Making a splash

A nice thing our school does is include an activity fee with our tuition. I’m not speaking in a facetious manner, I actually mean it. For $55 per semester, we get a membership at a gym located a couple blocks from the school. Normal membership costs more than $55 per month so it’s a bargain. It is also one of the nicest fitness center I’ve seen.

Last semester, Kevan (my carpool buddy) and I began going in early to use the gym. They have a wading pool with six lanes and a full length swim pool with eight lanes. After spending a few mornings running on one of the dozens of machines, my knees reminded me how much they detest it so I began spending more time in the pool.

I can swim but it’s anything but graceful. In fact, it’s much like my skiing. I’m wild enough to jump off any double black diamond slope, Continue reading “Making a splash”

Presentation Devices for Mac OS X

One of my esteemed professors needs a remote for use in class. Actually, a couple of my professors are in need of a decent remote for their presentations in class. So, I did some searching around and found a couple good options, listed in order of recommendation.

Choice #1: Kensington Wireless Presentation Remote

Kensington Wireless Presentation Remote Control with Laser Pointer

All features of the Kensington are known to work reliably with Mac OS X. Simply click the link and it’ll take you to item at the Amazon.com store. If you order by clicking the link, they’ll even give me a little referral credit.

Choice #2: Logitech 2.4GHz Cordless Presenter

Logitech 2.4 GHz Cordless Presenter

two chicks

Last week we saw a hot new chick in the neighborhood and I’ve been trying to get a photo of her ever since. We’ve seen her fly by a few times but yesterday was the first time she held still long enough for us to get a good look, and did we ever. Jen ran for the binoculars and I grabbed the camera and the 400mm telephoto lens.

Lucky for ya’ll, she held still long enough for me to snap a couple candid shots. In addition to the shot above, I also got one of her dropping her drawers to take care of some business. In the interests of moral sensibility, we’re not publishing that one. Today we saw her again, and she was at the top of her game. She was with some guy, and she had her claws sunk deep into him.

And the two were becoming one flesh, literally. We watched for 10 minutes trying to see exactly she had laid her claws into. Unfortunately, she was outside the range of my 400mm lens and our binoculars. Our best guess is: a cat.

And here is the other hot little chick in the neighborhood.

Eight months

Our litle bundle of joy will be 8 months old on Saturday. She isn’t quite walking yet but given a couple fingers, she’ll happily follow our lead. She’s very keen to do anything we do. (Monkey see, Monkey do) If we’re eating it, she wants some too. So, in addition to feeding off mommy, she eats just about everything else that we do. She has two front teeth coming in.

Not only is she absolutely adorable, but we’re continually amazed at how pleasant her disposition is. She is a treat to have around. People ask how I get her to smile for the photos. The secret is, I don’t have to. She’s just happy all the time. Maybe it’s because she knows she’s beautiful?

click for more photos of Kayla.

Texas is heating up!

Thursday morning on my way into school traffic was backed up more than normal. We meet at 6:30AM and at that time, traffic going into downtown is heavy but not congested. Because I carpool, we get to use the HOV lane and typically never slow to less than 60mph. On Thursday, traffic was backed up past 635 (where we get onto I-30. A couple miles down the road, we passed the source of the backup.

On the North side of road was a grass fire blazing away with a few fire trucks working to supress it. On our way home, there was a good sized black patch along the road. Make no mistake, it’s dry here. The Governer has declared the entire state a drought disaster. The warm and sunny weather isn’t helping. The Texan cattleman are beginning to cull their herds, the cotton producers can’t till the soil until some rain falls, and they’ve imposed a state wide burn ban. They have even banned arson! Shucks, and I was planning…oh never mind.

Samsung A900 (Blade)

It is long past time to get a new cell phone and plan. My contract with Sprint has long since expired so I’ve been researching the options. I have several criteria I consider essential for my cell phone service:

  • National Coverage – It must work while traveling
  • Home Coverage – Good reception at my house (duh)
  • Bluetooth/USB sync – Import/Sync address book from PC to phone
  • Modem/Data – tether to laptop for everywhere internet access

The national coverage and data access are mandatory for me because of my consulting business. I offer a service to my clients and guarantee them a 1 hour response. Thus, my phone must provide me with the ability to get internet access from nearly anywhere. That narrows down my list of potential service providers to Sprint, Cingular, and Verizon.

Beyond the choice of providers is the matter of phones. I had been using a Sanyo 8100 for years. I am able to tether to it using a USB cable and sync my address book to it via BitPim. It is not pretty or elegant, but it works. I have two problems with that solution. The phone is HUGE in my pocket so I hate carrying it, and it drops calls with great regularity. It needs to be replaced.

Last year I tried out a PM-325, also from Sprint. It was a slick little phone but Sprint crippled the Bluetooth support so that it only worked with headsets. USB tethering was also borked (I can’t remember why) so I returned it a week later and have been waiting for a better phone to appear since. (Note: Sprint later released a firmware update that enabled Bluetooth tethering)

Last month I wandered into a Cingular store and bought a Motorola Razr v3. I used it for a few days. The phone has a great feature list. I immediately synced my address book to it (yay) and tethered my laptop to it via Bluetooth. Yay again. However, after I started making phone calls with it, I noticed that the voice clarity and coverage at my house stank. I frequently had to ask the other person to repeat what they said. The clarity of calls on Sprint really has spoiled me.

The other problem with the Razr is speed. The net access is really, really slow compared to Sprint’s Vision. The lag is so high that interactive connections (ie, SSH which I absolutely must have) are painful to use. I thought perhaps it was simply a network issue but I was in Wal-Mart one day. I needed to look up something on the web so I pulled up the browser and spent 10 minutes trying to get to the page I wanted to see. I realized that I could have driven home, looked it up on my computer and driven back before I found what I needed using the phones (wap) browser.

I concluded that the Razr was not really an upgrade from my aged 8100 so I returned it. Since then I’ve gotten two incorrect (way overbilled) invoices from Cingular. I called them and the kind customer service lady promised to correct the bill. It’s been almost two months and I still haven’t gotten a correct invoice from them. That’s not exactly a great enticement for me to ever try them again.

Finally, on Dec 30th, I called Sprint again and they made me a sweet deal to renew my contract. I got a Samsung A900 phone for $100 shipped. It has gotten excellent reviews from all over and it supports ED-VO, Sprint’s new high speed mobile access, which includes support for streaming TV to your phone. The promise of high speed on my phone and the ultra-thin profile were nice additions to the other requirements of mine that this phone met.

When we got home from Michigan, it was waiting for me. I activated it and have been happily playing with it ever since. Bluetooth tethering to my laptop works great. I was able to import most of my address book entries (it only supports 500). Network access is really, really quick. In fact, unlike the Razr, everything about this phone is quick. Menus come up pretty quickly, the web browser launches quickly, Google maps load quickly, and movies download quickly.

The camera phone is good, nearly as good as phone sized cameras get. It plays MP3’s just fine but only holds a few of them. I haven’t figured out how to get GPS data from it to my laptop yet. I did install Google’s Local for mobile phones. It is way cool. In all, I’m extremely pleased and this phone was well worth the wait. It’s highly recommended.

I can see your phone records

Do you want to find out if your spouse is making secret phone calls from their work or mobile phone? Are you concerned that your senator is making a few too many phone calls to certain law enformant agent(s)? Do you think your telephone records are secure from prying eyes? Think again. Yours, mine, and practically anyone elses phone information is easily available to anyone with a few dollars to spare. Are you freaked out yet? Good.

CBS 3 in Philadelphia and the Sun Times in Chicago have both reported on a web site (http://www.locatecell.com/) that will allow you to retrieve any persons phone records for a modest fee. Consider yourself warned about the privacy implications of this, they are mind boggling.

Even if a law is passed that makes this illegal, the fact that it is possible will only deter those who actively sell this info. It will still be readily available in black hat circles. Consider that if you wanted to call someone anonymously, you could no longer use any telephone associated with your identity. If you used a pay phone and someone spotted you, they could easily determine the number you called by querying the logs of that pay phone.