March 2011 Archives

A few weeks ago we were checking out the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore in town since I'd never been there before. We waded through the typical old tile, vanities, sinks, and even a few microwaves. Then we found a table -- probably the coolest tables I've ever seen.  It looks like a buffet, but pulls out to be a dinner table to a length of just under 7 feet long! At first look, the price tag seemed a little pricy, but after some research, it turns out that it was well worth it.

I had to go back the next day they were open to purchase it, figuring it would fit into the back seat of my ION. Unfortunately, I was mistaken by only about two inches! So the helpful ReStore clerk helped me lift it onto the truck, where we tied it in with my jumper cables.  I have since put the bungees and ties back into my trunk. I've never driven the roads of Fond du Lac so slowly in my life nor do I plan to ever again.

For a while I've been trying to come up with a safe and easy way to catalog my movies. I have quite a few of them and often forget if I have a specific season of Dexter or Psych. This catalog needed to be both easy to populate and easy to view on the go. So I started playing with the Amazon Product Advertising API as it would let me look up movie data on amazon and store it locally in my own database for fast access on-the-go. No typing the actors, movie length, and description. Sounded good to me. Only one problem: I was not familiar with creating the API signature type that Amazon required.