Paxton

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40 years of the Elvis ’68 Television special

Posted in pop culture, TV shows with tags Elvis Presley, pop culture, TV shows on December 3, 2008 by Paxton

Forty years ago today, Dec 3, 1968, NBC aired the Elvis Presley Special sponsored by the Singer Sewing Company. It has since become known as the ’68 Comeback Special, or just the ’68 Special. It has stood the test of time as one of the most iconic performances of Elvis Presley’s career. It re-ignited his singing career and also started him touring and performing live concerts for the first time in seven years. This is how the televised special became known as the Comeback Special, Elvis was returning to touring and making rock-and-roll records.

As I said, the ’68 Special has become iconic, not just for Elvis fans, but for the man himself. One of the more famous images of him is decked out in his all-leather suit strumming his guitar.

This special marked the first time Elvis had “gone electric” during a musical performance. In all previous performances he only played acoustic guitar.

Another iconic image of Elvis is in his all-white suit, standing in front of the immortal red ELVIS letters singing “If I Can Dream”

Although it aired on Dec 3 1968, the special was actually filmed in July 1968. Elvis had just returned from his honeymoon with Priscilla. While the Special was wildly successful, many people don’t realize that the original concept of the show was completely different.

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December is here, the Christmas decorations are up!

Posted in Christmas, holiday, life with tags Christmas on December 1, 2008 by Paxton

South Park Santa Pax

Alright, now that I’ve eaten enough food to feed a third world nation for three months, it’s time for the three week slide into Christmas. I’m like a bottomless pit in November and December. I’m almost ashamed of the amount of food I eat during the holidays. Plus, I was sick most of last week so I couldn’t really do any running at the gym, or outside because it was a bit chilly. I’m going to have to get Steph to roll me out the door in the morning so I can get to work.

Anyway, I worked all weekend on the blog header you see up top. I had several ideas and I didn’t like how any of them turned out. This one finally just came together and I really like it. Maybe I’ll show you a few of the ideas that didn’t make it as a Christmas blog header this week.

Till then, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. FYI…Auburn completely self-destructed in the Iron Bowl on Saturday. It was painful to watch. Best of luck to Alabama in the SEC Championship against Florida. Should be a fun game to watch.

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Happy Thanksgiving from the Cavalcade of Awesome!!

Posted in holiday, humor, Thanksgiving with tags Thanksgiving on November 26, 2008 by Paxton

Thanksgiving

I hope everyone has a pleasant and safe Thanksgiving.

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Oh, and Kathy, be prepared to face not being ranked #1 after Saturday. It’s inevitable.

Have a great holiday everyone and I’ll see you on the backslide into Christmas 2008!!

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Google Gmail: Now with ninjas!!

Posted in Gmail, Google, ninjas, reviews, technology with tags Gmail, Google, ninjas, technology on November 25, 2008 by Paxton

I joined Google’s Gmail service back in March of 2005. At that point, you could only join by invitation. I was able to find a guy that had a Gmail account on one of the tech websites I usually visit (PCMag.com) and got him to forward me an invitation. Once I was approved and given a log on, I tried it out. I was immediately in love. Google Gmail is simple, elegant, and has TONS of space to store all of your emails. It’s because Gmail started offering 2.5Gb of storage that Yahoo! Mail had to up their limit too. While Gmail’s form factor, or interface, is minimal (which is typical Google), the functionality is fantastic.

Gmail has many cool features that I enjoy. Instead of folders, it uses labels. You can affix multiple labels to a message and search on these labels. Makes finding emails easier. Also, Gmail will sort your emails into groups. Emails with the same subject get stacked on top of each other into a message thread called a “conversation”. This lets you see all the emails pertaining to a subject instead of having to search through 15 separate emails for a piece of info. It also lets you see each email within the context it was sent. This particular behavior takes some getting used to, but I love it now that I am.

For the first few years Google added small items of functionality to Gmail, but the online interface remained the same. When you logged on, this is pretty much what you saw.

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Battle Scars: Running the Winn-Dixie Obstacle Course

Posted in humor, life, personal, work with tags personal, work on November 18, 2008 by Paxton

obstacle_course_finish So, every year, Winn-Dixie throws its employees a picnic and calls it Associate Appreciation Day. They have vendors come in and give out tons of free stuff. Pepsi and Coke show up and give out cans and bottles of free soda. Sometimes they even give out test flavors. Last year we got to try Squirt Citrus Power before it hit the shelves earlier this year.

At these picnics, Winn-Dixie will organize events that we, as employees, will participate in. One year they had a tri-sport challenge where you threw a football, shot a basketball and kicked a soccer ball to win prizes. Another year they organized a “Winn-Dixie Jacksonville Idol” karaoke contest. Usually management organizes their groups into teams and watches us compete. Days before this event, these managers will start smack talking each other saying their department will win this, other departments are scared of their team, etc, etc. It’s like the Associate Appreciation Day events are the equivalent of the “Coliseum Games” in Rome. We employees are the gladiators, the CEO and management team are the Emperor and Senate. The employees team up and compete in the “games”, trying to outdo each other and entertain management while they gorge themselves on food and drink. It’s fun for all. 🙂

This year there were several events and collectively it was called the Winn-Dixie Olympics. I competed in two events; the tug-of-war and the obstacle course. The tug-of-war almost became a blog article in and of itself. Our team won 2 matches then was told we were eliminated because we didn’t beat our opponents quick enough. I didn’t realize there was a time restriction. We dispatched our first opponent in just over 7 seconds. The second one took a little longer but not much more than 12 seconds. We were all a little ticked that a team that went 2-0 was being eliminated. Come to find out later, we actually did win the Gold in that event. I don’t know who fell asleep at the wheel, but I’m glad they finally recognized. IT PeopleSoft came to REPRESENT, yo. Here’s the winning tug-of-war team: