That’s a question Elizabeth asks me every so often. She wants to know how his wedding plans are going while I want to know if he reached the warp level on Super Mario Bros.

You see, the conversations between Jason and I have always been like this. We aren’t long-lost friends or even casual acquaintances. We’re tight. We’re on the same level. We’re one with each other (in a non-homosexual sort of way… not that there’s anything wrong with that). Simply put, we’ve strongly shared the same interests since pre-90’s.

I could talk for days about our friendship, but what I’m getting at is our IM discussions. Almost daily, we talk about things of interest [to us]. A while back I stated I’m going to blog those conversations. Well, that day is today. Starting with March 30 (because that’s as far back as my logs go for this year since my last PC HDD crash), I’ll be posting a few topics at a time. Maybe you’ll find something of interest, but probably you’ll be bored (if you don’t care what we’re talking about).

So, here’s a list of the posts/topics. I hope you’ll find parts of this and future posts at least a little useful.

Eric: What’s the easiest way to find out shipping costs for an item that I’m going to list on eBay?

Jason: Well, in a nutshell, USPS shipping costs are based on four factors: speed of shipment, size of shipment, weight of shipment, distance of shipment. If you have a scale handy (one that does both ounces and pounds), you can use their website. Otherwise, I would recommend going to the post office and using one of their self-help machines. You can get a postage rate but don’t actually have to buy a stamp for it. All it will cost you is time.

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Eric: My current project: iCalendars. Mozilla released Sunbird (a stand-alone calendar) and they have a Firefox/Thunderbird plugin which gives you an active Calendar. It outputs the same .ics file that Apple’s iCal does, so it will allow you to sync up a calendar between computers. phpiCalendar runs as a website that will read the .ics file. Mozilla’s calendar is supposed to be able to publish directly to it, but I can’t get that to work yet. It’s driving me insane. See it in action here: [LINK WITHHELD]

Jason: That friggin’ awesome! I’ve been looking for something like that for a LONG time. I’ve always thought that something like this would be a perfect tool for family doctors/dentists as a scheduling tool.

Eric: Well, there’s another option that works well… Tasks (now called Tasks Jr.) by a great coder named Alex King. I’ll setup a demo for you. I really want this first option to work since it works so easily. The piece I’m missing is WebDAV which my host doesn’t support unless you have a dedicated server. This phpiCalendar is supposed to work without WebDAV (uses FTP instead), but I can’t get that to work yet. A 3rd option is using iCal Exchange. It’s a free .ics hosting service that has WebDav support.

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Jason: Apprentice Finalist Arrested

Eric: hellyes. I hate that guy. I knew it was a matter of time. Man, he has a SHORT temper. Everytime he opens his mouth in the board room, he screams.

Jason: Yeah, no kidding. Cassie and I can’t WAIT for him to get the cobra.

Eric: Freakin tree-huggers: “There were several patrons in the area who were visibly shaken by his actions”. I liked how they showed him just standing around acting like a baby at Best Buy.

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