My wife and I had an opportunity to experience the amazing services that the Ronald McDonald House provides to families with children under hospital care. Their mission is to create, find, and support programs that directly improve the health and well-being of children and their families, and they don’t fall short when it comes to following through. Continue reading
Thanks to the Linux Foundation and groups such as the EFF, Free SSL certificates are now available and are easy to issue and deploy on your websites. The catch is that they’re only valid for 90 days, but utilities exist to manage and renew the certificates for you. If you don’t use SSL on your website, I encourage you to check out the Let’s Encrypt and Certbot websites for more information.
When I went to my site this afternoon, it showed an error stating my SSL certificate had expired. I recently (90 days ago) configured Certbot (https://certbot.eff.org/) through a cron-job to renew my certificates regularly so they don’t expire. But they did!
In case anybody else comes up with this issue, I’ve explained why it happened and my solution below.
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Photos © Jason Bauman (Taken at Big Apple Comic Con with ICON Science Fiction, Inc.)
I’ve been attending Science Fiction and other genre conventions for about 20 years. For half of that time, I’ve been engulfed in photography as a hobby. I am constantly striving to improve my work, but I will agree that the quality of my photos are pretty good. You can learn the technical stuff in school and through research. Yes, you should understand the rule of thirds and a bit of color theory, but one thing that will improve your photography is to make a connection with your model. It sounds cliche, as this theme is constantly repeated when learning portraiture, but it holds true every time. Continue reading
As a photographer who runs a regular portrait workshop, I frequently have to send high resolution photos to multiple models. The images can exceed 10 megabytes each. Since some email services have limits of how much space the attachments can take up, I generally try to keep below 20 MB per email. If I have to send out 30 images, this could require up to 30 individual emails. This is why I use Google Drive to send the emails. There’s also quite a few additional services that allow you to share large files. I’ll list them at the end of this post, but I wanted to share how I use Google Drive to send models downloadable galleries of their images.
It’s been almost 8 months since I dropped Sprint’s service, and I still couldn’t be happier with Verizon. Usually I post about negative experiences, but tonight’s call to the big red phone company has left me in a good mood.
So after more than a month of constant phone calls, emails, and even a few blog posts, I am happy to say that Sprint finally did the right thing and agreed to take back the phones. I don’t know if it was because of the aggressive promotion of my post about the issue, or if I just happened to get a sympathetic representative. I may never know, but I’m glad that this chapter is over. After consideration of what I was put through, I have switched my line over to Verizon Wireless whose service costs quite a bit more, but whose service is more reliable. Hopefully their customer service is more customer-friendly. We’ll see. I was with Sprint for sixteen years. If Verizon is any better I’ll be with them for the next sixteen (and maybe more!).
You were driving across Long Island when your car broke down. You go to call roadside assistance, but you can’t get service. You get out of the car and start walking, when you see several figures coming at you in the dark. As they step into the light, you realize that they’re not looking for new friends. You try to make an emergency call to 911, but your phone indicates “No Service Available”.
This fictitious story could come true as Sprint’s new upgrades are leaving some of their newest and most popular phones without service, and Sprint does not seem to care one bit. Continue reading
I live in a co-op. It’s basically an apartment building where I own shares of the “company” rather than the physical property. Decisions that affect the property are determined by a board of residents, and a company is hired to manage the facility. In my case, that company is Fairfield Properties and they serve as a firewall to prevent us residents and owners from having any access to the individuals that make thes decisions on our behalf. Continue reading
So I pulled up to pump for my first fill-up in the G37. The dashboard indicator came on during my ride to work, so during lunch my coworker and I stopped to fuel up. I hopped out only to find the gas tank missing. Or on the opposite side of the car anyway. I swing the car around, and go to open the tank. It doesn’t open. I come back to the car to look for the release switch. There isn’t any! Continue reading
So I finally got rid of my Scion TC. It was a reliable ride, but over the past five years, I have grown a complete hatred for Toyota. After two top-of-the-line Grand Prix GTPs, the Scion was a big step down. I’m happy to say that I’m back in the game. Continue reading
