Entry #00bh: First Impressions...  
 
Frankendate: 01.31.2010  
 

Craig Johnson 1958 - 2010

Much has been made of first impressions as they often quite accurate. We attach adjectives such as boring, clueless, quiet, dull, stiff, shy. At first impressions of Craig Johnson however, none of those words came to mid, well except for that last one: shy. I heard it more than once when folks were describing their first impressions of Craig and I remember thinking that myself. OK So we don't always......

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Entry #009h: Memories...  
 
Frankendate: 05.01.2009  
 

I think I'm going to start walking home from COMMON,

One year ago while at the airport waiting my flight home from COMMON's 2008 annual conference my phone rang. In that short call I learned of the passing the night before of "Mr 400" himself, Al Barsa. Today on the way home from COMMON annual conference. I was sitting on the plane awaiting the request to turn off my phone when it rang. It was my father who told me that my Mother's oldest brother William J Aukeman, had died. Today is May 1, the same day we lost Mom a few years back.

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Entry #008h: Customer Service?...  
 
Frankendate: 12.01.2008  
 
Strange how it's always complaints that get me back to blogging. I have plenty of them buf for now I'll focus on customer service.

Recently I've noticed that some folks believe the economy is slipping a bit. Not as fast as gas prices but I digress. Based only on my personal interaction with these companies and their customer service I think I know why. They have made customer service such an oxymoron that nobody expects any!

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Entry #007h: The laptop continued...  
 
Frankendate: 02.12.2008  
 
In a previous post I complained about my latest laptop "Number 5". Number 5 came into existence because "Number 4" had become unreliable. At this point I'm not sure Number 5 is an improvement. The complaints continue.

/RANT *CONTINUE

I spent a considerable amount of time updating this thing. 5 Hours actually between downloading 500MB of updates and applying them! In the list were everything I could think of: hard disk, DVD, USB, Bluetooth, Wireless, Ethernet, video, power .....

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Entry #006h: This is a tool?  
 
Frankendate: 01.27.2008  
 
I have found great humor observing 'MAC' and 'PC' in the excellent television commercial series from Apple Computer. Virtually every item that MAC picks on PC for is something I have encountered in the many years I have been cursed to run operating systems from the far northwest. The good news for MAC is that the list of things he picks on PC for is so long the series could run forever.

Recently I moved to a new laptop, something I do approximately every three years.....

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Entry #005h: Shut up about gas prices!  
 
Frankendate: 01.01.2008  
 
Over the past weekend I trekked around the southern end of Lake MI over to see iGor in Milwaukee, WI. On Sunday we rolled up to Green Bay and took in the final regular season NFL game on the frozen tundra of Lambeau field. (And YES it was frozen!) To summarize the game, it was not a good day to be a Lions fan. But then there really are not a lot of days when it's good to be a Lions fan .

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Entry #004h: Why do we do this?  
 
Frankendate: 12.18.2007  
 
Last week one of my customers was hammered by a virus that attacked their windoze infrastructure once again. How did this happen? I could say that they purchased a lousy firewall and that's how it got in. I would be lying; they have a very recent Cisco ASA firewall..  
 
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Entry #003h: Do you work like this?  
 
Frankendate: 12.04.2007  
 
About a month ago my ATM card finally cracked in half. I stopped to order a new one and while I was there asked if there was a way that I wouldn't have to select 'English' for my language and select 'Yes' after every transaction for a receipt. I was told "No we cannot do that." It's a stupid waste of time but what are ya gonna do if you want to use...  
 
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Entry #002h: Wrong Behavior.  
 
Frankendate: 11.28.2007  
 
Recently my family and I went out to the western part of our beautiful country and visited several US National parks. We borrowed a motor home so we stayed in campgrounds along the way. One of the parks we stayed in had an excellent bath house facility, only a couple months old. Now I would be shocked if you said you'd never been in a bathroom with stuff scrawled on the sides of the stalls....  
 
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Entry #001h: The right numbers.  
 
Frankendate: 11.27.2007  
 
Recently I read an article that discussed carbon emissions and our efforts to reduce them here in the US. The article pointed out that in China alone, runaway fires in coal mines burn as much as 200 million tons of coal each year. That would be nearly 10% of the coal China actually uses. Now we know that burning fossil fuel emit carbon dioxide...  
 
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