Your special favorite place to be

Do you have a special favorite spot you like to go? Where you feel the most relaxed, or at “home”? I do. It is not anything fancy. I am most at peace sitting on my bed at home with the pillows propping my back up. I sit in this weird position with legs propping my laptop up. I am doing this as I write this blog. I put a pillow on my lap and play music, and just type. Recently, it is the blog I write, but I can write anything. Emails, letters, etc. Hand pain aside I could do this for hours. It is calming and I always fee at peace when I am done. I don’t know why I just thought of all this. I did a thing in school once where they asked that question “what is your favorite place to go that makes you feel at ease or safe”. I had no clue to the answer then and came up with some stupid response, but now I know what the teacher was talking about.

This is an entry that either you will go “what is Scott talking about”, or you get the gist of what I am getting at. I can say that I am relaxed sitting here now. I am going to bed in a few minutes. I hope to get a good night sleep and do some Scuba Diving Class research tomorrow. I want to take that class more than ever now. I need a good hobby, and I liked diving better than golf. More tomorrow.

Work, ipod’s, and Blog’s

Work was crazy since I was only in for a half a day due to the eye doctor. We are going to go with the 3 ton HVAC unit. 1.5 tons for our new computer room is not enough, but my inflated estimate came out to requiring a 10 ton unit. Sorry Gus your theory of taking a maximum theoretical number of servers in the room and then increasing the heat load by 50% sort of put us way over the top:) It was sort of funny to hear the construction guy tell me we were way off and wanted to do my math since he thought I was crazy. I sent him my calculations, and they were correct. We just inflated stuff. Oh well.

While I was out this morning I think a demo that someone was supposed to do was not up. I don’t think people were happy since the site was supposed to be ready last week. Keith said their was some yelling going on. It was something my team didn’t screw up and I wasn’t their for the meltdown. I am glad for small favors.

It also looks like we are going to overhaul our Dev & QA hardware. I am waiting to see what the needs are before I make any changes.

Gus and I went to the apple store in SoHo today. He got a new 30gig Ipod. I am jealous. it is great. I can’t goto the apple store. They make it tempting to buy a new computer.

On the blog front another person I know did a blog. Howard Morgan got one going today. I felt really stupid since he asked a bunch of questions about Moveabletype and I didn’t have all the answers. I would consider it an honor to teach howard something new. I bet his blog will be incredible. So far I was the first person to comment on it.

Eye doctor was not what I expected

So I went to the eye doctor. The results were not what I expected. No I cannot get La-sec surgery but the reason is not what I expected. Turns out my prescription changed. And it actually got better. So Dr. Marks (my eye doctor) does not want to do surgery since I am still slowly improving my eyesight. I can’t blame him, but I am still unhappy. He also gave me a new person to check out contacts with. her office is right in Union Square (3 blocks from my office).

I also got instructions for putting this gel goop in my eyes at night since they are really dry. I knew they were dry but I am being told that it is bad for them and I need to keep them moist or whatever if I want contacts. This stuff is supposed to help when sleeping. I will goto the drug store and get some. it will be weird putting on but I will try it.

Everyone at work thought I was crazy walking around inside with my sunglasses on all day. the drops never wear off quick with me. Dan thought I came from the matrix. he is a freak.

Dam Apple

I am pissed. I called to get my Powerbook fixed tonight at a reasonable hour of 9:30PM EST, only to find out that apple does not provide consumer hardware support after 9pm. Uh, hello apple. People use their computers 24/7, so you should have 24/7 support. Your windows competition you love to bash has 24/7 support. What is the deal. Your hardware is not that indestructible that you don’t need to provide support. Now I have to call your stupid support people during work tomorrow. I love spending a half an hour on the phone for support people to realize what I knew when I called that my speaker port is blown.

I love this powerbook and it has been working well, but I have had it for less than 4 months and it will be in for servicing twice. That is not good. I have had other computers for years and never needed servicing.

OK, my apple support bashing is over. I actually like this company but I can’t stand when a company falls flat on their face completely on their own. Dumbass stuff like this gets me wondering if I invested in the wrong computer? Granted I still have a ton of intel box’s, but I just want apple to get it right, and then maybe Microsoft will get a clue.

Bluetooth dial-up works, finally!!!

I actually got my Thinkpad to dial a GPRS connection through my Sony Ericsson T-68i using a bluetooth connection. I found an updated driver package for my Xircom card. It actually works with XP now. AT&T’s connection software still didn’t work. That ticked me off, but I found instructions on their web site to do it with XP’s built in dial up networking. It worked like a champ. Now I have to see if it works out and about. I have problems allot of the time when I try to use it on my powerbook. It is all due to spotty data service.

I am just happy I figured it out without having to buy new hardware. Now I wait until Verizon comes out with a Bluetooth enabled phone and I am all set. Of course having verizon’s data plan come down in price would be nice also. Until then I live with AT&T’s sub par GPRS system.

I like it when technology works the way it is advertised. Lets ignore that it took like 4 software revisions and like 6 1/2 months (with this provider) to get it working on Windows.

The eye doctor

Tomorrow I am going into work late because I have an eye doctor appointment. It is my regular appointment I have every 2 years. Thankfully I don’t have to go every year like I did when I was younger. I am hoping that this year my doctor will say the La-sec (laser eye surgery) will actually help me. Up till now he said the surgery will not be as good as wearing glasses. if he says “i can get you to the prescription you have or better with surgery.” I am getting it. No question. If he says no to the surgery I am thinking of doing contacts again. I stopped because my eyes are too dry by nature, and I spend tons of time at a computer screen. FYI looking at a computer screen allot makes you blink less, thus dry eyes get even dryer. The other down side to contacts when I last had them was they cost like $500 a pair for me since I had special weighed lenses. Yes my eyes are really screwed up. Technology is improving so much I hope things have changed in that arena in the past 7 years.

I actually like going to the eye doctor because I always hope he has good news for me, like hey you don’t need glasses any more. It never actually happens, but I can dream. Hearing the news about the la-sec’s is good enough for me. On the down side I don’t react well to the eye dilation drops that he gives me. it always takes all day to return to normal and I can’t do much when my eyes are screwed up like that. Work tomorrow will be interesting!

Fathers day

Went with my family to my brother-in-laws family today. Well sort of family. It was a family friends house that they have been friends with forever. They are like family. If you know me, it is like the Stein’s for my family. They had an an awesome house with a nice in-ground pool on like 4 acres in Stamford CT. Nice place, but too far from the city for me. I had a good time. Mike pissed my sister off by dunking the baby in the pool. In my opinion the only thing wrong he did, was dunking her right in front of my sister and then not giving morgan to her when she started crying. Some things you don’t do in front of mom.

Not sure if we will do that trip again next year. The traffic sucked and my dad has a bad back. Sitting in the car is bad for him, or that is the excuse he uses. I guess this BBQ is an annual think, so we will see if we go next year.

I am spending most of my evening changing address’s on everything I can think of in planning my upcoming move. I got most of the magazines, the post office, the credit cards, and one cell phone company done. I still need to change my drivers license and some more stuff. Address changing is an art form if you have stuff auto billed to your credit card. If you change your credit card address you need to immediately go and change the auto billed account or else they will stop sending your or providing you whatever service you are paying for. I found that out when Amex changed my address on all my cards when I just wanted a corporate card changed. My Metro card was turned off. If you don’t live in NYC, a metro card is the credit card that you use to get onto the Subway. Mine also is linked to my Long Island Rail Road account, so having that get turned off was a bad thing.

Cleaning Up

I finally got a fathers day card for my dad. I also got one for my brother-inlaw. He is a dad now too. The day before a holiday like fathers day is a zoo at the local card store. I also had a bunch of errands to run, so I took out my dad’s new Honda Accord. For honda that thing has some power. I always like driving something with tons of horse power. I will stop talking about it now because I am getting teary eyed thinking about my last fast car. I miss my mustang.

1999 My Mustang - 006

I also did the super fun task of balancing my check book. Or rather download stuff into quicken and make sure I actually bought the stuff it says I did. Turns out I actually found a $500 plus error. Gotta call and find out what is up with that. I am now up to date on all my bills and statements and other misc. mail, I think! My desk is sort of clean now.

I also started the grueling process of calling everyone and telling them I am moving. I always forget a bank or magazine, and then spend months figuring my mistake. I am doing allot of change requests on line, but it still takes forever.

Bluetooth Woes

I may have mentioned my problems with bluetooth and my IBM thinkpad T30 running Windows XP. I have a Xircom Realport 2 Bluetooth card. I cannot get it to dial out using the bluetooth modem on my Sony Ericsson T68i. I can do it with my powerbook. Turns out that my problem may be the Xircom card. Howard (aka super smart guy that is an investor in my company) got it to work on his Thinkpad T40 with a built in bluetooth card and the same type of phone. that sucks because now I need to get a different bluetooth card. The Xircom one does not seem to work with XP. I hate wasting money on tech that doesn’t do what it was designed for. I am off to search ebay.

Vonage is out

OK, so Vonage is everything they say it is, and probibly more. I used the service and the phone calls are nice and clear. The call routing is great. The service is just awesome. Just one little show stopper problem that I have. They won’t let you choose a vanity phone number. I got a really crappie number and would pay anything to get a nice easy to remember number from them. The problem is they automated the system and claim that they cannot in any way let you know the number you are getting before you pay the $10 fee to change it. With Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile I talked nice to the rep and was able to select the number that I want. AT&T even stayed on the phone for like 30 minutes with me till we came up with something good. They rock. Vonage is saying no, sorry. I wanted this service for incoming calls, so a crappy number is no good to me. I would rather change cell numbers and let everyone know about it often than keep a shitty number. I am looking into returning my router and getting a refund.

It is a great idea, but doesn’t seem to fit what I want if they are inflexible. I would still recomend them to others.