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Update: The OLPC’s “Give One, Get One” Campaign has been extended until December 31st! If thought you were going to miss out in supporting this worthy cause, you now have more time to participate…

I’ve been hearing about the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative for some time. It came to my attention that between November 12 and November 26th, OLPC would be offering a Give One Get One program in the United States and Canada.

At PowerServe, I have the pleasure of working with a lot of folks that love technology as much as I do AND love giving to worthy causes. When I saw the OLPC Give One Get One program was going on, I immediately sent an IM to Mike and Jeff. They loved the idea, and said that PowerServe would match what employees could raise.

The initial goal was to try and purchase one OLPC. But I’m happy to report that between the bunch of us, we were able to raise over $400 and PowerServe is going to match that to purchase two pairs of the OLPC xo laptops. Two of the systems are destined for developing countries where they’ll provided to children who would otherwise not have access to the internet or technology in general. The other two systems will be making their way to our offices, where, once they arrive we’ll be giving them to two local children who could use them.

I’m glad to support this initiative, and I can’t thank my coworkers enough for supporting this worthy cause. If you’re interested in participating on your own, xo laptops are available for $399 via laptopgiving.org. One system goes abroad, the other comes to you. Don’t wait too long though. The Give One Get One program only lasts until November 26th.

(One bonus to this is that buying the xo laptop will net you 12 months of free T-Mobile Hot Spot use. The recipients of the laptops we’ve purchased will be getting this access to use with their new computers. I’ll be following up with this post once we decide on who will get the laptops!)

I’ve been meaning to post about this for a while… Patrick recently took it upon himself to entomb Wyatt’s Initech coffee cup in a bowl full of Jello. You can view all of the pics from the prank here.

For only the second time ever in my life, I’m playing in a Fantasy Football league. 10 of us here at PowerServe thought it’d be fun to see how we’d stack up against each other. We held our Live Draft today, and here’s who I ended up with:

I guess I did alright… I’m honestly not sure, because I don’t follow sports, especially football, like I used to when I was younger.See Also: Wyatt’s picks

The first floor of our building is available for rent. Located at 961 Broad Street, the 2,400 Sq. Ft. offices are located in the heart of downtown Augusta. For more information, please visit the listing page on Blanchard & Calhoun.

I got the go ahead last week to register for Webmaster Jam Session 2007! I’m really looking forward to attending the two-day conference. (I don’t get to leave the office all that often.) The speakers list is impressive! There’s going to be so much going on… so much to learn.

I’m especially looking forward to Bryan Veloso and Dan Rubin’s “Design is in the Details“, Jeff Croft’s “Typography: Beyond the Font” and so much more… I follow the blogs of so many of these designers and developers… it’s going to be sweet to learn from them face to face.

I’m making the trek alone as of right now. If you’re planning to attend, let me know!

It’s not a huge deal, but I like to keep track of this sort of stuff… Yesterday marked my three-year anniversary at PowerServe. Since graduating high school in 1996, I’ve worked ten different jobs. I spent, on average, about 17.7 months at each job. Early on, many of the jobs I had only lasted around four to six months, and for a while I worked more than one job…

I worked as a graphic designer for Old Dominion University’s Mace & Crown for 6 months. I worked as a 3rd shift stocker at Food Lion for 4 months. (Working from 11pm until 7am really sucked!) I took elementary and middle school pictures for Lifetouch for 6 months. I worked as a data entry clerk for Norrell Staffing for a year. I was the Managing Editor/Webmaster for Quail Unlimited for 2 years 6 months. During the time I was working, for QU I also worked part-time for Blockbuster Video for a year and a half to feed my video addiction… I also worked part-time as a webmaster for the Department of Political Science at Augusta State University for a year and a half. From there, I went on to Double-Dot.com for 2 years 11 months. Spent a year at The Alison Group, and then by sheer chance landed a job at PowerServe, where I’ve been for 3 years and counting…

It doesn’t seem like much, but it’s been a heck of a journey for me so far. I’m grateful for the time I’ve had here so far and look forward to growing even more with the company. I couldn’t have wished for a better place to end up.

It’s 12:30am, and I’m giving up on trying to install CS3 for the night. I’m tired and frustrated. Updating software shouldn’t be this difficult, nor should it take as long as it does. Just installing the smallest app, Contribute CS3, takes over an hour because of all of the “Components” that need to be installed. This is complete and utter nonsense.

When I upgraded from Photoshop 7 to Creative Suite I didn’t experience any problems. When I upgraded from CS to CS2, I experience no problems. Now, because I - like so many other people - decided I’d like to try out a Beta application from Adobe, I’m getting screwed out of hours upon hours of my time - because their software simply doesn’t work like it should.

I expect more from Adobe, and frankly this situation is making me seriously reconsider upgrading the rest of the designers in our office.

Tomorrow morning I’ll need to spend some time trying to make sure CS2 works like it should. I have a feeling it’s going to be a while before I waste any more time trying to install CS3.

I’ve been pretty busy as of late, so I didn’t get around to writing this review because I didn’t fully make the switch from Extensis Suitcase 9.2 to Extensis Suitcase for Windows 11 until this morning. I’ve been delaying the switch for a couple of reasons:

1. Upgrading to the new version didn’t replace Extensis Suitcase 9.2. This is bad, because it didn’t copy over all of the font sets I had created in 9.2. Recreating my font sets took time, and that’s something I haven’t had a lot of lately.
2. A number of fonts I had loaded into 9.2 were being referenced in my C:\WINDOWS\FONTS\ directory. When I loaded the new application and copied fonts in for the first time, a number of the fonts wouldn’t activate because they were already in my system folder. I am not sure if Suitcase 9.2 did this… but it was a nuisance to go in and clean those fonts out of the system font folder.

Now that I’ve got that out of the way… Suitcase 11 seems to be working pretty well. Auto-font activation works well with both Illustrator CS2 and Photoshop CS2. (I haven’t had a need to try out InDesign CS2…) I’ve got about 600 fonts activated currently and it appears to perform pretty well given it’s current load.

I haven’t seen much in terms of difference between Suitcase 11 and Suitcase 9… other than the addition of the “Font Vault”. I’m not sure if that’s a compelling enough reason to get most people to upgrade.

We’ve been using Quickbooks Timer to keep track of time spent on projects for ages. It’s not bad, but it’s pretty unstable at times. We use Basecamp for project management. We’ve been using it for nearly two years now… The Time Tracking functionality is one aspect of Basecamp we haven’t ever taken advantage of… But that may change with the release of Chronopipe.

Here are some of the features it promises:

• Import Time from any Basecamp Project to any Customer and Job in QuickBooks
• Match Users in Basecamp to Employees and Contractors in QuickBooks
• Match To Do Item names in Basecamp to Service Items in QuickBooks
• Specify a “catch all” Item for Time that doesn’t have a match.
• Import with the same set of parameters more than once, without duplicating entries.

I am definitely going to need to try it out. It could be a great addition to our team…

I feel disconnected from the design and web community of Augusta. I don’t really have a desire to get involved in the local AdFed, but there isn’t anything else out there in this area. Perhaps this presents a good opportunity to fill a void?

I’m thinking about contacting Adobe to start an Adobe User Group (AUG) for the Augusta, Georgia/Central Savannah River Area. Honestly, it doesn’t even have to be an AUG. It could be something more along the lines of what they are doing in Alabama. I know of a few local designers that read my blog from time to time… would any of you be interested in getting involved in something like this?

I’m also going to start the process of getting certified in one or more Adobe applications. Considering I’m mostly self-taught in Photoshop, Illustrator and Dreamweaver, I think going for certification in one or more of those apps would help to solidify my knowledge of the applications…