Just had a nice little video chat with my grand-daughter Taylor and now I know where her new home is down in Pensacola. I'm really antsy to hit the road with my girlfriend Piper and go hang out there for a bit, but I've got that damned second shot coming up.

The area behind the seats in my truck is cleared out and ready for the girl. I'll put food on one side and a place to shit on the other, and she will be right at home.

The route below is not quite accurate since I'm going to be following Hwy 43 all the way down so just picture a line to the left through Tuscaloosa. I have to admit, as much as I make fun of the South, I'm glad I'm here. Hey, I'm even going to be driving through Hamilton Alabama!

Just thought I would share my latest work here. The Rides system is coming along nicely where Clients can go online and search, click, and drag the map around until they have their ride from Point A to Point B specified. It then enters the Que where Drivers can decide if they want to accept it.

As a test, I booked a ride from the town I used to live in, to the town I live in now. I offer it here for you to try out in Visitor mode, which is what Drivers and Staff would see. You can't change it but you sure can have fun with it!

If you click the black A box, the map will fly to the starting point. Then click that little icon to the right of the car to start Auto mode. Forward and backward buttons become available. If you drag the map around and center the red dot near any place along the route and start Auto, the map will pickup the directions display at the nearest waypoint. This is a new directions concept I came up with, involves a little trig, and I'm quite pleased with it. :-)

Click the image below to try out my little test...

Update: I just opened up the Click logic so you can try your own routes :-)

Steph's doctor said that her A1C level is lowered, which is good I suppose. My B2D (bottle to drink) level has been at zero for some time now and I don't need no doctor to tell me that my body is loving it. Combined with the fact that smoke hasn't touched my lungs since last summer, and I get my second covid shot shortly, I'm one healthy old asshole. Watch out world...

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My grand-daughter Taylor is moving from Austin to Pensacola in a couple of days, new place, new job, proud of her and Shelby. I was running my new kick-ass ride booking app through it's paces just now and plugged in the moving truck run. Wish I could help, but it looks like they have it covered.

I need Help! I ventured out yesterday into the Winter Disaster of 2021, at risk of life and limb, just to get critical supplies at the store with barren shelves, and I forgot two things. Plastic garbage bags and crackers. Not just any crackers mind you, but those little organic cheesy round ones. I need them for my goat cheese mid-morning snacks! If anyone can help, please let me know, the situation is dire...

Update: I was wrong, they're square:

Ok, I'm a snow snob, I admit it. I have frequently brushed off the lame ass snow events that have happened here over the last three years, but this one wasn't bad, about six inches down, icey underneath, temps into the lower teens.

I've been hunkered down for days now waiting for it to melt but it just keeps coming. Power and internet are still up so I'm good, but I was running out of things so I decided to do a store run this morning.

Got out to the highway, ran into a pile of snow and ice blocking the street, and got stuck. As I was walking back to the house a big ol monster truck pulled up with a good ol boy driving around with his kids unstuking people. His teenage son in another truck came up from the south, turned his rig sideways and blocked the road. I grabbed my tow strap, hooked to his bumper and he had me pulled out onto the highway in a heartbeat, and down the road towards town we all rolled.

Went to Krogers and stocked up and on the way back into our street I gunned it and went flying through that patch of crap and slid to a stop at my carport. Fun day!

Fleshing out the ride booking process here. Inbound and outbound rides are single rides and could be handled by different drivers...

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I've been going to bed at 7pm and getting up at 3am. Sometimes earlier on both ends. I have no human contact unless I go to the store. My goal is to avoid the world until my second shot Mar 8.

I was alone on Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years and the Super Bowl. Guess what I'm doing on Valentines Day? :-) Not complaining, these are my choices in life as it exists now.

I woke up this morning thinking my project was pretty well wrapped and then proceeded to design an amazing Ride Queue concept that ties the whole thing together, and then created a Notes structure that lets me describe everything externally from links within the main application.

Here's the Notes on the new Ride Queue Table.

Don't you just hate the hassle of adding a security certificate to a domain? Not to mention having to update all of your links from http to https like everywhere you have them, all of your various API keys from map vendors and such have to be re-created with them because the URL has changed. Know what I mean? Sheesh...

And then to do it on the first day you've launched an ad campaign with a new product page on Facebook! Why do I do this to myself? Oh well, everything is done and it went smoothly. http://www.rideque.com/ is now https://rideque.com/

I got Vax Sin Ated this morning. Stayed in my truck through the whole process and barely felt the prick in my arm. They asked you to wait in the church parking lot in case you had a reaction, I waited ten and was out of there.

This is the first flu shot I've ever had, always just said no, but people my age around me are dropping like flies. I've got stuff to do and I ain't gonna let this shit take me out.

Next day update: Zero side effects...

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If I'm going to get serious about this website project, I should just, you know, get serious. Steph dropped by on her day off yesterday so I sat her down and showed her the latest stuff. She said, I like it a lot, but you're naked.

Ok, I've known the broad for a couple of decades and she can be brutally honest and the plea that I'm only shirtless in the spinning logo fell very flat. Not to mention the stupid name, JimCube.

So, once again, I have rebranded my latest project. MyRideLawrence, MyRideLab and JimCube are now retired and the three domains all re-direct to, wait for it...

Ahh, just click here :-)

I've been running all of the major rich text website based editors through their paces lately, and most were developed by geeks who love pushing javascript bullshit on you just to get them up and going. One of them had 240 setup options, give me a break!

I have settled on the one I should have checked out first, called tinyMCE. It's open-source but does have paid plans that I need to stay away from. I like it a lot, it's very configurable, and it just works.

A text editor is key to my marketing plan for JimCube. I want to give folks the ability to create/change their own content on the site, whenever they want. Now all they have to do is log on as Admin, select the section they want to edit, and do it.

I was having so much fun with the editor today that I rewrote all of the main site text with it, instead of changing the code here on my computer and then uploading it to the server.