Technology

The Different Ways To Communicate

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Going up to Kingston gets me thinking about how I use the communication tools at my disposal. If you ask anyone, I have too many gadgets. The problem is sometimes none of them work the way I need them to. Right now my blackberry’s screen is all screwed up so I have a hard time reading it. I need to replace that. On a good day the screen sucks, so I would like to get my mail another way. The Treo Mail program requires you to pay $50 a year. I don’t know if the mail function on the new Treo will be the same as the old one, so I don’t want to buy the Treo Mail if I plan on upgrading to the new Treo 600 in 2-3 months when it comes out. Eudora Mail for the Palm sucks, so I can’t check mail that way. The problem is I want to send and receive email on the road, but I don’t want to pay the crazy hotel charges for a phone call. I am thinking of getting software that will allow me to use my Treo’s GPRS data service on my laptop. the problem is the same as with the Treo Mail. Can I still use it when I get the new Treo 600? If so I am sold. If not, I don’t want to fork over 50 bucks.

Another problem with the blackberry is I use it for alerts all the time. If I start forwarding all my mail to it, I will get duplicate emails when I get an alert. (Alerts goto my mailbox and the blackberry, so sending my mailbox to the blackberry will duplicate some mail.) the other problem is if I turn on forwarding, I have to turn it off. It becomes a pain. I never know when I will need it or not. With the Treo, I can turn it on or off from the handheld.

It is crazy that I now have all these options, but still can’t make a decision on what to use. I want to get rid of one or two devices. Who needs a PDA/Phone, a pager, and a cell phone. It is too much to carry. In addition I have to carry around my thinkpad.

Two Late Nights In A Row

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I just found out that I need to be around tonight at 1AM for a software release. This will be really fun because I will be up till the same time Wednesday for a hardware release. Needless to say I am not happy about the situation. I hope I am awake tomorrow. I have a meeting filled day from like 10AM through 2PM. Meetings are never fun.

Unfortunately Keith cannot do this hardware swap by himself tomorrow. I don’t think he can mount the gear with one person. if he could I would seriously thinking about letting him.

Bring Your Powerbook To Work Day

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I didn’t take my thinkpad home last night due to the dinner. So I decided to commute in to work today with my Powerbook. It is the 2nd time in a week that I am doing it. For some reason I just feel comforatable typing on it, but not on the Thinkpad. I miss the blog entries on the train like today’s entries. Of course because I have 30 minutes to type I tend to ramble on about useless stuff. That is just what a blog is supposed to be. I will see if I will want to commute with both. I doubt it though. We shall see…

Training For A Call Center

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Yesterday a new class of trainee’s started at our Kingston Call Center. We have 24 customer service reps who will “hopefully” start taking calls full time on 9/22. The class was so big that we had to put the working reps in the training room and the people to be trained sat in the call center. Joe our Tech guy in Kingston is overloaded right now. Justin went up for 2 days to give him a hand. Justin was eager to go up, so it worked out ok. I need to get up there one day next week. I will also need to be there on the 22nd.

Besides the ongoing call center build out I have hardware swap out’s to deal with in our Data Center Thursday morning. Tomorrow will be interesting since it will be a long day.

I just received my first Penguin Computing Server. These guys make cheap linux servers. The joy of it is, I can put Windows OS’s on it without a problem. The Super Micro servers I have been buying for windows will not handle Linux. I have some issues with the hardware, but for the price we will deal with it. A decent server can be had for around $1600. I can get a really cheap one for under a grand. We are actually looking to get some cheap windows box’s and may actually use these guys.

I am still awaiting a heat sync for a Super Micro test server we are testing. I got a trial of a serial ATA server. Actually we had the financial ok to buy it but instead of buying a regular server we got this to test. If we like it, we will keep it. If we don’t like it, we will send it back and get a normal IDE server. Serial ATA looks good, and this machine can do hot swappable drives, where IDE RAID cannot.

I need to also start working on our Exchange 2003 test server. Gus and I want to get one working for the Information Systems team and see if it is easy to admin and troubleshoot. If it is we may want to make a larger scale deployment. The difference this time will be we don’t outsource it and we do it ourselves. In December of 2002 we outsourced our mail and put it on Exchange 2000. It was a horrible failure. Too much latency with accessing exchange over the WAN. We abandoned that option and returned to our original mail provider with just POP/SMTP mail. We have been happy since.

Technology Scare’s Me Some Times

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My dad wants to get a phone / PDA combo device. Now he has always been ahead of the game when it comes to gadgets. I get that from him. But he is also not the biggest computer genius. He has had a cell phone since the late 80’s. Has had a PDA or whatever they used to be called for longer than that. He now doesn’t want to carry a cell phone and a Palm. He uses his palm all the time at work, but only carry’s the cell phone in case of emergencies. He now likes the idea of combining the two. Lucky for him he has Sprint PCS. I don’t like them anymore, but at some point I did. That is why he has service with them. He actually doesn’t complain about the service so we keep him on it. My mom also likes her phone number. I say we are lucky is sprint looks like it has the biggest selection of PDA Phones. I showed him my Treo 270. He seemed to like it. Of course I showed him my original Treo over a year ago, but that is another story. I think he may be better off with one of 2 Samsung phones out there. The SPH-I300 or the SPH-I500. I like the I500, but it may be too much like a phone for my dad. He will use it as a palm more than a phone. He liked the Treo but I don’t know if the no memory expansion and the keyboard will cause him problems. He did play with the keyboard on my Treo for a half an hour today and then proclaimed we will go shopping next sunday.

Shopping with him is fun. We go for breakfast, drive out to Roosevelt Field mall area. Shop for maybe an hour and then go home. We are super fast shoppers. The only slow down we encounter is if we goto Best Buy. He can browse the DVD section for like 2 hours. That store is a black whole. Everyone I know sifts through those DVD racks forever.

My Personal Phone Dillema

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It survived a month. I still have (and like) the Treo 270. I totally think having the unlimited data account that actually works in allot of places makes this device good, versus just using it as a cell phone. To tell you the truth I almost never use it as a cell phone. I do when my Verizon phone runs out of batteries or if I have to call a number I don’t have in my Verizon phone’s limited speed dial. other than that I don’t use it that much. I just forward my T-Mobile calls to my Verizon number.

That brings me to another problem I am having. I am too connected. Gus mentioned that I have too many numbers to remember. It is true. I have my primary cell phone. That is Verizon right now. I also have my old AT&T number that I don’t use, but can’t cancel it because the contract is up in December. I then have the T-Mobile number that I use for data. I also have my NYC work number and now I have a Kingston work number. I have trouble routing calls places. Right now I have a message in NYC telling people I am out of the office. My T-Mobile phone is sending call’s to my Verizon phone. And the Kingston voice mail is telling people they can press 1 or 2 and get me at other numbers. I don’t have a solution though. T-Mobile kicks but on the wireless internet so I keep them. Verizon has the best cell coverage, so I keep them. And I need my work numbers. Now in december if/when cell phone number portability happens I will cancel my AT&T contract and take that number and move it to T-Mobile so I can keep the good number. I need to see how I can pull that off.

On top of all that, I have a blackberry pager from work. I hope one day for the Treo to work well enough that I can get rid of the blackberry. I will see what the new Treo 600 can do.

I Am Glad I Kept The Powerbook

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As much as Gus made sense when he said I should sell the powerbook and buy a desktop mac, I am glad I didn’t listen to him. I love this little powerbook. I don’t use it on the road much anymore, but when I do it is golden. It is light, the keyboard still is one of the best laptop keyboards I have written on, and the screen is bright. The fonts may be a bit small, but I can deal. Granted I use it plugged into my desktop monitor at home most of the time, but this type of portability is awesome. I also don’t like putting all my personal stuff on my work computer. I just got around to putting quicken on my Thinkpad. The only reason I did that was so I can sync quicken with my Treo.

The downside of this powerbook is that it gets HOT. Man this thing is charging and my legs are getting hot with it on my lap right now.

Neat Stuff For The Treo

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So I am still playing with the new Treo 270 I got last week. I downloaded eudora internet suite for the palm. I am not a big eudora mail client user, but they have a cool palm mail client and web browser. I am comparing it to what handspring offers.

I also downloaded Landware’s Pocket Quicken 2.03. I used this software ages ago and it is awesome. it lets you sync up your quicken db with your palm. So I can figure out where all my cash goes.

I also am trying Handsprings Treo Picture Caller ID. It lets you assign a picture to display when a specific phone number rings. It is cool, but the photos take a lot of space on a palm. Also trying the demo for SilverScreen 3.0. It is a theme or skin for the palm. it is slow on the 33mhz dragon-ball processor on the Treo, but it makes stuff look nice. It probably will fly on the new Treo with the new Palm OS 5.

And of course lets not forget the old favorites Avantgo. That is the most used program for me on any PDA. Without Avantgo I wouldn’t get my fix of news every day while sitting on the train. I also have the newest version of Vindigo. That is my attempt at acting sophisticated and knowing where to go. NYC coverage on it is great.

And for the record I will not download any annoying music for a ring tone. I can’t stand them on everyone else’s cell phone. Phones are made to be put on vibrate. I may use my phone allot, but I do have some etiquette. Get a clue people on the train, railroad, etc!

In a nutshell, the apps make the Treo way cool. And the service actually working now makes it actually functional.

Sleep Habits All Screwed Up

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So I got home at 3:30 Saturday morning from my crazy day at work. I slept till 1PM. I awoke to problems with 2 servers. One just needed a reboot because terminal services was not working. The other one wouldn’t return from a reboot. We have had issues in the past with that machine and its onboard RAID card.

Gus was nice enough to run down to our data center and fix the problem. I cleaned up my place and tried to rest for the remainder of the day.

I went to my parents for dinner. Carrie and Morgan were there. Morgan is still so cute! We ordered italian and sat around watching my mom freak out about all the dirt left behind by the construction crews from their kitchen/bathroom renovation. She won’t listen to everyone telling her to get a cleaning crew in to fix the place up. The place does look nice though.

A bunch of people are going golfing again in Princeton NJ sunday. I was on and off about if I wanted to go, but I didn’t have a car today to do the stuff I needed to do, so I need to go tomorrow. I called Dan and let him know. I want to golf but this turned out to be a bad weekend.

TREO IS BETTER THAN I REMEMBER IT

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I got my new Handspring Treo 270 from T-Mobile on monday. I got rid of my old one in March mainly because of poor data services by T-Mobile (why have a data phone with crappy service). Well I took the phone with me to our new site in Kingston Tuesday and today. Tuesday was weird because T-Mobile was turning on a new tower on top of the facility we are in. But after it was up I had great signal. Today I had great service most of the train ride up and all around town. I relied on it for getting my mail for work. It went out every 15 minutes and grabbed it for me. It alerted me when they come in. I wish the alarm was louder but I can deal. It is as big as I remember it, and the screan is no where as good as the HP Pocket PC I have used since the Treo, but it is still a good device. I think it will hold me over until the new smaller Treo 600 comes out this fall.

One down side is that I went through a battery in almost a day. the data access drains it allot. Thankfully I have a USB cable that plugs into my laptop and will sync and charge the Treo!