Posts from — October 2008

Some of you may be wondering why the hell I’ve been joking about yacht rock stuff and soft rock for about a week. It’s mostly because on Friday, my friend Kenny had a big bday bash. And the theme was “yacht rock”. A good time was had by all. Here are some pics (courtesy of inShane):

But there’s a set of videos you should watch if you have time. They’re all on youtube- just search for “yacht rock” and look for the various episodes. I’ll put two of them down below this text. The one that cracked me up is that 2nd one with Van Halen stealing Ted Templeman away as a producer (below). But the other ones like Toto fighting with Michael McDonald or Hall and Oates getting in a match with Loggins shouldn’t be missed. Now, that said- let’s not have any misunderstanding– there’s still a special place reserved in hell for Steely Dan fans. Got it? Skiddly diddly bop!! The toto one, just because I like it

I finally watched Torque the other night. It had been recommended to me by a trusted friend. The movie is bad. Real bad. Stinky bad.

But you know what? It’s so bad it’s good. Real good. Stinky good.

Drinking games could be (and probably already have been) made for this movie.

Superbikes jumping onto trains. Girls having a catfight using their motorcycles. Bad lines. I love it. You will too. I agree that there could’ve been some nudity though, it was disappointing to not have any.
(Yes, I’m still on my kick that American movies need fewer guns and more boobs).

I’m in a goofy mood

or you can watch monaco

or you can watch this-

I need a favor- Could those of you who have AT&T as your mobile provider look at your bills and tell me (via email, not the comments) which voice plan you have — (especially those of you who have iphones)?

Another FAQ I get from FB people regards the Status Updates. They either ask me about someone else’s status and ask how they update so much, or their asking about mine.

A lot of people are updating their status lines via their mobile device. I think people have figured that out now especially as there’s usually a little phone icon next to the silhouette.

So how do you do that? You need to activate your mobile device in the FB settings. Or you could just browse to m.facebook.com via your phone. . .

The other question I get is about updates that seem less personal, or more usual, too frequent.

I’m more guilty of the latter.

But no, I’m not sitting on the site all day updating the status. Here’s the deal-

I’m one of those dorks who use Twitter (follow me here if you want. Although it’s a mild pita, I have my twitter updates go straight to my FB status via twitterfeed.

The links in my status come up because I also have the “articles” (blog posts really) that I marked as ’shared’ in google reader hit my twitter account. And if they hit my twitter account, they go to the FB status.

At some point I had a grand scheme to really write more on this blog and start posting on other blogs and have my posts and shared items hit twitter, but I didn’t really follow through (hellllllooooo day job). So that was the intent.

But that’s why a lot of my status updates are so ‘impersonal’ at times. It’s the shared items from my Google Reader. . ..

Speaking of, if you want to see what I’m reading, or have other suggestions for me- see the side bar below. I’m constantly whittling down my RSS list and then building it back up.

I had to pass this along

12-Year-Old Boy Scouts Volunteer To Give Women Breast Exams

I meant to post this a while back, sorry.

A while back, a coworker was lamenting about how all the execs were loving Facebook and adding all the employees as friends. Well, not all of us, but managers and higher. We thought that was kind of poopy because if you denied a VP-level person as a friend . . well, maybe they’d take it the wrong way.

But on the opposite end- what about if you felt pressured enough to add them, but then realized you don’t want that person to see your status updates and pics (or wall posts, etc).

I had told my coworker that I had already set up lists to deal with all of this and wrote a quick tutorial on how to alter the settings.

But it came up again as more friends had gotten on FB and were mentioning the same problem, so maybe you’ll find this useful.

In a nutshell I did two things.
1) I made as many of my settings as possible as “only friends” can see X.

2) I made a list called “work” or “restricted” and put some people (not all) from “work” in that list and then blocked that list from seeing my photos and status updates.

Yeah, yeah, I know I’m google-able and they could just see the stuff on my blog, or twitter, or flickr, but you get the point.

Anyway, here’s what you do.

Let’s make a list first

(you could skip this and just do part 2 if you don’t need a list)

• -Log into FB
• -Click Friends
• -On the left, click “Make a New List”
• -Name the list something clever and add a person to it (or add a person later)

Now let’s restrict something like Wall Posts

• -Click Home
• -Hover over Settings and click Privacy Settings
• -Click Profile
• -This is where a lot of the settings you want to modify are located.

If you’re very concerned with a lot of stuff, just set things so that only “Friends” can see what you’re doing.

In this example, I want to have my “Friends” see my wall posts, but not a group of certain people

• -Click the drop-down menu under “Wall Posts” and make sure “only friends” is selected.
• -Click the drop-down again and select “Customize”(screenshot)
• -under “Except These People” start typing the name of the list you made (mine is “test-list”, screenshots 1 2)
• -Click Okay, and make sure you click “Save Changes”.
• -Do the same thing for your other settings that you’re worried about.

Something to remember:

You don’t need to use lists if you don’t want to. You could just restrict any individual’s name to an area that you don’t want them to see (those pesky ex’s, vp’s, etc). But then you’d have to remember to keep up with adding their names to things if you make changes.

One other thing:

Some people I know have a “purgatory” list because they get a lot of friend requests and add them, but they may not remember who they are (long-lost friends with new married names perhaps?). So they put them in “purgatory” list until they have some re-established contacts, and then bump them up to full-friend later. So do whatever floats your boat.

My dad mentioned something to me when I was in SA and completely forgot about it until now.

He said that SA Express News readers voted the Olive Garden as the best Italian restaurant in San Antonio. Are you f$*%ing kidding me?

I thought he was joking, or hoped rather. But nope, here’s the reader’s survey

There are so many things wrong with the selections. Uggh. I’m a bit disappointed.

I have been playing with some alpha and beta software the past few months. Well, actually, I do that all the time, that’s not news. But I like to tinker with Media Server software when I can. And now that I have a newer computer that can actually display stuff, it’s been more fun.

In the past you’ve heard me talk about how badly I’ve wanted to build a “myth box“. It’s basically a home-theater+dvr server. (Patrick has written much more about it, check out his site).

There is other software out that’s a bit easier to use if you’re less inclined to tinker though and have a spare machine around. And if you have a Mac there’s Plex and Boxee (and Sapphire, a plug-in for Front Row).

But I was thinking about the Mac software a lot recently. And this morning on the bus there was a guy on his cell phone talking about Web Two Point Ohhhh (I should point out that he wasn’t that loud, but the rest of the bus was quiet). But listening to that guy talk about Social Sites (and someone in the office talking about Facebook) reminded me that just because a site has a “social” aspect it doesn’t make it any better than other software. In some cases it can be worse. Bear with me, I’ll circle back to this . . .

See more …

Well, I’m back from the AHHS Reunion trip. I had a really good time (better than I thought I would). Most of the events were a blur, but here are some random thoughts and recollections (and advice?):

1) I had a camera with me and I thought I took hundreds of pics all weekend. That wasn’t the case- I barely used it. I think I wound up putting about 20 pics in an album on Facebook.

2) I thought I did a damn good job mingling at the bar on Friday night and at the event on Saturday night. Well, now that I’ve seen some of my friends’s pics- I seemed to have missed a lot of people. That’s kind of a drag, I wanted to give at the least a hello to a lot of them.

3) The girls looked better than ever (but of course you knew I’d say that)

4) The smartest thing I probably did was to schedule outside events- I met Ross for breakfast on Friday so we could catch up. I also got to hang out with the Lauras and catch up as well.

If/when you’re going to a reunion, do that same thing if you have time– schedule lunches/breakfasts/coffee whatever with your classmates. Or, bring them along to your parents’ regular burger night post-reunion if they’re still in town like Kevin, Laura and Tenny were. Like I noted before, I thought I had mingled well, but didn’t so I was lucky to have scheduled things where I did have time to talk.

5) I also got to spend some quality time with some non-reunion folk- most notably my parents, my replacement™, Megan, Sarah, Chuck & Sam, and got to do a quick catch-up with Golly who I didn’t know lived in SF for a bit before moving back to SA (she has a kick-ass store where those of you in SA should go shop).

6) I forget I’m in a bubble out here and was surprised that a lot of people weren’t online- ie at least facebook. But from the past week’s worth of activity, they almost all are now. Not everyone I know sits in front of a computer all day like me and I forget that.

7) No, I don’t have any crazy “guess who I made out with in the women’s restroom” stories, so stop asking me that.

8) No, the hostess of a popular tv entertainment “news” show wasn’t there- so sorry, didn’t get any star gossip.

9) Re: #6 above, I also rarely have business cards on me. I remembered them on Saturday, but only had one on Friday night.

I did have the foresight to order some cards from moo cards but they didn’t arrive until today (or after I had left). Take cards with you if you go to an event– I used to think it was cheesy until more than one person asked me for one. btw- here’s what my cards look like. I had linked moo to my flickr account and picked random photos tagged with “food, travel or wine” and did some rearranging. They came out quite well.

10) I thought I had more to add, but I forgot some points. I’ll add them to the comments later if I think of anything.