Category Archives: Uncategorized

Back in the classroom, but what a classroom!

I’m currently living a dream I had when I was a much younger man. I’m teaching at a facility that I wanted to attend a long time ago. It’s no longer a dream of mine, but it’s still cool to take that off of my ‘life goals’ checklist, even if it’s a checklist I haven’t touched or used in a long time. The classroom is actually quite stunning… It’s like your typical conference room, only 2 of the walls are glass, and one of them faces a long set of windows overlooking a man-made lake and the rest of the campus. The gentleman in charge of A/V equipment at this facility, Charlie, was helpful and friendly, just what I would expect (and have seen so far) from everyone at this company. Most of us only know their ‘satellite facilities’, but at their home office, it’s a different story. I know that they want this kind of ‘Quality, Service, Cleanliness and Value’ at all of their facilities, but considering the age of the employee base at some of those facilities, it’s hard. But as this company’s founder used to say, ‘As long as you’re green, you’re growing. As soon as you’re ripe, you start to rot.’

I’m sorry that I can’t say where I am just yet (I will when this set of classes is done on Tuesday), but if you have Plazes, you should be able to find me and my location. I’ve also left some clues along the way…

Another morning in Oakbrook Terrace

I’m here again to do two more days of training for a client. I’m actually getting used to the ride here, which means that it should be ending soon. It also means that I’ve got a lot of personal crap that I’m ‘dodging’ back in Detroit. (Many of my friends from my college years should remember that…) More things to keep me from thinking that my future lies ahead…. Oh well, time to make the doughnuts….

Problems with Intellisync for Yahoo and Palm OS

I seem to have an ongoing problem with using Intellisync for Yahoo with my Palm Zire 72. I can synchronize my calendar no problem, but when Intellisync for Yahoo tries to sync my Yahoo Address Book or Tasks (To do items), I get the error message “Unable to sync application data” and then when I try to go to my Yahoo Address Book or Calendar, it is inaccessible for about 15 minutes. I think that it is corrupted, and that Yahoo is restoring it from a backup. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions?

On my way home

I’m on my way home from my successful training sessions in the Chicago area. I stopped by a Panera Bread in the Oakbrook area to do some last minute replicating and thought that Ed Brill would have already tagged it via Plazes, but it wasn’t claimed yet. I want to thank the students and my contact, Linda Hantz, for her help for this week. They were a lot of fun, and they asked some great questions. They’re upgrading their version of Lotus Notes… I think that they’ll like the upgrade. Tomorrow is another class. Well, gotta get back on the road. Have a great night everyone….

On the road again… Just can’t wait to get on the road again…

Comment Spam

Just like Duffbert, I started to receive comment spam. I’m adding the list of IP addresses here to help:
221.115.135.14
216.155.95.163
196.40.43.218
83.222.15.92
194.154.190.252
210.132.64.35
193.188.73.129

Keep on guard…

I’m home… I’m gone…

I got home last night. We only had one night’s sleep on my bed. Now I’m packing to go to Chicago tonight. Once again, my sister–in-law, in-laws, and nephew are watching the house, along with our neighbor, Ricky. He’s about the best neighbor someone could have. We’ll get there late tonight for two days of seminars for the company that I’ve been training for the past couple of months. Then, back home I come. This time, I’m going to miss an appreciation dinner/dance for those of us that help out at our church. I’m bummed that I’m going to miss wrestling tonight also. This is REALLY GETTING STALE… at least at the salary I’m making. Oh, and did I mention that I’ll get back Wednesday night, and I’m probably teaching on Thursday back in Southfield?

Florida Trip 2006 – Day Eight Wrap-up

Day eight began early… and as a smaller group, as Tawnya, Roger and Elijah decided to try to catch up with us as we left early (for a vacation) to get to the Magic Kingdom. Jennifer, Kiara and I first went to a ride that Kiara has been wanting to do since she saw it on a Disney vacation video… the ‘Mad Tea Party’. We then hit ride after ride, and rode a few of Kiara’s favorites, including ‘The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh’, ‘it’s a small world’, ‘Dumbo the Flying Elephant’, ‘The Magic Carpets of Aladdin’, and ‘The Enchanted Tiki Room’. We also got on ‘Big Thunder Mountain Railroad’. Kiara was concerned when we got on, but loved every minute of it, and told me a number of times after we got off the ride. (She’s a speed freak like me.) We also rode ‘Tomorrowland Transit Authority’ and (another Kiara favorite) ‘Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin’. Once we got done with all of that, we saw that we still had plenty of time to return to EPCOT, so we did. (This also gives me a chance to have a drink at those countries that I missed the day before.)

Once we got in, we went right to ‘Club Cool’, which is the area where people can try Coca-cola products from around the world. What a disappointment compared to its earlier incarnation, ‘Ice Station Cool’. They only had four different soft drinks available that they make elsewhere. They sell frozen Cokes, and plastic bottles of their regular drinks (with an option to get a shrink-wrapped sleeve on the bottle for an extra 50 cents). It just seems like it’s now an afterthought rather than an actual attraction. Shame on you, Coke and Disney! Anyway, we started with the country we missed the day before, Canada, the country that’s south of Detroit. (It’s a trivia question… check it out!) We then preceded to hit every country ‘around the World’. Yesterday, in the USA pavilion of all places, I met a lady named Linda that was selling Ukrainian Pysanka (decorated eggs), but she wasn’t there today. We also noticed that every place had long lines, but we contributed that to the extra hours for those staying at Disney resorts, plus the McDonald’s owner-operator convention, which was being held here in Orlando this week. (The golden arches were EVERYWHERE!) We finally got to Germany for some good food and we picked a nice sweet German wine to take home. We then stood there and watched the fireworks and just enjoyed the moment. Our day ended with a gas fill-up for tomorrow’s departure, and a good night’s sleep.

Day eight pictures are up on Flickr. On day nine, we depart….