An evening of spyware, pizza and podcasting
Last night, I went over to Tom Wright's to help him rid his computer of spyware because his system had become so sluggish that he could hardly get anything done. David, shown here in November '04 photo with Tom, has recently rented a room from Tom (to help ease the general financial burden on both of them) and he was there as well. We had fun with the project, though much remains yet undone. I was able to help speed up the system a bit, but we ran out of time before I got everything accomplished.

I have always enjoyed visiting Tom's home because it so evidently reflects his interests and his personality. In an older section of Knoxville near the downtown area, it is neat and tastefully decorated and a tribute to his talent for making it his own.

We ordered pizza to be delivered (it's apparently an unwritten rule that geeks always have to eat pizza when they are working on such a project), and after we had devoured as much as we wanted, Jack (the cat) came in, pounced up on the counter and, in what Tom described as a "cat-off," the left-over pepperoni was the cat's choice.

It was a fun evening with friends on a sultry night in Knoxville. I was even able to rope them into listening to an example or two of my podcasts and thereby introduce them to podcasting. That experience evolved into a spontaneous kind of mini-focus-group about the names of software programs that intimidate the non-geek population and how they might be better named to make them more approachable for that segment of the computer-using world. I'll most certainly be sharing those observations with James Prudente, as he is nearing the release of MixCast Live 1.0.

- posted by Perry @ 9:20 AM