macusingworkaholic

Joe Schmo is my hero

Well, not really.

I caught the last 2 episodes on TNN, err Spike TV last night. A TV show need to be pretty damn funny to make me laugh out loud but I actually did. It's not so much what's going on, but what the twist is. I keep thinking of two scenarios.

1. Matt is actually the one who has all the actors fooled. He's planned this, with the producers of the show, as a twist against the aspiring actors.
2. The entire show is a twist and everyone knows what's going on, except us, the audience. Since they're poking fun at reality TV, why shouldn't they poke fun at the fans.

It's an odd thought, but it could be within the style of the new network. Agree?

The post at Occasionally Wright sparked my own post.

Speed reading should come easy knowing this

I thought this was pretty darn cool. You have to try it. Let me know if you have any problems reading this?

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy

I bet you won't. In case you didn't notice, the letters are all jumbled. He also has some links in his comments that lead to the actual study and an app to create this effect for you automagically.

Occasionally Wright: Extreme Dyslexia?

http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/123453

Free Mac Seminars -- pointless?

Two days in a row. Wow, I must be taking advantage of my freedoms at work. I ventured out to another seminar today. This time it was at Apple Canada and the presenters were my new friends at Loop Enterprises. A good crew, but I'll save that for another post.

Anyhoo, I am always reminded of why I skip most of the seminars on Apple's Calendar of Events. Why do I even bother? I've started to encourage folks from the production and creative teams to sign up for these, as they would benefit more than myself.

The problem I find with the majority of the sessions I attend is that they speak to the general audience or speak on high level terms. They are generally overviews and stay fairly basic. Playing the lowest common denominator if you will. I sometimes hope that there is still some free info out there that I can take advantage of. The truth is that aside from paid workshops which last one to two days there isn't much going on.

Along with that, having the motivation of doing R&D on my own time, I find much of what can be learned is available if you need to find it. The Internet will never be exhausted of its resources. Nobody can say that they can't find information on a particular topic. If it's out there, it's probably been posted on the Internet waiting for the anxious.

Bottom line is the time a seminar comes along that promises to teach/show me something new, please stop me from registering.

From to good to bad in one fell swoop

I know they are folks out there that handle much more in the their day-to-day but let me tell ya. My day started off on a high. I was privy to Adobe's upcoming new software releases. They will end will A CS versus the traditional version number (think Macromedia Studio MX). CS standing for Creative Suite. Creative Suite namely because the apps are meant to work together in a tightly integrated workflow.

Actually I can't say too much because I had to sign an NDA. Yes, it was that much of a secret. All I can say to the folks out there that actually care is that it blew me away! What a day it was, being part of something that cool. But that was the morning, and there was an entire afternoon to cope with.

Of course, as I'm late leaving the presentation, someone decides to shut down a highway lane of my get-to-work-from-the-presentation route. That placed me on the late side of things. I was late for an IT meeting (by 10 minutes, but still). It was time to get set-up for the workday ahead of me. First thing first, check on the server's differential back-up job that was supposed to have run the night before. Guess what? Three guesses. You guessed it. It didn't happen. Oh well, tonight's backup will run and noone will be none the wiser.

What's this? A red LED on one of the hard drives on the server. A little history on this, shall we? We have a Compaq ProLiant ML530. It's packed with 10 - 72GB drives in a RAID set up. Two weeks ago, one of the drives failed. For those that know, servers contain redundant components including hot-swappable drives. You swap the old one out for a new one and all the data rebuilds itself. Simple, right? Well, let's just say things didn't work out as planned, and it wasn't so smooth. Fast forward to this afternoon. I ask you, with one old hard drive needing replacement, why shouldn't all the rest follow suit? I fear that this might turn out to be the case. Then again, as long as only one dies at a time, we're safe. So now I need to make that call to Compaq for a replacement. The silver lining with all this bad luck is that the hard drives are still covered under warranty. Thankfully Murphy and his stupid law skipped over this situtation.

I imagine sometime next week four will fail simultaneously. The ideal situtation would be that one drive would die, get replaced, the next one would die, get replaced, and so on. If all the drives can die and get replaced before the warrant is up then I'll be golden. Maybe this is a blessing?

Anyhow, point being is that there is never anytime to sit down and relax. Constantly running around putting out fires. On one hand there are fewer fires these days; on the other hand the fires tend to be much larger usually equating to much more work in the end.

I've ranted enough and maybe you're not even reading this post anymore. If you are, congratulations. You've officially been diagnosed with read-anyone's-blog-because-blogs-are-cool syndrome. Honestly, I don't expect anyone to read or even visit my blog. If they do great, if not that's okay too. I suppose it's gives me a place to vent when everyone else is too busy to listen.

I'm a keep-my-feelings-inside kinda guy. Until next time.

To blog or not to blog...

I've been checking out the unofficial TypePad User Group and stumbled across an intersting link. It helps explain the potential addiction blogging can create while at the same justifying it. It cuts close to me because I meet similar challenges of spreading my time appropriately between work and personal commitments. Check it out.

Tikun Olam: Why We Blog

Apologies to Richard for shortening his blog site name. Those darn hebrew characters don't translate. This is how it would show:

Tikun Olam-%u05EA%u05E7%u05D5%u05DF %u05E2%u05D5%u05DC%u05DD: Make the World a Better Place: Why We Blog

Nice, huh?

b u r u n d a n g a: typepadistas unite!

b u r u n d a n g a: typepadistas unite!

Just trying out Liza's instructions on how to TrackBack using QuickPost. Doh-de-doh...

Draft vs. "Publish on..."

That ellipsis is part of the pop-up menu selection. I'm waiting for someone to comment on my already frequent use of the ellipsis. It's supposed to be there, okay?!

Anyhow, just trying out the draft feature. There was a feature request posted in the UTUG (unofficial typepad user group) requesting a scratchpad feature. It would allow bloggers to jot there ideas down for later posting so they don't lose the inspiring moment.

This is a workaround, but I:

1. clicked on TP QuickPost in my bookmarks bar;
2. created my weblog post;
3. saved it as a draft;
4. went to my TypePad Home > Weblogs > this post;
5. changed it to Published On;
6. and selected a date in the past.

This way I can position it anywhere in the timeline.

Lest we forget...

a quiet day on the homefront

Isn't the English language funny?

Isn't the English language funny? Aren't words that begin with vowels supposed to be preceded by the word "an" not "a"?

For example, it's "AN" umbrella, not "A" umbrella. However we say "A" uniform resource locator versus "AN" uniform resource locator. It sounds wrong, doesn't it.

Oh well, now to try out the link: Unsanity.org?

Does strong work as well?

A link not working...

Visit the wonderful world of icons.

Update: Obviously I haven't gotten this right. Damn!

Update the Sequel: After updating this post and viewing it I know realize what the P.C. function does. Nice. Kindah like the news sites

Continue reading "A link not working..."