Always connected

Just had Lotus notes & Sametime apps added to my work iPhone.

I can never jet away now.

Ahhhh!!!

(it is not that bad though... It rare we get emergencies that can't wait until morning.)

I swear I will pack all my camera gear and have it with me always!

That's me on the left with my online gaming friends of 12+ years. Except for the bride and groom (center two people) this is the first time I have met them in person!

I brought my camera with me to my friend's wedding this past weekend because I only planed on taking a few pictures of the ceremony and those of my friends (see above). So I wasn't thiking of bringing my flash or extra filters (see here for my camera). However as we waited for the reception it was pointed out that the photogrpher for the wedding was not going to be there for the reception. So I was asked to take extra pictures (not by the wedding couple by another close friend guest).

It started out OK as I'm still getting use to the camera and taking better pictures in general. The room was really well lit for the dinner and cake cutting but once that was done they turned down the lights for dancing I wished right away I had my external flash with me. I only had the pop-up flash and after looking at a few pictures to check them out to see how the flash made things looked I was horrified!
That pop up flash really was bad when I needed a little more light and not wash out everyone in a blinding supernova that came from the front of my camera.

All in all the pictures still turned out decently and the happy couple will have memories of reception events that other people where not taking.

Grats Mari and Chris hope your honeymoon is going smooth and you are actually relaxing and NOT trying to check up on work!!!

Hello iPhone 4S, I'm Jason

Today I received my iPhone 4S through work as my business phone.

After carrying around my Galaxy SII for a year the smaller size is actually nice. I don't even mind that the screen is smaller. I don't do a lot of multimedia watching on my phone and since this is my work phone I will not be pushing my luck in running up the data usage even though it is unlimited. I mostly use email, text the wife, look things up when out shopping, or snap pictures with my personal phone and I don't see much changing with my work iPhone.  The size seems to fit better in my pocket too as I carry a number of things in mine and the SII never seems to sit right.

I do get to use if for personal calls and can basically use it as my personal phone as well if I choose to within reasonable usage (many people do this at my work). I do have to pay $20/month as a usage co-pay but worked covered the cost of the phone and monthly charges.  This is a sweet deal considering my personal phone doesn't have unlimited data and even though it is under my wife's cell account it still costs us a lot more for data.

With the iPhone 5 coming out shortly there have been a few people say I should have waited. I figured since the phone is free and I needed to get a work cell sooner rather than later I would just get the 4s for now and if I like iOS and the phone I will upgrade my personal phone to the iPhone 5 when I can upgrade or just drop my personal one all together and when I can upgrade my work phone I will just get what ever comes after iPhone 5 in two years.

We will see over the next few months.

House Buying

One thing we have definitely learned from this process so far is this...

What ever you think you have set aside for a down payment make sure you increase that amount by another 10% at minimum to cover all these "little" things like, inspections, closing costs and items to clean/buy new for when you move in. While we do have this I do wish we had more set aside to make me feel a little more comfortable at the end when writing the "big check" to finalize the deal.

You know it's going to be expensive going through the whole process but OMG... seeing the numbers (even after working in a bank's mortgage department writing software) is still a shock at times. 

New Job

So this week I started a new job. I am happy to not be working for a bank finally. Although it does suck to lose vacation (4 weeks cut down to 2).

I am happy to see that this new job actually spend time trying to onboard you instead of how it was at my last place. Where they said here is your cube, watch these online videos and don't call us if you need anything because we can't help.

New place is such a nice change of pace so far. Hopefully it worked out for the best in the long run.

OK it wasn't that bad... but still it was very lacking.

New Camera, New Fun

 

So I got this new camera a while back (Canon SX40 HS) that I’ve tried to be more active with in taking pictures. Here is the camera:

Here are links to photos I’ve taken with it:
Cedarburg WI
Milwaukee County Zoo
Milwaukee County Zoo-ala-Carte
Downtown Milwaukee WI

I’m really liking it and maybe next year I will upgrade to a full dSLR as my photo skill improve.

Changes for the better

Over the last few years I've let a lot of ideas get away from me and lately I've been trying to reorganize to get back on track.

One of them being to consolidate my (forever forgotten) blogging sites. So after a little cleaning I've settled on using Blogger for my main posting and Tumblr as a secondary catch all. By catch all I mean that whenever I post something new too one of my blogger blogs it will be posted to Tumblr as well through If This Then That.

So here is the list of blogs I will be trying to write on:
Awake on Autopilot (Everyday things)
Pocket Dev (More Developer/System Admin Focused)
Blackout Writings (My Old Bad Poetry)
KeyPress Labs (Side project not started)

Awake on Autopilot (Tumblr version)


You can always goto my About.Me page to fine me in other places on the web.