LVTC(Living Vicariously Through Corey)

Update

2008-11-19T05:50:32Z

These past couple of weeks I was able to put more focus on the documentation for Deki and was able to launch the following space: http://www.mindtouch.com/Documentation I’m very pleased with how it turned out and and continuing to polish off the user manual so that our documentation will have a solid structure that will make it easier to expand. I really like doing documentation as the ultimate goal is to help people better understand the product, which helps with adoption and decreases case load as things are explained better.

Last weekend Pam’s friends were out here visiting and it was a lot of fun. Pam and I hadn’t had a weekend like it in a while as she has been busy with school. I’m looking forward to winter break and ultimately her graduation so that we can have more time to explore and go to the beach.

We officially started the home purchasing adventure, we put a bid down on a place, we shall see if the sellers accept it. It is exciting as both Pam and I are ready to have our own place. Our landlords have been awesome, but we want to be able to change the house as we see fit, along with not worrying about moving.

Other than that I’ve been keeping up with my RSS feeds and working on backing up my computer as it seems like it is starting to go out. I installed Ubuntu on it as dual boot, so that I can configure it and see if it will work out for what I need.

Otherwise things have been going well.

Tags: catchup, Deki, documentation, Mindtouch, pam, Ubuntu

People that spend the least, expect the most

2008-11-10T06:06:50Z

In my years in the Hospitality industry, selling things on eBay, and doing Free Lance work, the one thing I’ve come down to is that people that spend the least amount of money or get the biggest discount on a product/service will expect the most and take up the most amount of your time. A perfect example of this is when I worked in hotels. The people that stayed at the hotel and paid full price for their room were courteous and didn’t burden the employees at the front desk or the rest of our staff. Now the people that got the hotel room on Hotwire or Priceline for $30/night, they were ornery, demanding, and didn’t tip. Obviously there are exceptions to the rule but there is one thing I want you to take from this:

“If you have a cheap service, then you will get cheap people that will eat up all of your time. If you have an expensive service then you will get an evenly balanced request of your time”

The core issue of the quote above is that people who are always driving for a bargain and pushing to get every penny out of every service have time to pursue it and ergo time to bug you. Someone that has a higher budget typically has better things to do then to try and take advantage of the service/product.

One stipulation that needs to be made is that the above information assumes that the product or service that is being presented has value and isn’t cheap.

Tags: rant

House Hunting

2008-11-10T01:27:53Z

Recently Pam and I have started to look at homes to buy. Both of us are tired of paying rent and want to upgrade as far sq ft. It is interesting to see that even in this downturn economy, the short sales/foreclosures are still relatively expensive, especially in comparison to the midwest prices that both of us are used to. The prices are mainly due to the fact that the banks are trying to get as much as they can from all of the failed mortgages that they coerced people into signing years back. We’re hopeful that we can find a good sized place for a decent price that can be a step up from where we are at now. Originally we wanted a house as opposed to a condo, but now we are leaning more towards the condo because of the availability, prices, and location. We’ll see how things go.

Tags: house hunting, housing market

Happy Halloween!

2008-11-01T04:35:44Z

Happy Halloween everyone. I’m chilling with Pam tonight, watching movies and relaxing. My knee is hurting, so that means rain is a comin Today I dressed up for Halloween. I went as “Is It Friday Man”. Mild mannered Support agent Corey Ganser leads a double life, spreading the good news about Friday as..

“Is It Friday Man”

Tags: happy halloween, is it friday

Feeling good about progress

2008-10-28T04:05:49Z

Today was a productive day on many fronts. Today we brought on a new Support Engineer at MindTouch who is going to help with cases and documentation. This is going to be great as I’ve been working on increasing the documentation for Deki so that it is easier to get started. Keep an eye on the MindTouch blog as I will announce it once it is launched.

I’m also feeling good about playing catchup for my personal todo. Even though I’d enjoy documenting more. Believe it or not, I am one of the few out there that actually enjoy documenting my work. Note: I like to document my work, not others

I’m going to be working more on www.coreyganser.com to add more notes about Linux tips and tricks. I’m trying to make it a good resource not only for me, but for anyone else that is trying to get into Linux. Also I will be working on putting together a Mythbox over the next couple of months. I say a couple of months because I know how easily I can get wrapped up into things. I’ll do a blog post and wiki write up on my exact steps in case anyone else wants to try it. I’ll be starting with a VMware image, so it should be interesting.

Otherwise it feels good to get a blog post in here and there. I need to write more often as I’ve been slacking in that arena.

Tags: catchup, Deki, Linux, linux tips, Mindtouch, support engineer

Awesome Birthday!

2008-10-26T19:04:34Z

I had an awesome birthday. First I got to sleep in, which is always great. Then Pam woke me up with balloons and coffee cake(super sweet). I opened some presents and talked to family on the phone. Then I went to Coronado and laid on the beach for a while. It was a beautiful day, around 77 degrees. After that we came back to our place, had some lunch, and then went to Torey Pines. I hadn’t been to Torey pines before so it was really neat walking around and seeing the view. After that we came back and got ready and then went to Fred’s for Dinner. As always I got really full on the chips and their huge burrito. After Dinner we went to “Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist”. Hilarious movie, I definitely recommend. Came back and chilled at home, had some birthday Brownies with whipped cream and watched Constantine. Then went to bed while watching “Beast of a Billion Backs” I thoroughly enjoyed the whole day. The best part of it was the fact that Pam put her homework aside and took the day off to spend it with me. It has been a while since we have been able to spend a Saturday together. It was great! Thank you to everyone who called, emailed, and wrote me for my birthday. I felt very special with everyone remembering my birthday.

Here I am with my Bday brownie and Corey at Torey:

Tags: Awesome, birthday, burrito, coronado, nick and nora, pam

Cool PDF import extension for Open Office 3.0

2008-10-23T06:19:49Z

I started messing around with Open Office 3.0 tonight. There is a sweet extension for it called the PDF import It allows you to import a PDF document into Open Office Draw, and change it. This is awesome as before, one would have to have an Adobe product in order to edit a PDF. I encourage you to download Open Office 3.0 and try out this extension.

Tags: open office, pdf document

Update

2008-10-23T06:08:49Z

Well I haven’t written in a while as I’ve been super busy. Work has been crazy with new customers coming on, new deployments, and the release of 8.08.1 In my personal life I’ve started to look at homes in San Diego. It is fun to look into the housing market out here. Also my bday is coming up…which is always fun as anyone that knows me knows that my birthday is a month long celebration. I mean come on…me being born is a pretty big deal to everyone that LVTs. Pam has been super busy with her school work, internship and job. I don’t know how she does it, but she is doing it well. As for me, “I may not be a smart man, but I know what love is”¹

¹ Forrest Gump

Tags: forrest gump, housing market, personal life

White Lion Concert

2008-10-17T05:22:40Z

I went to the White Lion concert on Tuesday and it was awesome! I’ve listened to White Lion since I was a kid as it was one of my Dad’s and Older brother’s favorite bands. Mike Tramp, the lead singer of White Lion, sounded just like he did in the CDs I listened to when I was young and put on a great performance. I hope they continue to tour and hopefully can make it to the Midwest so that possibly my Dad and Brother can go see them.

Tags: concert, mike tramp, white lion

Open Office 3 is available!

2008-10-13T01:22:39Z

I’ve been waiting for Open Office 3 for a while for one of its best features, compatibility for Microsoft Office 2007 files. For those of you that don’t know, Open Office is an Open Source alternative to Microsoft Office. It is very easy to use and includes the full suite that you would get with Microsoft Office. You can download the newest version of Open Office here. It hasn’t been officially announced yet so if you go to www.OpenOffice.org it will be the previous version. Anyone that currently has Microsoft Office, I encourage you to try this out.

Tags: Microsoft, microsoft office 2007, open office, Open Source, open source software, Sun