.: What’s Bruin :.

Last Wednesday my “office” moved its location to 32nd Street Naval Station near downtown. The funny thing is that it actually takes less time to get there than it does to get to our old location at Pt. Loma.

We’re in a huge office that has lots of desks. But right now, our little unit of three plus three SMEs are all that’s in the new place.

My Laptop Docking Station

My New Desk

The day we moved, the two Navy instructors from Great Lakes, Chicago, Shawn, and myself went to lunch on the base. Someone told us about the galley. We had steak and lobster for $3.50. It was actually an all you can eat buffet. The food was okay. I guess you can’t expect much for $3.50. But I think it’s cool that military can eat so cheaply.

Steak and Lobster for $3.50

Tags: Career, Computers

This site is moving to a new home. For the past year, I’ve been with icdsoft.com, which has been fantastic actually. They have awesome technical support in addition to their good hosting plans. But upon the recommendation of Mark, I’m switching to site5.com. For $1.95 per month more, it seems to have much more to offer. Mark is handling the transfer for me.

For a few days, perhaps, this site may be down, as well as comments turned off. I will begin the site migration this Thursday, but I am probably going to point my DNS servers to the new site starting this evening. Ultimately, this will mean that I will be incognito for the next four to five days until the migration is complete.

Update Thurs 7/28/05: Mark finished the WP migration to my new servers. So far, everything seems to be in working order. Just a couple of legacy issues to finish.

Tags: Site5.com, site_announcements

My $500 lesson came in the mail today: Seagate 400 GB External Hard Drive. About a month ago, I was working on my movies from Greece, using my Mac. I unplugged the firewire cable WITHOUT unmounting the drive.

Poof. In an instant, the drive was damaged. I could not remount it, even though I could see that the data (i.e. my movies files) were still on the drive. So I called around for estimates for data recovery services, which ranged anywhere from minimum of $500 to $2,000. I decided to go with Seagate Data Recovery Services. They ended up doing the job for $500– the job being to recover my lost files and restore them to my replacement hard drive. Thankfully, the drive was still under warranty, so Seagate replaced it for free.

I’m burning the Greece movie I was working on. Everything seems to be A-OK.

I will NEVER AGAIN unplug the firewire cable or turn off the external drive’s power source without first dismounting the drive.

In my experience with Apple, this is the LAMEST thing I have experienced. But thankfully, it is the only thing. Windows still sucks, and PCs are basically pointless.

Tags: Apple, Computers, OSX, UNIX, Windows

I liked what Mark did with his Archives page. Although I’m not exactly sure what Tags are all about yet. The two category lists on my Archives page seem were kind of redundant, although the listed categories do show the subcategories while the weighted list does not. I may change it later so I changed it to a single weighted list.

Tags: site_announcements, WordPress

Happy One-year Anniversary to my blog. This is the 542nd post.

One year ago today, I started this blog to replace my long-time teaching web site because I am no longer a public school teacher. THANK GOD for that. No more putting up with bozos in the classroom and their progenitors outside of it.

The blog has undergone minor cosmetic changes on the outside, but plugins on the inside have made this a very functional self-publishing tool.

For most of the year, my thoughts focused on the election of 2004, conservative politics, and terrorism. While I’m still somewhat interested in those topics, I haven’t found myself writing obsessively about them. Right now, they seem kind of boring. It will be interesting to see what I’ll be musing about in the upcoming year.

In any case, Ευτυχής επέτειος στο blog μου.

(Translation: Happy Anniversary to my blog.)

Tags: Blogging, site_announcements

Like It

My manager, as I was on my way out of the office:

You got a lot done this week. Thanks for all your hard work. You’re doing a great job.

F.D., Manager, Instructional Systems Design

This is a far cry from my previous job where I was feeling more and more stupid every day from the negative environment created by the manager. It’s hard to believe that I was never complimented once nor were my efforts personally acknowledged for an entire year. No wonder at least four or five people had left that office in the past year. What a negative environment. Josephine says that that’s what it’s like to be abused and brainwashed. Nice.

When I first started at S Tech, I was a little scared because my confidence level had been taken down to such a low level by all the negativity. But after being there for almost two months, I know that I am and will be doing just fine. After all, how can I not be when I get complimented almost every day for my work. That rocks!

Don’t Like It

I’ve got a paper to write that’s due on Monday. And I’ve brought home some work from “work” because there is just not enough time to get everything done during the day, especially when the tasks keep getting piled on and on.

Tags: Career, management, work

I didn’t notice it the first time I watched Return of the Jedi on the new DVDs recently released in the last couple of months. But after watching Episodes 4, 5, and 6 today in a Star Wars marathon fest here at home, I anxiously waited for the closing scene of Jedi, which was rumored to have been changed. I had heard that the original actor portraying Anakin Skywalker had changed to Hayden Christensen in the apparition scene during the Ewok Celebration. And it was true! How cool is that?

Of course, Anakin should be remembered in his glory days as the young and powerful Jedi that he was before he turned to the dark side. I think that’s a very cool way to end the weekend.

Tags: Movies, Star_Wars

Despite what the critics said about this movie, it was good. Sure it had its cheesy lines like all superhero movies do. There was not as much action as I would have hoped, but it definitely was not disappointing.

The only thing that decreased my enjoyment of the movie were the idiots throwing candy from up above us. Then going home from the theater there was the huge amount of post-movie traffic on the main streets. Because I was going the speed limit, some person of Hispanic descent was tailgating me. So he passes me and gets in the left lane in front of me, but when the light turns green he shifts lanes to the right because he doesn’t need to turn left. What a moron. Seriously, if I were mayor of this city, I wold conduct an illegal alien raid and deport everyone not here legally OUT OF THIS CITY and COUNTRY. But that’s just me. The illegals should be thankful I am not mayor.

Tags: Commentary, illegal-immigration, Movies, politics

So I’m reading a textbook (not a very enjoyable read because it’s very elementary) for EDTEC 541 and I come across something about graphics. One of the authors is an award-winning author with over a dozen best-sellers. She has led workshops on design. The other author has over 30 years experience as a graphic designer.

I’m quoting from page 176:

GIF is a graphic file format developed by CompuServe specifically for online use. It stands for Graphic Interchange Format. GIF is pronounced “giff,” not “jiff”–the “g” stands for the hard “g” in “graphical.”

The Non-Designer’s Web Book, by Robin Williams and John Tollett

So much for shutting up dumbass morons. I always knew I was right. But this just validates that fact.

Tags: Computers, education_and_training, stupid-people, Web Design

This morning there was no traffic going down the 15 freeway. I made it to Pt. Loma in 45 minutes instead of the usual one hour or one hour 15 minutes.

The Reason: A tanker truck had overturned in Fallbrook off Mission Road on the 15 South. It was blocking traffic from Riverside in Temecula all the way up to the 215. Ha ha. Taste of their of their own medicine. All the Riverside commuters stuck up there behind the truck were inconvenienced.

It’s hard to believe that without all the traffic coming in from Riverside that the commute would be this nice. I wish they would all go work in Los Angeles or Orange County and leave San Diego alone.

Oh well, tomorrow it will be same as usual — backup on the 15 freeway South in Escondido.

P.S. Nobody was hurt in the tanker truck. I have no idea why a huge truck would overturn like that. The driver was probably falling asleep or otherwise driving carelessly like most truck drivers do.

Tags: general_stuff, Life, traffic, transportation

Did you know that I have the coolest phone ever? It’s the Treo 650. It replaces my Kyocera Slider phone, which I gave to Pourpa. And it replaces my PDA, the Sony Clie TJ-27, which I also gave to Pourpa. The only phone that kinda comes close is the Motorola Razr, but that’s just a phone. The Treo 650 is also a PDA, camera, and videocamera.

Coolness…Treo 650

Tags: cell_phones, Palm, Treo650, Verizon

I’ll never get tired of hearing that I did a great job. Before getting to leave early on Friday for the three-day weekend, my manager told me that I’ve been doing a great job.

This work, team, and manager are so cool. I love working n such a professional organization.

Tags: Career, management