Jeremy Schneider's Blog

Fine Lines Studios

2011-10-19T19:34:00.000-07:00

Those interested in permanent makeup in San Diego should check out Fine Lines Studios! My friend Karey runs it and she does a fantastic job! :)

Super Wok Pacific Beach, San Diego Chinese Food Take Out

2011-10-14T10:25:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to give a shout out to my favorite chinese restaurant in Pacific Beach! Check out the new website for Super Wok!

Web Listings, Inc. is a SCAM

2011-01-31T11:18:00.000-08:00

These things really piss me off: I just got a letter in the mail that looks identical to an invoice from "Web Listings, Inc." It is actually a solicitation to try to get me to transfer a domain to them. Transferring a domain should cost around $10, but they are charging $85.

You can tear off the little bottom portion, fill in the "Amount Paid" and return it in their envelope (not pre-paid, unfortunately) to "pay your bill. There is ONE LINE (which I'm sure they need to include to be barely in compliance with the law) that says "This is not a bill...", but they obviously exist solely on misinformed, busy people who don't understand domain names and think this is a real invoice from a generic sounding company they have done business with before.

Transferring a domain to them is a TERRIBLE idea. If you're reading this and you've already paid, do NOT go through with the registration. Keep your domain with a reputable registrar or you'll probably be paying $85 every year instead of $10 and I'm sure you'll have a huge headache if you ever try to transfer away.

Anyway, these guys are theives as far as I'm concerned. Hopefully a spam bot is reading this and can e-mail them at: info@web-listings.net

BMI is Bullshit! (BMI of pro athletes)

2010-11-15T23:31:00.000-08:00

I was cruising reddit today and saw a comment where a redditor was a bit disappointed that according to his BMI, he was (just barely) classified as "overweight". For those who don't know, BMI stands for Body Mass Index and is a stupid formula that divides your weight by your height squared.

BMI MIGHT have some value when determining the health of a very large population, but for an individual it is totally useless and probably dangerous! To make my point, I replied to the comment that most professional athletes would be considered OBESE according to their BMI. That got me thinking about what a pro athlete's BMI would actually be. Luckily for me, heights and weights of athletes are readily available on their rosters, so I went to work!

I studied the Detroit teams, because they have a team in every major sport and it's my home town!

BMI defines the following categories:

Underweight = Under 18.5
Normal weight = 18.5–24.9
Overweight = 25–29.9
Obesity = 30 or greater

Overall, there are 115 pro athletes on Detroit rosters. Their total average BMI is 28.3! Yep... the average Detroit pro athlete is overweight and approaching obese!

The number of athletes by category is:

Underweight: 0 (0.0%)
Normal: 24 (20.9%)
Overweight: 64 (55.7%)
Obese: 27 (23.5%)

The Lions had the highest BMI with an average of 31.2 (Obese) and 49.1% of their team falling in the obese category. Only one player was "normal" (cornerback Chris Houston at 5'11, 178 with a BMI of 24.8) and quarterback Matt Stafford snuck in JUST under obese at 6'2, 232 with a BMI of 29.8. Here's a photo of what an almost-obese person looks like.

Next fattest were the Red Wings at 27.2 (overweight), then the Tigers at 27.0 (overweight) and finally the Pistons got into the normal range just under the wire at 24.6.

At any rate, unless you think that 80% of pro athletes are overweight and need to lose weight, then it's probably time to realize that BMI is total bullshit!

Of course the REASON it's bullshit is that it doesn't take into account musculature, fitness, strength, endurance or any other reasonable measure of health or fitness.

For the same reasons, I think weight is a terrible measure of fitness! Screw the scale.

If you want a better measure of fitness, may I suggest:

Mile time
Burpees in 20 minutes
The mirror (not so easily measurable)

Seriously. Run a mile or do burpees for 20 minutes and see if you can improve THAT number. If you can improve one of those two by 20% the mirror test will improve considerably! Don't obsess over the scale... it just leads to yo-yo dieting and a slowed metabolism. Obsess over your burpees in 20 minutes score and you'll get fit!

Netgear XAV101 Powerline Networking - Syncing or adding a device

2010-05-17T00:47:00.000-07:00

I just wrestled with adding a 3rd Netgear XAV101 powerline networking device to my network. The main problem is that the documenation is blatantly wrong. To press the security or factory reset buttons, you do NOT hold them down. You just click them once. I kept getting stuck in the stage with two green lights on (first and third) implying the device was not paired correctly.

The steps I followed to get everything working with a custom private key:

Go to each unit in your network and click the "factory reset" button once.
Once everything is reset go to device #1 and press the "security" button once, then go to device #2 and press the security button once.
Wait two minutes. (I think you have to pair 2 devices before you can add a third)
To add the 3rd (or 4th or 5th) device. Click the "factory reset" button (why not?) and wait a few seconds.
Press the security button on device #3, then press the security button on device #2. That should pair #3 to the first two.

The Netgear documentation says you need to hold these buttons down for two or 10 seconds. When we did that, it seemed to make sure that nothing happened whatsoever!

TempGetStateItemExclusive3 called repeatedly - SQL Server requests timing out from ASP.NET

2010-01-21T17:04:00.000-08:00

UPDATE 1/28/10: Ok, so the solution I provide below, isn't actually the fix. The SQL Agent being off was actually a side-effect of restarting the SQL Server. Turning it back on certainly helped things, but we still have seen this blocking issue since this fix was in. I currently have a question into stack overflow about this.

I just spent the last couple days trying to track down an issue with SQL performance where there seemed to be a blocking or hanging issue causing SQL requests to timeout. Doing a profiler trace, I found a stored procedure called TempGetStateItemExclusive3 (TempGetStateItemExclusive in older versions) getting called over and over seemingly grinding the server to a halt.

It turns out, the issue was with the ASP.NET Session State stored in SQL Server. Lots of internet searches didn't turn up much. There is an old bug in .NET 1.0 that had to do with serialization of objects. I also found a promising looking hot fix that seems to address this exact issue (but it wasn't our solution).

Our problem ended up being that the ASPStateTempSessions table (stored in either tempdb or ASPState) was growing out of control because no old sessions were ever deleted. Looking up session data then became uber-slow causing ASP.NET to timeout waiting for the session (at which point it tries again, amplifying the problem). You can check how many active session rows you have by doing a simple query like this:

select COUNT(*) from ASPStateTempSessions

The cause for this out of control growth was that our SQL Server Agent was turned of for some reason, so old sessions were never cleaned up.

The fix was to turn the SQL Server Agent back on and make sure the ASPState_Job_DeleteExpiredSessions job is running. We also had to turn on the "SQL Server Agent (MSSQLSERVER)" in the Services section of Windows and make sure the Startup Type is automatic. Our session count is now hovering around 1500 (but I suspect this number would vary vastly based on traffic, the important thing is to make sure it doesn't grow out of control).

Hopefully this helps someone out there, or at least gives you some ideas for ways to track down the problem!

Hyperfit USA Review

2009-11-20T13:19:00.000-08:00

I've been working out at Hyperfit USA in Ann Arbor, MI for over a year now and I've been meaning to share my thoughts about it, so here it goes!

First, some background about me

I was always an active kid but certainly no savant at sports, and eventually found my athletic "home" on the track team in high school. I had a successful high school career and continued running in college at the University of Michigan and was a pretty decent college runner. My one remaining claim to fame is that I still hold a U of M school record in the 600m dash (1:17.33 for anyone who knows what a good 600 time is). I also ran 46.8 and 1:49.8 in the 400 and 800. I was actually even ranked 4th in the world in the 600 in 2001 (but admittedly, it's not a world champs event so fewer people run it)

After college

It's a weird time for a lot of people because almost all of the structure that school or college provided evaporates. I wasn't quite good enough to kid myself into thinking I should be training for a post-collegiate track career so my motivation to train at a high level kind of died. There were quite a few years there where I didn't do much of anything, fitness wise. I did still run a bit recreationally, doing a 5k here and there, but nothing serious. I may not have known it, but I was in pretty terrible shape. Here's a picture of me which has to be near my wimpiest:

Getting back into it

One day, I got struck with some inspiration to get into shape. I used to think "in shape" meant the ability to jog a 4:30 mile or run sub 50 in the 400 after being woken up in the middle of the night. But even looking back at college, I wasn't "totally fit", I was just fast at running. So, I bought a weight set on craigslist and started doing bench press in my basement. I was getting back into shape! (Or so I thought)

What's Hyperfit?

Fast forward a couple years, and I had been getting more serious about fitness, working out at a gym at least a few times a week, mixed in with running, hill repeats, etc. I started hearing from a few different friends about this CrossFit thing and my roommate started working out at Hyperfit. Since I had been working out, I think we'd both admit that I was in better shape than him, but after hearing what was going on at Hyperfit I knew he was closing the gap fast, so I had to get in on that. I e-mailed Doug, and set up my first intro session!

Some Reservations

I originally had some reservations about working out at Hyperfit... I wanted to workout like I liked to work out. In my case, that meant focusing on my "glamour" muscles to make my body look as good as possible (and ignoring the "core" and legs, because who cares?). At some point, in my aged wisdom though, I decided that I would just get into incredible shape, then whatever my body looks like would be the way it should look.

Pukey Pukey

The "intro WOD (workout of the day)" is as follows: Row 500 meters, do 40 air squats, 30 situps, 20 pushups, 10 pullups in succession, as fast as you can. I had been working out and was a college athlete, so figured I could blow this workout away. I even cheated a little by training for it before I got there. Well, the workout basically blew me away. I think my time was around 6 minutes and I was JUST shy of puking for about 30 minutes afterwards. THAT sure brought back memories. When I got to the pullups, I was trashed. At the gym, with tons of rest, I could rip of 10 pullups no problem, but after doing all that other stuff I could barely reach up to hold on to the bar. The workout made a mockery of me!

So what makes Hyperfit different?

A lot of things:

Group based workouts: You can't just show up to the gym and piss around on machines for half an hour then walk out. You show up to scheduled workouts and are forced to work your ass off because everyone else is working their ass off doing the exact same measurable workout and you don't want to look like a pansy. (Not looking like a pansy was my motivation through most of my 10 years of competitive running)
Total body fitness: Everything at Hyperfit is designed around total fitness. I have yet to do bench press or bicep curls here. (Although my chest and biceps are stronger than they've ever been). Instead more total body complex exercises are performed, like push ups, pullups, olympic lifts, rowing, kettlebell swings, wall balls, rope climbing, running, various barbell and dumbbell exercises and more (if you don't know what those are, don't worry). My "core" is stronger than it's ever been and it gives me a lot of confidence in day to day life and athletic activities!
Randomization: The workout you do each day is set when you get there and is always (much) different than what you did last time you came. Any fitness expert will tell you one of the keys to improving strength and endurance is to "surprise" your body and your muscles with something different. If you go to the gym and do the same thing every day you're only getting a tiny percent of the benefit out of it that you should be. This doesn't happen at Hyperfit.
Experts: Personal trainers are expensive. Hyperfit's "group based" workouts offer the best of both worlds. You have expert trainers there who know you by name, teaching you the moves, assigning the workouts and encouraging you to work your ass off, but the cost is shared among all of the members.
Measurable: While you never do the same workout twice in a row, there are a set of "benchmark" workouts that we do a lot. They're all measurable (usually time, reps or weight based) so you can look at how you're improving over time. Tracking your performance is key to improvement or you end up just not caring and plateauing quickly.
Photos and Video: Pretty much every workout is photographed and video taped by the trainer running it. It's fun to ego-surf the photos and videos, plus gives you a chance to take a look at your form on the various exercises.
It's for everybody: When I mention Hyperfit to friends, the most common objection I get is "but that must be for crazy good athletes". No, crazy good athletes are already in great shape, YOU are the one that needs Hyperfit. Everything at hyperfit is scaled. That means stronger members may be doing shoulder presses with 180lbs, but new members can scale the weight down to a PVC pipe if that's where they are at. Everything scales: pushups, pullups, weights, reps, etc. In fact, I highly recommend checking your ego at the door your first few months and going VERY light on the weights or you might end up VERY sore like I did. Hyperfit is certainly embraced by current and former athletes, but I think it's the out-of-shape non-athlete that really needs it, because you get a window into what workout out is REALLY supposed to be like while you get into the shape of your life!
Results! The bottom line is that the combination of the things above equal results. If you're going to the gym and doing the "elliptical" for 60 minutes while you read a magazine, you're quite literally wasting your time. At Hyperfit, you can do in 5 minutes what 60 minutes of the elliptical can't touch.

Now What?

Now a bit over a year of working out at Hyperfit and I did the "intro wod" the other day in 4:06 blowing through each exercise with zero rest. (taking 30%+ off your time is a lot). Yesterday I did 150 pushups and 150 pullups (5 of each, every minute on the minute for 30 minutes, a workout I couldn't have dreamed of doing a couple years go). I'm also having a lot of fun! It's nice to get out and see people after a long day of staring at a screen. Despite not focusing on my "glamour" muscles, I'm pretty sure my body looks better than it ever has. Here are a couple more recent photos taken at Hyperfit:

"Lens error, restart camera" - PowerShot SD750

2009-09-07T10:22:00.000-07:00

Problem: My camera's lens (PowerShot SD750) recently stopped retracting after probably getting some sand in the mechanism from the beach. It would give the dreaded "Lens error, restart camera" warning message. I read everything I could, but nothing I did fixed it. I went as far as taking the camera apart, tiny screws and all before I finally chickened out and put it back together.

Options:

Try cleaning it. I tried, but nothing worked
Buy a new one... pricey and feeding our "throw away" mentality
Sell the broken one used on ebay for 80ish bucks and buy a working used one on ebay for 150ish bucks. Probably my best answer but still 70ish bucks and a lot of hassle
Get it fixed. Canon, apparently, charges $200 (more than the cost of the camera). I called local shops and they said they just send the camera to canon

Solution: Well, DURING my shopping on ebay for a used camera, I found a guy selling the repair for "Lens error, restart camera" for $64. He had excellent feedback (a lot of which looked like it was for this repair service). So I gave it a go. I'd rather have my own camera back anyway. So I shipped it and VERY quickly he got it and shipped it back. Within a few days. I got it, turned it on and "LENS ERROR, RESTART CAMERA". Ugh... I was a little discouraged, but he seemed responsive so I wasn't too worried. But it turned out that there was just some moisture or something on the lens and I cleaned that off and it's been working perfectly ever since!

Summary:

CUSTOMER SERVICE WATER ANN ARBOR MI

2009-05-04T09:06:00.000-07:00

Another weird looking item on my credit card statement, this one with no phone number:

CUSTOMER SERVICE WATER ANN ARBOR MI

It actually was referring to a parking ticket I paid at city hall. Very descriptive.

Maybe there needs to be a website for users to report these.

SQL Server full text search returns no results, won't index new rows (Error '0x80040e09')

2009-04-24T15:49:00.000-07:00

So... I just spent the last hour or two pulling my hair out trying to figure out why none of the full-text searches were working on a specific table of my database. (SQL Server 2005 Express with Advanced Features). Here's what I learned.

Problem: SQL Server full-text search will not index new rows after a certain date. After dropping and rebuilding the index all full-text searches return NO results on that table. When this happened, it was only happening on one specific table and all other tables were acting normally. I eventually dug way down into the SQL full text error log and found an error like this: "Error '0x80040e09' occurred during full-text"... This happened after switching to a new database server.

Solution: Reboot the server. (Are you kidding me?)

Hope this saves someone an hour or two.

SuperSimpleStorageService.com

2009-04-20T13:16:00.000-07:00

Those looking for a high-volume, low-cost, totally useless hosted storage solution should check out Amazon S3's newest non-competitor: S4, SuperSimpleStorageService.com

MAPDEMOG

2009-04-20T13:15:00.000-07:00

MAPDEMOG is DynamicGeometry

Back in Lima, heading home tomorrow!

2009-01-25T14:17:00.000-08:00

Jess and I made it back to Lima this morning after a 15 hour bus ride. Jess is getting on a plane tonight and I get on a plane tomorrow night at around 11. We had a great day in Arequipa yesterday and did get to go white water rafting! The boat almost flipped and when it did, Jess and I were 2 of the 3 people that sucessfully did not fall out of the boat!

Today we hung out on the beach in the hot, hot sun, and I'm hoping that my sunscreen did its work! I am TOO worn out from the sun to try to monkey with pictures, but I'll upload them all when I get back on Tuesday!

Made it to Arequipa!

2009-01-23T12:48:00.000-08:00

We made it to Arequipa safe and sound! Today we're just hanging out and checking out the city. Tomorrow, we're going white water rafting, then getting an overnight bus back to Lima for Jess' flight home!

I've finally got my camera cord so I was able to upload a few images!

The beginning of our 4 day trek, riding bikes down a big mountain in the rain! We ran into a river flowing over the road... We had to load our bikes back onto our van which was able to drive over the water which was at least 8 inches deep or so and flowing fast!

Posing in front of another river on the bike tour

Jess and I during our 13 mile hike on the 2nd day of our 4 day bike/hike/Machu Picchu trek! Jess is doing something new with her hair... can you spot it?

Day four of our hike in front of Machu Picchu! Pictures definitely don´t do this place justice!

Back in Cusco, heading to Arequipa tonight!

2009-01-22T11:17:00.000-08:00

We successfully finished our mini-trek and it was a blast! Our last day we got up at FOUR AM (I think I mentioned that last time) to hike up the Machu Picchu mountain. Other than the early hour it was really awesome. Machu Picchu is really unbelievable. In short, it's this huge Incan city made of rock and was abandoned only about 500 years ago! The Incans were living there and building this incredible city in the Mountains when they got word that the Spanish were coming to kill them and destroy their cities and build nice churches on top of the wreckage.

I think Machu Picchu get so much attention because it was one of the few Incan cities that avoided that fate. Scholars think it was because the Incans, in anticipation of the Spanish coming, burned down their own city (leaving only the rock walls, pottery and other non-burnables) and hid all the paths to the city. They did this so the Spanish couldn't follow the paths and use the city as a camp for their men.

ANYWAY, it was great. I have awesome photos, but unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera cord with me today, so they'll have to wait for another day. Tonight we're getting on an overnight bus at 9pm to arive in Arequipa tomorrow morning. We're hopefully going to do some fun stuff, like white water rafting! Then only a couple more days 'til Jess flies home on the 25th and I fly home on the 26th!

On a 4 day, 3 night trek, Going to Machu Picchu tomorrow!

2009-01-20T18:43:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the posting delay! After I arrived in Lima, we got up the next morning and hopped on a plane to Cusco which is the biggest city that acts as a staging ground for trips to Machu Picchu. When we got into Cusco we booked a 4 day/3 night trek that ends at Machu Picchu, which will be tomorrow!

That trip started at 8am the next day and we've had no Internet access until now. There is a world famous "Inca Trail" that is a multi-day hike to Machu Picchu but that is really pricey and generally requires 6-9 months advanced booking. SO: Our trip takes us on the OTHER Inca trail. Which is just as awesome, as far as I know, but less expensive... and easier to book.

The first day, we drove in vans to the top of a mountain... I think around 4,000 meters? Well, it was way too snowy and sleety and cold up there, so we drove closer to 3,000 meters (I'm making most of these numbers up) and they let us off and we BIKED DOWN on bicycles they provided. It was really fun. It was never too steep. It was cold and raining at the top, but by the bottom it was probably 80 degrees and sunny. It took a long time for the whole bike... probably 4 or 5 hours? One girl fell off her bike and sliced open her arm, but luckily one of the 12 people on our trip is a medical student from Argentina and SHE did the stiches to help the girl!

The NEXT two days were long hikes... 13 miles and 10 miles or something like that. We ended up at some awesome natural hot springs buried in the mountains last night. The trails are incredibly cool and incredibly rural. We passed a lot of native Peruvians and it's amazing to think how our lives would be different if we lived in these tiny huts seemingly hundreds of miles from civilazation. Despite being hard to imagine how different our lives would be, we've tried and here's what we came up with:

We would watch fewer YouTube videos
We would go on more hikes
We wouldn't care as much about Obama being president
Fewer facebook friends
We would have more pet dogs and cats (they're everwhere)
We wouldn't care as much about who will be the next American Idol
We would care way more about who will be the next Peruvian Idol

So tonight, we're crashing in Aguas Calientes, and tomorrow at FOUR AM we are hiking up 1600 steps to Machu Picchu. (Apparently in South America they have a four AM in addition to the more traditional four PM)

I didn't bring my camera cord on this mini-trek, so this is all for now! Hopefully I'll have pictures later

Arrived in Lima, Peru! Heading to Cusco

2009-01-17T09:25:00.001-08:00

I have officially arrived in Lima and successfully found Jessica, making the most difficult portion of my trip complete! It was a fairly uneventful travel. A guy from the hostel even came to the airport with a sign that said my name to pick me up and take me back! Pretty lucky. I´m kind of a big wig around here. Jessica also missed a boycott of some sort that shut down all busses between Ecuador and Peru. That would have left us stranded in different countries, EXCEPT the boycott luckily started a day after she got through!

We´re headed to Cusco which is the city closest to Machu Picchu, which we´ll hopefully see in the next day or two!

Simple way to Draw a Circle with Google Maps

2008-12-19T15:35:00.000-08:00

The Google Maps API doesn't provide a "draw circle" function for free, so you're left to your own devices to draw an approximation of a circle using the GPolyline object.

Here's a really basic circle drawing example adapted from the more complex example below. My simple example:

http://www.herculessolutions.com/GoogleMapsSimpleCircle.htm

The more complex example with dragable points and more:

http://maps.huge.info/dragcircle2.htm

How does ChaCha make money?

2008-04-24T10:50:00.000-07:00

I just found out about ChaCha.com and had one pressing question: "How does ChaCha generate revenue?". Well, I dutifully texted that question into ChaCha and got this response:

ChaCha earns revenue from advertising on its website and through its strategic partnerships. Please text more questions to answer! http://chacha.com/u/theyxbp3

I don't see any advertising on their site, so I guess I don't really buy that answer. I think the real answer is, "ChaCha doesn't generate revenue yet, but hopefully we will some day, somehow". Or maybe they're funded by phone companies for some reason?

ROW_NUMBER() Sucks?

2008-03-26T10:50:00.000-07:00

Is it just me, or does the SQL Server 2005 ROW_NUMBER() function's performance suck? I always used to complain about SQL Server's lack of a LIMIT clause like MySQL has. I was thrilled when 2005 came out with the ROW_NUMBER() function.

When we switched to SQL 2005, I dutifully recoded the main search query to use the ROW_NUMBER() function, only to find out that it hurt performance by almost 3 fold! In addition, using ROW_NUMBER() doesn't give you an easy way to get the total number of records a query would return. (Helpful to display something like, "Viewing records 51-100 of 2,120")

I should put a caveat here: My testing shows that ROW_NUMBER() is actually much faster when doing very simple queries with large numbers of rows. For example, if you need to quickly grab 10 rows in the middle of all 10,000 rows in a single table with no joins, ROW_NUMBER() is probably for you. However, if you're doing a more complex query like to search for specific records or joining with many other tables, my testing shows ROW_NUMBER() is a significant slow-down. Here are the results for my specific query:

Description	Rows	Estimated Cost	Actual Time	Slowdown
My original query	12,547	3.701	0.729	-
Using ROW_NUMBER()	12,547	6.616	2.094	287.1%!

So, if not ROW_NUMBER(), then what? My solution is to declare a temporary table and insert all of your result IDs into that table, along with the ordering. You can then join with that table to grab only the results you need. For example:

DECLARE @FirstRecord Int
SET @FirstRecord=0
DECLARE @LastRecord Int
SET @LastRecord=49

--First make a table to hold the order of the final sorted results
DECLARE @ResultOrder TABLE  
(     OrderID int identity(0,1) not null primary key clustered,
    ResultID int    
);

--The main "search" query... this can be pretty slow with lots of rows
INSERT INTO @ResultOrder (ProductID)
    SELECT p.ProductID
    FROM Products p
    WHERE p.Cost < 100 AND p.CategoryID=4 --Or whatever search you're doing

--A very fast way to get the total number of results
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM @ResultOrder; 

--A very fast way to get the details... you can even join with many more tables
SELECT p.Name, p.Cost, c.Name AS CategoryName, s.Name AS SalesPerson
FROM @ResultOrder ro, Products p, Categories c, SalesPeople s
WHERE p.ProductID=ro.ProductID
    AND p.CategoryID=c.CategoryID
    AND p.SalesPersonID=s.SalesPersonID
ORDER BY ro.OrderID

Obviously, that is a simple example, but I suspect as your query gets more complicated (especially the 2nd details part) you're way better off not using ROW_NUMBER().

As an ADDITIONAL speedup, that first result set is potentially PRIME cacheing material. For example, if a user (or a crawler) hits the first page of results, then clicks "next" a few times. You do the expensive search only once, then quickly pull up the details for each page on subsequent requests. You might have to analyze your usage to see how often and how close together different pages of the same search are requested.

How do you best cache those Result IDs you ask? And how do you get the IDs to and from SQL? Well, I'm about to implement that myself so hopefully I'll let you know in a subsequent blog post.

TWL Two Letter Words Sorted By Second Letter

2008-03-18T16:46:00.000-07:00

I'm playing a lot of scrabulous online lately and I constantly want to see which two letter words END in a given letter. So for your enjoyment, here are the 101 words defined by the TWL sorted alphabetically by first letter and second letter.
In list format:

Sorted by the first letter
AA AB AD AE AG AH AI AL AM AN AR AS AT AW AX AY
BA BE BI BO BY DE DO ED EF EH EL EM EN ER ES ET EX
FA FE GO HA HE HI HM HO ID IF IN IS IT JO KA KI LA LI LO
MA ME MI MM MO MU MY NA NE NO NU
OD OE OF OH OI OM ON OP OR OS OW OX OY
PA PE PI QI RE SH SI SO TA TI TO UH UM UN UP US UT
WE WO XI XU YA YE YO ZA
Sorted by the second letter
AA BA FA HA KA LA MA NA PA TA YA ZA
AB AD ED ID OD AE BE DE FE HE ME NE OE PE RE WE YE
EF IF OF AG AH EH OH SH UH AI BI HI KI LI MI OI PI QI SI TI
XI AL EL AM EM HM MM OM UM AN EN IN ON UN
BO DO GO HO JO LO MO NO SO TO WO YO OP UP AR ER OR
AS ES IS OS US AT ET IT UT MU NU XU
AW OW AX EX OX AY BY MY OY

And in table format:

Sorted by 1^st letter	Sorted by 2^nd letter
AA AB AD AE AG AH AI AL AM AN AR AS AT AW AX AY BA BE BI BO BY DE DO ED EF EH EL EM EN ER ES ET EX FA FE GO HA HE HI HM HO ID IF IN IS IT JO KA KI LA LI LO MA ME MI MM MO MU MY NA NE NO NU OD OE OF OH OI OM ON OP OR OS OW OX OY PA PE PI QI RE SH SI SO TA TI TO UH UM UN UP US UT WE WO XI XU YA YE YO ZA	AA BA FA HA KA LA MA NA PA TA YA ZA AB AD ED ID OD AE BE DE FE HE ME NE OE PE RE WE YE EF IF OF AG AH EH OH SH UH AI BI HI KI LI MI OI PI QI SI TI XI AL EL AM EM HM MM OM UM AN EN IN ON UN BO DO GO HO JO LO MO NO SO TO WO YO OP UP AR ER OR AS ES IS OS US AT ET IT UT MU NU XU AW OW AX EX OX AY BY MY OY

Back in Santiago!

2008-01-27T16:14:00.000-08:00

After another all night, 12 hour bus ride we made it back to Santiago! Dan just left safely and should be in the air on his way to Chicago in a few minutes.

This is the point in my post where I like to complain about either the speed of the Internet or the speed of my computer. Today you are in for a treat because I get to complain about BOTH! I was hoping to upload all 200 or so of my photos, but they are taking about 5 minutes each. There will be a few up, but I think we'll have to wait for later to see all of them. There are also some exciting VIDEOS on the way!

Today in Santiago, we got in, helped Jess finish moving out of her apartment, found a place to stay and explored the city! Tomorrow we may be hitting up two coastal cities about an hour from here, Valaprasio and Vina del Mar.

I'll post more photos and videos soon! You can see my Chile set of photos in progress here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jerschneid/sets/72157603748636020/

3 Days In Bahia Inglesa

2008-01-26T11:10:00.000-08:00

We spent the last 3 days and 2 nights in Bahia Inglesa! Bahia Inglesa (or English Bay) is this gorgeous little touristy beach town. Food and lodging is expensive, but totally worth it because everything there is so beauiful and sunny. I think we all could have used about an extra week there!

Unfortunately, I´m currently using the same computer that the Wright Brothers used to run their aviation simulations. The historical value is interesting, but uploading photos is nearly impossible (as it pre-dates the Internet by about 80 years).

The last two days we went SURFING on the Pacific coast! We wore wet suits as the ocean is still pretty cold here, but not too bad. This was my first time surfing and I did a bit better than I expected (although I had pretty low expectations, since my goal was to not drown). It turned out it is pretty easy to "catch" a wave, but standing up on the board proved to be the hardest part... I got up a few times but nothing you´ll see on ESPN2 any time soon.

We also stayed in this awesome little cabaña. Well, not little, actually. It had 3 rooms and SIX beds, plus a living room and kitchen and porch! We bought groceries and cooked dinner and drank Chilean wine last night. I think they charge per person, and foreigners don´t have to pay the 19% sales tax so we ended up paying about $80 per night, split 3 ways!

Tonight, we´re catching an overnight bus to Santiago. Dan leaves tomorrow and Jess and I leave on the 29th. I´ll be back in Michigan on the 30th! Photos and even some exciting VIDEOS will follow!

On our way to Bahia Inglesa!

2008-01-23T08:41:00.000-08:00

We´re doing great and have left San Pedro de Atacama. We're currently on a layover and are on our way to Bahia Inglesa which is described as "beach nirvana". Still short on Internet time, but here are a few selected photos from the last few days!

Here we are in our beach clothes in 0 degree Weather! Actually, this is after the sun came up, so we were much warmer here.

Here is a shot of the mountain where we saw the geysers. Those are flamingos!

This is my feet as we are about to cross the Bolivian border. I didn´t sign up for snow!

Dan and I in the snow. SNOW? Seriously though... I didn´t sign up for snow.

This is a shot of the Bolivian customs building, which was more of a shack. To get here, we turned off of a nicely paved highway in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. I don´t even think we were on a road. We just drove off road for a while then got to this shack. (They did have two little gates, also in the middle of nowhere, as if that might prevent people from crossing or something). We actually had some trouble crossing. They said Americans had to get visas in advance, even though our tour booking guy specifically said we didn´t. Everyone else on our tour left and we were sitting there at this shack in the middle of nowhere, waiting for the Bolivian "boss" who was going to come sort it out. He actually did show up, and got us temporary visas. I have to imagine the tour company decided it was easier to have their guy bribe the officials rather than force American tourists to buy the expensive and time consuming visa. It would have been nice to let us know though!

The three of us in Bolivia in front of La Laguna Blanco

We drove around in Bolivia in these trucks for HOURS and HOURS and HOURS over virtually no roads. We all had serious headaches and car sickness by the end of the day. We also were in a BLIZZARD by the end and were concerned that we wouldn´t make it back at all. I certainly did not sign up for a blizzard.

Dan and Jess in natural hot springs in the middle of the Mountains! The hot springs were about 100 degrees here!

This photo doesn´t do this place even a little bit of justice, but it is a huge bright PINK lake with THOUSANDS of pink flamingos in the middle of gorgeous mountains. It was just really really beautiful, fertile land. Amazing stuff. And if you´re wondering how flamingo kebabs taste, they´re delicious.

Still Having Fun in San Pedro DE Atacama!

2008-01-21T16:04:00.000-08:00

Today was a BIG day here in the "driest" desert in the world! Last night was actually capped off with RAIN here in the driest desert in the world. To be honest, we are not that impressed with the dryness. I´ve seen drier.

Last night was CLOSELY followed by this morning which started with a 3:15 am wake up call. That´s not "Chile" time where an hour is actually 4 hours or anything, Jessica actually made us drag our asses out of bed at 3:15 am. We did this to hit the Tatio Geysers in the best viewing time of between 6 and 7 am.

Our helpful tour booking agent informed us that these are HOT geysers that include a hot springs for bathing so we should make sure to bring our swim suits. Dan, Jess and I diligently dressed in flip flops, bathing suits and long sleeve t-shirts and our light jackets (in case it was cold). One point of interest was the native´s choice of clothing. While we chose "beach wear", they seemed to prefer parkas, long pants, scarves and hats. Apparently, when you are 5200 meters above sea level, in the desert, before the sun rises, 0 celcius is a pretty average temperature. We continually asked if we were in the right place for the beach volleyball tournament, but no one knew what we were talking about.

The geysers were hot, both literally and figuratively. We DID get in a swim after the sun came up! Our trip was capped by seeing some real live mountain llamas! Our guide then took us to a tiny local town where they were selling real dead llama-kebabs. He seemed to think it was hilarious to point towards the llamas and say "before" then point to the grill and say "after". If you are wondering how llama-kebabs taste, they are delicious.

Also: we went to the moon valley. We´re on a dial-up connection so more details and photos will follow! Tomorrow, we are heading to BOLIVIA, then a bus to Bahia Inglesa on Wednesday! I suspect they´ll have better Internet there.

We're in San Pedro de la Atacama

2008-01-20T13:59:00.000-08:00

After a 17 hour bus ride, we have made it to the Northern most point of our trip, San Pedro de la Atacama. The "Atacama" is the driest desert in world! Although, to be honest, I'm not that blown away by the dryness just yet.

The highlight of the bus ride was playing some mad boggle on the last leg (Jessica remains undefeated). The lowlight was the poop smell that engulfed us everytime another wayward passenger decided to venture into the unknown of the bus urinal. I personally made it all 17 hours with no potty breaks! Go blue!

Tomorrow we're getting up at FOUR AM to check out these geysers and hot springs and then doing a sunset trip to this famous valley area in the desert. The NEXT day we're going to Bolivia on a lake tour! That means I get one step closer to Jessica in terms of countries visited (proportionally, at least)

The Internet connection sucks here so no photos today! Hopefully in our next city! We'll be here for three nights, then off to Bahia Inglesa.

In La Serena, Heading to San Pedro

2008-01-19T08:31:00.000-08:00

We have finally made it on our way! We made the tough ¨Go North/Go South¨ decision based on a series of thougtful discussions, a few coin flips and a rousing game of rock/paper/scissors. We decided to head NORTH!

After one night in Santiago, we took a morning bus to La Serena, which is about 6 hours north. We checked out the beach, went to a nearby town and hiked up a mountain and last night we had a midnight trip to an observatory. Chile, according to our guide, is the best place in the world for observatories and coutries from all over the world are building telescopes such as the VLT (Very Large Telescope), the ELT (Extremely Large Telescope) and the OWL (OverWhelmingly Large).

We´re headed to San Pedro tonight on an overnight 14 hour bus ride. Apparently it is the driest dessert in the world. I´m skeptical... I think I´ll be able to spot a FEW puddles, at least... I mean, how dry can it be? My computer time today is pretty short so I think I´ll end it here with some photos!

You can see my photos here http://www.flickr.com/photos/jerschneid/

Made it to Santiago!

2008-01-16T14:35:00.000-08:00

So I have finished the first part of my journey and made it to Santiago, Chile! I stopped in Atlanta, then a 10 hour flight to Santiago! Chile is actually 2 hours AHEAD of New York and 5 hours ahead of the West coast.

This is my first time in the southern hemisphere. Things are not nearly as upside-down as I imagined. Also, it's summer here, which would have been helpful knowledge to have before I packed. Oh well...

Ok... Short on time today but more posts and photos to come!

FullSizePosters Review

2008-01-02T09:18:00.000-08:00

I recently was looking for a way to print a reasonably high quality 24 x 36 inch poster to be placed in a frame in my living room. I checked out a ton of options, including getting ripped off by your local Kinkos or the vast array of online stores that claim to do it.

I finally decided on FullSizePosters.com. I made the decision based on their great prices, their focus on poster printing and a good feeling I got from the positive reviews on their site along with their phone number displayed at the top of every page. (I had read some horror stories from other printers where the print didn't show up for weeks with no way to contact the company)

The actual upload and checkout process was really nice. The site is strikingly simple, only a couple pages, but it's exactly what you want and need. They make really good use of Google checkout. I paid easily and quickly got a receipt by e-mail with a link to track the status of my order.

I placed the order around 1:20pm on December 28th and was thrilled that it was printed and shipped THAT DAY. They shipped via USPS 2-3 day priority mail with a reasonable shipping cost. (I paid $32.37 when all was said and done for my 2x3 poster)

I received my poster 2-3 business days later. It came in a really sturdy cardboard tube. Inside the tube, my poster was rolled in tissue paper and sealed in an airtight plastic bag.

The poster looks awesome. I mean... it's perfect. I've gotten used to being disappointed after ordering a print job, but this final product was exactly what I hoped for. The print is on really high quality glossy photo type paper. Kind of like a big version of a photo you might get developed, so it's thicker and heavier duty than a stock poster you would buy at the store.

ANYWAY, I was googling for "FullSizePoster Reviews" when I was making my decision, so hopefully this is helpful to others. Also, FYI, this is not a paid post of any kind. I'm just a dude trying to give back to the Internet community in my own little way. Thanks FullSizePosters.com! :)

P.S. The poster was actually to play a prank on my roommate. Here is what I printed:

E-mails bouncing back with error "smtp;554 refused mailfrom because of SPF policy"

2007-04-03T10:35:00.000-07:00

I have a contact form on my website that allows Internet users to generate an e-mail to a 3rd party user of my site. This results in my server sending e-mail from one domain to another domain, neither of which are my domain. (This is a really common scenario for things like evites, greeting cards, send-to-a-friends, etc).

I've recently been receiving reports e-mails sent in this fashion have been bouncing back with this type of error:

Final-Recipient: rfc822;john.doe@anotherdomain.com
Action: failed
Status: 5.5.0
Diagnostic-Code: smtp;554 refused mailfrom because of SPF policy

Thanks to some research and the Fanatical Support over at rackspace, I learned that "SPF" is a fairly new spam prevention technique (Sender Policy Framework). Basically the receiving server checks to see if the sending servers domain is the same as the "from" address domain. The goal is to prevent users from sending e-mails from "george.w.bush@whitehouse.gov" or whatever.

One workaround is to always have the "From" address be from your domain, but that's really not an option for most of these paradigms (You don't want to receive all the replies to someone else's evite)

Luckily openspf.org has a great page on how Web-Generated Emailers Can Avoid Looking Like Forgers. The solution is to tweak your e-mail headers to show that the sender is your domain, like this:

Return-Path: service@mydomain.com
Sender: service@mydomain.com
From: "Jane Doe" <jane.doe@hotmail.com>
Subject: Jane Doe has sent you an e-mail through my site!

In the above example, the e-mails you generate add the "Return-Path" and "Sender" header values to show that you are being honest about the source of the e-mails. One notable side-effect is that service@mydomain.com will now receive the bounce-backs instead of jane.doe@hotmail.com.

The final trick is to get your code to do this. In .NET, the following C# code function sends an SPF-safe e-mail.

static public bool Send(string to, string subject, string body,
 string from, string cc, string bcc)
{
try
{
   //Create your standard mail message
   MailMessage mail = new MailMessage();
   mail.BodyFormat = MailFormat.Html;
   mail.To = to;
   mail.Cc = cc;
   mail.Bcc = bcc;
   mail.From = from;
   mail.Subject = subject;
   mail.Body = body;

   //Add the headers to avoid SPF errors.  (Make sure to change this to your domain)
   mail.Headers["Sender"] = "service@mydomain.com";
   mail.Headers["Return-Path"] = "service@mydomain.com";

   //Send the message
   SmtpMail.SmtpServer = "localhost";
   SmtpMail.Send(mail);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
   //Maybe log an error
   return false;
}

return true;
}

You can check the success of this by viewing the original e-mail headers in the generated e-mails. Some receiving e-mail systems (like Gmail) will even append and SPF status to the header so you can see if you were successful.

The header line in my received e-mail went from this:

Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 72.123.123.123 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of jane.doe@hotmail.com)

To this:

Received-SPF: pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of service@mydomain.com designates 72.123.123.123 as permitted sender)

Hide form tag, but leave content

2007-03-28T19:44:00.000-07:00

I often run into an issue in ASP.NET when I want to include a <form> on a page that posts to a 3rd party website. For example, I could have a PayPal button that posts directly to PayPal (as opposed to doing a "post-back") to the current page.

The problem is that a common practice in ASP.NET is to have a <form runat="server"> tag "high up" in the HTML, usually in the Master page. HTML doesn't allow overlapping <form> tags, so my PayPal button won't work. Since the higher level <form> is in the Master page, it makes removing it pretty messy. As far as I know, there's no built-in "hide this tag, but render the tag's contents" feature for controls. In the past I've maintained two master pages: the normal one and a "no form" version, but I've since discovered a more elegant solution.

I created a class called GhostForm that has a property RenderFormTag. When RenderFormTag is set to false, it doesn't render the <form> tag or closing tag, but does render all of the contents. This works perfectly so I can have my <form runat="server"> high up for most pages, but I can fine-tune it when I need forms posting to other sites or multiple forms.

Here's the code for GhostForm:

using System;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;

/// <summary>
/// This is a special form that can _not_ render the actual form tag, but always render the contents
/// </summary>
public class GhostForm : System.Web.UI.HtmlControls.HtmlForm
{
  protected bool _render;

  public bool RenderFormTag
  {
      get { return _render; }
      set { _render = value; }
  }

  public GhostForm()
  {
      //By default, show the form tag
      _render = true;
  }

  protected override void RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriter writer)
  {
      //Only render the tag when _render is set to true
      if (_render)
          base.RenderBeginTag(writer);
  }

  protected override void RenderEndTag(HtmlTextWriter writer)
  {
      //Only render the tag when _render is set to true
      if (_render)
          base.RenderEndTag(writer);
  }
}

Palenque!

2007-01-11T21:12:00.000-08:00

Here is a video from the first ruins we stopped at in Palenque, Mexico!

Walking in San Cristobal

2007-01-10T18:29:00.000-08:00

Continuing our series "The Best of the Rest", here is a short video of walking through the streets of San Cristobal.

Also, I think the San Cristobal hotel room videos are good enough to merit editing and reposting here:

Home sweet home

2007-01-09T18:28:00.000-08:00

After 26 consecutive days away from home I am finally back in Ann Arbor!

We left for the LAX airport at about 9:00am this morning and I arrived at the Detroit airport at about 7pm! That is why travelling East sucks. But I'm glad to be back, despite the cold and darkness that comes along with it.

We have tons of videos that haven't been posted, so I'm going to keep updating this bad boy for a while with all that never-before-seen content. Here is the "extreme wind noise" video that we tried to post earlier. Thanks to some brilliant video editing, it is now only the "moderately extreme wind noise" video.

Back in Los Angeles

2007-01-08T11:46:00.000-08:00

We made it! We crossed the border (after a 2 1/2 hour wait in line) on Saturday and completed a 15 hour driving day by staying at Jessica and Jean's parent's house. Jessica's Mom had an AMAZING spread of food and drinks ready for us, including a Honey baked ham! I think I ate more in 2 hours that night, then the previous 3 weeks combined. But don't worry, because the following morning we went to the fanciest all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet in the world, including shrimp, fillet mignon, made-to-order omelettes, champagne and cheesecake. I am planning on coming back to visit soon and often.

Yesterday, Jess and I dropped Jean and Richard off at the airport and they are back at their respective schools! My flight leaves tomorrow so Jess and I will be hanging out around LA today.

All of our photos are finally online! I bought a flickr "pro" account so you can order prints, or download the original high-res versions of any of them. I uploaded all of our photos to my account so you can see them all in one place in chronological order. Here is the link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jerschneid/sets/72157594465056537/

There are nearly 1,000 pictures. I'm going to go through and try to label and rotate them when I get some time. Here are some of my favorites:

Tequila!

2007-01-07T11:53:00.000-08:00

Heading to the USA Tomorrow

2007-01-05T20:58:00.000-08:00

We have spent the last day and a half in Guaymas, Mexico. Today we were on an absolutely amazing beach and have some really great pictures to show for it. We just rolled into this Internet cafe about 10 minutes before it is closing so I won't have time to post anything, but will post tons of photos and videos in the upcoming days when I'm on a good ol' USA Internet connection!

Back in Los Mochis

2007-01-03T18:32:00.000-08:00

Today our plan was to drive to Los Mochis, then catch an overnight ferry to the Baja peninsula and drive up Baja from there. We had trouble getting in contact with the ferry company so we knew there was a chance that we would not be able to catch a ferry. UNFORTUNATELY, it turned out that all the ferrys are full until MONDAY, a day after our flights leave from Los Angeles, meaning we would have to drive negative infinity miles per hour up the coast in order to catch our flights. We dutifully checked the manual of our Toyota Corolla only to find out that the maxmimum speed is closer to 110mph, not negative infinity.

ANYWAY, our new plan is to spend a day in Guaymas, then drive back up the coast to LA on the 6th and stay at Jess and Jean's parents house (Surprise Elizabeth and Tom! We're coming to your house on the 6th!) If they're busy partying or something, we can just drive straight to Jess' place.

The Internet here is pretty sketchy so no photos or videos today. I'll post lots of uber-cool edited videos when we're back in the states.

Tequila!

2007-01-02T19:46:00.000-08:00

We are in TEQUILA, Mexico! Yes, THAT Tequila. And I have some in me right now!

We made amazing time the last two days and made it all the way from the Guatemalan border to Tequila which is just West of Guadalajara. Sorry Mom, we drove through Mexico City like I told you we wouldn't, but it was the only way to make it back in time! But the good news is that I didn't tell you until after we made it so you had no reason to worry!

On the bright side, Mexico City and everywhere we have been in Mexico has been incredibly nice and I have never felt unsafe. I don't think Mexico City is any more dangerous than any other 25 million person city.

The city of Tequila is really nice. Lots of little shops and great food and hotel values as always! The restaurant we ate at gave everyone their first tequila drink on the house!

The Internet here is pretty slow again, so I may not get a video up. Below is a photo of the four of us at the temple ruins in Tikal, Guatemala!

USC Can Suck My Balls

2007-01-01T20:18:00.000-08:00

We're back online after some sparce Internet days in Belize and Guatemala. After spending New Year's Eve in Tapachula, Mexico, we made amazing time and drove close to 1000km to get to Cordoba, Mexico. We made it just in time to see Michigan get their ass kicked by USC in the second half of the Rose Bowl. I'd like to send a big "Eat shit and die" to all you USC fans out there. You too Ohio State.

We're planning to get to Guadalajara by tomorrow, then Los Mochis on the 3rd in time to take a ferry to the Baja peninsula and drive back up to LA. These driving days are pretty rough, but we had an awesome time in Central America and some great days to look forward to in Baja!

New Year's Eve in Tapachula, Mexico

2007-01-01T20:12:00.000-08:00

We spent New Year's Eve in Tapachula, Mexico which is just across the border from Guatemala. Crossing the border at 7pm on New Year's Eve was a pain in the ass. The Guatemalan officials were giving us an extremely hard time, saying we can't leave until the next day because the computers were turned off or something. I personally think they were just waiting to be bribed, but our incredible tour guide Jessica wouldn't put up with that shit and started ranting and raving in Spanish until he finally decided that getting rid of her was bribe enough. I regret not having a video of that one! Hopefully we'll get a video of Jess flipping out in Spanish before the end of the trip.

Here is a video of some of the festivities of New Year's Eve!

Temple Ruins in Tikal, Guatemala

2007-01-01T20:03:00.000-08:00

Jess planned a trip to some amazing temple ruins in Tikal, Guatemala. Man, do those Mayans like to build temples. There are a ton of them and they are really big. It would probably have been great to live back then, except for all the famine, sacrifices and eventual demise of the civilization. But at least the buildings were cool.

Caye Caulker in Belize!

2007-01-01T20:00:00.000-08:00

We made it to Belize! The Internet is slow again so the videos may take a while.

Caye Caulker off the Coast of Belize

2006-12-27T19:15:00.000-08:00

We finally made it past Mexico and into Belize! Last night we stayed in Belize City which was the sketchiest and most expensive place we have stayed yet. Things looked a little bleak for Belize, but today we took a water taxi to an island called Caye Caulker, which everyone agrees is amazing!

The island is 600 meters at its widest point, so you can always see water in two directions wherever you are! The water is a deep aqua blue and crystal clear. Belize is world renowned for its diving!

We're staying in this awesome guest house for $25/night. Internet is crazy expensive so I have to keep this short, and no photos or videos today! We are going to stay here one more night, then to Guatemala, then start heading back through Mexico!

Palenque and the Ruins

2006-12-25T19:08:00.000-08:00

It is Christmas day and we have made it to Palenque, Mexico! This is our last stop before the big trek to Belize City tomorrow. I think Palenque is probably best known for the ruins which we visited today, but the city is actually really nice and has the best Intnernet cafe we have seen yet, so I am sold.

Last night (Christmas Eve) we stayed in San Cristobal and it was really wild. We heard a few fireworks going off during the day, but they were no big deal. We went to bed around 11:30, but at midnight all hell broke loose. I think every Mexican within 20 miles started setting off fireworks right at midnight. We stayed in bed for about 5 minutes before we decided it was a lost cause and we headed out to the roof of the hotel to watch the madness. The participation really put Americans on the Fourth of July to shame. One of the other hotel visitors commented that it seemed like we were in the middle of Baghdad!

Today while driving we encountered a make-shift road block. This is only the second we have seen, but it's basically a scam put on by local Mexicans. They hold a rope with flags on it across the entire length of the road, forcing you to stop. When you get up there they ask for change or try to sell you goods. It's no big deal, but kind of a hassle. HOWEVER, today a bunch of kids set up the road block and as we approached we heard them all screaming to each other and quickly dropped the rope allowing us to pass. At first, we were confused as to why they let a car full of (normally profitable) gringos drive through, until we noticed a Policia truck coming around the bend in the opposite direction who passed the block at the exact time we did. Lucky!

I just realized the sound is a little screwed up on all the videos. Sorry about that. I'll be able to fix it when I get home. More photos are posted to the Flickr account as well.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jerschneid/tags/mexicocentralamerica06/

Here is a video of the ruins of Palenque!

Video coming soon

Lost in a Cave Outside San Cristobal

2006-12-25T19:05:00.000-08:00

San Cristobal Hotel Rooms

2006-12-25T19:02:00.000-08:00

We stayed in San Cristobal two nights, first in a 12 dollar hotel room, then in a 40 dollar hotel room and I think these videos will help you spot the subtle but important differences. I can't edit any videos here, so you will just have to watch all three.

San Cristobal

2006-12-24T06:50:00.001-08:00

It's Christmas eve and we have arrived in San Cristobal, Mexico. It's a really cool town that is extremely different from the other Mexican cities we have seen! The streets and sidewalks are really narrow, and made of stone with buildings lining all the streets. It reminds me more of London than of a Mexican city! There are tons of lights and people selling things and excitement everywhere! We stayed in a pretty crappy hotel last night, but for $12/night split 4 ways, it's hard to beat on value. Yesterday we stayed at "Hostel Shalom" in Puerto Escandido (Hidden Port). Puerto Escandido probably has the most amazing beach I have ever seen! It was a fairly short beach, about 150 meters, but was kind of in this rock cove that extended about 300 meters out into the ocean. It created this amazing set of really smooth and consistent waves that carry surfers for 300 meters all the way to the shore! Hopefully there will be a video below of the sunset from this beach. Our plan for the next few days is to hit some ruins in Palenque, then cross the border to Guatamala heading for Belize City. We're going to stay in Belize city for a couple days, then head back!

Puerto Escondido Sunset

2006-12-24T06:50:00.000-08:00

Topes!

2006-12-24T06:49:00.000-08:00

Another Day in Acapulco

2006-12-21T11:25:00.000-08:00

Richard, our fourth travel member, arrived late last night. His plane was about 2 hours late and lost his bag! After repeated phone calls, they keep saying it will be coming on a later flight, so we are going to stay at our camp ground one more night.

We said farewell to Tom, our hitch-hiking friend today. He and his guitar Betsy are on their way to Guatemala.

The weather here has been SPECTACULAR. It couldn't be any better. The waves on the beach we are on are HUGE. They are probably 8-10 feet tall and CRASH really close to shore. Sometimes they break so hard that the mist from the crash reaches hundreds of feet up the beach!

Our internet connection here is really slow so we might not be able to add any more videos or photos for a while.

We haven't been able to upload many photos yet, but the few that we have are here (future photos will be here as well):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jerschneid/tags/mexicocentralamerica06/

Made it to Acapulco, Picking up Richard Soon

2006-12-20T19:05:00.000-08:00

We made it to Aculpulco on the 5th day! The driving has gone extremely well with no major issue. The biggest problem has been gargantuan speed bumps that are randomly placed on the highway which you try not to hit doing 70. We have adopted a strategy of all the passengers getting out of the car as we drive over it to avoid bottoming out on the speed bump.

After the first day our car started making a "knocking noise" which was a stressful concern for all of us as we drove. After first inspection we couldn't figure it out, but after listening more to it we were able to identify the culprit. I pulled out some McGuyver skills and repaired it with nothing but a toothpick, two rubber bands and some chewing gum.

Jessica has been an absolutely amazing attribute and tour guide. I think every Mexican is DELIGHTED when a hot blonde American (who presumably has money to spend) comes up and starts speaking perfect Spanish. It is definitely the difference between this being an intimidating and uncertain trip and the trip being an absolute delight! Jessica is amazing.

Everyone we have encountered so far has been wonderful, helpful, friendly and no one seems to be trying to rip us off.

Oh yah! Today as we were about 2 hours outside of Acapulco we drove by a young dude holding a guitar and a backpack hitchiking. In a snap decision we decided we couldn't leave him behind and that was an awesome decision. His name is Tom and he's a 20 year old American who has hitched all the way from Seattle on his way to Guatemala. We're on our way to pick up Richard in a few minutes, so Tom will have to find a new ride tomorrow. He's sleeping in his hammock near our Tent tonight!

Military Stops, Spiders, More driving

2006-12-20T19:03:00.000-08:00

Video is here!

Extreme Wind Noise!

2006-12-20T19:02:00.000-08:00

Caution!!! Turn your speakers way down before you play this video... there is really loud wind noise at the beginning AND end of the video!

Video coming soon

Los Mochis Hotel

2006-12-20T18:55:00.000-08:00

A short video of our second hotel room in Los Mochis!

Our videos are taking too long to upload on this connection so the others will come soon!

Arrived in Mexico!

2006-12-17T18:26:00.000-08:00

Starting the Drive

2006-12-17T18:21:00.000-08:00

Made it to Los Mochis

2006-12-17T18:12:00.000-08:00

It´s Sunday night at about 7pm Cetral time and we have made it to Los Mochis, Mexico! Driving has been really great, and we haven´t had any problems with the authorities. The highways are actually suprisingly nice. They don´t, however have any shoulder to speak of... instead they have about a 2 foot straight drop on either side. Veering a bit off the road probably will mean that our toyota will rollover several times, so we´re going to do that as infrequently as possible.

Our goal for tomorrow is Tepic and Aculpulco by the 20th! The food so far has been amazing and increasingly inexpensive as we get into the heart of Mexico. I have only had solid poops to this point and that will be a continued goal of mine. Right now we´re in the lobby of a hotel which charges 10 pesos (about 90 cents) for an hour of Internet! Go blue!

First 3 Days Plan

2006-12-15T21:03:00.000-08:00

Flying to LA

2006-12-15T18:24:00.000-08:00

HTML Frames are the Devil

2006-12-15T18:21:00.000-08:00

I’ve given this rant to everyone who has ever uttered the word "frames" to me, but much to my dismay there are still uninformed people in the world who think that using HTML frames is a valid way to develop websites! It is not. Frames are the worst. (You too iframe) Frames are the devil and this is why:

The MAIN problem is that HTML framed pages are not “addressable”. This means that each page in an HTML frame does not have its own distinct URL. Only the main “frame” page has a URL and all of the internal content does not. This might not sound SO bad, but it actually ruins everything that is good about the Internet and makes me cry at night. For example, when using frames:

Book marking pages doesn’t work – A bookmark is usually just a saved URL and a title. If you're surfing around on a framed website then see something you like and bookmark it, next time you go back to the bookmark you won't see the page you saved, you will see the main frame page. Internet Explorer has pulled some trick to save the internal frames, but that's no excuse to make crappy websites.
Sending links to friends doesn't work - Again, if you're on a framed site and copy the URL and send it to a friend with a note like "Wow! The specific content on this page I surfed to is delightful!" your friend won't see what you saw, just the original frames. According to the US Census, frames are responsible for 6% of divorces in the US.
Frames annihilate your search engine traffic - Search engines basically follow links around the Internet and save each page with its associated URL. If you use frames, then all of the URLs on your site are the same, and the search engine skips them. This is the absolute worst thing you can do for your search engine rankings. It will basically prevent ANY traffic from finding your site through search engines. Alternatively, if you don't use frames and give all your pages nice, descriptive titles the search engine traffic will flow in.
Frames are not accessible - Accessibility on the web can be a intricate problem, but using frames is a sure way to hose your site. FOR EXAMPLE, I happen to be in the airport right now where they charge $8 for stupid Internet access. Instead of flushing $8 down the toilet, I tried to check my work e-mail from my handy-dandy web-enabled phone. But guess what, the web interface for my work e-mail uses FRAMES and my phone doesn't support frames, so I get no e-mail. I kicked a small dog just to make frames feel some of my pain. In addition to phones or PDA's there are many other types of alternative browsers (like a screen reader for blind people) that choke on frames. There is a <noframes> tag to address this, but instead of using that, why don't you stop sucking and stop using frames.
Frames produce non-standard behavior - When you use frames you risk having a user view one of your "internal" frames without the template around it. This makes you and your site look stupid. I know it's possible to use javascript to force the internal frame to appear in the correct frameset, but if you're coherent enough to do that, why don't you stop contributing to the political unrest in the Middle East by stop using frames!

So what do you do if you don't use frames? The answer is to use a server-side programming language like PHP or ASP.NET. This lets you get all the deliciousness of keeping your template code in one place, with none of the baby-killing involved in using frames!

Are frames EVER ok to use? Well, if you think you have some exceptional circumstance where frames is the only option, I encourage you to pour a bucket of ice water on your genitals and re-think that decision. HOWEVER, there are some respectable sites (i.e. Google) that do use frames for VERY SPECIFIC PURPOSES. Basically if you can decisively say that none of the points above applies to your task, frames MIGHT be okay. Google uses them with their image search to show the user the page the image appears on without "really" leaving the Google site. But Google makes damn sure to provide every necessary step to make the frame as innocent as possible (like a "Close this frame" link)

In conclusion, don't use HTML frames. Frames kill independent George. If you must use a frame, just put a picture in it and put it on your wall. (Although as a political statement, all the artwork in my house is nailed to the wall with no frame)

Tacky Holiday Sweater Party

2006-12-14T12:39:00.000-08:00

This is the first post

2006-01-09T22:02:00.000-08:00

I'm glad you're here, because this is probably the most important piece of information you will ever come across in your entire life.