Month: April 2007

So This is Outside

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I went to the Sakura Matsuri Festival today at the Botanic Gardens in Brooklyn. I know, two days in a row leaving Manhattan really takes allot out of me! It was an interesting experience, especially since it is outside what I would normally do on my Saturday. I am still trying to figure out what was more interesting the festival itself or the people dressing up in costumes? There were the people in traditional Japanese costumes that you would expect, but there was also a noticeable number of people dressed up in Animea characters and other costumes. I even saw a guy dressed up as a transformer. It was just weird/interesting.

All in all it was a good day, except for the fact that after I got home I started to get a migraine. I took some Amerge and a 2 hour nap and I was allot better but not 100%. I ended up having to cancel my plans to go out with with some friends.

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The Wet Mini Road Trip

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Today I left the island of Manhattan and my reliance on the public transit system to go out to Long Island for a data center tour. In theory everything should have been fine even in the rain. My car was late showing up, but I still made it to the site a few minutes early. That should have been a good thing, but apparently there is no reception area at the place I went to so I was standing out in the rain with no way of getting inside.

Thankfully my boss drove to the site so eventually he showed up and I had the dryness of his car. We tried to sort out the whole situation. Apparently there is no one typically onsite at this facility that can greet people or give tours. Some how they messed up the fact that we were showing up for a our so we were out of luck.

Since the tour was a bust we hit a local diner for some early lunch, and then I called a car to take me back home. With the amount of time lost going back and forth to the island, this was the perfect day to work from home. And that is exactly what I did. Once I got home I got online via the wonderful world of VPN and worked the rest of the day from the dry confines of my apartment.

I ended up not going out to meet Danny after work even though we had tentative plans. I was no where near the office, and I was tired and didn’t really want to go out after a crazy wet morning. So laziness kicked in and I hung out at home.

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The Three Month Rule

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I was once told that it takes someone three months or so to fully adjust to a new job. I have believed that theory that it takes that long to be a fully functioning member of a new team, but personally I haven’t put that theory to the test for some time. Of course that was because I was at the same job for almost 6 years. That was until about 2 1/2 month ago.

This week I started to notice that I am able to take on more responsibility and a more active role in my team. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t doing anything for 2 1/2 months, but what I was doing before was specific tasks and projects. Now I am starting to grasp the bigger picture and taking a more active role in shaping that big picture. Then I looked at my calendar and saw that it has been more than 2 1/2 months since I started. I proved my own theory right. I does take about 3 months for everything to fall into place. It may take me many more months to fully understand everything but I am now feeling more connected to what is going on. And to be honest it actually feels good. It is also weird that it doesn’t feel like that much time has past since I moved jobs, but looking at my calendar proves my gut feeling wrong. How time can fly.

I am Not Addicted to my Blackberry

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The odds were against me. Heck I even thought I would be, but I survived the Blackberry outage with not issues. I actually didn’t know there was a problem with our Blackberry mail until about 2:30PM on Wednesday, and even then I didn’t ask about it until about 5:30PM EST. That timeline does sound weird to me since everyone said the Blackberry system was down Tuesday night and back on Wednesday but many of us at work were down most of Wednesday afternoon.

In any event I am officially (in my opinion) not addicted to the device. The jury is still out about the internet in general though!

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Lazy Saturday

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I was up late last night so I decided to have a lazy Saturday. I just got back from some light shopping. I got a book at B&N, and some blank DVD. Nothing fancy. It is really nice out today.

I am not sure what my plans are for tomorrow or tonight for that matter. I am playing it by ear, but I don’t mind not doing much. This week was busy at work, and I was out half the nights also.

Why Do Some Stores Treat You Like a Criminal?

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Why do some stores in NYC treat their customers like criminals? I know most places out of NYC don’t do it, but some chains especially electronic stores like Best Buy seem to be treating everyone who buys something like a criminal these days. Every time I buy something at Best Buy I get badgered to show my receipt to some one at the door before I leave. It use to not be this way. I am a customer. Treating your store like a police state does not encourage me to go back and spend lots of money.

A few months ago on a consumer blog I read that unless a store is a members only store like Cosco, I am under no legal obligation to show my receipt if asked when leaving a store. I have tested this theory several times at Best Buy (hasn’t happened at CompUSA since I decided to try this) and so far I have not been stopped when I just ignore the guy at the door and continue on my way out. Is it sad that a small part of me wants one ignorant employee to try and stop me one time?

On the flip side I just got a new monitor at the Apple Store and walked out without a receipt (they email you a pdf of your receipt if your email is on file) and no tags or anything on the box. I asked the clerk about getting out of the store with no receipt and they were like you have to buy the monitor before we can give it to me from the back, so I don’t need a receipt to leave the store. See not treated like a criminal. And to make sure I compare apples to apples (no pun intended) I have bought computers at Best Buy that they can only get from the back of the store and I have still been asked for a receipt. How can some stores get it right, and others so wrong?

H700

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I got a new bluetooth headset this week. I bought a Motorola H700. It is great for one simple feature that I cannot understand why others don’t include. When the boom is closed and a phone rings, I can answer it normally like I would without a headset, or I can open the boom to answer the call. When the boom mic is opened, I can answer calls by tapping the button on the side of the headset or on the phone and the call goes to my headset.

With other headsets, when they are on the call always goes to the headset. I like everyone else sometimes forgets that I have the headset turned on or don’t want to use it for that particular call but I have to fumble around since the call is already going to the headset. It is annoying.

Now all I have to do is stop my Treo 680 from crashing all the time and I would be happy with my mobile phone setup.

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Rain Day

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It rained all day today. I stayed in and relaxed. I didn’t want to go out in the bad weather, and since it was Sunday and I had no firm plans I just relaxed. It was nice.

My Apple TV

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I finally got my Apple TV a few weeks ago. Since I was really sick when I got it I didn’t really get to set it up and use it until around the 26th of March. Then I just never got around to finishing this post. So now here is my brief first thoughts on the product.

So far it has meet my expectations, and I am happy with it. Even though I have read mixed reviews about it, the Apple TV fix in perfectly with my home entertainment setup. Since I use a Windows PC for a DVR, a Mac Mini was not feasible for the same TV. I KVM didn’t work so well, and the DVI to HDMI cable never got the resolution right on the Mini. All that and the fact that Front Row was very slow to respond on the Mini, the Apple TV fit perfectly. I have a new Stereo with HDMI inputs and the Apple TV plugged in and was online in 10 minutes.

It is true that the Apple TV doesn’t have HD content, but what was watching on my Mini wasn’t in HD anyway. Eventually getting HD content would be nice, but I am happy with the product as is for now!

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Easter Sunday Shopping

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Today I took advantage of the Easter holiday to do some cleaning, and some shopping. I have been pondering upgrading my computer monitor for some time. Apple just lowered the prices of their flat panels this week so it sparked my renewed interest in upgrading. I have a 20″ Apple Cinema Display, so many would say why in the world would I need to upgrade? I believe you can’t have enough screen real-estate. My vision isn’t so hot so the bigger the screen the better. I was looking at several 23″ & 24″ models during the week. Most of them are noticeably cheaper than the Apple ones, but they don’t look anywhere near as nice as the Apple displays. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to shell out $600 for a big piece of ugly black plastic.

Since I was on the fence with my decision I went down to the Apple Store. The 5th ave. store in Manhattan is open 24/7/365. And sure enough on Easter Sunday there was a line to get down the stairs into the store. It was packed. I found a 20 & 23″ display to compare side by side. The 20″ looks small compared to the 23″ one. Of course the 30″ is massive, but none of my computers could handle that display. I also like to put my desktop and laptop on a KVM and no KVM that I know of would ever handle the resolution of the 30″, so that one was out of the running for the foreseeable future. After standing in front of a 23″ display and browsing on the web for a few minutes I was convinced that this was the monitor I wanted, and that it was well worth the hefty price tag. I bought the monitor and caught a cab home and was up and running with the new display in 20 minutes. So far it is fantastic.

I have cleaned up my old 20″ display and put it back in the original packaging (yes I try to keep all of that stuff since I know I upgrade more often than most people) and it is ready to be sold to a needing friend or ebay.

Once done setting up the new monitor I continued to clean up my apartment. I pulled my Mini I had been using as a DVR computer. It was working great but I decided that wasting a Vista license and my Mini as a DVR was not worth it. I put back the old DVR box, but realized that the power supply was making rather nasty sounds. I never realized how bad it was until it was off for a week and then I turned it back on. I ended up pulling that computer also and I will use my Cable box DVR for now until I figure out what I want to do with the computer DVR setup I have.

Now I am off to mop and empty my dish washer!

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