as some of you know i've been silent for a lot of december due to a series of unfortunate incidents. the worst of which was a phone call that my wife was being air-evac'd from our neighborhood. yeah, not a good call. she was hit by a car while cycling. she is getting better now after a surgery and physical therapy. not back 100%, not even 70% but getting better daily. in the midst of all of this, i've been battling kidney stones. anyone who has had these knows that pain killers are your best friend right now. i've had 3 over the month of december and have 1 more still in the track...and it sucks going day-to-day not knowing if it will be a painful day...so if you see me bust out the ziplock with two pills in it...you know it's a bad day :-).
anyhow, i came home today from going into the office and my wife asked me what the 'nm .net user group' was. i gave her that 'why are you snooping on me and how did you figure out my email password' look. then she handed me this card:
wow. way cool. the folks of the new mexico .net user group community sent my wife and me a card. some well wishes to my family to get better. i thought that was a very thoughtful gesture on behalf of them and from my family a very sincere and humble 'thank you' goes out to you all. we've been blessed with a lot fo local and distant friends and maybe i'll get around to posting some thoughts on being humble and accepting help...but i'll have to think of a geek twist on it ;-)
i've really enjoyed seeing the growth of the new mexico .net community over the past 2 years thanks in part to a lot of people. i think they are even experiencing growing pains right now, which can be frustrating but is always a sign of success i believe.
so thanks again to the new mexico .net user group -- if you are a developer in new mexico, you need to be a part of this community. it is growing and they are doing exciting things. there are passionate people involved helping drive direction to serve the community...so get out there and be a part of it!
well, it's been a while since the phoenix installfest and i've been behind on a few things. on 20 dec 2007, the arizona user group communities hosted the phoenix installfest in tempe, arizona. special thanks to a lot of people, but namely scott cate, spike xavier, lorin thwaits (cameraman), steele price and my comrades rob bagby, eric strait and dan willis.
tempe center for the arts was our host venue for the night. i personally thought it was a kick arse venue even if the food was not the greatest (blame me for that, but you shouldn't complain, it was free ;-)). a lot of work went into organizing that event down to the wire and i was glad to see over 200 people show up. i wish we could have hosted more, but we were limited by the venue!
at the end of the night, a lot of people stayed the entire time, a lot of great prizes were distributed and best of all, the attendees walked away with a copy of visual studio 2008 for thanks in being a part of the user communities. if you aren't a part of a .net user group in your area -- find one and get involved. participate and be active.
we shot some video from the event and i put it up on silverlight streaming services for you to see. it doesn't auto play so after the initial buffering, hit the play button:
thanks again to everyone who showed up and hopefully you had some fun in tempe!
it could be that december sucked and i was bored, or it could have been the pain killers, but i have found that the recent freecreditreport[dot]com television advertisements have been hilarious.
caveat: i am not promoting the service and i actually don't necessarily agree with it (as i think there is too much fine print involved and it isn't really 'free' but that is beside the point, this is about the commercials.
their latest one had me cracking up as the guy singing the jingle in what appears to be somewhat of a red lobster type restaurant ("they say a man should always dress for the job he wants, so why am i dressed up like a pirate in this restaurant"):
the previous one is about his girlfriend with bad credit ("so now instead of living in a pleasant suburb, we're living in the basement of her mom and dad's"):
there is another one about a new car, but i don't find that one as amusing. the agency behind these is the martin agency. who are they? well, they are behind some of the more successful broadcast media campaigns around:
- spiketv and the CSI campaign (the humorous ad showing a guy being dumped and he's telling the killer about all his mistakes)
- geico -- they brought geico the gecko, as well as the advertisements featuring celebrities helping tell customer claim stories and the cavemen commercials
- 'virginia is for lovers' campaigin in 1972, which apparently is still going strong.
- wrangler
- launched the UPS 'brown' campaigns
seems like a pretty talented agency balancing their abilities to serve different mediums as well as creative abilities catering to both the stiff corporate customers as well as enabling companies to see some humor in their own brands or bring something catchy to their advertising.
anyhow, nothing of significance here, just a random thought and appreciation for the creative talent. i wonder what the martin agency could do for microsoft?
incidently did you know that the mac vs. pc ads (their agency is TBWA\Chiat\Day) are market specific? check out the ones from the UK and Japan has some, but the link is bad now and i don't read japanese...but they featured a popular japanese comedy duo in their advertisements.
in searching for a past post on10.net i noticed they got an overhaul on the user interface. i also noticed some great new content just this week. today i was able to learn about:
- new battery rules for travel
- problems with xbox live from major nelson over the holidays (maybe that was my problem)
- how to use a windows mobile device as a wireless router (although i'm not sure why, it is interesting)
- viigo - a free rss reader for windows mobile (and blackberry)
- anagram - a tool for outlook to create contacts/tasks quickly based on content.
if you haven't been over to on10.net in a while, check it out!
