Category: Life

I got some pretty funny responses to the e-mail that I sent out yesterday. Here are a few of my favorites. I’ve left out the names to protect the innocent.

You sorry dog. I was going to be in Austin next week and look you up to buy me a drink with the money you were going to make on your new job. I was also hoping you would put in a good word for me.

I certainly hope this is an April Fool joke!!!

Oh Tony congratulations but OMG you will be missed. Knew this was gonna come sooner or later and I’m gonna go sit in a corner and cry but good
luck and give em hell. Thanks for all the support you have given me and
for putting up with all questions no matter how stupid.

You will be greatly missed. Good luck to you in your new job. I’m sure you will dazzle them with all of your computer knowledge. The district is losing a great person.

Congratulations!!! I am so happy for you!!! You will thoroughly enjoy your time in Austin and at Dell! I am priveledged to have known you and worked with you, you have taught me a lot! Take care and be sure to keep in touch! I will miss you, sir!

Something tells me I’m really going to get it next year…

Here’s the e-mail I just sent out to all of the technology people at work. Let’s see who falls for it:

As you’ve probably heard, Dell tried to outsource a lot of their support to India. When their customers started complaining, Dell decided to move some of their tech support back to the US. This created a lot of jobs in the Austin area, and I was lucky enough to get a phone interview last week.

I got a call back from the recruiter at Dell this morning concerning a job in Austin. They were impressed with my skills and experience and they want me to come work for them in server support. They will start me off at about twice what I’m currently making, and they want me to start tonight. They start the new hires off on the night shift since there’s fewer calls at that time.

I’ve talked this over with Mr. Trull and he agreed to let me use two weeks of my vacation time as a two week notice and let today be my last day. I’ll be leaving town around 4:00pm this afternoon and starting my first day of work at my new job tonight at 11:00pm.

I’ll send another message from my Dell e-mail account once it gets set up so you can add it to your address books.

Keep in touch,

Tony

Spring break is officially over now, so I’m trying to get back into the swing of things.

This was the first time in two years that I’ve actually had all of spring break off. Back when I was taking classes in Commerce I would have a week of work followed by a week of school, since Commerce and Paris never had spring break on the same week.

Paige also took off last week so we managed to get a lot done. We went shopping in Sherman and ate at Red Lobster, cooked out on the grill, visited my family at the lake, did some work around the house, hung out with Geoff, had a garage sale Saturday, and worked on some landscaping Sunday. We also spent a good bit of time on rest and relaxation.

I’m a little sad that spring break is over, but on the bright side we’re now that much closer to summer.

This is just a quick note to let my faithful readers (reader?) know that we haven’t skipped the coutry or anything like that. I just haven’t gotten around to posting anything here lately.

I didn’t do much with my computer last week since the fan on my video card was dying. I was afraid to leave it running for long since it was getting too hot. Thankfully, I got a replacement from NewEgg.com a few days ago and installed it. I documented the procedure and I’m planning on posting a howto here just in case anyone want to know how it’s done. Check back for that this weekend.

One more thing – God Hates Shrimp

Here’s some great news for anyone who’s into Stargate (like we are). In July there’s going to be a new spin-off series called Stargate Atlantis.

The SG-1 team finally finds the Lost City of the Ancients that they’ve been looking for this season. It turns out that the lost city is not through the Stargate at all, it’s Atlantis. Using the knowledge they gain in the Lost City, a new team sets off to explore another galaxy and fight a new enemy called the Wraith.

So far it sounds like it’s going to be pretty good. You can check out Scifi.com’s Press Release and the official Stargate Atlantis website for more info.

I’m not sure the tone of my voice came through in that last entry. It was supposed to be more like this:

WooHoo! I’ve got super-fast Internet! Hurray!

We had a great Valentine’s Day today. First of all, it snowed. Paige and I had a snowball fight, and we made a snowman:

And, we joined Aerofit. Ben and Paula have been bugging us to do it for a while now. We worked out for about 45 minutes this morning. There’s nothing like lifting weights and then walking out into the freezing cold.

Also, we got Valentine’s cards from Geoff. The interesting thing about them is they’re vintage super hero cards from when we were kids. Very cool.

I’ll post a few more snow pictures once I get them sorted out and resized.

I just thought I’d mention that today is my birthday. I’m 29 today. If you forgot all about it and you’re feeling guilty for not getting my anything, there’s a link to my Amazon wishlist in the bar on the right side of this page. Actually, even if you’re a complete stranger and don’t care whether it’s my birthday or not, the link is still there…

Cory Doctrow, who also runs the Boing Boing weblog, has just released his second book – Eastern Standard Tribe. I haven’t finished reading his first book (Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom) yet, but I will say that I like what I’ve read so far.

Not only are Cory’s books available to buy in stores, he has also released them for free download from his website. Although this seems like it would be economic suicide for an author, he has in fact been selling books “hand over fist”.

Cory has also written a page called What’s this site?, where he explains his reasons for releasing his books for free. This page and the discussion that follows provide a great insight into the mind of an author who really “gets it” when it comes to modern distribution of artistic work.

As always, here’s a nice quote to convince you that you really should go read this now:

There are 70 million Americans engaged in file-sharing today, violating a copyright law that hasn’t kept pace with technology… No author is going to turn those downloaders into customers by calling them thieves. By contrast, the author who figures out how to capitalize on that activity will find himself sitting pretty

It will be interesting to see how that quote holds up 5-10 years from now…

All of the picture galleries are working again. It took a little longer than I would’ve liked to get everything moved over, but it’s finally done. While I was moving files around, I found some great pictures that somehow never got posted.

Here’s Sam playing with some ribbons:

And here he is napping on the back of our old couch:

That should give you an idea of how old these pictures are, we got rid of that couch months ago.

I also have a few more good pictures of me and Max that I’ll post in the next few days.