scott

Scan My Life

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A few Saturday’s ago I took a stack of bills and other important papers to work and ran them through the high speed scanner we have. We have a page feed scanner that can scan duplex copies of pages right into PDF. It is great. I got about a years worth of backlogged papers scanned into the computer. Now I have to shred all the originals since I don’t need them anymore. I am one of those people who is trying to digitize everything.

I am not there yet, but every year I get closer. I am slowly getting to a point where all bills are sent electronically so I don’t need to deal with scanning paper into the computer. I am close. Most statements are available to me both as print or online, but some still are paper only. My electric bill’s online system sucked so bad that I actually switched back to good old paper. I never thought I would do it, but Coned made it so hard to make a change to your account I found it easier to just change back to paper and give up the online option for them.

Day Trip

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Today was a day trip to our other office. Had to meet some contractors and sit through an all day meeting. Man that was fun. Actually we learned allot but I have trouble sitting all day in a meeting. We ate, and had breaks but it does take something extra to do it.

I am glad I took the train up. Dan wanted to be there for 9AM so he left in a rental car really early. Funny thing was as I was getting out of the cab from the train station, he was pulling up in the rental car. Traffic sucks. I am glad I didn’t go with him since I would have needed to get up hours earlier to make it there for the same time as the train!

Jayson was up there doing some work in a computer room, so I rode back with him and nelson on the train. They had the sleeper seat business class so I upgraded. I had a nice little nap.

Jayson and I ended up at Outback for some dinner afterward. We were going to meet up with John, but he was not feeling so well and went home early. Instead we actually meet up with Gus. We both didn’t think he would show, but he did. It was good catching up.

It was all around day. Productive work day, and I got to get out for a bit afterward.

Back From The Holiday

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Today was the first day back from a 4 day weekend. It always sucks getting back into the routine. To make the day even more fun, I had a bunch of meetings planned. Thankfully a few of them got canceled so the day wasn’t so bad. I got caught up on some work, but then got side tracked by some systems issues that took up most of the afternoon. I hate issues that you cannot find the true root cause. The fix or what people call a fix is not really a fix but a putting the problem off for another day. Can’t really go into details, the symptoms go away, but the problem is still out there somewhere:(

Halo Monday

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Today I meet up early with Jayson for some Philly Cheese Steaks by his house. Then it was off to John’s for some Halo. Actually it was halo 2, and then later that day we played classic halo. I always have fun playing even if I suck and always loose.

I did learn that I actually play better at Halo 1, vs Halo 2. Not sure why but my stats are always better.

I got to hand out for a while. I haven’t done Halo in a while so it was nice hanging with that group of guys. they are cool. I am actually thinking about an Xbox for my place now. I know the 360 is out, but everyone that I know who knows games say to wait and just get the original Xbox. I am pondering now…

New Year

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It doesn’t feel like the new year yet. I haven’t had to write the date on anything and mess up by writing 05. When that happens it is really the new year for me.

I didn’t do much for the new years. I rotate from going out and doing something crazy to sitting at home and being thankful that I didn’t go out and do something crazy. Last night I watched my first 2 movies I got from Netflix. Then I watched the ball drop in time square.

Today I hung out most of the afternoon (slept till 1:30PM) and then saw Siriana with Jayson. It was a good movie, if a bit slow. The story was good. I had no dinner, but I am full off of $8 popcorn.

Tomorrow is Halo day at Johns, so I need to get up early. No 2am bedtime for me tonight. That is good since I need to get back on a normal sleep schedule since work starts on Tuesday!

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.