jeremy's blog

And, yes, I do [at least partly] mean that sarcastically (ie: smart @$$).

I'll start off by saying that Vitamin Water is awesome!  I love the taste, it's very good for you, and there are enough flavors to keep anyone interested.  This stuff is quite possibly the only thing that could ever replace regular water for daily intake.

Basically, it's like getting the vitamins and minerals you need while drinking the water you're supposed to be taking in already.  Each serving (8 fl oz) is typically 50 calories and usually contains a low amount of sugar.  In fact, an entire bottle of Vitamin Water (20 fl oz) contains about 40% less sugar than a can of soda AND provides your body with a number of much-needed nutrients.

There are at least a dozen different varieties with different purposes: focus, endurance, energy, essential, power-c, multi-vitamin, etc.  I've tried a half-dozen or so flavors, and I've liked them ALL!!  You will not find high fructose corn syrup, [added] sugar, aspartame, or saccarin in the ingredients list--only, as the power-c bottle states, "water + vitamins = all you need."  They even use things like b-carotine to add color instead of rumored-to-cause-cancer yellow 5.

So, what makes Vitamin Water so smart?  Each bottle has a little saying on it (kinda like the Starbuck's cups).  Different flavors have different sayings, and each one is witty and humorous.  Every bottle also says three things: for best results, stick it in the fridge; the inside is natural, the outside is plastic; and made for the center of responsible hydration (aka glacéau).

I highly recommend this product as a replacement for your current daily beverage of choice.  The one drawback: it's a bit pricey.  Target sells it for $1.39/ea, the lowest regular price I've found.  Safeway carries it at $1.49 per bottle.  QFC is running a sale right now: 4/$5 ($1.25/ea).  They also make smaller bottles--great for kids or lunches, but not as cost-effective as the larger ones.

I was reading a news article the other day about the potential for Google Apps to replace Microsoft Office in the productivity tools market for applications like Word and Excel.  Out of curiosity, I decided to go and check it out, since Google has made their office "suite" free for use, and I already own plenty of domain names and have a Google account.  After a lengthy and somewhat less-than-exciting sign-up process, I ended up at my Google Apps Control Panel.

The Control Panel is relatively straight-forward...except you can't really do anything until your domain has been activated, which you have to do yourself unless you buy one through Google.  Activating the domain is pretty simple, really, requiring one of two things...either upload a simple HTML file to the root of your domain or change the CNAME record in your domain's DNS configuration to point to Google.  This is to verify that you are in control of the domain name you have chosen to use with Google Apps.

I said that activating the domain is pretty simple...that is, if you very carefully pay attention to the instructions (assuming you're doing the file upload method--I didn't even bother with the CNAME record option).  Being a "power user," I tend to skim instructions and just extract the necessary information from them.  Most users will do this, whether they're a power user or not, because users hate to sit around and read instructions and confirm prompts (that's why so many users automatically click "Yes" or "Ok" or "Install" on dialogs).

So, I messed up on my first attempt at activating my Google Apps domain.  Turns out that you need to put this seemingly-random string of characters into a HTML file and upload that file to the root.  I incorrectly interpreted the instructions as saying that I needed to upload the file to a folder named with that string of characters.  But, even though I messed it up, I didn't see a "you messed up, you idiot" message...in fact, it just politely told me that it could take up to 48 hours to verify my information, until which time I would not be able to use any of the Google Apps applications that require a verified domain name.

Ok...dumb...I went back and re-read the instructions, this time very carefully and thoroughly, for activating the domain name.  The directions are not very clearly-written and can be confusing if you don't read through them a couple times.  I finally got it figured out, got the file uploaded, and went back through the activation process.  This time, after about 5-10 seconds, my Control Panel (after a refresh, of course) showed that I was now golden and could start using the applications (except the Gmail account, which takes a bit longer to activate).

Sweet!  I was in, and I could now see what all the hype was about.  I'm still trying to figure that part out...

The Google Apps applications are a bit disappointing.  Ok...they're a lot disappointing.  The Word-clone is about as sophisticated as the editor I'm using right now to type up this blog entry.  The website builder is VERY restrictive and doesn't have a lot of options, though it does allow you to plug a number of widget-like items into it (ala Konfabulator, Vista Sidebar, or Apple Dashboard).  Yeah--being a web developer, I am going to be a huge critic of such an app, and I'd recommend FrontPage (which has been discontinued) over Google's incarnation.  Dreamweaver, anyone?

I haven't yet checked out the spreadsheet app, though it's supposed to be pretty cool.  I'm sure I'd have plenty of complaints, though, and once I do take a look at it, I'll add some information about it.

I have had a Gmail account for quite a while now.  I don't use it and probably never will.  There's nothing particularly wrong with it, though the UI could use some improvement 'cause Yahoo! Mail and Windows Live Mail have MUCH better interfaces and are a great deal easier to use (and take up about 4x as much bandwidth for their initial load!).  I simply have no need for ANOTHER e-mail account.  I hardly use my Hotmail accounts as it is, typically only for Microsoft Passport-related stuff or for anything where I absolutely must have web-based access.  The nice thing about Hotmail is that I can sync it with my phone...same with Yahoo!, using Yahoo!'s Go application for Windows Mobile, though I don't use my Yahoo! account, either.

Another drawback to Google's web-based office applications is that you can't use them from Windows Mobile devices.  I frequently use Excel on my phone, and now that Microsoft has written a version of Office Mobile that works on the Smartphone platform, too, all users of newer Windows Mobile devices will be able to create/edit/share Microsoft Office documents easily.  Hopefully, they'll update the software to work with the new XML-based Office formats...and that's another point: Microsoft has gone to great lengths to make sure users can share their documents with other users on other platforms by providing support for additional file formats and even creating a new one of their own that is human-readable (ie: you can open the file in a text editor, like Notepad, and edit the document right from there, because you can actually read it!).  Hell...you can even use older versions of Office to read (and possibly edit--I'm not sure) the newer formats with a FREE update Microsoft has created for those versions.

It's going to be a long time before a web-based clone of Word, Excel, FrontPage, or PowerPoint will be able to knock Microsoft Office off balance.  I, for one, prefer using an application on my computer for editing documents rather than a web-based application.  Granted, there are some advantages to using a web-based version (especially document accessibility from any location, but that's why we all carry around USB drives!), but I will stick with my PC-based applications for now.  As for e-mail...I still use Outlook, 'cause it still does plenty of things that I can't get from a web-based version, and I never have to worry about running out of storage space (not that I have 2GB of e-mail to store anyway).  Plus, it works with all of my primary e-mail accounts AND my two Hotmail accounts all from the same interface.  If only I could get the data stored in SQL instead of a PST...hehe

So, my computer was being really, really slow this morning.  After checking Task Manager to see what was going on, I noticed one process was consuming WAY too much CPU time, so I killed it (it was a service host, something that you really aren't supposed to kill).  Anyway...I killed it and was promptly disconnected from my remote desktop session ('cause I typically only use my desktop by remoting into it from work or my laptop at home).  I physically logged onto the computer and decided that, since it had been about a month, it was time for a reboot.  As I commonly do when rebooting, I checked for updates, and there were 10 waiting to be installed (yeah--I don't update often).

Long story short, ran the update, rebooted, logged in, started Outlook...or rather, tried to start Outlook.  "Windows cannot find MAPI32.DLL...blah, blah, blah."  One of the updates was for Office 2007, and I've seen this happen with previous versions of Office, too.  Very annoying...  I ran a repair on the Office install, and an hour-and-a-half later, Outlook is working again.  Funny that it takes 1.5 hours to repair but only 30 minutes to install.

The past few weeks, we've been preparing our quartly goals as a team and as individuals.  These goals can include performance achievements and project accomplishments.  It can be anything from drafting a new spec to building and deploying an entire application.  Basically, the idea is to come up with six objectives, giving each one a percentage to determine how greatly it affects the final score.  Assuming all objectives are met, the percentage will be 100%.

The real importance here comes down to the bonuses.  As a team, we need to complete all of our team goals (which, honestly, are not that difficult to achieve so long as we're doing our work).  As individuals, things get a bit more complicated, because we can't just slide by doing a minimum amount of work and expect to get our bonus check at the end of the quarter.

The difficulty in this is coming up with goals that will help the team and the company but aren't so much of a longshot that they become impossible to achieve.  Now, I can come up with a hundred different things to do that would meet those criteria, but these goals also have to make sense for whatever direction our company is going and what projects we have on our plates.  Having been here for only 3 weeks, I'm still learning about some of that, and I question whether to include the tiny parts of each project independently or as a complete objective.

The solution I came up with was to simply group some of the smaller tasks together into a larger objective (typically turning it into a spec) and to take some of the other smaller items and turn them into a different, but somewhat larger, item that would accomplish those tasks without seeming too insignificant to be part of my bonus plan.

The reality of the situation is that I still have to work my ass off to get paid.  heh

One of the coolest things about the Xbox 360 is the Xbox Live Marketplace.  From there, you can download game demos, theme packs, gamer pictures, and more, including game and movie trailers AND movies and TV shows!  Since I have the hard drive for my console, I can download tons of stuff to it (whether from the Marketplace or from another computer on my network).  So, I've spent a couple hours checking out games and videos.

The movie section is pretty limited having only 94 titles.  But, every movie comes with a trailer (which you can watch for free, of course).  I noticed that they have the first six Star Trek movies in their library, so I started watching the trailers.  Now, being a Star Trek fan, I'm pretty familiar with all of the trailers, and I know every movie pretty much by heart.  It's interesting, though, to see how crappy the trailers were back in the late 70s and 80s and how much they got better once the 90s rolled around.

You don't need an Xbox 360 to check it out, though.  Go to a site like IMDB and look at movies from the 70s, 80s, and 90s--most of them should have trailers.  You'll see what I'm talking about pretty much instantly...it's very obvious and borderline hilarious.

I took this picture last night of <a href="http://jeremy.klukan.com/blog/tags/Jacob" rel="tag">Jacob</a> and Cody.  They have their heads cocked in almost exactly the same way looking at the camera (well, at me--I was making a funny sound to get their attention).

For anyone who isn't aware, Cody belongs to my very good friend, Todd.  I'm watching Cody until next Tuesday, so suffice it to say that any crankiness on my part is due to a lack of sleep. 

So, I got my first paycheck last week from my new job, and while I was very pleased at the number following the dollar sign ($), I was quite upset to notice that I was missing three days from it.  Namely, the last three days of January (since I started on the 29th).  But, my boss came and talked to me this morning and said he'd get it taken care of.  I was very pleased. 

Well, I finally broke down and created my own self-hosted blog.  I may as well, given that I'm spending $40/mo on web hosting that I'm hardly using.  Anyway, I decided to go with an open-source project called Subtext, which is based on the popular .TEXT blogging engine.  It's pretty neat and has a ton of features.  It also didn't require me to use my brain to set it up, so that's a plus, 'cause I use my brain enough as it is.

So, the purpose of this blog will be to talk about all kinds of things: life in general, coding, computer stuff, Seattle, my puppy, work, etc.  I'll try to keep it updated as much as possible but no promises.

Anyhow--I have to get down to the chiropractor.  More later!