Always something more to learn

Ah, morning. Time of new beginnings, revelations, and self-examination.

I just became friends on Facebook with a friend from high school. The first thing she said to me (somewhat jokingly) was "I thought you knew everything." (She was commenting on a status.) I probably haven't talked to her (except at the 10-year reunion) in about 20 years.

As much as I may have changed over the years, it's good to know that some things remain constant.

I was a know-it-all then and I'm a know-it-all now.

At least I know. And knowing is half the battle (I sure hope they use that line in the G.I. Joe movie).

Monday. Definitely Monday.

It started with being late for my first meeting of the week. I sit down out of breath and frazzled only to hear the guy across the table incessantly clicking on his pen. After about 20 minutes of that I know what I would have done with that thumb if I'd had a pair of garden snips (sorry - it's been a long day).

Of course, then, preparing for my 11:00 meeting, I realize I didn't bring my lunch. Who starts a 2-3 hour meeting at 11 anyway? The thing is we have this big meeting with all the managers on Tuesday and right after the 11:00 Monday meeting, I've got to turn in charts for tomorrow's meeting based on what happened in today's meeting. So, since I was dumb enough to forget my lunch, my choices are: (1) get lunch at 10:30 in the morning or (2) possibly wait until 2 or 3 after I get my charts done.

At least I can be working on my charts during the meeting. Oh, wait, no I can't. Due to some technical difficulties, since the guy who normally runs the PowerPoint is out, I get to run the meeting from my computer. By the time the whole fiasco is over and I turn my charts in for tomorrow, I'm an hour late. Welcome to my workweek.

And then this is what greets me in Madison on my way home.



I guess I should be thankful my day is only full of minor irritations and that I have a job to complain about.

Still...

More Home Improvement Woes

This is what happens when I try to install a sink.



Maybe the water will just flow straight from the drain to p-trap via gravity.

Speech-to-Text for iPhone?

So - anyone know of any good speech-to-text or voice-to-text iphone apps coming out? I'm looking for something that I can record thoughts and e-mail them to myself, rather than just recording them and having to transcribe them myself (which usually means they pile up and I never transcribe them).

I've been doing all kinds of looking, but can't find anything I like.

reQall is the first one I came across that looks promising.  The app is free, and so is the service.  The service?  Basically, you have a service that you send  audio recordings to and it's transcribed there.  But they have complete access to your recordings and can use them as they wish.   Since I'm planning on using this for writing ideas, any service that can take your text isn't a good fit for me.

Jott seemed like another possibility. It's a free app, but requires a monthly subscription for the service.  Once again, I'd rather not utilize a service - especially if they're charging for it.

Then I came across vLingo. It's free and doesn't use a service, but the only thing it will transcribe right now are updates to Facebook and Twitter. It's primary purpose is to be able to use dial and do other functions via voice (which is nice functionality - just not what I'm looking for).

On the surface, the most promising thing right now seems to be Voice Text Pro.  It will send texts by voice, and I guess I could just send multiple short texts to my e-mail - but it costs $5 and has horrible reviews.

So, I guess I'll be waiting for something a little better to come out soon.  Let me know if you hear anything.  I'll update if I see anything better.

Tonka Truck / Toilet Dolly

Things I've Learned This Week

It's been a long week, and I've learned a lot.

1. How to install a toilet.
2. How to replace a keyboard in a mini laptop.
3. That toddler riding toys make great dollies to move heavy toilets.
   
4. That if you can't figure out what to eat for lunch and you work close to a Super Target, an asiago cheese bagel, a quarter pound of seasoned Angus roast beef, and some wasabi makes a good sandwich.
5. That two packets of wasabi is probably too much for a sandwich like that (though the flames shooting out your nose are pretty cool).
6. Target has some delicious looking sushi (I was afraid to try it).
7. I shouldn't go into home improvement - some things are better left to professionals. 
8. I'm old #1: My forearms and hands are sore as can be from cutting tile (see #7). 
9. I'm old #2: Ralphie (you know, from A Christmas Story) turned 38 today.  I turn 38 this year. 
   
10. I think I like Nickelback. (I love the song Rockstar.)
    
11. Seether did a cool remake of Wham's Careless Whisper.
12. What "waiting with bated breath" means ('bated' is similar to 'abate' - so it's like trying to abate your excitement or hold your breath). 
13. It's not "baited breath".
14. You've got to have a good strategy if you're going to beat a 6-year-old at Mario Kart.
15. Finally, I've learned I'm still not very patient. I'd like to slap the next person who answers a multiple-choice question with "yes" (when they're not joking - just not paying attention).  When you ask someone if they prefer A or B, and they're only half listening and instead of choosing A or B, they say "yes".  It drives me nuts! 

Comic / Pillow

Quite possibly the coolest thing I've ever seen. A Spider-Man comic book and pillow all in one. Saw it at Sam's. I really wanted to get it for myse- er, uh, for Max.
But I didn't think it warrented spending $20.

Quote of the Week

"I've got some Trix up my sleeve."
-Liz Lemon

Clouds After the Rain

All kinds of interesting sights after the storm...

Rainbow Over Florence

Into the Darkness

Heading home a little early, hoping I won't have to drive all the way home through damaging winds and hail. Got more work to do, but guess I'll be finishing at home.

April Fool

Got hit by a good April Fools joke yesterday. I'd been having trouble with my Outlook mailbox filling up quickly and I figured out I had 50 MB worth of stuff in my calendar and in this "synch folder" where apparently Outlook keeps a record of email when it has trouble synching with the mail server.

So I deleted the stuff in the synch folder and archived all my old calendar stuff, which freed up a lot of space.

My mistake was sharing my new-found info with the people I work with, thinking it might help them to (this is what I get for being a good Samaritan).

I emailed them all and told them what I was able to do. Suddenly I was inundated with emails telling me people were getting weird errors, pop-up messages that certain parts of Outlook were admin-accessible only, and even references to the Conficker worm (which was warned about on our company's homepage).

Of course, dupe that I am, I fell for it all. I didn't get suspicious until one guy said it removed half of his future calendar notices - that's when I remembered it was April Fools day, and thought maybe I had been taken for a ride.

See...no good deed goes unpunished.

Thinking

Urrrrgh!

Too many thoughts floating around in my head. 

Think I'll need to get them out soon...

Huh

My allergies are breaking up and so are the clouds.

CrossPoint Guitar Hero Tournament

Yes, we are putting together a CrossPoint Guitar Tournament.  It's primarily for fun, and all proceeds will go to CrossPoint.  Since we're inviting everyone at all levels to play, we've gotten the question a few times on how we'll play out the tournament.  So, though I put this information on the Facebook Guitar Hero Tournament Page, I wanted to let everyone who doesn't have a Facebook account know how we planned on playing out the Guitar Duels. 

We did a lot of thinking about this. What we wanted to do was to make sure that everyone could come and have fun, regardless of what level they were at. But, without a ton of time, and a qualifying round, how do you break people up into brackets? This is not something that’s easy to do, especially with our time limitations, and not knowing how many people we’ll have, so we settled on what we thought would be the most fair. Plus, we didn’t want to make it too complicated. Not sure how well we succeeded on that front.

Basically, we’ll start with two brackets: Beginner and Advanced. If you play on Easy or Medium, you’ll start out in Beginner. If you play on Hard or Expert, you’ll start out in Advanced. We started out this way to make it a little quicker, but to also give people more chances to play. This way, everyone gets to play in at least two guitar duels, even if they lose. [Note: If you tend to 5-star just about every song on Medium, you’ll probably want to start in the Advanced bracket.]

We’ll randomly draw names in each bracket to find out who will play each other in a Guitar Duel. Who wins this round will determine which bracket each person goes to in the next round. Everyone in the Beginner bracket will play their first round on Easy; the winners of the Beginner bracket will advance to the Medium bracket. Everyone else will advance to the Easy bracket. This way, everyone that loses in the first round gets to play again against someone else who lost in the first round. Both of these brackets will advance the normal way, until there is an overall winner in each.

The same thing will happen for the Advanced bracket. All of the duels in the first round will be played on Hard. Winners advance to the Expert bracket, while everyone else advances to the Hard bracket. Duels will be played out in the same way until there is an overall winner.

We’re hoping that this gives everyone a chance to play, and still be fair in who gets to play who.

What’s to stop people from being dishonest about what level they’re in, or sandbagging on the first round so they get to play easier on the second? Well, nothing. We hope that, this being a CrossPoint event, everyone will be honest, and come to have fun and do their best.

For early registration, feel free to click on the picture below, and print it out.  Give it to me, or Joe with your registration fee.

Thanks, and hope everyone comes to play (or at least watch)! I'm hoping we'll have time at the end for some free-form play and Guitar Duels.  Maybe we'll even break out the instruments and get another band going.

Let me know if you have any questions.