonic balanceer ( I made my own after watching a youtube video

I watched all sorts of videos to figure out how to do this and I had to try all of them to come to a solution that worked for me. I would under no circumstances suggest starting the car with a breaker bar attached to the balancer. That simply

didn’t pass the smell test with me and sounded like a great way to fuck up the engine. I opted for elbow grease and fire. Once the harmonic balance is exposed and ready for removal, you need to set up the system with a large breaker bar and a jack that will support the load of you standing on the breaker bar and trying to torque the nut off. If this doesn’t work after several tries ( I applied well in excess of 300lbs of torque with no luck then it is time to try fire. I broker out my

oxygen/ propane kit and got a nice hot flame and set it on the bolt for about 20 seconds to

get it really hot. I then tried standing on my breaker bar again and successfully broke the connection.

Breaker Bar I made from a metal rod and 1.5" pipe floor flange. I notched the floor flange with a grinder to fit over my balancer and drilled 2 holes to accomodate 2 bolts to fit in the harmonic balancer's threading.

The harmonic breaker attached to the balancer with the jack stand supporting my breaker bar.

Close up of the pipe flange with the grinder cuts I did to fit into the balancer.

Lexus ES300 Head Gasket Replacement

montytx — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 15:20:33 +0000

I have a 1995 Lexus ES300 that I enjoy working on. I bought it from my brother a few years ago and drove it until the head gaskets went bad this Summer in the 104 degree heat we experienced here in Texas. I decided it was not worth the money to fix the car with a Mechanic, it would cost what the car is worth. So I had to make a decision, sell it as a junker or do it myself. This was a much bigger repair than I have ever tackled with a car before. I like working on cars but I have always had 2 rules: stay out of the motor and transmission. But, I decided that worst case I sell it for junk and I am out the cost of a rebuild gasket kit, radiator and machining job.

I decided to use the Lexus/ Toyota Manual on line and carefully follow the instructions and bag and label everything as I went so I wouldn’t have a bucket of bolts left over at the end. I also decided to take dozens of photos and videos just in case I needed a reference point. The images are below. I have to upload the videos to youtube. I hope this helps someone else. This is not a job for a person who does not like to tear things apart. I took us 2 days of slow work to get this done.

Blown Head gasket in Lexus ES300

[Show as slideshow]

SEOopen Toolbar plugin for Firefox 9.x updated

montytx — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:56:57 +0000

SEOopen Toolbar has always been my favorite toolbar for Firefox. It simple, effective and doesn’t have a bunch of adware built into it. But, the owner quit supporting it a few years ago. I have hacked my way through it every time I have had to update Firefox to a new version. As more things change online I keep having to update it. Recently Yahoo did away with its backlink tool which has been killing me as I search for an alternative tool. I finally found a new search engine and decided to add it to SEOopen under the same spot as Yahoo for backlink checking. I’m afraid Yahoo is officially dead for me. The only thing they did really well was support webmasters and SEO types. Sad for them.

Anyway, I thought I would offer this updated plugin to anyone interested. Here is it. Just click on the file in Firefox to get it working, you may have to reboot. I have it set up to work until version 9 of Firefox. It is a .xpi file so it should slide right into firefox. IF you want to download the file and look at it you will need ti unzip the package.

Two big changes:

Fixed the Pagerank checker tool to go to a site that works

Changed the backlink checker tool to go to blekko.

Plugin

Courtney’s Brother Going for the land speed record

montytx — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 15:42:34 +0000

Is Corporal Punishment a Right?

montytx — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 01:18:11 +0000

Just finished reading an article on CNN about whether or not corporal punishment is right and how laws against it have passsed in Sweden and several other countries, but not in the U.S. I think back to my childhood and remember a few instances where I was spanked. Once for breaking a window ( my dad used a shoe) and once at military school for going to the campus store ( with a paddle). Both of them left indelible memories on me and made me think long and hard about breaking windows and being where I wasn’t supposed to be. I was spanked many other times as a kid, but those 2 stick out. In both cases I think I deserved the outcome. People like to argue corporal punishment is wrong, but the reality is sometimes behavior has to be altered by force to teach a lesson.

Ask any school teacher about respect and they will all tell you the same thing, ( at least the half a dozen I know) that kids don’t show respect for their elders, they simply have no fear and feel free to say things like ” Fuck You” and call teachers Bitches. I hear about this weekly from my girlfriend who is a teacher. When I was a student that simply didn’t happen. There was a healthy respect for authorities. That has gone wayward. Today’s students don’t appear to think there are any repercussions for this behavior because frankly, there aren’t. Worst case they get sent home, and what kid wouldn’t want to sit at home over sitting in school.

That brings me to my son. He’s 15 and in the midst of massive Teenage angst. I think back to his childhood and when I spanked him. I stopped around the time he reached 11 because I decided he was getting too big. But, I remember a day when he was three and the baby sitter was watching him. I got a call that he had gone crazy and had to rush home. 20 minutes later I got home to find that he had thrown a candle and hit the babysitter in the head ( she was bleeding), he had pushed over a 32″ tube TV from the stand, he had knocked over several plants and spread dirt all over the floor and knocked over all his toy shelves. It looked like someone had ransacked my house. I quite simply lost it. I remember spanking him hard about 8 times, that immediately stopped the tantrum and started a balling session. I regretted it, but do I think I did the right thing? If I had it to do again I would have done one half the spanks, but I would have done them. It had to be done to restore the universe and its order. Anyone who tells me differently can have my son come live with them for a few weeks.

That brings me to my son’s situation now. He’s 15 now and as big as me. He’s as wayward and as lost as a teen can be and nothing, and I mean nothing I say matters to him. He looks at me disgust and I feel like a broken record repeating my dooms day proposition of his future. He has no interest in school, life, his future or anything else worth while. He is only interested in girls and hedonism. The tragedy is his future is flipping burgers at minimum wage, yet he is smart and a talented writer/artist ( if only he would do it). Because of all of this consternation, we have had two physical scuffles where he challenges me. They are over in a flash, but it makes me think why doesn’t he respect me? I don’t have an answer but I do think respect has to do with fear. I respected my dad and the gym coach because they had the paddle. We respect authority becuase they will throw us in the slammer. It is just that simple.

I don’t know when society decided it was wrong to spank kids, but I simply don’t understand the logic. Kids need someone to show them the way, and while there are many role models, they often fall short. If no one steps up and says “this is profoundly wrong” and punishes them appropriately they learn they can get away with anything. I think this is what is happening with a lot of this generation’s kids. They feel entitled to everything, don’t have any desire to work for it, and have no respect for their elders. We are going to live in a very different world in 50 years as a result. I’m not saying I have the answers, but I’m not sure the direction we are heading is workable.

Entering New Mexico

montytx — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 19:18:43 +0000

A few more hours and we’re in Taos. Giant wind farm near route 66.

Live PR and Swootsy SEO add on no longer working in Firefox fix

montytx — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:32:20 +0000

I use lots of SEO Tools and my favorite ones are the ones in Firefox. What I cant stand are the SEO tools that come loaded with ads and unrelated crap the builder is stuffing it with. For this reason I have a small program called livePR that gives me the pagerank of web sites. It stopped working a few days ago and after some digging I found out google had changed the location of its toolbar.

You now have to query it via:

The old query URL is:

http://toolbarqueries.google.com/search?client=navclient-auto&features=Rank&ch=8f3b58e04&q=info:[URLHERE]

The new query URL is:

http://toolbarqueries.google.com/tbr?client=navclient-auto&features=Rank&ch=8f3b58e04&q=info:[URLHERE]

Small change but it breaks my simple program. I had to find the plugin here: C:\Users\Joel\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\n87di648.default\extensions\{8061ddcf-3632-4287-8d8a-133e219ae838}\chrome\livepr

Yours will be different, the key is it is under users> your user name> AppData>Roaming>Mozilla>Firefox>Profiles…. Then you will need to look under all the folders with the extensions in them with the numbers. You will find under the chrome\livepr. It may be faster just to search for livepr. Then you will see a .jar file which is compressed. You will have to uncompress it and located this file:

liveOverlay.js ( open and save a back up as liveoverlayold.js)

Around line 241 there is a querry change it to:

var querystring = “http://”+datacenter+”/tbr?client=navclient-auto&ch=”+gch+”&features=”+feat+”&q=”+reqgre+”&num=100&filter=0″;

Then save the file and recopy it back into the .jar compressed folder. You may have shut down firefox to do this since it appears to lock up the file.

Swoosty SEO Tools 2.0 Pagerank fix

Swoosty is another tool I run in firefox. I found it in the same main firefox folder folder as an xpi file called 23ad39a3-36e7-4d8e-92d2-ba116ee32c45. XPI files are zip files and can be opened with winrar. Once I opened it and decompressed it into its own folder I found this file in the content folder: swoostyseotools.js.

Around line 362 I found the query and changed it to:

querystring += “toolbarqueries.google.com/tbr?client=navclient-auto&ch=” +
this.mGoogleCH + “&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&features=Rank” +
( this.mGoogleRankOnly ? “” : “:FVN” ) + “&q=” + reqgre;

Once again you will have to save this file and then close firefox and add it back into the xpi via winrar. Works like a champ.

Good Luck!