Its been a long time since i had a chance to sit down and write  a new post. I’ve been really busy at work. We had two major events that seemed to take up all of June. Now that everything is over I don’t really know where the month went. So i guess I’ll do a quick recap of the events that happened during June.

The first even took place the second week of June called TRUE. TRUE stands for The Relocation and Upgrade Event. Last year it was called the Select-A-Seat event. It was basically the same thing as Select-A-Seat but not at the Ford Center. Due to construction at the Ford Center in preparation for the 2009 – 2010 season we had to move the event from the Ford Center to the Coca-Cola Center in Brick Town. This presented several technical problems to us as an organization. Firstly, its hard to sell a product when you can’t actually SEE or touch the product. In our case, we are selling seats. Last year when the team first moved here, we were able to bring customers into the Ford Center and show them around the arena. Customers were able to sit in their seats and get a feel of what those seats would be like during an actual game. Obviously we can’t do that when we don’t have access to the Ford Center. After a lot of back and forth we decided to go with a 3D model of the arena created by a company called Ballena using their Seats3D software. If you click here you can see the actual application they created for us.

The second problem we had to deal with was bringing the 3D model to life at a different venue a mile away from the Ford Center. Not only did we have to deal with the 3d model but we also had to relocate our entire sales & retention staff to the Coke Center for one week while the event was going on. What that translates to in IT terms is that we had to transport and setup about 35 computers and workstations from the office to the Coke Center. On top of that we also had to setup a bunch of computers and large plasma/LCD monitors as well as 3 large projection screens to show off the Seats3D chart of the arena. Many of the workstations we setup required two LCDs. And the icing on the cake was that the Coke Center had just a single DSL modem that provided Internet to the entire place. Obviously with 35+ PCs constantly downloading 3d data over the Internet the existing DSL connection would not work. We ended up having our own temporary Internet connection installed at the Coke Center for the event. The 45mb DS3 that was installed worked extremely well and we had no problems the entire week. We also had a VPN tunnel back to our main office for all of our POS and ticketing transactions. Over all the event was a huge success and went off without a single problem. (IT problems at least)

After wrapping up TRUE we had about 2 weeks to plan and prepare for the biggest event of the summer, the NBA 2009 Draft. Seeing as how the 2008 Draft occurred prior to the teams relocation, this was our first Draft in OKC. As this was my first experience with the Draft, there were a lot of unknowns. The Draft isn’t as complicated or technical as other events such as the TRUE event. However it does require much more work and planning. The main issue is that we have to absolutely ensure that everything works as it is intended to work. That means when the team’s GM, Sam Presti, picks up the official Draft telephone, he better get a dial tone. It means that when our head trainer needs to lookup a player’s medical chart in the medical database, the database has to work. It means that when our assistant GM needs to look up something on espn.com, the Internet has to work. All of those things add up to making sure every piece of technology in the war room and facility works and has sufficient backup plans in place to keep it working if something unexpected should happen.

After much planning, preparation, and testing the night of the draft arrived. For those unfamiliar with the Draft here is how it works. All thirty teams in the NBA are put in a specific order. (Some by chance and others by record) The Thunder, for example, were fortunate enough to be given the third pick. Each team was connected to the NBA’s headquarters via a webex conference and each team designated one telephone number through which the picks were to be verbally chosen. When it’s your team’s time to choose, the commissioner calls your team’s designated phone number and informs you that you have five minutes to make your selection. (You are only given 2 minutes for your choice during the second round of picks) The most intense part of the draft, for me, were those precious five minutes. Should anything go wrong, especially during those five minutes, it would have had to be corrected within seconds to avoid possible fines and penalties from the league. Luckily for us and as per the plan everything worked flawlessly. None of our backup plans or even the backup to the backups were needed. The team acquired three new players and everything is set for next season. Regardless of what kind of planning we did, those five minutes were still nerve racking. I’m glad its over.

And with that, the end of the month is upon us. I finally have some time to breath and start to plan for next year. We have a lot of work ahead of us. The Ford Center is being remodeled and a lot of the technical aspects of the arena have changed since last year. We have to do a bunch of rewiring and redesigning. I’m not to worried at this point. But I’m sure that will change when we get closer to Opening Night. I’m hoping to document some of that work here. I’m not sure how much of it i can actually publish but I’ll do as much as i can.

When i started this blog thingy I decided that i didn’t want to stray into politics or religion because those topics seem to cause problems. But I’m compelled to write about one story in particular that has been on the news recently. A few days ago, two armed men attempted to rob a pharmacy. According to the victim (the pharmacist) after one of the gunman shot at him he pulled out his gun and fired back. He hit one of the gunman and chased after the other. After realizing the second gunman got away, the owner returned and reloaded his gun. When he went to see what the first gunman was doing he found him still alive and shot him again. Those shots killed the gunman. Because of those actions by the store owner he is now being charged with murder. (Did i mention the gunmen was 16?)

Now, in my opinion the store owner had every right to protect his store. If two men burst into my store or house I would not hesitate to do the very same thing. The matter at hand is that the store owner, after a short chase with the second gunman, came back in and shot the first gunman while he was still on the ground. Now in hindsight its easy for us to see that the store owner probably didn’t need to shoot the first gunman a second time. However i think its important for us to put those few minutes into context and try and understand what must have been going through this war veterans head. (Did i mention that the victim was a decorated disabled war veteran?) For all he knew the first gunman still had a gun and was about to shoot him. There are a million possibilities. What actually happened was not capture on camera as it took place off camera. What we do know is that the gunman on the ground had already threatened the victims life and demanded the victims money or his life. I think the victim had every right to see to it that his store, his employees, and most importantly himself was safe from danger until the police arrived. Until that moment, the store owner (in my opinion) had every right to do what he felt necessary to keep himself safe.

I just think its very dangerous for us to send this kind of message to would be criminals. I just don’t get how anyone can sympathize with the gunman in this situation. He committed a violent criminal act. He attempted to rob someone AT GUN POINT and threatend to take the victims life. You don’t point a gun at someone unless you intent to kill them. Anyone with any sense knows the risks involved here. You can’t tell me that the gunman wasn’t fully aware that the owner might have a gun and that his actions MIGHT result in his death. I think that part of the story is what keeps criminals awake at night. It is what makes them think twice about committing crimes.

But NO! Now we have power hungry district attorneys who are in it only for the conviction. All they care about is the little number beside their name showing how many people they’ve put behind bars. These people could care less about justice. And now they are telling us that we should THINK TWICE about our actions in that kind of situation becuase we too could be put in prison for defending ourselves?

As i said earlier, its easy for us to calmly watch the video from the safety of our homes and critique the store owners actions. Its easy for us to say “Well he shouldn’t have gone over there the second time and shot him.” But believe me, when you are in a life or death situation just as this store owner was, you won’t have that luxury. Its life or death. You have to think fast. The gunman has already made it clear he will take your life without a second thought. And I for one will make the choice to live.

For those interested in reading or watching more about this story, click here. You can read the full story and watch the surveillance video there.

I have a rant about the Sony Playstation 3. Don’t get me wrong I love my PS3. I bought it as a present to myself for Christmas. I just think that Sony is moving so slowly with its development trying to milk every penny they can before the market forces them to improve their product. I bought my PS3 because of its multimedia functionality and Blue-Ray player rather than the gaming console. I have a few games for it that i play on random occasions. But i don’t use that function nearly as much as i use the multimedia functions. Now that I’ve had the Playstation for a while I’ve truly been able to see its ups and downs. And that is what i want to share.

Good this first. I was able to replace my bulky E-Machine PC with the clean slick PS3. It looks very nice under my TV. The PS3 has HDMI support. This was huge. The quality difference was amazing.  The PS3 also offers a “store” where you can buy/rent games and videos as well as a Hard Drive to store them on. In theory you can store all your videos and music on the local hard drive.  I don’t use it as i probably should but i can see how it could benefit some.

Now for the Con’s. My biggest problem with the PS3 is that it doesn’t support 3rd party applications or addons such as codec packs. Because of this, the damned thing can’t play half of the videos i have. Sony suggests i convert all my files to MP4 or some other bulky format. This not only costs me time but also costs me a lot of disk space. This also means that support for 3rd party services such as Netflix or Hulu are next to impossible to add. Because of this mess, those of us who want these features and conveniences have to go out and create workarounds and Mcgiver-ish solutions so that we can easily access ALL of our content on the PS3.

And thus the Media Server applications were born. The catch? This solution requires a PC to be on that has all your file stored on it. Thus defeating the purpose of the PS3 hard drive.(Not that 160GB can hold much…)  There are several out there. I use PS3 Media Server. I’ve also used TVersity & PlayOn. All of these have similar functionality and they all provide the same basic thing. They offer a way to let you play ALL of your videos and music on (or rather through) the PS3 regardless of what type of file it is. This is HUGE. This means that no matter what kind of file it is, the Media Server application can take that file and “transcode” it into a compatible PS3 file. Don’t get me wrong on this. I love these types of software and am thankful they exist. The problem i have is that Sony refuses to add native support for this type of thing ON THE PS3. If they only allowed 3rd party codec packs none of us would have to mess around with these Media Servers. We would be able to store all our files ON the PS3 and truly use it as a Multimedia Center. It would benefit both Sony AND the developers. Just like Apple, the Sony App store could carry these codec packs from various developers allowing the developers to charge a fee for them. Sony would get a cut and the developer would get paid for his time and effort.

Until then, all of us in the real world are stuck downloading various software to our PCs in hopes that it will be able to stream our videos to the PS3 so that we can watch them when and how we want.

So today I went to Guthrie to go to my Grandpa’s old house that has now been turned into a storage unit. (Its a very old house that isn’t livable anymore) I’ve been trying to get my Icom 2720 ham radio hooked back up and i needed to get my antennas and power supply unit i left up there. After we got the equipment i decided to drive out to see the new edition my brother and his wife were building in. I called my mother and she directed me to get on I-35 and drive to Seward road. She said to get on I35 and go north. The only problem with these directions is that Seward road is South of Guthrie and not North. Seeing as I’m not to familiar with Guthrie and the surrounding area i decided to take my mothers directions and get on the I-35 and follow it north. About 3 miles into my journey North i remembered that Seward road is South of Guthrie. At this point i knew i was going the wrong way. I figured “That’s okay I’ll just get off on the next exit and turn around.”

HAH! Nope. Not in Oklahoma. I had to drive 20 miles North to get the next exit off of the highway. I ended up in Maulhall. That’s in Payne County. I had to drive through the entirety of Logan County to find a place to turn around. How ridiculous is that? Every 2 blocks i would see a N0 U Turn sign in the median. Obviously they have a problem with people needing to turn around that they felt it necessary to put up signs. Why not just build a few legal turn arounds? I guess that would be to convenient. Hah.

Anyways, that’s the end of that little rant. Don’t have much else to talk about at the moment. I’ll post more laterz

I got to see Star Trek the movie on Thursday. It was awesome. Even if you aren’t a Star Trek fan I believe you will enjoy this movie. JJ took a lot of the nerdiness out of the show and put a lot more action in. It felt like watching Transformers or the Matrix. It was a good balance I think. A lot of people were expecting him to screw it up by either being to nerdy or not being nerdy enough. I think he found a good balance that will satisfy all the long time Star Trek fans such as myself as well as a lot of the newer non-trekkies who are more interested in actions films in general. I would highly recommend it. I’m hoping to go see it again in sometime soon in one of the larger theaters such as the Cine Capri at Harkins.

In other news, I’ve been wanting to get back into ham radio, scanners, and war driving. I unboxed some of my old radios and re-programmed them with a few frequencies i still remember. I would like to get my main ham radio (the radio on the far left of the pic) and my portable (the Kenwood in the middle) programed with the new updated ham frequencies. My scanners (the two radios on the right) have a few channels in them. I haven’t touched police frequencies in a long long time. The handheld scanner has Edmond in it only. I actually keep this scanner at my desk so i can find out whats going on when i hear sirens around my apartment. Once i get a list of all the frequencies i need to input I’ll publish the list on here. Probably in a new tab at the top. It should be interesting.

Another thing i wanted to talk about was Champions Online. I’ve been reading a lot about this game and it looks amazing. I’ve watched a few videosof the game play and it looks like a lot of fun. The main thing I’m looking forward to in this game is the character customizations. Cryptic is the same company that did City of Heroes/Villains. And if you remember anything about that game, its probably the character customization process. From what I’ve read, the character creations process is City of Heroes on steroids. I can’t wait. Jon and his friend are both doing elemental animals as their first characters. His friend is calling his character Fire Mare and Jon is doing Static Panda. I need to come up with a catchy character to play soon.

Time for something new. I couldn’t think of a catchy title… so its just Random Links for Clicking. Basically, if you’re bored here are some interesting finds for for the week:

• Uncrate – Interesting blog with random products you might want to buy
• GeekPad – Very funny and interesting tech blog
• Cyber Warfare and the Army
• The 10 Most PUzzling Ancient Artifacts
• StarCraft 2 Beta opened on Wednesday
• Cute Overload – Very cute animals that will make you smile
• Learn Morse Code- I still need to do this. Though the General and Extra licenses no longer require CW to pass
• WoW Player gets power, gets corrupted, gets banned – Interesting read about a player who obtained Martin Fury
• Stupid girl run over by her own SUV during “Ghost ride” stunt – Natural Selection at its finest
• $330,000 photo of Air Force one – Honestly, i think a monkey with a disposable camera could have taken a better photo…
• The Hunt for Gollum- Still haven’t watched this in its entirety yet. Looks amazing though. Fan created prequel to the films. (Fan fiction, not cannon)

I’ve had an HDTV for a while now. (2 or 3 years… can’t remember) I love it and don’t think i could/would ever go back to SD. Its a lot like the dial-up to broadband switch that most of us went through. Within the last couple of years I decided to subscribed to Cox’s digital cable so that i could receive their HD service. The service has slowly expanded from 10 or so channels to pretty much all of the major networks. (To numerous to count) Now i can receive all my favorite networks such as Discovery, Sci-Fi, Cartoon Network (Adult Swim), TNT, HGTV, Etc in HD. Or so i thought.

While for the most part the service is good, there are several things that annoy the crap out of me. The first is what i like to call STRETCH-O-VISION.

As you can see the stretched version makes the video/picture look like complete crap. Whoever decided that this was an acceptable practice is seriously messed up in the head. It should be fairly easy to explain to customers that the reason not all of their shows are shown in 16:9 is because some of the shows were created before 16:9 widescreen format was standardized. Any rational person will be able to understand this. The fact that network television companies use stretch-o-vision tells me that they think their viewers are complete idiots who are incapable of understanding the problem.

The other thing networks do that annoys the crap out of me is showing a 16:9 HD show in letterbox SD at 4:3. Don’t know what that techno-jargin means? Allow me to show you:

As you can see they’ve taken a perfectly good HD show (In this case Star Trek Enterprise) and simply broadcast the same letterbox 4:3 signal to both their HD channel and their SD channel. So now i get to watch a 16:9 HD show in 4:3 SD letterbox. WHY?!!?!? Can they not afford to broadcast the show in HD? Or even at 16:9? I would be perfectly happy to see it at 16:9 even if it was not HD. I’m sure they same screwed up technology that brought us Stretch-o-vision could blow up a 4:3 letterbox signal to 16:9. All they have to do is zoom in.

I just don’t understand why these networks felt the need to even purchase an HD channel from the cable or satellite providers if they weren’t ready to broadcast in HD. Sci-fi channel for example has maybe one or two shows in HD. The rest are SD in stretch-o-vision or this screwed up letterbox 4:30 format.

So i was going through some of my old files from High School and stumbled upon something that made me laugh. The assignment was for a british literature assignment my senior year. I have no memory of actually writing this. Reading it now makes me giggle.

Bicycle Bob as called by many
Has nothing, not even a penny
He rides on his bike with nothing to do
But beg for money and steal some food
When he’s not riding he’s sitting
Doing nothing but listening
He had a walkman for playing a tape
But he needed some money, so he sold it for dope
Getting high was fun, he thought
But getting busted by the cops was not
All the hastel for one little smoke
Was not enough to stop Bob from a smoke

And one day while he was high
He was hit by a car, sent flying into the sky
And that was the last we saw of Bicycle Bob
He did nothing important
Nor accomplish anything important
And when he was gone, no one remembered
The homeless man named Bicycle Bob 

Apparently today was stupid driver day.  Starting this morning when i left for work and ending this evening when i got back from my quick trip to Target, i encountered driver after driver doing the most incomprehensible stupid things. At my parking garage this morning, i encountered a lady driving around the garage looking for a parking spot in reverse. (Not just backing up to get to a spot… i mean full blown OMG ITS BACKWARDS DAY YAY driving) Then i encountered a moron who apparently didn’t know how to read the Enter and Exit signs on the parking garage gates. He couldn’t understand why the gate arm wasn’t lifting for him. Apparently no one told him he was in the Exit lane instead of the entrance lane. These were just a few of my encounters with stupid drivers today. I can only hope that tomorrow brings better driving.

In other news, I finally transferred my 55 priest from my recruit a friend classic wow only account to my main WotLK account. At the beginning of the year Jon and I established a friend link from his account to a new classic wow account i bought. (Classic wow is like $20 bucks at Walmart) This allowed us triple xp when playing together. Lucky for me, Jon was bored enough to dual-box my priest and his hunter from 0 – 55 in like two weeks. After that he leveled up like 5 or 6 more characters from 0 – 60 for me. The link finally broke about 2 months ago and i just never had the time or need to transfer the priest to my regular WoW account to finish leveling him from 60 – 80. I still don’t know when I’ll have time to do it  but I’ve always wanted an Undead Priest. I’m going to try and level him on the weekends and on boring week nights when I have nothing to do.

That’s all for now.

Btw, i’ve been giving thought to exploring my job in more detail on this blog. I’ll have to find out if posting pics and details about the NBAs equipment and setup is legal or not. (I doubt its illegal. Its there for all to see on TV anyways.. lol) I’ll have more info later.

I find that i have way to many online profiles. I have a MySpace (never use it), Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, Linkdin, this blog and site, and many many more. I don’t have time to keep up with them all. I wish there was some easy way to consolidate all of these profiles to have the same info. Then again, do i really want every knowing everything i do everywhere? Do i even want to post everything i do everywhere? I doubt it. I just wish that when i took a picture of something, i could email or upload it to one place. As of now i have to take that picture and put it on Flickr, Facebook, and here. Three freaking copies of the same photo just because i want everyone to see it. REDICIOUS.

I have no idea what to put on this thing. I find reading blogs fun. Especially the ones where people have all sorts of random shit from tech, geeky, music, movies, politics, religion etc. I actually wrote two or three political and religious based posts but removed them due to the fact that i don’t like talking about controversial topics on public blogs that have my name attached to them. I don’t mind making random comments here and there, but detailed rants and posts dealing with controversial topics tend to cause problems. Especially at the work place.

In other news, I randomly just found a bag of Penera potato chips that expire in exactly 25 days. Yay me! And here i thought i had nothing edible in the house. Since I have no other way of ending posts… i guess i’ll leave you with this:

Pardon my WoW terms. Basically I’ve been in the mood to buy a house lately. Why? Basically I’m tired of throwing away money at my apartment complex. Don’t get me wrong, i love this place. Its so much nicer than my old place. I just can’t see a reason to keep renting and giving my hard earned money away. Plus Obama is giving away free money to first time home buyers. I can’t pass up $8,000 bucks.

Thus I’ve been home shopping. I’m looking for homes in the price range of 130 – 150k. I’m hoping to get something in the 135 – 140 range so i can use a few extra bucks to upgrade my furniture and appliances. Looking in Edmond and NW OKC, i see all kinds of houses for sale. New ones and Old ones. My mother says i should look at semi-new (less than 10 years old) homes that were well kept and upgraded. I’m leaning more towards the brand new never owned option. So far 3 bedroom 2 bath seems like the best investment. (Even though i doubt I’d use the third bedroom for anything) I really want hard wood floors and a nice kitchen. Everything else is pretty much negotiable.

That said, i think i need so professional help. I’ve been looking online all week and I’m pretty over whelmed by all the options. I’ve been looking at website after website and everything is starting to run together in my head. I also don’t know specifically where in Edmond or NW OKC i want to live. Right now i’m happy with my location. I don’t know if I’m ready to move out to west Edmond in the newer developing neighborhoods. I like the looks, its just a bit of a drive to central Edmond where i do most/all of my shopping. I’m hoping to find a good realtor that will show me around and give me some good options. Suggestions are welcome!