Norm’s Spot Has Moved to http://normanbauer.info

After a number of attempts to backup my blog wich is hosted on blogsome.com I have found no good way to do it. To add to that, blogsome has made it difficult to customize the them or add plugins of your own. So while they have been good to me I just need more features to get this thing rolling.

With that being said I have made the move to http://normanbauer.info which is hosted by free-web-hosting.biz. Unlike blogsome.com they do offer an upgrade path and a whole lot of control and flexibility that most free hosting providers do not give.

Thanks to blogsome for hosting this site for the past year or two. I wish them all the best.

I want to welcome Theresa, my wife, as a new contributing author. I look forward to seeing what is on her mind.

I’m a big fan of “Brit-Coms”, yeah I’m a true geek. But frankly aside from Jericho - which was taken off the air - we don’t have TV as good as the Brits have it. Take “The IT Crowed” for example. Here is probably the single most brilliant TV program ever. I have never seen a show that keeps me laughing on every episode as The IT Crowed does. I can only hope that we don’t make an American version and totally butcher it. Oh, and if you want to see it, you can search Youtube for “The IT Crowed”. You may have to watch it in 7 min. blocks, but it is well worth it.

This is soooo disturbing on so many levels. Have a look http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=25713&only

I’m a humanitarian of sorts and one who loves children, especially my own. However (more…)

Bellow is the original comment by Karrie M. I’ll post my reply to it below.

Karrie M
I stumbled over your blog while doing a little research on Wal-Mart and their sudden lack of compliance with this particular law. Since HB 2176 passed it has in fact required that a pharmacy clerk take down your information and log it in a book that is then entered in the computer, whose computer, I don’t know. However, law enforcement in some states (more…)

Somehow I was chosen by my employers QA Department to be a member of a three person Internal Audit Team…..who’s bright idea was that? =P. No really, I think it will be interesting. I’m not a “Details Oriented” person. Far from it. So I see this a chance to hone some of those much needed (or maybe dormant) detail skills.

Just as bad as my detail skills is my ability to organize. My work and home office are in shambles. They look like a bomb went off in them. If asked, what is the #1 thing I needed improvement on, ORGANIZATION would be it. I’ve read articles on it. I’ve tried mimicking those who are organized, but to no avail. I always wind up loosing it only a day or two later. I suppose it has something to do with the way one thinks. My wife is the most organized person I know, and she thinks in very clear, organized, steps. Me on the other hand, I think in a scattered manner, stopping in the middle of a thought onlyu to start a new one. And I read that way too. I dont look at the entire word, letter by letter, rather I look at groups of words that form sentences, I don’t really look at something directly. The best way to describe it is I take it all in at once. Sometimes reading ahead a bit then reading back. Is that dysfunctional or what?

Ok so it has been a long time since I last updated. The winter was long and busy as hell. Work, the baby, life in general, I have had little time to stop and record my thoughts. Which is something I enjoy immensely. I have been up to a number of things.

I am developing a new website which will be announced sometime in the future. I am also taking on some web work. If you need or have an idea for a website that you want to have made for you, let’s talk. One of the websites I am currently working on is www.ClassActKaraoke.com. The current site is maintained by the business owner and needs a huge make over. Lucky for him, I am his son because he gets a make over for free.

In my spare time I am evaluating several CMS solutions. Drupal, Mambo, and Joomla, to name a few. This site is maintained on WordPress. Which is great for strictly blogging and basic web functionality. But for something a bit more beefy that can do things like eCommerce, WordPress does not cut it.

Now that the weather has changed and it is officially spring, I will have even less time to because now I’ll have to take on all the yard work for another season. Yuk! I hate yard work. It’s not so much mowing the lawn and things like that as much as it is the frequency of it. You have to stay on top of it and do it at least once a week which eats into my shrinking (nearly gone) free time. That is what I hate about it. Oh and the sweating your ass off in the dog days of summer.

One final bit of information. I finally quit smoking. As of 3-28-07 it has been 15 days since I last had a smoke. I’m using the Commit lozenges and it works great. I have tried everything under the sun including the new Chantix pill and nothing seemed to work for me accept for this lozenge. Anyone who is trying to quit should really consider trying them.

I will not be one of those pain in the ass reformed smokers who preach the gospel of quitting smoking. Nope. I quit because the price per pack is too high for my wallet and I was having trouble walking a flight of stairs. I enjoyed smoking I just enjoy breathing a bit more.

It has been a really long time since I last posted a blog. I have been really busy with work and the baby. I have made some changes to the blog and plan to implement more.

1) I did away with my website and redirected my URL normanbauer.info to here.

2) I am recreating those pages here. You will notice the about link at the top. It’s the first of several other pages planed.

More to come in the future.

A small part of my past has vanished. In December of 1999 after a long heated debate on the now defunct FireTalk, I was inspired to create a web discussion group. The topic was Liberty and the US Constitution. My goal was to form an informal group that all like minded thinkers could rally around. Thomas Jefferson being one of my heroes, I decided to call the group The Sons of Jefferson. I hosted the group on MSN Communities. I was active right up until 9/11. After that I became so distraught and disgusted with politics that I no longer cared, so I left the group and let it run on it’s own.

This morning I went to MSN which recently changed to Live.com and is in the process of converting everything to the Live.com domain, to see how this would effect the group. I was shocked and heartbroken to learn that the community had been deleted. The board had pretty much become stagnant over the last year. I made an attempt two years ago to move them from MSN to a PHPBB based system, but only half a dozen of the members out of nearly 150 came over so I gave up entirely. I decided to focus my attention on things that are far more productive like my career and family. Never the less, I still do have fond memories of the many varying opinions and spirited debates. I would have loved to have had the chance to archive those threads. It is interesting to see how much ones opinion changes over the years.

Good by to TSOJ you will be missed.

It boggles my mind what we put up with from our elected leaders. Folks, I suffer from seasonal allergies. In the spring and in the fall I get hit hard with them. Sometimes they last for weeks on end. I am stuffed up in the nose. I can’t get a good nights sleep because I wake up choking every hour. My eyes are watery and itchy. I am plain miserable along with several million Americans these two seasons. Modern medicine (chemistry) has given us some great advances to aid those who suffer from seasonal allergies. One of them is the former prescription only Claritin (pseudoephedrine sulfate/loratadine). This stuff is amazing and is my only true relief from this misery.

So I walk into the local Wal-Mart to pick up some Claritin. After searching the isles I did not find it. Then I remember that all the stores are now keeping it behind the counter. I approach the nice woman behind the counter and ask her for the 24 hour relief Claritin. She grabs it and then asked me for my license so that she could enter my information into their computer. Right then and there my blood begins to boil. I felt like telling her to shove it up Sam Waltons dead ass, but realizing that she is only doing her job and it is not her fault, I politely declined. Then she says in the nicest, most helpful voice “Are you sure? It’s the Law now since September 1st that we all have to do this.” At this point the vein in my head, you know the one that pops out when you are fuming, is popping out. Faced with only two options comply or don’t buy, I whip out my drivers license and hand it over. (more…)