Install Complete

Install of character set fix has been completed.....our folks in France, Germany, and all the other folks that like to use accented characters are free to blognow. Sorry for the long delay in getting this fix out.

Yoel

Fixes going in

Hi Everyone,
For those following Magic Smoke we are going to deploy two fixes tomorrow morning during the install window, 4-6am ET. They are;

1. Character Set Problems:
This is the problem of characters with accents (and other special symbols) displaying improperly (as gobbledygook).
2. Removal of Takeover Animated Ads
We're removing animated ads for AOL members, that take over your screen, from the inventory of ads that we have to show you. Sorry, AIM Screennames will have to put up with those ads for now.

Yoel

Hope you had a happy

Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgivng. I enjoyed it with my daughter (her first Thanksgiving ever!), my wife and her family in our home.


We also celebrated Buy Nothing Day....the day after Thanksgiving. The local news talked about the other side of the "Black Friday" as Buy Nothing Day. We've never followed the consumer binge buying around Thanksgiving, who wants to deal with the crowds. Even with some sites offering free shipping we didn't buy anything. We enjoyed the the day at home with Fae. :-)

Now back to fixing the issues in Journals and trying to bring new features to the product before the end of the year.

Ads in Journals...still sucking

For the Anti-Ads folks.....we're trying, trying our hardest to get some options presented to the decision makers. We're also trying to get in the loop to review future responses to the press when it pertains to this product.

AntiJournalsAds

AOL Toolbar for Internet Explorer

With the release of AIM Triton came a new version of AOL Toolbar for IE

I'm plugging it here since 1. There isn't a AOL Toolbar blog yet and 2. There's support for blogging in the toolbar.

There's nifty little feature, which I used to get the previous post started,  that grabs highlighted text on a page and put it into the text area of a journal entry.....the Journal team calls this the "Blog This" functionality.

Go check it out http://downloads.channel.aol.com/toolbar

Soccer

I'm a soccer fan and player, been playing since I was 5. One of the ways I like to unwind from "the grind" is watch the nightly recap of international games on the Fox Soccer Channel. Occasionally I'll record some games on my Replay TV to watch when I have the time. I prefer the Seria A (Italy) and La Liga (Spain) games over the English Premiere League.

Anyways, on to another matter in the same subject that I felt like posting about.

"FIFA Mulls End to Anthems Before Games"

http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/sports/article.adp?id=20051122164409990003

I think FIFA has a point. How many people know their national anthems? How many people know the national anthems of other countries? IIntl soccer games are definitely emotional events so we'll see how they decide, I'm still undecided myself.

Check out this  National Anthem Fiasco

AOL in Silicon Valley

Recently I posted my location on Jason Calacanis's, CEO of Weblogs,  blog.

So I wanted to follow that up with some more info about AOL in Silicon Valley

Yes, that's right AOL does has an office in Silicon Valley. We're 3 miles from Yahoo, 2 miles from Google. We're still sitting in the same buildings that Netscape used to operate out of. We're active in the local  tech industry, hosting moblie monday and the community, like The Human Race

We're hosting tag tuesday next week so come on out!

Download AIM Triton for Windows

Go to http://www.aim.com/

Yes, please do.....regardless of what you are about to read. It's worthy of a test drive, that's for sure.

I downloaded AIM Triton today since we got the announcement that it went GM. I had previously installed some beta versions and liked what I saw but the performance was horrible.

I am using AIM Triton 1.0.2 today and started seeeing the same performance issues I did with the beta. I'm seeing a slow response in typing IM's and CPU usage for aim6.exe is really really high. After 8 IM sessions and eating 109 MB of memory I had to kill it and go back to using AOL Communicator IM

On to the good news: tabbed IM & integrated Radio.........those are my favorite features.

More to come when I have time to play and memory to spare.

the previous posting

So my last posting didn't really contain much "Content" with regards to Journals ads. It was more about  anger and frustration. I'm going to leave it up there since it makes a point.

I wasn't happy when we were told to put ads in journals and I'm still not happy. Oh well......back to work.

Ads in Journals suck

No one on the Journals team wanted them but we don't make these calls.
AntiJournalsAds 

Connect on LinkedIn?

http://www.linkedin.com/

It's a cool site, corp. networking.

hello from AOL Explorer BEta

This is a test from AOL Explorer

spell checker is nice

this is poorly spelled word

AOL.com - Welcome to America Online

"California Rejects Arnold's Ideas"

She's arrived ...

Here's a few pictures of Fae

GoogleBOMB | 'Miserable failure' links to Bush

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=miserable+failure&btnG=Search

Miserable Failure

enough said

Belly to Belly

11 days till the baby comes! (or sooner). We have an appointment at the hospital on the 16th if the baby decides not to come sooner.

Why We Blog

From MagicSmike via blog this

 

"Why We Blog So, for my last update of an action-packed day, I just wanted to call your attention to the results of a survey that AOL conducted. The survey asked folks, "So why do you do this blog thing, anyway?" (I'm paraphrasing.)"

Ford exec: Japanese hogging hybrid parts - Sep 20, 2005

"Ford exec: Japanese hogging hybrid parts"

Stop crying! If you were only as smart as the japanese when it comes to hybrids you wouldn't be so reliant on them for hybrid parts. Maybe you shouldn't be 5 years behind them, maybe you shouldn't be so closely tied to a losing strategy of need oil! Serves you right for supporting the president and a bad strategy.

CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS: Car execs fund Bush well http://www.freep.com/news/politics/car17_20040617.htm

President Bush's inauguration $250,000 DONORS INCLUDE  Time Warner & Ford Motor Company


Wow- I think I may have to stop using Journals now, AOL is Time Warner

Thanks Dubya!( for making America and the world safer)

A United Nations panel of experts issued a report Monday saying there is no shortage of recruits for terrorism worldwide and that Iraq has provided new training ground for them, replacing al Qaeda bases lost in Afghanistan.

costa rican sunset

Missy

Our doggie

Kiki

Our umbrella cockatoo and she's waving!

FEMA Chief Relieved of Katrina Duties

"FEMA Chief Relieved of Katrina Duties"

WOO HOO!!! The man should be sent to jail. Now, maybe his boss and his bosses boss can step down too.....all idiots

Add to MyAOL

click on the add to my aol button to add my journal to your my aol page

AOL Favorites Plus is Live!

Can you say host based favorites with feed integration!?! Nothing else like it on the web

http://favorites.aol.com/ef/welcome.html

FEMA head bears the brunt of Katrina anger

And he should! He's "W"'s former roommate and has no experience in emergency mgt.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/12582790.htm

Time Warner chief gets backing from royal Saudi investor

Is this really news worthy?
http://aolpf5.marketwatch.com/news/newsfinder/pulseone.asp?dist=feed&siteid=aolpf&guid={9035509A-CB31-4BB5-A423-E39EEEF343E3}

Kenya

This is our African Grey called Kenya

test

Commute.org - Working Together to Improve Your San Mateo County Commute

http://www.commute.org/


I think this is pretty ironic.....San Mateo County, situated between the AOL office in Mountain View and San Francisco (my commute when I drive to work) has a website all about commuting. I find it ironic because San Mateo County is one of the only counties in the bay area that doesn't suppport the diamond lanes. Diamond lanes, or commuter lanes, are for commuters with 2 or more (on Hwy 101) people.

I used the "blog this" url posted in John's journal.

Wow, FTP does work

This is an interesting test. The entry below contains an image from AOL Pictures, pretty sad picture display. The picture in this entry was FTP directly to my hometown space. The FTP tool was hard to use to say the least and obviously editing tools don't really exist. At least you get a good view of the mural. :-)

Can anyone guess what rhyme it is?

We're having a baby

This is a test of the pictures system, seems to be working fine.

This is a picture of the mural we had painted in the baby's room by a painter we found off of Craigslist.

We're expecting a little girl on October 17th. We're heading to Babies R Us tonight to do some hands on testing of stuff we need to put on our registry.

Awesome Feed Reader

AOL just released a web based feed reader (to public beta)
http://feeds.my.aol.com/

It's pretty dam cool and my friends are digging it too. Check it out.

What's the point of a secure authentication system?

What's the point of having a secure authentication system for employees that requires you to have a Secure ID if company sites don't use it. We just got a mail stating they are changing the authentication system to our online check system and it's not using the service that most of our sites use. AAAARGGHH.

I wish I had the power to fire people. The person who made this decision and the idiot that decided we need to use Outlook Calendar. As the Donald would say, "You're Fired!"

It seems that my journal is about gripes. I suppose that's what work will do to you.

Are you legs broken???

I hate seeing my coworkers drive a 10th of mile to get take out lunch. I don't care how little time they have before their next meeting. ARRRGH

Testing from AOL Explorer (next release)

This is a test from AOL Explorer

Announce yourself!

I bike commute to work from the Mountain View train station. It's a about a 2 mile ride and all flat, pretty easy riding. There are bike lanes on the two main roads I ride on. A lot of people bike commute in this area, people are health and environmentally conscious, as well as the weather being perfect most of the year.

One of the things I hate about the most other bikers, not all of your are this way, is that they never announce themselves when passing. I don't wear a rearview mirror, which are available, to see what's behind me since I can just turn my head. It's pretty frustrating to be riding a long and have someone come up on your left without a peep. It's not safe!

Message to other riders out there, ANNOUNCE YOURSELVES when passing please :-)

have a good day.

Welcome

Welcome to my Journal. I'm starting my journal since I work on this product and need to be a user. I'm not that found of sharing my life with the web, but we'll see. Maybe I'll like it.

I chose to call this Journal "The daily grind" because I am at work most of time and there's plenty to write about (that's allowed). There'll also be some content on my personal life as well.

Enjoy