After owning probably over 20 PCs in my life and still 10 in my house, I have made the jump over to the Apple side of the computing industry and got an iMac last week. I will tell you one thing, this is a beautiful piece of hardware that functions much better and cleaner than a PC. If you own a PC and have Microsoft Vista on that sucker you know what I'm talking about. The incessant number of popup windows you must click to install a program, to launch an application or get to a protected area of your hard drive. Let me just say I will most likely be owning a Mac Pro sometime in the near future.

I've been lucky to have season tickets for the St. Louis Cardinals for the past 3 years and was fortunate to see the Cardinals win the World Series last year. When you sit in the same section year after year you get to know some of the people around you including the vendors. Well this guy is one-of-a-kind. I don't know him personally but he always has a smile on his face and he has one of the best beer chants I have ever heard. Basically what he does is repeats the same thing over and over really, really loud and when you hear it you know he is coming!

Here is basically what Albert says.

Beerman, budman, beerman, budman, beerman, budman, beerman, budman, here comes the beerman!

This is one of the coolest things I have ever done. You never know the magnitude of some decisions you make but this was a good one. The following photo was taken by Joe and Sarah Holst right by Gate 1 at the new Busch Stadium. Yes, that's my name and my message on there. I hope it remains in the same spot for 50 years or more!

It's safe to assume that if the other stations on the TV went away I wouldn't be that mad, I really only watch the Discover Channel. I don't get to watch TV that often because I work so many hours but when I do here is the lineup I like to watch.

1. American Chopper - Now on TLC but still great.

2. Build It Bigger - Looking forward to watching some episodes of this new show.

3. Dirty Jobs - One of my favorites right now. Mike Rowe is nuts!

4. Extreme Engineering - Another one of my favorties. A very educational and interesting show.

5. Deadliest Catch - Really into it a couple months ago at the end of the season.

6. Man Vs. Wild - Just started watching it not too long ago and am glued to the TV whenver I get a chance to see it.

7. Planet Earth - I own the DVD collection so I don't watch it on TV that often.

This was an interesting article that I just read about the city where I live. Apparently it houses the highest percentage of married persons in the entire United States, which equates to about 69 percent of residents over the age of 15. I wasn't surprised at all by this, O'Fallon is definitely a great place to live. It also ranked 39 in the United States for best places to live in the country not too long ago as well.

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I've never had this happen so I decided it was blog material. This crazy young robin that can't fly yet has taken refuge on my porch. The mother keeps coming back to feed it so I figure it's just a matter of time before it is strong enough to fly but take a look at all the bird poo everywhere. That's not even all of it. It's everywhere! Apparently young birds eat and poo a lot, just like kids do.

Everyone else was having some fun with this so I figured I would give it a try. Go on over to www.simpsonsmovie.com and create your own.

Since the 5th movie came out today I thought I would post a couple thoughts about it. My wife keeps reminding me that she REALLY REALLY wants to see this movie. And not like next week or next month, like right now! She is a Harry Potter fiend, she can never ever get enough. She has all the books, we own all the movies that have been released plus she has audio clips on her iPod. This is bordering on insanity. But she is not alone, I'm sure there are millions of others just like her. Come on, you know you are too!

I've been struggling with the answer to this question a lot lately. Both sides are compelling and there are positives and negatives about both.

The Bad - The bad mostly deals with time management. If you don't set a schedule you'll end up killing yourself by working crazy amounts of hours. Since I already work 10-12 hours a day minimum there really isn't much more time I can commit to working. When your time is squeezed then that leaves less time for down-time and for your family. This can be bad.

The Good - There are many more good aspects of having a ton of work in front of you. For example, you know you have a very good chance of paying your bills. You know that your customers like the work you do, which is why they give you more. Probably most of all, you have job security, which is key when you're trying to run a company.

So good project planning, tracking and execution are becoming more important lately which is why I have started to use a ticketing system more and more often. By using the ticket system I have a sort of check and balance in place.

So all the excitement over Vista was a little overwhelming for me so what did I do? I went out and bought 2 upgrades the day after they were on the shelves! Bad idea though. After 8 grueling hours of attempting to upgrade I had to abort and upgrade from the CD directly. Of course none of my settings were saved and all my files were moved to C:\Windows.old. I like the new interface but I think Vista is a little over-hyped. I mean, the MAC had this figured out years ago and Microsoft has been rushing to catch up.