Introducing: Business Casual

A few of my favorite strips from 2009:

Day job I am the reporting guy.  Run reports, develop reports, etc.  So I loved this one!

I think a lot of us have had projects that have changed from time to time…

Ever feel busy?  I have had a conversation just like this with IT buddies before…

Well I hope you enjoy those comics.  If you do, subscribe to the RSS feed and have them pop up in your favorite feed reader every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Post from: Jake's Corner

Comics – Business Casual

Well not this year.  Started with a nice cushion.  Now going into the 3^rd week, that cushion wore away a little, but still managing to make goal and keep on track for hitting that 50k.  It’s been a bit tiring at times, doing that last crunch to midnight to hit the goal for the day, but it has also been a ton of fun.  I have had the story idea for a while, but never really gotten it out. NaNo has helped force it out of me.  The fun part of the process has been, it’s gone in directions I never expected

The periodic emails “pep talks” are generally fun and help inspire one to keep on.  Even though there are a million other things one could (and debatably should) be doing, one keeps pushing through.  Having a friendly contest with ThatEdeGuy (who is also a writing buddy), has been great too.  The whole writing till I am just slightly ahead of him in wordcount, also means a higher than needed wordcount, so keeps me ahead a little bit.

Start of week 3 – slightly ahead of goal and over 50% done at this point.  14 days remaining, so it is a trudge to the finish.

Post from: Jake's Corner

NaNoWriMo 2009 – 50%

Really the best part of this contest for me has been discovering some new blogs.  This has been probably my favorite discovery so far.  As you will see by the name, and looking through the site, they are a “fire family.”  The husband (called FireDad on the site) is a 26 year old career firefighter.  The wife (aka FireMom) is a 27 year old freelance writer and mother of 2.  So seeing similar ages, interests, blogging, and loving all things department related, perked my interest to the site right away.

They are starting their contest today: Stop, Drop, and Blog.  Here is the post for the HP contest. (Each site has their own rules, so make sure to read the contest rules before commenting.)

Disclamer: this post counts as an additional entry to the contest… but I also thought it would be fun to share how winning (if chance likes me) would impact my family, friends, and readers.

First, I would replace our aging family laptop, but more importantly I would give one to my wife so she can finally have her own computer. (Neither is in the Christmas budget this year.)

Secondly, I would see if anything would be of use to my (fire) dept. – I am guessing the photosmart the guys would have a lot of fun with and actually use productively. (Well sometimes.)

Last, I would share online as well by having a contest of my own on supergeekblog.com – not only would it be a blast, bring a lot of new readers, but someone I don’t even know would have a better holiday season as well.

So winning would have a positive, lasting, impact on myself and others.  I encourage everyone to head on over and check out the Stop, Drop, and Blog site.  It is a blast

Technorati Tags: HP Magic, Supergeekblog, Contest, Jake Barnard, Olorinpc

Post from: Jake's Corner

Stop, Drop, and Blog – HP Contest

Today’s criminal, one Mr. Sparky Barnard, was caught red-handed.

Exhibit A)

"Oh I am soooo sorry"

Unfortunately this was discovered as merely a cover story for the larger crime.  Committed in secret upstairs.  Right next to the location of a previous infraction!

Exhibit B)

Somehow... someone knew when to hide when I went upstairs... I wonder why.

As we all know, chewing on and tearing up carpet is a serious infraction if you want to maintain your status as a good dog.  Having violated multiple house rules, the criminal was sentanced to an afternoon in doggy jail.

He is very remorseful:

"Ohhh I am such a bad dog. I won't do it again I swear!"

So Sparky is currently serving his sentence for the afternoon.  At which time he will be released and be his normal bouncy self.

Technorati Tags: Sparky, Jail, ThatEdeGuy

Post from: Jake's Corner

In the dog house

I am thankful this year to my fellow bloggers for their assistance, inspiration, and support.  I hope everyone has a safe and fun holiday today!

Technorati Tags: Thanksgiving, Olorinpc, Jake Barnard

Post from: Jake's Corner

Happy Thanksgiving!

So here you go:

“Winter is coming to H.B.O” – GRRM’s A Game of Thrones - Via Tor.com

Ancient Rome in 3D – Via the Official Google Blog (As a guy with a History degree, Ancient Rome was my favorite topic in college – so looking forward to checking this out.)

Where have all the Pagers gone? - Via AskSlashdot.  (Interesting commentary.  The only people I know who still have pagers are emergency service workers like myself.)

A Checklist of Obama’s many promises – Via IBDeditorials.com  (Fairly comprehensive list… like McCain, Obama made a lot of promises to his supporters.  Though like most Presidents, we know there is no way to get through them all in 4 years.)

How Twitter is a Communications Game Changer – Via Web Worker Daily (Makes some interesting points and helped confirm to me that Twitter is a communications tool that I want to try and make use of.)

50 biggest movies of 2009 lineup – Via Geeks are Sexy (Waiting on the Harry Potter and Star Trek ones the most myself!)

Some British Schools Stop Teaching About Holocaust Because It’s Not Politically Correct – Via Say Anything Blog (I couldn’t believe this one when I read it.  The whole point of teaching it is because it isn’t politically correct.  It should make people uncomfortable!  “Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”)

Well those are the main highlights from the first half of the week.  Let me know if there is a particular one that you find interesting – and why!  I can either feature more like that on this site, or we can start a rousing discussion.  Either is fun

Technorati Tags: twitter, GRRM, HBO, History, Ancient Rome, Google, Pagers, olorinpc, Jake Barnard

Post from: Jake's Corner

Link roundup – November 12th

Write a Killer Haiku for the Win

As you might have gleened from the headline, this time we’re going to write Twitter haiku. There’s already a healthy group of people who tweet clever little haiku poems on Twitter due to the constrained size, so it seems a natural for Twitter Writing Contest 2.0.

If your memory is a little rusty on what haiku is, here’s a refresher:

Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry. It consists of 17 syllables broken up into three phrases of 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively.

Here is my entry for the contest:

Reporting is fun / Meaningless data crunching days / solutions discovered daily

https://twitter.com/olorinpc/status/1002296279

Not bad, and it was a fun little distraction to think outside the box on a Twitter post.  Twitter posts being limited to 140 characters already forces one to be a bit more concise and limited in posting, so having to follow the rules to make an actual Haiku was a fun change.

If anyone has a Twitter account, feel free to visit my page and follow me.  Also – sign up for the contest and come up with your own Haiku!  Might not win the MacBook Air, but it is fun to try!  ThatEdeGuy gets the credit for finding this contest and pointing it out to me.

Ede’s entry:

Win a MacBook Air / A Catastrophe for me / For I’m a PC

http://twitter.com/thatedeguy/status/1002262444 (Seems to be a delay in Twitter showing this post, but it is there.)

Technorati Tags: twitter, olorinpc, copyblogger, twitter contest, contest

Post from: Jake's Corner

Twitter Writing Contest 2.0

Try it yourself!

Post from: Jake's Corner

What Sci-fi character are you?

Anyways – I have been slowly going through the offerings out there. There are quite a few internet radio stations out there these days. I have tried the AOL radio, Yahoo music, ShoutCast streams, and now a new one: Pandora Internet Radio.

The shoutcast streams can be ok, but due to their amature nature, up or down, random quality, etc keep them from being… good. (In a lot of cases at least – not all.) AOL and Yahoo radio stations are good, but for the free versions, annoying ads between songs. Irrision however, introduced me to Pandora Radio. It works kind of like the Yahoo radio. In which you create a custom stations and rate songs based on what is played. The station is tweaked to play music more to your liking. That rocks. Pandora however, does not have any ads in the audio stream. The free version is supported by ads on the website. That is cool.

Check it out!

Technorati Tags: Olorinpc, Jake Barnard, Internet Radio, Irrision, Pandora, Pandora Internet Radio

Post from: Jake's Corner

Internet Radio

A 14 year old girl is filing a $30mil suit against myspace.com over being assaulted by a 19 year old guy. We have heard stories like this before… a person is stupid, gives out personal information (or simply posts too much personal information) and gets into trouble. Now of course this guy should go to jail, but how can myspace protect a person from their own stupidity? Maybe her parents should have had a better idea of what sort of information she was giving out online.

Well that was enough of a story… now the bastard’s (excuse the language, but any guy who forces himself on a women deserves it) attorney thinks his client needs a cut of the claim for damages because she lied about her age. The girls claim was stupid, but this follow-up guy… how lame. It is just sad how people can blame anyone but themselves, and try to get money for it.

I have a myspace page and a myspace blog, should I sue myspace because I don’t have as many friends as some people? That must somehow mean the man is keeping me down? Common now people – own up to your own responsibilities. If you’re a parent… find out if your kid has a myspace page. (Or any other social networking type site… friendster, facebook, Hi5, etc.) Ask them what sort of things they have on their page. Maybe even look… if the whole world can view it – its not spying on your kid, it is caring. Perhaps if more adults took the time to learn just what their kids are up to on the web, we wouldn’t have such stupid lawsuits that waste our time. (Which also are a result of legitimate hurts pointed in the wrong direction.)

Technorati Tags: Olorinpc, Jake Barnard, Myspace, MySpace Lawsuit, Hi 5, Friendster, Facebook, Stupidity

Post from: Jake's Corner

Stupidity – No shortage in the news