Month: June 2008

My Blog Entry For Tuesday 6-24-2008

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My day at work basically boiled down to me taking part in a meeting with Cisco for most of the morning. The second half of the day was me writing up a proposal for a project we are looking to do. There was a few other quick conference calls in between that. I also think I discussed a network project with some guys on my team. This was one of those days that a few items took up almost all my time. That is good because time goes by quick, but bad because most other items on the agenda are not taken care of.

I did get to kick off some windows updates on my desktop that I am rebuilding. At an old company I worked for we called that an updateathon. It wasn’t so bad but there were allot of Office 2007 updates. I also plugged in a 5 port switch I brought from home yesterday to use in my office. It replaces the 8 port 100meg hub I had received from my group when I asked for a switch. it is weird when I have to bring in better gear from home to work, but this is now the second job I have had that sometimes I need to. On the plus side I do have a sweet ultra portable Sony.

Apparently my cleaning lady (yes I pay to have my apt cleaned every few weeks) was working in my apartment when the maintenance people came over to fix a leak in my bathroom. They sort of freaked her out. Apparently they weren’t very nice, she doesn’t speak english and I didn’t realize she would be around when I put the request in 3 days ago for them to come over and fix the issue without calling ahead. My dad called me a little while ago to tell me about that whole saga. Apparently my cleaning lady called my parents since she knows my mom. She wasn’t home so I get the story from my dad. Lots of drama, but thankfully everyone is ok now.

I didn’t get out of the office too late. I did do something stupid at home though. I thought tonight was the night for a BBQ in my building. Turns out that is next Tuesday. I can’t read. Oh well. I am now relaxing, writing and listening to some music.

Amazon MP3 Store

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Since the iTunes store opened, I have been a customer. I have bought a bunch of music from the store over the years. I have still bought regular CD’s but recently that has been happening less and less. Out of all the online buying options I liked that Apple’s AAC format’s DRM would allow me to burn regular CD’s. But recently I have ran into issues with that option. I have wanted to play music bought from iTunes on my Nokia phone. In order for me to that I have to burn the music to a CD and then rip it back to iTunes as an MP3. By doing this I would lose quality. I knew this when I bought the music in the first place, but I didn’t think I would need to do the conversion ever so I figured what the heck. Well fast forward a few years and if I bought all my music as CD’s and just ripped them as MP3’s I wouldn’t be in this situation.

I know that the iTunes store does offer some MP3’s without any DRM, but the issue is the store only offers SOME MP3’s. I haven’t found a song I want to buy from iTunes that was in MP3 format. About a week ago I checked out the Amazon MP3 store. I have heard about the store since it came out, but the ease of use of the iTunes store kept me lazy and I never checked it out. Last week I picked up 1 single to try out. Amazon made it really easy to buy and import my completely DRM free MP3 into iTunes. I was very impressed, but how about the stores selection?

Yesterday I did some browsing for music. I searched the iTunes store and then searched the same music on the Amazon MP3 store. What I found was that most of the music I wanted was in both stores. I ended up buying the latest Stoke 9 album on the Amazon MP3 site. I actually was going to buy that album about a month ago but I held off because I wanted a DRM free version. Now I have it. I will say I am not a huge fan of the DRM in Amazon’s ebooks, but I buy them. That being said I am impressed with the DRM free music they offer. For now I am switching to the amazon store vs the itunes store for my music. I will wait for more music to be DRM free on the itunes store, but I am not holding my breath.

For the future, I don’t see myself buying any DRM enabled music. I will get it from amazon or another store that offer’s DRM free music, or I will buy the CD’s like I used to and just rip the music. This is a time where I will not let laziness win out anymore. Now I wait for a more open ebook reader like the Kindle, but until then I will be still buying DRM’d books.

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My Blog Entry For Monday 6-23-2008

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I think I am going to get back to basics on some of these posts. I want to write down simply what I did for the day. This is how I originally started writing a journal many years ago before blogs got big. I will still have regular posts like I normally do, but i want ot have at least a blirb about what I did for the day. I will keep the titles simple like the one I have on this post. I am doing that just because it is hard to come up with snappy titles all the time.

Today I worked on some status reports for my boss. I worked on getting the status of several projects that are in progress right now. I also had to rebuild my desktop in the office in between working on stuff. The linux install I put on last week wasn’t working out, and the backup image I took of the machine didn’t work so all I could do was do a restore from the factory defaults. Thankfully that doesn’t require allot of effort from me.

I went to the post office to ship my Treo 750 that I sold on ebay. Thankfully it didn’t rain as I walked the 10 blocks to the nearest post office. I don’t understand how in mid town manhattan you have to go 10 blocks in any direction to find a post office. Oh well.

It was unusually hot in my office today. I don’t get it since it was only like 75 degrees outside today. Maybe it was the humidity. It got worse in the afternoon when I had a meeting in my office and there were 4 of us with the door closed. Man it can cook when you do that. Thankfully the meeting was very productive and I think we have a game plan for solving some design questions on an old hardware platform we need to support for a while linger. Now I have to write up a proposal to our vendor and see what they think.

I got out of the office at a reasonable time. I cooked up some stuff I had fresh from my Fresh Direct on Sunday. That was tasty. I got to talk to both my parents, and I emailed my brother in law back an answer to a question he sent me. I got to relax at home after that. I also even had a chance to write this post.

What I Did This Weekend

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To sum it up, I didn’t do very much and I loved most of it. Today I slept till 10:30. I am glad for that since i have been having issues sleeping in recent memory. I did my laundry, wow what fun. I cleaned my apartment. I don’t know why because the cleaning lady is coming on Tuesday, but I need to tidy up the clutter. I don’t like clutter. After a week clutter just happens.

I did some shopping for items i have needed or wanted for a while. Online shopping can be easy sometimes. I uploaded some of my latest photo’s to Flickr. I watched some TV. I am now up to date on Weeds & The Deadliest Catch. I also got in a little bit of Grand Theft Auto IV.

I got my fresh direct delivery allot earlier than I planned so I had fresh food for dinner. Other than that I bought some music online and relaxed. That’s it.

Chair Blogging

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I am attempting to write on my Sony Vaio laptop I have from work. It is so tiny. It is one of those 2.5lbs units with a tiny screen. I have to push the fonts up to 22pt in order for me to see things when I put the laptop on my lap. They keyboard is small, but so far I am able to touch time without tons of errors. I don't know how long i can do it for.

Even though the laptop is less than 3lbs this is the first weekend I have taken it home. I had to get everything configured properly on it as well as get a power adapter so i can leave it at home. I know, I have a Macbook that I travel to and from work with, but when I am home it acts like a desktop so this tiny guy is nice to have for times like right now when i want to sit on my comfy chair and type. It also has broadband access so i can get on the internet from anywhere Sprint has mobile service. That makes it worth it to travel with. OK enough talking about extra computers that I am tinkering with.

Relaxing Weekend

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I don’t know why, but I just don’t want to do anything this weekend. It is a beautiful day out. I can take a bike ride that I wanted to take all week. I could roller blade down by the water since there is some street fair. I could go hang out with friends. I could even do some shopping. I just find myself in my overstuffed chair listening to music and writing. I just don’t want to get up and do anything.

I will admit i am tired from working all week, and I did look forward to the weekend but I am not usually this lazy. If I end up doing nothing it is usually because it just happens, not because I sit around and make a actively decided not to do any of the things I think of getting involved with. And yes I just said actively decide to do nothing!

Maybe I will relax a little and go out with some friends tonight? Sounds good, but who knows if I will do it. Now I am just rambling so I will end this entry:)

eBay’s Feedback Rules Suck

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So eBay and Paypal are great when they work. The problem is when any little bit of fraud or doubt about an auction comes into play an seller gets screwed. My latest issue with the dynamic duo of lets screw the seller is eBay’s relatively new feedback policy. In the good days of the past someone would leave you a bad feedback score, you could reciprocate. That way a total moron would feel the pain of being an idiot when they left feedback for no good reason. Now a day’s only a buyer can leave neutral or negative feedback. eBay’s thoughts are that they don’t want buyers to be afraid of retribution when they leave negative feedback on a seller.

Here is why that doesn’t work. I am finally selling my Treo. In order to try and decrease the number of potential fraudulent bids I clearly state in the auction that I am only looking for bidders with 5 or more feedback. In the scheme of things it isn’t much of a protection against scammers, but every bit counts. I had someone win the auction with Buy It Now, and paid via Paypal. I went in to my accounts to check out the buyer. To my dismay I noticed that the buyer had only 1 feedback. Then I went into Paypal to check on the money and noticed that the person had paid for the item but wanted to have it shipped to a PO Box. I immediately refunded the guy his full payment price and in the refund I left a note about why I was refunding the money. The bidder actually sent me like 3 notices on ebay confused as to why he was being rejected even-though I explained it to him. He then wrote back to say that I got my first negative feedback for screwing him. This is where I got mad at eBay. I went to leave him feedback explaining my side, and realized that I couldn’t because eBay changed the policy. I refunded the guy his full amount paid. 1 feedback and asking to ship to a PO Box are both clear signs of a scam. How am I at fault here trying to protect myself? He got his money back like 30 minutes after paying. How is that screwing him???

eBay is trying to protect buyers, but what about sellers? I am more protected as a buyer already. If you use Paypal you can dispute the charge if you don’t get your merchandise, and then get your money back. If I send a product to someone and they dispute it, I have seen Paypal side with the seller, and then I am out my money and my product. Jayson got screwed selling a Mac Mini because it was worth more than the Paypal insurance and he shipped to a non registered address, even though it was the buyers home address. How is that fair?

Don’t you just love a semi-monopolistic website like eBay (try finding as large an auction community in the US and I will use it) that lets one type of customer able to complain about service, but not another? I find eBay contemptible, but I am forced to use it because it is basically the only game in town.

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Nokia N95, vs iPhone 3G

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Since I wrote my post about getting the Nokia N95, I thought of a few things that get me wanting a new iPhone, and some that make me think the N95 is a better option than the iPhone.

Features that my new Nokia N95 does now or last year when it came out that the iPhone will do in July are: GPS, 3G data speeds, Wifi, 8gigs of music or videos, & sync’s to my Mac seamlessly.

Cool features that the N95 does that the iPhone doesnt are things like built in internet radio, regular radio (via headset), 5mp camera, & basically any S60 application can be installed on it. Oh, yes Apple being able to write software without any restrictions is a good thing, no matter how crash proof you want to make the platform. There has to be a better middle ground than what Apple does.

To be fair the iPhone does the following things that will probably get me to switch when it comes out. It will have a keyboard (well touch keyboard still counts), awesome email client, & mobile me.

There are probably more features that fall into all three categories but that is a summary of what I care about.

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Fathers Day

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This fathers day I was supposed to have dinner with my parents and they would spend time with my sister Sunday morning. Like many plans in my family that setup changed at the last minute so I found myself at a backyard party my sister threw at her house. Flickr photo stream is here. As much as I don’t like the two hours plus trip to get to my sisters, I usually have a good time. Sunday was beautiful day. It was the first time I was at the house and able to use the pool.

It was a great day all around. How can you really complain when you sit around and eat, lie around in the pool play with the kids in the pool? When I wasn’t in the pool I kept cool by siting at the patio table and Zachary kept coming over with a watering bucket and wet my feet. For some reason he loved doing it, and it kept him busy for like 90 minutes.

The only down side really of visiting is that the drive home is usually horrible with tons of traffic on a Sunday night. Compound that on top of the fact that I am not a huge fan of sleeping over when there are tons of other people over. There just isn’t enough places to sleep comfortably. I will say that I do get in ample reading on NJT on the train ride out. Going home the ride sucks, but I would rather riding in the car with my parents if there are there than taking a train home and dealing with the limited sunday night schedule.

I still need to figure out what to get my dad for fathers day, and his birthday for that matter. He is now help, since he has no idea what he wants.

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Phone vs PDA Phone

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Yesterday I broke down and did a sort of impulse buy. I have been eying some mobile phone alternative to what I have that is not an iPhone. The Nokia E61i is just too dam slow, and the lack of a good email client and task management has put me over the edge with tolerating it. I will admit the E61i is still a great phone, but for me there are things that I will put up with and things I won’t. My issue is that the next real contender for a phone for me is the new iPhone 3g that is not out yet. Even then I am not 100% convinced I will be happy with it due to some known limitations for me.

That all being said I broke down and went out and bought a Nokia N95-4. It has almost all the multi-media functions of the iPhone and more, but it is not a PDA. In the first day that became a problem for me, but I did have a back up plan. I broke out my old Treo 750 that I never got around to selling and set it up to use as just a PDA. I can also use bluetooth to use the N95 as a modem if i want to check mail or browse the web on the Treo. I know, a PDA and a phone. How 2001ish. So far it has worked for me. I don’t always need the PDA, but it is on my desk at work or in my bag when I need it. That and I actually have a nice fast phone that sounds good. I know I will probably ditch this setup by the time the iPhone 3g comes out and I get sucked into getting one, but this setup does work.

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