jeffpollard.net

In Reston This Week

So I'm up here in beautiful Northern Virginia this week for some MacOS X training at Apple's office in Reston. Martin finally decided after almost 4 years that they'd live up to their promise and send me to some training. I guess I can't blame them too much, since the economy's been in the crapper for the past couple years.

So, I have three main objectives for this week:

	Be a sponge. No, I'm not planning on getting a makeover so that I look like Mr. Squarepants, but I do plan on soaking up as much information in my training class as I possibly can. This is definitely a HUGE opportunity to further my knowledge of OS X. It's exciting. Even more exciting - I'm on track to get my ACSA (Apple Certified Systems Administrator) certification. I was told today that less than 1,000 people in the US have this certification. Pretty cool.
	Relax. With as busy as the past few weeks have been at work, I was in need of a break from it all. As much as I love my job, the daily grind was really starting to take it's toll on me. And not just work, but the daily routine of it all. This is a great opportunity to step back from it all and relax. Almost like a retreat.
	Get some stuff done. If you take a look around this website, you'll see lots and lots of old, outdated content. And I mean lots. It's just old, funky, and in need of some serious updating. The truck section of my site is due for a huge overhaul, too. I plan on getting it all done this week. Screw CustomTacos and any other client websites that need work. This week belongs to THIS website, and I plan on making the most of it. Look for changes soon.

So, it's off to soak, relax, and work I go.

Handheld Hell

So I'm basically in handheld hell. Well, maybe hell is too strong of a word for it. My Handspring Visor Edge is pretty much dead. Well, I guess I should say that it has a dead battery. It only holds a charge for a couple of hours before it dies and loses all of its data.

So, I've been considering getting a new PDA for a while and the Sony PEG-UX50 really appeals to me with its Wi-Fi and bluetooth connectivity, keyboard, and color screen. But it's around $500.

I've also been considering getting a new phone. My current phone (the Motorola V60i) gets poor reception out at my house and in my office, but I'm pretty happy with it otherwise. Actually, I wish it were a little cooler, since most of the new phones have color screens and stuff.

So, I started considering devices that are BOTH a phone and a PDA. In the realm of Palm-based PDA phones, there's only a few choices. I have been playing around with an extra Handspring Treo 300 here at work and it's pretty cool, except the battery life is a little short. That's a frustration I already have with my current phone, and I'd hate to move to a phone with a weaker battery.

The other option is the Handspring Treo 600, which is a nice PDA phone with a camera built-in (whop-dee-doo) keyboard, and color screen. The battery life is much better than the Treo 300, but it also carries a $450 price tag. Yeowch.

I've even considered keeping my current phone and just replacing my PDA (possibly a Tungston T3 or Zire 71). Or, I guess the other option would be to just replace the battery in the Visor and get a new phone.

So, what do you think?

How Lamers Get Around

I was walking from the parking deck up Cary Street this morning to work when I saw this tour bus coming towards me. You know the kind: Quick's or Greyhound or something, always filled with tourist-types staring out of the windows. But something set this tourist-filled bus from others I've seen before. As it passed by, I read the name on the side of the bus: LAMERS

Gee, I always wondered how lamers got around. I guess we all know now. By bus!

Here's what it looked like:

Doing things I never thought I could do

So since I haven't written on here in a while, I'll try to make this as interesting as possible.

So work has been really busy, but should be calming down a bit now. We just finished up a lease and packed the computers up for the truck on Friday. It'll be nice to have those old dual 800 G4s out the door. That's right, folks. The oldest desktop Macs our people use are G5s and iMacs. Not too shabby.

Other work has been absolutely crazy. Remember a month or so ago when I listed off all of the sites that I would be working on? Most of those I just recently completed in the past two weeks. And as grueling as it was, the steady stream of extra cash has been really awesome. House calls have picked up, too. A big audio recording studio here in town, Rainmaker Studios, got my name and I've been doing some work down in Shockoe Bottom for them in the evenings, too. But it's not just them down there. There's 4 or 5 companies housed in that building that use Macs and now know who to call when they need help. Needless to say, word of mouth has been very kind to me lately.

The wedding plans are starting to kick into a higher gear, and we sent out our "Save the Date" cards late last week. It was really a blast designing them ourselves (using Adobe InDesign), but pretty time consuming.

Speaking of switching gears...One thing that has been a problem for a while up here in my computer room has been heat. Everything up here gives off a ton of heat: the computers, the monitors, the lights, and even me! When we purchased the house, we had the option of having Ryan pre-wire this room for a ceiling fan. But, to cut costs, we decided against it. I figured that if I really wanted to install one, I could probably have someone do it later.

Well, I decided recently that "later" was now. With my recent success of do-it-yourself projects (lifting the truck, installing a patio, etc.) I figured I could pull this off.

Before I started, the room was only wired with a single wall switch that controlled an outlet that I have a lamp plugged into. I figured I could tap power from that switch, install a ceiling fan box in the ceiling, and badda-bing! Ceiling fan!

I went to Lowe's last weekend and purchased all the goodies I would need to complete the project and finally made the time to do it this weekend. The amazing part is that it went perfectly (well, almost). I hopped up in the attic and cut out the ceiling of my computer room for the fixture box, secured the box, ran power cable from the switch box to the fixture box, ripped out the old single-switch box and installed a dual-gang box, hooked up the wiring in the new box, and attached the fan to the ceiling. Here's a photo of the fan in action and my finger after slicing it open because I was too lazy to go get the wire strippers:

What's really cool about the fan project is that it's something that I didn't know that I could do. This room was not at all wired or designed for a fan, but I got the right tools, read some books, and then pulled it off with only a cut finger. It definitely reassures my belief that anybody can do anything, if they put their mind to it.

In the next few days I hope to finally (a year later!) redesign my truck page with info and photos of my Double Cab and put a new face on our Wedding site.