Well, I'm back.
Blogging, and writing in general, is like having a case of scabies; it's a persistent itch that just will not go away!
In any case, I'm safely married and my blushing bride is hard at work on her business, so I'm back at the blog and other writing projects. Right now, I'm working on some personal documentation off-line, in the privacy of my own directory structure, but that may eventually get shared with the larger world. Until then, though,...
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My new ordering system at work. Based on a blog post I read weeks ago, I bought a bunch if cheap "guest checks" like wait-staff use in restaurants. The post suggested using them to take ALL your notes, but at the office I only use them to write down equipment and supply requests for the day. Then, every day at about 4:00, I can just grab my pad and place my order. So far, it's worked great! (And, if it continues to work well, I may expand my use of the guest check pads!)
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No, not mine.
I got nothing this week.
I'm out of creative ideas and pretty much feel like a spent shell casing.
But, I have a good excuse. In just over a week, I'll be getting married. So, this is the last Friday post you'll see from me for a little bit. Just kind of how that goes. Next week, I'll be busy with family and last minute details for the wedding. The week after, I plan to be still recovering from the...
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So, yeah, I've got pretty much nothing this week.
Pretty much every bit of time and energy is going into either getting married (in just over two weeks!) or getting my fiance's business, The Organizing Decorator, more customers. So, that means I have little left to come up with too much that's interesting here. As it turns out, that's okay because Haje and Daniela over at Photocritic have plenty to keep you amused, at least if you're a photographer. In particular,...
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You know what I'd like to do?
I'd like to run a large-ish IT shop with a clear and well-defined budget. I'd like to plan for rolling upgrades so that no one had a workstation or laptop that was older than five years old. If the budget allowed for it, so that no one had equipment that was older than three years old. And, I'd like to take that old, retired equipment and donate it to worth causes, like the Boys and Girls Clubs of America or the Red Cross or Goodwill or something like that. Local charities, too, but all causes that would use that equipment to better someone's actual life.
I'd like to have servers that were under-utilized for a change, instead of always headed toward being out of resources. Servers with so much room to grow that they still were running smoothly even after a five or six year period, but that were upgraded before they were ten years old anyway, just because that's the right way to do it.
I'd like to have staff that I could develop and grow and train to be the best IT personnel that techs could imagine being. And, I mean that both through having a training budget to send them out for classes, but also on a personal level. The one thing I really, really miss about being more than a department of one is that chance to teach someone how to do it the right way. (And, yes, there are many ways to get IT stuff done, but, honestly, there are some ways that are more right than others.)
I long for a neat wiring closet again. And an orderly server rack. I miss having a dedicated server room with it's own A/C and raised floors. Can't there be a way for even small companies to do that? Shouldn't we find a way for that to be a thing?
Okay, Universe, there it is. I've said it. Now, go make it happen!
I like being free and independent.
I like the idea behind Instagram, but not the proprietary nature of it.
I don't like giving up my rights to work I create. Even when it's just a little photo of a little moment captured with my iPhone. I dislike, as Nicholas Carr called it on his blog, "digital sharecropping". And, of course, now the ads have finally started on Instagram, solidifying my discomfort with it. Why should I let them profit from even the smallest amount of my work without compensation?
Well, now, there's a new program called Pressgram, that's a free iPhone app, which allows an Instagram-like experience, but uploads the photos to my WordPress blog. You can upload them to your WordPress.com blog, or, as I do, to my self-hosted WordPress blog. Word has it that there is an Android version in the works, too. It's a new app, so there are some on-going refinements, but it really is a great start, I think.
Obviously, I've been using it here and at my other site, JKHoffman.com, so I believe in it. Yes, it took me a little fiddling to get the setting just the way I want and to sort out a couple other things, but, now that I have, I think this is going to work just fine. I can already see the difference in my site stats!
Anyway, worth checking out if you're leary of another ad-supported system that lets you share, but not much else.
My favorite new tech toy!
Recently, I cleaned up my office (by hiring my fiancé), and found a lot of older hard drives that needed to be wiped before I could dispose of them. [amazon_link id="B003WV5DLA" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]This little guy from Startech.com[/amazon_link] has really done the trick! I just pop a drive in, hit the power button for that slot, and I have a fresh, new drive available on my machine to format clean! Just that easy!
(You can find my fiancé's business at The Organizing Decorator, by the way!)
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By now, dear readers, you both should know that I'm "into" photography.
Now, I'm not really into collecting cameras, though, I will admit that I have several. And, I only shoot digital, because, frankly, film is kind of a hassle these days and I just never really had the time, patience or money all at once to learn enough about film to develop my own. And, let's face it, if I'm not developing my own photos, it seems like a waste...Read More
I'm obsessed with photography lately, mainly because I feel so stymied by it.
It used to flow so much easier for me. I had even gotten to the point that I could go a shoot anonymous portraits on the street or at a fair or carnival and be comfortable doing that. But, lately, it's been problematic for me. Of course, I have no one to blame by myself.
Still, as a result, I find myself quietly obsessed with photography as a medium...
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