scott

Busy Week, Not Much Writting

by

I haven’t been in the mood to write this week. I have been busy. I have had plenty to write about but just not motivated to write. So what is the recap of the week…

Meetings galore on Monday. The usual stuff, but they always seem really long. I am do not handle long meetings well. I get bored quick I guess. I survive though.

Ended up meeting Kristen for a few drinks at a decent Jazz club Monday night. Then I went home to cut our IM server over to a new hardware and a new version of software. All in all that cut went well. A bunch of client issues on Tuesday but nothing major.

Wednesday was my travel day I mentioned in my last post. Thursday felt like friday. I spent most of my day working on ensuring everyone in my group was on top of their assignments. Friday was allot like thursday and then there was the misc troubleshooting, and recapping my boss on everything he needed to know about the Wednesday trip.

Jayson and I left a bit before 6 today and hit the Outback. We had appetizers like we did years ago. Got full and went home early. I wanted to get a haircut but by the time I got home it was too late. I will get up early tomorrow before I have to goto the office and get one. I wrapped up the day by cleaning up my apartment a bit, and putting away my laundry that came back from the Laundromat.

In general a normal week. I will try to write more this weekend on specific topics, but I like recapping what I did, if not for anyone but myself!

10:35

by

I did a trip to the “other” office today. Due to return trip train delays I didn’t get back into the city until late. The pouring rain didn’t help. As with most of these trips they are productive, but not in the traditional sense. I get allot done with people, but I usually can’t get any of my own projects done. I did allot of talking with people to see how certain things were progressing, and that is as detailed as I can get.

On the plus side I didn’t get a headache. That is a plus since I tend to get them when I do this trip. I also think I napped a bit on the train home. I had my iPod on and I think I dosed off for a while. I fought not to fall completely asleep, but the trip seemed to end allot faster than it does when I am awake.

Since I had the such a long travel day I got nothing else done on a personal level, unless you count watching some TV I had on my DVR from last night.

If you are wondering the 10:35 is the amount of time elapsed from the time I left on the train this morning until the time I returned back at penn tonight. And yes I got bored on the train and kept track.

Overall a good if not wet day, but I for one will be happy to be back in my office tomorrow.

Security Is Inconvenient

by

If anyone has every told you security is convenient for you, they are lying. Security is very inconvenient. The more secure something is the more difficult and or expensive it is to use. it is much harder to support a group of people you force hard passwords on vs a group you let set a password to anything they want. You know I am right. People give lip service to wanting more security, and when they are given it they don’t like how hard it is to use whatever system you secured.

Take for example something I read a few months ago that said AOL was offering a secure ID like FOB for people to enhance the security on how they log onto their accounts. I have used Secure ID’s for years (i haven’t used it in years, but I have used them long ago, they are not new) and it is not some new wiz bang system. Will the masses use it? probably not unless they are forced to. Do you really think that (i always use my dad as the example) my dad would carry around a keychain secure id to just log into AOL? He would screw it up and get frustrated inside of a week.

Westchester county in NY is trying to legislate securing Wifi networks. In principle it is nice that the county is trying to protect citizens, but come on! Do you really think a person or small business that is ignorant enough to put up an unsecured WIFI network will be compelled to register with the county and secure the system just because there is a law saying it. Hello people this won’t do anything but piss people off and generate some revenue for the county. Like I said before, security is a myth. You cannot legislate the population into security compliance. If you could people in rural areas won’t still leave their houses unlocked and keys in the car!

This of course will be the problem going forward with everything becoming digital. The more secure you try to make something, the less mainstream it will become, but the more mainstream something becomes the more secure it needs to be to protect the public.

Imposing Personality

by

Do I have an imposing personality? I never thought so, but something someone said to me has got me thinking.  It was not said in a bad way or anything.  It was actually part of a conversation I was having with a friend, and it came up.  I always say that I am very quiet if I don’t know you, and if I do know you I won’t shut up!  I guess that can be said for my personal life and part of my professional one.  When I do start to think about how I handle things in the work environment, my friend may have a point.

More Great Mac Tools

by

While working on something today (i honestly can’t remember what), I got side tracked. I am so happy I did. I have been slowly playing with the unix shell and ports for my mac. Today I found a bunch of cool (and free) tools that make life and my job much easier. I am so loving the power of this Powerbook!

First I found Xutils‘ RDP Menu program. it lets me launch multiple windows remote desktop connections at a time. Microsoft should make that work out of the box, but at least 3rd party developers are doing it.

Rawr-jour is a cool utility that lets you browse all the Rendezvous Bonjour networking. it is really cool. If found it really easy to mount volumes on other mac’s.

The 2 products listed above are by far my favorite of the bunch, but I also found 2 SSH & Telnet connection managers that both seem really cool. Saves my lazy ass from typing in all those switch and firewall host names when I want to connect to them. I also found a random password generator, but I honestly think the one I have on my XP machine is much better. The difference is the mac one I have was free and I actually paid for the Windows based password generator.

Freevo Version 4.0

by

I have been using Snapstream’s Beyond TV 3 for almost a year now. I have spoken before of how great a product it is. They just announced Beyond TV 4.0. Having no need for over the air HDTV tuning I bought the upgrade anyway. Truth be told I wanted to check out the Divix encoding option on the new version.

For a few months I have been pondering turning my custom built celeron pc into a media center box. I have been using Beyond TV as a PVR on my good HP box. I had been too lazy to reconfigure the setup. The announcement of the new version of Beyond TV got me thinking, upgrade. I did some research on decent PCI video cards that are compatible with my TV Tuner USB device. The computer I was going to use as the DVR has a built in video card that is not compatible, and since it is such a small PC it didn’t have an AGP slot. I found a good PNY card at Compusa for the unit. I also upgraded the 160gig drive in the computer to a bigger 250gig. I performed the hardware upgrade and checked that the gear worked. then I installed windows from scratch. All I put on the machine the latest windows updates, the USB IR drivers, the video capture card drivers, remote, and Beyond TV. I did some heavy rearranging of my living room and moved the computer to my entertainment center. I rigged it up to my computer using the computers built in VGA port (nice).

There were a few minor issues, but all in all the upgrade went well. I am running some test recordings now to verify the system works correctly, but so far it looks good. This setup actually fixed an issue I had with my old computer not working with the resolution of the HDTV I have. The new video card plugged into the VGA slot (vs the RCA slot on the old setup) fits the screen perfectly. What is weird is the resolution the computer is at is not the native resolution of the TV but it works, so I won’t complain.

Once I am happy with my new setup I can blow away the HP computer and rebuild it to use as a general workstation. I use my Powerbook as my main computer but I always need a Windows box around for something.

Now I am off to clean up all the dust and dirt I created and unearthed with all my moving of stuff around my living room.

Spooks Series 4

by

Spooks (MI-5 in the US) has completed its series 4 (season in the US). Thanks to the joys of the internet I was able to watch the entire series while living in the US even though it has not been broadcast here yet. The 10th and final episode was crazy. I for one can’t wait to see what happens to everyone next year. Isn’t that what good TV is about? Keeping you wanting more? I still haven’t found an american show as good as this in the genre.

Since I was able to get all the episodes so quick I now have to wait until the end of 2006 for more. Let the waiting begin…

Poker Wednesday Again

by

We actually got together to play poker again today. I fared better than I did last week. I still didn’t win, but I was back to my old self. I had $40 on the table and came away with $38.50. Not bad when only 2 other people out of 8 walked away with anything. And only one of them had a profit. It was a John taking everyones money night. I was down for a while and happy that I came back in the end. If people would play hands I stayed in on in the end I would have had a profit. I had 2 (count them 2) full houses near the end and no takers even after I tried to slow play them. I won’t complain about losing a buck fifty. To me that is a wash.

I personally don’t like the style of play that went on. Everyone seems to bully people out of the game before the flop. John does it, and since he is effective at it everyone seems to emulate it. With 2 cards you have nothing, don’t bet $3 and before the flop and then bet nothing after it. It makes you look like a dick. That is just my opinion.

Overall it was a decent night. Hopefully we can play again before December!

Mac Sync

by

So I am kind of ticked at Mark/Space. Not for a bad product, or support or anything. For releasing a product that solves all my problems but not announcing it until it is out. A little heads up on the new Missing Sync 5.0 would have been nice. it would have saved me the $149 I spent on Daylite and then have to go out and buy the upgrade for the Missing Sync. Daylite is a great product, but the integration the Missing sync now gives me with the Address & iCal apps make it hard not to use them. I can get invites again without having to manually add them. I get all the fields from Address book that I couldn’t before. And the biggest advantage is that calendar categories move back and forth with iCal now. Daylite was a bit limiting on allot of those features, but it had the best task lists, and ability to assign or associate people, projects, etc to tasks and appointments. The question is are those nice advanced features worth not having basic features like what Address book and iCal can now give me with the Missing Sync? Honestly I don’t know, but I am once again using the Mac PIM apps and the new Missing Sync 5.0. Will I get fed up with them in a few weeks and switch back to Daylite? Maybe.

But for now I am happy with what I am using. Now if only Marketcircle could integrate better with the Missing Sync and have iCalander support for invites. The best of both worlds would be nice.