Back to the old stomping grounds

I will be returning to St. Paul, MN next week to do a speech on "What is a Wiki?". The event is being coordinated by the Science museum of Minnesota. See their page for this event.


If you can make it please stop by and check out the speech. There will be Q and A after all of the speeches have been completed so please stop by and say hi. Other than that things have been picking up for wedding plans. Invitations will be going out this week, so don't worry if you haven't received one yet. I also plan to do a recap of the wedding afterwards for anyone that can't make it.
Until next time, you keep reading, I'll keep living.

Wells Fargo is run by lawyers

I know the financial industry is pretty tight when it comes to money but the following situation is the last straw. I have been a member at Wells Fargo for the past 12 years. They had been good, no complaints, was even thinking of doing investing through them. I encountered an awful experience when I had to stop payment on a check. I placed a stop payment on a cashiers check. Now I knew that there would be a fee on this, I think it was $20...this is fine. But on top of this they charged me an additional $30 because of the amount of the check...it was under $2k...It must of really broke them that day. On top of this they reissued the check to me and charged me a $5 processing fee to reissue the check. This was one of the last straws. So I decided to go over to Washington Mutual, which has an awesome online interface and great customer service. I called up wells Fargo to cancel my account and while on the phone found out that I couldn't over the phone and instead I needed to go into the branch. This was ok with me but because of being out of town a lot haven't gotten around to it. So I logged into my account and found out that they charged me $2 to talk to a representative on the phone about canceling my account! Can you believe that? They are charging like lawyers now. Since when was customer service for a product that the company already makes money on, charged to the customer? The last time I checked, basic questions directed to support was a cost of business. The conclusion of this post is stay away from Wells Fargo and go to a smaller bank as they at least won't charge a ton of fees to your account plus you can get a 5% return at WaMu for your savings account.

On the Road again

I am in Orlando now at the Nexpo convention. It has been a good convention and I've met a lot of interesting people. I was able to connect up with a friend of mine from grade school that I hadn't seen in 10 years. It was good to see him again.

Today MindTouch release Nexus. A wiki platform for user generated content. Check out more at http://www.mindtouch.com/nexus

I am looking forward to getting back home to get caught up with work and with plans for the wedding. We are almost done with our invitations which is good. Until next time....I'll keep living, you keep reading.

Wikis, Blogs, CMS, and other technologies I learned after college

I know...I know...you are shocked that I haven't always been the ridiculously resourceful and intelligent person that I am today. I wasn't into technology as much as I am now. It isn't because I liked it less then, it was because I really didn't know where to start. I was really busy working a bunch of jobs, going to school, and starting businesses that I didn't take time to explore other avenues. I'm glad I did though. I've found that fun technologies like blogs, wikis, and CMS are just a few of a vast sea of technologies out there. But my understanding of these three have helped me peek into other technologies and be able to absorb their potential or lack their of. This is probably a boring post for most of my readers as usually I have something fun or kooky to say...I won't let you down. I will no enlighten you as to one of my first experiences with computers.
We had an IBM PC when I was about 6. I enjoyed playing DOS games that were loaded off of my floppies. One of my favorite games was Commander Keen. It was a cool game where you were a guy that wore jeans and a green bay packers helmet(not a packers fan but funny to see a character wearing one). The goal was to collect things like pizza, soda, and candy while you navigated through the levels and zapped aliens. Pretty cool game. Anyhoo...my game stopped working one day and I tried to recover it. I was deleting different files off of the system to do a fresh reload and accidently deleted the config.sys file. It messed up our computer a bit. The downside is that my parents were skeptical for a month about me around computers. The good thing is that we got a better one with a 20 gig harddrive(it was a lot) and a CD burner...right when they came out. I gained my parents trust back about computers and continued to foster my interest in them. So as you can see it was my parents that helped me get into computers. For that I thank them. Well this has turned into quite the lengthy post. I will stop for the night. But I will continue to post so keep checking. I'll keep living, you keep reading.

Airport, my second home

Well I got back from Web 2.0 expo last night, it was a good time. Met a lot of cool people, wish I would have had more time in San Francisco though. Now I'm gearing back up to head out to Florida for Nexpo. It should be interesting too. I also get to see one of my friends from way back that I haven't seen in forever that will be in my wedding. So I'm pretty stoked about that. Anyhoo...I'll try to get some pics up to tie into maybe on flickr or something. I'll keep living...you keep reading.

New site I worked on

I just created a site for Norcotronics. It is an automated coin wrapping company. The company really puts out quality coin wrappers. I through up a Wordpress blog and integrated Flickr into it. I love messing around with WordPress, even though I'm using blogger...this is from my earlier days in technology. I like both platforms...Wordpress is better for straight up easy website creation. Anyhoo check out the site at http://www.norcotronics.com it is pretty cool. There is also a cool pick on the about page of a coin wrapping machine completely disassembled.

Back through popular demand

Well I tried to slip away quietly but it can't be done...I've had mobs of fan mail coming in saying you want more of Corey. I mulled it over for a couple of days and decided to oblige you. This time I will actually keep up with my blog and add content more often, maybe even everyday(shock). I'll give you a brief recap of the past two months. I'm still working for MindTouch and recently moved out to San Diego to work at our headquarters. San Diego rocks and we even created a wiki about it. I am getting prepared for my wedding coming up in June. Things have been crazy...we did our own initiations and let's just say I have a writers cramp...j/k...but seriously we put a lot of time into it. Currently I am in San Francisco for the 1st Annual Web 2.0 conference. It has been one of the best conferences I've been too in regards to attendees and content. People are really in tune with the industry and there are some awesome concepts here. Other than that I've been working on different projects like my brother's site www.tagartcompany.com and have helped out a couple other people with some setup. I will start blogging more and taking pictures so that you can see cool stuff when you come to my blog. If I start to slack off please submit a comment and make me get back in the swing. Thanks again for your devotion. Don't stop reading and I won't stop living.