It’s that time of year again. Melissa and I are making the trip down to Gainesville FL for our second annual alumni weekend. After 10+ years of not doing anything FL Crew related (or rowing in general), we’re both trying to get back into supporting our alumni and it’s been fun getting back out to the boathouse for a weekend tour of the facilities. I might even squeeze my not-so-lightweight frame back into a shell for a brief reminder of what made rowing such an addiction during my college years.

Florida Crew Alumni,

Invitations were sent out last week to the 4th annual Florida Crew Family and Alumni Weekend. Some of you may not receive one because your physical address is not on file. A copy of the invite is attached to this message. It explains how to RSVP and gives a description of the event. The festivities start Saturday, February 20th. The event continues to grow every year and I guarantee it will be worth the trip to Gainesville.

Hope to see you there!
Family and Alumni Weekend Invitation

Regards,

Mark Gallrein
Florida Crew Alumni Coordinator
FloridaCrewAlumni@gmail.com

It’s not often that commercial technology in the public sector makes such an intuitive leap into the modern world that I actually notice the change. Sure, plenty of stuff changes behind the scenes all the time but we pump gas from the same kind of terminals that have been in use for 20+ years, pay for products using the same small plastic cards (or cash), stack our groceries on the conveyor belt, etc. It might not sound like much but you develop a habit of doing things. All the steps you go through to accomplish some mundane task.

Take deposits for example. Sign the back of the check, find a damn deposit envelope (always seem to be out when you need one), fill it out, enter the amount into the machine, confirm the total, etc. Pretty much the standard procedure for ATM deposits for the last 10+ years (not having to fill out the envelope is the only change I can remember). But when I went to deposit a check at my local Wachovia branch this morning, I was completely thrown for a loop.

The old machine was gone, replaced by a brand new design. This ATM didn’t have a hard to see, 8″ green CRT monitor running some outdated piece of ATM software from the 80s. The new machine was sleek and modern. A large, brightly lit touchscreen LCD dominated most of the front panel with a user interface that was actually pleasant to use (I didn’t have to fight with the card reader to accept my bank card either). However, the most noticable difference was the lack of a deposit envelope container. As I stepped through the deposit process I realized Wachovia had just made deposit envelopes obsolete. You select the deposit account, feed the check into the slot and the ATM auotmatically scans the check for the amount. All you do if verify the total and finalize the transaction. Apparently it will take up to 30 checks or a stack of cash all at once.

This is really nothing new – desktop/commercial check scanners have been around for years so it’s not like the banking industry just figured out how to scan a check digitally. I just want to give them credit for actually putting that tech to good use in a way that makes this annoying process even easier.

That’s pretty cool.

I remember playing all 6 games on my friend’s console. Gripping the joystick (black, square base with a single red button) between the web of our thumb and pointer, we’d play for hours until our hands started to cramp. Atari has converted them into flash based web games:

Atari Arcade

Bonus Link: Muppets return to YouTube!

If you liked Shaun of the Dead, you’ll love Zombieland. Tongue-in-cheek story with great special effects, slo-mo high-def videography and a great cast. Part of it was filmed here in Georgia (I caught a 99x bumper sticker on one of the destroyed highway vehicles – lol) so that was pretty cool. This one is definately going on my DVD purchase list and I hope it does well enough to spawn sequals.

Overall, I like some of the new changes in IE 8.0 but one feature in particular is driving me crazy: the delete option on the drop down URL list. The little red “X” is located in a column almost immediately beneath the drop down arrow. Mechanically, my natural URL selection motion drops the mouse pointer right over the delete button or close enough to it that every third or fourth time I scroll down to select a URL, I accidently delete the address I’m looking for. Very poor implementation of a GUI feature especially considering IE8 doesn’t offer any options to change the behavior.

I’m not the only person who thinks this “feature” is annoying.

Among other things, we’re still trying to decompress from our 2 week whirlwind vacation to Vancouver, Alaska, Victoria and Seatle. Most of it from the deck of the Celebrity X Mercury cruiseship. My first time aboard a ship this size and we go for almost 2 weeks! I’ve got over 600 digital pictures from 3 different cameras, a couple days worth of GPS track files, and plenty of amazing memories to sort through as we try to get stuff posted online between this site and our Facebook account.

Throw all that into the blender with Madeline, College Football in full swing, and the day-to-day stress of Atlanta and it becomes clear we need more hours in the day to get it all done on time.

I’m hoping to get pics posted by the end of the week and then some of the GPS track highlights afterwards. I think we’ve got some cool shots of some amazing scenery and I can’t wait to get them posted.