jeffpollard.net

Finally, a win - NASCAR

NASCAR. That's right. NASCAR. The Martin Agency's been chasing the official NASCAR account for more than 3 years through two different new business pitches and come up empty handed every time. Until this time. Announced as of yesterday, we are NASCAR's official agency. Very cool. It's supposed to only be a $20 million account, but more importantly: it's a win for our company. And we needed a win badly. And this is a big, huge win. Especially if they give me free tickets to races.

Sunroof Plans

I stopped by a local custom automotive tops shop this morning. This makes no less than 3 times that I've stopped by this shop to talk to the owner about installing a sunroof in my truck. Actually, this is the second time with the Double Cab, and once with the old truck before I sold it.

There are two types of sunroofs that I could have installed in my truck. The first is a moonroof, which slides down between the roof and the headliner (like many factory sunroofs) and the second is a "slider" sunroof which slides up and back, like a spoiler. I always liked the smooth look of the moonroofs, mostly because you don't see anything (except a hole in the roof) when the roof is open.

But in talking to the guy, he indicated that the moonroofs can be much more problematic than the "sliders". The reason for this is because there's no way that moonroofs can create a truly watertight seal with the roof. Sure, it's a decent seal, but it is expected to leak just a little.

(Explanation: If the sunroof and corresponding hole in the roof were too tight of a fit, the glas would get stuck closed, especially on a hot day when the metal of the car expands a little.)

Ok, so they leak just a little, but that's ok because they're designed with a "tray" below the roof opening to catch the water that is expected to drip in sometimes. Ok, so where does that water in the tray go? Well, in each of the 4 corners of the tray there are tubes that are run down through the vehicle and drain out the bottom of the car. The problem is, these tubes can get clogged up with dirt and debris (leaves, acorns), and if they do, your tray overflows and you have a nasty, wet mess in your vehicle.

Ok, so the owner of the place felt it necessary to properly educate me about all of this, which I totally appreciate. It's nice to not have someone sell you something because it's more expensive, not because it's a better product. So, to make a long story short, I ended up deciding to go with the "slider" sunroof. There was enough doubt in his voice (and he installs HUNDREDS of sunroofs every year) to steer me away from the moonroof, even though it's what I originally intended to buy.

It looks like I'll be dropping the truck off Monday August 10. Installation should only take a day, but it may run over into a second day, he said.

By the way, there was an article on USA Today's website about BuyMusic.com yesterday. An interesting read.

A BuyMusic.com Rant

Instead of re-capping our wonderful hot weekend at the show, I thought I'd take this opportunity to shine some light on the fine folks over at BuyMusic.com. (feel the sarcasm?)

As many of you know, a few months ago, Apple rolled out their music download service, a legitamite way for you to download the songs that you want for a small fee - usually $.99 each or $9.99 per album. Not a bad deal, considering you know you're going to get a good quality version of the song, and, hey! it's legal. My couple of experiences with the iTunes Music Store have been pretty good. You find the song, you click one button to download (it's so easy it's kinda scary) and in a few seconds, you're listening to your new purchase.

OK, so the fine folks at Buy.com announced a few weeks after Apple intro-ed their new service that they, too wanted to begin a similar service. I thought, "Great, competition. Some competition will probably do Apple some good in this market. More competition = lower prices."

So a week ago today, Buy.com rolled out their new music download service. It's called BuyMusic.com and you've probably already seen the ads on TV for it. If you haven't seen their ads, go take a look (bottom of the page) and then come back. Ok, now go take a look at Apple's music ads that they came out with back in February. See any similarities? I just don't understand why a company would make TV ads that are such a blatant ripoff of another company's ads. I mean, you don't see the other beer companies doing the Budweiser "Whassup??!!" thing in their ads, do you? No! They have their own creative teams that come up with their OWN ORIGINAL IDEAS. I look forward to Apple legal coming down on them.

Ok, so nevermind the fact that they can't come up with original ideas for advertising. Let's move on to the site. Interestingly enough, it looks strikingly familiar. In fact, it looks very similar to the way that the iTunes Music store looks. Amazing!

Let's move on to the music. The advertising states that songs can be downloaded starting at $.79 each. I went on there Monday afternoon and surfed around for a while, checking it out. Where are these $.79 songs?? In my quick browse through popular music, I found MAYBE 1 or 2 songs that sold for $.79. The rest were between $.99 and $1.19 each.

Ok, so what about file format? I mean, you could download these songs, and transfer them to your iPod (for Windows or Mac), right? Umm, no. The songs you download from the BuyMusic.com service are in WMA format. And licensing isn't the same for all songs. Some songs can legally be transferred to other computers. Some songs can't. Some songs can be burned to a CD 3 times. Some can be burned 10 times. It varies from song to song.

We,, what about downloading the songs? Is it easy? Well, not according to this person, who had a horrible experience with the entire process of downloading and burning an album of music.

But most appalling of all is that late in the week BuyMusic.com began blocking any users who don't use Internet Explorer on a Windows-based PC. Yep, that's right. So, if you're using Mozilla, Camino, Opera, or any Mac or Linux-based browser, you aren't allowed to use their site. Yup. If they were only blocking Mac users, they'd be missing out on approximately 5% of their potential market. But they're blocking ANY browser that's not IE on a PC. Ridiculous. And why? Nobody knows. If you disable JavaScript (so their code can't check your browser), you can browse the site just as anybody else can.

Ok, and the last thing. The whole operation seems like it was put together very quickly and hap-hazardly. For example, here's a couple of quotes taken directly from the "Company Info" page on the site:

"...your music downloads have their own DRM license so you can enjoy your music whether or not your logged on to the internet."

"With over this many songs and these great products in one convenient, easy-to-use site, you’re sure to find what you’re looking for at BuyMusic.com."

Uhh..Did a 5 year old write this stuff? Don't you people have proofreaders?"

The good news is: Apple is working on a version of iTunes for Windows right now, and will be released by the end of the year. And then everyone can enjoy easy, pain-free music downloads and burning.

Ok, rant is over. Thanks for letting me get that out. Happy Monday!

Sporadic Blogging

I've been pretty sporadic lately with my blogging. Don't really have too much of an excuse, if you were hoping for one. I've been continuing my recent streak of productive nights working on freelance web projects and CustomTacos. That is, until yesterday. I got home from work and didn't really feel like doing anything. So, I plopped down in front of the ole' Playstation for a few hours of mass destruction and mayhem. Yes, I became Tommy Vercetti. And I killed A LOT of people. And I died. A lot.

But then I became bored with it as I always do and wasted the night away doing..well, I have no clue. I just know that I didn't really get too much accomplished.

This weekend's highlight is the East Coast Nationals car and truck show here in Richmond at the RIR speedway. Should be a great show as always. Some guys from the site are coming in to town, so that should be fun. Have a great weekend!

eBay (and other general) Madness

I've been a busy man lately. Notice the lack of bloggage. Wow, is that a word?

Work's been pretty busy with OS X installations, I continue to have my hands pretty full with freelance website work, and to top it all off, I've got the last round of old stuff up on eBay. I figure it's finally time to get the rest of those old truck parts out of the house..and make way for new ones! Just kidding, Olivia. Don't get scared yet.

Oh yeh, speaking of: I finally did something with JeffandOlivia.info. OK, so it's not much, but it at least establishes the site as SOMETHING. Don't worry, when I get a free day or so, we'll be putting up a full site with details of things we haven't even decided upon yet.

CustomTacos merchandise continues to sell like hot cakes. I've now had 30 tshirt orders in just a short 6 days. Things seem to be slowing down a bit now. Perhaps it's time to send out my quarterly newsletter to talk it up a little more for those who don't visit the site as often. Either way, it's gotten great results: the guys on the site seem to really dig the new gear.

You're getting verrrry sleeepy....

You're getting verrrrry sleeeeeepy.....

The new CustomTacos merchandise has been a great success so far. I've sent off orders for around 20 shirts in the first 24 hours or so. That's more merchandise than I've sold all year. I guess it just took getting some cool stuff to sell.

It's a good thing it's friday, cause I'm tired of this week. But I really don't have any big plans for the weekend.

I decided it was time to wash the truck yesterday evening, but I felt like I needed to get it a little more dirty before I left, so took it back to the construction area near our house and had a little bit of fun. Almost got it stuck in a inconspicuous-looking mud pit, actually. But, all was good and I quickly brought it home and washed about 6 lbs. of mud off the undercarriage. Good as new!

Web Monkeying Around

Wow, I've really been busy the web the past two days. No, that doesn't mean that I've been sitting here at work surfing all day long. I've had a rash (not in my shawts) of freelance requests coming in, plus other stuff, too. Here are some highlights:

A local interior designer was referred to me by another one of my freelance website clients late last week. Apparently, a house that she designed is on the cover of a major magazine (Traditional Home), and she wants a website to show off her work. So, I've been working with her on buying a domain, setting up hosting, and creating a site design that she likes. The good part is, she's been really easy to work with, so this looks like a fun gig.

A few months ago, I contracted one of the guys on CustomTacos to create some artwork that included cartoon-ish renderings of Tacoma trucks. I wanted his artwork mostly to put on merchandise and sell, but all also perhaps to use on the site at some point. So, I received my "sample" shirts with the new artwork yesterday, which is my cue to put them up for sale on the site. I'm actually offering two different versions of the t-shirt: Both shirts have the same large "flamed" logo on the back, but the front can be configured with either the big, silver 4x4 Tacoma or the slammed orange Taco. They look so amazing, I can't believe they turned out so well. Pay Pal notified me that 2 had already sold before I went to be last night, which confirms that these things are gonna sell like hot cakes. :)

Jay (from Show-N-Shine) informed back at Summer Slam that he was looking at doing some kind of a 4x4 Jamboree event this year in October in Winchester. The big expo would be a combination of a truck show, an offroad trail ride, and lots more. His plans seem to be coming together and he's been sending me lots of info to post up on his site. Last night was spent creating a whole new section of his site with information about this event. Check it out!

Finally, I purchsed another domain name a few days ago and I wanted to wait to post it here until the DNS had propogated throughout the 'net. This domain was purchased to become the home for information about Olivia and my wedding. The domain is JeffandOlivia.info. Go ahead. Bookmark it. You know you want to. There's really not much there at this moment, but we're working on it. Should be fun.

On top of that, I've got little freelance projects here and there that I've also been working on, plus the obligatory work, sleep, and eating sometimes.

Happy Birthday, Dad

I'd like to take this opportunity to publicly embarrass my Dad. You see, today is his birthday. Ok, I'm not really going to embarrass him, but that's only because I can't remember exactly how old he is. I think it's close to 36, though. But anyways, me..and the boys...wanted to get you something really nice...

IT'S A SWEATER!!! Happy Birthday, Dad. Hope you have a nice, relaxing one.

3 Years

Well, today marked 3 years that I've been working at Martin. And, you know what? It's was just as exciting today as it was the first day I arrived.

I wish I had been blogging back then so I could go back and see what I would have said after my first day. If I remmeber correctly, I was VERY overwhelmed and not even sure I liked the place. Today, I arrived to work a little late as usual. I attended an HR meeting and found out that I'll be fully-vested in my 401K this August, rather than in the year 2006. Someone in management arranged for the ice cream truck to arrive at 2:30 and hand out ice cream treats to anyone who came outside between the buildings (this happens a couple times a summer, usually). We threw a surprise birthday party for someone in New Business at 3:30. Beer, strawberry daiquiris, and cake ensued. I left work a little late, not unusual.

Not a bad day, I'd say. Here's to another 3 years.

Water Mystery Solved

I stopped by after work on Tuesday and picked up my new tire. Luckily, they ordered the correct tire and it looked fine.

It looks like I might be getting some kind of results from my telephone calls to Ryan Homes about the nails/debris problem that have caused our tire problems. I received a message from a customer service person late yesterday saying that they had swept and/or run a magnet around in the street in front of the job site(s). When I talked with her the other day, I also inquired about getting reimbursed for the price of replacing our two tires. My tire (and mounting/balancing) alone came to right at $150. The lady also said in her message that she would be speaking with someone else at Ryan and that they'd let me know if they were going to reimburse me by Friday. We'll see what happens.

We finally solved the mystery behind Saturday's water-on-the-kitchen-floor disaster. I was chatting with our neighbors last evening when I got home and they were telling me about how their washing machine drain hose hopped out of the drain spout and spilled water all over their first floor. Literally, their entire first floor carpet has been ruined. I asked which say this happened. They replied, "Saturday night". Interesting. They seemed slightly conerned that their mishap had caused us problems, but I assured them that we hadn't experienced any real damage. The carpet got wet, but it has since dried and doesn't seem nasty or mildew-y. I'm just happy to know that all of that water wasn't caused by our refrigerator. It's nice to have closure with something like that. :)

The sickness is almost over. I'm now to the snotty, congested stage, which is ALWAYS an indication that the sickness is on it's way out. Another day or so and I'll be back to 100%.

We;re starting some OS X upgrades here at work. We had our first group OS X training session yesterday when I talked for two hours straight. The afternoon was spent installing OS X (and all the updates and extras) for 3 hours. Figure in an hour or so for lunch and that was pretty much my entire day. Looks like it'll be more of the same today.

My yearly sickness and another flat tire

Well, I had been wondering when my once-a-year sickness would come around. Funny, I never thought it would be during the summer months. Usually, it's during spring or winter, when the weather is changing. But my sinuses are crazy and it's causing my throat to hurt and my ears to clog up. I took some pills last night, which seemed to have helped, but they're making me a little ill this morning, since I haven't had anything to eat since dinner last night. Yup, just those two pills and some mucous sloshing around in my stomach. Not too good.

Speaking of dinner last night, we hit the ole' Quizno's again last night and took advantage of the coupon deal once again. And while we were sitting there enjoying our yummy inexpensive meal, I noticed that my rear passenger tire looked a little low. The more I looked at it, the more curious I became. We left Quizno's and headed accross the street to Pier One. My curiosity was killing me. I grabbed my tire pressure gauge and went back to check the pressure. As I leaned down to take the valve cap off, I noticed something strange about my tire: a large drywall screw sticking out of the middle of the tire!! This would make 2 (count them: one, two) drywall screws in our tires in the past month or so.

I was a little aprehensive about driving home on my damaged tire, so Olivia assisted me with yet another parking lot tire change. She lowered the full-sized spare from under the bed while I loosned the lugs on damaged wheel. We put the spare on, and then went in Barnes & Noble to browse their books.

I woke up this morning feeling as crappy as ever. Last night was the longest, hottest, sweatiest night I've had in a long time.

With the damaged tire in the back of my truck, I left a little early for work wit the intention of stopping somewhere to drop off my tire to be replaced. My philosophy on damaged tires is that if you've got a damaged tire, don't waste your time patching and/or plugging it. Because what you're doing is just causing yourself more headache. It's likely that a patched tire will leak and/or blow out before you're done with it.

My first stop was VA Center GoodYear. I knew that Firestone doesn't carry BFGoodrich tires, so I didn't even bother. The GoodYear guy told me that he could order me a tire, but it might take a week to get in. No thanks.

My second stop was Merchant's Tire. The guy in there couldn't find any mention of a BFGoodrich tire called the Rugged Trail A/T. He could find the Long Trail A/T, but that was a completely different tire, and I didn't want that. He suggested that I try going to one of the Toyota dealerships. He figured that maybe the Rugged Trail tire was something that was used only in OEM situations.

So, I headed over to Mechanicsville Toyota. I went in and told the service guy my predicament. He seemed very confused. It wasn't until I spelled it out a second time that he finally understood that I had the wheel and tire OFF of the truck and just wannted them to mount/balance a new tire for me. He still seemed confused, so I asked him if this was a strange request. he said that it was a strange request because they don't have a tire shop there at their location. When they have tire work that needs to be done, they send it off-site to a tire specialty shop. I finally got him to agree that I'd be smarter to take it to a tire shop myself instead of letting them to it and jack the price way up. He pointed accross the street to Schmigal GoodYear (can't remember the real name) and said that they could probably order it for me. Yay, another GoodYear.

Stop #4: Schwazilee Good Year. When I asked the guy if they carried BFGoodrich tires, he said that they don't stock them, but that he could have one in by the end of the day. "Can you have it in and mounted and balanced on my wheel by the end of the day?" "Yep." Ok, sold. $126 for the tire and then another $14 or so for mounting, balancing, and labor. So, I'm looking at around $140 to replace my tire. Owch. Thanks, Ryan Homes. You're the best.

The Decision

Today was a pretty busy day at work. Part of what made it so busy was that it seemed like everywhere I went people were asking me about one of three things: the vacation, the engagement, or the job offer. Don't get me wrong, I'm really not complaining. Well, maybe about the job thing. You see, the idea was that nobody at work would need to know about this exploratory endeavor, but somehow the word aboout the existance of this site spread quickly around the office while I was on vacation. I chuckled to myself about a year ago when he became aware that people from his office were reading his blog, and now I'm experiencing the same thing. The good news is that I've suspected that this was the case for months now, so I've been extra careful to not post any information that I wouldn't want folks at work to know about, if they happen to peak in. The negative side of that is I don't really feel as if I have as much freedom on here anymore. I have to be at least a little careful with what I say.

So the descision I made about the job offer is as follows: I made the decision that I feared that I might have to make ever since I laid eyes on the opportunity. I declined Apple's offer for the Mac Genius position.

To be honest, the decision to either take or leave the opportunity hinged on one single factor: work hours. As a retail employee, I would be required to work retail hours. So what does that mean? That means that I could be working different hours each day. I might work 8-5 some days and maybe 12-9 other days. It means that I would be working at least some weekends. It means that my schedule as it pertains to my friends and family would be totally different. Weekends camping? Might not be able to make it. Going to car shows in the summer? Might not be able to do it.

So I must give credit where credit is due: Michael Sos, thanks for your thoughtful email that forced me to examine the opportunity in a slightly different manner. It encouraged me to make this decision based on my life priorities, not based on the excitement of a job. When I really stopped and thought about what was more important, I discovered that I couldn't put a price tag (even one with an Apple logo on it) on the time that is spent with friends and family. I couldn't change my life's priorities to fit this job. So, I've decided not to.

Don't get me wrong: it hurts. I have some serious buyer's remorse. The fact that I've dreamed of working for Apple for so long and to have that dream THAT CLOSE (so close that I could reach out and grab it, if I wanted!) to reality and then pass it all up.

But it's over, and I'm really kinda glad. I'm ready to not stress over it any longer. I'm ready to move on.

Maybe I'm not really going anywhere at Martin right now, but at least I get a 4-day weekend starting today for July 4th. Yep, they gave us today off.

Happy Deathday???