I need to keep more current on Wordpress. I upgrade about once every 8 months. I should make it more like once every two months. While it isn’t hard, I need a way to make it a one line command from the web server.
Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category
USAirways finds new ways to nickle and dime you. Extra charges for baggage. Extra for food is something we have all gotten used to. Paying for drinks is a stretch for me, and I have to say that not even being able to get a cup of tap water for free is pathetic.
United has charged extra for Economy plus for quite a while, but you supposedly get more legroom. Today when I went online to check into my flight home from Orlando I went to select my seats. No seats were available when I bought my tickets (except Premium seats which I didn’t qualify for) so I looked at what was available. Two choices… A single available middle seat, or pay $10 for a “choice seat” of which there were 12… Two full rows in the middle of the plane. Not exit row or anything special. So if I wanted a aisle or a window, I needed to pay $10.
I didn’t check in. I’ll wait and see what I can get at the airport in the morning… Can’t be any worse than a middle seat.
UPDATE: checked in at 6am and I had a middle exit row (better than a regular middle) but was able to select an aisle (albeit in the back of the bus)
Finally, as if I don’t throw away enough credit card offers that come in the mail, now USAirways has their flight attendants pitching CC offers on the intercom and hawking brouchures up and down the aisle…I hope they at least get an individual bonus if they hook one of us sardines.
One of my big pep peeves with the Apple TV has been its lack of support for a video playlist. I wanted to have a list of music videos to run during a party. I also wanted to have a playlist of video podcasts to setup my own “TV Channel.”
My wife’s nano could do this a long time ago. THe iPod Touch could do it after the upgrade to 2.0 earlier this year.
FInally with the Apple TV update a few weeks ago, I have it on the atv, and I’m happy!!!
A few years ago I heard Dawn Meyerriecks talk about SOA and how to help get it started and funded. The idea was around building out infrastructure and getting buy-in. The quote that still sticks with me:
“Plumbing for plumbing’s sake is not sustainable”
Which she followed by an analogy of the stone soup story: infrastructure & federated service development… “we bring the stones, everyone else brings the vegetables.”
This one is for Steve Hayman. Just so he knows when he is my territory. I could also make it “DCA” since he is most likely to enter via that route. 571 would also have been an option (as an overlay areacode), but 703 will always be “Northern Virginia” to me.
I’ve seen people use them, read about them, and now I’m going to try one. I like to take notes on paper in meetings because most computer use in the meetings I’m in is people doing other things (not being a part of or paying attention in meetings).
I’ve used notepaper I printed and put in a 3 ring organizer I have and it works pretty well, but it is a bit big. I want to get to the point I carry just a few things:
- iPhone (to replace the Blackberry and iPod Touch I usually have now)
- MacBook Air (to replace the 6.5 lb Dell I have now)
- Moleskine (to replace the full size organizer I have now)
Since the first won’t happen until I work for a company that supports the iPhone as an option, and the second won’t happen until I shell out the bucks myself, I figure I’ll start at the bottom and work my way up the list.
So I’m looking at options to make the most of this, since it does need to have some components of my organizer (quick reference sheets, business card holder, etc). The iPod Touch/Blackberry will probably take the load on contacts and other bulk info (as I’ve used it more for recently).
Here’s to a new system that I will hopefully stick to and get value from.
This is the list of things I’d like to hear announced at MacWorld, some big, some small:
- Video playlists on the iPod touch and Apple TV. I’ve wanted this for a long time. Last week I discovered that my wife’s nano already has this. So it should be on all “devices/platforms”
- iPhone apps on the iPod Touch. There is no reason the touch should not have mail, weather, stocks, and Google Maps. Having used them on my hacked touch for a month now, they work just how I’d like and the touch is SO much more valuable to me now.
- Microphone add-on for the touch, maybe with a speaker also. Do for the touch what the iTalk did for the earlier iPods. But it needs to be full duplex so it will work with Skype when 3rd party apps are officially supported.
- Ultra small laptop. A small professional laptop would be great. An 11 or 12 inch screen, but super hi-rez (DPI of the iPhone). Touch screen would be nice. My wife’s MacBook would be ok for me to use at work, but I really want a little more and the MacBook Pro’s are a little big for my “on the road” use in the new job.
Over the past two weeks I’ve had two hard drive failures. I have mixed backup setups currently…some things are backed up often, some things are backed up once in a blue moon, and others never. Some things I’ve learned over this experience.
- I had preferred Seagate drives because they had 5 year warrantees. I figure if they had the confidence to offer it, the drives would (statistically) last longer. I don’t believe this anymore, 2 Seagate drives have failed, 2 Maxtor drives and 1 Fujitsu drive. Of all these, only the Fujitsu drive was under a warrantee (and it was something like 4.5 years old).
- Seagate OEM drives are not covered by a 5 year manufacturer warrantee. You have to goto the OEM. Apple in the case of my 18 month old Mac Mini, but I didn’t have AppleCare. The other case it was a bare drive (now 3 years old) I bought which was an OEM drive (not sure I realized it, but maybe I did based on price).
- You need multiple backups “just in case.” Backups copied to other machines, copied to external hard drives, copied to network file servers, internet based backup solutions. We’ll see how Time Machine does on the Mac.
- Disk Warrior worked well for me. It saved my bacon. I had all of my Music, but my pictures had not been backed up (off site DVD) for about 18 months. By booting the Disk Warrior CD, it was able to save most everything. I had to copy it to an external drive, but that was painless…just plug a Mac formatted USB drive in and say “copy all” to that volume.
- SeaTools (Seagate’s diagnostic tool) isn’t very good. I’m not entirely sure, but Seatools seams weak. I took the “failed” drive that had read errors and tested it with Seatools. It failed with read errors, not a diagnostic code. I tried a zero write on the whole drive. I think this said it worked. This is supposed to make the drive attempt a write and read, and if something has problems, deal with it. The drive still failed. I almost threw the drive in the trash.
- PowerMax (Maxtor’s old diagnostic tool before Seagate bought Maxtor) seams to work pretty well. I only have version 1.14 (or something like that) and can’t download 1.46 (the latest) because Seagate thinks SeaTools is the answer. PowerMax was able to “format” the drive and it now passes all of the tests in both PowerMax AND Seatools. Time will tell if it is really fine, or if the problem has just gone underground and is waiting to rise from the dead.
In the end I haven’t lost anything on either computer, but it was close. I need to put a complete backup strategy in place, but I struggle with the right way given the number of computers, the amount of data and my desire to make it very low cost. Perhaps I’m being penny wise and pound foolish. The smartest thing was to spend $100 on Disk Warrior early in the process.
[tags]harddrive, failure, backup, apple, seagate, seatools, powermax[tags]
TidBITS: New iPods: The Worst Ever!
So Joe Kissell writes a bunch of words that amount to “I have no use for an iPod, so why do I keep thinking I want one?” Where the answer I have is “if the shoe don’t fit…”
Over the years that I’ve had various iPods, I’ve gone through phases of little use and great use. My original one (one of the first one’s out of Apple at eh original launch) is still in use by my older son. First there was music, then I didn’t use it much. Then there was Audible support, then I didn’t use it much. Then there were podcasts and I now use it all the time… music, podcasts, even audiobooks.
The key to my using it more is that I have places to listen to it. The car, where the Flexdock makes it so easy. On the golf course, where the shuffle works so well. In the gym or just out and about. But I use it because I can and I’ve accepted it.
Why bother to write WHY you don’t need one. If you don’t need it, don’t get it…move along, nothing to see here.
[tags]ipod[/tags]
I like to get my Verizon phone bill in paper format. Besides the fact that I’m less likely to view it on-line and pay it given the way I manage my bills, I’ve never found their e-mail notices to be accurate, timely, or effective.
But what bugs me here is that they tricked me. The site changes often enough that I generally just “go with the flow” when paying my bill on-line. This time I when I clicked “Submit” to pay my bill a pop-up came up (probably DHTML type, not a browser pop-up). I said “yes I accept” thinking it was the confirmation of my payment request.
NOPE! It was me accepting that I was requesting paperless billing. That is just crap. To make it worst, after saying “thanks for saving us money by going paper free,” it returned my to the same payment form and I had to click “Submit” again to process my payment.
It was a total trick. They didn’t even alter the workflow in the trick, they simply intercepted my click. Just like a virus, Trojan, phisher would. Very lame. I’m half tempted to call up and ask for my paper bill turned back on. Of course, I’m sure that will imply a monthly charge.
[tags]verizon, bad+ui[/tags]