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My Blog Entry For Wednesday 6-25-2008

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Getting to work was interesting today. The 7 train had some issue so even though it takes me less than 15 minutes to get to work, it took me over 40 minutes today. I love waiting for 10+ minutes for a train and then the announcement comes over the PA that says the next train is 4 stations away. Then it shows up and you cannot get on it because it is packed. Then another 5+ minutes go by before another train comes by. This one is almost as packed and people don’t seem to want to move to the middle of the car. That was my commute this morning. Thankfully on the second train a few of us were able to squeeze into the train. I had my drama for the day before 9:30!

Today seemed like a normal day at work. It was one of those days where you don’t think you did any work, but the next thing you know the day is over and you have been busy the entire day. For me I was busy with meetings in the morning with one of the guys on my team. Then I meet with my boss about some planning. Then I grabbed lunch since I forgot to bring breakfast in, so I was hungry for the kindergarden lunch (inside joke that Jayson came up with). I then got through some emails and other misc work, and had another meeting that took more than twice as long as I thought so the next thing I knew the day was over.

Thankfully it wasn’t as hot in my office as it was on Tuesday. I got home at a reasonable hour. I ordered dinner in, and did some work on the computer. A package I that was supposed to show up today doesn’t look like it will make it, so I have to wait another day.

My Blog Entry For Tuesday 6-24-2008

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My day at work basically boiled down to me taking part in a meeting with Cisco for most of the morning. The second half of the day was me writing up a proposal for a project we are looking to do. There was a few other quick conference calls in between that. I also think I discussed a network project with some guys on my team. This was one of those days that a few items took up almost all my time. That is good because time goes by quick, but bad because most other items on the agenda are not taken care of.

I did get to kick off some windows updates on my desktop that I am rebuilding. At an old company I worked for we called that an updateathon. It wasn’t so bad but there were allot of Office 2007 updates. I also plugged in a 5 port switch I brought from home yesterday to use in my office. It replaces the 8 port 100meg hub I had received from my group when I asked for a switch. it is weird when I have to bring in better gear from home to work, but this is now the second job I have had that sometimes I need to. On the plus side I do have a sweet ultra portable Sony.

Apparently my cleaning lady (yes I pay to have my apt cleaned every few weeks) was working in my apartment when the maintenance people came over to fix a leak in my bathroom. They sort of freaked her out. Apparently they weren’t very nice, she doesn’t speak english and I didn’t realize she would be around when I put the request in 3 days ago for them to come over and fix the issue without calling ahead. My dad called me a little while ago to tell me about that whole saga. Apparently my cleaning lady called my parents since she knows my mom. She wasn’t home so I get the story from my dad. Lots of drama, but thankfully everyone is ok now.

I didn’t get out of the office too late. I did do something stupid at home though. I thought tonight was the night for a BBQ in my building. Turns out that is next Tuesday. I can’t read. Oh well. I am now relaxing, writing and listening to some music.

Amazon MP3 Store

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Since the iTunes store opened, I have been a customer. I have bought a bunch of music from the store over the years. I have still bought regular CD’s but recently that has been happening less and less. Out of all the online buying options I liked that Apple’s AAC format’s DRM would allow me to burn regular CD’s. But recently I have ran into issues with that option. I have wanted to play music bought from iTunes on my Nokia phone. In order for me to that I have to burn the music to a CD and then rip it back to iTunes as an MP3. By doing this I would lose quality. I knew this when I bought the music in the first place, but I didn’t think I would need to do the conversion ever so I figured what the heck. Well fast forward a few years and if I bought all my music as CD’s and just ripped them as MP3’s I wouldn’t be in this situation.

I know that the iTunes store does offer some MP3’s without any DRM, but the issue is the store only offers SOME MP3’s. I haven’t found a song I want to buy from iTunes that was in MP3 format. About a week ago I checked out the Amazon MP3 store. I have heard about the store since it came out, but the ease of use of the iTunes store kept me lazy and I never checked it out. Last week I picked up 1 single to try out. Amazon made it really easy to buy and import my completely DRM free MP3 into iTunes. I was very impressed, but how about the stores selection?

Yesterday I did some browsing for music. I searched the iTunes store and then searched the same music on the Amazon MP3 store. What I found was that most of the music I wanted was in both stores. I ended up buying the latest Stoke 9 album on the Amazon MP3 site. I actually was going to buy that album about a month ago but I held off because I wanted a DRM free version. Now I have it. I will say I am not a huge fan of the DRM in Amazon’s ebooks, but I buy them. That being said I am impressed with the DRM free music they offer. For now I am switching to the amazon store vs the itunes store for my music. I will wait for more music to be DRM free on the itunes store, but I am not holding my breath.

For the future, I don’t see myself buying any DRM enabled music. I will get it from amazon or another store that offer’s DRM free music, or I will buy the CD’s like I used to and just rip the music. This is a time where I will not let laziness win out anymore. Now I wait for a more open ebook reader like the Kindle, but until then I will be still buying DRM’d books.

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My Blog Entry For Monday 6-23-2008

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I think I am going to get back to basics on some of these posts. I want to write down simply what I did for the day. This is how I originally started writing a journal many years ago before blogs got big. I will still have regular posts like I normally do, but i want ot have at least a blirb about what I did for the day. I will keep the titles simple like the one I have on this post. I am doing that just because it is hard to come up with snappy titles all the time.

Today I worked on some status reports for my boss. I worked on getting the status of several projects that are in progress right now. I also had to rebuild my desktop in the office in between working on stuff. The linux install I put on last week wasn’t working out, and the backup image I took of the machine didn’t work so all I could do was do a restore from the factory defaults. Thankfully that doesn’t require allot of effort from me.

I went to the post office to ship my Treo 750 that I sold on ebay. Thankfully it didn’t rain as I walked the 10 blocks to the nearest post office. I don’t understand how in mid town manhattan you have to go 10 blocks in any direction to find a post office. Oh well.

It was unusually hot in my office today. I don’t get it since it was only like 75 degrees outside today. Maybe it was the humidity. It got worse in the afternoon when I had a meeting in my office and there were 4 of us with the door closed. Man it can cook when you do that. Thankfully the meeting was very productive and I think we have a game plan for solving some design questions on an old hardware platform we need to support for a while linger. Now I have to write up a proposal to our vendor and see what they think.

I got out of the office at a reasonable time. I cooked up some stuff I had fresh from my Fresh Direct on Sunday. That was tasty. I got to talk to both my parents, and I emailed my brother in law back an answer to a question he sent me. I got to relax at home after that. I also even had a chance to write this post.

What I Did This Weekend

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To sum it up, I didn’t do very much and I loved most of it. Today I slept till 10:30. I am glad for that since i have been having issues sleeping in recent memory. I did my laundry, wow what fun. I cleaned my apartment. I don’t know why because the cleaning lady is coming on Tuesday, but I need to tidy up the clutter. I don’t like clutter. After a week clutter just happens.

I did some shopping for items i have needed or wanted for a while. Online shopping can be easy sometimes. I uploaded some of my latest photo’s to Flickr. I watched some TV. I am now up to date on Weeds & The Deadliest Catch. I also got in a little bit of Grand Theft Auto IV.

I got my fresh direct delivery allot earlier than I planned so I had fresh food for dinner. Other than that I bought some music online and relaxed. That’s it.

Relaxing Weekend

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I don’t know why, but I just don’t want to do anything this weekend. It is a beautiful day out. I can take a bike ride that I wanted to take all week. I could roller blade down by the water since there is some street fair. I could go hang out with friends. I could even do some shopping. I just find myself in my overstuffed chair listening to music and writing. I just don’t want to get up and do anything.

I will admit i am tired from working all week, and I did look forward to the weekend but I am not usually this lazy. If I end up doing nothing it is usually because it just happens, not because I sit around and make a actively decided not to do any of the things I think of getting involved with. And yes I just said actively decide to do nothing!

Maybe I will relax a little and go out with some friends tonight? Sounds good, but who knows if I will do it. Now I am just rambling so I will end this entry:)

eBay’s Feedback Rules Suck

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So eBay and Paypal are great when they work. The problem is when any little bit of fraud or doubt about an auction comes into play an seller gets screwed. My latest issue with the dynamic duo of lets screw the seller is eBay’s relatively new feedback policy. In the good days of the past someone would leave you a bad feedback score, you could reciprocate. That way a total moron would feel the pain of being an idiot when they left feedback for no good reason. Now a day’s only a buyer can leave neutral or negative feedback. eBay’s thoughts are that they don’t want buyers to be afraid of retribution when they leave negative feedback on a seller.

Here is why that doesn’t work. I am finally selling my Treo. In order to try and decrease the number of potential fraudulent bids I clearly state in the auction that I am only looking for bidders with 5 or more feedback. In the scheme of things it isn’t much of a protection against scammers, but every bit counts. I had someone win the auction with Buy It Now, and paid via Paypal. I went in to my accounts to check out the buyer. To my dismay I noticed that the buyer had only 1 feedback. Then I went into Paypal to check on the money and noticed that the person had paid for the item but wanted to have it shipped to a PO Box. I immediately refunded the guy his full payment price and in the refund I left a note about why I was refunding the money. The bidder actually sent me like 3 notices on ebay confused as to why he was being rejected even-though I explained it to him. He then wrote back to say that I got my first negative feedback for screwing him. This is where I got mad at eBay. I went to leave him feedback explaining my side, and realized that I couldn’t because eBay changed the policy. I refunded the guy his full amount paid. 1 feedback and asking to ship to a PO Box are both clear signs of a scam. How am I at fault here trying to protect myself? He got his money back like 30 minutes after paying. How is that screwing him???

eBay is trying to protect buyers, but what about sellers? I am more protected as a buyer already. If you use Paypal you can dispute the charge if you don’t get your merchandise, and then get your money back. If I send a product to someone and they dispute it, I have seen Paypal side with the seller, and then I am out my money and my product. Jayson got screwed selling a Mac Mini because it was worth more than the Paypal insurance and he shipped to a non registered address, even though it was the buyers home address. How is that fair?

Don’t you just love a semi-monopolistic website like eBay (try finding as large an auction community in the US and I will use it) that lets one type of customer able to complain about service, but not another? I find eBay contemptible, but I am forced to use it because it is basically the only game in town.

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Rain, Lots of Rain

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I was surprised when I got a knock on my apartment door tonight. A maintenance person from my building was checking to see if i had a leak during the big rain storm today. I was like, “what? Leak, no I am fine”. Then I figured I would check out what he was talking about. Sure enough I had a small leak near my celling in my bathroom. Turns out some entrance to a deck on the floor above me flooded and the drainage system couldn’t accommodate as much water as was trying to get into it. The pent up water started leaking into my apartment and i believe another one or two on my floor. It was a small leak, but it flooded my bathroom a decent amount since it was constant for a while. I had no idea about the flood until the second or third time i checked on the leak and wondered why my feet were wet!

The maintenance guys were fantastic. They came and mopped and cleaned everything up, and they are going to call me during the week to arrange to come in to fix the marks the leak left.

I am glad I got home before it poured since I was out shopping in the afternoon before the rain began.

The Do Nothing Weekend

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My plans for this weekend are very simple, I am to do nothing. I am happy to report that as of noon Sunday I am successful in that mission. My goal is to stay in and kick the remnants of my cold so I am fresh and normal for next week. I may have stayed in, but the cold is not 100% gone yet. I am coughing a little, that is actually a new development. My noise is still slightly stuffed up, but better than before. My throat is still slightly soar. An improvement over last week yes, but I am still not my normal self yet.

I missed my nephews birthday party yesterday due to this cold. As much as I am upset that I missed it, I am glad I didn’t have to do all that traveling to get there. That and there would be tons of kids over, and I don’t want to get anyone else sick. Instead I sat around and watched allot of TV. I have all but cleaned out my backlog of things to watch on my Tivo and Apple TV.

It is weird to think that it was 95 degrees out yesterday and currently 93 degrees outside when I am cool and comfortable with the AC on low in my apartment. I will say this, my current apartment stays cool. In my last two apartments before this without AC on high the place would be sweltering with the temperature in the 90’s outside. When I woke up this morning my living room was a bit warm but not completely unlivable when the AC was off for more than 12 hours. There is allot to be said for that!

I am not sure what the agenda holds for today, but probably more of the same lying around letting the meds kill my cold. Maybe I will get some more writing in this afternoon if I am in the mood.

Dinner With The Family

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Today I was back at work but still felt like crap. I did feel better than I did yesterday but I was really tired and stuffed up. Other than that the day at work was uneventful. I was originally planning to go out by my parents to have dinner with them and my sister who was visiting. It turned out that the weather wasn’t so great so my mom, sister, and the kids didn’t goto the beach. That was a win for me since they wouldn’t be rushing to travel home from the beach to eat, they decided to come by my neighborhood to a restaurant. I was thankful since it would have been a trek for me to get to them, and I was out of it. Sometimes relying on mass transit sucks, this was one of those times.

We ended up going to the crap house by my place. I had crab cakes. It was good, but I would have appreciated the food more if I wasn’t sick. I did get to see my parents and my niece and nephew (my sister too). They are so cute. I know I say that allot, and most people say that about relatives, but they always put a smile on my face when I see them. I wish they kept their distance from me because I didn’t want to give them anything, but my sister wasn’t worried. Morgan, and I shared a piece of chocolate cake with my dad for his birthday. Morgan had more than both my dad and I.

Since it was Zachary’s birthday yesterday we had cake and sang happy birthday for him and my dad. Zachary loves to sing happy birthday. I am going to try and get some photos my sister took of the kids at dinner. They were funny.