Michael Beat Me to the Punch

It's been a few week without a blog posting and I want to apologize to all my loyals fans out there. I know there are a few people out there who check this once in a while and I feel like it's growing some cobwebs. Time to clean them out, and update you with the latest news, lets see...

• My mother returned from her trip to Spain and Portugal late last night and will be helping us today with the kids. Tonight she will come over and we'll have a pancake dinner and listen to her talk about the bullfights!
  
  
• I sent a letter to the City Attorney offering a couple of settlement options for my speeding ticket. They wrote me back and turned me down, but offered a counter-settlement, for $128. That is $8 more than the ticket. Long story short, I will be appearing in court on November 4. See the full details.
  
  
• For a long time I have been a critic of the hold music that IBM plays for our customers, and a couple weeks ago I submitted an official suggestion that it be revised. Last week my manager forwarded me an e-mail asking for volunteers to review it:
  

  "Hi, its been several years since our hold music has been reviewed. I'm working on gathering a panel of people to review hold music options and determine that either the music that we have is good or propose a new 'channel' that's best and most appropriate for our business. I'm hoping to collect a representative cross-section of our Center (new, experienced, sw, hw, female, male, etc.) to make the recommendation. Please send me a list of two or three candidates (you may include yourself if you'd like) and I'll use the names to try build a team of ten to twelve people. I expect that it will take two or three meetings at the most and perhaps a little work on the side listening to samples. I'm not expecting this to be a big time commitment."
  

  I went to the library and picked up some CD's by Phillip Glass and Andreas Vollenweider just to prepare myself with some samples if that is required. I have a lot of ideas about the hold music and other announcements we make and I hope that they pick me to be part of the team. It would be nice to have different channels for people, like if there is a long expected hold time, putting them into a channel with longer /interesting tunes, and for a short expected hold time, transitioning them to a queue with peppier music. Also, our announcements need to be changed, and we could fill some of the time with advertisements for our products and tips and tricks thay people could use to optimize their use of the iSeries.
  
  
• I am working a few new classes for IBM. I have to teach a class on Infoprint Server this Sunday night between 6 and 10 PM, and I am currently working on developing some education for a new release, and creating a class on how to print in color.
  
  
• I got close to winning the NFLPOOL this past weekend. I picked the Packers to win, and they demolished the Saints 52-3. It is important to note that they lost their previous 3 games by a combined total of 6 points. When they lose, usually it's a squeaker, when they win, it's often a blowout.
  
  

  2005 NFL Pool Week #5 Results
  
  WEEK'S RANKING
  --------------
  
  Capital letters denote a correct pick for that Confidence
  Value.  Dashes (-) indicate a incorrect pick.
  
  1  Mark Lonsky           689  10/14  71.4% A-C-EFG-IJK-MN
  2  Paul Sabby            668   9/14  64.3% ABC-EF---J-LMN
  3  Robin Wolf            651   9/14  64.3% AB-DE--HI--LMN
  4  Kurt Schroeder        630   8/14  57.1% ABCD--G---KLM-
  5  Nick Lonsky           630   9/14  64.3% AB-DE----JKLMN
  6  Karl Davis            624   8/14  57.1% AB-DE-G-I-K--N
  7  Tinsley               618   9/14  64.3% A---EFGHIJKL--
  8  ~Vegas                616   8/14  57.1% ABCD---H--K-MN

  Oh, and for the record Brett's name is officially pronounced "Faav-rah." He just never corrected the announcer that pronounced it "Farve" when he was younger, and the mispronunciation stuck.
  

That's it for now.