DUDE, YOU DON'T WANT TO BE GETTING A DELL

A waterfall of bad experiences have led me to tell everybody I know about this. Bad batteries, bad services, bad hardware, etc.

The products don't hold up for professional use. Laptop lifespans should be longer than 14 months.

My Original Post to the Dell Community - Completely unanswered by Dell.
Dell Community Post - A subsequent post with users having the same problem.

I would attach the feeds for both of the above posts to be updated immediately at this blog, however, the XML parser for their boards currently is not functioning. View the error here.

Watch Stranger Than Fiction

This week I took in the movie, Stranger Than Fiction starring Will Ferrell.

I enjoyed it immensely.

Comedically, I found it funnier than a lot of Ferrell's other movies despite the fact he is slightly 'toned down' in this role. His character, "Harold Crick," is an IRS agent that is trying to avoid impending doom brought forth by an inner narration that he wakes up one morning to hear. This isn't the kind of movie that queues up lines like, "YOU'RE MY BOY BLUE!" and singing "Dust in the Wind," so the subtelties of his performance are what really bring his character to life. It was good to see him pull it off.

If you haven't joined the all access rampage put on by Blockbuster, I might suggest it. It's kind of like NetFlix only with thousands of locations nationwide....

Longview Texas is where I want to be.......

So I've been doing some work with a real estate agent out in East Texas - and I sincerely think she probably lives in one of the most misunderstood places in the US.

Living out in San Diego is a great experience. The weather is good pretty much every day, the ocean is incredible, and I've got Adam Pascu, my friend and a San Diego Realtor, to tell me how great it constantly.

But lately, I've been looking at East Texas like I never saw it before. I had always thought of Texas as a land of cactus and wasteland as far as the eye could see. It's pretty far from that actually. The grass is green (well, actually, it just grows naturally there...), the people are a little more laid back, and the value of a dollar real estate wise is drastically different than anything I've experienced out here on the coast.

It might be time for a move, it might be time for an investment property. Am I crazy?

Check out LongviewMLS.com for easy access to search the Longview TX Multiple Listing Service. Tell me what you think.

If you like what you see and you want to get dream home updates, fill out this email notification form. It will basically email you Longview Real Estate listings as they come onto the market if they meet your criteria.

Also - check out her blog. I swear I'm not crazy. Longview TX Blog

Google Apps - A New User's Perspective

I'm working on google apps currently and I have to say, I'm really impressed. So far, I've dug into Gmail, Google Talk, & Google Calendar, and all in all, these hold up with the same service level - if not higher - than my paid providers.

On thing in particular that I've found particularly exciting about this is the ability to build these services into my existing/developing online platform. Google will configure their name servers to assist in making user experiences as simple as possible.

Want your google mail to be branded to your employees as your own? Why not incorporate the two?

My employees pick up their mail at mail.leadsoap.com which is basically a private labeled version of gmail. The set up consisted of applying for the Google Apps program, verifying ownership of the domain, and setting up routing for the DNS with Google and my current host. It sounds more complicated than it was, Google made it simple.

Nokia E62 Stereo Headsets

Recently, I've been doing a lot of research on using my pda faster and smarter. It had come to my attention that perhaps I wasn't using 100% of the functionality and could be costing myself chunks of time by not fully configuring the handheld.

Along the way to customizing new menus and setting user groups with ring tones, I noticed a few capabilities that I overlooked when I bought the device, and have since found a new affinity for it.

The device in question is the Nokia E62 - distributed by Cingular.

The primary function that I discovered was mp3 playback with the embedded playlist manager. I was greatly elated to find out that the device could do this, but absolutely dejected when I looked online for a pair of headphones that would supply me a stereo playback experience.

Sincerely, I looked far and wide, and there wasn't much out there for the 2.5 jacks.

I did find a good work around though, located in these posts and discussion board listings:
Cingular E62 Fo-RUM
Symbian Freak E62 Blog

The work around is to locate an HS-47 Headset from Nokia. I ordered one from Let's Talk, got it in less time than they quoted, and have had stereo mp3 sound on my pda since. It's been great. The headset even came with built in buttons so you can handle calls from your headset instead of using your pda. Pretty nifty.

Get the HS-47 From Nokia Here for Less than $20.

Godaddy is Sweet

This could probably fall under the category of "FYI" or "The More You Know" - bah bun, bum, bah - category. It's about Godaddy.

Godaddy is a registar with whom I am exceptionally pleased. They offer hosting, domain registrations, ssl certificates, and a wide variety of other services. I've been a client for three years and have used a variety of the different platforms in my time as a client.

If you are in need of web utilities, I recommend Godaddy.com.

From Lead Shop to Lead Soap..... You'd think I'd get tired of this

So as many of you know the Lead Shop was sold approximately 2 months ago to a few different buyers. It's not often you build and sell a company in a year. I think there are probably good reasons for that. But here we are today, smarter, wiser, and having done more things that other people said, "you can't do that." Well, we did it. What do we do now.....

On the Horizon:
One of my next projects is one that focuses on address verification and lead verification. At my last two opporunities, The Lead Shop, Inc and Client Shop, Inc, it was my primary responsibility to maintain proper lead quality in our systems and develop tools to monitor and check for quality. During this time I saw the dark side of the lead industry in more faces than I could have imagined, and was always looking for something that would give me (and my customers) the leg up.

So along came a tool that with a primary collaborator that shall for now remain nameless, that is based soley upon improving lead quality by looking at the individual factors within it and scoring each against eachother for accuracy.

This tool essentially can look at a name, email, ip address, physical address, etc. and look at each piece and how it fits with the others. It generates scores, and will approve or disprove this particular piece of data based upon those variables.

This is a great tool for a lot of reasons, but we have some time, so I'm going to let you think about how it could help your business first before I go telling you....

LeadSoap.com :: Not a lead company at all, just helping people with their data cleansing, data integrity, and lead quality...

Opening Day at Petco

I recently had the great pleasure of taking in the opening day festivities for the San Diego Padres. This was a blast. Thank you Christopher Dryden, of Del Mar, CA for the tickets! Never before have I seen a Major League Baseball team open up a season and it wasn't anything I'll soon forget.

First: The pre-party.
San Diego is a city under constant development. The downtown area is no exception to that. Thousands of new condos are coming onto the market via sheek condo complexes. One of those condos happens to be owned by none other than Melani Gordon, Principal at GWave Consulting. Melani was kind enough to open up her home to me and my camera, so I could get the shot above. Thank you Melani. Good luck with your San Diego Consuting Business.

The Stadium & Opening Day:
As you can see in the photos above, the city of San Diego built a new stadium located in the center of downtown. You can visit that official site here: Petco Park Official Site The stadium is phenom-inal. Prior to this experience, I had only seen the inside from grass seats out in "the yard." For opening day, we had spots perched up behind center plate. A great spot to see the opening day fesitivites including a flyover from our local marines.


The Game:
While the Pad's may have lost this home opener, the game was still a thrill to shoot. I just happen to be taking a sequence when Khalil Greene #3 hit a sweet home run. Way to go Khalil, 'chicks dig the long ball.'