Craigslist is good for laugh every now and then.

Usually it comes in the form of someone looking to hire someone to develop a site “Just like MySpace” with a budget of $500.  Or “I have a great way to run auctions online, a real Ebay killer.  Need you to implement my ideas.  Budget $1000 plus equity in the new company.”  LOL.

But you can get a good laugh too by posting your own listing and reading the responses.  For example, I posted recently looking for someone with experience integrating business systems with quickbooks.  I wrote that, initially, I just wanted to sit with the person for a few hours to point me in the right direction, and to talk about some of the best practices for doing tihs type of work, but I might have them do some of the development work.

Here is one of the responses I got:

** CRAIGSLIST ADVISORY — AVOID SCAMS BY DEALING LOCALLY
** Avoid: wiring money, cross-border deals, work-at-home
** Beware: cashier checks, money orders, escrow, shipping
** More Info: http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams.html

That is a hard program to automate, but I do have some experience with it when I worked for a large union construction company. You are better off not using it, I have some better methods of keeping your affairs in order using Excel. Call me if you want at XXX-XXX-XXXX for any questions. Marty

LOL

I was working on my father-in-laws laptop the other day and noticed that he was using up a lot of drive space.

I started poking around, but things were not adding up.  Of his 80 GB drive, about 30GB was unaccounted for.  I called a buddy of mine who was also running Vista to see if he had the same problem, and as it turned out, he was.

After some more investigation, it looks like this might not be a Vista issue, but is instead caused by IBM/Lenovo’s Rescue and Recovery software.

I will have to confirm this later by actually fixing his computer, but I wanted to get this out there in case anyone else has a Lenovo laptop that is missing drive space.

Keywords:

Missing drive space, Missing disk space, Where is my drive space, Lenovo hard drive missing space.

I have been toying with the idea of trying to learn spanish… the class I most hated in school.

I have no idea where this desire came from, and more than I can explain my rather sudden interest in traveling and soccer (lots of EPL games on my DVR).

So I have been working with some Rosetta Stone CDs as well as listening to some podcasts ( www.coffeebreakspanish.com and www.notesinspanish.com ).  I have improved a little, but I think there is only so much you can do with reading/listening and not really having to interact with people who are speaking the native language.

I found this page that talks about the COE Language Proficiency Scale.  I think on this scale I would be only an A2:

A2 – Can understand sentences and frequently used expressions related to areas of most immediate relevance (e.g. very basic personal and family information, shopping, local geography, employment). Can communicate in simple and routine tasks requiring a simple and direct exchange of information on familiar and routine matters. Can describe in simple terms aspects of his/her background, immediate environment and matters in areas of immediate need. 

And I think I would like to be at the B2 level:

B2 – Can understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and abstract topics, including technical discussions in his/her field of specialisation. Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party. Can produce clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects and explain a viewpoint on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of various options.

So while the ipods and Rosetta Stone are good, I think if I want to take it to the next level I need to take lessons.  I found 2 places that offer lessons online from native speakers over Skype. 

Nulengua (http://www.nulengua.com/) charges $10/hour and WebSpanish (http://www.webspanish.com/) charges $15 / hour.  Both are very cheap as the tutors are based in South America, so I guess I need to decide if I am going to bit the bullet and sign up for some of these.

The only thing holding me back at this point is the fact that I don’t have any free time as it is, and also I am trying to factor in my tendency for being really interested in something only to lose interest over time, get burnt out, whatever. 

I think the term my mom used to use was that I was “very intense” when it came to things I was interested in.  So right now, I would love to spend a lot of time learning these things, but 6 months from now will I still have the same interest, and therefore be glad that I spent as much time as I did on learning spanish.  Or, will I be on to something else with my limited free time?

Sometimes I feel like simply being aware of my tendency to overly invest time in things like this has the opposite effect, causing me to over compensate and avoid moving forward.

Anyway, I am lucky enough to have a wonderful wife who puts up with my ebb and flow, and is willing to do the lessons with me.  Just need to find some time to get started.

I am having a very hard time using my iphone headphones outside these days in Chicago.  It gets pretty cold, and the plastic that they wrap the wires in freezes up almost instantly, making the cable stiff like a piece of solder.

So when you turn your head, the headphone wires don’t move and the ear buds pop out of your head.  Pretty poor design.

I guess it doesn’t get this cold in Silicon Valley, where Apple has it’s headquaters.

So it looks like youtube.com is down.

I can’t imagine how much money they are losing with each passing second.