Ying and Yang, WordPress and Typepad

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I have been using WordPress since January and overall generally happy. Initially the ability to customize any aspect of the software was a hindrance since it required time to tinker to get things right. Then over time I got my WordPress site to be in some ways better than my Typepad one. The effort involved wasn’t trivial, but I enjoyed the tinkering. Once the site was right it has become an annoyance to deal with plugin updates, WordPress updates, etc. I know my Typepad subscription is up near the end of the year so I wanted to keep using WordPress to see if I would be comfortable enough to delete my Typepad account when the time came. I mean I hadn’t updated Typepad since January.

A few other annual subscriptions are up around now so I got thinking about what my plans are for everything. I was set to ditch Typepad all together since it would save some cash, but decided to check out their changes while looking at my current WordPress setup. My conclusion was mixed. I think overall I like both systems. They each have their advantages. The deciding factor was for some reason the performance on my hosting site I use was apparently really slow recently. Significantly so that I noticed it affecting page load times. That little thing made me realize why it is worth it to pay for an application suck as Typepad. I don’t host it, i dont’ fix it, I just use it. I like tinkering with the look and feel, but don’t want to deal with performance and stability and updates, etc. In the end I will stick with Typepad. I have used it for almost 5 years now. It just works.

That being said I spent the better part of this afternoon porting posts since January from WordPress back to Typepad. The migration process works, but is not as clean as I would have liked. Tags in WordPress show up as Categories in Typepad. That required some work. Then severing my domain hosting accounts hooks into my Powerz.org domain took some work since they controlled the DNS. After a DNS server migration my mail and blog are now safely working again. Now I have to wait for Google to rebuild my site index. Their goes my page rank’s but it isn’t the first time I have done that. Now lets see if I don’t want to change my mind again in 6 months. The reality is both systems are good, but I am happy where I am, and don’t want to mess with easy upkeep.

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The Vegetative Weekend

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After 12 days of work, and several late nights I got this weekend off. One of the project’s I was on has a deadline today and we had lots to do. Thankfully I am now about to catch up on sleep for now. There was a few really late nights plus the weekend work. The funny thing is even with all the work I put in over the past two weeks it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I have lived through. I am not trying to jinx myself or anything. I just noticed even with lots to do the management is aware of the toll it takes on people and tries to alleviate the pain when possible. I like that. For reasons I have gone into many times I don’t go into details of my work on this site, but one of the reasons I love my current job is in a lot of ways how people are treated. It isn’t perfect, but it is a far cry from where I was for years at Partsearch for example.

With work over late Friday I took the opportunity to relax and do not much of anything this weekend. Friday night I meet up with Mike, Luke, Stanley and others for a few drinks. Saturday consisted of sleeping late, TV watching, and some apartment cleaning. Today consisted of sleeping late (a theme for the weekend) more TV watching, work on this site, writing, and general lounging around.

Now the weekend is gone all to fast. I am back to work tomorrow, even if it is working from home. I am thinking of taking Friday off to burn off some vacation time. I will see towards the end of the week if that will be possible. Right now I want to finish up some writing and then I am off to bed.

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My neighborhood kicks butt. Live music by the water tonight was actually pretty good. Too bad I had to leave for my conf call. Wondering if the concert is still going on now?

Long Travel Day

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Today I went up to see Gretchen, Jayson, and baby Seth. It was a nice, if not short visit. I took the train up in the late morning and everyone met me at the station. We grabbed a quick lunch (including Seth) at a local pub/restaurant. Then we went back to their house to hang out. It was nice so we went into the pool. It was Seth’s first trip in the water. He seemed to like it. We hung out there for a while and then just relaxed at the house. It was a nice leisurely day with friends in the country.

I headed back early to goto a birthday party for my friend Luke. Typically the trip to Poughkeepsie is long enough to warrant staying over, but the last few times I have had plans. This time I should have stayed. I decided to spend the few extra bucks for an Amtrak train to Penn since the party was 2 blocks from Penn. Metro North would have required an additional two subway trains. Well Amtrak decided to not cooperate and the train was an hour and forty minutes late. The bad luck was that I just missed the previous Metro North train so I had to wait another 40 minutes for the next train.

By the time I got into Manhattan it was late and I was on the wrong side of the city. After prodding by Danny & Luke I said to heck with it and just went home. I was tired from the long day and I didn’t really want to trek over to the west side for a little while with people who were obviously drinking a decent amount.

What saved me from going insane was the mobile amtrak site, my iphone and my HP Mini Netbook I used on the train to watch movies.

Thursday / Friday Update

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Not much to report over the past two days, but I wanted to write a bit since I have been neglecting writing for a bit. Worked from home Thursday & Friday. Ended up not going out tonight since it got really nasty out and most of my friends ended up not going anywhere either.

Work was hectic but nothing out of the ordinary went on.

Venting Over

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My last post was a big rant, but I think I articulated my frustration so maybe it isn’t technically a rant? Still really ticked off. I have a bunch of other posts I am working on that I just haven’t updated in July. I just felt compelled to update that last one after I read about it today. Hopefully more updates (and backdating some older posts I started writting two weeks ago) in the next few days.

Apple Are You Kidding Me?

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I have been a huge fan of Apple and the iPhone. I have always had my criticisms of the company. I have also said that I love my iPhone but would love to find another phone to replace it due to the restrictions Apple puts on the iPhone. This latest stunt by Apple may just get me to drop the iPhone and get something (anything) else. GV Mobile is an app I have used since it came out. It is an app that works with Google Voice. Before GV Mobile I used Grand Dialer that did similar things with the old Grand Central before Google turned it into Google Voice. Why then did Apple just decide to pull all apps that work with Google Voice? I paid for this app, now basically it is killed off? Yeah it will still work for a while but if anything in the OS breaks the app it wont work. This is crazy. How is this not big brother that Apple (or AT&T through Apple) just come in and turn off an app? And why, because it mimic’s iPhone features? So what, I choose to use those mimicked features. Thoughts are it is more likely that AT&T doesn’t want to lose revenue by free SMS via these apps. So can someone explain to me how App Stores are better for the consumer if the handset maker and the provider say what can and cannot be put on my phone? I prefer the day when i can find an app, download it and run it on my smart phone. Worked for years with Palm, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile. Now everyone has their own app stores. How is this progress for the consumer?

I was tempted to pre-order an Android powered My Touch with T-Mobile today. The only thing that stopped me was the fact that the My Touch doesn’t offer Wifi Calling (no android phone does yet). Apple / AT&T get your act together or you will lose a good customer, and I bet I am not the only one.

On a related note I was kind of pissed about what I consider similar crazy tactics by Amazon regarding the Kindle. At least Amazon apologized about what they did, and it doesn’t look like they will do it again. Apple you should learn something from Amazon!

UPDATE 7-31-2009: Finally the FCC is doing something. Questioning Apple, AT&T & Google about what is going on.

A Birthday Dinner With The Folks

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Yesterday was my mom’s birthday. My parents were at my sisters last night, so we ended up going out to dinner tonight after they came back into the city since I am on the way home. Well I can be on their way home if they go through Manhattan instead of taking the GWB. We went to the Waterfront Crab Shack. I love that place. Well I love good sea food. I had some crab cakes. It was a nice night with my parents.

I gave my mom her gift. I gave her my Amazon Kindle. She had interest in one when my sister was given one so I decided to upgrade and give her mine since it was in perfect condition. Actually when she got home and opened it up she called all mad at me since she thought I spent a ton of money giving her a brand new one since i put it back in the original packaging. I assured her it wasn’t. She wont use it until she travels so I hope she remembers how to use it.

Meet And Greet Tuesday

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After work I headed over to an interesting meet and greet at another office. It was nice to get out of the office for a while and socialize with some people from work I don’t normally hang out with. I didn’t stay too long, but it was an interesting meet up.

Work otherwise was busy but nothing out of the ordinarily.

Dinner And a Wedding With Far Away Friends

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This weekend was my friend’s Joe & Karen’s wedding. I know Joe from my time working and living in Baton Rouge. I know Karen since she went to the same High School as I and we have the same group of friends we kept in touch with after school. As an aside I find it interesting I hang out with Karen now, but didn’t know her at all when I actually was in HS. That is true for a few of the friends I know from back then. Ok back to the story. One of my other friends John introduced both of them to each other when he was living down in BTR. And now they got married. Karen moved down south a few years ago to be with Joe, but they decided to come back to NYC to have the wedding.

Friday night there was a rehearsal dinner of sorts, but in reality it was just friends and family getting together for dinner. We went to City Crab. On a previous trip to NYC a bunch of us took the couple their (I had to be reminded that since i was like hey we are going to city crab i love that place when they told me the venue, and couldn’t figure out why they chose that location) so we went back. I had the surf and turf. Filet and Crab Legs. It was fantastic. Afterwards a bunch of guys went out for a mini bachelor party. We were going to do that Thursday but Jayson couldn’t get out on Thursday so we pushed to Friday. Gretchen did just have a baby on Sunday! We had a good time, and that is allt he details on that subject.

Jayson ended up crashing at my place instead of having to pay for a hotel. We got up today and hung out by my place for a while before heading into the city for the wedding. There may be another post on the shopping spree we went on. We meet up with Scott (yes another one) and went over to the hotel where the wedding was.

The ceremony was nice on a deck at the top of the hotel. We just missed the rain so it was perfect timing. John actually showed up. That was a pleasant surprise since no one expected him. His wife also just had a baby so he wasn’t sure if he could get out. He did. It was a fun wedding. I even danced a bit, but not much. It was relatively small, but I don’t like huge parties.

I grabbed a ride home from John after the festivities were over. Overall it was a great weekend.