Nathan’s Daily Grind

Time to reboot my blog.  Again.  Again.

It seems I do this every year or so, but I really do want to get back to writing often on my blog.  There’s something about a long-form blog post that just doesn’t come across with a 140 word Tweet.

Ironically I always used to wish there was a venue for short posts, links to interesting articles, an easy way to share a picture, etc.  I’ve taken to that pretty well with 2600 Tweets so far (www.twitter.com/nanovak) and an active Facebook account too (www.facebook.com/nanovak – and no, it’s not public, much to Facebook’s chagrin).

I’m hoping to use the blog as a forum for posts about both technology (I’m a gadget geek and an operations engineer for Windows Live Messenger) and my personal life.

Speaking of my personal life, I’m 48 hours away from having knee surgery so I’m going to blog about what’s going on and my recovery process over the coming months.  Months…bleh.

More to come … honestly this time.

I’ve heard this is going to be resolved in Outlook 14.  In fact there were huge cheers when we were told this at the Company Meeting in September.  Time will tell…

In the mean time, time will continue to be spent sitting and waiting … and fuming.

I really love Windows 7 and am happily using it on my primary laptop.  The so far the only thing that doesn’t work is my AT&T wireless modem (need to find a driver installer that doesn’t care about the OS version).

One issue that I haven’t liked is the Windows Live Messenger client wants to live in the taskbar with the rest of my running apps instead of the system tray where I’m used to it staying.  But  I just came across a way to make it work like I want and stay over by the clock in the system tray: compatibility mode!

Here’s what to do:

1. Close/exit Messenger
2. On your local computer browse to C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Messenger\ (or \Program Files (x86)\ on a 64bit OS install)
3. Right-click on msnmsgr.exe and choose Properties
4. On the Compatibility tab click the “Run this program in compatibility mode box and choose Windows Vista.  Click OK at the bottom.
   
5. Now you can start Messenger again from the Start Menu.
6. In the System Tray click on the “Show hidden icons” arrow and then click Customize.
   
7. In the Notification Area Icons dialog find Windows Live Messenger and in the dropdown to the right choose “Show icons and notifications”.  Click OK at the bottom.
   
8. There you go!  Messenger back in the System Tray!

Credit to www.mess.be for the tip!  Unfortunately they don’t have URL’s directly to their posts.

Just wanted to let you all know that I’m still around! 

You may have noticed that I’ve added a couple of links/feeds to the right of this page.  The first one is my Twitter account: http://twitter.com/nanovak.  I have actually been quite active over there as I find the 140 character short post syncs up well with my usual desire for blogging: oh that would be a cool thought or quote to share.

The other feed is a “link blog” feed of blog posts and articles that I find interesting to share.  Some good stuff there! http://feeds.feedburner.com/NathansLinkBlog

I’m starting to get motivate to write a 2008 year in review post, so stay tuned for that.

For now, it’s off to bed to try to get rid of a head cold.  Joy.

Funny Pic: The Financial Crisis Piggy Bank

Just came across this in catching up on TechCrunch posts.  Pretty funny revisiting of characters from the old Budweiser commercials from 1999-2002 … eight years later.

A new grocery store is going to open in our town.  Well, reopen under new ownership after the last group went all Chapter 11 on us.  This has led to some considerable discussion on the various email DL’s and other online forums for folks who live in Snoqualmie.

The best post I’ve seen just came in while I was at lunch, and is in response to my beautiful wife pointing out that a newspaper article said people in Snoqualmie were driving half an hour to get to a grocery store.

But then he got a phone call from a retail developer at Snoqualmie Ridge, who said the community’s only supermarket had closed and residents were driving a half hour to shop for food.
-Puget Sound Business Journal

What a load of bull the retail landlord fed these people!  There’s a small organic grocery in downtown Snoqualmie (3-5 minutes) as well as a QFC and Safeway 6 miles away in North Bend.  The response?

“Not sure where people would get information line that…”

Thanks Chris!

I’m not sure a spoonful of sugar will help in these rough times in the economy, but it certainly could at least help you feel better for a short moment.  Catching up on news from this week I came across TechCrunch launching the f@%kedcompany for the new downturn: The TechCrunch Layoff Tracker.

To intro the page the have a great graph that espouses what I’ve been saying for a long time … if your company is having issues or entering tough times cut early, cut ONCE, and cut deep.  I’ve lived through not doing that in the last dotcom bubble burst in 2000-2001.  The company I worked for went through seemingly endless layoff rounds and morale was totally shot.  We were eventually purchased for about half the amount of cash we had on hand … bought with our own money.

Essentially, if you make a deep cut in workforce early in a downturn sure there’s a morale hit, but at the same time the core group of folks who are left know that management is serious about preserving the company – and their jobs.  If management decides to cut a few jobs here and there “so as not to make anyone worry” they’re actually doing the opposite – who knows when you could be next.

So in the last couple weeks we’ve heard of lots of layoffs from companies that are well funded (Zillow for one).  While a lot of folks are viewing this as a sign of the economy tanking (and I don’t disagree there), I think this is more of a sign of CEO’s making the right decisions for the good of the business and the majority of their employees.  Sure it sucks to be the 1 in 4 employees laid off from Zillow, but 3 in 4 now have a good fighting chance of riding through this recession in one piece.

If only my former employers heeded these lessons…

Gotta love the Inter-tubes…

For the last couple weeks we’ve been glued to the TV watching various events from the Olympics.  It’s been great to watch all the swimming, and track events, and see some of the stuff that you never really get to watch but for every 4 years (rowing, whitewater, etc.).  [What's the deal with trampoline as an Olympic sport?  That's just nuts!]  We even watched a bunch of events while we were on vacation the first week of the games.  Kaitlyn tells us she wants to be a 10M platform diver.    We’ll see.

Tonight we watched the closing ceremonies on NBC in HD – the fireworks and other bits of eye candy look so much better in HD.  That being said, for the past 2 weeks we’ve been pretty firmly planted “north of the border” watching the Games on CBC.  That’s right, Comcast carries Vancouver, BC, Canada’s CBC channel here in the states.  AND THANK GOODNESS FOR THAT!

We’d watch an event one evening live, and then notice that the same stuff was getting replayed 18 hours later on NBC.  Especially crappy was when NBC did decided to show something live they only did so for for the east coast of the US.  They tape-delayed EVERYTHING for the west coast, but still kept the “LIVE” banner on the screen.  Can’t the FCC get them for false advertising?  And don’t get me started on the inappropriate and moronic comments that Bob Costas feels like filling airtime with.  Spare me.

Next time, especially with Vancouver hosting the Winter games in February 2010 we’ll be watching a LOT of CBC.  I only hope Comcast starts carrying their HD feed here in the states by then.

I read a story this evening on Engadget HD that at least gives me hope … ESPN is thinking of bidding for the 2014 and 2016 games and promises to never tape delay anything.  NICE!  I can’t wait to watch Olympic dodgeball on ESPN 8 … The Ocho!

For those frustrated by NBC’s arrogant mishandling of its broadcast rights, there exists one slim ray of hope (other than living somewhere lucky enough to get Canadian television so you can actually see the events before reading about them in the paper or on NBC’s own website), ESPN. That’s right, with Brett Favre finally on an NFL roster, the sports giant has apparently found enough free time to consider taking a run at broadcast rights for the 2014 Winter Games and 2016 Summer Games.