the bits

Hoo-ray for friday night :) (okay, well.. my friday at least).

Things are gearing up for the Mac Business Expo and the general activity level is rising. We’ve been getting truck after truck of product at the store… our inventory peeps are earning their money, dats fo sho.

Today I did full-length runs of the seminars I’ll be doing at the expo. Our VP of biz. ops. wanted to make sure that I (and the other presenters) had it together / provide feedback before the real deal (which, incidentally, will be a bit smaller than previously estimated… my presentation room tops out at 80 seats). In any case, she was the one who decided to get me trained and apple certified, etc… today was the first time she’s seen my training shtick, and so getting the mad props and being told that she was very glad she decided to get me on as a trainer was good.

Also good today was the reception of the first fruit of the contract training for apple. It’s a fun contrast… one day I’m more broke than I’ve been a long time, and the next day I get a paycheck about double the expected size…

—

So that was last wednesday… apparently I didn’t post it then, as it was sitting in my lj client app…

I developed a flu over that following weekend that hopefully will peak soon. It’s Thursday and the expo has just finished.

Yesterday was a long day of manual labor followed by a boisterous gathering at Jillian’s… it was a company sponsored event, and there were minor treats for free. Even though I was pretty sick, I managed to stay and have some beers, and play some more ping pong, finally.

Slept poorly that night (last night)… the way you can’t sleep when yer sick. Feels like your body is just pissed off. This morning I was at the convention center at 7:30, after a small debate as to whether I’d go in at all. I felt nauseous and generally shitty. But, I went… it would have been a fairly significant hit for the expo to lose 3 out of 20 or so seminars.

It certainly was not the hardest thing I ever did, by a long shot… but being on display, under lights, with masses of herding llamas (actually most of the people were pretty cool, I was surprised) all around me, I was definitely wishing for the dark and quiet confines of my bedroom. An otherwise exciting / fun experience was made basically miserable (although I still had some good times, more of that in a bit).

Doors opened to the public at 10:30, so until then it was last minute stuff. Thankfully the nasuea wore off sometime around then, so at least I didn’t have to carry a plastic bag around in my pocket any more. Worked the training booth for a bit and walked the floor some. Ate lunch just before my first seminar, which was at 1:00. Then two more seminars back to back, directly after the 1:00 (all part of the apple training curriculum, taught by a certified trainer (me), etc, etc), and that ran me out until about 5:20.

The last one was the QuickTime Streaming Server seminar… a tiny morsel of the full 3 day QTSS course, condensed into seminar format for the expo. I blazed through two of the 10 chapters with nodding heads all around, then demoed QTSS and broadcaster, plus some mp3 streaming, and it was a hoot :) During times of necessary performance, the body has a way of shutting out the negative feedback… getting up in front of an audience can be one of those times. Anyway, there were several audio / video geeks in the room, and we had some great discussions going toward the end. It went as well as I thought it did… four people thanked me and shook my hand before they left :) So that’s the shiny stone of gratification in a sea of turbulent discomfort… heh.

Then it was over. Then we had to break down. We sold a lot of shit there… like a lot, but we came with about a store’s worth of inventory… two bigass trucks, one full and one 3/4 full. Loading it all in sucked, and loading at least half of it back out sucked even worse, cause it was evening time, and my flu had intensified further since the previous morning (load in). Blah blah blah, enough whining out of me :)

I was fading fast by around 7:30, so I told the inventory manager that I was out of gas, and it was cool.

… and now, after a subway sandwich and some well deserved sitting time. I’m about ready to pass out for many many hours, for tomorrow…. is a day off :)

Oh yeah. and apple has invited me down to cupertino for the alpha certification course of the jaguar-revised ACSA curriculum, which won’t be publicly available until spring of ’03… For some reason, they seem to be allowing me to skip stuff and still get certified to teach the material… this happened with the ACTC stuff… you’re supposed to receive the material as a regular student, pass the exam, and then go to an additional session where you deliver the course to an apple training guy, who then puts an evaluation of you on file with the apple training scheduler people … with the ACTC certified trainer bit I just kinda jumped straight to the last session – taking the test a week or so afterwards, and did well enough at the session that they’re asking me back to do it again for the ACSA, so I’ll be certified to teach it as well, even though I have received none of the ACSA material as a student… either it’s pretty easy, or I catch on pretty quick… but it seems to be working good so far :) woop :) That ACSA session is in November… also another QTSS class for apple in cupertino at the end of this month.

out

today was an above average day. better than most days, which are “good”, for sure. I tend to do a fair amount of bitching about things from time to time, but ultimately I’d have to say that I’m generally happy with my state of being at this time and place.

it was a good day because I got to talk to a lot of smart *nix people at work today. usually those folks mysteriously gravitate in my direction on the sales floor… and if they don’t, I’ll usually go strike up a conversation with anybody I see mucking around in a terminal on one of the demo machines. It’s always a good feeling to surprise the hell out of some geek who comes in to mess with OS X by providing an intelligent conversation from a unix perspective… for two reasons: 1) nobody ever expects that a sales person at a computer store will know much about the underpinnings of a unix-based OS, and 2) I’m the only person at our store with more than rudimentary *nix abilities… which also means that the other sales people usually toss me the *nix questions, which is always a welcome departure from talking about goddamn printers or some other stupid shit (I really hate printers).

every day is always packed with phone calls and walkins… anything from buying ram to shopping for a new computer to help getting this or that to work. the quality of the day, to me, is determined by the distribution of llamas versus people that aren’t total n00bs…. and even what kind of llama it is…. there are nice llamas and dumb llamas. The nice ones aren’t that technologically literate, but posses an ability to ask questions and assimilate information in a logical fashion, which means that (with the guidance of a skilled problem solver) a solution can often be reached quickly and painlessly, whether it’s a new computer purchase or just tech support. The bad llamas are the ones that ask the same questions in different ways, without really listening to what I say in response. One time I was approached by two young, extremely hyper females (mother and daughter)… the mother asked 3 pretty clueless questions back to back, rapid fire style, and then as I began to answer, she asked a fourth question. I simply walked away. That shit pisses me off, because it’s straight up disrespectful…. although that is definitely the exception rather than the rule.

then sometimes (rarely) I get people that are right on the verge of significant empowerment by all of the wonderful enabling technologies that we offer, but they haven’t quite made all the mental connections. these are usually people that are already familiar with computers as tools for accomplishing specific tasks… what they lack is the understanding that a computer is really just about anything you want it to be, and can do just about anything you want it to do. Even if they don’t get that fact, they usually *can* wrap their heads around the applications of the technology that the creator (usually Apple) has in mind… and usually that’s enough to get the ball rolling. I greatly enjoy those customers, because I feel like I’m giving them a good start into what is for them an exciting new realm of possibilities.

then there are the geeks. just like with everybody else, there are the good geeks and the bad geeks. the bad, snobby geeks are usually kind of fun, because those are exactly the kind of people apt to spout misinformation and general bs, which I have no problem refuting (in a way that’s embarrassing to the customer, if the situation calls for it). the good, fun to talk to geeks are the ones that are curious and excited about all this OS X stuff that they’ve been hearing about. I also greatly enjoy talking to those people and showing them the ins and outs of OS X, and hearing things like “that’s really cool” or “wow” :) Macs have always had a reputation of being very different than anything else out there, but that’s not true anymore in some respects… (unix based and all that)…. so it’s also fun to show a *nix person that on a mac, yes, you really can edit a flat file, HUP a daemon, and see your change take effect…

there is one thing that does nag at me from time to time… and it’s hard to say this without sounding like a dick, but oh well. I’ve always experienced periods of rapid growth when regularly interacting with people a great deal more knowledgeable than myself (coming to seattle, or when I first started work for the school district back in FL, for example)… and for that reason, I sometimes feel like I’m not getting exposed to very much in the way of new ideas / concepts / information…. but it’s balanced out by the fact that I seem to be providing that sort of benefit for those in my workplace, whether they be fellow employees or people that enroll in my classes. still, though, sometimes I long to be back in a small room of geeks, grinding out some smart shit without spending *any* unnecessary time meddling with things that don’t consume enough brainpower to be interesting.

in other news, we’ve got a fairly large convention called the Mac Business Expo coming up. it’s hosted by my company, and is (according to our VP of sales) the third largest mac expo in the US, after macworld and seybold (it’s currently listed on apple’s hot news page, and will soon be on the small business page). since I’m more or less the lead trainer, I’ll be doing three seminars for the expo, each roughly an hour in length, which are essentially snippets of the Mac OS X Admin Basics, Mac OS X Server Essentials, and QuickTime Streaming Server courses…. so, another chance to get up in front of what will probably be at least a few hundred people and do my little song and dance… should be fun :)

anyway… carry on :)

Wednesday evening, 9:10 EDT… on the plane from NYC, stopping in Chicago, then on to Seattle.

Tuesday evening / night was a bunch of fun. After I finished class for the day, I hung back at my hotel for a bit. I decided to try and see if I could get the “broadband Internet” in my room to work. The ether drop was completely dead (same as when I tried it sunday night), so I called the front desk and they told me they would “send up the engineer”. I laughed at the thought of some poor asshole actually being on call to fix this. Turns out it was just Manuel the maintainence man. He took one look at my gear splayed across the bed (that is, my various pieces of technology… like, digital technology ;) and pretty much assumed that I knew how to set up my computer for an ether net. He then informed me that it’s probably just dead, because my room wasn’t on a list of rooms that are known to have functioning ‘net access. He offered to get me moved upstairs, but since I was checking out the next morning, I decided to just screw it. I did end up paying just over $40 in goddamn phone bills, though… 17 cents per minute :/

After all that, I took a train going down and walked over to West Village area, where my friend Bill (billabong on newnet) resides. Met him in person and hung at his place for a few hours, just shootin’ the breeze and whatnot. He’s a freelance mac dude who does consulting and a bit of hosting… as he described it, a lot of what he does is “putting out fires” :). Anyway, I respect the ability to just sorta make it on one’s own… It gave me some pretty good ideas about my ability to do the same, not that I begrudge my current situation, mind you :) I told him all about the Apple training stuff, and he told me about some of his escapades involving compressing video that represents the seedier underbelly of web content… hehe. All in all, a very enjoyable evening. It’s not all that often that I get to hang out with people that are doing similar stuff as me in a professional context. Plus, he’s pretty laid back (like myself), and knows how to just kick it, which we did in typical fashion :)

He had to wake up quite early, so I split around 10:30, and decided to walk the ~ 60 block back to the Hotel and hit bars on the way. I had updated directions to the two bars gren had recommended, so I wanted to try to visit ’em… shortly after leaving bill’s place, I found a Belgian Beer Bar, and had to check that out. I had a Treppiste (sp?), which did indeed remind me of LeFin d’monde (sp again). Victor (the developer of the QTSS curriculum) dropped me a call and we talked for about a half hour about the class, and how it was going for me, plus he answered some of my questions about some of the various technologies at work. We also went over some of the details of how we’d set up a live stream the following day to demo for the class.

After the consumption at Bill’s place, plus the beer I had at the Belgian bar, I was feeling pretty elevated. It was very pleasant walking, and I must say that I was unconditionally happy about that particular point in space-time. Kept walking until I found the Korova Milk Bar. I didn’t realize from the name that it’s themed around Clockwork Orange, at least as far as decor / style… there was none of the ol’ ultraviolence, thankfully :) It did look pretty much straight out of the movie though, which was cool. It was kinda dead… just small pockets of people scattered about. Not willing to crack into anybody’s conversation, I just sat at the bar and stared at the multiple monitors, watching something I’d never seen before, but which was quite captivating and strange. Without the audio, the imagery seemed quite random and stream-of-consciousness… I asked the bar tender who told me it was American Warewolf in London. Gotta rent that or something.

It was a bit after 1 when I left there… kept walking up. I decided to bypass the glamor of the grand central / times square scene and instead walk up 1st ave… past the UN complex and the trump tower and all that. It wasn’t until I was just about at the hotel that it finally clicked in my head how the hotel was situated with respect to cardinal directions in relation to the rest of manhattan.

Even though there is quite a lot of activity in the city, I get the feeling from people that live there that it’s nothing like what it used to be before Guilliani took the helm. I’ve heard people say things like “he took the fun out of new york”. Now, to be sure, we’re talking specifically about illegal activities, but goddammit if a lot of those aren’t considered fun by a lot of people. Is it worth ‘cleaning up’ the city for the benefit of those who don’t care for the seedier stuff, but at the expense of those who do? Guess it doesn’t matter at this point, cause what’s done is done. There’s still an incredible number of hip people, places, and things.

I must admit that I feel some level of attraction to NYC, but not as much as I did before I started my life in Seattle. Seattle is more low key, more laid back… not nearly as much infrastructure / overhead that goes along with supporting many millions of people in a tiny area. There are benefits and drawbacks, but I’m certainly quite happy in Seattle currently. I get enjoyment just knowing that NYC is there, and constantly in motion, even when I’m not looking :) Now if we could just get all the humans on the planet to feel the same sort of kinship and comradery as the citizens of NYC, then we’d really have something… It’s kind of absurd that we don’t, but I guess the geography has a lot to do with it… Ultimately, though, we (as a species) have a *whole* lot more in common with each other than we have differences. But I digress…

Wednesday I had to kind of step on the gas a bit as far as the courseware because we moved a bit slow on Tuesday. Ended up finishing all the chapters, though we had to skip an exercise at the end of the day due to running out of time. Victor was kind enough to do a live stream for us from Cupertino, in which he answered a few questions we threw at him (actually, my group was somewhat less than technical, so many of the questions were my own :) My workstation’s video was being projected onto a large screen for the class, and I had the quicktime stream open next to an iChat window which we used for feedback and such (see a screenshot). It actually went rather well, considering it was the first try at it in this situation, and that the source was all the way across the US. After some fine tuning (which I get to help with), we should have it 100% solid (as it was, we had some loss due to a couple possible conditions that will be explored further).

After class was over, I met up with b nelson at Union square, and we hit up some kind of Japanese tea place. He recommended a tea with tapioca perls in it, so I got the green tea variety with said perls. It was one of the most unusual drinks I’ve ever had, and I’m still not sure if I like it :) Only had a bit of time before having to leave for the airport – caught a cab just after 6, and the rest is recent history :)

Not getting to the seattle / tacoma airport until almost 1 a.m, but then it’s gonna be all about sweet sleep…. (after I post this, of course ;)

out.

Today’s events:

Day 1 of the QTSS class, which went well. I hit a couple snags early on, but it’s stuff I remembered us having to deal with during the training session back in May, so what could have been annoyingly difficult obstacles instead were instructor-led troubleshooting / learning sessions :) If I had taken better notes in May, I would have had it all in black and white, and I probably wouldn’t have had that instant of creeping despair (when nobody could hit their apache server from their client machine, for example), but I can usually depend on myself to either remember key details or work around a problem on the fly… heh. In that particular case, it was a “default settings” type problem where apache was telling connecting clients that its address was the loopback…

Ate lunch at the bottom of the Citigroup building with the folks from class. One of the dudes has been working for apple for like 10 years, and is a true Final Cut Pro god. Got some good ancillary info today just as part of regular discussion, but it’d sure be nice to be able to watch him work with FCP for a few minutes.

After class, I hung out a bit in the training center, trying to get suggestions of things to do from people… I got directions to two different bars recommended by gren, and also noted the location of the Soho Apple store. Grabbed a train downtown and found the apple store pretty quickly… it’s a bit off the beaten path, but really quite impressive. I took a few seconds of video while there. I then continued my trek, intending to visit both of the bars, neither of which I could find at the supplied locations… heh. Alas, I was happy just walking around.

Unfortunately I didn’t get too much street freak action, although at one point there was this scraggly lady who looked 50 but was probably 35 (and strung out) holding up two dog-eared, highly used desk lamps… small ones. She said to all who passed: “bowf lights for fiteen dolla”, and I couldn’t help but laugh. Got a kickass cuban sammich for $5.45, something I’ve been craving for some time. I don’t think cuban sandwiches exist in Seattle.

Tomorrow I hang with billa from #macz / newnet… haven’t met him in person, tho we’ve been acquainted for several years now. Was supposed to hook up for macworld 2000 (which was the last time I was here), but it fell through.

Last but certainly not least, big ups, mad props, and shout-outs to Steve and Victor for their rapid and helpful support as of late in my QTSS training endeavors. We’ve got a nice mailing list for the QTSS trainers and have been seeing fair volume lately, which is good considering that we’re still a pretty small group.

… and while I’m handing out the praise, more for blackmagic for getting me hooked on the Aphex ambient stuff… I like it a little bit more each time I listen.

*yawn* … sleepy

Living it is…

…returning to a town you were in less than two years ago with 10x more momentum than last time you were there.

Retracing my steps is always a reminder of what’s been accomplished since I initially laid the path, and this is a rather potent example. When I got to NYC in 2000, I really didn’t even know what was going to happen. When it didn’t, and Seattle came into the picture (/me smiles at piston), I still didn’t know what was going to happen… But these last (almost) two years have been pretty packed with good things for me. I would have to say that I’ve been successful in some of the goals I hoped to attain when I left Florida. It’s a good feeling :)

The purpose for this trip is to teach a three day QuickTime Streaming Server course for Apple at their training center in mid-town Manhattan. I am fully stoked at this opportunity :) I know the material pretty damn well, and it’s stuff that I was into well before these training opportunities came into play… plus I’ve been practicing lately, doing my own streaming stuff (props to Rob for letting me run DSS on his box in spkz colo :) QTSS is plainly badass, especially now that mpeg4 has finally hit (reasonable quality video + audio at under 10 KB/s, anyone?). I haven’t had a lot of experience with other streaming solutions, but from what I know, QTSS (and the open source Darwin Streaming Server) is far and away the best and cheapest way to deliver streaming media to the masses. In typical Apple fashion, it’s easy to set up (okay, sometimes not so easy for DSS) and use, and you simply don’t need to know all of the underlying details relevant to the actual delivery of the content in order to be successful (although it certainly helps, which is one of the purposes of Apple’s QTSS course). But enough about that :)

I was also to teach this same course in Santa Monica next week, but unfortunately it was canceled due to low enrollment :/ I dunno if they’ll reschedule or what, but I’m thinking that if the student evaluations from this NYC session are good, they’ll be asking me to train for them some more.

My long term plans are still about what they were a few months ago when I started my current job:

-hang in Seattle and enjoy a nice, quiet geek life / culture, while building a good rep with Apple as a contract trainer, and also with the Mac community of Seattle.

-glean whatever sort of strange enjoyment I can out of being able to live quite cheaply. I really expect that my next gig will pay (and seriously, I’m not about chasing the dollar, it’s just a matter of fairness. It’s currently a struggle not to be constantly pissed off with my current compensation… due to the way sales people in my company get paid, I never get commission due to said funds being awarded on a monthly quota basis – since I’m often doing training and am not on the sales floor, I don’t meet said quotas. Not one cent of commission since I started. Haven’t seen any money from the 5 training classes I’ve done either. I make less than every sales person there, yet provide a great deal for the company in terms of knowledge / ability. Something has to give, cause this is bs.

-if things are good when my 1 year is up at csnw, then I might just keep hanging out. (note: things are already pretty good, except the money situation). There is certainly much incentive to stay in seattle… great friends, great neighborhood, sweet apartment / dsl, good job where I can do mac stuff all day every day, and good opportunities for travel with my existing gig. From a security standpoint, I could probably keep this job for a very long time. Realistically, that probably will not happen unless they make it worth my while (which, from what I’ve learned recently, will also probably not happen… it infuriates me when companies treat humans as nothing more than line items on a balance sheet). Opportunities are quite relative, after all… things that are great opportunities now will slowly fade into average opportunities as my chi strengthens. This has been true in the past, and surely will continue to hold. Gotta keep it movin’, etc. :) So, next stop will hopefully be Apple. There’s a lot within that company that I’d like to try my hand at. Incidentally, I realize that I’m pretty naive about business… For a mac geek like myself, Apple seems to be the ultimate destination, but according to many, it’s “just another company”. Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s ass about business. I’m interested in working with enabling technologies and smart people, and I notice a very good representation of both within Apple.

But for now, it’s all about NYC… I’m staying on 51st and lexington, and the training center is just a couple blocks away. I’ll attempt to hook up with some of the NYC folk.. that is, mookie, bnelson, rico, and perhaps even pahn… though time is short. Only two evenings useful for hangout time, and I can’t be doing the mad bar hops like previously :)

It’s currently 7:00 p.m. edt, and I’ve been traveling since about 8:30 a.m. pst, as my flight to NYC is via Atlanta. Left from Atlanta about 6 or so. Pretty unremarkable so far, except for the cab driver this morning who took me to the airport. He said two things. At one point he grunted and mumbled, and I barely heard so asked him what he said, and he replied that he’s “got some heat on his shoulder…. you know, that kind of….” then he waved his hands around a bit as if that would clarify things. A few minutes later, he exclaimed out of the blue “SKATEBOARD DOWN THAT HILL TODAY”. I pretended not to hear, continued propelling myself inside to the smooth and steady beats of Black Coffee.

Also, big ups to blackmagic for the laptop loaner while I send my Bish to Apple for last minute warranty repairs (nothing serious, just a sticky hinge and a wireless antenna that gets pinched when the lid is open > 45 degrees, causing significant degradation of signal strength… I could live with both problems, but since I can get it repaired for free… might as well :)

I think it’s now time for my favorite in-flight passtime: reading documentation :)

More later …

—

…and now it’s 10:40, and I’m at the Metropolitan in mid-town area. Split a cab from the airport with a guy who’s staying two blocks from here. Took a walk to the CitiCorp Center, which is where the training is tomorrow, and which is also two blocks from here… Got a bit to eat by choosing a random direction and then walking… guess how far I had to go? Two blocks, and a kickass Spinach salad was teh win.

I am quite tired, so I do believe I shall sleep now :)

woop!

So, the training in CA was… aight. I’m not the biggest fan of Office type applications, but hay… it’s a trip to cupertino… So this session was the first “train the trainer” session for the Microsoft Office X courseware that apple has developed… so now I’m able to teach this Office curriculum. It’s end-user training, not technical training… which are two pretty different animals, for sure. I prefer teaching techs, not llamas, but… joo gotsta pay da bills (n shit).

This was just a one day thing… flew in last night, flying out in about an hour. I’m currently at the San Jose airport, at the Expedia.com bar / lounge area. They’ve got complimentary ‘data ports’ (phone lines) at some of the tables, so of course I jumped on that with the Earthlink account I have for travel purposes. Turned on internet connection sharing over airport, and 30 seconds after sitting down, me and my buddy from seattle (who also came down for the Office X session) are kon3ct3d t0 teh d|sc0v4rwab.

The company put me up in the fairly swanky Cupertino Inn, which was nice since it’s like 1.5 blocks from the apple campus. It’s also nice cause they have an actual limo used for complimentary shuttling to / from the airport… it was my first time in a limo :) They also had free happy hour at the Inn, which we hit up before catching the ride to the ‘port, and now here at the expedia I went ahead and bought myself a six dollar shot of the cuervo… wee ;)

In other news, I found out that my company will be putting me through the more advanced Apple certification (ACSA) once the courseware is revised for the upcoming major release of Mac OS X (jaguar). I’ve already got the ACTC, but will have to re-certify for jaguar, since things are changing significantly.

And uh… other than that… life is good :) Looking forward to kickin’ back to sea town, chillin’ with the bml crew, etc. For now, however, I’ve got an hour of increasingly semi-drunken 24000 bps (shared) lovin’ to contend with, and contend I shall ;)

out

I wrote this little script today to help demonstrate the differences between media encoded at various bitrates using the AAC (mpeg4) codec, compared to straight uncompressed aiff and a 128Kbit mp3 for reference. Feel free to use this for your purposes. In order to function, the directories track1, track2, track3, and track4 would each contain the various versions of the track encoded in different bitrates. The script then opens up all the files for a specific track and plays them all at the same time). The user can then switch between windows and the audio source will follow along (just like the demo they did @ macworld). Oh yeah, this was designed to run on a machine withi a Cinema HD, so if you have too many different bitrates for each track, some of the windows will be placed off the bottom of your screen.

teh skript

I think I’d like some feedback on some stuff I’ve been working on lately. Specifically, music tracks… While the point of the creation for me is to enjoy the process and the end product, maybe others might dig it too… So, give these a listen and if you like, let me know what you find pleasing / displeasing. Thanks :) (if I’ve already bothered you about this, don’t feel compelled to respond again ;)

7-24.mp3
7-25.mp3

I’m very excited to begin building an actual setup of some kind, with proper equip and everything… currently using only a computer, which is quite powerful indeed, but I’d go quite a bit faster with a midi keyboard, as the amount of mouse clicking required to duplicate a few bars of funky syncopated action is quite a lot, considering that I could play it in real time… plus that would open the door to longer melodic / improvisational lines… using loop-based stuff (like reason) is cool especially for ‘electronic’ music, but ultimately I get off most by building myself a little bed with the loop based stuff and then laying lots of dynamic stuff on top that’s manually played.

Anyway, I’m encouraged enough by recent efforts to start thinking of getting more serious about it… maybe once I get some tools I’ll put together a set and see what happens ;)

So… sunday evening, just kickin’ it.

Had a gathering last night at Beau’s place. I’m never one to pass up an opportunity to uh… well, to get wasted, and it was nice to get a chance to hang with some people at work that I normally don’t see outside of work. It’s also good for me, since I rarely spend time outside of my tried and true social circle.

I rode directly to his place after work, but then we drove back to my apt later to pick up some party favors. I then proceeded to lock my keys in my apartment, but it really wasn’t a big deal… crashed at Beau’s place, which was probably the ideal course of action anyway :) I’ll get my spare set from blackmagic when he returns from a weekend getaway sometime this evening. The sunday work day went by pretty fast (as it should; it’s 4 hours shorter than the normal workday)…

We had a few refurbished 5 GB iPods left, and after doing a little bit of checking, found out that I could get one for about $224 after tax. When I heard that Apple is extending the warranty on iPods from 90 days to a full year (and also that that 1 year warranty is retroactive for all iPods including the Apple refurbished ones, not just new ones), I couldn’t resist. There are precious few items that I can buy from our store at a good price, but refurb products are generally in that category. Considering this cost about $180 less than the same product when it was first announced, I think it’s a pretty good deal. It’ll make the two bus rides per day a bit more enjoyable, and the extra utility as a portable hard drive can’t be beat (so, for example, I could sell somebody a new mac and then give them all the system updates without having to mess with putting the laptop into target disk mode, etc). Not to mention the entirely new world of possibilities related to syncing iPods with the smart playlists in iTunes 3…

After work, I took the bus home and then proceeded to walk around capitol hill for a little while, having nothing much better to do. I hit Broadway and got an instant craving for a Texas Roadhouse BBQ Chicken Bowl, scoured up and down for the World Wraps, finally asking a kind passerby where it might be. Apparently, it closed several months ago… drat :/ I settled for cheese pizza pie and pesto, and then hit up the Starbucks to see what their wireless ‘net access situation looks like. It’s not free, of course… the only non-contract account that’s available is $2.99 for 15 minutes and then 25 cents each additional minute… far too pricey considering I could just walk my ass back up the hill and sit outside my own apartment to get online if I really needed to.

The class I was to teach all next week got canceled – 2 of the 3 participants backed out for some reason, so it got rescheduled for later. Also, found out that I’m going away for more training soon – this one will get me certified to teach the new Microsoft Office for Mac OS X class… like I give a rats ass about M$ apps anyway… but I’ll still teach it and teach it well… I think I’ll spin my instruction to be kinda like “How to make M$ Office be your bitch, instead of being totally fucking annoying and counter-productive to your work. Step 1: turn off every goddamn assistant / wizard / auto-complete / auto-format / condescing “I know what you want to write better than you do” piece of crap…”.

According to the email I got from my travel contact within my company, this is the first “T3” (train the trainer, the session that certifies you to teach the material) for the Office class, and I’m invited to participate “compliments of Apple”, meaning no $1275 price tag. So either I really am on Apple’s radar and they want me to train for them more, or perhaps there’s no charge since this is the first run of the T3 for the class, and they want to get all the kinks out in front of a supportive audience (although the QTSS T3 I went to was also the first one for that course, and it definitely was normal price…). In either case, I think it bodes well for me… In a way, I’m already working for Apple (albeit as a contract trainer, not a full-timer), and that simply kicks ass :)

Other random thoughts:

-This grande iced soy chai is way, way off.
-My iPod freakin’ rocks
-It’s gorgeous outside this time of year in Seattle
-There’s a lot to look at on Broadway in capitol hill
-Amon Tobin’s track “Nightlife” also freakin’ rocks. The drum work blows my head.

Now I shall leave this Starbucks and walk around aimlessly some more :)

So, been a while since I’ve updated… Not too much has been going on, and that is why… Today was a good day, however. Started by waking at 5:45 to prepare to watch the MacWorld keynote speach with blackmagic at 6:00. After that I went back upstairs to my apt where I studied a bit more for the two Apple Certification exams I took today – Mac OS X Administration Basics and Mac OS X Server Essentials. Took a cab down to Wings Aloft at King County Airport (it’s a Prometric testing center), started the admin basics exam at like 10 and the other at 12. Passing score is 75%; I got a 97% on the admin basics and an 87% on the server essentials :) So, now I’m certified to train:

-Mac OS X Admin Basics (as of today)
-Mac OS X Server Essentials (as of today)
-Admin Basics / Server Essentials Combo Class (as of today)
-QuickTime Streaming Server
-Getting Started with Mac OS X
-Migrating to Mac OS X
-Setting up Airport Networks

As of today’s exams, I’m an ACTC – “Apple Certified Techical Coordinator” (not sure exactly what that implies, except that I’ve passed the admin / server exams… heh). There’s one more Apple cert left for me, and that’s the ACSA – “Apple Certified Systems Administrator”, which requires taking three more courses and passing the exams. Hopefully my company will put me through those as well, considering that I’ve made it this far this fast, and the potential for teaching the other classes is great.

Next week I’m doing an Admin Basics / Server Essentials class in Redmond; that’s monday through friday. Nice little break from the sales floor… plus maybe I can get saturday / sunday off since I’m working thurs / friday (my normal days off).

So, life is pretty much continuing as planned. I think I’ve just about hit equilibrium from a financial perspective… it’s taken longer than normal since my job pays monthly. Still saving for a new powermac to be purchased as soon as I can get a dual gig for around 2k without totally draining all of my funds. While the desire for an iPod is stronger now that they’re cheaper and cooler, I basically have no real need for one, and that money would be better spent on other things.

I feel like I’m hitting a pretty good stride lately. Good town, good friends, good job, good housing situation, good computer situation… there’s not really much to complain about. Sure, there’s that all-american greed of wanting more-more-more, but dammit, I think I’d rather smell the flowers for a while ;)