Six Weeks Wait For a Watch Band

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When I turned 30 my dad gave me his vintage 1969 Omega Speedmaster. I haven’t used it much since I have always been afraid of damaging it, even though my dad wore it in surgeries for 30 years. In the few months that I did wear it I began to scratch the underside of the steel watch band. It was scraping against the desk when I typed. I have a similar problem with the Titanium X-33 I use as my day to day watch.

Recently I have wanted to wear the Speedmaster Professional more often, but I don’t want to mess up the original band any more than I already have (I really haven’t damaged it, but with continued use it will be messed up). I decided to go and try to buy a leather band that I can swap for the steel one I currently have. Well that was easier said than done. I went to Tourneau on Saturday and was basically told if they could get me a band it would be 6-8 weeks. I say if because since they couldn’t find the serial number on the watch they couldn’t validate that it was authentic. They claim that Omega won’t let them order anything without a serial number. I informed the lady that watches as old as the one I have don’t always have the serial number on the outside. For some reason I read that older models had the number inside the watch, if at all. She said it didn’t matter. I just shook my head as I provided my contact information in the hopes that Tourneau can order the band. If they can, I have no idea what color it can come in, or how much. I just don’t get some businesses. Is this company thinking in their head and saying lets take a loyal customer who has paid a premium for a product that double digit percentage of the population are stopping from buying (yes with mobiles and other electronic devices less and less people are buying watches) and make it harder for them to pay money for an accessory. It sure feels like that.

Oh and to be clear, I will blame the store not the manufacturer in this case because the sales lady didn’t handle the situation well at all. Places have to learn how to treat their customers better.

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Trying Moveable Type 4

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I have been continuing to play around with blogging software on my web hosting account. I finally decided to no longer be lazy and try an install of Moveable Type. WordPress is was easy to install on my hosting account because my provider Site5 offers a simple install script that takes about 2 minutes to run. You need to know nothing about linux software installation. I on the other hand know a little (not much but a little) so I decided to stop procrastinating and try the personal edition of Moveable Type. I was surprised at how easy they did make the install from the last time I tried to do it. Of course that was 2 versions and several years ago.

The point is I was able to get the software installed with no major issues. So far it looks good. I am comparing Moveable Type with WordPress, and my currently hosted blog at Typepad. What I am noticing is that Typepad has allot more bells and whistles built in, vs either of the other platforms. For example, the widgets make life easy. Moveable Type & WordPress both have widgets but neither of them are as nice as what Typepad offers. That of course is only my opinion.

The verdict? Well it is probably too early to say, but besides the cost involved in hosting my blog with a service provider like Typepad on top of my normal mail and site hosting I think that Typepad is still better. The major sticking point I have right now is that I cannot use custom themes with the current package I have on Typepad. I don’t really want to pay the extra fee per year to get the ability to use custom theme’s, but I want to play around with them. I am leaning to just trying out the themes I want on the MT4 install I just did, and if I find one I really like I can always pay to upgrade Typepad.

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Weekend Update

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Friday night I went out with a ton of people from work. It wasn’t an official going away party for me, but it felt like it. We ended up at Windfall to start. We hung out there for a while until the crowd thinned out. After that about 6 or 7 of us went to a Japanese Karaoke place. I am not a fan of Karaoke, but I had a good time. I cannot confirm or deny if I sang anything.

We started drinking around 5pm, and I finally stopped around 11:30pm. Starting early like that can kill you. I rested most of the day Saturday because of it. I did run out to do a little shopping. See a future post about the antics involved in getting a new watch band.

Saturday night I meet up with Danny to see Iron Man. I haven’t wanted to see many movies in the past few years, but I have been waiting to see this one. It looked fantastic, and I was also a fan of the comic when I was growing up. The movie was really good. Afterward we went to Heartland Brewery for some drinks and dinner. I shied away from the drink after Friday nights festivities.

Today was a hang at home and relax day!

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What Do You Get a Two Year Old?

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My nephew Zach’s birthday is in under a month. That means I am thinking about what to get him. I don’t even attempt to get him the most outrageous present. That is reserved for my dad to come up with something crazy. My problem is I can never think of what my niece or nephew would want for a present. I rely on input from my sister, otherwise I would never have thought to get a 5 year old a printer for her birthday. Zach is only two so he will probably get some traditional two year old gift. My issue is I don’t know what that might be just yet. It is always fun to shop for him, but I need guidance:(

2 Weeks Notice

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It has been only 14 months since I started, but today I gave my two weeks notice at my current job. In many ways it was a hard decision, but in many others it was an easy one. You may or may not have noticed I have not talked about work on this blog for some time. Part of that was due to my schedule, and another reason was my employer frowned upon it. But I also didn’t have anything interesting to write about. For that reason and a few others I decided to take a new opportunity that came up. The last company I left 14 months ago I was simply burnt out and frustrated. This move is less emotional.

If I had to boil down the reasons why I decided to look to leave I would say it was because this position never transformed into the job that I signed on for in the first place. For that I am disappointed. I like the majority of the people I work with. I think the direction the department is trying to go in is a good one, but I am simply bored and not doing what I enjoy. When you wake up and don’t want to goto work, it isn’t a good sign. I will probably talk more about this decision in the coming weeks, but I wanted to write something today. I will also try to write about some of my experiences that I went through once I am gone. I also hope to be able to discuss more of what I am going to be doing at this new organization, but I can’t be sure.

I am really excited about my new position. It is a smaller organization but the opportunity is huge for me, so I can’t wait to get into the thick of it!

The Harmony

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I am like most people (or at least people that I know). I have allot of remote controls needed to watch TV. At last count I had 6. I have wanted a universal remote for years, but for almost as long as I can remember there have been universal remotes that just haven’t done what they were supposed to do. I remember my teenage years at home and my dad had at least 3 “universal” remotes sitting along with the remotes for the TV, VCR, & Cable. None of them did everything they were supposed to. I have also had the same problem, so for years I gave up.

I had almost lost hope in technology solving this problem that it had created, until I read the reviews of the Harmony 1. I had read and heard great things about the Harmony remotes, but they were expensive and seemed difficult to teach the remote how to do stuff. Because of that I avoided them. Then I read about the Harmony 1, and I was impressed. Now granted it did seem that other of the more recent Harmony remotes by Logitech did the same thing, but 1 was the latest model that was in my price range. After reading CNET’s review and talking to a friend or two I went and shelled out the $250 for the remote. Yes you heard me right, it was $250 plus tax for a remote control. Let me tell you it is worth every penny!

I have what you would call a slightly more complicated entertainment system setup than most. I was skeptical that it could be programed easily enough for all the stuff I have. I can safely say now more than a week later that this remote works as advertised. It took me about 30-45 minutes to program in all my devices, and activities but after that it worked on the very first attempt to use my setup. My entertainment setup is complicated because I have a TV, Tivo HD, stereo receiver, DVD player, Apple TV, Xbox 360, and a HDMI switcher (KVM) to cycle between everything. That means the Harmony needs to know to switch the KVM to one channel, the receiver to another channel, use the receiver to change volume, use the Tivo to change channels and know all the special Tivo buttons just for me to watch some TV. It also needs to know what to do when i want to switch to the Apple TV to watch TV and listen to music, but like i said on the very first attempt the remote knew what to do. I was amazed. The only remote the Harmony needed a little extra assistance understanding was my Tivo remote. Everything else it knew how it functioned right away. The online database of devices was very thorough. It even knew my HDMI switcher model. I was impressed and still am. I am waiting for the day I come home from work and the Harmony just gives me a run down of what I missed on the TV that day!

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Blog Theme Change

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My previous theme on this blog has been around in some for or another for a few years. I have wanted to change it for some time but frankly I hadn’t found a better one to switch to. I had used a stock theme from Typepad for a while but the column for the blog content was too small even on a large monitor. Because of that I kept going back to my old custom blue theme. It at least had a flexible column setup so if you read the site on a larger window the columns would resize to fit accordingly. Well I finally found a new theme that I wanted to give a try. It isn’t as flexible as what i had but it doesn’t suck as much as the other ones i have tried. It also looks nice! It was this or try the radicle option of doing my blog over in WordPress on my regular hosted site account (that is still something i am pondering).

I Can’t Sleep Again

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I have been having trouble sleeping for weeks. I have a few ideas why, but I won’t go into them here just now. A by product of my lack of sleep is a noticeable increase in the number of migraines I am getting or rather the number of times recently that I have needed to take my migraine medication. I even left early from work one day this last week, and worked from home another because I wasn’t up to my normal 100%. I am hopped up on meds right now because I woke up not feeling so hot today. Normally on a weekend day I would just suffer through the head ache because I don’t like to medicate when I don’t absolutely have to, but you can only take so many migraines before you break down and just take something. Sleeping helps, but if you can’t even do that you have to take something. Thankfully the stuff I took is working and I have been fine since about 1PM. Today is wasted but at least I feel semi normal.

I am afraid that the Johnnie Walker Blue I had last night might have been the trigger for this mornings issues. It is the second time that I have woken up with a head ache after drinking some, but i have had other scotch’s and bourbon’s before without any problems so I can’t see how it is a problem, but I don’t believe in coincidences.

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