Friday, December 29, 2006

iJustice for Apple

I don't like Apple.

There, I said it. I wish I could say that I feel better now, but I don't. You see, I've been made to feel bad about my choice to be a PC enthusiast for years now. It started with the "Microsoft is the devil" stance often taken at sites like slashdot.

Then came the PC/Mac commercials. You know the ones. Mac is there, looking all hip and trendy and cool. PC is there, looking old and busted and a lot like my uncle that I will never let my kids be alone with (no offense intended to the hysterical Jon Hodgman, who clearly needed to pay the rent). And the point is clear: use a Mac, or be a pariah. Be mocked by the cool kids in the back of the bus that always have the latest clothes and the hottest girlfriends and the uncles that aren't on some national list.

So you can imagine my joy at the Christmas present delivered to me this week by the SEC. It appears as though there is some accounting funny business going on over at Apple, and there are 7M stock options that were payed out to their CEO without anyone's consent. That's a lot of apples.

Hopefully, this will be looked into with an appropriate level of scrutiny. Hopefully the dorks on capitol hill (and let's face it, its hard to think that Orrin Hatch is cool under any circumstances) won't be intimidated by Apple's "cool" factor and will see this through to the end.

If for no other reason than to see that smug look on Mac's face replaced by the shocking realization that he is going to be spending some quality time in a federal prison with a convicted murderer who just happens to love his new Dell. Perhaps the commercial will go something like this:

Mac: Whoa! How did I end up here? Its ok though. Lots of cool people have done time.
PC: Oh, hey there little fella. This is prison. You probably want to take that hoody off before someone strangles you with it.
Mac: No way! I love this thing. Besides, people love me. Haven't you heard? They can't get enough of iTunes.
PC: Um, perhaps you should go over and say hello to the boss of the yard before he comes to see you.
Mac: No way. He's not cool enough for me.

(someone walks on from off screen, grabs Mac by the hood and drags him off screen. Grunts and screams are heard. PC weeps. Mac returns, his hoody gone.)

Mac: I can't believe that just happened.
PC: Yeah, maybe you should offer yourself as a new product: iPrisonBitch.

Top 6 Things to Hate About the Internet for 2006

In recognition of the end of 2006 and all the countdowns you find in the media, I’ve decided there’s room for one more.

Selection criteria was made based on nothing significant and order is more a reflection of when I was exhausted from cutting and pasting.

6. Google Secret Land Grabs Hey, I’ve got a fun way to waste your brain cycles, speculate into why Google is buying land and building infrastructure and not putting their name on the building. Duh, that’s what you do when you build a data center.

5. Vista It’s not stable. Probably me, but 3 blue screens today? Come on. This is 2006.

4. DRM/RIAA/Copyrights If we’ve learned anything over the last 20 years, there’s always ways around copy protection and the new DRM storm. Find your loop hole and exploit it. Move on.

3. Stories on Digg about Digg Ok, so Digg is an interesting way to piss away your time at work. But do we really need to read about how it’s probably gamed, who’s getting paid to submit or digg and articles under the “you know you’re a diggaholic if” category? I guess so, as they end up at the top all the time. I just wish there was a Digg detractor and fanboy filter so I could bury that waste of html.

2. MySpace Proliferation Are you on MySpace? If you’re not, you’re saving yourself from a huge waste of time writing about yourself, reviewing web-cam spam and finding that someone you never wanted to find in the first place. My biggest peeve about MySpace is that when they send you a “you have a message” alert, you have to log into their terribly designed site to just see what was said.

1. Fake YouTube Videos that Lure You I am a creature that looks for crap on the web. If I see a link to “Britney Spears Party Video REAL!” or “EXCLUSIVE Steve Irwin Death Video NOT FAKE!’, I’m clicking on it. Unfortunately, so do a lot of others and they show up on the top pages. Of course, the video is never what it says and I start to weep.

Have a safe and Happy New Year celebration. Drink one for the blogosphere!

Thursday, December 21, 2006

May the Gift Card Die Already!

In light of the holiday shopping season and seemingly endless advertisements for "Gift Cards", I give you my thoughs on gift cards. (All who care raise their hands!)

First, Gift Cards are a huge cash cow for retailers. It may cost than a regular transaction, as there's the material, processing involved and the cost of building the validation/acceptance system. This is how they really make their money on them:

  • Over a third of cards purchased never make it to the point of being used in a transaction. Basically free money to the store
  • Often cards are used, but a balance is left on the card. Then this isn't used. Once again, free money.
  • The user of the card tends to overspend from what they would if it was coming directly out of his/her pocket. Win again for the store.
  • It locks the user into the a brand/store, so competition is eliminated.

Giving a gift card sometimes leaves a feeling of thoughtlessness. Gifts are a way to express your perception of the recipient. Although a gift card is kind, it's really a cop out.

Why not just give cash? It's KING and can be used anywhere. I'm not certain when giving cash became tasteless, but that needs to stop. Nothing makes anyone more happy than having complete freewill with the gift. I do like the new Visa or American Express gift cards, although not as much as cash. Since they're accepted at almost all retailers, they're good. But in the same respect, they're locked into retailers :)

There's only one good exception to all the above that I've found: giving it as part of an experience. For instance, last year, I gave my sister and brother-in-law movie tickets gift card, gift card for dinner and free baby sitting services. This was an all around experience and planned by me. It was thoughtful and used completely. Those gift cards didn't go wasted.

Merry Christmas all! Enjoy opening your gift cards on Christmas morning. May they not be lost or misused.

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Google Maps on a Blackberry 7105?

I'm heading to a gathering at a friends house on Saturday night and for the life of me, I can't find the place. I'd been there a few times before, but always during daylight. I wasn't lost, but I was having troubles.

I wanted to spare myself the embarrassment of calling for directions, as it was a rather large gathering. So, I turned to my blackberry 7105 and pull up Google. I figure they would have some flat maps that I could use, but I was wrong.

So, I went to maps.google.com and typed in the address and got nowhere. I tried 3 more times and nothing. No map, no indication of anything. I did notice a "Download Google Maps" link, but with my experience with my 7105, I'm thinking that's not an option for me.

I went to MapQuest and it kept complaining that JavaScript wasn't enabled. So I went and enabled it and still nothing. During all these tries, I had to move my car a few times because it felt awkward parked while cars drove by in the area I was in.

I finally went back to Google Maps and tried the downloads. I tried the search again in the Blackberry browser and once again failed. So, I went directly to the new Google Maps app put in my Tools folder.

In 2 minutes I found where I was and where I needed to go. It was most excellent! (Go Bill & Ted)

So, a drive that should have been 15 minutes, took me 45 minutes. But I saved a little bit of grace by not calling for directions. You should check out if Google Maps is available for your phone. If it supports a BBerry 7105, I'm sure it supports a bunch of 2 year old smart phones.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Vista is a Pain

I can almost not stand it anymore. There are serious issues with this OS and existing hardware out there. I have a Dell Latitude D620, a very common laptop, and I have a bunch of issues (listed below).

For the record, this is Microsoft Windows Vista RTM running business edition. Dell 620 Latitue laptop. Bios revision A06 (just released)

#1 Problem

Sleep - One of the most important feature for those who need to work on the road, shut the lid and it sleeps. My experience has been that it does "sleep", but when it wakes it's not the machine you put to bed. For me, the machine starts, but the monitor doesn't come up. I know the machine is working because it beeps when keys are pressed. Only a CTRL-ALT DEL and password shows activity.

So, I hard reboot.

I pray that these are just driver issues and will be corrected in the future. I know it's early for this OS, but I would almost expect a business laptop, like the D620, would be supported. I will note that Dell has barely anything on the support page for this machine. It's mostly just tools and BIOS. No drivers. So, I wait, hoping for a better experience. Thankfully, XP is still on the machine and if I think I'm about to cry, I can switch back.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Vista Sidebar Saves Husband

A buddy of mine was up late last night doing network maintenance at the office and didn't get home until late. When he got up this morning, he went about his normal routine, probably blurry eyed. He had breakfast with the wife and kids, gave the wife a kiss and took off for the train station (the typical beginning of a 90 minute, 70 mile commute).

So, he's resting there on the train, half awake, when another passenger sat next to him and booted a laptop into Vista. He decided to snoop the stranger's session as he has not been playing with the new OS much. Of course, Aero was on and the differences between Vista and XP were clear.

While looking over the different desktop experience, he was drawn to the sidebar. This user had the Calendar gadget up. If you haven't seen it, by default it's huge and very prominent (see pic). "The 7th, the 7th, the 7th. It's already the seventh?", he thought, "OH CRAP!"


He snaps awake, grabs his cell, dials his wife and sings "Happy Birthday to You!" A bunch of explaining was due, but much was forgiven. It was funny that such a non-necessary feature, on by default, saved his day.


Later during the day, I caught him burning a DVD of Vista and preparing to run GParted on his HDD...


Oh, and before I get in trouble, Happy Birthday, Sarah!

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

To See Your Eyes Roll

As if beating a dead horse was to spear the wife...

I was trying to submit my pitiful story on Digg and did a spell check of my title/description, and low and behold, the work Blogger and Blog are not in the dictionary. And then after that, it had like 20 other possible dupes, which yes, were dupes. Apparently a lot of other people share my observations and thought worthy of blogging.

I think just about anything is worthy of blogging, which may be the reason that so many people roll their eyes at someone who blogs.

-Looking forward to see your eyes roll,
The Blogger

Moving to Vista & Office 2007 - The install

During the lul of a thanksgiving work week, I decided to make the switch to Vista with Office 2007 on my primary workstation. Unfortunately, my dependency on 3rd party connectivity and presentations (SSL VPN, ISA, WebEx) and the risk of not being able to function at work, I decided to dual boot.

My primary machine:
Dell Latitude D620
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0
1GB Memory
60GB 7800 RPM

Vista needs it's own partition to be happy, so I had to find a tool to split my hard drive into two partitions.. I wasn't about to shell out $70 for Partition Magic, so I found a great free alternative: GParted. It's in Linux and performs the functions I needed to re-partition my NTFS XP volume without losing the data within. The best thing about the tool is it's distribution options. I chose the bootable live cd iso route, which allowed me to boot from CD and run it without having to install Linux. It simply boots into Linux that's on the CD and launches GParted.

I split the disk in 2 (30 GB for each OS), which took about 2 hours to do. Then I installed Vista RTM Business Edition, which is the easiest OS install of any Windows operating systems to date. It's also fast, only about 30 minutes without much user input needed. After the OS was up, I joined the corporate domain and installed Office 2007. This was also a breeze, except for the warning boxes that darken the whole screen and pop up a request for elevated privilege.

I've been running Vista w/Office 2007 for a few weeks now and will post about my experiences later. I will say I like Office 2007 quite a bit. Vista is a pain at times due to apps I used in XP not working in it. I've even had to go back into XP a few times in order to do a few things (WebEx was one of them). These apps should clear up over the next few months I hope.

I'll stop here. More to come later.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Blogger Spell Check


So, after the last posting, I did a spell check and the only word it had issue with was "blog"...

So, doing a little searching around and I found that blog is in many dictionaries including the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/blog
Main Entry: blog
Pronunciation: 'blog, 'bläg
Function: noun
Etymology: short for Weblog:
a Web site that contains an online personal journal with
reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer
- blog·ger noun
- blog·ging noun

You would think of all the spell checks in the world, that at least Blogger would have the word blog in it's dictionary. Also, checking the spelling on this post finds blogger as a misspelled word.

"Diet Coke and Antique Ladders"

Ok. So the original name of this excellent blog ("Diet Coke and Antique Ladders") sucks. I thought of it while sitting on my couch and looking around the room. That's what I saw, a finished Diet Coke and an antique ladder.

So, I'm changing it to something even more meaningless. For now on, this blog will be known as "Mister Pickles Down the Stretch".

Discuss amongst yourselves.

The Game has been DELAYED!

Ok. So, I figured my first post would be my last, although I never actually wrote that. I thought I did, which is strange.

Anyways. I think starting this up now would be interesting. Probably not to you, but to me at least. And that's what it's all about, me!