A Good Life...all in all

Slightly Better Than Sliced Bread

2011-07-31T20:43:00.000-06:00

This next one is one of the greatest technology concepts that is likely to disappear within a couple of years. It's a company called Zediva and the whole idea is to stick a finger squarely into the eye of the movie industry.

THE CONCEPT: Zediva is an online, streaming move service. It's basically a combination of Netflix and Redbox in that it has a pretty limited selection of new-release and popular movies, but does not require you to hang out in front of the grocery store late at night when you have a desire to watch a movie and you also don't have to return a disc. You simply sign onto the Zediva website, pick your movie and it starts playing. Once you start a movie, you can watch that movie as many times as you want over the next 14 days. Rentals cost $2 apiece or a buck if you buy packs of movie credits ($10 for 10 credits). Also, the new releases here are truly new releases, and not month the month old releases that you get on Redbox.

THE INNOVATION: So why didn't somebody else do this first? Many have tried, but the short answer is that the movie industry does not like making it this easy (and cheap) for consumers to watch new release movies. They prefer that you have to work a lot harder and pay a lot more money to watch a movie that has just been released on DVD and so they have all sorts of rules in place that keep services like Netflix, Redbox, etc. from renting new releases until they have started to get a little stale (meaning, the DVD purchases have started to taper off at Walmart and Amazon). In order to get around this little complication, Zediva basically gives the finger to the movie industry and has found a loophole in the rules. Zediva actually goes to the local Walmart the day a DVD is released and buys a bunch of copies of the actual physical disc (I don't actually know where they buy them, but this is how I imagine it). Next, they take those discs back to their secret lair which is basically a room full of thousands of DVD players all hooked into the Internet and trained monkeys (now I'm really taking some creative liberty, but, again, this is how it happens in my mind). Now, when you sign into the website and "Rent" a movie, one of these trained monkeys (we'll call him Mr. Peepers) sees an image of the movie you wish to watch on a small screen in his cage. Being the highly trained monkey that he is, Mr. Peepers knows that if he can successfully retrieve that movie, place it in one of the DVD players and press the play button, then he will be rewarded with a banana. The next thing you know, the movie begins with DVD menu that you control, previews and all and Mr. Peepers is happily enjoying his banana and back to watching his advanced copy of "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" and dreaming about the day when you will be the one retrieving/playing the DVDs for him.

THE CATCH: Obviously the movie people aren't happy about this little arrangement, and are suing like mad to get it stopped, because, obviously, if something is easy, cheap and makes consumers happy, it must be illegal. Nobody is quite sure if this approach will stand up to the convoluted copyright laws in place in the US right now, especially given that they were all written before the Internet or DVD players even existed and don't even begin to address this sort of technical setup. But surely, if history is an indicator of where this is headed, some judge somewhere in the US will decide it's his place to create laws where none exist and protect the motion picture cartel by shutting Zediva down. If that happens, and Zediva probably doesn't have the resources to take this to the Supreme Court, this awesome little wonder of human problem solving, loophole exploiting will cease to be. Either way, I'm pretty sure this business model is only going to last a year or two anyway as the whole online movie thing evolves and eventually movie studios are going to figure out, just as the music industry did, that consumers will find a way to get the content. It's just a matter of whether or not the industry will get a slice of the pie.

THE LIMITATIONS: The biggest things keeping Zediva from taking over the world today are 1) the movies are currently only playable on Adobe Flash enabled devices. That basically limits it to desktop/laptop computers or Android OS powered devices (Yes, this really works on an Android phone...I've tried it myself on T-Mobile 3G). If these guys could get an app out there for Roku, PS3, Wii, XBox, etc, it would explode. They say on the website that they're working on it, but nothing yet. 2) It's still an invitation only service. Since this whole operation is run by a couple of college drop-outs and a legion of trained monkeys, they can only add capacity as fast as they can make trips to Walmart to buy discs and cheap DVD players and get them all wired together. That doesn't even take into account what is required to find qualified, upstanding monkeys who are looking for work and get them trained. But, they are adding capacity and I just got my first batch of invitations this week.

HOW DO I SIGN UP: If you're looking for a great way to enjoy new release movies and you aren't willing/capable of the whole Redbox thing (my family is not able to return rentals, as evidenced by our vast collection of DVDs we've "purchased" from Redbox because we can't get them back, even after a month) and you're ok watching them on your computer or Android device, follow the link below and sign up. Since it's a referal link, we both get free stuff if you do:

http://www.zediva.com/user/register/sNsMzzmWou

Only the first 10 people to use the link will get in.

Another Interesting Business Model

2011-07-09T19:52:00.000-06:00

So speaking of interesting business models, here's one that's guaranteed to make you bajillions of dollars, if your interested in that kind of thing. It's pretty simple really and I'm surprised more people haven't thought of it. It consists of a few simple steps.

Design a product that every man, woman and child in the world will want.
Sell the product at a huge markup that guarantees you piles of cash.
Make it really slippery and difficult to hold onto.
Make it out of glass, or at least the surface of it should be made of edge to edge glass such that a drop from any height onto a hard surface will shatter the surface, rendering it useless or nearly useless.
Make sure the product is designed to be impossible to to repair.
Threaten all business partners that if they attempt to repair the broken product, they risk losing the business relationship.
When consumers call to ask about the options they have to deal with a now broken, useless product, tell them they can take it to a company retail store, which may or may not be within hundreds of miles, and present it to the store staff which may or may not do anything to help you. Store staff will have the option to
a) repair broken product with magical tools in the back at no cost to you
b) repair broken product with magical tools in the back at some cost to you
c) give you a new product at no cost to you
d) give you a new product at some cost to you
e) do nothing and laugh at you for being such a parental tool who actually bought this product for all of their children

Now, I know you're all thinking that this business model is much too simple and couldn't possibly work, but I'm here to tell you that this is, in fact, a real product in the real world and that the company selling this product does have large mounds of cash that can be directly attributed to this product and business model. I am also here to confess, sadly, that I am a parental tool that begrudgingly gave my money to said company and now has 3 of the above mentioned products in my home which have been rendered completely or partially useless after a drop from the height of a small child's waist. I haven't yet played the retail store lottery game yet to see which of the options I will be granted. That's mostly because the nearest retail store for this company is 215 miles from my home, but I'll certainly have this opportunity soon since living without this product apparently violates a fundamental human right (according to my children).

And so my recommendation for other parents who don't want their children to be losers who don't own this product (I think, technically you are considered below the poverty level if you don't own at least one of these products), make sure that you don't allow your children to touch this thing until you have wrapped it in some sort of super, shock-absorbing protective cover. And in case you're wondering where to get such a protective cover, I know they are available at a very high markup at the company retail store nearest you.

Happy Independence Day!

2011-07-01T00:00:00.007-06:00

As far back as I can remember, I watched BYU football games on Saturday afternoons in the fall. In my very early years, it was with my Dad or my Grandpa, but even in my too-cool-for-family teen years, I used to walk, bike or drive to church houses in the neighborhood where I could catch the games over satellite broadcast. I would hang out with lots of grumpy old guys and a few young dads with small children running around screaming, but it was a small price to pay to see my Cougars in action. Then there were the wonderful "Blue and White Sports Network" years when the games were all on network tv, saving me from those uncomfortable church house afternoons.

We had our good times and our bad times as fans of BYU athletics. I was 10 years old when we won the national championship and a little older during the fun Sean Bradley basketball days (I'm a bit too young to remember the Danny Ainge days), but anybody who knows me well will attest to the fact that I was no fair-weather fan. I was true-blue and, even though my plans of attending BYU changed after high school, my love for "The Y" never faded. There is/was nothing better than spending a cool Saturday afternoon in Autumn watching a BYU football game and my Saturday schedule has often been centered around those games. And then in 1999 a bunch of suits got together and decided to ruin it for me and many others like me.

I find it fascinating to watch the way businesses operate, particularly how they interact with their customers, and to predict how those businesses will fare in the long run. I actually have a pretty good track record of predicting products/businesses that will thrive and those that will fail. I've been watching and waiting for the Mountain West Conference (MWC) to fail for 12 years. The MWC was formed to be a "better" Western Athletic Conference (WAC) and, as far as I can tell, the plan was to take a product that many people were passionate about (BYU sports) and make it difficult, expensive and sometimes just plain impossible for those loyal customers to enjoy. I've resorted, these past many years, to listening to games on the radio. On the radio! Like it's 1978 or something. It doesn't take a genius to see that this might not be a sustainable business model, but the very well paid executives running the MWC decided to try it anyway and to ride that pony as long as it would stay standing. Well, needless to say, 12 years of frustrated, angry, desperate fans has resulted in a pony that is laying on the ground in a pile of its own feces, swarming with flies. Now that BYU, Utah and TCU have bailed on the conference and its ridiculous TV situation, poor BSU and the Bronco Nation are left to suffer the aftermath in what is now the "lesser" WAC.

But enough with the negative. My real reason for actually sitting down and writing this post is that today dawns a new era in BYU athletics. As of today, July 1, 2011, BYU is free of the MWC and has finally regained control over the rights to view their own athletic events. Not only that, but they've built up an incredible HD broadcasting station unparalleled in the collegiate world. BYUtv can be found on almost every major cable network and satellite tv provider in the USA, as well a decent online streaming capability that means access to over 140 BYU athletic events in the next year, available for free to all...many live and some delayed until after they are shown live on ESPN. And for those of you with a Roku box, there is a new BYUtv channel for Roku that allows you to stream any of this stuff live for FREE! (For those of you without a Roku...you should get a Roku!)

So all of this to say that this is an exciting day in BYU sports history and should be celebrated by Cougar fans worldwide. If you're die-hard enough, you can even start on July 12th by watching the BYU Football Media Day in all it's glory, for the first time ever outside of the Wasatch Front area. I'm not sure I'll end up watching much of that, but I COULD!!

There...now I feel much better. I've been wanting to write this post for quite some time, but before now, it was always just going to be a whiny rant. At least now it can be something positive (unless you're a BSU fan). I can't wait to see how this new experiment goes for the BYU athletic department and most of all, I CAN'T WAIT FOR FOOTBALL SEASON!! Woohoo!! Go Cougars!

Blogging Again

2011-06-18T16:49:00.003-06:00

It's time for my annual cleaning-up and dusting-off of the blog, because you never know when an emergency will strike and you'll be in desperate need of a blog, and that's when I'll be glad I've made the effort. So, you, my faithful blog followers, may or may not notice that I've actually migrated my blog off of my own home-based, sitting-in-my-basement, old-computer-looking server to the magical world of Google (who owns blogger/blogspot). So, like nearly everything else in my life that I depend on, my blog now sits on a server owned by Google, somewhere in the world. It's been fun and educational hosting my own web server at home, but I'm getting tired of trying to keep it hack proof and worrying that it might actually already be compromised by hacker/terrorists and be serving as the hosting service for al-Qaeda operations. And so I'm shutting it down and moving stuff out to blogger and continuing to put a lot of faith in Google that they won't decide to become evil and do bad things with all of my personal information.

I've tried to make this blog look as much like the old design as possible, not because it was spectacular, but because I didn't have any ideas for a different look. I even got my random image generating header working here. I'm going to move some of my old posts from my old blog to this one so that those of you who refer often to my informative posts will not lose that history (and so it doesn't look so dang empty and stuff).

I'm also hoping that this effort will revive my desire to be a more prolific and value-providing blogger. I've been pretty bad the last year and the really sad thing is that there have been many times that I've been thinking about something that I thought would make a good blog entry. I considered going Twitter for a while, but I've decided that just doesn't make any sense for me. When I actually want to write, I want to sit down and take some time and write a thoughtful piece of prose and not 140 characters of Jeff trivia. So consider this notice that there will be more regular posting from here on. The topics will probably stray from my normal tech/fast food topics and could head into some uncharted waters. We'll see...

Merging Etiquette and Road Rage

2010-08-07T12:54:00.007-06:00

Yes, I know it's been forever since I last blogged and all...no need to state the obvious in snarky comments. That being said, I have a topic that is just begging for a blog entry and is too big to fit in a Facebook status update so...here goes...

I recently had a friendly debate with a dear friend about the "right" way to merge when you hit construction on the freeway and traffic narrows to a single lane. Do you a) merge as soon as you see the sign or b) be one of "those people" and speed to the front of the line past all the suckers and merge at the last minute?

Now before having this conversation, I actually thought it was common knowledge that if you were a good-spirited, moral, ethical person, you knew that the answer was to quickly merge and wait your turn in line and if you were a jerky, self-absorbed, idiot you don't care about the rest of humanity and so you just blow by everybody in line and go as far as you can and then wedge your way into the through lane at the last second whether somebody lets you or not. And then my world was rocked when I talked to a person who fit profile a and whose opinion I happen to respect, but was practicing behavior b! So rather than let it go, like a sane person, I've tried to find an answer from an authoritative source. I finally got a response from the Idaho Transportation Department (oh yes...I really did). I asked two questions: What is the right way to do it? Am I, as an early-merger, required to let the line-skippers merge? Here is the answer I received from the head of the state driver's license program:

"Regarding your first question, a driver should merge into the though-lane as soon as it is safe to do so. If the driver waits until the lane ends before attempting to merge there may not be adequate time and space to merge smoothly and avoid interrupting the flow of traffic.

In answer to your second question, the through traffic has the right of way and merging traffic must yield. While the through traffic may be able to make some speed adjustment to allow interspersed merging, the through traffic is not required to yield to the merging traffic. The merging traffic does not have the right of way. If there is a collision, the merging vehicle is likely to be cited for failure-to-yield. Occasionally, traffic could be so heavy that merging vehicles may be required to come to a stop to prevent collisions and then only proceed when the way is clear."

All I'm going to say is that it makes sense to me. This response pretty much follows the reasoning that I had assumed all along. It just makes sense to me that if we all could just get along and merge while we're still moving at a decent speed, there would be no reason to have to come to a complete standstill down the road. In fairness, I do have to say that there could certainly be situations where traffic in both lanes is so heavy in a big city setting that it probably doesn't matter when people try to merge and it's going to become complete gridlock no matter what. Having said that, this has not been the situation I was in 98% of the time. It's usually open Idaho Interstate, and I often get so angry watching huge trucks blow by me pulling campers and 4-wheeler trailers that I seriously consider what sort of road-rage action I could spring on them that would wipe that smug smile off of their faces and not get me and my family killed. If anyone thinks of anything, let me know...

I'm only posting this, dear friend, for your safety and well-being (and for the sanity of us line-sitters). I will refrain from gloating...at least I will try...very difficult...

OK, I feel so much better now having this burden off my chest. I think I may start doing this blog thing more often.

Fast Food Perfection

2009-08-10T00:14:00.002-06:00

I was shocked to discover this last week how many among my family, friends and colleagues have never had a McGriddle from McDonalds. Here I was, innocently going through life assuming that everybody appreciated this lovely little concoction as much as I, only to find out that there are many who didn't even know what I was talking about. And now, because of these conversations I've had (more on these conversations later) I feel a moral responsibility to inform the world about the unparalleled goodness that is a McDonalds McGriddle breakfast sandwich.

While the concept seems pretty simple (basically a McMuffin breakfast sandwich, but with pancakes instead of the muffin) the unexpected synergy that comes from the combination and the delight that you feel when you realize that the pancakes have maple syrup cooked right in makes for a fantastic experience. Let's be honest, who doesn't love to eat a big pancake breakfast with bacon and eggs, especially when the syrup takes over your plate and sweetens everything up. The McGriddle is sort of like the Turkey dinner gum from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (remember, Violet Beauregard turns into a blueberry in her haste to be the first to try it). Anyway, the magical McGriddle is like a whole pancake breakfast wrapped up in a little sandwich. You can get several combinations, but I am partial to the sausage, egg and cheese variety.

Now, back to my recent conversations. I decided one morning as I drove to work enjoying some McGriddle goodness that I simply had to discover how to make a McGriddle myself. I would eat them every morning if I could (and if my heart wouldn't explode within a couple months) but they aren't cheap, so I decided I would figure out how to make them at home. I discussed this with the guys at work, and with Suzie to see if anybody had any insight to offer and to see if I was the only one who dreams about these little things. Basically, those who had tried them love them and the rest of the world just doesn't know yet that they love them because they haven't tried them. Unfortunately, nobody was able to offer any insight into how one might go about creating a McGriddle from scratch. Furthermore, it turns out, there isn't a simple recipe to make them like you can find on Google for most restaurant yummies. No, the McGriddle is apparently the result of years of painstaking scientific research. That's right...it's Science!! It's not an easy thing to make a delicious little pancake that tastes like real maple syrup, but doesn't get your fingers all sticky and doesn't overwhelm the taste of everything else in the sandwich. You can try adding syrup to the batter, but it changes the flavor and eventually, if you put too much, starts to make everything sticky and they won't cook right. So McDs R&D department came up with some sort of wonderful maple syrup pellet that gets mixed into the batter to give it the flavor. You can see them when you bite into it (they almost look like blueberries in fake blueberry muffin mix). I eventually found a couple of websites with accounts of others who had tried to recreate a McGriddle at home. The most successful attempts involved boiling down maple syrup until you get a sort of syrup candy which can be broken up into little bits and mixed into the batter. I decided that I just had to try.

I have to say thank you so Suz, who let me experiment in our kitchen with A LOT of maple syrup over the last couple of weeks. First I tried making my own maple syrup from scratch, but after many minutes of boiling and watching one of those candy thermometer thingies really closely, the whole potful of stuff instantly changed to a pot full of sugar. It was really strange, and I'm sure it defied several known laws of physics and science (I hope Jason, the Chemical Engineer and pretty good cook, never reads this). My next several attempts took the simpler route of boiling off-the-shelf pancake syrup down until it started turning candyish (somewhere between hard ball stage and soft crack stage for those of you who actually know something about baking). After 4 or 5 tries, I ended up with a pretty good consistency that I was able to freeze and crunch up into tiny bits, but was still sort of soft and wouldn't be gritty and crunchy in the final pancake.

Last night I finally tried my first attempt at the whole shebang. I mixed up some regular old bisquick pancake batter and mixed in a quarter cup of maple syrup and then added some of my wonderful syrup crystals. I fried some eggs and bacon for filler and used your basic sliced/wrapped cheese that isn't really cheese. I have to say, I was quite satisfied with the result. It's obvious that I need to mix in a lot more of the crystals to get it just right, but the bites that did get some of the yummy little cooked in nuggets were really similar to the real thing. I think I'll probably try again this week and, if all goes well, I'm thinking about making these for everybody when me and my siblings get together at a cabin in the woods at the end of the week.

So there you have my ode to the McGriddle and a first-hand account of my own quest to recreate the world's most underrated fast food menu item in my own home. For those that have yet to experience McGriddle goodness, I strongly recommend you treat yourself this week and report back here with a comment about your experience (unless you're going to be one of those party poopers that says "eh...it was ok", in which case we'll know you're a liar and will have to publicly call you out on this blog). And those of you who already know how amazing these things are, back me up here.

Good Music

2009-08-07T00:05:00.006-06:00

So anybody who would be reading my blog probably knows that I love music. Ever since I was 8 or 9, I've loved listening to all types of music and have spent countless hours browsing record/tape/cd stores and now online music services. My reason for doing this, of course, is to find those absolute gems of musical perfection that pop up every once in a while on obscure and little known albums. Some of my favorite albums and songs are those that most people have never heard of. I swear it's not one of those "I love it because it's obscure and I have an insecurity issue that requires me to talk about and obsess over strange and obscure things" like a lot of the weirdos, punks and depressed kids in high school. I really, really love some out-there stuff (like the Mighty Lemon Drops - World Without End), but likewise I really enjoy some very mainstream, overplayed stuff as well (Like the 2nd Kelly Clarkson album). I'm just fascinated and grateful that I am wired in such a way that certain music speaks to my soul and brings me joy (I'll even admit that I've actually cried just from listening to music). I don't find nearly as many of the unknown gems these days since I don't spend much time hanging out at the mall anymore and my awesome college dream job at Budget Tapes and Records is now several chapters back in my life story, but I still find myself wandering every once in a while through the Amazon.com MP3 download store, partaking of the free tracks and listening to the 30-second clips of the personalized recommendations they shove in my face. It's a music lover's paradise!

Anyway, that was an extremely long introduction to a blog entry that I meant to write months ago, but just came back to my mind this week as I was flying to Chicago for a business trip. I was checking my phone for some good tunes to block out all of those airplane sounds that can make you really annoyed and slightly claustrophobic if you start paying attention to them. I put on an album that I bought a couple of months ago after downloading a freebie track on Amazon. The album is "Keep Color" from The Republic Tigers. This is just a great album (that word is suddenly sounding weird to me...do the kids still use the word album today even though it's just a collection of binary files...hmmm...al-bum...albummm...weird).

My best description of the music, which will likely not help any of you at all, is that they sound like a mix of Deathcab for Cutie with better harmonies and Blue October without so much anger and resentment. I won't say that the album is all great, but there are a handful of songs that are just awesome and can be replayed over and over. The freebie that I started with was "Buildings and Mountains" and if you listen to that one, I think you'll understand why I wanted to hear more. It almost sounds like a cool 70's folk song, but has some interesting electronic sounds and layered vocals to make it modern. Just a near-perfect alternative radio song. You can hear this song and a couple of other good ones (though not my faves) on their MySpace page. The band is still small enough that they don't seem to have an official homepage (at least not one that comes up on the first page of a Google search, and, let's be honest, if it's not on the first page of a Google search, it might as well not exist). Or you can listen to the 30-second clips on Amazon. My other favorites are "Give Arm to its Socket" with a funky tempo change that I love, the kind of spacy "Contortionists" and the totally-different-from-the-rest-of-the-album-but-still-great "Golden Sand" (very Peter Murphy-esque Nat).

Anyway, there you go. Blog entry number 3. I think this whole "Music I'm Currently Listening To" theme might end up being one of my oft-used cop-outs when I can't think of something earth-shattering, groundbreaking or thought-provoking.

iPhone Envy

2009-05-19T03:00:00.002-06:00

It has taken a great deal of soul-searching and courage for me to finally write blog entry number 2. First of all, I feel like I set the expectation way to high with my first entry, and just couldn't come up with a 2nd blogworthy topic. Then, once I decided what I needed to write about, I nearly chickened out, but I decided it's something I need to do...for my own cathartic value if nothing else.

Many of you know I'm kind of a gadget geek. I don't really spend a lot of money on gadgets, but I really like to stay up on all the newest, coolest geek toys and have been known to obsess at times over a well designed gizmo. I remember saving my lawn mowing money as a 15 year-old so I could buy my own Sony CD player (which I spliced into an old record player/amplifier that Aunt Calene gave me). I remember getting very excited in college when I bought my first DVD player, not so I could watch DVDs, but because it was the first and only model at the time that could play MP3 files (before MP3s were cool).

My latest gadget and tech obsession is my totally awesome <a href="http://www.t-mobileg1.com/" target="_blank">HTC G1 (The Google Phone)</a> running the Android OS 1.5. This phone can do anything. It scans barcodes and looks things up for you on the web to make sure you're getting a good deal (Suz and I used this a lot while Christmas shopping in December). It will search by voice command and give you directions to any place using gps and Google Maps and even has a sky map that you just hold up to the sky and since it knows where you are and what direction you're standing and everything, it will tell you what star/planet/constellation you're looking at. It's incredible. The only thing is, it's sort of the not-as-cool kid in class who knows everything and can answer any question, but wears sweaters with colorful abstract patterns on them. You totally want to study with this kid and have him in your group when you're working on a group project, but he's not the kid you want to be seen with later at the football game. That other cool kid is, of course, the iPhone.

Again, I totally love my phone and don't regret getting it, but that iPhone is just so shiny and sleek and smooth and flawless and...did I already say shiny? And the apps that you see on TV and on others' iPhones are just so well built and handsome (yes...I did just use the word handsome to describe mobile phone software). Now of course I can rattle off half a dozen things my phone can do that an iPhone can't (the list was a dozen before the release of the new iPhone 3G S this week) and yet I continue to have these regular episodes of iPhone envy, which brings me to the larger issue at hand here.

I'm just not sure I'm cool enough to be a Mac, iPhone person. And this is where my deep-seated feelings toward Apple are rooted and why their cute "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ad campaign has totally backfired when it comes to consumers like me. Sure, I could get one of these things, just like anybody else (I actually do own an iPod), but just owning one of them will not make me as cool as the guy in the Mac commercials. I'm pretty sure I have more in common with the PC guy and would probably end up feeling like a total poser if I did get one. So am I destined to always have the smart, sweater-kid phone? Not necessarily. It is entirely possible that as soon as my T-mobile contract is up that I will just give in and get one. It wouldn't be the first time I've stepped outside of my own personal coolness boundaries (some of you may remember that whole post-mission long hair thing). But I would prefer that, between now and then, somebody catch up with Apple in the slick design department and come out with that totally killer Android phone that I can really get excited about in all aspects, so that I can be confident enough to carry it around in my hand all day like those dang smug iPhone users do.

Where do I start?

2009-05-03T00:11:00.001-06:00

I used to think that people with personal blogs fancied themselves a little too much to believe that the rest of the Internet world actually cared what they have to say. I guess my view has changed somewhat over the past couple of years as it has become a simple thing to sign up for blogger/blogspot accounts and as I've watched friends and family spill their guts for the civilized world to see. I kind of see it now as a way of writing and publishing your own autobiography as you're living life. We all know we should be recording our deepest thoughts and passions in a personal journal, but since none of us remember how to write on paper anymore, why not do it on the computer and why not put it out there where family, friends and wierdo stalker people can enjoy it as well.

Now, just for the record, I actually had a blog set up about 5 years ago, but, as I said, I didn't really see any point in posting my own personal rants, so I used it as a family message board for a year or so and then converted it into my full-blown family forum and meeting place that now exists. But I've had a few things happen lately that made me realize that 1) as a professional web developer, I should have some sort of web presence and 2) I actually love to write and might as well create an outlet for that urge and 3) I don't see my siblings/parents/aunts/uncles/friends as much as I'd like and it wouldn't hurt to give them all a little news about me and my family every now and then.

And so begins the personal blog of me.

Now, a few notes about the blog itself. It's based on a great piece of open-source blogging software called BlogCFC written by a great guy and hard-core geek named Ray Camden. (UPDATE: I'm no longer using BlogCFC, but Ray is still a great guy.) Next, the images in the page header are all images taken by me that represent some place or moment in my life that has significant meaning to me. They're not all great pictures and a real photographer could have done so much more with these moments, but I don't really care. These are the bits of my life that I always want to remember, and what better way to remember than to have them at the top of my personal homepage. Now I say images (plural) because I've actually programmed this page to pull one of 10 or so random images each time you come to the page. In fact, if you refresh the page right now, you'll most likely see a different image. I plan to keep adding to the collection of images that are used in the header as I capture new moments. Also, I was going to give credit for the title of this website, "A Good Life...all in all", but first I'm going to see if anybody besides my wife knows where it comes from. Those who know me well should be able to come up with the source without too much trouble.

So anyway, I hope that this site will be of interest to a few people out there in interweb land. But if not, that's ok. It's really more for me than anything, so that I can liberate some of the thoughts and feelings that come to me which normally stay all cooped up inside my head or which my patient wife has to sit and listen to while she tries to get things done. I'm sure I'll cover wide-ranging topics, but for now, I've created the following as my list of entry categories: General Musing, Family, Music, Soapbox, and Tech. We'll see how far that gets me.