What are you, people? On dope?

We’ve made more progress on the bathroom.  The dumpster’s almost full.

Full Dumpster

Here’s a shot of the cutout window:

Window removed. Cutout will be for glass block.

I have a neighbor at our office that I’ve been get to clean up their front yard.   This seems unreasonable.  I hope the city does something about it.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to help them clean this up?

Messy Front Yard

Side Yard

Last weekend we ripped out our bathroom. This weekend we finished they gutting.

Phandroid has posted a very cool looking android phone, the 8230.  It is reminiscent of the iPhone and I’m sure it will lure some iPhone folks away.

Just downloaded a new android alp go keep this blog updated more frequently. I hope it helps.

I was wondering about where the Chat went — I used it to chat with Christine and Scott, etc. — and now I have an answer.

I’ve gotten invitations from friends to be on Facebook, but for a company to not allow me to own my data I think it sucks.

What do I mean? Ok, you’ve built up your network of contacts and now facebook does something you don’t agree with — what do you do? Can you export your contacts? No. You’re stuck.

It’s like having a PDA and the dropping it and having it break. Would you really spend all your time entering your data into a PDA if you know you could never get it out if it broke?

Some third-party Facebook hacks like “Facebook Sync” (for Mac) and “Facebook Downloader” (for Windows) did allow you to download your Facebook friends’ names, emails, mobile phone number and profile photo to the desktop but they were quickly removed for violation of Facebook Terms of Use.

There were other tools too that have all fallen by the wayside:

http://www.allfacebook.com/2008/09/facebook-let-me-export-my-contacts/

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2442338999&b&ref=pd — can’t use this service.  Access the page and see why.    Here’s an excerpt:

Fonebook does not, and will never export phone numbers or email addresses – Facebook does not allow this!! Feel free to join this group to petition for it to change http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=47429104064

http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/10/to-download-contacts-from-facebook-to.html — unfortunately this service violates Facebook TOS, so no dice.

Here’s Mark Zuckerberg’s stance — basically — it’s I don’t care — people keep using my service and may or may not know better but I don’t care about them getting their data out right now.  I’m going to hide behind my stance that without the correct controls, it’s not safe to let people have their data.  Besides, users are using Facebook and Facebook has all their data to lock them into their site.  Nice.

Other sites:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/16/data-portability-its-the-new-walled-garden/

http://blog.dataportability.org/tag/facebook/

Hamcrest is a slick tool. The codehaus guys have great code. Here’s a great primer on Hamcrest.

Joe Walnes’s code (Xstream, Hamcrest, Sitemesh, etc.) has helped a lot of projects, including mine.  A beer to him if we ever meet.

In 2007, I purchased a building in Lockland with the plans of having an office where I could spend part of my summer while the kids were running around the house.

I’ve finally finished it and here are the before and after photo albums.  Take a look and let me know what you think.

Before

449 Wyoming Ave – before

After

449 Wyoming