A new beginning

It's been 3 months at my new job. I have been working hard through a temp agency and it has finally paid off. The job has offered me a permanent position with in the company and I will be continuing in my current position for better benefits and pay. It's a great step for me, as I have had to take major pay cuts since I left the Internet service provider back at the end of 2001. My change of status is effective yesterday. It's a great feeling to have accomplished this goal. It's the beginning of a journey that I hope does not end any time soon.

The end of Spam!

I've made the switch from Microsoft's Outlook Express to the all new Microsoft Outlook 2003 and I have to say I am impressed. Aside from the shazzy looking UI, they've improved Outlook quite a bit since the last version.

First of all, the filters work, and they're a lot faster than they were in Outlook 2002... I had many problems when experimenting with Outlook 2002 because I could check mail 100 times faster with Outlook Express, but the 2003 version run smoothly and quickly.

Another great feature of Outlook 2003 is it's spam filtering. As someone who gets about 994 pieces of spam per day and about 6 real emails, it's been critical that I find a solution to filter spam as it reaches my inbox. I've played with just about every spam filter out there and have found one, SpamKiller, that I like. Combined with Outlooks built in spam filtering I have tremendous control over what makes it into my mailbox and what gets deleted. Plus it's easier to delete the spam now than it was in Outlook Express.

I'll run it for a while and see how it works out, but so far, I'm loving it.

Renaissance Faire

This weekend was great. I took off Saturday from the radio station to head up to the New York Renaissance Faire in Tuxedo, New York.

I headed out about 9AM to get a hold of $25 in gold dollar coins. There's just something about buying stuff at the renfair using gold coins out of a leather pouch. I find it so "in-period". It wasn't an easy task gathering the coins either. I had to go to 2 banks and they couldn't provide me with a roll, so I managed to gather together about $30 in gold dollars.

After the whole money ordeal, I picked up Kerry at the train station and we headed out to Queens to meet up with Laura, Vinny and Dave. We got to the faire about 20 minutes before Scott and Liz arrived, so we all got together and had a blast. The Renaissance Faire was a lot of fun this year. It's a great place to go with friends or family.

I'm looking foward to going back to the faire with in the next month or so.

Geocaching Climb

I was out Geocaching with my friend Matt when we came upon a tree that had boards nailed every foot or so up the tree. The makeshift ladder seemed to lead up about 100 feet where it just ended. Perhaps the builders planned a treehouse at the top (That would have been cool, seeing this tree was off a bike path in a public park) but they never completed their project. Finding this extremely cool nonetheless, I climbed up about 20 feet into the tree. Got a few pictures of me waving from the heights and then climbed back down.

Maxim-um Confusion

So I get a phone call, asking for me by name, on my line which is:

1. Unlisted
2. In my mother's name
3. NEVER given out to any companies/agencies

and the caller claims to be representing Maxim Magazine. When I asked where she got my number, she answered "Maxim Magazine". Knowing that Maxim does not have my phone number, I again inquired where they got my numbed and her reply was again "Maxim Magazine"...

After telling her that I did NOT receive maxim AT THAT NUMBER she hung up.

Now, I dialed star[*] 69 and got the number 800-362-0796... I've been trying to research that number but with no luck. So far, it will cost me between $60 and $250 just to find out who owns the number. $250 to find out who called MY phone.

I call out to the masses. If anybody has access to this information would you please email me any information you have. I dunno, maybe someone in your family is in law enforcement or is a private investigator? I could use a hand...

Movie Night

Some things just don't stick in your mind. No matter how many times you try to remember. I just saw Collateral tonight. I tend to forget the name of this movie EVERY time I tell someone about it. "I just saw... that movie with Tom Cruise." is all that comes out! Even in this post, I had to go back and fill in the name.

The movie was pretty good, though I missed the ending. I figured that I had time to run to the bathroom and get back before the climactic moment, but as I returned, the action had ceased and the movie ended. It did have some great moments and lots of action. I enjoyed it and as soon as a bootleg becomes available, I'm catching the ending!

So much for new friends

I never did get to meet Patti today. Last minute, she backed out claiming to need to babysit. Around 3:00 PM, we planned to get together around 6:00 PM. I called her at 5:00 PM to get directions and arrange where we would meet and she suddenly had something else to do.

This is not the first time recently I have been cancelled on last minute. One day I will find someone who isn't this flaky. It's a shame that there's so many people like this out there.

In control, and loving it

I'm back up an running! The new remote control (UCR-6131 by OneForAll) kicks ass. It was completely programmable for all the devices on my home theatre:

- My Sony Surround Sound Reciever
- My Sony TiVo
- My Phillips DVD-Recorder
- My Sony iO Cable Box

plus it has the capability of reassigning keys between different devices, so while set for TiVo, I can control the power to the surround sound reciever as well as the volume controls (Even better than I could on the real TiVo remote)

I also have the capability to add any 2 additional devices (TV and VCR). The buttons can be cross programmed as well, so the TV button can actually work any type of device (PVR, DVD, VCR, AUD, CBL, etc..)

Not bad for $20!

New Remote Old Friends New Friends

As stated last night, I found that Best Buy carries the universal remote that can control my TiVo as well as (hopefully) everything else in my room.

I'll head out in a bit to take care of that and then I need to pick up a belated birthday present for my friend Jen. Her birthday was the other day and I havent had a chance to get her anything. I feel like such an ass, as I consider her to be a really good friend.

After all that I might be meeting someone new. This girl, Patti, that I met through my other blog at LiveJournal.com. She seems like a cool and interesting person, so I am looking foward to meeting her.

No Tivo Remotes?

I'm a little bothered by the events of the past few days. All I remember is that I was sitting at my desk, installing Windows XP on my desktop and surfing channels and watching saved episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space 9 (DS9) on my TiVo.

Then all of a sudden it was gone. Since then, I have not been able to locate my TiVo remote control. It has completely vanished into thin air. I've cleaned about 75% of my room (and those of you who have had the honor of seeing my room, know that that's not an easy task!) and it's still nowhere to be found....

After calling PC Richards and Circuit City and about 10 minutes of searching I finally found a universal remote on Yahoo! Stores that works with TiVo. So of course I ordered it for $14 plus $11 s/h (outrageous!) Then I proceed Besy Buy's site to find they carry the same remote for only $19... and I can pick it up tomorrow...

Well, I called and emailed the Yahoo! Store and told them to cancel the order. We'll see what happens.

I typically post to LiveJournal, but I figured I'd give Blogger a chance seeing it is such a popular blog engine... Who knows. Maybe I'll like this one better and switch over to here. I'll try to keep the posts as interesting as possible. Then again, if my life were that interesting, I'd be a writer and not a Support Technician :)