To Tweet or not to Tweet

I've been reading everywhere on the net and in RSS feeds that I've been following how great tweeting is and of course the place to do it is on Twitter. Twitter is all about micro blogging but its like updating your status on Facebook but its available to everyone. I'm still deciding if I should sign up for it. I don't know anyone else thats on it, but then again I haven't looked for any of my friends on it anyway.

I currently have a problem just blogging regularly, I don't know how I'd do with keeping up with Twitter. I'm quite short of my goal of 100 posts by the end of the year. I think I'm at around 60 posts but none of them have been that substantive.

I wonder if I can call tweets as part of my blogging posts? They are mirco blog posts after all but its hard to convey a lot in only 160 characters (about the limit of a text message). I'll ponder signing up for Twitter tomorrow, maybe I'll sign up and see how the thing works. I've heard that there are all sorts or protocols to conform to but thats enforced only by other people ont he service and not really by admins. I guess we'll see in the next few days if I have some time to mess with it.

Rained out Memorial Day

My Memorial Day weekend has been pretty crappy so far. It's been raining almost the entire time. There were a few specks of sunlight but it never lasted enough to actually get me out of my home. On top of all this, my wife has had to work the entire weekend on and off so that contributed to us being trapped indoors.

It's not all bad, I get to spend time with my wife in the office and my cats come in and out and visit me. My wife shoo's them away when I'm not in the office but they're good at following me wherever I end up.

Tomorrow will hopefully not be so event filled. But I do intend to eat badly by munching on chips, drinking soda, and scarfing hot dogs :)

Where's the toothpaste?

I'm out in Omaha at my client and I'm staying at a brand new Courtyard Marriott. I normally don't buy toothpaste because the hotels normally have some readily available at the front desk for guests that forget to bring some basic toiletries. I decided to go to the front desk at the Marriott where I'm staying and asked for some toothpaste. To my utter dismay the man at the front says that they don't provide that anymore but I'm free to buy a tube for about $2.00. RIP OFF!

I'm staying at a full service Marriott in Omaha next week and I'm hoping that they have some free toothpaste. I'm eagerly awaiting going back to Atlanta for my client so that I can go back to my bad ass Hilton. At least there I know they give me free toothpaste.

On another note, my time in Atlanta will be coming to an end in June. That means it will be time to look for another project to get on so I'll be flying off to another exciting city in the lower 48 hopefully in July.

Anniversary at Ft. Lauderdale Beach

I celebrated my 4th year of marriage with my wife Claire last week and we decided to spend it at Ft. Lauderdale Beach. This was another anniversary where we really didn't go away but it was still pretty fun. The day itself started out a little on the gloomy side and it actually rained for quite a bit of the morning but by the time the afternoon hit, there was nothing but blue skies and sunshine.

The ocean was surprisingly warm that day and it wasn't too bad even though there were rip tide warning signs everywhere. Needless to say we didn't venture too far out so we wouldn't be sucked out to sea. Most of the day was spent just being lazy and enjoying the sun Florida is famous for. I still think that the sand in Hawaii is much nicer but I might be biased on that part.

Since we spent the entire day in Ft. Lauderdale, it only seemed fitting to eat at there as well. Claire knew of a great place called Cafe Martorano, an Italian place run by this jacked up Italian from Philly. The reputation of this place was pretty good and we went early to make sure that we were able to get a table. It was kind of funny to be there, all the waiters had a Brooklyn accent so it felt like we were in NY. To top it all off, the place played mob movies on the huge plasma screens all over the restaurant. I was pleased that they were showing the Godfather III while we had dinner. We even saw the founder himself in the kitchen cooking which was pretty awesome. Just to make sure everything was all set, we even went ahead and ordered dessert which is not normal for us anymore since we always stuff ourselves silly on just the appetizers and entre. I tried to encourage Claire to get the $70.00 lobster but she refused, oh well I tried!

All in all, another fabulous anniversary with my wife :)

The Koi drive!

My memory has come back to me, this past week was my 4th year wedding anniversary. Since Claire and I are doing the traditional gift, we stuck to appliances and fruit/flowers. Claire got me something that I have been unwilling to spend money on, my 500 gigabyte passport drive so I can take my entire music and photo collection with me on the road. Not only did she get me the drive (thanks Claire!) she also put a sweeeeeeeeet skin on it. I put the picture on this post which shows two koi fish in a yin/yang symbol.

This makes my drive look totally bad ass. I've only had it for a little while and I haven't put the data on it yet but I will. I'm also experimenting with some drive encryption software so I can hide my files from prying eyes unless they have the password.

I'll post more about my anniversary later, its kinda late and my brain isn't working so hot.

I forgot what I was going to blog about

There has been a lot going on in the last few weeks but for the life of me I can't remember what it is that happened. It must be because I'm getting old.... crap!

I have my Treo Pro!

After doing my speculations and weighing the different costs, I finally did it and bought myself a Treo Pro and joined up with AT&T to do it. I was able to get it for $249.99 at Best Buy and signed up for a 2 year contract with unlimited data and text messaging.

I'm pretty happy with the phone so far. There are still some things that I love about my Palm but I think it was time to leave that OS behind and go forward with Windows Mobile. I debated on and off for a while on whether or not to wait for the new iPhone but in the end I still love using the Treo. I have most of the accessories that I need for the phone, but there are still some odds and ends that I have to buy. n the software side, I need to get some programs to mimick some of the things that I did on my Treo 700P but I'm waiting for my memory card from Amazon to arrive.

All in all, this is an excellent phone and will become even better as I get more familiar with it. Now if AT&T's service were only a shade better, but eh its something that I can live with.

Verizon Contract is up

Today is indeed a magical day. It's the day that my Verizon Wireless contract comes to an end. I'm unsure if I should go ahead and pull the trigger and get my Treo Pro and switch to AT&T or wait it out a bit and see what new phones AT&T might come out with. I tried the Treo at a Sprint store (they happen to have one and they offer an everything plan too) and I really liked it.

I can't decide which stinks and I don't want to only have 5000 night and weekend minutes (I know I'll never use them but there's still something to be said about unlimited nights and weekends). The roll over minutes will be useful though although they only last for a calendar year or something like that.

Verizon finally came out with a new HTC device but its totally touch screen and thats not something that I want. I still like the plans (well they are comparable to Verizon right now except for the night and weekend minutes but we'll see).

Decisions decisions....

Hilton Marietta

I think for the remainder of my stay in Marietta GA, I'm going to be staying at the Hilton. I've been staying at the Marriott here but that was because everyone else I knew was staying here. My team has gone off to The W hotel but thats with Starwood Hotels and I don't have any status with them. Since I still have Diamond status with Hilton, I'm going to try and rebuild my points with Hilton. If I can do it, I'm going to try and keep my status with Hilton as well. To me, my Hilton status is much better than my Marriott. I can get mega bonuses with Marriott but the hotels just aren't as nice.

Here at the Hilton Marietta, it FEELS like I'm in Georgia. It doesn't feel that way at the Marriott. The Hilton is really nice with its old Georgia charm, lots of paintings of the old Georgia Military College are all over the place, there's even a canon in the lobby! How freaking cool is that? Alas, I'm not going to be here long. I think I'm going to stay here a total of four weeks. I have two weeks in Omaha coming up as well as a week of working at home.

Here's hoping that my next project will let me stay at a Hilton property so I can maintain my status for 2010.

Happy Birthday Nala!

Today is May 1 which means its Nala's 5th Birthday. I didn't get her anything from Petsmart as a gift since I doubt she knows its her birthday but I'm giving her plenty of extra petting and treats today to help her celebrate :)

Food commercials annoy me

I've been watching the tube this week and I've come to realize that I hate food commercials. They've become more annoying as time has passed. My two most hated commercials are Subway and Burger King. I don't eat Subway because I don't think its worth the money to get a sandwich from them but I do eat Burger King on occasion.

I hope they stop with the crappy food commercials, they're not making me want to buy their food in any way.

OK the Benedryl I'm taking is starting to take effect and make me drowsy. Hopefully I can stay awake long enough to make lunch and my two meetings this afternoon.

Work Computer Update

OK I mentioned in one of my last blog posts that my work computer was acting up. That was quite the understatement! This past week the damn thing just refused to work. I thought it was Firefox or even Xobni but to no avail, the computer seemed to be mocking me by being ON but eating up 100% of my CPU. Totally not cool!

As part of my ordeal, I had to go to the Atlanta office 3 different times this past week. The first was on Monday and they just tried to give it a tune up. I went back to the office and the thing was running like a slug again. I went to the office again on Tuesday afternoon and requested a re-image and I had to leave it over night. I went back again on Wednesday to pick it up and things seemed fine but it was not to be.

After installing some tools that I knew of things started to look a little better and for Thursday and Friday it seems to be working like a champ! Very very strange. Just so you know I was upgrading from XP to Vista and I found it strange that Vista would treat me like this after running so well on my home computer.

I asked my tech guy in Miami to keep my hard drive intact for now, I don't think I'm going to need it now that I have my computer running finally. I just have some other issues to work out that I've discovered recently but as long as the computer isn't eating 100% CPU, I can manage.

Life with contacts

It's been a week or so with contacts and so far it hasn't been too bad. I've been struggling with them in the morning sometimes but its no longer taking me 20 minutes to stick them in my eye. The one thing that is kind of annoying is that now I need contact solution and the travel size bottles don't last long enough. I'm thinking of buying bigger bottles at my client site and then leaving them at the office and just bringing a travel size one just in case I need it.

Things haven't been as clear though, not like when I had my glasses. I called my eye doctor and I have to go in and see her because she might need to make some adjustments to my prescription. Thats not to mean things are bad, they're just a tad blurrier than I'm used to. We'll see what happens on that front.

One of the major pluses is that I get to wear real sunglasses and not prescription ones anymore. I bought some Oakley Flak Jacket sunglasses that Ialways wanted (I think I mentioned this in another post somewhere) and I use them as much as I can. If the sun is out and I have to go outside I put them on. Part of the reason is because I don't have transitions anymore, I don't think they make them for contacts, and because they look cool. HA!

OK I think I've done enough blogging for today. I was going to blog earlier this week but my laptop died and I had to take it in to be repaired. Next week I'm off to Omaha!

Could the iPhone 3G be in my future?

Recently I got a communication from my company that they might be considering opening the flood gates and letting more people be on corporate cell phone plans. This is due to the fact that a majority of the people that work for my company travel and it makes having an office number totally impractical. There are a few caveats that I've noticed so far.

1) It's a voice only plan, so that means I have to pay for text messaging and data on my own
2) I can only choose AT&T and Verizon, thats not a big deal since I was going to use either of them anyway
3) My phone number would be owned by the company instead of me, some cause for concern but not a big one

The kicker is if I want my company to monitor all the calls and websites I'm looking at. I enjoy my privacy but this might be a bit much. There is an early adopter program and I signed up for it to see if they would pick me. One of the phone choices was the iPhone 3G. I already have an iPod Touch but this would make things more interesting since I would have the phone component and a lot of the apps that are on the app store require an internet connection all the time.

Only time will tell if I get one though. If I get it through my company thats fine but if I'm getting a plan on my own, I'm going Windows Mobile all the way.

Issues with Firefox on my work computer

I recently got an upgrade for my work computer and I loaded the usual programs that I use. My computer is running Vista Enterprise and I have Vista Home Premium on my desktop but for some reason my work computer doesn't like Firefox. It was rather strange because I use it at home without any trouble.

What seems to happen is that the program gets hung up on something and then it goes and eats all the memory on the computer. When it does this, my computer won't start normally and it takes half an hour to get going. Thats bull crap right there! I've un-installed it and things seem to be working ok. I'll test it a bit more tomorrow but I have a ticket in to tech support to look at it on Monday in Atlanta. We'll see how things go.

Finally got contacts

According to my wife, I have finally joined the 21st Century by getting contacts. I've been wearing glasses for at least 20 years now and my prescription is pretty high. I decided to try out contacts to see if the technology had improved any. I attempted to wear contacts before but I found them uncomfortable and I didn't see the need to get them.

The thing that is difficult is actually getting them in. I'm not proficient doing it yet like my wife but I'm slowly getting there. I'm using some trial contacts right now as I wait for my real ones to come in so my vision isn't 20/20 just yet. It's a bit blurry but I can still see just fine. To celebrate this progression in my life, I decided to splurge and get some sweet ass Oakley sunglasses. Too bad its not even sunny in Atlanta so I can use them.

I still have to keep my glasses up to date though but I own the Cadillac of lenses. The are the thinnest lenses available for my prescription, it has anti-glare, polarization, transition, and they're scratch proof. I'm carrying them in my bag and I have another back up pair at home just in case that have the same options. I'm using the insurance for the glasses because lenses are just so expensive these days anyway.

I'm going to have to keep practicing with these contacts so that I can get my time down to under a minute. Yeah I know, kinda cheesy that I'm timing how fast I can put them in but it will really help when I'm in a rush. Oh and I'm totally committed too, I bought a years supply of contacts. HA!!

What happened to the sunshine?

This weekend (yeah I know its Tuesday) my wife and my sister-in-law wanted to spend some time out at the pool. Of course I'm game for it and it was a nice sunny day. It had rained the entire week so it wasn't a wise thing to try and go swimming. There were some crazy people that decided to go in but not me.

Unfortunately, the sun didn't last that long, only about an hour and a half. Then it would tease me by poking its head out and then hiding behind some rain clouds. Since it was close to lunch I got us some Burger King. Amazingly my wife had never had a burger from BK before. After she explained it, it all clicked for me that I never have seen her eat a burger from BK.

I got take out and brought it back to the pool, as we ate there seemed to be a freak storm. I was happily enjoying my fries when a huge gust of wind just blew them all over the pool. I couldn't even recover them which totally sucked! At least I still had my burger which didn't blow away but I was missing the fries. Anyway, that was my Sunday....

Goodbye my old computers

It truly is an end of an era for me. Over the past two weeks I decided to recycle as many of my old computers that I could. I'm a bit of a pack rat especially when it comes to technology. I paid or invested hundreds of dollars into my computer equipment over the years and I have a difficult time letting go. In order to get rid of some of the clutter and because it was finally free, I decided to unload some of my computers that I've collected over the years. The final tally was 2 desktops (one of which I built from scratch) 2 laptops that were super old and had a tough time running even Windows 98 and an LCD monitor that burned out.

I was in IT Asset Management for years and one of the things I learned was never to toss out old computer equipment because of all the harmful chemicals and what not that are contained in old computer parts. I never recycled my equipment because I had to pay people to cart it away which really isn't a good way to get people to recycle. Now that Best Buy is offering free recycling, I'm starting to look around to see what else I can unload. They don't take hard drives which is fine with me because I still have data on them but now at least I know I don't have to cart old equipment around with me.

Middle Seat is so uncomfortable

These past two weeks I've had the unfortunate pleasure of sitting in the middle seat on the plane to Atlanta. This was my own fault for booking late. No matter, Delta gives me some bonus miles for this but still, I would have enjoyed napping just a little bit this morning instead of reading my book. My book is good, don't get me wrong but I like to get a little bit more rest so I can work a bit longer during the day on Monday.

I'm going to keep this short since I'm tired this morning. Maybe I'll do an early morning work out or something. *yawn* or not....

Creepy people want my cat

I don't think I've blogged about this yet but my cats are currently up for adoption on Petfinder. I love the little balls of fur but they make my wife upset so since I have to choose, I'm choosing my wife over them. I do get to have a say in who they get adopted by but this economy isn't very friendly to people who need to have their pets adopted. Not to mention my cats are cats, not kittens by any stretch of the imagination. Thumper is 5 and Nala is 4 but she'll be 5 in another few months.

I was looking around at how to get them adopted and the most logical place is Petfinder. I considered Craigslist but the warning from the ASPCA scared the crap out of me so I decided against it. I think Craigslist is fine for inanimate objects but not for animals that need a home.

So anyway, I got an email earlier this week from some Yahoo email address that was forwarded to me from Petfinder. The email was kind of weird, it just asked for more info on my cat (singluar) and so I wrote the person back and asked them which one they were interested in. They couldn't even name the cat (Thumper or Nala) that they wanted, they just said I wanted the cat that you posted. CREEPY!! Needless to say I deleted that email post haste. The ads for my cats are still up but if someone comes off as creepy again, I might have to rethink my strategy. For now I'm going to continue to take as many pictures as I can of them and load them up on my 1TB hard drive.