Vista is cool for a number of reasons beyond the Bill Gates / Seinfeld commercials (joke). For one , the little known ability to run programs in other modes. Such as Windows XP Sp2 so if you have any programs your not sure will work. Well, I’m pretty sure thats not an issue anymore (but I haven’t even had to use that for my favorite programs).

Also, I have had no driver issues with my hardware. In fact, my second monitor had resolution trouble in XP but works perfectly with Vista. Much improved.

While I hate DRM, the fact that Netflix and Vista work together better is nice. Due to Netflix’s archaic system they only support IE, but even then you had to OK a couple of pop-ups to get to watching the actual flick. In Vista, you still have to use IE but the pop-ups are gone… it just starts playing. I use it non stop so its an annoyance saver for me.

Little things are improved, making shortcuts for the quick launch, icons are much better looking, program start menu is easier, control panel is better (uninstall is super simple and quick) and it just looks better. Calibri is your friend.

I will be upgrading to Ultimate but am very happy with Home Premium right now, (mostly most likely due to my vast speed increases also with the new computer) .

Other Awesome Things : I think my postman hates me for getting back with Netflix. Everything was hunky-dorey until last week and my discs stopped arriving. Normally it was the next day after Netflix sent them now it was gonig on ten. I called Netflix and they refer me to USPS. I haven’t tried them yet but then a strange thing happened. An old friend called me to say he had some of my discs, they showed up on his doorstep, 6 blocks away at an address i have never lived at or even heard of. So now, my discs are just getting spread around Austin. Lovely. (it was only 1/3 of the missing pieces) Also, not cool that it just happened to be an episode of the OC that I missed…. that makes me look awesome.

I would also like to extend Martin Grammatica a swift kick in the face for costing me 65 bucks tonight. (4 team parlay almost came through.) Only lost ten bucks, but come on dude. 2 field goals. That will be my first and last betting on sports for the next 6 months…. that guy needs to just quit.

I woke up in the morning and heard the news anchor say the market was looking good due to some drop in oil… and come back from campus to screams and the gnashing of teeth all over msnbc.  Let me just say one thing… when I worked in the industry ( and by industry I mean my 3 month internship at A.G. Edwards) the market was doing fine. Since I left… well, not so much. Just an odd correlation. Maybe more than coincidence. 

What are you doing this Tuesday, September 29th? You probably should be out renting today’s new releases on DVD Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Ironman. Ironman should be arriving on my doorstep via Netflix hoo-rah. Who’s down for a lil Robert Downey Party (not the dui or drug part) ?

Also on the agenda. More work on orangecampus.com so I can finalize it and get it up for my project on Friday. Tell me what you think of the design.

I just checked my page rank for the first time in a while and I am a 3. If I remember correctly the last time I checked was about 2 weeks after my relaunch so I was a big fat zero. I’m pretty happy with that, not that I overanalyze my analytics or anything… I don’t really care that much right now, but just a simple SEO package for wordpress has seemed to get the word out a little bit better. 

Anyways, if you want to check out your own pr :

Stream of consciousness:

Football : WOOOOOO HOOOOOO USC lost to Oregon State. Now 4 Big 12 teams are in the top 10. Wow. Pretty much that guarantees a big 12 representative in the national championship, but at the same time, sucks for us that it is so competitive this year. I think the road to the ’ship runs through Dallas. If OU wins they have a clear shot. If Texas wins then we still have to take on Mizzou and Tech, two other top ten teams…. before the ever stressful game vs. A&M (even if they suck they show up for us). However, you have to love USC getting punked again. Hook ‘em.

Heroes : Season 1 was good. Parts of Season 3 intrigue me… but for the majority I am over with. They lost me with too many superhero powers. There is no certainty of death, everyone just seems to come back to life. Superhero series are good because of a balance of powers. (Silas straight up sticking his finger into Hayden’s brain was cool… along with a few other things)

The Office continues to impress.

It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia’s first episode (the return of green-man) was hilarious, the other one not so much.

Worst week is the worst show. Even though I really like that guy, it wasn’t a good episode.

Att U-verse is such a mixed bag it drives me crazy. I’ve complained about them many a times here and there. For the past week I have been up and down with service. Anywhere from 75-90% uptime which is absolutely unacceptable obviously. Combined Erik and I have spent 3+ hours on the phone with them, 2 techs have come out and a third coming tomorrow… if we don’t get it fixed this week we will be going back to Time Warner. Customer support continues to be terrible, but then we get to second tier and they are knowledgeable, helpful and want to solve the problem not just get a temporary fix I will have to call back about again.

Then they released the update today that lets you watch the recordings from the one DVR they give you on any of the other tv’s in the house. This was supposed to be included in our original package but the fact that we finally have it after 2 months adds a lot to the service actually.

The fact that the NBC affiliate has not renewed their contract with Time Warner and Austin will be losing NBC (including the office, and all other nbc programs) until that contract is renewed is a reason not to switch back. A similar holdout with a different station lasted 3 months earlier this year, thats the entire fall season.

I have spent the last 2 hours programming a website in VI that I could have done in half an hour with even notepad. I do not envy you old programmers. The mouse is a beautiful thing.

Currently my netflix has been throwing a bunch of The Wire in my direction since I have to watch it for my english class. I’m pretty hooked. Cop Dramas that try to emulate real life pale in comparison, it is gritty, well-written and all around awesome.

I really don’t like IKE because it canceled my football game this weekend. ARGH.

Anyways, Ike is supposed to be a doozy but I doubt it does too much damage up here in Austin. Nonetheless, I seem to lose power if the clouds so much as head in my direction, so there is a good chance I will be down for at least some time this weekend. For that reason I leave you with my top played songs in the last month :

The 90’s Calm Playlist :
1. Kingdom Come - Coldplay
2. Your Hand In Mine - Explosions In The Sky
3. Pawn Shop Guitar - Kurt South
4. Turn Your Lights On - Everlast / Santana
5. Shimmer - Shawn Mullins
6. October Sky - Mark Isham
7. For Nancy - Pete Yorn

The 90’s Alt Rock Playlist :
1. Scotty Doesn’t Know - Lustra
2. Touch, Peel & Stand - Days of The New
3. King of New Orleans - Better Than Ezra
4. Possum Kingdom - The Toadies
5. Jumper - Third Eye Blind
6. Burden In My Hand - Soundgarden
7. Only In Dreams - Weezer
8. Teenage Dirtbag - Wheatus

Noteable Miscellanious -
Wagon Wheel - Old Crow Medicine Show
Boom Boom Boom - Big Head Todd
Sunset Boulevard - Charlie Robison
Feelin’ Good Again - Robert Earl Keen

P.S. In preperation for the hurricane Erik and I bought a maglite… which are awesome for they both provide light, which is necessary for life… but also can be used as a weapon and take the lives of intruders. Bring it on Ike… bring. it. on.

I’m back as a Netflix user. I took a hiatus to focus that entertainment money on more important things like food and shelter, but as school is back in session my extra curriculars dwindle so I watch some more cinematic pieces.

I joined up again for a couple of reasons but none more important than the xbox’s coming integration. In the past few weeks I have been using play-on to watch hulu on my tv and it does drastically change the experience from watching on a computer. Thats why in my opinion when some of those podcasts we all watch (such as diggnation or the totally rad show) get into a platform where they are easier to stream to the TV, then they really will take off. Huge numbers of people online, and I watch it via my xbox, but even still when Internet enabled TV’s (or similar systems accomplishing the same thing) become more commonplace then those shows become more than just a web-geek world.

So, before that tangent what I was trying to say is that my xbox + netflix will become my first direct to box content service and its going to be interesting to see how it works.

One bone to pick with Netflix and it is a major annoyance on my part. How on God’s green earth do you still not support FF. I’m assuming it has nothing to do with tech specs and that there is some microsoft tie-in because honestly I have not opened Internet Explorer in months before yesterday so that I could watch my show via the netflix player. (Those 30 seconds from loading IE to getting to my movie start make me hate myself).

Someone please fix that. Or know a work around? maybe I just need an IE Tab extension for FF. See, writing these posts makes my brain work better.

I will be posting a couple technical (not so much) posts later , 1 on animated favicons and the other on building your own im-bot. Also hopefully a review of google chrome. If you don’t know what that is, please plug in the internet. Thanks.

It was Nate’s 21’st birthday so give him a shoutout at natemcguire.com. We had a fab time in downtown Austin, and cheering on the Texas Longhorns to their first of many victories this season. As I moved back into cyberspace today I hit up on some VERY interesting stuff. So here goes with a quick recap :

1. This is pretty crazy if true and the evidence is mounting. Mostly circumstancial but some very weird things going on at the least. Sarah Palin, the republican VP nominee, you may better know her as the attractive one McCain has been walking around with for a couple days… may not be the mother of her youngest daughter. She may be the grandmother. You need to read this one, it will take 5 minutes, and take it with a grain of salt its not a news network or anything, but I’ve seen it pop up in a couple places in the last 24 hours.

2. Also, Sarah Palin related, I saw a fox news clip where her experience on the national stage was cemented in place by the assertion that Alaska is the closest state to Alaska. Let me tell you what, all questions I have about her viability are now cleared.

3. Bucket of Awesome found the greatest. cover. ever. Nickelback’s Photograph but Better.

4.  If you have been hiding in advance of Gustav, here is an up to date tracker. Yours truly might have a quote in a local newspaper cause of a quote I gave. Hooray.

This site is all the rage right now for some reason so I figure I’ll jump in.  I didn’t follow the full program but did weeks 3-5 and am about to do week 6. It gets pretty tough , and after the initial test you realize doing 100 pushups is alot harder than it sounds.

I qualified as a level 4 off the bat with 33. Only 33 you say? Try it and see how many you get. Weaklings.

So check it out and get your push-ups on, it won’t take very long each week and now if you get drafted you can keep up with everyone else.
one hundred pushups in 6 weeks

Tyler Lee
tyler@tylerjameslee.com

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For the less obsessed with the geek blogs out there I’m gonna give you a run down of what has occurred recently. This way you don’t go out and do something stupid like buy a macbook right now with new sub $1000 models on the horizon.

If you do however buy a macbook, get it coated with golden shellback, a new substance that when properly applied coats the inside and outside of electronics to make them impervious to water. Follow the link to watch an IPhone playing a movie while underwater. A boon for all those who find it impossible to keep their phones out of the toilet or other water-retaining vessels.

In news for queers : The Iphone has been jailbreaked but more importantly also supposedly unlocked.

Someone still needs to tell me why I should buy a TV with a ‘touch of color’ bezel that matches the predominant color of whatever your watching. I don’t think a strip of color around my tv is going to increase my enjoyment of the program very much. But thats just me.

In other news, Do not tell me about The Dark Knight until Sunday when I will finally be seeing it as it was meant to…. via IMAX. I have somehow made it this far without losing too much, but I don’t want to miss out on experiencing anymore of it. Also, on the horizon I definitely want to see Step Brothers, Pineapple Express and The X Files. Not excited about the mummy because Brendan Frasier stopped making me laugh when I stopped being an 11 year old girl.

Personal Update : I am not dying. I was working out when my brain exploded so I had to get a cat scan but they say I don’t have a tumor or aneurysm. Damn. I had already decided.. If I got to Make A Wish, I was going to wish to see Jackie Chan… and then I was going to kill him for making horrible horrible movies.

I love writing about myself. Its what I live for. <– Sarcasm. Here goes a quick overview :

Born in Dallas and growing up in Texas you probably expect a cowboy who wrestles steer for fun, herds cattle in the morning and plays the fiddle at night. If only.

Somewhere during my developmental years someone plugged a computer in and sat me in front of it, and from then on I was hooked into the world wide web. I pride myself on striding that line between a full blow nerd and able to communicate with society, so don’t expect any late-night-by-the-glow-of-a-lava-lamp hacker fests and during my unplugged hours I am normally playing basketball, or soccer, maybe some tennis or golf thrown in and thoroughly enjoy my time in the sun.

However, thats not why your here. You are here because I have a website. So, my web experience :

I learned early on , so far back as middle school, that I enjoyed the internet and what it offered in terms of communication. I started small websites (at a time when the web was young) for my school and church and local groups. This was in the second half of the 90’s when the internet really was blowing up and it was very neat for my friends and I to be in the middle of that explosion. From that point on we tried to monetize our interest and began freelancing for friends which helped us learn alot about the world of business online.

In the past couple of years my focus has shifted into the realm of Graphic Design as I have worked as a desktop publisher and on the staff of a magazine as Assistant Art Director. I enjoy the ‘real’ nature of the printed word so designing for print has been a fun experience but in the past year I have re-dedicated myself to maintaining my proficiency on the web. As I rebuild my knowledge of the latest standards and languages I am currently fluent in HTML and CSS and with the obvious associates of XHTML and XML. I have a working understanding of PHP which allows me to have a very basic reading ability when it comes to object oriented programming. Software wise my main tools are Photoshop, but as a graphic artist I can work with the entire Adobe Suite (also includes Illustrator, InDesign and Flash). Actionscript 2.0 is a system I plan on learning in the near future.

For a full resume feel free to contact me, and for some of my work visit the portfolio section.

Thanks for reading!

Tyler Lee