Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Expedience

A few days ago, I saw an ad by Microsoft for their business intelligence stuff; naturally, my interest was piqued, considering that is what my company does.

Dawn was watching something live on our Comcast DVR. I suppose there is probably a way to record the video from the DVR to a computer, but I don't have any good, easy way right now, nor time to play with the nearly easy solutions (connect output to digital video camera, then transfer it to the computer).

A few days before this came up, I upgrade the software on my CrackBerry. This was a reasonably easy process, and I didn't lose much. I have found a number of nice UI enhancements, and since I put a MicroSD media card I happen to have into the BB, I can now record video as well as taking pictures. I am sure the quality won't be very good, given how bad the photos tend to be.

Nevertheless, I was able to queue up the ad and record it from the TV on my blackberry and then email it to some of my colleagues.

I found this rather amusing...

Thursday, January 15, 2009

A Brave New World

Rachel started reading the front page of the Chron today. She's 7, and there are definitely things I'd rather she not worry about just yet.

She read a couple of sentences about the BART officer who killed a man who was prone on the platform with his hands behind his back. She only got that far because then she started asking questions and talking about it.

She wanted to know what "prone" meant, and why the officer shot him. The large picture with the article was of a demonstration outside Oakland City Hall at which a number of people lay prone on the ground and chanted "please don't shoot", so we discussed what a demonstration is (in that context).

We didn't really have a lot of time as we were getting ready to leave, but it was quite fascinating. If a little disappointing that she is starting to get this stuff.