February 5, 2007 by dkaye

Take two feet of snow, a snowday, and four testosterone-riddled teenage boys, and what do you get?

The Jr Polar Bear Club.

Proud (??) to say one of them is my nephew. Wonder how long it took them to thaw out afterwards? Wonder if getting a tattoo would be less painful? Wonder if they were drunk? Nah, just crazy!

But it seems there’s something missing. Ah yes - *how* could we forget!?

| Posted in steroid chasers, that which amuses me | Comments »

February 4, 2007 by dkaye

[MEDIA=24]

| Posted in Noteworthy, steroid chasers | Comments »

February 4, 2007 by dkaye

There was a lot of hype surrounding the recent release of Microsoft’s two new offerings: the Vista OS family and Office 2007 family.

As a beta tester for Vista, I didn’t feel it was ready to be released yet but, hey - what do I know. I’m merely an end user. Of course, the fact that it was released to the public along with a SP lessens my great expectations that all the bugs are truly resolved. I believe the amount of pressure coming from computing manufacturers had something to do with pushing Vista on out to the public.

As a beta tester for Office, I was anxiously awaiting its release, and am happy to say I am using the Office 2007 Professional version. There is going to be a learning curve associated with the new version, but it is packed with many enhancements and features enabling powerful document generation and work environments.

This blog entry is being created using Word 2007. In this post, I want to accentuate some of the cooler things you can do as it relates to blogging.

From within Word, you can create a blog entry with extensive formatting and imaging, and easily upload to your blog - whether hosted by a company such as Blogger, or hosted on your own website through installed software, such as Wordpress.

You set up your blogging account information, including URLs, usernames, and passcodes. It’s all really quite simple, and painless. You can set up multiple blogging accounts, and select the one you want to post to.

I was amazed how easy it was to use. The additional features within this version of Word make publishing any type of content for any purpose a breeze. You get live previews for text styles, images, paging, etc.

Along with text effects, are a wide variety of image effects, including:

• Shadows
• Orientation
• Borders
• Shapes

Dropping in tables with specific formatting is also a breeze. Additionally, there are a number of ready-made templates and stylings to jazz up information:

You can also create SmartArt diagrams and charts:

In summary, Word 2007 is simplifying blogging, so it’s not just straight and boring text anymore. Give it a Test Run and see what it can do for you.

Happy blogging!

| Posted in technonerdy | 2 Comments

January 27, 2007 by dkaye

Updated Jan 28, 2007:

I know it looks a little different at the moment. Hang in there - upgraded the blog software to the newest version; however, the site’s theme/coding wasn’t supported. Currently hard at work pouring Had to pour through code and documentation to transition to the upgrade. After hours and hours of deciphering new mapping schematics, finally got it back to pretty much where was before. With the new version comes some cosmetic enhancements and features, including:

• Live Archives - you can see in the sidebar at the right,
• Active Search - searches the blog as you’re typing, and
• Rolling Archives - navigates through the blog, as soon on the front page.

Some other interactive multimedia features were previously added to enhance the blog, including:

• Streaming sound clips -
• Video feeds -[MEDIA=22]




• Pop-up (lightbox) image effects -

On the backend, a lot of improvements have been made. For the non-techy, just know that these features and changes have been designed to improve the security and interactivity of the site.

Hope you enjoy the new look. If you have suggestions, questions or comments, post them here.

Thanks!

dKaye

| Posted in technonerdy | 1 Comment