Bizarre Bradyisms

Lights, Camera, Action

I received my FM radio transmitter in the mail and on Wednesday of this past week I started playing my Christmas lights show.  It is fun to watch and while it is not perfect,  I am quite proud of myself for having done it.  Between the light controller, the extension cords, and all of the lights, I probably spent a bit more money than I wanted to, but as far as I’m concerned, it was an investment and well worth it. 

If you are or feel like being in the Lehi area after 6:30PM, I invite you to stop by and see the results of all of my hard work.  I’m broadcasting on 107.1FM and have about 9 songs playing, 2 of which are original (I personally synchronized the music with the lights, ~10 hours each song) and the rest I’ve modified ones other people created. 

For those that are not in the area, I’ve taken a video of two of my favorite sequences and posted them below.  Enjoy.

I Saw Three Ships by Jon Schmidt

Wizards of Winter by Trans-Siberian Orchestra

Money, Money, Money

Part of my job that I have been assigned to research and evaluate over the past month has been to find a replacement for our SBCs (Session Border Controllers), IPS (Intrusion Prevention System), Reporting Server for our end-user VoIP solution, and Log Collectors.  After a lot of time reading up on various vendors I finally made a presentation (kind of) to my manager to share my findings.  It was fun to learn so much and get sales people to work really hard to make me understand why their product was superior but at the same time quite daunting to know that my research was going to be highly influential in purchasing around $600,000 to $750,000 worth of equipment and software licensing over the next year.  Perhaps it is really not that big of a deal when compared to the hundreds of billions of dollars the government is throwing around right now, but those numbers still signify quite a bit of cash in my world.

The Concert

I thought I would take a moment during my lunch hour at work today and post some of the photos from the TSO concert a couple of weeks ago.  It was a really fun concert, albeit quite different.  There is nothing quite like seeing a rocker-type individual with the classic long black hair head-banging to Christmas tunes.  I really liked the light show and it created in me an urge to eventually own some really cool lights/lasers myself. 

I think my date enjoyed the evening as well.  Traffic was really quite a mess that night and neither of us were very familiar with the area so we had to end up going to a fast food place for dinner instead of sit-down establishment that I would have liked so as to not be late for the show.  She was even good enough to be okay with walking close to three blocks to get there because parking in the closer lots would have taken ages.  Overall, for blind date of which I had no expectations, I was quite pleased with the outcome.

Post-It Notes

I walked into my office area today and realized something.  I have fallen victim to the predator know as “Post-It Notes.”  Without even noticing it or even thinking consciously about it I have started writing information down such as phone numbers and IP addresses on little sticky notes and placing them on my monitor, desk phones, or walls.  I haven’t gone so far as to start writing down passwords and I don’t ever expect myself to do something so irresponsible as that, but I’m still surprised I made it this far. 

I guess I can’t expect my brain to keep up with all of the information I’ve been trying to stuff into it.  I never thought I would say this, but perhaps I’ll have to give in and just let it be.  All I know is that I’ve started down a slippery slope and I hope I can control my rate of decent before I find sticky notes on my bedroom door, bathroom mirrors, or even the kitchen sink.

Nerds Make Me Laugh

I read the following comment in a Slashdot article this morning.  It made me smile and chuckle for a number of minutes so I thought I would share.  While everyone might not understand the technical part of the comment, I think most people can get what is being communicated.  Enjoy.