Another year has gone by. As with any year, a lot happened so here is my wrap-up of the highlights of 2007...

• First full year of being married.
• Finally got a dog that has been almost the perfect dog for us.
• Playing the first Harakiri shows back after a very long hiatus.
• Having 8 songs for the next Harakiri album. More songs to come.
• Going to User Experience 2007 conference in Vegas and learning so much good stuff.
• Lost some weight.

Overall, 2007 was a good year. I'm looking forward to see what 2008 has in store!

So, I there quite a few restaurants around here that I've become such a regular at and the fact that I usually stick to the same dishes that the people working there always know what I want without me having to order it.  I love those places and I love being that much of a regular.  It feels kind of good.

The flip side to that is that a while back I had a prescription to pick up at the pharmacy I've been using for years and when I got there, the woman working at the pharmacy grabbed my prescription before I even asked for it.  If there was ever one place that I didn't ever want to become a regular, the pharmacy was that place.  I have a few prescriptions that I need refilled monthly so I know I had been in there more than I'd like but I hadn't thought I had been going in there so much that they remember who I am now. 

I have to say, I was more than a little freaked out the day I became a regular at the pharmacy!  That's just not a good thing; not a good thing at all!  I'm making more of a effort now to increase my workouts and to hopefully eliminate the need for some of my prescriptions.  I've lost almost 10lbs and I think it's going pretty well, but I guess we'll see.

Far too often people send emails to full lists of their friends and families.  The problem with this is that eventually, someone with not so good intentions ends up with lists just full of email addresses that they use to start spamming.

I had one main email address that I never used for any accounts and only gave it to close friends and my parents and another address that I always used when setting up accounts.  This main address went at least two or three years without ever getting spam while the other constantly received spam.  This was until one day when an extended family member somehow got a hold of that email address and sent an email to other people in the family as well as that address with all the email addresses listed in the TO field.  I don't remember what it was but I think it was something that was shown to be false by Snopes.  Anyway, within a week I started getting a lot of spam to that email, after having gone years without ever getting any.

My guess is that some of the people that got the email forwarded it on until it reached a mailing list that shows the email and all the addresses it had been sent to on a web page where a spammer grabbed all those addresses.  Or, it could've been forwarded directly to a spammer's address.

This could've been easily avoided had that extended family member put all the email addresses in a little known field call the BCC field.  BCC stands for Blind Carbon Copy and it essentially means that it sends the email to whomever you want but it doesn't display the email addresses.  That way anyone down the line cannot grab those addresses to spam them.  Virtually every email program offers the BCC field but not all display it as an option by default.  You often have to enable it from an option menu.

So while the BCC Solution may not bring a total end to spam, it can be helpful to keep your friends and family from be spammed because of a message you sent them.  Use it whenever sending an email to a list of friends and/or family; they'll appreciate it!

With the launch of Apple's Safari browser for Windows (in Beta) yesterday, besides all the bug issues, Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror (a blog that I read often via RSS) has pointed out some issues with how Microsoft and Apple render fonts differently.  Microsoft (via ClearType) renders fonts smooth but crisp.  Apple renders fonts smooth but not so crisp.  Some say it's blurry, but within OSX, it seems to fit well. 

 Anyway, the reason why these two render the fonts the way they do has already been discussed to death so I won't go into that.  Ultimately though, it helped me to understand something about myself when it comes to Web Design that I always thought was kind of odd...

For some reason, I've always had an easier time doing graphic design on my Mac but writing code has always been easier on a PC.  Even though Photoshop is almost exactly the same on Microsoft's Windows and Apple's OSX operating systems, I'm more inspired and can knock out graphics quicker on the Mac.  Even though Dreamweaver is pretty much the same on both, I can knock out code quicker on the PC.  I've always suspected it was the way the fonts displayed on the different operating systems, but after reading up on why they two render fonts the way they do, now I'm certain that is definitely the reason.

Now that Macs can run Windows as well as OSX, I'm planning to go back to just using Macs, although my G4 won't do it since it has to be an Intel-based Mac so I have to buy a new one.  This is mostly because I'm just tired of having to reinstall Windows on my computers every couple of years and all the other problems I've had with Windows and PC hardware.  I've never felt like I needed to reinstall OSX on my Macs ever and I've hardly had any hardware issues. 

Anyway, does any one know if Boot Camp or Parallels render screen fonts the Mac way when you're running Windows or does it keep it the Windows way?  I'm going to have to find that out before I go back to the Macs.  I use Visual Studio 2005 these days but I guess if Boot Camp or Parallels render the fonts in Windows apps the Apple way, then I may have to rethink that plan. 

What a long week! I spent this whole week taking some SharePoint training classes and my brain is tired. It was kind of nice to be a way from work but I know I have a lot of work to get caught back up on next week. Especially since I'll be on vacation the week after.

Anyway, back to SharePoint...my company is interested in implementing at least some of SharePoint internally so after playing with it for a while, I decided I probably should take some classes before going any further with it. It's flexible (almost too flexible) and can be very confusing.

After a week of classes, I have a better understanding of it but I still find pieces of it confusing. There are just a lot screens that look similar and often have similar functionality but you can only get to them in very specific ways. It can be difficult to find the specific screen you need to find. Even the instructor got lost in the interface a few times, so I don't feel too bad when that happens now.

Overall, I see some great potential in SharePoint but I also see the potential for a lot of work maintaining it. Luckily for now, we're only going to be using WSS 3.0 and not the full SharePoint 2007 software and we're only going to roll it out to one department at a time. More than likely, we'll eventually start using the full version but for now, the basic version will make a big difference...better document management, document versioning, better and easier to use interface than our current Intranet, etc.

I'm excited!

I'm having a random network problem with my laptop that is driving me crazy.  The driver for the wireless network card is somehow becoming corrupted and keeps my laptop from going to sleep when I close the lid or when I just put it to sleep manually. 

It took me a while just to narrow down what exactly was causing the problem and once I figured it out, it still took a while to find a fix for it.  We had to disable the wireless connection before putting it to sleep and then enabling it when we wanted to use it again for quite a while.  I finally found the answer on a forum where someone suggested uninstalling the driver and then reinstalling the driver.  Unfortunately, this hasn't stopped the driver from becoming corrupted, if that's even what's really happening to it.  It seems to be getting worse by the day.

So what exactly does this have to do with Windows besides it being a Windows driver?  Well, from my experience, when these random errors begin happening and won't stop, it usually means it is time to wipe the hard-drive clean and reinstall Windows.  This does not make me happy.

Anyway, I guess that's one more reason why I'm going back to Macs exclusively. I know that running Windows on a Mac is bound to have the same problems eventually, but I won't be as tied to the OS as I am now.  Reinstalling Windows won't be as big of a deal as it is right now. 

I cannot wait to get a new Mac!  I'm still holding out until Apple updates the Mac Mini with a faster processor and the 802.11n wireless card.  It's due for an update any day now. 

CommunityServer, the web software I use for this blog and for my family website, has release a new version.  I'm using it at work for some new community features on a few our websites and I really like it so far.  Last week, I actually discovered a new bug they hadn't seen with HTTP Compression and IE6 and found the fix for it.  They created a new Knowledge Base article on it, which I thought was kind of cool.

Anyway, the problem is that the licensing has changed and is kind of weird now.  It's still free for personal sites, but I don't see a way with the new licensing to run both of my personal sites from one database like I'm doing right now.  It looks like it only allows for one site per database now and I don't have an extra database to use.  That's the whole reason I setup these two sites like that.

Oh well, I guess I need to post on their forums and see if there's a way to make it work.  I know the commercial licenses we have at work are being grandfathered in (this is good because the limitations in the new licensing made me not too happy) so maybe they'll do something similar for the personal version.  Otherwise, I'm going to have to find some other way to handle it.

I'm not doing such a great job of posting here lately.  I think my biggest problem is that when I write something, I tend to put probably too much time into it.  When I think about something I'd like to write about, I always think about how long it's going to take me so I tend to put it off.  I'm going to try to start writing at least a little bit at a time and/or maybe try to make shorter posts just to get me started posting more regularly.

The Colts won the Super Bowl! It started off rough, but they managed pulled it off.

I'll admit, I got way too frustrated early on during the game so I spent most of the game working on a website instead of watching the game. I did watch the first five minutes and the last five minutes of the game but that's all I could handle. That's still more than what I watched of the playoff game versus the Patriots. I didn't watch any of that game. Of course, my wife and some of our fiends were here watching the game (the playoff game too) so I could hear the good and the bad from their screaming. Oh well, I did get a lot of work done though.

Anyway, this is definitely an exciting time to be in Indy! People are going crazy in Indy right now! Congratulations Colts!

OpenID might just be for you!  OpenID hasn't quite hit the mainstream yet and it may still be a while before it does, but I think it has a good chance of making it.

What is OpenID? 

The idea is to have one decentralized, open source, identity system that is secure and free for everyone to use.  Think of it as something like Microsoft Passport, although instead of Microsoft charging and arm and a leg for non-Microsoft sites to use it, this one is free.  That was probably why Passport is more or less dead these days.  Anyway, I came across a good screencast today that explains it better than I can, so check that out.

The Problem with OpenID

Right now, OpenID faces two major problems that is keeping it from becoming mainstream...

Problem one: It's still too geeky for average folks.  Being the webmaster here at Klipsch, I'm a fairly tech-minded kind of guy but it took me a while to really understand how to use OpenID.  The screencast mentioned above is a good step in explaining to the average user.  I wish it had been around when I started messing with OpenID

Problem two: It's not used widely enough to catch on quickly.  Only a handful of sites use OpenID today.  A few examples: LiveJournal, MovableType, Zooomr, Technorati, etc. (Here's a directory of sites using it).  Wikipedia says they'll be supporting it soon as well.  There are more sites adding it every day and it is catching on, but it would catch on a lot quicker if Google or Yahoo or some other large player on the Internet began supporting it.  Of course, most of those companies have their own version of Passport and aren't going to be very open to supporting OpenID.  I think will eventually though.

The Future of OpenID

I do think OpenID is very promising and I feel like it has a good chance of succeeding.  The thought of having only one password to remember for all the sites I login to is very appealing and I think we'll get there someday, whether it's with OpenID or some other identity system.  I just hope that day comes sooner than later!

I know what you are thinking now...why doesn't Klipsch use OpenID if I think it's so great?  Well, to be honest, I've only begun to really grasp OpenID in the last few weeks and I don't currently have the time to implement it on our sites right now.  I do hope to add it to most of sites by the end of summer though.

For more information, check out the Wikipedia entry for OpenID! 

UPDATE (2/6/2007): Microsoft announced today that they would begin supporting OpenID via their CardSpace technology.  I had a weird feeling that Microsoft might actually be the first big company to back it because they've gotten better at listening to web developers lately.  Way to go Microsoft!  Hopefully now, Google and Yahoo! will more seriously consider supporting OpenID!

UPDATE (2/16/2007): AOL just announced it's plan to support OpenID.  Now if Yahoo and Google would jump into the game, it would really take off.

NOTE: I originally posted this on my work blog on 2/2/2007 which is why I back dated this post. This work blog isn't "live" as of 2/19/2007 so I decided to re-post it here.

Speaking of echoes, I think the "Web 2.0 Bubble" echo has been done to death. That's not to say that I agree or disagree with those stories; just that I'm tired of seeing headlines about it.

The "Web 2.0 Bubble" doesn't need to be reevaluated and written about every single day! Not much has changed since yesterday; give it a two or three weeks before revisiting it please!

Today is definitely an echo day! Luckily, this doesn’t happen every day, but you can see what I’m talking about over on TechMeme today.

I don’t want to add to the echo so I’m not even going to point out exactly what I’m talking about but it should probably be pretty obvious. Of course, the issue is not as big of deal as most people are making out of it and I think most bloggers have figured that out.

Anyway, I love the blogsphere but it can be annoying when most people are just repeating what others have already said without adding any substantial commentary of their own. I can’t fault the bloggers that posted earlier when these echoes blow up but all the ones since just add unnecessary noise to the conversation. To make the situation worse, you just know that Mainstream Media is going to pick up the echo the next day and add even more unnecessary noise to the conversation!

The funny thing is that this could be avoided if most of these people used tools like TechMeme. It's a great tool (I use it daily!) and you can see an echo on there pretty easily when they happen.

I guess maybe most people don’t care and just want to join the link chain. Oh well.

After spending some of my time last weekend and two full nights this past week trying to make Windows XP functional on a friend's computer, I've decided that I'm definitely going back to using Macs. Ok, that's not the only reason but it was the final straw.

My Windows Problems

In the past year, I've had to re-install XP on my brother's computer twice. Once, his hard-drive died (not XP's fault) and another time because a virus messed his computer up. I just re-installed XP on a friend's computer because a virus and spyware made it completely unusable. I had to re-install XP on one of my computers because it had gotten slow, bloated and was crashing too much.

Luckily, I was able to save most of the important data from each computer each time so it wasn't as bad as it could've been, but it's more than I've ever had to do with any Mac I've owned ever! I've never had to re-install the OS. Not once. Plus, the only time a Mac ever felt slow and bloated was when it had finally lived past it lifetime.

My Mac History

The first Apple computer I ever used was in elementary school (maybe 5th grade) and it was an Apple IIe, I think. All through the rest of school and even early college, Mac was the only option.

I bought my first Mac in '96 or maybe '97 and it was a Beige G3 233mhz. Then around '02, I was doing more print design (huge files) and Photoshop seemed slow so I talked myself into getting a G4 867mhz. I also wanted OSX. Anyway, I still use my G4 to this day and it works great.

My Move To PC

In 2000, I got a job as an ASP developer and a Windows PC was the only option there, unless you were a graphics person in the marketing department. So, I became a PC user during the day and a Mac user at night. For some odd reason, I’ve always found graphic design easier on a Mac and programming easier on a PC. Eventually, though, with ASP.NET I wanted to be able to program locally so I bought a Desktop PC. Later, as I starting taking classes again, I got a Laptop PC. My PCs have been ok, but I’ve definitely had more problems with them than my Macs.

What About Now?

From now on I’m going to go back to buying Macs. I’ve briefly touched on why but there are many more reasons going into that decision. Of course, I’ll still need to run Windows while programming but with move to Intel, I can do that now on a Mac. That’s actually one of the bigger reasons why I’m going back. Now I just have to resist buying a new computer now because I don’t really need another right now. My G4 and two PCs should still be ok for a while longer. It’s very tempting though!

I turned 31 today. Of course, I don't feel any older. Time is going by so quickly though.

As of yesterday, I've been married for one month. I also became an uncle for the first time last Saturday.

Things are going really well right now!

While working on that last major work project, one of the additional complications that I haven’t mentioned before was that I also had to plan a wedding. Anyone that has gotten married knows that planning a wedding can be time consuming.

Making the Wedding Ours

Angi and I spent a lot of time and effort into planning this wedding. We wanted it to be very much “ours” and to reflect our personalities well. I know there are a lot of guys out there that leave much of the wedding planning to the bride, often because many brides have planned their dream wedding from an early age it seems, but my Angi wasn’t like that. I tried to stay involved with every aspect of the wedding (finding/choosing the church, reception hall, caterer, florist, rehearsal dinner, etc.). I think the only part I wasn’t involved with was the dress part; I wasn’t allowed.

Branding Our Wedding

On top of all that, I wanted to brand our wedding by designing the invitations, programs and website myself. This was something that was inspired a little bit by Jason Santa Maria (Branding Your Wedding).

My goal was to have invitations that were unique and like no one else’s wedding. I looked at a lot of samples of invitations and was unimpressed with the bulk of them. Far too often, the invitations would use one font and often only one text size throughout, which made nothing stand out.

When I took this project on, I knew my work project was supposed to be complete almost three months before the wedding. Unfortunately, my work project started a little later than planned and took longer to complete so the two overlapped. There were days that I spent a long day working on that project and then a long night working on the wedding stuff. That was an extremely stressful time!

How Did It Turn Out?

Overall, it turned out well! I didn’t spend as much time on the website as I would’ve liked, but it still turned out ok. I’m little happier with how the invitations and programs turned out design-wise. Unfortunately, while I’ve been doing some graphic design (completely self-taught) for almost 10 years now, most of my designs have been for the web; print is not exactly my area of expertise. They both printed out fairly well though, but they could’ve been better.

Of course, I’m kind of a perfectionist so I always think things could’ve been better. We did get a lot of compliments on them though and they were unique.

One semi-major problem with the invitations turned out to be the dimensions when we tried to mail them. It turns out that the USPS started charging $0.13 more for mail that isn’t the standard elongated rectangle shape so a large stack of invitations were returned to us. Even worse though, was that for some of the invitations they didn’t return, they made the person we sent them to pay $0.13 to get their invitation. I’m only aware of that happening to a few people, but it probably happened to more and they just never had heart to tell us about it. That was super embarrassing!

So How About The Rest?

The rest of the wedding turned out great! I think it was very much us. For the ceremony, we used a lot of really cool music done instrumentally on the piano. We used some Journey (“Open Arms”), Lionel Ritchie, Kenny Rogers (“Through The Years”, a favorite of my mom’s), The Beatles (“Here, There and Everywhere”), Billy Joel (“She’s Got a Way”, for the bride, which was incredible!), John Lennon (“Grow Old With Me”) and finally, we left on Queen (“My Best Friend”), which was fun! We were very happy with how all the music worked out.

The reception was cool. The place we had it had a very cool feel to it, the food was good (what little we actually got to eat), the cake was good, the dancing was good (the DJ was a friend of Angi’s and a great DJ), etc. With the exception of us being pulled in a million different directions all night, we had a great time.