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I’m an apple whore

It’s true.. after using an iPhone, then a nano, and now a MacBook, I have to admit it.. Apple makes a good product. I really hate to say it. After all these years, I’ve always said I didn’t like them. I never gave OSX a shot although I was open to it. I hated the operating system prior. They really did a great job. I’ve been leaving my compaq laptop at work to force me to use the macbook and after 2 weeks I can honestly say I really enjoy using it. Don’t get me wrong, I still love Windows XP. I gave up on Vista after giving it a few months to grow on me.  So I’ve been using my MacBook for playing out while djing and it’s pretty solid.  I’ve also begun applying it to my developer side of things  We’ll see how it holds up versus the staples I’ve grown accustomed to over the years.

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Another year…

It’s weird to think another year in my life has blown by. I went from car guy to dj then back to geek. I’m pretty happy with things now. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I like to look back at where I’ve gone in life and reflect on how I’ve changed. The things I’ve done better, the things I’ve been worse at. I’d say my 26th year was a good one.

First off, I’m very satisfied with my living arrangement. I made the decision to leave my 2 bedroom apartment and things have been good in Bloomington. Leaving Identix also turned out to be a solid plan as I love my job now. I still look forward to going to work every day. The dj crew is still doing a kick ass job even though we have a few bumps here and there. Our party we hosted last Saturday was crazy and around 250 other people agree with me on that. On top of that, I’ve been hitting the gym, not as much as I’d like but I’ve been fairly decent at it. I haven’t been in a few weeks though and that will change this week.

I’ve left good friends behind and gained new friends and rekindled past friendships. Some of this I’m pretty upset with, some I think is for the better. The way life changes as I walk down the path intrigues me though. It’s weird to think how the smallest thing can make a large impact on your life. I like to look back at those moments and think about how my life wouldn’t be the way it is without them.

I guess that’s enough reflection, I need to get into work. I’ve got lots of code to write. =)

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Can you see the light?

It’s been quite a tumultuous past few weeks.  I’ve written thousands of lines of code and we’re so close now with 2 days to spare.  Brandon and I did another 12 hour marathon session at work and most likely will start another in a couple hours.  The pieces of the puzzle are all coming together and I’m excited for the results.  If all goes well, we’ll finish up tonight, polish tomorrow, and wow the vendors on Tuesday.

It’s really fun being a programmer again.  Sure the time investment isn’t the greatest but I’m actually using my brain again.  To those that haven’t seen me around much lately,  I apologize but I’m sure you all know I’ll be back and kicking very soon.  Next we get to start planning the AfterHoursDJs spinoff here in Minneapolis.  The venue is locked down and the djs have their flights booked, it’s just a matter of getting the plans for the venue locked down.  If you’re in Minneapolis, you better party with us on October 20th!

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I really don’t want to go to work today

So I’ve now worked 12 days in a row, and I need to go in today again.  In a way it sucks, but on the other side, I’m doing something I love so I can’t complain too much, plus the company always takes care of me when I put time in like this.  We have a huge October 2nd deadline to meet so I’m sure this week will be the same thing with a few 12-16 hours days.  I guess I can give up one thing and then just watch the other end pick up heavily.

On the flip side, I feel strangely energetic today.  Robbie and I went to the gym early and lifted for a while and rode the elliptical machines for a while.  Things with Lifetime have been going good so I can’t complain.  I’ll start with my personal trainer next week so I can really learn what it’s like to kick my own ass.

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95%

Back when I used to work at Irresistible Ink during my first yearly review my boss referred to me as 95%.  He told me that I can do any project and fly up to 95% and afterwards wait until the last minute.  I sometimes feel like this is true about my life lots.  I can climb to near the top at almost anything I do.  Be it djing, working within the car club, or work.  It seems like it comes with relative ease as if I prove to myself I can be the best, then slouch off.  I wish I could explain why I do it, or where it came from.  I know that when I push myself, I climb over the wall but there have been few times I’ve done that.  I really don’t know where all of this is coming from either.  I should be in relatively high spirits.  I’ve been working a bunch of hours but beyond that, I’m on track for a very successful year in my life.  I love my job, Brandon starts work there next week.  My dj crew is growing more and more and we’re throwing 3 shows in the next few months which will put us at the 4 shows I wanted to reach in the beginning of the year.

For those that don’t know, I also signed up for a gym and I’ve already lost 6lbs in the last 2 weeks which puts me just a hair over the 2.5lbs / week goal I set for myself.  Yet at the end of the day, I feel dead.  I haven’t felt like going out for quite some time now and even playing out isn’t a priority.  I really think I need a vacation and may opt to take one in October.  I’m really considering just getting in the jeep and driving.  Where I end up, it really doesn’t matter as long as it’s away.  Of course, that means getting away from work, probably everyone I know as well.  I really enjoyed being away with an entirely new feeling.  Driving in downtown Nashville, not knowing what I was going to find was exciting.  Granted this would probably be a better plan if it was summer but maybe I’ll just go that far south.  Who knows, not me that’s for sure.

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Yes, I’m am a gear geek now

I always thought the iPod was a cool device but I never really got into it. It’s funny the world we live in these days. It’s so convenient. I’m watching the movie Shooter in HD as it downloads from XBox Live right now. Meanwhile sitting on my couch with the laptop wirelessly. Speaking of wirelesss, I purchased another bluetooth headset last week. Thanks to Steve Jobs deciding that everyone that purchased an iPhone is entitled to $100 in in-store credit, a new Jawbone Headset only ran me $32. The employee in the store rang me up and even emailed me the receipt rather than printing it from his handheld point of sale system. As a jeep owner, one of the biggest problems I have is wind noise. I had originally purchased Apple’s iPhone Bluetooth Headset.  Now this is a cool product.  It comes with a dock and a mobile USB cable so I can leave at one at work and take one home.  It’s absolutely tiny, and when I charge my iPhone, the headset charges in the dock along with it.  The downside is that it seems to pickup wind noise like nobody’s business.  So with my new credit, I purchased the Jawbone Bluetooth Headset.  Now it’s a bit bigger than the Apple headset (read: much) but it actually possesses adaptive noise shielding.  By doing this, it does an excellent job of filtering out background noise wherever  I am.   Now driving the jeep with the top flapping away or the window open at highway speeds doesn’t mean I can’t use my phone.  I’m still happy I have the Apple headset though as I intend to use it once I put the hard top on the jeep.  Until then though, I’ll talk with relative zero background noise from the Jawbone.

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It’s time for more life changes!

Well I decided to make a life change today and it’s a pretty big one.  It’s actually one that will have a huge impact on my life.  I really don’t keep too many secrets, so as an experiment, I’ve told one person of the change.  It’s something that if it goes well, will affect me for the rest of my life.  Have any guesses?  Anyways, it’s one of those things that’s for the better.  I’ve considered creating a separate category that’s private where I can write about it and then once I’ve decided to, I’ll open it up for others to see.  Here’s to my new endeavor!

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No, I haven’t forgotten

My life has been pretty nuts lately.  I’ve been employed for almost 2 months with the new job and I still wake up in the morning excited to go to work.  I feel like they really appreciate me, and I keep getting to do new things.  Right now, I’m spending alot of our time reverse engineering the previous programmer’s work.  He wasn’t very good at keeping things organized.  There are no comments, and its like untangling a big mess of cords to figure out where things are.  Thus far I’ve been using the Zend Framework in favor of Cups or Code Igniter.  I made this decision based on a few things.  While I hate to say it, ZF is made by the creators of PHP.   Because of this, I expect the best support out of it as well as community.  Some parts of Code Igniter feel cryptic and the community around seems small.  Working with ZF and hanging out in the irc channel for it reminds me much of when I started learning PHP.  As far as where I’m at with our re-write at work, we’ve been doing a lot of planning on the show management side which will lead us into the call center manager’s portion of work nicely.  In a way it feels exactly where we should start so I think we get bonus points for that.

I’ve also written a search engine of sorts to search or data tables easily.  The existing setup is fairly clunky (which I’m sure is hard to  believe based on previous statements) so I rewrote it the way I think it should be done.  It’s not 100% but it’s definitely an improvement over our exisiting one.  I plan on posting the basics of the code here once I get a bit further along with it to share.

Beyond that, I purchased Bioshock today for Xbox 360.  It’s purely insane.  The graphics are unmatched and it’s the first game to scare me and make me jump in years.  Plus its a fun single player FPS.  It’s been a while since I’ve found that.    Anyways it’s near one oclock and I have another long day at work tomorrow so I’m crashing.

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Apple is changing my life

So I’ve decided that the iPhone is a device that will change my life. Sure I haven’t even had it a week, but now that the initial “I have an iPhone!” buzz has worn off I think I can make an accurate assessment. now before people start telling me “well my blackberry can do that”, keep in mind up until this point, I’ve avoided the blackberries, the t-mobile dash, treos, etc for the most part. I’m looked at them a bit but I’ve always been turned off by their inability to browse the web easily. So I’ve put together a list of pros and cons for why I love my iPhone.

Pros

Interface
The interface on the iPhone is slick. I can bounce from program to program showing someone my phone swiftly, and it looks cool as well, watching things slide off the screen like deleted emails, or rotating the phone to show someone my albums in the iPod portion of the phone. Browsing uses a real browser, sure I don’t have flash yet, but that’ll come eventually. I can login to my wordpress panel, myspace, or search weather.com fairly quick. The keyboard is also pretty quick once you get going on it. I’m by no means typing like I do on a keyboard, but faster than on any other phone I’ve had.

Google Maps
Living in Minneapolis, I get to deal with traffic during my commute. Now the current traffic status is just 3 clicks away while I’m on the road. Best of all it’s been very accurate thus far. Sure lack of GPS kind of sucks but I know how to read a map. If I want to find something, I type the zip code and what I’m looking for. For example “55416 go karts” and it shows me all of the go karting places on the map. Tap on one shows the address and phone number, 1 more tap and I’m calling them.

Syncing is easy
It took me about 5 minutes to move my contacts from my Motorola RIZR to the iPhone and that included installing the Motorola Phone tools. I synced to the Windows Contacts, then synced those to the iPhone and I was done. This was a bigger pain in the ass when I went from my RZR to my RIZR. On top of this you get the standard fairly reliable syncing you have with the iPhone. Your pictures directory syncs fine, just like videos, music, and podcasts.

The Calendar rocks
The calendar on my previous phones sucked. With the iPhone I can list a radio show, then edit each one individually. It’s a simple feature lots of phones miss out on. I just wish they had an option pre-installed to text or email the calendar date somewhere else. THat was as I book someone for something, I can email them a reminder right from the phone.

Cons

Lack of multimedia MMS support
Why can’t I send or receive pictures easily via MMS? I’m able to email pictures. For that matter where is my video support?

Where is iChat or a similar IM client
Sure, I can use something like meebo, or there’s TinyBuddy IM which was written by a aol programmer for the iPhone, but I can’t leave my phone on. I honestly can’t wait until 3rd party applications have hit. Things like Pownce or Twitter will truely take off. Can you imagine a world where you can send an mp3 via Pownce on your phone? Then access it the same on your pc or mac?

Ringtones?
There are a bunch of rumors going around that Apple is going to charge $0.99 for a ringtone to put on your phone. Sure it’s cheap compared to others, but seriously, why would you bill me for it? My theory is that Apple will let you create a ringtone from any mp3 you own, or from the iTunes store for $0.99.

These are just a few things that are the tip of the iceberg, but I really haven’t seen many other people talk about. The iPhone doesn’t have 1 awesome feature, it has several and in the end, all the cons can be fixed via software. (except lack of GPS) If this is a first gen model, I can’t wait for the second or third.

I also picked up the Apple Bluetooth headset and was impressed by that. The headset comes with a dual dock that allows you to charge your phone and headset at the same time and while charging, the headset’s battery status is displayed on the phone’s screen. The wind resistance in the jeep isn’t really cut down at all and I can’t be heard at all so I’m deciding if I want to exchange it for a jawbone, or perhaps keep the Apple headset and buy a jawbone for the jeep.

The crazy thing is the iPhone is almost enough to make me an Apple fan boy, in fact I started wondering about picking up an older mac laptop. I’ll cover that up by using it to know the most I can about the IT market, but after owning an iPhone, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t intrigued at what Apple does with an entire OS.

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at least I didn’t cave

Its been a bit since I posted. Since there aren’t many comments though I assume not many people visit anymore. I’m currently sitting in the theatre at the Mall of America waiting for the Borne Ultimatum to start. Do to the wonderful company known as Apple I can do this from my new iPhone. I managed to convince work to purchase one for me.
thu
Thus far Im pretty impressed with it but I can’t go into too much detail since the movie is about to start. Rest assizes I’ll get to that soon. Well the previews are starting, until next time…

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