Uncategorized – Page 42

Halloween

Each year at Halloween our church hosts a “Pumpkin Patch” party. To get a mental picture, imagine a large building with 2-600 little kids all dressed up in their costumes playing various carnival type games, door prizes, balloons, and other exciting stuff for kids. Jen and I are in a group and our group volunteered to serve at the event and were assigned to assorted positions.

I was one of 11 people assigned to security detail. It is Halloween so a costume would be necessary. I had aspirations of being a Roman Centurion but a $15 plastic helmet and sword doesn’t do it justice and a “good” costume with real metal helmet and sword was a bit much at $800.

I didn’t give the costume much more thought until last night when Jen brought up the matter. Since we were now in the 11th hour, we were limited to clothing options in the closet. Jen came up with a great idea, an Agent from The Matrix. I already had the black suit and black square sunglasses. The white iPod headphones made a perfect earpiece, so only a few accessories were needed. A trip to Wal*Mart to acquire a black tie, tie clip, and hair gel and I was in business for a whopping $21.

The real work was done last night, reviewing the movie again to get the lines down: “Hello Mr. Anderson”, and other classics like, “I’m going to enjoy watching you die Mr. Anderson” expressed in monotone eloquence. I’m quite pleased to report that it was a smashing success. The most common comment was “You look so professional”, followed closely by “You look like an agent”. Everyone got the “government agent” part. Members of demographic profiles that would likely have seen the movie got it immediately, and everyone else guessed Men In Black, or CIA agent.

Defining moments were intimidating 15 year olds with nothing more than an expressionless stare and issuing an appropriate agent greeting to a miniature Neo. The little Neo was quite taken by the experience as well. We enjoyed ourselves very much this evening and hope that you too did something enjoyable and memorable on this holiday.

iMac 17″ for sale

Do you know someone looking for an iMac but can’t afford a new one? I have a 17″ iMac G4 (800MHz) for sale. I am the original purchasor, as this was Jen’s iMac. It was top of the line with the just released 17″ LCD display, 80GB hard drive, SuperDrive, 56k modem, Ethernet, and speakers. I bumped the RAM up to 768MB and added an Airport (WiFi) card. I did a price search on eBay and this system currently sells between $1,000 and $1,200. This system would lean towards the higher end of that range due to the SuperDrive, extra RAM, and Airport options. It’s a great little computer but it’s being replaced because a faster system is needed.

To buy it’s replacement (17″ iMac G5 1.8GHz, 512MB, SuperDrive) costs $1,700 direct from Apple. Despite this systems ability to fetch over $1k on eBay, I’d sell it for a little less to someone I know.

The answer is yes, but what, pray tell, is the question?

Some people don’t get the iPod

It’s no secret that in psychological terms, humans have a tendancy to project their world view onto others. Because of this, they often have have quite distorted views of reality. I found this iPod user review to be a classic example. It seems iPod users have been giving each other “the nod”. His assumption is that because he bought his to “be cool”, that so too have all other iPod users. How absurd.
Continue reading “Some people don’t get the iPod”

Cellular And IP Telephony Update

I’m now a Sprint PCS customer for the next 12 months. Despite not having quite the plan I wanted, and despite a very limited selection of phones (which do not support bluetooth), they do have a decent nation-wide plan, as well as adequate local service in northern Michigan. Almost as important, it saved a friend a $150 contract termination fee by taking over her contract.

For my purposes, data access is as important as the cell coverage. Sprint PCS has what they call “Vision”. Vision encompasses many things such as web surfing on your phone, picture exchange, etc. The short version is simply that for $15/mo I get internet access at ISDN speeds, anywhere Sprint has vision coverage (most everywhere). This is quite cool.

Today I purchased a $23 cable at Radio Shack. I plugged the cable into the phone and the USB port on my powerbook. Right now, Jen is driving 85mph down US-131 on our way to a Third Day concert in Ypsilanti. At the same time, my cell phone is charging (via my laptops USB port) and I’m typing this blog entry on my Powerbook, connected to the internet through my Sanyo 8100 cell phone. Slick.

Oh, and one more question just got answered. I can also receive calls from telemarketers on the cell phone while connected to the Intenet.

On a related note, my Packet 8 IP phone has a useful “forwarding” feature. Instead of doing a “normal” forward like your traditional (POTS) line, it forwards the call to a number and rings in on the IP phone at the same time. Whichever phone picks up the call first gets it. Now, should you call my home phone, after I fail to answer in two rings, it rings my cell phone. Very slick. 🙂

I am fairly pleased with Packet 8 but their call quality leaves a bit to be desired. As soon as VoicePulse provides service in my area, I’ll be jumping ship. Their service costs $5 more for unlimited national calling but offers a many more useful features in addition to better call quality. If I lived in an area where I could get my number transferred to VoicePulse, I’d do it poste haste.

Oh Canada!

Hasta la vista Michigan. We’re off to Canada for a long weekend of backpacking along a couple stretches of the Lake Superior Coastal Trail. We hope you too are doing something enjoyable this weekend.

Noah arrives!

Congratulations to Jen & Eric on the safe arrival of Noah.

Noah is a healthy 8 lbs, 4.5 oz. Both Noah and Jen are doing well. Visiting hours today are 8-8 and they’ll be home tomorrow.

NicTool announcement

NicTool is a project I’ve been slightly involved with for a few years. I happened upon it while searching for a DNS management application while working for HostPro in Bellevue, back in 2001. We liked it more than the commercial DNS management suites and purchased a license for it, essentially funding development of some features we needed. After that, the founders went their seperate ways and development ceased.

I approached them earlier this year, petitioning them to allow me to Open Source the code and give away NicTool under GPL terms. They agreed so I built the new NicTool web site, made some minor enhancements to the code, and have spent a fair bit of time writing documentation for it. The initial effort is complete. The code is available, documentation exists, and NicTool now has a future.

Cell Phone Conundrum

I need a cell phone and service, and getting the right deal has proven suprisingly difficult. Maybe you can help?

My reprieve from being married to a cell phone is nearing it’s end and I have a choice to make. Because of my personality, I have already done some research to determine what’s available that will suite my needs the best. I have found exactly what I want, I just can’t get it. My ideal service plan is as follows:

AT&T Shared GSM National, two lines with 900 shared anytime minutes (from anywhere, to anywhere), two bluetooth equipped phones (Nokia 6820, Motorola T616), unlimited nights and weekends, nights begin at 7pm, unlimited mobile to mobile, $0 setup, and $80 per month.

For my needs, this is absolutely perfect. We already have unlimited free long distance with our IP phone so it’s highly unlikely that we’d ever exceed the 900 minute plan and AT&T has fantastic coverage all over the country. The only problem with this plan is that I can’t buy it. AT&T doesn’t offer “local” coverage in Northern Michigan and willl not sell a service plan for use here.

I have exactly the same problem with T-mobile. They too offer a very similar package but once again, do not offer service here. I’ve checked with the regional cell phone providers in the area (Cellular One, Alltel) and neither offer a calling plan that I want to be limited by for a year. Cingular doesn’t offer service here, so the only option I see is Sprint.

I dislike Sprint for several reasons. The coverage up here is very spotty, I don’t like the phones they offer, their data service is expensive, and I’d have to pay a fair amount more to activate service and buy the phone. With AT&T and T-Mobile, I can get a cheap data plan, free phone & activation, and a good service plan.

Ideas for a solution anyone? Ideally I could get an AT&T plan but as far as I know, I cannot do so without crossing ethical boundaries.

Compact Flash – Finally!

My single biggest annoyance with my Nikon D70 camera has been swapping flash cards. I shoot in JPEG Fine so I can fit about 75 photos on a 256MB flash card. I have two of these and am quite adept at swapping them as soon as I’ve filled up the first. Having two 256MB flash cards just isn’t enough. When I shoot panoramas, I burn through 10-20 shots each. Shooting just a few of those will leave me in want of space.

On our Alaska trip I toted along my PowerBook to offload the photos as I filled the flash cards. I also took it to have a full darkroom at my disposal but there are occasions like our Isle Royale trip where it’s impractical to take the PowerBook, or even an iPod with Griffin’s media reader.

Until recently, the options for solving this problem have been: a) pay through the nose for a big (1GB +) flash card, buy an iPod mini or Nomad 4GB mp3 player for $250 and rip the 4GB flash card out of it, or just wait for the prices to become reasonable. Now that fast 1GB cards can be had for under $100, there’s no reason not to upgrade. Pick a fast card from Rob Gilbraith’s site and then use PriceGrabber to find it cheap.

I picked up a SanDisk Ultra II 1.0GB for $89 shipped to my door. That’s a far better deal than buying more 256MB flash cards locally for $60 each.