jeffpollard.net

Second Song

I've still been playing with GarageBand and here's my second song.

Wintertime Blahs

I think I must have the Wintertime Blahs. Maybe you've heard of it. Some scientists believe that it has something to with the amount of sunlight and blah blah blah. Who knows. I just know that having some time off with little motivation to do anything exciting has gotten old.

Luckily, our iLife '04 software arrived yesterday at work. It includes updated version of iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD. In addition, it included a brand new app called GarageBand. Now, you guys know I'm certainly no musician. At all. But, I sat down with GarageBand last night and had a blast creating a couple little ditties using the built-in loops and effects. Curious enough yet? Take a listen to the little song that I created. Nothing too exciting, but not bad for having absolutely no musical talent.

I opened my email last night only to be flooded with (and I'm not joking here) more than 480 Movable Type comment notifications from this site. You see, there are programs that people write that go out on the Internet and find Movable Type sites and flood them with comments. It's not even spamming, if you ask me. It's just annoying. Luckily, I found some software that will allow me to prevent this kind of thing from happening again. So if you're out there, annoying-comment-spammers, BRING IT ON!

I guess it's time to get back to work. Or maybe I'll just go play with GarageBand some more. :)

Snow (not Informer)

My little Aiwa 3-disc bookshelf stereo has lived a long and fruitful life. But I recently decided that the time had come to replace it with something a little smaller and more specialized for the task. Since finishing college and having a living room, I haven't used any of the real functions of the stereo: radio, playing CDs, tapes (bwahahahaha), etc. Nope, it's simple been sitting here in my computer room as a set of external speakers for my computer(s). And it's done a great job, although it has taken up loads of space in my office. So, I went out this weekend looking for a computer speaker setup that would be comparable in sound and much smaller. I had heard good things about JBL's "Creature" speakers and figured that's probably what I'd end up taking home. It's a good thing that I went into the store with an open mind and tested ALL of the speaker systems before I made my mind. In comparing the JBLs to some of the other systems, I was a little disappointed in their sound. Aesthetically, they're awesome. They look like little UFOs and have LEDs on the bottoms to give the appearance that they're floating. But when I compared to the sound I was hearing compared to Logitech's Z-2200 system..well, there was no comparison. The JBLs sounded tinny and lackluster. The Logitech system, at only $20 more expensive provided nice, clean, FULL sound. It probably helps that the entire system is rated at 200 watts, while the JBL system is rated at a mere 40 watts. To make a long story shorter, I bought them. And, it sounds INCREDIBLE. I couldn't be happier. I never thought a set of two small computer speakers and an 8" sub could vibrate the floor so well! I'm truly blown away with these speakers.

As the title of this entry indicates, we received about 4-6 inches of snow beginning Sunday around 3pm. It started out slow and I commented to Olivia that I didn't think it would amount to anything. I guess someone hasn't been reading the local new lately because it surely did amount to something. Luckily, I got an extra day off work today, but it looks like I'm only getting the morning off tomorrow. Lucky Olivia gets (at least) another day.

The best part of the snow is that I finally had the chance to take my truck out in it and play. And play I did. With Olivia gripping the "oh sh*t handle" on her side of the truck, we gracefully did a few donuts in the snow out on Hunton Park Boulevard. She may not admit it outright, but it was fun. I should have gotten some photos (or a movie) of my truck in the snow. Maybe next time.

Finally, while Chris and the gang were over here on Saturday night, somehow the topic of "Europe" came up in conversation. Which led me to reminiscing about listening to "Out of This World". A quick trip to the iTunes Music Store, clickity-click, and 5 minutes later I had the entire album once again.

By the way, it looks like Comcast finally upgraded our cable modem speed to 3Mb/sec. Nice to see them giving us a little more speed since they've raised their rates a bunch of times lately.

Shoes and a Hidden Gem

Hey look, I finally motivated myself to update my site again.

Nothing too exciting happening. I finally found a new pair of shoes that fit and were cool enough to fit my strict standards (yeh, right!). Ok, the big news is: they're red. I don't think I've ever owned a red pair of shoes. In fact, most of my shoes have been black, tan, or a shade of grey. I figured it was time to do something different and these shoes fit the bill perfectly.

Also, in searching around the iTunes Music Store the other day, I found this little gem. Yeh, DJ Encore. Pretty cool if you like pop-ish techno. It reminds me of Amber back in the late 90s before she went all weird. I did exactly what I'm sure Apple wants people to do: I found some music that I already own and then clicked through some of the links for "Related artists". Sure enough, I found this album, listened to the :30s of each song and then purchased the entire album. Impulse buying, I suppose. With 1-click ordering, it's just too easy.

Work is steady these days. We implemented our new Help Desk system that I've been dreaming of for 3 years. It's all web-based, written with ASP and SQL server, for you geeks wondering. It's a package we purchased called Issue Trak. I've been pretty impressed with it. I think the best part is the flexibility that it gives me to submit my own tickets, and update and close my open tickets. It's good for a control freak like me. It also has an integrated knowledge base to store frequently encountered problems and a inventory management system. Not bad.

Ok, so that's all of my random ramblings for now.

Hello From XMUG

I'm writing this from our XMUG meeting where I am demo-ing Movable Type.

It's the hap- hap- iest season of all

It's one of the most exciting times of year. No, not Christmas. That was two weeks ago. It's MacWorld San Francisco time! Tomorrow is the big Steve-note with hopefully some cool new product announcements.

If you're at all curious, you can tune in to the live stream starting tomorrow at 12noon.