Take study-worthy lecture notes

As I'm taking notes on different topics throughout the day, whether it be software testing, reports of issues from users or features I need to add... I find that I don't do a very good job of taking notes. I never have. In college that became especially important.

Anyway, here's an article explaining a method of taking notes that supposedly works well. I need to try this out... and thought that some others might find it useful.

Yellow or Black: The Decision

For quite a while now I've wanted to get a lab (labrador retriever) whenever Katie and I get moved into the house and we have enough money to take care of one. The choice within the last few days has been narrowed down (for me) to whether we should get a black lab or a yellow lab (because the chocolate labs look creepy to Katie).

Now that we've got Ted around the house Katie's doubting her ability to handle a big dog. We bought him a rope toy yesterday and when Katie played with him he jerked her around the yard like a rag doll, though Katie wasn't really trying all that hard.

I see her concern, but I like the idea of a big dog being around when I may not be, and that labs have great personalities (seemingly consitent throughout the breed).

I had my own opinions forming tonight about whether I'd like a yellow or black lab... and I'm thinking it will have to be a yellow lab. Tonight, I was eating lasagna when I found a black hair in my lasagna. Was it Ted's? Was it mine? I'll never know... That's the first reason to get a yellow lab. The second reason is the obvious... yellow lab puppies are much cuter than black lab pups.

Living for a week with Ted has caused my posts about dogs to increase by 532%. I apologize if you don't have a Ted to make you understand why I've got a renewed interest in having my own dog... but luckily, this week, I do have one.

Video: Clinton's Tear against Fox News and Chris Wallace

Former President Clinton let loose on Chris Wallace (host of Fox News Sunday) for the bias he feels is prevalent at Fox News and in other media. He attacked Chris Wallace directly and attacked Fox News and made good sense in his rant. He even accused Wallace of coming there under false pretenses, to talk about the fund raising he'd done and then asking poor questions about national security. It's worth watching just to see Clinton red faced and fuming and also to see Wallace on his heels.

HouseSitting with Ted

This week, we're housesitting for Chris and Ann while they're enjoying a nice vacation to Hawaii... the lucky mugs. However, the deal is sweetened on our end due to the fact that they have a black lab, Ted, who we'll be taking care of and enjoying for the next week. He's a big pup and is definitely a character.

Chris and Ann also have a great crafstman style house that feels homey even though it's not our home. This morning we woke up and made some pancakes and sausage, played with Ted for a while and watched a little TV. We're about to get ready for church and head out for a while...

I've got good news and bad news...

Here I am, at 3:00 AM, sitting in front of the computer. 30 minutes ago I woke up sweating, for two reasons. First, the air conditioner went out by the time Taylor got home (after Katie and I hit the sack)... so he decided to crank it up and set it on 80 to preserve the cool air inside the house (rather than have the AC bring in warmer air). Secondly, I couldn't stop thinking about work and how a new application we installed in South Louisiana Thursday will perform tomorrow (actually... today). One of our clients will have shift workers coming in today to try to catch up on some work using our program. They're hoping to go through about 40,000 documents and make sure no personal information is showing. They're our first client to receive this software and it's only been a day and a half since I installed it there in their (large) environment...it makes me nervous.

I wrote a windows service that will analyze documents for this sensitive information. So far, it's got around 20,000 to work on and is working concurrently on two machines in an effort to speed the analysis up. I wanted to check that it was still crunching away, analyzing documents... and it is. That's very good news. First, it's great that it's successfully running two instances of the service concurrently with no deadlocks or other issues but also that it's been running for the last 12 hours or so and has run through several thousand images in that time.

Enough of that though... the air is back on (I had to try to start it twice before it actually blew cool air) and I'm satisfied that my service is doing a good job of analyzing images.

Since I've been unable to post here for the last week or so due to time constraints resulting from work, I thought I'd post a summary of the latest news - good and bad.

Good News:

• Spent Wed. and Thurs. in a South Louisiana parish installing the program I've been working on for the last few weeks (maybe months)


• We heard through the grapevine that our house has been bricked.


• There's a little black lab puppy that sneaks in Taylor's back yard under our neighbor's fence every day. It's adorable. The owners have to come get it at the end of the day... They bring their little boy over (looks to be 4 or 5) and he just says "Where's my dog!?"


• Katie started her internship. It looks like she can set her own hours there and work at almost any time. So she'll be able to get her 120 hours of time in this quarter. This quarter and next and in February, she can start looking for a jobby job.


• Tennis lessons are going well... and possibly helping me to lose a little poundage. I'm hovering around 190 lbs. now... after maxing out at about 205 a little over a year ago.


• Living with Taylor has renewed both Katie's and my resolve to get a puppy. Even though Cosmo is a crazy little handful sometimes, it's great to have a puppy around.

Not so great news

• I spent Wed. and Thurs. in Lafayette with my boss... sharing a hotel room... and spent 7 hours in the car with him. He's a nice guy, but I don't really talk all that much... so, I struggled to be outgoing. You run out of things to talk about after all the hours of time spent together...
  


• Katie wasn't happy about me spending the night down there Wed., and I wasn't crazy about it either, but that's work sometimes.


• Taylor's air conditioner is still on the blink.

That's the latest from my world. All that good news, with just a little bad news to keep me from being spoiled. Things are good... hope they are with everyone else too.

The weather channel website makes me thirsty

This makes me thirsty...

We have a man maid now...

Before we moved in with my brother, Katie and I decided that we'd need some help in keeping up with keeping the house clean... after all, Taylor's got a dog that sheds all over the place and he's usually only here long enough to make a mess, then go to bed.

So, we've been trying to find some good cleaning help for a few weeks. As a matter of fact, for over a month Taylor and his friend Chris had some leads, but could never get in touch with them. So, when a former employee of Katie's bank, and current customer stopped in and asked if anyone needed help cleaning houses or anything, Katie jumped at the opportunity.

Later that same day when we got home from work she told me she'd found someone to clean the house... and that it was a man. My response was "A guy?". Katie was shocked and bewildered by my reaction... like I'd just said "Women are second class citizens and don't deserve the right to vote...". I didn't think it was a sexist comment at all though... Something about a man wandering around the house, going through my wife's underwear as he washes dirty clothes didn't sit right with me though. Katie and I talked it out, and considering our alternatives (no maid at all), we agreed to give him a try... though he's not going to be doing our laundry. So, we contacted the maid man and he agreed to a deep clean the first time for a larger amount of money, and if we weren't happy with the results he said he'd understand.

So, this past Thursday he did his thing while we were at work. When we got home, everything was gone... the TV, the stereo... just kidding. We got home, and everything was clean. He did 3-4 loads of laundry, mopped, vacuumed, cleaned both bathrooms, even cleaned out the inside of the microwave... he did a great job. I'm definitely pleased with the decision, though I have to admit, it's still a little weird... but looking at the results, I really can't complain.

Weird Al: White and Nerdy

Tonight I found, quite possibly, the greatest song made in the last year. Weird Al released a new song called White and Nerdy, a parody of Chamillionaire's Ridin' Dirty. The only version I found was a youtube version, dubbing his version over a chamillionaire video. It's absolutely worth 4 of your minutes.

Apparently, he's got a new album due out Sept. 25th titled "STRAIGHT OUTTA LYNWOOD" parodying Chamillionaire, Green Day, Usher, R. Kelly and Taylor Hicks. He recorded a parody of James Blunt's 'Beautiful' called 'Pitiful', but some record exec or other wiper of pigs bottoms prevented him from putting it on his album. James Blunt, the artist, gave his approval but the record company did not. Pathetic. He's made it available at his site though...for free:).

The other song he links to is on his site, "Don't Download This Song". The video is awesome. Give it a gander.

This may be the first album I will have purchased since... since... well, I can't really say. But I'll support Weird Al, he's given me more good music memories than just about any other artist. In addition, he respects artist wishes (not record company demands) and is doing his part to take a shot at the record companies by releasing his parody of James Blunt's song after they denied his request.

Link: What I know in my 50's I wish I knew in my 20's

I found this article this afternoon, and thought it was too funny to avoid posting it on my blog...

It's an article about what a man knows in his 50's that he wishes he would've known in his 20's. Enjoy.

Kumon, Dell, CMS2,FAT16 and my mother-in-law

I've had a rough time wrangling a group of people together to fix an issue my mother-in-law has been having with her brand spanking new Dell. When we encountered a problem with her computer being able to back up her work files to her USB thumb drive, fingers started flying in all directions... and none of the finger pointing got us anywhere.

You see, Katie and I ordered a new Dell Dimension E310 for her Mom's office where she runs a kumon learning center for children. Her old Gateway laptop was limping along, just waiting to be drug out to an empty field to die in peace.

When the new computer arrived, I volunteered to help her get it set up... after all, being the computer family guy... better I start sweet talking this computer now than after some other slob comes along and causes problems I have to clean up later. The setup went well until we tried to test her ability to backup her student database (a daily task) through CMS2 (kumon's program). Her backup program gave us the following error: "The directory or file cannot be created.”.

Time was short that day, so we had to call it quits without fully exploring the error. We set her up to backup temporarily to her C:\ in the meantime. Two weeks later, this afternoon, we ate lunch with Katie's mom and she tells me that she contacted Kumon and thay they're blaming Dell. They want a copy of her Database (via e-mail) and that she doesn't know how to get it to them. I tell her that it's not the thumb drive (the thumb drive still works perfectly with the gateway)... it's not the Dell (it's brand new and has a (semi)fresh install of XP)... I still think Kumon's giving you a raw deal, but I'll give it another look today.

The first thing I checked today was the ability to write any files to the root directory of the thumb drive (G:\ at the time). It was a no go. I could copy files to any subdirectory and read files perfectly, but creating any files or any more folders was not a possibility. At this point, I knew it wasn't the Kumon program... I looked at the file system of the thumb drive and it was FAT (FAT16), and realized shortly after that FAT16 file systems have a limit of 512 entries in the root directory... and when long names are used for files names, they can each take 4 entries (128 file limit).

Since she had a large number of files on her thumb drive, so all the entries in the root directory were taken. I removed almost all the files from the thumb drive and tried to copy a file there. It worked, so we tried the backup again... I got a "runtime 53" error, the cause of which I'm still not sure of... but was solved by creating a sub-directory called "backups" on her thumb drive and backing up there. Success!!! What a sweet feeling. I wrote an e-mail to Kumon to let them know how we'd solved the problem.

Kumon support needs to refine the problem solving process of their support staff... if the answer to every support call is "send me your database" they're going to spend a lot of time and money on the wrong path. However, they were very responsive and tried to be helpful... so I guess I'll cut them some slack... I'm not paying their salaries. Anywho, Katie's mom is up and running again, and my computer confidence has been restored.

Tivo: the pricing plan of horror

I know I'm a little late to the party when it comes to bashing Tivo for changing their pricing plans. I heard about the pricing plans change last year, but didn't really think much about it since I was the happy owner of a replayTV (which was a much better value than any Tivo's at the time). Now, though, the replayTV doesn't work with the Dish receiver I have, thanks to dish's sneaky screen saver coming on regularly, which can only be deactivated by a button on the dish receiver remote... (intentionally) making it very tricky for Replay to turn off the screensaver and start recording a scheduled show.

I started looking around at the Tivo site to see what the new pricing model was all about. I'm finding the new prices to be pretty confusing, at least initially... though after a little mathletics, they may be slightly lower. So some explanation may be in order for what's really going on here with the pricing.

The Good Old Days
Previously, you could buy an 80 hour Tivo unit for about $100 at Best Buy or wherever and pay $12.95 each month (billed monthly instead of pre-paid). $100 (after rebate) + (12 months x $12.95) = $255.40. That would've been the usual cost of having a Tivo for a year. You could also buy a Tivo (again $100 being the normal cost) and buy a lifetime subscription for $299.00.

Todays Pricing Structure
Here are the pricing choices:

• The price for a TiVo box and a one-year service commitment is $19.95 a month, or $224 prepaid.


• The price for a TiVo box and a two-year service commitment is $18.95 a month, or $369 prepaid.


• The price for a TiVo box and a three-year service commitment is $16.95 a month, or $469 prepaid.

After that 1, 2 or 3 year commitment (yuck) is up you'll be charged at your current rate until you call and tell them to switch you to a "service-only rate" $12.95/mo (which will require a year commitment from you).

With this pricing structure, you could get a Tivo 80 hour unit with service for a year for $224, which is obviously cheaper than the previous plan... especially considering the $100 purchase price above would have to include a $150 rebate (frequently available). However, there are no lifetime plans anymore, and you're not eligible for the low, commitment free price of $12.95/month.

Cancelling before the commitment period is up will cause you to pay the remaining money on your plan if you owe less than $200. If you owe more than $200, you'll just pay $200.

Conclusion

It's evident that Tivo has gone to commitment based business model at the expense of simplicity. It took me a few minutes of reading to figure out exactly what the pricing structure is, and I'd already heard about the changes. Although it does seem less expensive over a short period (a good thing), the loss of the lifetime subscription was a heavy loss.

Additionally, I hate being bound to a service... it's ridiculous that so many services now require commitments like these and I won't be buying a Tivo because of it. It's not even a service... it's a product, that they've tried to convince everyone is actually a service because of the guide information. Cell phones have that necessity aspect to them to where they can require commitments, but I don't need a Tivo... it's nice... but has become an inconvenience with its commitments and higher total cost. I'll take a replayTV or mythTV box.

Labor Day Weekend Pictures

The House - Meeting 1 (of 3)

In the process of building our house, there will be three seperate meetings that we will attend before we move in... the purpose for two of which I can't remember right now. I believe that the last two will be a final inspection of the house and lastly the hand over after closing.

Our first meeting was the meeting just after the frame and roof were completed. This was our chance to go into the house and ensure that outlets were in the right places, walls were in the right places and that if we hadn't already wet ourselves due to the reality of the situation, we should go ahead and do that now.

Katie and I took off work early to meet our construction project manager, Scott, at 4:00. We were told that the walk-through would take about 30 minutes and that if we had any questions or issues we could raise them at that time. We weren't told however, that we'd be taking this tour with the largest man ever assembled. His parents must've had to change his diaper with construction cranes... the man was huge.

We started the tour with Scott, the aforementioned giant, pointing out outlets, lights and hookups in the living area, then onto the bedrooms and kitchen and garage and all that other good stuff. Everything looked good, so we didn't complain. However, Katie and I were both too afraid to complain anyway. We know the rules... never anger a giant.

In reality, Scott was very pleasant. He seemed eager to answer questions and was quick to point out any errors that they'd made... and told us what he would do to resolve those errors. We were there for less than thirty minutes, and then went on our merry way.

Studio Movie Grill : What a movie experience should be

This weekend the family and I took a trip over to Texas to see the grandparents, part of the excitement about the trip was due to my recent discovery of a movie theater in Plano, TX, Studio Movie Grill, that serves dinner during the movie. For some years I've wanted to find a local theater that did this, so we made plans to see a movie this weekend. Not knowing what to expect, we bought tickets early on Saturday and tried to show up about 20 minutes before the movie began. After all, we'd be eating there... we don't want to be ordering and receiving food while the movie's starting.

When we arrived, we typed our confirmation number into the touchscreen ticket window and got a printout for each ticket we'd bought. We walked inside where we got menus and a little plastic pager, handed our ticket to the ticket-taker and headed into the theater.

A few things surprised me right off, first that there weren't all that many screens and secondly that the movie theater was over half full already. The theater was arranged in a stadium seating fashion, with each row of seats being higher than the one in front of it. In addition to the normal stadium seating idea, the front of each row had a long bar extending the length of the row, like a long table while the back of the row had small half-circle tables with chairs at each table.

A few minutes after being seated, we pressed a button on the side of the pager (which lights up the entire pager) and shortly a waiter came over to take our order. Between the five people in our family that went, we tried the Garlic Chicken, Chicken Quesadilla, and the Cheddar BBQ Burger (with sweet potato fries). Everyone was extremely happy with the food... and let me tell you, there's nothing better than having a drink and munching on fresh fries during a movie rather than stale popcorn smothered in some kind of a buttery substance.

We had a great time, which I'm sure was helped by the fact that we all enjoyed The Illusionist. I'm convinced that this is how movies should be watched... after all, that's how I watch movies at home. In comfort, while enjoying a good meal.

In Dallas for the long weekend

All the fam is down in Dallas today. We got in last night at about 10:30 or so after getting a late start...

The exciting events as usual, are seeing my grandparents, going to the outlets in Allen and we're gonna try to go to the Studio Movie Grill in plano where they serve food during the movie. It should turn out to be a nice, relaxing weekend after a cruddy, stressful week at work.

Maybe I'll even get to snap a few pictures of the hummingbirds that are sometimes in the backyard at the feeder... that would be awesome.