My Side Door

I take notes on yellow legal pads for each phone call. These rough notes remind me who I talked to, their phone number, hopefully what property it is regarding, etc.. The trouble is, the legal pads are in the office, so that when I’m at home, in the car, wherever, away from my notes, I don’t have John Doe’s number handy.

Via Twitter, I was alerted to Evernote. I immediately understood how it could help me, so I asked for a beta invite and was granted one pretty quickly. So far, I’ve transferred all of my hand written notes to Evernote, which is great. I can now search those notes, and hopefully find names, numbers, email addresses, etc., for stuff I have captured. Let’s hope anyway.

For my needs, Evernote’s primary appeal is that is is online (and thus visible via the web from any computer).  I’m not using it much more differently than I might use Wordpad to do the same thing, again, except that it saves my notebook online.  Evernote can create multiple notebooks, thus I suppose I could do a notebook per call, or maybe per property, but what I really want is one ginormous log, otherwise the effort to name each notebook I create would be too much effort to bother with. Sure it might be nice for indexing and such, but I don’t need that as much as I just want to be able to quickly search a name or address.

So I like just having one notebook.  This brings me to the desire for a super-handy feature of the notebook, which is to have individual journal entries that were time stamped, automatically. This would capture my phone log better. Far better. I’d definitely love that feature.  It looks like I want to use Evernote in a way it wasn’t intended to be used (today), but the notion of lots and lots of tiny notebooks, just to keep my phone log doesn’t make much sense to me.

At any rate, if you want to try out Evernote, I can shoot you a beta invite. Just let me know.  It definitely has a bunch of features I’m not using right now.  I’m hoping that when I win my iPhone, I’ll be using Evernote all the time when I’m on the go.

Saturday afternoon I upgraded every blog to 2.5.1. That includes the Phoenix Area Real Estate Blog, Scottsdale and Phoenix Homes for Sale, and my newest single property website: 3121 W Mescal. Of course, I also upgraded My Side Door from 2.5.0 to 2.5.1.

Another thing I did at the same time, was switch all blogs to use Subversion to get the latest version of WordPress directly from Automattic, rather than using the normal upgrade path. Upgrading via Subversion saves an FTP step, which wasn’t really a big deal, but if you can save a step, why not?

I had used Subversion to get the trunk (latest and greatest) before 2.5.1 was released, while I was testing out and setting up my first attempt at a single property website and found it was faster and easier than the standard FTP approach. So when I decided to jump to 2.5.1, it was a no-brainer to begin using Subversion for all future blog upgrades.

If you are considering using Subversion to track WordPress development, or upgrade your blog, here’s the link Upgrading WordPress using Subversion. Naturally, in order to do this, you will need Subversion installed on your server, and you’ll need access to run Subversion from that server.

The Arizona Diamondbacks have gotten off to an amazing start this year. Unfortunately, very few people were noticing, because the Suns were in the playoffs. With the Suns now out in the first round, all eyes in Phoenix will be on the DBacks for the foreseeable future. The DBacks finished April with the best record in all of baseball, and one of only a few teams to ever register 20 wins in April. At 20-8, the DBacks already have a 5 game lead in the NFC West.

What seems most noteworthy about this start to me, was something I noticed looking at their 8 losses. I couldn’t remember a loss that they had failed to score a decent number of runs in, so I looked into it more. Sure enough, the DBacks are averaging 4.25 runs scored in each of their losses. The fewest runs they have scored in any loss was 2. To beat the DBacks you must score 3 runs, and in all likelihood, you’ll need to score 5 runs or more. That’s simply amazing.

Also noteworthy is the hitting being done by their pitching staff. Pitchers are hitting .277! No wonder they are scoring so many runs. Micah Owings leads the DBack pitchers, hitting a torrid .421, including 1 home run (last night). Micah is simply a stud, and he’s now being used situationally by manager Bob Melvin as a pinch hitter.

Also impressive, is the start that Brandon Webb has had. He has 6 wins, a 1.98 ERA, and is pitching nearly 7 innings per start. He’s a true ace. He’s only hitting .167, but has driven in 4 runs to help his cause in several decisive situations. FYI, all of the starting pitchers (outside Micah

Then look at Chad Qualls. He has 15.2 innings pitched in 15 appearances for 0 earned runs. He’s also got 14 strike outs, while allowing just 6 hits so far. He’s nearly unhittable.

I predict Brandon Webb, Conor Jackson, and Orlando Hudson are sure fire locks to be on the all star roster, with Webby being the starting pitcher for the NL. Qualls should be on the roster, even though middle relievers rarely get in. Justin Upton has 5 home runs, and is hitting .327, making it difficult for him to miss the roster, even though he’s a rookie, if that pace keeps up.

Can the DBacks win the West? Absolutely. Can the DBacks win the NL? Again, I think they can and will. Will the DBacks win 100 games? I think they come up just shy. I predict they’ll win 98 games this season. A starting pitcher that is healthy today is going to get hurt, and we’ll lose some games due to injury, but overall, we are looking at a very strong, remarkable, hopefully memorable (flashbacks to 2001) team.