A couple of updates to the Boo’s portfolio.

Jacy and I were both a little shocked to see what appears to be my nose in this portrait! Yes, not only does the Price name live on, apparently the Price nose does as well.

His sense of humor seems to be high functioning too. When the ultrasound technician got a little too upity with the photos, the Boo bent over and mooned her. And in his Great Grandfather’s tradition, another nazi photographer is offered an ass to kiss.

Ah… That figures.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Thanks to John Gruber for the link.

View Larger Map

After my grandfather died in 2001, most of the family met there one last time and made the hard decision to sell the property since the younger generations mostly moved away from the area and couldn’t maintain it.

Some of my best childhood memories are of this place. There is an old logging road winding around the field to the northwest. After dinner and at various times during the day, we would all walk around in small herds looking for deer, fossils and other forest delights. I can still vividly conjure the smell and taste of Deep Woods Off.

My grandfather would get up shortly after dawn each morning to walk around that same trail. The sound of the door closing acted as my alarm to quickly get dressed and race out to join him. My shoes were drenched in morning dew before I ever caught up. We whispered our conversations and consulted each other and an Audubon Society guide to identify the birds we came upon. In between he quizzed me on the types of trees, many of which he planted. Hours later, the clank of a distant bell would call us to the breakfast table. Not being one to just snap-to and do what he’s told, Grandpa would always take a few extra minutes to marvel at the color of the indigo buntings before ambling back. I guess that’s were I got it.

I have no doubt the the old Gravely is still keeping the forest at bay. And if you look closely, I think you can still see that claw hammer in the barn roof.

I did a google on 2600n and chip reset and i found out that we can setup the printer to print past it’s 2000 and 2500 page limit. Below are the instructions i got.

Cartridge Out Override can only be enabled from the printer’s control panel menu.
1. From the main menu, press (RIGHT ARROW) to System setup and press (SELECT).
2. Press (RIGHT ARROW) to Print quality and press (SELECT).
3. Press (RIGHT ARROW) to Replace supplies and press (SELECT).
4. Press (RIGHT ARROW) to Override out and press (SELECT).
5. Press (SELECT).
If Stop at out is selected, the printer will stop printing when a cartridge reaches the recommended replacement point. If Override out is selected, the printer will continue printing when a cartridge reaches the recommended replacement point. The factory default setting is Stop at out.

Thanks to Google and DaVillen.

I’ve been meaning to mention them here for some time, but now that they have asked and they are giving away a few memberships to promote their 100th WPMU plugin, it seems seems like an especially good time for me to chime in. I started paying by month, and am now several months in to a (paid) annual membership. Well worth it, in my opinion.

Although I have given most of their plugins a try, the ones that I make the most of are these:

• Google Analytics for WordPress MU – Sitewide AND single blog solution!
• MailChimp Newsletter Integration
• Recent Comments
• Remove Email Verification From Signup
• Sitemaps and SEO – Wordpress MU Style
• Supporter

Of these, I’d say that supporter is the heavy hitter. It is made to integrate in with PayPal as a payment facility and to control what plugins and features are associated with “Supporters” versus free accounts. It makes the whole system hum.

In addition to plugins, I’ve made great use of their Farms 100 big ones theme pack. Basically, they’ve taken 100 popular themes and modified them so that they all work with the various plugins and tools in a reliable way. I can’t imagine how many hundreds of hours they have spent fiddling with these, but I can say with certainty that BestAgentBlogs would have many fewer themes available without their efforts.

Congratulations, on your 100th plugin, WPMU DEV Premium!

(But it’s much harder than it looks.)

Click here to view the embedded video.

I was tickled to see that Microsoft has announced a new search engine at bing.com.

I purchased bing.com from a midwest property manager several years ago for a startup I was involved with. That domain, in fact, ended up being most of the terminal value of the company.

After considerable effort and a lot of negotiation, I sold the domain to a venture-backed firm for, um, much more than we paid for it. (More important to me than the money was that the VC agreed to a future sit-down for another project I’ve been working on.) Ultimately, however, the firm we sold to went bust and evidently sold bing.com to an Australian company that used it in conjunction with their EasyMail product. They must have received an offer they could not refuse because although the Bing service is still available, Bing.com has hit the big time in Redmond.

– Update!–

While searching for logo images, I found this story in PC World! The author put together a nice little article that goes into more depth than my post here. With regard to his section summary: “Hmm. Guess the introduction of the smaller cell phone with built-in vibrate mode kind of killed that idea.” Hmm. Guess you could avoid publishing inaccurate conclusions if you bothered to do any off-net research.

I’d expect more from a “seasoned journalist“.

–Another Update!–

JR called me out on Twitter for my over-sensitivity: “@TheRightPrice Snarky? Sure. But unsubstantiated? I’d say it was pretty clear in the context that that line was a light-hearted joke.” That’s fair. I apologize for my brash comment. It’s hard to hear someone of note distill years of hard work–incorrectly. I wish I could set the record straight, but doing so would probably be a very bad idea. I’ve got to just suck up my pride and enjoy this small notoriety until my day comes.

Don’t ask how, but earlier today I came across a post on letter writing at ArtofManliness.com. (Let it be…) You must understand, I’ve been surrounded by technology and electronic communication for most of my adult life. I am very connected. The fact is, I feel I’m too connected. But not for real.

Like any good businessman, I’m always on the lookout for process efficiency. For years, I’ve investigated services that facilitate, or even automate, communication. As a Realtor, the most important thing I do is communicate and interact with my friends, clients, and prospects. Not surprisingly, there are legions of salespeople and vendors pitching me about how their product will save me from the arduous task of personally attending to all those that I ought to be routinely engaging with.

The problem is, these products and techniques promote the worst kind of mediocrity; that which attempts to commoditize my treasured relationships and turn them into mere contacts. To my mind, squandering the goodwill of one’s social network by applying a “Dear {FirstName},” drip campaign is not only lame, its disrespectful. However, we agents are trained to do it because, unfortunately, it works. And because anyone can do it.

Well, I’ve never been particularly attracted to work that anyone can do and I don’t pitch my friends. The names in my address book represent my most prized relationships and I’ll much sooner neglect them than abuse them. Nevertheless, I work hard to stay connected with these people, though I have plenty of room for improvement. In fact, I’d love to meet with each one of them frequently and stay caught up with all that’s happening in their lives, but I just don’t have the time to do it. Consequently, I do need to be systematic in my efforts to remain in touch and to make sure that I at least check in with everyone periodically. And the post I referred to earlier reminded me that even if I don’t have the luxury of meeting face-to-face with my friends as often as I’d like…

…sending a letter is the next best thing to showing up personally at someone’s door. Ink from your pen touches the stationary, your fingers touch the paper, your saliva seals the envelope. Something tangible from your world travels through machines and hands, and deposits itself in another’s mailbox. Your letter is then carried inside as an invited guest. The paper that was sitting on your desk, now sits on another’s. The recipient handles the paper that you handled. Letters create a connection that modern, impersonal forms of communication will never approach.

Now, where is that fountain pen?