It used to be you had to go to a bar to have a loud mouthed a-hole pick a fight with you. These days you just have to post an innocent comment on the net. The biggest downside is that you can’t wring the sucker’s neck across the internet.

See what you can do is put this barcode on your website, or on a badge, or on a business card, or anywhere else, and then anyone who has an iPhone or other smart phone can scan the sucker and voila! They have your information and they didn’t have to type it in.

Don’t even tell me that isn’t the dandyest thing you’ve ever seen. Because it is. The possibilities are endless! What if I got my name and social security number tattoo’d on my forehead or right hand and then the government could identify me at any time? Wouldn’t that be awesome???

OK, maybe not. But capturing somebody’s contact information without having to type it in seems pretty cool. Check it out. Scan my lovely model and you’ll get a link to this very webpage in your mobile phone so you can read my thoughtful missives any time, wherever you may be.

Here’s some links for you to get started with QR Codes.

Read QR Codes – Neo Reader, QuickMark, Optiscan

Make QR Codes – Kaywa , ZXing, QRStuff

I have to say that for the first few hours, I was in a nervous state. It’s weird not having a mail account or a Twitter or Facebook account to check. I think I get so used to just “checking” things that it becomes habit and I kind of forget that 99.9% of the things I’m “checking” have no impact whatsoever on my life. So once I got through the initial shock of changing up my habits, I began to enjoy the relaxing silence and something really changed in me.

There’s something magical about the silence when you shut down the TV and turn off the computers. At first it’s a bit boring, but then you begin to talk to your loved ones and the conversations just run along, uninterrupted and you actually LISTEN and you are HEARD in return. My wife and I sat in our living room with a glass of wine and actually just talked and laughed together rather than staring at the stupid TV, complaining that there’s nothing on worth watching, yet we’re sitting there watching anyway. It was awesome.

Saturday was even better. Being cut off from technology is really freeing. Your mind begins to free itself and focus on what’s happening here and now. You begin to experience a freedom that says you can go do things without worrying about somebody interrupting your day, your adventure. I was reminded of how life was as a child, when people actually had to physically come find you if they wanted to change your agenda. It was absolutely freaking awesome. I spent the day riding bicycles with a friend, then actually getting things done around the house that would have surely been pushed off another week had I had a computer or TV to suck up my time.

So for me, this will become a weekly ritual. Though I may push it back to Saturday night to coincide with my religious sabbath day, which is Sunday. I think having that day of no electronics, plus no chores or work will be extra awesome. But it really was eye opening and the most important thing was that after completing it, I logged into my computer and found that absolutely nothing happened that would have changed my life in any way. And I think that’s a big lesson here. The world will not end if we’re not “jacked in” 24/7, and more importantly, life is more enjoyable once we’re disconnected for a bit.

I’ve often said that American society really started going down hill when TV was invented, and the internet has quickened the pace.  To be able to exchange information so quickly and easily is awesome, but evil information travels just as fast using these same methods and for some reason the evil is more attractive to us and affects us in a much more pronounced way. Think about it; how many accounts of crimes do you see in the media on a given day? How many accounts of horrific crimes or corruption or other wrongdoings are we exposed to? How many sexual images do we see in a day?

It’s a constant onslaught of negative imagery and sound. For me it starts when I turn the laptop on at 6am and doesn’t stop until I hit the sack. Between the laptop, the iPhone, the computers at work and my TV, I face an all day, every day, blitzkrieg of negative messages. I’m literally bathing in them.

Compare that to what we would see if we had no TV, and no internet. How many murders have you seen with your own eyes? How many sexual perversions have you experienced in person? Let’s take it down a notch; How many fistfights have you seen? How many car wrecks? When I think of these negative events I’ve personally witnessed in my 40+ years on this Earth, I’m counting them on the fingers of one hand.

Wow, what a difference between how my world REALLY is and how the world APPEARS to me through the media. We’re subjected to everyone in the entire world’s bad news and we’re subjected to it at a concentrated and rapid fire pace. How can we not become bitter or indifferent or hateful or resentful? So what to do?

Unplug.

I ran across this video today. Tonight at sundown we’re being asked to unplug for 24 hours, until sundown Saturday. For just one day a week, turn off the TV, switch off the cellphones, and close the laptop. It’s an electronic Sabbath. A day of rest. Can you do it? Does the thought of being disconnected make you nervous or anxious? All the more reason to give it a shot.

I’m in. How about you?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tiffany-shlain/national-day-of-unpluggin_b_505679.html

Why 64 Square Feet you ask? Because that’s how much space I get here at work to mastermind my takeover of the free world. Muahahaha.

Alright, so I know there will be one or two of my imaginary readers who will miss my deep technical dives here, but you know, that’s life man. For the rest of you, you now no longer have to see code snippets and talk about mime types and crap.

Here’s a link to the new site: http://64sqft.wordpress.com/

Now even though I really dig my iPhone, I don’t live for it. I’m not one of those guys that stands around in little packs with other iPhone users and tweets and texts and surfs while ignoring the people right in front of me. But I do think it’s incredibly handy to have on me when I need to check the weather at the place I’m driving to, or need quick directions, or need to find a good restaurant, so I was a little bummed when I dropped the darn thing Sunday night.

I was leaving church and jogging out to my car because Michelle was waiting for me to open the doors and it popped out of my jacket pocket and hit the edge of a curb. At first it didn’t look too bad, just a nice dent in it’s aluminum back and a scuff of red paint from the curb. But I quickly realized that it had internal injuries. The volume buttons no longer worked, and the touch screen would not respond to my loving caresses.

I was bummed. Not so much about the phone, but about the replacement cost. This is no economy to be spending $100 on a phone. At least not for me. So I figured, hey, I can fix this thing! So I grabbed a screwdriver and pried the sucker apart.

I soon realized there was no way I was fixing this thing. After pulling 15 of the tiniest screws I have ever seen out of the innards of my beloved iPhone, I realized I would never be able to get them back in. My fingers are too fat and my eyes are too old to have any hope of getting that thing back together, even if I could magically figure out which component was bad.

But luckily I had a back up phone to use. Unluckily it was my daughters old RAZR; in stunning pink. Yeah, that really bolsters my bad boy image. On top of that, the thing is a piece of hot pink crap. I tried to type a text message on it and suddenly realized why I got an iPhone to begin with. No, I think I’d rather not have a phone at all rather than fight with this hunk of garbage. But you can’t just go around without a cellphone in this day and age right? So I decided to go down to the Apple store and get me a new phone. And this is what I really wanted to write about because the shopping experience at the Apple store is amazing.

I went online to order one and they give you the option to pick it up at a store. I figured that would be better than waiting for them to ship it to me. So I select the store I want to get it from and they ask my name and then tell me when it will be waiting for me.

I walked into the store and told the guy I reserved a phone online. He asked my name and then looked me up on his iPhone. He then tells me to have a look around and somebody will be up with my phone. I drooled over the new 27″ iMac for a few minutes and then a guy taps me on the shoulder and asks if I’m ready to check out. He’s got my iPhone in one hand and a portable credit card reader in the other. He takes my id and punches in a few things. Then he takes my credit card and swipes it. He then asks me if he can email my receipt to me and I say yes. He then hooks the phone up to a computer, activates it and then hands it to me. Done.

Within 5 minutes I had an activated iPhone in hand. No swapping SIM cards, no calling headquarters, no paperwork to sign, and they were FAST! None of the B.S. that I’ve always gone through when buying phones at the AT&T store. And what else was cool is that this is all while standing in the middle of the showroom, they don’t have registers, or lines, at the Apple store. Brilliant.

So I’m back in business with my new iPhone. I gotta say I kinda miss my old one. I really liked the aluminum back versus the plastic back that the new phones have, but it’s way better than the pretty, pink RAZR, that’s for sure.

So if you want to find someplace new and cool to eat, want to avoid a stinker, or want to share your favorite tri-tip recipe, this is the place to be. Check it out.

TasteFresno.com

I went to Vegas last week for the big Microsoft SharePoint conference. For those who don’t know what SharePoint is, it’s a collaboration and content management system. If that still doesn’t make sense, at it’s most basic, it’s a system for building websites. It goes way beyond that, but I like to keep most of the techie stuff off of this blog.

Anyway, one of the amazing things about these conferences (to me anyway) is the logistics. Microsoft knows how to put on a conference. This event was sold out at 7000 attendees. That’s 7000 geeks all in one place to discuss software. This is a big deal. People come from all over the world to attend this conference and I met one guy who came all the way from Jordan!

The keynote address on the first day is setup to accomodate all 7000 attendees. The head of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, was the speaker and it’s amazing to see that many people crammed into one room. The place was massive, with 6 giant 20ft projector screens showing the action. Microsoft took over every inch of meeting space in the Mandalay Bay Casino to put this thing on.

In addition, they fed us all…. yes all of us, twice a day, and they had to do it in an hour. Imagine the organization that needs to take place to get 7000 people in, fed, and out in less than an hour. The Mandalay people really know what they are doing.

And of course with all the technical presentations and what-not going on, geeks need some fun time to offset the seriousness of everything, so Microsoft rented the entire Mandalay Beach, hired Huey Lewis to play (yeah not my first choice either), had an open bar (can you imaging what that bar tab looked like?) and finished it off with a firework show. Microsoft knows how to do a conference.

Anyway, it was a great experience and I picked up a boatload of great information. Looking forward to next year.

So I’m back in town now and settling back in. Coming home after a week in Vegas takes some adjustment. It’s been a good few days back though. I got to jam with an old friend of mine, Alan Yerxa, at his new church on Sunday and that was pretty awesome. Jamming with Alan is a lot different than jamming at my church. The main difference is that it’s a lot smaller, and a lot looser. Both churches are come-as-you-are churches, but Clovis Hills has a much higher production standard, and so there’s a lot more rehearsal and a lot more polish that goes on. Alan’s church on the other hand is small, and intimate, and Alan is a free wheeling kind of guy who’s been playing guitar forever, so it’s more of a come in, run through the songs once, and you’re expected to rock type of situation. Neither approach is better than the other, it’s just different, and so it was nice as a drummer to have a bit of a change in style and presentation.

And speaking of change in style and presentation, tonight I’m hitting a concert and it’s no ordinary concert. This show is going to be the epitome of theatrics and heavy metal music. I’m going to see Slipknot. And what’s better than seeing the insane show that is Slipknot? Taking a pastor to see Slipknot. That’s right, Paul, our worship pastor is going with me. Now honestly, I was taken aback when I put the invite out on Twitter and Paul replied with an affirmative. Paul is a young and hip guy, but I don’t think he owns a single Slipknot album, or any heavy metal album to be honest. Nor do I think he really understood what a Slipknot show looks like, so this should be an eye opening experience. Of course I may be wrong. Maybe he’s been a closet Slipknot fan his whole life and is going to show up dressed in black overalls and a halloween mask? We’ll see.

Now I know it sounds weird for a worship drummer and a pastor to be going to a Slipknot show to begin with. Slipknot is about as anti-establishment, anti-religion as it gets. But honestly, I learned when I was but a wee lad that if I wanted to enjoy heavy music (which I do immensely) I was going to have to tune out most of the lyrics. So for me, this show is about hearing some fantastic musicianship, and seeing some crazy theatrics. To me heavy metal is theater, and Slipknot is one heck of a show. It should be fun.

-Update-….. Well Paul just texted me and said he’s not coming. Said his wife is sick. Not sure I’m buying that, but I guess we’ll never know. Hope you get better soon Jenn!

I swear I hate Windows. It’s the only OS I’ve ever run (and run everything at one time or another) that will spontaneously self destruct, for no apparent reason.

This particular install has been running for about 8 months. I have loaded almost no software on it because I choose to load my apps into VMWare in order to keep my install clean. Yet today, out of the blue, BSOD. And now the machine won’t even boot except in Safe Mode.

And don’t even get me started about Vista. It’s even worse than XP, and slower too.

Since I have to reformat anyway I might just throw Windows 7 on it just for kicks, but you know, it shouldn’t be this freaking hard. It just shouldn’t.