CV of Justin Lang

So here I am… Sittin and waitin for my “contact” that I got from craigslist that wanted to buy the very computer that I am writing this on. The PowerBook 12″. Lets see how long I have to wait before I have to make a call!

So it happened… I took the plunge and picked up my new Mac Pro and 23″ Cinema Display from the Clarendon Apple Store on Saturday!  Let me tell you, this thing is beautiful and SOOOO powerful. It fits right into my work space at home.  I got the basic model with 2xduo core 2.8 and 2 gigs of ram with a 320gig hard drive and only one cd rom.  All of this can of course be upgraded later which is why I was so attracked to the Mac Pro.  I am still working on getting everything transfered over, but the main thing is done, my iTunes songs and movies!!!  Now I just have to finish loading my programs and Renee’s stuff.

Picking up the Mac Pro on Saturday was quite the adventure as it was the second day since the release of the 2nd iPhone.  There was still a line out the door for the iPhone and another smaller line for customer looking at getting other things!  After everything was said and done, I walked out with a 5% business discount on everything, a businesss account, a personal shopper at the apple store and $200 dollars worth of free stuff.  How can you go wrong with that?

On This past Sunday was Olivia’s half Birthday/Swim Party at her local swimming pool.  She split the day with one of her friends as they both have birthdays in December.  I think she had a lot of fun if you couldn’t tell from the photo!  That was Olivia jumping off the diving board for the first time ever!!!  After that there was no way to get her off of it!

I posted all the photos over at the photo gallery of our wedding site.  Click the image to go right to the gallery.

Just a random photo of beutiness! Someone took it while I was thinking about something at the office!

Last night after work, mom had her birthday party at one of her friends house in Lorton. While her birthday was really on July 7 which was a monday, they threw her a party closer to the weekend.  In attndance was my brother Jonn and Frannie and their kids Oliva and Griffon.  Since I don’t have to many photos of Griff, I tried to snap some on my iPhone to share, and this was the best one of him looking some what in my direction!  Cute kid huh??

I worked a show yesterday at the Omni Shoreham in DC called the Alliance for Community Media.  It was for cable access channels around the country.  We shared a booth with Videssence, one of our manufacturers.  While the show was alright, I was interested in some of the different vendors exhibiting.  I am also interested in learning more aboout how my customers do their job and what tools they might use.  One that caught my attention was the product from Rush Works Media, called the Remo Remote Production System.  What first caught my attention was the use of a Hardigg rolling storm case that houses the whole system.  They are outfitted the entire system including a monitor, 6 mic inputs and mixer, camra joy stick, program switcher, mouse, keybaord and video inputs into the Hardigg Stormcase iM2720.  click through the link above or the picture to learn more about it.  You can get the stand alone kit with just the production system or the production system with small robotic cameras.  Pretty neat stuff!

So I have been doing alot of thinking lately about my road map for upgrading my macs and where I want to go in the future.  I think I have narrowsed down the main computer to a Mac Pro.  It is expandable, FAST and SEXY!  But Renee is correct, what if I am traveling and need to do something?  I think it is at that point that I would include a MacBook Air into the system.  It would be able to sync up with the Mac Pro when I get back.  Plus it doesn’t need to be super powerful as that is what the Mac Pro is for.

But one thing that has come to lite is the fact that I would need wireless broadband access at times.  Now the MacBook Air does have a USB connection and there are USB broadband cards, but thinking more about it… I almost always stay in courtyard marriotts, which have free wireless broadband!  If they only have a wired connection, then plus in the airport express that I have and I have my wireless base station up and running.  I think this is a viable road map, what do you think?

Which one which one…. It truly is a TOUGH decision!. What is a boy to do?

I plan on upgrading my good old faithful G4 PowerBook to a new apple intel computer.  But I am in a little bit of a bind trying to figure out which one to invest in.  So here I will go over some of my points…

Mac Pro – It is the fastest mac out there with 2 duo intel processors, can handle 4 hard drives, upgradable ram and extra PCI card ports.  So the system can grow if I need it to.  plus it is a desk top so I can upgrade to a larger display later. PLUS, it will force me to do my design work at the desk rather then on th couch while watching tv.  But then the negative is that I can be mobile with it.  What if I need to do something on the road???  I think it is at that point that I hope to be profitable and can afford an additional apple, macbook, macbook Pro or apple air.  Then I can sync the computers.

Macbook, Macbook Pro, Apple Air – MOBILE!!! that is the one top reasons.  but a huge negative is that none of them are really upgradable!  The oppsoing argument can be made that I get a laptop now and add on a desktop later after being profitable.

Help anyone???

About a week or so ago, I was asked to pick out a grill for the office as my personal one was stolen. Since we as an office are doing this every year now, we might as well get one. So I found the biggest cheapest one I could find. It’s called the Super Pro Charcoal Grill! We got it at Lowes for $130.00. Not a bad deal if you ask me. It can hold up to 40 hamburgers at once! Plus it has cast iron grates which will NEVER rust out or get crappy, another nice hit. It was a little bit of a pain in the ass to put together, but it was worth it.  Lowes offered free grill assembley with purchase.  But after working at Hechingers for 6 years and having to put things like this together, I know how lazily they put them together!

So tomorrow is our annual employee Barbeque.  Everyone brings something to share which is awesome.  We are going to have 6 different meats grilled up and smoked as well as plenty of sides.  Should be a lot of goooood eatin’ for 2 days.  Yes, TWO days!  That is why we do it on thuresdays.  There will be plenty of meats left over to grill some up on friday as well.

I have been looking for a new ecommerce system to try a new venture.  I have found magento!.  It is open source, which i love. It’s ran by php and mysql.  But most of all, I love the inegration and updating system.  It seems easy to use, I just have to do some more reading on it to figure it out.  Now I just need to find something to sell!