jeffpollard.net

Another club invite

Another cool day today. I didn't get a chance to ride the little bike again, but that's because I was too busy to care. And, unlike some people, I enjoy being busy because it makes the day go by faster. I looked up from my work and it was 5:00!

My new headlights arrived today and I installed them in the parking deck before I came home. I purchased these to replace my current aftermarket bulbs - a set of 1st generation blue-ion bulbs that have an orange-ish, yellow-ish, blue-ish look..depending on which direction you look at them. The new bulbs are (apparently) the latest, greatest bulbs out there and provide a nice, blue-ish white light. I've always admired how bright blue the bulbs I put in Olivia's Cavalier are. But, as with many things, I'm probably taking one step backward because my blue-ion bulbs were rated at 85 watts and were the absolute brightest headlights I've ever had. I assume that since these new bulbs are only rated at 55 watts, they'll probably not be quite as super-bright, but look better, overall. Have you ever seen someone ramble this long about aftermarket headlights? I haven't.

I came home tonight and since it was such a mild (which means only 85 degrees and 90% humidity) night, I decided it was time to get the rest of the goopy Toyota-emblem glue off of my truck. I had considered using a product like Goo-Gone, but i had also read that a couple applications of wax would take care of it, too. So, I took my Meguier's cleaner wax out there, prepared for a headache. But, it ended up being much easier than I expected! I still scraped at it with my fingernails a lot, but the wax took care of most of it. The best part (and the part that I've been worrying about for months) is that you can't even tell the emblems were ever there.

While I was scrapin' glue, a dude drove by in a hammered (that's really low for all of you non custom vehicle people) Civic and pulled up next to the truck and stopped. It turns out that he just wanted to meet me and see if I wanted to be in his local car club. I told him "thanks" but that I didn't really have time to spend with a club right now. He was a really nice guy and had a pretty cool sport compact. This is actually the second club invite that I've had in the past two weeks. I forget if I mentioned the one last week or not.

I finished the day off by cutting the graphics and setting up a "skeleton" site for the ResurrectionAuto.com website. I should be tired..but I'm really not. Where is this energy coming from?

A Rough Day at the Office OR Circus Boy Rides Again!

Whew! What a rough day at the office. heheh. Just kidding. It was actually a pretty exciting day @ Martin. When I went up to our Broadcast department this morning, I found a small mini-bicycle sitting in somebody's cubicle. I couldn't resist. I mean, it was a little, lowered bike! So, I asked the owner a few safety questions (is this thing designed for adults? No, I mean, is this bike strong enough for ME to ride it?). After being reassured that this is an A-D-U-L-T bicycle, I hopped -- no, wait-- I gently sat down on the tiny seat and tried to take off. It took a few feet for me to get my balance, but I finally got the hang of it. Being on a bike THAT small made me feel like I was part of a circus show. So, I bet you're wondering just what this little bike looked like. So, below I've posted some pictures that a guy in Studio shot of me as I was riding the bike around the building. As usual, click the thumbnails for the larger image.

So, there's my excitement for the day. I later found out that this bike was used recently during the shooting of our upcoming UPS ads. I actually got to see the "rough cuts" of one of the ads that will be released closer to Christmas. Pretty cool stuff.

The rest of the day was spent working on Intranet stuff..again. Oh yeh, and I got to play with our new Dual 800mhz G4 tower with DVD (video and data) burner. WOW. What a screamer. OS X ran AWESOME on it, as expected because it took full advantage of both 800mhz engines. Whew. If only I had the money.

Design Burnout

Last night was one of those nights where I got in bed, turned off the light and then said, "Crap. I forgot to update my site." So, that's what happened last night.

Today was pretty boring at work. My guess is that nobody at Martin is really doing any work because we're not getting many calls. So, I spent the most part of today working on the re-design and re-organization of our Intranet site. I've realized over the past few weeks that I'm getting moderately burnt-out on web stuff. Here's my current list of web projects:

Fixin', cleanin', and solvin'.

Wow. What a productive weekend. I fixed. I cleaned. I solved.

I set my alarm to get up early Sat. morning and fix my stereo issue once and for all. Well, it went off..and I slammed it and went back to sleep. I really wanted to get out there and get it done before it got hot. No dice. I finally went out and got started at around noon. DOH! For those of you unfamiliar with my stereo problems, go back a few days and read on. One thing I considered when the problem started happening was that I needed to put a relay on the amp turn-on lead. So, I had purchased one a few days ago from Circuit City. Installing the relay was also the only advice the installer there gave me. So, I figured I'd install that and it would solve the problem. Nope. Installed the relay...no change. So, I went back to Circuit City and returned the relay and asked another installer what he thought. "Man, I have no idea....sorry." Thanks, genius-boy.

Back to the drawing board. I called Crutchfield tech support to ask their opinion. The guy suggested buying a multimeter to measure the amp turn-on lead to see what the voltage looked like when I turned the stereo on with the engine running. He suggested that it might be a ground loop, since the two amps are grounded on opposite sides of the truck. So, I went and bought a $30 digital volt meter from Auto Zone. Then, I measured the turn-on lead with the engine off: approx. 12 volts. Ok. Start the truck. Turn on the stereo. .5 volts..(1 second passes)...0.0 volts. Dead. Hmmm. I connected the grounds from both amps together. No change.

3:00 PM. I called back to Crutchfield tech support. The guy suggested buying a diode to seperate the two amp turn-on leads and prevent any kind of line resistance from the HiFonics amp. He also suggested wiring the amp turn-on lead to the accessory switch on the truck, just to see if it solved anything. I think somebody suggested that on here a few days ago, but I never tried it. So, I went back out and tried that..and it worked. So after 4 hours of messing with it, I was tired, sweaty, and stinky..again. So, I just left it wired that way. I'm just glad it's all fixed now..and it sounds great!

Saturday's other activities included washing Olivia's car and my truck, both of which needed it badly. After washing the truck, I also started pulling the factory emblems off of my truck. After getting the two SR5 emblems off the Xtracab posts, I noticed that my fingernails were bleeding, so I figured I'd better stop.

And finally, today I finished pulling the emblems off the truck (using a credit card-type card) and cleaned up the apartment before Mom and Dad stopped by for a visit this evening.

Things that make me go VROOM VROOM!

You know what I hate? I hate waiting until 11:45pm to update my site. Earlier in the evening, I had all of this cool stuff that I wanted to write about..but now it's late, I'm tired and I don't feel like really typing much. So, here's the condensed version of today:

Cindy (a co-worker) brought in her talking parrot, which provided lots of morning entertainment. This bird is HILLARIOUS. He sings, talks, sqawks, and talks-back. There wasn't a whole lot of excitement today..pretty slow day. It would have been a great day to catch up on projects and that sort of thing..but for some reason, I just wasn't that motivated to work on any of it. I piddled a bit with the new Intranet design that's supposed to go live the first week in October, but that was about it.

After work, I headed accross town for a Mac "house call" at a co-worker's friend's house. His mac kept getting a -42 error (Time synchronizer error) on startup. Well, duh..everybody knows what that means. It's a corrupt Finder!! So, I went over there, spent 2 minutes fixing his system and charged him my hourly rate (1 minute=1 hour, 60 minutes=1 hour). Not a bad deal.

I came home to find that our tickets for the UAW GM Quality 500 race at Charlotte arrived today in the mail. YAY! I'd really like to scan them..if only I had a working scanner.

And now, I'm tired and it sounds like my neighbors are blasting their music. I may have to get nasty. grrr. Goodnight!

Numbness..and weirdness

I hope my weird humor didn't scare any of you away last night. It was late and I realized that I hadn't updated the world about my day in court.

This morning's visit with the dentist wasn't too bad, despite my numb toungue and mouth. A numb mouth is a bad thing when you're a desktop computer support person. But, it wore off by around 1pm.

Other than that, it was a pretty boring day.

Tonight, I decided to jump on the bandwagon of strange photo manipulators and do a funny pic edit of me watching Tech TV. Check it out!

Judgement Day

I realized late last night that my meeting with the Henrico Judiciary Club this morning was scheduled for 11am, not 9am as I had it set in my mind. Whoops! That's good for me because I got to sleep in..but bad for work because I had told them that I would probably be there by 11 or so.

Anywho, at 10:45am, I rolled into the Judiciary Clubhouse parking lot, followed by a lowered red Civic with euro clears, some wheels, and a coffee can exhaust tip. Poor bastard. They got him, too. I decided against parking in the "State Trooper" section of the lot, for obvious reasons. After being thuroughly frisked at the door, I made my way into one of the 6 court rooms and sat down. And that's where I'd sit for the next 2 hours or so. It brought back memories of when I used to sit through hours of court procedings, waiting for my 15 seconds of fame with the honorable one himself...who usually looked very similar to Bob Barker. Today's wait seemed extremely long, however. I watched a translator translate "You must have a driver's license to drive a car in America" into Spanish. I watched a lady try to weasel her way out of a "Following too close" charge. She lost. And then..he called my name.

I took my place beside Mr. Read in front of the (none-other-than) honorable Bob Barker. He asked me if I had removed the tint from my windows. "Not as of today, sir." "An the turn signals?" "Yes sir, I have replaced those with DOT approved ones. I brought one of them with me today if you'd like to see." The judge then gave the secret wink to Officer Read. They then did the secret handshake and wispered the secret password to each other and I was told that the Unapproved Equipment violation would be dropped and that I would be fined for the "Illegal Sunshading"...$35. Cool, I thought, only $35. I was escorted to the clerk's office where I promptly paid a total of $62. Grrr. Court costs.

I made my way back out to the truck in the parking lot, expecting to see at least 5 or 6 troopers examining it. Luckily, they hadn't come out yet. So, I booked it on out of there. Overall, I feel pretty good about the whole thing. $62. Whatever. If it keeps happening, MAYBE I'll put 50% tint on the side windows..but only if this becomes a real nuissance. The worst part of the whole thing was wasting my time sitting there in that court room all morning.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. I had a pile of work waiting for me when I got to work (at 1:30!), but I got it all pretty much knocked out by 3:00 or so.

Don't miss tomorrow episode where I go to the dentist...again. It's doomsday week on jeffpollard.net, by the way!

Spi-gatti!

Long day today. And, overall, pretty frusterating. We tried to make progress with the huge network problem we're having at work..no success.

When I got home, I immeadiately began troubleshooting my stereo problem. I took both seats out again and started testing the remote turn-on lead, as I'm 95% sure that has something to do with the problem. So, I changed the wiring, started the truck, tested it. Nope. Changed the wiring again, started the truck, tested it. Nothing. You see, both amps power on fine when the engine is not running..but as soon as that key is turned, they both refuse to work. Strangely enough, if I unplug the remote turn-on from the new sub amp, the (previously installed) Rockford amp powers on and is fine. Very, very strange. In all of my years of playing with car audio, I've never seen this happen. So, after it finally got dark on me, I put the truck back together in disgust. And ya know? It's approximately 2.596 times harder to put Tacoma seats back in the truck when it's dark outside. (Randy, you know what I mean).

So, I came inside sweaty, stinky, and pissed. We ate dinner and then I sat down here with my Titanium beast and worked on some web designs for a friend's business. When we finalize a design for them, I'll post it on here for those of you who are curious.

Well, it's past midnight and I've got to get up bright and early to go to court for my tickets (comon', you remember that..right?). It should be an interesting experience. It's been a long time since I've been to court for this stuff..or anything else for that matter. Wish me luck!

Back back back back back back back...gone!

Hi ya'll! Whew, it's been an action-packed weekend.

I got outto the truck as early as I could possibly drag my bones out of bed on Saturday morning. Acvtually, it ended up being 1PM or so before I really got started installing my old amp and new sub. I removed both seats and began planning how to run all of the wires, etc. I found that my already installed amp (for my door speakers) already had a set of pass-through RCA jacks, so I decided to run my new (subwoofer) amp through there. I spliced a remote turn-on from the old amp to the one, grounded the new amp and ran an 8-gauge power wire up to the battery (with inline fuse) and connected the speaker. So, let's try it out. BWAHHHHHH!!! It needed some tweaking. The settings on the older amp were set for pushing 2 15" Cerwin Vegas, not a single 12" Kicker. So, after tweaking, listening, tweaking, listening for a little while, I was happy..but I was enjoying listening to the newfound depth that my music had, not to mention that it blurred my vision every time the bass hit. I sure had missed that from the "good ole' days". I miss the tight feeling I used to get in the back of my throat when I'd play some good bass tracks with my old system. I had been listening to it for a little bit, so I figured I'd better start the truck and keep the battery charged. So, I started the truck, the CD player continued to play..but there was no music. Hmmmm... By this point, it was around 4pm and I was very hot, sweaty, stinky, and tired of messing with it. So, I put the seats back in and planned on taking a closer look at it later. After further investigation that evening, I found that, with the truck running, the amps turn on very briefly, and then immeadiately turn back off. With the ignition off, it will sometimes turn on and play, but other times won't. And as of right now, I still haven't had a chance to do more testing. If you're a car stereo genius and you know what might be causing this, I'd love to hear.

Today, we went to the Richmond Braves baseball game and sat with the other Radford University Alumni. There really weren't that many other Radford people there..not as many as I expected, at least. The Braves won, by the way. After the game we went over to Maggie's house and then out to dinner at a "tavern" resturaunt. Pretty good food.

And now, I'm home..tired. Olivia and I will proably watch the Pepsi 400 race that we taped from earlier today and then hit the hay. Hope everybody had a nice weekend!

Event II Photos

Pretty bland day at work. Again, not really too busy, which gave me some time to continue work on CustomTacos designs.

Tonight, I posted a photo gallery from Show-N-Shine's Event II last weekend. Go check em' out!

Shew..Friday again. Hopefully, it'll NOT rain on Saturday so that I can install my amp and new sub. Sunday is Radford Alumni day at the Richmond Braves baseball park, so it's gonna be another busy weekend. What plans do YOU have for this weekend? Parcheesie? A limbo party?

Whoops!

Well, folks, last night was one of those nights where I just completely forgot to update my site. Whoops!

A giant load was lifted from my shoulders today at work when Tommy and I finished switching out all of the new monitors. Now I have to prepare myself to handle everything next week while Tommy's out on vacation.

He and I did a small organized class this morning with our Mac users on how to burn CDs with Disc Burner and iTunes. Overall, it went VERY well. Even smoother than I expected. I figured it would go well, but it was really cool because people were asking lots of good questions. Hopefully now that they all know how to do this, they won't have to call us every day and ask. We even had requests to do another class on using iMovie and editing digital video. We'll see.

i spent a good bit of time this afternoon and this evening working on a good, solid design for CustomTacos.com. I think I'm well down the road to a good, easy-to-use site. Perhaps I'll post a screenshot of it on here in a day or two. I'm starting to get more and more excited about it. I really think there's a good market for a site like that out there.

And, if you really have to know, the real reason I didn't update my site last night was because I was too busy watching "Match Game" on the Game Show Network. If Dad's reading this, he'll be proud of me. :)

The end of the monsoon?

Well, day three of the 2001 Virginia monsoon season has come to a close and it appears as though we may be free and clear of precipitation for the next day or so. But it's been pouring like crazy all night. Again.

For those of you hoping to see photos from the show I attended this past weekend, you may not see them here for another days or so. I have submitted them to SporTruck.com again and they may decide that they want to use them for show coverage again. So, if they do indeed run them, I'll just direct you all over to their site to view the photos. If they decide not to run them, I'll post a small photo gallery here on my site. My storage space on my server is starting to wear a little thin.

You know how I complained the other day that I had too much "stuff" on my proverbial "plate"? And how I wished there were just a few more hours in the day so that I could get more accomplished? Well, just as I expected, it hasn't gotten any better. While at the show on Saturday, I picked up another two possible web design/setup gigs that (ALONE!) could keep me busy for a couple of months, if not more. Add that to projects that I already have going like CustomTacos.com, ResurrectionAuto.com, house-call work for local ad agency JHI. Shew! Ok, no more complaining. But, as you can see, I'm crazy-busy.

On a completely unrelated note, Olivia and I stopped in at Crustchfield in Harrisonburg on Sunday. I've been wanting a little more music depth in my truck for a while, so I broke down and purchased a 12" Kicker Comp VR subwoofer in a sealed QLogic box. Since I already have a good HiFonics amp (from the old teal truck) to push the new sub with, it seemed like a good thing to do. And, to be honest, I'm tired of not having any bass in my music in my truck. I'm not looking to blow anybody away, but It'll be nice to finally have a little kick in the seat. Hopefully the rain will go away long enough to install the amp and new sub in a few days. I'll post pics when I get done, as always.

The show..

So here we are in Bridgewater. We arrived here Friday night around 9 or so, and after a brief stop in Staunton, we were here at Mom & Dad's house by 11pm or so. Buster (Mom & Dad's cat) was very happy to see us. In fact, he was so happy to see us that he rubbed on us for about the next hour or so. In fact, even after we had gotten into bed and turned off the light, he continued to meow and rub on us. We later figured that he just wanted to go outside. Mom and Dad don't allow him to go outside after dark since his stroke that he had a couple months ago. So, I couldn't let him out, so we just had to lay there and listen to him howl. A L L N I G H T L O N G . In fact, he's sitting here now..still crying to go out. Poor baby.

The show was pretty cool. As I expected, it wasn't quite as large as some of the other shows in Virginia, but it was cool to see all of my friends (and their trucks and cars) again. It's a shame that it rained for a good part of the day, but I still got around 100 photos. Perhaps SporTruck.com will want to use these, too.

And now, we're watching ConAir. This has got to be one my favorite movies made in the past few years. And the best part is that we can crank up their surround sound system and the neighbors won't complain!

It's off to Staunton we go!

Tomorrow, we're off to Staunton and Bridgewater for the weekend. Jay Christian and Show-N-Shine promotions are holding their second event of the 2001 circuit at Colonial Mall in Staunton this weekend. This was the same show that my old teal truck was inside the mall for a few years ago. Not quite sure if I'll see it there this weekend. I'm guessing probably not. Hopefully, this will be a good chance to catch up with some friends from the valley and show them the modifications I've done to my truck lately. Not quite sure if I'll actually enter the truck in the show or not, but right now, I'm thinking probabably not. The main reason for this is that my engine compartment is still really dirty and I'm still missing two center caps from my wheels. Firestone can't seem to get their act together and get the correct caps ordered for me. Either way, this will be a pretty good test of the long range dependability of the new suspension. I feel confident that it'll be fine. If it can take I-95's beating every day, I'm sure it can handle a drive up to the valley.

So, that's where I'll be this weekend. I'll do my best to update as often as I can, and I should have show pictures posted by late Sunday evening. Have a great Friday and weekend!

Jugglin'

Do you ever get overwhelmed thinking about everything that's happening in your life right now? Yeh, that's me. Today started out pretty slow..and then got fairly crazy later in the day. I'm figuring out that I've got entirely too much stuff going on at work and I need to sit down and prioritize it all. But, as you may have expected, it all seems to be of the highest possible priority. So, that leaves me busy and stressed out.

On a lighter note, I've recently been working on re-vamping my Tacoma page. It has lots more information, pictures and I've even posted my recent tickets. So, head on over and check it out!

It's late. I'm tired. And I'm heading to bed so I can wake up and do it all over again.

Novacaine and Margarita

I found out something today: a healthy shot of Novacaine in the morning and some margaritas in the afternoon make for a looong day. But it was fun.

My dentist appointment wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. The purpose of today's visit was to get three fillings: two on one side of my mouth and 1 on the other. What I didn't realize is that I wasn't going to get all three fillings done today. They did two, then sent me on my way. Oh, but not before they collected a hefty ransom. So, I now have to make a THIRD trip to the dentist later this month to get the last filling. Oh well.

The beach party was great. I used the Glen's Coolpix 990 and took some great photos. They served margaritas and some beer and just about everyone that was out there got wet in one way or another.

XMUG was the last event on my schedule today. And now..now I'm at home..and worn out. Anybody have any Advil?

My new venture..

Hi everybody. Quick note tonight. It was a slower than usual Monday. Which left me a little time to create a teaser/splash page for my new web project. The site is CustomTacos.com and I'll explain more about it tomorrow night.

I'm psychic: tomorrow is gonna suck..and then it's gonna be cool. I have a dentist appointment at 8:30 and then tomorrow afternoon the Agency is throwing a party out on our patio. It's called "Sand, Land, drink in hand" Operations set up three pools, some sand (for our fake beach), and some sprinklers to keep us all cool tomorrow afternoon. It's gonna be great. They have told all employees to come to work in shorts, t-shirts, flip-flops, and a thirst for some good drinks. Should be loads of fun. I'll take some pictures and post them tomorrow night.

Have a great day..and pray that the dentist doesn't hurt me too much!

Fast and the curious

Well, look at the time! It was a busy weekend.

I woke up fairly early Saturday morning so that I could change the oil in the truck before it got hot. I was a little late. It was only 10:30 or so and it was already scorching outside. Changing the oil wasn't quite as hard as I imagined it would be with the lower ground clearance that the truck now has. The oil drain pan barely fit under the main front crossmember. I actually had to sortof lift the truck up about a 1/8" to fit the pan under there to change the filter. I guess when/if I go lower, I'll need to figure out a new strategy. I took my oil over to Auto Zone, filled up my tank, and watched an F-150 go up in flames in the Wal-Mart parking lot. All before noon.

Brian arrived around 6:30 and we met Mike, Lauren, and Maggie and went to a awesome Greek Italian restaurant called Trak's. Maggie had warned us that the portions were large, but..MAN! Overall, it was some great food. We'll definitely have to go back there again.

Sunday we slept in a little late and then went to see "The Fast and the Furious" at the theater. Wow. I had been looking forward to seeing that movie for a looong time, and it was every bit as cool as I expected. I especially enjoyed the sound effects that they added for the cars. In our nice, new theaters with surround sound, it was pretty realistic. Kick ass movie.

Dr Seuss Explains..

This was forwarded to me today and I thought it was pretty funny. So, enjoy:

Dr. Seuss explains why computers sometimes crash:

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,

And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,

And the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,

Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,

And the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash,

And your data is corrupted because the index doesn't hash,

Then your situation's hopeless, and your system's gonna crash!

If the label on the cable on the table at your house,

Says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,

But your packets want to tunnel onto another protocol,

That's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall.

And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,

So your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,

Then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,

'Cause as sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang!

When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy on the disk,

And the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risk,

Then you'll have to flash your memory,

And you'll want to RAM your ROM.

Quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your mom!

Was it 15 minutes or 14?

Woo woo! Let my 15 minutes of fame begin. Actually, it'll probably last longer than that, I hope. If you haven't been following the past few days, SporTruck.com asked to use my digital photos from this past weekend's East Coast Nationals for their show coverage. And, of course, I agreed. They've finally posted their (well, MY)gallery over at their site. So what are you waiting for? Go feast your eyes on their higher quality (and quantity) images than I had space to post over here on my site.

Today was awesome at work. Until the last half-hour. You see, we've been having this terrible server/network problem that has been causing MASS havoc for our users. Without getting too technical, our computers are randomly getting kicked off of the server for no reason. They'll be saving a file, printing, or some other server-intensive task, and *BOOM*...they just get booted off the server. So, I've been spending a great deal of my extra time at work trying to figure out a reason why this is happening. Well, Jack made a stunning discovery this morning. The primary ethernet card in the server was configured wrong, causing network activity to that server to be severely crippled. He fixed it and server performance seemed great all day long. Until 5:00. Then I started getting calls from people getting kicked off the server and slow performance. What a let down. I really thought we had it fixed this time. Now, it's back to the drawing board. How depressing.

Oh yeh..more new computer stuff showed up at work this morning. Our department really DOES look like a warehouse now. About 20 more 17" Dell monitors arrived to go along with the 15 17" displays that arrived yesterday. I'll try to take a picture of it sometime tomorrow. It's a shame that my webcam doesn't see any of that. I wish I could find a new place to point my cam.

And, finally, in the spirit of my "weird friends" theme this week, I made yet ANOTHER friend this morning. A big ole' horse-fly. Yep. When I started up my truck this morning, there he was, perched on my hood. He was absolutely the largest horse-fly I've ever seen; probably about the size of your thumb (no joke!). So, he rode with me all the way down the parkway, onto Route 1, onto the 295 access road, and finally blew away when I got up to speed on I-95. What was even funnier was the fact that he looked like he was putting on a dare-devil act the entire time. Every once in a while (even at 55mph!), he'd lift his front 2 legs (arms?) up and fiddle with his antennae. I could almost hear him saying, "Look, Ma! No hands!" over the roar of my 2.4L beast. Pretty funny.

A swim in the 'ool

Well, believe it or not, we're just about finished switching out the new Macs at work. Amazing. What's more amazing is that 15 22" Mitsubishi CRTs, 4 19" Viewsonic CRTs, 10 17" NEC flatpanels, and about 40 Dell laptops showed up over the past two days. So..we're not out of the woods yet. But at least the hard part (for me) is over..I think.

It was a really nice day when I got home tonight, so we decided to go for a swim in the pool this evening. Don't laugh, but it's the first time we've used the pool this summer. I mean, if you had a pool in your backyard, wouldn't you use it just about every day? We would too. But, it seems like the circumstances are never right for us to enjoy a dip in the pool. But, they were today, and it was nice and relaxing.

In the spirit of my theme this week, I'd like to introduce you to another newfound friend. This one is a website. It's called "The Joy of Tech" and it's a (almost) daily-updated comic that is centered around Mac enthusiasts and general techno-geeks. If you're not into technology and keep up with what's happening in the Mac press, you not understand some of it..but it's hillarious and I visit it just about everyday now.

Another tidbit of news: I found out recently that we've been begun the account review process for Universal Orlando. Yep, the same place we just visited just a few weeks ago. Pretty neat. I emailed our new business team and told them that I had tons of pictures and input to give them if they were interested, but they said that they just made a trip down there a few weeks ago to get a feel for the atmosphere and company and all. But, it's pretty neat to see our studio designers working on illustrations of Dr. Seuss for new business.