I am once again dabbling with Microsoft Vista. I installed Vista using bootcamp on my Mac Mini the other day. Now that I am using the iMac more and more, I can give the Mini a dual role of normal Mac and Vista. The iMac is much more powerful so using it for video processing and other functions I used to do on the Mini makes sense. WIth the Mini freed up I can play with it and do Vista on it. So far I haven't put any software on it. I am just tweaking the install and patching it. I don't know why I am really spending any time with Vista if I am so happy with my Mac. I guess my need to tinker outweighs common sense sometimes. Not to worry I am not abandoning my Mac any time soon. On the contrary, I am waiting for the new Macbook's or Macbook Pro's to get released so I can upgrade.
Meeting Old Friends
Last night I meet up with my friend Karen. She was in from Baton Rouge and was having a little get together with her friends. We meet at a bar near Cooper Square. I had fun, even though I only knew Karen and barely knew one or two other of her friends. All our other mutual friends punked out and didn't want to come into the city. Who would have though I was the adventurous outgoing one of the group?
Like I said I had fun, but I guess I didn't realize how much I had to drink. I felt like crap all night long and barely slept. I didn't think I drank that much, but I guess after 4 hours I might have. Dam Jack Daniels, you taste too good in Coke.
I hope to get down to Baton Rouge sometime when I finally get some vacation time and hang with Joe & Karen. It has been 2 years since I last saw Joe. I don't like loosing touch with old friends.
The rest of the day was taken up by me trying to sleep and relax after a horrible sleepless night. I should have taken a photo of all the blown capillaries under my eyes. It was nasty. I am now trying to wind down so I can get ready for the work week ahead.
The Wedding
Yesterday was my cousin’s wedding. Family get togethers are always interesting. This one was fun, but thankfully on the less interesting side. I ended up not drinking since I was taking migraine medicine. I was stupid and didn’t eat lunch since I was waiting for my dad to come pick me up from home. He got tied up in traffic for over an hour and a half and then it took us another hour plus to get from my house to his. That meant it was around 3:30PM by the time I ate anything all day. That is a big no no for me. I took two different migraine medications I have before I started feeling better. Thankfully by the time I was at the wedding I was feeling ok.
My sister didn’t go to the wedding since my nephew was sick all week, and my niece was sick earlier in the week. That meant I thought i was sitting alone at a table with my grandmother. I love her, but she is not always the most fun conversation. I was surprised to find my cousin’s Synde & Wayne sitting with me. Their kids also ended up with us so I was not alone. I had a good time. The food was decent. I looked fantastic in my suit, but I always say I clean up nicely.
I stayed over at my parents house since it was really late by the time we got out of the wedding. As family get togethers go, this was a good one!
This morning my dad took me home, but not before I snagged his old computer that he had in his closet and a bunch of slides and photos my mom had. I am on a project to have all my families photos and slides scanned into the computer. My dad has been slow with scanning the slides so i decided to take them and 2 box’s of photos with me. Once I get back the VHS tapes from the conversion place I will send in the slides and some photos. The computer is my dad’s old one that he stopped using because the video card is messed up. He hasn’t used it since January and I totally forgot he was holding on to it so I could take it and maybe do something with it.
Once I got home I napped for a few hours since sleeping on the air mattress at my parents isn’t the most comfortable place to sleep. At least there was AC!
Breaking out the suit and tie for a wedding .
Apps That Should Be Written To Be Put On My iPhone 3G
I know the iPhone App Store is only a few weeks old but I really would like to see some apps that I am used to on the palm. I don't miss the Palm OS, but some of the apps I had on my Treo's were very helpful or fun.
SSH Client – someone wrote a Telnet client, but lets face it if you are a decent network or systems person you really want SSH and not telnet. Or both!
FTP Client – Probably wouldn't use it that much, but a cheap or free client would be a nice to have.
Quicken or an expense program that will export inputed data into a format that Quicken will read. Am I the only one that uses Quicken that wants this? They make a Palm and Windows Mobile version!
Call Recording – This was a must have for me on all my recent phones. Until you have it, you don't realize how much you need to record calls. Especially when dealing with vendors, support people, etc. Had it on my Palm Treo's and my Nokia E61i. I actually didn't use the Treo 750 because it couldn't record calls. Not having this function was a trade off I made when getting the iPhone, but I would hope someone would write a program to do this!
Skype – probably too much to ask for since you can't use VOIP applications via the 3G network, but Skype would be nice!!!
There is probably more, but for now that is all that I can come up with.
Apps Found on My iPhone 3G
I have been using my iPhone 3G for a few weeks now. So far I am a fan! There are still a few things it cannot do (call recording!) but overall it is a great phone. I have downloaded a ton of free and paid apps. Some of my favorites installed on my phone now are:
GrandDialer – Basically an app that will do GrandCentral's click to dial. I haven't used it that much yet, but so far it is really cool.
Weather Bug – because I like to know the weather.
iTrans NYC – fantastic NYC subway maps, plus transit alerts
Facebook – because I got addicted to it back in May!
iDrink – You never know when you need the ingrediants to make a fantastic drink
GoContact – send contacts details quickly. It is amazing how often I need to do this
Loopt – Location based stuff is just fun. I just wish anyone I know used it
aSubnet & Instant Byte – Subnet calculator. I also have some unit converter software specifically for technology. Very helpful. I am waiting for an SSH client, and a cheap FTP program (the only one out there is $10).
iNetwork Test – runs a test of my wireless connection and keeps track of results and the locations they were taken. Very cool.
Mobile News & NY Times – my fix of the news.
1Password – website password management on my iphone. I love this on my Mac and it works great on my phone.
SplashID – I had this on my Palm for ages, and the concept is the same. My password library with me anywhere i go, but in a nice secured format.
Remote – iTunes / Apple TV remote that just works.
PwGen – random password generator. I have a program like this on my Mac, but a portable one is cool. In my job creating passwords happens all the time!
BigTipper – I hate calculating tips, this makes life easy.
Flashlight – It is just cool!
and More…
Dinner With My Parents Continued
If you read the title of the post you would think that I had dinner with my folks again. Well you would be wrong. I wanted to write a little bit more about what I learned from watching the videos with some color commentary from my parents.
I now know my mom's original hair color. My dad didn't look so bad in the late 60's, early 70's. By the mid 70's he looked like a cabbie. I don't know what happened. He had a major fro by the late 70's but thankfully I didn't see that on any video, but we have photos.
I was a really skinny kid, but in baby video's I looked really fat. My mom always thought that was funny because I did look pudgy but i was never heavy, I just looked it. She called it baby fat. By the time I was 4 I was a twig.
I Cannot Stand The Blackberry Pearl
I cannot stand the Blackberry Pearl! I know it is a really small phone, and it is a Blackberry but it drives me crazy. The only reason to have a Blackberry is to use it for email. I think all other functions of it are sub-par as smart phones go, so to have an email device without a full keyboard is driving me up the wall. My office gave me a brand new Verizon Wireless Pearl when I started and I tolerated the horrible keyboard since it was the nicest phone they had. The last straw was about two weeks ago when I was writing my boss and the dam predictive text or whatever you call it could not type out LAN, nor could I cancel out of the options it was giving me.
Early last week I had our telecom person switch me to an Blackberry 8800 that my predecessor had. That phone is huge, and kind of sucks but it has a full keyboard. I will use it until we can figure out why we cannot get the iPhone or any other Wireless Active Sync device to connect to our Exchange 2003 server.
Dinner With My Parents
Tonight my parents came over and we had dinner. We ordered in, which is is a change of pace for us. I finally gave my mom her birthday present. We viewed the raw footage from the 8mm film I had converted to DVD. Seeing the reactions from both my parents was well worth the price I paid to have the film converted. I took notes on when most of the clips were taken so I could resequenced them correctly. I had to guess at the order of teh clips when I had them put to DVD. I am glad I paid to get the raw AVI files since I can go back and add a music sound track and sequence the files using iMovie. I demonstrated one of the 22 clips with a music sound track and my mom loved it. The video editing takes time, but the finished product is fantastic.
Today was basically a trip down memory lane. I had been playing with iMovie for a while before my parents came over. I wish I had more reasons to take more pictures or video, since I have fun editing stuff. The only real stuff I take pictures of now are my niece and nephew. I showed my mom some quick slide shows of them on my Apple TV and she loved them also.
My biggest problem is that there is almost no video of me as a kid except for the 8mm video I just put to DVD. Then there is my Bar Mitzvah video that I have a low quality MPEG-1 of. I am having that converted by the same people that did the 8mm videos in the next week or so.
Once I have the finished DVD with some music to it I will give my parents a remastered copy. If I have time I will also put a web friendly version on my flickr page for other family members.
The stroll down memory lane was fun, but I need to get ready for work tomorrow.
Light Friday Night
Busy morning at work. A few meetings, and a few canceled meetings. I did get to meet up with Jayson for lunch. Since I started my new job back in May I haven’t had much opportunity to goto lunch with friends. The two main reasons are I am at a new job, and it is hard to get away for a while during the day, even if it is once every week or every two weeks. The main reason I haven’t meet up much with friends is because I am working on the east side again, and now all my friends are working on the west side. I went from being centrally located to everyone, to being really far away from everyone. That goes back to reason 1, not having tons of time to get away especially since travel time to meet up with everyone at our usual spot would take a while.
I was able to get some real work done in the afternoon (real, vs meetings I have been in since Tuesday). I wrapped up the day with staff meetings with most of my team. So yeah more meetings was fun.
Not much going on tonight. I didn’t see anyone online in the late afternoon to see if anyone was going out for drinks. I wasn’t really up for drinks anyway so it worked out. I have been drained once work is over for the past few weeks. I will take rest when I can.