Technology

Friday Tasks

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Jayson and I went to our data center today to bring up a server we just built. Man a 2U server is more than twice the weight than a 1U. Even though it is only double the size.

I hurt my wrist on a disk array we were mounting. It got stuck under the array as I was (trying to) holding it up. I didn’t realize it hurt until I tried to lift some metal rails later back at our office.

i was successful at creating a phone for the first time on our Avaya switch. I did it by myself. It was not so bad. Lets hope the next time I can figure it out again.

I also began to map out all of our phone ports. Looks like keith never bothered to do that, so I am going and mapping physical office location to the port on the phone switch that that location is hard wired to. I am slowly building a nice DB of everything.

Jayson left early today so he could hang out with his wife gretchen and friends that flew up this weekend to see him. I am catching up with them tomorrow for dinner.

Apple Has New Laptops

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Whenever apple comes out with an updated version of hardware that I have, I need to stop and look at it. When they went from the original 12″ Powerbook to the one that I have, I noticed differences that I wanted to take advantage of. The third generation 12″ doesn’t look like it is much different at all from the 2nd generation one that I have.

It has a 33% faster process, and that is great. What else does it have? Built in airport extreme and a faster video card. So what. I don’t play games on this thing and I have airport extreme on mine. The only thing of interest was the bigger standard hard drive, but that is not enough to want to get a new one. their is no other differences. That is good news to me, since I won’t feel compelled to upgrade anytime soon.

My current PB does good by me so far.

Ring Tones And More

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When I got my Sony Ericsson T610 I realized I had a ring tone or two on my old T68i. What to do? I paid for those tones, and I sure wanted to keep them. Turns out it was a snap to move them. I tried IR to beam the tones to my new phone. That didn’t really work. I figured it out via Bluetooth. I paired both phones with each other and just sent the tones. Took like 3 minutes total. The tones work fine on my new phone because it is also a Sony Ericsson.

I also got the new phone to pair with my Powerbook (talked about that in detail before) and now my HP iPaq 1945. The iPaq took some time. I had to figure out the dial up networking settings on it, but now I got it. I can browse the internet on my iPaq using the GPRS of the phone anywhere I have a signal. I was trying it out from my desk at work when the phone was in my bag. I also was able to connect to the phone when it was charging in my bedroom and I was on my couch. Nice!

My next mission is to get this setup to work with my Win XP PC. I think my problems are related to the Xircom card I am using. Their are no new drivers for it, since Xircom got bought up by intel. I am looking for another PCMCIA bluetooth card or maybe a USB one.

Printing

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I am (sort of) on the market for a new printer. My old (new) printer is an HP laser jet 1000 printer. it is great except it won’t work on my mac. It just wont work. I checked everywhere. I want a laser printer that will work with my mac. I bought the HP before I got into Mac’s and thought that printer would last me years. My first (and only other printer I have bought) was a HP desk-jet 300 portable printer. it lasted me like 7 years before I got a free upgrade from my dad.

I may sell the printer on ebay and buy a new one that will do what I want. Now I am thinking that I should look for a bluetooth enabled printer to work with my Mac? that way I can keep it away from my desk. Maybe hide it in my wall unit. That would be cool. I am still researching the options. I am also looking for the extra cash to pay for this:)

This blog entry was written while listening to Superman from the album “America Town” by Five for Fighting

Bluetooth, Powerbook, And A T610 = Awesome

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I have had a new Sony Ericsson T610 for a little over a week now. Actually I am on my second one. The first one’s camera stopped working on day 2, so T-Mobile gave me a new one. So far this one seems fine.

This phone is nice, but the best feature is the bluetooth. I can sync with my Powerbook while the phone is in my bag. No more entering contact information into the phone. I know I could have (and have) done this on other phones, but the sync software on the pc and the usb or ir methods sucked. This is a breeze. Setup on the powerbook was easy too. I also got GPRS dial up to work. Now I can use my T610 as a modem anywhere I get good signal while using my Powerbook. I was just checking my mail on the rail road. The phone was still in my bag. Now that is technology that works.

The only kink is that the GPRS is slow, and on the train the signal is sometimes spotty. When I get good signal the connection rocks.

OS X & It’s BSD Root

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Every time I talk to a hard core computer guy (or girl) and tell them I am into Mac’s now, they say “cool, have you done anything with the terminal?” Or something like that. Meaning have I used the BSD commands in it? Until today, not really. I finally had a project I wanted to do, and it required me to play with config files. I wanted to do something with Samba that would allow me to share other files besides my home folder on the network. I played around and got Swat to work. Swat is a web GUI based configurator for Samba. I know I could have just edited the smb.conf file, but I wanted to play with swat also.

Next up is playing with apatche a bit, and maybe try moveable type on a Mac. it has been done, and a mac is after all built on BSD!!!

Saturday Recovery

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Saturday I took it easy. I was semi recovering from Friday, and I had stuff I wanted to do around the house.

Even though I wanted to keep my desk area clear of extra cables, I broke out the KVM so I could build a new desktop machine. I had two in the closet. I had my Dad’s old Dell Dimension XPS 600r, and my old P-4 800 that I still had lying around. The P-4 is a better box, but I had problems with it the last time I was building a computer. I couldn’t remember what was up with it, but I still cannot get an OS to build on it. I ended up using my Dad’s old dell to put Suse 9.0 on it. I want to start using Linux again at home. My website still runs on a Windows 2003 server, but I don’t feel like a real tech guy if I let Gus host my blog on his moveable type setup. I at least want to try and get the system to work. If I don’t use it, I am cool with that.

Other than that I did some quick grocery shopping. I love fresh direct, but sometimes you want small stuff that doesn’t make using the service worth while. Also they don’t have everything so I still have to goto the grocery store every so often. I do need to make another fresh direct order this week. I am running out of food at home.

Bluetooth Gear

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I talk allot about the technology gear that I use. To me recently, the holey grail of technology gadgets is wireless interaction between devices. Ussually that means Wifi. Wifi is out there and it works great, when it works. For me the big thing is getting good Bluetooth devices that work well together. I have been trying for this goal for over 2 years.

I had a good setup with my T68i and my motorola bluetooth headset about a year or so ago. The problem was that I broke the headset one day when I dropped my backpack. The T68i, with headset and my Powerbook made an unbeatable combination. Now I have a T610, a different powerbook, and I plan on getting another bluetooth headset. Hopefully everything will work as advertised and I will have a complete portable wireless setup. Is it a pipe dream? Maybe, but I am going to try to get it to work.

As I mentioned earlier today the next step for this solution is to get GPRS to work on my Powerbook via the T610 over bluetooth. If I get it to work, I may even suck it up and buy a new PCMCIA Bluetooth card for my thinkpad. I have a Xircom Realport2 Bluetooth card, but it doesn’t have resident XP drivers, and I am finding it doesn’t work 100% correctly. The cards have come down in price so I will see how much they are.

This blog entry was written while listening to Bent from the album “Beneath These Fireworks” by Matt Nathanson

Powerbook Ram Boost

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After using my new 12″ 1Ghz Powerbook for a while I realized that I can’t live with the on board 256megs of ram. I tried since it isn’t my main computer and I use it for light work most of the time. I realized that when I use it in the office (even though it is my personal computer) I need the extra ram boost. I went out and got a 512 meg upgrade giving me a total of 768megs of ram.

So far the boost in ram is working. I haven’t seen the powerbook lag when opening a program.

I also got another mini DVI to VGA adapter just in case I want to use the laptop at home on my flat panel.

This blog entry was written while listening to Father of Mine – ACOUSTIC from the album “So Much for the Afterglow” by Everclear

Sony Ericsson T610

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My new T-Mobile phone is a new Sony Ericsson T610. It is supposed to be the upgrade to the T68i that I had. I actually still have the T68, but I am never happy with the signal strength I get on it. T-Mobile discounted the phone by %50 with a mail in rebate so I took it. I will wait till they offer the Motorola V600 and the price comes down.

So far my reviews of this phone are limited. The screen is nice. It is bright and crisp. The buttons are small and annoying like the T68i, but I can deal with that. I only used it for 2 minutes on the phone so I am not sure about voice quality or volume.

Bluetooth looks good on it. I was able to setup and pair the phone with my Powerbook in 2 minutes. I don’t know how that will work with my Thinkpad. I like that the new bluetooth devices don’t need you to specify that you want to make them discoverable. That is good for setup, but bad for security. Also nice is the fact that I don’t have a big bright blue light that is always on when bluetooth is on. My T68i did that. It was really annoying. All I have is an icon on the top of the phone screen telling me I have bluetooth on. That is all I need.

iSync with bluetooth was easy also. I dumped my entire phone book to the phone in 3 minutes. I didn’t even take out the Sony Ericsson software for the PC since I can do that all on my Mac with no special software. Have I mentioned I love my Powerbook?

Downloading or uploading pictures was a snap also. Just told my Powerbook to browse folders on bluetooth devices and up came my phones memory. I downloaded the two photos I took yesterday.

What I was unable to do was setup my powerbook to use the T610 as a GPRS modem via bluetooth. I found a few sites on the internet that explain how to do it. I downloaded some modem scripts, but have still not been able to get it to work. I only worked on it for like 15 minutes last night before I needed to get to bed. I had an early train to catch today.

I got bluetooth GPRS to work on my old Powerbook and my T68i using AT&T Wireless last year. I should be able to get it working with the T610. I just need to work on it. Kind of pissed that I couldn’t get it working before my trip. I could be using it right now on the train. Instead I get to clear my head and update my blog!

This blog entry was written while listening to Angry from the album “Mad Season” by Matchbox Twenty