VegettoEX Dot Com

Category: Uncategorized

  • Professional Podcasting

    Yesterday I recorded (and today I edited) my first “professional” podcast… that is, the first episode of the new podcast we are doing at my job. It was incredibly exciting. I got to spend a little money on upgraded equipment from what I own at home (mixer, mics, etc.), get the troops rallied around the concept, develop show outlines and schedules, etc.

    As you heard in the first podcast episode of WTF EX, some of the most important things Jeff and I thought were necessary for managing time were bringing in sanity and happiness to that mix. In this particular example, what makes me more happy than anything else is being able to take something I’ve learned and experimented with in my spare time over the last few years and apply it to work. I’m actually making money doing something I love, and on top of that, I’m spreading valuable information that will make the world a better place. I don’t forget for an instant that what I just said doesn’t happen to many people, and I’m incredibly thankful for it.

    How about you all? Do you have any life stories / examples of something similar?

    (BTW, if you’re reading this blog and haven’t responded saying who you are, you’re obligated to do so!)

  • Who Are You?

    I did a similar thing over on Twitter a couple weeks ago, and I think I only got one response :P.

    I know there are people out there that are reading this, and a few of you have already commented on a few blog posts. Just out of curiosity, though, who are you? How’d you get here?

    No, seriously. I really want to know. If you’re reading this, consider yourself obligated to comment and tell me! Even if you think I know who you are and know that you’re reading, respond anyway. It’ll feed my internet popularity ego.

    Which really isn’t something I need, but whatever :P.

  • I don’t know what to title this. “E-mail and parents”…?

    So for the last many years, I occasionally receive spam specifically geared towards a car enthusiast. Nothing strange here, but keep reading.

    Let it be known that my dad owned a Corvette for a while, and thought he was the super-awesome car guy. He got rid of it a few years ago, mostly because he didn’t really have a whole lot of time to actually enjoy it besides pumping money into it to keep it clean and shiny.

    I’ve told him time and time again that it’s not OK to use my e-mail address to sign up for extra entries on sweepstakes, mailing lists for coupons at the local car supply stores, etc. I understand that he really wants to win those things, but it’s not NOT a big deal ‘cuz pressing “DELETE” on the keyboard wears a little thin after a while (spam filters are only so good, blah blah blah). It’s certainly slowed down lately, but I occasionally get one that reminds me that he’s still doing this stuff.

    Today I received an offer for a complimentary car inspection from a dealership down the street from him in Richmond, Virginia (note that I live in New Jersey). This clearly says to me that he’s still using my e-mail address to sign up for things.

    What does this mean? What does it say? He’s the type of person who types full URLs into the search bar, and also didn’t understand why it wasn’t OK for me to “just put in a little higher bid” on one of his eBay auctions to force the other guy to bid more. It’s not like he’s a bad guy, or anything (though he would be extremely defensive if I called him on it, again). So what is it? Are we just so in tune with the internet and its associated culture that we don’t even know how to explain these concepts and best-practices? Are they that foreign to people? Or are some people just inherently inconsiderate, regardless of the context?

  • Direct Visit or RSS Reader?

    I suppose this is something I could get answers to if I felt like looking at and analyzing some server logs, but comments are much more interesting.

    For this blog (as well as vgconvos, and perhaps any other blogs you read)… are you directly visiting the website, or are you reading it in some type of RSS reader (be it Google Reader, an e-mail client, or something else)? Why? Does it affect whether or not you’ll come leave a comment on a blog?

  • What’s a podcast…?

    So I was down at Anime Weekend Atlanta (or just “AWA”) this past weekend doing all sorts of wonderfully nerdy things with a whole bunch of seemingly-equally-nerdy people. Saturday afternoon I happened upon a couple DBZ cosplayers, and felt obligated to take a few photos. Here’s the first one I snagged (off the ol’ iPhone):

    DBZ Cosplayers at Anime Weekend Atlanta 2008

    After I took a couple pictures, I started up a little conversation with them, and found out there was going to be a larger gathering of DBZ cosplayers at 12:30 pm. Awesome! Not only people of my own kind, but multiple super-nerdy people of my own kind! Once we got a little dialogue going, I figured it was as good a time as any to mention the website. I asked if it was OK to put the image up on my site, and then if they had ever checked out the DBZ podcast that we do.

    Yajirobe (the one on the far left) stared at me blankly for about four/five seconds, and then replied, “What’s a podcast…?”

    As the guys over at GeekNights have said time and time again, it’s all well and good that we are trying to get other podcast listeners to check out our own shows, but what we really need is for more people in general to listen to podcasts in general… not specifically our own shows. If they don’t even know what the word means, how on Earth are we to expect them to listen to our piddly shows?

    What came next was the real killer. After briefly explaining that we do this cool show every week talking about what’s going on with news, in-depth topics about the series, etc., the same guy blankly stared at me again for a couple seconds and replied, “Well, I’m not that big a fan…”

    I did everything I could to hold myself back from saying, “BUT YOU’RE $%#@ING COSPLAYING GOD-DAMNED YAJIROBE~!!!!1”

  • General Maintenance

    Learning a little bit more about how WordPress actually works and farting around with some themes. The blog may continue to look completely different every single time you come (unless you’re getting it through something like Google Reader), so please excuse my breaking the code every so often.

    If you’ve subscribed to the feed for the podcast, you may have noticed something other than the first podcast episode appearing in the feed. Do you have any recommendations on how I may be able to link to an audio file within a regular blog post (such as in the “Top 10 Pokemon” post) without it actually showing up as an “episode” in the podcast feed? Any types of special “exclude” linkings?

    The web of today is so different than how I first got into it… it still remains so exciting to me, but it’s just as frustrating in a whole bunch of different ways!

  • Podcast Episode 001: Time and Project Management

    (or lack there-of)

    That’s right, I’m doing a third podcast (#1: Daizenshuu EX, #2: vgconvos.com, #3 this one). As you’ll hear on the show, this is going to be about whatever I want it to be about, whenever I want to do it, and whoever I want to do it with. I have a bunch of random topics flying around in my head that I would absolutely love to talk out with friends, and this gives me an excuse to get them over here for said topical discussions.

    For this first episode, I decided that Jeff (a familiar voice to those who follow anything else I do) would be a great guy to have on. We talked about how we manage to accomplish all these various things in life… things like going to work, paying bills, going out for a walk, and all those extra nerdy things in between.

    I don’t really have a whole Hell of a lot to say about it. If you’re here reading this (and listening to the episode), there’s a good chance you already know who I am and have at least a quasi-stalker-ish interest in following the things I do. If you don’t already know me…? Well, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m the most bad-ass person on the planet, and you’ll be a fan immediately. I think.

  • Just a typical first post.

    I decided to set up an actual blog for me… “me” being VegettoEX. Hi. Nice to meet you. Actually, though… if you’re reading this, chances are you know who “VegettoEX” is.

    This won’t be for trivial nonsense posts (you can follow the Twitter for that). I have a bunch of semi-professional but non-corporate writings I would like to do, and they just don’t really fit in anywhere else. I wanted to set up vegettoex.com as a central place to list the majority of things I’ve been involved with, and this seemed like as good a place as any to set up such a blog. I have plenty of other places I hang out online with friends and write various things, but it seems like if I’m going to be online in some position of notoriety for over ten years, I should at least have a standard blog with my alias attached to it.

    This will probably stay looking like a pretty standard WordPress install for at least the foreseeable future. Since my day-job consists mostly of design/re-design/content-management work on these here tubes, it takes a lot of dedication and non-existent free-time to want to do it for personal things…! Perhaps that’s just a series of excuses to justify it for myself, but I feel it’s at least partially true.

    So anyway, it’s good to have you here. Read along, subscribe, post some comments; the things I’ll be expunging from my head and writing down will be meant to be and intended as conversations. I’m very big on “conversations”. You can probably tell from the podcast I’ve already been doing for nearly three years, as well as the upcoming one with the word itself in the title (wowzers, sneak-peak of a broken website…!).

    Later, all.  You know where to find me.