Author Archives: Jeff Pabian

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StartUp Weekend Atlanta and Skribit

Man, what a weekend. What an honor to be part of this. This past weekend was another part of the StartUp Weekend, and it was in Atlanta. I was there with almost 70 other people. Many of them were old Mindspringer‘s so it was great to see and reconnect with them.

I was really looking forward to this since I’ve been interested in getting involved in a start up and doing more creative type of work with my technology background. Before it kicked off, folks were able to suggest their ideas with the end result being one of them, or a variation of one being selected to be worked on by the resources in the room.

There were a lot of really interesting and neat ideas discussed. We broke up into various teams like

  • Dev
  • Biz-Dev
  • Marketing / PR
  • UI
  • Creative

Then we talked about each idea with regard to our respective groups. I was in Biz-Dev and we all focused on what ideas could make some money. As we narrowed down the list it was interesting to see how the different groups thought which ideas would be successful and why. In the end, we picked the idea and I thought it was neat how those who were staunch opponents of it quickly began to get behind the idea and push it forward. Everyone was dedicated.

I knew from the attendee list that whatever we decided would probably become a Ruby on Rails-fest. One of my friends that was there was a hard core Java programmer and he felt left out so he came to help Biz-Dev.

There were plenty of people who were super busy and had plenty to do. Often, I had cycles to burn and I had a hard time finding things to do, to help out. I felt like I could have done more to help, but there were a lot of cooks, so to speak. Hopefully, I’ll be able to help out going forward.

So, what did we make? We made a Blog suggestion engine. I must admit that it is really slick and exceeded my expectations. Behold… “Skribit!”

So, if you find yourself looking for ideas to write about on your blog, you can use Skribit to help get ideas from your readers. From the FAQ:

Why Skribit?

Skribit is the first tool that allows bloggers to interact efficiently with their community. It is easy to load, easy to manage, and provides an opportunity for quick communication and input.

How does it work?

Bloggers load the widget onto their blogs. Readers click on the widget in order to submit suggestions on topics. Everyone votes on the topic via the “What’s Hopin'”.

How do I insert the widget on the blog?

Currently, we are in closed beta so the Widget is unavailable to the general public. Please contact us to be notified as soon as you can use the widget.

As one of the founders, we have access to the widget. I just found out that I am able to install it. I will try to get it up on here today at some point.

We already got some press.

And some online presences:

So, even thought I wish I could have done more, I really enjoyed it. I met a lot of really cool people, connected with old friends, and got a taste of the building a business. It was really cool.  Would I do it again?  I’d like to, for sure.

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i am out of the loop… or what?

Since I have been unemployeed and at home, I feel left out of a lot of things.  Don’t get me wrong… I am very busy and my time in front of a computer is much less these days.  I’ve been enjoying the time with the kids and my wife so that’s a great thing.  But I’ve had some eye-opening experiences.

First, I feel left out.  When something classic or really funny makes it around the office, it’s great.  But since I’ve been out of that loop, I’m missing on some stuff, (realistically, am I really?):

And there are various Youtube and Google videos that I feel like I am missing out on.  What’s the next, greatest Internet meme? I think what I am really missing, is the people I used to work with.  I wish I could spend more time with them since I still consider them my best friends.  *sniff sniff*

But seriously.  I am on the computer way less than I used to be so I guess it is conceivable I am going through some sort of withdrawal.

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mspscan.exe crashes… or ScanSrv crashes

This is totally nuts.  As you might have read, I reinstalled WinXP on a newly formated hard drive and had to reinstall Office 2003 naturally.  When I tried to scan in a doc with Microsoft Document Scanning, as soon as I hit the “scan” button, the application crashed and wanted to phone home to Microsoft and report the error. Here’s what showed up in my Event Viewer -> Application:

Faulting application mspscan.exe, version 11.0.8166.2, stamp 4616c200, faulting module mspscan.exe, version 11.0.8166.2, stamp 4616c200, debug? 0, fault address 0x00008b66.

I couldn’t find anything on Google or Google groups… nothing even close.  I did find two articles in Spanish that didn’t seem to help.   I was starting to sweat since I really needed to send a particular fax, (I use a web-based faxing service so I scan in my docs and then email them to the fax provider who sends them as a fax to my recipient).

I then searched for “microsoft document scanning crashes” and I found something that looked like a clue from somewhere:

To get this to work on our machines using ‘Microsoft Office Document
Scanning‘, we went into ‘My Computer’ from the desktop and under
‘Scanners and Cameras’ shortened the scanner’s filename to 26
characters.  Also put the recent file history settings that were
deleted previously from the registry back in place (couple of them had
really long filenames). It still works.  For us it appears the
presence of recent file history with long filenames had nothing to do
with the ‘…Document Scanning‘ not working.

You know what? It worked.  Instead of going to “My Computer” I went into “Control Panel” and changed:

  • Hewlitt-Packard OfficeJet K80 Scanner

to:

  • HP OfficeJet K80 Scanner

And it worked.  So, here I post this for you in case you need it.    This is apparently something that came up after Office SP3.  Good luck!

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i must conquer the fear of life

My title might sound somewhat philosophical but in realty, it’s the song I am listening to right now.  The title of the song is “The Risen Lord” by Will Oldham.  I’ve rated this song four stars in the past…

So where were we? Oh yeah… I haven’t posted in a long time.  I have been more busy than every since I am unemployed.  It’s been great and I feel super productive.   For the last two or three days, I had to rebuild our home PC.  I ended up buying a new motherboard, powersupply, and SATA DVD burner.  I can’t believe how cheap and powerful computer parts have become… even in the last year.  It’s nuts.   So now I have a rock solid and stable machine at home, and my wife is happy.   Okay, she’s not happy about how much I spent, but when I explained to her we spent way less than if we bought a new computer, she saw the logic and was cool about it.  *whew*

For those interested, here’s my shopping list:

I didn’t include my RAM.  You know what’s nuts? When I bought my Sony DVD burner, it was almost $150.  This Lite-On I bought is more faster and has more features and it cost $39.  Incredible.  I’m happy.  But I’m not too happy with the on-board video on the motherboard.  For now, it is a necessity since I had a hot-shot AGP card.  Now I need to find a deal on a PCI-E video card, then I’ll really be in business.   Oh, and everything is moving to SATA… so if you are thinking about buying a new motherboard to get an upgrade, make sure you have enough IDE ports on the new motherboard or move your data to SATA drives… hence my SATA dvd burner purchase.
So, tinkerin’ around with our computer took valuable time away from some other important things I have been working on.   (You know who you are), but now I am back on track.  I also ended up buying some bad RAM from a guy on Craigslist, (he says he didn’t know it was bad and promised to mail me a check back… I hope he does the right thing).   I manged to sneak my new new laptop RAM into my home computer purchase the other day.

Today, I got a bunch of stuff done so I feel pretty good.  I doubt you, the reader find any of this interesting, so I promise a more juicy, technical post later this week.

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music

I think I got this work out with a WP plugin called easytube. I hope this works…
If you are a reader of my blog, you’ll see that every once in a while I’ll post some music related stuff. Truth is, I love music… but not the top 40 crap or the pop music. I cut my teeth on college radio when we moved here from Chicago in 1984. My first record/LP I bought was Devo, New Traditionalists. I’ve always enjoyed music that wasn’t part of the mainstream. Don’t get me wrong, there is good popular music, but I just hate the souless crap that is pumped out nowaday. This is something I can speak with some authority on. During my college years I worked at record stores for a good… hmmm, let me see… 1988 until 1995. I was part of the LP to CD conversion and even then I remember when CD’s were sold in the “longbox” before they went to the jewel case only product that you see today. I remember when I laughed outloud when some kid asked me, “What is an LP?”

Even today, I prefer college radio to mainstream radio. However, I have found myself appreciating some fo the classics. I’ve always like the Who, but lately I have begun to appreciate Led Zepplin.

Okay, I have distracted myself from my main point. You should see this video. It’s great. If you don’t get it, then maybe you should tune into some spoon-fed pablum for the masses:

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to bring you down. It’s just a beautiful video that’s done really well. So, dear reader, in order to balance things out… I submit this nugget that I believe is completely underrated, even despised among the true fans. Check it out:

This video is significant for many reasons. I might need to start a separate post about it. Neil Young is one of those guys that is a creative genius. Whether you like or hate the “Shocking Pinks” era, you have to appreciate the effort that Neil put out. Anyways, I’m getting tired but thought I’d leave you with this Cornershop video. I love this song… and whole album is really good, too.

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i gave circuit city another chance…

I rarely shop at the big box stores. I even rarely bite on something on sale at a big box store. When I was in college, I opened a Best Buy store when they came to Atlanta. To make a long story short, I felt like I sold my soul to the devil. Since I had worked there, it has been very hard to bring myself to shop there. I know how the employees were treated and I knew the story of the people I worked with. To put it in simple terms, Best Buy wasn’t for me. I wasn’t into selling something someone didn’t need or selling extended warranties, (yeah, they’re a waste of money: pure profit). I don’t want to get into that since that’s not the point of my post. My point is that I understand somewhat the mentality of the retail sales person having been there myself.

As I said, I rarely shop at the big box stores. But my wife has been saying she would really like a laptop. I tried to hook her up with a 1Ghz Ubuntu Dell laptop and it was okay for email, but just a hair beyond her tech level. She wanted Microsoft. Okay, I thought. Now, tomorrow is our 10th anniversary.

I scoured the hot deal websites and found a nice $399 laptop at Circuit City after rebates. This wasn’t a monster laptop but it would be excellent for what she wanted to do; email, surfing, editing, etc. Any real heavy lifting would be done by our home-built XP desktop so this would really just be a satelite.

So I checked online for instore stock and made a special trip to a Circuit City that still had the laptop I wanted in stock. I found it on display and took it for a test drive. I don’t know anything about Vista but I know enough to tell if the laptop would be fine. I thought it was a good deal.

I waved down some slack-jawed EMO kid and told him I wanted a laptop. When I showed him the one I wanted, he went, “Oh…” and then the conversation went like this… (btw… he was identified as a supervisor on his name tag).

EMO: “Oh, so you want this one. What are you going to do with it?”

Me: “Surfing, email… that sort of thing.”

EMO: “Are you planning on upgrading it?”

Me: “Yeah, probably.”

EMO: “Oh, well you can do that. 512MB of ram is barely enough to do anything. In fact, 2GB is barely enough to do anything on this laptop.”

Me: “Yeah? I think it will be okay for what I am planning on doing with it.”

EMO: “Yeah, well.. the processor isn’t fast enough to run Vista.”

Me: “I’m sure it will be fine.”

EMO: “Okay, here’s the details on the return policy… blah blah blah and being slow isn’t a reason to return it.”

Me: “I am willing to accept the risk.”

I was so mad at this little punk. Obviously, he doesn’t know me from Adam, but I think I do know a little about computers. Clearly, he was trying to up-sell me into something else. Thankfully, he didn’t bother asking me about the extended warranty because I would have walked out. I was fuming.

So I paid for it and picked it up. Everyone else at the store was really nice. As I left the parking lot, I began doubting my purchase. Maybe it wasn’t good enough…or I should have gotten more bang for my buck. Then I realized that was this kids job… to cast doubt into someone’s decision to purchase something. When I made that realization, I felt like I had been violated. I swear, I was 10 seconds away from walking out of that store and have them loseWeight Exercise my sale because of this kid. I would have but that was the only store within my area that still had the laptop in stock.

What would have happened if this kid tried to talk to me and told me why he liked another laptop (similarly priced)? He could have opened with, “Yeah that is a good deal on that laptop, but maybe you should consider one of these because…” instead of trying to scare me. Like I said, I felt violated and doubted myself. Maybe I was more mad at myself for letting him get to me.

As a gut-check, I stopped at an Office Depot to see what they had on sale. I still maintain I got a good deal at Circuit City and I am sure it will be great for my wife. I might upgrade the RAM but I’ll wait for a deal on that.

The point of my post is that, no wonder people are afraid of computers and technology because you got chowder-heads at these stores trying to scare people to spend more money. Having been a Best Buy employee many years ago, I am familiar with the sales tactic of F.U.D. and I hate myself for almost falling for it. Grrrr!

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the unattended garden

After a most excellent weekend, my thoughts are heady and deep. Yeah, I did have a great weekend, thanks for asking. Today, on the wind down, I was listening to Ian Brown and Massive Attack. They both sound so good on my new receiver. The guy across the street let me borrow the Ian Brown CD and I was telling him how good Massive Attack was and that he should check out the “Lemon Song” by Led Zeppelin. I used to forward people websites as a way to introduce people to new things. But I backed off of that since many of my reference websites have been left to wither, or as Nick Cave refers to in “Bring it on” an unattended garden.

My case in point. Check out the once awesome and mighty Massive Attack website:

When I first saw this site, I was awestruck. It was one of the more advanced and ellaborate flash sites I had seen. Now, you can’t help but be distracted by the xanax and Viagra spam. Now a days, it isn’t rocket science to block this pharmaceutical spam, but obviously no one in charge of the site gives a rats ass or even is aware of the current state.

So this brings me to my next point. For the last year, I have been cultivating an online presence. As I mentioned before, this was a conscious shift in my thinking. Up until this year, I tried to remain more or less anonymous on the Internet. Then I decided to change things around when I decided to look for a new job.

Some of the fuel for tonights post came from the latest issue of Details Magazine, (no, I would never subscribe to this myself buy my wife got me a free subscription). There was an article about networking in it. The article didn’t have anything new to me or any secret knowledge, but it was a reminder how much networking is an important activity for anyone in the job market and arguably any professional.

What does this mean? Well, if you go through the effort to have an online presence and have it mean anything, you got to care and feed and water it. Now a days, that can be a small chore. Personally, I’m on the following sites to make me look like I actually know something:

All of these are important components of what makes my online presence. Yeah, I know potential employers might be looking at this so, so I try to keep it somewhat clean, but I want to make sure it is an accurate representation of who I am. I can do that without being smarmy and cursing without due cause.

I am surprised to find out that I really enjoy this aspect of the Internet. I guess it really is like taking care of a garden and making sure it grows. You got to make an effort to keep all of it up to date. Actually, it’s not that bad if you enjoy doing it… and i do.

Keep the weeds out and make sure your online presences it lookin’ good. I’ve been at the same company for 12 years so I consider myself to be a n00b when it comes to networking, but I am getting more and more clearer on how it is all supposed to work. I love talking to people so this is a great extension on who I am. Part of it is a little about me growing out to be more of an extrovert, or at least a little outgoing.

View Jeffrey Pabian's profile on LinkedIn

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a couple of minutes of fame

Tonight, I had the sheer pleasure of being in the live studio audience for a TV special.  If you live in Georgia, you might know who Clark Howard is.  He’s great.  I’ve been listening to him for years and think he’s a great person that has helped a lot of people.  Tonight we taped a show for next Monday’s airing of a real estate special.  My sister-in-law and I were picked to be in the audience.

Some of you know that I am a real estate investor, property manager, and  agent.  My sister-in-law is my broker and we have worked together on a couple of interesting deals.    I have intended this to be my “Plan B” but as you might know, now is not the best time to fall back on this… maybe just not yet.

Anyways, we both enjoyed the show and the message Clark had to say.  If anything, I am more convinced that my philosophy on real estate is definitely solid and on track.  So, that’s a good thing and I am looking good, (if I do say so myself).

I don’t want to take anything away from the show so I won’t post pictures or what was discussed until the show airs.   The show airs on 9/10 @ 8PM Eastern on Channel 2, WSB.  Be sure to set your TiVos’.

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good things afoot

So, those of you paying any attention know that I got notice that I am let go from my current employer. But fret not since I am in excellent company. This year, I have been focusing on creating my “online presence” from blogs, to Twitter, LinkedIn, and recently Facebook. Honestly, I am very proud of my efforts since it allows me to talk about stuff that really gets me excited and even happy. At the very least, it’s an expression of who I am.

On to the future! I am ready to find my dream job and do something that I completely love. An old friend, Lance Weatherby, wrote an excellent post for folks in my position.

Lance pretty much summed up everything I had learned and read about this year. I found it a very helpful post. And I am sure it will help other people in a similar situation.

My wife’s cousin who has done international business gave me a similar lesson, although it was in a 45 minute care ride. His tactics were more for non-tech jobs, but the premise is the same; you got to network.

Having been at the same company for 12+ years, I heard that “you got to network” from every angle. But what does that mean? I had a really hard time figuring that out. For me, it really meant, be yourself. That’s a tough lesson. I guess some people can “sell themselves” but networking with other people means to me to be able to talk about what you know, love, do passionately. Don’t try to bullshit the bullshitter, (as my Dad used to say). Somewhere, along the line, someone I really respected said, “To be free you have to be totally responsible.” That means be honest. I can’t / won’t lie to my wife, employer, friend, etc. I simply can’t do it anymore. It’s not always easy, but I now see it’s the only way I can be. Having said that, I defer to Henry Winkler in “The Waterboy.”

Back to the “networking” issue. Of course I realize you have to sell yourself at some point. That’s the part I need to know more about.More later, but I am feeling very positive.

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yeah, I removed a post…

If you happened by earlier today, you might have seen a post about my currently employment.  I did get a severance package today, and since they were very clear about the risks of losing the package and gave very specific guidelines, I’ve decided to take down the post I made previously, since my wife would kill me if I lost the package!  😉  I am playing it safe and did this of my own accord.

Thanks to you that sent words of kindness.  Whew, I’m glad it’s over.