jeffpollard.net

A BTTF Christmas

Santa was good to me, as usual. I received many nice gifts that I won't bore anyone with the details of. However, I will say that EVERYONE received a copy of the Back To the Future trilogy DVD set...and we all rejoiced..yay!

In fact, we watched ALL of the extras on all three DVDs tonight. Pretty impressive stuff. I learned some neat things I never knew about the movies and saw "never-before-seen footage" as advertised.

Jennifer got a pretty neat photo of three generations of Pollard men tonight. From left to right: Jeff Pollard, William Pollard, Jr., and William Pollard Sr.

Christmas in Bridgewater 2002

See me over there? I'm pretty sad. And why am I sad? Because I'm here and Olivia's over there.

But, I'm still having a pretty good time here at Mom & Dad's house. Watching movies has been the nightly activity. I've gotten to see a couple movies I've never seen before (Ice Age and The Perfect Storm)and watch some others that I really enjoy (The Green Mile).

I'm installing OS X for Mom and Dad and showing Dad the basics of it. So far, I think he's catching on pretty well. We'll see how they do after I'm gone. I think they'll be fine.

I guess I'd better go clean myself up so we can head out to Christmas Eve church service tonight. It's been sleeting and snowing since around noon, so hopefully it won't be too messy out there. Merry Christmas everyone! :)

Tacky Lights Photos

Thanks for the creative writing, Jennifer. If you wanna see what we saw, check out my Tacky Lights photo gallery.

Tacky lights

As I sit writing this my brother Jeff is sitting across from me in his spacious living room, wearing reindeer antlers with bells on them. Very cute. All I can say is that it is LATE. He has talked me into writing a segment for his blog as a "guest author." I'm very flattered that he trusts me enough to make an entry here. It's not every day that I get to give the world my insight on life. HA-HA.

Anyway, tonight I was invited to a night on the town, so to speak. After arriving at Jeff and Olivia's place and meeting up with Kelly, Eric, Lauren, and Mike, a wonderful white stretch limosine pulled up to the townhouse. Our chauffeur for the evening was a cool guy named Purcell (he insisted on opening the doors for us each time--but I guess it was his job!). He transported us all around town and we took in the sights of some of Richmond's tackiest tacky Christmas lights. A lot of the decorations we saw were very tastefully done, others were a bit wild. One house's yard included characters including Dumbo, Spider-Man, Mario (of Super Mario Bros.), Bert (of Bert and Ernie fame), Barney, the Grinch, the whole Flintstone family, and Big Bird. It also had a room full of animatronic dolls that included Barbies, trolls, assorted teddy bears, and (of all things!) E.T. Yeah. Fairly creepy. People have some good imaginations when it comes to festive Yultide decorations. Nothing speaks more to me at Christmastime than seeing E.T. in a Santa hat! I could go on and on about the rampant commercialization of Christmas, but I'll spare you....this time.

The whole evening was really a lot of fun. I got to meet Mike for the first time (I think I know now why Jeff has kept him hidden! j/k) and riding around in a limo for 3 hours was definitely a highlight. Aside from not getting to meet the infamous Chris Rhines due to his, ahhh, prior commitments, it was a perfect night. Maybe next time...

I'll sign off for now and send you back to your regularly scheduled program, probably already in progress. Thanks for listening, and have a happy holiday season! And by the way, if anyone out there wants to buy me a NICE Christmas or birthday gift (December 22!), I'd REALLY enjoy a CD copy of Winger's "In The Heart of the Young." That album ROCKS. :-)

Later all!

Long A$$ Vacation: Day 1

Long Christmas Vacation 2002: Day 1

I woke up around 11..just in time for, you guessed it, The Price is Right. Man, Bob Barker is getting old. It'll be a sad day when he kicks the old bucket.

I spent the remainder of the day catching up on some things that have needed some catching up for about the last month or two. I removed any links to my sparetire.CustomTacos.com server and called OLM to discontinue that service. I created some more premium memberships, made some more membership cards, licked some more envelopes, blah blah blah.

I also set up a reservation with CMC Limousine service for Wednesday night for a "Tacky Light Tour" of Richmond. We'll be riding around the metro area in a luxurious 10-passenger checking out the crazy light arrangements that people have done. There will be 7 of us: Mike and Lauren, Eric and Kelly, Olivia and Me, and Jennifer. It's going to be a great time..I know it. Look for photos afterwards. This is pretty cool for me, since I seem to be the only person in America who has never riden in a Limo. I'm excited.

And now, here I sit, still in my pajamas. Haven't even put my contacts in. I think Gizmo is confused as to why I've been here all day. He'd better get used to it!

Finally..relief is in sight!

Luckily, relief is in sight. Here's my schedule from now until the beginning of next year:

Yes, you read that correctly. My last day of work (almost) before next year will be tomorrow. And boy am I glad. Work hasn't been terribly busy, but steady. And then there's CustomTacos. I pulled up the curtain on the premium membership program on Sunday and it's been chaos with that ever since. To be rather honest, it's a logistical nightmare. I have to receive Pay Pal orders, put the necessary information into my membership spreadsheet, login to the forum as administrator and change their name to gold (that's #B0B02B for all of you playing along at home..yes, I've memorized the hex code for Gold.), change their group membership to either Plus or Premium, login to the CustomTacos user administrator, create their email account, email them their email login/password information, print out their membership card, print out their mailing envelope with their address from Pay Pal, run the hot iron over their (now laminated) membership card to seal it, stuff their membership card and two sheets of pre-printed paper and a sticker into the envelope (see above). Then, I have to double check that I spelled their name right, that there is a sticker inside the envelope, seal the envelope (these new envelopes taste pretty good!), put a stamp on it, and send it off.

And that's PER USER. And, I've already had 25 users upgrade their accounts this week. Did I say logistical nightmare?

Don't think I'm complaining, though, cause this is really good. In one week, I've managed to recover 1/3 of this year's operating expenses for the site.

It's a good thing I have more time than money.

And, it looks like time is on my side for the next few weeks. Look for some cool changes on here, finally. I'd like to move over to Movable Type and pull a new design out of my sleeve. We'll see. Maybe I'll help Eric create something cool for his site. :)