I am so excited that my pet project MyLoganCounty.com is very close to launch.  I know there will be a bug testing period where I have to work out some kinks, but everything seems to be working pretty well.  I’ve even stopped at a couple of local merchants to recruit them to give it a test.

Right now, we have the following features:

• Community Calendar
• Marketplace Photo Ads
• Job Board
• Business Directory
• News

All of the above features are free.  This really catches the people around here off guard.  I stopped in three places in the last week and every time they ask “Well, how are you going to make money?!”  I tell them I have a job, and I’m really trying to do something for the community.  I get a funny look…

Beyond that, future plans include having paid home and property listings and possibly a sponsor membership for those that really love it.

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Just a note to let anyone who cares know that one of my pet projects finally launched and it is WELL received.  LCHSTeachers.com launched the week before school started (~2 weeks ago) and it already well exceeds monthly traffic for this blog.

Looking at the stats I see that we’re already getting good organic search results and I believe it will only get better with time.

The site is running WordPress Mu 1.5.x and it rocks hard.  The flexibility of this thing is downright amazing.

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I had a bit of an issue the other day in trying to sync up my Google Calendar with Outlook for the purpose of syncing to the iPhone.  Somehow there is the annoying “24 Hour Bug” that makes “All Day” events become 2-day events. I don’t know what the solution to that is yet, but I do know that between trying multiple sync apps in the past I have run in to the uber-annoying duplicate entries issue.

This project assumes you are using the following:

1. iPhone or another device that syncs with MS Office Outlook
2. Google’s Calendar Sync
3. Microsoft Office Outlook

Important Note: Make sure you have Google Calendar Sync set to “1 Way - Google to Outlook” in order for this to work.

In Outlook, go to “Advanced Find” (in 2003, the easy way to do this is to hit CTRL-SHIFT-F) and then look for “All Outlook Items” and hit the browse button to select ONLY THE CALENDAR - make sure “All Items” is unchecked.  Click Find Now.  When the results are displayed, click any one event, then type CTRL-A to Select All - then simply press the Delete button.  You now have a blank slate in Outlook Calendar.

Note: I did this without changing my GCAl Sync settings, so I lost everything.  I should have used my iPhone to manually rebuild everything, but I didn’t.  I tried to sync.  Outlook took priority and therefore wiped my iPhone cal too.  Pretty sad.  Trying to rebuild a calendar is counter-intuitive.  You put everything on the Cal so you didn’t have to remember yourself.

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I have hinted before at what I would truly like to see from Dental Lab software - some of it I don’t know if it will ever come true from anyone. In the mean time, I am going to give an unsolicited product endorsement:

Jenmar International’s Dental Lab Management Software

At this point I have reviewed and played with basically everything out there that isn’t DOS based (and who the hell would invest in DOS based applications at this point anyway?) Jenmar truly understands the difference betweeen case tracking and Lab Management. They’re the only ones who seem to have as much emphasis on rapid entry and ease of use as they do on getting crucial business information out to the managers.

Some of the big selling points for the product that Jenmar puts out have to be the ability to link and pull in information from closed cases (remakes, restains, etc) so that there is a clear path with any case as well as Dr preferences on a per item basis - so you can have a Doc that wants a PFM a certain way every time and it auto

Even if you’re not running a pay-per-piece lab, this is the way to go. Someday, though, someone is going to make one that gives you a department dashboard with graphs and all. We’ll see.

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I freely admit that I’m a geek.  I always have been.  I was more interested in chess that I was in flag football and I was way more interested in tearing down computers and rebuilding them that I was in my car.  I read software instruction books for financial software way over my head rather than read my US History book and couldn’t stop myself from using up my parents precious long distance minutes to access the cool looking BBS’ in the back of my Computer World magazine every month.

When Barnes & Noble opened in Bowling Green, KY the first thing I did was run to the computer magazine section.  There my heart nearly burst from my chest as I discovered 2600 Magazine for the first time.  I read alt.2600 (as much as I could understand - I knew what they were doing, just not how).

I still have every issue of 2600 that I ever got (about 2 dozen of them) in a plastic container upstairs in my own house.  They traveled to college with my should I ever run in to Lord Nikon questioning my hacker elitism.  I always dreamed of playing hookie from class and running off to NYC to go to the H.O.P.E. conference that 2600 put on.

Now, the last H.O.P.E. coference is taking place.

Ah well, some dreams are not meant to be.  I wouldn’t be on their level anyway, but I did want to try my hand at “Spot The Fed” and maybe pick up a t-shirt.

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