Jay's Life » General

Still Sick

Jason — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:26:17 +0000

Well, the new year is upon me and I’m still sick. Have been since the 31st. Missed going to kiss Staysea at new years. But I did get to see Ian and Emily’s beautiful daughters, as they were kind enough to drop by.

It’s been a while since I posted. I don’t know why. I’ll try to do better in the new year. Might even make this a private blog, not sure yet.

First Concert

Jason — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:29:49 +0000

I went to my first real concert tonight, Metallica! Lots of great songs from my teenage years, and some new ones. It was awesome to sing Enter Sandman, while the band played it live. It was a lot of fun and probably the only time I’ll go to a concert for a big name band.

The simple reason, is that I couldn’t get out of the back of my mind that I paid $100 for a ticket to watch 4 millionaires do what they really seem to love to do.

It was still amazing though, and a lot of fun, and off my bucket list.

Maybe it’s not always Duncan

Jason — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 04:30:36 +0000

That used to have dip in it.

Welcome Baby Ainsworth

Jason — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:59:32 +0000

This morning Alison delivered a 6lb 15oz baby girl. Mom, baby and Dad are doing well. Now they just have to pick a name.

Pot of Gold

Jason — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:30:44 +0000

Apparently Oracle is at the end of the rainbow.

New Bike Bag

Jason — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:39:49 +0000

My new bike bag means that today I was able to drive through at Timmys and get my begal. Joys!

Facebook Landrush

Jason — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 04:28:07 +0000

So today 12:01 EST, Facebook let you pick a custom URL. I didn’t manage o grab Jason, I did mange to get Jason.McLeod. So you can check out my facebook at facebook.com/Jason.McLeod

Bike Tuneup

Jason — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 16:51:53 +0000

It’s amazing just how much better a bike runs with a new battery and fresh spark plugs. Especially when they are the right spark plugs. Starts up cold just as well as my car. Now it just needs to warm a wee bit.

Just an FYI to anyone buying a used bike, make sure you take a good look at the part numbers on the bike you’re buying. Some people use the wrong ones, and will only cause you heartache in the future.

First Motorcycle Ride of ‘09

Jason — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 23:41:50 +0000

Picked up the new battery for my Bike today, and with the weather warmer than it has been since ‘74 I got to go for a ride. Staysea was kind enough to pickup some spark plugs as a surprise, when I mentioned that might be why it wasn’t starting earlier. No need for the plugs yet though, she started up with a deafening backfire that scared the crap out of the cat.

Rain tomorrow, maybe I’ll get to go out again Sunday.

Palm to iPhone

Jason — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 00:06:16 +0000

I’ve been using an iPhone for a little over a year and a half now. This is after using a Palm device for more than a decade. I started with a Palm 1000 that I picked up at a Father’s Day sale (sorry Dad I kept it). Over those years I’d collected a LOT of useful information on various topics. My Palm had everything in it including Pocket Quicken for keeping my finances straight as I made my purchases. I’m still waiting for a iPhone version of Qucken, I’m talking to you Landware team.

So aside from not being able to track my finances, and as a result not using cash at all any more, the only other missed thing from my Palm was those memos. But today I learned how to get them on my phone, searchable, and synced with the web.

I used a site called Toodledo . They have the ability to import a CSV file for memos, which is good, because the Palm Desktop can export as a CSV file. Unless you’re a Mac user like me, then it’s a Tab&Return file and there is a lot of text editing that goes on to fix the format of the file. Couple their site with their iPhone application Notebook ($4.99) you can have all your notes back in your pocket. Just search for Toodledo in the App Store and you’ll find it.

A couple of tips if you are one of the unlucky ones like me who has to use the garbage Mac version of Palm Desktop. Go ahead and export the memos you want, but choose just the Title, Note and Category columns.

The open the file in excel, or another spread sheet program, and add an extra column between the fields. We’re doing that so when we re-save the file as a CSV we can strip out all the ” characters.

Do the following replacements:

Remove all the “
Replace all the ,,, with “,” (hence why we added the extra blank columns between the columns.)
Replace all the \n with “\n” (\n is a new line)
Replace all the ^ with a tab
Replace all the | with a new line.
Add a ” to the front of the first line and you should be 99% of the way there.

You can test import until you get only 3 columns imported and all should be good in the world.