I’ve been a little quiet for the last couple of days because I’ve been kicking around a few ideas, and right now deciding on the structure of my site has me stumped. Of course this blog is less than a month old, and I want to get this worked out before I put too much content up.

I know, I should have had this all squared away before I started, but I was really excited to have my own domain name, that I just had to get started.

My original idea was to set up a site that gets fairly technical, and use port 16 for personal stuff. The problem here is that I have somewhat limited time, so I don’t think that I’ll actually be able to create enough content for both. Recently I’ve been thinking that I might as well do both here on Port 16.

Right now my blog is at the root of the site, which I think will turn out to be a bad idea. If I ever want to do anything else with the site, then I will have to move everything around later, after I have created gobs of stuff. Either I’ll break any external links coming into the blog, or I’ll have to make all sorts of crazy redirects.

If nothing else, I think that I should move my blog into a /blog subdirectory, and either set up a place holder in the root, or a redirect, like Wendy Piersall does.

So thanks for reading, and stay tuned.

Posted in BlogNewsandUpdates 2 Comments »

They say that “Necessity is the mother of invention”. I think that Necessity’s sister, Poverty, is the mother DIY. When I grew up, we couldn’t go wasting money on such frivolous things as car repairs, so if you couldn’t fix it, or you didn’t know someone who could fix it, then it just didn’t get fixed.

In some ways that experience has made me a cheap skate. To this day, it physically hurts me to pay someone to do something that I can do myself. If something breaks, I fix it. If I don’t know how, then I either look at a book and / or ask a friend.

Now granted, it may not get fixed right away, or I may lose some skin, blood, sanity, weekends, and / or money in the process of fixing it, but I’m going to do it.

Heck, I may not even learn to fix it until I’m standing around, looking at all the extra parts that are left over after I’ve put it all back together, but its always easier the second time around. It also gets progressively easier each time you do it.

By the fifth time you’re pretty much an expert.

From a time and money standpoint, this practice doesn’t always work out, but I’ve saved a huge amount of money taking care of my vehicles and my house, so I think that I’m in the lead.

There is another saying that comes to mind, “Experience is something you don’t get until after you need it”. With the 84 Jeep CJ-7 pictured above, I’m getting a whole lot of experience.

I will say that there have been a number of times recently that I let a professional take care of an automotive problem. But last week, when my foot pushed the brake pedal to the floorboard, with none of the “stopping” that is generally associated with that action, I had to take a look at it myself. It turned out that I had a cracked brake line. Easy enough to repair:

• Step 1: Remove the old brake line.
  • Optional Step: Wash Brake Fluid out of your Eye.
• Step 2: Replace it with a new one.
  • Optional Step: Bash Knuckle on the Master Cylinder.
• Step 3: Bleed the brakes to get the air out of the line.
  • Optional Step: Take Motrin to stop the throbbing in your leg from pushing the brake pedal.

Simple right? Well, I didn’t get past step 1.

I couldn’t get the fitting off. The fitting was conveniently located between the exhaust pipe and the frame. There just wasn’t any room, and when the three fingers I could fit in there managed to get the wrench to turn, I was only shaping the fitting into a perfect circle.

A circle is a good shape for tires, but bad for nuts and bolts.

I brought the Jeep into Brakes Plus, and they said it would only take about an hour to an hour and a half, so I decided to wait. I figured that they would have an easy time with it.

Watching the mechanic, with a 4 foot long wrench (its a little easier to work on when the vehicle is on a lift), pushing as hard as he could, I thought “Man am I glad I brought it in, I would never have been able to get that off”.

Watching the mechanic bang that same 4 foot long wrench with a large hammer only made this thought more concrete.

Watching the mechanic cursing (sound proof glass), pounding a 6 foot long wrench with a hammer, and angrily throwing said hammer into the toolbox across the room, I was sure that I had made the right decision.

Anyway, 2 and a half hours later, I had my Jeep back, with a brake pedal that can put a bald headed, 215 pound man firmly into the windshield, or so I am told. I gladly parted with $190, knowing that there was no way that I would have been able to do that in any reasonable amount of time, if at all.

The moral to this story is that sometimes it pays to bring your problems to a professional. Whether this is a mechanic, a computer repair tech, or a psychologist, you will probably be happier when it is all over.

Posted in Advice, CJ-7, Jeeps, Repairs 5 Comments »

So you finally took the plunge and got an account with a hosting provider. But you aren’t big enough yet to afford a dedicated server, or co-location, so you’re using shared hosting.

Did you ever wonder who else is on the same server?

Well “My IP Neighbors” lets you find out. Just enter in your web site’s IP address, or web site URL, and it will list off the other sites on your server, in a convenient viewing window.

When I did it, I found out there are 101 web sites, including my own, on my server. I can’t complain since Blue host has been really dependable, and I can’t beat the price or what is included with the package.

Posted in Blogging, Hosting, Web Tools, WebSites 3 Comments »

Art, over at Incoherent Mumbling ran into this issue with WordPress and Windows Live Writer Beta, and found a fix for it. Windows Live Writer started giving him the error “Image upload not supported by weblog”, which we all know is a blatant lie!

This is something that I should keep handy, because I use Windows Live Writer Beta, and I’m sure now that people are having this problem, my computer is going to want to follow the crowd.

Art called me and asked me about it, and my suggestion, to delete the account in Live Writer and recreate it, didn’t fix it.

Good Work Art!

Posted in Errors, Fixes, WordPress 7 Comments »

I’m one of those people that read a blog or web site with a lot of readers and ask myself, “I wonder who their hosting provider is?” I also do this for sites that are really slow, or seem to be down often.

I just don’t think there is any better recommendation for a hosting provider than a fast loading, responsive site that is always available.

Now, I can occupy myself for hours looking up the hosting providers for my favorite sites with “Who is Hosting this?”.

The site is really straightforward, you enter the domain name that you want to learn about, and click on “tell me”. The site comes back with the hosting provider, conveniently linked so you can check them out.

Unlike some other web based tools out there, Who is hosting this isn’t covered in ads. There are some ads, but I’ve seen some web tools that have so many ads, sometimes I have trouble finding the tool.

No need to look Port 16 up, I use Bluehost.com, and love it.

Posted in Blogging, Web Tools, WebSites No Comments »