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Helping Those In Need

2009-12-23T19:00:00-05:00-05:00

This year, Jenny and I decided to stay in town for the holidays instead of spending an obscene amount of money traveling just for a couple of days (I have very little vacation saved up). Since we were, here, we decided to do some good and volunteer somewhere. Jenny found this great organization for us to volunteer with called Miriam's Kitchen.

Miriam's Kitchen provides healthy, homemade meals and comprehensive case management services to homeless men and women in Washington, D.C. You may have read about them after Michelle Obama volunteered serving food with them earlier this year.

I was very impressed by how well the operation was run and how much the people there cared for guests. I look forward to working there again and encourage anyone else in the area to see what they can do for those in need whether with Miriam's Kitchen or with another organization helping those less fortunate.

Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Bad Movie

2009-12-15T19:00:00-05:00-05:00

Nothing much to do here in Texas on a Wednesday night so I want to dollar theater. I had already seen most of the movies there to tonight was Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant. For a dollar, I'm still undecided if it was worth it, but for any more than that, it certainly isn't.

I'm a big fan of John C. Reilly and although he did have some good lines delivered in his typical over the top style, he couldn't make up for a weak plot.

Not much more to say about this. Since it is already at the dollar theater, you probably won't have to time to catch it while it is still in the theater, but don't worry about that. And if you miss it on DVD, you'll be ok too. If you see it on cable next year and have nothing better to do, sit back and enjoy.

Time for Zombies

2009-12-03T17:09:39-05:00-05:00

Hooray for the dollar theater near my hotel. I was bored tonight so I decided to go catch a movie. I had heard some mixed reviews about Zombieland, but for $1.75, it can't be that bad, right? I'm not big on horror movies but the comparisons to Shaun of the Dead as well as having Woody Harrelson gave me enough incentive to go see it.

To the point, I thought it was great. The appearance of Bill Murray really put it over the top for me. It isn't the best movie ever made, but it was very enjoyable for the 88 minutes it ran. The Texas and Redneck jokes at the beginning were especially great since I saw this while in Austin.

I'm still not sold on Jesse Eisenberg though, he always seems like he is playing Michael Cera's character. The only other movie I remember him from is Adventureland which was a painful 90 minutes and perhaps that just left a bad opinion of hm in my mind.

Anyway, if you don't mind some gore (well a lot of gore) and like zombie humor, this is a pretty entertaining movie.

What's a "Fromer"? Ask the AP

2009-11-14T08:04:00-05:00-05:00

I was reading this AP article and noticed that the AP is apparently making up words... If you look at the caption on the photo, it lists Palin and the "fromer" VP candidate. Seriously, that isn't even a word, don't they at least run spell check on this stuff?

Update: It looks like Google doesn't host AP stories for too long, but you can still the article on sites that publish it. Here AZ Central, still has the article with the typo in the caption.

BlackBerry 5.0 OS Update Helps a Lot

2009-11-05T02:59:56-05:00-05:00

Earlier this week I plugged my BlackBerry Storm into my computer to charge it and I was prompted to upgrade the new 5.0 BlackBerry OS from the 4.7 version I was currently running. I haven't been to thrilled about the speed of my Storm or the stability of it so I figured an upgrade couldn't hurt.

I'm pretty impressed. Highlights include:

Stability - It has only been a few days, but I haven't had any crashes (which seemed to happen about once a week before).
Speed - Switching between screens is faster now
Looks - While not super important, the transitions look better than they did before
Gestures - I haven't played with this too much but scrolling is much better. It looks smoother and is more sensitive to your speed (particularly in scrolling). This may have been iPhone inspired, but better is better.

I believe that the OS is the same as what is shipping on the new Storm 2 which seemed a little better than my original version when I played with it at the store. The new Storm has Wi-Fi which is something I would like but I'm not sure it is worth the extra $150. I was leaning toward it though based on the more stable OS. Now that I have the new OS on my old Storm, I'm thinking the $50 price tag on the old Storm is pretty good.

If you haven't upgraded your Storm, I recommend doing so ASAP. One word of warning, it took a while to do the upgrade (about an hour) but I think most of that was due to my internet connection and the download of all the packages. The installation itself though did take a decent amount of time so don't do it right before you need to leave.

(Not) Finding Windows 7 on Bing

2009-10-31T18:51:34-04:00-04:00

Recently I was trying to track down the best price on the Windows 7 Family Pack so I went to the shopping section of my preferred search provider, Microsoft's Bing. I figured on Bing, Windows 7 would be something that is easy to find. It was pretty amazing to me that I couldn't find the Family Pack at all. For those of you haven't heard, Microsoft is offering a 3 license pack for Windows 7 Home Premium for a MSRP of $150. Since the standard upgrade price is $109 or so, even if you only plan on using two licenses, this is a GREAT DEAL!!! This is a pic of the box to the right so now you know what to look for.

When I search Bing shopping this is what I got:

Interesting, when I searched Google Shopping (Froggle I believe is the name) I quickly found what I was looking for:

As an addendum to the story, I order the Windows 7 Family pack from a vendor on Google Shopping and a day later received an email saying that the company didn't actually have the product and that my credit card would be refunded. Not related to Bing vs. Google, but annoying none the less. Moral of the story, make sure the company you order from has a good reputation or buy it in person (i.e. I saw the Family Pack at Costco today and although tempted to buy it, I'm going to try for a better price and no tax on-line.)

The Jeff Dunham Show is as Bad As it Sounds.

2009-10-25T18:15:08-04:00-04:00

According to Comedy Central, The premiere of the Jeff Dunham show had record ratings. I'm really curious how the second show does. There was nothing else on tonight so I watched a few minutes of the show. It would be mediocre for a comedy special (I'm just not sure that ventriloquists translate well to TV) but I just can't see how this will survive multiple shows. It really is the same gimmick over and over again. Face it if Brooke Hogan is your guest "star" then you have some problems.

It is pretty amazing how Comedy Central promotes things. They do a great job of building up interest for something before it premieres. However, the trend seems to be the more Comedy Central build something up, the worse (and more short lived) it will be.

Well, at least the pain will be over soon.

Go Joe!!! (Just not to the movie)

2009-10-20T17:30:17-04:00-04:00

Thanks to dollar movie night I finally got to see the new G.I. Joe movie. I've been waiting all summer to see this. I started traveling right before this came out and just haven't had time until now. Had I known how bad it was, I wouldn't have worried about it so much. At a buck, it was well worth the investment, but if I had paid full price I might have been a little more upset. Even Terminator 4 was better than this.

I'm not sure when Hollywood will learn that more (especially not better) CGI doesn't make up for a weak story. I appreciate that they tried to drop in the classic lines "Yo Joe" and the classic "Knowing is half the battle" but forced is a little bit of an understatement.

Why couldn't they just have a simple shootem up story? They tried to make this a little to cool. I would have preferred something a little more realistic (as much as it can be) rather than over exaggerated. This reminded me more of a live version of Team America rather than G.I.Joe.

How Long Does it Take Google to Process Street View Images?

2009-10-08T04:05:35-04:00-04:00

Q: How long does it take Google to process StreeView images?

A: About two months

As I mentioned in August, when I was walking my dog on a Friday afternoon, I saw this funny looking car with what looked to be cameras sticking out of the top. When it got closer, I was able to read the Google logo on the side. It is interesting that it takes Google so long to take a picture from a camera and get it on the web. One would think they would be more efficient that that.

Here is the proof I'm not lying.

View in Google Maps

The World is Even Smaller Than Thought

2009-10-06T17:56:35-04:00-04:00

To follow up on my note a couple of months ago about what small world this is, but today I found this is even smaller than I thought. This evening I went down to the gym at my hotel (shocking I know) and on my way back up the steps I was passing a guy who looked real familiar. We both stopped at the same time with a "don't I know you???".

Anyway, as it turns out we used to teach band together and although he may not know it, he was one of the reason I decided to quit my job move across the country and get an MBA. He recently took a job out here in Texas and we just happened to cross paths.

I'm pretty amazed.

Budget FastBreaks Take Too Long

2009-10-04T19:05:19-04:00-04:00

I travel a lot for work. for the last few months, I have been flying to the same place every week. I stay in the same hotel (a Residence Inn, which I really like), flying the same flight (which is tolerable) and renting my car from Budget (which is progressively gotten worse). The past two weeks have taken forever to get my car. Here is the complain letter I just sent to Budget. We'll see how they handle this:

Why do I have a FastBreak account?

1) I have for the last 10 weeks or so using my Fast Break and although Avis has a sign up where people can see what car they have and can go straight there, I have to go to the booth, wait in line and find out what car I have. This is amazing since i have to go to the Avis booth to get my car.

2) Last week I rented a car (with FastBreak) and it was a horrible experience. Once I waited in line to find out what car I had, I went to the space (lugging my baggage) and there was no contract in it. Then I went back to the booth and although I just asked for them to print a new contract, someone went to look then looked at ALL the cars to find my contract. After about 20 minutes they came back and printed a new contract (for a different car). What a waste of time.

3) When I returned the car, I looked at the contract and the bill was twice what it is normally (each of the past ten weeks or so). It took about 20 minutes after I returned my car to get it straightened out. Once again, I'm glad I had the FastBreak to help me out.

4) I rented a car tonight and after waiting in line to get the contract (and waiting for about 10 minutes while they looked it up and printed it) and going to my car, I looked at the contract and found yet another rate on it (not as high as last week, but still way too much). I went back to the booth and after about another 10 minutes, I got the correct rate. Good thing I had Fast Break.

Please explain to me what FastBreak gets me and why I should ever rent from Budget again? This seems to become more and more of a problem and take more and more of my time. Since I fly in at 10pm or so on Sunday nights, I would really hope to save any time I can getting to my hotel. This concept seems to be missed by your company.

Quicken Support Sucks

2009-10-02T13:47:42-04:00-04:00

For the past week I've had a problem updating one of my account in Quicken. This happens occasionaly, but overall, I'm pretty happy with Quicken (I just started using it in June).

However, when I tired to use their on-line chat support, I had a horrible experience. Below is the message I sent to Intuit. I couldn't find a place to send them feedback on the support process itself so I had to pick another category. Hopefully somewhere there find this message and does something to improve the quality of their support.

"I tried to use your on-line chat support and it was a horrible experience.

1) They didn't seem to tell me what was going on. No "just a second while I look up the problem" just an "ok" and then a long period of nothing. I had to keep asking what was going on.

2) I couldn't tell if the person was restating my question or telling me what to do. It would be helpful if they said, let me clarify... or lets go through these steps to see if we can solve the problem.

3) It would be faster if you just supplied the script they are reading from. They wanted me to do something and when I asked what we are trying to accomplish, all I got was "please follow the steps"

I hope you can track down the log for my session and change something. I would have been better off not event starting the chat that was not helpful and wasted my time."

Tips for Lazy Workers

2009-09-29T14:54:37-04:00-04:00

I came across an interesting (and short) article entitled "6 tips for lazy workers to get ahead". This really resonated with me. I believe in working smarter, not harder. In this vein, it is important to take a break and not work all the time. Distractions are important.

The most important note for me is the affirmation not to multi-task. The human brain simply can't do it. You can switch tasks quickly, but you can't do two things at the same time.

F-Bomb on SNL

2009-09-27T11:31:52-04:00-04:00

Last night, I stayed up to watch the season premier of SNL (normally I DVR it and watch it on Sunday so I can fast forward through the crappy musical guests). Over all the episode was a dud. U2 sounded good (except for Bono who sounded terrible) and Megan Fox just isn't funny.

However, there was one bit of excitement, one of the new cast members, Jenny Slate dropped the F-bomb during one of her sketches (a clip is embedded below until it gets yanked from YouTube). On the positive side, the sketch wasn't very good so I'm not saddened by the fact we will probably never see it again.

There seems to be a lot of hubub on the net about this incident but I don't get it:

1) It aired at 12:40. How many people watching this had never heard this word? Were you really watching this with your six year old kid? If so I would probably be more offended by Keenan Thompson's "Grady Wilson's Burning Up the Sheets" that was disturbing.

2) Why is the F-Bomb bad but Freakin' ok? Don't words just express an idea? Isn't the idea and the meaning what is offensive, not just the sounds the mouth makes? Sounds a bit ridiculous to get worked up over this.

Monopolies Increase Competition According to Ellison

2009-09-23T05:46:49-04:00-04:00

I just read the funniest comment I've seen in a while in an article on Ars Technica:

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison says that Oracle will not unload MySQL to appease EU regulators. He claims that his company's pending acquisition of Sun will ultimately increase competition in the market and that antitrust fears are unfounded.

I only have an MBA, perhaps I need a Ph.D. to understand that thought process.

You can read the full article here:
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/09/oracle-wont-unload-mysql-sun-losing-100-million-per-month.ars

Long Time Between Updates

2009-09-22T17:13:39-04:00-04:00

I know if has been a long time since my last post. I have been working hard on my web app for planning MBA Corporate visits, UbiDub.com. I have been working hard to convert the site to use the YUI JavaScript Library. It is just amazing what this library does.

Anyway, I'll do my best to get more content on here.

Visit to the Magnolia Bakery

2009-09-20T09:33:11-04:00-04:00

This weekend Jenny and I went up to New York partly to attend a lecture given by one of Jenny's friends at Columbia and partly to go sight seeing. One item we finally did after a couple of years of missing it was visit the Magnolia Bakery made famous in SNL's Lazy Sunday:

Although there was a lot of hype about the cupcakes, it was all worth it. These cupcakes were amazing. The icing was near perfection. Here is a picture to give you a visual taste (I had the one on the right, the Vanilla on Vanilla).

District 9 Is Better Than I Thought

2009-09-09T20:00:00-04:00-04:00

In spite of my better judgment, Jenny and I went to see District 9 tonight, the new movie from Peter Jackson. I have yet to forgive Jackson for the 3 hours of my life I will never get back which he called King Kong.

To my surprise, I found out that Jackson wasn't the director, only the producer. It was actually directed by Neill Blomkamp. I understand that this was Blomkamp's first real movie, but I would have been more likely to see it without Jackson's name attached to it. However, there was nothing else playing that looked good to me, so District 9 it was.

As for the movie... it was different. Not quite like anything I've seen before. I don't agree with the comparisons between the aliens and segregation (since the aliens had technology we desperately wanted and typically that is not the case with racial differences). If you ignore any guilt imposed cultural references, this is just a good sci-fi movie that is not quite like anything you have seen before. The is some great character development Sharlto Copley was excellently cast. He really made the character believable and you really empathized with him.

If you don't have a chance to catch this in the theater, be sure to rent it if you like sci-fi.

Plane Lavatory for Two?

2009-08-30T18:46:27-04:00-04:00

Is it Time to Terminate the Terminator Movies?

2009-08-28T12:20:20-04:00-04:00

I was a bit too young to see the original Terminator movie when it came out in 1984, but I remember seeing T2. The second installment was pretty good, perhaps good enough to rival the original. As for the third movie,I thought it was ok, although not up to the same standard James Cameron had set with the first two.

Being a fan of Christian Bale, I thought I would go see the new movie in the series, Terminator Salvation. (Hooray for dollar movie night).

Well, there were some good parts but to me special effects can't make up for a bad story line (which too many gaping holes in it). Perhaps McG should stick to music videos and lay off the feature movies. It is interesting to see that even some of the actors agree the movie wasn't as good as it could have been.

I will take a minute to note that while some of the references to the past movies (such as the obligatory, "I'll be back") didn't do much for me and could have been left out, I appreciated the inclusion of Guns 'N Roses in homage to their contribution to T2. It was also nice that the Governator isn't too full of himself and allowed his image to be used in the movie.

So if you find your self with nothing to do and a theater playing dollar movies, go for it, otherwise it can wait until it comes out on DVD. No need to rush out to see this one.

Another Successful Entrepreneur from Tepper

2009-08-24T19:30:15-04:00-04:00

I was browsing the news today and came across an article that I found really inspiring. Inc.com (a magazine for entrepreneurs) posted an article about the founder and CEO of Perfect Fitness, Alden Mills. Alden is Tepper Alum (well actually GSIA back then) who worked for a company for a while after graduation but then struck out on his own. The article describes some of his big mistakes and then how he focused on what he knew and came up with the Perfect Pushup (seen to the left).

It is great to hear a real story about what it takes to make it. You will have struggles on your way but if you believe in yourself and your product, you can make it happen.

Go Tepper!!!

I Gave In and Got a CrackBerry

2009-08-22T18:10:30-04:00-04:00

For the past two years, I've had a Motorola Q from Verizon as my mobile phone. It has served me well but I've had more and more problems charging the battery so I decided it was finally time to get a new phone since my "New Every Two" kicked in recently.

With my Q, I was able to get a smart phone that could sync with Outlook without a data plan, but Verizon has realized it makes A LOT of money on data plans so that is no longer an option. That being the case, I decided to upgrade to a phone with a data plan. There were a couple of options I liked but upon the suggestion of the sales person, I went with a BlackBerry Storm over a Windows based phone. I liked Windows Mobile, but it hasn't been trouble free and I wanted something that worked well this time since I would be using it for other things besides just the phone and calendar.

The Texas Donut

2009-08-21T18:03:52-04:00-04:00

As you may know, I have been spending a lot of time in the Austin area the past few months and based on a conversation with a friend of mine who was talking about Austin with a guy at a Happy Hour, I decided to visit Round Rock Donuts in Round Rock, Texas, just north of Austin. (Yes, I do have a lot of time on my hands when I'm out there).

Round Rock Donuts reminded my of Krispy Kreme, but the real deal. While you don't get to see them make the donuts at RRD, it is easy to tell they are free.

When I went, I asked what i should order and they offered me a free sample of their normal donut. After waiting a few minutes for it to cool and I could eat it, it was amazing. Hot and tasty. Not quite as light as a Krispy Kreme, but I prefer this cakier consistency to KK's.

I wasn't smart enough to take a picture of the normal donut but I did grab one of Round Rock's "Texas Donuts". This thing was huge. It must have been at least 12 inches in diameter.

This is a nice option to make you feel good about yourself. After all, if you only have 1/2 a donut, it can't be that bad for you right?

If you are in the Austin area, I recommend stopping by and try one of Round Rock Donuts. I have a few more pictures in my photo gallery if you still need some convincing.

Done with Blogger

2009-08-18T19:49:57-04:00-04:00

Due to several connection issues between this site and Blogger's server over the past few days (you may have noticed the lack of updates lately), I've decided to move my content back to my own server instead of hosting it on the Evil Empire's servers.

Let me know if you have any problems with the site in the next few days. I'm expected the site to be faster as well as easier for me to customize and maintain.

Year One, You Get What You Expect

2009-08-12T19:19:00-04:00-04:00

Last week one of my co-workers wanted to go to a movie while we were traveling and when we went to the closest theater, we found that movies are only $1 on Wednesdays. Since my hotel charges $14 for a movie on my TV, $1 is a steal.

The other guys had plans tonight but I decided to go catch a movie that may not be to their tastes, Year One.

This is a typical Jack Black movie and Michael Cera plays the character he is known for. Nothing new in here, but it was pretty funny through out. David Cross does a great job as Cain and there are some other great bits by the likes of Hank Azaria and Bill Hader. Harold Ramis did a great job writing/directing/producing (along with Judd Apatow co-producing).

This had a great mix of biblical stories and lore with crude humor.
If you think you would like this movie, then you probably will, if you are on the fence, you may want to skip it for now and wait for the DVD.