The Big 30

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It was Beata’s birthday yesterday. She turned 30. She had a bunch of friends meet up at Mixx for drinks. I had a good time. It was my first time meeting Beata’s friends, but they all seemed cool. After Mixx a bunch of us headed over to the Delancey Lounge. Apparently Beata’s sister worked there and we got in without waiting on the line. I typically don’t goto clubs like that, and I certainly don’t get to avoid the line so it was a nice change of pace. The first floor was super crowded. We were able to head upstairs and it wasn’t as bad. We found some seats in the back and relaxed for a while. I don’t think anyone was drinking by this point.

We called it a night and I got a ride back to the Canal Street subway station.

Lazy Sunday

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The 7 train isn’t running this weekend. That meant I had an interesting time getting home late last night / early this morning. I had to take the Q to Queens-borough Plaza and wait for a shuttle bus to take me to my stop. What could be a short trip took over an hour with all the waiting. I didn’t get home till after 2:30AM and into bed until after 3.

I didn’t get up until after 12. I felt like crap. That is what happens when I mess up my sleeping patterns. I had breakfast and felt a bit better. Thankfully today is/was a lazy day. I am doing some laundry and hanging out. It is nice out, but I just want to relax so I haven’t been out today.

Since I have no food in the house apparently I am debating on what to order for dinner.

iLife 2009

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I have been using iPhoto as my photo editing and archiving software of choice for several years now, and although it isn’t perfect it is the best that I have found. Earlier this week I got iLife 09 specifically for iPhoto 09. The two main features that got my curiosity peaked is the faces and GPS features. With my iPhone I am capturing the GPS coordinates of all my camera photos so the GPS feature in iPhoto seems cool. I am still a bit gun shy to post GPS coordinates on all my photos to Flickr, but for me to have them and publish to my friends is cool.

The really interesting feature in iPhoto 09 is Faces. That is what is hopefully worth the cost of the software. I have been tagging and labeling my entire photo album for a while. It is always a work in progress. With the Faces function I can label all my photos in one shot. As I write this post I am letting iPhoto scan my library to look for faces. Hopefully it will be easy to label after that.

The one downside I have with iPhoto is that all the photo detail (EXIF) data is not stored in the photo. That means if I export a photo it won’t have any tagged details that I put in iPhoto. Since I am a fan of data portability I don’t like that. Since I have started using iPhoto I keep a copy of all photos I put into iPhoto in a separate folder in case I have problems with my iPhoto files. I am glad I did this since I already have damaged my iPhone DB once and had to restore a several months old version. Without my regular backup I would have been out of luck.

So far the new version of the app looks decent, but I am not so sure if it is worth the cost? Only time will determine that.

Internet Explorer

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I find it really funny that everyone is saying Internet Explorer has lost market share. I just read that Cnet reported that IE’s market share has dropped to 67.55%. I am sort of happy about that. I don’t use Internet Explorer that much. I like Firefox, Safari, and Chrome wasn’t so bad when I tried it out. I like options, so when one browser is overwhelmingly dominant it isn’t good. What I still don’t understand is that if IE’s market share is under 70% why are sites and applications still only made to work with it? Many Cisco devices, and internet portals I have tried just don’t work the same with other browsers. I mention Cisco devices since they are an example I am personally exposed to, but there are tons of examples of sites and appliances writing for IE only. Everyone needs to wake up and see that 1/3 of the word doesn’t use that browser!

For me Firefox 3.x is the default browser on both Windows and Mac for me!

I Don’t Think I Will Ever Use Verizon Wireless Again

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I went out and bought a Verizon Wireless USB Data Card right after christmas. I wanted to use the card for multiple reasons attached to my Macbook or my new HP Mini 1000 Netbook. After using the device for about 2 weeks I realized that I didn’t really use it that much to warrant the price ($59 per month). That on top of the fact the card didn’t work very well near where I lived. Since I was within my 30 day trial period I decided to return the card and cancel the account. This is where my fun began.

I went back to the Verizon Store where I bought the card. Even though there were several sales people free I had to wait at a specific service desk that was not well staffed. After about 30 minutes of waiting I finally was able to return my card. This part wasn’t very hard. They took the card back, refunded my money to the credit card and put me on the phone with customer service to cancel the account. Once customer service was completed with their cancelation of the account I questioned about verifying that the account was closed and that my early termination fee was waived since i returned the card within the 30 day window. They assured me there would be no problems and that they noted my account. I asked for a reference number but they said there wasn’t any. My account notes would be updated and all will be well.

The very next day I received my first bill for the card. Since the bill was mailed to me before I canceled the account I knew the balance due would be off. I figured I would either wait for a final bill or call to calculate the final amount and send in the payment. Sure enough on Friday I recieved my final bill. The only thing was I was shocked by the price I owed. It turns out that even though I returned the card and called customer service just like everyone told me to, I was still charged with the $175 early termination fee. I was not so happy so I called customer service again. The lady I spoke to told me that it was an error from the in store people and I would have to return to the store to have it fixed. I politely refused. The store people only returned the USB card for me. The account cancelation was done over the phone with the same customer service number that I was currently speaking with. The lady insisted that I return to the store. I then insisted that I speak to a supervisor. I was told the supervisor would say the same thing. My response was I would like to hear them tell me that since this is insane. I was then told there would be a 20 minute wait. I politely told the representative that I would wait and putting me on hold for a really long time was not going to get rid of me.

About 5 minutes later the representative returned telling me they could in fact try to reverse the termination fee. It would just take 5-7 days to process the request. I told her fine, and go ahead and file the request. My next question was how much do I really own Verizon so I could pay my usage for the time I had the USB card. I was still surprised to see that they claimed I owed $111.21. According to the rep I still have to pay a $35 activation fee even though I returned the phone. I was skeptical but after I got off the phone I searched the internet and apparently that is a nice little secret wireless companies have. You can return the phone and cancel your contract before 30 days, but if you don’t make a return before 3 days you have to pay the $35.

A week has gone by and I called to check on the status of my refund for the termination fee. I was told that I will get my refund, but it will be 1-2 billing cycles until it happens. I have to trust that they are telling me the truth on the phone while I get 1-2 more bills telling me I owe them more money. What is so funny about this issue is I wasn’t the hugest fan of Verizon in the past, but they have good product so I have tolerated them. This experience has probibly turned me off for good to that company. I would rather deal with poor coverage with a T-Mobile since I know they offer good customer service than deal with the nightmares of Verizon again.

Stupid Cold

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I am fighting a stupid cold this weekend. I haven’t gotten totally sick but I feel crapy enough with the soar throat and itchy ears. I can’t describe the ear discomfort in any other way but itchy. I have been taking Tylenol Cold and Zicam for a few days. I haven’t gotten that much worse, but I haven’t gotten better either. I am not sure if that is good or bad.

I stayed in this weekend with the hopes of resting. I didn’t do much resting, but that was the plan. Right now I am tired and just not able to nap. I am doing a load of laundry, and not happy that I have another load I probably should do after this one is done.

Changing Themes

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2009-01-31_001

Since I am never content with my blog theme, I changed it again today. I was never a huge fan of the one that I just had, but it was one of the better ones I had found. I am now using a theme that I like better. I am still not in love with it, but I will keep it while I keep looking! Can I ever be content, or will I always continue to tinker with this site? I probably will always tinker!

The old theme is captured above for posterity.

No Good Applications For The Blackberry?

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In some of my free time over the past few weeks I have been looking for some free or cheap applications for my Blackberry I got from work. It has only been six months since I had a Blackberry but I can’t remember many of the applications I used on the BBerry. I think I just didn’t use that many.

For now all I have installed is Gmail, Facbook, and Google Maps. Since I have a personal iPhone I haven’t even used any of those applications since I have them all on my iPhone. The Blackberry is still great for mail, but so far not much else.

Drinks With Friends

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I worked from home today like I have been doing most Fridays. I was able to run out around 5:15 to go meet up with some friends for a few drinks. I shouldn’t have. My throat was hurting a little before I left, and is hurting more now. I meet up with Luke, Stanley, Ben, Vanessa, Jeannette, Danny & others for a few hours.

I am home now regretting the drinking and the going out. I did have a good time, it is just that my body is regretting it now! Lets hope this isn’t a cold, or the Zicam makes it go fast!

Data, Data, Everywhere

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I read allot about cloud computing now a days. It makes me laugh because before that I read about grid computing, or web based apps, or web 2.0, etc. Someone writes up some new buzz words. To me alot of these terms boil down to getting access to my stuff from anywhere. If that is in a cloud, grid or web app, I don’t care. I want ubiquitous access to my stuff.

I have written about some of the technologies that make this happen for me before because it is very important. Something so minor today that happened to me reminded me of how important this is.

Today as I was winding down at work and preparing to go home I was updating the tasks I need to work on the rest of the week. I use Remember The Milk (RTM) for my task management, and I was having problems with google gears updating my offline copy of data so I was syncing my data and verifying all my tasks I worked on were updated. After I closed Firefox and began to shut down my laptop to go home I realized I had 3 pieces of paper with notes I took in a meeting that I needed to update some tasks with new actions. To turn my laptop back on and boot it up would take like 15 minutes (don’t ask why XP takes that long, I don’t know), and putting the papers in my bag to take home was a good idea. The only issue was I knew I would forget to input the info when I got home. Knowing I had to do it while I remembered I grabbed my iPhone and opened my Remember The Milk app on it and sync’d down a replica copy of my data. I updated the most important items to RTM and put the few remaining notes that could wait a few days to add into my bag. It took a bit longer to enter info on the iPhone but everything was updated. I then made further updates on the Subway on the way home, and then re-synced the data when I got home on my Wifi connection. I could have done it walking from the Subway but it was just faster to use my WIFI connection. The entire process was entirely seamless. During the entire process I had my information up to date anywhere I need it. My home computer, phone, or work computer! To me that is the perfect example of having my stuff, data, whatever anywhere I need it to be.

RTM uses a web browser, Google Gears, and the iPhone with data synchronization to enable data everywhere. Other applications or tools I use have different methods.

I used to use VoodoPad as a personal wiki. Then I started using multiple computers. One of then happens to be a windows XP box so a Mac only app like VoodoPad no longer cut it. I needed the data in that wiki more than when I was just sitting at home. I tried Google Apps, then Zoho, and then I ended up with my own installation of Mediawiki. I secured the site and now I can access the wiki from any computer with an internet connection. No cloud needed. Just a simple web application worked. For some work related stuff that I want to track for just me I still use Zoho since they have a nicer GUI, and WYSIWYG editor.

For email I used to use a simple IMAP mail store, but I only had recent mail (past few months) online. Then I started using Google Apps and got addicted to having all my mail from all time in one place. I never thought I would ditch an application for a web browser as my email but I did. I had some things I didn’t like Google Apps for (I previously talked about it), so I ended up using Zimbra. Now I have all my personal mail in 01.com’s cloud. Not sure if it is really a cloud but that is what they call it. I can now access my mail from any browser (and it looks fantastic), any IMAP application, Outlook with the Zimbra plugin, or they even have their own app that sync’s data. And there is Mac version of the app too. I use the Exchange connector on my iPhone to sync all the address, mail, and calendar data from Zimbra to my phone. It automatically sync’s up when data changes. No need to plug in and sync. Knock on wood i haven’t had any noticeable issues with the syncing. I also sync the same data to my Address book & iCal on my Mac for offline editing. I can access that data anywhere, and I do use all the options I have to access it!

The last major application I use to access my data anywhere is probably the coolest. It is SugarSync. I have written about it before, so I won’t really go into why I like it. What I will say is I have started putting more data into my SugarSync replica. Jayson got me thinging about it when he started playing with the Amazon S3 cloud for backups of his personal data. I have used SugarSync to keep my office type documents backed up for a few months and I have loved it. I want to start using it or something like the S3 to backup all my important stuff. My close call a few months a go that almost cost me all of my backed up data got me thinking. Just having 2 hard drives wasn’t enough. I started putting my archive of photo’s onto the S3 today. I hope to calculate how much doing the same to video’s will cost. These systems (S3 or SugarSync) gives me access to my files from anywhere. I have used SugarSync to open files on my iPhone to grab information. It has been very useful. If I sync everything up in a cloud storage system I could use any computer just like I was at my own. Yes there are some pitfalls to that system (I like locally downloaded replica copies of stuff for ease of use) but overall it is a really cool idea that has worked for me!