Just for the record, I really do not enjoy phone meetings. I don’t enjoy long phone conversations for that matter, unless it’s someone I really want to talk to.

This morning was a meeting with another client on the east coast who we have been doing some programming for. He’s a smart guy but he doesn’t understand the concept of being billed for new development and fixing bugs. If there’s a bug in the work we have done for him, we fix it, no problem. However, when he wants a feature completely changed or something new added that means billable hours.

I am not sure if he understands that we cannot make exceptions for him and bend the rules, so I basically had to stop him and tell him that the things he was asking for were all billable. That cleared the air right away and the rest of the phone conversations went over well.

I am still making decisions as to how I want to get music in the future. I am torn between iTunes because of its ease of use and just buying music at the store and ripping it. The AAC format that Apple has decided to encode their music in is not compatible with WinAmp (my music player of choice) and that is a huge downside. WinAmp too has its own share of downfalls. You can no longer rip CDs to MP3 format without paying WinAmp $14.95, a small amount of money, but it still defeats the purpose.

So lately I have been messing with different rippers and encoders to see which one I like best. I’ll let you all know when I make a decision.

We are in for another one of God’s light shows tonight. There is a storm headed this way from just south of Amarillo and from here (about 120 miles away) you can see most of it.

It is amazing to see huge storm clouds lit up by lightning at night. You see nothing and then a bolt of lightning and you see a huge mass of a cloud. If I had a digital camera I would take some pictures and share them.

Development at work is going very well. Tomorrow we should finish up our work on one aspect of the project and we will start discussing the way to move forward to port our work to the other sub-companies of this bank. We are trying our best to keep the sites molded together on the front and in the database aspect. My co-worker (Andrew) is a really good database designer and has done a spectacular job laying out the current database so all that lays ahead is planning to extend the database to even more companies. Should go well but we’ll see.

Well, I finally got my computer back all fixed up. They put in a cheap 250 Watt Power Supply so I may have to go buy a new one of those. Since my computer is running two harddrives and an extra CD-RW I eat up more power and the 250W doesn’t cut it. I am thinking a 400W will do just fine, but we’ll see.

I’m just happy that I have it back…

Well the article that Segars Communications is featured in was released this morning. The Avalanche Journal ran the story on the front of its “Vista” section. You can read the full article here.

I personally cannot believe they quoted me as saying, “I like messing with new stuff”… I don’t remember saying that, ever.

Finally was able to get the database restored and it doesn’t look like anything was lost.

I am still waiting to get my computer back but I am drooling over the Asus S5Ne. I am torn between that computer and a 15″ Powerbook.

Both are really cool computers but you can’t beat the 2.2lb weight of the Asus and the Powerbook’s screen size is a big plus… Decisions, decisions… I guess it all comes down to what I want to do with it, which is simple, programming. Most of the programming I do can be done on either one but I would need to relearn the OS itself if I bought the Powerbook. I would also need to relearn the tools…

The tough choices life throws our way.

Keep on the lookout for anything suspicious when browsing websites because it looks like there is a new virus/trojan out that is causing havoc. This Yahoo! News story gives more insight to the virus and what it is doing. Another one focuses on the financial implications.

The way it looks now is that this virus is shutting sites down and installing malicious code on a users computer to get bank account numbers, credit card info, etc.

If you go to a site and are asked to download anything before continuing, do not do it. This thing is nasty and I haven’t seen any updates by Symantec as of yet.

I still do not have my computer back, hopefully by the end of this week it will be back in my possession allowing me to actually get stuff done at home.

Work has been stressful lately because of deadlines and trying to meet close to impossible dates. The project we are working on isn’t huge, it just has some little quirks in it that make it a little more difficult than others. We are working fast and furious just to get most of it out on time.

I’ve been playing with my Gmail account a little and I’m still learning how it works. It doesn’t use folders so if you want to differentiate your messages you have to use these “labels” and apply them to a message then you can sort by label. It’s a neat concept but I don’t know if I like it or not. People have complained about ads in e-mail but to be honest I have only seen a couple of them and they weren’t intrusive or annoying so I don’t know what the problem is.

Yep, the Avalanche Journal (Lubbock’s newspaper) is doing a story on Segars Communications and the unique business environment here. They came in this morning and asked some questions and they are sending a photographer on Wednesday. So, that is pretty interesting and it will be cool to see how it turns out in the paper.

So my computer is out of commission for a while. The power supply and motherboard both died on Friday night so the parts are being replaced and I have no idea when I’ll be back on line (I’m making this post from the BA computer lab).

Those of you who usually contact me using an instant messaging client should e-mail me if you really need something (ssegraves [at] alltel dot net). I will be able to check e-mail from work so that of course is good.

Just wanted to update everyone so that they didn’t think I dissappeared.

The obstacles that stand in the way when dealing with non-tech savvy clients who have taken a “dive-in” approach in the past is usually bigger than you expect them to be. In dealing with a recent client’s hosting needs we almost ended up smack dab in the middle of a legal confrontation between the client and their hosting provider. We took a step back, evaluated the situation and let the two sort it out themselves.

Since then the hosting company has been nothing but a thorn in our side. We have let our client know of this and there is still hope that we will move them off of this hosts servers and on to our own. I have learned a lesson though, you can never plan to the last detail. We were originally going to be stuck on a server that had an old, old version of ASP and Access when what we were planning to use was PHP and MySQL.

We were able to push the hosting company to move the sites over to a Linux server running the software we needed.

In other news, I came across the owner of Cilantro’s blog located here. Check it out. If you don’t already know Cilantro’s is a burrito grill with some similarities to Freebird’s but I would say the atmosphere at Cilantro’s is more inviting.