Home Pages of Matt Beland

7:00 AM Monday morning. Early Monday morning. I don't think there's a time of the week I hate more. So, I guess it's time to get to work so I can get past that worst time of the week, eh?

Saw the new Bond movie, and liked it. Fast cars, lots of explosions and violence, and lots of toys. <g> Typical Bond film. Although, I must say, I think they did more damage in the first teaser before the opening credits than in the entire "Roger Moore" era of the films. Made for an interesting opening. Pierce Brosnan makes a good Bond, although my wife tells me no one will ever be able to replace Sean Connery.

I t's going to be a short week in this corner of the Daynotes World; Thursday is, of course, Thanksgiving Day here in the United States (or as it's known in my family, Turkey Day) and I have <gasp> both Thanksgiving and Friday off. I'll try to post an update Friday, at least, but my wife and I are going camping for the weekend, so if it's not up by 10 AM MST, it's not going to be. I'd like to post more updates from home, but with a 28.8 modem, it's just not meant to be. Our new apartment will have high-speed access, so we'll have to wait and see.

In other news, I'm most likely going to be spending the week playing contractor, building office cubicles and wiring them for network and phones. We're going through another growth spurt here at iTOOL, which means busy times for your truly. About the only good thing about this, aside of course from the signs of success in the company, is that my first assistant starts today. He's young and fairly inexperienced, but he seems to know what he doesn't know, and he reads Jerry Pournelle's column, so he can't be all bad. <g>

And that's the news of the week. Stay tuned for more updates whenever the hell I feel like it.

Tuesday

7:15 AM I almost posted an update yesterday afternoon just so I could say "I feel like it", but then I realized I didn't feel like it, and wouldn't that be a fine kettle of fish? So, of course, I get this email from some smart-ass (nothing wrong with smart-asses, BTW - I'm one):

-----Original Message-----
From: bilbrey@pacbell.net [mailto:bilbrey@pacbell.net]
Sent: Monday, November 22, 1999 11:16 PM
To: matt@rearviewmirror.org
Subject: hell

>Stay tuned for more updates whenever the hell I feel like it.

<g> We watched Star Trek 4 over the weekend, and I just heard an echo of Spock saying "The hell I won't, Admiral." or something to that effect.

--

regards,
Brian Bilbrey bilbrey@pacbell.net
http://www.OrbDesigns.com/ brian@orbdesigns.com

Do you often hear Leonard Nimoy speaking to you? Should we be concerned? <seg>

So anyway, it's shaping up to be an interesting week. And I am in a wierd mood. Why? Beats me. I'll post some more later. Really. Honest. I mean it.

BTW, tomorrow is later. <seg>

Wednesday

8:20 AM See, it's later. <g>

Be honest; how many of you plan on using the line "You're killing an animal to commemorate a past event. It's ritual sacrifice with pie" tomorrow? Show of hands? Come on, you know who you are...

Well, lots to post and only a little time to do it in. I have 12 computers arriving today, and they all need at least a cursory check-through before being deployed. And four of those are laptops. Might just have to take one home over the weekend for... testing... <g>

The computers are all Dell workstations, save the laptops, which are Toshiba Tecra 8000s. Low-end Optiplexes for the office staff, and the high-end Precision workstations for the developers. The Precision line is very nice; dual-processor boards, Viper770 graphics cards (though, admittedly, the Dell OEM version, which is not as good as the retail board) 256 MB of RAM, SCSI, and for a very nice price. We've used them before, and they are definitely recommended in my book, particularly for business uses. I don't know about the girl-in-the-dorm theory, like in the commercials, but for businesses you can't beat Dell with a stick.

And, as requested, Brian's official response to the question of wether or not he often hears Leonard Nimoy speaking to him (scroll up a bit) is :

Remember what I said last week about schizophrenics never being alone... <g>

Oh, so you're saying you don't HEAR Leonard Nimoy, you're saying you ARE Leonard Nimoy. Well, that's all right then. We can play poker, and we'll get Napolean for a fourth...

And speaking of Bilbrey, I was reading my email last night when my wife looked over my shoulder and demanded to know why Brian had a decapitated TeleTubby on his email icon. I was confused, to say the least, until I took another look at my Inbox... and you know, she's right... here's an image that'll explain things.

Just look at that for a second. She's right, isn't she? That, or he ripped the antennae off of one.

Whoops, out of time. More later, maybe, if you're good. If not, have a good Turkey Day.

Thursday
Happy Thanksgiving

9:30 AM Well, we'll see how this works. I'm editing this using iTOOL's iEDIT software, and then I'm going to take a look at the source code and see how badly it mangled it... I mean, see how well it formatted it. Should be an interesting experiment.

If you're interested in taking a look, I suggest taking a browse over to itool.com/iedit/. You'll need an iTOOL account to use it, but that's what free trials are for.

Well, my fellow Daynoters all seem to be listing the things they're thankful for; let it never be said I can't follow a trend. I have a wife and a family I love, a challenging job that I seem to be excelling in, and a group of friends I value more than money or possessions. In the past year, I've gone from a too-small apartment in a city my wife and I hated, to a comfortable life in a city I can, if not love, then at least be happy in. In short, life is good; and for that I am truly grateful.

I finally got the first of the new machines I ordered last week, although not all of them. This is being edited on a Toshiba Tecra 8000 laptop, a PII 300 with 64 MB of RAM and a 6.4 GB hard drive. Currently, it's running Windows 98, but we purchased it with an upgrade flyer to Windows 2000, which means I'll be reformatting this machine soon to test it out using RC3. But all in all, this is a nice machine. The keyboard is just about right, and although it has a never-to-be-sufficiently-accursed eraser mouse instead of a touchpad, this particular eraser mouse is not too annoying. I especially like the extra tips they included; I thought they were simply spares in case the current one should wear out, but as it happens they have different textures and "stickyness" to make for easier control. I like.

And now, on with the humor. <g>

First, an old joke that I got again in the mail:

Santa was having a bad year. The elves were on strike, delaying the production of toys. Donner and Comet had run off to join the circus, Blitzen was pregnant, and Rudolph had written a tell-all book entitled "The Threat of Venison: How Santa Undercuts His Competitors", and to top it all off, Mrs. Claus had filed for divorce and was having a not-so-discreet affair with one of the elves. So Santa was a wee bit stressed.

As Santa hunted for the Scotch left over from last year's New Year's party, there came a knock on the door. When he answered it, he found a cute little angel with a huge fir tree. The tree immediately began dropping needles all over Santa's floor, and the trunk had gouged his lawn. The angel didn't notice this, however, and, with a big smile on her face, began to speak:

"Santa, I know this has been a hard year for you, so I brought you this beautiful tree to cheer you up. Where would you like me to stick it?"

And so began the tradition of a Christmas tree with an angel sitting on top...

And, continuing the beheaded-TeleTubby story, we find this in the inbox, from Svenson:

From: qjsw@oce.nl
To: matt@rearviewmirror.org
Subject: teletubby
Received: Thursday November 25, 1999 - 6:29 AM

Schizophrenics have a 'split personality'.
We could have known Brian was half Leonard Nimoy and half teletubby ;-).
Svenson

Hmmm... hadn't thought of it that way, but you know, you've got a point...

And now, it's time to go cram bread and spices up a turkey's nether regions. Have a good one; I won't post any more until tomorrow.

One last note - iEDIT did pretty well. I was able to do everything I needed to without fuss. Check it out.

Friday

Saturday

Sunday