Friday, August 29, 2003

Lee/Terry... So very sorry to hear of your loss. I will keep you both in my thoughts and prayers as you go through this difficult time. Keep us all posted as to arrangements...

I am sorry to report that Terri's mom passed away last night in her sleep. As you may know from a few previous weblog postings she had been struggling with cancer for the past 10 months. After a few months of chemo and radiation therapy earlier this year, she felt well enough to accompany us on a trip to Scotland and Ireland in June. But her health continued to decline. It's always hard to lose a parent, but we trust that she is at complete peace and reunited with Terri's dad, who passed away last year.

Friday, August 22, 2003

I posted a comment the other day about the product I've been working on, but here I am talking about it again, like a proud father who torments you by going on and on about the virtues of his child :-). It's called the HP DVD Movie Writer dc3000. We got a really good review yesterday from Walt Mossberg, the technology writer from the Wall Street Journal. If fact, if you have a broadband connection, you can see his video here. He was on CNBC's show 'Power Lunch' talking up the product.

Walt is like the food critic on the movie Mystic Pizza. He is able to 'make or break' a product simply by praising or criticizing it in his weekly column so we all feel pretty good that he liked it. It will be on store shelves in about a month. I've used it to convert several wedding videos to DVD. I hadn't watched our wedding video in years and it was great fun. Part of the reason I don't like to use old video tapes is because they are susceptible to damage and wear each time you use them but once you put them on DVD, you can easily make multiple copies for safe keeping. I also copied some instructional videos to DVD and apprciate the convenience of being able to navigate around in them with the chapter points it automatically inserts during the conversion.

Thursday, August 21, 2003

Jay, congratulations on your CD sales. If you like, I can put up a web page where people can order it from you. We could put short mp3 samples of the songs and an email address where they can contact you. Also, you can accept payment with Paypal, which allows private individuals to accept payment using credit cards. What do you think? I searched on Ebay but couldn't find any CDs that were for sale but I found the image I've posted here under 'completed items'.

Wednesday, August 20, 2003

Hey everybody! Well, after the first three weeks of CD sales, we have sold over $1200 worth. Pretty good, I'd say! If any of you are involved in church work, or would like to donate the gift of new music to your church, or religious ed. program, get in touch with me. It's pretty good stuff, if I do say so myself. I guess the main point is this: If you buy a CD for $16.95, and have to worry about bleeping out half of it, the word of God in music for $5 is a pretty good bargain. If you don't feel it's for you, at least put a feeler out for me. You've got my e-mail. You can also get it on eBay. Just search "In the Shadow of the Cross". Peace...

Monday, August 18, 2003

Hi Jay, I think I know how you feel... I was having one of those days too...

Thursday, August 14, 2003

I'm having one of those days at work today, and I thought that you guys wouldn't mind if I just vented a little.... @%&@^%)%#&#@#@&^%$*!!!!!!! Thanks.... I needed that!

Tuesday, August 12, 2003

The product I've been working on has been introduced and will be available in a month or two. I've been testing it lately and it works very well. Did you have your wedding video taped? Did you know that video tapes degrade gradually and may not be viewable after a few decades of storage? Well, then you need this product . It's a way to convert our VHS tapes to DVD so they will be viewable long after we are not

Monday, August 11, 2003

Doc, In answer to your earlier question as to how to purchase my "tunes"... You can get them directly from me ($5 plus $2 shipping), or through eBay (same price). You can search by typing In the Shadow of the Cross. Thanks!

Saturday, August 09, 2003

I think that I may have discovered the source of the problems with Blogger. If you are using the 'old' blogger, i.e., www.blogger.com it seems to have trouble publishing to the website. However, the new blogger, i.e., new.blogger.com seems to work. You can see that their interfaces are vastly different and so maybe that is the source of the problem. I've updated the Blogger link (That's this thing here --> Powered by Blogger ) at the bottom and added another at the top so when you click on them, it should take you to the new composing screens. Let me know how it works for you.

Wednesday, August 06, 2003

I got to ride a Segway. There was a lot of hype surrounding these self-balancing scooters even before they first made their appearance, but I am not sure we'll be seeing them in large quantities anytime soon. They just don't do much more than a bicycle and cost quite a bit more (like nearly $5,000 more!).

This is my campsite at Oshkosh. I've been doing this for so long now that I think I should reserve a space with my name on it :-)

This is a view from 10,500 feet on my way back out to Colorado. I just narrowly escaped Wisconsin by flying above some thunderstorms that were just beginning to form. If you give these things enough time, there's hardly any chance of flying over them. I learned about 30 minutes later, they were topping out at 45,000 feet with hail.

And Congratulations to Jay for making a CD! Don't go signing any recording contracts until you've talked with me, my friend. I have the inside scoop on those :-).

Hi everyone! Well, my CD came out last weekend, and we sold about 200 copies on Saturday and Sunday. We listed it on Ebay yesterday under Religious, christian music genre. People really like it! It really gives you a certain air of satisfaction when you see something that you had a hand in creating blossom. Not too shabby for a Swoyersville boy! See ya'll!!!!

Tuesday, August 05, 2003

I got back from Oshkosh last night and had a great time there, as usual. I've been to the event 12 times and never grow tired of it. One of the guys who was camped next to me put together an on-line 'scrapbook' of his trip last year and you can visit it here. It gives a sense of what it's like and if you're into airplanes, you will most certainly like it.

I got a call from John Nardone yesterday and he's doing well and still protecting people from the insurance companies who are only too happy to write policies and then fade into the woodwork when it comes time to pay a claim. Heaven has a special place for personal injury lawyers.

Maryellen Cusma sent me a notice that there will be a golf event on September 26th for Bishop O'Reilly graduates. I'll send out the details in an email some time this week. Hope all is going well for you and please take some time to post a message here when you have time.