I am cleaning my apartment so Zach and Morgan (mostly Zach) can mess it up later
scott
Wondering why my iphone keeps resetting?
The Election
I am not big into politics anymore. If you know me I am more than willing to debate issues, but I am not a huge fan of picking sides like Democrats or Republicans. That being said I am just glad this election is over and we now will have a president that actually has a brain he will use.
It was funny I knew that Obama had one when I heard cheering outside my apartment. At that point I checked the web and saw the projections! I guess others felt the same way as I did. And that’s all that I need to say!
Google To Zimbra Update
So far I am liking Zimbra, but I do have a few features that I miss from Google Apps. I miss the ability to search and apply tags to everything that is already in my account. Zimbra cannot do that, but version 6 should be able to fix that. I miss the linking of messages to one thread in Google, but on the other hand I don't miss it sometimes. That was a controversial function for me.
I miss the extra drive space. My current Zimbra account only gives me 2 gigs. When I am done uploading all my mail I will need closer to 4gig, and Google apps gave me around 7. I knew this going into the Zimbra, but more space would be nice!
I am liking the syncing to my iPhone. The only quirk is that the photo caller id pictures I have on my Mac address book won't sync with the iPhone anymore but they will sync with the Zimbra server. Weird. I am also having issues with getting the calendar on my mac to sync with Zimbra. I was able to do a one way import to the server but getting it back down to my iCal has been a problem. It hasn't bothered me yet since I don't really use iCal as much as I used to now that my work world lives in Exchange.
I have had a few other odd issues with mail not replicating to Outlook using the Zimbra plug in, but I haven't gone crazy over it yet. Overall Google Apps was a good solid web app, so change is difficult. That being said I am happier that I have a bit more control over my most sensitive data. Sorry Google, I love you in many ways but I am still a bit skeptical about your privacy and data retention policies. And in a nutshell that is the final reason I moved to Zimbra. I still use my Gmail account as a backup, but I haven't logged into my Google Apps account all week.
Technorati Tags: 01.com, email, gmail, google apps, IMAP, zimbra
iPhone 3G Reset
My afternoon today was thrown for a bit of a loop when I tried to go out today and tried to play some music on my iPod. There wasn’t any. That was odd since I always have about 8gigs of music on it. I then went to sync it up again with my Macbook. That is when things got interesting. I kept getting an error saying the phone couldn’t sync and I had to reset it. I figured a quick reset and I should be good to go. Well that didn’t work either. I reset the phone and then it kept giving me an error. I couldn’t sync it, or boot it up. An Apple KB article said to reboot the computer so I did that. After about 3 more tries the phone reset and started restoring.
This is the problem with one converged device. I almost can’t go anywhere without it. It is my phone (only one except Skype until I get my blackberry from work). It is also my music player, and PDA. I am sunk if it doesn’t work. Today was a perfect example of that. 3 hours later I am back and semi running with the phone. My only lingering issue that I know of is my icon’s are all in the wrong order. I am more concerned with the fact that I don’t know if this will happen again, and I have no backup plan. I guess that is my operations mindset going. I always need a “plan B”. I am thinking about that, but for now I am just happy things turned out as well as they did. It could have been allot worse!
Decorating
Several months ago I went online and purchased a few prints to decorate my apartment. I have been really lazy and they have sat in the corner of my living room for ages. Last Sunday I finally hung them with my mom’s help. Now that they are up I love them as much I thought I would, but I also realize I still need more of them to make the room look great. I have been browsing on Allposters.com all weekend looking for additional prints that I like. The problem is that I find too many great items I want to buy. I used allposters when I bought the first 3 pieces and I am planning on sending them some more of my money for 2-3 more pieces this month.
I also have been looking for a site where I can make a collage of photos from digital photos and have a large poster made up that I can have framed. I finally found out that HP offers exactly what I want and they are partnered with Flickr. I can select the photos I want right from Flickr and but the poster. I am happy about that but after counting all the places I could put a big poster up in a frame with photos of my niece and nephew I realized that I don’t even have the room for what I wanted. It is good information since my mom likes making collages of photos. I will end up with smaller frames of 2-3 photos of the kids on a wall or two.
I am also trying to upgrade my kitchenware. The plates I have are over 5 years old and they are getting all chipped in my dish washer. I am trying to find something that looks good but is also affordable to replace them with.
The last few items I need to find is a bookshelf, and an end table for my couch. I need a place to throw my keys and stuff. My mom suggested I look at Chiasso. They seem to have nice stuff, but were more expensive than I thought it would be.It is looking like November is decorate month. And to think I was trying to cut back on the spending, but I do want to make my place look nice!
Technorati Tags: allposters, decorating, flickr, plates
Free Google Apps, to Paid Zimbra!
My brother in law reminded me that he lost everything in his Gmail inbox a few months ago. He can’t recall how that happened, and there is no way to get the data back. Knowing him, I don’t think he did something to delete it. This story on top of several people I have spoken to about percieved issues with Googles privacy policy has got me wondering if I should be relying on Google Apps for my mail. To be truthful I was originally a skeptic of Gmail but I have been using Google Apps for about a year with no major issues. That being said hearing horror stories about lack of support or loss of mail (or loss of access to mail), hijacking of accounts, etc got me thinking. I am willing to pay for rock solid service from a mail provider, but even paying for Google Apps doesn’t (in my eyes) solve the security and privacy issues with Googles terms of service.
All these concerns got to seriously look at using Zimbra again. Earlier this year I had tried out 01.com‘s personal Zimbra hosting but ended up sticking to Google Apps. What has changed? The iPhone for one. The need in my opinion to have my contacts synced with my mail system. The fact that I have an iPhone so I switched to Remember The Milk for task management. One major reason I didn’t keep using Zimbra was it didn’t sync tasks to the Mac and at the time that was a requirement. With me using RTM that isn’t an issue anymore. I could have used my existing hosting provider and used simple IMAP mail like I did for years, but I grew attached to a nice web UI. The ability to have the same mail experience on any computer became very compelling, so going back to simple IMAP mail wasn’t going to cut it.
Last week I signed up for a business account with 01.com (biz account offers me more features over the personal one I previously tried). I have already moved the majority of my mail from Google Apps over to Zimbra. The moving of mail was slow since I was just coping messages between the two services using IMAP. Getting my contacts and calendar into Zimbra was easy with the import functionality as well as the iSync connector. I am having issues sync’ing my calendar back with my Mac, but everything syncs up perfectly with my iPhone. If I realized Zimbra would work so well syncing with the iPhone I would never have renewed .mac (mobileme). I would have been better served just using sugarsync and Zimbra, but I didn’t know about sugarsync in July. I know for next year not to renew mobileme!
Now all I need to do is sort out a few minor glitches with my Zimbra experience and I will be happy to stop using Google Apps.
Technorati Tags: 01.com, email, gmail, google apps, IMAP, mobileme, iPhone 3G, sugarsync, zimbra
I am hoping I can go to the corporate HQ more often. The cafeteria was really nice.
13 Days With an iMac
As my bad luck would have it I went out and bought a 24″ 3ghz iMac the weekend before the announced the new Macbooks. Now I admit I knew they were going to announce new laptops. It wasn’t really a secret. At the time I had given up hope that Apple would come out with a regular Macbook that could use their 30″ displays. I gave up on an affordable solution to have a 30″ display. I wanted the display but didn’t need the Macbook Pro, or Mac Pro that I would need to own in order to run the display. Since my new job gave me a laptop that I need to use for work I didn’t really need my Macbook as much so I settled on the cheaper option of the iMac. I gave up on the larger screen but got a more powerful desktop.
So when the new Macbooks came out and could solve my original requirements I was not happy. I had already owned the iMac. This was of course the week I was out of work sick. I was contemplating selling the new computer for a loss on ebay and just getting the Macbook. I didn’t realize that I could return the iMac to the Apple store and just pay the high restocking fee. I opted to pay the restock fee since I could never sell the computer for what it was worth. I returned it with 1 day to spare on the 14 day return policy. I went ahead and picked up the low end aluminum Macbook. I thought about the more expensive one, but the hard drive space wasn’t an issue. My extra $400 would get me 400mhz in processor. As much as that would be a nice boost, it wasn’t worth the money. Instead I spent a little over $200 and upgraded the unit to 4gig’s of RAM and put in a 320gb 7200RPM hard drive. For less money I than buying the higher end laptop I think I speed up the unit more by getting a better HDD and RAM.
I just finished upgrading the new hard drive today. It was a as simple as running Carbon Copy Cloner on my old drive to a USB drive. Then I booted to the USB drive after installing the new 320gb drive in the laptop and ran CCC again in the reverse direction. The process took several hours to copy the data, but only required my interaction for a few minutes. When I was done my entire computer was cloned onto the new hard drive. I could never do something that cleanly with Windows, trust me I have tried over the years.
The only downside to note is yes I can use a 30″ Cinema Display with the new Macbooks, however the cable that will allow me to do that is not yet available or backordered that it will take several weeks to get. That means I am still on my 23″ display until I can get the cable and buy the new display. Why is going from 23″ to 30″ so important? My eyes aren’t the greatest, so the more screen that I can get the better!
Technorati Tags: Carbon Copy Cloner, iMac, Mac, Macbook, 30″ Cinema Display
Teleport
The ablity to teleport would be a nice to have, but in the mean time I will stick with the Mac application Teleport. Sorry I couldn’t think of any other segway! Teleport solves an annoying problem I have had for a little while. I have setup my Macbook (without a KVM) on one part of my desk, but since I got my 20″ iMac a few months ago when I am not using it as a TV (almost all the time) it is on a portable table near my desk. I have had two keyboards and mice at my desk for a while. That was annoying. Now that I am working from home a bit and sitting using my laptop screen was killing me I setup a spare 19″ flat panel I got from my dad also. Three displays / computers setup near each other is great, but 3 keyboards and mice are not. Now with Teleport I can control my iMac with my main keyboard and mouse from my Macbook. It works great and took a whole 2 minutes to setup. I could have used an open source tool to control both my Mac’s and my Thinkpad, but I would rather have a dedicated setup for my work computer anyway.