Well, I don't own a Mac, or have iTunes or anything that is Mac or Apple, but I do care about what is going on with Macs. I just read that some artists are not going to release their music to Apple as a reseller because of the way Apple is selling the songs. These bands include Metallica (corporate whores for my reference in this entry), Green Day (sellouts now), Linkin Park(nails on a chalkboard to me), and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers (strange, but ashame that they feel this way).

I have a hard time trying to understand bands that don't want to be a part of these great money making oppertunity. So what if people are not buying your whole album, did you ever think that some of the songs that you put on there are all that good? Most bands can barely put four or five good songs on a single album these days. These bands need to get over themselves fast. If they want to stick to the "Old Ways", then let them. Just like the RIAA, they will welt on the vine and die.

I could go on forever on this...

For the last week, I have been the only guy that knows what the hell it takes to run a tech department at my company. The guy that was there before me was a alcoholic and had some um...very interesting personal problems araise from that.

But anyways. For anyone that really knows me, I love to work on project by myself. And when i am on a roll, I don't want to be bothered. I am sure I am not the only one that is like that. But being the only geek that is in production and it is fucking tough!! A lot of the people that are in production don't have a clue on how to fix computer problems or software problems. I have to work on production projects, and work on other projects that are more for the company betterment. I am torn between two areas of the company. It is unfair. I want to be truly in the IT department, but they won't put me there, but they can't afford to move from the Productiond department. I am wondering if there is any logic at my company. When it comes to scanning documents, a trained chimp can do it. I don't underestand why people want to make it tougher than it actually is.

Shit, this turned into a rant. Oh well. The evils of upper management continue. And the geeks of the world that are good at what they do will never be management because, we use logic.

Logic, the true power in the world.

Ok,

I am not a vengeful person, but, I have a special place in my heart for the huge amout of hate I have for lawyers. Since I work for a litigation support company, I have found that there is more to hate about lawyers than just the normal things. If you wonder why legal costs get higher and higher, I can give you several reasons why.

The biggest reason is because they are greedy, I know that is a stereo type, and I am sure there are some lawyers that are out there that are truely interested in their clients' pursuit of justice. But from what I see every day, lawyers are more about prolonging the time a case takes to resolve. This runs up costs.

The costs of a legal or civil case comes not only from the lawyers hourly fee or from a retainer, but from all the discovery work that goes into a case. This is where I come in. The lawyers and their paralegals search through documents of the opposing side to find a smoking gun or probable cause. After going through all the docements and tagging the ones they want to have a copy of, they send them to my company. This is where one of two things happen. One, we copy the docs and send it back to the lawyers for both sides, or we scan the docs with highspeed scanners (60 pages/minute) and we produce the docs on cd with a nice little database to make searching easier.

This can raise the cost, plus, the lawyers and paralegals charge the client for the time that it takes them to look through all those docs.

There is also all the depositions that can be taken from almost everyone that could be involded with what ever happened. These can be video taped, another thing that the client can be charged with. Then, I come back into the picture if they want to use that deposition during the trial. There are very nice, and very expensive software packages that allows you to sync the transcript of the deposition to the video. This is a time consuming process that can take two days just for 10 hours of video.

Now, the lawyers can make stipulations in the settlement for their expenses to be paid by the deffendant of the case, but most of the time, the lawyer takes a percentage of the overall settlement money. Either way, they still make a killing.

So, the next time you want to get a lawyer and sue someone for something that is petty and stupid, remember, all that work has to go some place, and will cost you money, the deffendent money and then the price of goods, services and insurance goes up. So, who really wins in the end? The one person that you hate...the LAWYERS!

Ok, my first journal entry.

Well, not much is going on. Since this is my first entry, I will do a little backround on myself.

I am curtainly employed at a lititgation support company. To clarify, we scan, copy, and do outsource work for law firms that can't handle the volume of documents that they get. Right now my area of expertise is video transcript syncing.

My backround is in systems administration. I have two years of experience, and with emphasis on networking and hardware.

I have a B.S. Biology, majored in Athletic training, that's sports medince for those who really want to know.

In college I was a systems analyst for the college, also I was the general manager of the campus radio station, and technical producer for the television station.

Other than that, I have a wide and varied areas of interests.

As you can see, I am a Jack of all trades.