jeffpollard.net

Math Lesson

I'd like to start this morning with a simple lesson in Mathematics:

Some will understand, some will still be scratching their heads later today.

On with the show....Another good weekend, although not long enough, as usual. Mom and Dad visited, I got "shorn" as Olivia likes to say (a haircut), and I solved my pesky parking brake light problem by topping off my brake fluid in my truck. We went to Stuarts Draft to a pre-season Show-N-Shine meeting Sunday and had a pretty good time hanging out with all of the guys from the show staff and watching the race on TV.

And now it's Monday. The gospel music is blasting and I'm ready for another week of excitement. Can you sense the excitement in my voice? :)

Bored.

I can think of 35.8 things I'd rather be doing than sitting here at my desk this afternoon. I won't bore you with them all and I don't want anyone to think that I dislike my job now. Because I don't. I still enjoy my job. When it challenges me. When there's something to do.

But until then, I'll just sit here and twiddle my thumbs. And get paid for it. Anybody know any good jokes?

Oh Happy Day

We had our quarterly staff meeting this morning in the atrium where they showed off some of our latest work, told us how good we've been doing, and basically pumped us all up about what we do and who we are as a company. I don't know why, but I always come away from those meetings very inspired. I think it's something about our CEO John Adams- he's very inspiring to me. Even in the worst possible times he finds a positive way to look at things and encourages us all to "Think Different". He never fails to give me a fresh perspective on things.

At the end of the meeting he talked about how even through this sluggish economy the company has performed well and he attributed that to us employees. He continued to say that since we have worked so hard during these times, the partners were happy to reward us with salary increases this year (early) in April. Normally that kind of thing happens in July and hasn't happened the past two years, so I'm pretty excited about this. Not sure if this will include a performance review or not, so I guess we'll see.

John left us with one final simple thought this morning: "Go out today and do something you're afraid to do." Have a great day, everyone!

4.5 hours of OS X Hell

After work yesterday, I made my way over to a coworker's house for an after-hours house call. He had contacted me a few weeks ago asking about installing OS X on his 4 home computers: 3 iMacs and a Cube. I suggested that he buy the OS X family pack (which allows you to install the OS on up to 5 computers in your house) and that's what he did. I knew from previous experience that you should allow about 2-3 hours per OS X installation, mostly because of all of the updates that need to be run afterwards. I knew getting 4 computers up and running on ten would take a good while, so I had been mentally preparing myself.

Needless to say, I didn't get home until 11PM last night. And the bad part is that I'm not really done with everything that needs to be done at their house. But the whole thing puts me in a difficult place because while I'm sitting there waiting for software to install and updates to run, I know the client is sitting there watching the time. Tick Tock Tick Tock. Asking questions about how their software is going to run once they're up to OS X. The reply is always a grim one: "Well, you see, the software you currently have isn't OSX-native, so you should probably upgrade your copy of Photoshop and Microsoft Office." Yeh. That'll be at least another $500 in software and then if you want me to come over and install it for you? More dough. I sorta feel bad because I think if I were them, I would feel like I was being taken advantage of. I hope they don't think that, because my intentions are good. It's just that sometimes things can't be as simple or inexpensive as people would like for them to be.

Bristol Race Weekend

Another exhausting but amazing weekend. We spent Saturday helping Mike and Lauren move into their beautiful new house. It's amazing how quickly you can move stuff when there's 10 people working.

Olivia and I left early early Sunday morning for Bristol, TN for the Food City 500, compliments of UPS. It's a shame that Dale Jarrett didn't have a very good day. I've posted a photo gallery from the race. Hopefully my lady friend will post up some of her photos and movies soon. :)

Saddam or Not?

Ok, I'm not suggesting anything here..I'm just saying that maybe we should look into this...

And thus it begins

I like going to CNN and seeing this:

We were pretty much glued to the TV last night with our popcorn and soda, watching the war break out. It's amazing how the US media has made this whole thing out to be just another new reality TV show.

"Tune in tonight to see who Bush will vote off the island! Will it be Saddam? Will it be Cheney? Don't miss a single episode! Tonight..on CBS."

Still, you gotta watch it if you want to know what's going on in the world.

test

test

Silent Chicks

This whole thing with the Dixie Chicks and their comments at a recent show in the UK is totally ridiculous. If you haven't heard, certain radio stations (including a few Richmond-area stations) are boycotting their music ever since that incident. They refuse to play Dixie Chicks music because the girls voiced their opinion on politics. And now it's causing a big ole' stink.

Here's my view (what, you thought you weren't going to hear MY view??): America is all about freedom. Freedom of speech is at the forefront of those "freedoms". The Dixie Chicks, just like anyone else in America, are allowed to express their opinion freely, no matter how popular their view may be. And it just amazes me that radio stations are deciding FOR their listeners if they are "allowed" to hear Dixie Chicks music...censoring them in a sense. If people are not happy with what the girls said, that's fine - they have the freedom to not buy their albums, not go to their concerts, change the station when they come on the radio, etc. But when the radio station decides FOR the listeners is where the problem comes in.

Play on, Silent Chicks!

Almost, but not quite.

I'm such a wuss. I did it again. For about the millionth time, I did what I always do this morning during my morning website rounds. I visited SlickDeals.net as I always do and saw a great deal. On this particular morning, the deal is a Sharp Zaurus 5500 Linux-based PDA for $170. Not that exciting, right? Actually, you'd be wrong. It has a color screen, 64MB memory and SD and CompactFlash memory card slots. And..it can be wireless if you want.

Ok, so what made me want to do this "deal"? The fact that these PDAs are selling for around $250-$275 on eBay. So, my first thought was to purchase three of these beautiful new PDAs. I'd be investing roughly $510 ($170 x 3) I'd sell the two on eBay for $255 each ($510 revenue), which would make the third PDA basically free for me to have. What a deal.

I clicked the link to the site selling the item. I added it to my cart. I added in my billing and shipping addresses. And then, on the next page it happened. I froze up. I couldn't make myself push the little button that said "Submit".

Man, and I thought all that stuff about "consumer confidence" was crap. I guess they're right.

War Imminent

It seems that war is now imminent. I imagine Bush will tell the nation tonight that we'll begin attacking soon. Still not quite sure how I feel about all of this. I think something definitely needs to be done about this, but I fear that this will only spark retaliation and possibly a larger war with other countries, too. My question has always been: Why does the US need to be the world's police?

This weekend's adventure to Natural Bridge was great. A nice, relaxing weekend with my two best friends. Nothing better than sitting around reminiscing about old times, playing Quake, and climbing the huge mountain that is the Pollock's back yard.

We had dinner with the entire gang (minus Kelly Hurd and Paul) last night at Grapvine, a Greek Italian place very similar to Trak's. Our friends really are the greatest.

And now, back to the daily grind.

Good Thing It's Friday

GTIF. (Good thing it's Friday) I'm not sure if I could take any more days this week. Even though it has been a very productive week, it's worn me out. I feel asleep "at the wheel" last night waiting for a Photoshop resizing script to resize some images for CustomTacos.com. It was then that I realized that I needed to get to bed.

Not sure if I'll get much sleep this weekend, however. It looks like a few of us are headed to Natural Bridge for Friday and Saturday nights. Should be a good, relaxing time as usual.

I'm really liking my new phone so far. The only bad thing is the belt clip that Motorola ships with it just plain sucks. It sticks out about 2 inches off the waist and is VERY difficult to release the phone from it. Paul, Eric: Any tips?

I think OLM (my hosting company) is finally going to credit my account back today for the money they've owed me since December. I cancelled an account back then and asked that the remainder of my pre-paid year be credited back to my credit card. Never happened. Their billing department seems to have problems getting things right.

Happy weekend, everyone!

A new phone in my future...

Just a quick note regarding my previous entry about the broken computers at work: I called Apple support this afternoon and got a quote to repair the mangled PowerBook. $1,000 (or so). When it came time to give the support guy a credit card, I had to go get our department's American Express from one of the managers. He was floored by the price and immediately went to talk to our department head. Fury ensued. And, you'll never guess what happened next. We got a call from another art director upstairs saying, "I need someone to come up and look at my computer. The screen looks all funny." Sure enough, another broken PowerBook. This one with a cracked LCD and cracked metal around the hinges. Art director. 40-50-something years old. Wait until our CIO sees this one. It's gonna hit the fan tomorrow.

And speaking of tomorrow, I'll hopefully be receiving my new phone. Why a new phone? Because I'm kinda tired of my current one. It still functions mostly right, but the battery dies REALLY quickly and reception is crappy most of the time. So, I asked our Alltel rep what kinds of cool/cheap phones they could replace mine with and she offered me two choices: The Kyocera 5135 or the Motorola V60i. Both are flip phones with great features and a low $30 price tag. I opted to go with the V60i because it has a Date/Time/Incoming Call display on the outside of the phone. You would need to open the Kyocera phone to see this info. Since our original phones were free, Martin isn't going to pay for me to get a new one, but it's worth it to me. I'm excited.

Beatin and Banging on a Titanium

It makes me pretty mad when one of my users brings me a $3000 PowerBook G4 all dented and mangled. I received such a computer yesterday. Actually, the user called me to tell me that his laptop case was cracked and the CD/DVD drive was making funny noises when it spun. It isn't too uncommon for a user to bring me a laptop that has seen better days. And to tell you the truth, I've gotten pretty used to it.

But yesterday's case was worse than I've ever seen. I really had to hold myself back from going off on this guy after inspecting his mangled laptop for a few minutes. My question is: Why can't these people realize that even though something doesn't belong to THEM that they indeed are responsible for it and need to treat it with care??? Instead of probing the user as to why he doesn't have any respect for stuff that doesn't belong to him, I kindly reminded him that these are $3000 laptops and that repairing his computer will cost the company M-O-N-E-Y. Gosh, I so wanted to just smack this guy around a little.

Looking closer at the laptop after he left, we discovered more and more damage and indications of where this PowerBook had been dropped at least twice.

Folks, this is why you come out to your car in the shopping mall parking lot to find a ding in your door. It's because people could care less about taking care of stuff that doesn't belong to them.

I think it all stems from poor parenting. I'm proud that I was brought up to respect other people and other people's stuff. Why is it so hard for other parents teach their kids these same values?

Spring-Like Weekend

This weekend has been a textbook example of the belief that if you want to accomplish things, you certainly can. Here's a list of things I got done this weekend:

- Changed the oil in Olivia's car


- Changed the air filter in Olivia's car


- Purchased brake pads and rotors in preparation for replacing those soon


- Purchased and installed new windshield wiper refils on Olivia's car


- Washed Olivia's car and my truck


- Purchased a hose-wheel-organizer-thingie for the front hose and installed


- Made my almost-famous mashed potatoes tonight

CustomTacos.com Stuff:

- Re-did the sticker sales area to reflect original white stickers back up for sale


- Composed and Sent out email newsletter to 90-some Plus and Premium users


- Posted 3 tech articles and composed and posted 1 quick tips tech article


- Re-worked the group-checking code to correct a bug which could prevent Plus and Premium users from seeing certain "premium" features


- Upgraded a few accounts, sent out membership packs, and processed a few sticker orders


- Coded an "Upgrade your account" line to appear at the top of every non-upgraded members' forum pages

All that, and I still had time to sleep in late both days, watch the entire race today, and even take a walk down through the woods and explore the nearby apartment construction site in detail.

Boy it feels good to be productive. What a weekend!

WEEEEEEEE!!!!

Ok, forget everything I just said about boring.

Contact

I've been playing the crap out of this new Eiffel 65 CD. It's just awesome. Thanks for Brian and Chris for the suggestion.

Last night was fun. Chris and Jennifer came over for a night of laughs. We mocked President Bush during his press conference, watched Tambaqui salvage some of thier dignity on Survivor, watched some of Jennifer's new Osbourne's DVD, and then played Chris' music trivia board game. The combined knowledge of Olivia and I was apparently no match for the vast music knowledge of either Chris or Jennifer. We got beat in both games.

Work has, again, fallen into that rut of being boring. Luckily, I've got a user upstairs who's now booting OS X, so I may get some action out of that. To quote a great song from a great album:

The daily grind can freak your mind. But life isn't all that bad... C'est la vie!

But alas, it's Friday and I'm really glad. This week has been a doozy. I got home last night and crashed on the sofa. The funny thing is, how can someone be so tired if they haven't done anything? It's not like I had run a marathon or really done any work yesterday. (Insert American Pie's Sherman voice) "I guess it was just my time."

Free Headlights

WOO HOO!!! Free headlights!

I arrived home to find a fairly large box waiting. As I opened the box, sifted through the peanuts, and unwrapped each headlight, I couldn't help but giggle like a schoolboy. My giggles turned to all-out laughter when I pulled the invoice out of the box and read the total price aloud: $167.10. These puppies would have cost me a pretty penny. But, I'll now be able to install these new headlights AND sell my old ones on eBay. I'm so happy. Now, it's time to visit Mechanicsville Toyota to pick up my new grill and back window.

On a different note, here are a few photos of Gizmo eating his kitty grass. Since cats have a natural urge to eat grass, some company has created a product that you buy and grow grass for your cat to eat. We bought our grass kit at PetSmart and Gizmo seems to really enjoy it.

Impulse Buys and Anticipation

Great weekend. I got to hang out with my friends, get some work done on CustomTacos, eat Cracker Barrell and Taco Bell, and catch up on sleep.

Our six-month house inspection was this morning at 7:30AM (ugh!). They just wanted to make sure that everything was going OK and that we were changing our filters, etc. We asked them a few questions we've had and showed them a few things that needed fixin'. They fixed the stuff and were gone by 8:00.

This gave me just enough time to check our SlickDeals.net where I found my impulse buy of the day: a silver ATX case with power supply, plexiglass window, and built-in LED fan for only $31. I guess this'll be my next project: fitting my Blue & White G3 innards into this cool looking case. A guy on AppleFritter did something similar, so I can use his notes as a guide. Should be fun. And hey, if it doesn't work out, I can probably turn around and sell that case on eBay for around $30.

Also on the "accomplished" list from this wekend was resurrecting my webcam at home. I brought both the webcam computer and camera home to play with and found that BOTh are still working fine. Weird. So, I now have the camera in my computer room window looking out the front of our house. The only problem is that the camera doesn;t adjust to bright light very well at all, so instead of the picture being black all day, it'll now be white almost all the time. I'll have to look into fixing that.

And for all of you waiting in suspense to see what comes in my 10lb. box from California, here's something to add to your suspense: I just checked UPS tracking and they show that the package has been delivered. It's aparrently sitting on my front porch right now. The suspense is killing me!

Listening to the "new" Eiffel 65 this morning. Awesome stuff. I think I may have to buy this one. A little corny at times, but still very cool.