Aaron Paul Vogel

Well, I think I'm about done with going to expos to learn stuff. I've realized today that I need to start either paying full price for a professional, multi-day class, or suck it up, get a book and start reading.

The Motion Tips & Tricks session I did this morning was not entirely worthless; I learned where I could get a good DVD tutorial to watch and learn. Besides that I picked up a few little things, but I certainly don't feel like I could get a project started from scratch and come out with anything that looks good. I did get $20 off the DVD tutorial because, surprise, it's done by the same guy who did the workshop. The lesson here is that these 2-3 hour sessions are basically just shock and awe with little actual learning going on. I did take 2 pages of notes, but they're just notes, not anything really solid to work with. With this expo running $200 I guess you get what you pay for (Apple training sessions lasting 2-3 days run about $1K-2K) it's just a disappointment to go in expecting something worthwhile then feeling let down because you're barely any further along than when you started.

I'm hopeful the Digital Documentary Workshop will be more productive... will report back afterwards.

This is a good news / bad news item for myself, though I hope it's good news for everyone else. I just today downloaded Google's new Google Updater software for my Blackberry Pearl. I've been using the Gmail and Google Maps mobile software for some time and have absolutely loved them. With the new Updater software I found that not only were there terrific new updates for these two programs but a slew of other new programs are now available. The best of these new offering, IMHO, is Google Sync.

For a few months now I've been using a combination solution to get my Google Calendar schedule to sync with my Blackberry's calendar software. Two things, service at Goosync.com - which I believe will now be rendered completely useless - and a little piece of client software called SyncJe, were handling the syncing of my main calendar, while other calendars (birthdays, holidays, etc) were being ignored due to the crippled service Goosync.com provided for free. I had to pay $30 for the SyncJe client so I certainly wasn't going to pay a ludicrously large monthly free to Goosync.com just to sync a few more calendars.

I have to say that I've been happy enough with the service of this combination. However, when offered something better for free, I'm not one to pass it up.

So in comes Google with - finally - their own direct sync client that, gasp, syncs as many of your calendars to your phone as you like! There have been reported bugs, though the only one I've personally experienced has to do with recurring events in GCal showing up as single events in my Blackberry. But that's a minor nuisance I'm hopeful Google will correct. The other down side for many is that the service is only compatible with Blackberry devices, so sorry all you Palm, and mobile phone users.

So, for those of you with Blackberry devices and Google Calendars I highly suggest you check out Google Sync to get yourself synced up! Oh, and the bad news, in case you missed it, is that I just a couple months ago PAID for a service I could have waited for to get free. Oh well.

Wow. I have to say I'm incredibly touched by the sheer number of people who've wished me a happy birthday today. I've received about a dozen text messages of glad tidings and best wishes. I've had about as many people say the same to me in person as I spent the day shopping and hanging out with pretty much my favorite guy in the world: Aaron Post (the Good Aaron).

To all my dear friends who sent me their best today - Joe you old fart, John, LeAnne :*, Erin, and everyone else. Thank you so much. I feel so incredibly fortunate to have such a wonderful and caring group of friends and extended friends.

I often hear, "Oh, Christmas Eve huh? You must really hate getting jipped out of presents huh," when strangers find out that my birthday is the day before such a momentous and lucrative holiday. My typical response is pretty contrary though. Usually I say something like, "actually, I usually get DOUBLED-UP presents!" Which was true in the past, not so much anymore, but neither here nor there in the big picture. In reality I LOVE having my birthday preceding such a stupendous occasion. First of all no one ever forgets my birthday. You'd have to be pretty oblivious to forget another event right before the biggest shopping holiday of the year. Second, and more importantly having my birthday on Christmas Eve means that ALL my friends are generally back in town for break from whatever schooling they're up to, or, more frequently the case now, they have a couple days off work to come visit the family.

You see, I'm VERY close with a good number of high school friends. And we've all been fortunate that no one's family has really moved away from the area in the year following high school. Thus, our nice, tight-knit group of incredibly caring people are all in town for my birthday. We usually get together for a dinner or at least drinks on Christmas Eve or slightly before. I'm wished the best by everyone else and we all get to see everyone else's smiling, happy face another year as they grow into the amazing people we all knew we would be.

So again, to everyone here and elsewhere, "Thank you!" You are all very special to me in your own, unique way. Now, when is your birthday again...? ;)