BoomFlag

I’m building a new computer for a client, and I noticed a little black box on the motherboard.

Sweet! This computer comes equipped with a magic box!

We’re heading to southern Utah tomorrow for Laralee’s brother’s wedding. Unfortunately it looks like we’re going to have to plow through about a hundred miles of wet, slushy, snow-covered roads.

The I-70 corridor through the mountains– everything from Idaho Springs to Rifle– is marked blue on the CO-DOT maps. They just closed Vail Pass about 20 minutes ago (the red icon in the center) which is always a bad sign.

I guess we’ll see what the morning brings. Fingers crossed.

Why is Zing awesome? Because we can do the kinds of things our clients need, when they have no idea how to do it or who to even ask. Some examples from today:

One client had a list of 5,000 ZIP codes from a consumer database and needed to know which states they were in. In 10 minutes I was able to generate a list of not only states, but cities as well.

Another client needed to send an e-mail message announcing their new project to 22,000 people. As is often the case, they didn’t really get everything together until today, and they need the message sent no later than tonight. I created a nice graphic e-mail, reformatted and imported their contact list, and had everything ready to send in 40 minutes.

Someone else was having problems with Yahoo search results directing to old URL’s on his site. In 10 minutes I was able to update the configuration of his site to automatically rewrite URL’s so the search engine links were correct and people could get to his “important” pages easily.

Still another client decided to change the underlying user authentication model for their entire business, so we had a conference call to figure out an approach. I was able to come up with a solution which will give them two different “classes” of users while still preserving the overall functionality of the system.

Those are the unusual requests that came in… I also handled updates to a donation request form, launched a major new site, handled a case where a client lost all of his passwords, updated accounting calculations for million-dollar trade deals, and provided online order summary reports for someone who couldn’t figure out how to generate what she needed.

All in a day’s work, I guess. There are a lot of web design and development firms in the world– heck, there are a lot just in the Boulder area– but I feel like we’re extra awesome because we can do the things the other guys can’t.

Of course, I might be biased…

Fifteen years.

Wow, that’s a long time. But today is my fifteenth anniversary, and I must say that I still think Laralee is pretty swell. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me.

Photo credit: Thom, circa 2000

Today’s overused annoying phrase:

living document

Example usage:

Documents are inanimate objects. They aren’t alive. Can’t someone come up with a better term here?

So Laralee has this crazy vibrant orange shirt with Electric Apricot across the front.

I have no idea what that is, but it seems like a great name for a band.

It’s been twelve years since I worked at Raytheon, but during my five-year tenure there I had the opportunity to contribute to some cool projects and work with some great people. Every few years I meet these guys at Mama Alvino’s, an old pizza hangout we used to frequent. So today I made the pilgrimage down to Aurora and enjoyed lunch with Bill, Ken, Paul, and Dan.

What an awesome team. I miss you guys… although I don’t miss working for The Man!

Hah, another pizza week, starting last Saturday…

Saturday : homemade pizza
Sunday : leftover homemade pizza
Monday : Anthony’s Pizza (south Longmont)
Tuesday : Old Chicago (south Longmont)
Wednesday : Pasquini’s (south Denver)
Thursday : leftover Old Chicago (at the office)
Friday : Mama Alvino’s (north Aurora)
Saturday : homemade pizza
Sunday : leftover homemade pizza?

I sure hope to see a federal study one of these days that proves conclusively a diet of pepperoni pizza and orange juice extends your lifespan by ten years…

Alex and I got back a little while ago from a campout with his Boy Scout troop. Good times. We were up in the foothills above Boulder– beautiful area. The area was deserted, which made it nice and peaceful. Well, I guess with ten boys there it wasn’t exactly peaceful, but still. The weather was a little nippy, dropping down into the 20’s overnight, but everyone had a good sleeping bag so we were all right.

Now it’s 60ish and sunny, so I went out and washed my car. I hadn’t washed it since sometime in December, so it definitely needed it. It’s all nice and shiny again, so overall life is good.

I made some mac and cheese for dinner tonight. As I was scooping the noodles into the pan, I noticed the date on the side of the can.

One can only hope that pasta doesn’t go bad after eight years.