While I was watching a game this last weekend on TV, my wife and I got into a conversation about life and death, and the need for living wills. During the course of the conversation I told her that I never wanted to exist in a vegetative state, dependent on some machine and taking fluids from a bottle.

“You know a lot of people say that college is a time when young men and women expand the way that they look at their world when they open their mind to new ideas and experiences and when they begin that long journey form the innocence of Youth, to the responsibilities of Adulthood… now isn’t that a load of horse shit!”

Yeah, that’s right. I’m watching Accepted.

I attended a bachelor party for my brother-in-law Eric this past weekend. Well, it was a bachelor party in name only. Has to be the strangest bachelor party I’ve EVER attended. And I didn’t participate. I know, I know. You’re all saying, “Yeah, right!”. Let me explain…

Just finished updating to WordPress 2.2.1. If you’re running WordPress, go update! If you aren’t running WordPress … well, maybe you should!

(Excerpted from an article which appeared in the Dublin Times about a bank robbery on March 2.)

Once inside the bank shortly after midnight, their efforts at disabling the security system got underway immediately. The robbers, who expected to find one or two large safes filled with cash & valuables, were surprised to see hundreds of smaller safes throughout the bank.

The robbers cracked the first safe’s combination, and inside they found only a small bowl of vanilla pudding.

As recorded on the bank’s audio tape system, one robber said, “At least we’ll have a bit to eat.”

The robbers opened up a second safe, and it also contained nothing but vanilla pudding. The process continued until all safes were opened.

They did not find one pound sterling, a diamond, or an ounce of gold. Instead, all the safes contained covered bowls of pudding. Disappointed, the robbers made a quiet exit, each leaving with nothing more than a queasy, uncomfortably full stomach. The newspaper
headline read:

Check out this site. I guess if the shoe fits…..

Happy Birthday, Adam!

Happy Anniversary Zach and Jessie!

Well, I really got back home on Wednesday afternoon. I’ve just been exhausted, and I’m not sure why. Yeah, I was on my feet 10-12 hours on Monday and Tuesday. Maybe it’s that, huh? It’s a good thing I went because there were a few tech issues that I handled that probably couldn’t have been handled by the sales and marketing types. I will say that with all the standing and walking around that my feet… well, as we used to say “My dogs are barkin’!”. Luckily there was a CVS Pharmacy between the Merchandise Mart and the hotel where I stayed, so I picked up some one gallon ziplock bags. Why? So I could fill them with ice at the hotel and ice down my feet and ankles. I’ll swear that’s how I managed to walk on Wednesday!

All in all, it was a good week at Neocon. Visited with a lot of our field sales folks, helped some of them out with issues on their laptops and also gave out a lot of advice:

• If you don’t have a wireless router set up by our IT department, I would suggest that you have some sort of security on yours. You don’t know who is borrowing your signal unless you ‘lock down’ your router.
• Did you know that you could use your Blackberry as a high speed modem? Then, as long as you have a good wireless signal you can access documents on the network.
• The best way to change your password without incident is to change it while you are connected via VPN. Then it changes your network password as well as the locally cached network password.
• Did you know you can run Password Safe from your flash drive?
• Even though you’ve got this cool Blackberry, it’s a good idea to dial *228 at least once a month to update the programming for the phone part.
• Did you know you can Google on your Blackberry to find a business and the select the business and immediately dial without going back to the phone?
• Yes, we have people on the phones 24/7. Well, not exactly - we don’t really have anyone there on some select holidays like Christmas. Do you REALLY use your laptop then?

There were other “nuggets” of advice I dispensed as well, but these were the most common. And I looked really good in my suit!!

Happy Anniversary, Al and Sue!!

That’s right. I’m in Chicago. I’m at Neocon. Neocon is the office furniture industry’s big show. Everyone who’s anyone shows up and shows their stuff. I’m up here to provide computer support for the folks who show up from my company. I’m staying about two blocks away in the Westin. Nice place. It’s right across from the House of Blues (which I’m going to have to visit this week.) I’ll be going home probably Wednesday evening, and I’ll probably be very tired then after long days and short meals.

Right now I’m about ready to shoot one of these computers. It needed upgrading badly, but I didn’t upgrade it… well at least initially I didn’t upgrade it. It was having problems connecting to the LAN, so I tried a number of things and after many hours invested it’s getting upgraded. The biggest problem with this upgrade is that I forgot to pack one of the company Windows install CDs, so I had to go out and buy one - and I wasn’t happy about that, but it was absolutely necessary to fix this stupid tower. Hopefully I’ll be able to expense at least a part of the cost of the CD. Now if I can just get it to cooperate and upgrade faster. Once done, I can set it up the way it needed to be set up originally. Man, what a mess it turned into by simply trying to clean up the PC so it would run faster. (No registry hacking, no serious service toying either.) Well, it’s on the way to recovery. Back to the upgrade.

Got a few pictures of Fruitland from a friend at work. Remember that while Muscatine was hit with an EF2 force tornado, Fruitland was hit with an EF3. Significantly more damage was done. I can’t get in to Fruitland as local authorities only are allowing those who live there and those who are working for FEMA on cleanup into the small town.