You see it all the time. You hit what sounds like the site you’re looking for, only once you hit the link and the site pops up in your web browser, it looks like something from 1993. It looks like someone figured out how to use Paint they found in the Accessories directory and suddenly thought, ew, I’m a graphic artist, cool! Next, they figured out how to copy/paste it into a word document, do a little fiddling with the copy and the picture, usually all centered copy, and then they must have saved all of the files in to an HTML format and posted them on a server.

Typically, these turn me off right away. In some cases, they may actually have some very useful information, but I just can’t get past the horrid look and feel. Its like seeing that crappy car in the used car lot that has one corner hanging down low about to touch a tire, 1 red fender, white hood and a blue rear end. The sign says, strong reliable engine. Well, it may be, but there’s no way on this green earth I would drive it or rely on it. Okay, I have to admit, back on the web page, there are rare occasions I’ll look around and read if it’s at least easy to get around AND the information is very helpful.

I HATE THESE KINDS OF SITES! In fact, if there was any way that a law could be passed that enacted legislation that disallowed such crap, I’d be in heaven. Then of course, the government would have to create the Web Site Design Police. Well, then again, I suppose they’d be a sub-division of the “Fashion Police”.

Boycott such sites no matter what!

-Shane (JMHO)

Posted: January 28th, 2006 under Rants, Web Site.
Comments: none

Okay, well… just to clear the air… I wasn’t let go and still have my full time job.

However, the company I currently work for had a “mini” layoff or as our upper management calls it a RIF. (Reduction In Force) The primary reason was for P&L purposes. Meaning, our sales had/were down and we had to manage expenses. It’s actually a pretty standard thing these days. Fortunately, the cuts weren’t that deep.

Even though I wasn’t directly involved, as a manager of people and involved in affecting peoples lives, it’s still hard to take. Plus, the dark cloud that sits over the office doesn’t exactly make one productive.

-Shane

Posted: January 27th, 2006 under Personal.
Comments: none

Breckenridge Colorado. It’s cold, the sun is shining and all of the athletes are dancing around attempting to push the blood down to their toes. They’re all anticipating the days first run.

Ski racing is the only sport where you can go faster than the speed limit on nothing but two sticks and your legs. For those who’ve not had the oppurtunity to ski fast, it’s about as high adreniline rush as you can get. It takes focus and poise, not to mention hours of training to ride a razors edge.

This past weekend, January 20th through 22nd was the Age Class Super-G. Super-G is a very fast racing event only second in speed to downhill.

Dylan made two runs on Saturday and one last run on Sunday. After each run, the smile on his face said it all. But, the phrase, “Boy was that fun!!” told the entire story of why he races. “It doesn’t get much better than that!”

Dylan may be small, but everyone says, his technique is all Alpine Racer.

Three day race weekends take their toll on us all. However, the team camaraderie, sportsmanship and sense of accomplishment can’t be taught in any class-room.

Next race is here on our home turf, Eldora. It’ll be a Slolam run and more technical. It’s not Dylans favorite as he loves the speed events.

Stay tuned…

- Shane

Posted: January 24th, 2006 under Skiing.
Comments: none

Ever wonder if there’s a cheaper better solution than iTunes Store? Well, I’m a huge proponent of using iTunes regardless of the Operating System, but have always perused the iTunes Store with caution so as to not end up with a $300 plus bill like a good friend of mine that just didn’t “pay” attention.

So, another friend of mine who will remain nameless, but his initials are DH, sent me two links that are extremely interesting. One is MP3Search.ru and the other is Tunester.ru - see any similarities? They both look like sites not hosted in the US, so I’m guessing as long as they’re running then they must be legit, but might be questionable on how long. Tread cautiously, but I can say, I now have a ton of awesome albums.

Posted: January 17th, 2006 under Personal, Reviews.
Comments: none

SUSE 10.0: yes, I know the dinosaur Novell purchased it, but I took another look. Several years ago I had purchased SUSE 8.x and played with 9.x on a local workstation, but just didn’t feel compelled enough to use it on a daily basis. So, I stuck to the MacOS 10 and Windows XP flavors of OS’s for daily chores.

So, then a colleague of mine, Tad, catches me in the hallway and says, man Shane, have you seen the new SUSE 10.0 distro? Well, of course I hadn’t and beings that he is a hard-core Win user, but slowly converting to the Mac or at least using them both interchangeably, I figured I’d take another look.

Install download ISO disks are huge, but worth the wait. I did them over night one night as I tend to get more bandwidth at night (around 3mb or greater w/Mesa). The ISO’s make either several CD installers or one large DVD installer. I burned the DVD installer and gave it a go on my DELL 4700 workstation with a 150gb drive and WinXP Pro already installed.

The installation took about 45 minutes, but the coolest thing is that it has a built-in reformatting tool that took a chunk of the NTFS volume allocated to WinXP and shrunk it to make room for the Linux install. Way cool and didn’t even have to think about dual boot, which I installed first etc… Linux for dummies. Each step of the installation was very similar to Apples installer asking all of the basic questions. Will you connect to the internet, what user name/password and preset the ‘root’ password, etc… Once installed, it jumped right into the desktop and ran the YaST application, which basically ran out to their live update server and updated several patches and security fixes that had come out since the ISO burns.

Voila’ I’m now running a modern Linux desktop with the Gnome UI. You can choose between KDE and GNOME during install. Previously I’d used the KDE UI and found it a bit klunky. So, I decided to give GNOME a go. So far, so good.

Next, I popped open FireFox, pre-installed, and updated the theme and a few extensions I like to use. Jumped over to my blog site, gmail account and several web haunts to see if it looks and/or worked any different. Nope, all the same. Last, I downloaded the current PDF reader. The one thing I noticed was, the Acrobat installer was very Wind/Mac like. Double click an installer application and it was done. No package to install, no command line to run, no shell script etc… All things I’m familiar with, but my goal was to imitate the average Joe.

Now, I’m attempting to use it along with the WinXP and MacOS I’m familiar with and attempt to become as virtual as possible. No more OS dependencies! Maybe.

Posted: January 17th, 2006 under Reviews, Software, Software, Technology.
Comments: none

Well, I’ve been dabbling with WordPress and editing Themes. The new version (2.0) seems pretty cool and the theme or “Presentation” manager is much easier for selecting your theme. I also found the theme editor much easier than the original version.

Reading:
I’ve just finished reading and highlighting practically every page of Tom Antions book, “The Ultimate Guide to Electronic Marketing for Small Business”. I read a review a friend posted and was intrigued. I have to say, even knowing he’s a motivational speaker and that some of his web sites have the “One Single Long Page” Pitch-y, Sales-y look/feel, the practical information seemed pretty straight forward. Obviously, he’s not a technical person and I cringed every time he mentioned doing this or doing that with Front-Page, amateur hour. Many of the techniques and marketing ideas were very informative for a techie like me. Keyword management and understanding page ranking and how to monitor keyword trends could very well pay for the book.

Software:
I’ve been playing with WebCEO and WebPosition and man, what information at your finger tips. I’m dabbling with a site I setup for our ski team that could potentially be a money making fund-raiser. The keywords I’d used in the pages were way to basic. They’re now changed and I’m going to see if the page ranking gets better.

More reading… I’m now working on “The e-Code” by Joe Vitale and Jo Han Mok. Two writers I’d never heard about. When ordering Tom Antions book, it was recommended at a discount and so I gave it a shot. So far, it’s been refreshingly honest and some interesting ideas. Where Toms book was more, do this and do that and here’s a ton of links to go check out, this one is a little more phylisophical and thought provoking. Also, it was written by a bunch of other sub-authors and they state it up front on how they published the book and are now making money on it. Pretty honest.

Posted: January 14th, 2006 under Personal.
Comments: none

Well, after a few months of burning the candle at both ends through 2005 and thinking about what 2006 will look like, I’m putting the blog back-online. I was dabbling with a full-blown CMS site, but it was too much, so I had to simplify.

Photos and other areas of the ole site are still around. However, now, it’s all blog… Journal style.

[I actually back-dated a few entries. I know, it’s probably not kosher, but hey… it’s my blog to post, say and portray what I’d like.]

Posted: January 12th, 2006 under Personal.
Comments: none

First race of the season for Age Class. Usually, it’s bitter cold and windy. This year, it was neither. The early morning drive was riddled with cars in the ditch and a nice heavy snow-fall the entire drive. At the resorts parking lot, the front-end loader they used to clear the lot was driven by a wild man. I’m not sure if he was having fun flying around in the deep stuff like it was butter, or actually trying to take us all out as we skurried to the warmth of the lodge.

Free-skiing was the best I’ve ever done at Loveland. Usually it’s icey and wind-blown. However, this past Sunday it was a major powder day.

Jodi was nervous and didn’t hike up to the finish on Dylans first race. Since it was his first official race since recovery, she wasn’t sure about watching. He was strong, confident and showed great potential. You see, I couldn’t help it I skied down and watched. We’re down playing his racing this season so knowing his time was not relevant. He looked great and I was extremely proud. His hard work through the summer and early fall training paid off.

Posted: January 9th, 2006 under Skiing.
Comments: none