scott

Road Trip, to Walmart?

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Jayson, Gretchen & I drove up to the Walmart in Monroe today. It is about an hour drive, but it is worth it for cheap everything. We borrowed his dad’s car. We are not kids anymore but living in Manhattan gets us to borrow our parents wheels again. I spent way too much. Dam impulse buy of expensive electric razor. Stocked up on frozen foods, cleaning supplies, paper goods, garbage bags, etc. You name it we probably bought it. Don’t forget the real popcorn butter. Now I am going to need bigger paints after I eat all this stuff.

Jayson said I was like a cat on catnip in the store. There was just so much to get. he can make fun all he wants since Gretchen and him went twice already recently on this trip. I for one had not been to Walmart, or any really good grocery store since I moved back to NY in 2000.

The high point might be the find of a $6.54 for a toaster. Jenn if you read this, you would be proud of that deal! Of course the $150 razor probably cancels out the savings on the toaster, but I had been thinking about this razor for a while. Now in 2-3 weeks I will have nice close shaves, with no razor clips to buy anymore!

I do have to say that this Walmart had all the nice stuff that I remember from the Baton Rouge Walmart, but fending for ourselves for carts, and the sitting down greeter really ruined the ambiance. Just kidding, that actually happened but it was a good day so I won’t ruin it with bad comments about little things. Even gas was cheap. Go New Jersey with your really weird fuel rules.

Now that I am stocked up I should be good for a few months. I figure a fresh direct order is in the works on about a month or so to restock some food. Other than that I am good.

MTA Snow Day

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One funny thing I noticed when I was out in the snow Saturday. The 4 & 5 trains were running local in manhattan. that meant the express track was not in use. They do construction on the weekends. This weekend during the snow storm they parked trains on the express track at every station that I stopped at. It looked like they were trying to keep trains out of the snow when they were not in use. I have seen them park a train or two before but there were allot Saturday. It is sort of comforting that the MTA is thinking a bit about things like this. Trains underground out of snow causes less problems! Now all they have to do is not raise the fares

Another interesting note is that Jay read that the city was taking anyone with a social security card and a drivers license and letting them work with or on snow plows for like $9 an hour. I guess they were really short handed.

I Love Snow

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I love the snow. I love watching it come down from the comfort of my warm apartment. I love standing on the street and watch fresh snow fall. I am no longer a big fan of playing in the snow, but I used to be. Snow is one of those things that looks cool, and doesn’t come along so much to become a bore!

Saturday when it was snowing I decided to go out for a while. If it was poring raining on a weekend I would probably stay in, but snow is a different story.

First of all I decided to go out for two reasons. I forgot something at work on Friday, and I really wanted/needed it this weekend. That is what I get for bringing in my own gear to the office. Second I needed something at Best Buy. At first I thought I was crazy for wanting to go out. Then I realized that I lived in a city with one of the largest underground transit systems in the world. And the train I needed is about 1 block from my house. So basically I had to walk a block, and then a few blocks once I got to my station by work. That was it. Best Buy is one store down from the train station. I thought piece of cake. Guess what, it was. I even spent some extra time out in the snow because it was so nice. Cold, yes but nice.

251 22Jan05

One misconception I need to discount in this entry. My mom has said repeatedly that Doc Martin’s are not good snow shoes. if it snows out they won’t be good. Well mom I used my Doc’s Saturday in the snow with no problem. Of course after 3-5 inches of snow I probably would have needed snow boots, but I wasn’t planning on going out after that much snow.

My cousin just IM’d me. She of course did play in the snow. The joy’s of being 9.

Godaddy Hosting No More

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Less than 24 hours after I wrote about how good Godaddy’s hosting was I have canceled my account. It turns out that they had just recently stopped offering IMAP mail support. They did in fact advertise it, but they don’t support it anymore. I am disappointed. they had great features. The admin tool seemed easy enough. Unfortunately for me IMAP is a must. I am back to shopping around. The problem is I have yet to find an affordable (under 10 bucks a month) hosting provider that had everything just the way I want it. I know I am picky. I am in the field. I host sites (granted for my own company). I do everything a hosting provider does but for my own company. That is why it pains me to not be able to find a provider that does everything I need for a decent amount.

In the old days (before I moved to my current building) if I wanted to I could host my own website. I did it for years. Actually I have self hosted my site for almost as long as I have paid for hosting. Pondering these issues I realized I can host the site myself. I can take an old computer and drop it at a friends house. They get a free hosted website, and I can put a server in a place that does not port block web traffic. Time Warner doesn’t block ports that I know of. I have tons of friends who use them. I smell an idea coming together…

Mac Mini, The Review Part 2 First Impressions

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If you want real benchmarks read CNET or Macworld. This is my opinion of the Mini based off of my 2+ years playing with OS 10 and Apple hardware. First the memory I put in the Mini (pumping it up to 1gig) really helped. The 1.4ghz G4 did not seem light years faster than the 1ghz G4 in my Powerbook 12″, but it was faster.

I had no problems loading up Microsoft Office, iLife 05, Konfabulator, ecto (using it right now), Netnewswire, and a bunch of other mainstay programs that I have.

One major issue I did discover was that it was VERY slow copying files to the drive. I have a 100mbit switch and router and copying 30 gigs of MP3’s took like 6 hours. That is drastically longer than it should take. I have copied a ton more in that period of time. I am not sure if it is the Mini’s NIC card, or the hard drive. looking over the spec’s I believe that the hard drive is what is causing this slow speed. What I don’t understand is that I have a Thinkpad with an 80gig 4700 or so RPM drive that is close to the spec’s of the Mini, but the Thinkpad can handle the same copy almost twice as fast. I don’t think anything is wrong, but I am extremely unhappy with that performance stat. In real world use I won’t be copying on or off the drive that large amount of data very often. it just sucks that it is so slow. in normal use so far today it has performed well.

The Mini plugged into my 20″ Cinema display without a problem. iLife 05 didn’t come installed. I assume that the final version was not ready when the final image for the Mini was burned into the hardware. That install took a few minutes, but was painless. I have not had a chance to try out the new iPhoto. The rest of the suite (minus iTunes 4.7.1 that I already had) is not stuff that I plan on using.

I am winding down my day of configuring software. I just finished syncing my Treo 600 with Entourage. I think that the only major thing I need to do is get my favorites out of firefox off of my Powerbook.

More reviews and impressions as I use the computer. So far so good!

Mac Mini, The Review Part 1 Upgrading Memory

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I got my Mac Mini yesterday. For a small computer it came in a massive box. Upon opening that box I found yet another large brown box.

Upon opening the smaller brown box I finally found the box for the Mini.

The box as Steve Jobs showed is very small.

First impressions was that the mini seemed heavy (for its size) and well built. Turning it on and configuring it was like any other mac. I got right into installing programs. Then I realized I needed to put the ram I purchased in it. I was not going to stick with the 256 megs RAM that came with it so I ordered a 1gig chip. The RAM upgrade was not as easy as originally led to believe, but it was doable by an end user. of course Jayson and I are both experienced computer (information systems) people and we both were a little skiddish about opening up the Mini. I never had to go buy special tools to open a computer. Read on for more details.

So Apple says the memory upgrade on the Mini is user upgradable, then does not recommend that you do it. I for one was not going to pay double for the Apple memory upgrade, so I decided to do the install myself. Macworld had a fantastic article on how to do it. They gave tons of photos, and explained what you should use to open the Mac Mini. Since I my vision is less than stellar Jayson and I ventured from my warm apartment to Home Depot by his place. There we bought the two puddy knives that the article recommended. The one criticism of the article is on what putty knives to get. The writer said get the thinest you can get. Not sure about you, but I had no idea what I was doing buying putty knives. I can do electrical or computer work, but home improvement stuff is not my thing. After feeling up a few knives we selected two that we thought were good. I include a picture of the label and the Home Depot part number in case you are like me and like exact details on tools you are going to use to open up your $500 computer. We used PN 037064091750 from home depot. Picture below:

The reason I am so specific is because if you goto a place like Home Depot you will see a wall this many options. Who knew you could have that many putty knives.

The upgrade went exactly as the review said. You have to be careful but Jayson was able to get the Mini open and ram in it with any major problems. Funny enough the only problem he did have was getting the case back on. In order to get the clips to all lock into place he had to do it in a certain way or else the back part of the case wasn’t as snug as it should be. After a few minutes of tinkering and all was fine again. Now I had maxed out my memory on the Mini. Below are a few pictures we took when we opened it up. they are not very good. Neither of us had our real camera’s. All I had was my Treo Camera Phone. It sucks in low light conditions and his place was not well lit.

The Mini found the memory right away and I was off and running from there.

The Mini Has Shipped

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My Mac Mini has shipped. I should receive it right on time just like Apple said. I am actually surprised. But very happy. I should get it sometime tomorrow. Hopefully my extra ram I ordered also comes on time tomorrow. I did not get my memory from Apple. I was not paying $400+ on a 1 gig chip. I got the same memory for $220. Not saying where, but yes it is a deal. Some things just have a crazy markup on them.

Pictures and a possible review when I get it.

New BroadVoice Account

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This story starts out with me wanting to configure a Cisco 7940 phone we had for our Call Manager to work with my VOIP provider. I never did get it to work. I ended up with a nice Motorola cordless phone plugged into the ATA device Broadvoice sent me. I have wanted to tinker with getting the Cisco phone to work with SIP for months but didn’t. Truth be told I hadn’t really put much effort into it until today. After tinkering with some TFTP files and some firmware updates from Cisco I was able to convert the phone over to SIP. This enabled me to order the Broadvoice service without needing the ATA adapter.

I have been happy enough with my BroadVoice account that I signed my company up for one. We have a POTS line in our cage in our data center. It costs $50 a month for the dam thing. We use it like 4 times a month. The problem is that it is a life saver to have when calling in a server or communicating a problem to others from the data center. Broadvoice’s plan for $10 a month was too good a savings to pass up. I was able to get the phone configured in 10 minutes after I got the SIP firmware on it. Now all we need to do is move the phone to our data center and setup a firewall rule to allow it to work.

Treo 650 Rumors

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The rumor mill is filled with buzz about the PalmOne Treo 650 GSM version coming out within a week or so. All I have to say is “took it long enough, but WoHoo!”. I will most likely pay for the full priced unlocked version. I am so far basically happy with T-Mobile. I also do not want to be forced into a 2 year deal with Cingular. They can kiss my ass over having to pay full price for any phone unless I sign a 2 year deal. So if I don’t get a subsidized phone, why do I have to sign a 1 year deal? Don’t start telling me that a 2 year deal is needed to make up the price of the phone subsidy. They do that after 1 year. Cingular is trying to lock people in since now people can move to a new carrier with their cell number by making a simple phone call. Let me give you a bit of advise Cingular. T-Mobile has kept me as a customer by NOT being pricks about their contracts. This is from a user who has had issues with them as recent as last week. I also am not happy with their data speeds of GPRS, but I don’t want to move to another carrier and get screwed with a long term contract or a company that blatantly doesn’t care about their customers choices.

To anyone that says the non-customized version of the Treo won’t work well with T-Mobile I have to say give it up. I had an unbranded Treo 270. It worked just fine on AT&T and T-Mobile. I don’t need to wait for T-Mobile to do some GPRS tweaks and stick their logo on the phone. Unbranded and unlocked versions should work fine.

Of course I bash Cingular, but I ever do want/need higher data speeds I will be using them since T-Mobile’s higher speed data network seems years away. Dam mobile providers. None of them has just what I need/want:(