I updated tons of photo pages on my photo album website. I have compressed down a ton of images to save space. I have also replaced allot of the old iPhoto generated pages with a newer style I am using. I am also creating new index pages so I can update the site easier. Fireworks was bad since links would be broken since it didn’t see the dynamic updates that frontpage did. Now I can move around the structure of my site without having to manually change hundreds of links.
Technology
Freedom Day
Today is the day I have been waiting for. It is the day that my mobile phone contract is up. I rely on my mobile all the time so since february I have been thinking what I would do when this day came. My issue was I have 2 phones on the same plan. One line was under contract and the other one has not had a contract in years. The one without the contract I wanted to keep, and drop the other one that the contract just ended on. The issue is you have to change price plans when you switch off the family share plan to a single phone plan with T-Mobile. I didn’t want to change the plan type on the phone I wanted to keep and then have to get into a contract since I was making a change. I am so against contracts for crap like a cell phone that I would have switched from T-Mobile and switched providers just to prove a point that a long time customer should not have to sign contracts!
Turns out T-Mobile was super cool with my situation. They offered me a regular 1000 minute plan with no contract, but I couldn’t get unlimited nights. For the price, and the fact that I still got unlimited weekends I took it. I can always get rid of it later if I have a problem.
So after my billing cycle changes (sometime this weekend I think) I will be down to one phone and no contract! Lets just hope that when I get my bill next month they didn’t f–k anything up.
External Hard Drive
Ever since I upgraded the hard drive in my new HP computer (like a week after I got it last year) I have had 2 160GB hard drives lying on my desk. I haven’t needed the space since I have 2 new 250GB drives in there now. Since I am using my DVR more and more I decided to put the 160’s to use. I got an addonic’s external USB 2 drive enclosure. It is neat. For $40 you can put a normal IDE drive in it and make it a USB 2 drive. For me this is perfect since I have no more internal drive bays on my computer but I have extra USB ports. I will get another one of these enclosures soon now that I know they work as advertised.
Fresh New Circuits
We just got our new 3700 series Cisco router today. it will be used for our new 4.5 megabit internet connection we are getting for NYC. This replaces our 2 redundant T-1’s. this connection is basically 3 T-1’s plugged into 1 big router. less redundancy, but triple the bandwidth. We figured our corporate office can have some acceptable downtime. Since our uptime stats have been great on our current circuit it seemed like a good gamble. I hope that once this is done I can use my VOIP phone without getting terrible choppiness sometimes.
We hope the circuit goes live in about 1-2 weeks. Verizon will be out tomorrow (had to cancel for some reason today) to do the smartjacks. Like I always say, you cannot have enough bandwidth.
VOIP Rocks
I haven’t said anything nice about Broadvoice recently. It still rocks. It’s $10 a month unlimited in state calls plan is the only reason why I have a home phone. It is only $1.50 in tax, vs $9 in tax for the $8 dial tone service Verizon offers. And that gives me just dial tone. My $10 gets me tons of crap. The only issue with the service is the customer service. it takes forever to get someone on the phone. They are growing so I will cut them some slack for now. Thankfully I only needed to call when I had to make changes to my account. No problems so far. Lets hope it stays that way. Why Vonage can’t or wont offer some of the services Broadvoice does I don’t know. Hey vonage you would have gotten my biz if you had more than 1 phone you can simultaneous ring on, and if I could use any VOIP phone, and not just your adapter. My Cisco 7940 rocks! Can you get the weather report off your home phone? Do you want to?
Other cool VOIP products I am playing with now is Skype. Just being able to make phone calls from a pocket PC got me interested. I have the free service setup, but I have not had a chance to use it. Gus and others rave about it. I am traveling on thursday and will give it a try then. Added bonus, Skype works on the Mac or Linux!
New Servers
We got 3 new servers this week. G4 HP Proliant box’s. We got one 2U, and 2 1U. They will be for our Biztalk 2004 deployment. We have 1 box for QA and then the other two goto our data center. Jay was building and testing them earlier in the week. Due to issues with our original quote we are way behind schedule. I would like to thank HP for their great process for securing special pricing if you buy in volume. They even admit they have issues with it recently. We hope to finish the build out early next week.
Missed Appointments
I was going to meet up with Gus last night for dinner. Then I wasn’t. Then I was, but I ended up canceling. I started getting a migraine (very common recently) around 1 or 2PM Friday so I decided to go home and head off the problem. I left G a VM saying I was out of it and canceling. I feel bad since I never see him anymore. Except of course for going to the Apple store with him on Thursday and then to lunch. That was sudden and unexpected. He finally got a MacMini. I got a Bluetooth USB adapter for my Mini at home. Miguel got an Airport Express for his apartment. Jay and Danny just came along for the trip.
Since we never see Gus much we went to lunch down in SOHO. We found a little italian resteraunt. it was good and cheap, until we all digested it. Then it was not so good:(
I will try to reschedule with the G man sometime next week or so. Seeing him I realize how much things have changed at work recently. It really is a different place to be for me without him. In some ways more stress full, and in others less.
Mac Mini Twins
Being single + impulse buyer + tax return = new mac mini for Scott. I was at the apple store Monday. Gus may refer to it as his Mecca! I was looking for a bluetooth USB adapter for my Mini. I happened to ask if the Mini’s were in stock. I wanted another one, but I haven’t wanted to wait for it to show up so I haven’t ordered it yet. Stupid logic, but it works for me. The guy at the store said they had the high end one in stock. In a moment of weakness I said I will take it.
Now I use my mini at home almost excessively. I sometimes use my Thinkpad or my HP desktop, but very rarely. The Thinkpad is only for work emergencies. that happens enough to warrant me taking it home every night. The HP is my DVR and not much else these days. I live off of my Mini. That is why I wanted another one. I spend 10 hours a day at work and allot of it is on a computer. hey I am in the Technology field. So I figured dropping a Mini at my desk would be great. I can do allot (but not all) of my work on a mac. And the mini is portable so I can throw it in my bag and take it with me when I need to. The logic worked for me. As I said I had tax return money. So now I have more computer than I can count. Well that is not true. I have 1 PC desktop, 2 mac desktops, and 1 mac laptop. The rest of the computers I discuss are not technically mine. The Thinkpad is the works. But it makes sense if you look at it a certain way. I need a PC at home, and I need a Mac. Another mac for work, and the powerbook for when I travel. Well in my head the logic worked. I know I am crazy. you don’t need to tell me.
So far I am happy with both Mini’s. I should get my 512 meg ram upgrade for the new mini in a day or so. I didn’t want to shell out the outrageous price for the 1gig chip again. With my new camera phone I can take better pictures of the inside of the unit compared to the bad ones I took when we opened my first mini.
Update, I got the 512 Meg ram upgrade. Jayson had the handy putty knives from the last time we did this and had the memory upgraded on this new mini in 20 minutes. I have it sitting on my desk at work. I was able to use it for more than like 80% of the day Friday. I need to find a good open source SSH client for OS X. I am starting to make a list of business software that I could use on the Mac.
I got the new mini to bluetooth sync with my Treo 650 after about 2 minutes of trying. It worked like a charm. So much simpler than my horror with the 3com PCMCIA card with my Thinkpad, and the Xircom bluetooth card that I never really got to work right.
Computer Buying For Novices
I had to explain computer purchasing concepts to my brother in law. he doesn’t understand why he cannot buy a $299 computer and be happy with it. I tried (not sure if I succeeded) in explaining that it is low end crap, and that it will be easily outdated in 3-5 years. Since they want to (plan to) keep the computer that long, they should not buy the bottom of the barrel. I didn’t mention but felt like I should mention it, that I wouldn’t recommend to my worst enemy to buy a $299 computer so I would not let my family buy that stuff. The only exception of the rule mentioned above is Gus. Since he seems to think he can run the universe on his old P-2 300mhz, I would recommend a 5 year old used Dell off of ebay for him:)
Busy and Sick
Got one of the 2 circuits we were going to cancel taken care of. our provider is working on canceling the other line. The new bigger circuit for my office is on order now.
Jayson is working on finishing up the hardware for our VMware GSX server. We had issues with the poweredge we bought so we won’t have 4 gigs of ram. We will settle for 3. That means less VM’s we can run. I need to cofigure GSX when I am in the office Friday.
Jay is off next week to goto sell his house. he is going to fix it up and put it back on the market.
I am working to get hardware for our Biztalk 2004 deployment. I need to buy a server for QA and 2 for production. Working out pricing issues now. Hope to have them by next week.