Randomized Harmony

Working on getting a higher quality video inserted here. In the meantime, if you would like to view the higher quality video–you may do so here:http://media.randomizedharmony.com/movies/snow_camp_photos.mp4

The caption should read: Dodd looks at people: “You call that work?"

If your the family tech support person, more than likely you have come across a time when something will flash up on the screen for a moment and then will be gone.  There is no way to tell what it was, or even what it wasn’t.

That flicker on the screen has been more than annoying for anyone playing the tech role.  It jumps out of nowhere and then jumps away before you have a chance to decode the weird messages that pop up.  And of course, it always follows a pattern, coming up for a blink just after clicking on your favorite program or just as your trying to help a client on the other end run a script your engineers wrote—which of course you have no access to modify to have it output the text to a file.

Thanks to Camstudio that issue has been resolved, for the most part.  Camstudio is an on-screen recorder which can record predefined areas or a rectangle/box which you size freehand.  Combine Camstudio with the Lossless Codec and you get decent quality AVI files which, when played back, you can catch exactly what the heck that script was outputting to the screen as you can stop and manually advance the playback of the file. 

Have an issue that is hard to explain to one of your co-workers?  Camstudio can help with that too. The resulting video file can be exported as a SWF video, so you can easily and quickly send the file over to your coworkers to check out and they can see exactly what is going on.  All they would need is flash.

The nice thing about Camstudio is that it is 100% free.  No need to license it for commercial products, no registration, nothing.  It is licensed under the GPL license. This means that support desks are able to use it without increased costs or security threats.  Since it is GPL, the code is out there to be reviewed. 

The only thing the owner of the software asks is that it would be nice to receive a copy of the final product that Camstudio is used for if it is used for a commercial product.  Pretty nice huh?  So go grab a copy of Camstudio, and if you work somewhere where you need to frequently record something, get them on Camstudio as well. 

Free + open + useful + intuitive to use.  You can not ask for anything better than Camstudio.

I remember back in the old days(and when I mean old…I mean…electricity was just a myth back then) when people used to draw pictures of Jesus, they would draw it with a halo around his head.

Well thank you media.  They have resurfaced this art form and made it popular with their own savior.   Of course if you don’t know who that is—well you haven’t been paying attention to the media.  Thank you media for bringing back the halo glow…

So one of the itches that I have been having recently is programming.  Programming for the iPhone of all things.  Got a couple of ideas for some apps, and seeing as I could hire a developer for $250+ an hour, or just bite the bullet, a mac looks like it is in my future. 

With the new iPhone 3.0 release, more possibilities exist more than ever for the application and the introduction of the iPhone in more industries than which it currently resides.  The iPhone has truly become the universal plug and play accessory computer.  We have grown used to various accessories attaching to our computers to extend the functionality of our computer.  Now, the iPhone has become the accessory which can plug into various items to extend their functionality.  Plug the iPhone into your blood pressure monitoring system and transmit the results directly to the patients digital medical records.  No need to write the information down on a chart and then have someone else read the reading and then enter them into the medical records.  Why have more people involved than necessary when the iPhone could communicate and directly update the records?  Same goes for glucose monitoring.  We are truly entering a new era in which digital medical records are now possible. 

Imagine this.  A diabetic is reporting that on days, they feel week or tired, and whatnot, but they believe that their sugar levels are normal.  Using the new iPhone 3.0 firmware and an accessory(which was shown at the unveiling of iPhone 3.0) the patient could take their blood sugar, and have the data uploaded directly to their medical record for the doctor to review.  If they could mark on the reading, say at 5:00pm, that they are feeling weak or tired, then this could flag the reading in the medical record.  If multiple reading are done and transmitted throughout the day, on the next appointment the doctor could examine the graph and see if they can find any patterns to the times in which they felt weak or sick as reported on their readings.  Maybe the doctor could see a pattern which the patient isn’t seeing.  This allows for the doctor to have more complete information when making a diagnoses.

Medical applications is just one way in which the iPhone can revolutionize the industry.  Since the new firmware is opening up to the developers the use of the dock to hardware accessories, you know what one of the first items which will come on the market will be.  That’s right…a keyboard!  Now.  Imagine this.  A hardware accessory which enables bi-directional communication from the iPhone.  In one direction, the keyboard(and mouse if you could) inputs keys and cursor movement to the iPhone.  In another direction, video is outputted from the iPhone.  The iPhone can already output to tvs, so what would prevent it from outputting(in not an extremely high resolution say 800×600 or maybe at the extreme end 1024×768—whatever the processor can handle) to a monitor.  All of a sudden, you have a dual source connected computer which can be used.  While the iPhone itself is not a highly productive machine if you had to keep moving between apps.  But.  With the release of the citrix xenapp coming soon.  Do you see where this could(if all the bugs could be worked out) be going?  A dual connectivity computers.  The main connection, wifi, and the 3G network as backup if your company internet goes out.  And of course, since vpn is built into the phone, you can secure your connection without issue!

What other fun ways could it be used?  Well right now there is an application called SnapTell on the iPhone.  Basically you take a picture of a book and then it goes out and then searches for the best prices for you on the app.  What if you had an accessory and application for the iPhone which allowed you to scan the barcode of something you were looking at purchasing.  It could then connect over 3G to multiple sources and then provide you with reviews of the item(where applicable—this may not be something which would be relevant to say…noodles or soup) as well as brick and mortar stores and online stores which sell the same item with their prices so you can compare if you are getting the best deal or if you should order it somewhere else(of course—due to shipping costs, this may change)

Now, what if retail and grocery stores got in the game?  What if you had a way to download to your iPhone a one time use coupon from manufactures(say something like coupons.com) and then there was a dock at the grocery store.  You load up your app with all the downloaded one time use coupons, and then dock your iPhone with their dock at the checkout.  The coupons are automatically credited to the store so they can get reimbursed for them through an online transaction and the appropriate amount is deducted at the register.  No more having to carry around multiple paper coupons or the coupon book which the neighbor mistook to be a child you were placing in your car(of course…if you have coupon book that big there might be more issues going on here which need to be discussed).

Now there are some things which can be done with the current iPhone(and honestly most other smart phones with a decent web browser) which I am surprised hasn’t been done already, and if it has, I have not heard of it yet.  For example.  One of the things that I hate the most is going to visit another town, or just a different part of town, and going to a store there.  If the store(which is highly likely) does not have a standard layout from store to store across the nation you are left trying to guess what is where, and where you can find certain things.  Grocery stores—usually not that bad—general stores(Target,Wal-Mart, Shopko) can be horrible for this.   While it is true it is likely that someone once in a while may spend just a little bit more, there is also the possibility that they would get frustrated.  Wouldn’t it be nice that if you were going to a store you haven’t been to before to fire up your smart phone, and connect to their wifi network and on the first page of the wifi network, it showed you a zoomable map of their store with their various departments clearly mapped out as well as the entrances and exits.  It doesn’t have to track you through the store, it doesn’t have to show you isle by isle what is where(though that would be a nice feature) nor does it have to allow you to access regular web sites.  That alone would save time and(at least in my part) frustration.  Stores are always looking for new ways to attract customers.  This would be a great way.  What other store(at first) would allow you to see where everything is and quickly navigate there.  I know that something like that is possible, as restaurants such as Buffalo Wild Wings have a page which loads before they let you online.  There wouldn’t necessarily need to be an internet connection for the service, just so much as they could serve out that one page internally.  Maybe on the side of the page they could show some of the specials that they think most people would want to take advantage of and make sure to say what section the special could be located in. 

So this brings me back to the original title of this post.  The dang you apple comes because, and I hate to admit this, they make some good software which as they become a little more open and allow a few more people to do more things, allows for a good product.  Their iWorks suite is kinda nice for some of the features which are hard to do at times in Office 2007, are amazingly simple in their software.  Makes me kind of sad.  Maybe Microsoft needs to study the design and usability of Apple software a little.  As a Microsoft person, that makes me kind of sad.  But I find that as I delve deeper into the world of technology, no one operating system fits my needs completely.  I need the compatibility, applications, ease of installation/use of windows, the advanced toolsets of linux, and the programming powers of apple for apple devices.  If someone could find an operating system which contained all of that, I would be happy.  But until that time, I will be doomed to forever have multiple computers.  Homer, my windows machine,Bart my linux machine,Lisa my linux router, and when the mac enters the house…they will be given a name.  What it will be is unknown at the time.  Smithers?  Who knows.  Though I would have to say it would kind of fit.  Time will tell though, and one can only hope my soul does not get corrupted by the evil which is mac. 

Long live king Microsoft!

To take a screenshot in mac, you can use the following shortcut.  But please tell me, how is it short at all?  You have to be a gymnist in order to take a screenshot?

Command-Control-Shift-4, then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it to the clipboard

Testing…does this work? These are the things you see in life.

Today marks my one year anniversary at VCPI. This past year has been a blast in terms of learning new things as well as solidifying my existing tech skills. The year has, for all intensive purposes, has flown by faster than any one could’ve predicted. Its brought around multiple new oportunities, especially as the economy has started to downturn. Out of downturns bring multiple opportunities for learning and growing and development. Usually this learning and development occurs by those who are unemployed. Thankfully, I do not fall into that category at this point. I thankfully am still employeed by VCPI. But that being said, in technology inovation needs to take place otherwise your dead. It does not need to be a big distinctive innovative product like facebook, amazon, twitter, etc. It could be something small. It could be a program which takes already existing services, and either makes them easier to use, or brings them together in a new and innovative way. One example would be tweetdeck. Tweetdeck, while not exactly a new and innovative idea, allows someone to use twitter in innovative ways. Allowing you to create custom groups and searches within tweetdeck, the application allows you to take the large amount of data which is streaming into the program and break it down in ways which is usuable for you. Only want to see tweets from certain people? Only want to see certain items being talked about? Tweetdeck makes it easy for this to be looked for. That is just one example of innovation that has been seen recently. In the near future, there will be many more innovative things coming out and taking place.

Another one year anniversary that come recently was yesterday marked the one year birthday for Porthos. He is now officially one year old. In that one year, he has lived through a lot. He has had all his shots, but beyond that, he has survived one night in the ER. He swallowed a blood sugar lowering pill, making him hypoglycemic.

One year with Porthos. One year with VCPI. The future is going to be quite interesting if the years ahead are patterned any way shape or form after how this past year has transpired.

Its been a while since something has updated and changed on this blog. Its not like I neglect this on purpose. I just get wrapped up in side projects and other items which are ongoing in life, and the blog ends up taking a backstop to the rest of this. I am more faithful on twitter, mostly because it takes a few seconds where as the blog can take more than that. One of the best things about having your own domain is that you are able to start consolidating everything there. Currently that has been one of my projects which I have undertaken. I have been moving all of my items which have an email address and which require email attention over to randomizedharmony.com. I have also been working on transferring (and cleaning up at the same time) my calendar so that it is all cleanred up, organized, and up to date. Due to the working between google and dreamhost, it makes it easy to use the calendar, docs, gmail, etc… right from my own domain without having a ton of extra steps. They pretty much do it all for me.

So what does this transfer process mean to those few people who check my blog every once in a while? Nothing for you. Except maybe now I will be able to start posting more due to the fact that pretty much everything has been migrated over. There are still a few things which haven’t migrated over yet, but I am working on that.

Ah, and now my life feels like it has free time again. Of course, that is only an illusion, I know that my time in my life will never be able to actually be “free”. If I’m not at work, I’m at home either working on a side project, studying for a test, or taking care of my dogs to ensure that they are optimally taken care of. Then of course, there is the recreational activities that I once in a while get to participate in. Again, that’s not all the time, but its better than it has been in the past.

Ah well, this is my commitment to my blog and the few people that actually pay attention to it that it will be updated on a more frequent and regular basis. At least once a week. Maybe.

If I feel like it.

Today while riding in the car with a friend I was reminded of something. That something being that music is such a critical aspect of who we are and how we act to thing. Sometimes we don’t even realize how music affects us down in our deepest parts, whether that is for the good or the bad.

It’s amazing how little things in our life can create joy and grief at the same time. It’s always fun to live life. Which makes life random and fun.

So today I worked on, and got working, total integration of my blog, facebook and Twitter. Using some premade plugins I was able to get my blog to update tweeter to update facebook. Social life all insync now

I posted these photos to Twitter. Guess I should post them here as well.

Just some interesting videos that I found on Obama

My lovely dog Porthos

It seems that a now a days my life is busy and that the only times I get to update my blog are when I work the weekends for work–and that is only because pretty much nothing happens on the weekends. Things have been pretty quite around these parts of the woods for a while now, which I don’t mind at all. Hurricane IKE has caused a little scare within my company, but that is only because of the damage that the hurricane will wreck upon all of the nursing homes down in Texas. Thankfully pretty much every single nursing home escaped and took up refuge in another nursing home. This is good because the residents are not in the path of this strong storm. It sucks for them, however, because they are in an already cramped nursing home. It’s only temporary, so I imagine it won’t be too taxing on most of them.

Well I’ve had my iPhone for a little while now, and I can say that I honestly like it. True its basically a stripped down Mac(and no..my next purchase is not a Mac—if it is someone please kick me!) that fits in the palm of your hand. For the fact that it is a stripped down computer, I am thankful since it provides a few more options than your standard cell phone. The latest windows mobile software, I do have to say, does look good and looks like it might present a somewhat of a decent challenge to the iPhone when a touch screen version of it comes out. Version 6.1 of windows mobile has a pretty decent interface for a mobile phone. The interface can be seen at BoyGeniusReport.com and looks pretty good I must say. Not as simplistic as the iPhones, but hey, nothing can be perfect, right?(There are problems even with the iPhone interface—such as–its TOO simplistic at times)

Ok, off of my fetish with the iPhone.

Something that has been interesting to hear at work recently is that the upper management kind of has this renaissance that they want to bring to the company. It honestly sounds exactly like what google does. Its funny. But as more comes through, I’ll reveal(maybe–depends on corporate policy) what is happening. But for now, this seems like an excellent opportunity to be on the ground floor of something amazing that will simply change the world for the better. Yeah, everyone has heard that already, and I know how that is taken(huge grain of salt that can salatanize the entire ocean) but this will be something that you will hear about more and more, how VCPI and Extendicare are changing not only the healthcare industry but also the long term care industry.

One of the cool things about working at VCPI is that I get to be involved with a lot of different areas around the company, even if I don’t want to be sometimes. In the end, though, it is really cool. Annoying at times, but helps you learn what you need to do quickly. Lets just say that Cornerstone was a good learning experience, but being here at VCPI has been like being at technology boot camp the last few months. I have only been here 7.5 months and I am just really starting to get a grasp of everything here. It seems like everyone here flounders for the first few months(6 months actually) and then after that they start to get on their feet and are able to start doing amazing things. I’ve been fortunate to be stuck on the financial team. The financial team(and yes, there might be a little bias here–but not that much) is one of the strongest teams on the desk. Currently there are four of us–two of which also play a dual role as tech 2’s, so they have a lot more to do and leave as much of the financial stuff to us “financial” techs. We kind of get to be jack of all trades group–we have to be able to do tech, networking, basic programming(interpriting/understanding login scripts, create batch scripts for drive mappings, printer mapping scripts, etc…) and understand financial concepts–and many times we have to do all of these in one call! Being a jack of all trades lover(in most games I play the group/job that is the jack of all trades and not the specialty person–so I guess this fits me!) being a financial tech excites me!

Ok, well the call volume is going up, so I probably get going. But yes…another post was needed

Recently I have taken it upon myself that during those mind numbing exercises of taking some phone calls for work to find ways to try to stimulate my mind in some way. One of the ways in which I have found the way to do this recently is through a game called GemCraft. While I enjoy the game, I must say that the first “boss” battle is kinda tough, and as of yet, I haven’t figured out how to exactly get around it, even though I love tower defense games. Oh well. Its the challenge of a good tower defense game that I enjoy and will continue to enjoy as I work through it.

I had written really briefly about andLinux in my last post on my blog, well today I discovered something really cool about it. For whatever reason, the Konqueror web browser is able to connect to some sites and bring up digital media content that neither firefox or ie is able to bring up at work. I have some theories about this, one being that the two being big players in the web market comply with group policy settings, but its kind of interesting that something like this will just ignore whatever is causing both IE and Firefox to ignore flash media while browsing the web. Of course…konqueror can not always play all of this media…but that is beyond the point…way beyond the point because that can be fixed with a few installs in linux.

Speaking of the powers of Linux. I have begun to use the windows power shell more and more. I am finding that it has some interesting abilities, and one of which is to run an script every once in a while which finds any and all processes which are using more than a specific amount of memory with the option to immediately kill them. It is with this in mind, that I think that windows will eventually start to head the way of linux, with a powerful command line interface in the background that can do everything that the gui version can, and the die hard geeks out there will start to run only in the command line and argue with anyone that uses gui only.

Ah the day when Microsoft Windows can be considered a geeky operating system…..it never has…but given the improvements in how microsoft is handling things as elementary as the command line….it will probably be less than 20 years!

Well im sitting around on call at home. Just putzing around on the internet while at home and enjoying the fun times that is had by having two dogs…..and a laptop that turns off when the power cord comes unplugged…so you can imagine how often my computer gets turned off at this time. Its not a power laptop, just a laptop to be used to get online and perform basic tasks…don’t even have full graphics card support in Linux…but im working on that…so the graphics are just basic and run slow, but that is ok. I have found that PUPPY Linux works great when you just need to run linux on a system and have it work. Puppy linux has detected all hardware that I have thrown at it, including my wireless card. Looking at some of the other features of puppy linux, they make it easy to make a customized version for use on usb or cd. How cool is that that they make it part of the system to remaster the distro?
I used to(and still do) love Ubuntu…but after my bad experience installing the newest version on the laptop…I was disappointed……but just as i got dissapointed with ubuntu…someone came along and made me believe in it again. What is this? Why it is the project called andlinux which is a project to run linux nativly inside of windows with little to no performance hit. I am running it on my personal computer and work computer, and so far, have experienced no problems with the software locking up on me. And since its based on the popular ubuntu distro, it is easy to update and maintain. Now to just get some linux exclusive items working…and that will show the usefulness of this program….he he he

And to my former CU coworkers…never complain about the pager….for on call duty I get three cell phones and a laptop—one cell for calls, one for email, and one for text messages…..what the heck?

Im currently sitting in the doctors chair getting shots every half hour. Im getting desensitized to those things that cause me to have allergy problems almost everyday starting with the first blade of grass that grows in the spring until the first frost of the year. It will be a welcome relief to finally get this done. Five hours in a comfy leather chair is so nice. Im using the EEEPC. A nice little pc with a tiny keyboard. If you know me,think of me trying to use something that small and have a good laugh. Well its time to get another shot. Me and my arms are gonna be sore by the end of the day.

I was driving into work one day when I heard a story which hit me good that I haven’t heard or stumbled upon on the traditional news outlets that I browse on a daily basis. A report released this year stated that over the page year, the earth has not suffered from any global warming, but instead has been suffering from global cooling.

Wait. What?

Hasn’t the rhetoric of the past year and year of a half been that the world is headed to hell in a handbasket and that every year we are getting warmer and warmer and that if we don’t do something about it soon, that our children will suffer from the unstable environment produced by this increase in temperatures across the globe.

Of course, that has been at all times, propganda used for political motivation and has never once been scientifically sound or based(just like evolution, but that is something for another time) to where the arguments make sense with the data presented for it.

Now, we find out, that last year the earth suffered the greatest fluxuation in temperature that has ever been recorded, with enough cooling to wipe out the past 100 years of “global warming” that we have seen. If you look at the temperature change in the native format of Celcius, to us Americans who rely on the Fahrenheit scale, it doesn’t seem that much. But when you convert this over to something that we understand…well…it becomes that much more significant. To start out with, the temperature change (Per the information found on the DailyTech website) of the earth this past year places the cooling of the earth anywhere from 0.65 to 0.75 degrees C. Not that bad right. I wanted to see what that was in a temperature I could understand so I dug out my old science notes and excell to do some calculations. Per my notes:
Tf=Temperature in degress Fahrenheit
Tc=Temperature in degrees Celsius

Tf=(9/5)*Tc+32

So if we plug our numbers into the equation here….
Tf=1.8*.65+32
Tf=1.17+32
Tf=33.17

This is the low side. So according to scientist, the earth cooled a whopping 33.17-33.35 degrees Fahrenheit in the past year. I didn’t believe my calculations, so I checked them against some sites that do it for you automatically with javascript. Same results. One of those sites can be found here.

So essentially what is happening here is that the polar opposite is happening of what Al Gore and his cronies have been saying will happen. Instead of the earth getting warmer and burning up, it is in fact getting cooler. Now while this drop in temperature may seem extremly significant, it could be just due to a weird cold cycle that we are going through. Or it could be the herald of something much worse on its way. What could be worse?

According to The Australian, our sun has not followed through on its cycles the way it is supposed to. This is how it is supposed to work. Sunspot numbers follow a cycle of a somewhat variable length, with an average of eleven years. The most recent minimum (by minimum it means end of cycle, or low of the cycle with the lowest/low number of sun spots in the cycle) ended last March(2007) and the next cycle (what they deem 24) should have started sometime after that. The only problem is, that it hasn’t. In fact, the very first sunspot that had been spotted was in January of 2008 and since then only a small handful and they have been really small and lasted only a little while. It is these very sun spots that provides the heat and the increase in temperatures we have seen.

I like the IBD as it summerizes a study quite well

A Hoover Institution Study a few years back examined historical data and came to a similar conclusion.

“The effects of solar activity and volcanoes are impossible to miss. Temperatures fluctuated exactly as expected, and the pattern was so clear that, statistically, the odds of the correlation existing by chance were one in 100,” according to Hoover fellow Bruce Berkowitz.

The study says that “try as we might, we simply could not find any relationship between industrial activity, energy consumption and changes in global temperatures.”

The study concludes that if you shut down all the world’s power plants and factories, “there would not be much effect on temperatures.”

The article also states:

R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Center of Canada’s Carleton University, says that “CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet’s climate on long, medium and even short time scales.”

Rather, he says, “I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of energy on this planet.”

So Mr. Gore and everyone else that thinks that we are killing our planet by overheating it. Sorry to say your wrong. Now, don’t get me wrong. We need to take care of our planet. We need to reduce pollution. But the impact that these so called greenhouse gasses are having on the planet is a joke. We need to look at this from a purely scientific standpoint and realize that we are not warming the planet at all. In fact, if predections are right, we will need to find ways to warm the planet due to the decrease in temperatures. So I’m gonna do my part. I’m gonna drive my nice SUV to and from Milwaukee each day. Gotta keep those greenhouse gasses in the air…never know….global warming in that regard could be our friend!

Sources:
The Australian: Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh

IBD: The Sun Also Sets

Power Line

EDIT:
Something just doesn’t feel right about those numbers. I’m triple checking some articles. Even if it was only 10 degrees F, that would still be alot, however.

Ah that time of the week again. The time where I sit at work, bored, and with no work rolling in. I actually don’t mind it cause it gives me a little bit of time to sit back, relax, and get some other work done. As well as try to write some scripts/code to try to make my life a little bit easier. Of course that doesn’t always work exactly as I plan. Never does I guess. But that’s ok. I can deal with that…and if you can’t….well then tuff beans for you.

Tuff beans…thats an interesting combination of words that I came up with…of course it doesn’t really mean anything…so why the heck would I even try to use it? Ok…enough editorializing…..

One of the things that has been fun over the past few months has been learning my new job. I’m loving it more and more on a daily basis and glad that I was given the opportunity to come and work for this company. It doesn’t afford a lot of free time to do coding, etc…but once in a while I get some time, and when I do, I take full advantage of the whole thing. One of the things that I have been working on recently is a little batch script to help automate as many of the daily tasks that I do as I possibly can. The script has already become a big help with one of the most mundane tasks of trying to open citrix ica connections to servers to test out the server to see if I am able to replicate the problem. Ah the wonderful power of text file replacers. Which takes me to my next thing. At my last job(Cornerstone) I was the one known to have the little known/helpful utility to help out when it was needed……and that tradition has continued over to my new job. Which is the funny part….because some of these people have been at this forever it seems like…but you know what…we all have stuff to learn still!

I guess its good that I have, over the past few years, liked working with the command line more and more. One of my new job responsibilities will take me into the Unix environment on a probably fairly regular basis. It takes me into Oracle too much. If someone is reading this randomly on the website because Oracle comes up on the list, please, for the love of all that is good and holy, please, think twice about oracle. It will drive your users batty……..sorry…had to throw that personal opinion in there…its just such a clunky program at times to run.

Well with that said, I guess I can live my life in peace now….right?

I only wish.

Life is crazy, but you know what, I enjoy having a kinda crazy life. It makes life interesting, and it makes life fun. Ah. Yes.

Ok. Well I should probably do something somewhat productive for the last hour or so of work….so until the next update in the continuing saga of snow camp comes out…have fun…and chat with you later!

Thats right, the Armentpau clan has grown again. And this time the clan grew not by an increase of one but by an increase of 2!

This past month has seen a new dog enter our midst. A new dog by the name of Porthos. Now as some of you may know, Porthos is the name of one of the Three Musketters as well as the name of the beagle on the starship Enterprise in the show Enterprise. I find this fitting because he is part beagle. He is in fact, half beagle. The Wikipedia entry on this name states that the following:

Porthos, honest and slightly gullible, is the extrovert of the group, enjoying wine, women and song. His eating abilities even impress King Louis XIV during a banquet at Versailles. As the story advances, he looks more and more of a giant, and his death is that of a titan.

His classification is that of a Bea Griffon. I don’t have any photos here at the moment to post up on the site of him, but let me assure you that he is growing on an almost daily basis. Its actually quite amazing. He is a welcome addition to the armentpau clan, and will make life a lot more interesting for sure in the weeks and months ahead

The second addition to the armentpau clan is a new camcoprrder. A Sony HD-SR12 to be exact. Its a nice high def camcorder that records directly to….a hard drive! Now how nice is that? The only downfall to that is that the format that it uses is a little weird at times, and not all programs(though most now) can play the format directly without it being converted. To read the specs on it, visit Ritz Camera as I highly recommend them for consumer cameras/camcorders, etc….

All right, well now you know how the armentpau clan has grown, expect to see updates featuring both of these new clan members. Of course, one of the older clan members(Homer) is now going to busy processing and storing a lot of data from the camcorder and camera regarding Porthos

This is an update that was not going into the regular schedule, as I didn’t know about it to begin with.

Today I walked into work, and there was a meeting request from my boss for later that day(in about an hour and a half) so of course I accept…who is going to tell their boss no? I like how she phrased the email:

Gentlemen,

I need to meet with each of you briefly…don’t worry nothing’s wrong!

If that calms your nerves….then….please tell me how?!?

Well I go in to the meeting, the third person in a row to go to this meeting. As I walk in, she tells me to sit down, and she asks for what I graduated with and what my credentials are. She said she needed to update her list. I’m thinking its a little odd, but ok. Then she does what I was not expecting at all. She tells me that she is promoting me to Financial Analyst 1 effective April 16th. That means I now will specialize in financial applications along with general tech…..Im looking forward to the new challenge..and was not expecting it at all..but sometimes the best things in life come when we are not seeking for them and when we are finally content with where we currently are at…..