Month: December 2005

Modern Does Not Always Mean Better

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If you have read this site before (or you know me) you will know I am into mostly modern and electronic stuff. Would it surprise you if I said that not everything new and electronic was better? Well it isn’t. Allot of the time I do think that modern stuff is better, but there have been (more of them recently) where the “old school” way to do something has become my preferred choice.

What brought on this trend? I think it started when my dad gave me his old Omega Speedmaster. For years I shied away from an old fashioned wind watch. I was happy with my digital, it was easier to use. Then after having the Omega for about a year I started to wear it. I was hooked. I ended up going out and buying a newer Omega that was a hybrid. it was like an old school chronograph but it had some digital elements. But the classic analog watch switched me over from my timex indiglow.

My most recent switch to less modern, is shaving. I have found it more and more of a pain to get a good shave. I have a year old top of the line braun electric razor in my closet that I never use. It never gave me a close shave. It was more of a pain than anything. I currently use a Schick Quatro. It was ok for a while, but now it is just allot of blades (4 of them). Who needs 4 blades? Over the summer I read an article about old guys finding old fashioned shaving to be actually better than this modern crap. I finally got fed up and went surfing for answers. My own research and an MSNBC article got me to Classic Shaving.com. About $100 later I am eagerly awaiting my starter kit to a better shaving experience. A few months ago if you asked me to buy a razor designed 100 years ago I would have laughed at you, but that is exactly what I did. Hopefully I will be happy with my choice.

Next on my list? I have no idea, but I am slowing having a more open mind about tried and true options vs new and modern. Of course I will still pick my PDA phone and laptop over a rotary dial phone and a typewriter any day!

We Can See You!

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Today I went out and bought some iSight camera’s to test out. I have said it before, but I will say it again. Most of the time I can say I play with toys for a living and I won’t be lying. One of the business managers wanted a video camera solution so people in one of our offices can see what others are doing in another office, and vice versa. The theory is to bridge the gap between the offices by seeing a small glimpse of what goes on in each location. I thought it was a really cool idea. After looking at several options I came to believe that the iSight cameras were the best bet. Several wireless network cameras were several hundred dollars each. Plus the computers and monitors we would need to show the other offices camera on, the cost got to great. With iSight we can get a computer (Mac Mini) a monitor and the iSight camera and that is all.

To test the setup I got 2 camera’s. Jayson and I plugged them into our Powerbooks and we took them for a spin. The picture looked good in full screen mode on my 19″ LCD. Jay took it a step further and plugged his Powerbook and iSight into the 42″ Plasma we have in the office and went full screen. It looked good enough that we can use 23″ LCD TV’s for this project. The picture in general looked really good. Granted we were on the same LAN, but we have decent bandwidth between both offices so it should work fine.

What is even cooler is we were able to use the video chat functions of Jabber, and not even use AIM. After showing that we can use these iSight cameras for the solution I went out and looked to get the computers. At first I was going to get the really cheap $499 mini’s but then I realized we need the wifi for one setup, and maybe need it for the other one as well. It was worth the extra $100 to have it ready if needed. I love that this stuff just worked. I plugged in the camera and the software immediately said there was an update ready for download. I clicked ok to download it, and in less than 2 minutes and one OK click later I was chatting via video. Not bad for an OS that has less than 5% of the market!

Now that we know the cameras will work for this solution I now want them to use for day to day video conferencing between the people in my department in my office and the other one! That would be really nice!

Far Away Friends

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Tonight I got to meet up with my friends Joe & Karen. They live far away (aka a time zone & 1,000+ miles). They were up for the holidays so Jayson, Gretchen, John, Zee, and I met up with them for dinner at a place in little italy that we like to goto. A lot of food and like 4 bottles of the house wine later we had a great dinner. It was nice seeing everyone. The last time I saw Joe & Karen was like July so it was good to catch up.

Joe is trying to get me out to Vegas again this June for another convention. I am all for it. Now I have to convince my boss that he is all for it also!

It was cold tonight, but besides that I had a good time. Now off to bed since I have work again tomorrow!

A Lonely Jew on Christmas, Well Not Really!

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What to do on Christmas day? It is really the only holiday that not being catholic I can’t do anything (since everything is closed) and it is not a holiday for which I celebrate. The typical jewish thing to do is goto the movies. I am not talking about a stereotype. I can recall countless Christmas eve’s or christmas days where my mom has taken me and my sister to a movie. Within the past 10 – 15 years it has been super crowded. When I was like 5-7 my mom took us to Rockerfeller Center for ice skating on Christmas day. That also was very crowded so we stopped going.

The other tradition besides movies was the Christmas day party at my mom’s friend Beverly’s. In recent years that tradition has been brought back but there was a long period where there was no party. I went last year. it was fun. This year the party is on, but I am off to a friend’s little get together. Some other friends are meeting me (any minute now) by my place so we can share a cab over. hopefully it will be fun.

Virtual Community

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I just noticed that VMWare has a free public community of VM’s. You can build and publish VM’s of free OS’s on the VMNT. I already downloaded several to play with. They are already added to my growing collection of OS VM’s. I think this is a great idea. The first VM I want to look at is the Asterisk PBX VM. I have wanted to setup one up for a while, but haven’t had time to deal with it. This may be worth a look.

Day Off

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I took a personal day today. I wasn’t sure if the strike would continue and I didn’t want to deal with the commute so my plan since Tuesday was to take today off. Turns out the strike ended, and my company gave everyone in our office the day off anyway. It was nice. At least I didn’t use up my personal days.

I ended up at the office anyway. I had to ship out my sold powerbook. it is easier to do that from the office than at home. I also got some shopping done. I got cards for everyone that I needed to, and went to the bank.

I meet up with Jayson at night and we went to Compusa to get IDE disk enclosures. We both have internal drives that we can’t use now that we have laptops and use Mac’s. I got a IDE disk enclosure for like $45. It works great so far. USB 2.0. I just plugged in my drive and formatted it. Unlike the other one I got before the summer this one does not have a fan so I don’t have to worry about the bearings burning out like the old one did. I will go back next week and get another of these cases to replace the old broken one. I should say it is not broken. It does work, but when running it makes an awful sound.

Strike Notes

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Since a friend emailed me and asked how the walking due to the strike was, I decided to write my little story of what happened. On the first day of the “work stoppage” I missed my ride since I worked late the night before. I ended up trying to take a cab down to my office. I got a cab rather quick but 35 minutes later we had moved less than 20 blocks. It was a mess. When people were walking faster than we were driving I decided to get out of the cab and walk. By this time I was in the mid 70’s (or 60’s I forget). It was dam cold. I ended up walking till the mid 30’s and then I broke down and caught another cab and rode the rest of the way to work. Surprisingly the roads cleared up by grand central station so the 2nd cab got me to work really quick.

I ended up at work by 11AM. Almost no one in my group made it in. That sucked since the powers that be wanted as many people in as they could get. I ended up getting a ride home. it took us an hour and forty five minutes to drive uptown. This trip normally takes me 20-30 minutes on a normal day.

Yesterday (Wednesday) it took an hour to get in. The roads all sucked. I got another ride. I got smart and packed a bag so I could crash at a friends who lived 10 blocks or so from work. Good call since the roads sucked last night. Because of my friends bad back we took a cab to his place even-though it was so close to work. I could have gotten there faster by walking. The traffic was horrible. People giving other people rides home from my office didn’t get home till like 9PM.

I slept and my friends and walked to the office this morning. The strike was over by mid afternoon but since nothing was up and running yet I decided to attempt to walk home. 3rd Ave. was packed till 59th street (i should have stayed on park or madison). I tried catching a cab after 59 (before then wasn’t worth it since I could out-walk most traffic). I had my ipod on and it wasn’t that cold (at first). After 59th street I couldn’t catch a cab until somewhere in the 70’s. I could probably have walked the rest of the way home, but by then I was so tired I paid the $10 since I felt like I couldn’t walk another 5 feet.

I am home now resting. I need to go back to work tomorrow (even though I took off and then was given off for the day) and pick up my overnight bag I left there since I didn’t want to carry it back uptown on foot. Lets hope the rest of the holiday weekend is less eventful.

We Don’t Negotiate With Terrorists

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So the MTA workers have struck in NYC. That means the dreaded telecommute for me! Since I rely on the subway to get anywhere I am rather ticked off. But what pisses me off the most is the reasons why the union is striking. I am not the hugest fan of unions in general, and this strike reiterates my issues about them. Forget my specific issues with the unions contract. I just want to know why if you have a group of people who refuse to work for the conditions (reasonable conditions) set by the employer, that you cannot replace them with people who will? Seriously, if you were a corporate worker somewhere without a union and you said I am striking until I get a better contact you would be replaced right away. I am curious to know any non union workers who would have a job if they decided to not show up for 2 days because they wanted better benefits?

And lets talk about benefits. Back in the day (early 1900’s) unions were necessary. Without them people where exploited. Is the MTA exploiting the union members now by asking them to contribute 1% to their health benefits? I don’t know what % I contribute to my health insurance but I know it is allot more than 1%. Also where can you work that you can demand a guaranteed raise of 8% a year for 3 years for everyone? What ever happened to you do well and you get a raise?

You have a group of 30,000 people holding a city hostage. They have cost innocent people hundreds of millions of dollars because they think they are entitled to a better contract. Well wake up TWU, several other unions have been operating without a contract for a while. They don’t strike and cost others not involved in the situation money. The mayor was right, your leadership is a bunch of ignorant thugs. I feel bad for the union workers caught in the middle, because yes they too are caught in the middle of all this.

I do have to say I am thankful that the governor and mayor didn’t cave into demands. TWU, if you act like terrorists we treat you like them. We don’t negotiate with people holding cities hostage!!!

Dinner With The Family

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I hung out most of the day today. In the late afternoon I went over to my sisters and meet up with her mike, and morgan to go over to my parents neighborhood for dinner with the folks. We went to a decent italian restaurant for dinner. We had a good night, I got to see everyone (especially my most favorite only niece). She gave me a drawing (well she was kind of arm twisted into it, she wanted to give it to her nanny. I am not upset since I know my place in her world!) that now decorates my refrigerator door.

After dinner I had an uneventful trip home. A nice end to a decent weekend!

Real Checks

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Yesterday I had to deposit a real pay check. At first I didn’t know what to do! I have had direct deposit for like 4 years. Well seriously I knew what to do, but it quickly came back to me how annoying it was to goto the bank every few weeks with a check. I am switching banks (more on that later) so I needed to have 1 paper check so my employers payroll company could send a test EFT to the new bank. I will be back to the land of automatic payments in a few weeks.

The good news is my company started recently direct deposit expense checks. My last place I worked did that. It made life really easy. No need to goto the bank for almost any deposits:).