July 24, 2007 by chad.

I just spent the last 20 minutes or so on YouTube just browsing about and seeing what there is to see. As I flipped through Simpson’s videos, humorous animations and parody commercials I stumbled upon someone’s video log. Now, this video log belongs to a woman…no dirty thoughts here…and she kinda uses it as a sounding board in her life. What I found amazing about this vlog is that she totally leaves her thoughts and feelings out there for the world to see. The passion is there the excitement and fear as well. This is amazing! Forget that this society becomes more and more intrusive every day with “reality” programming and video cameras all over town tracking the goings on of the average person. Forget about the whole conception of having a personal diary, as it were, to vent…to feel…to internalize what affects our lives. This is something that she is offering up for anyone to view. This is powerful! This is immense. I can type what I want here and cautiously edit the content as I fell, but video does not lie. Oh, sure, you can approach it the same way, but you can see when video has been edited. She just lays it out there in almost one take. You can see her looking down at some notes to keep herself on track. YouTube always seemed to be just an amusement, but it can be so much more. A message can be broadcast everywhere and anytime. You could present a thought one time and have it seen in a million different places.
Strange but true, this opens a whole other world for me. Our lives…my life seems rather insignificant to this 21 year old and her experiences splashed out on the web. I know that is not true as I do a lot for this community and a lot for my friends. My missions and goals remain the same and this feeling will pass. Its just incredible how our technology can bring so much together. That this young woman can show me something new and exciting is wonderful.

I know…I know, you want me to link to her YouTube presence. That is actually irrelevant. Go to YouTube or any one of a number of online video log houses and see for yourself if you have not already ventured out there. The growth is in the experience not in the person. Time for lunch. end of line

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July 20, 2007 by chad.

I have been under the hood of a lot of computers in the past 7 years, but very few of them have had the telltale sign of a smoking harddrive. I wish I had a camera when I went on the service call because one of the chips was half melted around the bottom of the spindle. Some of the green board was was well scorched. The smell of burning computer innards is an unmistakable smell, not unlike the smell of a freshly killed skunk on the road. It could be pitch black outside, but you would still know without question that it was a skunk. Enough about skunks because there’s one on the Sherburne county backroad we live on now..and he’s a freshy.

This hard drive was definitely the result of hardware failure although we can usually trace this kind of damage to a power surges from such things as lightning. Uh oh, gotta bolt. More on this later.

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June 19, 2007 by chad.

If there ever was a SHOUT BAMA-LAMA! moment its when I received 2 boxes in sealed containers that presumably contained install disks for Microsoft Office 2007 Pro. I opened them only to find a license key and the instructions to download it off the web.

The world is continuing it progress toward a paperless, productless existence. In some respects this is a good thing, but when you want to do a quick install for a client, the shear fact that you need to DL the program before installing is maddening. Actually I need to download the 2007 Microsoft Office System OEM Pre-Installation Kit(OPK) Master Kit. I was advised that downloading the 60 day trial is sufficient for making this work, but we will have to see on that one. I have found that the best way to deal with software vendors is follow E-X-A-C-T-L-Y what they say I should be doing and then figure out a workaround when their directions fail. Why bother re-inventing the wheel if you don’t have to. End of line.

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