Mobile Tech

tech to bring on vacation???

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So I am getting ready to pack for my island vacation. The question is what to pack tech wise. I will bring my mobile phone. It wonít work in Barbados, but it will work in the airport before and after the trip. No charger is needed for it though. I checked. No service provider has a ROAMING agreement down there so no cell phone would work. I would have to get one down there. Not going to do that, so I am out of luck.

I am bringing a laptop so I can get some work done, and more importantly watch some movies on the plane. The question is what laptop do I bring? I can take the work thinkpad. It has a DVD player, and I can play with vmware on it. I can also take my Powerbook. The powerbook also has a dvd player on it, but it also has all my personal files, and I can download and edit the photoís I take on the tirp while I am down there. It will probably be a last minute decision. Not sure what to do just yet.

Besides that I am bringing my Pocket PC just because it is handy to have around, and my digital camera. My sister is bringing theirs, but I want to bring my own anyway.

My computers & Blogging stuff

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I realized yesterday that I wrote a bunch of blog entries. I decided to write an entry on on topic, or group of topics. So if I want to discuss a few things at once I will have multiple entries broken down for your reading enjoyment.

I am back into my routine of writing on the train. that is how we got the morning and afternoon posts yesterday. I just forget to post when I get to work and just have to post time-stamp things later on. I tried to use the thinkpad for blog entry’s. I found a bug in w.bloggar. Well I think it is a bug. The dam thing wont work on my laptop. I use it once after install and then it crashes every time I try to open it after that. I just gave up on Monday. My powerbook works great, and it is light. I can do without the thinkpad some days during the week.

Yes I do have two laptops. You are reading correctly. I have my own personal Apple Powerbook G4 12″. it is the little powerbook. It is awesome. I am new to the mac’s. I have only had a mac since last july. The other machine is my company issued Thinkpad T31. It has a bright screen and weight’s around the same as the Powerbook even though it is bigger in shape. It is also an awesome machine. The down side is that as much as I tried, I cannot get any windows laptops to go into and out of standby and hibernate modes properly. The mac usually works. Also the smaller mac is easier to open on the train.

Then we have desktops. I have 3 computers at home (not counting the laptops). I currently have an AMD Atholon XP 1500+ computer running Windows XP Pro. That machine is my main desktop computer. I don’t use it nearly enough anymore, but I bought it in December 2001 when my desktop was my main computer. This box is tricked out even though I don’t utilize it that much. It has a gig of ram, 180gig hard drive, etc.

My next two machines are used as servers. I have my old desktop, A Pentium III 800 with 780megs of ram. I use that to test different things on. It used to be my windows 2000 server. Then I have an old Dell Dimension desktop that I think has Pentium III 700 in it. That is now my main server running Red Hat 9.0.

While I am on the topic of my computer gear I can say that I am using a Linksys DSL Cable router with 802.11g wireless built in. That gives me fast wireless while I am on my Powerbook!

There you have it. I am trying to shrink down the size or amount of stuff I have so it doesn’t look so bad in my living room. I just put the AMD computer into a new smaller & cooler looking case. The other two are already in mid tower cases so I am not sure what I can do with those.

More work, less hacking, unless it is for work

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It is monday again, and I am off to work. Today we meet with another telecom provider to see if they have a good deal. We need to make a decision this week.

OK, time for me to gripe about something. I am on the train, and cannot stand it when people receive cell phone calls (or make them) and have an entire conversation. In addition to that these people usually talk like a plane is flying by. Now I am all for cell phone use. I have 2 of them, and I don’t even have a home phone (another story). When I am out and about I will receive calls but only talk for a min if it is not important. If it is a work emergency (which I get more often than I would like) I talk. What is with this casual talking on a train with 100 other people. We don’t care what you have to say to your friends or family. We don’t need cell phone restriction laws, we need some etiquette from people. Ok, I am done ranting.

Speaking of cell phones I am kind of bummed that my main phone (an AT&T GSM Provided Sony Ericsson T68i) won’t work in our office in Kingston. Actually it wont work in kingston at all. I am not sure what will work well up there. I know verizon works, and t-mobile, but not sure if either of them provides good signal at our site. I have a verizon phone but I wanted to cancel it. No I am paying the monthly fee to wait and see. I also have a T-Mobile SIM card, but no phone. I am holding onto that for a bit longer also.

I gotta tell you, I go through phones (just like PDA’s) fast. I just upgrade to the latest and greatest allot. I was on ebay last night looking for a phone for the CEO of my company. He is going to europe and wanted a phone. He has a SIM already, but no phone. Since I didn’t have any extra he said to look for one. Well after looking I don’t see any GSM phones that do everything I want, except for the one I already have. For my CEO we are just going to rent one, but I started looking for myself also. Like I said I don’t have a phone for my T-Mobile SIM. It is weird. For the first time in a while I am ready to spend money.

OK, back to work talk. This post was supposed to be about work. I ended up sending back the low end Compaq 1U server we got. FYI, 1U is the size of it. Computer racks are broken down by U’s. Each standard rack has 42U. A 1U server takes up 1U of that 42. They are really small. It turns out the compaq server we bought does not have a RAID card for IDE like were were told 3 times. The were going to send me one for free, but I decided to send it back instead. Part of my reasoning is that we were going to get 2 of these. And I want to get them and see if I like them. if I do like them I want to standardize on them later on. If we got a free raid card, I would have to pay for them in the future. That would put the cost well over what I wanted to budget for these low end machines. I ended up ordering a super micro box and saved like $600 off my original quote. It is a no name brand, but we already use no name VA Linux machines, and this thing has a 3 year warrantee. I will see if they are any good.

Pocket PC wins over Palm (for me, for now)

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I didn’t listen to myself. I went out and ordered the Dell Axim pocket pc. it had all the features I wanted except that it is kind of big. Other than that it cheap for a pocket pc, it has the bluetooth add on capability, and it has memory upgrade slots. I chose that over the slim HP model that does not have bluetooth. if you don’t know what bluetooth is, it is a wireless way to connect devices. I have had allot of success with bluetooth connecting my palm, cell phone and powerbook. the problem is you need devices that support it. that is a key factor in my technology buying now. so if one device does not do everything I need it to, can it connect via bluetooth to something else that can do the job? the down side is that dell takes a while to ship anything. I have a weird way of thinking about paying for stuff. Once I get the pocket pc I will of course sell my current palm on Ebay. I probably will make as much or more money back from the palm sale to pay for the pocket pc. Crazy justification for buying a new one, but it allows for almost spending more on something while getting a new device earlier than I would normally have.

On another note I totally forgot that my friend rich got us islander play off tickets for Wednesday. I am not sure the kind of seats we got, but I look forward to going. I love hockey. it is the one sport I can get into. I played a little roller hockey in college, and when I worked at summer camp when I was younger I played and coached a bit. so I am into the sport. Every season I say I will follow it more or goto more games, but never seem to find time to go. I have gone to play off games the past 2 years. this will make 3 for me. I am a toronto maple leafs fan as well as a NY islanders fan. always difficult when both teams I like are in the same division, but I normally root for toronto when both teams meet. My thinking is if either team win’s I am happy. I will break out the islander’s jersey Wednesday for the game. it should be fun.

Not that I care a huge amount about who reads this (it is primarily for me to have as a journal), but I want to figure out how to get this out so I may get some visitors. some of the writing is kind of private, but I always wonder if I am any good at writing so this is a good chance to see if people can actually make sense of what I write. So I think the next step for this blog is to get it “out there” and see what happens.

Another thing I need to do is create a sort of cast of characters of my life! I mention people in this thing, and if you are a stranger reading this you have no idea who in the world I am talking about. I did something funny with my friends a while ago with funny bios, but I think I may actually do a real one for some people I talk about. This all depends on if I have time on the train to write it. this entire blog rely’ on the fact that I have time to write. today I have time to do 2 full entries, but other days I can’t do any. we shall see. also my hands have to not hurt. I have been having problems with hand stress again. it comes and goes for the past few years. that is the curse of working with computer all the time. also not do ergromatic things when working on computers also does bad things to you.

OK, it is late. I am off to bed. I hope to get back on a normal sleep schedule tonight from the past 4 days of crazy sleeping habits.