Work – blog.tristanPipo.com (Archive)

2010 – What a year..So Far…

So looking back at 2009 it kinda just flew by. It seemed like there was always something to do or somewhere to go. But yet I always found myself saying “Nothing much going on. Same stuff different day” I sometimes worry that I am becoming incredibly boring. Like lately been having to work with Raleigh and her grandma just getting out the hospital. Which has been kinda taxing but it’s what the good boyfriend does. So I am happy to be there for her.

But I am still I am never sure what I can talk about or mention. People say “How have you been since I have seen you last” I could talk about my trip to Maui which was awesome. Or the video I made with my sister that at last check was almost up to 400 hits on YouTube. But all I can ever seem to find myself talking about is work. Nobody really cares about work. It’s something we all do. We all have different jobs but it just seems easier to talk about.

I could talk someones ear off about all things tech. But I always assume people would find that boring. I think I need to quit thinking of myself as boring. I need to just assume that if someone asks what I have been up to that I should just tell them. I will also do a better job of telling the readers that still come to TristanPipo.com and now that these get imported in Facebook those readers as well.

But as January winds down to a close. I hope everyone is ready for February and the lovely marketing holiday of Valentines Day where single people feel guilty about not having a mate and people in relationships worry about not making their partner as happy as they could be.

I would love to hear what’s been going on with you since our last chat.

Lately

I have been working on “June Vacation Part 2 ” since those stories tend to be a great deal more epic I like to put more effort into them. Making cheesy pictures and finding related links, etc that takes a while and only work on those in my freetime. This is a blog post that I decided to start at 10:37pm at night and just a bit of free form thinking composed into the digital realm.

I purchased a new MacBook Pro and have found myself undertaking other projects mostly cutting together videos for mostly personal use. Things I have captured for my family etc and been publishing those internally. I miss the blogging realm when I felt like I had a bunch of people reading. But lately I feel like my blog has become a lost cause in some ways. They say that a place with people in it attracts more customers. I tend to think a blog is like that as well. The more people read it the more people want to read it. Currently my RSS feed has 26 subscribers by my count and my Podcast still has 16. It was recently removed from the Apple Store since it hasn’t been updated in two years. But I like the thought that 26 people still subscribe to the blog.

I feel like since I finished school and got an internship that turned into my full time career I have been shoved into what the American Adult should be. I have a career and I get up at the same time every day and go to work and find myself learning and pushing myself constantly. Working in the IT world is always interesting I must say. It never stops evolving. I love my job and happy to be employed but sometimes a bit more variety would be nice you know. But work is work and you can’t really expect things to be different all the time. But it’s like I never expected being an adult to be the same all the time. I was never warned of this and none of my previous jobs gave me any clue since they were always rather free form. You are doing Job A today and Job B tomorrow under the same roof. But who knows maybe this is a bit of a slump.

I have been in a relationship for two years now. She is a wonderful and amazing girl. But we have our moments like everyone does. I remember being single and going on all these dates with women that didn’t really fit me. I think it was more about finding some female attention then a real companion. A great deal of women I found to be rather insane. But I was also a great deal younger then and it seems like as I age women also begin to make a bit more sense. I had a few do a bunch of mean stuff to me and I got to do that to one woman. I felt like a dick about it afterwards then she did that typical thing that women do say some mean things about me and life went on. I still have yet to figure out why women always need to have the last word in every argument. But I am happy now and I try to make my girlfriend happy.

Friends seems to be an odd topic as well I think that goes along with the adult thing. Most of my friends all live at different distances and it makes it hard to go and see them. I still chat with them online or via SMS or phone but face to face contact it all has to be scheduled with everyone now. It’s not like the days of old where I could call a few people and say lets hang out. I kinda miss those days but kinda don’t. Like it used to be “Hey I’m Bored Fix It” sent off to a bunch of people in my phone. Group used to get together and just hang out and it was great. I just don’t find myself doing that lately. Most of the people I hang out with and call my friends are coworkers. Which is great but at times I miss my other friends. There are internet friends as well they can be cool the people that follow me on Twitter and my Facebook friends they are cool and all. But again the whole internet thing can be scary for some people. I send out a twitter update “Anyone wanna go see a movie” I don’t get many responses and if I do they are things like “I would but I am in Spokane” the thought it nice but I also don’t see the point in responding if you can’t go. That is a bit of a mixed bag and would love to dive into the social networking trend of quizzes later.

But as with all things this post must come to an end. Thank you for taking the time to read and I hope everyone will continue to do so.

Happy Belated To Me

Also a Happy Friday to you! So thought I would take some time to write about my Birthday

experience. Raleigh surprised me on May 12th 2009 with tickets to the Flight of the Conchords concert at the Paramount. I must say an epic show. I love Flight of the Conchords I got Raleigh hooked a bit as well. It all happened about a year ago actually.

We were down in Portland for Memorial Day and we stayed in a Holiday Inn. They had an HDTV in there and HBO. I must say one of my pet peeves is people that have an HDTV and don’t have it setup properly. But I can also understand that they have to pump analog to all these TV’s in a Hotel so most cable systems decode the digital signal and multiplex down their own systems so you can view all channels. So end result most Hotels with HDTV’s don’t have the HD setup properly. Also drives me nuts when going to someones house with an HDTV and they have their cable or satellite box hooked up via RCA. But anyways that was a tangent that has nothign to do with this. Well we had HBO in the room and they were rerunning some episodes of Flight of the Conchords.

It happened to be the episode featuring the awesome song of Business Time.

After that I bought their CD’s and Season one on DVD. It also spawned me to get HBO. Also for Entourage. After that HBO is like a bit of an obsession for me. I really only have it for their TV shows and don’t really watch the movies. But anyways the concert was awesome. One thing that was interesting was that they had someone doing Sign Language in the front. I must say I bet that ladies arms were tired. I wish I could have made out the motions for curse words. Also I can’t imagine doing sign language for a song is easy.

I must say that the concert was epic and thank you so much Raleigh for the awesome gift. In the meantime pretty much went along as normal. Nothing out of the ordinary and then the 20th came around.

I went to work on my Birthday and must say it was what you would expect for work on your Birthday. I went fairly low key didn’t tell anyone except for the people at work on my Facebook Friends List.

Raleigh picked me up from work and we went to Red Mill scored a Creamsicle Shake. I have been wanting one of those for probably a year now. I must say it was awesome and delicious. After that we went home and we were planning on going to see a movie but tiredness overwhelmed us so we popped on the AppleTV and rented a movie. Raleigh got me some awesome video games. She picked up the Metal Gear Solid collection. Nice to replace all my old games. Metal Gear Solid 1, 2 and 3. Also picked up God of War for the PSP which is a totally awesome and radical game. I must say seeing a game designed back in 1998. I remember getting it as a Christmas Present from my Dad. But now playing it on a HDTV 11 years later I must say I thought these graphics were crazy awesome. Comparing it to Metal Gear Solid 4 it’s like night and day. Time to play with some nostolgia.

This weekend we are heading to Portland so I call that Birthday Extension 2009 Memorial Day Awesome Fun Time. Pictures will be posted as things happen.

Blogging Year 1 – 2003

2003 was an interesting year for me. I really got inspired to blog when I was reading slashdot and saw that google had purchased blogger.com. So I was like what the hell I will check it out and found that having this easy engine to write down my thoughts to be a rather nice release for me. I was in a relationship that was on it’s way to an end. I was working with SiriusBackstage.com as a Forum Jockey and had been around the Satellite Radio business for a while now. I was working for Best Buy as a Computer Tech.

I think the two highlights of the year were when I came back to Seattle for 3 weeks for my sisters graduation. I got to borrow my aunts truck when I was visiting so I had freedom to just do whatever the hell I wanted when I wanted. Went to a few Lan Parties and all and all it was a great vacation to see my friends.

When I was living in Indiana I honestly had no real friends. I had all of my internet peeps that I connected with and that was enough to make time pass easily enough. But I had no such happiness in Indiana. Which resulted in the end of my time their. The girl I had been seeing broke it off with me in December of 2003. To which I promptly got on the internet and let my mother know of the situation. The resolution was I could be out in two weeks to tie up all of my affairs. I flew my buddy Darin out from Seattle to Indiana. We drove from Indiana to Seattle in a few days with threat of a winter storm at all moments. I have been really meaning to finish writing about that drive since it was incredibly interesting. But have just never been able to find the time to do so.

I got back to Seattle a few days before Christmas it was the first Christmas I had spent at home in 2 years. That was pretty much 2003 in a nutshell.

I am going to write up a yearly summary daily up until this year. Friday-2003, Monday-2004, Tuesday-2005, Wednesday-2006, Thursday 2007-2008. Let’s see how well I do to meet that goal. =)

TristanPipo.com Podcast Show #12 – Getting Back in the Swing of Things

I haven’t done a spoken podcast in a while for myself. I have done a few for other people. But last Friday I was feeling a bit inspired to record something to give it a go see if I still had a knack for it.

So I thought I would publish the raw uncut results for you to get a bit of feedback from the listeners and readers of the blog. I truly miss podcasting and wish I could do it more. But I think the dynamic is much better with another person.

If you subscribe to my podcast feed at /podcast/Podcast.xml you should be getting the update next time you update your feed readers.

If you would like to leave a voice comment: +1 206 973 7886

This runs 18 mins and has some music and some other things. Thoughts are appreciated. I tried to bang this out in about an hour.

Blog Post #820 – “It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.”

Props go out to the our first president George Washington. The only president who cannot blame his issues on the previous one. Being the Deist that he was he gets my props for being somewhat awesome. One quote that I picked out of a movie I saw by my homeboy Richard Dawkins titled The Root of All Evil? Had me thinking the world should check it out. “We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”

But I got to thinking I am not a man of excuses. So anyways. Hey how have you been? I tested an experiment on the myspace collective yesterday. I posted a Bulletin. The Subject was “Good Morning” and the body said “That was it. Thanks for Reading” I recieved 49 responses from my friends list of 140 or so. Now I got to thinking that is a great deal more then I get on my personal site. So now I need to come up with a system that will automatically take my personal blog. Extract the Post. Send it to MySpace put the add a comment link at the bottom of the MySpace Bulletin. So I sent the myspace team a few e-mails asking if they had an API I could look at to see how I can push data to myspace. But knowing that realm they will probably not be very open to this. I also joined the Dev community on the WordPress sites to see if anyone has anything like this. Then I could probably get this easily converted to blogger and all that fun stuff.

If myspace was like all the other Web2.0 things I could just add an RSS feed to my profile and have that go with whatever. But myspace doesn’t have a functional RSS parser and the RSS feeds from the blogs they have are not exactly easy to use. 30Boxes.com seems to manipulate myspace RSS feeds in a good way. I just like to manage all my feeds and sites through Bloglines.com and taking the time to scroll around myspace just is a bit more effort then I want to put forth to see that Girl#12 has a survey up that she is more like an orange cat then a blue cat.

I was told I need to post some graphics in my posts. Graphics lead to load time and well I have no issue doing it. So some graphics.

Nuke the Whales!

This was spawned from a quote from Nelson from the Simpons. When Lisa was dating him so to speak. She walked into his room and he had a poster that said “Nuke the Whales” Lisa was like umm. Nelson said “Gotta Nuke Something” Now as pointless as this is. I always chuckle about this. The concept of Nuking all the Whales. Maybe I am just retarded but ever since I have seen that I always get a chuckle every time.

I don’t think I mentioned this before but last Saturday I went and got a haircut at a Super Cuts. I must say they have a system that confused me. Most hair places you pay with a credit card and there is a line for a tip on the recipt but this time the lady asked me “Do you want to add anything extra?” all I could think about was hmm hair products I am good thank you. I didn’t know that was for the tip and I didn’t tip the woman that cut my hair. So I feel bad and that I shouldn’t ever use their services ever again. So to the blonde woman that seemed mad at the world I am sorry I didn’t tip you.

I bought a new bed. I must say they are rather expensive and I feeling rather broke. I forgot to move some cash from savings to checking and I got hit with an overdraft fee. Curses I used to have that account protection that would automatically do that. So I got hit with 2 overdraft fees that total $50. Curse the Banks for that.

So the Soda Issue. I have quit drinking soda. I am sticking to clear fluids at work. We get all the free soda we desire. But I have switched from Diet Coke to Dasani, Apple Juice and Coffee. I must say I feel a lot better. I did have a Coke when I was hanging out with Chris and I was nervous about it. But been doing fairly well. Feel refreshed hopefully drop a few lbs.

Been a bit of a slow blogging week. I must admit I have had a pretty rough week. Just been a little overwhelmed with the move and work being crazy. I do apologize Hope all has been well and wish everyone the best.

The Updates of the Week

So Saturday what happened last Saturday.

Well I went to sign for a new apartment but after we found out some more details that kinda fell through so I had to deal with a hassel with the bank to cancel some checks and $15 to stop a check and then had to put my account on alert for anything if someone tried to do a background check with my bank for a certain place and that was just a great deal of hassel. But got it taken care of.

I was supposed to have a date last saturday but the girl I was going out with hadn’t made any contact at all during the week. Then she calls me up on Saturday and says what time am I picking you up at the ferry dock? I was like I haven’t heard from you all week and you are calling me 10 mins before asking when you are picking me up. I removed it from my schedule and made other plans. Then she started freaking out and saying how sorry she was and wanted to reschedule so I set that up for this weekend but again I have not heard a thing so it has been removed. This girl seemed a bit crazy anyways when she was asking about which wedding dress I would prefer a bride to wear.

So I went and saw Smoking Aces the wonderful new movie. I hadn’t heard much about it except for the little video clips that were on IGN video before reviews for Wii Games. So I was expecting a movie that had some elements of Lucky Number Slevin which is a truly great movie. It’s like a modern pulp fiction of sorts. Well it had that feel to it but it had a bit of the linear and non linera elements that made it great. But Smoking Aces is a total mob hitman style movie that is just pleasant and Alicia Keys in a Dominatrix outfit. Was very pleasant to watch.

Sunday was pretty cool day went to go check out a Condo which shall be dubbed the Pipo Pad. Right next to the Ferry on Bainbridge so I would have a 2 min walk to the ferry and I would get to sleep in an extra hour in the morning and I would get home 90 mins early every day. Good times. I was pretty tired all day Sunday went and had breakfast at this place called the streamliner had probably the 2nd best Biscuits and Gravy of my life. Since I don’t like eggs and I am either left with Waffles, French Toast for breakfast at a diner the only other option really is biscuits and gravy. So I tend to go for that and judge the breakfast on the biscuits and gravy. The best was at this litle hole in the wall place me and Darin stopped off at in Missouri and that was crazy insane. If you want to check out something really delicious you should check out my http://del.icio.us/tristanpipo page this web2.0 stuff is sweet as hell.

Monday was a day dealing with getting everything settled out. The old apartment I decided I didn’t want called in my credit check and I was like hey I told you I didn’t want it you might as well stop because I put a stop payment on the check so you are just going to cause a big issue. So they stopped and I have not heard anything of it. Which was sweet. The new place called and got all the paperwork to sign this weekend.

I must say 30Boxes has this thing called the Truithness Factor which is on a scale of 1-9 based on how “connected” you are and how you use the service. I scored a 9 and since I totally dig this site they have a donation button so I donated $5 and got a special star next to my name. But in donating I have gotten invites from a few more people in Twitter. Which is addicting as well So my Twitter Page with 30boxes and my blog seem to be getting a great deal of exposure.

But lets see Tuesday I went to the Mall to go pickup a bus / ferry commuter pass $114.70 for a months worth of unlimited bus and ferry. Which is a steal for a deal. Since it costs $1.25 for the bus each way so $2.50 and then $6.50 to walk on the ferry. Plus the fact I don’t need to wait in the line to pay I just walk right on makes life incredibly easy. I also picked up Seasons 5, 6, 7, 8 of Red Dwarf the great show on the BBC. Barnes and Nobel had it Buy one Season get one Free. So that was totally sweet plus 10% off with the BN card. Thanks go out to Raleigh for that one.

A buddy of mine sent me 1GB stick of RAM for my laptop which is nice going from 1GB to 2GB I really need to upgrade to a 15” MacBook Pro. Leopard please come out soon. Please!

A good friend of mine has been odd lately. He joined this thing called Quixtar which is basically Amway spawned as a new company. Now I don’t have anything pleasant to say about this Pyramid Scheme. A while ago he basically said I was making the dumbest decesion of my life for not getting into this and that I could own my own business. Which I tend to view as total bullshit.

The whole concept of Quixtar is basically a pyramid. You have one guy at the top Quixtar who gets some more people that go out and get more people to pawn off Vitamins and Energy Drinks and other shitty products at 300% on average above retail to morons. So the concept is that Ollie has basically gone to everyone he knows to get them to sign up underneath him to sell this stuff via a website. Now the concept for this idea is that you go to his quixtar page. Sign in and then it redirects you to a vitamin page or best buy or whatever and people purchase from you. I have the same concept for Apple and iTunes but I don’t force it upon you. If you want to click great if not no worries. To run this site costs about $112 a year. Revenue from iTunes clicks or someone checking out an iPod link more then covers that. But anyways I have done my research from peoples experiences with the company and I even found a Dateline Investigation on Quixtar.

If you would like to check that out I suggest you do /file/video/dateline_quixtar.wmv but I have yet to find anything good about this company. But Ollie says I need to speak with lawyers and doctors that he has spoken to and I should find IRS tax filings about the whole thing. I could really care less about that because well if you do Quixtar fulltime if you make more then $70 a month you are in the top 11% of earners. But Ollie swears he is going to be a millionare about the whole ordeal.

But he called me Wednesday Night to bitch me out because I have been telling people all this negative stuff and since I present a valid argument and people tend to see my way and we know all the same people I am cutting into his business of propigating bullshit so he can make money and he called me a Fucking Prick on the phone.

I was saying I would love to speak to you about this in a respectful manner over dinner or lunch. Then he went on a slight tangent about how busy he was. Now I have known Ollie since I was the age of 11 and I was bothered by the fact not that I was being called a fucking prick everyone is entitled to think that and I totally encourage you to express that to me but do explain why. I will not be bothered I actually love that brutal honesty. But his argument that I was taking away from his “Business” didn’t really seem to hold much water because he was just doing a McJob for some other person above him above him. I always get a chuckle when people get truly mad because of how they get bothered by how I don’t really show any emotion in such matters. They try to attack my character. I really should have been on the Debate team in High School. I did it in College and was quite good at it as I get a stupid chuckle about I was a Master Debater. Someone has a real hard time arguing with you if you keep a smile on your face and pleasant tonality to your voice when they are trying to argue with you. They don’t know what to do and when you have that going for you a few things can happen this will either upset the person more because they tend to feel like you are not communicating with them on their level. Or they ponder what does this person know that I don’t.

But I must say since Quixtar came around it has caused a great deal of drama. According to what I know is not correct because the information has not come directly from Quixtar or the IRS or the “Older Life Experienced People” that Ollie knows. I went out into the world and spoke to people that have been in the “business” and various people’s experiences and Dateline. I think information like Ollies I tend to take like a grain of salt because well most people that do only Quixtar cannot afford to hire someone to pursue legal action against them for the bullshit they propagate. But I also view this like if I go to a store that works on commission. Everyone knows what the markup is and they are going to try and sell me something by telling me anything so that it sounds good even though I may not want it. I am one hell of an anal person and like to have a balanced view to try and keep unbias on things. But I also like to know what I am talking about. My father did amyway back in the day. I know how it works even when I am told I don’t know how it works. But who knows sucks that Ollie is trying to take advantage of everyone he knows so he can make a small fraction of coin.

That turned into a rant that I didn’t intend. But still not sure what crossroad I am with the Ollie fellow. But he wants me to present what I know. He has tried to present what he knows but eh. I get much more help from a forum of people that have experience with a product for support then then the actual company itself since they are looking after their interests. Had an issue like this when I was working with SiriusBackstage.com

Interesting Times Indeed.

Let’s Talk About Some Cool Stuff

Well I must say that one of the most recent cool experiences I had was when I was looking for the offical rules of Ultimate Frisbee and in my search for a frisbee that could fly a bit further I came across the FlashFlight! We had our first test run in a field last night after I had some Thai Food. *Spills a Bit of Beer On Myself, Chuckle _beerfriday* So we thought these light up frsibees they are really bright I bought the Red One. But when it’s dark out you really can’t see who you are throwing to. So we are woking on a solution for that.

Another Note I went over on my cell phone which is rather amazing since I have never done that in my life. So I upgraded my plan with Unlimited T-Mobile to T-Mobile and raised the Cap to 1000 mins. I bitched enough didn’t have to renew my contract. That was pretty sweet. T-Mobile I may bash you frequently but your cool in my book. They are one Seattle based company that I enjoy. =)

It’s the weekend I am going camping this weekend with the KGB Mafia Man and Company. So I am doing a rare tristan thing. I will have the cell phone but I doubt it gets service but I have to make a visit to an area that has service so leave some love and I will get back to you in a delayed fashion. My friend Nick is dating a Model who is coming along on the trip. So I have never really been around a model and am creating all these scenarios of this model in my head complaining of sitting on a stump for a chair and all that jazz. But anyways I am deteremined to have a good time. Enjoy not thinking. And Really enjoy a shower upon my return.

I created a new page of concepts I am working on for the blog. Need to sharpen some of my skills. I even took some time and updated the interface on my MySpace Profile. Also noticed it said I was 23 and that tristanpipo.com was the link to the blog so I changed all of those files to make everyone’s life easier to find myself.

Today I am rather happy even though I got yelled at by someone who could only speak french. I had to take what he was saying and his e-mails he was sending in convert them to English and pass them onto my boss while I got yelled at in a language I have no way of understanding. That kinda put a damper on my day but this wonderful ice cold beer I brought back to my desk seemed to make up for it.=)

But last night I had a great talk with a new friend and I feel really great. But I have 18 mins left thought I would write a blog. Send me some love if we haven’t talked in a whlie let me know what’s new. Especially the one who’s eyes are scrolling back and forth as we are moving down the page. What is funny is you are still reading this looking for what might be so productive that this is worth the eye exercise. Well as we press on slowly but surely I am enjoying the fact that I have at least a little control of your next few moments. Now you are pondering “I Could stop reading at anytime” Well I am sure you could. But you are hoping that on some small whim I will let you go from my powerful text spell. But it won’t happen. It might happen. But I highly doubt it.

Look we jumped down a few lines. Welcome Back. Anyways enough with this. This is your resident Blogger and the T-Factor also Tristan Pipo. Anyways lots of love to the blogosphere. Damn I’m in a Good Mood.

IT”S THE WEEKEND BABY! WOOOT! It’s August Summer is almost over! Get out and Enjoy it! If You Don’t I will hire a man named Bruno to be like “Listen Up! Your Going to Enjoy Yourself! Or I will pummel you with Lego’s and Nerf Ammo” (current items on the desk…. And a Beer Cup!)

Damn Good Times. I will try something that I don’t usually do.
Current Favorite Song: City of Blinding Lights – U2 – How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb – Current iPod Plays 19 – Last Play August 18th 2006 2:37 PST

Unemployed – For a Bit

Well I am taking a week off between jobs. I start my new Job May 30th at 9am and really looking forward to it. I left my job with a bit of flair I was in Violation of Dress Code by wearing jeans. My new job doesn’t care if I wear jeans or not. I also went around and hung up two signs at the store that said.

“Your Not Paid to Think, A Mindless Worker is a Happy Worker, So Shutup and Do Your Job”

It had the Logo of the Company and a Finger pointing at the person reading it. I will find out what the reaction was from an inside source on Thursday. I was offered an open invitation to come back to work there if shit hits the fan so I guess that is good. It was amazing how many people enjoyed working with me I was getting all kinds of cards and hugs it was an interesting experience.

So as I enjoy my week off I will be recording a podcast. It will be show #8 of my show and #14 of my co-hosts. So look forward to iTunes being updated for you.

On a side note enjoy this video.

/file/SNL-Al-Gore-5-14.mov or aka If Al Gore Was President!

More Features

In the ever progressing website that will be the portal to my life I am going to bring the focus more around to who I am. Where future employers or people that would like to take advantage of my skills and knowledge will be able to come.

I am discovering the power of WordPress and find that updating the software engine and all the plugins can be a bit difficult. But anyways back to vacation and this is basically my vacation project and will take over the main page after I complete everything. With the modular design of wordpress makes it easier to manage and create all the pages from one interface over some other tool like Frontpage or Dreamweaver.