Greg Moore

Author: Greg

  • Four Walls and a Roof Ago…

    Four Walls and a Roof Ago…

    This past weekend was a big one for the shed office construction. Once again with the help of my little brother, Warren, we put up the remaining two walls and the roof trusses. Keep in mind that I’ve never framed anything in my life. This is the first time I’ve ever taken on something like…

  • South and East Walls Framed

    South and East Walls Framed

    What a day! With the help of my brother Warren, we now have a South and East wall! Since we started the day out without a framing nailgun, the going was slow and I ended up with a few minor blisters on my hand from swinging that hammer. I made the decision to put a…

  • Platform: Complete

    Platform: Complete

    The last few joists and the sub flooring are in! The base of the shed is now complete and ready for the next phase – to put it up in the air with walls and a roof. According to the weather man, we have a weekend of sun ahead of us. Now I need to…

  • Platform

    Three day weekends make for productive shed building! As I finished up the ground work for the shed, I discovered that there was in fact a 3″ ductile cast iron drain line and not the continuation of a series of cement/clay. Curiously, it didn’t fill with water when it rained, so I’m thinking it’s not…

  • Ground Work Continues

    Ground Work Continues

    I’m beat from all this digging. It appears that I’ve selected the perfect spot to place my shed. I’m finding all sorts of buried treasures. First, there’s the old metal watering system 3/4″ pipe that was buried barely 4″ underground. I remember when the house was being built that my builder had a pile of…

  • Breaking Ground

    Breaking Ground

    And so starts the progress! After carefully measuring out where the building site would go, I went ahead and started excavating the necessary earth to create level platforms for the pier blocks. Under each pier block is about an inch of gravel for drainage and stabilization. I discovered I have more slope to contend with…

  • Building a Shed Office: The Design Concept

    I’ve always wanted to have the opportunity to build a structure from the ground up. In the past few months, the wife and I have decided that a garden “office” was something that we wanted to have in our back yard as part of our larger plan to convert our back yard into a working…

  • 7 Simple Rules for Sending Me an Email

    We all have a love and hate relationship with our email. Technology requires a balanced approach and careful management to be the positive thing it can be. Here are my rules to help keep email from becoming an out of control beast: One request per message It seems simple enough, but how often to you…

  • The Ever Changing Security Quilt

    Back in December, this country was struck hard by horrific, thoughtless and tragic massacres with no apparent reason. Unimaginable atrocities. The work of insane and unloved individuals. I speak of the two shootings that took place in two very different places in the US. First, in my home town on December 11th 2012, a young…

  • Meeting Records – Greg Moore Style

    Meeting Records are the key to a successful meeting. Without them, you cannot take action or even hope to recall every relevant detail discussed in a meeting. Using the Greg Moore Meeting Record System, you can capture the most useful information in an actionable format that will help you make the most of the meetings…

  • Food Sources

    In Oregon, families on Food Stamps have to make due on $4/day for food. But what if everyone and everyone were to live on $4/day for food? I have my doubts as to how sustainable that would be for today’s built up empire of commercial food industry. Stores have to sell a certain percentage of…

  • A Hairy Conundrum

    My 3 year old niece said to me the other day: “What’s wrong with your hair?” “What do you mean?” I inquired. “It’s long.” I paused considering the source of the criticism. She means well, right? Perhaps someone put her up to this? That doesn’t seem likely. Three-year-olds can’t pull of this sort of stunt…

  • Connecting Cultures

    After watching a highlights reel from last night’s Timbers/Whitecaps match here in Portland, it got me thinking about the role of sports in society. In ancient times, sports had a clear dual role in society. On a small scale, they brought people together in communities, villages and towns. Games could be played for fun, to…

  • Don’t Expect Anything Simple

    Bankers are a funny bunch. Investors, too. The latter will coo about how necessary it is to take risks in order to achieve payoffs. The former will often tell the public “we don’t take risks” while they roll the dice in the back room with our cash (and the government’s these days). It’s quite entertaining…

  • SSD Geekin’

    Over the past couple of years, I was determined to make 40 GB of (then expensive) SSD space work for my primary computer. Finally, today, the time came to upgrade to something larger. Not that the old drive has anything wrong – it’s just too small for Windows 7 and it’s bleeping “Side-by-Side” system to…

  • Mom and Dad want to take Junior to the Pub, too.

    Just before my daughter was born, I and my wife were quite the pub patrons. Unfortunately, our neighborhood pubs are not kid friendly. We still believe in this country for some reason that by limiting kids exposure to places where alcohol is consumed we are somehow doing them a favor. That and the drunks like…

  • The Play’s The Thing

    My good friends (and former High School teacher) Mr. Michael Jarmer and his awesome wife and bandmate Rene Ormae-Jarmer have started a Kickstarter Campaign for their new album. Check it out and send them some Moolah if you can. I’ve been following their band, Here Comes Everybody for about 15 years – never have I…

  • iDevices and the Enterprise

    I run a medium scale enterprise with lots of Group Policy, Security and the usual IT control accoutrements. Increasingly, I’m becoming a big fan of the iPad. Sure, I still don’t have a personal need for one. On the same hand, those who have made the personal investment haven’t been a thorn in my side.…

  • Thoughts on Occupy Portland

    Today around Noon, what appears to be a fairly large showing of support for the Occupy Wall street will take place in the streets of downtown Portland. While I personally expect no troubles from organizers and participants, there has always been the threat and real damage caused by non-affiliated individuals looking to make trouble. While…

  • Fitting In Today

    Shakespeare pondered “to be or not to be, that is the question.” Most of us in tech today ponder this same thing, but in the context of to be a tech or a manager. Most of us got into technology because we loved something about it. For some, the thought of coding day in and…

  • Burnout Hobby

    One of the things I love about being a full time student while working full time is that I have no excuse to be “bored”. Yep – none at all. I get to have a list of to-do’s that is perpetual. So how is it then, after the homework is done, the day at the…

  • Vision is not a Democracy

    What is a vision? We spend a lot of time listening to a lot of hot air from a lot of different people about their “visions for the future”, “vision for Iraq”, whatever. Before we start to talk about vision, we need to talk about a few other topics. Consensus. Awful word, huh? That word…

  • Giving Life to an otherwise useless server

    There comes a time in every server’s life when it’s no longer needed. The advent of virtualization has made this very real and very interesting. Here we have a fairly decent model server – HP Proliant ML 350 G5. Sure, it’s not the newest kid on the block, but it’s got some chops. 8GB of…

  • Skype: Microsoft can have it.

    I love the concept of Skype. Audio/Video communications for nothing. What’s not to love? Dial up your friends and family in far off places and not pay a cent in long distance. That’s awesome. Most visions are. This is one, however, that the owners who recently just padded their investment accounts with Microsoft stock knew…