Yesterday afternoon, I was kind of restless, so I drove over to the local music store. While I was there I walked around a little bit and a tried a couple of guitars. Mostly feeling smart, because so far mine at home sounded much better then the ones I played. (And mine is less then half of the cost of the ones in this store) I walked over and played a couple of classical guitars.

I love the sound of nylon strings. There is a warmth to the tone, that I find so wonderful to listen to and to play. Anyhow, I pick up this acoustic classical, with a cutaway body so that you can reach high in the fret scale. I just strummed an E chord and all of the sudden, my ears said 'that sounded good, do it again!'. So I do, again my ears go, 'do that again!'. So I must of sat there played that beautiful guitar for close to 20 minutes. So by this time, I am in love, ready to take it up to the man behind the counter and ... put it on layway (what? You know you have to do that too!).

So I find the little card thingy that is the price tag and look. Once I regain consciousness... I looked at it again. $1,600.00 ... On Sale. So of course I put it back really gingerly, holding my breath until it is back in the guitar stand. Come to find out it is a Rodriguez C Cutaway. If I listen to the tale from the website, it is a handcrafted guitar made from the trees that Mr. Rodriguez grandfather planted many years ago.

Well, short story long, the guitar got to stay at the music shop. I got to come home and complain. I mean, I have a family to support, bills to pay, I can't talk myself in to buying something like that! That thing cost more than our rent (Though not by much). Though I have talked to the guy at the music shop and he says I can come back to visit, just as long as it's not to often.

How come weekends seem to go by so fast? There never seem to be enough time to get everything done.

Wow, am I feeling blah. It was a long night. I couldn't get comfortable. I went from the bed to the floor to the bed to the floor and back to the bed. My stomach hurts and all noise seems to be extra loud. I mean the hard drive in my laptop spinning was keeping me up, and I had to shut it down.

The other day I downloaded the trial version of Microsoft OneNote. I am amazed how quickly this has become one of those necessary apps. My boss told me about it and I thought, well it is probably good, but more for Tablet PCs. And yes, it does work with Tablets very well, but what it lets me do is brainstorm digitally. I can't sit down and write out how my next web application is going to work linearly. I do think object orientedly, in clusters of functionality. And once those are down, I figure out what I am going to need to built that function. So I have been mapping out my applications this way for years, usually with just a pad and a pen. OneNote lets you work that way on you PC.

So say you figure out you need two functions. One named myName and the other named yourName. Now we have the functions, what else do we need. Well maybe to create a superClass over the two functions because they have name in common. Well how do you write that out in Word? And once you have it written down, how do you move the text around to show relationships?

Well OneNote, works with textboxes, so you just click in the note space and start writing. And say, does that need to be higher in the document? Grab it's header and drag it up, or left or right.

When I work, I have Web Browser open to Google. I like to reference articles and blogs I have read, that have great information or ideas. How do you include that in your Word document. Add Hyperlink right, well with OneNote, you simple drag the URL from the address bar into the OneNote notespace. Or an image, drag that in too!

Okay, what if you don't want to type, you just want to, I don't know, talk about it and have that in your notes. OneNote can handle that too. It can record audio and have that linked in your document.

I test lots of applications, and very few of them, get in to my, required tools category, but OneNote has done that rather quickly.

Today was another Thursday. I had tons to do at work, but had to solve other people's issues. (grrrrr) So as far as I can figure it, I only spent ten minutes working on my stuff today. However I did somehow keep a good mood, despite the fact I am being buried in others work. We still haven't gotten everything straighten out with the vendor we are buying our CMS solution from, so it looks like we aren't getting it till next week. So on the 26th I will get it. At least they don't expect me to have it done by the 31st as original projected.

Through the rain there is some sun. I run two monitors at work, and the left side one was a CRT 19" Dell. It was getting blurring and being that I run the resolution really high, it accentuated this problem. So today it got replaced with a 18" Flat screen Dell, which is identical to the right side monitor. So now I have more desk space (a 19" CRT takes a ton of room) and two rockin Flat Screens. All I need is two more!

---

It was really nice to get home before 6:30pm tonight. That hasn't happen'd in a while. I caught an earlier train and walk the 8 blocks from the train station to the house. It was a wonderful evening for taking a walk. A little brisk, but just really nice. As I walked down the street, I could smell everyone's dinner cookin'. This house on the right is having Chili, and this one over here is grill hamburgers and hot dogs. So I picked up my pace, because I was starting to get hungry.

On the way home, there is a little park. And there is where the Cheer Nazi does her work. You see it is dark outside and brisk but the Cheer Nazi doesn't care. She has what could be bright young women out there in the cold, in the dark practicing "the Perfect Cheer" until these girls pass out. This really bothers me, I mean these young women could be come doctors or scientist, to really make a difference in the future but no, she is turning them in to cheerleaders, yeah, cheerleaders. Bottle blonde, perpetually smiling, snooty, 'like oh my god', cheerleaders. I tell you the thought if it just makes me sick. Now, I know that some one is going to say, Hey, I was a cheerleader. And to that I ask one question, what did cheerleading teach you that you use in your day to day adult life. And please no "Miss America" answers. I want a really answer.

So this women (the Cheer Nazi) is out there screaming at these girls, 'no, no, no, do it again but right this time'. What pleasure can she possibly get from screaming at teenage girls ( I mean besides the obvious) to step to the exact rhythm of the stupid teeny bopper on the boombox. Is she creating a army of cheerleaders to take over the world?

So, I take the train back and forth to work. I find that most of us computer geeks have an issue with driving in traffic. Now, don't get me wrong, we love to drive, just fast, and without cars in the way. I am of course this way, that is why I take the train.

Interestingly enough, I get to meet all kinds of interesting people on the train, Computer Programmers, IT professional, TV Syndication Experts, Marketing Gurus. There is always something to talk about and it makes the train ride go fast. But then there are days, when it is a long lonely ride and the only company you have is the book that you brought. Sometimes, I find these to be the some the beautiful moments.

---

There is a new movement from web developers to move away from using tables for placement of images and text elements. For accessibility we as developers are now to start using CSS2 and HTML. Which is all well and good for me. I mean it isn't a big change, I use CSS and DIV tags all the times, now I just need to start using positioning in my CSS. However there are a couple of issue that none of the articles seem to mention. First, writing code in this format, does not lend itself to liquid designs. So a page that scales in size is a lot more testing. Secondly, I just got my Jr. Web Developer proficient at using nested tables, and now I have to tell him, stop! Unlearn everything that you have been learning for the past two years. That isn't going to be a smooth transistion.

So there are always those people that believe that the Operating System they run is the best. And if you say you like something about Mac OS X, they will tell you why Windows XP is better, or Linux is better then Windows 2000. Well I believe these gentleman have come up with the perfect answer to the question, "Which OS is the best?"