Mills Brothers

Only In West Virginia

2008-11-08T14:02:00.006-05:00

A friend of mine who lives in the next town over (yes, that would make it a 40 minute drive) noticed this ad in the local paper on election day. Despite the dubious efforts of Neil & Bob from Moorefield, Obama lost the state by 13%. Click on the article to enlarge.

Brunch in New York

2008-07-12T00:40:00.002-05:00

Oma is the most stylin of us all. Does that say more about Oma or more about us?

Toggl - online timetracker

2008-05-23T21:48:00.001-05:00

Well, along with Flickr going downhill, another very useful web application, Toggl, is trying to shoot itself in the foot, too.

Prosper

2008-02-11T13:08:00.000-05:00

I have been keeping an eye on this company for a while. It allows you to borrow money directly from other individuals or make investments by lending directly to other individuals. I recently started experimenting by making some investments through this service and have been impressed with the interest rates you are able to get. Of course since it is a loan there is greater risk involved, but I thought others might be interested to know that this type of company exists. I find the idea very intriguing since your investments go directly to other individuals.

Cleaning House on Older Photos

2008-02-10T21:35:00.000-05:00

I've been using Flickr for the last 4 years to organize and share all my photos since acquiring a digital camera. Lisa and I are in Crested Butte for the month of Feb, and as all mountain towns afford, I've got some free time at nights after the sun drops and the temperature drops with it. As such, I've been going through some photos and cleaning house on our photos older than around 2005. If you still need access to these photos, all you need to do is sign up for a Flickr account and add me as your friend or something like that. Then you can grab all the older photos you want, including Europe and older family scans.

Max Finds Blue Paddle

2007-12-18T20:46:00.000-05:00

To continue my cousin Max's lucky streak at ski areas, today he found the hidden blue paddle at Arapahoe Basin. Here's the deal: New Belgium Brewery and Arapahoe Basin teamed up to add some fun to Tuesdays. Each week, an employee hides the blue paddle in-bounds, somewhere on the ski hill. If someone finds it, that means a $50.00 bar tab is on the house. Here's how it went:
Max: "Eric, I found this thing in the woods"
Eric: "Holy @#$%, that's awesome"
Max: "Yeah, awesome, what the hell is this?"
Eric: "That is $50.00 worth of beer!"

Petersburg, WV

2007-11-26T18:09:00.000-05:00

So Kristin had her "Site Selection" event at WVSOM today. This was when everyone picked where they want to do their rotations and the locations that didn't have enough slots went to a lottery. Fortunately for us, the location we wanted had enough spots and we got it. So in the early Summer of 2008 we will be moving to Petersburg, WV. It is another small town in WV, but it cuts 2 hours off my drive to work. So I am excited.

Alignment of the Toppers

2007-11-12T01:30:00.000-05:00

I was putting the topper shell back on my pickup truck today, and I was having a really hard time getting the shell aligned properly with the body of the truck. Then I recalled the numerous times my brother and I would help Opa put his topper on, and how he aligned it. While I don't have the older, wooden slide rule that Opa used (like this photo), I do have a nice little combination square I use for carpentry that worked wonderfully.

Lion in Lewisburg

2007-11-05T14:02:00.000-05:00

Apparently there is an African Lion in the woods near where I live in WV.

News Article

Another Article - with video

Well, I haven't seen it, but I certainly will be more wary walking in the woods for a while.

Yay Bicycles

2007-10-24T11:16:00.000-05:00

Vimeo, a really great video sharing site a la YouTube minus the crap, TV shows, stolen movies, and etc., just put out a new "channel" called I Love To Ride My Bicycle. Sounds like that Queen song, doesn't it? Well, Lisa and I are on it, just scroll down a little bit and you'll see the video post card I sent to my Oma saying thanks for the bike (we inherited her 1972 Schwinn Twinn).

No Doors?

2007-09-22T14:16:00.000-05:00

Despite the fact that I will never live down my mispronunciation of the word Tudor in reference to the style of the house we are renting in WV, the house itself will no longer be subjected to future mistakes of this nature. The owners of the home are having a lot of work done, including residing the home in an awfully bright shade of white. So, Eric, you can continue to make jokes about the number of doors on houses you are looking to buy in Denver, but now I have no doors at all on mine...

Quintessential Blog Post

2007-08-26T08:33:00.000-05:00

What else is the internet good for, if not for wasting space with videos of one's cat?:

Oh, My Goat!

2007-08-12T23:48:00.000-05:00

Skiing at Toggenburg as a kid prepared me for many things: rain, dirt, rocks, ice, and ice. Luckily, I've since moved on.

Back in New York, at Toggenburg Ski Center, there is/was a trail called "oh my goat" (because Toggenburg is a type of goat) and it was/is the hardest trail on the 'mountain', not because of technicalities or terrain, but hard because of ice. It was steep and icy. That's it.

While I am still prepared for ice, I am still not prepared for the real thing... in this case, a goat! But here it is.

Wing of a Chicken Flock Together

2007-06-30T20:08:00.000-05:00

Living in Buffalo, NY for a few years during grad school, I became well aware of the local food scene (or lack thereof): beef on weck, fried just about everything, and an immense amount of alcohol until 4am. Upon reflection it seems a little interesting that I moved from one of the most obese cities in the nation, to one of the only non-obese states in the entire country.

Matt Reynolds' trip across New York State, in search of the best chicken wing (which were invented down the street from our apartment in Buffalo) should bring back some memories. He'll be eating nothing but chicken wings for two weeks, and this should prove to what bar the best wings flock.

Greenbrier River Trail

2007-06-16T18:13:00.000-05:00

There are advantages to living in the middle of nowhere.

Triple Bypass, Triple Chainring

2007-05-30T00:21:00.000-05:00

Last weekend I went on a bicycle ride along the peak to peak highway in Colorado. The old scenic bypass is a great north-south route between Black Hawk and Estes Park, and it offers great views of Long's Peak and surrounding beauties. I was fortunate enough to acquire a new(er) road bike for bike season 2007: a Lemond Alpe D'Huez. After a few rides up the local hill, I thought this baby was light enough and I had legs enough to take the Triple Bypass.

The Peak to Peak Highway told me a different story, a short story, a one-word story: NO. To make a short story long, then, tonight a good friend and I, using a 14 inch 3 pound framing hammer and a slotted screwdriver, changed out the bottom bracket and added a triple chainring to the Lemond. 10,000 feet of lung busting elevation gain? Here I come!

Slideshow Update

2007-05-20T10:15:00.001-05:00

This older version with the options I spoke of in the last post:

Created with Paul's flickrSLiDR.

Flickr Slideshow Now Sucks

2007-05-20T00:18:00.000-05:00

I have never, ever had anything negative to say about Flickr. I'm sorry, however, because now I do. Their old slideshow rocked. This new one, well, sucks. I liked the colors, I liked the white background, I even liked the purple (pink?) and blue balls spinning around eachother as a way of letting you know things were happening. Am I the only one who thinks things have spun around backwards? This feels too Yahoo-ish...

And, who wants to know that this photo (to the left) is named wv020? I say bring back the slider for speed, bring back the choices, and why fix something that isn't broken?

--Eric Mills likes his slideshows customizable, which is why he dropped photobucket in the first place. He is also always on the lookout for good sites gone wrong.

Foxing It Up

2007-05-16T23:38:00.000-05:00

We here at Mills Bros headquarters have extolled the virtues of Firefox before. Over at /dev/null, however, they have the ultimate lineup of browsers, and still Firefox comes out at number one. Check out the list:

I’ve been using Firefox since the very early days. If I don’t remember wrong I moved over to Firefox from Opera when the version number still was around 0.6. It rocked at that time, even though a few crashes and strange behaviours had to be accepted. I guess it didn’t help that I nearly daily downloaded a new nightly build from their FTP site, ensuring I always knew what new stuff which would pop up in the new releases. I’ve been using Epiphany, Konqueror, Safari, Opera‘, Internet Explorer, Camino, Flock, Omniweb, Mozilla (now rebreanded to SeaMonkey), Netscape, Dillo, Mosaic, Amaya, Galeon, ICEBrowser, Arena, and Chimera (plus text-based Links, Lynx and w3m) in addition to Firefox, but no other web browser have given me such a capability of customizing my own web-browsing experience, thus also making it personal and tailored for my needs and preferences.

Signage: Foolish Craig

2007-05-11T23:26:00.000-05:00

Eh? I'm foolish, so what?

Signage: Oma's Pizza

2007-05-11T23:11:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure that Oma was ever too interested in making pizza, but this sign from Bradenton, Florida is funny, nonetheless. (You can click-through on the photo to see it full-sized and in its original context.)

Energy Savings

2007-05-06T20:32:00.000-05:00

After finally remembering to switch the hot water heater in our house to "vacation" on our last vacation, I've tried to be a little more energy conscious. To accomplish a small start, I picked up a few lower energy light bulbs and also took a quick inventory of the power-suckers in our house. Deciding that the basement computer has to stay on for the majority of the day, I found SwitchOff, installed it hassle-free, and set it to 4am (the time after which the computer does no more housekeeping tasks). Admittedly, the computer will not save me the most energy. Saving money, it is important to note, is not the goal. My goal with this small exercise is to save energy.

Thus, instead of the computer, I decided to look into my lighting habits. Ironically, on the same day that I decided to add a few low-impact CFL bulbs to our lighting repertoire, Snopes.com (the post-humous-Faulkner-character's eponymous site of urban legends) decided to run an article [link contains popups] on the bulbs' mercury content. Whew, that was a wordy sentence. The short story? The site found no extreme danger of mercury, and with an average savings of around $45.00 / year it is one of three things I'm working on to save a few nickels per kilowatt hour. The others? Unplugging the wine fridge until company comes, splicing in a programmable thermostat, and trying to make the most of Great Stuff, which truly is great stuff.

--Eric Mills

Benefits of a Restless Brother

2007-05-01T09:45:00.000-05:00

No one has ever accused Eric of being too calm, or sitting still too much. He is the person that presses every button and opens all compartments when getting into a car (OK, I do this too). Given a few minutes with a bike, he will either have fixed everything wrong with it, or caused everything on it to fall off. Lend him your laptop for a moment, and all your saved passwords are cleared and 3 new programs are installed (admittedly useful ones).

But I have to say there are benefits of having a restless brother. Especially when you confine him in the middle of nowhere in West Virgina. Under these circumstances he is left with little to do, so after borrowing your bike, using your laptop, and mowing your lawn, he is bound to start a project of some sort. In this case it was helping me organize my garage. I think the results speak for themselves:

Thanks Eric! See the results of the whole project.

--Brian C. Mills is always on the lookout for a time saving application. Sometimes, this can even be a relative!

It's About Time For Some Mills

2007-04-30T16:22:00.000-05:00

We've been wanting to post some family things here related to the Millses (given that this site's name is Mills-Bros.com, after all) but we didn't have too much useful material. Until now. A while ago, Laurie Fourmont had these transferred from 8mm. All we did was to convert them to streaming and downloadable videos. Enjoy!

Stream part 1 | Stream part 2

Download DVD (.iso) | Download VCD (.mpg)

--Mills Bros

Japan Top On List For Life

2007-04-29T22:04:00.000-05:00

I've never read further down on the page of answers at Answers.com until today. Doing some simple searching for a suitable name for Lisa's family practice, I searched on "health" and came to this results page. Here we learn that Japan is #1; they have 74+ years of disability adjusted life expectancy (D.A.L.E.). That's #1 in the world, by the way. And out of the top 25, where is the US? Oh, I'm glad you asked. The US is #24. Some more scary figures, though: Sierra Leone is last in the entire world, with a D.A.L.E. of 25 years old.