February 12, 2003
Rockin' with Shania
Before I go any further, I want to clarify that I am in no way 
turning into Chris Rhines by posting a photo of Shania Twain on my site today. But, I do have to admit that I am totally hooked on her latest album, Up!
If you haven't heard about it, she did something that I've never seen another artist do: she released a 2-CD album with two versions of each of the 19 songs. The first CD in the set has the 19 songs in a rock/pop format and the second CD has the same songs in a country format. What a cool idea. I think this symbolizes the general movement in the music industry. Some country is starting to sound more like rock/pop; some rock/pop is starting to sound more country. The previously-drawn line between country and rock/pop is definitely blurring and her album proves it.
One of the coolest things about "Up!" is that it's produced by Mutt Lange, who (some of you may know) has produced a few of the best Def Leppard albums. In fact, MOST of the songs have a VERY distinct Def Leppard-ish sound. Imagine what it would sound like if Shania recorded songs from "Hysteria". That's kinda what it sounds like. Very cool.
Here's a link to the Amazon.com listing for the page. Go listen to some of the tracks. It's probably the best CD I've heard in recent memory.
I've also been playing a lot of NASCAR Thunder 2003. I'm not in my second season of my career after a HORRIBLE first season where I finished something like 38th in points. I only had a couple of top ten finishes: Talledega and Michigan. Jeez, listen to me. I'm talking like this is a real thing or something. It's so much fun, even though my crew hates me for beating the crap out of my car EVERY RACE. Oops.
Guess I'd better get some work done. I started down the long road of my latest project here at work this week: I started writing a big document that I'm calling "MacOS X Survival Guide". It's a self-help guide to OSX so that when our users make the migration, they're not totally confused. Now, whether they'll read it or not is another story. I hope this is not done in vain. If nothing else I'll distribute it somewhere on the Internet so someone can actually get some use out of it.
Also, here's a photo of my graphics card art that I did over the weekend. Oh, and by the way, I found an old PowerBook 520c here at work that will never be used again. Looks like that will be my next project...
Have an "Up!" day!
Posted by Jeff at February 12, 2003 09:57 AMThank you for listening to my wife's cds. She is lovely, is she not? Now if only that Chris Rhines character would stop trying to steal her from me.....
Posted by: Mutt at February 12, 2003 10:56 AMOh man, let me know if you find another one laying around. I SO want to try it.
Nice wall-piece there!
I can tell you as the in-house documentation guy that writing a document won't prevent the how-do-i-do-this calls/emails. You can direct them to your manual over the phone and online, but most of the time, they'll take that information and go ask the person next to them.
We have entire meetings at TruSecure where they plan on what I need to write in the help files. They look at the programs and see what needs more instruction. Then, those very same people ask us if we have a program that does X. When X is what we had the stinkin' meeting about! AHhhhh!!!!
People will get the most of it online, I think. But don't let that stop you. You could mention it on Fark and Slashdot, host it on CustomTacos and force-feed all visitors some Tacoma ads to make some cash. :)
Posted by: Brian at February 12, 2003 11:20 AM