Brady MacDonald's Blog

Which mobile device is right for me?

2011-06-12T11:03:00.001-07:00

Due to the nature of my work (IT Systems Engineer) and being the “mobile device guy” (BES admin, etc) I often get asked, “I am looking into buying a new phone. Which mobile device is right for me?”. “Well it depends”, is what I usually say.

If you saw my previous post, I carry around four mobile phones (plus I have an iPad). I have ready access to a blackberry 9700, an iPhone 4, WP7 (Samsung Focus), and an Android (Samsung Infuse). When I show people the different phones, they usually ask, “Which is your favorite?” This is the point where my likes might not be the same as the person asking. I am a geek at heart and like messing around with gadgets, so my take on things might be different than someone who just wants their phone to work without much fuss.

Here in no particular order are the pluses and minuses of the different phones. I am not breaking down every single detail of each type of phone OS/device. I am just hitting the high points.

iPhone :

+’s

· Lots of polished apps

· Great camera*

· For the most part it just works

· Pretty good phone sound quality

· Lots of peripherals

-‘s

A little restrictive (for example, try adding a custom alert tone like you can do on most any other phone).

Personal preference, but current hardware is not that great considering you need a cover to prevent the “death grip” reception issue. Also the phone is made with glass that is on the front and back making it easy to drop and crack. Plan on getting a case for the phone.

Lousy camera*

Recommendation:

If you are a diehard Mac fan, this is your phone. If you want a phone that pretty much works like you want it to, again this is your phone. If you like to “hack” your phone, you can always jailbreak it, but this will void your warranty. Why is “camera” listed as both a plus and a minus? The phone sensor is actually really good and takes crisp, clear pictures, but at the same time, it oversaturates the photos which is to me something that should be left to post processing a pic in say Light Room or another photo manipulation application.

Blackberry:

+’s

· Great physical keyboard (if you are into that sort of thing)

· Great messaging device

· Great phone sound quality

· Great reception

-‘s

· Applications aren’t that good and can be a bit expensive compared to the other manufactures

· Phones tend to be on the smaller side which makes the screen kind of tiny and hard to read

· RIM seems to be out of touch with its users and not really innovating for the consumer market

Recommendation:

If all you do is use your phone as a phone and/or for messaging purposes and don’t mind a smaller screen, then this is your phone. Most of the major apps like Facebook and Twitter are available and work ok, but honestly they aren’t nearly as polished as say the iPhone version of the application. If a physical keyboard is a necessity, you can’t beat the keyboard on most blackberries especially their newer high end models like the Bold series, and the Torch.

WP7:

+’s

· Fast user interface (UI)

· Simple UI

· No crashes

-‘s

· Not as many apps as iPhone and Android

· Not as many phones to choose from compared to Android. For example at the time I am writing this there is only one WP7 phone on Verizon while there are over a dozen Android devices again on Verizon.

Recommendation:

WP7 is not like the older Windows Mobile OS that you might have remembered from a few years ago. It is a complete rewrite. Now that is a good thing and a bad thing. Good because they are getting rid of all the old code and starting over fresh. Bad because all the old apps no longer work and have to be rewritten. Right now there are close to 25,000 apps in the Windows Marketplace with the majority of the well known apps being there. The WP7 is a good OS for an OS that has only been around for less than 9 months.

Android:

+’s

· Plenty of devices to choose from on most carriers

· Lots of apps

· Customizable

-‘s

· Crash prone

· Malware, viruses on the upswing

Recommendation:

Google Android devices are currently the number one selling mobile phone. Many different companies make the devices and they are available on almost all of the carriers. If you like “hacking” your PC with different skins and launchers and what not, then Android is the mobile OS for you as you can hack it any which way you want.

Well Brady, this is all well and good, but if it was your money, what would YOU buy?

Ok, this is usually the second question I am asked after which device someone should buy.

First, I am not a big gaming fan especially on my phone. The screens are just too small and well I am 43 years old and not into gaming like I used to be ;-). I like to play the occasional game of “Go”, but that is about it. I also don’t browse the web that much on my phone. What I do care more about is email, text, phone sound quality, a good camera (like they say, the best camera in the world is the one you have with you and most people have their cell phone with them all of the time), and a few select apps.

I don’t care for Android as it crashes and locks up quite a lot. I shouldn’t have to hack my phone (“root it”), just to make the GPS, wifi, etc work properly. Also the UI is an absolute mess.

iPhones are a good phone, but they are too restrictive. If you want to change your alert tone, you had better like the built in selection because that is all you are going to get. To me it is just too much of a controlled environment.

Blackberry is a pretty decent phone, but it lacks a few apps that I like to use. For example I like going geocaching, but the geocaching app isn’t available for blackberry. Blackberry does a good job with every other function that I look for in a phone. I am looking forward when RIM releases their QNX based phones (maybe by this time next year).

This leaves WP7. My next phone will more than likely be a WP7 device. I really like the UI and the speed. They have all of the apps I need and email on the device works great. I think Microsoft is in this game for the long haul and have committed to a minimum of five years to the launch of the new mobile platform. From what I understand developing for the WP7 platform is relatively easy which should help increase the amount of apps available.

Summary:

In the end when purchasing a mobile phone is a personal decision based on many factors like cost, performance, carrier choice, etc. What is the best phone for one person might be the worst for another. At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself what do you see yourself using the device for the most and make sure that the device you are purchasing is tops in that category.

Too many phones

2011-04-08T17:43:00.001-07:00

I think I have too many phones to lug around in my “man bag”.

From left to right:

iPhone 4 with Mophie Juice Pack, HTC Thunderbolt, Samsung Focus, Blackberry 9700

The iPhone is mine. The Thunderbolt (Android OS) is on loan from the nice folks at Verizon. I should be getting one permanently soon though. The Focus is my Windows Phone 7 test device for work. The blackberry is also for work as I am the “BES” admin.

Technology: Still amazed by it

2011-04-05T20:42:00.001-07:00

While at work today I attended an "All Hands IT Meeting". During the meeting a picture came up on the overhead in a PowerPoint slide that looked kind of like San Francisco. The picture looked like you were standing on Jefferson or Beach Street and looking West up towards Ghirardelli Square. Kind of bored and not being one to let things go, I quickly logged onto my iphone and brought up the Google Mobile app: http://goo.gl/eO3q. I took a picture of the PowerPoint slide and let the Google Mobile app do its thing. Now understand I snapped the pic very quickly and was quite a distance from the wall that the PowerPoint was being projected onto. There were also people in the way, so again this wasn’t the best of situations.

Once the Google App finished, it came up with a link: http://goo.gl/QtkP2. The shot I was looking for was in the “Images for traffic at night” link at the top of the results page: http://goo.gl/lYRTo. I clicked on that picture and found out that it was a picture of “Harrogate town centre”. Realizing that it wasn’t a picture of San Francisco, I selected the text and copied and pasted it into the Google search engine. I learned that this picture was actually in Harrogate, North Yorkshire England (if I had been more observant, I would have noticed the cars headlight trails were on the “wrong side” of the street. Duh). I then saved that Google link into another app called “Read it Later”: http://goo.gl/KsDm. When I got home at night, I did some reading about the area and learned something about Harrogate England.

This sequence of events utterly amazes me that things like this are possible. I work around technology all day and stuff like this keeps me energized with the type of work I do.

Mophie juice pack air for iphone 4 review

2011-02-13T16:47:00.001-08:00

I was asked if I wanted to test an extended battery pack for iphone 4’s that we might deploy to our iphone fleet at work especially field support people who are on the go a lot. Test…cool…gadget….hmmmm…Where do I sign up?
The test unit is a Mophie juice pack air for iphone 4. The device looks like a plain phone case but actually has a 1500mAh battery inside of it (there is also a 2000mAh model available called the juice pack plus). The standard iphone 4 battery utilizes a 1420mAh battery. So, technically this battery pack should double my phone’s lifespan between charges.
Looks:
The case comes in two pieces. The larger piece which contains the battery has a bypass switch on it which allows you to draw from the Mophie juice air battery or the iphone’s internal battery. There are 5 white LED charge lights on the bottom with accompanying button that when pressed shows the battery strength. There is a micro USB connection port that allows the device to be charged and sync with a computer via itunes. There is no need for disassembly of the case to sync and charge both the phone and the battery in the case. Once the iphone slides into the bottom piece and mates up with the connector that looks like the connector on a standard iphone/ipad/itouch cable, you can then slide the top piece down to cover the top of the iphone. The two pieces come together slightly past a third of the way down from the top of the iphone.
The sides on my juice pack are silver and the back is a matte black. There are also two other back colors available (red and white). The back part of the juice pack is a rubbery material that provides some tactile support to help you keep from dropping the phone.
There are cutout slots in the case for the volume controls, mute switch, power button, headphone jack/upper mic, and the camera on the back.
The Good:
The most important question here is does the juice pack well, deliver the juice? In my testing, the device almost but not quite doubled my battery life. Normally after a full day of use, my battery is around 50% used up. I typically have all the antennas on, (3G, GPS, bluetooth, and wifi). With the mophie juice pack, it doesn’t kick over to the internal battery on my phone until around four in the afternoon. Realistically, if I pushed it, I probably could get a day and a half of usability from the combination of internal phone battery and the Mophie juice pack. The documentation says you should get ~500 FULL charges out of the juice pack. Three recharges of the juice pack while it was at 1/3 battery battery strength counts as one full charge.
The styling is quite nice. I like the rubberized back on the device. The juice pack adds about 1cm of length to the phone which isn’t too bad although there is a downside to this as you will see below. Additionally the back on the juice pack adds about another 5mm of depth to the phone back which isn’t too bad.
I really like how you can charge and sync the device with a micro USB cable. I have plenty of those floating around from other devices and this makes it easier to sync and charge the device. I have never liked the proprietary iphone connection cable.
The Bad:
As mentioned above, the length of the juice pack is only increased about 1cm, but that seems to be enough to make the balance of the device “off” in your hand. When you hold the phone with the juice pack on it, it feels like it going to tip over the top of your hand (and I have fairly large hands). It isn’t that bad, but it is noticeable.
The phone becomes big enough with the juice pack installed that getting it in and out of jeans pockets takes a little more work. Again, it isn’t too bad, but those of you wearing tight “lawmen” jeans might want to think twice about getting this battery pack/case.
I wish the case had some sort of latching mechanism for where the two parts of the case come together. I don’t think it is too big of an issue, but I have already pulled the top piece of the case off pulling the phone out of my pocket.
I would be a little concerned dropping my phone with the juice pack attached to it. I think my phone would be ok, but I don’t think the juice pack would survive the fall. With the weight of the phone plus the battery pack and the fact that the silvery band around the case is just colored plastic, I have a sneaking suspicion that it would break quite easily.
There is a very slight degradation in voice quality due to the ports used in the bottom of the juice pack that funnel the speaker sounds up and through it. Also, callers reported they can hear something when I got a text or email notification and my phone was set to vibrate. The vibration through the juice pack could be heard according to callers.
The Ugly:
The price. The list price on the Mophie website is $79.95 at the time of writing. That is a bit spendy for my tastes. If it were say $50, I think this would be a much more reasonable price.
Verdict:
If you are looking for a nice extended battery for your iphone 4 and money isn’t an object, I recommend the Mophie juice pack air. It pretty much doubles your iphone 4’s battery life, it is built well, and it looks great.
******* 7/10 stars
Some pics: (Note, the LED’s aren’t on all of the time. I just turned them on to show what they look like)

Disembodied voice

2011-02-08T08:14:00.000-08:00

This morning I was eating some breakfast while surfing the web, checking work email, the usual stuff. Cassandra was in the kitchen doing some dishes. Cassandra looked out the back window and made a comment about the poor neighbors being outside with their dog for 15 minutes (waiting for the dog to do its business). About 5 seconds later I hear over my right shoulder about where the staircase is a child say, "15 minutes" in kind of a light hearted tone. It didn't quite sound like Cameron, but it didn't quite sound like Lauren either. I asked Cassandra if the kids were awake. She replied they weren't (I later went upstairs to brush my teeth and their door was closed and both were sound asleep). I also asked if she repeated saying "15 minutes". Nope.

I have no idea who or what said the second "15 minutes". I guess this is just another one of those quirky things in life that goes unexplained.

Your future cell phone will be your computer.

2011-01-22T20:21:00.001-08:00

We are at the beginnings of another watershed moment in personal computing folks. Motorola displayed the “Atrix” phone running the Android operating system at CES 2011 a couple of weeks ago: http://engt.co/eFkLlf. This “phone” is actually more than just a phone. With the docking station plugged into your monitor, it can become a desktop PC or TV. With a laptop shell that the phone plugs into, it becomes a sort of netbook. The key is this phone will have a dual core 1Ghz processor. Soon there will be quad core processors coming out for small form factor devices: http://engt.co/ifwI4q.

This is huge! Why? Think about it. You will only need one device (and some accessories) to do all of your computing. You go to work and plug this device into its docking station and through the Citrix interface connect to VDI backend. Basically VDI is a server running in your companies or third party datacenter that has multiple desktop sessions running on it. You then connect to your desktop that is running on the backend server via the Citrix interface over the network and do what you normally do like opening up Word documents, fill out Excel spreadsheets, check your email, etc. All of the heavy lifting is done on the backend servers with your phone just displaying the graphics. You undock your phone and go out to lunch all the while staying connected just as you would with any full featured smartphone that is available today or over a 3G/4G network stay connected to your work desktop session if need be or running locally stored apps and games as you do now. Later that day you need to take a plane flight to a customers site. You grab the laptop accessory and plug in your phone and finish your presentation in route. Later when you get home, you plug your phone into the docking cradle at home and watch Netflix on your large screen HD TV and check your email. If you think about it, this will also reduce the impact on the planet as theoretically you won’t need multiple PC’s and laptops anymore.

Now will you be able to play a very graphic intense game or do heavy photo or video editing on these types of devices? Certainly not (for the the foreseeable future anyways). These devices will appeal to road warriors looking to trim down their necessary equipment to take on a trip and people that need simple machines to check their email, browse the web, etc. This is what cloud computing is all about (well mostly). It means a simple device that gets you connected to the wireless network be it 3G/4G or WIFI and then you are off and running.

Sounds like science fiction huh? Years from now this device will be remembered as THE device that changed computing….again.

Freedom of Speech + Internet = BOOYA!!!

2010-10-22T20:36:00.001-07:00

I know everyone has their opinion as to the release of the US Iraq war files on wikileaks (http://goo.gl/qUBI). Here is my take on it. As a veteran and a tech geek, I am 100% behind the people who released the files and it makes me proud to be both a veteran and a tech geek. The American tax paying public (and the world for that matter) has a right to know what really happened during the Iraq war. The only caveat I have is that the information needs to be vetted and truthful because if it isn’t, then that creates a whole other set of issues. If the powers that be did nothing that went against the Geneva convention and other rules of engagement, then the US Government/military has nothing to worry about and the files will be boring and have little interest to most people other than some war historians. If the war was conducted outside these rules and regulations, then there should be repercussions to those that broke the rules.

I am glad we have the internet for exactly this reason. It allows for the democratized dissemination of information that travels to the most far flung reaches of the planet. Most people forget what the internet was created for. People often forget this as they use the WWW buying things on Ebay, killing Orcs on World of Warcraft, and watching movies streaming over Netflix. At its heart it is still a medium to store and share ideas and information.

Knowledge IS power and those that thought they had it got taken down a few pegs and that isn’t such a bad thing at all in my book. Any government is put in place to serve its populace and not the other way around. By having a transparent view into the goings on of a government helps keep the checks and balances alive and well.

Healthcare is jacked in this country

2010-09-28T19:58:00.001-07:00

During this past Labor Day, I was cleaning out some old computer parts. Lauren happened to be playing nearby and fell on an old computer CD-ROM. She cut herself pretty good near her wrist. At first I didn’t think it was so bad, but after Cassandra cleaned it out, it was decided that it might be deep and wide enough for stitches, so off to the doctors we go. Because it was Labor Day, her regular doctor wasn’t available, so we had to go to the emergency room. The nurse practitioner decided that stitches weren’t needed and after a thorough cleaning and what amounted to some glorified crazy glue applied to seal the wound and a small bandage was applied, we were sent on our way.

The bill came today:

You have GOT to be kidding me. I know my insurance sucks big time, but I didn’t know it sucks this bad.
It is amazing to me that a visit to the emergency room for what amounted to a band-aid costs nearly $900! I feel so bad for all of the people out there for whatever reason don’t have any insurance and would have to decide whether or not to take their child to the doctor or not because they couldn’t afford it.
As a country we can spend almost a trillion dollars a year on a defense budget yet we have some of the crappiest health care on the planet. We seriously have our priorities screwed up!

Denon AHD2000 Headphone review

2010-08-28T22:50:00.001-07:00

I am partially color blind. Most of what I see is in shades of grey. As such, my sense of hearing is more acute than most people I think. I really focus in on hearing things more than seeing things. A lot of people don’t hear things that I hear especially with regards to music.

One thing I really like to do is listen to music. I mean REALLY listen to music. Sure it is nice to have some music playing in the background, but there are times (especially late a night on weekends between 11pm and 1am) I like to turn the lights down low, sit in a big comfy chair and listen to some of my favorite music. The type of music I mostly listen to is Electronica, Ambient, and 80’s. I do listen to many different types of music though including alternative, reggae, 70’s, hard rock, and new age. I love deep bass.

When I listen to music, I like to listen with headphones. Headphones allow me to listen to music at relatively loud volumes without disturbing anyone. Also, a good pair of headphones will sound better than speakers unless you have several thousands of dollars for a pair of quality speakers. I have a decent setup with some Polk speakers upstairs and some Bose downstairs for the home theater, but I can’t blast those late at night.

My old Sennheiser 545 headphones are 15 years old. For the past year, they have been starting to sound a bit “frayed” as best I can put it. Low ends aren’t that tight and high ends have a slight crackle/hiss to them. It was time for a new pair.

I tried listening to several brands including some Audio Technica’s, Grado’s, Sennheiser, Denon, Beyer Dynamic, Bose, and Sony’s. I don’t need any noise cancelling headphones as I tend to listen to music in a quiet room. I looked at some wireless models, but they seemed to be a little expensive for what you were getting. As I walked around the showroom, I noticed a few times the wireless models would pop or lose connection to the base station. No thanks.

I finally settled on a pair of Denon AHD2000’s. These headphones are a closed back design. My old Sennheiser’s were an open back model. I decided to go with a closed back model due in part to the extended bass end that these types of headphones have.

Bass is definitely the strong point of these headphones. The sound is tight and clean. I have had the headphones about a week now and I haven’t heard any distortion on the low end. Mid range is about average. Voices are clear, but not terribly so. Hi end is crisp and bright. I think my old Sennheiser’s might have had a little bit better mid range, but not by much.

Fit and finish are superb. The ear pieces are plastic (I believe), but they feel like metal and are quite solid. The frame is made out of magnesium, light and strong. The ear pieces are a leatherette material (leather would have been nicer). There is a standard mini plug that screws into a full size plug. The cord is wrapped in a thick material that coils fairly easily.

I have a fairly large head. The headphones fit quite well on my head. There is no pressure on the top of my head from the headphone band. The ear pieces fit perfectly over my ears (I do have rather small ears though).

I was a bit nervous getting a pair of closed headphones wondering if they would be too warm during extended listening periods. I am glad to report that I have no problems listening to these headphones for many hours with just a slight bit of heat build up and fatigue. The ear pieces are fairly large and when I am laying back against a pillow, they tend to push the headphones forward a bit, but not too much. Even though these are closed ear headphones, some sound does leak out. Not as much as my Sennheiser’s, but more than I thought would from this type of headphone.

I am very pleased with these headphones. They are a treat to listen to. Songs I have listened to for years sound brand new and alive. I keep hearing new things in songs that I hadn’t heard before in any other headphones or speakers I have owned. Most headphones require a break in period before you start to hear what they will eventually sound like. If I hear anything different after the break-in period, I will update my post.

People, are you that retarded?

2010-08-15T09:16:00.001-07:00

The country that I live in (the USA) seems to be full of people who JUST DON”T GET IT. Case in point: Obama defends plan to build a mosque near ground zero. Now the bat shit crazy tea baggers, right wing zealots, and baby boomers (ok, that last one is a generalization, but not by much) are coming out and saying that Obama is wrong for saying this and pretty much even allowing it. I mean how dare he allow for religious freedom in the country founded on among other things freedom of religions to the people who make the USA their home.

Look, just because a mosque is being built a couple of blocks away from ground zero doesn’t mean that the Muslims will be planning their next attack from that very location. It also doesn’t mean anything that Muslims are building near ground zero because they didn’t blow up the twin towers. Religious extremist nut jobs blew up the twin towers.

What about Timothy McIdiot? Some have speculated that he had very strong Christian beliefs and was a member of a Christian cult tied in to the Aryan brotherhood. Should they never build a Christian church near the Oklahoma bombing location? Of course they should. Timothy McVey was a crazed person just like the twin tower bombers.

People, this country is about freedom of speech and religion. You are a bigot, racist, and at the very least small minded if you think for one second that a religion that is based on peace and understanding like many of the other great religions out there is out to get the rest of us. The Christians had their crusades that killed and murdered thousands of people. No one is a saint, get over it.

This pic pretty much sums up the whole issue:

Things are not always what they seem to be

2010-03-01T22:49:00.001-08:00

Tonight just like every night I put the dogs out so that they could go do their business. I got one of them back in his crate and then I heard the other one that was still in the backyard barking like crazy. That meant pretty much only one thing; he had cornered some animal. I got a flashlight and stood on the deck and with the flashlight located the what was causing all of the commotion. Sure enough there was Loki and a bewildered looking opossum suffering the wrath of a pissed off boxer dog.

I started to think how stupid this animal was. It was next to a tree yet it didn't even try to climb it. It had sharp claws and lots of fairly big teeth and yet it decided to just stand there. Hell, it didn't even play the "playing dead" card. It just stood there. You dumb freakin' beast I thought. How did your kind even evolve to allow for one of your species to be in my backyard on this night?

I was finally able to get Loki by the collar and get him in the house. After a quick check to see if Loki had received any cuts or bite marks, I decided to go back out and check on the poor beast to see if it had suffered any wounds. Yep, the critter was still standing there just as dazed and confused as I had left it. It hadn't even moved an inch. It didn't appear to have any wounds inflicted upon it either.

And that is when I noticed it. The opossums eyes were all milky gray colored and not the typical dark black they normally have. It was obvious it had cataracts in both eyes. I shined the flashlight away from its eyes and then back again. No response. I did this a few more times. Again, no response. The poor thing was blind. I could tell it could hear as its ears perked up when I made a noise and it was constantly sniffing the air.

I started to look at the creature a bit closer. It was obvious this critter had seen better days. Its fur was really matted. It was underweight. It also had a few scars on its ears and down its side where some fur was missing. I started to wonder how many other animals had attacked it.

I left the animal to its business and purposely didn't bring in the dog food bowl that had a few kibbles left in it so that this old and busted up marsupial could have its snack that it had earned and almost lost its life over.

I learned something in all of this. It might sound funny, but it was almost a religious experience of sorts. What I had thought was just some stupid animal causing me frustration and didn't deserve to live as it was so dumb to not even try to flee or defend itself in any way was actually doing all that it could. In my mind I had condemned this creature to suffer and die because it was annoying. As it turns out, all that it was doing was trying to survive the best that it could with what it had to work with. It amazed me how quickly I had made all of these assumptions of what this animal should be doing when it was doing exactly what it could do. Sometimes all you can do in life is sit where you are and take whatever life presents good, bad, or indifferent.

Yes, tonight I learned something from an old blind opossum. Things are not always what they appear to be.

The digital cleanse

2010-01-09T09:12:00.001-08:00

I read about how the musician John Mayer suggested people go on a “digital cleanse”. I had tried something similar a few years ago before twitter, facebook, and blogs became popular. You had to go without email for a week. Work email was ok, but no personal emails.

I only made it a day.

You see I am a weak bastard when it comes to electronics, gizmos, technology, etc. Just looking around my house, it is sickening all of the electronic crap I have. Well, no it isn’t, but my wife thinks so and maybe she has a point. I am on the computer a good 50+ hours a week and always have a cell phone (myyyy preshhhhhuussssss) within arms reach at all times.

I would say I am a connected kind of guy. No not THAT kind of connected with Tony Soprano and crew. The geeky kind of connected. Information of any sort is interesting to me. When I was a kid I used to sit and read catalogs like Crutchfield’s, Heathkit and just memorize all of the different statistics and power ratings. I read a lot on just about everything. When I was a teenager, I liked reading my Dad’s Scientific American, OMNI, and Playboy magazines. Oh, that last one wasn’t true. Really. I am just seeing if you are paying attention. Anyways, having access to information and how information is disseminated to me has been kind of an interesting topic. It is one of the reasons why I wanted to get into the IT field (besides that the chicks love a guy who talks about routers, servers, storage area networks, etc. If my wife asks me to talk dirty to her, I say something like, “The server shut down dirty and I had to do a fschk to make sure I didn’t have any dirty sectors on the drive that would cause corruption.” Yeah I know how to turn a girl on.). For a while I was really interested in ham radio as I thought that was so cool that you could bounce radio waves off of the Earth’s atmosphere and talk to someone on the other side of the planet if conditions were just right.

Nowadays it is really easy to get access to pretty much anything you want to know about. It is also easy to stay connected to this information stream that includes your friends and family no matter where they live. I don’t live where I grew up. I moved around quite a bit during my college years and then in the military. Most people I know are scattered across the globe and with things like email, twitter, facebook, and blogging, I can keep up to date with what they are doing. Distance really doesn’t mean anything now when it comes to relationships. I always knew that growing up, but today it is even more true.

Getting back to the digital cleanse thing, this week was interesting. I had a lot to say with my son turning six and the CES show (digital toys!!!) going on among other things. I got accustomed to updating cyberspace with my ideas, and thoughts that were important to me. I will admit it was a little difficult not posting things this week. I actually slipped up once this week and sent an email via my phone, but I had seriously forgotten that was on the verboten list. Other than that, it was a complete shut down of all social internet sites and applications(other than email).

I also missed not keeping up with people. Did Steve find a job? Just how cold is Cindy in Montana this week? What sort of heavy machinery is Shawn driving today? Did Kevin post any new videos of his music? Will Michelle regale us with another housewife from Yacolt witty-ism (I kid Michelle, I kid!!!)? All of these things become a part of my life that I can dip the digital toe into every once in a while to get a slice of their life and they in turn get to do the same with my life if they so chose. Seriously, how great is that?

Yes, all of this information can be hectic and controlling if you let it and I think that is the point of what John is saying here. Back away from it for a while and gain some perspective. I fast one day a week for several different reasons, but this is one of the reasons why I fast with regards to food. How do I relate to food and what is its meaning to me? I am always trying to gain more insight into my life and my surroundings.

Now back to posting a bunch of useless nonsense about what I ate and what movie I saw because you know you are dying to hear about my life.

Blackberry 9000 (aka bold) vs iPhone 3G

2009-11-22T21:16:00.000-08:00

VS

First things first. I realize that this “review” is about a year late as these two phones are one rev back from what is currently on the market or in the case with the blackberry bold, the bold “2” or 9700 is due to launch any day now on ATT (it already has launched on the T-mobile network). I wanted to give my impressions of the two devices at a higher level with regards to the two product lines and not so much the individual units themselves.
iPhone:
I have had the iPhone 3G for about 9 months. My previous phones before the iPhone were a couple of Winmo devices like the Samsung blackjack II and before that the Cingular 8525. Both of these phones were actually pretty decent devices. The 8525 was probably the closest to what I would call phone nirvana as it had it all at the time. It was starting to show its age and the fact that I had to use the stylus for pretty much everything other than making phone calls got annoying quick. It also didn’t have a built in GPS and being a geo-caching nut, I really wanted a device that had a GPS in it. One day while logging into geocaching.com, I noticed they had an iPhone app for geocaching. I resisted purchasing the iPhone on principle, but finally gave in after about 3 months. I know, I know, I am weak.
One of the reasons I didn’t want an iPhone was the lack of a physical keyboard. The blackjack and the 8525 both had a physical keyboard (the 8525 was a delight to type on for such a small device). It took me quite a while to get the hang of the iPhones virtual keyboard. The predictive typing helped out quite a bit. I can still type faster on a physical keyboard though.
The user interface on the iphone is pretty slick. The capacitive touch screen is a real engineering feat. It allows for multiple fingers to touch the interface at the same time and allows for things like “pinching” to allow for zooming in and out for example. The ability to finger swipe on the menu system allows for quick menu action.
Apps for the iPhone are done very well and is in my opinion one of the main selling points for the iPhone. It is brain dead simple to find apps, buy them, download them, and start using them.
The camera is pretty decent for a 2MP camera. The colors are good and consistent.
Call quality is very good on both ends of the phone.
The music player on the iphone is somewhat confusing. It just seems like it is trying to do too much. Some people like it, I am not one of those people.
Email/SMS is done very well on the iPhone. Exchange support is there if needed along with POP and SMTP.
Web browsing is outstanding on the iPhone. With its large screen, it is easy to view web pages.
Some things I don’t like about the iphone are that it doesn’t have some sort of light to allow for notification of new messages. I really wish they would have included this as I often set my phone in quiet mode and just want to visually look at the phone to see if I got a message or not. I am really surprised they didn’t include a light around the circular button at the bottom of the phone that pulsed like on a Mac computer. For me the jury is still out on the virtual keyboard. I don’t like having to rely on a proprietary cable for syncing and charging. The blackberry uses a standard USB charging cable and since I have a ton of those from various gadgets, there is always one at hand.

Blackberry:
I got a new job about 5 months ago. Part of my new job responsibilities is being an Exchange/Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) admin. I haven’t played with a blackberry since they were a text only device. I was able to get a blackberry bold 9000 and a blackberry curve 8320 for doing some testing. These are the two most common devices deployed in my work environment.
The screen on the bold is incredible. While not being as large as the iPhone and lacking the touch screen capabilities of the iPhone, it is absolutely beautiful. I don’t care how good your vision is, I dare you to find a pixel on the screen. It is like looking at a miniature hi-def TV.
I don’t know if I care for the scroll wheel. On the newer blackberries, they moved away from this type of input device which is probably a good thing.
They keyboard is really, really good. I had forgotten how much I missed typing on a physical keyboard. The keys have the right amount of play and are spaced the right distance apart (at least for my somewhat large hands).
The apps are OK. Nothing special here, but there are some decent ones out there and blackberries “App world” is no Apple App store, but it does the job. There aren’t as many apps for the blackberry as there are for the iPhone, but the most popular ones like facebook, twitter, etc are there.
The camera is not as good as the iPhone, but the phone does take videos.
Call quality is quite good and very comparable to the iPhone.
I like the fact I can use add on memory cards to the phone, so there is technically no limit of how much storage that is available. With the iPhone, you are locked in to whatever you purchased (in my case 8GB).
The music player is quite nice. The audio sound quality was superb.
Web browsing is just so-so on the blackberry. Navigating isn’t as easy as the iPhone because you have to use the scroll ball and the screen is smaller, so there is a lot of zooming in and out.
Email/SMS is the bread and butter of a blackberry. It takes a while to become used to the combined inbox where your different emails and even facebook updates are kept.
Things I don’t like about the blackberry are that the screen is somewhat too small. If it was just a 1/4 of an inch bigger, it would be so much better (the newer blackberry 9700 has a somewhat larger screen.) The build quality could be a little bit better. The battery cover on the back comes off quite easily and while using it, I have had it pop off more than a few times and the battery falls out as a result. Again the newer blackberries have addressed this issue (so the spec documents say).
Conclusion:
I wouldn’t mind using either phone as my primary phone (with google voice, I can have both phones ring depending on which one I have with me at the time). Both have their positives and negatives and in the end they end up being equal.
Now if I could only get my hands on an android device…..hmmm…..

We don’t need you anymore.

2009-07-16T22:18:00.000-07:00

First off, I am no economist. I am not even capable enough to balance my checkbook. There are things in life I can do pretty well (if I do say so myself), but finances just isn’t my forte.

That being said, I noticed something today looking at the 6 month DJIA chart. Starting in March of 2009, there is a fairly gradual gain being seen there. It isn’t the best rally Wall Street has had in its long history, but at least it appears from the outside looking in that there is some good stuff going on there and we might be heading out of a recession as a few financial prognosticators are saying.

Now, here is another chart that I saw earlier in the week. It is the US Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment survey. For the month of June, it shows a figure of 9.5% meaning that 9.5% of the population that CAN work isn’t working. Yes, yes, there are all kinds of caveats about “seasonal adjustments” and the fact that a lot of people aren’t being counted if they stop looking for work for longer than four weeks and a lot of other crazy numbers that make my head spin. For the sake of the argument, lets just say a lot of people are out of work right now in the US who should be working. Other countries are being hit pretty hard too, but I was lazy and didn’t look up the numbers. Global recession? Ok, I wouldn’t doubt it.

Now, when I look at the above two charts, doesn’t something just leap out at you? It sure did to me. Here we have a stock market showing several months of gains and the unemployment numbers showing the highest percentage of out of work people in over a decade.

Here is where my silly wild ass bug eyed thinking machine most people call a brain goes into a temporary lock up mode (don’t worry folks, it is only temporary…hopefully). How could this be? How can the stock market be doing fairly well and yet vast numbers of people aren’t employed? Then my brain slams into gear and a thought crosses my mind. Could the reason why this is happening is because we don’t need these people to have a functioning society? Huh? What? How can that be? I dunno, but it seems to me that this is what the numbers are saying. Now true we are in debt up to our kids standing on our shoulders and our grandkids standing on their shoulders eyeballs and all that, but seriously, this is the only way anything makes sense here. It is like someone somewhere is saying, “why create new jobs? We have a fairly healthy economy as is?” Why do I need to deal with these unemployed people? Just leave them to fend for themselves. I have a job right? AM I RIGHT??? Wrong!

Something is seriously messed up here. I have no idea what is really going on or what is happening. I am just trying to call things as I see them and it doesn’t make any sense to me.

Here is hoping that those of you out there looking for work can find it soon.

GTD: Where I am at

2009-06-21T22:19:00.000-07:00

A long time ago I wrote a blog post about how I was progressing with my GTD (Getting Things Done) system. I thought I would circle back to see how things have progressed.

I still don’t follow the GTD method that is laid out by David Allen. I just couldn’t get it to work right. I also found I was just making more time for me to do more work. Not what I want to do really.

For one thing, I gave up on OneNote. For me it is just to unwieldy. I also now have an iphone and there is no OneNote client for the iphone. Also, I could never get the OneNote mobile client to work the way I wanted it to when I had a windows based smartphone. I do like the Evernote application. It is a really nice desktop and iphone application that can do many things and does them well. I use evernote to type up my notes and take pictures of things I want to remember like business cards and things like that. It is easy to search for my information which is a key requisite in my system.

I also use the “Remember The Milk” (RTM) application. It is a web based application. It also has a really nice iphone application (paid version only). I started to use the RTM application because I started to work somewhere where I didn’t have full control of my Outlook tasks and couldn’t sync to my iphone. I use RTM to set up reminders and to remember things I might have to do for work or need to be done around the house. I can be alerted via several methods whether it is an SMS text, email, or even by twitter.

I have started using a moleskine cahier as my catch all “to do list”. I take a cahier with me everywhere. I don’t always carry my iphone with me wherever I go (I know blasphemy!). I still haven’t gotten used to typing on the iphone and can write faster in the cahier. I protect it with a leather cover from Renaissance Art. The cahier has a very flimsy cover and while that makes it easier to carry in your pocket, it will tend to fall apart without this protection.

I have a large moleskine notebook that I use to take notes in. I keep the notebook in a Rickshaw folio. I like this folio a lot. It holds a few of my pens and pencils and some other odds and ends and isn’t too big.

I also keep a journal. It is an Oberon Design Lotus Icon journal. This is starting to go with me everywhere. I might do a post later about this journal in more length.

All in all this system works for me. Yes, there are a lot of “inboxes”, but it allows me to be flexible. I have successfully dealt with the “What should I use, digital or analog for my GTD system?” by using both ;-). I might have a few minor tweaks like using the new extra small moleskine volant’s instead of the larger cahiers for my catch all notes.

Tin can living

2009-04-01T22:21:00.000-07:00

This appears to me to be a modern day version of the “Lord of the Flies” just waiting to happen.

I wouldn’t want to be that little guy in the middle. I bet he becomes the first guy to mysteriously “disappear” under “unusual circumstances” when the rations start running low. Just saying…..

http://www.universetoday.com/2009/03/31/crew-of-six-begins-105-day-mars-mission-simulation/

The little computer that could

2009-03-28T22:22:00.000-07:00

Cassandra’s computer has been starting to show its age. It is about 6+ years old. It has started locking up recently, so time to get something new.

Since there was no money budgeted for this project, it would have to be done fairly cheap. I set the original target at $300. We already have a working monitor, so we didn’t need to buy that. I also had confidence that the current hard drive (IDE Western Digital 160GB) wasn’t the cause of the system issues, so I could probably save some money and use that.

Cassandra uses the computer for surfing the web, email, and chat, and we have a few educational games for the kids on the system. The system isn’t taxed very much with her normal usage. I tried to load Vista on her old machine and it would run, but not very well. I didn’t expect it to with it being such an old system.

After a lot of research, I came across a few articles about the Intel atom processor. This dinky little chip is

VERY small as you can see with the picture at left (I believe this is the 230 single core chip).

I purchased the Intel 945GC Mini ITX motherboard for about $80. The motherboard comes with the CPU already attached. It is using the Intel 330 atom processor which is a dual core 1.6GHz processor with hyper threading and is 64bit capable. I also purchased a single stick of 667Mhz DDR2 2GB Kingston memory for $20. I had a couple of old ATX cases around the house, but this motherboard uses the ITX form factor cases. I purchased the Rosewill, RS-MI-01 BK for $55. The case comes with a 250 Watt power supply which is more than adequate for this size of a system. I also already had a DVD ROM from the old system to use with the system, so I didn’t need one even though I could have just used my system’s USB DVD to build up the system and then removed it.

It took me about 30 minutes to put the motherboard/case/hard drive combo together. For testing, I first loaded Ubuntu 8.10 64bit. The system was very responsive with full Compiz desktop effects. Since I had a copy of Vista 64bit to use, I installed that next. Again the system is very responsive with full Aero glass effects. Some forums state that Apple OSX runs on this setup as well.

All in all, I am absolutely amazed how much grunt this little computer has. It is light on the power requirements using 55W when fully cranking along and 8W idle. It does all of the things Cassandra needs and does them very well. The case is small and unobtrusive too being only 8.7”x5.1”x13”. It is fairly quiet as well. This setup would make a great home server.

I am quite pleased with the results of this project. I only spent about $170 total for the project and came in way under budget. Cassandra is pleased with the system’s responsiveness even though after building it up and asking her what she thought, she said, “It is just a computer”. Yin and Yang we truly are.

I named the computer “pea-brain”, but that isn’t quite fair as it actually is more of a “mighty mouse”.

Flashback

2009-03-14T22:23:00.000-07:00

It is a lazy rainy Saturday afternoon today. A while back my parents sent a box of things that contained some memorabilia from my two trips to Japan.

These pictures were taken in August of 1985. I was 17 years old. I am standing on top of Mt Fuji (12,388Ft) in my bleached out levi’s, way too thin wind breaker (temperature was hovering around freezing), and my Purple Converse Chuck E. Taylor’s.

I had just arrived in Japan a few days beforehand. I was seriously jet lagged. It takes roughly two days to climb to the top, so we stayed in one of the many huts that my host family had arranged for us to stay in. We had an early evening meal with what I can best remember to be a chicken curry. I got very sick from the food and was up all night from the jet lag and the rumbling in my guts. Just about the time I was falling back asleep, they woke us up at 2AM to finish the ascent to the top so we could see the sunrise from the top. All I wanted to do was go back to sleep, but I thought this is my only chance at doing this, I might as well push on.

As I was hiking to the top in a dazed and confused stupor, I slowly began to gain an energy that I hadn’t had previously. I became calmer and even though I was freezing, cold, and half awake, I felt great.

When we got to the top, the sun was just starting to peak over the horizon. What happened next will be seared into my brain forever. Standing about a dozen feet to my left was a Buddhist monk in a saffron colored robe. He was standing next to the main hut at the top. It was the first time I had ever seen a Buddhist monk. I tried not to stare, but he fascinated me to no end. He was obviously deep in contemplation and was reciting some sort of prayer in almost a whisper. Just then the sun crested the horizon and it was like it pierced something in me. I looked over at the monk and he stared at me and with some of the most determined eyes I think I have ever seen said to me, “Wakari masu ka?” (Do you understand?). BAM! Yes….Yes I did. For a few moments I did understand completely. I replied back “Wakari masu” (I do understand). It was incredible. I was there on top of Mt Fuji, and yet I wasn’t.

As my host brothers and I hiked back down the hill, I felt like I was floating. We got to the train station and I had two big blisters on my heals where my Chuck E Taylor’s had done their damage. I smiled.

Photography

2009-01-18T21:27:00.000-08:00

Lately I have been bitten by the photography bug. At first I couldn’t explain why. I really enjoyed photography when I was younger in my teens and 20’s. Looking back on it, I don’t exactly know why I gave up on photography. Sure, I take pictures of family events and things like that, but I don’t necessarily get into the artistic facet of photography anymore.

In my meditations, something started to emerge. I have wrestled with the notion that I had become jaded with life. Why is this? Well, I guess it is due in part to that whole mid-life crisis thing. At this point in life, you become a machine. You go to work 40+ hours a week and just try to have enough energy to make it to Friday so you can collapse on the weekends. Everything is pretty much the same as the day before. Nothing really changes. Remember being a kid and it seemed like the days lasted forever (in a good way) and there was so much to learn, do, and see? You became fascinated with everything around you. Maybe I am different than others here, but that is how it was for me growing up. I could sit and stare at an ant colony for hours at a time.

Again, back to my meditations, I noticed that I needed to “wake up” (again). I needed to change my perceptions on how I saw things. I needed to rip the veneer of life off and the cruft that had built up over time and return to seeing things differently. I wanted to not just see a bird, but really SEE that bird. The colors of its wings (well, the colors I can see), the shape of its beak, the look in its eyes. Sure, it might be just another black capped chickadee, but this particular one that I am looking at has a story to tell if I would just pay attention. I realized what I was looking for was to put my photographer’s eyes back into my head. I wanted to see the glint of sunshine on the gossamer wings of a dragon fly or the dew on a spider web early in the morning as if I was seeing it all for the first time. Photography has a tendency to make you slow down and take it all in and study the subject matter and then try to capture that instant of time. In the very least, I am hoping this will be a step in the right direction.

Now it is time to grab the camera and go sit and stare at that ant hill for a few hours.

The Day the Earth Stood Still

2008-12-29T21:28:00.000-08:00

I saw the remake(?) of the 1951 movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still” today. I remember watching the original movie as a kid and the robot “GORT” scared the pee-wadding out of me similar to when the alien in the original War of the Worlds movie put its hand on that lady in the farmhouse. Even though it was scary, I was hooked on the sci-fi genre in no small part due to GORT. I just thought he was bad ass. Just look at him at the picture on the right. Que Hombre!!!

The reviews from the professionals haven’t been too kind to the new remake of the movie. Actually, the two movies are very different from each other. At a high level, the first one was a warning from the aliens that we shouldn’t be messing around with nuclear weapons as it would be humanities downfall. This time around it was more about how we have goofed up the environment so bad, the aliens basically need to hit the reset button on the Earth.

The movie doesn’t have a lot of plot twists and is very predictable. The plot is about as straight forward as it gets. Still, it is a good story and seems pretty believable with the way humans have treated the Earth.

Keanu Reaves plays “Klaatu”. He is the alien dude. I use the word dude, because at any moment you get the feeling he is going to bust out with his “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” speak. At the very least he will pull a Neo from the Matrix trilogy (Think “Whoa…..”). I can see why they cast Keanu as Klaatu as he can play a dispassionate deadpan alien with little emotion quite well. One scene shows a guy having a heart attack in a busy train station and while others quickly rush to the guys aid, Klaatu just munches down on a tuna salad sandwich he just stole from a nearby vending machine and watches the whole scene unfold in front of him without even batting an eye. I won’t say how he arrived on Earth, but let’s just say his space suit is pretty nasty.

Kathy Bates plays the secretary of defense for the US. She actually plays a pretty believable role and does what she is supposed to do and try to protect us from the perceived threat.

John Cleese has a brief but very well played role of an aging Nobel Laureate that Klaatu has a brief meet up with so that the alien can see we aren’t all wicked evil little beings and deserve a second chance.

Will Smith’s kid plays Jennifer Connelly’s stepson. He is one annoying little brat and quite frankly couldn’t act for crap. I guess it is good to have well known parents in the biz.

Then there is Jennifer Connelly. Ooooh, she is just soooo dreamy. My heart is all a flutter. That girl is just so beautiful; breathtakingly so actually. I think she played a decent part, but honestly I don’t know as those eyes of hers kept my attention. She played some sort of micro-biology scientist something-or-other who was very important. Anyways, she was the central human character.

The movie just seemed to never really get off of the ground. It was like, eh, the aliens are here. Mass riots spreading around the globe, people acting stupid, etc. There were some pretty good special effects and I would have loved more time given to Klaatu’s protector robot GORT (I didn’t care for how they depicted how GORT was composed of nanorobots that looked like small gnats. I don’t know, I just thought the nanobots would be a bit more different and “techie” looking.) Actually, I think the whole movie would have been better if GORT just came to Earth and started kicking some butt holding Jennifer Connelly in a King Kong/Fay Wray sort of way. That would have been pretty cool. Alien robots and hot chicks sell tickets!

In the end, the movie could have been a bit better. The product placement in the movie is just a little too in your face at times which is getting to be annoying at current movies in general. Don’t go into it expecting it to be anything like the original because it isn’t. It is a decent flick and if you like sci-fi (and Jennifer Connelly ;-) ), it is worth seeing it even though they didn’t even mention the famous catchphrase from the original movie “Klaatu barada nikto”.

Cleaning gutters

2008-11-16T21:31:00.000-08:00

It is that time of year here to clean out the gutters on your home. The leaves haven’t all quite fallen off the tree, but it was a nice sunny day and it is somewhat easier to do this chore on a nice day rather than in the wind and the rain.

While doing this task, I noticed a few things. One, the goop in the gutter is quite “fragrant”. It has an earthy, damp, rotting smell. Second, I noticed how the gutter is its own little ecosystem. There were all kinds of critters living in there. The largest species was a spider about the size of a small pea. It was bright orange and had a very small yet ornate web. There was also some little squirmy worms. They were worms as opposed to the other squirmy things in there which were mosquito larvae. I suppose the mosquito larvae were using the squirmy little pinkish/white worms as a food source. I also noticed a few different types of beetle species and a couple of ants. I am sure there were other things growing in there, but they were too small for the unaided eye to see.

It is amazing sometimes what you find doing the most mundane of things like cleaning out gutters. There was a whole ecosystem that lived just a few feet above my head that I didn’t know anything about until I got up close and personal to it.

What did I do with all of the crud I cleaned out of the gutter? I kept it! Yep. It was enough to fill a bucket and looked like it would make a great compost for some seedlings in the Spring.

The Buddha Machine

2008-11-09T21:30:00.000-08:00

This is a cool little gizmo. The device does nothing more than play a few ambient clips (or “drones” as they call them) from the group FM3. FM3 supposedly got the idea for the Buddha Machine from the little Buddhist chant boxes that are sold in temples throughout Asia. Instead of having the chants embedded into the memory chips, they had their drones embedded.

They come in many different colors including a very rare set that is made out of Pu-erh tea! Mmmmm…..Pu-erh tea, yummy.

My buddy John Lee from work translated the Chinese characters. For all I know, he is yanking my chain and knowing John, he probably is.

Here is the translation:

翅部 – Wing Area – as in Wing from a bird

事倍功半 – Twice the Output, Half the Effort – it’s a common Chinese saying, but not appropriate to describe 2 AA batteries.

路喂 – Road “Hi” – first character means Road, second character is common way to say hello over the phone, together they do not describe circuits

願望 – Desire/Hope/Wish – doesn’t mean plastic outer shell

心 – Heart – ok the Buddha, I get it

X裁 – don’t know if that first character is even a word, but the second one means to get rid of, as commonly used in laying off people (裁員)

Now, I haven’t held one of these gizmos although I have downloaded the tracks that are on the device. I don’t know what it is about the device, but I find them very intriguing. I read once that the music group Kraftwerk way back when they first started making digital music envisioned a time in the future where little machines would be everywhere creating music for people to enjoy. I can’t help but think that the Buddha Machine was the type of device they had in mind.

Facebook

2008-10-11T22:33:00.000-07:00

Well, after much cajoling from Steve G., I signed up for Facebook a few weeks ago. I have resisted in getting involved with any of these types of sites because to me they just feed the ego a way to glorify your self. I also don't have a lot of time to spend on yet another site.

The interesting thing about Facebook is that it is kind of nice to connect up with people you haven't heard from in a long while. It is nice to see where life has taken them and their stories.

I am not into all of the things you can do on Facebook, but I like how it does keep you connected to your friends. I also like how Facebook was set up with privacy in mind. I don't necessarily want the unwashed masses seeing some of my personal details that I have in my Facebook profile. I can put stuff like that on my blog here.

So, if you are interested in connecting with me again, look me up on Facebook ;-).

Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds

2008-09-09T22:32:00.000-07:00

On my way to work today, I saw some clouds I have always wanted to see. I had heard about them way back in college in meteorology class and either had never paid attention to them in the past or had never seen them before.

The clouds are called Kelvin-Helmholz clouds. They are pretty cool looking. From what I understand, they don't last very long and these sure didn't. I barely caught them with my cell phone camera. They were starting to collapse rather quickly. Not the best picture in the world, but you get the idea.

Fasting

2008-08-17T22:34:00.000-07:00

I have been fasting one day a week for about 6 months now. I started off kind of slow by only having a glass of juice (apple, grape, cranberry, etc) once a day and maybe a very small serving of puree type soup for dinner. I did that for the first couple of months. Now I only have a couple of cups of tea during the day. I "break" my fast at night before going to bed by drinking a shot of Goji juice and a shot of either Mangosteen juice or Acai juice depending on what we have available. I also drink twice the normal amount of water while I am fasting to help rid the body of toxins and other gunk.

The first couple of months it wasn't easy. I would get kind of woozy by the end of the day from not eating. For the most part it was my mind playing tricks on me. I found it was more or less my mind craving the food and thinking thoughts of food more than anything. Over time, it has become easier.

Some benefits I have noticed are that I have lost weight. I am down to about 220lbs which is not bad for someone 6' 4" tall with my type of frame and is my goal weight (I graduated high school weighing 225lbs). Our food bill has dropped a bit because I am eating 1/7th less than I was before. I don't seem to get as sick as much as I used to. Food tastes amazing the day after my fast is over. Even something like oatmeal just tastes great.

I had planned to do this experiment only for 6 months, but I plan on continuing this indefinitely. I haven't tried for more than a day of fasting, but I think for now a day a week is enough.

Straight from India

2008-04-21T08:56:00.001-07:00

I came into work today with a new addition to my cube. Very Cool.

Thanks Gabby!

Another "What was that?" episode

2008-03-23T13:57:00.001-07:00

The other night I was doing some work on one of my computers. It was almost midnight or thereabouts. Cassandra and the kids had gone to bed already. Behind me about 20 feet away, I could hear the plastic blinds being pushed on making a "clacking" kind of sound. I thought that it might have been the heater turning on as there is a vent underneath the blinds. The heater wasn't on (it automatically turns off at 11:30pm anyways). The blinds were still swinging when I looked at them and couldn't have been caused by anything that I could think of.

March desktop

2008-03-21T18:12:00.000-07:00

Here is the latest screenshot of my desktop. Going for the minimal look here. I actually have the taskbar set to autohide. It stayed in the up position for some reason when I took the screenshot.

Steve spills the tea

2008-03-18T12:22:00.000-07:00

Steve has one of "those" moments at work. Somehow his hand decided to just start going nuts and spilled his tea all over his lap. He doesn't know how it happened. Now he has his fan strategically placed over his crotch to try and dry it out.

Steve.... We can't take you anywhere.

Tibet Unrest

2008-03-14T10:36:00.000-07:00

Do you really need any other justification to boycott the upcoming Summer Olympics?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23629811/

When a government starts to tell you what religion or spiritual practice you can or can't follow or makes it difficult in the extreme to practice your spirituality, you know that is a government completely out of control.

BOYCOTT THE 2008 SUMMER GAMES!

FREE TIBET (already)!

Whatsinmybag

2008-02-25T10:46:00.001-08:00

Whatsinmybag, originally uploaded by bit_flipper1.

Here is my entry into the "What is in my bag" group on flickr.

Boards of Canada

2008-02-23T14:54:00.000-08:00

I recently found out about the music group "Boards of Canada". It seems that many have found a deep connection to their music. Some of their music is a little out there even for my eclectic tastes, but overall, they have some really powerful songs. I find their songs touch something very deep and emotional even.

This is Dayvan Cowboy by Boards of Canada. The first part of the video shows the famous 1960 high altitude bailout called Project Excelsior done by Joseph Kittinger. The jump was from an altitude of 102,800 feet.

Current Desktop Feb 08

2008-02-18T10:48:00.000-08:00

Desktop Wallpaper: "Fiber" from Social Wallpaper

Pidgin IM with Midnight OSX theme set to 60% transparency

JRiver Media Center with "Mano" theme

Maxthon web browser with Vista Blue Night theme

Yahoo Widgets: Weather, Radar

Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets: Date, Alarm Clock, All CPU Meter, UPtime

AltDesk virtual desktop manager, RocketDock (bottom right)

What was that?

2008-02-17T11:49:00.000-08:00

The other night Cassandra and I were relaxing after a long day of her watching the kids and me doing battle with a cold bug by doing a little web surfing. The kids had been put down for the night about 30 minutes or so earlier. All of a sudden, we hear the sound of a small bouncing ball (the kind you get out of a gum ball machine) bouncing down the stairs. Figuring one of the kids must still be up and playing, we go up and investigate. Both kids were both completely conked out. To make it more interesting, this particular ball had been missing for a few months and we thought it was missing. It was one of those small hairs sticking up on the back of your neck incidents that seem to happen occasionally at our house.

My work white board

2008-01-31T21:27:00.000-08:00

Bored out of my mind during a staff meeting.

Planet killing crayons

2008-01-26T19:37:00.000-08:00

Cassandra came home with a couple of packs of Crayola “Twistables” crayons for the kids as stocking stuffers. You really can’t see it very easily in the picture, but instead of the ol’ skool type of crayons I had as a kid with the crayons wrapped in paper, these things are wrapped in a very thick clear plastic. The crayons themselves are thinner than the original ones as well, so you are getting less crayon.

I can’t stress enough how thick the plastic is on these things. Now I know why they are doing this so that you don’t break the crayons, but isn’t that part of the fun? I used to love snapping new crayons in half and looking at the inner core. They made such a satisfying “snap” sound.

I digress. These crayons can’t be refilled once they are used up, so all you are left with is these plastic crayon exoskeletons. I am betting these casings can’t be recycled either, so they will just end up in a landfill somewhere which is completely unnecessary.

Needless to say, these crayons are getting sent back to the store for a set of old fashioned crayons (wait did I say OLD fashioned? Crap…).

NIN concert

2008-01-26T15:32:00.000-08:00

Steve Dehaart and I went to the Nine Inch Nails (NIN) concert here in Portland last night. The concert was pretty intense. The effects were truly extraordinaire. There were several mesh-like screens that came down in front and back of various band members. The screens looked to be made up of LED’s or something similar were touch and position sensitive. At one point Trent was behind a screen that had nothing but static like you would see on an old TV not tuned to a station and as he came up closer to the screen, it would open a virtual hole in the static and the hole would follow him wherever he went on stage so that you could see him the whole time. Additional virtual holes would open up for additional band members as they came closer to the mesh. The mesh screens weren’t down the whole time. Sometimes they were lifted up and the stage was more wide open. The mesh projected a variety of visuals including smoke, clouds, flames, etc.

The mesh screen was used at one point to program a virtual drum machine for the song “Echoplex”*. A few rows of squares were on the screen with lights going down the rows and then repeating. One of the band members (I believe the drummer) came out on stage and started to touch the screen in certain places and when the lights went down the rows and where he selected the squares, there would be a corresponding kick drum, snare, etc from the drum machine. When the song was about over, the drummer came out again and slowly started to unselect the squares he had selected before.

There was a brief acoustical set that was kind of cool with again some neat visuals. The visuals made them look like they were standing out in a Louisiana bayou.

Of course Trent had to break a few instruments. At one point, he completely snapped the top part off of the neck of a guitar. The boy has some angst even to this day.

The concert was very engaging and kept a great mix of old and new songs, slow and fast tempo selections from their previous twenty years.

*According to the NIN site, this song and the associated album The Slip are and always will be a free download. I am just linking this song here to make it easier. Please go to NIN.com to sign up and download the whole album.

Dome home

2007-11-30T22:14:00.000-08:00

I think it would be pretty cool to live in one of these: http://www.monolithic.com/. You don't have to worry about water leaking in or fire damage. For the most part they are hurricane and fire proof. They are well insulated due to the materials used in the construction of the building. It doesn't cost very much to heat and cool it. There are so many reasons to build this kind of home, it makes you wonder why more people don't make them. Is it because most homes in the US are built as a part of a "sub-division" made by some corporation that has six models to chose from? It seems this is the wave of the future with fuel costs going up.

San Diego fires = Surreal

2007-10-26T16:18:00.000-07:00

I had a business trip down in Rancho Bernardo CA for the week of 10/22 -26th. Flying into San Diego that night was an experience. We were in a small puddle jumper Brasilia coming in from LAX. The pilot had a hell of a time landing because the Santa Ana winds were really blowing.

We got in late around 8pm. After getting the rental car, we started heading East to Rancho Bernardo. Just South of the Miramar Naval Air base, we started smelling smoke. It kept getting worse and worse the farther East we went. We checked into the hotel and it was very windy and ash was falling everywhere. We found some really bad Mexican food for dinner and came back to the hotel around 10:30pm. I tried to fall asleep, but I kept waking up smelling smoke and kept wondering how close this fire really was. I got up and opened up the window shades and just watched the blowing trees and ash coming down. I turned on the TV around 3am and realized then how bad things were. I knew then that this trip was a bust and we would have to get out. I went downstairs around 5:30am to get some breakfast. The host was saying that they were going to be asking guests to leave as we were in an evacuation area. After everyone got downstairs, we decided to head over to my boss's temporary residence in La Jolla. His Mother in law had a condo where we he was staying. We arrived there and ash was falling there and the pool at the condo was coated with ash. His brother and his family who lived in Rancho Bernardo arrived shortly after we did. We decided there wasn't much we were going to be doing there as the site had been shut down. We started to call the airlines to make arrangements out of the area. All but two of us had flights out of San Diego that day. The other two had to drive up to LA and get flights out from there. I had a window seat. It seemed like most of California was covered in smoke.

The trip is now back on in a couple of weeks. I hope this trip goes just a little bit better.

The picture was taken out of my hotel room looking Northeast right before I left.

So Wrong

2007-09-28T22:39:00.001-07:00

This is so wrong, but it is so funny at the same time.

Sparky really likes me!

FU YU

2007-09-12T16:41:00.001-07:00

A coworker of mine spotted this box in our break room today. It would suck to have a business card with FU YU on it. I couldn't see getting too many new clients throwing that bad boy out on the table.

Buddha pic (test)

2007-09-03T16:10:00.001-07:00

This is a picture of a Buddha statue which Cassandra (my wife) took at a local nursery. Once again testing the mobile features here.

Desktop for the week 9.3.07

2007-09-03T09:02:00.001-07:00

There are two screen shots this week. The first screen shot shows what the desktop looks like normally. The second screen shot shows all of the hidden things that either pop up/out or hidden from view most of the time unless needed. I am trying to streamline my work space and this seemed like a good start. I don't know if I like having things hidden all of the time.

Left side:
Trillian - GuiStyle "Dark" skin set to 60% transparency and docked left and auto hide on.
WMP 11
Yahoo Weather applet set to small
World Clock "Night"
Date gadget
Desktop Wallpaper "Zen Stripped Rock v2"

Right side:
Altdesk "Alt Aero" skin set to about 70% transparent.
Firefox "Kempleton" skin
Web site: "Japanese Gardens"

Getting Things Done or GTD

2007-08-31T10:59:00.000-07:00

I work in IT (System Engineer/Admin to be exact). There is so much information coming in all the time, I was looking at how to solve the problem. So, I have read the "Getting Things Done" book by David Allen. I also read the blogs Lifehacker, Lifehack and Zen Habits, etc. to try and get ideas. I have been trying to use all this knew knowledge to help me become well, a better me when it comes to handling the information overload. I have tried keeping a GTD system both online at the various tools that are available. I have used Microsoft's OneNote application. I keep a moleskin journal with me at all times along with a pen and even a small note pad in my pocket to jot down things to put in my "inbox".

None of this has helped me at all. OneNote is kind of nice to use as I am always in front of a computer it seems, but not all of the time in front of a Microsoft based OS computer which is required to run OneNote. The application doesn't really work all that well on my "smartphone" for taking notes. So there is the dilemma. If you have to write it down on paper and then transfer it to the computer to help remind you of something in Outlook (again need to be in front of a computer and one that is running a Microsoft based OS) what is the point? I don't want to keep looking into my note pad or journal every fifteen minutes. Isn't this supposed to make me more productive?

So far it has boiled down to a mish-mash of all these tools and it isn't working that great although I am still giving it a go. I don't agree with the GTD method though. It just doesn't work for me as written. For the most part I have come to the conclusion that my brain can actually keep up with it all. I am doing this now though to help out with the ol' brain fade that comes about as you get older, so I am trying to set up good habits now.

I also have come to the conclusion that I don't want to be good at "processing" things (term from the book). I don't want to become more efficient to do more work which this sort of things lends itself to. It is supposed to help you get things done so you have more free time. For me though that isn't what is happening. It is making me neurotic. Did I get the info out of my journal and put it into Outlook? Is OneNote syncing with my home workstation with my work laptop properly? My daughter just pulled out some paper from my notepad to make another "mermaid" (don't ask). Did I miss something? Where exactly IS my inbox?

I will keep trying it and report back in a later post where I am at. Hopefully I haven't gone completely mental over the whole thing.

Current Desktop 8.26.2007

2007-08-26T16:26:00.001-07:00

For some reason, I find it interesting what people's computer desktop looks like. I change my desktop look about once a week or so. So, I figure every couple of weeks I would upload a screenshot of my current desktop.

Here are the details on this screenshot:
Microsoft Vista OS
Browser: Firefox- Theme: My_buuf 2.0
Altdesk Virtual desktop manager
Yahoo Widgets: digiclock and Yahoo weather both set to about half transparency
Windows Media Player
Windows Live Instant Messenger (beta)
Sidebar gadgets (from top): World clock (night), Date v6, Multi Meter 4 Core, Uptime, Outlook Info
Wallpaper: Color Jive

2007-08-15T18:28:00.000-07:00

I am taking the week off this week from work. Last week was a nightmare. I had a business trip to California where a group of us had to take over a site that was managed by some contractors. The contractors are being let go. Nothing like walking on eggshells for an entire week. I wish the contractors the best of luck in finding a better job. The site we are taking over is a train wreck. Too many problems to list. I used to work at this site seven years ago. I think I saw a few servers that I built up back then that are still in production. They aren't just in production, they are in "I need it to be up 24x7x365, this server is the lynch pin to the success of my business" type of production. Ridiculous. Oh well. Job security I guess.

SPIEGEL Interview with China's Deputy Minister of the Environment: "The Chinese Miracle Will End Soon" - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News

2007-08-04T19:25:00.000-07:00

SPIEGEL Interview with China's Deputy Minister of the Environment: "The Chinese Miracle Will End Soon" - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News

After reading that article, it makes one wonder if this might all be planned. Think about it. I think in the beginning of the movie "Apocalypto" it says something to the effect of the end of every great civilization is the rot from within. Hell, it might have been in the book "The Art of War". I don't know. My point is, what happens if letting China build all of the Western world's crap is all planned? Go ahead and build all of that stuff China. Yes, you are getting richer by the day, but only monetarily. What about your environment? You are stripping the land bare to run your factories and for the raw materials needed to build widgits that are destined for a Wal-Mart somewhere in the USA. You are running out of arable land to both feed and house your people. You build the world's computers, ipods, and other electronic gadgets which employees your people, but then you destroy your land by accepting all of that waste to come right back to you because the West didn't want it and you are more than willing to take it back if it means more profit. Doesn't matter if that waste and the process that created it in the first place is killing your people or making their lives hell.

The more I think about it, the more this makes sense. If China ever decides to call in all of the Western debt it owns, things could get ugly really quick. The west will just say "no" as it would bankrupt them otherwise. This game can't go on forever. Something is going to snap. I just hope it can be settled peacefully.

ABC News: POLL: Surveillance Cameras Win Broad Support

2007-07-31T17:01:00.000-07:00

So is it me, or did someone already buy the robot "Johnny Five" from the movie Short Circuit off of ebay and start using him as a lowly closed circuit camera watching people load groceries in their cars all day?

ABC News: POLL: Surveillance Cameras Win Broad Support

Poor Johnny. What a sad state of affairs (both for Johnny and those of us being surveilled).

2007-07-30T22:42:00.000-07:00

Out for a bit of geocaching with the family.

2007-07-30T21:00:00.001-07:00

This is my desk at home (this is a test from my cell phone)

2005-03-11T09:53:00.000-08:00

I went to the Duran Duran concert in Portland Oregon. I have never seen Duran Duran in concert. They put on a really good show. The sound was good and we had pretty decent seats. I went with Steve and Michele Dehaart and they both liked the concert too. Simon's voice cracked a few times but he has always had a sort of raspy voice. They opened with "(Reach up for the) Sunrise". They played "Rio" as their final song during their one curtain call. They did a good job of mixing their new songs with older. Simon appeared to be very much in touch with the crowd and the group appeared to be enjoying themselves.

The opening act (we didn't even catch their name) was so utterly horrible people couldn't believe they were allowed on stage.

We took the trimet rail to the concert. We parked at the Parkrose station which was on the "red line. Little did we know that the red line stops service at 11pm. We took the blue line back from the concert which only makes it to the Gateway station. It was around 11:30 by now. Great.... We tried finding a phone book at the station to call a cab, but they were all shredded up (mental note, put some cab company phone numbers in my cell phone address book). We started to hike over to the Fred Meyer nearby, but that prospect didn't look good as the gates looked closed up. Up pulls this lady asking us if we were having car problems or something. If by car problems she means we are about 3 miles from our car; yeah we are having car problems! She told us to get in and we gladly accepted! She then proceeds to tell us she can't see well at night and that she went to the concert as well and while there there was a group of homosexual asian boys that were definitely "enjoying the show". During the show one of them had their pants down. This I guess drove her nuts so she went and ordered a few screwdriver drinks. So now our fate is with a lady who can't see well at night who has had an undedetermined amount of alcohol. You want to know what? I DIDN'T CARE! I wanted to get to our car. Buddha had smiled on us and I wasn't about to look the gift horse in the mouth. BTW, whoever you were lady, thank you!

Michelle, one word: Yardapult.

Great night, great concert.

2005-03-11T09:46:00.000-08:00

Simon out front.

Public Park Designated Copyrighted Space

2005-02-16T15:32:00.000-08:00

I am just amazed sometimes with what is going on in this world. Take this for example. Public spaces are now being copyrighted? How can this be? Try to take a picture of a statue and you get the rent-a-cops chasing you down? I am hoping that this isn't a sign of more idiocy like this to come. I am NOT holding my breath though.

Funny voicemail

2005-02-12T13:49:00.000-08:00

I don't know if this is real or made up, but it is funny nonetheless. Click here to listen.

2005-02-12T13:08:00.000-08:00

Me and my son on his 1st Birthday

The most hilarious movie reviewer ever

2005-01-14T15:05:00.000-08:00

This guy is so damn funny. Sure he curses. Sure his grammar sucks. He does have some of the best reviews for movies that are out there. He reviews regular movies and is funny as hell. Check it out.

The Filthy Critic

Wake up folks!

2005-01-14T14:57:00.000-08:00

For those of you who thought they have a pretty good idea of what went on at the Pentagon during 9/11/01, you might want to check this page out . If you think a Boeing 757 slammed into the side of the Pentagon you are going to come away with a different perspective. Either that or you like pretending everything is ok. In that case, you need to go refill your soma prescription and think happy thoughts.

Test

2005-01-14T14:24:00.000-08:00

Giddy up cowboy.....