Basically this blog posts articles about how to intergrate technology into your everyday life to make yourself more productive.  Among the coolest things I’ve found on this site is a link to mint.com. Security concerns aside, I took the plunge and it is freakin’ cool. I’ve come to not use any technology if it doesn’t do something for me that I wouldn’t want to do myself, and in this case its balance my check book and give me a clear picture of my finances across all my accounts and credit cards.

and

consumerist.com

This site has turned me into a customer service fiend. I came to the realization, i would estimate at over 2 years ago, that if you ever have an issue that requires a call to a customer service rep, be it for a cell phone bill, or other account issue you must have had some bad karma coming to you. A call to a comcast service rep is a pain in the ass I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. This site documents egregiously bad customer service incidents as well as puts an ever brightening spot light on corporate Americas “screw the consumer” attitudes.

Powered by ScribeFire.

iTunes is great about dividing up its streaming radio stations by genre. If you want to listen to Punk or Pop you can usually find a station that plays it. However what if you love Bob Marley, but want to hear him and other artists that sound similar? Or maybe Pink Floyd. Pandora fills this need in spades.

When you go to the site its as simple as typing in an artist you like, and I was hard pressed for it to miss any of the names I tried.

Next is when the magic happens. The music genome project, is a research project put together by Tim Westergren a Stanford Grad, that has set out to catalog music in a unique fashion. Screeners that “[have] a four-year degree in music theory, composition or performance, [and have] passed through a selective screening process” rate each musical composition using some 400 individual characteristics . The project has been cataloging tracks since 2000, each taking 20 to 30 minutes each. In effect the project has created musical DNA. Using this classification system and an algorithm Pandora is able to create a “Radio Station” for you that will not only play tracks by the artist you typed in, but also tracks sharing the same DNA, so to speak. From personal use and talking to others the stations have an uncanny ability to introduce users to new music that appeals to their preferences.

The exact size or number of tracks included in the catalog I was unable to discern, but from using it for about 3 months now I can say it contains everything from the mainstream to the eclectic. It may not contain the rogue recording of that local bar singer down the street, but if you are interested in discovering more about a genre I’ve found typing in one of the big names, for example I was interested in blues and typed in B.B. King and as new artists that I appreciated popped up in the rotation I added them to the station, in effect creating a station of blues music composed of only artists and tracks that have musical qualities that appealed to me. All I can say is its freaking awesome. I went on to create stations of all my favorite jam bands, relaxing music, and angry music. I tend to vary my musical tastes on mood, and Pandora seems almost tailored to that style.

• I drove him to Bridgeport.
• He forgot the microphone cable making it a worthless 3 hours in the car.

Wasted trip aside he was able to make it to an event in Hartford to hear Lieberman talk. Basically he wouldn’t have gotten any sound bites of the senator if I hadn’t have helped him with the technical aspects of producing a short radio spot

• I downloaded the clips to his laptop.
• I converted them to wave files.
• Showed him how to open them in audacity.
• Instructed him on how to upload files using FTP.

Take into account that he’s going to COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY and he can’t figure out a couple of pretty basic computer programs for importing and editing audio and it really boggles the mind as to how he got into such a good school . He’s a Ron Burgundy in training. Good job bud, I hope you are lucky enough to get a very talented producer/engineer if you ever make it to be a reporter.

Last Tuesday Final Fantasy XII was released. I’ve gotten in about 2 hours of game play so far and I am more than impressed. My, and I imagine, others allegiance to the series stems from the fact that no other series can create such characters or universes that are so compelling as to make a gamer willing to invest dozens upon dozens of hours into a game.

I quit WoW cold turkey so I anticipate using this game as a sort of MMORPG patch. And as a plus this game has an ending that I can tell from the little bit of the battle system and gameplay elements I’ve experienced will prove to be very rewarding.

Unlike previous final fantasies where story elements revolved around coming of age events in a teenagers life this installment seems to be more political in nature. The fate of a kingdom with multitudes of people seem to be at stake versus coming to terms with teenage angst that a lot of the others contained heavy themes of throughout the game.

Lately I’ve been reading alot of forums. Mainly regarding two things I love. My car and my computer. And I’ve read both of these forums for a good time, but if I ever get bored I can go read up on just about anything and get what I would call semi-reliable, as in I would verify anything posted by these internet-know-it-alls/experts with at least three reliable sources not connected in anyway to the internet. But I digress..

Recently with the proliferation of photoshop and other basic photo editing software, image search engines , and digital cameras dropping into the price range of just about any body able to hold a minimum wage job the masses have started to create what I’ve come to know ,and usually derive a good chuckle out of, as thread bombs.

The Life Cycle of a thread on the internet usually goes as follows:

• Statement or question, usually of a technical manner at least in the forums I frequent. Another type of thread starter are the look at me’s, which usually just consist of stupid pictures of what someone has bought or done to what they purchased or them desperately seeking attention from faceless people that think alike on the internet.
• Replies. If the question or statement was well formed and in complete sentences once in a rare while useful information can change hands. However, those are the exceptions and not the norm. And if you read forums you know what I’m talking about, but heaven forbid you forget to read the stickies, because if so do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars, and proceed directly to receiving multiple replies along the lines of “can’t you read”, “are you retarded?”, or “use the search, jackass”.
• Counter point/example explaining why all the previous replies were stupid/and or wrong. This is the fuse of the thread bomb, so to speak. It usually goes down hill quickly after this.

These are by no means set in stone rules, but if you have ever followed or participated in a forum you can probably relate to at least a few of the points. Now thread bombs are the random gifs interspersed into threads, usually, but not always containing 4 letter words.

Here is a good source for a few examples —> http://www.ondmis.dk/forumpics1.htm

And lately my greatest joy has been including these pictures in my reply-to-all messages, as the images work just as well to the stupid mass e-mails that everyone’s friends usually send out. Don’t get me wrong I like getting them, but I like hitting reply-to-all and attaching a funny pic just knowing what some of the recipients faces/reactions are going to be when seeing them.

I get this :

Its no Core 2 Duo but it sure flies compared to my 3700+.

More pictures of the upgrade here

Strategies:
===========

1) Make suggestions and recommendations subtlety but with conviction
2) If a product has minimum requirements those are minimum suggested requirements and using anything less in production environment leads to number 8
3) Get other people to back up your recommendations
4) In emails avoid technical wording and if you must provide LINKS to EVERYTHING.
5) In documentation provide directions a monkey could follow and intersperse with screen shots liberally.
6) If you must do something that isn’t the way it should really be done, get it in writing, so when, not if, it goes FUBAR you can drop a number 8
7) Expect no recognition for your work, because ideally if you do your job right most people will ask “What does so-and-so do?”
The proverbial “I told you so”, not always worded as so, but enough to get the point across that you should have listened to someone who knows what they are doing.

In the event that these strategies fail you, and I include no guarantees or warranty of any kind along with them, so they likely will, just reassure yourself that you have it in writing and can always drop a reason number 8 and pass the e-mail with your directions from number 6 up the chain of command to alleviate all responsibility.

I got into grad school. To get my masters of science in Information technology from RPI in Hartford. Along with the acceptance came the realization that I’m about to go about 50k further into debt to accomplish this piece of schooling. I also discovered the so called “tuition reimbursement” for state employees is utter crap. I’ll be lucky if I get enough to pay for the costs of my books, let alone a full credit of course work.

Last weekend was one of the highlights of my summer. Sarah and I spent the weekend with her uncle, who happens to be a state trooper. He took us out on his boat and also to the Norwalk PD firing range.

Thats Sarah packin an H & K MP5 and me with a Remington 11-87 Police Semi-automatic tactical shot gun . We went and shot off a couple hundred rounds and suprisingly I found shooting a hand gun to be quite theraputic. (more pictures)

All things said and done, Life is good.

We are having a house warming party the Saturday of Labor day weekend to break in the new place, and if your reading this you’re invited.

CompTIA Server+ certification is an international industry credential that validates the knowledge of individuals with 18-24 months of experience with Industry Standard Server Architecture (ISSA) technology. Professionals who want to certify their advanced technical knowledge in areas such as RAID, SCSI, multiple CPUs and the like, should consider this certification.

The bad (need to study a little more before a retake) :

CompTIA Linux+ certification is a vendor-neutral credential, generic across distributions, that validates the knowledge of individuals with a minimum of six to twelve months of practical Linux experience. Professionals who want to certify their technical knowledge in installation, operation and troubleshooting for Linux operating systems

Apparently because I can install a bunch of different distro’s does not mean I can pass this cert. I knew most of the command line stuff, but some of the switches for each one are arcane and if I ever needed to use them I’d do a man on that shit anyway. PS – RPM’s suck balls

out.

From June 6-11, we are staying at the Nassau Beach Hotel, sweet.

In other news:

I’ve become motivated and I am thinking of starting my own business. The budget will be shoe-string for the time being, and hopefully in time I can parlay my IT skills into something useful while holding my fulltime job down.

Not that anyone reads this, but how does the new design look? I switched content management systems from livejournal to something with a little more control, wordpress.

We eventually walked so far away from the car we had to call for a ride…oops.