CurtBlog

RE: Visualize credit card debt

I'm currently trying to get my credit card paid off (again) as well as my car loan. I have a pretty good awareness of how long credit card debt can hang around if you don't attack it aggressively, but sometimes it's hard for people to think about. This little app will show you visually how long it will take you to get your card paid off. you can use both a payment of your choosing or a minimum monthly payment scenerio. The minimum monthly outlook should be enough to make anyone think twice about going that route.

All around smart fellow John Maeda has whipped up an application that'll help you get a handle on your credit card debt. I've had a problem understanding credit cards since the first time I was...

[Via Lifehacker]

A food adventure

Not having had a chance to test drive the Anthony Bourdain "Les Halles" cookbook yet, I decided to try a recipe for the Valentine's dinner I cooked for Kristin. Decided to try Duck al'Orange, an old classic that I used to make back in my bed and breakfast days. So in trying to find a place to buy a fresh duck I stumbled across Chicago Live Poultry. Basically this is a place that caters to the Muslim community in the primarily Indian neighborhood of Chicago up around Devon and Western. They can slaughter live animals using the strict dietary restrictions and customs that some Islam sects practice, as far as I can tell.  And other people, like me, just know that fresh (never frozen) meat tastes better.

Very interesting place, they have live chickens, ducks, turkeys, quail, rabbit and some other stuff in the back room, fresh from farms in Indiana and you go into the back and pick your animal. It is then humanely killed with an Arabic incantation and a knife to the throat and butchered right there while you watch. While I was there someone bought a rabbit and it was interesting how fast my brain went from "what a cute little bunny" to "that looks like some good eating". I got to watch them skin it and it's really cool to see a master butcher do his thing. So precise and not a cut wasted. I grew up on a farm, so I've seen a few animals slaughtered and it doesn't really bother me. I understand where meat comes from. I think it would be quite a good experience for any non-vegetarians to see this type of place though. It really brings it home and this place is probably way more sanitary and humane than the big slaughterhouses would be. I told Kristin it smelled like "blood, fear and death". Not terribly pleasant, but rather interesting all the same. I'll definitely be back. Hasenpfeffer anyone?

ASP.NET Versioning and running 1.1 applications

Well, apparently you can't run a 1.1 ASP.NET application under a ASP.NET 2.0 root. IIS Manager allows you to set the target framework at the application level, but the 1.1 application will still bubble up through the 2.0 web.config and fail to validate. So until I can get Community Server running under ASP.NET 2.0, I can't use my standard blog set up. The guys at WebHost4Life recommend setting it up as a subdomain and setting the version on the subdomain. This works because IIS thinks the folder is actually a root node and so it sticks with ASP.NET 1.1 and works fine. The only problem is I lose all my inbound links, feed subscriptions, etc which sucks. I'll probably be able to go back to the old links at some point, but for now you'll have to hit my blog using:

http://blog.swartzentruber.net/CurtBlog

Please update your RSS aggregators and links accordingly. Here is the new direct URL to the RSS feed

CurtBlog RSS

Oh and I can't do a redirect with an Http 301 Response because if I could get that working, I wouldn't have this issue in the first place.

Addicted to oil? duh

Watching CNN this morning and then seeing headlines while riding the train to work, it seems like everybody is somehow impressed that Bush says we are "addicted to foreign oil". Now I didn't watch the State of the Union because frankly I don't really care to hear much of what Bush has to say anymore. He's mainly concerned with pushing his agenda in Iraq, something I've never supported and still don't support. You can tell when he talks about domestic issues or the environment that it isn't something he is passionate about, more like something he does because he has to or he is expected to.

I think anybody with half a brain could make the astounding leap of logic that we are addicted to foreign oil. That should've been obvious back in the OPEC crisis of the 70s. Yet here we are 30 odd years later and not much has changed. We aren't just addicted to foreign oil, we're addicted to oil in general. There's more at stake than the national security problem of relying on oil from a politically unstable region like the middle east. Let's face it, if we ran out of oil tomorrow, our economy would collapse overnight. Some people might say that is doomsayer talk, but we are on the downward slope of depleting our fossil fuel supplies. It's about time we start electing politicians who care deeply about this issue and start working in earnest on alternative energy. Bush doesn't go far enough and I honestly don't have high hopes for much to change under his leadership. I don't understand how we can afford to keep putting people in office who treat the environment as an afterthought. Regardless of your personal feelings on global warming, it's obvious something is going on with the way we are treating our planet. Christians should be leading the way on this issue, but too often are not informed or don't care. God expects us to be good stewards of the earth he gave us.