02/12/16

2/3 of the way done. Now for a few busy weeks of catching up on life and long overdue commitments. Revamped the recipe section (finally!) to make it more organized. Let me know what you think of it.

02/11/14

I have finally found a good way to express why I dislike living in California. As paraphrased from Chris Blizzard's website: "I can't forget that smell. Humidity mixed with decomposing leaves.... It's something that... may prevent me from ever moving out of the north-east United States." So there you have it. A very good encapsulation of all I dislike about living in a desert... In the spirit of the coming turkey day, I just put up the recipe for the single most delicious foodstuff in the world: Sausage Stuffing. Go and make it. You won't be disappointed. I guarantee it.

02/11/03

Just got back from MCM. Race sucked, I bonked. Shoulda drunk the cool-aid... Only real items of note at the moment are that I temporarily retired (until ~April) from running on 11:12:08AM EST on Sunday, October 27 and that I got a few more pages of the recipe book up - completed everything up to section 13 and am now working on 14. Only eight more months in Heck...

02/07/30

Lots of changes around here. I finally wrote a Javascript to replace the custom HTML on the navigation menu (to the left). Now if I want to change the menu, I don't have to change every page on the site. I could have done it with SSI but I like playing with Javascript. Also added the technology used section.

Not much else. Running. Running a lot. Running 80 miles a week. Hoping to get into Marine Corps Marathon again. You'd think being the 13th place finisher last year would help my chances. You'd be wrong. Hoping and running....

02/07/11

The entire site is now revamped and "complies" with my "new" (it's really about 6 months old) look. Let me know what you think of it and if you find any problems/errors or whatever.

Everything up to section 10 of the recipes is done. Might be able to get 11 and 12 done before work heats up again. Seems like I might actually finish this thing before next June.

02/07/08

Phew! After a marathon coding session today, I've almost finished totally revamping the Bike Trip '98 section to get rid of the old kludgy design and bring it more in line with the 'new' look here. Only part left to bring up-to-date is the pictures section. There's not a whole lot of pictures ready to be up anyway. Maybe I'll just forget that sub-section until I get the 250+ photos ready to be posted.

Everything up to section 8 of the recipes is done. Slow going but steady.

Rode out to Harpers Ferry on the C&O last Friday and came back by way of the W&OD on Saturday. Check out this site for lots of great info about trails in the DC area.

02/07/01

Survived the drive across the country with Lindsey. One thing that made it a lot better was the cruise control I installed just prior to leaving. I'll put a page up in the future detailing the installation.

I've added a few more pages to the recipes. Everything up to section 7 is done, section 8 is almost done.

Running again. Run every day since I arrived. This environment is so much more conducive to running for me. Maybe I'll even do a fall marathon if the training goes well. Maybe.

02/06/10

Finally arrived at the twenty mile mark of my degree. As all marathoners know,I'm only 1/2 way there and the last 10K is a killer.

With the end of the term and a long, luxurious summer break, you can anticipate more effort being put into this site. For starters, I've added a few more pages to the recipes. At the rate I've been going, should be only two to three more years before it is done. Talk about long term projects!

Only a few more days and I head back to hang with my buds for the summer. Oh, yeah, I am going to work and make some money... gotta do something when I'm not running besides eat and sleep...

02/05/12

Just finished and posted "Zen and the Art of Resource Procurement" - a fundraising book I wrote while a PCV. I originally did it in PageMaker back in '96 but lost the disks! So, I just spent about 4 weeks retyping and designing it AGAIN in PageMaker. Coming sometime in the future will be an HTML version. Read it, let me know if you find any errors and what you think of it.

02/04/26

We here at EricZander.com pride ourselves in maintaining total independence from all influential factors. This is why we must state that our decision to yet again change the style/colors of this page (with the rest of the site to follow) has absolutely nothing to do with various comments made by our friends and acquaintances.

Supposed comments such as "... it would look better if you puked on it..." and "... my grandma could design a better page!" had no effect upon our decision.

It is a total coincidence that we have received numerous such comments like those above in the last two weeks and our decision to do the redesign. ;-)

Let us know what you think of the new scheme....

02/04/03

Well, I survived spring break and am now back at the grindstone. Despite my predictions otherwise, I actually got grades good enough to let me stay here. Not sure if this is good or bad but it certainly helps my future earning power...

If you're reading this, that means that my switch to a new host went well. I found what appeared to be a few good hosts - imhosted.com, bravidio.com, hostinggroup.com, solidload.net and web-x.net. They all offer what appears to be good value for what I'm looking for in a host but I decided to go with hostinggroup.com for two main reasons - they don't require a year-long sign-up for their low rates and their website seemed more honest than the rest. We'll see. You know I'll tell you if they suck! I wanted to go with web-x but they are having network problems and aren't taking new clients. imhosted would be my second choice followed by bravidio and solidload together. But, like I said, it was very close between all five.

The BEST benefit of moving hosts is that I now have Soupermail up and running! What does this mean? It means that finally I have a way for people to contact me through this site using a form. Try it out.

Coming sometime this week will be a bunch more recipes - I finished sections 3 and 4 during break and just have to distill them and post them. I had big plans for break but that's all I got done web-wise.

Wish Joe good luck at Boston in 2 weeks!

02/03/22

Spring is finally here! Exams are done, papers are handed in and, if my grades are good enough, I might actually be able to stay in school for another few terms!

Expect to see a bunch of updates to the site over the next 2-3 weeks since I have time now to work on it. Primary goal for right now is getting more recipes up and working on my bike trip pictures (there's like 200 of them or so!).

I'm also looking for a name for my new bike. Zelda is the current leader but I'm also considering Guenivere, Heidi and others. Let me know what you think of these or offer me new ideas.

Within the month I'll be changing hosts. I'm currently hosted by readyhosting.com. I do not recommend them. They're not that bad but not that great either. My new host will be Web-X. They come with good reviews and have *nix hosting cheap. We'll see how this works out. You can be sure I'll tell you what I think! :-)

Finally, I'm running again. Just a little, like planning on ~20-30 miles a week for the next week or two, slowly building up to ~50 or 60 by June. Then we'll see where to go from there. Maybe NYC or Chicago? Hmmm.... Wish Joe good luck at Boston in 3 weeks!

02/03/10

So I was researching a school paper today and came across this web page which says This web page is part of the copyrighted web domain, Authorlink (http://www.authorlink.com), and may NOT be linked or re-distributed without written permission by Authorlink. I find it silly that people think they can prevent others from linking to their publicly available pages - like I just did. This was all settled long ago through the courts (against Neanderthals like Authorlink). Obviously the people over at Authorlink live under a rock - especially looking at how bad their web page is and how long ago it was last updated. Even ericzander.com looks better and is updated more often! Now watch them slap me with a lawsuit for linking to them. Wouldn't that be fun?

Go check out the Golden Valley Harriers website from time to time - I've been slowly rebuilding it for them. Won't be long before it looks much better than this site. But it's content that's important, right? [long silence] OK, ok, the silence is deafening. I'll do something soon about the lack of aesthetic qualities of this site. Really I will. Real soon now.

Check out Overlib. My friend Eric Rusten discovered this long ago - I just rediscovered it. Amazing use of JavaScript!

Finally, a shameless plug for myself --- Want to hire me for an MBA summer internship? I'm looking for a position that will allow me to pursue my interests in all things open source (from the business end), work in the DC area (prefer but would be willing to go to North Carolina for Red Hat or the Bay Area for a good opportunity or even Boston!), work for a dynamic organization and allow me to learn a LOT.

02/02/03

No real changes to report today except the color change. Samantha doesn't like the old color scheme. she says it is godawful and ugly and perhaps she even said it is putrid. So, to make her happy I have changed it.....

02/01/27

Although I made it a while back, I forgot to add in a link to the downloads page. Now you too can access it... I've also added a few more recipe book pages.

I have finished scanning all the pictures from my bike trip. Now I have to convert them from TIFF to JPG, make thumbnails, build the HTML pages.... all in all, about 1/2 way done with them. I'll throw them up here as soon as possible. Like I've said before, content is the first priority right now.

Next week is midterms so you won't be seeing a whole lot new up here between now and the end of the term what with projects, papers and exams. So sue me...

02/01/13
The Raw Logs from my bike trip are finally all typed in. Took so long... and, I haven't even spell checked them or anything so I'm sure they are rife with errors. Presently I am scanning in the photos and, after that I need maps and some real graphic design and some javascripts... you get the idea. It's a lot of work. For maps, last week I happened upon this guys site - he and his wife rode across the country same summer as me and finished 3 weeks later and only 3 miles away from me! What a neat coincidence!

I've also added a few more recipe book pages. I predict this will take years before I finish this project.... But, like I may have said before, once typed in, neither I nor anyone else'll ever have to do it again.

Now the new term has begun so I'll probably have less time to work on all this stuff. Enjoy what I have gotten done!

01/12/24
Soon it'll be a new year - in fact, by the time you read this I *know* it'll be a new year. There's a lot of changes around here in the past few weeks. No, not the bad graphics or color schemes (though some of the color schemes don't seem too bad) but CONTENT. Yes, as Jakob Nielsen would say, it's all about the content. I've added a lot of the raw logs from my bike trip, a whole new recipe section, a new running book review and a download page for some files. Yes, content is king around here - especially because we don't have anything else to brag about. Once I get all the raw logs from my bike trip up, I'll start working on things other than content.

Happy Holidays and thanks for visiting...

01/12/18
Ah, a week ago I was struggling with finals, living moment to moment just trying to keep my sanity between finals and studying for finals. Well, grades aren't in yet but I'm fairly sure I did OK. This was the toughest term, what being out of school for so long and having massive financial aid problems. Bureaucracy (spelling?) in any form hates me...

But, finals have ended, financial aid is done and now there's still nearly 3 weeks left before winter term! So, there'll be lots of changes around here in that time, I'm sure. I'm hoping to have the whole month of June posted for my bike trip. Also want to figure out a few things, like how to let you, my adoring fan, contact me without my revealing my email addresses.

Life is OK and getting better all the time.....

01/12/16
OK, the school term is over and so now I have time to work on this site a little. Today I just added in 3 more days of the raw logs in my bike trip. Up to end of May now - approaching San Fran. Only 5,200 or so more miles to go on that...

It's really something how life changes over such short amounts of time. School, running, etc. Sometimes I can't wait until I'm old just to see where life takes me between now and then....

Thanks for visiting, come back again...

01/08/03
For those of you who await these updates with bated breath, don't hold your breath too much - I'm not promising that there'll be updates as regular as they've been coming.

So, I keep plugging away at inputting the Raw Logs in (See the bike trip). I'm only up to May 20th. I've got to go until sometime in August. That's a LOT of typing. Especially for the hunt-and-peck method. Oh well, with the marvels of computer technology, I'll only EVER have to type them in once. Never again! I also finally found a map and traced the route I followed on it in photoshop. This'll help for now - in the future I want to put up much more detailed maps.

Also updated is the running section - not much, just some links and stuff. Check it out. Coming soon - a way to send me email by using a form. maybe....

Thanks for visiting, come back again...

01/07/26
It's late and time for me to go. I've got a race tonight and it's raining. I love rain...

But you don't care about that, do you? I took the message board down - not sure if it's the PERL script I'm using (Soupermail) or the NT server my site lives on. Do yourself a favor when you get your own website - DON'T use an NT host, go with *nix. It's better. trust me..... I'll put something up eventually in the place of a guestbook. Maybe when Ikonboard goes gold I'll use that as a guestbook as well as discussion forum. But, with a discussion forum, who needs a guestbook? It's just SO 1999.

One good thing I've done is fixed the Raw Logs in the bike trip - seems older browsers (and they don't have to be very old) don't recognize *.txt files as text files. I added in some simple formatting and the all important head and body tags. Now you should be able to read them. More coming soon. Gotta run!

01/07/20
Well, I've been futzing around with this stuff for a week now (8 days according to the last update). I've added a whole lot of stuff - Raw Logs of my bike trip are growing, I have a guestbook up and running (but it's pretty crappy layout and stuff right now), I updated the running books - finally added in the authors of the books. And, other stuff has been done.

My primary objective for now is content generation - getting it up and making it work, even if it is kludgy. I'll make everything work well and look pretty later. So, if it's ugly or doesn't quite work now, sign the guest book and tell me your suggestions. I might incorporate them later.

01/07/12
Have you ever noticed how your computer 'desktop' mimics your real desktop? Neat people have neat desks, messy people have messy desks, artistic types have cool images/graphics, engineers have boring color schemes...

Not sure what this web site says about us here at EricZander.com.... maybe that we puke our stuff onto our desktop?

Cut us some slack here on the lack of content, design and such - we're just starting out on this little adventure. if you can look beyond the obvious flaws in navigation, design, lack of content, lack of creativity, lack of innovation (that pretty much covers this whole website now, doesn't it?) and see the potential, We're sure you'll enjoy yourself. We have plans to improve this mess. Really we do!