Life has been found 1.6 kilometres under the sea floor, at temps reaching 100 °C. John Parkes hopes his team's discovery might one day help find life on other planets. He says it may even redefine what we understand as life and what we understand by age.
It will be a real nail-biter on May 25, 2008, for engineers, as the Phoenix spacecraft performs a series of challenging maneuvers right before it lands on Mars.
The Hill asked all 97 senators who are not running for president the same question: ?If you were asked, would you accept an offer to be the VP nominee?? Some senators laughed, but others took the question seriously.
Forget touchscreen, solar powered or even self-destructing coffee tables… Kyle Downes has modded the coffee table into its best version ever: a retro-tastic NES controller… that actually works!! Video in link!
So, Jess was bugging me to get our “Wedding Video” done and as much fun as that would have been, I really didn’t want to. So, after her nagging and vetoing all of my music/picture choices, I decided to just go all out (or, as all out as I was willing to go in 45 minutes with little effort).
Long story short, she’s now making the video, but she decided to upload the movie I made to YouTube, so enjoy:
I just got around to upgrading to Wordpress 2.3.2. I tell you, I’ve just been wiped out the past few months. For those wondering, the wedding went great! I’m still working on pictures, but here’s a nice one for you to chew on:
Awww… how cute! Yes, that’s a Christmas Tree behind us, as it was December 24th!
Work has got me constantly running… this past week has been insane as we had to rush and upgrade to Exchange 2007 (mainly because we were out of space and weren’t allowed to purchase Exchange 2003 Enterprise) and we’ve run into many a problem. Luckily it looks like I’ve finally gotten most of it under control (we run a 2 man shop here and I was responsible for about 95% of this little project) and the users are back working just as they were before.
I really need to update the look/feel of the site… maybe I’ll get to that in the coming weeks. I also have another domain I purchased for something I was looking to do as a side project, but it’s been sitting on the back burner (oh what could it be?!).
Anyway, I’m looking forward to the new year… I’m officially married, I’m going to see the Foo Fighters in concert in Feb, and I’m an uncle! What, I didn’t mention that? Jessica’s sister gave birth on Jan 17th to Miss Catherine Grace Stephen:
Adorable, isn’t she? I think she has my sense of style.
Okay, that’s enough for now… I have e-mail issues to attend! Expect more later… I won’t let this blog fade away!
I’ve had so little time in the past couple weeks to blog about anything, how sad! Jessica’s “winter hours” have started and she’s now working more overtime in a week than normal time (41.5 hours of overtime, just last week… crazy!). Once the wedding happens (just 2 weeks!) and Christmas is over, things should start to get back to normal. There are a few things I want to touch base on, though.
The Westroads Mall shooting. First, both I and Jessica, and everyone we know are okay, even though we’re shook up about it. This was a horrible act by a messed up person, and I hope no one sees it and thinks “What a good idea, think I’ll copy it!” Just horrible.
People should not open second restaurants, no matter how popular they are, if they aren’t going to try to keep the quality the same as the first. This line of thinking also goes for making movie sequels (I’m looking at you, Hollywood). Recently Jess and I went to the new Wheatfields here in Omaha, seeing as how we love the original, we thought having a closer location would be great. It wasn’t. While there we were kept waiting a good 20 min for food that required minimal cooking (a BLT and a turkey reuben), then when noticing the food wasn’t as described on the menu, I was first told to show them that it wasn’t correct (as if I had to prove it), then was told that “this is how we do it here” and then “but you know, the cooks do things differently”. What? Pick an excuse and stick with it. For a $10 sandwich, it should be made right. I’ve never had this happen at the original location, and the one time I didn’t like what I ordered (my fault, just didn’t like the taste) they insisted they buy me desert to make up for it. Now that is how to treat a customer.
Speaking of treating customers, I have decided that customer service has all but died, lately. While ordering stuff for the wedding, one of our items was incorrect. When e-mailing the company, they failed to even read the first 2 e-mails, responding to our complaints with a simple “the order shipped”. When finally getting them to see our issue, they tell us that they’d expect a “$500 every other week customer” to raise this big of deal, they just don’t see why we’re so upset. This continued until I started demanding money back (and I’m sure copying my message to the president didn’t hurt). Finally over 6 e-mails and a week later, they seem to understand why we’re upset and begin to move forward. Why did it take that long? The first thing they should have said when noticing our order was incorrect was something along the lines of “What can we do to fix this problem?” I was going to name names here, but they finally shaped up, so I’ll spare them. Just in general, be nice to your customers unless they’re being a jerk to you.
That’s all I got for now… still trying to finish up my Christmas shopping and all that stuff. Since I missed it before, Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah, everyone!
Jess made her first ever fondant cake today! She spent all weekend making it to see if it was even possible. I think that this is pretty good for a first try:
She wants to make the cake for our wedding, and just needs a little practice so expect more cakes to show up on here as she makes them!
Speaking yesterday at the Black Hat Security Conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft has now introduced a new group of security related programs that share advanced information with partners about upcoming security threats.
As many in the tech industry know, within hours, and sometimes minutes of monthly security patches being released, exploits are already booming for the [...]
Sad breaking news… snagged this from Neowin.net:
SpaceX Launch of Falcon 1 Suffers an Anomaly During Launch
At 11:36 pm EDT August 2, 2008 the Falcon 1 lost contact with the base in Hawthorn, California.
After aborting the launch at .5 seconds, the counter was reset to 11 minutes and launch countdown was reinitiated. At one minute [...]
Jess and I got semi-interviewed today on a Podcast, and you can check it out/listen below:
Jason & Jessica on the “Featuring Who?” Podcast
Some of the things that we discussed:
How Jess and I found Neowin (a forum we belong to) and how we became staff.
Our computer setups.
Discussion about Virtual Machines (Sun xVM VirtualBox 1.6.4, specifically).
Microsoft’s Mohave [...]
Today I thought I’d show you how to remove formatting marks from Outlook 2007 and 2003. You may never need to use this, but judging from the amount of people in my office who do, it may come in handy.
If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “Help! I have all sorts of funny symbols and backwards [...]
Yes, that’s a Christmas Tree behind us, as it was December 24th!
