This week a friend of mine at work turned me onto a new web-based service that aids you in tracking the time spent working on projects. Cashboard is a service that lets you download a small application (or in my case, a Mac OS X widget) that I can use to start and stop a clock and assign the resulting hours to a client, project and task. It's not free, but it's not expensive either. I signed up for the $12 a month service which gives me the ability to track up to seven projects at once.

The biggest turn on for me is the time tracking and invoicing features. It allows me to send out invoices using the projects/tasks and billable hours I've entered via the web site and my time tracking widget. No more will I be forced into hand calculating and drawing up my invoices which has been such a drag for way too long. It also allows your clients to log in and see the progress of their project including the time details so far and billable hours. It's configurable so you can decide to let them view only invoices, or track tasks without showing the number of billable hours.

Anyway, for other folks like me who do the occasional contract job - this is a real simple way to keep track of your jobs while you're doing it allowing you to accurately keep time records, and draw them up into an invoice.

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I've recently developed the sports portal for hhgregg stores in North America and part of this is a College Basketball Bracket game that they are promoting as "Bracket Breakdown".

I'm trying to get some outside thoughts and opinions on the ease of use for this portal and was hopeful that visitors of this web site could go there and register for an account and try to play the Bracket Breakdown game and provide thoughts and feedback to me based on it's usability and functionality.

If it's not too much trouble, just go to sports.hhgregg.com and try to play the Bracket Breakdown game and let me know any thoughts that you might have that would make it easier to use or understand. You will need an account here to post comments or you can email me directly with your insights to . I welcome thoughts and insights no matter how big or small!

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I put Bowie back in the kitty cat day care today. I'm convinced he's having a reaction to the new carpet. Tomorrow night I am going to rent a steam cleaner and clean the carpets and see if this does not alleviate his allergy issue. In the mean time, I'm going to see if the vet can give him some kind of allergy medication.

The reason I think it's the carpet is he usually falls asleep beside my desk while I am working in the evenings. The last two nights, he won't come into the office (which is carpeted) but instead sits just outside the door in the hallway which is hardwood. I'm hoping this will help the little guy.

Today the vet is going to give him a shot of Benedryl and I'll pick some up from Kroger as well. Hopefully this will help also.

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We're all finally getting settled in our new home now that the move is complete. Bowie seems to be having some issues adjusting to the new place. I'm not sure what's causing it yet, but he seems to be having a reaction to something in the house. The vet told me to keep an eye on him for a few days and see if he clears up. I'm wondering if he may be having a reaction to the new carpets in the place. I'm going to get the vacuum this weekend and vacuum the entire house and hope that helps a little bit. The poor guy is completely miserable. Has anyone heard of a cat reacting negatively to new carpet?

Mom and Dad were here doing some painting. They got three rooms painted. Words can't express my gratitude toward them for the help they have provided. I'm going to do something nice for them as soon as they get back from Chicago.

Now it's just a matter of unpacking stuff. I'm 99% out of the old apartment and I'll be getting the remaining 1% over the next few days.

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While doing some research for one of my classes at Kaplan, I came across the following article cached in Google's search engine. Since the page is no longer available and will likely be de-indexed over time, I have decided to re-print the information/research here.

The research is on the history of programming languages and presents some information that is cited and not part of what is in the current Wikipedia entry on the same topic. The researcher's name is Andrew Ferguson who I am assuming did this research while a student at Princeton University.

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