erica's joys :)

I am a piss poor so-called techie. Why? I don't own a digital camera. Well actually I own some little $60 P.O.S I got off Woot. Trust me when I say its not worth the parts its made of. So now I have a conundrum. I'm about to start traveling more frequently than I ever have before and I have no way to adequately document my journies with pictures. The pictures of next weeks trip to NYC will be courtesy of my 8125. If you care to see them, please don't be offended by their blurriness and low resolution.

Back to the conundrum...how to get a digital camera. I'm debating cashing out a portion of my 401k and rolling over the rest. Tax penalties be damned, I want to be able to take pretty pictures. So yeah, its either that or selling my laptop which is really becoming a viable option. The thing weighs a ton and I really won't need it soon so why keep it?

Decisions decisions.

For some reason, Blogger lacks the ability to pop in an RSS feed somewhere and have it easily displayed on your blog via some tag. Not to worry, I installed feed2js which is working quite nicely. I modified it a bit to get spiffy corners to work on the feed titles.

Anyhow, I have a bone to pick with Cingular and any other cellular provider that sells the HTC Wizard, better known as the Cingular 8125 or the T-Mobile MDA. There should be a big red sticker on the box of every one of these that says "DO NOT LET YOUR BATTERY RUN ALL THE WAY DOWN."

I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, lets go back to the day before yesterday. How to describe my reaction when my brand-new almost unaffordable phone wouldn't turn on? Lets say there were a lot of words that I won't post in my blog flying around. Before you ask, yes I let it charge overnight, yes I reseated both the battery and the SIM card, yes I did all the troubleshooting step I could possibly do to get it to work. I'd given up the ghost, resigning myself to calling Cingular to go through the hassle of getting a replacement. I decided to do one last search and came up with this thread on xda-developers.com and the post that saved my sanity:

"I had the same problem some weeks ago. If the battery go down to much and Wizard switch off then you have big problems because this ppc charge only when OS is loaded!

So if you are not able to switch on to charge it you have to charge the battery outside the phone.

This problem happen to me when i was traveling and i forget my charger at home... I bought another USB cable i cut it to take out the red and black wires, then i take out the battery from the Wizard and put red wire on the pin with label (+) and black wire to the pin (-), the pin label are written on the battery. I put attention to don't make shortcuts and that wires and pin was touching and let 15 minutes to charge (natually the USB was attached to my laptop). Then disconnected USB cable from laptop, put the battery on Wizard and switched on it pressing the power button few seconds. It booted up and when OS was loaded i connected the normal USB cable to the phone to finish to charge it.

Now i charge the battery before that reach 0%!"

:| Yes. If I let my battery completely drain, I better have a USB cord handy that I can do some quick wirestripping on. Luckily, I happen to work in an environment that has them laying around all over the place and I got my 8125 up and running. HOWEVER. Cingular, T-Mobile? Bad form. Simply terrible. Please provide some method for charging the batteries without the OS running? Thanks.

From Best WiFi Hotels 2006 || HotelChatter

"Kimpton Hotels: Kimpton once again tops the list as the undisputed hotel WiFi kings. The brand improved their now legendary free WiFi service in the last couple of years, by extending their fast, reliable WiFi network to your upstairs room, at many hotels. Yup, at most Kimpton hotels you *can* actually sack out with your computer on the bed wireless and happy. This scenario is oft-advertised by other hotel chains, but hardly ever a reality. Kimpton doesn't count on their lobby WiFi network to reach the top floors of their buildings, instead, at the hotels we visited, Kimpton actually had two separate WiFi networks--one for the lobby and the other for the guest rooms. Both networks are easily accessible by clicking on a standard terms and conditions. Furthermore, during our Kimpton visits, friendly staffers went out of their way to ask us if we were getting a good reliable WiFi signal in both the lobby and our room, and guess what? We were. Kimpton Hotels tend to appeal to business travelers, hip leisure travelers, and globe-trotting bloggers."

Errr...what? I recently had the um...pleasure of staying at The Muse Hotel, which is a Kimpton Hotel. Given the location of the hotel (Times Square) you would assume that the Muse would be one of the better Kimpton Hotels, with all amenities and options available. You would be incorrect, as I was.

When I arrived at the Muse, check in was easy, the bellman was quite friendly, and I was very happy with my room. The only problem I had was the lack of wifi. I asked the bellman about wifi when I arrived at my room. He told me that wifi can ONLY be used in the lobby, quite contrary to what this article states. What was I to use for internet access? A wired internet connection at the desk in the room, for the low low price of $9.95 per night. To make my experience that much better, they provided a nice 3 foot network cable for me to use.

I couldn't believe that for a minute. This $300/night hotel in Times Square does not have wifi access in the rooms? I fire up the laptop and pick up about 5 wifi signals...none of which were for the hotel. Unfortunately, all of them were encrypted. Yay for people being safe about their networks but boo for me not being able to have wifi access.

So I'll say this...hopefully the ranking of the Kimpton Hotels was based on some of their other hotels and by some weird twist of fate, the Muse was excluded. I would advise Kimpton Hotels that if they want to keep that ranking, they should ensure that ALL their hotels live up to the title.

Extremely useful application Crutchfield has created for the iPod owners out there. Tell it what kind of iPod you have and what kind of car you have and it will show you all the different ways you can connect your iPod to your car stereo.

read more | digg story

Mini-Microsoft: Vista 2007. Fire the leadership now!

Not more than a few weeks after I get my little (well not so little) hands on Vista, comes the news that the release has been pushed back until 2007. Honestly. I, for one, am not at all surprised by this announcement, given the fact that besides some new UI stuff (stolen from Apple and Linux) and some ridiculous bug-me-ware, I see nothing changed of significance in Vista. So yes, M$, push back and push back and push back some more until you have a product I as both a consumer and an IT professional will see some value in. Perhaps you should pull back on the whole Live initiative and focus more on your core business. Like it or not, you're an OS and software company. Try and, you know, do it right? Thanks.

I got a new job. I just officially accepted it today. I start on the 3rd of April.

Psyched? Yes.

You remember back a couple years ago, Free iPod mania swept the nation? Okay maybe thats going a smidge overboard. You can't deny that there was a lot of buzz on the internets about it. I managed to nab a few free things myself during that time period and on. Back then, little known company Gratis Internet won the hearts of many cash strapped college students. However, today, after a name change, a policy change, and some unsettling information, I have to wonder, if the free ride is over?

On March 1st, I got a nice email from Freepay (what Gratis changed their name to) stating that I now had 90 days to complete my free offers and get however many signups that I needed. What's this? A policy change? So I head on over to the Freepay website and find...nothing. No explanation, no quick blurb about a major policy change, no "Click here to find out more about our recent changes." Just nothing. So I click to their "News Blog" and again nothing. That struck me as odd so I head over to a forum that has been around since the beginning of the free site fun. What I've read there has is what led me to my conclusion about the end of the ride.

First, Jake, the resident Gratis/Freepay representative, has no real answers about the change of policy. Not a bit of insight into why, exactly, it is required for people to complete their accounts in 90 days. Later, a half-hearted explanation about the policy change "from the top" of Gratis/Freepay states they made the policy change for accurate financial planning and statistics showing that 93% of people finish their accounts in less than 90 days. I find that number hard to believe as so many people sign up and NEVER do anything with their accounts (trust me, I have accounts full of them).

Second, Gratis/Freepay instructed Jake to lie about what was first called a "glitch" that was causing peoples accounts to stay in Pending Approval status but turned out to be an offer that Gratis/Freepay was having a problem with. This does not bode well for any business, let alone one that has to battle to be believed to begin with.

Third, and most alarming, is the revelation that Gratis/Freepay, who promised never to share users information, has in fact, sold millions of users information to a company named Datran, who had to cough up this information in an investigation. As a result, Gratis/Freepay is now under investigation by Eliot Spitzer.

All this makes one wonder how Gratis/Freepay will fare in the next few months. Is the investigation the REAL reason for the policy change? Are they trying to scale back just in case Spitzer smacks them with billions of dollars in fines? I guess we'll have to watch and see. Meanwhile, let me get back to hustling to get my last four signups for a free computer before they go under.

If I see "Windows needs your permission to use this program" again, I think I may scream.

I went to a Business Desktop Deployment class recently and one of the M$ reps sitting in hooked us up with Vista beta invites. A few days ago, I actually got around to installing build 5308 and I've started using it regularly. However, if it does not shut up, I will go right back to using XP or maybe start really getting into the Kubuntu I installed on my other box.

Seriously, Windows does NOT need my permission to run the task manager. I understand the whole secure computing initiative but that does not mean pester me every time I want to do one task or another. I haven't found the setting (if one exists) to make it stop bothering me every other second but once I do, it will never EVER get turned back on.

Meanwhile I have a few Live Messenger invites if a) anybody reads this and b) anybody wants one.

...and there is nothing wrong with that.

i like to fix computers. i like to tinker with new technology. occasionally i like to futz with php and html and css IF i have the need for it. i do not have an inferiority complex because the idea of writing a program makes me want to jump off a bridge. i was a computer science major once...for a year. i had a java class with an instructor named victor. victor said "you either love programming or you hate it. there is no in between." victor is a very smart man. i am one who hates programming but loves computers. so i fix/upgrade/maintain/work magic on them. i can administer a domain to the end of the world and back. i can't subnet like i can do math but give me a week or so and i can change that.

there thats a good first entry for this blog. that should give you an idea of who i am and what i do and don't do.