Blog Master G

Have you ever seen your credit report? How recently? If you’re not familiar with your credit report or what’s on it, there’s no time like the present to request one for free. Thanks to relatively new federal legislation as mandated by the Federal Trade Commission, we’re all eligible to request and review free copies of our credit reports from all three credit reporting agencies (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion) once per year.

Rather than paying for a credit monitoring service or requesting all three reports at once, here’s what I think is a great strategy to proactively monitor your credit throughout the year: Request one from each bureau every four months. Here’s the schedule I’ve established for me and Jen as of today:

• January 5: Experian
• May 5: Equifax
• September 5: TransUnion

Repeat every year (access all three via AnnualCreditReport.com). I’ve made this process easy by setting up recurring annual reminders in my Yahoo Calendar, so I’ll get an email every four months reminding me to do this.

Requesting the report is the easy part, so do yourself a favor and go for it. It takes a whole 2 minutes. And then review what’s on the report… it might surprise you… or anger you if you find that someone else has pretended to be you. This happened to me a few years ago, and it’s no fun.

I don’t agree with everything Suze Orman says, but she has mostly good advice. The one bureau per quarter strategy is courtesy of her.

url(x) — like tinyURL, but cooler.

Here’s what really happened:

12 of 13 W. Va. Miners Confirmed Dead:

TALLMANSVILLE, W.Va. – In a stunning and heartbreaking reversal, family members were told early Wednesday that 12 of 13 trapped coal miners found were dead — three hours after they began celebrating news that they were alive.

The devastating new information shocked and angered family members, who had rejoiced with Gov. Joe Manchin hours earlier when a rumor began to spread that 12 miners were alive. Rescue crews found the first victim earlier Tuesday evening.

“They knew the odds that were against us, and with that, to have the ending as it did with this high euphoria, I can only say there was no one who did anything intentionally other than risk their lives to save their loved ones,” Manchin told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

The sole survivor of the disaster, identified by mining officials as 27-year-old Randal McCloy, was hospitalized in critical condition early Wednesday, a doctor said. When he arrived, he was unconscious but moaning, the hospital said.

This, despite earlier news that only one of the trapped miners had been killed. Newspapers landing on doorsteps across America this morning look like this front-page story from today’s Washington Post:

There are two things about this story I simply don’t understand: First, how could they get the news so wrong and let down so many people? Secondly, in this modern age of technology — we send people to the moon — why can’t we dig 13 people out of a hole? I know it was deep, but give me a break. Are we really that advanced if we lose 12 people because we can’t dig fast enough? I’m not blaming the rescue crews — I know they tried their best — or anyone in particular.. I’m just saying… why don’t we have the means to dig faster? Or why don’t coal mines have alternate escape routes?

Here’s another idea: If we all drove hybrid cars (I’m guilty, too) and installed solar panels on our rooftops, then maybe we could wean ourselves off our reliance on fossil fuels and these poor guys wouldn’t have to lose their lives underground. I filled out an interest form with Evergreen Solar a few days ago. I really do want to get solar panels on my garage to power my house. Most local and state governments will help pay for the system, and then your energy bills go down, you’re helping save the environment (and lives), and you even get a tax break when you file with the IRS.

One of the many things that makes the character of Saratoga Springs so unique is the architecture and the appreciation everyone here has for preserving old buildings and homes. The Saratoga Springs Preservation Foundation has an Historic Plaque Program, which not only adds to the character and historic integrity of the home, but helps in educating passersby about when the home was built; the plaque also displays the name(s) and occupation(s) of the original resident(s). You might recall the intro from this post about my first trip to Saratoga Springs: “1860. It’s not our new address; it’s the year the historic building that we’ll soon call home was built.” That building had a plaque marking the year it was built, and so, too, will our house.

Every since we bought our house about a year-and-a-half ago, we’ve wanted to apply for the Historic Plaque Program. We finally got around to it, and got the application prepared yesterday. It’s sitting on the mailbox ready for mailing now, so hopefully in a few months, we’ll have a new plaque for our historic home, built in 1925-1926. Based on the research already conducted by SSPF on behalf of a prior owner, it was determined, based on assessed value at the time, that a different structure was here in 1925. Then, in 1926, the assessed value increased dramatically — from $150 to $1,000 (if only we had been around to buy our house in 1926!).

Some houses I’ve seen around town have two years on their plaques — for example, 1925/1926. Visually speaking, I’m not as fond of that, so our plaque will probably end up saying 1926. Pretty exciting.

I bought the infamous Ding-King yesterday at the local As Seen on TV store, so hopefully it will work as advertised to remove an annoying dent from the right fender of the WRX that’s been there for way too long.

It snowed several inches overnight, and I love it. I did tons of shoveling and plowing of my driveway and my neighbor’s driveway this morning.

As I did last year around now, it’s time to post and review the annual site stats. January 2005 set a new unique traffic record, bringing 24,882 unique visitors, 39,242 visits, 103,725 pages served, 347,365 hits, and 5.64 GB of bandwidth (though only unique visits were highest that month). Overall, gabeanderson.com saw an increase of 45,697 unique visitors in 2005, with 243,228 people stopping by (a 23% increase over 2004). Those visitors came by a total of 418,280 times, viewing 1,139,170 pages and 4,309,860 hits, consuming 71.83 GB of bandwidth.

The blog home page notwithstanding (81,632 views), the wedding category of the blog was the most popular page of the year, having been viewed 22,404 times. The most popular individual entries of 2005 were both technology-related: Airport Extreme & Linksys WRT54G (12,361 views) and Unix/Linux Find & Replace in Multiple Files (10,568 views). The third-place individual entry of the year (racy Halloween photos aside) was my October 2003 post on Golden Gate Bridge Jumpers, spurred in popularity in January 2005 by a San Francisco Chronicle story on Eric Steel’s suicide documentary (I also attribute the record traffic in January to this topic, and the fact that Mr. Steel himself commented on that post).

The top search terms leading to my blog were “adrianne curry,” “chicks,” “gas prices,” and “kinky.” Gotta love the “wedding porn” search, too (leading here).

Here’s to the start of my 7th calendar year of blogging!

Happy New Year, everybody! Welcome to 2006. We got the year started off right last night (and this morning) with a little shindig at casa de A_nderson. The A_nderson party crew included Gabe, Jen, Alex, Cati, Justin, Seth, Tom, Anne, Alf, and Nastassia. It was a solid crew who really knew how to have a good time. In addition to copious volumes of beer and wine (red, white, and sparkling), we also enjoyed the Absinthe imported from London by yours truly. Jen whipped up tons of delicious snacks, including stuffed mushrooms, shrimp cocktail, pesto hummus, cheese, crackers, and a special 2am treat: fondue. The festivities lasted until 5am; we put in a full 10 hours of partying, complete with tiaras, derbies, and paper crowns.

View all New Year’s Eve photos

Enjoy National Hangover Day, and next year… it’s 007 party time!

Data are (and is, now that data as singular has become acceptable in American English) important to me, especially things like photos, financial documents, and the like. I try to be pretty obsessive about backing things up. I don’t lose sleep over our digital photos since they’re all archived on Ofoto/Kodak Gallery — all 10,736 of ’em as of today (4,249 more than November 2004, partly because I recently migrated all our remaining photos from Photoworks to Ofoto). So what of the other data? I use an external backup drive and an old PC for regular full-drive backups. I also have a number of important files backed up in my Gmail account via Gmail Drive Shell. But of course that’s not enough. I must have off-site (Internet) backup, too, and Gmail is limited to uploading files 10 MB or smaller.

I recently discovered FolderShare (purchased by Microsoft not too long ago), which allows you to keep your data in synch across multiple machines, and to access data from anywhere on any computer that’s currently online. It’s a pretty cool application, runs quietly in the background, and works pretty well. The one big limitation: You can only synchronize up to 10,000 files.

So I got to researching other online backup options and came across this blog entry, which has a number of recommendations.

I haven’t yet tried all the recommendations, but the one to which I was the most drawn based on storage (2 GB), cost (free), and ease of use (runs in the background) is Mozy. So I signed up (agreeing to receive occasional advertising email directly from Mozy in exchange for the service), installed the app, and have selected a number of important files (photos aside) to backup in my 2 GB. (You get 1 GB initially, but can upgrade to 2 GB for free if you fill out a short online survey.) So far, I’m very impressed. You can select from predefined Backup Sets that Mozy compiles (spreadsheets, presentations, Firefox favorites, financial data, etc.), or you can browse your Filesystem to pick and choose what folders and files to back up.

Mozy is fast, does not hog system resources, allows you to run automated backups when your computer’s not in use or schedule backups, and just plain works. So far, I’m very impressed. Oh, and your data is super safe because Mozy uses high-end data encryption:

• 128-bit SSL Support (to secure your data during transport)
• 448-bit Blowfish Encryption (to secure your data on our server)

Good stuff. If you’re looking for a safe and easy-to-use online backup solution, check out Mozy.

Mr. Davis came to Saratoga for one night only last night, so we hit the town. Thirteen was the desintation, followed by a brief visit to the Tin & Lint. E-Dawg and I had brunch at the Country Kitchen on High Rock before he hit the town to head back to the DC area today. It was awesome hangin’ with E, if only for a night.

Google Video, as I wrote about yesterday, has really become my new hobby. Here are a few more fun movies:

• Lazy Sunday (SNL skit)
• When car meets 747
• Ninja training camp
• WRX STi vs. Acura Integra GSR
• WRX 140 MPH+ (reminds me of someone else I know)
• Fall to the death
• Matrix pong
• Merry Christmas lights

It’s endless entertainment. Go to the Google Video home page and keep clicking on the logo to shuffle through popular vidoes, or just search for random words or phrases that interest you.

Google has quietly begun to compete with everyone’s favorite message board, craigslist, via the new Google Base. Google is taking it up a notch, though, with photos for just about everything, from personals to blogs to coupons. Time will tell how popular Google Base becomes, but I think many of us are already very attached to craigslist for the very reason Google became popular in the first place: Its simplicity, community, and ease of use. I think Google will be hard-pressed to create the sense of local community that craigslist has achieved. Whereas craigslist grew out of a community in San Francisco (its offices are a block from our old apartment in the Inner Sunset), Google is now an international behemoth trying to go backward. I’m a big fan of Google in a lot of ways and Google Base is fun, but it’s no craigslist. All that and craigslist doesn’t have advertising.

If you haven’t already seen Google Video, here’s a sampling of some of the best I’ve seen so far:

• Self-attacking dog
• Little monster man
• Chinese freedom rock

If you missed the Gmail holiday login page, here it is for your everlasting enjoyment:

While we’re at it, here’s my current Gmail usage for historical perspective:

I was using only 201 MB on April 1, 2005, so I’ve more than tripled my usage in just under nine months.

Last night I watched a great Frontline documentary about how we Americans eat too much and don’t exercise enough. It was hosted by Stephen Talbot, the guy who played Gilbert on Leave it to Beaver and is himself struggling with weight loss and eating healthily.

America On the Move

Two years ago today we were in Lexington, Kentucky and had spent the day at Graceland.

This Christmas weekend was relaxing, long, and fun. We packed tons of stuff into the three-day weekend. On Christmas Eve we had a quiet dinner at home with my Dad, and watched March of the Penguins, which was an incredible documentary about the migrating, mating, and child rearing of the empire penguin in Antarctica.

View all Christmas Eve photos

On Christmas Day we headed to Poughquag for a family gathering and tons of good food. That night we played Scrabble and watched the Ben Affleck, James Gandolfini, and Christina Applegate classic Surviving Christmas. Jen got her first seven-letter, 50-point bonus word (BLUDGEON), and later, when I also ended up with both blanks, I repeated the feat with ZEALOTS. My Dad came close to a 50-point bonus with SQUEEZE. It was one of the most well-used boards with the highest number of long words I’ve seen in all my Scrabble days, so we took a picture (see last photo of Christmas album).

View all Christmas 2005 photos

Yesterday we enjoyed the last of the three-day weekend with a bit of house cleaning, followed by a late lunch with Justin at Forno Toscano before a stop at Clancy’s and an evening of shooting the shit at Joe’s place.

Two years ago yesterday we were in the middle of our cross-country drive and staying the night in Amarillo, Texas, then in Little Rock two years ago today.

Happy models Jen’s old watch now that Jen got a new one for her birthday from her husband:

I’m a model… you know what I mean… I do my little turn… on the catwalk… yeah, on the catwalk!

Last night we walked to a fun winter solstice party not far from here. We met some cool new people. Thanks so much to the hosts for a great party!

Happy winter! It’s officially here.