jeffpollard.net

A moment to breathe

So I get in to work this morning, set up and open up my computer, and sit down, fully expecting to be flooded with the morning's issues. But, I launched Entourage and found only spam about Vicodin and V.I.A.G.R.A.(or v1agra). No new tickets. Amazing. Maybe, just maybe, I'll have a few moments to catch up on some things.

House calls have been busy lately, which is good for my wallet, but sometimes painful after a long, stressful day.

Eric was nice enough to let me change my oil out in his garage the other night. I was pessimistic enough letting it go 5,000 miles, let alone 5,200 miles. We'll hope Castrol Syntec held up for that many miles. Speaking of the truck, I finally broke down and ordered my Flex-a-Lite dual electric fan last night. I can't wait to wrench on my truck again. Seems like it's been a while. And this mod will not only blow more air across my engine, but it will also free up some horsies and give me a little better gas mileage. It's a win-win-win situation. Now, if I could just get some warm weather to install it in a week or so...

It looks like I'm finally going to get the chance to meet my CustomTacos partner in crime, Randy from Missouri. Randy and I somehow found each other online a few years back and he's been the single biggest help I've had building the site right from day one. He's done everything from helping me code tech articles to providing advice, both truck-related and site-related. I've told him before that I couldn't have done this without him, but I'm not sure how much I really mean that. Now I just have to trick him into letting me buy him and his wife dinner this Wednesday night. They're making a trip to the east coast and they're going to go a few hours out of their way to drop in on us. Very cool.

This weekend we're doing another bachelor party..this time for Jon Bultema. We're headed up to DC for the event, so it should be a good time. Happy weekend!

TiVo Upgrades and Quick Days

Wow, look at the time! It seems like I just got to work and it's already 12:30. Sheesh, the days just fly by lately.

Speaking of flying by, my weekend flew by as well. I spent the entire weekend hanging out with Mike and Brian, doing mostly geeky stuff. We did some re-wiring in Mike's house, we upgraded my TiVo (now with 186 hours of recording time, YAY!), and watched Matrix Reloaded.

Fun weekend, but it's over and now it's back to the grind.

Continuing Frusterations at Work

In addition to having Monday off for Columbus Day, I took Tuesday off from work as a person day to head up to the valley for my Uncle Fred's funeral. Even now, it seems weird even typing those words. He had been fighting brain cancer for a number of years and his body finally gave in. The funeral was great and I think our family held up pretty well, despite the unfortunate circumstances. I don't know what else to say about this other than it reaffirms my fear of cancer. It seems like every time I lose a friend of family member to cancer, I get very angry at the world of science. Why is it with all of the technology and information that we have (in the year 2003!) that we can't seem to find a way to stop this terrible disease? It makes me very uneasy knowing that it can sneak up on you and take your entire life away, in a matter of months. If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm not too keen on the idea of death.

On to a more happy subject..or not. Work. Work has still been busy. I felt like I was playing catch-up all day today. And I continued to notice, as I have often recently, that things aren't quite right in our department. It's really difficult to put into words. At our last department meeting, we played a little game about maintaining good, clear communication within our department. The bad news is, I'm not sure if it served its purpose. In general, I don't feel like our department is functioning as a cohesive unit. There are certain groups that are still functioning great, in my opinion. Tommy and myself are kicking butt getting the new Macs rolled out, despite our frustrations with Quark. I guess the bad part is, there's really nothing I can do except sit back and hope that someone important notices the problems and figures out a way to turn things around.

In other news, I purchased a 120gb IDE drive to install in my TiVo on Monday at Best Buy. After the 10% off (thanks, Brian!) and the rebates, it'll end up only costing me around $63. Not bad at all. Another $60 was spent on the installation kit from Weaknees.com and now I'm ready to upgrade the TiVo. I should have somewhere around 160 hours of recording time after it's all done.

I also started a new promotion over on the ole' Taco shack where we'll be giving away something cool each month for the next few months. Luckily, I've got lots of great relationships with companies who would benefit from the exposure of giving away stuff. We're starting small and just giving away a CustomTacos t-shirt this month, but I've already gotten verbal commitment from three of my other vendors to help me give away neat stuff. The underlying goal is to sustain and grow my premium membership numbers, which helps to keep revenue coming in to the site. All users will be eligible for the first contest and subsequent drawings will probably be only for my premium members. We'll see how it works out.

Friday at last

Ahhh..Friday at last. I'm going to be so glad this week is over. And more importantly, it's a 3-day weekend - we get Monday (Columbus Day) off.

Our TiVo-filled Thursday night was great. There were many times when the pause and rewind features came in VERY handy. I also had new episodes of Fresh Gear and The Screen Savers (TechTV) and Motor Trend TV. These are shows that I hardly ever get to watch because they come on at odd times and it's not worth it to setup the VCR to record them. Now, I just have to set up my season pas for McGyver and The Dukes of Hazzard (if it's still on).

A rocky start to my TiVo-lution

It has been absolutely insane here at work. I can't think of a single time in the past week or two that I've been sitting here thinking, "Gee, what is there to do?" Likewise, it's been a long time since I've written anything in here. Gotta prioritize, I guess.

So the big hoo-ha here at work is that our 50-couple PowerBooks and 37 desktops have all arrived. Along with some 75 19" Dell flat panels and about 100 Dell workstations. To make things more interesting, all of our new Macs ONLY boot OS X, so we're upgrading 90% of our Mac users to ten. Oh, and it all needs to be done within the next three weeks. Yay!

The other big news on the work front is that we found out Monday (officially) that we have won the Quiznos advertising business. What awesome news. And, in typical Martin fashion, a party with plenty of Quiznos subs and frosty beverages ensued across the street at Richbrau.

Olivia and I finally took the plunge and purchased a TiVo Monday night. I've been considering making this purchase for a long time based on the rave reviews from our various friends who currently own one. I ended up spending way more money on it that I had originally thought I would, but I really think it'll be worth it. I went ahead and purchased the Home Media option so that we can view photos and listen to music on our home network. I also went out to Wal-Mart that night and purchased a USB wireless adaptor (firmware ver. 2.5). So, I'm all set with my wireless TiVo. Now, I just have to find time to actually program and use it! Oh, I almost forgot: We purchased the TiVo at Best Buy as an open box item. The tag said that the item was not damaged and wasn't missing any parts. And it was a bit cheaper than the brand new box. I even had a Best Buy employee open the box so that I could inspect the contents. Everything looked fine. But, once I got home and turned the unit on, it was a different story. To make a long story short, the hard drive in the unit was borderline dead (it was making all kinds of clunking noises, etc.), so I took it back to Best Buy yesterday afternoon and exchanged it for a brand new unit and no extra cost. They originally wanted to charge me the difference between the open box price and the regular price, but I argued until I got my way. What a jerk I am. So, we now have a brand new TiVo for cheaper-than-retail.

I had other news, I think, but 23 more PowerBooks just arrived on our doorstep. Guess I've got work to do. :(