Will It Blend?

I've been doing some things in the office (where I can), but mostly, I've been sitting around doing nothing. Does the term "lame duck" ring a bell? Earlier today, through a string of links, I ended up at at the Will It Blend website. This is a site run by Blendtec, the blender manufacturer.

Can I just say, "How did I miss this?" They blend all sorts of stuff. (And, it's nice to know that Chuck Norris does not blend.) For the most part, this site shows that if a company has a little humor, it can go a long way. (Go Go Viral Marketing!) Great job guys, it was really enjoyable.

Today....... I quit my job.

This morning I went to my boss and I resigned. Right now, there are mixed feelings rolling around my head, but all-in-all, I did the right thing for me.

A post on "Creativity"

Right now, I'm pretty drained. Drained of energy. Drained of life. Drained of creativity. Now, that might not be a major thing for a cube-living technology guy, but for me, it's an issue that must be dealt with.

You see, I'm a cube-living technology guy only at work. While at home, I like to create stuff. (Stuff is jewelry, glass and other assorted things.) What happens now is that I leave work completely "drained". I am a shadow of the former happy guy.

Creativity, according to m-w.com, is a word that traces is genealogy back to 1875 and is defined as the quality of being creative or the ability to create. Last night, I was at BAGI trying to create some test items for the booth I will be manning. I first created a ribbon cane, then a box and combined the two. What appeared in front of me was a box with a ribbon. Nice, and the ribbon cane needed some work. Next were candy canes. Easy enough. I created 20+ small candy canes and realized something. I was a bit stressed out. Next came Christmas trees. Nah, they sucked. Back to the boxes and a complete failure. I went home to de-stress.

A call from a friend beckoned me over to a smoked turkey dinner. There, I was introduced to some new acquaintances and said "hey" to some old ones. Turkey was eaten, then came the Wii. A little Dance, Dance to ease the mood. Then, some bowling. By the end of bowling there was the husband/wife hosts and me. I asked if I could see Super Mario Galaxy. My friend handed me the remote. Little did I realize that the second remote was useful. It was a jump enhancer. It was a mob stunner. It was a star collector. And, it was a mischief maker. I could either help or hinder my partner in the game. (It was a lot of fun!) At the end of night, I could feel the stress begin to melt away.

In the end, what does it really mean to be "creative"?

The Nabaztag is Nabaz-broken

This past week, I played around with the Nabaztag. It is 100% a gateway device for the Internet. My expectations have been met and with an API, I think will be exceeded. During my introduction, I thought perhaps that the microphone was a bit odd. After looking at it, I have found out that it is not even working.

Back to Think Geek you Nabaztag! Bring me a replacement gender-neutral bunny!

Rabble, rabble, rabble! What happened to my holiday.

This has been growing over the past few years and this year, it hit the fan. Halloween, straight to Christmas. What ever happened to Thanksgiving? I'm surfing the web, Christmas adds. I go into a store, Christmas decorations are for sale. Where did you go, Thanksgiving? You're still on the fourth Thursday of November, aren't you?

Why is Thanksgiving my favorite holiday? To put it bluntly, I was born around the holiday. Yep, my birthday occurs around Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving, the turkey and football holiday, means a lot to me.

Now, it may not be a popular Hallmark holiday. It certainly isn't a good gift holiday. It's a great family get together, stuff your face and everybody spend time together holiday. Thanksgiving happens to be when people used to get a four-day holiday to spend with friends and family. Unfortunately, now, the Friday after equals the largest shopping day of the year and most people are traveling on two of the four days.

For some simple sites on Thanksgiving, please visit:
Wikipedia
Holiday.net
History.com

People say that the American family is not as strong as it used to be. I'll weigh in and add that as the meaning of holidays erode, so will the family bond.

My Nabaztag arrived

My Nabaztag arrived. Unfortunately, I was laid up sick, so I didn't do much other than set it up. Pretty easy set-up.

This weekend, I'll be working on getting an API set-up.

When did it go commercial!?!

I decided to go and look at the state of PHP because of my new Nabaztag purchase. (Looking at OpenNab as an open-source API for it.) In the 2.5 years I've been away from any decent type of programming, what was a simple and free scripting language has become more commercialized. A simple search for "php script" resulted in mostly "buy my script, it's the best" websites.

I understand that it might have been my search term, but it amazed me what used to be a community of fairly open-minded and freely sharing people has become more of a money grubbing group. I also realize that there is still freshmeat.net and sourceforge.net. There are still a number of higher-level script sharing sites.

I'm just a bit surprised. Has PHP fallen to way-side? Have other languages taken that much business away from from the LAMP community? Or, did I just hop into the PHP world at a time when it was super popular?