jeffpollard.net

Umbrellas

Olivia said that I should talk about umbrellas tonight, but I'm not too sure that you all would find that interesting. Instead, I'll show you all a couple of pictures from the project that I'm working on at work. It's a web project that upper management requested of us (Jack and I). I can't really reveal any real details, but here are some screenshots so far:

This weekend (June 2 and 3) is about the most jammed-packed weekend, event-wise ever, I think. Our friend Lauren is moving into her townhouse, XMUG is having their swap meet, Washing Apple-Pi (Mac user group) is having their twice-a-year yard sale with tons of old and new Mac goodies for sale. The yearly Greek Festival is also happening here in town. Finally, Show-N-Shine promotions is hosting the 10th(?) annual Summer Slam car and truck show in Winchester, VA. I think Olivia and I have both decided to make the trek to Winchester on Saturday for the show. It should be fun. Look for pictures from the event on Monday. For those of you who don't know the significance of this show, this was the very first show that I ever attended..and I ended up walking away with two trophies. Not too bad, for my first show. Of course, that was 6 years ago..and things have changed a bit. The show was actually sold to Jay Christian (who runs Show-N-Shine promotions) who added the show to his now 4-show show circuit that he runs every summer. Anyways, it'll be fun.

And that wraps up today's episode. I'd just like to take this moment to thank all of my loyal readers for tuning in every day (or every other day as it may be). As my counter statistics show, this site has been steadily gaining useage..which is why I do what I do everyday. So, thanks for reading..and stay tuned..the best is yet to come. Take care!

A little high, a little low..

Pretty depressing day today. I spent the second half of the day helping some of my fallen comrades in the Interactive department download and backup their data from our file servers before they leave permanently. Apparently, someone from high above in the company decided that these people might be a threat to our computer systems and ordered that their email accounts and server logins be disabled as of yesterday's announcement. While walking over to survey the "damage", many of the former employees were at their desks, gathering up their stuff. They all expressed a need to get their data from the servers so that they could add their Martin Agency work in their portfolios. So, I talked it over with one of the Interactive department managers and ITS people and finally worked out a compromise so that they could retrieve their data from the server. Little did I know that I would be sitting around "babysitting" these folks for the rest of the day. I watched files copy and CDs burn for the next 4 hours. I was so excited at one point that I think my head actually hit the desk. But, I'm happy, because I know how important this was for these people.

Still no tail lights. The guy actually emailed me this morning and said that he was going to call me sometime today. It's 10:55pm and the phone isn't ringing. Why am I surprised?

Also, I forgot to mention yesterday..I have been told that I've been approved to be sent to MacWorld New York! WOO HOO! The ITS managers weren't sure if the current financial conditions within the company would allow me to to go to the big show, but after 3 new business "wins" in the last 3 weeks, it looks like I'm headed to New York in July!! I'm really excited, if you can't tell. I'll finally get to the chance to attend a LIVE Stevenote and walk around the show floor and talk to folks from Microsoft, Adobe, and many other companies. The whole show looks like it's going to have a strong focus on OS X, so this is going to be a great chance for me to learn about Apple's new technologies. I can't wait. But, I have to admit: I'm a little apprehensive about going to New York City by myself. I just have to pretend that I know what I'm doing and nobody will be able to tell that I don't...right?

Flip your lid!

Hi folks. Thanks, Brian for your entry the other night. Readers, I hope you enjoyed the change in author for the day. By the way, I'd love to have anybody else that's interested write in and tell me (and the rest of the world) what you've been up to! I'm trying to convince Olivia to post an entry and tell everybody what she's been up to, but she continues to refuse.

We had a great time Monday in Bridgewater. We left here at around 9am and rolled into my parent's driveway at 11:30 (right on time!!). The initial reason for showing up that early was so that we could see Pearl Harbor with Mom, Dad, Jennifer and James. But, since we had already seen that on Saturday, we really diddn't feel like seeing it again, and we couldn't find any other movies that we wanted to see. So, Olivia and I stayed at Mom & Dad's house and watched as much of The Three Amigos as we could before we both fell asleep. We ended up sleeping about 2 hours each..almost the entire time everybody was away at the movie. Looking back on it, we really shouldn't have arrived so early, but it gave Olivia and I a nice chance to nap. We both needed to make up sleep that we lost over the weekend with Mike and Brian here.

Today at work was...not-so-good. It's not that it was not-so-good for me..but it was not-so-good for happiness' sake. We were all asked by our CEO, John Adams, to meet in the Atrium at 3:30pm. He sounded very serious in his voice mail that he left us. So, at 3:30, everyone reluctantly made their way to the Atrium. The big announcement was a structural change inside the company. The partners decided thatit would be best to centralize our web development department, Martin Interactive, to our New York office. This means that almost all of our Interactive guys (and gals) here in Richmond lost their jobs today. Now, there was only about 10 people, but it's still never a good thing to have to let people go. I felt really bad for them. I also feel bad for them (and Mike) because of the challenge they face now: finding a job. It seems like a really tough market out there right now for jobs. My heart goes out to all of them..especially Mike.

On a happier note, my Visor flip cover came today from FlipCover.com. What an amazing invention. I wonder now why Handspring didn't think of this themselves when they were inventing the Visor handheld. I love it. And..it was only $12.99. Awesome.

Still no tail lights today. I'm getting antsy. Ok, so I was getting antsy the day after the auction ended, but I'm really antsy now that it's been almost 13 days and still no tail lights. Perhaps I'll call the guy tonight. He's new to eBay, so maybe he just needs a wakeup call.

That's about all for tonight. Take care!

Weekend recap from Big B

Hiya folks! Brian Korte here. I thought we should mix things up. Since Jeff and I both happen to be geeks, I thought I would trade lives with him for the night and update HIS site, sleep in his bed, wear his clothes, etc. Okay-- I'm kidding about the clothes thing. Anyhow, it's me in all my splendor. (or something like that) Jeff, if you're wondering, is in the sofa next to me, typing his entry in my web log. So when you're done reading my little ditty here, you can hop on over to my site and read his rantings.

Today was cool. We got up for Pearl Harbor this morning. Oh wow. What an incredible movie. Wow. What a movie. Its been a while since I've been through such an emotional roller coaster like Pearl Harbor was. I was surprised at Jon Voight's role as Roosevelt. Normally, I can't stand him. Also notable were Alec Baldwin who played Doolittle and Josh Hartnett, who played Danny. It was kind of a no-brainer that Ben Affleck would do a good job. --and the hottie who played Evelyn? Good lord. I wish I were back in the 1940's sometimes.

It takes a lot to get a guy like me to get all teary-eyed while watching a movie. Okay, no it doesn't really, but this one was unique in that it had me going several times. Folks, if you're debating whether or not to see Pearl Harbor, decide quickly, before it leaves the theaters. I guarantee I'll be returning to the theater to see this one. Hopefully with Mike Sos, Paul, and my brother Mike too. They all wanted to see it too.

This is kind of strange. I mean, I don't really know who i'm writing to. On my site, I write to my friends and family, and a few occasional visitors. I'm pretty sure that Jeff has the same kind of thing going on this site (I'm a loyal reader!) and I know you're reading it... But who are you, exactly? Do me a favor, and leave me a note in the comments. I'd love to know who I'm writing to.

So anyhow, after Pearl Harbor, we went shopping around at the mall and then out to Maggie's place (she's a friend of theirs from school. But you might already know that.) After her fish were fed, we came back home and everyone pretty much fell asleep for a while. I stayed up, trying to think of what to do for my site (yea, I told you, I'm a geek.) We saw Jeff's parents drive by the house, honking and waving with reckless abandon. I think they were rubbing it in that they took Jeff's copy of The Three Amigos from Target before he had the chance. hehe. We got some grub at an Italian place (mmm...baked Ziti...) and now we're back home again. It's been a really relaxing weekend.

Thanks a bunch for reading this folks. I'm excited that I may be writing to people that may have never read about me before. Feel free to stop on by www.peer2all.com anytime, 24/7 and visit me. I'm friendly. I promise. Okay, i'm heading out to watch Executive Decision with Jeff and Olivia now. Good night, and take care!

Who's memorial is it?

The AT&T guy finally showed up yesterday afternoon around 4:30. Apparently, the filter had gone bad down on the box for this building. So, he replaced it and everything immediatley started working again. With one exception: HBO and Cinemax. So, I asked the guy why those two channels weren't working and he said that my list of services didn't include those..so he turned them off. DOH! Sorry Brian, but we can't watch The Sopranos over here anymore. :( But, I'm just happy that we're back online. I got to watch The Screen Savers last night while surfing around. It kinda sad how lost I felt not being able to watch my normal TV shows or be online. I guess this should make me appreciate those things a little more, right?

I'm so glad it's an extended weekend. Brian's coming down today and we're all going to go see Pearl Harbor and maybe go down to the river again..if it doesn't rain all day. Then, on Monday, Olivia and I are headed to Bridgewater for a cookout at Mom & Dad's house with Jennifer & James, too. Should be lotsa fun. Mike left yesterday around dinner to go to his grandparents for the weekend. I guess he'll be back on Monday evening, too.

That's about all of the excitement around here. Not too exciting, eh? My tail lights still haven't shown up. My guess is that they'll show up on Monday..hopefully.

This just in: Olympus!

This just in: we found out late this afternoon that we won the Olympus account. WOO HOO! The people upstairs really put their heart and soul into this pitch (and I even helped!). I'm so happy that it turned out great for us. As always, a congratulatory party on the patio followed at 5pm. A nice ending to today's workday.

This is a great morale booster for everybody in the company. While this might not be a huge account, $$-wise, it's a solid win with a good brand.

In other news, it looks like our cable modem won't be back up in the next day or so. A service technician was supposed to have visited us today..and he didn't. After a phone call to MediaOne, I found out that no such visit was even scheduled. Great. So, now we have a visit scheduled for Friday. So, hopefully by Friday night I'll be back online at home. Olivia, Mike and I will have to suffer until then, though. :(

AT&T Woes

Well, our cable modem is down tonight, so I'm writing this entry on...you guessed it: my Visor.

Apparently, our service went down sometime after 8AM this morning, and hasn't come back up since. A technician from Media One is supposed to visit sometime around noon tomorrow, so hopefully we'll be back online tomorrow. This outage has also caused us to lose our digital cable service as well. So, Mike, Olivia, and I watched "Road Trip". Funny movie.

Ok. This is pretty hard updating on a 240 X 320 screen...writing in Grafiti. Have a great Wednesday!!

Busy Weekend

Hi everybody. Sorry for the lack of updates over the past couple of days.

I've been continuing to learn about making database-driven websites and have learned even more valuable ASP coding skills.

Other than that, it's been running from one meeting to another and coming up with web designs for all of these new projects that I'm involved in at work lately.

It looks like we're on for lowering my truck on June 9th. Woo hoo! I can't wait. I go into my closet every couple days and look at my new control arms with anticipation.

That's about it. Nothing too exciting going on, really. Mike's getting himself settled in and has already started seeking employment somewhere in Richmond. Good luck to him. Hopefully, Gizmo won't drive him too crazy while he's at home during the day.

Homecoming and The new Chilis

Well, Brian and Mike showed up at our doorstep this afternoon at around 4pm. Miraculously, they had made the trip from Colorado without stopping to sleep. When they got here, they were both dead-beat and high on caffeine.

Lauren arrived shortly thereafter and we all went to dinner at our new Chilis restaurant. That was at about 7:00. We sat down at 8:00. The food finally arrived at 9:30. We finished eating, paid the bill and left. It was 10:30. Amazing. Either the cooks were really busy or they forgot about us. Either way, we weren't in too big of a hurry, so the long wait didn't bother us too much..other than the fact that we were really bored and Mike kept falling asleep. I guess not sleeping since Thursday will do that to you. Poor guy.

Now we're back home and Mike and Lauren have left to go to her house to sleep for the night. Brian and Paul are staying here. Paul and Olivia and having fun playing Dr. Mario and I'm watching The Winston (Nascar's All-star race of the season)..which is just now getting underway because of a rain delay.

It's great to have everybody here tonight. Hopefully we'll all do something together tomorrow. Perhaps we'll head down to the river for part of the day.

Finally..Friday

Wow..this week has seemed pretty long. But it's over. Now I gotta figure out what I'm doing this weekend.

As some of you know, tomorrow (Saturday) is Apple's grand opening of their first two retails stores. One is in Tyson's Corner Mall near Washing, D.C., and the other is somewhere in California. Olivia and I debated on whether we should go up there tomorrow and we decided that it would be nice to spend a weekend at home, rather than going somewhere, as we have for the past few weekends. It makes better sense to go up there and visit the store the next time we go to visit Brian. That way, he and Paul can go, too, if they want.

Speaking of Paul, make sure you check out Brian's site today (and yesterday, too). Since Brian's somewhere between here and Denver, Paul is updating his blog for him while he's gone. Nice work, Paul!

I got the chance to learn some ASP programming today at work, thanks to Jack. He sat a couple of us down and gave us some basic fundamental knowledge of how ASP works and how to make it interact with an Access database. These are the skills that I've been dying to learn so that I can help develop some of the database-driven features and projects of our Intranet. I'm pretty psyched about learning about it. If you still check in here often, Jack..thanks!!

That's about it for today. Anybody else have any big plans for this weekend? Tell me about it!

You'll never believe this, but...

You'll never believe this, but I'm writing this entry on my Handspring Visor, connected to the Internet with a Handspring 33.6bps moden springboard module. It's really not that slow, but my site looks really funny. Man, my Graffiti has gotten pretty bad. OK. This is pretty cool. I should buy me one. :)

I won!

Woo Hoo Woo Hoo Woo Hoo! I won! I won! I won!

..and it doesn't even bother me that I'm getting screwed on the shipping ($16 from Atlanta to Richmond). Woo Hoo!

Gizmo's fecal failure

I'd like to talk about Gizmo's fecal failure tonight. Now, I know that some of you might not be comfortable or even interested in Gizmo's bowel movements, but I don't care. I'm going to discuss it, and there's nothing anybody can do about it. Ha. Enjoy.

Gizmo has never been wonderful about covering his, well, you know. His business rarely gets completely covered after he's done. However, in recent moths, he seems to be trying harder. As a result, though, he tends to send loads of litter and, well, other stuff EVERYWHERE when he's covering his mess. So, I can't quite figure out how to stop him from doing this. If you have any suggestions, chime in below in the comments area.

Today was a pretty blah day again. I began working on making prototypes of this new database project that upper-upper management wants. Without revealing too much information, the request for this Intranet feature is coming directly from the CEO, so we're all jumping in with both hands.

It looks like a bunch of those Altezza-style tail lights are ending tonight on eBay. I'm going to make a shot for a set of them. Wish me luck. And don't bid against me. Take care, everybody..And drive safely on Friday, Brian and Mike!!

An Solumpy Party

What a cool day. The first half was pretty normal, but the second half was anything but normal. You see the Agency doesn't do anything half-ass. When they throw themselves into a new business pitch, they throw themselves into it head first..and they don't ever look back. Today was a fine example of that. They decided to throw a party or sorts to get everyone excited about this new client that we're in the middle of trying to get their business. You see, the advertising industry is a tough place to be..as an ad agency. Companies are constantly putting their feelers out for the "greener grass", or a better ad agency. So, ad agencies are constantly faced with the task of trying to prove to their clients that they love them. I don't see how our account people do it. It would tire me out.

So, today's party was awesome. They had sporting events like a mechanical bull-riding contest and a american-gladiator-style jousting contest. Tommy and I had a great time whacking the crap out of each other in an attempt to knock each other off of the platform.

All in all, a great day to be at Martin. People that work in the buildings surrounding our building walked by all afternoon with a confused look on their faces. "Yes, folks..we get to come to work and play games...and get paid for it. Have a nice day." Never a boring moment. I love it.

By the way, the person in the picture is not me...it's one of our Operations guys.

Tail lights are finally shipping!

Oh happy day! Last night while making my rounds on eBay looking for useful stuff, I came across the most beautiful sight: Altezza-style tail lights for my Taco. Finally. APC has been promising these lights for months now, but nobody has them yet. Except this guy on eBay that has 10-15 pairs of them up for auction. His auctions will be ending in the next couple of days, and you can bet your bippy that I'm going to win one of them!!

Until then, I'll drool over these lights..I can't wait to see how they look on the truck!!

If you want something done right...

Today has been a pretty blah Monday. I say "blah" because work was so-so and other stuff pretty much sucked. It probably didn't help that I took Friday off and gave myself an extended weekend.

CapitolMac called to tell me that my replacement keyboard for my Titanium beast had finally arrived from Apple. So, at lunch, I went over there and had them install a new (and hopefully fixed) part. I also got a quick peek at the new iBook. Pretty spiffy. It was smaller and glossier than I expected. It almost looked like a cube and a TiBook had a baby. As expected, the screen seemed a little small..but it was running 1024x768, so the screen real estate is as large as any 17" monitor..only squished to fit in a 12.1" screen. Still pretty neat, though.

Anyways, so I made my way to the service area and handed one of the service guys my TiBook. He replaced the keyboard and booted it up to make sure everything worked. Pretty standard stuff. But when he got the system up and running and started typing things to test, the top row of keys (q-p) weren't responding at all. So, he turned it off and replaced the keyboard with yet another unit from another TiBook in the service area. When he booted it up this time, the strange behavior continued..only a little different. The bottom row of keys (z-m) came out on screen as "121221212211" when he ran his finger across them. Very strange. So then he started questioning what software I had loaded and if I had any system extensions that might be causing the strange behavior. Amazing. So then the guy started saying that the problem was definitely a faulty logic board. So, he told me that I'm going to have to let them send my PowerBook into Apple for repair....and that could take weeks!! So, before I send it off, I decided that I need to do two things:

1.) Do a few of my own tests to make sure that the logic board really IS bad..and this guy really knows what he's talking about

2.) If the board really is bad, then I'll need to backup my data before I send it off. Jeez, I hope it doesn't come to this..

Without going into too much detail, I'm fairly distrusting of the guy's troubleshooting tactics and diagnosis, so I feel like I need to see all of this happening with my own eyes. It's for the same reasons why I don't take my truck to some shop to get the oil changed; How do I know for sure if the filter will get put on all of the way tight? Or how do I know that the billy-bob at the shop didn't forget to add that last quart of oil? Yes, folks, I have a strong belief in the idea that "If you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself. And THAT is my thought of the day.

A little message for OSB..

Today has been just what I needed: a day to kick back, relax..and do (almost) nothing.

Today wasn't all good, though. I received a phone call from my good friend Mike Sos telling me some bad news today. I'll spare you all the details, but from the story he told me..it sounds downright dirty. I just couldn't believe that his company would do such a terrible thing, considering how hard he's worked for them in the past year. So, here's my message to One Step Beyond: UP YOURS! One good thing may come from this, however. Mike says that he's probably going to go ahead and move back to Virginia and try to find a new job here. So, I told him that he's welcome to stay here with Olivia and me for as long as he'd like. Hopefully something good will come out of this for him.

I tried out the "free" car wash at the apartment complex down the road this afternoon. I pulled up, gave the truck a good washing..and nobody even questioned me. It actually took me about half as much time to wash it, amazingly enough. So, to summarize: our apartment management is too cheap to let us wash our cars for free; they took the spicket out and raised the price per water "cycle" to $1.00, so I went down the street and can wash my truck (and Olivia's car) for FREE..and it takes me half as long as it did when I was getting shafted for water! So, here's another example of something good coming out of an initially bad situation. On a related note, Olivia and I went in to renew our lease today and I asked them why they were being so cheap about the car wash area. The lady in the office didn't have a very good answer for me, but said that they were not going to put the water spicket in. Hey, they don't need to try to make their residents happy..we only pay them $850 a month! Assholes.

It's a beautiful night and I'm out here on the deck enjoying it with my PowerBook, Gizmo, and OS X. What a great combination.

Is it possible? A bad day?

Today was probably the first day in the last 2 months where I think I frowned more than I smiled. For one reason or another, people just bugged me today. And in the position I'm in, people bothering you isn't a very good thing. I can't imagine being a nurse like Jennifer and having to deal with sick people, not just computers.

It didn't help that Tommy took the day off. I'll take my day tomorrow, then we'll both work on Saturday, getting our inventory in order. You know, the more I think about it, the more I realize that this is really going to be a pain in the ass. We have to go to every desk, turn every mac around to read the serial number off of it, and then do the same for the monitor. I think perhaps the worst part is all of the little trinkets and such that people have sitting on and around their computers. It's amazing the crap that people keep in and around their desks. But, I find that one of the more amusing parts of my job as I'm visiting people on a daily basis.

I'm really looking forward to having tomorrow off. It'll give me a chance to wash the truck and take care of things that gets pushed to the side of my everyday life. You know, as whiney as it sounds, I only wish there were just a few more hours in the day. I feel like I could get so many more things accomplished. Or perhaps I'd just sleep longer. Yeh, maybe that would be better.

Getting back on track..

Today was the first day since the weekend that has seemed fairly normal. The other days have seemed weird, for some reason. Perhaps it was the fact that I was tired. My long nap the other night pretty much solved that. Perhaps it was the chip on my shoulder from the thefts at work this week. Just to fill you all in on that:

Over the past few weeks, we've had 5 laptops grow legs and walk off. None of us have been sure whether it's been an inside job or someone off the streets gathering up the nads to come into the building in broad daylight and snatching up our stuff! As I mentioned briefly in yesterday's entry, someone came into the building Tuesday morning and stole another laptop. One of the mailroom guys saw him, and later in the day, he saw him enter the building again. He immediately called the Police and began following him around the building. He also notified those left over in ITS and Operations so that they could seal off the entrances. A few minutes later, the guy emerged from the building. Rod,from Operations, stopped the guy and told him that he needed to "ask him a few questions". The suspect became very uneasy, tossed his drink in Rod's face and took off running the opposite direction. Rod and my boss, Glen, chased the suspect 2 blocks where he finally surrendered and knelt down with his hands up. By this time, two other Martin employees came running up and they all gathered around him to keep him from running again. Glen called the police to tell them to come up the street 2 blocks, instead of our building. The police finally arrived and took him away.

We found out today that the guy confessed to stealing multiple computers. Witnesses to the previous thefts were able to positively identify the suspect. So, it looks like we've got a winner…err, a loser. This is really good because it gives me some closure to this whole thing.

Nonetheless, Tommy and I have been instructed to get our computer inventory more precise, so we've both agreed to come in this Saturday and record serial numbers from the CPUs and monitors from all of our Macs in the building. Fun.

Jennifer came over tonight to help me work on a project for this weekend's holiday. Folks, I can finally say with absolute certainty that the digital age is here. Jennifer is sitting here with my other PowerBook, chatting on AOL Instant Messenger to some girl that she doesn't even know. And the funny thing is: she's been sitting here doing this ever since we got home from dinner. She's addicted. Since arriving at 6:30, she's checked her email twice and been chatting online another 2 hours or so. I think she likes our broadband connection. Perhaps I'll need to hide the computers the next time she comes over. :)

Explorer frustration

Well, folks, I just wasted 20 minutes typing up a LONG entry..and right as I was looking over it for spelling errors, Explorer crashed...and I lost it all.

So, I'm pretty mad. So, here's the Reader's Digest version:

We went to Radford.

Graduation was neat to see again, hot as crap!

Lunch at Sara & Maggie's apt.

Dinner at Macados. Mmmmmm.

Drinks and stuff later at BT's..our bill came to $222..but there were 13 of us there.

Sunday: late breakfast at IHOP and everybody parting ways again.

Long drive back to Richmond (we tried the Rt. 460/360 method)

Visited Maggie at her new house. She bought a business, BTW

And we had another laptop stolen from the Agency today (that makes 5 in the past 3-4 weeks), but the guy aparently made another try tonight after I left and a couple guys from ITS and Operations chased him up the street where the cops caught him.

Sorry about not posting the in-depth entry that I promised. I wish M$ would hurry up and finish development on Explorer 5.1 for OS X. I found out the hard way tonight that it's still very buggy. :(

RU pictures are up!

The RU pictures are posted. Check em' out!

I've still got some commentary to add from this weekend, and I'll add that in here later tonight, so check back later.

Graduation 2001

Howdy everybody. This weekend's trip trip to Radford was great. It was the perfect blend of seeing old friends, seeing people I had totally forgotten about, partying, and reminiscing about the good ole's day at Radford.

I've got LOADS of pictures and plenty of insights and opinions from this weekend's adventure. However, it's late and we've been driving all day and visiting with Maggie in her new house all night, so I'm pretty tired. Look for a HUGE update on everything tomorrow. I should have something up by early afternoon.

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Full speed ahead! Intranet-Style.

Today was full-speed ahead on the Intranet front at work. The lady who normally keeps track of corporate communications and "in-house" news had been out of the office for the past few months, and regular news updates suffered as a result. So, with her back, it looks like we'll finally have some great new news content for the site. It (the content on the site) has become pretty stale I feel like most of my co-workers have pretty much given up on the site as a news source. Hopefully, we'll be able to turn that around. Thanks to mastermind Jack Lyons, the news portion of the site will be database-driven by next week, allowing the corporate communications people to post their own news, rather then send it through me to post. That makes my life a whole lot easier.

Not sure if any of you care about any of that, but it was the highlight of my day.

A couple of exciting things this weekend: Radford's graduation and NASCAR's in town. However, I'll be attending the first of those two events, preventing me from attending the latter of the two. I can't wait to see everybody that I left behind in Radford..and, of course, go to BT's and Macados. Oh yeh..and Sonic.

And, by the way, for those of you who didn't watch Survivor: Tina won.

A thunderstorm in my brain

Today's day-long meeting was a truly insightful experience. I never realized how much brainstorming and thinking goes into coming up with new perspectives for clients. I'm pretty psyched about this pitch now, even though I'm not really involved (other than today). There's still lots of time left until the process is through, though.

The rest of my lowering kit arrived today. After looking through the directions, it doesn't look too hard to install. I found out from the guy that's supposed to help me that he won't be able to do so until around the first weekend in June. Maybe I can persuede him to find time a little sooner. I'm gettin g antsy, now.

We watched Space Cowboys earlier this evening. What a disappointment. I finally found a movie hokie-er than Independance Day. And now that I think about it, ID4 really isn't that bad. But Space Cowboys was pretty terrible. Now we're watching Miss Congeniality. It's not too bad.

The final episode of Survivor is on Thursday night at 8pm. Don't miss it folks, it's going to be pretty good, I think. :)

Bring your computer night

Wow. What a long day. Work was pretty slow as usual today. Tonight was the May XMUG meeting. It was "bring in your home computer night", so most everybody brought in their home computer to show off and ask for help (from other members) with problems they may be having. Overall, it was pretty fun, but not a smash hit or anything. Most people just stood around talking; it seemed like nobody wanted to play network games or trade MP3s. Perhaps it IS time to schedule a LAN party and invite a bunch of friends over to play games and trade files, etc.

A major revision to the iBook was announced today, as I expected. So far, it looks awesome. 500mhz processor, 128MB RAM, 10gig drive, DVD and/or CD-RW support, AirPort ready, etc. etc. etc. All in an enclosure smaller (and lighter) than the Titanium Powerbook G4. Amazing. From the responses I've seen so far, these things are gonna sell like hot cakes. Henrico county schools has already signed up to buy 23,000 of them for their high school students. Apple may not have the market share that the Win-tel world does, but when was the last time that you saw so many people get this excited about a new portable computer from Dell. Or Gateway. Or Compaq. On a similar note, I read an interesting article about Apple's marketshare, etc. It's in Fortune magazine this month. In the interview, the interviewer asks Steve if he's worried about Apple's relatively small marketshare in the computer industry. His answer? Both BMW and Mercedes have a smaller marketshare in the auto industry, and you never hear about people wondering when those companies are going to go out of business. Actually, you hear the opposite. People swear by their cars, and even refuse to buy anything else. Apple is much like that. Ok, soapbox hour is over.

Tomorrow, I have been asked to sit in on a new business meeting for a potential client that makes digital cameras. I'm not going to name any names, but if I remember from my history classes, this place was pretty important back in the days of Zeus, Aphrodite, and Thor. Anywho, they'd like for me to sit in on this day-long meeting and give the perspective of an IT person, and someone with experience using, well..the product that they sell. Hopefully, it should be pretty interesting. I'm pretty excited to see what all of those hard-working folks upstairs do. Normally, I fix their computers and I'm off on the run again, but tomorrow will give me a chance to see our company in action. I'm excited.