A Plane-ly Obvious Solution…
By Brian | March 7, 2007
They typically load passengers on the plane starting at the back, so people aren’t stepping over each other in the aisle. Logical.
They also pre-board their frequent flyers to provide an incentive for becoming one of their regular customers. Makes perfect sense.
So how come, when the flight’s a commuter flight (i.e., Chicago to Newark at 6:30pm), and more than half the passengers are frequent flyers, do they just randomly board all the frequent flyers first, as opposed to boarding the frequent flyers from the back of the plane forward? Wouldn’t it be better for everyone, including the frequent flyers, if they didn’t have to step over each other once onboard?
I’m just askin’ is all…
Categories: Travel Talk | 4 Comments »
Game Day EyeBlack
By Brian | March 5, 2007
Remember when we were kids and they told us that one day, advertising would be everywhere? Well, they were right.
Categories: Random Acts of Blogging | 1 Comment »
Oh, by the way, a laptop too!
By Brian | March 3, 2007
With all the technology running through the house lately, I never got a chance to post about my other new toy: An HP Pavillion dv6000 laptop.
Here was my thinking: Now that we’re a multi-PC househould (the super-fast desktop PC in the home office and the previous office PC in my son’s room), we might as well setup an actual wireless network in the house. And what’s a wireless network without being able to access the network from anywhere in the house? Ergo, we need a laptop.
This was unfamiliar territory for me, because it meant buying a PC that wasn’t tricked out to do anything I may ever imagine doing with a PC. After all, I already have the desktop PC for that. Instead, this machine would serve more of an “appliance” function. It’d be the machine we keep in a drawer in the den, so we can surf the web or check our e-mail while watching TV, or the machine that my wife would use when she’s doing some work from home while taking care of the kids. So it had to be cheap and competent, as opposed to expensive and awesome.
Stop #1 was Dell.com. Every computer I’ve ever bought for myself has been purchased through Dell.com. I know some people have had troubles with them, especially lately, but my experiences have all been good (knock on silicon…). It turns out, though, that Dell doesn’t do “cheap and competent” all that well. The cheapest laptop I could configure from Dell with my minimum requirements came to more than $1,500 every time. Very odd. So, I found myself doing something I haven’t done since my parents took me shopping in grade school – going to a computer store to buy a computer.
My first instinct was Best Buy. Large store, big selection, and if you’re lucky, some competent sales people who can answer basic questions about the products. I can’t say I was disappointed in this regard. I learned a lot of about laptops and about Windows Vista there, and actually decided on a laptop: a Gateway, 17-inch machine for just $700. Quite a steal. So good, in fact, that they were sold out of it and couldn’t predict when they’d get more. I left the store empty handed.
My next stop was CompUSA. By this time, I knew exactly what I wanted: a 15-inch screen, Windows Vista Home Premium, at least a Pentium Duo chip, 1GB of RAM, a graphics card with at least 200MB of dedicated RAM, a decent (but not huge) hard drive, and whatever other bells & whistles they could throw in. CompUSA had the HP Pavillion dv6000 for $700, plus $150 for accidental damage & warranty for two years (for most devices, I ignore these packages, but a laptop has a higher chance of being dropped, spilled on, etc., especially with kids in the house). So, I came away with a new laptop for $850, all-in. A little more than I hoped for at the outset, but still a pretty good deal for a brand new PC.
I’ll post later about my thoughts on Windows Vista, my experience with wirelessly networking the two machines together, as well as my thoughts on file sharing (Vista on the receiving end and Windows XP as the host – not exactly a common configuration these days). But I’ll close this post with a quick word for my Mac-friendly friends on the topic of “it just works.”
When I opened my laptop, the first thing I saw was a piece of paper that said (I’m paraphrasing here):
Congratulations on purchasing your new HP laptop. The first time you turn it on, your laptop will optimize Windows Vista for you, based on your answers to a few simple questions. During this process, the laptop screen may go dark for short periods of time, and the computer may appear unresponsive. Do not turn the machine off during this time. The process will take approximately 25 minutes.
I plugged it in and turned it on. It asked me for basic ID info (name, address, phone number) for the purposes of registering with HP, and it asked me for my timezone, preferred language, etc. to setup Vista properly. Then, it went to work. Most of the time, the screen had “feel good about the machine you just bought” advertisements on it. Occasionally, it did go dark as the paper said – including a couple of automatic Vista reboots. In the end, though, exactly 25 minutes later, I was up and running with my new laptop. It really could not have been simpler.
So, there you have it. My new PC is still in boxes in my living room, but I’m already a full-fledged Vista user, and a bit of an expert on wireless networking and file-sharing. Turns out the laptop served the unintended purpose of training me to be my own IT Support desk, before attempting the big job that awaits tomorrow.
Should be fun…
Categories: Tech Talk | 4 Comments »
It’s here…
By Brian | March 3, 2007
Now you know what I’ll be doing this weekend!
Categories: Tech Talk | Comments Off on It’s here…
A New Addition to the Greenberg Family
By Brian | February 28, 2007
Well, it’s been about four years since we’ve made this kind of announcement, but here it is: after a great deal of thought, discussion, financial planning, and many months of waiting, we’re expecting a delivery. And as was the case the last couple of times this happened, it’s a Dell!
Specifically, a Dell XPS 410, which frees up the existing PC to make it’s way into Avery’s room in plenty of time for him to start using it for school (and video games and IM and web surfing and…and…and…)
(NOTE: The above is rather cheesy, but only because none of our parents read this blog regularly. If that weren’t the case, it would have been rather cruel.)
Anyway, serious geekticulars to follow. If that’s not your thing, abandon ship now. You have been warned.
Here are the highlights, including running commentary by yours truly:
Intel Core 2 Duo Processor E6600 (2.4GHz,1066FSB) with 4MB cache
CPU clock speed always has an obvious price point for me. The 2.4GHz was a little more expensive than the 2.2GHz, but a lot cheaper than the 2.6GHz – the highest that Dell offers. Plus, the Core 2 Duo has two processors on the chip, so if the mix of applications is right (or if a given application is written to take advantage of it), this thing could theoretically approach speeds close to 4.8GHz. More than likely, though, it’s likely to be about 50% faster than my current 1.9GHz machine.
4GB DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz
Extravagant choice #1. Microsoft recommends 2GB for an optimized Vista experience. I’ve seen machines running Vista well with 1GB, and even a couple that made due with 512MB (a heavy app load would probably slow these machines down, but the advanced Vista features, like Aero, were still running). In any case, I figured more memory is never a bad thing, especially as the machine inevitably gets loaded up with add-ins, terminate & stay resident programs, hidden processes, etc. My current machine was a screamer when I bought it, but now it takes almost two minutes to open Microsoft Excel. The extra RAM should stave off this kind of degradation for a while.
24 in (24.0 in viewable) 2407FPW Wide Aspect Digital Flat Panel Display
Extravagant Choice #2. For this, I blame John Scalzi, who bought one of these puppies and then bragged about it on his blog. Not only is this puppy 24 inches of widescreen goodness, it rotates to portrait mode, providing oodles of space for web surfing, or for when my wife (or I) are writing long documents in Word.
Of course, now that we bought this, it occurs to me that in our home office, we have a 24″ Hi-Def screen with surround sound (see below), a DVD-player, and a dual-TV tuner. In our den, where we watch most of our TV & DVD’s today, we have a 27″ TV from 1994, when Picture-in-Picture was a really big deal. I’m seriously thinking about putting a couch in the office soon…
Dell WL6000 120V 6.1 Stereo Speakers with Subwoofer
The last machine I bought had surround sound as well (certified by Skywalker Sound, no less), but the speakers all shipped with those (proprietary) Sony plugs, and all the wires were the same length. There was no easy way to put the rear speakers behind me, unless I spliced the wires and installed new plugs, so I’ve been living with 5 speakers spread around my desk (rear ones on the outer edge, surrounding the standard L&R, and then the center speaker under the monitor). This time around, the rear speakers are wireless, so I can go ahead and mount them on the back wall of my office for a true surround sound experience. Anyone know where I can buy a good couch?
256MB NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS
Nothing but the best, Clark. I’m not a big user of Vista’s celebrated graphics capabilities, but given similar pricing, I went with a high-end graphics card.
Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate
Extravagant Choice #3. Vista Home Premium would probably have been enough, but I’m anticipating the mystery software package that’s coming in 2009 which only runs on Vista Ultimate. As I discussed here, I want to avoid upgrading/updating the OS once the machine is up and running, so I went for it.
320GB Serial ATA 2 Hard Drive (7200RPM)
500 GB 7200 RPM LAN USB 2.0 LinkStation Pro Shared Network Storage
The presence of two machines in the house means I can start using my wireless router for more than just accessing my work laptop throughout the house, which in turn, means shared network storage. The 500GB drive is a Buffalo drive, which can plug directly into the router, allowing access to files even in the rare event where my desktop PC is off. My current plan is to install my software on each machine, but have it all point to the Buffalo drive as the main shared drive in the house. The 320GB hard drive (the smallest Dell offers these days), will serve as a backup drive. I’m still investigating backup software solutions, so if anyone has any suggestions, please drop them in the comments. Thanks!
3 Year Limited Warranty
Dell Hardware Warranty PlusOnsite Service, Initial Year
Dell Hardware Warranty PlusOnsite Service, Extended Year
Type 15- 3rd Party At Home Service w/ Nights and Week ends, 24×7 Technical Support, Initial Year
Type 15- 3rd Party At Home Service w/ Nights and Week ends, 24×7 Technical Support, 2 Year Extended
Warranty Support,Initial Year
Warranty Support,2 Year Extended
CompleteCare Accidental DamageProtection, Dimension, 3 Year
Dell On Call, 30 Days, Getting Started Assistance, Unlimited Incidents
Yeah, I know – that’s a lot of help for a desktop PC, right? I’m not a big believer in extended warranties for PC’s because typically, a machine either craps out in the first few months or lasts forever with little or no problems. In this case, adding all these packages brought me up to the next “bundle,” which actually lowered the total cost of the PC. Basically, I just did it for the money…
Dell USB Enhanced Multimedia Keyboard with USB Hub
Dell 13 in 1 Media Card Reader
Dual TV Tuner with Remote Control
Silly stuff, but what the heck. I don’t have a separate Cable TV feed running into the PC, but one day I might. Also, the media card reader might come in handy with my digital camera, and the volume knob & DVD controls on the keyboard are just convenient…
There’s more, but that’s the gist. As for price, the whole thing came in just under $3,000 (that includes Dell’s discounts du jour, as well as a corporate discount my employer has negotiated with Dell). The ironic thing is, the last three computers I’ve purchased, over a period of six or seven years, have all cost roughly $2,500 (give or take a few hundred dollars). The capacity of those machines, though, has grown exponentially (the first of the three had roughly the processing power and storage of my current iPod). So yes, technology has become cheaper, but practically speaking, it’s more accurate to say it’s become better.
Now, the setup begins. Watch this space for ISBS reviews of Vista, thoughts on setting up wireless networking, home network filesharing, and much, much more!
Categories: Tech Talk | Comments Off on A New Addition to the Greenberg Family
Presto! E-mail without a Computer!
By Brian | February 28, 2007
This product has been around for a while, but I just heard an ad for it on the car radio, and was intrigued enough to jot it down at the next red light and then look at the website when I got home.
It’s called Presto by Hewlett-Packard, and technically speaking, it’s just a high-end fax machine and an e-mail forwarding service. But it’s got a great marketing spin:
Do you want to send e-mail to Grandma, but can’t because she doesn’t know how to use a computer and doesn’t want to learn? No problem!
Buy her this box and plug it into a regular phoneline. Then, go to our website and select an e-mail address for her (e.g., grandma@presto.com). Don’t worry – she doesn’t even need to know about the address. Once you’ve registered, you send e-mail to grandma@presto.com, and we queue it up, format it nicely, and send it via full-color fax to Grandma’s machine every night at 2AM.
When she wakes up in the morning, her “e-mail” will be sitting in the machine’s output tray – pictures of the grandkids, the latest family gossip, birthday wishes, etc. We’ll even provide third party content, so you can sign Grandma up to receive a weekly newsletter from her favorite newspaper or magazine.
No matter what you send, the process is the same: Grandma wakes up every morning and checks the Presto machine, just like she checks her regular mailbox. Couldn’t be more simple, no?
(NOTE: The above is not a quote; I wrote it myself. But it basically summarizes the way they are selling the product)
This strikes me as sheer genius – circa 1996.
It’s been a well-documented trend for several years now that older people are a big presence online. So the odds are that Grandma not only owns a computer, but is also fully versed in e-mail and surfs the web regularly. If not, she probably knows quite a few people of her generation that do, and would probably prefer to learn, as opposed to doing an end-run around the process with a device like this.
Of course, there are exceptions: if Grandma has physical ailments that prevent her from reading the screen or typing very well, then this might be a good subsitute. Also, cost works in Presto’s favor. the machine is $150, and the service is $9.99/month. Even a cheap computer is going to run $500 or more, and the monthly fee for internet/e-mail access is probably going to break the ten dollar mark too. So if Social Security isn’t going as far as it should, Presto might be a cheap alternative to actual e-mail.
So I think there’s a market for this, although it’s probably small and shrinking. The world is becoming more tech-savvy, not less, so in time, one would expect Presto! to go Poof!
Categories: Tech Talk | 2 Comments »
DST2K7 – Y2K’s forgotten stepchild
By Brian | February 23, 2007
I blogged about a month ago about the new Daylight Savings Time rules, and their impact on corporate IT environments. Since then, there has been a lot of time and effort dedicated to patching and testing various systems and environments to make sure that everything continues to run smoothly after 2AM on March 11, 2007.
Here, for example, is the Security Industry Association (SIA)’s Business Continuity Page regarding Daylight Savings Time. It has links to more than thirty technology vendors, each of which have specific recommended procedures for testing and verifying their products. The page also includes a log of commentary by SIA members which also gives a good sense of how seriously this is all being taken.
I still remain mystified about why this hasn’t gotten the same kind of hysterical press coverage that Y2K did. Don’t get me wrong – I prefer it this way. I’m just surprised the media hasn’t taken the opportunity to news catalog this with the Y2K story and sell some papers leading up to 3/11/07.
I guess what I said before still applies:
The implications of the world’s computers being one hour off are relatively minor, whereas having them be 1,000 years off requires the building of underground bunkers, the purchasing of copious amounts of duct tape, and a deep introspection about our society’s dependency on technology.
Categories: News and/or Media, Tech Talk | Comments Off on DST2K7 – Y2K’s forgotten stepchild
Indexed!
By Brian | February 22, 2007
Wil Wheaton points us to a very cool blog, which I plan to check out semi-regularly. It’s called Indexed, and it consists of graphs & charts drawn on index cards in order to comment on social issues, pop culture, or life in general. Here’s the one that Wil chose to highlight.
He’s right – it’s one of the best, but the others are very cool too. Check it out…
Categories: Blogging about Blogs | Comments Off on Indexed!
Billy Joel – All My Life lyrics
By Brian | February 22, 2007
My trusty Google Analytics stats tell me that many folks have come to this blog looking for the lyrics to Billy Joel’s new single, All My Life, only to find my review of the song, but no lyrics.
I Googled around myself, but had difficulty finding them as well, particularly because of his 1978 hit, My Life, which is gumming up the search results. Hopefully, this will help matters:
All My Life
by Billy JoelAll My Life
I’ve searched this whole world through.
Try as I might
to find someone like you.Years drifted by
but it was always on my mind.
I didn’t know just how long I’d go
until I ran out of time.All My Life
I’ve hurt the ones who cared.
One by one
no loving heart was spared.I’ve been a wild and restless man
but still a man who needs a wife.
That was my dream and now it seems
you’ve taken All My Life.For as long as I could
my intentions were good.
I assumed my affairs
would be fine.But I know very well
there’s a long road to hell
that’s been paved with
intentions like mine.All My Life
I’ve paid for my mistakes.
After a while
the strongest spirit breaks.I’ve had heartache and pain
that cut me deeper than a knife.
Ah, but those days are done
’cause you’re the one
I’ve wanted All My LifeAnd I know very well
there’s a long road to hell
that’s been paved with
intentions like mine.All My Life
my stars were surely crossed.
Now and then
I missed the love I lost.But all that changed
the day you said you’d be my wife.
Who could have known
that finding you would only take me
All My Life.
Categories: Words about Music | 3 Comments »
ISBS Review: The New Blogger
By Brian | February 21, 2007
Like many Blogger users, I’ve been wary about switching to the new Blogger tool, primarily because the old tool did just about everything I wanted it to do. But I also read this Instapundit post which pointed to a string of problems Ann Althouse was having with the new Blogger, which in turn pointed to some problems reported by her commenters. Now granted, it’s not a random sample (complaints always seem to draw other complaints), but given the lack of a burning platform, a couple of bad reviews was enough to keep me from switching.
Then, last weekend, I was doing some blog maintenance on a friend’s computer. I went to Blogger.com and got the usual “Click here to switch” message. Except this time, the option to proceed with the Old Blogger tool wasn’t there anymore, so I was forced to switch immediately.
This was a little disconcerting, since I was in the middle of a nice weekend with friends, and really didn’t have a lot of time to mess around with Blogger if things didn’t work well. I understand the desire to move everyone to the new platform and all, but a warning would have been nice. You know, something along the lines of
“WARNING: After February XX, the Old Blogger tool will no longer be available.” Then I’d have been able to switch on my own terms.
At any rate, I’m happy to report that my switch went flawlessly. The fact that my blog only has ~350 entries (as opposed to Ann Althouse’s 7,000) might have had something to do with it, as might the fact that I waited until the big bugs were flushed out. Either way, (potential) disaster avoided, so that’s a good thing.
So, what do I think of the new tool? Not bad, but no great shakes.
The ability to categorize posts is nice, and the interface for updating categories on old posts seems very straightforward. I could probably categorize all ~350 of my posts in under an hour, assuming it took less than that long to figure out what categories I wanted to use. The thing is, in my years of reading blogs, I’ve never once clicked on a category link to view only a portion of the entries, so I’m not particularly motivated to categorize mine. Maybe if I had thousands of entries and thousands of new readers every day, it would make sense to organize the data that way, but at my current pace and readership, it’s probably a waste of time.
(NOTE: If anyone disagrees strongly, let me know.
I’m happy to bow to popular demand if such a thing exists).
Other improvements:
The main page allows you to go directly to the post management, settings management, or template management pages. Nice touch, but it only really saves me one click.
The Manage Posts page, in addition to adding categorizing features, now provides links to comments for each post, so I can scan the list to find the posts with comments. This is only useful if I’m perusing the blog at work, and don’t have access to my home e-mail, which notifies me whenever a comment comes in. Again – nice touch, but not revolutionary.
The post editor has a “View Rich Text” feature that may or may not have been there before (I’m honestly not sure). Either way, it’s pretty useful when you’re dealing with a lot of HTML (example: the first paragraph of this post – the one with all the links – was much easier to edit in Rich Text mode than in HTML mode).
There’s supposedly an ability to have multiple authors post to the same blog, but I haven’t seen evidence of that yet, nor have I looked real hard. Again, I don’t need the feature, so it’s a low priority investigation for me.
I’m also told that publishing has been streamlined, although this is the first post I’ve done in the new tool, so I’m about to find out. Hold on a sec…
OK, I’m back. The process is different, but I can’t say it’s noticeably faster. It used to show you a % Complete meter, and then give you a Your Post Has Been
Successfully Published message. Now, you get a spinning icon (no more percent meter), but then you get a report that details exactly what files were FTP’ed to your server (in my case: the blog post itself, the RSS feed, the Atom.xml file, the blog’s main page, and the current monthly index). As above, a small and rather insignificant change.
In summary: They’ve added a few new features, but nothing miraculous. I’d have been happy to stay with the old tool, and I’m still a little miffed about being forced to switch without warning, but I’m just as happy using this new tool as I was before. So no harm, no foul.
Categories: ISBS Reviews, Tech Talk | Comments Off on ISBS Review: The New Blogger