crazyskillsbloginitiative

…never before seen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdJ0E7HbTKc

Well, today a customer asked me about “a free alternative to Microsoft Office.” I of course responded with praise of OOo (openoffice.org) and went even further to write down Thunderbird and gIMP for them to recommend downloading.. But part of my job is selling software. So I should have said that MS Office was what they needed.. or should I have? I may have earned a customer for life. Always a possibility. What do you think? I am being paid to provide solutions to customers BY SELLING OUR PRODUCTS.

Is it more important to gain a few hundred bucks’ sale or a customer’s trust? What is worth more?

Haha. No I didn’t smoke - that’s been 193 days. Nope. I’m talking about my new job! Yup. I am now in the business of selling all things computers. Today went well. It is a cool environment - I think I ought to do fine there. They’re giving me plenty of hours and a couple of weeks to train. Yes I’m back in the retail sector. But you know, I really do like it. I really like my customers.

So, last night I had a dream. It was the strangest of dreams, not because of being all psychedelic or anything, but because everyone I have ever known was in it. People I haven’t seen for years, my whole family, friends past and present. Events too; things I’ve done, places I’ve been. I didn’t realize I held on to all of this detail, but I guess it’s in there somewhere. And they say that dreams happen in an instant, that only afterward, you’re able to remember all of the details from it and that they can appear to have elapsed some time.

But yeah. It was nice to see you again.

“Some date the dawn of the net to September 12, 1969, when a team of engineers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) connected the first two machines on the first node of ARPAnet, the US Department of Defense-funded network that eventually morphed into the modern interwebs. But others — including Professor Leonard Kleinrock, who led that engineering team — peg the birthday to October 29, when the first message was sent between the remote nodes. ‘That’s the day,’ Kleinrock tells The Reg, ‘the internet uttered its first words.’ …A 50kbps AT&T pipe connected the UCLA and SRI nodes, and the first message sent was the word ‘log’ — or at least that was the idea. UCLA would send the ‘log’ and SRI would respond with ‘in.’ But after UCLA typed the ‘l’ and the ‘o,’ the ‘g’ caused a memory overflow on the SRI IMP. … ‘So the first message was “Lo,” as in “Lo and Behold,”‘ Kleinrock says. ‘We couldn’t have asked for a better message — and we didn’t plan it.’”

You may have heard, GeoCities is shutting down today. To commemorate the occasion, one of my favorite sites, xkcd.com [xkcd.com] has redone their site in true 1995 fashion. You’ve got to see it!

So. Seems the good ol Federal Government decided to host an event where they gave out H1N1 vaccines. It was today up at the Butler County Fairgrounds. Yeah, so we arrived about 9 (the event began @ 10) and there were quite probably a thousand people there or maybe more.. It’s hard to tell when you’re talking about so many people and you can’t see them all. We figured we’d be early, get the vaccine and be back home in time to get back to work / make my 3:30 appt today. We waited about two hours and the end of the line, the supposed building where they actually were giving out the vaccines, was nowhere in sight. Oh but it gets better. Then it started raining. And yeah it’’s October 23, so it’s a little chilly too (upper 50’s so not too bad) and then to top it all off, we got back to the car to find us parked in. People had parked way too close to us on all sides. Anyway, I was determined to make my 3:30 (which I will be able to now, btw) so I inched back and forth, by braille, and eventually freed my poor automobile.

The sad part was that they just appeared to be nowhere near prepared for the turnout they had. We saw probably two guys wearing reflective vests trying to show people parking spots, but that is chaos when faced with how many people turned out for the event. When we left, they had closed off the entrances to the fairgrounds and weren’t letting anyone else in.

I can appreciate that they wanted to offer the vaccine (regulate?) to everyone and therefore assumed Federal control of the event, but if I had to say, they had no idea what to do with the number of people who showed up. There was [i]a[/i] cop there too, but he was just sitting in his car out of the rain like a true public servant.

Wow. Half a year today. Things are looking up!

The Windows 7 Launch Party was a complete success! Thanks to all who came by! Enjoy your souvenirs! Now get out there and pick up Windows version 6.1!

Thanks again all - and take care!

Volunteers wanted for a simulated trip to Mars, lasting 520 days, including 30 days on the surface. Scientists are looking to study how people react to long-term space missions. Six volunteers are needed for the study which begins in 2010. Full Story [physorg.com]

I was even a boy scout, believe it or not. Oh I know - it doesn’t get any worse than that. And OMG I owned a fork, knife and spoon [huffingtonpost.com].. And even a pocket knife [cnn.com]. And you know what? I still carry one with me much of the time. Bad bad Orb I know. The thing is.. If anyone had known and if anyone had cared, they would probably have just had me put it in my car, or put it in the office for me to pick up at the end of the day. But these days being a Boy Scout can get you in a lot of trouble. There is a difference between having a 2 inch pocket knife in your car and stabbing someone with a kitchen knife [foxnews.com].

I just don’t get it. Sometimes I think people forget why rules were created and just go on blindly following.