Confessions from a Geek
Can you hear me now? Crap!
So I had my first $1000 meeting yesterday. That’s a term that I’ve just coined and will soon patent. It means that the combined hourly rate of all the people in the room exceeds $1000. I don’t have any records on the attendees’ salaries so I guess my new phrase is based on pure speculation. Anyways it being my first $1000 meeting I spent a large amount of time getting ready for it so I wouldn’t look stupid in front of people who I’m sure can spot stupid 8,000 miles away. Everything was going well I tested the Video Conferencing equipment, set up an account with webex which in a nutshell allows them to see my computer screen in their conference room and I even contacted their IT guy the week before to make sure everything was setup correctly. Not bragging but I was expecting and preparing to wow people. Well I forgot one thing, their phone number. More specifically, the IP address to their video conferencing equipment. Their IT guy was going to be there 30 minutes prior to the meeting and I had expected to take care of that small but extremely vital piece of information then. Unfortunately he was sick that day and the IP address was not in the main phone book. With 15 minutes to go a I began to panic. Emails were flying. 10 minutes to go people started showing up on my side. Crap. I had tried to call everyone in the meeting to get the IP address but no love. Problem is, when people go to a meeting they aren’t at their desk to answer the phone. With the help of somebody on my side I got a hold of their head IT guru for TAMU – Finance and he called a guy who called a guy and they got my the magic 4 numbers to call the room.
The meeting started 15 minutes ($250) late which wasn’t the first impression I wanted to make. So I was digging out of a credibility hole from the very beginning. Kind of like wearing jeans and t-shirt to a job interview. By the end of the meeting I was very grateful that I had prepared in a matter that I originally considered overkill. I believe everybody got out of the meeting what they needed and no resignations were requested. So why write about a professional blunder to the world on a site that one day will hold my resume. It’s more for therapeutic purposes then anything else. A time for reflection and realization that sometimes you see the forest before the trees or the coolness of an international multimedia presentation/video conference before the IP address.
On another note Apple is the devil
I now have an Apple Video IPod thanks to work. The purpose of the IPod is so that I can tote large amounts of data around such as Images (snapshots of a computers hard drive) which can be several gigs in size. I will also be able to watch training videos on my airplane trips. So what did I do with my new 60 GB toy? Snagged the 2nd season of LOST from my friend and plugged it into my TV. Well it looks like Apple made a little mistake because when I plugged in my little A/V cable to the IPod then plugged it into the TV I got a strange buzz and not much else. So I figured that it was some proprietary signal that I needed a fancy white Apple branded cable to fix. Nope, not at all. After doing a search on the internet to buy such a cable I found the below article.
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2005/11/18/video-ipod.html?page=2
It turns out Apple made a mistake in how it sends it signal out of the Video IPod. The fix is summed up below which was taken from Erica Sadun’s article above.
* Plug the red RCA plug into your TV's yellow RCA jack.
* Plug the yellow RCA plug into your TV's white RCA jack.
* Plug the white RCA plug into your TV's red RCA jack.
So why does this get me so mad? People at Apple are smart, really smart, they made the IPod a device that I could fit 20 seasons of Seinfeld on and stick into my pocket. The likelihood they got their colors mixed up is very minimal. I believe it’s much more likely they saw an opportunity to sell some more equipment by confusing their consumers. I was on my way to buy such equipment in the first place. For promoting their free loving, liberal, nonconformist style of computers and life they sure know how to stick to you. While the utilitarian Bill Gates is off trying to figure out how to cure Malaria Jobs is tricking us into buying proprietary equipment. Who’s big brother now?
http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2006/06/gates_buffett_h.html
So I had my first $1000 meeting yesterday. That’s a term that I’ve just coined and will soon patent. It means that the combined hourly rate of all the people in the room exceeds $1000. I don’t have any records on the attendees’ salaries so I guess my new phrase is based on pure speculation. Anyways it being my first $1000 meeting I spent a large amount of time getting ready for it so I wouldn’t look stupid in front of people who I’m sure can spot stupid 8,000 miles away. Everything was going well I tested the Video Conferencing equipment, set up an account with webex which in a nutshell allows them to see my computer screen in their conference room and I even contacted their IT guy the week before to make sure everything was setup correctly. Not bragging but I was expecting and preparing to wow people. Well I forgot one thing, their phone number. More specifically, the IP address to their video conferencing equipment. Their IT guy was going to be there 30 minutes prior to the meeting and I had expected to take care of that small but extremely vital piece of information then. Unfortunately he was sick that day and the IP address was not in the main phone book. With 15 minutes to go a I began to panic. Emails were flying. 10 minutes to go people started showing up on my side. Crap. I had tried to call everyone in the meeting to get the IP address but no love. Problem is, when people go to a meeting they aren’t at their desk to answer the phone. With the help of somebody on my side I got a hold of their head IT guru for TAMU – Finance and he called a guy who called a guy and they got my the magic 4 numbers to call the room.
The meeting started 15 minutes ($250) late which wasn’t the first impression I wanted to make. So I was digging out of a credibility hole from the very beginning. Kind of like wearing jeans and t-shirt to a job interview. By the end of the meeting I was very grateful that I had prepared in a matter that I originally considered overkill. I believe everybody got out of the meeting what they needed and no resignations were requested. So why write about a professional blunder to the world on a site that one day will hold my resume. It’s more for therapeutic purposes then anything else. A time for reflection and realization that sometimes you see the forest before the trees or the coolness of an international multimedia presentation/video conference before the IP address.
On another note Apple is the devil
I now have an Apple Video IPod thanks to work. The purpose of the IPod is so that I can tote large amounts of data around such as Images (snapshots of a computers hard drive) which can be several gigs in size. I will also be able to watch training videos on my airplane trips. So what did I do with my new 60 GB toy? Snagged the 2nd season of LOST from my friend and plugged it into my TV. Well it looks like Apple made a little mistake because when I plugged in my little A/V cable to the IPod then plugged it into the TV I got a strange buzz and not much else. So I figured that it was some proprietary signal that I needed a fancy white Apple branded cable to fix. Nope, not at all. After doing a search on the internet to buy such a cable I found the below article.
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2005/11/18/video-ipod.html?page=2
It turns out Apple made a mistake in how it sends it signal out of the Video IPod. The fix is summed up below which was taken from Erica Sadun’s article above.
* Plug the red RCA plug into your TV's yellow RCA jack.
* Plug the yellow RCA plug into your TV's white RCA jack.
* Plug the white RCA plug into your TV's red RCA jack.
So why does this get me so mad? People at Apple are smart, really smart, they made the IPod a device that I could fit 20 seasons of Seinfeld on and stick into my pocket. The likelihood they got their colors mixed up is very minimal. I believe it’s much more likely they saw an opportunity to sell some more equipment by confusing their consumers. I was on my way to buy such equipment in the first place. For promoting their free loving, liberal, nonconformist style of computers and life they sure know how to stick to you. While the utilitarian Bill Gates is off trying to figure out how to cure Malaria Jobs is tricking us into buying proprietary equipment. Who’s big brother now?
http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2006/06/gates_buffett_h.html
posted by Russell at
8:28 AM
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