7.27.2005
7:50pm

I've been offered a part-time job at Harris during the school year! Our department head talked with me for a few minutes about my career goals and indicated that they would like to keep me part-time. He said that I would probably be moving around somewhat so that I could get a taste of the other departments, and that there wasn't a problem with my Monday and Friday only availability. Looks like I'll be saying goodbye to Best Buy soon. I've been lacking enthusiasm for that job lately anyhow--the discount is still useful but retail will always be retail.

Last night Nate and Matt from Harris finally came over to watch a movie. I picked up a copy of Constantine last week so we watched that. I met up with the FIT gang at Chik-fil-a yesterday for dinner, since it was the second-to-last Two-for-Tuesday. Dave and his clan from Integrated Ideas showed up after a while, so we had about 20 FIT people in one place; even Chris and Cory showed up.

Only 3.5 more weeks of summer then it’s back to the grind.

Check some of these WMV-HD Clips if you haven’t already seen high-def video on a computer. You’ll need fairly impressive performance specs and a high-res display but it is definitely worth it. Throw in a 5.1 channel sound card and you’ve got media that beats DVD hands down. That is until Blu-ray and HD-DVD finally get here. I cringe when I think about how much of a mess that is going to generate until universal players are created.

7.19.2005
5:03pm

Good news, bad news today. The good news is that our Harris intern group for NetBoss won the "Most Humorous" award at the Intern presentations today. The bad news is that the "Most Humorous" award is a non-cash-paying award. We got a prize instead, and we had to choose between a USB thumb drive, duffel bag, or portfolio. The group that won Best Overall got $250 each, which is what we definitely deserved to win. However, the NetBoss team won Best Overall last year so they might have been pressured to give it to somebody else this year. Either way, we had a great time making the video and it was worth the effort even without a large award. We received many compliments from managers in the audience and we were asked to give our presentation to the NetBoss group tomorrow so they can see what we've been working on. Scott told us if our chosen career paths didn't work out, we could probably find employment as technical marketing producers. We've been cleared to show the presentation to people outside Harris as well, so look for it to appear shortly on my web site.

7.17.2005
12:28pm

Well, I got my copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince yesterday but only had time to get through abouut 8 chapters because of work at Best Buy. Today I should be able to read a lot more since I'm home sick. And no, I didn't call in sick just so I could read the book; I've actually got an awful cough and didn't want to contaminate every customer I came in contact with. I still had to go in this morning to open the department but I left after two hours.

Our Harris video was completed Friday so on Monday we're going to practice our presentation. Hopefully I will have a fully working voice by Tuesday when the real presentation happens. The CEO of Harris, Howard Lance, is coming to speak to us during lunch so this is a pretty big thing. I don't know if he'll be there for the actual presentations but I doubt he has 6 hours at his disposal.

7.12.2005
8:20pm

Little while since I updated so here's what's new: we (meaning Chris, Matt, Nate, and I) started filming our short video for Harris that's due next Monday. We got some of the preliminary shots but there's a lot more still to go tomorrow. I have been made the unofficial director of this thing so I have to figure out what looks best. In addition to the video part we have to make a short powerpoint presentation showcasing our accomplishments and things that we've learned. If we stay focused and don't encounter any major setbacks everything should work out great. First prize in the competition wins $250 per person so we have a little more motivation than the usual pat on the back.

7.07.2005
10:08pm

Terrorist bombing in London... what's the world coming to? I have to wonder what drives these people to commit mass murder; religious and idealogical fundamentalism be damned. I hope they find the bombers, unless it turns out to have been a suicide bombing in which case they probably won't find much.

As far as my own life is concerned, I haven't been on any interesting excursions since the trip to NY. I've been learning more about shell scripts at Harris and doing the whole "computer jockey" thing as my dad would say. It's surprising how much I enjoy programming--I wish it was a more feasible career field but the way things are going I wonder if there will be any IT jobs left in the US. In the meantime I'll bide my time until graduation trying to figure out what it is I really want to do with my life. A few of my friends are planning on grad school but I still don't think I want to go that route; at least not until I've got a permanent job and some of the loans paid off. In my spare time this week I've been reading James Bruner's Zig Zag the Story which I found through the Sabrina-Online comic. Yeah I know I’m weird but anthro fiction is entertaining. And it gives me something to do until the much-anticipated sixth installation of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will be crushing the shelves of bookstores on the 16th. Enjoy your millions Rowling, in regard to profits and fans.

7.03.2005
9:50am

Yawn: it's early and I only got four hours of sleep last night. I didn't begin with that intention but I just couldn't get tired before 5am. I did waste some time at a very cool web site you should check out if you've never been there. WebArchive.org has stored versions of web sites back to early 1996 so you can see just how simple everything looked back then. Even sites that have vanished entirely from the Internet may have archived pages there when they were in existence. It's amusing to visit sites like Microsoft or Apple and see them touting their latest and greatest way back when. Best Buy's site from 1996 was quite a joke: they didn't even have a way to purchase things online. Some sites were actually more easily navigated with the old versions than in their current incarnation, and things load much faster when you didn't have zillions of tables complicating the page.

7.02.2005
11:21pm

Best Buy team meeting at 7am this morning. I was actually there 15 minutes early; go figure. We talked about become a Small Business segmented store and all the not-so-exciting things that accompany that. I think we should have become a Barry store but nope we're gonna be a bubba-fubba (BBFB) store. We had an entire store photo this morning and honestly it was already like 90 degrees at 8:30am. Today was the last day for Best Buy's big 30% off open box coupon and I actually told a customer about it today. He came back around 9pm with two printouts and bought two open box receivers and an open box DVD player. We definitely lost money on that sale but Mike wants all the crap gone. That means don't return anything to store 512. We don't want it back.

Some cool new Monster Power toys made their way into our store. We now have the AVS2000, the HTS5100, and the HTS3600. A few things we got aren't even on the Monster site yet: a diminuitive UPS and a new ultra-slim Stage 2 power console. The AVS2000 is the most expensive of the lineup at $1499 retail and Best Buy had so many employees use their discount on it that they had to disable the discount so they could keep enough stock to sell to customers. We still don't have the HTS7000 but I don't think it will be long in coming. What's next for Best Buy: Signature Series? They'll probably reserve that for Magnolia Hi-Fi.

I stopped at Dunkin' Doughnuts on the way home from Best Buy and they were out of doughnuts. Yes, out. Not out as in "we only have dry cake doughnuts that nobody else wanted" but out as in "we have coffee, how about that instead?" That's like McDonalds not having any fries, chicken or burgers and offering you a McSalad instead. I left with just a 20oz bottle of Pepsi that ended up being $1.47--sheesh. Pizza Hut got my business instead. Rolo took off for the weekend so I've been watching movies and reading to keep myself occupied. Last night it was "Titan A.E." Wow does that movie have some awesome sound effects.