Computer Rebuild, Again

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Today I am wiping my Presario desktop. I am moving all my DVR hardware onto it and re-installing the OS. My little DVR machine is fine, but it does not have enough inputs (internal or external). That made it difficult to add extra drive capacity or another TV tuner. Since I am not really using my more powerful Presario desktop for anything other than remoting into it to use VMWare I figured I would combine the two. The hardware should be able to handle both tasks without any problems. It is after all an AMD Athlon XP 3200+ with 1.5gig of ram and 2 250gig SATA hard drives.

I am in the process of installing Windows XP now. hopefully the Beyond TV & Beyond Media install’s go well, and I have no problems with the video capture cards. More news later

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Move Go, Or Maybe Not Yet

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I got word today that the office move that I am trying to plan for is almost a reality. We have verbal agreement on our lease terms, and the people that want to rent our current space have also come to verbal agreement with terms on our current space. That means I must frantically work to get a Cisco vendor selected and order a phone system.

I meet with an potential integrator today about this project. I just hope I can get quotes approved fast enough tot meet everyones time table.

Or Not To Join!

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My tryout trip with Cingular and my HP iPaq phone didn’t go so well for Cingular and the phone. First I should say the phone didn’t even get really used on the trip. By the time I was ready for the trip I had decided that the Windows Mobile phone software was too clunky to use all the time, and that the iPaq was nice as a PDA but was too big to use as a phone. Having it reboot 3 times while I was trying to sync it with my Mac didn’t help it.

With the Windows Mobile woes I figured I might as well try out the Cingular SIM in my Treo and see if the service was better and if the “high speed” data was worth the extra money. In NYC the signal seemed fine for singular. It even worked on the tracks in Penn Station. At my companies upstate office however where I had great service with T-Mobile I had 1 bar or no service with Cingular.

The data plan worked fine with no configuration necessary. But it wasn’t noticeably faster than my T-Mobile data plan that was half the price. Wanting to test that I used my Treo as a DUN modem and connected to the internet on my Powerbook using both Cingular and T-Mobile. The Treo 650 supports Cingular’s EDGE network and should have given me performance somewhere in the 100k range. I ran the CNET speed test and got a response of 26k. I tried my T-Mobile SIM on the same phone and got performance of around 60k +. That was what I expected with T-Mobiles GPRS system. That was the final decision to get out of my Cingular trial. The bad signal at my office was almost a death kneel, but paying double for a data plan that was slower was the final straw.

I will give Cingular credit. They are true to their 30 day money back policy for the service and phone. I had no problems returning the device and canceling the service. I say that before I get the bill for usage I had, but I think everything should be ok. If they improve the data speeds and service in the area I travel to I would look at them again, but for now I am fine with T-Mobile.

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Join An Evil Empire?

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I have pondered switching mobile carriers for a while. I have always ended up staying with T-Mobile. I have had them for almost 4 years and all in all they have been ok. But besides being cheap, and offering GSM they don’t have that much going for them. Well except nice customer service. That is a plus but for the once a year I call is it worth all the other trade offs? They offer the worst phones. Their high speed data plans may be cheap but they are really slow.

I have been eying the HP iPaq 6515 Windows Mobile phone for a while. Cingular offers it. It has a nice size screen and a keyboard. It is larger than my Treo 650 but the larger screen is REALLY nice. I saw it in the store today on my day off of shopping. I was originally not going to switch but I was surprised to find they had the iPaq in stock (they didn’t several other times I went to the store trying to take a look at it). I was impressed with the screen size, and the fact that the whole unit was not much bigger than the Treo even thought it was wider.

To make a long story short I made an semi impulse buy and am on my way to switching mobile carriers to Cingular. Now I have 30 days to see if I like the phone and the service, but for now I am switching. I will pay almost double for the data plan I had, but I am also (in theory) more than doubling the speed of the wireless data. The plan I am moving to is almost identical to what I had. 900 minutes vs the 1000 that T-Mobile gave me for the same price. The advantage is that I get roll over minutes now. Some months I use allot of minutes but others I almost never use any, so now I can roll over unused minutes to the next month.

I am going on a trip tomorrow so I will give the phone and service a real trial. More news later.

Oh and as for the title of the post I think most large telecom companies are evil. I love them, and use them all the time, but when something goes wrong you are at there mercy. You are in a contract that you cannot get out of, they can be very evil. But at least it is an evil you know!

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Party Weekend Roundup

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This weekend was a busy one. I had my cousin Merric’s Bar Mitzvah yesterday. I rode out the Jersey with my sister and Morgan. For a 3 year old Morgan was so good during the service. She played with her stickers and was generally quiet. After services we drove to the party. I had a good time. I had a few drinks, and ate allot. I saw tons of cousins that I never see. After a party like this it becomes apparent why I don’t see some of them. On the other hand there are always a few of them that I wonder why I don’t get together with more.

Morgan and my cousin’s Arrielle and Cerina were dancing like crazy. They were all so cute together. My 5 year old cousin Jonathan only wanted to play with with the girl in the red dress (aka Morgan). it was very cute.

I didn’t dance, since I am not into that unless I am very drunk. But the food was really good. We where invited back to the after party at my cousins house, but my dad was tired and his back hurt. So we headed home. Since my nieces birthday party was today in Queens I stayed at my parents Saturday night. The trip from South Jersey wasn’t so bad, but my dad and I ended up waiting for my mom and sister at my sisters building since they had to stop and ended up going a different way that had some traffic. The rest of the night was uneventful.

This morning I got up early and went to breakfast with my dad. From there we went to cosco to pick up the birthday cake. Morgan’s party was at a gymnastics place. 15 running and screaming 3 year olds was not my thing, but for a kids party it was nice. I got to video morgan and friends doing some really funny stuff.

I got a lift back home from Carrie’s father in law. It was nice not having to take the train back. We are all meeting at Loren and Andrew’s place later for dinner. Since their place is just 2 stops on the train from my place I am not complaining. Overall it has been a good (if not tiring) weekend so far.

A Day Off

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I am taking Monday off. I have tons of days in my bank, and I am nearing the max I can keep, so instead of loosing them I will take a day and just relax. I haven’t been sleeping well, so hopefully I can sleep in tomorrow. Not much planned on the agenda. I want to research some new mutual funds, and then maybe upgrade or build a new DVR computer. I am not sure if I can get all the components I need for the DVR so I may just work on the investment stuff. Either way I plan on doing no work. Of course that I usually end up doing some.

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Offsite Meeting

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I spent the morning with a potential vendor discussing network designs and Call Manager configurations. It was very productive, but I am always backlogged when I spend half a day or a day out of the office. I spent the afternoon catching up on paper work while most of my team went to the data center to mount a new core switch we are trying to deploy.

I ended up at Dan’s with Jayson after work to upgrade the ram in his new iMac. We got dinner out of the deal and I also moved over his files from his old windows machine and setup his iPod on the iMac. Now I am iTired.

My scheduled trip to our Call Center for tomorrow is canceled. I didn’t want to chance the trip in the snow they predict. I will try to reschedule for sometime next week.

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Food, and Some Drink

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Nothing eventful at work to report today. I did start getting a minor head ache late in the day. Some alive took care of most of it. I ended up meeting up with John at Heartland Brewery for some food and drink. I owed him for helping me with my xbox. Jay showed up also. We had a nice time hanging out for a while. I didn’t drink much since I wasn’t feeling 100%. We had a good time and planned out our next poker get together.

RAM & a DVR

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I ordered a 1 Gig RAM upgrade for my new iMac. It finally arrived and I installed it today. It was actually pretty easy to do. I was happy about that. The machine is noticeably faster now. Especially when I have several apps open. With the original 512megs on board I noticed the system would freeze up when I was doing some intensive stuff this weekend. The added memory is a nice solution to my problem. Now all I need is more apps that are run on the intel chips natively.

I also got a new USB DVR adapter for my DVR machine. The goal is to have 2 tuners running on the same computer. Snapstream says it will work. The problem I have is that I have 2 different revisions of the same USB DVR hardware. One driver version works with one unit but not the other. When I get the second one to work the first one decides to stop working. I gave up after several hours of messing with the system. I am RMA’ing the unit and will probably just go out and buy a PCI tuner card. I didn’t want to do that, but in order to do what I want I will need one. I may also just move the DVR setup to my HP desktop since it is not doing much right now. Still pondering my options.

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Canceled Plans

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I was planning on going ice skating today. I like skating but don’t go very often, so I said yes when asked if I wanted to go. Then I woke up and it is 27 degrees out and really windy, so it is not the best weather for outdoor ice skating. Thankfully my friends I was going to go with thought the same thing and we canceled. Now I have nothing to do today. Not that I am complaining, but I must amuse myself at home today. I could clean the place? Or just watch TV? Not sure yet, but I already blew 2 hours writing and browsing the web…