Month: December 2003

The Photo Album

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I have for years been scanning my images into the computer. I started with camp photos I took back in the summer of 1993. Scanning stuff was my first experience with a mac. I used the scanner at the Mac lab in college. But that is not what this blog entry is about:) Like I said I have been scanning stuff for a while. Because of that I have cleared out most of my backlog of photos. I have a few left to do from my cross country trip back in 1989, but other than that I am good. All my recent photos are digital, so I just upload them to the computer. I have been doing that since 1999.

I have been telling my parents to digitize there photos, movies and stuff for years. My mom doesn’t want to look at them on the computer so she never cared. The problem is most of our family photos are in 3 big baskets in my parents house. These baskets have been near windows when it rained, baked in the sun, and other damage has happened to them. Allot of them are totally screwed up. When you view them after scanning you can see the imperfections here and there. Some images have ripped or bad areas to them. I scanned them anyway because the originals will only get worse. Some of these photo’s are 30 years old and they never kept the original’s.

The first batch of 150 or so photos I did Wednesday I created as TIF’s. Everyone says the uncompressed file format is the best so you can edit or compress the image later. Well a regular size photo at 300dpi comes out to 4.3megs as a tif. I used over 800 megs doing images as tif’s. My entire collection before that was only 2 gigs. I am going to have my dad categorize the photo’s for me and then I am just going to convert them to JPEG. then I will burn the TIF’s to DVD and put them away. No need to keep them on my hard drive. The second batch I did, I used high quality (low compression) JPEG. Each photo is only 2-300kbytes. Much better size. I cannot tell the difference, and I don’t plan on printing many of these photos. if they look good on my high rez 20″ flat panel, then they will look good on most computer displays. I am going to take a few and have prints done, just to see.

Next up is having my dad scan slides into the computer. My Mac does not work with my old HP scanner. Like 1 1/2 – 2 years ago I bought a nice $200 scanner with a slide attachment. I scanned some slides but got busy with work. Now I have a mac and since I never thought I would buy a mac, I didn’t think to check if the HP scanner had OS X drivers when I bought it. I now have a Canon CanoScan LiDE 30 USB scanner for my Mac. My sister has my HP scanner, but doesn’t use it, so I am giving it to my dad to do slide scan’s.

Once the photo’s are done we are going to pay someone to move my dad’s old 8mm film to DVD. That is the really big project, but would be really cool to do. once it is on DVD I can do edit’s on it with Final Cut if I want. With all this scanning and stuff going on my dad wants to learn how to burn CD’s & DVD’s. I forgot his new computer has a DVD burner in it. That will be a fun lesson.

Tech Shake Up

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I am having problems with my iMac. it keeps crashing on me almost once a day. My Powerbook never did that on me. It started happening after I put in the Airport Extreme 802.11g WiFi card and my extra 512 megs of ram. At this point I honestly don’t know if either of them is causing this problem. I took out the Airport card. I don’t use it that much since the mac sits on a desk with a switch right on the floor. If it keeps crashing I will take out the ram. if it still is having problems I may just wipe the hard drive and configure it from scratch. I did just open up out of the box and started using it:)

I am still waiting for the Treo 600 to become available for T-Mobile. No end in sight for that. I called handspring to buy an unlocked version of the phone. They said they had unlocked Cingular branded (but it would work with T-Mobile). the only problem was that it is backordered for 2-4 weeks. No one else has them in stock either. I can get an AT&T version, but it is locked. Been there, and done that. I can also get a sprint one from anywhere, but I want a GSM version. T-Mobile has been good to me for most of the time since September 2000. I don’t count that period of 4 months after 9/11/2001 but we did have issues with service in NYC. Handspring wanted $700 for me to wait 2-4 weeks. I decided to wait a bit longer. I don’t want to order the phone and then be able to order my T-Mobile version for $399, and not be able to because I already had an order in. If/when they can ship my order same day or next day I may get it. I am not happy!!!

This entry was written while listening to Wherever You Will Go by The Calling

Cool Tech

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i got to use some really cool tech today.  I have been using Net Newswire on my mac for almost a year.  it is a fantastic program.  I use it to see if my favorite blogs have been updated.  I just started using it to see the latest news stories from my favorite news sites.  it makes browsing the web so simple.  I just launch the program and it tells me if each site has a new story.  I can see what I want to read and then I just click on the link and it brings me to the site.  this is nothing new.  RSS has been around for a little while, but it is starting to go more mainstream.  Yahoo now has RSS news feeds for their news sites.

I just finished adding a bunch of RSS feeds to Net News Wire for sites I visit often.  My internet browsing will be cut by like 60% by having all these sites together.  Now what will I do with all that free time???

This entry has been edited to remove WORK content.

This entry was written while listening to Another Postcard from the album "Everything to Everyone" by Barenaked Ladies

Lost Technology

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I got my dad a 512meg USB memory card when he got his new computer. I warned him about loosing it since it is so small. He laughed and said don’t worry about it. Well it is lost. My mom probably threw it out with the trash, but it is gone. I just got the replacement one for him and I hope that he doesn’t loose this one. I have to go over there in a while to give him the new card, and to see what is wrong with his computer. His Treo 300 crashes his new computer when he tries to sync it. I think one of his medical programs is screwing things up. I will find out soon enough.

Then it is card buying and maybe dinner with my sister. We shall see…

This entry was written while listening to High On You from the album “Greatest Hits” by Survivor

It Was Cold, But Fun

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I had a really good time in manhattan last night. It was dam cold, but it was fun. Went to a really great steak house. Keen’s. It was as good as I was told. Thanks Gus & Tori for the advise. Vindigo wasn’t too helpful about review, but Zagat’s on the Palm rocked. My Vindigo subscription is up, and I am thinking of dropping them for the Zagat’s online subscription. it is more, but I think it may be better.

We saw the tree. It was as cool as I remember it. The ice skating line was huge, so I am glad we decided not to do that. That is a day unto itself.

Went to FAO, and I found out that the store is closing. I knew they were having financial problems but I didn’t think they would close there flagship store. The everything in the store is on sale signs gave away the closing.

While at FAO I saw the really big stuffed animal I wanted to get morgan when she was born. It was awesome. It was also HUGE. My sister would have killed me if I got that thing. Glad I didn’t.

Note to self. I need new leather gloves, mittens, or any other hand covering device!!!

This entry was written while listening to The Great Beyond by REM

AT&T Wireless Is Gone

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After several false starts I was finally able to cancel my AT&T Wireless account yesterday. It was just over a year so I didn’t pay the dam early termination fee. Thankfully everything worked out. I got my number over to T-Mobile, and I don’t have that dam AT&T service anymore. They asked why I was leaving and I just laughed at them. I told them for one thing the estimated 10 minute hold I was told about was 45 minutes. I am just thankful that I am not using them anymore. Now it is time to Ebay my T-68i.

Shopping In The City

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I am off to spend the day in manhattan. It is cold, and I am probably stupid for doing it, but I am off anyway. Going to see the tree. If you don’t know which tree, you don’t live in NYC. Then maybe the coolest toy store in the universe, FAO. I have nightmares about the dam song they play there, but it is still really cool.

The hard part is finding parking at the LIRR…

This entry was written while listening to Long, Long Way To Go from the album “X” by Def Leppard

Friday With Friends

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Friday I still felt like crap. I am getting these mild head aches. I say mild because I take the medication since I am afraid they will become full fledge migraines, and then the medication work and I just feel lousy for the rest of the day. I almost turned down plans to goto Amanda & Rich’s for dinner. Glad I didn’t. As always I had a good time. We ordered pizza and watched movies. Nice and low key. We saw 8 crazy nights and some other stuff. They are off next week to portland so they wanted to hang out.

I took a furiset at like 4:30, but didn’t really feel better until I drank a bottle of water around 7. Amanda gives great advise, even though she doesn’t listen to some herself sometimes. Amanda, if you are reading this chill about your friend. She is a freak, ignore her! Not worth your effort to worry.

Don’t know how they can drive 5+ hours to portland but they do.

I actually got out of work at 5ish also. I stopped by Gus and told him I was taking off early and he was like, yeah so am i. And we left.

Allot of people are out next week due to the holiday. I am in, but it should be a low key week since everyone else is out. Or so I keep telling myself that.

This entry was written while listening to Breakfast At Tiffanys by Deep Blue Something

Projects Updates

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Finally put into service our first Windows 2003 Active Directory server. I demoted an old 2000 box and transfered its roles to the new server.

Started redirecting call center users in NYC to our new mail server we are using for our Kingston office. The end goal is to have the entire call center on that mail system. Once I get all the alias’s and accounts done I can just delete the old mail accounts and tell everyone they have a new email address. It is a slow process since I need to edit everyones profile when they are not at work. I did about 10 people in 2 days. this rate it will take me a month to get everyone cut over.

We upgrade our Pix firewalls next tuesday to enable us to use a VPN tunnel to send large amounts of VOIP calls between offices. when I mean large amounts I mean more than the 2-3 we can now. Probably like 20 at a time on a dedicated internet T-1.

Other things going on are the guys in Kingston are working on Cisco Softphone setup’s to allow remote agents for our call center. Or to allow us to use the phones from outside the office on our laptops. Also in the works is the ability to move your phone number between desk phones if you need to.

The Company Holiday Party

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Yesterday was my companies holiday party. I unfortunately didn’t go. I wasn’t feeling well yesterday and migraines don’t care that a party is planned. That was 2 days in row for migraines for me. not good.

It was suggested that I need to be at the party, but I just couldn’t make it. I ended up leaving work at 4PM. I figured I was up for one of the company awards they do at these events. I was up for one last year, but didn’t win. I figured if Gus was telling me it was a good idea to show up, that I was going to win something. I won the award for most savings to the company. To us that is a big thing. it is one of 3 or 4 awards. I got some Champaign. Supposed to be really good champaign, but I don’t drink the bubbly. My sister already offered to take it off my hands. I will save it for a special occasion.

I await the video to see how everyone acted crazy at the party. The didn’t allow hard booze this party since one we had in June had allot of people getting really drunk off of many shots.

From what I hear many people bailed on the party this year. Keith had to pack and didn’t go. Glenn our CEO was a no show because he threw his back out earlier in the day.

In any event it was supposed to be a load of fun. We do know how to have a good time when work stops…

This entry was written while listening to American Girl by Everclear