My blog. Personal thoughts, anecdotes, and musings.
Thanks to Erich, who was nice enough to loan me his firewire cable, I was able to capture some digital video into my new machine. It works great. It took only 18 minutes to export an AVI of my wedding, complete with transitions, and only 53 minutes to convert the video to a DVD, including write time! I’m quite impressed and very excited about the possibilites for the future.
I read an article today about the “tyranny” of email. It made me think about how much e-mail has really impacted the way people communicate. I remember when our mail servers crashed in 1999 and people were absolutely frantic because they couldn’t communicate. I remember telling my boss “You do have a telephone” but the truth is that nobody is ever at their desks these days. The people I need to contact are often only available via laptops or cell phones, and so email is a way of life. The programmers that I work with are only a few doors away from my office, and yet I have caught myself composing an email to schedule a meeting or distribute information. Most of the time, I stop myself and slap my face a few times before walking down the hall to the person’s office and meeting face-to-face. Computer people are too impersonal as it is… why make it worse? Furthermore, I fear that we may be making otherwise outgoing people more intraverted.
My computer was delivered this morning!!!!
I’ve said it before and I will say it again. I am very unhappy with the way companies treat people who use their goods and services. Let’s look at Airborne Express, the company that is supposed to ship my computer. After receiving notice that they attempted to deliver my computer today, I called my wife to find out what heppened. She told me that she had been home all day and didn’t hear anyone knock or ring the doorbell. I immediately called the customer service number and talked with a very helpful lady who told me that she would notify the delivery person to attempt a second delivery today. I thanked her and hung up.
I spent the entire weekend playing with my daughter. We did everything
from reading books and watching movies to playing in the snow. She even
helped me put a new power supply in my computer. She’s such a nerd!
In case anyone cares, the Motorola DCT2000 cable box that Charter provides for digital cable is actually a Jerrold / General Instruments box, as Motorola accquired those companies. So, if your home theatre / universal remote doesn’t have an entry for Motorola cable boxes, you can try a Jerrold or General Instruments code. It worked great for me… thanks to this news post
My computer shipped out today. I had some rather angry words with some Dell customer service people last night and I finally found a really helpful guy who expedited my order. It shipped this morning thankfully, so that whole mess is over. I have my DVD drive working and I recorded my first disc. I am very much amazed at the quality of the video that Chris shot at my wedding.
Microsoft released the pricing for their Windows 2003 server thingy that
comes out on April 24th. They’ve got four versions coming out, and it
appears to be identical to the pricing for Windows 2000. That’s
not too bad, but I feel sorry for anyone who just migrated from Windows
NT to Windows 2000. Right now, statistics show that 70% of Microsoft’s
server customers are using Windows NT 4.0. I think this cartoon illustrates
why people don’t jump on Microsoft’s latest and greatest.
dada is kicking off a 45 city tour this spring and summer. They’re doing a two-week run through the Midwest, and they may actually get to Minnesota and Wisconsin! However, I’ll probably hit up Chicago for this show… not sure yet.
I am putting a website live right now… I’m waiting for the files to upload to the host. I just finished a site for a client and it feels good. I think the design is a bit dated, but it still looks good and the client is very happy. It’s true what they say…. web design isn’t about what makes you happy… it’s about what makes the client happy. I suppose that my designs have a “pattern” to them… but it sells web sites. I make money with my pattern… and I manage to get repeat business… so I can’t complain too much about the staleness.