Chris M. Ayres

This company has a neat story. What started out as a hobby restoring antique barn lights has turned into a million dollar business where he now manufactures rustic lights in addition to restoring them.  The owner is a retired Army Chaplain as well.  Bonus!  His warehouse / office is right on the inter-coastal across from the NASA Launch Facility. Double Bonus! All of his stuff is made right here in America? Triple Bonus!  OK, enough bonuses. They’ve got a sweet gig going on over there. Not only do they provide lights to individuals like you and I, but they also have contracts with several chain restaurants to supply the lighting for each now store that opens. Not a bad gig.

Barn Light Electric is currently hosting a giveaway called the B.L.O.G. (Barn Lights Online Giveaway). We don’t currently own a home, but we have the only offer on a home that is being approved for short sale so hopefully we can get it by Thanksgiving or Christmas at the least. We’ve been inside a couple times, and it’s pretty nice, but there is absolutely no light in the living room. None. Nadda. So this is a perfect opportunity to pick a light that would look great! Unfortunately, the house doesn’t have a barn look, or anything other than “modern”, so that’s what we’ll be linking to today.  Keep in mind, I’m the man of the house so any and all decisions I make today will more than likely be tossed out by the First Lady of the house. Hey, a guy can dream!

First choice for the living room would be this Levon Ceiling Fan. I think it looks awesome and I love how many blades are on it. I know what you’re thinking, “But Chris, there isn’t a light on that ceiling fan!” You’re pretty observant. Fortunately, they having Ceiling Fan Light Kits.

Second choice would be to go with the ceiling fan above without the light kit and instead just place a pair of these Box Table Lamps. Most modern homes include a light switch that controls one of the outlets in the room. If it doesn’t then just rewire it so that it does (duh!). Who says the light has to come from above? I actually prefer the mood that a table lamp offers versus a ceiling light.

Third choice is not for the living room but rather for the kitchen. The kitchen is what we call a “blank slate”. The cabinets are ‘meh’ and we’ll probably end up painting them or something anyway. The appliances are black, so that makes it easy as well. So what we might end up doing is just refacing the kitchen and accenting it with some sweet pendant lighting. We could go with a couple of these nice Ivanhoe Union 14″ porcelain pendants or these Bond Large Pendants that I really like and think would look great in a kitchen, right above the island or dinner table.

If you like what you see and you would also like to enter the contest, visit Barn Light Electric Co. for details and follow the instructions below:

How to Enter:

1. Look around online at Barn Light Electric and pick lights you’d love to own
2. Feature your lighting picks on your personal blog, and link to the lights if you can!
3. Copy/Paste these rules at the bottom of your blog article so others can enter
4. Once your personal article is up, you must email your blog link to: contest@barnlightelectric.com to be qualified to win. The contest ends Wednesday, October 12, 2011
5. Don’t have a blog? Find out how you can enter by reading the Official Rules

I decided to start reading again.  It’s a great practice to keep up, especially when you have children around.  I was inspired by a friend who read 50 books in 2010.  As a father of 2 who works full time and runs a small business, I don’t think I can manage 50 books, so I’m shooting for 25.  My goal is to read a variety of topics, at least 200+ pages. 

My first book was “Eye of the Needle” by Ken Follett.  I came across this author while looking for books online.  His newest book looked good but were all checked out online so I looked up other books and this one stood out.  It was written in the 70s but based in the 40s during WWII.  It is a fictitious story of what may have happened leading up to the Allies invasion of Normandy. 

The main storyline follows a German spy who stumbles across a fake Allied invasion army that he must tell the German officials about as it would be the difference between winning and losing the war.  The English discover that this spy has found this information and is frantically hunting him down.  Intermixed are a couple of love stories, gruesome murders, comical situations, and a good ole classic climax involving a major storm, shotguns and sleeping pills? 

All in all I very much enjoyed this book.  I read half of it in the first 2 days and spent another 4 finishing it off.  If you’re into spy dramas with great action or WWII stories, you might like this book.  It was written by a UK author and based in England, so you get some of their language mixed in. Also, its not for children or even teens I’d think.  It has some pretty salty language and a rather detailed sex scene or 2.  They are short though and you can skip over them without missing any of the story.

Next Up:  I’m actually going to be reading 2 at once. 
- “Don Quixote”, by Cervantes.  I’m going to attempt this as it was suggested by someone who’s opinion I value.  It’s much more of a book than I’m used to which is why I’m going to read it in conjunction with another, to keep me from giving up
- “The Wrong Stuff”, by Truman Smith. 

Thank you GHoST61 for hacking the index.html of all of my websites. I’m actually not mad at you for this. Quite the opposite really. You’ve done a very simple hack that was, for the most part, non-destructive. In fact, you’ve taught me 2 very valuable lessons. The first is that I should always backup the content of my server to my harddrive. Fortunately, of all the sites I have, only 2 needed to have the homepage reloaded. The second lesson is that I need to more tightly secure my server. If it was that easy for you to hack in, who knows what else could have been done by someone with more malicious intent than your own.

So, you’ve been hit by GHoST61, what do you do now? All that’s happened is that your index.html file has been changed. If you didn’t have an index.html file but rather an index.htm, index.php, etc, then all you have to do is delete the 24byte index.html file and your other index file will take back over and you’re fine. If you did have an index.html file and he overwrote yours, then you will have to re-upload (hope you keep a backup on your computer) your index.html to your server.

The next thing you have to do is secure your server. Below are some sites where people have mentioned how they fixed their stuff:
http://www.kisaso.com/technology/hacked-by-ghost61-my-blog-got-hacked/
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=948590&page=2
http://codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPress

Can’t connect your Android phone to your WiFi while using a Linksys WRT45G router? Try updating your firmware via the Linksys website. As soon as I updated mine and turned my Android WiFi back on, it connected immediately. Give it a shot, might just save you some time.

I’ve set up my Facebook page for Chris Ayres WebDev. Click on over there now to check it out!

 

Much like my last post, I could never get my footer to stay at the bottom of my main content area without hard coding it at the bottom of each page. This time I figured it out based off of something else I was researching. So again, with only 1 CSS ID selector, I’m able to keep my footer in the same place on every page, no matter how much content is there. Here is how it works:

This is the CSS part (your numbers may vary, of course):

#container {position: absolute; min-height: 600px;}
#footer {position: absolute; bottom: -10px; left: 50px;}

This is the HTML part:

<div id="container"> Your content here.
<div id="footer"> Footer here </div>
</div>

Basically, we’re setting the position to absolute so that it stays where you tell it to. The ‘min-height’ attribute allows the container to scale with the content. Because you put the #footer inside the #container div and you set it to be positioned at the bottom, it will always stay at the bottom of the #container div, no matter how far down it scales.

 

I’ve been working with CSS for a while on my websites but one thing always plagued me; I couldn’t get the height of my page to scale with my content automatically. I always had to write a separate ID selector for each page set to a fixed height. I don’t know why I never just google’d it, but for some reason, 6 websites later, I did. It wasn’t rocket science, it was a simple

#container {min-height:###px;}.

Once I set the min-height, no matter how much content I added, it scaled to fit. Presto! Problem solved and lots of time saved. Make sure that any content you put in here is set to position: relative; not absolute. If it’s absolute, then the container won’t scale.
 

I’m posting this from my new Droid phone. How awesome is that?

I got the phone call that my motorcycle was ready to be picked up this afternoon.  After work I headed over there to get it with Michelle and Lilly.  Per the phone conversation that I had with the shop manager, we were expecting about $200 for the repair work + parts.  All I needed was a new tube, the labor to mount the tire, and the labor to fix the spokes.  When I got there, he said $304.05..  I ask why it was $100 more than I expected and he told me that they did the rear brakes too, something I didn’t ask for.  He told me that we talked on the phone and I said that as long as the rear tire is off, to go ahead and do the brakes too, something that I didn’t even really need yet.  After some talking back and forth, I was able to assure him that he must have had some things confused and he eventually agreed to take off the charge for the brakes and got my bill back down to what I thought it would be.  He later told me that there were 3 similar bikes in the shop over the last 48 hours that all had the rear tire off and that it could have easily been someone else, though he swore it was me.  I felt bad because it always looks like the customer is trying to get away with free work, but it was honestly not me.

This little bit of miscommunication cost the shop about $90, not a big deal to a shop like that, but to us it would have been a tough blow to the ole pocket book.  I see this as God saving us money to make my motorcycle even safer.

My motorcycle had a slight wiggle to it for a long time before my tire went flat.  I just avoided the interstate since it was pretty bad over 50 mph.  After I took my bike into the shop, they explained that almost all of my spokes had broken loose and was the cause of my flat tire as well as the wiggle in my bike.  The wiggle was extremely amplified after I hit the pot hole that caused the flat tire and the rest of the spokes to pop in the first place.  My rear brakes were getting thin and starting to squeal, which I would have to replace within the next 3-4 months anyways.  So due to the awful Maryland roads and the mistake at the shop, I got my bike fixed and new brakes put on, making it much safer to ride my motorcycle.  Heading into the winter, that’s a necessity.

Thank you Lord for allowing me to get my bike fixed and free brakes.  I feel bad that it happened the way it did, but I am not complaining!  Now if only You could have saved us all $200 too   Ah, I kid!  I know You’ll give it back to us somehow!

Saturday we went to our friends Brian and Nicole’s house for our first experience with Maryland crabs!  It was something on the list of things we wanted to do in Maryland and when I mentioned it, Brian made it happen, that night.  I have the same allergy to crab that I do with shrimp, so it was a little annoying to eat them, but it didn’t stop me!  After we got past all the gross parts of breaking them open and picking through the lungs, intestines and other guts we got to the meat and it was mmm… mmm… good!  Nicole always does an amazing job making very delicious meals that put most restaurants to shame.

On Sunday, Michelle and I took Lilly to Harrisburg, PA to meet our friends Bobby and Jennifer and their new little baby Thomas Rex, or just Rex.  We had a great time getting to see them and catch up for a bit.  Oh how they get so big so fast!

After they headed off to the airport, we made the short drive over to the Hershey Park where we took the Hershey World Tour.  It was pretty cool for being free.  It’s like the rides at an amusement park where you sit in a small car that moves forward and spins around as it takes you through the “factory”.  Lilly had a blast looking at all the moving parts, bright lights, and smorgasbord of colors.  It was very cute to watch her face.  At the end of the ride we got to sample the new Hershey’s Meltaway Kisses.  They were very good.  It was kinda like eating a Hershey Kiss that had been sitting in your pocket for a while, but without the heat.

On our way home we stopped at the Antique Auto Club of America Museum just a few minutes away from the Park.  Unfortunately it was a $10 per person entry and it was later in the day already so we decided we’d just go if we ever came back this way again.  Really neat cars from what I saw in the lobby.

Enjoy the pictures!

Crabs for dinner!

Gimme my crabs!

Lilly and Rex hanging out together

We took the back way to Hershey and saw this great sign

Close up of the sign.

Michelle and Lilly at the Hershey Park sign

Lilly during the tour.

Heading into the factory

Family photo on the ride. Lilly is focused on the factory

Look at all that chocolate!

On our way out

The cool design on the floor