I made the Switch

I’ve jumped in! I’ve slipped on the proverbial black turtleneck. Yes, I’m a switcher!

About a month ago I decided that my large, hot lead-brick-of-a-laptop, otherwise known as my HP Pavilion ZD8000, was getting a bit “long in the tooth.” On a hot July day, in my air-conditioned home office, it decided to to test my patience by overheating and shutting off without warning in approximately 10 minute intervals. My only thought, “Time to ship this sucker away!” Fortunately, my “brick” belonged to my employer. So, I asked for a new laptop; and I asked for a MacBook Pro!

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the new Brettic.us!

Besides changing my domain name, I decided to use a new blogging engine to boot. Drupal, while great, is just so much more than I needed. When I got looking into upgrading my drupal installation, it was apparent that WordPress would be much easier to update (and if time ever permits, to extend.) Besides, the WordPress administration layout is much better streamlined. Really, I just needed a blog with the ability to upload a page or two. WordPress does this in a manner that is both simple and elegant.

Perhaps, I will even be inspired to blog about something worthwhile a little more often now with all this newly found ease!

Some folks who know me might say I have somewhat of an “addictive personality”. Not that I’m the “life of the party” or any other similar-meaning cliche. I really do tend to have my little vices. For instance, drinking Coke (the legal kind) is a habit I have tried to break for years…to no avail. Once upon a time, I ate a Whopper from Burger King every day for almost a year during college. The next year, I ate a Chicken Sandwich from Arby’s so frequently they started calling me “Chicken Man” at the drive up window. Yes, you guessed it, I have “what the doctors might call, ‘a little bit of a weight problem.’” (Crazily, I was somewhat slender during the college years. I guess I played enough hacky-sack to offset. Actually, I made my first Website in college. WARNING: Lame Content!)

Lately, my greatest guilty pleasure is the podcast. Which, in layman’s terms, is simply a privately-produced audio-cast, usually in the form of an mp3 file for download. A simpler explanation might be: a radio show on the Internet that you can download. I can’t seem to get enough of them. I am constantly checking TWIT for a new `Security Now`, `This Week in Tech`, `Mac Break` (I don’t even own a Mac), or `KFI Tech Guy` (surprisingly, my 2nd favorite to `Security Now`.) Thanks to my Woot script, I snagged an ultra-cheap SanDisk mp3 player. Couple that with my Walmart FM-modulator/SD-or-USB-Drive mp3 player and I’m now listening to PHP Architect on the morning drive instead of NPR. Instead of surfing for tech news at work, I’m listening to it while I work. Before I say this makes me more productive, I might mention the occasional podcast-inspired surfing tangent (Now if I could only get better inspired to finish my website.)

If you are a techie-nerd who likes to stay abreast of the latest-and-greatest that the wide world of geekdom can offer, you better check out podcasts (chances are you already have.)

Well folks, from the mouth of babes — my babe anyway, “It’s sterile & lacks character!” I guess you can’t please everyone all of the time.

What she doesn’t know is that I plan to skin it one of these days. That interprets to, of course, “I’ll start in two months, do half the job, and finish 3 months later when I’ve run out of Star Trek episodes to watch (from our newest season DVD collection) and I drank too much Coca-cola that day (or night.)

Personally, I thought this was a pretty slick out-of-the-box theme. What do you guys think?