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Archive for June, 2010

Like camping, but without the rules!

26 Jun
Noise, the movie

A movie, —really!

Air-conditioning, wherefore art thou? Ours is a big grey lump sitting stoically on the side of the house, silently waiting to spread it’s goodness throughout our interior. However, the truth is, having the house cooled down is NOT the real reason it should be on. Colorado summers aren’t that bad, A/C is for wimps. Noise abatement is my one argument for turning the beast on.

Sleeping with the windows open is a challenge, even for small town living. Longmont is only about 80,000 folks, give or take. For such a family oriented, small metropolis, you’d think with all those kids and retired folks, everyone would be settled in for the evening early, but nooooo, they sure don’t follow the rules of the campground. Settle down after 9pm. Instead, it “seeeeems” the general population likes to crank up to a roar by testing their varied street vehicles, motorcycles, thumping boom boxes or sports car. If they are home, sitting on decks yammering until the wee hours of the morning must be the other memo I didn’t get. Our towns “cruising” laws don’t seem to really work and miss manors book on common courtesy must not have made it’s way around our neighborhood.

Lying with warm skin on top of cool sheets really isn’t that bad. Colorado nights cool off quickly making it bearable, usually down right chilly the next morning. So the real issue is the noise. Unfortunately, we know every dog in our neighborhood by name, though we’ve never seen them personally. Our little slice of town seems to be made up of home bodies who like to sit on their deck until late talking in low murmurs like Charlie Browns teacher or those Sims from the popular game just loud enough for sleepus, interuptus.

Some emergency provider didn’t discover his GPS last night, or it must have been on the fritz as sirens wailed endlessly tapering off into the distance, then seemingly headed back into our audible circle, turned into yet another direction bouncing around town trying to find their mark. After multiple attempts, they must have stumbled upon the emergency.

Town officials at some council meeting way back in the stone age voted a law into action that requires train engineers to announce their embedding approach even if blinking lights flash or long red and white arms are spread across the road. Engineers who wonder into Longmont seem to take the timing literally, blasting their warning horns for hours on end as they meander through town. Five crossings later, they’ve made their point.

Cost be damn, I’m lobbying for the A/C to be ramped up, not because it’s hot, but because our town doesn’t follow the campground rules. Settle down after 9pm.

 
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Posted in Personal, Rants

 

IOS 4, Yawnsville

23 Jun

wpid-apple-iphone-in-hand1-2010-06-23-10-46.jpgiPad and iPhone (and a MBP) are part of my everyday technical life, so you would think I’m some “fan-boy” or something, sorry, “fan(person)”, a term I hate BTW, but I’m not. I just like good solid technology to get things done, not worry about either being “hacked” or things falling apart in my hands, (okay, my iPad is just WiFi on purpose and I did have to put a new glass face on my iPhone). I’m also not enamored by the inflated number of applications “available” on those “other” smart-phones who “they” claim a huge number of programs, which according to my limited research, are mostly half baked, low quality and riddled with security issues, hacks and other such reminiscent “windoze ilk”. Android aside, I digress. While the latest iPhone isn’t in my possession, I do have one that is about a year old. With the new release of iOS4, I anticipated taking advantage of a few new features, knowing full well that most wouldn’t be supported, but some would. My anticipation was met with disappointment.

After several hours of waiting for the upgrade to process, I also didn’t see that one coming, I finally got to dinking around with the new system after dinner last night. Armed with the feature list, I poked through the various settings looking for the new features. It all acted, behaved and frankly looked no different than the previous version. I found nothing compelling that made me think, “Boy am I glad I upgraded!” Instead, I yawned pushed a couple of apps together into folders, about the only thing worth the upgrade and moved onto the next few features. Photo zooming, didn’t happen; home background, still black; tap to focus video, I have a 3G only phone, so that was a bust. Finally, I fired up the iPod application to make a new Playlist, underwhelmed and continued down the list. Gift apps, whoopity doo; spell check, —yawn; Bluetooth keyboard, don’t have one, man, this upgrade was a waste of time all around.

Basically, I did my “dinking” for about thirty minutes, placed it on it’s charger and haven’t picked it up since. Instead, as usual, I opted for my morning reading with the iPad, not thinking twice about what I can do with my old, reliable, beater iPhone. I’ll make a call later, I guess, as long as AT&T doesn’t drop me. Then again, I rarely use the calling feature on my iPhone, so I suppose I’ll stick the earbuds in and take the dog for a walk, I am “underemployed” after all.

 
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Posted in Gadgets, iPhone, Reviews, Software, Software, Technology

 

Underemployed

23 Jun

Job hunting is almost a full time job, but the tasks are tedious and frankly boring. I mean, if you were asked by your current employer to search through a myriad of job sites, poke through every company web site you’d like to work with looking for that perfect job description hoping that they magically posted a new option, writing compelling, relevant cover letters and going through every variation of a job application, you’d tell your boss you were nuts, right? Well, that pretty much sums up my mornings, among other things.

When people ask how it’s going or what’s your status, I tell them I’m still “underemployed”, meaning, I work, but not enough to pay the bills. Besides reaching out to my network, following up on leads and the dreaded seek and apply work, I also do other things to stay busy. While it’s not a stigma anymore to be “underemployed” for a period of time, it does look good that you’re busy filling in your time with related work rather than catching up on the latest soap-opera or catching all those “new career” commercials. (Okay, I watch a little daytime TV, but not much.)

Besides the job hunt, I find myself writing a lot more than before. I bang out more blog posts, like this, and I pump out a number of articles for various online venues like Examiner, eHow and several others. Elance also has some freelance optional work, but it’s hard to land projects with all the “off-shore” contractors. Along side the article freelancing, I’ve been really catching up on those two novel projects I’ve worked on and off the past few years. In fact, I’m finished with one, High Lies, it’s now on the back burner, I’m letting it settle out of my brain. I’ll pick it up in a few weeks to review my handy work and decide if it’s worth selling to an agent or not. Jodi says that being a novelist is my retirement plan, we’ll see.

In my spare time, I also come up with every business idea I can think, Pro-Services company, news website, IT Project Management company, several software ideas for the iPad, to name a few. I hearken back to the early days of Jeff Bezos and J.K. Rowling thinking that if something pops into my mind for a good business plan or a great book, maybe that will work out. Pipe dreams to be sure, but I’m busy, underemployed really.

 
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Posted in Blogging, Music, Personal, Rants, Reading & Writing

 

IOS 4 upgrade on 3G (No “S” or new iPhone)

22 Jun

IOS 4 upgrade

I just started the IOS 4 upgrade on my one-year-old 3G phone. I am not in the market to upgrade to the latest & greatest iPhone at the moment, but I figured I’d at least go through with the upgrade and see what new features I am able to take advantage.

Installation & Upgrade: easy to get started, simply plugged it in for a sync, was presented with the obligatory, “You’re not running the latest version, blah, blah, blah…” and I didn’t go for it at first. I was doing some house cleaning and trying to get some new music uploaded first. Then, I decided to go for it after about thirty minutes of futzing with the apps, syncing some music and an iCal appointment. I also realized that if the install screwed it up, all this would be in vain and I’d have to re-sync anyway. But, alas, that didn’t happen. What did happen… time ticked by, that’s what happened.

After selecting yes on the first screen, I was presented with a “this could take a while, do not interrupt it or everything will be wiped into obliteration” screen. Okay, it didn’t say that literally, but alluded to that being a possibility. As a side note, the wording stated that it could take up to an hour, or perhaps longer. Seriously, it stated this without an estimate or any more specifics, just a nebulous, an hour or more. So, deciding to just press on, I hit the button of no return at exactly 2:55pm this afternoon.

So far, iTunes presented a dialog window that said it was “backing up” my iPhone, the blue bar was about an 1/8th of the distance across the window, then it stopped. To not get frustrated or blow my iPhone into oblivion, I turned to my, (groan) DELL Inspiron with the 23” screen and started working there glancing back at the MBP every few minutes to see if the bar had moved. It had not.

Finally, after loosing track and getting absorbed into my “research” on the XP box (using Safari), I stole a peek and saw that the window had changed to “installing”. The iPhone flipped to some activation screen and iTunes started activating. That sat seemingly froze the progress for at least another hour.

Now, it’s exactly 5:18pm and it’s been “Restoring” on iTunes and/or “Sync in Progress” on my iPhone for some time now, I’m loosing track of exactly what happened when, still hours have creeped by. Two hours and twenty two minutes later, the entire progress is still going. iTunes has moved onto restoring my music, but it’s still going. Dialogs are moving, but very slowly.

So, I’m going to post this blog entry anyway and will follow up later with the exact length it took to do a full upgrade. Needless to say, set aside a lot of time if you’re upgrading. My intent was to include initial “Newness” experience, but I’ll save that for another day.

 
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Posted in Gadgets, iPhone, Software, Software, Technology

 

15 is the new 5…

21 Jun
Pumping Gas

Pumping Gas

When I was back in college and beyond, my monthly gas budget for my car was always up in the air. At college, I spent most of my time between classes, walking. So, my old clunker sat near my dorm parking lot, for the most part.

Ah, the old red Ford, I fondly remember it well. It was a “hand-me-down” to be sure, but it ran great. In fact, it was so reliable, I took it on a long road trip from Texas to Florida one fall (Big Sandy to Pensacola, to be exact). With over 150-thousands miles on the engine, it made the trip with little excitement, except for the Porsche 911 we followed to make good time, but other than that, it was rock-solid. Graeme, my good friend, and I pushed it to the limit a few times, but by and large, it was a strong running car.

So, way-back-when, I was on that tight gas budget, I would only put about five-bucks worth of gas in the car at any given time. Today, as I look for a new job and/or work from home I rarely drive my cars (yeah, surprise, surprise considering my recent past with cars). Stopping at the local Connoco or Shamrock, depending on which side of Target I find myself, I’ve dug up memories from those, oh-so-frugal college days of putting gas in the car I hardly drive.

Even though it’s been, (clearing throat), over twenty years since I attended college, keeping gas in the older SUV today requires a slight adjustment in gas price thinking. With regular income, my MO was to just keep the tank topped off all the time. Now, not so much.

Today, I only throw in about $15 bucks worth of gas in the old tank, so I call it, “15 is the new 5″.

 
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Posted in Cars, Personal

 

TV, The Simpler Life

11 Jun

No more Dish

No, not talking about the stupid reality TV Show with Paris Hilton or Nichole Richie, I’m talking about going back to simpler way of watching TV without all the costs.

We’ve killed our TV! That’s right, we no longer have a TV entertainment system like we did last week. No, I didn’t smash, destroy or burn, them (We have four in the house). Instead, we turned off the Dish Network service, the Satellite Dish is gone, literally. I took it off the roof and it’s being stored in the garage, just in case.

We made the switch to Over The Air (OTA) service, good old fashion free television. Of course, the first order of business was to buy a digital antenna, which was about as expensive as one month of Satellite service. Here’s the kicker, the HD signal we get directly from the local stations kicks satellite and cable to the curb. I mean, sure, we only have 26 channels, (most of them in spanish) but the main 5 channels (NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, CW) are crystal clear and “real” HD. The draw back, we’re seeing some skin blemishes we really don’t need to see, but hey, it’s like the newscasters are right there in our living room.

So, what prompted this? Two things. Um, well, no income (err job) and we’re tying to par down all expenses for the foreseeable future (No, I don’t think the end is here or an apocalypse is eminent, can you say COLLEGE TUITION), even if a steady stream of income starts back up, it’s just ridiculous the amount of money we have spent on things in the past, including TV entertainment.

We’re two days in, so far, so good. We’re having DVR withdrawals, but on the bright side, we’re watching commercials we didn’t know existed. Some funny, some not so funny and pausing TV is non-existant. Next order of business will be to build a DVR with our old PC, but there’s costs involved, so that’ll be a while.

In the mean time, we watch “LIVE” TV, (what a concept) and if there’s nothing on, then we have NetFlix online (Ok, we kept one thing), there’s the Xbox360 with loads of games and of course, (clearing throat) there’s always books to read, bikes to ride and outdoor activities to do.

Now, I have the old “Green Acres” theme song running in my head. Dunt-dunt, dunt-dunt-dunt, DUNT-DUNT… Greeeeen Acres is the place for me! (Wait, that should be Dylan with his summer job. – For those that are lost, Green Acres was a sixties sit-com and Dylan is working at a local organic farm (9-News piece coming soon, will update when schedule of Dylan on News is released.)

So, that’s it, we’ve gone back to free TV, no DVR, using NetFlix, the Internet, games, books and outdoor activities for our entertainment. What next? Cooking over an open fire, oh, wait, we do that with the grill nearly every night.

Stay Tuned!!! (Pun intended)

 
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Posted in Personal