Ze just posted a new song titled ‘Scared of Something‘. Caroline recorded her own version and I can’t decide which one like better. In either case I want one of them on my iPod. Caroline’s is embedded below.
Random
The Modern Web In Plain English
Stumbled upon this the other day and thought I would share it here.
We made this video for our friends (and yours) that haven’t yet felt the power of our friend the RSS reader. We want to convert people and if you know someone who would love RSS and hasn’t yet tried it, point them here for 3.5 minutes.
Millennials and Their Jobs
My generation has been classified as Generation Y, the Millennials, the Net Generation and the Echo Boomers. What does that mean? nobody knows what to call us. Maybe we should be part of the the Lost generation.
Yesterday I watched a special on 60 minutes about the Millennials and our tendencies towards putting ourselves first. I was at first appalled by this, but I felt much better after they classified it as:
Putting ourselves first over our jobs
The overall attitude of the show was that this is a bad thing. It seemed they thought we should, especially in our early 20’s put our jobs and careers over ourselves and grow up earlier. To that I say screw you CBS I think we got it right!
It’s not that we made a realization one day that we’re better than our jobs. We just made the realization that our jobs could be better. The fact of the matter is that there is always something better out there. Today’s society just makes it much easier for us to find it than previous generations. If you look at the job marketplace today its filled with networking sites like LinkedIn, Career centered sites like CareerBuilder and general job search sites such as Monster. None of these sort of resources existed for the previous generations. We don’t rely on the newspaper and word of mouth, and the sort of resources we do depend on spread information about jobs much farther and faster.
One of the most important things they said on 60 minutes was that our generation has realized that there are many more jobs out there than there are people to fill them. This puts the power in the workers hands and makes the employers pony up. It forces them to recognize that they need to create attractive jobs that our generation get excited about.
My generation doesn’t like to hold jobs. Well, that sounds bad and it’s not true. We like to switch jobs. No, that’s not true either. We like to have the best job possible. There we go. Doesn’t it make sense though? Why stick around just for that tenure when there’s a better opportunity right around the corner (and there always is)?
There is nothing wrong with sticking it out. Maybe you get lucky like I did, and you land a really sweet job right out of school that you love. Maybe it gives you all the freedom you’re looking for and you feel you really can last it out. That’s great! Our generation doesn’t have a problem with that either. I know that in my circle of friends there are a few on both sides. There are those that have switched numerous times (and I’ve only been out of collage for 2 1/2 years) and those that have remained loyal and show no signs of changing.
During the show they also claimed that once we got into the real world we’d have a different experience. They seemed to think that once we were asked to stay late or (gasp) work a weekend that we’d be appalled and would immediately jump ship for the next best opportunity (the loyalty thing again). I don’t know about jumping ship that quickly, but I do know that I wouldn’t tolerate a regular schedule that included nights and weekends. My job does not define me it is merely something I do. In fact, I define my job. I am not opposed to occasionally working a night or weekend when necessary. However; I lived through my father being on call one week out of every month for his whole career and I will not allow myself to do that. ever.
The job skipping will slow down for our generation once enough of us get into the careers and jobs we like. 60 minutes got it all wrong though. It’s not that we like the job skipping, it’s that its a necessity. Unless you get really lucky with your first job, it’s worth the skipping around to find that one job that you just love. After all, you spend close to 1/3 of your (working) life at your Job, you better like it.
As a side note, you spend 1/3 of your life sleeping, another 1/3 at your job… doesn’t leave time for much else does it?
Custom Youtube Players
A few week ago Youtube came out with custom players. I thought they were interesting but never gave them much thought. A few days ago I played around with them and found out some very neat features.
You can assign a playlist to a player. This means you can assign all of your videos to a single player, or just a subset. You can even assign videos you’ve found and watched that aren’t yours.
You can assign videos after the fact. Because it works off a playlist you can assign videos to that playlist after you’ve created the player and they get added to wherever you’ve embedded the player.
To create your own custom player goto my players and click create custom player. You’ll then be prompted with several options most important of which is the Content. Simply select the playlist, or group of videos (my videos or my favorites) you wish to include in your player and click ‘select.’
Once you’ve filled in all the options all you need to do is click ‘generate code’ and then copy and paste the code to wherever you want the player displayed. It’s very easy and its a powerful tool. I created the player below out of my posted videos. It will always be updated with my most recent videos.
http://www.youtube.com/cp/vjVQa1PpcFPs2iw3cqJ9pL9VChYoCF0vhlvxJabC9_0=
The Writer's Strike
Jon Stewart talking about the writer’s strike on on The Daily Show.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/sitewide/video_player/view/default/swf.jhtml
SideReel
I just discovered a new site today called sidereel. As far as I can tell they don’t archive videos they just archive links to videos. Every (popular) TV show you can think of is there, along with links to every episode. The more popular the show the more links they’ll have, and the more versions of the particular episodes. They have all the shows from today (Lost, Jericho, Firefly etc) but what I found most impressive was their collection of old shows such as The Muppets. They also have links to movies but I have yet to try those out yet.
Some of the links are dead, others link to videos with foreign sub titles. In some instances they link to the particular networks version, but often that requires you to watch some advertisements and install some proprietary video software. This is an evolving (beta) service though so I can only imagine it will improve over time.
This just made me think about the current state of television and video entertainment in general. With services like this emerging and even better ones (Hulu comes to mind) yet to come we’re getting closer and closer to the streaming world. All that is left is to hook the current internet video sites into your TV and the battle between Blueray and HD-DVD becomes moot. With the ability to watch (stream) any show or movie you want at your fingertips who would want to own a limited library of tangible objects?
A big argument against streaming media has always been that people want to own something tangible. While I can see that argument for the older generations even mine, that need is ending. Todays generations are growing up owning videos and mp3s downloaded in iTunes and Zune. Once they become the buyers in the market the tangible need will disappear. This day is coming sooner and sooner and the market needs to wake up to it.
Wii Hero III
You might have already seen my frustration at the Playstation 3 version of Guitar Hero III. I was mostly aggravated at the controller not the game and thankfully the game came out for every system available. I took the PS3 version back to the store and explained that it was broken. In my mind it was broken, because of their proprietary wireless crap every tenth or so note got skipped.
Immediately after returning the PS3 version I purchased the Wii version and brought it home. To my excitement the Wii version works surprisingly well. I have yet to miss a note because of the wireless communication (but I have definately missed a note due to my ineptitude).
The trade in was definitely worth it and I’d highly suggest that if you have a PS3 and a Wii that you buy the Wii version of Guitar Hero. That is unless you like missing every 10th note in Weezer’s “My Name is Jonas”.
Disable User Account Control (UAC)
User Account Control (or UAC) is a feature in Windows Vista which allows for an advanced level of security at the expense of a whole lot of extra mouse clicks. For the average user this is great, it forces them to think before they act. However; for power users such as myself this is entirely unnecessary. Disabling UAC is actually quite easy. Just follow the next 4 steps and you’re good to go. You can even follow them again (with one variation) to turn it back on.
- Launch MSCONFIG by from the Run menu.
- Click on the Tools tab. Scroll down till you find “Disable UAC”. Click on that line.
- Press the Launch button.
- A CMD window will open. When the command is done, you can close the window.
- Close MSCONFIG. You need to reboot the computer for changes to apply.
Note that you can re-enable UAC by selecting the “Enable UAC” line and then clicking on the Launch button.
(I found this as well as 3 other methods to shut off UAC on petri)
Mice, Dogs and Witches Oh My
Last Saturday we went to a Halloween party at our friend Corey’s old place. They had a joint party with their neighbors and we got to meet all sorts of people we’d never seen before. How fun. Just think, we won’t ever be able to recognize them again either because they were all in costume! I think Lenny Kravitz is the clear winner, with the Beastie Boys a close second. I lamed it up as a wireless router wearing my wifi detection shirt. Take a look at the gallery for the rest of everyone’s costumes.
From Blood to Wine
Today I lived up to my reputation as pure klutz. As some of you know Wegmans is in the progress of decorating for the holiday season (yes Christmas already). In order to decorate my area I needed to use a staple gun, however the only one I found was out of staples. I retrieved the staples and proceeded to put them in the gun. However; while splitting a row of staples in half my hand slipped and the staples caught the knuckle of my index finger. The cut was deep and I made an absolute mess of the craft room (sorry Becky). A numbed finger and 3 stitches later I was on my way home to nurse the wound.
Randy was feeling guilty because he wasn’t there to save me from the staple gun so we went out to eat with his mother and Kay, a friend from work. We went to the cheesecake factory where I enjoyed a nice glass of wine(easing my pain) with my thai chicken and keylime cheescake. While it was my 3rd trip to the cheescake factory it was Randy’s first and he thoroughly enjoyed the experience along with his pasta DaVinci and upside down pineapple cheescake.
Randy Aldrich 