Brian Dusablon

Internet Speed Test at New House = FAIL

This is not looking good. Yikes.

SpeedTest.net Results

Toast.Net Speed Test

**Update (10 Minutes Later)**

Senate Votes to Delay TV Conversion – WTF

Yay, another bailout of sorts. Let’s see. I can’t seem to remember when my mortgage payment is due, so can the Senate pass a law or something so I don’t have to pay it until June? How about my debt situation? I have some. At one time, I decided to purchase something I didn’t have the cash for. Can somebody just pay it off for me so I don’t have to be held accountable for my actions?

The Senate voted on Monday to delay next month’s transition to digital television until June 12 because some viewers would not be ready for the switch.

Senate Approves Digital TV Delay – NYTimes.com

Oh, and thanks for taking more of my money to advertise this transition (again) to the idiots who haven’t been paying attention for the last 18 months. I’m happy to see my tax money being put to good use, once again.

I’m tiring quickly of all this crap. Washington needs to be paying attention to the important issues, not worrying about bailing out its constituents all the time. Pucking folitics.

Gotta Love Texas Weather

Major cold front moving through. By cold, I don’t mean cold as balls. I mean cold for Texas.

It’s wild how Texas weather works, though. It was 77 and balmy this morning and through lunch. In a little over 6 hours, we’ll have a 41-degree drop in temperature. Crazy.

Happy Birthday Mac

The Apple Macintosh is 25 today. I’m 30 today. Being the geek that I am, I don’t think I could ask for a cooler celeb to share a birthday with.

Also, iLife ’09 starts shipping tomorrow. I can’t wait for mine.

Save $5 on it at:
MacMall - Your #1 Apple Superstore!
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Adobe Launches eLearning Suite

I develop a lot of elearning. Adobe has hopefully just made my job easier. I plan to upgrade to the newly released eLearning Suite as soon as I get my new laptop at work.
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The eLearning Suite consists of:

  • Captivate (massive upgrade from v3)
  • Flash (with exclusive eLearning Interactions)
  • Photoshop (I’d much rather have Fireworks)
  • Dreamweaver (with eLearning Add-Ons)
  • Acrobat Pro
  • Presenter (this is replacing Articulate Presenter for me)
  • Soundbooth (this will replace SoundForge)

I’m very disappointed that I’m forced to go with Photoshop instead of Fireworks. Photoshop is way more than I need for 98% of my graphics. I’m also much better at Fireworks for simple editing. I find it’s layout and workflow much simpler than Photoshop, and just as effective for the way I use it. What pisses me off most about all of this is that I will have to dump $600 to upgrade from CS3 Design Premium to the eLearning Suite. We picked up Design Premium last year, rather than Web Premium, primarily for InDesign, which again left me without a Fireworks upgrade. So I’m still using Fireworks 8, which is plenty effective, but does not integrate with CS4.

So, thanks to Adobe’s lovely pricing strategy, I now have to fork over an additional $149 to upgrade Fireworks. It’s like every year, to take advantage of new tools and features, I have to drop $500-$1000. I wish Adobe would have a loyalty factor in their pricing, so the more times you upgrade, the cheaper it becomes.

I do not have any hands-on with the eLearning Suite yet. I was supposed to beta test it, but I was unable to install the beta on my work laptop. Thanks IT.

I will probably install the demo on my home machine using Fusion – oh yeah, the elearning suite is Windows only. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Philip has more on the release here, with some interesting commentary about pricing, etc. In addition, Adobe has demos and a an overview (via Steve).