LVTC (Living Vicariously Through Corey)

Why do you go to the movies?

2009-11-09T05:51:34Z

Pam and I were having a discussion tonight about what are the major reasons people go to the movies. I’m curious as to what other people think so I created a poll. I’d love to know what you think:

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Fry and Leela for Halloween

2009-11-03T06:53:53Z

This year for Halloween Pam and I went all out and dressed up as Fry and Leela from Futurama. If you aren’t familiar with Futurama I did a side by side comparison of the characters so that you can see how authentic our costumes were:

I think that overall we looked pretty convincing. We had a good time at a house party and ended up at IHOP at the end of the night. It was good to hang out at the end of the night. I can’t believe that October is over. Only a month and a half left until Christmas. I have a lot of things I need to accomplish before the end of this year. Hopefully I’ll be able to get around to everything.

Other than that I’m still having a blast with my phone…I’ll let you know when the excitement wears off. I’m a little bummed out that it doesn’t come with Android 2.0 by default, but I’ll be interested in trying the upgrade once I’ve gotten around to learning more about the platform. Well until next time, you keep reading and I’ll keep living.

Tags: LVTC

My new Samsung Moment

2009-11-03T06:53:53Z

Today I got my new phone the Samsung Moment. It was officially released today and I was at the Sprint store in line to get it. It has been a while since I’ve had a smart phone so my initial reaction is ecstatic. A few things to note though is that it takes pretty decent pics, the QWERTY is fairly easy to use. It has the touchscreen and the keyboard which was one of my big requirements. The touchscreen is fairly responsive. It has a full on headphone jack to connect up to my car stereo (Bonus) Includes 2GB of SD storage (supports up to 32Gb). I have installed an SSH client for it that works great and the network is fairly responsive (I’m on Sprint). Since this is Android the Calendar, Email, and contacts sync’d up with Google after just one sign in. Very easy to setup and mess around with it. I’ll try and do a follow up post after the Christmas morning feeling has worn off.

Tags: LVTC

lucky number 400

2009-11-03T06:53:53Z

This is my 400th post, kind of crazy when you think about it. So it is only fitting that I recap on the past couple of weeks so that it is momentous. SupportAwards finished up and I just order the awards. They are actually in the mail right now and are supposed to get here in a week, which after inspection I will turn around and send out. Pretty stoked about sending the awards. I’ve also been really busy at work. We are almost in the end of the first third of the 4th quarter and I have a lot that I still want to accomplish. Including new documentation, streamlining the support process, and providing more detailed information for our customers about what support entails. All good things.

At home Pam and I are gearing up for some visitors coming out. Pam’s sister is coming this weekend to stay for a bit and then after her one of my buddies from college is coming out to stay for a bit. It will be a busy couple of weeks that are going to lead right into the holidays, which per usual I’m not ready for.

Overall I’m trying to take things in stride but I find that I hold myself to high standards as far as the type of work I do along with what I accomplish at work and in my off hours. It is easy to get caught up in pushing oneself harder and expecting more, so I’m working more on finding a balance. I’ll let you know how that goes.

All in all though things are trucking along well. Even though it is early, I’m looking forward to 2010. 2009 has been good and 2010 has some exciting adventures ahead including possible travel. We’ll see.

Tags: LVTC

So Excited About the New Android Coming out

2009-11-03T06:53:53Z

Today Sprint announced that they are releasing the Samsung Moment on November 1!!! This was also known as the Samsung InstinctQ. I’ve been waiting for this to be officially announced for a while now and now I’m totally stoked and will be 1st in line to check it out and ultimately get.

Here is a pic of the awesome new phone:

This phone has a 3.2 MP camera, external storage can support up to 32GB SD card, and runs Android, which is the biggest reason why I’m excited about it. I hope this phone lives up to the hype that I’ve built it up to in my head

Tags: LVTC

Been busy but still having fun

2009-11-03T06:54:18Z

This past weekend my parents came out to visit and we had a lot of fun. We toured the USS Midway, which was really cool. Went to some wineries in Temecula and did some boogie boarding. My dad had a blast boogie boarding, in fact I was the one trying to chill on the beach and he kept wanting to go back out. I’m going to try and get into Boogie Boarding some more as I have a blast with it. Took last friday off which led into a realllly busy week this week. I’m also recovering from a cold that I got after getting back from Seattle, oh yeah, I went to Seattle too. Pam and I took a mini vacation up to Seattle and stayed with a friend. It was a blast. We went up to Vancouver for a day and on the way back took the scenic route. October is shaping up to be a crazy month, but that is good. Support Awards is almost done. There is one more round of voting where the best across all industries is determined. It is good to see recognition of great customer support/service. I’m going to be working on it some more over the next year to make it easier to nominate/vote/and navigate on the site.

Other than that trying to just keep my head above water with everything that is on my plate. The time off has been great and has helped a lot.

Tags: LVTC

Support Awards Winners

2009-11-03T06:54:18Z

SupportAwards voting has ended and the winners of the Industries are announced here: http://www.supportawards.org/Winners

There is still one more round to determine the best customer support/service across all industries. The response has been great and I look forward to mailing out the awards to the winners. This is an annual award and before the next annual, I will be making changes to the site to make it easier to nominate, vote, and navigate the site. If anyone has any feedback on the site please leave it as a comment on this post.

Tags: LVTC

Side Projects

2009-11-03T06:54:18Z

I believe it is the side projects that help keep me balanced as far as creativity and assurance that my skills in different areas don’t go stale. I’ve been helping my brother with his sites, which I am in the process of working on a revamp of his kids site that will be running on MindTouch.

One other project that I just started last week is a mini php script to monitor my websites and alert me when they are down. There are many Web Site monitoring services out there like Pingdom, but typically they charge if you want to have it ping faster than every 30 min and I wanted to have a service that I could run that would ping at any frequency along with helping to improve my PHP chops. When I’m done I’m going to open source it and allow others to benefit from it.

Other than that I have some other ideas I need to follow through on, Support Awards is doing great. Voting is nearing the end (next week). I’m excited to watch it grow and to implement some new features.

Been really busy this week with a release of MindTouch coming out tomorrow. We are ramping up some more at MindTouch and will be looking to bring on some more people to do technical documentation. If you are someone that would be interested in working for MindTouch doing technical documentation, shoot me an email at coreyg ]at[ mindtouch ]dot[ com

Tags: LVTC

Support Awards is now in the Voting Stage

2009-11-03T06:54:18Z

The Nominations are in and now people can vote to determine the winners of the 2009 R.E.C.S.S. Award. To vote go to http://www.supportawards.org/Voting and vote for your favorite company. So far this has been a great experience and I have a lot of notes for what I’ll be changing for next year along with new additions to the site to Recognize support year round. Voting ends on Sept 17, 2009, so make sure you Vote!

Tags: LVTC

Keeping busy

2009-08-23T17:51:53Z

The past couple of weeks I’ve been keeping busy with catching up on side projects and working hard at work. MindTouch has been showing constant growth across the board which is great to see. From the customer support end, I’m seeing more advanced cases where the customers are getting into the guts of MindTouch and extending it to tie together systems and to use it as the foundation for their Intranet or as a cornerstone to their Support documentation. It is a lot of fun to work with people on their goals and objectives and see them come to fruition through ingenuity and hard work.

As for my side projects I’m coming up on the last week for nominations for Support Awards. The response has been good and I look forward to a strong surge of nominations in this last week. If you haven’t nominated yet, or even if you have, you can go here to add your nominations for outstanding support/service: http://www.supportawards.org/Nominate

I’ve been doing some other little side projects to get back into some coding a bit. I’m working on a documentation rating extension for MindTouch that will allow users to rate documentation and give feedback if the documentation wasn’t helpful. This is helping to improve my Javascript/Ajax skills, and by improve I mean actually acquire the skills I’ve also been working on my Brother’s sites to make it easier to update and access. He will be launching an update to one of his sites running off of MindTouch.

At the end of Augusts I’ll be heading back to MN to see family. It will be good, I haven’t seen family since the beginning of summer and I like to make it back to MN about 3 times a year(including Christmas).

Other than that I’ve been keeping busy around the house and enjoying downtime with Pam. It feels good to get caught up and get things under control.

One last note, I’m thinking about getting a smartphone again. I had one a couple of years ago(early windows smartphone) and now I really want an Android phone. There are a couple of new ones coming out in Oct/Nov for Sprint so we’ll see how they are. Not 100% solid on it yet, but still fun to think about.

Tags: LVTC, support awards