Ramblings - 5-03-08

Posted on: May 3, 2008


I’ve been looking at the site and noticed that for a semi-bloggish atmosphere, I have no Blog stuff on here. Mostly News and Podcasts. So I decided to practice the art of self-humility and talk about the things happening in life for the past week. I call it “Ramblings”.

Live show was awesome. I am not just saying that to promote, it really was. Although we didn’t get to 20 people, the ones that were there were interactive and fun. This week I upped it to 25 people. If 25 are watching and chatting, then I’ll be giving away a gift certificate. I got a great idea for how to do that, so you have to be present to participate.

Tuesday was the podcast. I had just reworked the sound and still wasn’t too happy on the results. I then made one major change, and that seemed to change the whole spectrum. The best part is the sound was a lot better. Still not at what I am looking for, but it’s a great step in the right direction.

Wednesday I had an interesting start of a new client. They called and asked me to call them back. No explaination, just “Call me back”. I called back and left a voicemail. No response. I am not complaining, just asking that the person get back to me and let me know if they still need my assistance.

Friday as I went to the gym, I decided to stop at McD’s first. I know what your thinking - Oxymoronic, right? Well, if you go to the gym first thing, you are told you should eat first. I also take a suppliment that requires you to eat beforehand. Usually I have a protein breakfast - egg sandwich or even PBJ. But every now and then I go for a McSkillet Burrito. They rock.

Anywho, I get to the McD, and order the burrito and chocolate milk. I eat said burrito. MMMMM good. I go to the milk, and notice it’s already been opened. Not only that, but someone has drank out of it.

I went back to that McD and talked with the Shift Manager. She was nice and ended up giving me a free meal. Thanks.

The site has seen some great advances. I am really working on the new redesign, but every now and then get confused on how DIV ID’s work with CSS. I think I got the header working right, and am moving on to the 2nd header. I think you will really enjoy the look of this redesign.

The Win a Zune or iPod contest finished on Wed. I only got 18 comments, which is good, but interestingly low to what I expected. I hope that the next contest will bring more people. If anyone wants to help with the contest, please let me know.

Spent most of Friday on Bwana’s site. I finally got my Wyldryde password worked out. Hung out and Bantored while Bwana played some game on the Wii.

I have 4 MySpace profiles. My main one, one for Geekazine, one for my WIBands website and one for my music. On Friday, the main one was glitched. It’s still there, but the URL is all messed up. You have to go into Myspace, find a friend with my profile, then go there, or do my id number in the URL.

I contacted MySpace, and they came back with an email stating I must make a “Salute”, which is a picture of me holding up a piece of paper with my ID number and the word “MySpace.com” on it. I did that and sent it in. I was then informed that this is a glitch and they are working on it. Hopefully it will get resolved soon, not that it’s a big deal, but it does affect the url.

The ustream.tv PC is down right now. Yesterday I found a issue with it, and I wanted to try something different. I won’t say what just yet, but I am reading up on doing some tweaks to the machine.

I had to stop because I was asked to work on a computer to clean it up. The computer had 4 different spyware programs on it. They didn’t look Kosher, so I am currently removing software. Fun….

This week I noticed that when I post, my twitter updates - which is a plugin I installed. However, if I post something that posts later (like the podcast), the twitter goes out, but nobody can see the page unless they have admin privledges (which is, well… me.). I will be more aware of this, but I want to twitter when a new post is available. Hopefully there is a way….

Finished Showtimes’ series “Weeds” Season 3. Wasn’t too impressed on the season ending but still can’t wait for more. Also watched “Californication”, which is an interesting show altogether. It got renewed for next year, so it would be interesting to see what happens next.

Finished the Medium series on Guitar Hero III. What can I say - I’m slow on video games. Yet I only play them once in a while. I should get back to Call of Duty 4, which I am getting into.

Checked out the DXG-569 HD Camcorder today. Pretty small camera. Quality looked good. Not sure if it’s something I can use with the ustream channel yet. Little more research before I buy, but I might just also get a regular DV camera because they’re dropping in price, too. We’ll see

That’s pretty much it for now. More next week. Let me know if you read this by commenting below. Let me know if I also should continue this part, or anything about the site.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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2 Responses to “Ramblings - 5-03-08 ”

  1. Dustin on May 3rd, 2008 at 5:31 pm

    I wouldn’t mind helping with your contest. Just let me know what I can do. And I was wondering why the live stream wasn’t up anymore. Hope that gets fixed up before Mondays show.

  2. Career Information on July 20th, 2008 at 12:15 pm

    Ah Div id’s and CSS… from my experience learning and completely understanding CSS is one of the better tools one can develop in the web. With that said, I am not using much CSS in my already existing website just because to go back and do it would take some comittement, but sites in the future will be completely CSS.

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Comcast is Watching You. Good or Bad?

Comcast is Watching You. Good or Bad?

The New York Times reports of a Blogger who gets an email after complaining about a service that is not there. Other people have complained about their bills and Comcast comes back with a “Can I Help”? Even others find themselves with internet connection issues for trying to use the service. This begs the question: are we seeing a new trend and is this a good or bad thing?

First of all, most likely they are not looking at your blog or twitter directly. They are most likely running searches from Google, Summize (remember - Twitter bought that company) and a bunch of other engines. They look at keywords that - in turn - give them information to turn around and say “What can we do?”

Last year while working at a job, we decided to implement a helpdesk system. I looked over a few systems, gave a recommendation and we implemented. The one I’m going to talk about wasn’t the one we went with simply because there were good features they lacked, but this is one feature that really made me think about the way we can see customers.

The service let you put a piece of code on each users’ desktop. When they logged into the network, that code would send a log to the helpdesk software. If any keywords showed up, the software would alert the helpdesk so action could be taken before the customer could call in.

Think about it: Google a specific topic. Let’s take Comcast for example. Go to Google, then “Advanced Search”. Type in “Comcast”, and filter to the last 24 hours. Not only will you get blogs, but you will also get twitters, plurks and a host of other items.

Now  if you organize that with specific keywords like “Comcast” and maybe a hot word like “sucks”, you can see all the blogs and posts that follow. If someone wrote an API that could constantly search for these words, then they can report on a system and get back to the author.

Of course, if you are on Comcast’s’ network and sending plain text (like most blogs are), then it’s ten times easier for Comcast to filter and respond. If it was encrypted, that would be a different story. However it’s only plain old text passing through the internet for all to read - including Comcast.

What is the good? Well, you may not want them to watch what you are sending, but if you put it out on Twitter or in a blog, you want people to see it anyway. So why not Comcast? Why not AT&T? Why not Steve Ballmer or Steve Jobs? I suppose if Ballmer or Jobs were to call you tomorrow over a blog or Twitter, you might see that as an honor that they are noticing your posts.

It can also alert people of any questionable activity. In this post 9-11 era, concern over communication is a hot issue. With so many ways to communicate over the internet, it might be nice to stop another epic event before it takes place.

What is the Bad? Well, it’s just another form of Big brother watching. One more step closer for RIAAs and MPAAs to surface. It is wrong to duplicate and distribute copyrighted material, but for those who don’t do that it’s not fair if we are being watched.

Dave Winer reported that right before an Obama speech, he was disconnected from Comcast for “Security” issues. Dave instantly closed his Comcast account. If I was in the same position, I think I would have either done the same thing or strongly worded the incident and made sure enough people heard it. I would most likely do the latter if I didn’t have another avenue of connection.

Is there a “Happy Medium”? Not really. That is why history is riddled with events like witch hunts and the Spanish Inquisition (Yeah, I know. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition). But with pressure to have a safe lifestyle, you have to have someone watching over it, right?

Well, someone or something might be watching you now. Whether it’s the ISP seeing what you are posting on your Blog or twitter, a security camera watching your actions in and out of a retail store, an ATM watching you take your money or one person just peering out the window to see what you’re up to. It’s all the same, right?

Some may call this move by Comcast as creepy. Others may call it brilliant because they are preventing issues. Even others may call it questionable practice because they are watching you. But the old saying “Danged if you do, danged if you don’t” can come into play here. We want to be safe but we don’t want to be watched or held accountable. What goes on behind closed doors….


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