Posts from — July 2007

As previously mentioned, I’ve been plowing through the inbox after vacation in between fits of actual work productivity.  This one made me chuckle - some dude in Washing actually changed his middle name to Megatron.

I don’t think Derek Soundwave Dysart has the right ring to it.  Besides, I think most of my family, immediate and extended would disown me.

I once had a co-worker say, “You know it was a good vacation when you feel like you need a vacation after it.”  We just got back from a week in the Outer Banks or North Carolina.  This was our first trip there, and our first trip to the Mid-Atlantic region in general.  We rented a house with the extended family and would definitely do it again.

One of the joys of my new job is less e-mail.  Gone are the days at Microsoft of 1000’s of emails a day (and, no, that is not an exaggeration.)  Granted you got pretty good at Outlook folder rules, but a weeks vacation would usually yield 600 or more items in the inbox.  This time, less than 125, most of which were dispatched quite quickly.

The most interesting was an email from a childhood friend I’d been trying to look up for some time.  I’d Googled his name a few times in the past, but never found much contact information or anything that led me to believe he was the same dude I knew from back in the day.  Turns out he was doing the very same thing and finally found me via my Photography Business.  I fired off an email to him last night.  It’ll be cool to catch up, as we spent most of our lives up through high-school together.

This one takes me back a ways, some footage from the old WMSE studios from back when I was a DJ.  The main guy in the piece is Ric Laciak, one of the guys who played a lot of industrial stuff around the time I was on the air (early 90’s.)  Enjoy.

I’m actually in the video, but only my back in the Mistral t-shirt with the lower case “m” is visible.  It’s during the part where Ministry’s “Jesus Built my Hot Rod” is playing. 

I seem to remember Tom Crawford (current station manager, then DJ) got his hands on the single before it was released and before the station got its copy.  I brought it in for Ric who played it directly on the air.  I only knew about the part with the sample “Let’s hit the f**king road” and cut that out (that’s my hand on the board), but didn’t listen to the B-Side where Jorgensen wails out “Connect the Goddamn Dots!!!!” We thought the song was pretty tough and Ric decided to air it.  Then Ric gives me this look like, “WTF!?!  Did you just have me play that on the air and had some guy filming me do it?”

He isn’t kidding about turning up the volume either, we used to crank the monitors really loud. I’m sure I pissed off a couple people during my 3am - 6am slot since the studio was right underneath the dorm rooms in Margaret Locke Hall. Ah good times….

Rewind to Christmas of last year - not two weeks after buying my XBox 360 did I get hit with the infamous “three flashing red lights” and I had to send it in.  It was one of my last purchases from the Company Store and I figured it would be fun to have when everyone came over for the holidays. It was out of commission until well after everyone left.

Fast forward to today when I see this article while balancing the accounts in Money.  $1 billion.  That’s a lot of money, even for Microsoft.  I haven’t really played the thing much since I bought it.  Mainly because the four year old drives me crazy when I let him play it (since his play time is never long enough and that is all I hear about for the next two weeks).

I shot a ton over the past weekend which I extended to the Holiday yesterday - lets hear it for the two day work week! I took my son out for a walk while at the cabin and got a bunch of nature shots I’m fairly pleased with and I shot a bunch at the Brookfield Independence Day Parade yesterday.

I will be posting my haul to Flickr once I get a chance. Watch my photostream [RSS] for updates.  I’ve got everything off the CF card, but need to do the sifting yet. It felt great to do so much shooting, but the price is the workflow tax.

If you know me, let me know and I’ll mark you as a “friend.”  I generally don’t bore the public with family photos.

According to the Chicago Tribune, RC2 is now facing a class action suit over the metal “Take Along Thomas” lines seeking to halt their sale.  The company’s response is interesting in the fact that they actually respond, instead of the normal “we don’t comment on pending litgation.” Also missing are the classic words “frivolous” or “baseless.”  RC2 is maintaining that the metal trains are not part of the recall and they are safe. They’re made in different facilities using different processes.

I don’t think anyone is mistaking the metal trains as part of the recall (though this seems to be RC2’s line of thinking).  The past few articles filed by Maurice Possley at the Tribune seem to indicate a new recall is in order.  Between the nurse from Kansas who claims to have found a metal train that tested positive for lead (and later was ignored by the CPSC), to the report that the Illinois State’s Attorney’s office found metal trains with lead after they mistakenly tested the wrong product in verifying the current recall, it sure does look like the recall might expand.

Fortunately for us, we don’t have a lot of the metal trains, mainly because they don’t fit on the wooden tracks, but this whole thing is getting uglier by the day.  As my wife said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if all it gets recalled”

I have to say I agree with her.

[Update: I've posted an update on this here.]