Catching up on bloggy goodness

Been extremely busy as of late, which has contributed to the neglect of this blog. We couldn't be busier at work, which is great. New business pipeline is full and we're pumping out proposals faster than Former NY Gov. Spitzer was spitting out "I'm sorry's." As part of our efforts to keep the pipeline full, we launched a blog. Actually, the blog is part of a larger marketing campaign targeting the top 400 private and public companies and organizations in the state of MA (with a few odd balls in between). We've developed an eight week post card campaign that touches upon eight different PR/communication issues. Each card has a call to action, which is visiting the blog to find out more about the topic. It's a traditional direct mail campaign with a digital twist. So far so good as we're seeing some traction in terms of visitors and RSS feed subscribers. If things work out the way we hope, the rest of the year will be extremely busy...which is a good thing.

On to some personal tech things.

I have a computer that's about two years old. It was built by the computer club at Malden Catholic High School, my previous employer and one that I won in a raffle. It runs well and has a ton of hard drive space and RAM (as I've tweaked it here and there to maximize its use). Recently, however, I've experienced slow performance. Come to find out, I have been experiencing some memory leaks. A number of the applications I would normally run started to use more RAM than they were supposed to. I've yet to isolate the issue, but have since googled each of the applications that are using too much memory and have had to patch them and tweak other system utilities to get the machine running smooth again. It's a pain in the butt. I can totally see how non-tech consumers go out and buy new machines when their's is "running slow." It's a very complex thing. PC's are a nightmare IMHO. I am yearning to go Mac.



Since I've had my newest toy this yearning over everything Apple has increased. To add salt to the wound, my brother in law just bought an iPhone. I have never had the case of tech envy in my life since playing around with that thing. Yea, the iTouch is great, but it's nothing like the iPhone...well, maybe it's similar, but it's just in a different league.

Here are my issues though:

1. Verizonwireless is my provider and has been for a long time. I like them. Network is great.

2. I need access to work email. Yes, I know they are starting to roll out enterprise solutions for the iPhone, however, it doesn't include the antiquated system we are using - Lotus Notes.

3. I need at least 32 gigs. I've had two other iPods before I got my hands on the iTouch. Each time, I've had at least 20 gigs to play with. With all the music I listen to, videos I watch, TV shows I download, I use at least 15-25 gigs. the iPhone comes in 8 and 16.

4. The AT&T contract with Apple expires in 2012 I think. That really stinks. I don't know if I can wait that long. What if they sign up with AT&T again...keeping VZW and other providers out? Then I might have to force myself to switch. Not sure I can stomach the hassle and BS to make that happen. I guess we'll have to wait and see how this plays out. In the meantime, I'm addressing my tech envy with the iPod touch and it's working, sorta, kinda.

The last bit of tech news comes in the form of virus protection. I finally got rid of Nortons (because it was hogging my system resources) and went with AVG. It's a not so well known anti-virus software package that also monitors the websites you go to for malicious stuff that's embedded in the pages. It's great so far. It's not a RAM hog either.

Last bit of news I'll share is that my god daughter had her first baby the other day. Check out the post over at my photog site for a pic. It reminds me of when my kids were born. You forget that sort of stuff because everything happens so fast. You forget how small and fragile they are. You forget that all they do is sleep and eat. You forget how light they are. You forget that they like to be tightly wrapped like a burrito. It reminds you of how quickly they grow up. It's nuts.

That's it for now. As they say in the tweeners world, l8tr.