Your 29, It's Pretty Cool
I turned 29 yesterday. Seems like a pre-milestone. I'm really starting to feel old, but strangely looking forward to turning 30.
To celebrate my birthday I went to work because I'm so backed up that I really couldn't afford to take the day off. I'm working remotely on Friday though and might cash in my chips then.
Last night I had my family over for dinner. Typically we go out to eat somewhere, but I just wanted to chill at home. Watched the movie "Meet Bill" and loved it despite all the negative reviews.
For gifts I got all Best Buy gift certicates and cash (thank you) which is just fine by me. I'm itching for a Blu-Ray player and/or Rock Band 2 was just announced so the money will be spent quickly.
This weekend I'll be wakeboarding if the weather nice, but the forecast doesn't look good. I'm heading up to Dave and Buster's Friday night, which is place I haven't been and have been meaning to go, so that will be fun. Mostly I'm looking to just get caught up both at work and home.
It's amazing how a few badly timed coincidences and really mess things up.
Thursday, July 17 |
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uplinkearth sucks
My fellow visitors,
You may have noticed that my website has been up, down, slow, and unreliable. Guess what, so have I. My previous web host uplinkearth, brought my site to the ground. They used to be a great company. Cheap, fast, reliable, fast response time, but all that slowly went out the window.
What's funny is that they noticed their service starting to degrade, so had this big plan to migrate their customers to new server platforms, but that's where they really messed up. The site started running even worse, and most functionality I had broke or wasn't ready yet.
The real nail in the coffin for this company was that my employer's public website was hosted here too, and things that takes minutes to fix were taking multiple days if that and crippled crucial functionality like online donations that we depend upon so much.
I won't get into any details, but the bottom line is uplinkearth.com SUCKS!!! My site is now hosted by a highly recommend company, HostMySite.com and I LOVE them so far. They've already gone above and beyond what their support requires twice!
Also you've probably noticed but I've started to blog less. Frankly, I have less interesting things to post and I've started posting more "mini-blogs" on twitter, check me out there.
Monday, July 14 |
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Netflix Eliminating Account Profiles
Link: http://www.hackingnetflix.com/2008/06/netflix-elimina.html
For anyone out there that knows me, I'm a HUGE Netflix user. I rate, review, sent notes about EVERY single movie I watch, including movies that I've seen before but not rented. I'm on Netflix daily rating movies and being involved in the "community". Every Sunday, I read reviews, watch previews, and add new movies to my queue. I've watched the top 100 movies of all time according to the American Film Institute, had my queue maxed out at 500 movies at one time, and since added a separate profile for my wife's movies, and one for my tv shows. Needless to say, I'm a HUGE Netflix geek.
This is an extremely dumb decision unless they have some sort of secret replacement that's even better out there. If anything, I wanted them to enhance the functionality (ability to move movies from one queue to the next, ability to view other queues without having to log out and back in).
The feature is a marriage saver! My wife hated some of the movies I picked out, and I hated some of hers, so we both got what we wanted. For parents out there, they can manage their kids shows with this feature.
It's just beyond me why they could possibly think this is a good move. What less money spend on development so they can focus on more profitable areas of the business? Yeah maybe, but some people pick Netflix over Blockbuster just for this feature!
Honestly, I'm not jumping shipping or anything as I firmly believe in Netflix, and actually I had just about eliminated my other sub-profiles anyway, because I'm REALLY cut-back on my movie watching (life is too short), but I still don't want to see this go away.
Make it right Netflix!
Wednesday, June 18 |
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IT Specialist (Level 1 Help Desk)
Second Harvest Heartland is hiring for an IT Specialist, Level 1 Help Desk. This is a perfect job for someone just graduating from college with little to no experience (although experience is welcome). We have a unique set of requests so there’s plenty of variety. Here’s the job posting. If you are interested, please contact me.
http://www.2harvest.org/about/employment/positions/Help%20Desk,%20Level%201.pdf
Monday, April 14 |
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New Orleans
This week I was in New Orleans this week for the 2008 NTEN conference. The timing was horrible because I was just in California a few weeks ago and was just getting caught up at the office from being gone and now I'm all backed up again. The good news is word around the campfire says I'm finally getting an assistant which I'm really excited for. I might be getting a database administrator as well which should really free me up to complete some projects at work. The last few months, I've just been keeping the place running instead of advancing the organization. It's really hard to go to a technology conference like this and get jazzed about emerging technologies only to realize it will a LONG time until you get to them. Hopefully that changes soon.
The conferences started early Wednesday morning, so I had to fly in late Tuesday night. The weather in Minnesota when I left was around 30 degrees, so it was pretty nice to land in 75 degree weather. I was expecting it to feel more hot and humid, but it was really perfect all week. At the airport I was suppose to pick up a rental car and I explicitly picked a company (Thirfty) that didn't require a shuttle, but sure enough when I got there, the one rental company not onsite was mine. That really bugged me, but what do you do, especially when you reserve it on a 3rd party site like Orbitz.com.
I rented a Dodge Caliber. It was a tight little car that handled alright (for an American car), but the acceleration was crap. I think it was really beaten up because it was a rental car. It still got me from point A to B though. It also had a direct audio jack for plugging in an MP3 player which was nice. Why don't ALL cars have this? It's not hard to do (REALLY irritates me)!
The conference was at the Sheraton hotel downtown. Unfortunately, all the rooms were booked (according to the website) when I purchased my tickets so I had to stay at another nearby hotel, which sucked because I was constantly walking back and forth to change clothes and drop off materials. But at least it was walking distance. I stayed at the Iberville Suites, which must have been partnered with the Ritz-Carlton because they were in the same building, so needless to say, it was pretty nice. Besides the floors being a little weird (had to ride multiple elevators to get to my room), there was no parking lot so you were forced to use valet service.
The first day of the conference, Wednesday, was called a "Day of Service". I was actually in one meeting all day exclusively with food bank folks from around the country talking about the future of technology as it relates to food banks. Naturally I got the most out of this session, since it applies directly to me. The Louisiana Food Bank was nice enough to offer a tour to our group and feed us dinner. They served crawfish and I actually tried it! Wouldn't say it was good, but I was proud of myself for eating it.
Thursday's conference started with a plenary from David Pogue, a writer at the New York Times. If you haven't heard of him he's known for his humorous takes on technology.
The second session I attended was on social networking. Talked about how to use sites like Facebook and MySpace in a nonprofit world. Met some really interesting people and got some good ideas.
The next session was about ways to utilize SMS info (text messages). The subject was fascinating. Just think in the near future you could text a 5 digit "short code" the world hunger, and have your phone tell you the nearest place to get food based on your location?
The final session of the day was dedicated to re-vamping your website. I've done multiple site re-designs, but I wanted to hear tips and tricks from other professionals to make sure my tactics were in-line.
Thursday night there was an after-party at a famous jazz bar called, Tipitina's. I'm not a huge jazz fan, but it was cool to hear it in an authentic place like that.
Friday was really brief and mostly spent traveling home. Minnesota got blasted with snow, so I was worried that I wouldn't make it home for a long time. But I was fortunate enough to return home on time (I'm a homebody).
All in all, the trip was a good experience because I got to travel to a new place and see some of the after-effects of Katrina up close and personal. It wasn't my favorite place in the world so I'd certainly only recommend a visit, but there are many other places I'd probably go first.
