Today, at work, I'm going to work on making my T-Mobile Shadow experience better. In between tasks, and generally filling time as I can, while doing work, of course. So, it is going slow. (I'm starting this post at about 10:00 AM. I've been at it off and on for an hour, inbetween reading training material, reviewing trouble tickets, dodging funny pictures sent to me by my colleagues and such.
For those of you, like my Aunt Staci, who says that I make "boring" posts. This one will probably be boring. Fair warning and all that...
So, music... I've purchased a set of Motorola S9 stereo bluetooth headphones. They're great, and I was going to use them with my Apple PowerBook, but I need Leopard for stereo sound, rather than the simple headset/microphone profile. I'm selling my PowerBook anyway... not specifically for that reason, Mostly because I don't want to pay for the battery upgrade, memory upgrade, and Leopard upgrade, but I digress... The bluetooth headphones work great with the phone, and I'd like to use them when I work out in the mornings before work.
I loaded a few songs from my PowerBook onto the phone, using a memory card that we've bought. They were encoded in AAC (.m4a, like on iTunes/iPod/iPhone) and they worked fine in the Windows Media Player. I haven't ripped all of my CDs, but I wanted to make sure that if for some reason, I go nuts and use Apple as my primary system, that I could use my ripped tracks on the phone. Seems to be fine.
Incidentally, I'm probably going to stick with Windows Media Center and just deal with the OTA subchannel nonsense or maybe go with Media Portal or some other free replacement on our DVR box. It's working very well, and syncing playlists and such seems like it will be great with our phones. Sigh... I've given up freedom for convenience, so I guess I deserve neither. I'll learn my lesson and come crawling later, I'm sure.
I'm also going to try to get my phone updated, and I guess I need to call in to customer service and grab those spare extra capacity batteries that are supposed to be free, but couldn't be sent to customers subscribed for less than thirty days... Sigh.
I'm also going to try to install moBlog, and see if I can try to use my camera phone and post directly to my blog, making some of those life moments more publically available. Maybe then I can justify having this fancy toy, rather than simply saying my wife needs to keep a schedule with her, and I just got one too.
We'll see how it all goes. Good luck to me.
Okay... went to lunch, came back... lunch was just awful, food-wise. My PC is getting re-imaged at 1:30, and I've got training to finish up. moBlog just didn't work right for me. I couldn't get it to work, and I gave up. I do wonder why Wordpress.com has a mobile client for iPhone, and not for Windows Mobile, but there's no real guesswork. Announcing a client on iPhone is bigger news...
I did manage to get the T-Mobile update installed. Avril Lavigne and Dave Matthews Band now emenate from my phone... very nice indeed. There's some better text input stuff too.
I think it is just time to sit down this evening and rip discs on the big box... WMA or MP3?
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Monday, October 6, 2008
More time in the day, please... kthxbye.
Ugh... I've had a recent event that I won't discuss much further, but I basically didn't have time to do something that was necessary. Not a "sort of nice" thing, but something I really needed to do. I missed out.
Anwyay, my life will continue, so don't worry. This weekend was a little slower. Friday, we hit the grocery store, and I paid some bills and the baby-sitters. I also got a new "big" flat-panel monitor and sold a 19-inch CRT monitor to someone who needed it way more than me.
Saturday, I made sausage and eggs for the kids, and we kind of lazed about. Some laundry, which is a standard Saturday activity for me, and a little bit of tinkering. I've still got a stack of paperwork to go through that I intended to complete this weekend.
Sunday, we went to church at CHURCH52. A friend of mine from high-school is the Music Pastor there. My wife and I both grew up going to chruch, but we've really faded out on it. However, she, I and my mom have kind of been nagging each other to get back into it. I know our kids need it. LOL. We enjoyed it. I'd like to go back. I think my wife has a few issues with all the singing. I don't really have issues with it, but we definitely both grew up worshiping in a more "reserved" manner. Pray for me and my family as we come to terms with it all.
I didn't get around to actually installing Amahi, ClarkConnect, or Windows HomeServer. Maybe one night this week, but I honestly think it'll have to wait until the weekend. I did do a bit of research though, and in the back half of the weekend, I realized Amahi came out with new stuff based on Fedora 9. I'm really excited about what they're doing with it, but ClarkConnect has a proven track record with me, and a seemingly more "mature" web site.
Lunch time Monday progress report... that's what this feels like. Blogging is too hard again. I just don't do anything I want to blog about on a daily basis... I guess I can change what I do, or how I feel about it. That way, my Aunt Staci won't say my blog posts are "boring".
I guess I could get those pictures of my kids uploaded...
Anwyay, my life will continue, so don't worry. This weekend was a little slower. Friday, we hit the grocery store, and I paid some bills and the baby-sitters. I also got a new "big" flat-panel monitor and sold a 19-inch CRT monitor to someone who needed it way more than me.
Saturday, I made sausage and eggs for the kids, and we kind of lazed about. Some laundry, which is a standard Saturday activity for me, and a little bit of tinkering. I've still got a stack of paperwork to go through that I intended to complete this weekend.
Sunday, we went to church at CHURCH52. A friend of mine from high-school is the Music Pastor there. My wife and I both grew up going to chruch, but we've really faded out on it. However, she, I and my mom have kind of been nagging each other to get back into it. I know our kids need it. LOL. We enjoyed it. I'd like to go back. I think my wife has a few issues with all the singing. I don't really have issues with it, but we definitely both grew up worshiping in a more "reserved" manner. Pray for me and my family as we come to terms with it all.
I didn't get around to actually installing Amahi, ClarkConnect, or Windows HomeServer. Maybe one night this week, but I honestly think it'll have to wait until the weekend. I did do a bit of research though, and in the back half of the weekend, I realized Amahi came out with new stuff based on Fedora 9. I'm really excited about what they're doing with it, but ClarkConnect has a proven track record with me, and a seemingly more "mature" web site.
Lunch time Monday progress report... that's what this feels like. Blogging is too hard again. I just don't do anything I want to blog about on a daily basis... I guess I can change what I do, or how I feel about it. That way, my Aunt Staci won't say my blog posts are "boring".
I guess I could get those pictures of my kids uploaded...
Friday, October 3, 2008
Amahi
So, I made a post about my backup solution/dilemma and mentioned Time Capsule, ClarkConnect, and other various solutions. I got a comment about trying Amahi.
I was skeptical, since I had passed over it before. However, I decided to go ahead and try out the beta. I haven't installed it on hardware yet, but some of the stuff looks really cool. One thing I'm really excited about is the installation procedure. Basically, you configure it by going through an online wizard, then you just run it on top of a base installation of Fedora. Hmm.. it looks like someone took a novel approach to what I've been thinking about doing for a long time... "Fedora Home Server" so to speak.
ClarkConnect runs on top of RHEL and for some reason, that makes me feel better. However, setting up stuff that isn't in the web-admin interface requires more time and effort than I'm willing to put in. having stuff like a firefly media server, PXE boot, and maybe a torrent box or something would definitely put this solution over the top, if it has some ready-made modules. If I were running a business, CC would be an easy choice. But I'm at home, with a limited time budget, and CC does the job, and I've used it, but I might be ready to entertain something a bit easier and flexible, even if it is in beta.
Heck... maybe I could "contribute" and help with the documentation or something. I'll blog about how it goes.
I was skeptical, since I had passed over it before. However, I decided to go ahead and try out the beta. I haven't installed it on hardware yet, but some of the stuff looks really cool. One thing I'm really excited about is the installation procedure. Basically, you configure it by going through an online wizard, then you just run it on top of a base installation of Fedora. Hmm.. it looks like someone took a novel approach to what I've been thinking about doing for a long time... "Fedora Home Server" so to speak.
ClarkConnect runs on top of RHEL and for some reason, that makes me feel better. However, setting up stuff that isn't in the web-admin interface requires more time and effort than I'm willing to put in. having stuff like a firefly media server, PXE boot, and maybe a torrent box or something would definitely put this solution over the top, if it has some ready-made modules. If I were running a business, CC would be an easy choice. But I'm at home, with a limited time budget, and CC does the job, and I've used it, but I might be ready to entertain something a bit easier and flexible, even if it is in beta.
Heck... maybe I could "contribute" and help with the documentation or something. I'll blog about how it goes.
Evolution on Windows / openSUSE
Jeez, I go back to bed. Wake up, do stuff... show up at work and casually read some blogs... come across the planet SUSE feed, and see this:
Srinivasa Ragavan: Evolution 2.24 & Windows port
Just after I raved about how much I actually *like* Evolution. LOL. Nice. Maybe I'll give it a try. The weekend is coming. Oh, and openSUSE 11 did work on with my S3 unichrome setup. I used the KDE 4 live CD and installed, but then decided that KDE was pretty much equivalent to a face palm for me. However, if I don't solve my Fedora 9 issues, I might just roll over to GNOME on openSUSE.
Srinivasa Ragavan: Evolution 2.24 & Windows port
Just after I raved about how much I actually *like* Evolution. LOL. Nice. Maybe I'll give it a try. The weekend is coming. Oh, and openSUSE 11 did work on with my S3 unichrome setup. I used the KDE 4 live CD and installed, but then decided that KDE was pretty much equivalent to a face palm for me. However, if I don't solve my Fedora 9 issues, I might just roll over to GNOME on openSUSE.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Unichrome... Fedora... FAIL
Anyone remember this whole Fedora thing? It used to rock, because it was the leading edge stuff from RedHat. Now it just makes my eyes bleed. I get an old socket 478 P4 chip and grab a motherboard that has PCI express and DDR 2. Awesome.
Then I install Fedora 9 from optical media... the screen goes all wonky, and locks up.
Best I can figure, from rolling back to Fedora 8, and then searching with Google, is that the version of Xorg in Fedora 9, and almost all recent distros, has a crappy VESA driver that doesn't work on unichrome video chipsets Bleh. At least Fedora 8 worked...
So, now what do I do. I can use "linux vesa" to get Fedora 9 installed, but then X fails on restart. I can get to runlevel 3, but I tried changing "vesa" to "openchrome" and that didn't work. I read something about "unichrome" but honestly, I'm too angry that I wasted my time with this at all. I might as well go back to my Mac... sigh.
The thing is, and I really should blog about this later, I now *love* Evolution for mail. Why? because I can use LDAP with my TuffMail account. Read and Write. Address completion, web mail addressbook is the same as my desktop client, save addresses to my address book on my desktop client... blah bah mwah ahahah.
So, I'm really excited about using Linux again. Then this... Sigh. Is it really worth all this, just to stay away from being trapped by Apple?
I'm going back to sleep.
Then I install Fedora 9 from optical media... the screen goes all wonky, and locks up.
Best I can figure, from rolling back to Fedora 8, and then searching with Google, is that the version of Xorg in Fedora 9, and almost all recent distros, has a crappy VESA driver that doesn't work on unichrome video chipsets Bleh. At least Fedora 8 worked...
So, now what do I do. I can use "linux vesa" to get Fedora 9 installed, but then X fails on restart. I can get to runlevel 3, but I tried changing "vesa" to "openchrome" and that didn't work. I read something about "unichrome" but honestly, I'm too angry that I wasted my time with this at all. I might as well go back to my Mac... sigh.
The thing is, and I really should blog about this later, I now *love* Evolution for mail. Why? because I can use LDAP with my TuffMail account. Read and Write. Address completion, web mail addressbook is the same as my desktop client, save addresses to my address book on my desktop client... blah bah mwah ahahah.
So, I'm really excited about using Linux again. Then this... Sigh. Is it really worth all this, just to stay away from being trapped by Apple?
I'm going back to sleep.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Why I don't have an iPhone
I'm poor. That is all... LOL, just kidding.
I had a comment on a previous blog post, linked to my Facebook account, about a friend wanting an iPhone. I mentioned basically that Apple makes stuff I want, but then makes me angry, alternating about every month.
This whole developer NDA thing is crazy. I read over at OS News: Apple Removes NDA on iPhone Software.
They simply don't want negative press to affect the iPhone. The NDA was supposed to do that, but it backfired, so they got rid of it. The core issue is still there, they can kill your app for whatever reason they want. They just didn't want developers to talk about it.
Now they think smoothing over the hurt feelings will make the issue go away, or at least keep people who were paying attention from abandoning the platform. The pressure didn't come from developers grumbling. Apple has already made it obvious that they only want developers if there's something in it for them, and not at all if there is a possibility that they might outdo Apple.
So, Apple is greedy and ATT is greedy (data rates are out of control -- too much money). I realize companies do stuff to make money, but golly... alternatives start looking really good when you're being punished by someone that wants your money.
I had a comment on a previous blog post, linked to my Facebook account, about a friend wanting an iPhone. I mentioned basically that Apple makes stuff I want, but then makes me angry, alternating about every month.
This whole developer NDA thing is crazy. I read over at OS News: Apple Removes NDA on iPhone Software.
They simply don't want negative press to affect the iPhone. The NDA was supposed to do that, but it backfired, so they got rid of it. The core issue is still there, they can kill your app for whatever reason they want. They just didn't want developers to talk about it.
Now they think smoothing over the hurt feelings will make the issue go away, or at least keep people who were paying attention from abandoning the platform. The pressure didn't come from developers grumbling. Apple has already made it obvious that they only want developers if there's something in it for them, and not at all if there is a possibility that they might outdo Apple.
So, Apple is greedy and ATT is greedy (data rates are out of control -- too much money). I realize companies do stuff to make money, but golly... alternatives start looking really good when you're being punished by someone that wants your money.
Windows Home Server Trial
Okay, I hate using Windows, but I need it for games. That's about the upshot. It's worth $100, but I'd rather not pay for an OS, so I typically use Linux. However, Linux sucks at lots of stuff, and they want my time, for free, to make it better.
Uh...maybe not. My time has more value than donating it for free. Kthxbye. That's official. I've decided. My life is very busy now that I have children, and I hardly have time to even keep up with my usual computer habits.
Speaking of time and habits... here's something that should be part of that: backup. I have used ClarkConnect, and I like the idea of using Bacula with it. However, I want to look at Time Capsule and Windows Home Server as well.
I ordered the Trial of Windows Home Server. It arrived a week ago. I still haven't installed it. I'm begining to wonder if I should even bother. I won't want to spend the money, and I'm really only interested in backing up pictures, which I can store online, and my resume, which I can store online.
If I could just stick a wireless card in a WHS device, that might sway me. I like having an Airport Extreme right now, but it lacks some flexibility that I'd love to have. NDISwrapper on CC sounds awful. Time Machine sounds awesome, but upgrading to Leopard and stuff is expensive.
Uh...maybe not. My time has more value than donating it for free. Kthxbye. That's official. I've decided. My life is very busy now that I have children, and I hardly have time to even keep up with my usual computer habits.
Speaking of time and habits... here's something that should be part of that: backup. I have used ClarkConnect, and I like the idea of using Bacula with it. However, I want to look at Time Capsule and Windows Home Server as well.
I ordered the Trial of Windows Home Server. It arrived a week ago. I still haven't installed it. I'm begining to wonder if I should even bother. I won't want to spend the money, and I'm really only interested in backing up pictures, which I can store online, and my resume, which I can store online.
If I could just stick a wireless card in a WHS device, that might sway me. I like having an Airport Extreme right now, but it lacks some flexibility that I'd love to have. NDISwrapper on CC sounds awful. Time Machine sounds awesome, but upgrading to Leopard and stuff is expensive.
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