Enraged in Shoreline

Please forgive any typos and grammar in the following post, I am frenetically trying to relay a story that spans a whole year and is fraught with emotions of frustration, disappointment and outrage... it could get a little messy. Here goes.

Despite being gainfully employed by Microsoft, I find myself enamored by a product offering from one of our biggest competitors... the Apple iPhone. I love my iPhone. I got the iPhone 3G last summer before heading to Las Vegas for the New Media Expo and instantly fell head-over-heels for my cell phone.

Once I weighed the risk against the benefits of jailbreaking my iPhone 3G I took the plunge and used QuickPWN to set my phone free of from the shackles and limitations that AT&T imposes on iPhone users in an almost sadistic manner. The result? Unbridled, unmitigated, unrestrained electronic awesome.

JAilbreaking my iPhone 3G opened up the door for a whole world of apps and mods that AT&T decided were too much for me to handle or Apple was too lazy (see greedy) to include in the 2.x software. You want some examples you say? Well, the flashlight app is pretty friggin rad. I know, there is already a flashlight app that doesn't require you to jailbreak your phone, but it also doesn't crank the phone's brightness level up so high it's almost like carrying an LED flashlight around. I am dead serious, this thing is BRIGHT! You can adjust the brightness and even the color to suit your personal preference. I am not sure if this is Apple's fault of AT&T's, but that's just pathetic that they don't think we should have control of the brightness level of our flashlight app. Still not impressed? Cool customizations galore, an assortment of free ringtones and even video recording. Yes, I have been able to record video for months before the 3.0 software showed up. All these are paltry parlor tricks compared to the app at the heart of my decision to jailbreak my iPhone.

When you sign up for the iPhone lifestyle with AT&T, you not only join a group of people who share an unlikely devotion for an electronic device that is usually reserved for televisions, but you willingly submit to mandatory data plan rates. Now don't get me wrong, there would be no point in having all the amazing capabilities of the iPhone if you couldn't use them unless tuned into a Wi-Fi connection. However, I do balk at a base monthly rate of $30 not including those fun hidden charges, fees and taxes that phone companies LOVE to nickel and dime us with. Now if you decide you want to up your productivity and access your work e-mail with the Exchange server software, well that means your data plan just jumped up to $45 a month. Now while we're balking, let's just remind ourselves that we now have internet ANYWHERE as long as we have cell service, that is bad-ass. Wait, what do you mean I can't use my phone like a wireless modem for my computer? You mean in any given month I am paying the exact same amount for a data plan on my phone as I am for a 30Mbps high speed broadband connection to my home but it is limited to use on only this device? Are my recurring rhetorical questions adequately relaying my incredulity? I hope so because it's getting tiring wording these sentences correctly. Anyway, my point is, with a jailbroken iPhone I could now tether my phone to my laptop and be on the interwebs wherever I wanted to... within my cellular service area of course.

Now AT&T being the type of company that doesn't play fair, monitors data usage for signs that you are skirting their regulations and using such an app to exploit their network. What happens then? Something along the lines of fines and account closures etcetera, the usual phone company Jack Boot tactics. So I only use this feature sparingly because if I get into all this mess than it would have just been easier to buy the dongle... heh, dongle, and sign up for the $60/mo. mobile internet plan. Ridiculous!

What is the point of this rambling? Well it seems that even though AT&T is doing most of the dirty work when it comes to violating iPhone users, Apple is still far from blameless. My latest beef with Apple is the result of something that happend this very morning, no more than an hour ago. I ordered my new 16GB iPhone 3GS online so I wouldn't have to do the phone calls and run-around to find one at the store, AND it was delivered to me in three days. Pretty sweet. So I am getting my new phone ready to take the place of it's slightly less sophisticated twin, you know, putting an anti-glare screen on (what a huge pain in the ass that is, especially when you have dogs, dust free work area my ass) and doing one last sync on the old phone to make sure everything is as current as possible and I don't lose any downloads or contacts. That's where I got dead-ended. For some reason iTunes was not able to sync with my phone. At first there was some nondescript "can't find the drive" error. So I restarted the phone and iTunes and it narrowed down to a more specific error. Now being a little paranoid I thought that maybe Apple wised up and found a way to turn a jailbroken phone into a useless paperweight, I didn't want to call tech support and read off the error code that throws up the red flag that tells them; "Please notify AT&T that my account should be closed, my warranty should be voided and I should be sterilized to prevent me from breeding more idiots to fall for such an obvious ploy." So in a panicked frenzy to avoid this I kept repeatedly restarting the device and iTunes until I realized how pointless and silly that was. Well, then I did it one more time just to be sure... yup still not working even after the eighth-ish time. Hmmm, I wonder why each time I restart iTunes it asks if I want to upgrade my device to the 3.0 firmware? Ok, so I click "Download Only" and saints be praised all of a sudden my phone syncs just fine. Now I know I didn't end up being forced to install the 3.0 firmware, but still I am shocked... shame on you Apple.

The Next Go 'Round

Ok, so I said I would see you tomorrow and it is two weeks later, so sue me. The day I left the last post marked the day I inadvertently steered head on into a maelstrom of problems with my brand new laptop. This laptop that I spared no expense on, this laptop that I have on had since about a week before Christmas... became the center of my unhappy universe until recently. Be forewarned, this is a lengthy post, but hopefully it is worth the read.

When I first got the machine I began the usual clean and stock; getting rid of bloatware and installing all the software I can't live without. Somewhere in that process I muffed a step setting up some of the manufacturer software for a couple of devices. I didn't know where to fix it, and if I didn't I would go insane from disappointment thinking I was not getting the most from my machine that I spent so much hard earned money on. So I concluded that there is only one way to resolve this, a full factory restore. I had already spent about 10 hours configuring this system, so this decision was not made lightly. Now in the spirit of saving mother earth, Lenovo no longer sends all those software CDs and DVDs and instead puts a partition on your hard drive with all the system software backed up. At first I was miffed that they would slice off a 20GB chunk of my hard drive space for this, but then I realized how easy it made restoring the system and I rejoiced with great jubilation.

So for those of you keeping count, that is one full restore within only two days of having received the machine. Now this is where dread, disappointment and drudgery began to take their tolls on my memory because the details begin to get a little sketchy.

Now if I recall correctly, I think the next event was another voluntary restore due to something similar to the first go 'round. Again, at this point I had a couple of late nights into this and if you count the first time, restoring it again would effectively negate the fruits of almost a week of late nights spent configuring the system. Now I am not just talking about downloading Firefox and Google Earth, I am talking about installing and configuring the MS Office Suite, MS Expression Studio, SharePoint Designer, Photoshop, Sony Vegas, Camtasia, Snag-It, a handful of other favorite apps and most importantly the software and configurations that enable me to connect to the Microsoft network. If you think Vista has too many pain-in-the-ass security settings and protocols, then just imagine what you have to do to configure Vista to connect with an extremely secure and finicky network like Microsoft's. Now I know what you must be thinking, "But it is a Microsoft product and you are connecting to Microsoft's own network!" This fact affords me no greater ease in accomplishing this task, none whatsoever.

Still keeping count? Two system restores (still voluntary) and only one week of ownership. Yes I made the decision to restore so I should just suck it up, but I believe had I not restored then, I would have had to at some later date, so to me it made more sense to do it on my own terms. Here comes number three, or as I like to call it "Involuntary."

So at this point I thought I was out of the woods and everything was configured to a spectacularly efficient and pleasing degree. Life was good. Then one day, when I connected to the MS network, I got the reminder to change my network password. We are prompted to change this password at 70 day intervals for the obvious reason of maintaining tight security on all of Microsoft's valuable information. My friend Anthony just went through his own personal hell with changing his password and having it cause a myriad of problems that interrupted his work to no end and demanded hours of phone time with IT. Having seen this and in fact gone through the same thing myself quite some time ago, I avoided changing my password hoping that through some miracle I would be given exception to this rule and could continue to use my ancient password unmolested. The days began to count down and when I tried to figure it out, I couldn't recall why changing the password would cause such spectacular fail. So with only 36 hours until password reset deadline, I took the plunge. No BSOD, no crash, nothing, so I think to myself, "This ain't so bad, Anthony must have had his configured improperly, he didn't spend as much time being meticulous and thorough like I did, he he sucker." Now cut to when I start my machine the next morning and FAIL. Guess what genius, you locked yourself out of your user account and it was the ONLY admin user account on the system! After one solid day of denial fueled frantic tweaking, I finally huddled in a corner shakily licking my wounds and conceded defeat.

Next step? Anyone? Anyone? That's right, system restore... again. Tally is now at three full system restores to factory default and only about one-and-a-half to two weeks since first hitting the power button on this gem of modern technology. At this point, voluntary or not, my tolerance, patience and good humor were all wearing thin. Through a cloud of exasperation came a thought that quickly tempered my mood and saved me from what I can only guess would be disastrous results. I did my homework and found out why my computer could be so presumptuous as to lock me out, and how to circumvent it next go 'round. Armed with this new found knowledge that even the seasoned professionals at MS IT overlooked, I began the undertaking of my third restore with the desperate hope that it will be the last time.

This time fate had a curve ball I could never have anticipated. After beginning the restore process that I had become intimately familiar with, something wasn't right. There was some deterioration in performance and then the restore just failed and the computer restarted… Weird. I was assuming I would be taken back to the beginning the restore process, no biggy. I was wrong, dead wrong. After POST, I was told that it could not find an OS. WTF!? Now at this point I had flashes of watching myself channel the Greeks of old and turn this expensive piece of equipment into a discus and hurl it through whatever window was closest (at the time that would have been the living room window, just in case you were wondering). Now I must apologize for the length of this narrative, but I trust your tiring of reading can give you some small glimpse into my state of mind at this point, “How much longer can this really go on?”

I called Lenovo Tech Support and they were very helpful at telling me that once their suggestions had been exhausted, there was nothing I could do but restore the system. That little piece of irony was certainly not wasted on me. I explained that the system is not recognizing the OS much less the partition that the restore information is nestled away on. They asked me if I had made a copy of the restore information on disk, and of course I hadn’t; there was a partition on my hard drive with all of that info, why would I need a disk? And of course the answer to that question is: In case anything like this happens. Next move? Wait for a set of restore disks to be shipped out to me, so much for saving mother earth. After the performance of the postal service and various other parcel delivery services over the holidays, I was resigned to the fact that I would be left with a $2000 paper weight for a few weeks. The disks showed up after only the better part of one week, I installed them and after some tweaking and downloading of what was missing from those disks but previously on my partition, I now had my system right here I wanted it, and still do. I have been knocking on wood and throwing salt over my shoulder every day since in hopes that I am finally past the crossroads of that debacle and will not be turning back any time soon.

What is the moral of the story? None really, I got so efficient at restoring my system, I am thinking of doing a reformat on my home PC while it is all fresh in my mind.

Re-Genesis

This is a new beginning of sorts. While I am still the same author, and I will still be putting forth the same self centered drivel, I will be doing it with new fervor. Since blogging is part of this New Media evolution, and since I now have a business license for a hot new company called Atlas New Media Consulting, I can now devote more time to this pursuit and chalk it up to business research and development. I want to explore every facet of social media and all the other Web 2.0 buzzwords out there; podcasting, blogging, tweeting, etc. and you may ask yourself, "Who isn't?" And I answer: a lot of people, and a lot of companies, and there is a lot of growth to be explored beyond what is hip and new right now.

Some things I recommend for keeping up with the latest trends are, Attack of the Show and StumbleUpon. Short list huh? Yeah, well they are both very good sources because they encompass so much. While we are at it, here are some of my favorite sites/web apps and why they are my favorites.

Giveaway of the Day - a site that offers a different free application every day. From media encoders to scheduling assistants, there are many useful free apps to be had, but also a miasma of "who-the-hell-would-use-that" apps.

Woot - Every day, one item (or two-fer), one stunning price.

Logic Buy - A user driven price watching site. If you want a new monitor, camera, game console or similar product, this site will show you where to find a great deal buying online. It helps when users scan through and vote "hot" or "not" to highlight the really good deals. This is how I found a coupon to get my Lenovo ThinkPad W500 laptop for about $900 off.

Live Maps - This is one of the most accurate online maps I have ever seen. You can plan a route with multiple stops, select routes based on shortest distance or shortest time AND filter based on current traffic consitions. It also allows you to keep a collection of "pushpins" on the map. You can also use the path tool and area tool to mark out a path wherever you like or mark out an area. These will give you the distance and area you marked out, respectively. I used the path tool to measure how many miles I traveled while canoeing up Ross Lake last summer.

New Egg - This is my idea of what a candy store is. It is an online retailer or everything electonic. Computers, game consoles, coffee makers, cell phones, software, hardware, TVs and so much more. They almost always have the best prices, they always have great service, and a huge selection. That isn't even the best part. Their site has one of the most user friendly UIs (User Interface) I have ever seen, which makes finding your needle in the world's biggest haystack really painless. I love this site.

Wishlist - If you are like me, you like to exhaustively research your desired purchases and keep track of them. A lot of online retailers now have an "add to wishlist" feature, but then you have to sign up for an account and hope you remember your login next time you go to the site. With Wishlist, you can maintain a centralized wishlist for yourself, but it is can also be made public so when you are asked: "What do you want for your Birthday/Christmas/Kwanza/Hannukkah/Bris etc..?", you can reply: "You can find my wishlist onlince at wishlist.com, you'll find it by simply searching my name first and last name and the city I live in. If you are even remotely close, you should see a few options for which wishlist it might be."

Craig's List - Does anyone not use this all the time?

Hulu - Movies and TV shows streaming online for free. Sure you have to watch the same commercial 4 or 5 times each one hour episode, but it sure beats the hell out of the same 4 or 5 commercials 10 times for every one hour show. They are gathering speed, accumulating sources and basically kicking entertainment ass.

Wikimapia - It's a global map that you can mark your own points of interest for all to see.

Pandora - This is my favorite site bar none. I get all the music I want for free, no need to download. I can use it on my computers or on my beloved iPhone, so it goes everywhere with me. You can create a host of stations that play music based on whatever song, artist or genre you want. It is ad supported, but it is very tastefully done so it is not too obtrusive or obnoxious. All the nay-sayers who think it will get shut down need to start putting out positive vibes - clap your hands if youbelieve in fairies!

Handy Resource Sites :
Thesaurus.com - duh
Dictionary.com - duh again
Online Translator - translates text from most languages into most other languages. type hello and get bonjour in French, or hola in Spanish, or привет in Russian. And it has text-to-speech links so you can hear how it is supposed to be pronounces.
Online Conversion - convert any unit of measurement into any other unit of measurement; inches to millimeters, ounces to kilograms, miles to cubits... it's got it ALL.

I hope this has been enlightening, and I hope someone out there has some sites that they want to share, I will be happy to add them if they are up to snuff.

See you tomorrow.

I'm Back!

I haven't blogged for almost four years! I am honestly surprised that my account is even still active after such a long absence. First I want to apologize to all of my fans, it has been a long time and I am very sorry. Aw who am I kidding, I have no fans....oh, and I'm not really sorry. :P I just happened to stumble across my own blog in Live Search while I was looking up my old boss. It would seem I had quite a crush on him, and for good reason, everything good I know about being a leader I learned from Dave Ruedlinger.

So much has changed in my life since the last time I wrote in this blog, I mean four years! I now have two dogs, two cars, live about 9 miles further north in a house, and have a good career starting. Kiki and I are 4 years closer to getting married, but that tells us nothing about when exactly we will even get engaged. I got a really great text message from her today that said "...I keep thinking about how excited I am to start our new life together. I want to help pay the bills every month and start saving." This is on the heels of going to Open Houses and falling head-over-heels in love with a house we weren't able to buy. I think it also has something to do with thinking of having kids and blowing up the whole nuclear family scene.

Speaking of procreating, we have long considered names we might like to give our children. Boys names have been easy enough, but girls names are not so easy. I think we have a few we really like and there is no way I am sharing them so they don't end up the flavor dujour and ultra common...but believe you me, they are good names, strong names, names you can go places with.

I recently built a bookshelf as a seven year anniversary gift for Kiki. I drew a plan of what I wanted, made a new friend who owns a cabinet shop and he helped me make the drawing a reality in return for being his on call computer guy. I would have done that for him anyway, it just so happens I got something out of it, so we both win. It needs some sanding in spots and I need to pick up more stain to finish covering it, oh, and some wood putty to fill a couple of mis-measured drill holes. It is AWESOME. I am excited to start blogging again. especially now that I have learned some handy HTML code.

Born Under a Bad Sign

I swear I have the worst luck sometimes, especially when it comes to computers. I guess that comes with the territory of building your own system, but it is such a royal pain in the donkey. An automotive problem can be narrowed down by a symptom or two that will almost always lead to the source of the problem. The same can be true of computers, but it seems more often the problem is extremely elusive and almost impossible to diagnose, like a "ghost in the machine." The ones that burn me the most are the ones I go to someone (software company etc.) for help and get the big brush off for one reason or another. That is what is happening right now with my DVD cloning software. Ok, so I guess that is what I get for pirating copies of almost every movie Netflix sends my way, but damn it, I payed good money for the software and it had better work. I had some problems with the software before, but can't remember how I resolved them, so now I am fighting an uphill batle where I am forced to learn as I go. The pros; I am learning as I go, finally solving the problem is rewarding, I am once again able to do what I want to do. The cons; it takes untold hours of fiddling and tweaking, the fiddling and tweaking can sometimes lead to other problems, the frustration associated with hours of fruitless fiddling and tweaking will probably send me to an early grave... ...ok, crucial time here folks, I am about to see if this latest barrage of tweaks has done the trick.... ...and sadly it has not and I am back where I started. You can't really call it square one, because that would mean I knew where I stood and where the next square is, but I gotta tell you from here I feel I am on a one foot by one foot square hovering over an black bottomless abyss, anyone care to take the first step? I know, a little melodramatic and slightly fatalistic, but come on, I am really frickin harrowed here.

Oh and to add to my frustration it is almost Christmas. How I long for the days when my biggest problem was not being able to sleep the night before Christmas. Now I have to worry about getting gifts (not a bad thing unless you are strapped for time and money because you work in retail hell) and making ends meet, and taking care of SO much stuff. I feel like I am being drawn and quartered by the devil's own steeds who have mastered the ability to snicker and taunt as they oh so slowly drag my body into their respective directions. Again, a little fatalistic, but now I trust you are beginning to observe the mood I am in. Where is my Christmas spirit anyway? I think I lost it, not like something that has washed away slowly (which I am sure to a certain degree it has) but more like a lost $20 bill or a set of car keys. I was sure I had it a minute ago, and all of a sudden I have no clue where it went. I just hope it turns up, sooner than later. I don't know if I could handle being a scrooge.

How do you shop for someone you care about and not spend all of your money? These days I feel I am paying less attention to what I think would be the perfect gift for someone, a gift that would show I pay attention and I care, instead I replace thought with amount of money spent. What does this result in? A completely unfulfilling gift giving experience. When I am done, I am usually overdrawn, and what's worse, I still don't feel like I have shown the person how much I care. So now I undertake a quest that will probably not outlive this holiday season (because I think big, but act small too often), but a valiant quest nonetheless, next year, I will take time to think of what would mean something to somebody, and make sure I am prepared for it so I am not contributing to the other stresses that the holidays bring. Of course I will try to focus on the actual holiday and it's meaning, instead of it's bastardization and malignancies.

Workin' Man's Blues

I have been a meat cutter for just shy of four years, and all of those years have been spent in one shop. There are good and bad things about that. First, it used to be a GREAT shop, we were top in the company, and favored by all of the big wigs. Our great leader Dave Ruedlinger left us in the Spring of this year, and it has been a steady decline since. There are other contributing factors to our decay, but I have to say that is the biggest. I talked before about the woes of our department, about not having any gainsharing anymore, etc. It may sound lame that I am unsatisfied with the pay I get and always want something more, but I feel I work hard enough to deserve something more. Besides, that extra treat is always what pushed us harder and farther to reach new levels of excellence. But we started taking on water some time last year, and while our sales were still climbing until late this spring, our gainsharing already started taking a hit. Now our team is way down to a lean 22 team members, so much better than almost 30. It's a start in a new direction, I just hope it gets a whole lot better real quick, because I am thinking of pulling up anchor and sailing elsewhere.
My good friend Neal and I may be going Entrepreneurial with another friend in the near future. What will our business be? Who knows? There are so many things we are capable of doing, we may have more than one focus, but rest assured when we find that thing or those things that are "it" then we are off to the races. Wish us luck, we are shootin for the stars.

Gamer Fever

Well, it is the time of year when everybody settles into their own kind of winter hibernation. I know some people stay compulsively active, but for the most part, people turn to sednetary activities that allow them to stay indoors. One of those things being video games. I have played video games since I was a kid, and on the PC since the first time I played Dark Forces (a Star Wars game) in my early teens. I found myself in a challenging environment where everyone I knew was far more skilled than I was, but that didn't detract from the fun enough to discourage me from playing. Without noticing I began to excel in all forms of gaming. I know, a dream come true right? Well, I found that I could out-race my friends in Gran Tourismo 3, out fight my friends in Tekken 4, and outshoot everyone in Battlefield 1942 and all of it's expasion packs and mods. This is a good feeling for me, I am proud of my abilities in this area, and what's more, I built the PC that I play on. It's not as hard as it sounds, but it certainly is intimidating fitting very fragile parts together that cost a couple hundred dollars each. But I did it, and I think I did a damn good job for my first PC built from the ground up. Now it is time for my first big upgrades. I am running a nice ASUS A7N8X motherboard with an AMD 1.8GHz processor. As it always does, the technology market moves ahead, leaving everyone in it's dust, scrambling to catch up. Well I am going to make some upgrades soon I think, we'll see what Kristen says. Kristen is Punkin by the way. I was tired of typing the word Punkin, it's one of those words you would have to hear to understand how it can be endearing. Anyway, I would like to upgrade to a 3.4GHz Pentium 4 processor, and put it on an ASUS P5P800 motherboard. This time I think I want to get an upgraded sound card as well, like a Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS. And going from a 7400 RPM hard drive to a 10,000 RPM hard drive will also help a lot. Another 512MB stick of RAM (DDR2-400 PC2-3200) which will bring this to a total cost of around $700, but I might be able to swing it without the extra RAM at around $550. When will this happen? According to our new budget... ...never, but we'll see where we can squeeze a little at a time and build it piece by piece. Wish me luck.