Technology

Bye, Bye Pix 501

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I bought a pix a while ago. I blogged about it. It is fantastic. I can tunnel into work, and setup multiple tunnels. The PDM is exactly like the 515’s we have at work. Unfortunately I am selling it on ebay. I probably shouldn’t have spent the money on it when I did, but that is not why I am selling it.

I don’t have time to play with it. I got it so I could continue to explore the Pix and setup some cool functions on it. I am finding I have no time to do any of that. I spent half my day off messing around with it yesterday. I did this by choice, and had a good time doing it, but I need to have my firewall/router at home to just work. Also the lack of wifi for me sucked. I didn’t buy a separate wifi point and I couldn’t use my old linksys 802.11g point/router with the pix.

I am actually unhappy about selling it, but it makes sense, but the Pix is still so cool…

iMac, Gone

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I dropped my iMac off at the UPS store yesterday. It is on its way to its new owner cutisy of ebay. I really liked that computer but I decided I need to be mobile. So I am sticking with my Powerbook as my only Mac, and as my main computer now that the iMac is gone.

I will miss that computer but I am looking ahead to smaller more powerful portable stuff:)

iMac Is Packed And Ready To Go

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I am moving fast before I change my mind. I have wiped the hard drive and restored it to the factory defaults. I then boxed it up and took pictures of it for ebay. Now I have to post an auction and sell it before I have second thoughts. I am working off my Powerbook as my main computer for now. My Server and desktop PC’s are still not unpacked.

For now the plan is to sell the iMac and possibly buy a nice 20″ or 23″ flat screen and plug my Powerbook and desktop into it. Or I may just get a bigger powerbook with the 15″ screen. I know I had one 2 years ago, but I am not sure what I want. I love my little powerbook, but it does not have a DVD burner, and it is not super fast. if I am going to use it as my main machine I need more out of it. Especially the hard drive. Even with an external firewire drive, the internal 40 gig drive just wont cut it.

For now I will stay with the 12″ until I sell the iMac.

It Just Works

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Whoever said that is correct. Mac’s just work. To make a long story short, I have an Eye TV that I have plugged into my iMac. I am moving, so I unplugged it. I packed my TV, DVD, VCR, Tivo and all other gear away. I still wanted to watch tv. I went to elgato’s website and downloaded the latest software for Eye TV and dropped it in the applications folder of my Powerbook and plugged in the EyeTV. I was watching TV in 3 minutes.

I never had that kind of luck with my ATI all in wonder capture card on my PC. The idea of setting the Eye TV up on my laptop is now when my cable company shows up at my new place I don’t need my tv to be unpacked. I just need the Eye TV and my powerbook and I can verify that cable works. Both items are small so they can go in my laptop bag.

I am very happy I didn’t have to spend hours figuring out how to get the dam thing to work. I don’t even want to watch tv now that I know I can when I want for the next few days.

Tivo withdrawal is another story, and another post…

Palm And Entourage

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I installed the Palm conduit for Microsoft Entourage 2004 over the weekend. After using it for a few days I have no idea why I haven’t been using it for longer. I want outlook like functionality on my Mac. I want free / busy data that works with outlook. Turns out I am a dumbass and have had that all along with Entourage. It makes sense, Entourage is Microsoft’s answer to outlook for the Mac.

I removed the Missing Sync from my Mac and ran the Entourage conduit. it worked great so far. I will put the missing sync back on when the new version 4.0 comes out with support for Entourage. No more iCal & Address book for me. Almost everything sync’ between the palm and Entourage. The only thing that doesn’t is calendar categories. I think that is because the palm doesn’t transfer them, because Entourage has the ability to handle them, and so does outlook.

I am going to try to sync my Treo 600 with my Powerbook today at work, and use the powerbook for my PIM instead of my windows box and outlook. I will see how it turns out. Now all I need is for my Treo to do Bluetooth and I would be a happy camper!!!

Pix Configuration Problems

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I am having a problem with the new Pix. I think it is a minor issue, but I just cant figure it out. I am trying to make a second static VPN tunnel, and the pix keeps telling me the crypto map is not complete. I am doing nothing different from the first tunnel I created but it still wont work. I am going to call Cisco and try to figure out what the deal is.

Mini Pix

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After some consideration I went out and bought a Cisco Pix 501e. You may be wondering why in the world a person needs one of those. Need may not be the word, but I do have uses for it. In the past 24 hours I have learned more about IKE tunnels than I had in the past 12 months. Allot of what I want it for is work related, but I doubt they will pay for it so I got one.

I want to prove (i know it can be done, but me doing it and having someone say it can be done are two different things) that I can setup a static VPN tunnel securely and allow a VOIP phone to connect to our office. I want to be able to lock down the connection so only the voice traffic we want can go over the VPN. It will work since to my office pix, it is just connecting to another office with a pix. The 501 is exactly the same as the larger 515 but you can only do less. The config and the PDM is all the same.

It is very cool. The only problem I am having is that I cannot initiate a VPN client connection through my pix to another pix somewhere else. We have this problem at work, and I have not been able to find a fix for it. I need to call Cisco about it. It is a pain, but not a show stopper.

I showed jayson what we can do with the personal Pix and he wants one, but he just got a big screen tv so he is not spending anything for a while.

Firefox Vs. Mozilla Vs. I.E.

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I downloaded Mozilla’s Firefox 0.91 last night for my Mac. To me it didn’t seem that much different from Mozilla 1.7. Not sure what advanced features they were touting but it just looked like a stand alone version of Mozilla to me. It had better import / export of bookmarks. Other than that, not sure what the big deal is. I will probably start using it, but only because I don’t need or want the newsreader or email client that comes with mozilla.

I find it funny that the government is telling people that Mozilla is more secure than IE. It probably isn’t. it is just less used, so less people using something equals less people trying to exploit it. I still think mozilla is a better browser. We have been pushing mozilla as a browser in my company for over a year. We love it. This past attack on IE reinforces my decision to go with Mozilla. Like I said it probably is not more secure, but in reality it will be attacked less, since fewer people use it. I think that theory is holding up.

HBH-65 Update

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The headset is good so far. The phone I am using with it (Sony Ericsson T610) right now sucks. You don’t really know how good or bad a phone is until you use another one in the exact same places and get totally different results. This time I used the T610 on my trip up from NYC to Kingston. On the train my Treo normally backs out allot, so did my verizon phone. In the cab from the train station I am usually able to make calls, and sometimes have spotty service. With the T610 I had almost no coverage at all on the entire trip. In the cab from the train I had no signal until I was 5 minutes from the office, and our office has a T-Mobile tower in the same building complex.

The headset worked well when I had good cell signal. No complaints from people about voice quality. I probably wont use the headset that much since the phone sucks. I am sticking with my Treo 600 for now. It actually gets a signal. Palmone, please put bluetooth on the Treo!!!

Sony Ericsson HBH-65

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I have had the SE HBH-10, the HBH-30, and now the HBH-65. Pretty much all three generations of SE’s bluetooth headsets. I have also had the Motorola gen 1 headset. The first couple of generations of the SE’s needed work. So far this new headset seems ok.

I made several calls with it paired to my SE T610. All were loud and mostly clear. Miguel said that he heard background hum when I called, but he could hear me clearly. Everyone else had no complaints about it.

making calls was easy. When the phone was paired to the headset it just switched over to the headset when dialing a call.

Recieving calls has been a bit trickier. I am still working on getting the headset to answer the call without having to transfer the call from the phone to the headset.

The headset fits nice in my ear. It is really small. I thought it would be bigger, but I am not upset by it being so small. I just hope I don’t break it like I did my motorola.

I am going to try and use it allot in the next 2 days while I am in Kingston. Hopefully I will iron out all the kinks with it.