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Hey Folks,
I have a new blog in a regular column with the Philadelphia Examiner! I’m writing for the Gadget Technology Department and it would REALLY help me out if you could head on over there just by following this link. What would also REALLY help me out is if you could Digg the article either by copying and pasting the URL or by clicking ‘Share’ at the bottom of each article written.
Thank you very very much and thanks for reading!
-Alex
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Apple, MacBook Pro, pennsylvania, Philadelphia, recently, return, settle, wordpress
Howdy,
I have to sincerely apologize for my lack of activity as of recent. I’ve been extremely busy with school and various activities and whatnot. My blog following has very obviously dropped off and this is disappointing, however I’m back and going to try to revamp things around here. We’ll be in touch soon.
-Alex
Filed under: Uncategorized
In case you’ve been living under a rock or just woke up from a coma and this happens to be the first online publication you read, today is election day. If you are able and you have registered, get out and vote. It’s your duty and responsibility to act upon your given right in order to decide the future of your country. If you care, if you have a heart, and if you are able, for the love of God get out and vote.
Upon the suggestion of a friend (who works for Apple), I joined chacha.com. He has been pestering me for weeks to join saying that it’s easy money and whatnot but I shoved it aside and kept my nose to the grindstone at my current job. I broke down and joined ChaCha today and after a good hour worth of testing to see if I was qualified, I have passed all of the tests and have started to take questions.
The basic premise of this service is that you can text (242242) or call ChaCha and a real human (me) on the other end texts you a reply to your mobile device. We make money per question answered so the more I can answer, the better I’m paid. You can ask pretty much any question you can think of and we spit out an answer, as long as it’s clean and whatnot.
I’ll post again once I get my first check but I have to make $100 before I’m actually paid. I’m off to ChaCha!
Best,
-Alex
I work in a medium-rise office building in a cubicle. My job title and place of work can be derived from the content of these posts. Thank you.
It was raining this morning. Hard. In fact everyone parked in the parking garage today and I can guarantee that not everyone here has a parking pass. Parking is $2.50 an hour here with a $20 cap for the day. People usually hit that cap which seems like absolute insanity to me. Even though people parked in the garage this morning, the farm was populated with hanging umbrellas on the outsid eof the cubicle walls. My side of the farm has ten cubicles, six of which are regularly occupied, two of which have part time occupancy, and the final two are temporary workstations for people who don’t have a desk here.
The Afternoon Show’s offic eis directly across from my cubicle and throughout the day they’re in a mad rush to get topics to discuss on the air. Generally, I think they debate the same things every day; hot political topics that amplify the conservative agenda. The door next to them is the Late Morning Show, and to their right is the supply closet which is locked with a thick padlock. They had a problem in the past with paper reams disappearing. Next to my cubicle is ‘Stacy’. She lives with her parents because she ‘wants to save money’ and can’t seem to focus on her work due to all the gentlemen callers phoning her. Next to her is ‘Allison’, the secretary for ‘Chad’. Allison has the habit of surfing Facebook and listening to loud rap on earbuds so everyone on this side of the farm can hear it. Chad has the habit of chain smoking and hitting on everything that breathes. He paces the farm floor every afternoon around 1:20 and packs his cigarettes. I can always hear him coming from across the farm by the ‘pat pat pat’ of his Marlboro 27s.
I think everyone here smokes. Smoking here is the lunch break for most folks. A cigarette for lunch is considered a healthy diet as it ages the lungs and makes you sound dead sexy on the radio. The whole place reeks of stale coffee, stale cigarettes, and stale mold. You can walk by cubicles and tell who smokes and who doesn’t. The veteran smokers are the ones who’s stink you can smell from across the farm. The newer employees and newer smokers are the ones who mask their stench with flowery lotions and perfumes and such cover ups.
Here’s the juicy dialogue of the day, thus far:
- Allison: What are you doing here?
- Gentleman caller: What do you mean, what am I doing here:
- Allison (hushed tone): You know you’re not supposed to be here.
- GC: The secretary stepped away from the desk so I figured it was okay.
- Allison: Okay? that’s like, breaking and entering or something.
- GC: Don’t be angry. I just wanted to see you…
- Allison: I just…I don’t know…this just doesn’t feel right.
- (Chad enters)
- Chad: What’s going on?
- Allison: {GC} was um…just leaving…right?
- GC: Yeah…yeah I was. See you around, Allison.
- (Allison bursts into tears)
- Chad: What the fuck was that all about?
- Allison: I don’t want to talk about it…
- Chad: If you need anything, just come into my office.
- Allison: (sighs)
Chad exits and enters his office. ALlison enters, closes the door, and turns out the light.
My boss hasn’t shown up in four days. I came in every day, did my daily stuff, closed down the cubicle, and left. It’s been pretty nice but I’ve felt kind of useless as far as productivity is concerned. He came back today and bogged me down with work just as I was getting used to not having anything to do. Apparently the station is marketing themselves as a website designer and is trying to get companies to purchase ads or website designs. I heard rumors that a major car corporation just paid us high-six-digits to design their website. I looked at it and wasn’t so impressed.
That’s all for right now. Over and out.
SO! I have passed the one year mark in my ownership of a MacBook. I’ve been looking around at new useful software and this is what I have found that I need MOST for what I do within the past year. They are the most simple, easy to use, streamlined, and beautiful, as well as most useful. In no particular order, here they are:
- Aperture/iPhoto: Photo management software is a nice thing to have around simply to de-clutter your files and keep things even marginally organized. Both iPhoto and Aperture have easy automatic uploads from digital cameras and camera cards. Both also offer great organization methods such as tags and folder separation by event, date, or other parameters set by the user. Currently, I use Aperture, mainly due to the fact that I received it for free and it’s significantly more powerful than iPhoto. The upside to iPhoto is that it comes standard with iLife, (a must for Macs).
- Microsoft Office 2008/iWork: An office suite is more or less necessary for any plausible function on a computer in modern times. Both Microsoft and Apple offer their spin on the programs, Microsoft with more performance based tools and Apple with more creative based. My overall perception is this: if I want an extremely easy way to create a certain type of spread sheet and make it really ridiculously good looking, I would use iWork. If I want to do something quickly that’s compatible with multiple platforms and is easy for most anyone to understand, I would use Microsoft Office 2008.
- OmniOutliner Professional: I have a programming friend who suggested this for it’s ease of use and quick handling ability. He was absolutely right. OmniOutliner Professional succeeds in what every office suite has currently failed to do: provide a note-taking tool that is amazingly in-sync with speedy typers, a fast and small program, and an extremely easy interface. I could not believe, once trying the program for myself, that I had ever used anything else to take notes. I can nail out any type of notes at all now, ranging from science and mathematics to social sciences, in half the time I was able to before. Plus the files are small, quick to open, and easy to organize.
- Mail: When I first got my Mac, I was completely satisfied with what Gmail had to offer. My account was doing fine, I was using free space with a free account on an easily accessible server. I soon realized that I was toting my Mac with me everywhere and I wanted to utilize every possible feature I could to get my full money’s worth of experience. My friend convinced me that I needed to integrate my Gmail account with Apple’s Mail and within 10 quick minutes I had inbox and outbox fully integrated and working beautifully. This is the greatest Mail client I have ever used.
- Bento: If you’re like me and need to manage 10-200 customer files, their contact info, purchase and sale history, and many other such things, Bento is the easiest way to accomplish this. As stated by someone else… Bento is the “database for the rest of us”. Basically, if you’ve got no clue how to use a database (like me), this program is for you. It’s amazingly easy and the streamlined interface makes things look beautiful and simple, as everything Mac should be.
- Transmission: I have friends who swear that Azureus is the greatest torrent program available for Macs but I assure you, they are gravely mistaken. Transmission is the most simple possible interface you could ever hope to have as far as torrent programs go. Transmission does what it is meant to do without frills, advertisements, or anything else. It’s small, streamlined, and beautiful.
- iFreeMem: I don’t know if it’s a gimmick or what it’s supposed to really do or how it does it, but this program makes your RAM usage drop nearly in half. It’s wonderful to run before and after using huge programs like an office suite or recording software. It honestly does clean things up and makes your computer run more smoothly after a short blip in productivity.
- AppDelete: In case you haven’t figured it out already, I’m all about simplicity and appealing looks. This program is so simple and clean looking I don’t even know what to say. It does what it’s supposed to: cleanly and promptly delete programs, widgets, preference panes, files, etc. in an efficient manner.
And these are the programs that I cannot live without! They are the most simple, streamlined, and beautiful programs that I use on a daily (if not hourly) basis. They have made all the difference in my Mac-use experience and I would recommend them to anyone for any purpose!
Today I was asked what makes Macs so special. I smiled and sat back and embarked upon what became a 20 minute rant about the benefits of Macs vs. PCs. I feel like whenever I’m approached about Macs or whenever I speak to other people about them, it’s like I’m talking to someone about their religion. It’s as if I said to someone, “I’d like to talk to you about Jesus Christ”. Not only do things tend to get awkward very quickly, but the overall relationship that might have been developing with that person tends to go south.
A non-Mac person just doesn’t give a rats ass about how great Macs are unless they really, really want one. Tonight I was fortunate enough to talk to someone who wanted to buy my MacBook from me (as I’m looking to purchase a MacBook Pro instead), but even as I spoke volumes to him about the wonderful software I’ve installed and care I’ve taken with handling and using this computer, his eyes began to glaze over after 2 or 3 minutes.
Maybe Mac people out there need to start a group like Jehovah’s Witnesses and go around collecting money for our Apple Fund. Maybe then we could actually afford half the neat stuff that Apple puts out…
I feel like Macs almost have become their own cult of sorts. There are people out there who buy every new product Apple produces simply because it’s an Apple product and for no other reason. I know two people, at least, who went out and purchased both the normal and server edition of Leopard for no other reason than because it was an Apple product and they had to have it. Maybe it’s more of an addiction than religion…
Whatever the reasoning behind it may be, I still love my MacBook and couldn’t imagine living without it. I enjoy my iPod and Universal Dock greatly and iWork is still a great program. Unfortunately, Steve Jobs wasn’t allegedly crucified to save our souls. Sometimes I feel like we’ve been crucified with Apple’s outlandish prices…
Early this morning an earthquake rocked parts of the Midwest (yes, including St. Louis). While it was only 5.4 on the scale and was fairly far away, we sure as hell felt it and being the first earthquake I’ve ever felt it was very bizarre to wake up to the pictures on my wall moving around…
It’s been a while since I’ve posted but I want to say this: I’m still here. Somehow.
Tomorrow is my last final and Monday I begin work full time at KTRS. On top of that I still work for the coffee company, still run an eBay business (which is doing amazingly well, if I may say so myself…), and still play in two bands and write my own music. Business as usual.
The New Pornographers will be here on Saturday, unfortunately I’m not in the least excited because I have so much daunting crap hanging over my head that I feel like Wiley Coyote chasing the Road Runner and I’m about to get seriously fucked up. We’ve got Radiohead and Wilco coming up soon which you’ll be hearing from me about all the time. Trust me.
Hope all is well,
Alex
Filed under: Uncategorized
Howdy,Today I started blogging on Tumblr. You can view it here. I’m not so sure I like the site yet, I feel like it’s an extremely dumbed down version of Blogger, an already super-dumbed-down blogging tool. Anyway, I’m just trying to spread things around to (HOPEFULLY) attract more views. Currently I have….three. I’m working towards my certification as a barista, most of the requirements I’ve already completed over the course of the Midwest Regional Barista Competition. I’m also beginning to sell more on eBay. If you’re in the St. Louis area and need ANYTHING at all sold…you know who to talk to. Aside from that, I’m gearing up for Explosions in the Sky on Saturday night at the Pageant. It should be quite amazing. 
I’m headed back to school on Monday. Two weeks, then exams, then full time work. Woohoo; the real world. Take care,-Alex
