Category: Uncategorized

I gave a presentation to my employers management team on new technology.

It is nice when they are excited about what we are doing.

This Dilbert Cartoon pretty much sums up my technique in explaining my realm.

My birthday is coming up (less than 2 weeks away).

For those of you racking your brains trying to find the perfect gift, might I suggest this item from e-bay

The toilette wasn’t flushed…

Being a father of a5 and a 3 year old, that statement shouldn’t be too suprising, but the one that I speak of is not at home.

This is the “stand-up” one at the office.

The only reason this bugs me is because that one is on a motion detector. It detects the individuals presence. Then, flushes when that presence ceases to exist.

All that begs the question, how can it remain unflushed? How does one trick the system?

It has led me to only one explaination…

We have a vampire in our midst.

I am a Cub Guy.

I went to Bylery’s over lunch today. I realized that I am not, nor will I ever be, a Byerly’s guy. I don’t mind the store so much, but the shoppers there seem like they are fresh from the “remember-you-are-better-than-carl” meeting.

There seems to be an entitlement attitude that is prevelant among a number of the customers. Take for instance the gal in front of me at the salad bar who was somewhere between 67 and 182. The rules are pretty simple. Start at the left with the lettuice, and end on the right with the dressing. Stay in that order, and no one gets hurt.

This gal was a dodge, weave, step back and dodge in again kind of gal. The order of salad creation didn’t seem to matter, nor did the fact that others were there. At one point, she stepped in front of me (which would have been ok with a simple “Excuse me, may I get a slice of cucumber”) and did nothing. Just stood there looking at the salad bar. Finally she looked back at me and said “Oh… you can go around”. That was quite thoughtful of her, except that the 3 things I wanted on my Romaine were right in front of her.

“Actually M’am, I would like some of that Bleu Cheese… It’s right there… In front of you… Can I please… would you mind if I… could … may… ”

Then I remembered my basketball technique and started using my elbows.

I got the salad and walked to the cash register.

As I walked up to aisle 10, the well-to-do lady in front of me realized that line 9 was shorter and left. I stepped up to take what was her place. When she got to 9, she realized that it was shorter because the gentleman over there had a large cart of groceries. Rather than cutting her loss, she squeezed back in in front of me in aisle 10.

AGAIN… had she asked, I would have certainly said yes, but apparently something about me makes it clear that I do not earn 6 figures a year, and therefore am not worth talking to, or presenting manners to.

I didn’t realize what tied this all together until I got to the parking lot (filled with Buicks in the aisle waiting for the next guy to pull out so they can be 5 spots from the door, rather than the dismal 7 spots away).

It is entitlement. It all comes down to that. Many of those shopping at Byerly’s arrive with the belief that they are the most important customer in the store. That is something Byerly’s caters to very well. At Cub, however, you realize you are one of hundreds of customers; the absense of which would go unnoticed by the store’s personell

I like that. I like being able to go in, and not be noticed. I like having the median income of those shopping. When someone wants something where I am standing, I politely get out of the way and let them at the shelf. Then, two aisles later, they do the same thing for me.

I am a Cub guy.

The Pretty one is out of town for a work-retreat today. That leaves me on kid duty.

Not going too bad today! About the time she returns this afternoon, I take off to do some work at a concert we are promoting.

That weekend work allowed me to take some time off yesterday. I went out with some co-workers to watch The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy.

I appreciated the treatment. It is hard to be too tough on it, since Douglas Adams wrote the screenplay himself. Plenty of missing stuff for the DVD though.

I don’t have an iPod. However, I do have iTunes. I love having my entire library at my fingertips. The only problem is that it is only as portable as my laptop. I can’t really hook up headphones and listen while I do the dishes.

So being a semi-geek, I decided to improvise with the tools at hand.

My laptop also contains Windows Media Encoder 9 (a free download last time I checked). So I set up my iTunes to stream out of my laptop via WME9.

The next step was to grab my WiFi enabled PDA with Windows Media Mobile, and dial up that stream. After plugging in some headphones, and putting it in my pocket, I can now pick up my iTunes stream anywhere in the house.

“Necessity” is the mother of invention. Geek-dom is the father.

Sorry, I have been traveling a bit… I suppose I can blog while I am on the road.

I just found out on Monday, that I will be going to Belize in 3 weeks. Should be an interesting trip.

It was nice to come home after a rather quick trip to Iowa this week. Unfortuately, I think I brought a nasty cold back with me. I guess that happens when you rent a car and rent a room.

I wasn’t too sick to go outside yesterday. The weather was warm, and beckoned everyone in my town to their back yards. It is always nice to meet the neighbors after months of solitude.

I was able to take rake some leaves off of one of the gardens yesterday.

After that I was a bit exhausted, so I went back indoors and tried to rest off the cold.

I also decided I needed to do some tinkering. I went into my shop and pieced together some old computer parts to create a Linux server. It is something I have always wanted to do (mostly for personal development). It was fun to make it work.

My whirlwind April contiues with 3 big weeks coming up.

I am sitting in my hotel room in Des Moines, posting to my blog after just completing a project for our location in Minneapolis, while listening to a radio station from Florida.

Worldwide multitasking.

This was one of those fun, deadline, on top of a deadline, on top of a deadline days.

I am preparing for a trip to one of our Satellite locations to roll out a new service. It is kind of exciting for me. It is a bit like the end of a giant jigsaw puzzle. I was given a giant box with 1000 pieces, a picture of what they wanted it to look like, then let loose to figure out the best way to accomplish the task.

I have made the task work in my “lab”, and now I get to see if I can make it work on the field. While trying to pack up all the batch files and scripts that I need for that project, I was informed that a production project I was working on actually had a deadline of yesterday. The only problem was that no one bothered to tell me. The work order listed it as ASAP, but it was really not yet “P” based on the other projects I was working on. I had a healthy discussion with the project manager about value of a hard date.

So… while I was working on that project (this is now project number 2 on my desk…), I was informed of a web-promotion that was supposed to be running (again…ASAP). Of course, since I work in the communications field, that was not really communicated to me either.

I now have 3 projects due before the end of the day (actually 2 before lunch and one before the end of the day).

While I work through these (which really shouldn’t take too long on their own), our Vice President comes with an urgent need to get a product out to a branch of ours that was currently doing a big event. So there I was, with 4 equally important “ASAP’s”. They all got out. And I even managed to fit a long lunch break in there.

At least I am utilized.