So we made it through the summer.

Actually, an interesting thing happened to me a few weeks after the last post. I went to Florida for a week and while I was down there I got a call from a recruiter who noticed something specific and unusual on my resume. That very quickly resulted in my moving into a new position.

I am now back to being a web site back-end developer, which is where I was back a few years ago, minus some of the management responsibility. That is good because it lets me spend time with the kids, and it even came with a bit of a raise. The new company is a part of a multinational, which has been a challenhe in itself, as I have not had to deal with bosses (plural) in a decade or more.

The newest toys are an HD Tivo and a Sony PS3. I mention them together because they are 2 ends to a single means - HD Video! I had owned a tivo a while back and two events combined to make me want to get a TivoHD: The price of the new TivoHD and my Cable DVR screwing up yet another recording. No other PVR interface compares with Tivo's. If you like HDTV you should just get one.

PS3 as a means to HD Video? Hell yes! For the price you cannot get a better Blu-Ray player. It's not perfect, but nothing that you can grab for under $400 is.
Actually it is slightly more than $400 once you buy the remote control you are going to want to make BluRay viewing easy.

Both units, the Tivo HD and the PS3 allow for external video to be viewed, the Tivo through their software or some open-source alternates and the PS3 through open and closed source software on various platforms. They go about it in 2 entirely different ways - the PS3 through streaming and the TiVo HD through downloading, but even though I think streaming is the better way to go in general, the TiVo experience is better overall. The inability of the PS3 to do anything but let you watch from brginning to end in realtime, without any pausing, fast forwarding or rewinding just does not cut it for me. The TiVo will let you move through whatever you have downloaded so far. Since downloading generally happens faster than realtime, it means that you can fast forward through commercials on contents from older PVRs or that had originally been sourced from the tivo itself.

Aside from that I am just doing work for the new company as well as continuing my (forever-)ongoing side projects, all of which are doing quite well at this point, plus handling a few clients that I have picked up whose needs are pretty minor.

A quick note on what is happening to me.

Wow, it has been almost a year since the last post so I thought I would just check in and update things a bit. What has been happening...

Well, in line with my name, I went to see Rush in Atlanta for the opening night of the Snakes and Arrows tour. For this who do not know, Rush is a progressive rock band that has been around for some 33 years now. They have about 20 studio albums and lots of live albums, and DVDs, most of which just finally came out on DVD in the last year. The trip to Atlanta was great and I went to the show with my brother, his girlfriend and a few of his friends. Seeing Rush on opening night is quite an experience. You do not know the set list yet, and they still have not ironed out all of the bugs. Lots of fun!

On the job end, I have been wrestling with a new T1, a new version of Asterisk on a new server and a phone consultant who has been learning as much from me as I have from him. I do have to say that I do not think I will be at my current position for all that much longer. I have gotten hints from the (new) CEO that downsizing is likely this summer and if that happens I will be asked to step down my hours. Ah well, if that happens there are always plenty of jobs out there.

As for the kids, they are both doing well and are both in the fencing summer nationals in Miami. My son will be fencing foil in the Y10 division and my daughter will be fencing sabre in the U14, U16, U19, Div II I, Div II and team U19 divisions. She also qualified in the open team and Div 1A divisions, but needs some time to rest between events. We leave next Wednesday for the nice long drive down to Miami.

In the "cool new toys" category, a JVC hard-drive (and SD)-based camcorder is the latest. My wife shot some footage with it last weekend and I was able to author it directly to a DVD - no transcoding or anything. Right into the authoring program! The only minor glitch is that it does not seem to mark the resulting files properly as 16:9, so I had to use IFOEdit on the resulting IFO files to change the aspect ratio. Not a big deal.

That's it for now. Catch everyone again in a few weeks (months? years?)

RT

Nasty people

You know, it is amazing. Some people are just nasty. My company run s\\s an opt-in mailing list. We send out mail 2-3 times per week listing our specials. At the bottom of every email is a link that will immediately unsubscribe you from the list.

Today I get a phone message forwarded to me from some lady, who is being quite nasty, saying something like "Take my name off your spam list. My email is gbpackergirl1@hotmail.com and if I get one more email from your company I am turning you over to my attorney and I will own your company."

She could have either just clicked the link, or worst case called and asked nicely. Ah well. Some people just have to be obnoxious.