TDotCom

a while ago, i found some time to actually sit and watch some tv… and while i’m not a huge fan of the family guy, i stopped and watched a lil bit. Cocoa and i were sitting on the love seat and she was chewing away on her bone when this part of the episode came on. it’s a funny lil bit, but even funnier when with every variation of the word ‘mom’ cocoa either cocked her head or got closer to the tv. by the end of the clip, cocoa was about 2 feet from the tv staring intently… needless to say, i giggled extensively.

good news abounds! a very good friend (practically a brother) called me today - he finally asked his 10 or 11 yrs running girlfriend to marry him - and apparently she said ‘yes’. Congrats $cotty!

hey, what else can you expect from the midwest in april? it’s snowing, about 30 degrees and there’s a slight breeze out of the east… it’s chilly, sloppy and wonderful. how fun would it be to bundle up and go muddin’ in a bit-o-weather like this? i submit, plenty muches of fun.

alas, i just gotta sit inside and wurk all day long. boos to that, but whatcha going to do?

what’s goin on with the Twins? they started off pretty darn red-hot and then they crap their pants for two games? that’s not right. i enjoys me watchin some twins games (even though i haven’t watched a game yet this year - i have been listening on the AM radio, though). plus, on my commutes, i been listening to all them talk stations, so i get my fix - at least basketball is pretty much done for the Twolves, so they can stop talking about that so extensively. i’m not a fan of the NBA, never really have been and don’t foresee myself ever really being. i could really care less if they just stopped playing, in fact, i’d rather appreciate it.

’nuff, of my sports ramblings… i’m done for now. this is my first attempt at just blogging on a more regular basis - what’dya think about that.

also, you may or may not realize that i’ve been workin out in the AM time with a small group of HS football players at Park and, well, i’m in need of additional motivation for some weightlossing.  so i’ll be posting some of the results of the workouts. for those in the know, we do the BFS (Bigger Faster Stronger) weight program at PHS, which consists of 6 core lifts, Bench Variation, Squat Variation, Power Clean, Deadlift, Bench and Squat. We do two core lifts every Mon/Wed/Frid. with various auxiliary lifts. that’s the basic outline of the BFS weight program. This week we all started new recording cards on week1. which is 3×3. Today, Clean and Deadlift (we use a hex bar for the deadlift). a couple new records put my current 3 rep Power Clean at 320lbs and the Deadlift 3 rep record at 545lbs. felt pretty good this morning.

this post brought to you by: Bigger Faster Stronger

so katie and i ventured over to the fitness center tonight and we had some pseudo-meetings with the ‘rents - they come in monday nights and my dad puts on an exercise ball class and my mom does some ‘office work’. so katie and i went in so we could discuss some things… we brought Cocoa in so they could see their ‘grand-dog’ and i must say, i was impressed.

a couple of weeks ago, we purchased a pincher collar for cocoa - she’s got an issue with really tuggin on the leash when she’s got just a regular collar or when she wears her harness… so, we go the pincher. and she KNOWS when she’s on the pincher and she is just a precious lil princess then. she’s almost another dog. this was my first experience with cocoa on the pincher… katie has used it a couple times when they go for run/walks, and she’s told me how much of a different dog cocoa has been. i definitely think this was $20 well spent.

back to the fitness center, things are going pretty good. i think we all wish we could spend more time there, but with us all having full-time jobs, that’s just not an option. it’s a fun endeavor that we’ve stumbled across and we’ve made major progress with how we operate. is good times.

i just realized that i haven’t gone into much detail about what i’m talking about here… and i think i’ll save that for tomorrow. the suspense is prolly killin some of y’all’s… and for a couple few of ya’s, it’s prolly not

The time has come and the time is now… the new site is in place (obviously). and you may notice that there’s not much here besides the blog… well, the rest of the site is getting upgraded as well and this was enough fun for the weekend.

i got the itch frid night and i pulled the trigger then. “What’d you do this weekend?” “me? i just redid my website, finally and then Easter stuff too.”

we’re now firing on all cylinders with wordpress - and i’m thinkin this is DEFINITELY an upgrade from greymatter… why didn’t y’all tell me before bout the wonderfulness that is, as they say in the hood, “da WP”.

as with all web designers, i’m looking for feedback on the new design - whatcha think? an upgrade? a downgrade? just a grade? holla!

okay, i’d totally link to this if i knew a direct url, but on CNN.com there’s a ‘video short’ (why don’t they have just a simple link to some of these video stories? cuz that’d make life easier - but i digress). if you happen across the video news and see a headline ‘$3,300 a month won’t get you much FEMA housing’ or ‘$3,300? there’s gotta be a hitch’ - watch it.

wtf - these damn spammers are f$*#&’n up my site: there was a bunch of great words here that really meant something, but now it’s all gone. cept for the first paragraph and this:

man, i hate stupid people.

sorry korin, but suspense is a tool even the worstest of writers can use to their advantage…

let’s see where was i? (gotta check the last blorg entry)…

okay, so i’ve found camtasia and i’ve decided that this is going to be what i’m going to use to create the demo CD - decision one, check. and i start working on it. i’ve got my idea of what’s going on here and i start writing a script for audio for it.

side story: they tell me ‘i’m not sure if we want to put audio on it’ - i tell them, audio will be on it - it’s necessary to explain what’s goin on and it will be a key element to this CD. i even find a lil guitar riff for an intro to each section of the demo which i was told to not put on there. i put it on anyway, cuz i think it livens up the demo and gives it a lil flare. this music gets the president of the company to dancing when she watches the first take. it’s in permanently. way to go me.

end side story. so we’re working on the script. we record the audio of a presentation given by one of our sales clients and ‘the others’ proceed to modify that for the basis for the script. this script is completely off base for the presentation and idea that i had from the beginning. and they’re hell bent to use this. so now we get to go through the clusterfuck of melding the two together - and making the presentation slides match the audio - which was NOT an easy task due to the way it was done. the script got tossed back and forth between me and a couple others, a tweek here and a tweek there everywhere a tweek, tweek. and by the time it got back to me everytime it was all fubar’d. the ONLY time progress was being made was when i was sitting in with the crew that was editing the script. (remember that, as it will come in handy later). so i take the script and start recording the audio. i have a decent sound card in my laptop and i was using that to record it. as i was recording, i was fixing the stupid things in the script. so we had a good script, audio recordings, the presentation slides and the videos we were using. all the pieces. and i put em together and the first part is done…. or is it? NO, it’s not done. cuz they want to spend extra moneys and get the audio professionally done (the first time we tried recording the audio it was done on an older laptop with a bad audio card, so the quality wasn’t the greatest). fine, it’s not my money we’re spending on not getting this stuff done - we send a script out and we get the audio back, NOW, we’re done with the first part.

the second part, i have never used the tool. of the two guys who developed the tool, one already left and the second left a week after we started working on it - so he’s now gone. i ask around ‘who knows this tool?’ answer: nobody. fucking great.

so i start recording some video to use for the demo - just to get an idea of what we’re going to talk about and how we’re gonna go about demonstrating this, cuz apparently no one has demo’d this tool for a client yet. this is the point where i started only working a couple days a week because there was nothing for me to do. instead of giving me another project or something else to work on, they tell me to go home. fine, and while i’m home, i’ll find another job - fuckers.

i give them almost an entire week to get started with a script on the second tool. when i return for my couple days, i was expecting to go over it and give it a couple tweeks so we could send it out to get the audio recorded. nothing was done on this project whilst i was gone. so i start writing the script myself. keep in mind i’m not a marketing guy and i don’t use sales jargon. i’m a techie. i’m technical in nature and i’ll talk in technical terms - even when i don’t fully understand something, it’ll sound technical coming from me. so i write the first draft of the script and i try to get the marketing and sales tweeks added while i’m there. so i set up a meeting with the other two. the meeting starts and they both say ‘i do better at this stuff at home’ and ‘ i can’t think right now about this’ - la-di-fricken-dah. whatever, so they decide to work on it at home later when they’re not thinking about other stuff. i sit and waste the rest of the day away.

this last week i go in on thursday and frid - and i try to set up a meeting with them again. to get their comments. sure 130 will work for me, okay. 130….200….230…300…330… okay let’s meet, well, one can’t be here, cuz she’s gone for the day. awesome (sarcasm). so i get my stuff and meet with her - her biggest and most occurring comment: ‘it’s too techie sounding’ - no shit! that’s where you’re sposed to come in and give it the marketing twist. and finally on frid, an even more ‘higher up’ has now been put in charge of this project - maybe something will get done now. we finally all met again and talkt about the script - did they not learn from the first part? - and something gets done. paragraphs are divided up and ‘i’ll take care of this one, you take care of that one’s are handed out. we break the meeting and i have nothing to do. the other people (again, with other things on their plate) all have tasks and paragraphs and whatnot - not me. so i start typing ‘my rant’ and then they catch on and i go home for the day.

and that brings us to now. i’ll go in on wed and will they have anything done? doubt it. but maybe. i just had a phone interview today and i’ll write more about that later as it doesn’t have anything to do with this post except, if i get an offer - i’m so done with this place of employment.