I lost my sunglasses while on vacation in barbados. I don’t know what happened to them. I had them when I got back from golf but then I couldn’t find them. I want new one’s anyway, and I am going to the eye doctor on monday but I still didn’t want to loose them. My parents and my sister got back yesterday and she HAS MY SUNGLASSES!!! I am not sure where she found them, but I am happy that she did. I need to go over to my parents house and get them.
Month: June 2003
Vonage & Other Tech
So I got my Vonage phone number and router already. That was very quick. I didn’t expect that stuff till next week. I can’t use the dam thing since I don’t actually have a phone to plug into it yet. I want to get a better phone number than what they gave me, so I am not giving the number out yet. I am willing to pay whatever it costs to get a good number, but I need a nice one.
I need cordless phone for this vonage system. The problem is that I need an older technology 900mhz phone since I don’t want it to interfere with my 802.11b/g wireless network I have at home. Man I will be lucky that I don’t get some sort of brain tumor from all this wireless radiation I got going on around me all the time at home and at work.
As expected my dam AT&T Wireless GSM phone didn’t work all day today while I was in Kingston. Thankfully I had my backup Verizon Wireless phone. It worked like a champ. The blackberry pager works up their most of the places. That is good news for our alert system.
Back to work, and then off again…
So I had a semi normal day at work monday. I was trying to catch up with all the craziness that went on while I was away. I still haven’t caught up. I sat through a demo of phone call recording software. it was cool, but I don’t know what our Call Center QA people really want. I like that you can search people’s calls by keywords and pull up a audio file on the computer of that call. It is crazy what they can do these days.
I found out late monday that I needed to be in Kingston NY today. Construction started on our new facility yesterday and they will be having weekly meetings on the status of everything. I needed to go because I have some outstanding construction issues. I won’t do that trip every week for those meetings but I will probably need to do a few of them as this project moves along. Things are taking longer than anyone thought, but it is construction and not internet sites.
Being out got crazier on monday when I found out Gus was going to Minnesota today to demo some software. He needed a wireless intent connection on his laptop. I couldn’t get the PCMCIA card he wanted quick enough so I stole Keith’s phone and put Verizon’s high speed internet access on it.
While I was out today they did a bunch of user moves. That means that people’s desk’s got moved around. Generally in my company if you get moved you are getting crammed in with someone else and you won’t be happy. We are not popular people when that happens. We are Technology guy’s but somewhere along the line we got roped into doing space allocation and moves. We had someone almost in tears once when we doubled them up. Not pretty.
I am back in the office tomorrow and hopefully I can bang out some more work. My list of work keeps getting bigger. I guess that is a good thing, but stuff gets overwhelming sometimes. I just take a deep breath, and get by on star-bucks mocha frapachino’s (cannot spell) and snickers bars! They have a calming affect on me during the summer months.
The boss man Gus is out till thursday so tomorrow’s staff meeting might be a 3 ring circus. Our project manager Mark is good to keep things on track in those things. I think he and I are the only one’s that try to push aside the BS to smaller group chats. Of course Gus is the king at cutting through the bull, and keeping things on track. We will miss him tomorrow.
VoIP instead of a home phone
I have not had a home phone for some time. I really haven’t used one since 1999. I may have had one on and off between now and then, but it wasn’t my main phone. I use my Mobile Phone. Unfortunately I like to switch phones and providers allot. I just find something new and switch. My situation always changes. A phone may not work at the office, or my apartment if I move, I need to travel and it doesn’t work where I am going, etc. So I switch allot. Well the people at Vonage have a home phone solution using Voice Over IP (VOIP). I still don’t want a home phone, but I want a phone number that will stay with me. I also want 1 number that I can route to multiple phone numbers. I had this solution in college. AT&T offered a 500 number service that allowed a follow you number. I guess the service never took off so they canceled it. I have been looking ever since for something that will do the same thing. Vonage looks like it will do that. For a flat rate I can route calls to any US phone number, retrieve voice mail from the computer, take the number anywhere, and other cool features. It works by plugging it into my cable modem.
I have known about Vonage for a while. A guy at work loves it, but I wasn’t sure I wanted it or needed it. I decided to give it a try because I am moving and I want to start having 1 number people call no matter where I am. So if I cancel a cell phone, it doesn’t matter people just have the VOIP number and get routed to whatever number I tell them. I also don’t need to keep my cell phone on all the time when I am at home. Another big plus is that I can finally get rid of my second cell phone. I always had a second one for the past 2 years or so because service was always spotty on one phone or another. So hopefully I can save some $$$.
If all works out, I won’t get people asking me what my phone number is ever 6 months when I change it. My family still tries to call me at numbers I haven’t had or used in over a year.
I should get the new Vonage equipment in about a week or so. I will let you know how it works. I just hope I get a decent phone number. I will call and try to change it if I don’t. I don’t care how much it costs, I need an easy to remember phone number. that is one of the reasons I still have crappie AT&T Wireless Mobile phone, I got a great phone number and I don’t want to loose it.
Finally a good Mac OS X Web Browser
I have been searching for a good web browser for the Mac OS. Internet Explorer is so slow and it sucks. I tried Netscape 7 for OSX, and I didn’t like it. I tried Mozilla for the Mac, and I have issues with it’s GUI, and other usability issues. On the flip side I really like the Mozilla web browser for Windows. That is now my default browser for my windows machines. I have been using the new Apple Safari. It is ok. It has been the best of the pack, but that is not saying much. Some web sites don’t render well on it. Even though it uses the mozilla engine.
I think I finally found a winner browser. I am using a beta of the Mozilla project’s Camino Browser. It is built to utilize the OSX Coca engine and other OSX specific functions. It has some new features that make it work for me in OS X, while mozilla 1.3 just didn’t. It is still in beta but I have been using it all day and it seems stable enough. They (mozilla.org) claim it is good for day to day use even in beta.
Small Powerbook defect!
I figured out while I was on my vacation that my powerbook has a defect. The headphone jack only play’s stuff out of the left headset. I bought a new pair of earphones thinking it was the pair I had. Wasn’t that. Turns out when I got home I couldn’t hear anything out of the right speaker I plug the powerbook into either when I am home. I am debating if I want to send the thing back again for a week of repair for this problem. They take forever to fix these things. I could just get a usb speaker set, but if I ever sell the mac (and you know I will) I may have a problem.
Done with vacation, now back to “normal” life
You don’t fully realize all the minor stuff you need to do around the house, and just stuff needed to be done to lead a normal life until you put everything on hold and go away. Today was the day of getting back up to speed with stuff. I got my mail that was crammed into my mailbox. I paid some bills that thankfully weren’t overdue. I am in the process of unpacking. I am not one of those people who unpacks right after a trip. The bag may linger for a week or so before I clear it out. After being on the road and having to do the quick pack and unpack routine, I am in no hurry to unpack now.
I uploaded the pictures from the vacation to my website. The photo’s were broken into two sections. I have my photo’s and the photo’s of morgan. 90%+ are of morgan, because lets face it she is cuter than anyone else I was traveling with, so I took photos!
I also sifted through email I got while I was away. That took a while. Has anyone ever realized that 90% of all emails you get are useless? that is how I feel after going through a weeks worth of mail.
I figured out while I was on my vacation that my powerbook has a defect. The headphone jack only play’s stuff out of the left headset. I bought a new pair of earphones thinking it was the pair I had. Wasn’t that. Turns out when I got home I couldn’t hear anything out of the right speaker I plug the powerbook into either when I am home. I am debating if I want to send the thing back again for a week of repair for this problem. They take forever to fix these things. I could just get a USB speaker set, but if I ever sell the mac (and you know I will) I may have a problem.
Vacation is over:(
As I said in the last blog, the vacation is over. I am home now and I just uploaded all the blog entries from this week. I actually wrote all of them on the plane. that is why some are so short. I didn’t take any time during the week to write. It was great!!! I proved I can go computer free for a bit.
At first I was going to post date all the blog posts to their corresponding days they represent, but I decided against it. I am just going to leave them. I uploaded them in order.
Turns out the airport (JFK) actually sucked tonight. We sat on the tarmac for almost an hour because our gate was not empty. We were early and then the flight before us was late. Then I got stuck on a huge line at immigration. I was the first person from my plane to the line (thanks for being in biz class and only having a book bag to carry on) but we got behind a flight from the UK. Baggage claim took the usually amount of time, forever. After that I breezed through customs, or was immigration first then custom’s, who knows. All I remember is they check the passport twice, but stamp it once. I got a cab quick. that is no small feat at JFK at night.
It is 2am sunday and I am not tired at all. I was tired all vacation due to the heat and now that I am home and in a comfy temperature I don’t want to sleep. I hope I can get onto a normal sleep schedule for work on monday.
Speaking of work I got 187 emails and 6 voice mail’s while I was away. At least everyone but a few moron’s listened to my voice mail message and called someone else while I was out. BTW, 3 of those messages were from the same sales guy. People have to listen. As far as email, that is not allot, so I am not upset. Most of them were automated alerts that I get. Turns out the office had some problems while I was away. Keith gave me a quick run down a few hours ago. I will get more of an update tomorrow or monday from Gus & Mark.
Vacation, Day 6 Continued…
So as I said before I didn’t do any work this whole vacation. I barely used the computer except for importing pictures off my digital camera and showing them to my family. What is weird as I sit here typing for the first time in almost a week, my hands still start hurting after a little while. I am beginning to think that my problem is how I sleep and not too much typing. I sleep with my arm under my head, and it can be a weird position. I am going to talk to my doctor about what I could do.
As I thought I brought a bunch of movies and only saw 1 on the flight down (mission impossible), and part of black hawk down last night. I need to finish watching that, but I will wait till I get home to do it.
Vacation, Day 6 Saturday
Vacation is over for me. My family is staying till monday but I am off. It was a great restful vacation. I didn’t do a lick of work. I am glad I got the chance to rest. I had to leave early (1pm) for the airport so I didn’t get any pool time today. The airport trip and check in was uneventful. That is always good. They changed the plane so my seat got changed. I asked for another change since I got put in the back, and I didn’t like that. I asked for something closer to the front of the plane. The next thing I know I am in business class. I guess this plane had more biz class seats than the last one and they didn’t know what to do with some extra passengers. Whatever, I got bumped up. I wasn’t one to complain. I got worried when the flight attendant asked if I was originally a biz class ticket and I answered no. Turns out that because of the confusion they thought that I paid for biz class and were going to put me in first class. I think I looked respectable or something. I don’t know why she asked me and not the other people sitting around me. Well I have an idea, but I won’t write about it. I try to dress biz casual when I travel, so I can look decent and vie for an upgrade. it worked today. if it wasn’t for my big mouth telling the truth I might have had a double upgrade. I am a snob because Delta Biz elite is much nicer than American’s Biz class. Oh well. I write this while I am in the air on the way home. Just watched the in flight movie “two weeks notice”. it was ok. The steak for dinner was good though. the jack Daniel’s and coke I had was better!
I hope customs and cab hunting at JFK is ok. Then this would have been a good day. I got “randomly” screened before I got on the plane. I never understand those. They make me take my shoes off, and inspect my PDA, but don’t even look at my laptop, belt or wallet. My wallet even set off the metal detector and they didn’t look at it. I am not complaining, I just don’t understand security. I think it is just a show to make people think they are safe. I guess it is good if it calms the mass’s. I guess what they say is true “ignorance is bliss”.