captbrando’s log

Welp, I’m wrapping up my week in Chicago as we speak. The trip was filled with lots of work and a tiny bit of play. I am really enjoying this town and could say that I like it more than NYC. Mainly because you have a little more personal space. Times Square is just too crowded for this Texan. Although, I know I would enjoy it more in the summertime! I will be spending the next week thawing out!

At any rate, we are wrapping up work and getting ready to head to the airport. More next week!

The search is finally over for the Iraqi tyrant!

Do you want to know more?

Gotta love December. Its that month with all kinds of holiday parties (EVERYONE seems to be having one this year) and its the first year in a while that the wife and I have not been going to my company party. Yes, I just got a new job, but our company is spread out all over the US, and there are just 2 of us in Texas. I spose I could just give him a call and we could have dinner somewhere… Ahh well.

Anyway, this is the first year that we are both going to HER company’s holiday party. Her previous employer only had the party for the employees (quite strange), but her new employer seems to understand the value of family a bit more and has invited us to a murder mystery! w00t!

Then of course you have all of the year end budgetary stuff going on. People who manage use-it-or-lose-it type budgets are trying to get all of the services they need for Q4 in before the end of the year. Then you have those folks who just want to wait until 2004. Whatever.

GREAT football is on TV every Sunday. Its really amazing how great the games are in December. Plus we have a good week of college bowl games to look forward to. It is kind of sad though because the end of the season is nearing. Anyway…

Hope everyone is having a great week!

Yep, I’m now more than halfway through my first week. While the first couple of days were slow, today certainly made up for it! Sheesh! I’m really working hard to climb up the NewJobLearningCurve.

Anyway, sleepy time for now.

I’ll start working on a new design as well for the sight. Maybe I’ll have something working before the end of the year!

Welp, it has finally happened! I found a new job that looks like a real winner with a company that seems to have one hell of a fresh look. I’m very excited and am enjoying my last few days of no job.

Celebration is indeed in order, and what a better time of year than Thanksgiving to do it. Surrounded by family and friends and enjoying all that life has to offer (until I become independently wealthy that is!). At any rate, celebration drinks at the Saucer tomorrow…

Yep, here comes that short week for Thanksgiving! A time for chilly weather (Farking Finally Folks!!), mass amounts of football, gluttony and holiday beverages. Oh and driving. We’ll be putting the miles on this weekend!

At any rate, I hope everyone out there has safe travels and enjoys this long weekend.

Done for 2003! Finished my Import/Export exam today in about 20 minutes (went through it twice). I’m glad that school is done for a while. This semester has been extra difficult!

Still doing the job search thing. I’ve got a few leads, but people are so busy these days that getting return phone calls is just not something that happens often. I know that sometimes its someone who has to call someone who has to call someone…. etc… I’m just trying to stay on top of things without being a bother.

Welp, its sleepy time for me so LAATAHH.

Yes, it is another Saturday. Thanks Leslie for helping me out yesterday! We had fun, and Chris and I enjoyed your company at dinner. Sucks having to suffer through some of those crappy jukebox songs doesn’t it?

This weekend is dedicated to my Advanced Supply Chain Management project. Its due on Monday by midnight and I’m going to be coming down to the wire. I was hoping to get more time during the week to work on it, but with other classes and junk, it just did not work out. So I have to suffer through the weekend. Though, the good news is that after this and the final I have on Wednesday, I am in the clear until mid-January. Excellent.

At any rate, its haircut day so we’ve got to get going.

For some reason, my birthday post did not make it up here. Anyway, last Tuesday was the ol’ birthday! I’m such an old fart now.

School is just about wrapped up for the semester… YAAAY! Its definitely time to get moving along the road on some side projects that have been shelved for the past 4 months. This is the long break. I still have a major project due in the next week and a final. Whew.

Anyway, I’ll be catching you all soon!

So, its 2 days before Halloween and I’ll be damned if its not 85 degrees here in good ol’ McKinney. I’m protesting today and wearing shorts. How silly is this?

Well, here in Texas we’re used to the funny weather so I’m sure this does not phase you Texans out there. This past weekend was so great though. All Sunday watching football with it in the 50s outside just reminded me how much I love this time of year. Oh and football too.

So Gator is now forcing companies who call their product “Spyware” to remove that terminology and call it “Adware.” I am not going to put my opinion down in this medium or try to classify it one way or the other, but is this a new way for companies to justify their software?

C-Net has an article that says the following…

“The distinction between such ‘adware,’ which can report back to its creator with information about the computer user’s surfing habits, so as to allow for supposedly more effective ad serving, and ‘spyware,’ which similarly monitors surfing habits and serves up ads, is sometimes a hazy one.”

So it seems like the only difference here is one serves targeted ads, and one is less targeted?

Gator has recently come under some serious scrutinization because they replace ads that are on common web pages with ads they specifically send you. Meaning, Google might have a vendor that pays for a specific ad to be shown, but instead you get Gator’s ad. Are we crossing some sort of boundry here?

My biggest beef with Gator is that it is generally installed on your computer without your direct knowledge. Yes, the user authorizes its install in SOME cases, but with things like Kazaa and other peer-to-peer networks, their installer will put it in your system without your direct knowledge. These deceit practices just seem to be screaming ethical violations everywhere.

Even worse, what data is being transported back to Gator? How do they maintain it? How do they SECURE it? The fact is, Gator uses YOUR CPU cycles, YOUR network bandwidth, and YOUR disk space to run its operations, generally WITHOUT your knowledge. I can’t begin to consider the numerous implications this posesses for companies whose users have inadvertantly installed the application. Is IP being leaked? What a great opportunity for corporate espionage?

So, while this author will not publish an opinion one way or the other (lets face it folks, neither are “good”), what do you think?

Yeh, its time to review some of the new albums that have come out that I bought over the past couple of months. Yes, some of these are not recent, but deal with it.

Dave Matthews, Some Devil
The first official solo project from Dave Matthews is much darker than that of the early records from the band, and even darker than Everyday. As my buddy James very aptly said, “Everyday was really the first solo album.” If you are looking for the days of Crash and Under the Table and Dreaming, you won’t find it here. What you will find is some very poetic music with some extremely talented musicians.

Howie Day – Stop All The World Now
This much anticipated release is the second studio release from this talented musician. While his first release, Australia, was recorded in short segments and took Day a year to complete, this album was finished in three solid months of recording. Day has a way of writing some really great songs that you can sing along to and enjoy, and he also has a dark side of him that pops out. He is an incredibly talented musician and in a few of the songs on this CD, his creativity is unleashed.

John Mayer – Heavier Things
There is not enough good things I can say about this album. This is the third studio release from Mayer and it is such an amazing combination of upbeat and slow songs that can really make that long car ride enjoyable. The CD comes with the lyrics for all of the songs and various other trivia such as the tempo of each song, where it was written, what part of the body the song touches, etc. If you liked No Such Thing you will LOVE Heavier Things!

Guster – Keep it Together
This recent release from Guster is one of their best releases to date. Their unique sound has a modern Beatles feel to it. If you like simple, up-beat songs, you should seriously consider this album. Their simple melodies are fun to sing along with, and they put on a great live show if you happen to catch one!

Vertical Horizon – Go
The last album from Vertical Horizon, Everything You Want was a very big departure from the classic Vertical Horizon sound. Older releases from the band have a folk feel and their new sound has been described as “Generic Radio Pop.” Go is the same generic sound with the same chords, but new lyrics. It will get quite a bit of radio play I am certain, so you can take that however you like (good or bad). At any rate, I was personally disappointed and will be keeping my old VH CDs in the rotation more than this one.

I hope you all enjoyed the brief blurbs I put here! See you later!

I’ve got my home computer all feeixed up. Needs some memory, but I’ll work on that later.

At any rate, check the Photo Gallery as I have gotten all of the pics to-date updated there. Basically, everything since our vacation. Have phun!!

Yeh, SLACKER! Please, bring it on. I’ve been busy on the job hunt for myself, but also for Chris. What a busy few weeks. Not to mention the mid-terms from hell and projects out the wazoo (yes, I said wazoo).

My home PC has just about had it as far as the current installation. The hardware is fine, but it is doing some VERY strange things. I’m probably going to be doing the fresh install thing this weekend if I can get some time. Once I do that, I have a ton of pictures to upload. Why can’t I upload them now you ask? Well, quite simply, the makers of Batch It!, iRedsoft, just seem to think that their program is bug free and it must just be my computer that is breaking it. I don’t have time to debug their issues (I guess that’s what you get when you pay $30 for a program), so I’m just avoiding things until I format.

Anyway, boating tomorrow, and I certainly hope to get this job thing wrapped up in the next week. LATER!

Busy busy busy. How is everyone else out there in netland doing?

Doing the whole Field Trip thing tomorrow (yes a field trip in grad school. Its FUN!) We get to tour an importing facility (for my Import/Export class)! I’m really digging this tour as we will get to see more hands-on about how the process works. Pretty boring to a bunch of you I am sure!

We went to Whitney this weekend. The boat BARELY fits in the boat house, but we got it in! Did some skiing, duck feeding and general canoodling. It was relaxing!

Congrats to Mom for inking out a win in the pool this week (thats 2 weeks in a row I have lost thanks to points!!)

out…

Man, this new boat thing is fun but its so hard not to overdo the fun. My ankle is killing me. I tried once again to slolum (woh that looks funny when it is typed there…) but after 2 tries I just had Chris throw me the second ski. I think I’m paying for it today

Boy, Gorman got hit this weekend pretty good! Figures it was the weekend of the Dove Bash. We only planned on staying Saturday night, and thank goodness for 4wd, we got out! It actually was not as bad as it could have been, but I bet they got a good 3 inches of rain on Sunday alone before we left. whew!

We’ve got some pictures of us huddling under tarps and Chris also grabbed a bit of video. Its pretty silly looking! Anyway…. I’m going to work on a couple of things and then enjoy my labor day

Well, Happy Birthday Ashley! Finally 21. Anyone else think we need to up the drinking age again? We celebrate her birthday tonight in Addison, so fear us.

This weekend has predicted rain in store for us, but I am hoping the rain leaves us alone down at the 4J. Maybe if we can get moving early enough on Monday, we’ll hit the lake on the boat, but I bet that’s going to depend on good ol’ Chris. Anyway, it will be great if we can!

Time to finish up this Friday’s work and get moving…

Class is starting again! I’ve opted to take on online and one in the classroom (which is probably going to be my mantra until my Capstone where that will definitely be on campus) which means I’ll be giving up my Wednesday nights for the next 13 weeks. whee.

This weekend was full of boating fun and relaxing. This coming week is going to be a beating, but at least we have the satisfaction of a three day weekend coming up! At any rate, I’m out for now… Catch you cats later…