5/2/2012 Edit: From the comments I can pretty safely say this doesn’t work on  2011 Macbook Pros. Sorry, it’s likely due to them using new hardware not accounted for in the Leopard driver pack. If you can find a way to make it work, please leave a comment.

Things you will need:

• Bootable Windows XP disc.  I’m using a TechNet XP SP3 disc, but any full, non-OEM option should work.
• Access to Disk Utility from something other than your active partition.  This can be via your Mac Install Disc, Install USB drive, etc.  I had a Lion USB drive.
• Boot Camp 2.1, i.e. the version that shipped on Leopard retail discs.  Use Leopard install disc 1 or download it here.

Quick Guide:

1. Use Disk Utility from your bootable media, partition off however much space you want to use and make sure the format is set to “MS-DOS (FAT)”  (which is actually FAT32)
2. Install Windows  on your new partition.  You can choose to re-format your partition as NTFS if you want, which is more efficient than FAT32 but only allows read access to the Windows partition from OSX, where FAT32 is read/write.
3. Download the Leopard version of Boot Camp here. (same link as above)
4. Run setup.exe, don’t bother trying to drill-down into the Drivers folders manually.  The setup catches it all.
5. Reboot; if you have sound, you’re finished!  If you don’t have sound,  go to Device Manager, expand System Devices, disable “Microsoft UAA Bus for High Definition Audio”, then uninstall it.  Verify Realtek High Definition Audio is also gone from Sound, video and game controllers (disable and uninstall if it is still there).
6. DO NOT REBOOT, run WDM_R268.exe provided in the driver 7z file or here.
7. Done, reboot to finish audio driver install.

Step-by-step Guide:

1. Boot to your OSX bootable media by inserting the disc (or plugging in the flash drive) and holding down the Option/Alt key once you hear the startup chime.
2. From the Install Menu, choose Disk Utility and hit continue.
3. Click on your hard drive, usually the top-most item in the list of devices, and in the main pane hit the Partition button.
4. On a default Lion install, it takes up the entire hard drive.  Provided you aren’t using all of it, select the partition and click the + button beneath it to create a new partition.  Name it what you want, set the size in GBs that you want to give to your Windows installation (I set mine to 120 out of 500, so I have room for XP-friendly games.).  In the details on the right side of the main pane, change the format of your new Windows partition from Mac OS Extended (Journaled) to MS-DOS (FAT).  This is actually FAT32, not standard FAT with it’s 4GB file limits and whatnot.  FAT32 has a downside here in that it makes 32KB clusters, which can be wasteful at large sizes (partitions above 32GB).  The advantage to formatting as FAT32 and not NTFS (which is possible later on) is what you’ll have read AND write access to your Windows files when booted into OS X.  NTFS is read-only to OS X.
5. When everything looks correct, hit Apply and wait for your partitions to be modified.  If you get an error at this point, select the Mac partition (not the hard drive itself), select First Aid (losing your changes to the partition table, unfortunately), then hit Repair Disk.  If you still have errors, repeat this step but choose Repair Disk Permissions.
6. Once your partition is set, put your Windows XP disc in the Mac and reboot, again holding down the Option/Alt key to choose your boot device.  You should see the typical Windows XP setup process begin.  After a few minutes of loading, you should be able to begin the installation.  Hit Enter to begin the installation and F8 if you agree to the license terms.  At this point, you should see your Windows partition, two [Unknown] partitions and possibly some unallocated space.  Make sure you install to your newly created partition.  You’ll be given the option to format to NTFS.  Again, NTFS only allows Read-Only access to your files from OS X, but is more efficient space-wise than FAT32, which you can read and write from in OS X.  Make your decision according to your needs and proceed with the installation.
7. If you’re used to installing Windows XP on computers, bear in mind this is not an unattended installation; every time the machine reboots you’ll need to be there to hold down Option/Alt and tell it to boot to your Windows partition (NOT the disc, which would start the setup process over again). So hold your computer’s hand through the installation process.
8. When setup finishes, you now technically have a working dual-boot setup.  But there are a lot of missing drivers and a lot of things you won’t be able to do.  The big one would be your lack of network drivers, which means no way to get online to get your other drivers.  So now grab Boot Camp 2.1, with it’s sweet cache of Windows XP drivers, here.  You will need 7zipto unpack it.  The files in that archive are copied directly from my Leopard Install Disc and 7z’ed with Ultra compression.  Be patient.Again, download the driver pack for getting XP working on Lion here. Get 7zip here if you don’t have it.
9. Once you have the driver pack downloaded and unpacked to your XP installation, run setup.exe to begin the Boot Camp installation process.  It will ask to install the Apple Software Updater first, which I went ahead and did because iTunes is going to install it anyway.  Watch as the Boot Camp installer finds and installs all the drivers for you.  Once it’s done, it will ask to reboot.  Don’t forget to hold down Option/Alt to get back in when it does.
10. When XP comes back up, you may find that your video looks like it didn’t install.  On nVidia systems, Go to Start -> Control Panel and double-click nVidia Control Panel.  It should immediately ask to adjust your resolution.  While you’re in here you can make any changes to the color, etc. that you need.
11. Test if you have sound by clicking the speaker icon in the system tray on the bottom right, dragging the volume slider all the way to the top and releasing.  You should hear a tone.  If you do, go to Start -> Control Panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Manager.  If there are no exclamation points, red Xs or anything of the sort then you’re done, enjoy your XP-on-Lion goodness.
12. If you do not have sound, Boot Camp has probably installed a Realtek audio driver that is incompatible with Service Pack 3 of Windows XP.  Go to Start -> Control Panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Manager.  Expand System Devices by clicking the + next to it, find ”Microsoft UAA Bus for High Definition Audio” in the list of entries, right-click it (on a Mac laptop, you can now right click by placing two fingers on the trackpad and clicking the mouse button over what you want to right-click on) and click Disable.  It will ask to confirm you want to disable it, click Yes.  Right-click it again, and click Uninstall.  Hit yes to confirm uninstallation.
13. In the big driver download there is a file in the root called WDM_R268.exe.  If you didn’t download the pack (because you already had Leopard Discs, for example), download just the audio driver here.  Run that exe and it will install working audio drivers.  You should hear the “fwop” of a Windows message in the system tray on installation saying a reboot is needed to complete installation. At this point, everything should be working on your system.
14. You’re done, Boot Camp now sits in the system tray as a gray diamond.  You can use it to determine which OS gets run by default.  If you see a boot selection prompt when you’re booting to Windows, having you choose between Windows XP and “Unknown boot on drive C” or something to that effect, go to Start->Control Panel->System->Advanced->Settings under Startup and Recovery.  Make sure Microsoft Windows XP is your default Operating System in the dropdown list, and uncheck the box immediately below it that says “Time to display list of operating systems”.  I leave the second box checked in case I do want to boot to Safe Mode after a loss of power.

Hopefully that’s all it takes to get you up and going, please comment if this helped you out, or if this doesn’t work for you (likely if you have a 2011-2012 machine).

Daniel Tharp
danieltharp.com

Anyway, the reason I’m writing this post is that I bought this thing to write iOS apps on, and I’ll be sharing my experience learning, debugging, testing and (probably) swearing with all of you. I hope it is informative to some of you, because I’m coming from a background in function-oriented PHP. It has done everything I needed it to do, and while OO programming is definitely cleaner, more secure code, I have seen little appeal in such a mental overhaul of my approach. So I approach this with no small amount of trepidation, the tutorials I’ve read so far haven’t really clicked with me yet, and I still feel out of my depth. I have one app I’m going to be working on right away, the series of posts will be mostly unfiltered, I will be learning, breaking things, and fixing things from post to post, so you get a feel of what I’m going through; my reasoning for this is that I know I’m not the only one making this transition from function-oriented PHP to Objective-C and Xcode.

The first post will be up before Friday, dealing mostly with Xcode and my understanding of things going in. I’m also revealing my studio name (obviously an important step in being an iPhone millionaire, much like how “writers” will have a grand story in their head, but when you ask “oh, how far along is the book?” they respond with, “Well, I haven’t actually written anything yet, but that part’s easy.” For the record, I don’t care. My studio name is awesome and you’ll just have to deal with my hypocrisy.

HTML: The Meta Redirect

Use case: You need to redirect someone to another page, and don’t want to bother notifying them.

Code:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://www.absolutepath.to/page.php">

Advantages: Silent, works cross-platform, timer can be set (in whole seconds) by adjusting the 0 in content, will work in the body even though it’s a meta tag.
Disadvantages: Breaks back buttons.

PHP/MySQL: Quickly process and sanitize form data.

Use case: You’ve just accepted a form and want to easily work with the data, and escape the data to prevent SQL injection attacks.

Code:

foreach($_POST as $key=>$value) { $$key=addslashes($value); }

Advantages: Saves a lot of repetitive entering of $_POST['element']. Instead you just use $element. Also escapes the data early on so we don’t forget further along in the code.
Disadvantages: You create a lot of variables instead of one array. Your array isn’t actually destroyed, just copied. The idea is that the backend is working primarily with this POST data so making a lot of variables isn’t an unwanted thing.

PHP/MySQL: Save an if statement on every mysql_error() check.

Use case: You need to use mysql_error() function to handle errors in your SQL statement.

Old code:

$result = mysql_query($query);
if(!$result) { die(mysql_error()); }

New code:

$result = mysql_query($query) or die(mysql_error());

Advantages: Reduces risk of typos breaking your page, cleaner.
Disadvantages: No known disadvantages.

PHP/MySQL: One standardized method of DB querying.

Use case: You want to get in the habit of one naming scheme for your MySQL queries, and don’t want to go the OOP route.

Code:

function doQuery($query) {
$result = mysql_query($query) or die(mysql_error());
return $result; }

...

$q_descriptivename = "SELECT * FROM table WHERE 1";
$descriptivename = doQuery($q_descriptivename);

Note: No advantage or disadvantage here, I just thought I’d share the way I do my queries. I usually have a functions.php file with things like doQuery, doConnect, and so forth. I then make the file a require_once() in my header.php. There are more efficient ways to do it via object-oriented code, but there are certainly less efficient ways too.

PHP: Regex out non-numerals from a phone number, then put them back for display purposes.

Use case: You have a form input for a phone number, and want to be guaranteed it works in your database. If you’re trying to optimize and want to use a CHAR(10), or just want a unified dataset to work against. Really it’s common sense to have all your data be uniformly stored here.

$phone=preg_replace("/[^0-9.]/", "", $phone); // strip non-numerals
		if (strlen($phone) == 7) { $phone = "505".$phone; } // if the user was too lazy to add their area code, add the expected one.  Handle this how you like.

...

$disp_phone = preg_replace("/^(\d{3})(\d{3})(\d{4})$/", "($1) $2-$3", $phone); //present it in the standard (123) 456-7890 format.

Advantages: Regular expressions take a lot of possible entries and catch them all. One-line solutions are always preferable to a switch or some such.
Disadvantages: The code above is a very crude handling of too few numbers, but the regex can be tweaked to accommodate that or you can do it via Javascript.

CSS: 3-column div-based website with a “sticky footer”

Use case: You find tables too outdated and confining, and would rather use divs and CSS.

Code: 3colstickyfooter.css

Note: The “sticky footer”, where the footer is on the bottom of the page even when the rest of the content doesn’t reach that far, is a surprisingly tricky behavior to get right. You can see the result here. Notice how the footer stays stuck to the bottom of the window as you resize it.

PHP/CSS/HTML: Blind-friendly, captcha-free, spam-fighting input field.

Use case: I had a client that was opposed to captchas, yet one of his forms was constantly hammered by spammers and filled his mailbox. Thus I designed a hidden text input field that spambots fill out, blind users are audibly instructed to leave empty, and sighted users never see.

Code:

HTML:

<tr class="robotic">
<td class="label">If you're human leave this blank.</td>
<td class="field"><input name="url" type="text" id="url" /></td>
<td class="status"></td>
</tr>

...

CSS: tr .robotic { display: none; }

...

PHP: if(strlen($_POST['url']) > 0) { die(); }

Advantages: The home-brewed nature of this solution has resulted in a 100% decrease in spam getting through. We thwart the spammer by knowing they don’t respect CSS; they just look at a page as raw HTML and fill in data wherever possible. Naming the field “url” guarantees the spammer is going to put a link in it, and then the PHP sees there is data in the field and silently rejects it. Just use a different input name for your real URL field. This also eliminates false positives and frustrating re-validation attempts by end-users that can’t read the captcha.
Disadvantages: No known disadvantages.

I’ve started on a new web project, and with the number of features I want to build out it stands to be my most ambitious project yet, and it’s gonna require some new technologies. Understand that I really don’t like the thought of relying on JavaScript, due to long-standing grudges, but jQuery does offer features I’m really gonna need in this project, in a prepackaged solution. When I hear that there are quite a few Top 100 websites that make use of it, I’m reassured.

So, Project Havana, as I’m calling it right now, is fragrance-related and fills a niche that no other industry website has sufficiently covered. This will also serve as a website I can show as a portfolio piece for both the UI and backend. That’s still a field I’d love to do as a day job again, and I’ve also just recently found all the code for the largest project I’d worked on but was under NDA on for a year. So it’ll be good to have both projects available to point to. I’m being rather tight-lipped on the particulars to this project as I want to develop it at a slower pace, get each feature dialed in before moving onto the next one, and then when I have something worth putting out there, I can do it without regret or concern. So that’s new, as I usually throw up core functionality and build out the site as it’s live, add those features as people use the site.

I’m going to try and get back on the three-day writing schedule, we will see.

Even hearing that guilt is a normal mechanism for suicide survivors, it makes the burden no less onerous. The argument with myself is that I should’ve spoken to him more, let him know he had friends and we really do care and want to see him do well, and not hurt. The placating counterargument is that I’m all the way out here, and he’s so far away, how much would it have meant? How much good would it have done? It’s the pain of never having an answer to that, no matter what and no matter how much you want one. Justifiably or not, I think a lot of us share a sense of guilt.

I have had closer deaths to me, my mother nearly six years ago and my grandfather around the age of 9. But I’ve never had to deal with someone I know taking their own life. Why does it feel so different? I did have plenty of time to prepare for losing Mom, after two near-death scares and seeing her the night before she died, I knew exactly what the call was at 4:45 that morning even as I was waking up.

Perhaps it’s different because Jon was about my age, and every day I am faced with that inescapable memento mori, the reminder that I too will die; he was only 8 months older than myself. Perhaps its different because we had so many shared experiences; we were coworkers in the same department, we sought each other’s knowledge and insight on a near-daily basis. We’ve both fought drug problems. And all the stressors of life as a young teenager, with a sick mother, generally unpopular at school, no love interest to speak of, and a series of painful illnesses, led me to contemplate suicide for what had to have been a year or two, around age 14 or 15. Though I never acted on it, the knowledge that I had a plan and could end things myself whenever I desired was a macabre sort of comfort that I hope you never experience, reader.

But things eventually turned around, I’m older, wiser, and happier now than I was then. I’ve made peace with those demons of my past. I cannot help but feel like if I could find a way through those dark days, Jon could have as well; and there again is guilt, because who am I to say that? Jon was also fighting a smoking addiction and chronic pain well beyond what I dealt with. It is pain that has the most destructive effect on the psyche to me; it amplifies all those other negative emotions, and for anyone the thought of spending the rest of their life in pain can be spirit-breaking.

Did he want to be helped? In this I honestly could not say, he hid it from all of us so well that I think he felt like I once did, it was a source of comfort in the end and an attempt to discuss or intervene would be met with equal parts gratitude and derision, because they may mean well but to be honest, they have no idea. It too is unknowable, but that does precious little to quell the want for an answer.

I’m writing this in large part for myself, hoping to find some resolution, some revelation. I know I ultimately won’t be able to put it past me until I can get back to Kentucky and see his resting place. But I hope that if you knew Jon, you might get something out of this as well. If nothing else, you’re not alone in your guilt. We all feel as thought we should have done more. But these thoughts are only marginally useful and largely destructive. Now I am left more with regrets than guilt; I should have spent more time talking to him, not because it might have saved him, but because he was a friend and deserved it.

Perhaps a new year’s resolution should be to be a better friend, and make more time for those I hold dear.

In memory of Jon Michael Vance,
5/15/1987 – 11/23/2010

• Go pick up a copy of The C Programming Language. Forget about Perl, C will get you where you want to be.
• MySQL is much, much easier to get started with than Oracle, and forget about ColdFusion, it’ll be dead soon.
• JavaScript is sometimes a necessary evil. It can do things that are either way too cumbersome or flat-out impossible any other way. But don’t worry, JavaScript is becoming respectable.
• Keep all your code from old projects. You’ll be amazed how much wheel reinvention you’ll save yourself when the time comes to implement a login system again.
• All those ideas you’ve had in your head? You need to use $_POST[] and $_GET[] to make them work. That’s how you send data from page to page. GET is only useful if you only care about one variable, you’ll find yourself using POST much more often.
• Normalize your databases. If you’re storing the same data in two places, consider the best way to eliminate that redundancy. This is the cornerstone of relational databases and something you’ve got to master. You can and will make tables whose whole existence are to join two tables together via commonly used data. This is desired and much faster performance-wise. Use unique identifiers for each row, even if you think all your data will be unique; then when you need data you only have to carry that one ID with you as data flows.
• Comment your code, even if it’s after the fact. The longer you’re at it, the more you evolve and adapt different styles to do tasks, and when you look at some of your earliest code you can find yourself going, “What the hell was I trying to do here?” On the same note, try and use an identical approach to commonly used functions. For example, you’ll make a lot of MySQL queries, so using the same approach each time will instantly let you know as you scan your code that that block is a query.
  $q_selectfrags = "SELECT * FROM Fragrance WHERE (Gender = ".$gender." OR Gender = 2) AND House = '".$house."' ORDER BY Fragrance ASC";
$selectfrags = mysql_query($q_selectfrags,$conn) or die(mysql_error());
if ($selectfrags) { do $stuff; }
• On a related note, there are several ways to do loops (that is, returning a list of data), and while a do-while loop appears the easiest, and for loops are a bit more elegant, when you’re iterating through data a very efficient way of doing it is send your query, and then use while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) { blah blah, echo $row['Username']; }. It’ll do it once for every row of data returned. Instant pro.
• Keep related functions and actions in one physical file, set your forms with action=”", and give your submits unique names. Then you have whole functions that only execute if ($_POST['submitname']) { }. Fewer files to keep updated has it’s advantages, but one disadvantage is if your code is sloppy, you break a whole set of functions instead of just one. So don’t be sloppy.
• Use variable names that are descriptive enough that if you return to your code in six months, you can still tell what’s going on. $i, $j and $k are fine when you’re doing math problems for homework, but in a professional environment it just reeks of poor team skills. Others are going to be reading what you code, so go easy on them.
• Tables really aren’t that hard to learn, you pretty much just use the tr tag to specify a new row, and then td tags inside for each column within that row. Use the colspan attribute to stretch across multiple columns. This is also handy way to organize that info you’re spitting out with your while loop.
• Those paper sketches you’re doing are not going anywhere soon. There are design programs like Visio but there’s nothing as useful as sketching it out by hand, and the relationships between tables in your databases. If you can sketch it, you can code it, every single time.
• Be patient, but be creative. If you want to try designing something, go for it. It’s all useful practice for a real-world skill that can make you a lot of money.
• Listen to more Juno Reactor. It helps.

“…easy, call em on the phone and Platinum Chanel cologne and I stay, dressed, to impress…”
-Notorious B.I.G., Nasty Girl

I’m fairly sure Platinum Egoiste is the only bottle in my collection that has been rapped about, but smelling it, it’s hard not to see that Biggie was on the right track. Platinum Egoiste is an aromatic fougère, meaning it combines the fern, lavender and oakmoss trio of a traditional fougère with additional woods and spices. 1993 was a transition year for the fragrance industry, some of the last few heavy-hitters and offbeat mainstream offerings before CK One and L’Eau d’Issey Miyake in 1994 set the stage for the aquatic-dominant industry we find ourselves in now. Where most current offerings are either soapy, inoffensive aquatics, or cloying sweet club scents, Platinum Egoiste is neither, and instead opens with a blast of rosemary, clary sage and vetiver that is herbal, slightly bitter, and very “aromatic”. Give it a bit to settle down and you see that the top notes have made some room for the cedar and even a fleeting floral hint, which Basenotes lists as geranium. This combination is unique to my collection, Pasha de Cartier comes close but Platinum Egoiste does a more classy job of it. It’s fairly linear from this point, drying down and losing some of that effervescent, sparkling quality but retaining the slightly sweeter herbal scent.

It’s my belief that fougères are some of the best out there when you need to show a professional, mature side. It’s my go-to scent for job interviews, for example. It rarely overpowers unless grossly overapplied, so it’s workplace friendly. Projection is right about where I’d want it, longevity is average at 5-8 hours.

The marketing campaign for the original Egoiste in 1990 was pure Chanel, dramatic and memorable. See below.

It was another four years before viewers saw the second half of it. A rough translation would be “Selfish, you’re just selfish. You know I follow your trail like a dog. Beware, some day I will steal your perfume to finally take your place, Egoiste.”

Creator and Chanel house perfumer Jacques Polge has no lack of perfumisto street cred, with Chanel icons like Antaeus, Coco, and Allure to his credit and also created Basenotes fan-favorites Ungaro III and Tiffany For Men.

So is Platinum Egoiste a celebration of the ego? The name would lead you to believe so, and the commercials don’t exactly help, but to me it’s not all that serious about it. It is serious, however, a straight-laced sort of scent that is there to put in a full day’s work with you. Given the near-worldwide availability of Chanel, this one is available to sample at pretty much any department store, and I highly recommend doing so if you don’t have a handle on what an aromatic fougère is, or how good they can be.

This month has been the best, busiest and most life-changing month I’ve ever experienced. Let me bring you up to speed.

Back in early August, Diana and I moved in together, which involved moving out of our respective cities and into a new town. We knew where we wanted to be, but even now as I sit here, looking out the window to see the sunset casting the Sandia Mountains red, it’s hard to believe that the hard work and determination paid off and we’re really here: Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The drive out here was an experience in itself, the first day was a long drive much like any other I’ve been on. The second, however, took us through the wind farms and hills of Western Oklahoma, the stark, desolate panhandle of Texas, devoid of life save for Amarillo, which seems to pop up from nothing and leaves you back on God’s definition of the flatlands just as quickly. After Texas was two hundred miles of New Mexico, and it included the most breathtaking driving of my life, through canyons and overlooking mesas and mountain ridges in the distance that evoked a thought I’d never had before, the thought that the landscape of where you call home could truly make you happy or sad, and maybe people are happier out here just because they get little flashes of the truly awesome in their day-to-day life. The fact that Diana and I still find breathtaking new views seemingly every week is confirmation in itself that we picked the right home, and in many ways I feel like I was always meant to end up here.

After moving quickly came work, four days after moving to a town where we knew nobody and had nary a box unpacked. I transferred with Best Buy to the store out here, about a ten minute drive which was great, but I was also moved into a new department, which was less great. Even though I’ve been with the company longer than a good chunk of the people here, there’s always that strange outsider feeling that comes with moving to a new store, with a new way of doing things. I floundered in my new department until two days ago when my department transfer went through, and that in itself has made a huge difference.

Perhaps more importantly wasn’t my job situation but her’s, as she couldn’t transfer store-to-store. But a little providence, maybe a sign that we’re finally getting some reward for our persistence, and she picked up a job two and a half weeks after we moved in. She starts tomorrow and it’s going to be the start of something wonderful, there’s enough artistic connections with this coffee shop that she may be able to make some contacts and friends in the local scene.

The one thing that I was both most and least excited about was the opportunity to go back to college, a real college. Most excited because it’s going to lead to a career more fulfilling than this, least excited because I’ve let myself down with regards to school and grades in the past. I decided to just take one class this semester, a professional writing class, as I’m going to be working 30-35 hour weeks all the way into the holiday season. My first day of class today, and it wasn’t until I was leaving class, walking through this busy campus with students everywhere, strangers to a man, that I realized I’m really back in school. It was an unusual feeling, something resonating that this was what I was aiming for, and for a long time, it’s been four years since I was at a real college, some of my friends from high school probably have their degrees already. It’s maybe not the cut-and-dried path that so many get to follow, but this path is slowly becoming clearer.

Finally, what may well end up being the most momentous thing to happen to us so far happened not six hours ago, at a restaurant across the street from UNM called Frontier. Diana met me there after class for a celebratory meal and she was keeping herself occupied in the meantime by writing about some of the artwork displayed at the restaurant, which is probably 250 feet long and 30 or 40 feet deep, split into five rooms, and there’s artwork displayed on every wall, if I had to hazard a count as to individual pieces I’d say between 70 to 100, mostly paintings but also a few sculptures in various media, tapestries and native blankets, and other little gems and treasures throughout the place. She and I were discussing two paintings displayed one above the other on the wall, and comparing and contrasting the two, and we got to talking about her career goals and that they’re fairly hazy right now. She enjoys analyzing the works, and writing about them, and I suggested she write about every piece in Frontier, and ask the owner if he had a list of which is which and by whom. She ended up talking to him that day, that hour, and as it turns out nobody has really asked him anything like this before. He’s setting her up to talk to some of the artists, get to know them, maybe some interview opportunities, and I didn’t mention it at the time but it seems like if the quality is there, there may be a possibility of publishing the whole thing, a Frontier art book. The possibilities are vast and the ball’s in her court right now, but the fact that the owner’s not only willing but quite interested in helping her may really get her somewhere she wants to be professionally, it’s connections like these that do more even than a prestigious degree. I’m going to be helping her with it, I can handle the photography if nothing else, and it’s exciting for the both of us.

It’s also good to know that I can still sit every now and then and write, and push out 1000+ words with no real trouble, the goal’s been an Education degree in my head for a year or two now but I can’t really rule out writing, in any of it’s forms. This is something that I’ll be picking up again almost by necessity, working in different styles again and just getting back in the proverbial saddle. The next piece is probably going to be a review of the new album by 10 Years, with a new criteria and scoring system much like how wines are rated, it’s a system I like and I’m gonna give it a shot. So, here’s a blanket apology for my recent lapses in writing, but this is also probably the best promise to myself I could make, to treat this whole experience in New Mexico for the adventure that it is, and write accordingly.

See you in September.

So, let’s get some things straight:

I’m not a manager, I can’t do discounts via Twitter, promotions, or any of that stuff, and I won’t be involved with it if/when the time comes.

The opinions you see on the renamed account, DanielBBPaducah, are obviously mine and may not (and probably don’t) reflect on the opinions of Best Buy as a company. This is the same logic that applies to my opinions working on the floor, i.e., just because I think Canon makes the best digital camera on the market doesn’t mean corporate agrees.

I really like helping customers, it’s why I do what I do and why I choose to extend that into Twitter. Please, if I can answer questions, ask them.

My future participation in Twelpforce, if I do choose to work on that again, will be limited to on-the-clock hours, no more late night assistance, sorry.

That’s the big stuff. It’s not all bad, the fact that I’m not speaking for the store means that I can make my opinions a bit more obvious, and to me that means that I can help you a bit more efficiently (if a product is bad I don’t have to act like it isn’t). I’ve had a few too many urges to post recently so that’s why I’m getting back into it, so if you have tech questions or Paducah questions I’m keeping an eye on it once again. For those of you that were in the know as to the situtation, your support has probably been the one thing that’s kept me going at work, so thanks sincerely.

Okay no that’s all I’ve got in relation to Ice Cube. Today just went about as well as I could ever hope for a day to go. Woke up with no pain or stiffness in my ankle, got out of bed refreshed and sat in front of the new 32″ monitor (the computer hasn’t acted up in almost a week now), some Brian Eno playing as the creative juices stirred and I found myself completely caught up on my reviewing. Well, so I say, I’ve still got a bit over 30 reviews to go but I’m caught up in the niche experiment.

I’ve been in the process of trying to move up within the Office Depot company; it’s been unsuccessful but not for lack of effort. I’m currently in what’s considered a Level 1 position, and the next step up is (surprise) Level 2. One of the major conditions for working at the store I’m at currently is that I would be able to be promoted to this Level 2 position fairly quickly. Sure enough, about a month into my tenure there a spot opened up. I was told, yup, we’re all set, just gotta key you in for it. Fast forward to a week later. Nothing. Fast forward. Nothing, it never happened. The position simply isn’t there now, they chose not to fill it at all.

That wouldn’t have bothered me too much except that I was continually being led to believe that I was getting this position. If you’re not gonna do it, tell me you’re not gonna do it. Combine that with the fact that the manager in question is not what I consider a model leader (I’m wording this carefully), and it becomes pretty clear what my course of action was when I saw another Level 2 spot open up in another store in Louisville.

Turns out it’s just a bit further out, and the staff there is arguably the most highly respected in the city. Their store manager has a tremendous reputation with every manager I’ve talked to, and one of their department managers and I used to work together back at the Paducah store.

I visited the store for the first time today, it is about 5 miles further but the roads and traffic are such that the time difference is negligible. It’s also easily the nicest looking store I’ve ever been to, pictured above. Talked to the managers and everything went fantastic, I think I made a good first impression. Decided to leave and let them discuss it, went home and cooked lunch, gave them a call back around 3:30.

Here’s the situation in a nutshell. My current manager has the opportunity to match this new store’s offer; that is, either I get the promotion and raise here, or get it there. It’s entirely up to my current manager. If he realizes my worth he’ll keep me but I don’t think he does. In all truth I’d be happier at the new store so no great lost, I take a great deal of pleasure in proving people wrong about me.

Something about today’s given me a much-needed spark that’d been starting to fade. I’m more upbeat about tomorrow, confident in what I need to do and really just a hell of a lot happier than I was a week ago. Now I can only hope that everything goes as expected.

Wish me luck.