Brendan's Journal

10:56AM - A suggestion

This is for any company with a Multimedia Extravaganza(tm) for a website. Not just as an intro video, or as part of a side-menu, but for their entire site. My suggestion to you is; why stop there?

I mean look, your customers may still be getting useful information about you by calling your company. You remember phones, right? That stodgy IVR system you have? Picture this! A customer calls, perhaps in search of locations where they may buy your product.

"Thank you for calling OCP. We value your business! You are walking through a forest. Ahead of you, a light flickers among the trees."
"Press 1 to draw your sword."
"Press 2 to turn back."
"Press 3 call out to the light."
*BEEP*
"You have selected 1. As you unsheathe your blade, the light emerges from the trees. It turns out to be a torch, wielded by a kobold! He turns toward you, seeing your weapon at the ready. His face curls into a menacing snarl."
"Press 1 to attack."
"Press 2 to attempt parley."
"Press 3 to flee."
*BEEP*
"You have requested Operator Assistance. The Operator bursts from the nearby trees, and is quickly slain by the kobold."

Current mood: dorky

10:51AM - Consumerized

My road-trip tale of DeLorme's awesome customer service made it onto The Consumerist today! Awesome!

http://consumerist.com/356192/delormes-awesome-customer-service-vastly-improves-road-trip

Update: Apparently now it's on BoingBoing too! I really hope this drives some business their way...not that they're hurting, but their handheld GPS isn't as recognizable yet as the older big-hitters like Garmin, Magellan, etc, most folks getting into the GPS market don't even know they have one.

Current mood: curious

9:37AM

I went to bed sometime around 11:30 last night, midway through an installation for work, with the intent of finishing it in the morning after some files copied.

I was awakened by a particularly loud train whistle at 4:30am. For about a minute, I was convinced that my dereliction of duty had caused a train derailment.

I think this is a good indication that I'm working too hard!

7:38PM - FedEx 'Overnight' Delivery

Delivering packages is hard.
Maybe ottr was right, and I need to show the driver how to navigate and gas up his truck?

Current mood: bitchy

6:14PM - Call me a Joad..

..cause I'm off to California again.

Flying out Sunday afternoon, and returning home next Thursday. As usual, it'll be a pretty busy trip, but workload-permitting, I should be able to sneak off for dinner one night if any of the San Jose-ish locals are around. I'm thinking Tuesday or Wednesday are the more likely culprits.

Also, I need a vacation. Seriously...I have to find a way to use 16 vacation days between now and December. Maybe I'll just take December off :P

2:09PM - Random Updates

First off, thanks to everyone who posted on the last entry. Snark was indeed a good snake, and it was touching to see how many guests in our home remembered her fondly.

Other stuff has been changing recently, as well! For starters, my trusty old Saab was starting to have more and more trouble with the daily commute. So while it was still trade-in-worthy, I traded it in, and bought my first ever new car - a 2007 Subaru Outback:

I was gratified to see as I drove off that the Saab was already being cleaned up for sale at the dealership...It's in a college town, and will most likely make for an excellent student car. Happy retirement, old gal.

Work itself has been quite insane; not going to go too much into it here, but it's mostly been good stuff. Hopefully there won't be any more 300-hour months for a while, though!

Switching gears, sans clutch...I may be moving more money into investments starting next year. Before we bought the house, I had a Scottrade account; it's now inactive, but could be reactivated. I was fairly pleased with them, but it's been a number of years. Anyone have any alternate recommendations? I'd mainly be placing market orders, buy-and-hold, no Options or anything.

And lastly, some may have noticed the adorable snake-face in my userpic. It's from an image I commissioned from the talented and snake-loving Bowrll, of a snuggle between my snake-character and genet's wah. Tooth-rotting, so be warned!
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/753549/

Current mood: busy

8:04PM

Snark ? - 2007


We never knew her origins for sure...or even if she was a she. She came from a pet store that swore she was captive-bred and less than a year old, but a visit to the vet confirmed that she was probably wild-caught, and already an adult when I took her in. For a wild African snake, you'd never meet a sweeter reptile.

Rest in peace, Snark...I hope the snakey-afterlife is full of plenty of warm cleavage to coil up in, and mice that aren't scary.

Current mood: morose

10:55PM

There's nothing like driving dark, twisting, forested roads with lightning flashing overhead and Mitternacht blasting on the stereo to make you feel like your life's a great deal more epic than it actually is.

Current mood: amused

10:41AM - There's Always a Formula

Much as I try to avoid it, I end up at a Wal-Mart from time to time. Usually this would be the one right next to where I work, or the one close to home. Coincidentally, these are both fairly new stores, built at almost the same time.

I can't help but notice that the Wal-Mart by home is flush with 'U-Scan-It' (customer-operated) checkout lanes, while the one by work has not a single one. I got to pondering; somewhere, in some corporate database, there's a policy and a formula for determination of whether a new store gets customer-operated checkout lanes.

I would love to see it!

Edit: I meant to add, the one by home is in a fairly rural 'village', while the one by work is in a small city. So the areas are different across almost any demographic you can name!

Current mood: geeky

4:30PM - KeKe

Due to a power failure last Friday, the last of the bottle of KeKe Key Lime Pie Liqueur apparently met its end. This is very sad!¹ In honor of its passing, I thought I'd share a few facts I'd gleaned.

• The product description states "Taste the creamy flavor of Key Lime Pie with just a hint of graham." They might want to consider putting that last bit on the bottle, instead of just the website.


• According to the Wikipedia article on it, it will not curdle, in contrast to most other cream-based liqueurs. They state that it can thusly be mixed with acidic mixers, such as beer and coffee. Yum!


• Okay, it really wasn't that bad, but the whole graham liqueur concept is quite alarming. I think they should follow it up with other dessert liqueurs. If anyone wants to bankroll my 'Deep Fried Twinkie' liqueur concept, I'm currently accepting venture capital!

Current mood: amused

6:46PM - Feeesh! And arts!

Well, currently at the house of haikujaguar and elusivetiger, along with two others from the local crowd. Our hosts were evil, and took us out to dinner, when we were hoping to take them out! Took us to Splash, a local seafood restaurant, which was gooooood. Midwestern boy misses his fish!

Course, as soon as haikujaguar and genet realized that the tablecloth was paper, and draw-uponable...

( The pens came out )

Current mood: amused

10:43AM - We are Rain Gods!

So, genet and I are down in Florida at the moment, visiting relatives. Pretty much as soon as we got here, Florida was hit with its first rain since January. A tropical storm, no less! The amusing thing is, everyone's been apologizing like this must be ruining our vacation, but...y'know? We didn't really have any plans to hit the beach. This weather is lovely! It's on the border between cool and warm, a lazy tropical rain that occasionally revs up to a driving thunder on the roof.

Yeah, I'm okay with this!

Tomorrow, we're off to see haikujaguar and elusivetiger, apparently following the storm north in the process. Let us know when the drought gets bad again, and we'll come back down!

Current mood: content

1:01PM - White Hen Pantry, Antioch

Just a friendly little warning to some of the locals!

Some of you when visiting may occasionally stop at the White Hen Pantry at North Ave and 83, for gas or snacks. It is my recommendation that you no longer do so. genet stopped there this morning, for gas and a soda. This is normal enough; we're nearly regulars there, living fairly close by.

When she went in to pay, the clerk promptly accosted her, and told her she owed them money. The explanation was that, during a transaction last week, the clerk that day had undercharged her. The reason given for the mistake was that 'it was really busy'. They took it a step further, though, and said that she owed them $7, right then and there.

When she understandably balked at being told that she owed a business $7 for their mistake, based solely on their word that she owed it to them, they got quite belligerent. They told her there was store video, and had transaction logs, and implied that if she didn't cough up the $7 or a receipt proving that she'd paid the correct amount right at that moment, the cops would become involved. She had to get to work. So she paid. White Hen got their $7, and will never see the business of either of us again. And we encourage anyone else up in our area to avoid them as well.

Hope they enjoy the $7!

Current mood: pissed off

6:56AM - "We're all going to die!" vs. "We're all going to be horribly maimed!"

Here I sit in my favorite airport in the whole world. Leaving ample time for travel delays of course ensured that everything went smoothly, thus allowing me plenty of time to soak up the ambiance. Having already availed myself of some OJ from one of the kiosks (*premium* OJ, no less...I can only assume the ice cubes floating therein are premium as well), there's not much else to do but blather on a journal.

I can't help but notice that, as with at least the last two flights from here, they have an announcement repeated pretty regularly. Some gent speaks in the most dire tones:
"Ladies and gentlemen, the Department of Homeland Security has raised the threat level to...ORANGE!"
I'm serious, they leave just enough space before the word 'orange' for my brain to fill in the proper "Dun-dun-DUUUUUNNNN". Of course, a nit-picker might observe that 'raised' is a bit of a misnomer, as that would imply it being lower in recent memory.

It's a bit of a moot point anyways, as they have elected to use a two-point scale; essentially 'screwed' and 'hyper-screwed'. If they ever see fit to lower it to blue or green before scrapping the program, I'll eat my hat. I don't have a hat.

I'll eat feren's hat. I'm sure he won't mind.

Anyways, I've apparently wasted enough time typing on this matchbook-sized keyboard that we're boarding. Is it too early to order gin?

10:30AM - Dulce et Decorum Est

Just a little personal glee in this one. I'm sure genet, feren, and lady_curmudgeon will recognize this fine theatrical establishment!

Schadenfreude? Never!
( 1 image )

8:02AM - DVD Help!

Dear denizens of the internet. I write to you today with a plea for my sanity.

Work has become insane of late, but mostly in a good way. Part of that has been a great deal more travel, both internally at the main company site, and to remote locations. Included in this is a trip to California this Sunday. Fortunately, my loving wife got me a video iPod for Christmas!

Unfortunately, trying to transfer one's DVDs to the damn thing is an exercise in greatest frustration.

If anyone out there can steer me in a good direction for getting a movie from DVD to iPod, please help me! Listed below are what I've got so far for requirements and attempts.

Requirements
1. Output in 640x(variable) H.264 mp4 format. I want to be able to output to a hotel TV as well as watch on the tiny screen.
2. Output the actual video to 640x(variable), with intelligent cropping, rather than just letterboxing everything on both sides to 640x480.
3. As little loss as possible. I'd rather not compress the DVD with one codec getting it to disc, then another getting it to mp4.

What I've tried
1. Handbrake for Windows. Drawback is that the Baseline 3 codec version is Very Beta, and has some quality issues, as well as being unable to handle some discs.
2. DVD Shrink to vob file, then convert vob file to mp4. This works, but doesn't handle sizing/cropping at all, and I can't seem to add subtitles.

What I have
Patience, a little experience, and a decent video converter that'll get me from almost any format to mp4. I'm not looking for a free solution either, I'm looking first and foremost for one that works!

Any help out there? My hair's going gray!

Current mood: frustrated

11:04AM - O Holy Moly

Several folks at a party I was at last weekend expressed an interest in scoring their own copies of the glorious rendition of O Holy Night that was played (courtesy of the new iPod genet got me...thank you love!). I originally got it from The Sneeze; the site highlights it every year, just as a sort of painful tradition. Don't listen if you value your computer speakers!

O Holy Night

(I still think a certain unnamed friend should use this as the hold music for a certain unnamed annoying coworker)

Current mood: amused

Current music: Oh niiiiiiiIIIIiight....de-VIIIIII*bronk*

1:44PM

So, my quest this year is apparently to work in as many of my company's buildings as possible (I'm up to 5). In the most recent one, there are many nice amenities (on-site cafeteria and bank, free coffee), but some oddities too. Chief among these is the bathroom for my area.

See, I work on the second floor. To get up here, I begin on the 1st floor, enter the stairwell, walk up a flight of stairs with a landing at the midpoint, and emerge on the 2nd floor. So where are the bathrooms? Why, they're off that landing, midway between floors.

This perplexed me mightily, until my coworker solved it for me. It seems so obvious now! Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you "Bathroom 9 3/4".

Anyways, almost the weekend, then off to Texas for 5 days, then straight from there to MFF. Somebody hold me!

Something good: Free coffee

Something bad: Bad coffee that's not free

Something disturbing: Bathroom 9 3/4

Current mood: amused

3:26PM - I'm exhausted

A couple weeks back, I received my next assignment at work. It's pretty high-profile, and I can't give too many details, but suffice it to say, it's keeping me pretty busy. Especially since I still have responsibilities on my old project, too. Hooray, for transitions!

Anyways, this week has been particularly bad. Productive, but exhausting. We've had an on-site consultant from a company we're working with on this new software, and time has been limited. So it's been nonstop plugging away at stuff, skipped lunches, no breaks, long days. Never a moment to check email, or just catch my breath. Always concentrating.

The consultant left today, but cause of all that, I'm way behind on some unit tests for my old project. Which means my vacation day tomorrow is pretty much impossible. Then I just found out that a business trip to Dallas in November is being extended by a day, which both nixes the *next* vacation day I had scheduled, and eats into MFF.

And yet...this just gives me a taste of what feren goes through daily.

Something good: Green tea

Something bad: Things that advertisements try to make look enticing, but which are actually annoying. Like soda cans that spray a refreshing splash of beverage into your palm when you pop the top, or milk that splashes out of a bowl of cereal as you pour it in.

Something disturbing: Deja-vu.

Current mood: exhausted

1:10PM - genet update!

Just popping in from the hospital waiting room to let folks know that genet's surgery went completely routine. They were able to take out the gall bladder endoscopically, so no major incisions needed, the whole thing took under an hour. She's in recovery now, I should be able to see Her Groggyness shortly!

We won't talk about the phlebotomist that set the IV port. *growl*