Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life — Steve Jobs

While the thought of being a full time blogger is certainly romantic, the reality of my life is that of a construction project manager and estimator. As I become busy in my professional life, something has to give and I … Cont

Our legislators are so smart here in Oregon. How smart are they? Well, for starters the previous democrat leadership managed to jack our taxes up so high that businesses and families are moving out of Oregon and re-planting themselves across … Continue read

It’s tax season here in the good ‘ol US of A. Having been self employed for a few years, I had a cpa do my taxes because there simply wasn’t enough time in the day to figure it all out. Now that I am once again working for the man, my taxes have become very [...]

My favorite browser – Google Chrome, had a recent update that produced a new viewer plugin.  Prior to this update, when I would click on a PDF, the very speedy and very useful Foxit Reader plugin would activate.  After the update, Google’s plugin would activate. My experience with Google’s pdf viewer was

I recently came across an excellent program that I’ve been keeping my eye on for awhile that has been invite only and has just recently become available for download. PhotoRocket is a drop dead simple way of sharing photos to various social network sites and will link your email contacts from outlook, google, etc. You

During my web travels, I happened upon a great time waster that generates newspaper articles. Visit Fodey.com to have a little fun. This is a newspaper article I created to have some fun with some Oregon Ducks fans.

As a consummate tinkerer, I’m always trying new software and different browsers. I downloaded the Google Chrome browser way back when it first came out but never did like it as much as Firefox. It had been a year or so since I tried Chrome so a couple weeks ago I wondered how Chrome was [...]

It’s no secret I am an admitted Google-aholic. I use it daily for both personal and business. Google integrates seamlessly with my HTC Incredible smartphone so it makes it all the more easy access to all things Google. I got an early invite to try out Google Voice when it was still in beta and [...]

Having just wrote an article featuring a media streaming service called Orb, I was recently turned on to another media streaming service that I’ve been testing over the weekend. Libox is a media streaming service that allows you to stream your music, photos, and video from your computer. It works similiar to Orb in th

As a youngster, I rarely missed Fran Tarkenton, John Davidson, and Cathy Lee Crosby and the cast of characters who brought us the ready for prime time show That’s Incredible. Today, and I do mean TODAY, Oregon’s very own Governor had an epiphany that our state government is in a financial free fall. That’s

I finally got fed up with trying to remember all of my darned passwords for the various websites I visit. I think I’m somewhere around 30 different usernames and passwords. Being a freak about security, I don’t have the same password or username for anything. Also, my passwords are long and not the type that [..

Where do I start? Let’s start with today’s May jobs report. Wow. Obama promised me Hope and Change. He promised you Hope and Change. He promised all of us Hope and Change. If any of you hold any paper in the stock market, you sure did get some change. Probably about a 3-5 percent drop [...]

The internets are full of websites. I have come across only what I can characterize as possibly the most intelligently funny website on the internet. It is a rare occurrence that I make such recommendations. Go Away gets top honors in a cast of millions of websites. I encourage you to visit and make it [...]

My good buddy, Dave Crow, recently took some time off from fishing to rescue an eagle from certain peril. I’ve known Dave since “back in the day” when we used to paint the town. Sobriety wasn’t exactly our strong point. When he isn’t out fishing or saving eagles, Dave is a great drywall craftsm

Have I mentioned I have a large music collection? For the past year, I have managed to convert my hundreds of CD’s to digital format so I can preserve them and of course listen to them with my computer. I have also bought Western Digital’s WDTV Live so I can wirelessly stream them from my [...]

This weeks Verizon Wireless release of the new HTC Incredible smart phone was perfect timing for yours truly since I have been due for a “new every two” phone for the past 6 months. For those of you who aren’t Verizon customers, “new every two” is a free or seriously discounted phone every two

It’s no secret that port commissioner Floyd Holcom is putting a lot of pressure on port director Jack Crider to come up with a business plan for North Tongue Point.  For those that aren’t aware, this nearly led to Mr. Crider resigning.  Rumor has it that Holcom is still putting on the pressure and Crider [...]

This has been a busy month for me. I have been remiss at blogging for good reason. I’m building a Veterans Administration clinic in 60 days. Actually, I’m building a VA clinic in 60 days less 3 weeks because it is a design build project and we had to fast track the design in 3 weeks. [...]

After the recent events surrounding the LNG lease with Oregon LNG and the current commission’s inability to grasp the fact they have a valid lease, I am more than convinced they have NOT taken the time to carefully think through the ramifications of their idea to export logs. There is consensus in the community that t

Since I made the move to Windows 7 about a year ago, I was unable to continue to use one of my favorite programs. AxCrypt is a program that will encrypt a file or folder and will also compress and shred files. My primary use is to encrypt my personal information in the event prying [...]

This was slated to be my last article on exporting logs at the Port of Astoria but there is just too much to be said so there will be more articles. There are many unanswered questions that have yet to be explained to the public. Looking back at some of the past articles, my biggest [...]

After considerable time was spent evaluating the types of business the Port could be successful at, we decided to move forward with a new strategic business plan which was followed up with a master plan that was conducted by planning consultants Mitchell / Nelson (who has since merged with Maul Foster Alongi). As a group of

This just in: Toyota is considering Clatsop County as their nationwide car recall center. It is widely known now that Clatsop County is the Recall center of the universe. Brett Vandenheuvel and Olivia Schmidt were unavailable for comment as of this writing.

In about 1999 or so, we hired Peter Gearin as the new Port Director. At about this same time, two new faces would appear in the commission line up – Jim Bergeron who defeated Bob Filori and Don McDaniel who replaced June Spence who decided not to run again. There were several commissioner changes leading up to [...]

For those of you who don’t follow local Clatsop County Port of Astoria politics, our not so ready for prime time port commission is embarking on entertaining a company to export logs from Port property. Over the next few days, walk with me as I take us for a trip down memory lane. The conclusion [...]

In the world of web based music media players, there are many to choose from.  I know many of you are quite content with the pre-packaged media players that come with the Microsoft operating system.  However, if you want to listen to other file types such as OGG or FLAC, or, say you want to [...]

As a faithful reader of Bill Mullins Tech Thoughts, I am constantly reminded about how important it is to be diligent about protecting my computer from the thousands of nefarious nasties that are at every turn on the web and email. Today’s post highlights a few of my favorite security applications. Just yesterday,

Having recently switched operating systems to Windows 7, I also decided to load Avira Antivirus as my main antivirus program. As you may recall in an earlier post, I explained how to disable the annoying Avira splash screen (notifier) on an XP operating system. After a little exploration and trial and error, I have figured

If you haven’t yet visited one of my newest links on the right hand side of this page, you gotta go over and pay a visit to Alligators In The Sewer. They have a great write up on my home state’s largest town - Portland Oregon. Here’s a quote about the weirdness of Portland: Just a bunch of [...]