Last Saturday my mom and I took Connor to the NC Zoo while Amy was in insurance classes all day. He liked the animals but all he talks about now is riding on the “choo-choo” (aka – the tram) and the zebra bus which take you back and forth from the American to the African side of the park. The thing about the NC Zoo is that you seem to walk FOREVER to get from one exhibit to the next and when you get there, the exhibit is either closed or non-spectacular. The polar bears and elephants were the only animals really close enough to get hyped about. But even they looked bored to be alive. Connor would look at them for about one minute then say “bye, bye elephant….ride the choo-choo now?”
Pack-Rat’s doing on-line quotes.
1-800-Pack-Rat now has an on-line quote utility at our corporate site. We’re cheaper than PODS! Get an on-line quote of the same container specs and see for yourself. Leave a comment to this post to request a special price code.
Just another Friday.
I made it through my first week of a new job. There’s a lot to be done and a lot of planning required but nothing is broken requiring constant, emergency attention. We’re building, not fixing. It makes for a enjoyable environment. Some of the things that I’ll be doing soon include transitioning a 2003 Small Business Server to individual domain server components, building a new 2003 Exchange server and migrating the existing mailboxes, installing new AD servers and terminal server licensing servers, and putting some new 3Com TippingPoint VPN concentrators in place to bump up the VPN tunnel count while integrating SNMP monitoring. No rocket science, just some straight forward tasks that if planned correctly will be simple and painless.
On to other topics since the new job info’s getting stale: Amy loves her new job at Jefferson Pilot Financial. We went out to lunch today an discussed the timing of our next baby. She may want to work into next year before getting pregnant again. It will help if Connor’s a little closer to kindergarten too. Connor is the big man now. He really thinks he’s about 16 now that he’s in a big boy bed and getting potty trained. He can actually sit at the kitchen counter in the morning and have a little conversation with us. Every morning he tells me about the dreams he had. It’s so cute it’ll almost make you cry. But he’s still suckin’ his thumb and carrying around his blanky. He won’t go to day care without it. And lollipops and Elmo are the most important things in the world.
Athlon Demand Squeezes AMD
Another AMD success story. Apparently AMD can’t make enough Athlon 64 chips. Their recent success leads me to beleive that Intel has spent too much on their new Apple tree. So what if they made Mac laptops faster. I still can’t afford one.
On the other hand AMD continues to align themselves with affordable 64 bit hardware manufacturers. They’ve also aligned themselves with Sun for dual core servers which Intel has yet to approach.
Intel… Mac… I can spell o-v-e-r-h-y-p-e-d. And I can’t afford the hype. For now I’ll just stay computer literate so I don’t have to buy a machine that’s dumbed down to keep me from accidentally breaking any mp3’s.
Apple did do one thing right by using EFI by Intel . The old PC/AT BIOS retirement is way past due. AMD better answer with a compatible equivalent.
Bret’s Chet.
The other night I learned that Bret Hedican ended up getting himself a sunburst Gibson Chet Atkins SST a while back. Good choice dude. It’s the same guitar Sam Hindmarsh played when we were in Lassiter Mill together a few years ago. [I feel] it’s a solid six string for anyone torn between electric and acoustic. Everyone knows I talk a lot about these guitars but I hate to think I ever acted like I knew what I was talking about. Na, not me.
Chet’s are really smooth electric acoustics. Almost all the best players out there have owned one. Sean Aitken can be caught playing his around town on many a weekend. Check him out if you get a chance (Sean’s got another baby comin’ soon too). And check out Sam’s new band Evenfall also. They’re pretty high energy now. Next show is January 14th at the Brewery.
P.S. – I’ll be posting some of the holiday pictures soon. I just haven’t had much time for new entries lately.
Bring Back Black
Amy’s going to be mad – I found a “deal.” No, really. I got $35 off internet prices on a pair of “open box” Roland DM-10 powered monitors at Sam Ash music. Let me tell you right now that if you’re listening to music from your PC using anything but professional grade digital studio monitors you simply do not know what you’re missing. And you can own them for less than the cost of some “gaming” surround sound PC speaker systems from Altec Lansing and Bose.
This all started because I needed a set of speakers for my PC since I have none. I’ve always used a stereo receiver and speakers. I began by looking at regular 3 piece PC speaker sets but was not happy that all of them were “PC silver.” My motivation for monitors became dual pupose – sound and appearance. When I walked into Sam Ash and they offered a discount on the last pair of DM-10’s in stock, I took ’em. I know it was weak and impulsive but these things sound incredible. If I feel bad about spending the money so close to Christmas all I have to do is turn them on and listen to Octane or The Coffee House on Sirius.
Poo Poo Analytics
Google Analytics was a flop for me. I could never get the required code installed in WordPress. Google got overwhelmed with requests for this service and quit accepting new accounts. I think they grossly underestimated demand for this service.
I got frustrated trying to install the code in the version of WP that I refuse to upgrade to any of the new theme based releases, I like my current css. So I went and checked out statcounter.com. It automatically emails me all of the stats I need each week. The free version is limited to analyzing the last 100 visitations in the log but I don’t foresee needing to gather any information about any more than my last 100 visitors. So analyze this google – I’ll come back when Analytics tracking code is easier to integrate into WP 1.2.1 and you can track the stats of current subscribers a little faster.
Safest And Most Dangerous Cities
Following are the safest and most dangerous cities with populations over 75,000, according to Morgan Quitno Press.
Safest Cities:
1. Newton, Mass.
2. Clarkstown, N.Y.
3. Amherst, N.Y.
4. Mission Viejo, Calif.
5. Brick Township, N.J.
6. Troy, Mich.
7. Thousand Oaks, Calif.
8. Round Rock, Texas
9. Lake Forest, Calif.
10. Cary, N.C.
Most Dangerous Cities:
1. Camden, N.J.
2. Detroit
3. St. Louis
4. Flint, Mich.
5. Richmond, Va.
6. Baltimore
7. Atlanta
8. New Orleans
9. Gary, Ind.
10. Birmingham, Ala.
I live down the road from the 10th safest city in America and just last year I wandered around the third most dangerous city alone for two hours, good ‘ol St. Lewy.
Connor’s pic last January
…is still on WRAL’s website right here. I just found it in a report about how the state is preparing for winter weather this year.
Connor’s pic last January
