Arlington National Cemetery

Just a quick note. I threw a few photos from Arlington Cemetery up on Flickr today. That's not the only place we took photos, but it's getting late, I've been up since very, very early and that was about all the time I had tonight. ;)

Arlington is a great stop, and viewing the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns is truly impressive. To think that only 500 people have ever qualified to guard to tomb, in it's history, and that the post has never been unmanned, even during a hurricane, is really something. The photo's title above is based on the fact that during the 30 minute shift, the guard will take 21 steps, then pause for 21 seconds, before taking another 21 steps in the reverse direction. This is a symbolic representation of the 21 gun salute.

The cemetery certainly gives you some perspective on life, and on the meaning of sacrifice.

Labels: Personal, Photography

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Facebook's People You May Know

A few weeks ago I mentioned that the Facebook feature for friend suggestions could use some improvements. Well, today was the first time recently that I went over to Facebook and noticed that they've made some changes to it.

They made it worse.

Now instead of suggesting people and telling you what friends you have in common, they put a larger list in three columns, and quit telling you what friends you have in common. So now, there are the same people there all the time, with no indication of why, and no way to just say "hey, I don't know this person, try again". Blech.

Update: I didn't notice until later that there is an "X" next to each suggested friend. When I hover over it, there's a message that says "don't show this person". I got excited, thinking I could actually get rid of some of these A-list tech guys that I have no interest in reading any more, let alone trying to friend them on Facebook. However, after I clicked the X for a number of them and went back to the "people you may know" list, they were right there again! Grr!

By the way, I've gotten a couple of friend requests over there from people I don't recognize, and don't have an friends in common with. If you're a reader and want to connect, I'm more than happy to, but add a message to the standard friend request, so I know who you are! Thanks!

Labels: Blogging, Personal

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Shine a Light

This morning, my wife was hosting a bridal shower/brunch at our house, so I needed to occupy myself away from the house for a couple of hours. Given the gray, cruddy weather, my options were somewhat limited, but I had read a number of positive reviews of Shine a Light, the Martin Scorcese filmed Rolling Stones concert flick, so I figured that was about as entertaining a way to spend the time as any.

I was completely blown away. I know, as they've aged the Stones have become a bit of a parody of themselves in their public appearances, so it's easy to forget that these guys are a great rock and roll band at the end of the day. This film reminds us that on stage, even at 60 years old, the Stones still put on a show that is better and full of more energy than most bands out there today.

Not only that, but there are some great lines in the footage of old interviews. Pretty much everyone laughed out loud, for example, at footage of a very young Mick Jagger being asked about being together for 2 years now and how long he saw it continuing, then responding "I never thought we'd make it two years, but I figure maybe we're set for another year or so".

Anyway, I highly recommend going to see this, and reminding yourself, or learning for the first time for some of you younger folks, just how great a rock and roll show the Stones can still put on!

Besides, if you don't think watching Ron Wood, Keith Richards and Buddy Guy on the big screen in surround sound trading licks on Champagne and Reefer is worth the price of admission all by itself, well then I fear you have no soul.

Labels: Fun/Games, Personal

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Race for the Cure -May 17th 2008

With the weather turning toward Spring this week, and the rain holding off until tomorrow, I decided it was high time to get in a little walking to prepare for my commitment to walk the 5k Race for the Cure next month.

Thanks to Gmaps Pedometer I can go back and figure out how far I walked today (2.2 miles) compared to how far the 5k is (slightly over 3.1 miles) and I have a pretty good idea that I should be able to do the walk without too much struggle. (We'll be in DC the first week of May for a few days, after that 3.1 miles should be a breeze!)

Anyway, thanks to Douglas Welch for talking about the idea of a Google Maps mashup that would calculate how far you walked. He talked about it on one of his Live from the Library podcasts, but I honestly don't remember if he talked about Gmaps Pedometer or another service. He inspired me to go to Google for my answer though, and that's what I found. :)

Now, for the important part of this entry. Yes, I'll be walking to raise money for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. The firm I work for usually puts together a team of employees and family/friends. This year, since a friend of ours had expressed a desire to do the walk, and didn't really have anyone to do it with, when I saw that the firm was paying the entrance fee for any employee plus one family member or friend, I volunteered to go ahead and do the walk with her, so she could part of our team and well it certainly won't hurt my karma any to do a good deed too.

If you wish to help the cause, (And really, why wouldn't you?) or you just know that you're going to delight in the idea that I'm getting up early to walk 5k on a Saturday morning and want to make sure to contribute to causing that to happen, you can donate online here:

https://www.active.com/donate/columbusrftc08/mmcbride68

I'm counting on the readers of both of my blogs to help push me near the top of the donation totals for the firm. After all, it's not like I can hit up my coworkers. :)

We've just started getting the word out, so I'll probably post a reminder again once the day of the race is closer, but you don't have to wait!

Yes, I'll be carrying my camera with me for the walk, weather permitting. So you'll get to share the event with us!

Thanks for your time and consideration!

Labels: Personal

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Evernote Impressions

Some of you probably know by now, that I'm a sucker for note taking applications that help me be more organized. I often say, if it's not on my to-do list or calendar, it may as well not even exist. (Case in point, this weekend I had planned to catch up on the John Adams series that is sitting on the DVR, but as I went through the list of things I needed to do last weekend, that wasn't on it, and I forgot to watch them.)

Anyhow, my current note-taking organization method involves two tools, OneNote and Google Notebook. I love OneNote, but since I currently use 4 or 5 different computers during the course of any given day, let's face it, the really current to-do lists need to be online, hence the reason they are on Google Notebook. Of course, for more in-depth stuff, notes I don't particularly want to share with the Google machine, or information I absolutely need to have during times I may not be able to get online, OneNote works just great.

Now comes the new version of Evernote. I took advantage of the  offer on giveaway of the day last week to grab a copy of the Mac beta for my laptop, and this was really the first time I got a look at the web client. I currently use the old, free version of Evernote at work for some specific things, like using a time tracker to jot down time that I need to bill without opening up our billing system to enter it completely or keeping track of work info that I really don't want to put online, even in a private notebook, so I am somewhat familiar with the Windows version, albeit in an earlier form.

Might this be the answer to the vexing conundrum of having information available from any computer, and also when I'm offline? It might just be, at least until Google gets their Gears hooked up to Notebook, which to my mind should have happened already, shouldn't it?

I haven't even begun to test out Evernote on the Mac, but when I do, I'll be sure to let you all know if the trial brings about any change in my current organization routine. It's certainly possible!

Labels: LitigationSupport, Personal, Tech

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Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Naturally, there were bagpipes everywhere in Chicago this weekend, even at the lobby bar on Friday night! I guess they were just getting warmed up for the parade Saturday!

It was quite a lot of fun to get to see the Parade, and the Chicago River dyed green later on. After a few long days spent at Techshow then taking in all the sites, and finally flying home to a busy Sunday, I decided to sleep in today, in honor of St. Patrick's. I do, however, need to go get ready to head to work for the afternoon.

Enjoy, and have a safe celebration!

As always, more pics over on Flickr

Labels: Personal, Photography

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A few Final Techshow Thoughts

Just a few thoughts, now that I've had some time to think about it rather than live-blogging it:

1. I've never been a big fan of live bogging, but I felt like I needed to really give it a shot. Doing it over the 3 days of Techshow helped me see where the value is, but I'm still not the biggest fan. Simply put, while it allowed to me to share what I was hearing and learning immediately with folks back in our office or all over the world, (And that has tremendous value, don't get me wrong), I still think my writing sucked because I was trying to keep up. :)

2. Live-blogging and Twitter gave this conference a different feel for me personally. I'm not normally very good in social situations, but having the handful of other folks who were blogging and twittering actually follow what I was doing and want to chat with me helped me feel a bit more comfortable, even when it came time to interact with the far larger number of people who were simply attending and not reading blogs or Twitter.

3. As much as I learned in the sessions, and with the vendor booths, the most important benefit I saw from Techshow was the people. Getting the chance to chat with other folks doing what I do, the speakers, the other bloggers, etc, and share ideas and experiences will make me a better Litigation Support professional, and a better blogger.

4. I met a bunch of great people at this conference that I hope to stay in touch with. I have read some blog entries of folks who were there or speakers who I heard who I didn't get a chance to meet, not to mention all the other attendees I couldn't possibly have had time to met. Whether we met or not, feel free to drop me an email and say hello! (Email link over on the right column of the blog, or connect with me on Facebook or LinkedIn.) Being relatively new to the Lit Support world, I'd love to build upon the network of folks, and their knowledge, that I have access to!

5. Now I have to go back through all these blog posts and pull out the best ideas and bits of knowledge that I think apply to our firm and how we're doing things. I didn't stop to think about just how much I was blogging over those 3 days, but now that I look back, it's A LOT! Hopefully anyone who actually followed along with all that drivel found some value as well.

Labels: Blogging, Career, LitigationSupport, Personal

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E-Discovery Round Table

I found it interesting how much of this session was absolutely dominated by cost concerns. This is obviously a hot-button issue. That's totally understandable. The cost of collecting, processing, searching and reviewing gigs and gigs of data is huge, and not only that, it's a cost that you're going to have to pass on to your client, and that's not going to be a fun conversation.

There were a number of suggestions on cutting those costs, including narrowing by file types, or dates, or anything else you can think of! Probably the best advice though, was to collaborate with the opposing counsel, which I know has not been the model in the legal world, to narrow down what you really need to process. If you have 20 custodians of interest, rather than processing all the documents and emails belonging to those custodians, can you come to an agreement on the 2 custodians who are the really key custodians, who will get you 90% of what you need, and process those? Of course, you preserve all 20, to go back and get that 10% that you might need, but you only process and review those 2 custodians. Cuts down on costs immensely to be able to come to those agreements.

Afterwards had a chance to chat with Brett Burney, a fellow blogger, and some other folks. Lots of interesting war stories, etc. I enjoyed it so much I didn't get to any of the vendor booths during the hour break. I need to make a concerted effort to do that tomorrow!

In a fun, odd story, I was walking past the Conference Concierge Booth and overheard someone reading off things I had Twittered, and someone recognized me from the Twitter profile photo. That was cool though, gave me an opportunity to chat with Tom Mighell, the conference chair this year. Never hurts to get the ear of the chair..:)

Labels: LitigationSupport, Personal

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The Wii is a social gaming platform

I think the fact that we've had two people make plans to come to our house for dinner, shortly after we got the Wii sort of gave me the impression, but last night cinched it. It really is more fun to play with other people. For example, when my wife's here, we will play together and that's fun. Last night a friend of ours came over and played some with us, and that was fun as well. Today, I'm home by myself, (I have the day off to be home for utility people to come to the house) and playing doesn't really interest me that much. The games we have are relatively simple, but fun for every one to play. It doesn't take mad gaming skillz to bowl, or to play Skee Ball on the Carnival Games, but it is fun to compete against other people in the same room. Playing golf, or baseball, by myself is ok but not that exciting.

Seems somewhat ironic that I'd be talking about a video game as a social product, but I think it really is.

Labels: Personal

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You want to hear about me?

The interview Douglas Welch did with me about transitioning from the IT Help Desk to Litigation Support is up over on his site. It was a lot of fun to sit and chat about what I do, and what I'm learning. Hopefully it'll be as interesting to some of you!

Check it out here if you're not a regular subscriber to Career Opportunities. (If not, you should be!)

Labels: LitigationSupport, Personal

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I'm a trend follower

It occurred to me earlier today, while I was sharing my love of the new Macbook and running VMWare Fusion on it, that I have become the thing I've always hated, trendy. Just since the new year I got a pretty trendy new lens for my camera, a Macbook, and now my wife and I have a Wii in the house!

See, the thing is, I've always fought against trendy tech tools because many times, they simply weren't the best tool for the job. Yeah Mac's have been the sexier choice for computers, but they never really made sense in terms of doing what I need to get done. There have been more trendy gaming consoles, but my Gamecube has always had what I wanted, so it was the right tool for me.

I realize now, that I haven't become trendy, the trendy tools have become tools that do the job better. There's nothing like the Wii on the gaming front, and now that Mac's run on Intel chips and allow me to access the Windows tools I need for my livelihood, it makes sense to own one. The 50mm lens adds a tool to compensate for some areas of photography that I had been ignoring for too long.

It's not that the old un-trendy tools I had weren't working, it's that, finally, the trendy technology isn't just trendy. It's actually a better fit for what I want to do. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get some ice, or a heating pad for my arm. Yeah, day 2 of having a Wii in the house, and my arm's sore. How cliche.....

Labels: Personal, Photography, Tech

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Wii having fun!

My wife and I had seen the Wii a number of times, and talked to some people who owned one, and thought it definitely looked pretty cool. With her birthday coming up, not to mention Valentine's Day, Angela was the one who finally pulled the trigger and asked for one. After some fruitless searches to come up with one, I was finally able to locate a bundle on Toys 'R Us the other day. Granted, some of the games in the bundle, I wouldn't have bought, but I knew it was the one thing she wanted, so I forked over the extra cash anyway. Hopefully we can get some store credit at Gamestop and turn those into a game or two that we would have bought, but if not, I went over budget to get my wife what she wanted for her birthday, shoot me! :)

Heck, after the money I spent on myself getting a MacBook, seriously, how could I not fork out some extra to get her the Wii as soon as I found it?

Anyway, it got delivered to my office on Friday, naturally. I was home sick, and was really in no condition to go chasing it down over the weekend at all. Angela patiently waited for me to get better, and while I'm still feeling pretty rotten, I had enough energy to get through the work day today, and bring home her present. She had it set up within minutes, while I ate dinner. I have to say, after a few games of bowling, and a little baseball, this is totally cool. I can't wait to really dig into some of the sports games, or the Super Mario, and a couple of the other games I got in the bundle. She can't wait to take it up to her parents the actual weekend of her birthday and have fun with the whole group playing. I can see where this is going to be a great party activity!

Labels: Personal

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I feel a little dirty

After years, and years of making my living supporting, and working with, Windows PC's I ordered a Macbook Pro to replace my aging laptop this weekend. There's no hope for me now, is there? I'm doomed to be a fanboy and have a Steve Jobs crush, aren't I? ;)

OK seriously, one of the first things I'll be doing with the MBP will be using Bootcamp to setup a Windows partition, (I need to use a Windows VPN client for work, and the Summation software I am now certified to train on both internally and freelance, won't run on the Mac.) and my main desktop at home will still be my Windows machine, so let's not get carried away. Still, I'm excited to see what the Mac can do as my laptop.

So, now that I'll be getting my hands on my own Mac in a week or so, what are the must-have downloads I need to get? I already know I'll be hitting Firefox, but what else do you guys recommend? I figure I need an FTP client, blogging tool, and pretty much anything else I'd use while on the road. If you were getting a new Macbook, what would be the first things you'd download?

Labels: Mac, Personal, Tech

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Switching to the lesser of two evils

Or, "How bad is the phone company that we have to switch to Time Warner Digital Phone?"

Seriously, we have enough issues with our cable Internet connection dropping out for significant amounts of time, for no apparent reason, that when Time Warner introduced digital phone in our area, I practically laughed out loud at the idea that I'd trust that connection to be my phone connection. On the other hand, when AT&T comes out to the house twice, proclaiming there's nothing wrong at all, despite the fact that there's so much static on the line at random times that you no longer can hold conversations for very long without getting disconnected, or your answering machine records nothing but static for messages, and they refuse to come back out, because there's nothing wrong, what else can you do?

Seriously, if we didn't have some really good reason to want to hang on to our number for a little while, at least, we'd probably just drop the land line altogether and just use our cell phones, but for now, this appears to be our temporary solution.

I hate utility companies...

Labels: Personal

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ABA Techshow

I had just started to see some mentions of the American Bar Association's TechShow 2008 in Chicago in March this week, and on Thursday I found out that I was being sent there myself, which is pretty cool. I didn't know how cool until I came across a partial listing of bloggers who will be speaking there. I'm pretty jazzed about getting to mingle in such a distinguished crowd. :)

Anyway, if you're going to be there, be sure to look me up and say hello!

Labels: LawFirms, LitigationSupport, Personal

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My laptop may be dying

I hope not, but my not quite 3 year old HP laptop, with Windows XP on it, is having difficulties. It only boots correctly every other attempt, or sometimes the third attempt. Sometimes in the off attempts, it hangs on the HP boot screen, other times it goes all the way to the login screen, then hangs on login. Occasionally it'll even log in, but the USB ports won't work, and other programs get hung trying to open.

For some reason though, powering it off, and rebooting makes it all just fine and dandy again, at least until the next boot attempt.

I'm going to have to take some time to troubleshoot this at some point, in the mean time, anyone got some suggestions on where I should start?

Labels: Personal, Tech

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So it's 2008

Wow, it's 2008 already. Not that the new year coming was a surprise, Christmas was a week ago, so it's not like we didn't expect New Year's to be right around the corner, you know? :)

On the other hand, I hardly felt like I ever got a grip on 2007. It was here, stuff happened, and then it was gone. 2007 was a strange year. There were quite a few changes that came about during the year, and most of them were pretty unexpected. I didn't go into 2007 thinking I'd be building a career in Litigation Support, or that some of the friendships in my life on line and off would develop the way they did. In fact, I really thought 2007 would be a development year, going into 2008, which would be the year of change. After all, 2008 is the year I'll turn 40 in. Not that I'm expecting a mid life crisis or anything (though I still have 6 months to work on that before I hit 40!), but we had been targeting 2008 as a year of doing some new and interesting things.

After the changes that came on unexpectedly in 2007 though, I've learned to roll with the punches. We'll see if 2008 goes the way I envision it will as the year starts. I'm sure it won't be exactly what I picture, but I also know there are some definite goals we have for this year that we'll be working towards. As with any year, all I can do is work on improving myself, being a better husband, better friend, better worker, better writer, better photographer, and just all around better person. Regardless of how any of the other goals we have in mind turn out, if I can look back at the end of 2008 and see improvements in myself, as I do at the close of 2007, it will have been a successful year.

I hope you can do the same!

Labels: Personal

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Random Thoughts about GPS

On the way home yesterday, testing out the new Garmin C-330 I got for Christmas, a couple of things occurred to Angela and I.

One, we wondered if our niece, is recently turned 2, would grow up in a world with turn by turn Google Map directions and GPS units and never need to know how to read a map.

Two, there's a odd balance between the cool factor of having the device tell you exactly where you are, and how to get where you're going, and the fact that there's a satellite that knows exactly where you are the whole time.

Three, when Angela's driving and I'm navigating, having the device tell her where to go instead of me, does not make her less angry. In fact, she found the device to be a bit on the bossy side. ;)

Labels: Personal

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Merry Christmas to our On-line friends as well!

Labels: Personal

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Summation Certified Trainer

Got the email response telling me that I had passed, and they'd be in touch with the details of the certification stuff. I'm glad to get that behind me before the end of the year.

It is a pretty rigorous certification. You have to apply, telling them some details of how you use Summation, ho you plan to train on it etc. Once your application is approved, you have to pass a pre-workshop exam. Once you do that, then you have to go out to one of their offices for the 3 day workshop. (4 days if you're going for the WebBlaze as well as iBlaze Certifcation).

After that workshop you have 75 days to pass parts one and two of the exam, at which point you'll be given the hands on project. Part 1 is 50 multiple choice questions, and was pretty similar to the A+ exam I took awhile back in terms of how it's laid out. One big difference, of course, is that you take it online, so it's open book for all purposes, and it's not timed at all. You can work on it, stop, and go back as long as you want.

Part 2 is 10 short essay questions. These take a little more time but, again, you can start, stop and go back as often as you need to. Short essay questions are a bit tougher, you don't see those in Tech exams very often, simply because someone has to grade them! In the case of CT Summation, though, they are typically only dealing with the 15 people from the latest workshop at any one time, and I think they maybe do 4-5 workshops per year?

Part 3 was a hands-on project. The idea is to take a case database and follow the directions to do the various work that they require to show that you know you're way around the database and the various features. After all, you can't really use Summation if you can't bring data in, make it usable for the attorneys and then get it back out when needed!

Overall, I'd say that while it's certainly a very specific certification, (If your firm doesn't use Summation, there's not much point unless you plan to become a free-lance trainer.) the rigors of the testing process and the relative lack of large numbers of SCT's out in the field make it a pretty good indicator for skills in using Summation, and that's really the whole point!

Labels: Certification, LitigationSupport, Personal

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Sorry for the outage

My apologies to those of you who might have tried to get to one of our sites last night. As you can see from this forum thread, our hosting provider was on the wrong end of a DDOS attack.

The nice thing was that the forum was available and there were timely updates posted to it, so I wasn't left wondering why I couldn't access anything, so I give them credit for that! Unfortunately, it was down until after I went to bed, so I couldn't get aN.Y. updates out to folks, though I did post to Twitter about it, so if you follow me there, or any of the social media sites where my profile includes my Twitter updates, you would have seen it last night. Just goes to show, that there are plenty of useful purposes for Twitter.