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August 11 My Blog Has MovedAfter being on Windows Live Spaces since it started, the time has come to move my blog to a dedicated blog platform. I chose WordPress, signed up with a web host, and used a domain I registered for a while back: forawesome.net. So check out my new blog and let me know what you think. I think it will encourage me to post more, hack around more, and in general be a bit more active. That said, I'm still using Windows Live Writer to post the entries. Even on my Mac. It's just too good. I wish there were a Mac blog program this sweet. April 14 Craigslist, Scams, and Windows Live Mail vs GmailI've been craigslisting some stuff recently in order to clear out the basement. For the most part, it's going pretty well. The Audi has been slow going and still isn't sold yet, but I probably just need to lower the price. The 27" Sony TV, 32" Sony TV, PC Sound Card, Zune 30GB, etc. have sold quickly, and I've got someone interested in my Yamaha receiver, etc. But what's funny is that the 12" PowerBook G4 that I listed has so far attracted 2 scams. They're hilarious. The first one came from an "Elizabeth Moses": From: Elizabeth Moses <dhlee88@msn.com> Separately, I got this pretty weak attempt at paypal spoofing (notice the oh so tricky email address in the from field):
Gmail, by the way, didn't catch any of this even slightly. No phishing indicator, nothing to say that an email address with "®" in it is a bit suspicious. Nothing. I went over to my live.com account and saw this:
Way to go, Live! Anyway, I responded to Elizabeth Moses with "LOL. Nice Try." But then I got another attempt at scamming this PowerBook, which is in progress even now:
Once again, Live blocked the mail and Gmail set it sail on through. So if you're worried about internet safety and getting scammed, you might want to think about that before switching to Gmail. January 23 Amazon UpgradeRelated to my last post about the Kindle, Amazon apparently has a service called Amazon Upgrade, whereby you can pay an additional charge on top of the fee you pay for the physical copy of the book to get a digital copy that you can access from "any Internet-connected computer." But this doesn't work with Kindle. WTF!!!!@!#! And not only that, but all the titles available for Kindle aren't available via Amazon Upgrade. Come on, guys. You're so close to having exactly what I want. Close the deal! December 07 I want to want the Kindle so much!
Kindle is a small device that's easy to hold, it has web access, it can wirelessly download books, it can read blogs and play podcasts. It has a beautiful E Ink screen that you can really read for hours without fatigue. It has enough memory to hold dozens of volumes. It has a method for inputting notes about the book and a dictionary for looking up unfamiliar terms. So what's the problem? The problem is: I want to buy the freaking book! I want to have it in my library, on the shelf, collecting dust. I don't care about the trees. I want my book. There is no option on the Amazon store for me to say, "I'll pay the full price of this book. Please send it to me. But also, let me download it to my Kindle to read on the go." WTF!! This is such a logical thing to do. But right now, the only options I have are buy the book, or download the book. I want to download the book and have them ship me the real thing as well. I want to have my book and read it too. Sigh. Amazon is one of the few companies in a real position to do this kind of thing and they let the opportunity slip. Note to Amazon: the day I can buy a bundle of physical book and electronic book for the same price as the physical book (or maybe $0.50 more) is the day that I will buy a Kindle. Please! July 17 Back on the ProgramI've gained back too much weight to be ignored so I've given ye olde Pro Club some more money and will start seeing a trainer 3x a week for the next 10 weeks or so, starting next week or the week after, depending on schedules.
So that's good. It will be good to turn the ship back around and start heading back down to fighting weight. May 03 Can't Architect a picture into a picture frameSo last weekend at IKEA, I bought some stuff to decorate my office. Including this picture frame, pictured here:
I can't for the life of me figure out how to get a picture into that frame. I've been having a great first real day in the office, but this particular thing makes me feel really dumb. May 02 Crazy VegasLast night was the MIX party at PURE at Caesar's Palace. It was pretty sweet. Definitely too crowded, but I guess that's just the way it goes when you tell 1500 software developers that they can have free drinks and see the Pussycat Dolls. Anyway, the craziest part was that on the way back I saw several women out walking their babies in strollers. This was at 11pm. wtf?! 11pm and they're out walking their babies? Aren't babies supposed to be asleep by then? The Pussycat Dolls were pretty fun. Here are some pics from flickr. (Just search for tags MIX07 and Pure or pussycat dolls to find more.)    
I'm sick this morning, sadly, but I don't think it's a hangover. It was starting up yesterday morning. I think I've just got the old fashioned flu. :( It's going to be a miserable 3 hour plane ride. May 01 Thoughts on MIX07 So Far
Technorati tags: MIX07 April 29 Arrived in Vegas for MIX07I woke up at 3:30am for a 6am flight this morning from Seattle to Vegas. I know, it was early, but it was the cheapest flight. Got to watch the bottom line, you know. ;) Anyway, the flight was uneventful and I arrived at the Venetian at something like 10:30am. Turns out that my room wasn't ready yet, so they held onto my bags while I had some breakfast. I thought about going to Bouchon, but it was too much trouble (off in some tower on the 10th floor or something like that). I'll try going there a different day for something. While reading the New York Times at breakfast, I got a call saying that my room was ready, so I finished up and finished the checkin process and headed up to my room. I had to wait quite a while (something like an hour) for my bags to make it to my room, which was upsetting, but the room is quite nice. It's got to be 650sq ft. or so. There's a bedroom, a living room, and a very nice bathroom. So far the most dissapointing thing about the room is the internet access. My wireless signal strength is VERY weak, ranging from 18-30%. Bleh. I have big packet loss, pages keep timing out, etc. It's a pain. In any case, now that I'm settled in, I think it's time to hit the casino for some craps or blackjack. What I could really go for right now, strangely enough, is some movie theater popcorn and a pay-per-view movie. But alas, no popcorn is on the room service menu. April 26 The End of an EraAfter something like 5 years on the MSN (now Windows Live) Messenger Team, I'm moving to a new role at Microsoft. Messenger is one of my favorite products in the world, the team is absolutely great to work with, and we're working on what I think is our most exciting release ever, but an opportunity came up that was just too good to ignore. Starting next week, I'm taking a job as a (Software) Architect reporting to Joshua Goodman, who is BillG's Technical Assistant and reports directly to the man himself. Yeah. It's pretty freaking sweet. I'm extremely excited. I'll be working on all kinds of things across the whole company. It's going to be an amazing period of learning and I hope to contribute to some wicked hot new stuff that will amaze and delight our customers. I can't talk about anything publicly, but it's some software that I for one would love to use. Anyway, I'm starting the new job off this Sunday by heading to Vegas to attend MIX07. I've worked a ton on clients, a ton on peer-to-peer apps, a bit on servers, but basically none on web apps, so I need to ramp up quickly there. w00t!!!~!1!!!~one!~@~~! March 01 Today we rolled out the i'm programA few months ago, we decided on the Messenger team that we wanted to do something more to help the world. Already our service brings people together and helps distant friends and relatives communicate, but we wanted to do something more direct. So now we've got the i'm initiative. It works like this:
The more conversations you have, the more of our ad revenue we donate to your charity. Pretty simple. So now when you talk to your friends, you can also help find a cure or feed children or stop global warming or whatever.
December 29 Two Recommendations: one for, one againstI recommend you buy a Wii. It's freaking sweet. The included sports game is awesome. Obviously the control is what makes this platform and it is done very well. If you don't believe me, come play mine (but wait until I get another 3 wiimotes). I recommend you do not see Apocalypto. This movie made me want to claw my eyes out and stab myself in the head with an icepick. I don't want to waste any more words on it. December 24 MacBook - 1 month laterI've lived with my Mac for about a month now. It's had its ups and downs. I'll start with the high level summary, then delve into details. Pros:
Cons:
NOPs:
Details:Hardware The glossy screen is gorgeous. Let me put this with the precision to help the reader to understand: glossy LCD displays are superior to matte LCD displays. There's plenty info about the physics of this online, but suffice it to say that this is not a matter of opinion -- it's a matter of fact. And the glossy screen on the MBP is absolutely fantastic. The colors are vivid. The pixels are sharp. My only complaint with it is resolution. It's 1440x900 pixels. I would really rather it be 1920x1200, or failing that, 1680x1050. I like a nice high-res display. But it's not that big of a deal. The trackpad is absurdly huge. Seriously, it's like 4" wide. Do I really need to be dragging my finder around that much? Probably not. What's worse, my palms constantly touch it while I'm typing. The drivers are supposed to detect when this is happening and ignore it, but they're not perfect and sometimes my mouse zips away. This basically means you can't use mouse focus, which is too bad. MacOS / apps As some examples, look at NewsFire, XTorrent, QuickSilver, Saft, Delicious Library, Democracy, etc. These apps are great. Better than their commercial or shareware counterparts on Windows. As for MacOS (Tiger) itself, it's an OS. What can I say. They're all about the same. It's got search integrated in. It's relatively snappy feeling. Comparing it to XP, it's probably better. Comparing it to Vista, it's probably not quite as good. Vista's glass look is prettier than Mac's aging Aqua interface. The sidebar is a bit more useful than dashboard, I'd say. I like that the sidebar is always up. I never actually go to the trouble to push F12 to bring up the dashboard on MacOS. The one feature MacOS has that I wish Vista had is Expose. Win-Tab is nice, but hitting one button than clicking the window I want is far superior to scrolling through 30 windows. As far as perf goes, MacOS is definitely faster on this hardware. But I feel that's a driver issue. The perf bottleneck on the Vista side appears to be disk i/o. The queue is always full when I'm doing much of anything and sometimes even when I'm not, causing access times to get into the 100-200ms range. This, obviously, slows things down quite a bit. That said, even when Vista is being slow, it still does what you tell it to. MacOS, on the other hand, just shows a pinwheel and you have to wait and hope for the best. When it comes to security, I feel a bit more secure on Vista than on MacOS because of all the work that's gone into it and the man-centuries of effort put into cracking it. MacOS is kind of virgin territory. It seems pure now, but if the hackers of the world turned their sights to it, I have no doubt that it would crumple quickly. Parallels There are, however, some issues with Parallels:
Boot Camp The second issue is perf. Vista seems to have some disk i/o issues under boot camp. I'm not sure if these are because of Vista, the hardware, or the drivers. Hopefully this will be fixed in a future beta. If not, I need to round up some io devs at work to investigate. The other issue is stability -- Vista in Boot Camp under heavy load hangs. It just flat out stops. It looks like the computer is overheating or something, because it just stops dead -- no bluescreen, nothing. I hope this is addressed in a future release, but I'll keep investigating. .Mac .Mac provides a small amount of storage (1GB) space that is shared between mail and files. For mail, I use both Windows Live Mail and GMail. Either one is superior to .Mac mail except that .Mac mail offersStorage in "the cloud" isn't really useful to me. I have, let's see, 3 computers at home, my macbook, a tablet and 2 desktops at work. That's 7 computers I can use to store files on. And with FolderShare, I have backups of all my important data on at least two of them, typically more, which I can access from anywhere and recover easily. Not to mention FolderShare works on both Windows and MacOS.
Overall Summary:If you have money to spare and any interest in MacOS, buy a Mac. If you're used to MacOS and don't care about games, buy a Mac. Otherwise, buy a PC. November 17 Mac Up and RunningFedEx exceeded expectations and delivered my package on Friday the 10th. I've had the MacBook for a week now and I've developed some impressions. I love it, of course. But before I get into too many details, a matter of order...
I'm trying to post this from a Mac blog posting app called ecto. Let's see if it works! November 09 Just when I thought Apple could screw up no more...Apple had said that they expected my MacBook Pro (replacement) to ship on 11/7 and be delivered on 11/8, as I've mentioned. That was pretty slow, but hey, I could deal. As you may have noticed, the 8th has come and gone. No MacBook Pro. No email from Apple either, saying it had shipped. To back up a bit in time, on the 7th, I called Apple and asked "WTF?" They claimed that they'd sent it to FedEx and even gave me a tracking number. Outstanding! Good news. Apple said this was supposed to be next day delivery, so I should be getting it on the 8th as expected. Not really believing them, I called FedEx. FedEx did in fact receive the package from Apple in China. But it was not going to get to me the next day. It "missed the cutoff" to be shipped out of China that day and would wait for the next day. Hm. Ok. I asked if it would get to me on the 9th then. They didn't know. It hadn't had enough scans for them to tell whether it was shipped next day or not. Great. So Now I spend all my free time refreshing this tracking page. This morning, the 9th, I expect to see FedEx has made some progress. I expect to see my package is "On FedEx vehicle for delivery" or at the very least "At local FedEx facility". But not only do I not see that, I don't even see an "Arrived at FedEx location" anywhere in the US. I do however see they've added to the webpage a little nugget saying "Estimated delivery Nov 13, 2006 10:30 AM". WTF!??!!!#@!# I think it's much less likely FedEx's fault than Apple's, at this point. I'm going to contact FedEx and see if Apple in fact sent the MacBook next day as they promised they would, or if they decided to send it rowboat class. God I hate Apple! Let this be a lesson to you prospective Mac buyers out there. You have no choice but to buy a Mac if you have your heart set on one, so I won't recommend against it, but I will recommend that you never order anything customized from Apple. Just get the default configuration. Upgrade your hard disk yourself. Apple is MacDonalds, not Burger King. You can't get it your way. You can get it their way or no way. November 01 The MacBook Saga ContinuesLast night I called Apple again at about 5pm since I hadn't yet received an email with my fedex label in it. The person I spoke with said there was no record of me talking to them before about this and getting a label, so they sent me one right away. I got it in my inbox while still on the phone with them. So I printed the label and dashed off to FedEx. You see, Apple assembles the machines in China, so if I could get them to start the order last night, they'd have all day in China to work on it. Anyway, I got to FedEx and sent the package, got my tracking number and called Apple. "Sorry, it doesn't show up on fedex.com yet." Great. I watched the FedEx man load my package onto his truck. He said he scanned it and it was in the system. I ask Apple to check again. No dice. I talk to a supervisor at customer support. He says there's essentially nothing he can do until it shows up on the fedex.com webpage as having been shipped. But what he can do is take $100 off my order. So that's nice, but I tell him that if he could just get me my freaking laptop, I'd pay him an extra $100. Frustrated, I get off the phone and head to Heather's for Halloween. On the way, I check the fedex tracking site on my Windows Mobile phone. The package is showing up! Wonderful, I think, and call back Apple. Of course, I can never talk to the same person, but the person I speak to says they'll release the hold on the order and set it for next day shipping so that it comes in 1 day rather than 2 when they finally do ship it from China. That's something, at least. I get off the phone, marginally happier. When I get to Heather's, I decide to check my mail to see if Apple has sent any updates. They have. I take a look and they say I have a replacement order number. So I check it out on http://apple.com/orderstatus. WTF!!!?!~! It says that Apple canceled the order. This is getting absurd and now Apple is closed for the day. I have to wait for the next day (now) to call them. So this morning at 7, as soon as I woke up, I called Apple. They say, yes, it was canceled. Because it had a non-glossy screen. LOL. This is just too absurd. Apple is trying to send me matte again. They say there's another replacement order open. I take a look and find out that this replacement order is set for standard, rather than overnite, shipping. I ask them to fix that and they do. But it's still got an estimated ship date of 11/7. I hate Apple. They feel much more like a monopoly to me than MS ever did. Consider: I want a Mac. I have only one choice of where to buy it. I can buy it from Apple. If I want a PC and Alienware gives me bad service (as they did) I can decide never to buy from them again and go to Dell (or Apple) instead. But if I want a Mac, I have no recourse but to buy from Mr. Jobs. It's extraordinarily fristrating to be a consumer bereft of choice. I hate Apple because their product is so cool that I feel I have no choice but to buy it, and given that, I have no choice but to buy it from them. I have no choice with Apple. With Microsoft, you can go to Dell, Alienware, DP. You can get a chip from Intel or AMD. You can get any number of graphics cards, sound cards, displays, etc. With Mac, you're stuck. But they're still cool. October 31 Apple Opts for 'Trick'I'm so freaking mad. I have to post again. Apple's service is so terrible. I can't believe they won't send me my replacement until they get a notification from FedEx that I've sent this one back to them. It's so innane. I mean, I could put a brick in a box and fedex it to them. This is the sort of shenanigans that really piss me off. What a freaking Halloween. I can't believe they pulled this trick on me when I thought I was getting an awesome treat. :@ !!!!!!!!!!!!!I'm so freaking pissed off. The ass-hats at Apple sent the wrong freaking Mac. It's got a goddamned matte screen when I asked for glossy. Now I have to wait up to 5 f!#$ing business days to get a replacement shipped out. They first have to email me labels to use to send it out from fedex, then I have to take it to fedex and only when they get confirmation that I sent the mac back will they forward the replacement on to me. What a bunch of fuck-tards. Goddamn I'm mad. I'm not going to be able to function for the rest of the week until I get my glossy Mac and all is right with the world. If I don't get it by Friday, I'm going to totally flip out and kill people ninja-style. Oh Boy Oh BoyThe new MacBook Pros with Core 2 Duo chips came out last week. I've been wanting one since God knows when, so I bought one. I ordered it last Thursday for something like $2600. 2.33GHz of dual core goodness, an ATI Radeon 1600 mobility graphics card with 256MB video ram so I can run games & Vista, a 15" screen (only WXGA I think, which is too bad -- I wish Apple offered a WSXGA display in the 15" model), 2GB Ram and a HD upgrade to 160GB. It's a bit sad that you can get 2 Dells for the price of one of these, even with my 8% corporate discount, but I would never have been happy with a Dell. I'd see people in coffee shops with their smug little Macs, taunting and shaming me. Now, I, too shall display my sub-optimally specced but superiorly designed and aesthetically rewarding hardware to the drooling Dell-plebs. Anyway, the little bundle of joy is supposed to be on the Fedex truck for delivery right now. I've been anxiously following its trek from China to my doorstep. Only yesterday at 1:38am it was picked up in Shanghai and as of this morning at 7:14am, it's "on FedEx vehicle for delivery". Naturally, I'm staying home from work this morning to receive it. I'll be posting pics & reviews, I imagine, as well as software for Mac recommendations and thoughts on Parallels / Bootcamp since I'll certainly be running Windows as well. I imagine one of the first things I'll be doing with this Mac is borrowing Rich's bluetooth barcode scanner and running Delicious Library on all my crap. Speaking of crap, in order to defray one of the Dells worth of the cost of my new Mactop, I'm going to be selling some things: my old Titanium Powerbook G4 (867MHz, 384MB Ram), a 32" or so Sony TV, and a Sony 21" CRT monitor. I need to get rid of these things anyway, and this seems like the perfect opportunity. |
I've wanted a killer ebook reader for years: a decade or more. When I first read about E Ink I was psyched and thought for sure someone would produce the device I wanted, which is basically exactly what's pictured here in Amazon's ad.
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