I am actually writing, but you don’t see the results here just now. I have found it wise to leave most current work related entries on a site secured from the general public. I also write some of my more personal stuff in another secured journal. Unfortunately that hasn’t left much to put up on this site. I hope to change that. I am thinking I am going to continue to write work related entries on the private work blog, and only publish them here when I leave a job. That way I am not under and obligations or restrictions. The other thing is that by the time anything is published it is extremely dated and most likely no longer relevant. Some posts still will never make the light of day just due to what I write, but I not going to totally disregard common sense and publish everything I write.
scott
The Busiest Day of The Year
Today was the busiest day of the year for me at work. As it turns out this statement is true on several levels. My current company has a bi-annual event that generates the highest volume of web traffic on one of our sites. We literally began planning for today back in June during our last event. Because of the work shifts we ended up doing, and problems creeping up throughout the day today was also probably the hardest work day I have had since I started working at this job last February.
The odd thing is I kind of liked it regardless of the craziness. There is something about being in the thick of issues with the pressure mounting and you having to make split second decisions that has an odd attraction. I guess I am still sometimes an adrenaline junkie from my days volunteering as an EMT in College. The other alluring aspect of today is you see six months of work put to good use (hopefully), and for me all my skills as an engineer and a manager put to the test. The result is exhausting physical and emotionally, but in the end very rewarding. During our last event in June I commented afterward that if you are in an operations group and you don’t secretly enjoy such days you are in the wrong profession or lying to yourself. I still think that to be true.
The day did have its high and low points. In the end I know now that I have to handle a few personnel issues, and our systems performed better than anticipated. All in all a mixed ending for a roller coaster ride of a day.
The Kindle
Since I traveled full time back in 2000 I have loved the idea of e-books. The idea was great but in practice it had a lot to be desired. I have read a handful of books in the ebook format. Most notibly when I was on the road on using my HP Jornada Pocket PC. It had a big screen but for reading books it wasn’t ideal. At the time it was the only game in town, and since there were times I didn’t want to carry a book with me having a book on my PDA was nice. Ever since I have been on the hunt for the perfect device to read books off of. Eventually I figured e-books would become more common, but so far they haven’t taken off so much.
When Sony came out with there reader I was fascinated by the technology. The size was right, it looked easy to read off of. I was all set to buy one until i read that you could only buy books from Sony for the reader. That on top of the fact that Sony’s selection wasn’t too hot I opted to hold off on my purchase.
That leads us to late November when Amazon announced the Kindle. It was very similar to the Sony reader, and it was backed by the book store at Amazon. I was still a bit hesitant to order one due to the DRM in the Amazon file format, but they offered over four times the books Sony did and they expected to continually add more books. After going back and forth on my decision I ended up placing an order for one in early December.
I was concerned about my choice because I read a few mixed reviews. I felt a bit better when I read Howard Morgan’s review late last month on his blog. I cannot remember a bad technology decision that he has made since I have known him. Well, I don’t count the fact that he wont switch to a Mac!
I found out late last week that my order finally shipped and I should expect to get my reader tomorrow. I already ordered 2 books for it that i was planning on reading. They should auto download to the reader when i turn it on. Hopefully this device lives up to my expectations since I have been waiting 8 years for it.
The Futile Attempt
Today I made a futile attempt at finding a Notary Public. Apparently no UPS Store I went to or Fedex Kinkos had any. This is in contrast to what UPS said on their website. Apparently when a multinational company lists available services at specific locations that means that one guy may be able to provide said service. If he is on vacation then they cannot.
What bothered me about the whole experience was I did my research and went to stores that said they had the service (UPS only, couldn’t find any info about Kinkos). I get there and I am told the guy who can do it is on vacation. I am not offered another location that can do it, just sorry. On my way back to the subway I saw a Kinkos so i tried them. I was told they don’t have one either but another Kinkos a few blocks away might. At this point, wouldn’t good customer service offer to call that store and check for me? They didn’t, and when i got to that location they looked at me funny. I fared worse at Staples where the clerk just looked at me funny and had no idea what i was talking about.
Now I need to find a bank on Monday that has a Notary that will actually notarize something for me without me having an account at the bank, since we know banks love to turn people away for simple crap like that if you aren’t an account holder. That has happened more times than i care to remember.
I write about this of all things because an errand that should have taken 30 minutes that I actually researched before I left my apartment turned into a 2 hour excursion around mid town manhattan.
Visiting The Kids
I spent Wednesday through Friday hanging out at my sisters house. I got to play allot with my niece and nephew. It was nice, especially since I don’t get to see them as much as I would like. I babysat for them on Wedsnday night since it was my sister and brother in laws anniversary. The rest of the time we just hung out. I had a good time since I don’t get to see everyone that much since they moved.
Unfortunately I caught a cold Thursday night and I feel like crap now.
Where is the Drama Free Line Please?
Have you ever wished they had a special line at the store (any store will do) that only took credit cards. Just a simple line where you walk up and hand the clerk your stuff. The clerk then proceeds to ring up everything and everyone who is on that line won’t begin to question if the computer is wrong, or the sale price didn’t ring up, etc. You are permitted to complain if you are buying something for $9.99 and it shows up at $100 or other outrageous errors, but generally you have to be a real grown up to be on the line, not just look like one.
If you accepted the responsibility of getting on this special line you couldn’t ask for discount card applications. You couldn’t try to combine a store credit card with a gift card. You couldn’t ask for gift wrap, or returns. You couldn’t ask questions about the product(s) you were buying. You would just get your stuff put nicely in a bag and you would thank the clerk and walk away. Typically I prefer if workers at the store spoke intelligible english, but on this special line it shouldn’t matter since you wouldn’t have to say anything beyond hello, and thank you to the clerk. So the question is where can I find this drama free line? I am on a quest to find it. I have a theory that this line does exist, and it is at the local DMV and quickie mart in the lost city of Atlantis. If anyone knows of any other locations please let me know! I have my credit card in hand!
Google Apps
I remember when Howard & Gus were talking up Gmail when it came out. A gig of storage for life free they said. It was a closed beta so you had to have friends who had an in get you an invite. In a short period of time (shorter than I expected) I had an invite. I was like why do I need this? I want and use my own domain’s personal email. Why would I want @gmail.com in my address? I mean the idea was very interesting but I didn’t think it was for me.
Not too much time went by and people were still talking about Gmail. I figured I need to use my invite so I can at least secure the username that I like to use, so I did. As predicted I haven’t used Gmail that much. I do route mail to it that I don’t want in my regular mailbox’s, but I could go weeks without logging into the account. That was until a month or so ago.
Recently Google offered Google Apps for free. Google Apps is a collection of web applications that you can use with your own domain. They have cool features like Google Talk, Calendar, etc. What got me interested was Gmail. Now they offer a Gmail front end that you can use for your own mail domain. Better yet it is free for personal use. I get 100 accounts with as of this writing 5.8 gigs of space. Now this information on its own would be interesting but nothing more. In fact when I first read about Google Apps I setup a mail domain pointing to the system and played around with it, but nothing more. I like to get my mail via IMAP, and Google didn’t offer that. The final clincher for me was when they announced that Google Apps would support IMAP, also for free. For the past week I have been routing some mail to my domain I had them hosting mail for, and so far I haven’t had any hiccups (fingers crossed). Because of that I am beginning the task of routing all my mail to Google Apps.
I can be a cynic. I know that, but I am very impressed by how this tool has evolved. I am even eying the Premier version of the service to get some of the more advanced features. I am not sure if I need them so the free service is fine for now. It is just too bad that I wasted some money moving to a new email hosting provider in September. They are great, but they can’t compete with 5gigs free IMAP storage.
10.5 Compatible Applications Follow Up
When I first installed Leapord (OS 10.5) I wrote about the compatibility issues I had with some programs that I use. Well it has been almost two months and allot of those issues are resolved with one or two still lingering.
I found out that the ecto beta for 3.0 is a free upgrade for me since I owned 2.x. So far 3.0 is working fine in beta and thankfully isn’t crashing so I can write this blog entry without aggravation.
Mark/Space has published a beta of the Missing Sync for the Palm that works with 10.5. I had issues with it like I did with the original version of 6.x. It stops syncing tasks and calendar items from my Treo. Thankfully since I wrote the first post and now I have switched phones to a Symbian based Nokia E61i so I don’t need to rely on this software.
PGP Desktop may be the de facto standard in security products but it is not cheap ($70 or so for 1 year). Add the fact that they didn’t have a working product (even in beta) when 10.5 came out I began looking for other products. I have looked into Knox several times before I went with PGP Desktop, but now I took another look at the product that is basically an add on to Apple’s DMG file format. Knox gives me all the functionality I want, plus added features that a simple encrypted DMG file does not. I gave the trial a go and already bought myself a license (only $34.95 for a license not a one year subscription). I have let my PGP subscription expire and so far I am happy with my choice. Converting the encrypted stores I had took some time but I think I am finally done.
Mactheripper is a totally different story that I wont go into now. I don’t want to write that much.
Marketcircle has had several beta’s of Daylite 3.6 out. Their latest still has sync problems with Apple Sync services. They have been very responsive so I am patient for now. I can use the program but I can’t use alarms, or I can’t sync it with my phone. This is probably the most frustrating issue i have right now.
Other than that I have not had many issues with Leopard. I am not using all the new features that I thought I would, but overall it is a great OS.
More Shopping Today
Today I took it easy in the morning and then headed out to the Queens Center Mall. The nasty weather didn’t really deter me. It wasn’t really raining/snowing that much by the time I left my apartment. I meet up with Jayson for some light shopping. I ended up not getting much but we found our way to the Outback for some lunch and hung out for a bit. Nice light fare for my vacation!
Saturday Shopping
Today I braved the cold weather and headed into Manhattan for some shopping. My main goal was to get a pair of new glasses. I have a relatively new pair (a year and a half old) but I wasn’t super happy with the way they looked. They were narrow lenses that seem to be the only major stye you can find in eye glasses. The problem with that is that I have Nystagmus, so even if I am not trying to my eyes would sometimes view an area of my view that was not covered by the glasses. Needless to say this is annoying. I got used to it for the most part but it came up now and again.
I wanted to find a pair of decent pair of round frames like I had previously had. When I got my old pair I couldn’t find a pair of round ones that fit right to replace the old pair I had, so I tried the narrow oval style instead. This time around I was able to find a nice light pair of round frames that covered my field of view so even with the Nystagmus I don’t have an issue.
While the glasses were being made at Lenscrafters I took a trip to the new Apple Store on 14th street. That was a mistake. I didn’t realize it was on 9th ave. For some reason I thought 8th, so it was a really long walk in the freezing cold. I did get a pair of Bose in ear headphones for my iPod Classic. I tried Jayson’s pair and knew in a minute that they were a good buy! I finally got fed up with the Apple ones that came with my iPod that I have been suffering with for years.
After getting my glasses I meet up with Danny in Union Square and went to Dukes for some dinner and drinks. It was a freezing experience, but overall a great day!