It occurs to me that I haven’t told people that I use Twitter. 

I use Twitter.

“What’s Twitter ?” you ask with that innocent look on your face.

Twitter is like a mini blog that you fill in throughout your day.  It has a small maximum letter input, so you have to keep your posts to a few sentences.  Then people who ‘follow’ you can see your posts.

“What’s the big deal ?” you ask. 

Well you can subscribe to other peoples twitter feeds and see what they are doing during the day and it’s a nice way of keeping up with how your friends are doing.  It’s like micro blogging or something.  Mostly you just post things like “I just saw the most amazing thing at [enter web site here]” or “I’m about to go master some Audio to CD on BigBlue” or “Does anyone know of a good MP3 player that’s free ?”.  Then people who subscribe to your tweets, can reply.  Kind of like a very slow chat . . . only not a chat . . .

But you need to install a client like Twhirl, which is a stand alone application based on Adobes’ AIR that automatically allows you to post your tweets and checks for your friends tweets for you, and just lists them for you in a nice small window.  Otherwise, you have to use the twitter web site to do the posting and see your feed, which is a pain. Thanks to Pete Cullen for the point over to twhirl.  I even read about it in Collide magazine today, who gave it 4 of 5 stars. 

It’s easy to install twhirl (and uninstall if you don’t like it).  Head over to www.twhirl.org and download it.  It will need to install Adobe AIR if you don’t have it, but the whole thing is very small and very light on resources.  You sign up for an account on twitter.com, then set your twhirl up with your username and password, and it goes and gets your posts automatically. Look for me on twitter.com, DXEndar, and click ‘follow’ and then you’ll get updates on me through the day. 

How fun is that ?  That’s more fun then . . . well it’s just very fun  !

Ok, long story short . . . my last pair of two week contacts have been in for more then 8 weeks . . . and it’s getting difficult to read the computer screen.  I don’t have an updated pair of glasses to use and I’ve been waiting for a new eye appointment since the beginning of December.  And for one reason or another, it’s been delayed and rescheduled and moved . . . up to last Friday morning (Jan 16th).  Then the eye place called Friday morning to tell me that the doctor was out sick and we needed to reschedule for the middle of February. 

Well I lost it a little bit on the phone . . . like went off just a tad.  And it was embarrassing

I didn’t curse or say anything obscene, but I did lose it.  I guess I had been on simmer all this week, what with doing all the little tedious time consuming jobs that needed to be done but just take way longer then you think they should.  And it’s been frustrating to have to lean into the computer screen and squint to try and read it.  And I’m using this eye place because it’s one of the best ones in town and it takes my insurance and usually they are very prompt.

But I cant see.  And I’ve been waiting for the better part of 40 days for an eye appointment and . . . then they wanted to move it to the middle of February.  And I suddenly was saying things to this lady before I was even thinking about them and . . . I just . . . kind of . . . snapped at this lady.  She was very nice, and I apologized, and then she put me on hold for a bit . . . and when she came back she had an appointment at for this coming Wednesday for 8:30 am.  She said that was the best she could do, but that she would call me if anyone canceled before that. 

So apparently I’m a little more stressed then I realized.  So today, I’m trying to do my best to relax and unwind. 

In other news, I was going to put up a little bit of a link dump . . . but I’ll just give you the headlines because I don’t feel like doing all that right now.  8- )

- Circuit City is closing all of their remaining stores.  So if you have anything preordered or on lay-a-way with them . . . get your money back now.

- F.E.A.R 2 demo is coming Jan 22 for 360 and PS3.

- Organic based Solar Cells, cool because they are flexible and could even be woven into fabric, are now better understood and, thus, closer to being used outside of a lab.

- Scientists have long wondered why Moon rocks are slightly magnetic.  They now believe that the Moon once had a liquid molten core, like the Earth, that magnetized all the rocks just ever so slightly.  The Moon no longer has a molten core (so far as we know), but the rocks remained magnetized.

- Some very smart people form Duke University used a new computer algorithm to make a cloaking material that was able to conceal a dot on a mirror.  First a dot, next a star ship !

All stories either from Joystiq or DailyTech . . . go to their websites for more info. 

You see what I did there ?  I got you with the caption and the picture . . . and now you’re all excited. 

  Read more

Well I’m, once again, waiting on Media to master and then duplicate . . . so that means time for a link dump !

The President is getting a secure alternitave to his Blackberry . . . HERE.

GM will assemble Volt batteries here in the US . . . HERE.

Sea Gate CEO bails . . . HERE.

There are a few web sites for game and film composers that you should check out . . .

Kevin Riepl (Unreal games and Gears 1 music) main site HERE and blog HERE,

Rob Gokee (music for such films as The Last Tenant and Until Next Time) HERE,

Garry Schyman (music for BioShock and the Destroy All Humans 1-3) HERE,

Jeremy Soule (music for Guild Wars, Oblivion, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic) HERE,

Russell Shaw (composer of all of Fable’s music other then the opening theme) seams to not have a web site . . . so visit his wikipedia page HERE,

Michael Giacchino (music for LOST) HERE,

Not much in the way of exciting links to share today.  In other news, I got the Knothole Island expansion for Fable 2 (since I had the points already).  Somehow I have turned totally evil . . . like all the way evil.  I think I remember playing with a friend once and doing some stupid stuff and NOT saving . . . but apperently I saved the game.  Now everyone runs from me . . . and this bothers me.  I may have to finish a few other quests on the main land so I can be ‘good’ again, and then finish up Knothole Island.  Yes, that’s how much it bums me out that I’m evil now. 

This is a very cool board game, as well as an X-Box Live Arcade game, that I found.  A fun, easy to learn game that is different every time you play.  Check out my review HERE. 

DreamWeaver is not being nice to me today again, and the pictures are a bit blurry as I had to take them with my camera phone.  But you’ll get the picture. 

Things have gone missing.  Most notably my sanity.  But specifically several things from the Youth area: the MOTU interface that was in the Youth Sound booth (slated to come back to the A-V room today), the old (but working) keyboard under the Youth Sound booth, a couple of microphones from the Youth Stage, and a box full of various adapters that I was moving from the Youth Sound booth to the A-V room. 

You know what I hate most ?  Well I hate waiting alone somewhere full of people, and I hate working out knots in audio cables second, but THIRD . . . I hate it when equipment goes missing.  Just up, and POOF . . . it’s gone.  All these things were here last night for service . . . but now at 11:00 Central time . . . they are not here.  Well, they are not where I left them last night. 

Scooby-Do WHERE ARE YOU !  We really need your help now !

It’s the New Year and things are busy.  There are no major projects I’m working on, no big upcoming events to prep for . . . it’s just a mountain of little things that are time intensive. 

I need to find out why my clients don’t always get all the information from the DHCP server when they ask for it.

I have to run more networking cable through the ceiling tomorrow as well.  This isn’t hard, just time consuming. 

I finally got our firewall to let me upload stuff to our web server.  The SQUID proxy server had a problem . . . well it’s a little complicated.  Suffice it to say it’s all better now.  I have upload all of Novembers sermons again, now I have to work on December and the first of January.

I’m behind in master audio CD’s, but I think I can get most of that punched out by Monday of next week. 

I need to finish cleaning out my office of old equipment that we’ll never use again (like 128 memory sticks, and 2 gig hard drives, and old NT servers that still work but . . . why would we need ANOTHER server . . . especially an NT 4.0 server).   

I have a growing pile of paper work that needs to be organized into file folders. 

And I need to put together a proposal for a battery backup / power conditioner for the servers (as we keep having hard drive problems and I think it’s due to the poor power in the Front Office). 

Nothing major, just lots of little time intensive things (along with the regular weeks worth of work) means that I must manage my time very carefully. 

For instance right now: Big Blue is defragging so I can do more audio editing, I’m looking at a Laptop to see why it suddenly decided to run slowly, I’m waiting for a virus scan on PEARL to finish so I can enter the Wednesday songs, and I’m writing a blog post. 

Well I sit here in Matt and Mel’s bedroom, hooked up to the internet by a cord strewn across the floor, doing a quick update ! 

We rung in the New Year by playing some Nexus Ops (which is traditional for us) and also some The Lost World 3-D: Jurassic Park (a new game for Matt and Mel.  Matt won Nexus Ops twice (the second time, we are convinced he cheeted though). 8- )

Today we are going to see the State Capital (which is, aparently, a replica of the nations capital), eat at the Blue Cow, and then later this evening go to a stake house (rather then do Taco night, since none of us quite feel like doing Taco night this time). 

Morgan (2 years old this October) learned to say ‘Rubium Dragon’ (one of the pieces in Nexus Ops) which just goes to show you that they listen to EVERYTHING you say. 

Anywho, I’m off to go get ready now.  Hope everyone is having a good New Year !