2010

Since I’m really bad about getting Christmas cards and letters out (it has been many, many years), I thought I’d use my blog to publish what would have been my Christmas letter.  I can reach more people this way, anyway.

In many ways 2010 was much the same as the past several years, consumed mostly with my work responsibilities.  As many, but not all, of you may know, in late 2007 I got involved with a new business venture.  A friend of mine, Jared, contacted me to ask if I would be willing to create the cash register component of a Point-of-Sale system for a quick-service pizza restaurant being opened by a friend of his. Despite my hesitation to get involved in such projects in the past, I decided to undertake the challenge.  Soon we began to attract the attention of other franchisees in the chain, and before we knew it we were selling our product to others.  Since that time we officially organized Custom Register Solutions, of which I am part owner.  In 2010 we increased our size from 3 employees to a company with 15 people.  It has been quite a ride.  My brother Brent joined the company in June this year, helping to create the web site portion of our software.

In 2009 we were approached by some executives from the parent company of the same international pizza chain to see if our product could be adopted to some new and very specific needs.  It was pretty evident that we could, so since that time we’ve been working intimately with them.  We’re confident that we will be announced as their preferred POS vendor very soon (the only “iffy” part is when, not if).  Between the preparation for that upcoming announcement, the demand it will place on us when that happens, and our fast-paced development schedule in the company I have been working very long weeks for a little over 3 years now.  It is nice to be getting close to the realization of what was, at the time we started the project, an impossible dream.  We’re doing some very cool and innovative stuff, but I can’t talk about that just yet.

In spite of the many hours I spend working, I have still gotten involved in several other outside projects.  Everyone who knows me is well aware of my interest in audio, video, and photography, and I have always enjoyed working on any project that involved any or all of those three.  This year was no exception.  Early in the year I proposed the idea of a live Internet-streamed concert to an up-and-coming California-based artist named Sonnet who had become known in Utah for the soundtrack she provided for a popular television commercial, and she was gracious enough to accept.  Soon the project blossomed into an honest-to-goodness real music video as well, which my friend Dave would direct, and another friend Paul would shoot.  February through May included a lot of planning for those events, which took place the first through second weeks of June.  It was a very busy schedule, but it was also a lot of fun spending time with old and new friends as part of the crew.  Few of the final results have been posted on the Internet at this point , but I will be sure to let everyone know when they are.

I had the privilege of spending more time with family this year than most.  My youngest sister Christine graduated from BYU in Psychology in April, and my parents and sister Suzanne all flew to Provo to be there for that.  Christine was seriously dating her then-boyfriend Brennen at the time, and a week later they announced their engagement to be married in August.  Through the planning stages my mom came back to Provo to help Christine out for a few days.  The entire family came out for the wedding in August.  It was the first time that all of us had not just been together, but had the opportunity to go to the temple as a family as well.  It was definitely a memorable occasion which we are all grateful for.

After the craziness of the wedding wound down, it was back to work as usual for a couple weeks before I headed to Tucson for two weeks to help with the installation of our software in 13 store locations there.  It was hot and stormy the first week, and the second week it was hot and dry, but the condo we rented had no working air conditioning.  I spent many nights on the couch just trying to get comfortable enough to sleep, while working in the heat during the day.  I was glad to come home.

This year I also got to see one of my favorite musical acts, Celtic Woman, perform not once but twice.  They came to Salt Lake in May, and I took my friend Sarah as my date, and Dave and Paul tagged along as well.  Sarah spent several years in Ireland and enjoys Celtic music, so it was a treat for her to be able to go.  The girls in the group are pretty amazing.  I really enjoyed the concert, so when they went to Los Angeles at the end of August I decided to see them again.  This time I took Sonnet with me, who despite being ill that day had a good time.  It was also nice to see my new friend again and spend a couple days with her in her hometown.  We planned to work together to record a short Christmas album, but due to both of us having busy schedules that didn’t happen this year.  Maybe next year?

Other projects this year included shooting video for a handful of weddings, doing audio for an international dance/music festival in Sandy, UT, my annual trip taking pictures of fall leaves with my friend Dave, recording the commentary for a feature film, and being the regular sound guy for the Mountain Blue southern bluegrass A Cappella gospel group.  Mountain Blue kept me really busy in early December, with quite a number of performances in the first half of the month.  But I love anything involving audio, video, or photography, so any opportunity that comes is more than welcome.

I am spending my Christmas vacation at my parents’ home (as I always do) in Tulsa, OK this year, with nearly all of the rest of my family.  Only my sister Cheryl and her husband Blake and their kids won’t be there. Their family is getting big and it is becoming more difficult for them to all travel.  It’s sad that they won’t be there with the rest of us, but we understand why they can’t and they’ll be with us in spirit.  This year Christine will be bringing her new husband with her, so we’re excited to include a new family member in our festivities.  We’re very lucky that we have been able to have so much of our family together for Christmas for so many years.

Christmas is my favorite time of year, not just because I get to see my family, but also because it is the time of year when many people put their own desires aside and think of others, and because it is the time of year we dedicate to thinking about our Savior, Jesus Christ.  The spirit of the season is unique, and something I look forward to throughout the year.  It never lasts long enough.

First Video of Sonnet

I posted this forever ago on my Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts, but forgot to include it here on the old blog.

This is the first released video of the week with Sonnet.  There are lots more to come… you’ll just have to be patient with me.  I still have a bit of editing to do.  And the videos will be released periodically as Sonnet feels it’s time to do so.

So here’s Sonnet’s “Without You” as performed at her acoustic house concert in June.

This was a lot of fun to work on.  We had quite a few technical problems (don’t get me started), but the good things far outweighed the bad.  Not only did I get to get out my audio and video toys, and play with new video editing software, I got to work with some great people.  Sonnet is so much more than just a gifted singer and talented writer… she’s an amazing person as well, and I’m really glad that I’ve had the opportunity to work with and get to know her.  And I’m really looking forward to the other projects she and I have in the works.  I always enjoy working on projects with Dave and Paul… both are extremely talented filmmakers, and lots of fun to be around.  The music video they’re putting together is going to be fantastic!  And Brad is amazing as well… always so willing to help out with my little projects, and just brilliant when it comes to all things musical and electronic.  He was such a lifesaver helping setup for the house concert, and directing the camera operators.  Thanks so much to everyone!

So there it is… the first public release of anything we did that week.  It was such a whirlwind (I literally got 12 hours of sleep between Monday and Friday), but in a good way.  I’d do it again in a heartbeat… but plan to spread things out over two more days if possible.

How it came to be…

So a few people have asked me how this all came about… a girl I had never met from California getting hooked up with a group of guys from Utah… well…

Let’s backup to early summer 2009.  I’m watching TV late at night and a commercial for Lagoon Park comes on.  And it’s got this cute, quirky, catchy song for its soundtrack.  The sort of song you’d never pick for a theme park, because it’s just this sweet sounding girl with rich but subtle harmony and a piano, to a slow beat—far from the stereotypical loud in-your-face sort of song one might associate with an amusement park.  But extremely intriguing nonetheless.  I really liked it, so I looked up who it was.  It took a little digging, but I finally found out that it was a girl from Los Angeles named Sonnet (yes, that really is her name), that managed to land a contract providing the song for the 2009 Lagoon/Coke ad campaign.  I found her website, saw that she was on Twitter, and followed her (that’s how you “friend” someone).  And she pretty much immediately responded by following me too.  Kewl!

Fast forward a few months.  Over time I had made a few comments to Sonnet on Twitter and she always wrote back, and was always very gracious.  We didn’t have what I’d call frequent communication, but it was steady.  At one point I mentioned to her that I did sound and that if she ever wanted to do a concert in Utah I’d be glad to provide my services, but nothing more came of that (I assumed as much… she really didn’t know me from Adam, and knew nothing about my ability as a sound engineer). At one point she did come to Utah and performed a couple concerts at Lagoon, and despite how hard I tried to get there, I arrived at the park too late and couldn’t get in.  So I missed the one opportunity I had to actually meet her and hear her perform.  That was a sad day.

Anyway, as Christmas approached one day she tweeted (that’s how you say that you posted something on Twitter) that she was looking for an idea for a Christmas present for family and friends.  I mentioned to her (since she was a singer) that she ought to record a song and give that to people.  There wasn’t really time before Christmas to do that, but it started a little bit of a dialog about working together on recording a song together someday.  Completely hypothetical, but it did begin to open up the possibility that someday something could maybe possibly happen if I rubbed my lucky rabbit’s foot during a full moon while the planets aligned just so.  Long shot, but not impossible.

Fast forward another couple months to February… another girl I was following on Twitter had been advertising to her followers that she was going to be doing a live streaming concert.  She started announcing it several weeks beforehand, making it seem like a really big deal.  This other artist was better known than Sonnet, had multiple CDs out, a recording contract with a major label, and had recently landed a nationally-broadcast TV commercial with a huge company in a very public advertising campaign, so for sure this was going to be something big, right?  So I made a point to tune in, only to be very disappointed.  Instead of being something professionally produced (you know, with at least a real microphone), it was her sitting on her bed, playing her guitar, being recorded by just the webcam and microphone in her laptop under really bad lighting.  You could barely hear her sing or play.  My first thought was, “What a waste!  She has lots of fans watching, has spent a lot of effort promoting this event, and this is what we’re getting?”  It was technology heartbreak for me.

At that point I had the idea that her disappointing production was probably due to the fact that she didn’t know the right person to pull off something better.  And I also thought, “I have the equipment, the know-how, and other resources to pull off something much better.”  The problem was, this other artist was too well known to even bother responding to anything on Twitter, so there wasn’t any way that she’d even consider taking the time working with some no-name from Utah.  And frankly, her music wasn’t something that I really got that excited about, so I didn’t even really want to pursue that anyway.

So the next day as I thinking about the disappointment of the previous evening, I thought, “who do I know that is good enough to justify spending the time, has enough of a following for there to be interest, and yet is not so well known that they’d consider working with me to produce a streamed concert?”  Of course Sonnet came to mind, so I sent her a casual message on Twitter asking if coming to Utah and doing a live, streaming Internet performance was something she’d be interested in doing.  She said it was, so we connected via IM and started talking about the possibility.  Nothing definitive, but it got the ball rolling nonetheless.

I don’t really know what she thought of the whole thing at that point--I’ve never asked, but she was game for the idea.  And before long we started making plans.  Eventually we connected via email and on the phone, then started regular video conferences planning things out.  Once we found a location, and a suitable timeframe within her schedule and mine, things finally started coming together.

Sonnet was totally on board with the ideas that I had for what the concert was going to be like.  I wanted to keep it small (for many technical as well as other reasons) but completely professionally produced, with real lighting, multiple cameras, moving cameras, nice piano, high end audio equipment, shot in high definition at a nice location, etc.  The idea of just a small concert in someone’s living room struck a chord with both of us.  I’m really glad that she and I have been on the same page through the entire process… it has made it that much more fun.

Somewhere along the line I asked Dave and Paul if they’d be interested in running cameras for me for the concert.  They’ve always been really good about helping me out with projects when I ask, so they agreed.  But I think at first they just thought it was one of my silly little just-for-fun things that I do when I’m bored of the rest of my life, so there wasn’t a lot of excitement coming from them initially.

After a couple more weeks, I was frankly a little frustrated that they weren’t more excited about the project… I wanted them to be excited about it.  And to see what I saw in Sonnet—a sweet, beautiful, extremely likeable and talented singer with a catchy sound—so I showed them a couple of her YouTube videos.  Fortunately, they got it right away.  They saw the same things I was seeing, and they finally started to show some enthusiasm. 

So as we started talking about plans for the concert, somehow the idea of shooting a music video while Sonnet was going in town came up.  I don’t remember who it was that had the idea, but after asking her if she would be interested, plans for the video started coming together.  A song was picked.  Then a different song picked.  Then back to the first song.  Ideas for the story started to come and be discussed.  Too many ideas, in fact.  Later, two days before Sonnet flew to Utah her image consultant called me and Dave and we had an emergency two hour phone conference to simplify and focus things drastically.  Yes, two days before she got here we were making major changes.  Talk about flying by the seat of your pants.  Anyway, we landed in a place we were all comfortable.  (Okay, Doug, enough with the plane metaphors!)

Anyway, thankfully we had a lot of other people jump in at the last second to help out.  A few days before we started shooting Sae Sae volunteered to help, and she did some amazing recruiting… she found people to help with lighting and moving equipment around (grips), hair, and makeup.  We owe a lot to her making things go as smoothly as they did!

Honestly, I can’t take much credit for the music video.  Dave and Paul really took the idea of the video and ran with it.  I really didn’t have that much to do with putting the video together.  Other than providing some of the equipment, while it was going on my main job was to make sure that Sonnet was where she needed to be when she needed to be there, and that she was being taken care of.  Sure, I’d step in to run a second camera, or move stuff around, but ultimately my biggest role for the video was really making sure that Sonnet was comfortable.

The Internet streamed concert was another story altogether.  Where I took a back seat during filming of the music video, I stepped in and took charge for the concert.  That was really my baby of the whole week.  Multi-camera videos are something that the others do rarely, but something I do with some degree of regularity.  Fortunately I have acquired all of the equipment to do so over the last several years, even designing, building, and writing software for quite a bit of it as well.  And I actually enjoy working with audio more than video, so this was going to be my only chance during the week to do what I enjoy most. 

I’ll save the many stories from the week when we actually shot everything for another post (and maybe some of the other people involved will post something on their own blogs… hint, hint?).  It really was quite an adventure, but in a good way.  So much fun, and definitely an experience I will never forget.  Frankly I can’t believe we pulled off what we did in so little time.  And that we survived the week of no sleep, super late nights, in the heat, on little food, without hating each other by the end (much to the contrary, actually—we’re all better friends), is kind of a miracle in and of itself.

Trip Summary

I just got back from a long trip…

Duration: 14 days
Days spent driving: 6
Nights in hotels: 10
Saved by using priceline.com for hotels: $404

Friends seen: Brian, Jess, Dale & Katie
Friends I attempted to see: lots more
Other friends connected with: Mark
Family seen: Mom & Dad

Number of Point-of-Sale systems installed: 2
Number of computers installed: 8
Number of man-hours spent installing at each store: about 12
Number of hours spent supervising and training employees: 10

Number of electronic gadgets acquired: 1 (HTC Touch Pro 2 cell phone, 32GB iPod Touch given to Brian for his help with POS installations)
Number of electronic gadgets that died: 2 (80GB Zune, Dash Express GPS)
Repairs to Truck: New brake light switch to repair failing brake lights

Number of miles driven: 3136.0
Gallons of fuel purchased: 141.151
Highest MPG on one tank: 25.993 (75 MPH freeway + 65 MPH highway in NM)
Lowest MPG on one tank: 19.924 (70 MPH freeway in OK, KS… dang oxygenated fuel!)
Average MPG Overall: 22.217
Average Fuel Per Gallon: $2.437
Tolls Paid: $8.90

Weather…
Every day but the last two were overcast, with some mist and rain.  The last day was the most varied, with snow, rain, cold, hot, and dry all within a couple hundred miles. 

Audiobooks: C.S. Lewis’ “The Problem of Pain,” Jeffrey R. Holland’s “Christ and the New Covenant.”

Highs: Getting to stay with my parents for a few days, seeing Jess for a couple days, hanging out with Brian when POS installations permitted, getting a new cell phone, playing with the computer I learned to program on in the early-to-mid 1980s.

Lows: GPS and Zune dying, staying up all night for POS installation, crawling around in ceilings with fiberglass insulation.

This is what a typical register looks like when we do an installation.
That’s my software running on the computer. Most stores have 3-4 like this,
plus a server computer. I installed 6 registers, two servers, and two
LCD monitors at the make line.

This is Brian.  We went to High School together, and have kept in contact since.
He drove up from Houston and helped me with the installation.
Without his help I would have been in trouble.  I wish I got a picture of his Corvette.

 
Me with Jess.  I spent Friday evening, Saturday afternoon,
and part of Sunday with her in Denton, TX.

On Monday night my parents took me to Braum’s for ice cream.  I got a Strawberry Shortcake Sundae.  It was excellent.  But we were surprised by how much inflation has affected the price of the food there.  Actually, it got worse after this picture was taken.  The next day, instead of $29, the same meal was $299.

I, unfortunately, didn’t get any pictures of my parents while I was there.  Or any part of the drive home for that matter, even though I saw some beautiful scenery.  But the drive was already long enough, and I didn’t really want to make it a lot longer by stopping every few minutes for pictures.  Some other trip when I don’t have pressing tasks waiting for my attention.

I think I might be sick

I can't sit still.  I have a really hard time sitting and doing next to nothing, whether it be to watch TV, read, even talk on the phone.  My mind goes a million miles an hour, thinking about everything that I need to do, as well as everything I want to do.  I just can't get the various projects I have out of my mind no matter what I do.

There are times when I should be relaxing to maintain my sanity.  We can't just work all of the time, right?  But every time I try I feel guilty that I'm not doing something productive. 

I can't go to sleep at night because I have so many things that I want to do.  And I'm only getting about 5-6 hours of sleep (or less) every night because I want to get back to work on different projects as soon as I can.

I find myself not taking time to eat.  One "meal" a day is all I take time for, and even then it's only long enough to prepare whatever I eat (usually something quick, like cereal, or a sandwich) and eat while I'm doing something else. 

I sometimes don't answer the phone when friends call, just because I'm right in the middle of an idea that I don't want to interrupt.

The funny thing about this is that none of this seems to be causing me any stress.  Deadlines and pressure from people to finish other non-work-related projects cause some stress, but not any of the "work" I'm involved with.

Is this a mental illness?

(This is meant as a rhetorical question; I'm not asking for responses.)

Busy Week!

So General Conference was this last weekend.  But I didn’t get to see much of it; both of the guys I’m working with on our Point-of-Sale application were tied up with other things, so all customer questions and problems fell on my shoulders.  So I pretty much missed most of Conference.  The part of the Saturday morning session when I could have watched because I wasn’t on a support call was missed because I only got four hours of sleep so I pretty much dozed off right after getting off the phone.  Fortunately I did record it, so I can watch it over the coming weeks.

Saturday night after conference Brad and I headed up to Riverton to visit some old friends.  Our friend Jessica had flown into town from Dallas, and wanted to meet a bunch of friends at Lalis’s apartment that night.  Jenn and Ariel were also there as well as some other people I didn’t know.  It was fun to see everyone.  Lots of good memories.

Since we hadn’t seen Jess since before her mission, Brad and I went to lunch with her yesterday.  Brad had to leave to get back to his studies, but I brought Jess back to my place and we watched August Rush and played some Guitar Hero for a bit.   (Don’t worry, Jared, I had my laptop and cell phone nearby during the movie, and took care of the issues that came up during that two hour window.  I’m not a slacker.)

In a few days I’m flying back to Spokane to help install our software in another Little Caesar’s up there, and to have a multi-day powwow with the rest of the Custom Register Solutions party patrol personnel.    Have you ever noticed that the word powwow is half Ws?

While I’m gone my living room is going to be painted (hooray!!! no more 1980s sleeping bag wallpaper!).  So between now and then I have to move everything away from the walls.  It’s going to be especially fun moving a 300-pound desk that has been sitting in the same place for ten years.  And the bookshelves which have been there for eleven.  I can’t wait to see who what is behind those.  I spent a few hours tonight moving my TV and audio equipment away from one wall so the wallpaper can be removed from behind it tomorrow.  (I’ll have to remember to take a picture of the wiring involved in a fully equipped home theater setup while it’s visible… it’s impressive.)  I’ll need to finish moving everything before Saturday morning when they want to remove the rest of the wallpaper.  I’ll also need to do a bunch of rewiring between now and then to “neaten up” the room.  No more visible wires dangling from the ceiling or clinging on the base of the wall around the corner into the next room… at least as much as I can get away with it, anyway.

As part of the living room makeover I plan to remove the computer and desk behind the couch to add a second row of stadium seating, and to build a new professional rack for all of the A/V equipment.  I was also going to mount my new TV on the wall, but the more I think about that the more I think that isn’t such a great idea; it wouldn’t be visible at all from the kitchen or one of the couches if it were on the wall.  So I’ll have to build a nice (and simple) stand for it at some point.  Things to ponder.

My friend Dave is also getting close to needing my help wiring his studio.  He’s has built a video editing / audio recording studio in his dad’s back yard and it’s now time to run the wires before putting up the drywall.  We went over the last little details before purchasing the wires last night.  But I still need to figure out how to terminate the wiring.  We’re going to be installing about 2 miles of wiring in a couple hundred cables, and I’ll have to add ends to the vast majority of them unless I can teach him how to do it.  Fun.

The POS stuff is going well.  We’ve had about twenty sales in the last two weeks.  And we’re getting more referrals all of the time.  Nearly everybody we show the software to is buying it.  I also just found out that we are trying to get into a tradeshow/convention thing in early November.  Which means I’ll have some big changes, as well as a demonstration video, to make between now and then.

If only I had something to do with my time.

Recent Goings On

You've probably noticed that the number of personal posts has been kind of low from me for some time now. Well, I've been kind of busy working. A typical day for me is 14-16 hours of programming, interspersed with a couple breaks for snacks, to run errands, then sleep for 6-7 hours per night to start it all over again the next day. Not exactly the most exciting thing to write about, so I've kind of kept my keyboard quiet.

But I haven't spent every waking minute in front of my computer; I flew up to Spokane last week to work up there for three days. The trip was a complete success, and I was able to add a feature to our POS system that a huge potential customer has been clamoring for for quite some time.

And prior to my trip to Spokane I spent several days prepping for last Sunday's regional stake conference broadcast by rebuilding the wireless network I setup between three local church buildings and rewiring the satellite room. Lots more time on the roof, with only a little bit of time in the attic. But this time I did got to play in the tunnels. Unfortunately I paid the price the next few days with jello legs from having to walk hunched over.

Speaking of conference, it was a pretty great meeting. And I actually got to watch almost all of it this time instead of running around between buildings fixing problems to make sure the video could be seen in all three.

TV Upgrade

One of the highlights of the last few weeks was the acquisition of a new TV for my living room. I have been using a 34" Sony CRT (tube) TV for the last two years, and it has been absolutely amazing (CRTs still have a MUCH better picture than LCDs), but I've been running into a compatibility issue between the TV and the projector I got in May. Plus I've been wanting something a little bigger anyway. While I was at Circuit City 10 days ago (looking for a projector for the regional conference, actually; not TV shopping) I noticed that the Sony 52" XBR4 LCD TV that I've been keeping my eye on for the last year was on sale, at the best price I've ever seen. It has typically been around $3500-$4000, but it was on sale for $2900. I asked the salesperson if they had any in stock, and they didn't, but they were willing to sell the floor model for $2540, which actually rang up at $2440. It was near closing and Brent and I went in his new So now I have an absolutely massive TV in my living room, and an amazing smaller 34" HDTV looking for a new home. So if you know someone who wants an amazing deal on an amazing High Definition TV, let me know.

For the techies reading this blog, the new model is Full 1080p resolution at 120Hz, and it supports true 24p, for an absolutely jawdropping picture for watching movies. If you're in the neighborhood drop by and I'll give you a demo.

Ike Hits Home

My sister Suzanne and friend Brian decided to evacuate Houston to get out of the way of Ike. Suzanne decided to visit my parents for a week to wait it out, while Brian threw his family in his RV and headed for northern Louisiana. From what I've heard, Suzanne's apartment survived unscathed, but I haven't heard the status of Brian's house yet. I can't say the same for Suzanne's employer's building; it had at least a few windows blown out by the storm. Because of the storm I'm also running some of the services that Brian provides for his customers on a computer here at my place to make sure that his customers continue to have access to their email.

Rock Band 2

Rock Band 2 is out now. Brent picked up a copy at midnight last night, and we played for a while before going to bed. It is essentially the same as Rock Band 1, with a few features added here and there. They didn't fix a couple issues I had with the first, though. You still have to play the same songs multiple times in order to get through the Tour, and it gets discouraging. Overall the guitar parts still just aren't hard enough. Brent and I 5-starred every song we played on Expert the first time through, and even had perfect scores on two songs. Shouldn't Expert be at least a little bit of a challenge?

The cool thing about RB2 though is that you can import/export almost all of the songs from RB1, and the songs you paid for with RB1 automatically show up in RB2 as well. Overall I think I like the songs that come with RB2 better than the first; but I'm still hoping that some day one of these games will focus on some of the bands I liked to listen to in high school, during the peak of the hair band era. Somehow I just don't think of Beck when I think of great guitar parts.

Nostalgia Lane

On Thursday Phyl came over and we were both hungry so we went to Pizza Factory in Provo. I had a Calzone, and it was yummy. But during dinner we were talking about TV shows coming out this fall, and I briefly mentioned that I was going to give the remake of Knight Rider a shot even though my expectations weren't that high. She gave me a blank stare, and I could tell that she hadn't ever heard of Knight Rider, not even when I mentioned David Hasselhoff. Anyway, so she would know what I was talking about we watched an episode of the show. It was the one where KITT's prototype, KARR, escapes from the laboratory. Now that's classic television. Do you know Knight Rider? And have you seen the show?

The Internet Has Changed the World

Two posts ago I ranted about a TV show I saw on Discovery Channel, and its pseudo-science being passed off as legit. Then Brad replied to my post and talked about another episode of the show that he saw on that same night. Then two posts later, someone who was actually involved in the episode that Brad saw posted a reply on my blog. If you had told me 15 years ago that someone involved in the creation of a TV show would contact me about my opinion (ok, it was Brad's opinion in this case, but that doesn't change the point) I would have never believed it. Back then you wouldn't even get a response if you asked for one, and here we got a response that we didn't even go looking for. The Internet has truly changed everything.

Excited For...

I'm excited that Heroes season 3 is starting up here in 10 days. I still think it's one of the best shows on television, even though they had to ruin season 2 because of the writer's strike.

I'm also excited for the new Zune software that is coming out on Tuesday. There are some pretty cool features coming with this update.

Don't Like Working on Sunday

I really don't enjoy having to work on Sunday; it is normally the only day I take off. But we had two Little Caesars stores with significant problems today that had to be addressed. So I had to spend three hours diagnosing problems with one store (their phone line had been cut, which caused problems with our system), then the next 3 hours fixing problems with the other store. That deserves 6 hours of not working sometime during this next week, right?

There is One More Thing

I almost forgot one of the biggest things that has happened recently. Brent bought a brand new Honda Civic a couple weeks ago. It's black, two door. But the black has a mild blue metalic flake to it that's really cool.

That's All, Folks!

I suppose I've rambled on long enough. But thanks for bearing with me through my techie posts to get to the good stuff.

Memories

I saw this on my friend Drew's blog, and it sounded like fun...  (even though I'm usually not one who likes to pass these sorts of things along)  So I'll bite, and I quote verbatim:

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty funny to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you.  (If you're not sure if I follow your blog, leave me a link just to be sure.)