Makin' a splash on "The View"

The ever important TV show, The View recently added a giant squid to their cast and hope that she has more intelligent things to say than Ms. Goldberg. The giant squid will take over the popular "Politics" portion of the show at the request of many of the fans that watch the show for their political stances.

Best website of 2008 (for me)

Brace yourself. I have deliberated over this decision for some time now, and the final tallies are in, every vote counted and dangling chad accounted for. Here is the best website of 2008:

Pandora.com

If you are not familiar with this website, please, please go and visit it immediately. Pandora is a website that streams music, like an on-line radio station only you get to choose the music! The best part about it all???? It is completely free to you and me as users!

All you need is an email address and a password. From there, you type in either an artist or a song that you like. Based off of that information, Pandora will load a list of songs and artists similar to what you have chosen and start playing music. If you like the song, you give it a thumbs up and they will continue to stream that type of music. If you don't like the song, you can give it a thumbs down and they will find another song that you may like.

Personally, I love this thing. Through Pandora, I have discovered so many great artists and songs. Now I just log on and have great music at my finger tips.

If you don't know where to start, take some of my suggestions:

Nizlopi- acoustic feeling, (this is my current favorite)
The Postal Service- just good music
Jessie's Girl- I named this station on mine "Cheesy 80's rock" I love it!
Earth, Wind and Fire- straight funky stuff that will make you dance
Carpenter's Christmas- need I say more?

Hope you discover this treasure and appreciate it! Happy Holidays to all! Give yourself the gift of Pandora radio and rock your holiday socks off!!

Raced the race

Today was a nice day because I finished my last final. As I rode my bike home from my last exam, I got to thinking. "What did I accomplish this semester?" I spent hours and hours of studying, reading, attending lectures, etc. and what do I have to show for it? I hope that my future will humble me on this subject, but for tonight, I look back and wonder. I have really enjoyed most of my classes. Learning about real estate and technology was great! (the tech course is the reason I started this bad boy!) I once heard that college is meant to show others that you can endure. Grad school is the same. And I guess life really is the same. Can one endure and be happy? Why not?

p.s I am the pasty, red haired fellow in lane 1. Not first, maybe not last, but finishing the race!

Hasta La Vista Kevin

Well tech-class of 2008. It has been a pleasure serving with you. In pain and tears you were brought to life, yet with much joy and gladness do we say 'adieu'. Such is life in this crazy blog-eat-blog world. One day you are king, the next you are worthless. Here's to you.....my tech blog. May I find the gall to one day post, like I have never posted before. But until that day, may you rest in peace 'till I call.

Tried-Riga

Well after a couple hours of stumbling through the Trigiga CMMS program, I am still alive! It is a great tool for tracking everything imaginable with your facility. The only real trouble is setting it up from scratch. There is so much information that needs to be entered into the system, but once it gets set up, the capabilities are amazing.

Networks from another dimension

This is a simple network that I created using Microsoft Office- Visio. It is a great, easy-to-use program.

Stegosaurus or Stegnography?

This week in our technology class we were introduced to stegonography- a very cool way to conceal information such as word documents, mp3s and other documents, masked with a photo. So to the naked eye, an email containing harmless photos could actually be filled with words, and unless you had the password, you would not be able to access the document. I really think that it is a cool thing to use for fun with my family over emails. It is very, very easy to use, which I thought was nice.

Practicality in the FM industry? I don't know but here are some of my ideas:

1. You could take a picture of possible security liabilities of your building, then encrypt the photos with explanations of different ways that people have exploited these liabilities, preventing the future security breaches. Doing so, you would ensure that only the people you wanted to see it, could.

2. When giving out Christmas bonuses to your employees, you could encrypt a picture of Santa Clause with the amount of their bonus.

3. Other than that, I don't really have more ideas. I am looking forward to class today to hear what other people think.

May the Vektr be with you

This past week, I had the "vektr-experience." I thought that it was a fine tool to use for tracking and recording work orders. At my current employment, we use JIRA, which is very similar. I didn't find anything too amazing about Vektr, but I can see that it would get the job done.

When creating a work order, I felt that I had too many options and too many clicks to make, when sometimes the order is just simple. I prefer less pull down menus, and only a few fields. Again, I see the benefit of pull down menus for filtering purposes, but I thought there were too many.

Also, the resource tab was not intuitive. I was trying to create a work order, but I needed a resource, and I didn't know where to find it. Eventually, after clicking around I found out how to create one. I also thought that the Help menu was not very descriptive.

It is a fine product that will get the job done.

One shall stand alone

Well, after further study and feasibility, I have decided that I am going to do my report on GIS. I use it at work all the time, and I don't know the background or capabilities of it. I just know that it is very cool. The nanotechnology for green buildings really opened my eyes, but the main study on it is in a book that costs $90, so the simple economic principle of poor-college-kid ruled that one out! I look forward to posting more findings when they come. Until next time.

Flattened the internet

Well, I have officially joined the blog-nation as of September 9, 2008. This blog will initially be used as an assignment that I have in my FPM technology class, which thus far has been great. For the first assignment, we are to identify 3 different technologies that we could implement in the facilities management field, and eventually whittle those options down to one, which I will present.

So, my 3 initial ideas for technologies are:

1. GIS-Global Information System- how to use satellites, maps and other resources to identify your needs.

2.Showclix or etix- they are an on-line ticketing company that provides an internet based way of ticketing for any event; sports, musical, speakers, anything that needs ticketing.

3. Nano technology for green buildings- it may seem crazy, but they have done some cool stuff with nano technology. Paints, insulation, adhesives, etc are all different things that scientists are looking into.

Those are my 3 ideas for now, and I will have it narrowed down to one by next week.