Construction Informer

Here’s a little shameless self promotional item. This blog has been nominated for the Best Construction Blog in the Construction Business category. The contest is the brainchild of the folks at Jackson Design and Remodeling, a design/build company in San Diego.

Jackson is no stranger to the award limelight. It recently took five regional contractor-of- the-year awards, and last year the company won at least 10 awards while a number of its people won individual awards for their design work and business skills.

If you think this blog is worthy of the honor then please take a moment to vote. It’s quick and very painless, and I’d sure appreciate your support.

VOTING IS OVER

© Dmitry Naumov | Dreamstime.com

The holiday season is a chance for humans to get a little break, like the plants get most of the winter. The urgency of things fades into the background and we spend more time cocooning, sleeping, and resting. The incessant drive to produce gets tempered with the need to rejuvenate and get back in touch with the more important things in life. Those things are different for everyone but there seems to be a common denominator – good health in all areas.

This is foundation time. The time of year with short days and long nights when we can take stock of the direction we are traveling and see if it still serves us. It’s a time to smooth over old wounds, disappointments, failures, and fears so when we start expanding again we do it from a fresh place-a place where the past doesn’t imprison our future. And perhaps if we are really wise, we spend some time listening to absolutely nothing, because in that silence, we find our true selves.

Thanks for reading over the years, and have a great holiday season!

We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. – Edward R. Murrow

The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe. – H.L. Mencken

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. – Thomas Jefferson

The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed, but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men. – John F. Kennedy

The trouble with free election is, you never know who is going to win. – Leonid Brezhnev

Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive. – Henry Steele Commager

They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security. – Benjamin Franklin

When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross. – Sinclair Lewis

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too. – Somerset Maugham

I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. – James Baldwin

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men. – Voltaire

The love of one’s country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border? – Pablo Casals

When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and the purity of its heart. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us. – William O. Douglas

Sometimes things just don’t work out.

I was installing a plugin to this blog and somehow broke most of it – the blog, not the plugin. So, that’s why you may not be able to reach any of the posts, or pages, or comments beyond this main page. It appears to be a problem beyond my comprehension, although it has been enlightening to get into the bowels of the beast so to speak. I am currently up to my ears in php and sql and a wide range of other acronyms. Oh, and I have a support ticket opened up too at the host.

Some might cry foul, thinking I did not back up…but I did. It’s just that restoring the database with the backup is not working like the other times I’ve had to restore it. Well, it isn’t working at all whether I use the hosts’s restore, or phpMyAdmin.

I’m also beginning to have a sneaking suspicion that the database may not actually be the culprit.

Anyway, I hope this will be resolved soon and then you can all wander around here again and see more than just the main page.

I put up a basic poll in the sidebar earlier in September and it just finished up. There really weren’t enough responses to make it significant. This blog is getting 12,000 page views a month so it’s kind of surprising that there weren’t more votes. Of course the topic was probably kind of lame. I mean, really, who cares in construction what OS you use. I guess just me and a few others. But mainly I wanted to test the plug-in and widget.

Internet polls are far from scientific but I think if they get enough responses they can indicate trends. For the polls on these pages I have disabled the “ISP cookie thing” so in effect people can vote more than once. I just figure there are enough cookies floating around and the people who stop by here are probably not interested in skewing my little polls. 

For the next ten days the poll on the right seeks to discover just how real this credit crunch is for those who are in construction. I’ve been hearing from several sources that it’s simply more smoke and mirrors and that good businesses are not having any difficulty with credit. After all, aren’t banks in business to loan? How could they all of a sudden decide a long-time customer with an excellent repayment history and a realistic business plan isn’t worth the risk? If they do that, why not just go out of business.

Anyway, maybe your vote will add to some clarity. Comments are always welcome also.