Month: October 2004

Well, after 5 months, the first release has gone out to our customers at Bascom. It is exciting times, as the new functionality and look was much needed and long overdue. It is quite exciting, as we all worked really hard on the project, and it came in on time and we’ll executed. Of course, we’ll see what happens on Monday….

Went to a different branch of my bank today. Very interesting. You first walk up to a TV screen, and just see your self. There is a single form (a bank transaction form) and a single pen in front of you, and a tube with a plastic container to your right. The teller then comes on the screen and instructs you to fill out the form, and put everything in the tube and send it up. These are not scripted instructions, but you are actually talking directly with the person, who is somewhere else in the building. The transaction went smoothly for me, but it makes me wonder if it really would have been so much of a problem to have the conventional setup instead. Too much technology for our own good? Who knows.

Ok, many you know that I moved recently. Well, I notified the Board of Elections that I moved via email a few months ago, and I *believe* I got a confirmation in the mail (I need to check at home, I could be imagining things). However, I have no idea where I am supposed to vote. There is a school a few blocks away from my house – I assume I vote there, but again, I’m not sure.

Here’s the kicker: I call the Board of Elections, and bounce around the phone system until I get a message that says – “We are closed”. The hours for Tuesday (that’s today) are from 8am to 8pm – well I called at 10:30am? What do you mean you are closed????? It could just be an unchanged message, or it could be a clue as to where our tax dollars are going. I’ll keep you posted.

In my quite busy and hectic life, I do lots of driving. A few hundred miles a week lately. And I’ll be damned if I don’t see at least 1 brake (or tail) light out on a NEWER car every day. This amazes me. I really think there is something going on.

Taillights or brakelights don’t go out on cars too often, at least from my experience. Two big manufacturers (probably more like distributors) of automotive lights are Sylvania and Philips. A quick lookup on the Philips site (which sucks, BTW, breaks in Mozilla on Linux) shows that their stock took a dump in 2002, and is on a small incline now. Ok, lots of stocks took a dump in 2002, but who better to benefit from light bulbs that don’t last as long? Yes, its a leap, but I’m amazed that is so prevelant.

Well, that’s another useless opinion from Tom. Check back for more….

My jukebox is back up in “testing” mode. I hope to have the camera back up soon, too. The jukebox is now portable, though, running off of my laptop. We’ll see how it ends up, as I *may* have a machine to put under my desk to run it, which is the solution that I like the best so far.

I know, I know, I owe everyone a big update. Life has been hectic. As my wife put it – “we are so busy, we actually need to *schedule* time to see each other!”