Charlie’s Haus

I should have mentioned that the video yesterday is from the documentary “Playing for Change.” The Playing For Change Foundation provides resources (facilities, supplies, educational programs, etc) to musicians and communities around the world. They put together a bunch of songs and are selling them to help fund projects they are doing. Unfortunately their website is down currently, but you can buy the CD from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Playing-Change-DVD-Various-Artists/dp/B001QOOCTE/

I also found a cool article on Grandpa Elliot from 1996 on the NYTimes website: http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/25/us/new-orleans-journal-music-draws-the-crowd-the-act-pays-the-bills.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

And now for something completely different….

This weekend Im helping my grandma move but called my Dad and he was free so we are going to go fishing in the morning. It will be my first time out this year…Im pretty excited. First because Im going fishing, but also its a chance to spend some time with my Dad….I dont get to do that very often.

Have a great weekend everyone!

I forgot to post that right before I went to Vegas, Mandi and I went to a new restaurant here in Madison called The Bayou.  I had the Bourbon St Special Po’ Boy which is Shrimp and Crawfish.  Let me tell you it was out of this world!  The only thing it was missing is the garlic sauce from New Orleans Take Out.  The bread is from a place in New Orleans and was extra tasty.  I would totally go back there.  When we were there it was before the grand opening so they were still getting up to speed.  They didnt have their voodoo juice yet and they were kind of slow.  Im sure it will get better as they get used to it.

The reason I remembered that is because I saw a video today that reminded me of New Orleans.  Its a video with a montage of different singers singing Stand by Me.  One of the guys is Grandpa Elliott.  I want to go and see him perform really badly…maybe someday soon, who knows.  Here is the video, he’s near the begining.

Been real busy lately with odds and ends of stuff.  I just ordered all our lighting controls for the theater side of the basement.  Im going to be using Insteon stuff there to do some scene controls.  Someday Ill buy the plugin so I can control them with my remote, but not today.  Ill be not lazy and use the switch I guess =D  Cant wait though.

The basement is actually getting somewhat near completion.  I have started to set the travertine hearth on the fireplace (will hopefully be finishing the majority of that tonight).  After that, I can finally finish up with the pine planks on the walls.  Then finish the lighting and some other odds and ends and I will be done.  Im hoping a few months at the most.  Its really hard to work on it when its so nice out.  Maybe we can have a grand opening sometime this fall, that would be sweet.

I went and saw Star Trek last Friday, it was awesome!  The characters had the same voices and quirks as the originals, so it was pretty cool to see that.  The movie was really well done.  Speaking of movies, whats up with all the good movies this summer?  Not that I am complaining, but there is a bunch of them.  Next is Terminator Salvation, then Transformers 2, Public Enemies, the new Harry Potter, GI Joe, and finally Inglourious Basterds.  Those are just theater quality films.  There are a bunch of others that look good too like UP!, Funny People, Land of the Lost, Year One, etc.  I guess the Theatres wont be hurting for business this summer.  Well at least ours anyways since I really dont see too many movies there, but there are 6 more this summer alone that I will be seeing on the Ultrascreen.  If you want to check out the full lineup go here:  http://www.imdb.com/features/summermovieguide/2009/month/may and then near the top you can look month by month.

Well that is all for now, time to go home and do real work =D

Well MMS 2009 (Microsoft Management Summit) is officially over here in Las Vegas.  It was a good and tiring week here.  Learned a ton of stuff, met some good people, and had a couple of long nights/mornings!  In fact, note to self, anytime you meet some guys and they suggest playing some beer pong, find something else to do =D  That was a bad morning.  I missed two sessions because of that!  Good thing the two sessions werent ones that I really was that interested in seeing anyways.

The sessions this year were very informative, and its interesting to see how I can work some of the stuff into my job.  One thing that I am going to do for sure is OSD (operating system deployment).  Its one of those things that may be a little time consuming in the begining setting it up, but after that will be so much better.  Instead of putting in the windows cd and going through the prompts, you just boot up and tell it which image to grab.  Then an hour or two later, you have a machine that is fully configured, and fully setup with all the software ready to go.  It really speeds things up and all the computers you deploy are now the same, doesnt matter who did the install.

Learned a lot more about app-v (application virtualization) and some cool new group policy stuff.  Also learned a couple of cool new windows 7 things I didnt know about (a trivial one…with a bunch of windows up, grab one and shake it…everything else will minimize….now shake it again and everything comes back…how cool is that!). 

All in all, the conference is a bargain for the price.  I learned so much more than a single class could ever offer, and I learned it from the people who actually help make the products.  I hope Im able to attend next year.