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Jun. 18th, 2009 @ 11:07 pm
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Just downloaded iPhone 3.0 operating system. Seems pretty good so far, but on my first gen phone it moved all of of my downloaded apps from the second and third page of my home to the fourth and fifth. Needless to say this confused me for a bit. I was actually on the phone with Apple tech support by the time I realized what happened. So if it looks like your apps are gone, check your later pages before you panic. Posted via LiveJournal.app.
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Tragic
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Jun. 4th, 2009 @ 06:40 pm
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I am going to have to kill the smaller of my two dogs. She's always been a bit neurotic, and once ate a set of aluminum mini-blinds when she was a puppy (Yes "ate", not damaged, not pulled down... Ate. There wasn't a square inch without at least one hole, and most of the blind bits were torn into pieces shorter than 3 inches). She proved to be one of the rare dogs that cannot be crate trained (or at least after a week or so of coming home to crates lined with a layer of... well.. really gross stuff, we decided it wasn't worth the pain to crate train her), and eventually we were forced to get her a dog of her own. Our Golden Retriever is normally a calming influence and mitigates the worst of her neuroses.
Not today. My wife is out of town visiting her parents, I was at work, and apparently the Golden boy managed to lock himself (but not her) in the bedroom. Being alone must have instigated a panic attack. She destroyed the vertical blinds in front of the sliding glass door. Pulled down every single slat but three, and broke two of those three chewing on them. Most were whole, other than the piece at the top where they used to attach to the hangers, but quite a number had been chewed in half or into smaller pieces. Not nearly as thorough a job as she did on those aluminum ones all those year ago, but more than sufficient to makes the blinds unusable until I can get to Home Depot and get replacement slats.
Sigh. |
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Loooong time no post. So, I want to try and develop an iPhone app to make a few bucks and just get some practice doing development (which I haven't done seriously in a while). So the question I have is: What kind of mobile apps would you like to see. I don't care if you have an iPhone, or even a smart phone, just give me some ideas of things that you'd like to be able to carry around in your pocket. I'm not an expert developer on these things so I'm not going to be able to write a fancy game or anything easily, but I'll take any ideas you come up with. Thanks in advance. |
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Skadi- Small friend, Happy purr-box. May Bast watch over you as your journey moves beyond the Veil
You were loved, you will be missed. |
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Welcome to 2009 everyone. I hope the new year treats you well. The tail end of 2008 has been tough, but I am really hopeful that 2009 represents a new start. Here's hoping that all of us have a great new year! |
| » Safety and Illusions |
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People are scared. I just read an article saying that many churches keep armed guards on hand during weekend services. The airports are full of security that would be trivial for a professional to bypass, but which is designed to show "presence". Kids go through metal detectors to get into schools, even in ares where gang violence is unheard of, and danger practically non-existent. People fear gay marriage (how the Hell can two people joining their lives together be scary? Well, for anyone but them...), a black president, a depression. People are scared.
Why are people scared? You can blame the media, the interconnectedness of the world. After all, a lot of fears of school shootings, pedophiles, and internet bogey men are the result of the news broadcasts that imply that these rare problems lurk on every street corner. You can blame churches and religion, instilling fear of the other, the sinner, the one who seeks to tear down society. You can blame the politicians, who tell us that their opponents are not just wrong but actually evil. You can blame many things, and many of them do deserve some share of blame.
Really though I think it's our culture. We have a culture of fear. It's easier to fear things than learn about them, deal with them. It's easier to think that gay people want to convert your kids than it is to understand and deal with the fact that they're just wired a little differently than you are; to think all Muslim are terrorists, than to actually meet and understand a few Muslims. If you fear something, it is categorized and dealt with on an important mental level. It's more efficient to fear all Muslim than it is to figure out which people, some of whom happen to be Muslims, are actually dangerous.
We fear things that we don't understand, but because understanding things is hard we'd often rather fear them than go through the effort. Don't misunderstand me, there is stuff to fear out there. Sure there is. There are bad people in the world. Some of them are black, some white, some Christian, some Muslim, some gay, some straight.
Taking the easy way out, fearing the other, creates two set of problems. It puts you in the sad position of fearing a lot of things and people that don't need to be feared. This hurts the people being feared as well as the people in fear. It also blinds you to people who are bad, and who are not the other. The rapist in your congregation, the Christian terrorist. The ones who seem to fit your world view, but really are dangerous.
Fear is a natural thing. There are times to be afraid. To live in fear though, to always be fearful of someone or something is no way to live. The simplest cure for fear is often knowledge. Meet a Muslim, or a Wiccan, or a Gay person, or a black person. Most likely what you find under the label is a person.
Nov. 7th, 2008 @ 09:16 pm
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| » (No Subject) |
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All major networks (including even Fox News) have declared Barrack Obama the winner of the 2008 Presidential election. This makes me Happy. Congrats President Obama.
Nov. 4th, 2008 @ 10:06 pm
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| » New job Post |
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So, I started my new job on Tuesday. I'm really pretty happy about this, although living in a hotel room in Huntsville for the next couple of months is likely to suck a bit. Do to some stupid problems with various computer systems my security clearance wasn't ready when I started, so I haven't actually been able to do my job yet. That came through today, and I should be able to get on my job site tomorrow. So far about all I know is that my job has lots of lovely people in its HR department and the benefits are pretty good. I worked a half day today, because there was literally NOTHING I could do until my new "I cans bes trusted" badge comes through tomorrow.
Huntsville seems nice. The area surrounding Huntsville is BEAUTIFUL, and the town itself seems to have a certain charm. Of course, at the moment I know no one and am trying to explore with little but my GPS system to guide me, but there's an Apple Store and a couple of Irish Pubs, so it can't be all bad. I'm going to try to do some more intensive explorations this weekend and see what can be seen.
I'll write more tomorrow actually I actually know what I'm supposed to be doing here :-)
Sep. 10th, 2008 @ 09:27 pm
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| » Irony is Fun |
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the storm is over. We kept power for the whole thing and took no major damage. I'm posting this from my phone because our cable (and hence Internet) died around dinner time. No idea why, I figured I'd call tomorrow. They're probably busy.
Sep. 1st, 2008 @ 11:03 pm
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| » (No Subject) |
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Still kicking and haven't lost power yet. The eye is about 30 minutes to an hour away. It's pretty damn yucky out here, but definitely survivable. Hopefully the power stays, I was playing World of Warcraft earlier. Everyone stay safe, we're doing fine here so far.
Sep. 1st, 2008 @ 02:55 pm
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| » Blogging from the Storm |
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Sitting in the house watching the Hurricane go by. So far it's no worse than a sustained, fairly bad, rain storm. That wont last, but so far so good. The wind is picking up even as I'm typing this. Storm is looking like it's not going to hit quite as hard as expected, but it's till going to be a bit of a ride when the eye come by. Hope everyone is well. I'll let you know as soon as we're through. I should be able to update on my phone even if we lose power.
Sep. 1st, 2008 @ 10:56 am
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| » New Job |
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Well, it hasn't exactly been low stress but I received an offer from a company in Huntsville, AL. I'll be starting Sept 9th, and everything is looking good. I'm pretty happy with the offer, pretty happy with the job, and pretty happy with the area we'll be living in. Huntsville looks like a great place to live with a moderate climate, fairly nice people, and a fair amount of "not like the rest of Alabamaness" I'll be working for a DoD contractor called "Colsa" whom I'd never heard of before this, but it seems like a pretty good company. About my only real concern is that I'll be working directly for a team from different contractors (Boeing and and company called TBE). Worst case scenario I'll work at this for a year or two then try to find another job inside Colsa. We'll see how it goes.
For the time being we're holding tight on Gustav. Lafayette is pretty far inland and a storm would have to be both extremely powerful and pretty much perfectly placed to really impact us. We may pull out yet, but for now we're not planning to. If we do evacuate we'll probably head toward Huntsville and ride the storm out near there. Do some looking around and such.
Aug. 30th, 2008 @ 10:48 am
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| » iPhone 3G, Free Software, and Annoying People |
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So, as you might have noticed (unless you live in a cave), the iPhone 3G was released today amid much fanfare. A friend of mine posted an article related to the release by a guy named Richard Stallman. Now, if you happen to be knowledgeable about the history and politics of Free Software, you know who this is. He's fairly famous actually. Stallman is the President of the Free Software Foundation and the developer of the GPL (GNU Public License) used by Linux, the gcc compiler, and and a whole host of other software.
When we talk about "Free Software" as it relates to Stallman, the FSF, the GPL and GNU we are talking are talking about software whose source code (the underlying programming language code the software is written in) is publicly available. It may or may not be be "free" in the sense of costing nothing. To use Stallman's own phrase, it is "free as in speech, not free as in beer". I'll warn you now this post is a bit ranty, kind of geeky, and even a little bit political, so feel free to skip it.
( Click for ranty )
Jul. 11th, 2008 @ 09:56 pm
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| » New Toy |
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I finally did it. I went to Best Buy this weekend and acquired myself a cute little MacBook. It's one of the smaller plastic models with a 13.3 inch wide-aspect screen, 2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo CPU, 2 GB of RAM and and an Intel video chipset that can share up to 128 MB of RAM (it's the most "meh" part of the computer unfortunately). I've been using the MacBook Pro that work provides me with pretty much exclusively (my newest personal computer is nearly five years old), but I decided I really needed my own computer. Among other things I've been thinking of developing some cute little app or other to try to sell when the iPhone store goes live, and I can't do that on a computer owned by work :-).
I'm fairly please with the little guy so far. I've got most of the applications I need installed, threw a Windows partition on using Boot Camp, and I no longer have to lug a computer back and forth from work. The smaller screen is sometimes a pain, but in a pinch I can get an external monitor for it and dock it. The portability factor is nice. It's not as small and light as an Air, but it's considerably less to lug around than the Pro. I like the keyboard too, which surprised me because in theory I hated it. When I first saw these "chicklet" keyboard I thought they looked horrible, but in practice I actually like using it quite a bit. Nice feedback.
I wanted a black one, but the black is only available with the most expensive version of the laptop and it's basically $200 extra dollars for the black option (well technically it has a larger hard drive, but there is no way that 90 GB extra hard drive space is worth $200). The best part is that Best Buy was doing a Father's Day special and I got 24 months interest free financing. That's like not even $60 a month to pay it off before I pay any finance charges. I had been planning to use my tax reimbursement thingie to pay for it, but I don't think I'll bother now. That can go into savings.
Jun. 11th, 2008 @ 09:39 pm
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| » In Which he Waxes Political More |
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I am beginning to question Senator Clinton's math skills. Don't get me wrong, I like the woman well enough. I have a preference for Obama as the Democratic nominee, but I was and am perfectly willing to vote for either in the general election. This whole math thing has really got me bothered though. It started with the "Gas Tax Holiday" proposed by both Senator Clinton and Senator McCain. Like most political sound bites, this one sounds good on the surface. We'll just not tax your gas for a few months and save you money to spend on other thing.
Great.
Cool.
Wait... Doesn't that money, you know, pay for something?
( Maths es gud )
May. 11th, 2008 @ 09:35 am
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| » (No Subject) |
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I haven't posted in a while, but I heard something on NPR this morning that so made me go, "huh?" that I just had to talk about it. John McCain apparently talked about his new health care plan recently, to contrast it with the Democratic plans. Now this information may have been available before, but this is the first I've heard of it. Essentially, Sen. McCain's plan seems to boil down to "Let the market figure it out". He'd like to move away from employer sponsored health care and instead move to model where everyone buys their own health insurance. His idea here (and if you don't think about the plan at all, it almost sounds sensible) is that people will make better and more informed choices about health insurance when they have a choice.
The problem, according to Sen. McCain, is not that people don't have coverage (wait? what? something like 20% of Americans have no insurance and many more are under insured), it's that their choices for coverage are by and large limited by their employers. If you have a cheap employer, you might pay 75% of your premiums and get crappy coverage. Conversely, my employer might consider health care a priority and I pay might 20% of my premiums for better coverage. I might pay less for better coverage, because my company puts greater emphasis on the benefit than yours. If we were on a level playing field, all just shopping for the best deal, then you would only have yourself to blame for this situation, but right now it's your employers fault.
( Holy crap, I wrote a book )
Apr. 17th, 2008 @ 12:35 pm
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| » The Year, it is New |
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May it be happy for you!
::Giggle::
OK, so I'm easily amused, have a happy New Year anyway.
Jan. 1st, 2008 @ 09:59 am
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| » Linux-The Free |
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Talking about "Linux" is a bit like talking about "Wicca", or "Paganism". There are an almost infinite number of flavors, rabid fanboys (and fangirls) abound, and no one ever seems to agree on anything; but underneath all of that is something really worthwhile. Linux comes in a number of different releases or "distros", each produced by a company or team that may or may not be out to make money. The reason that this happens is that Linux is not technically an "operating system", it's a kernel. For those without a computer background, consider a kernel to be the smallest and most important building block of an operating system. It's what allows the rest of the operating system, and in turn the user space programs, to interface with the underlying hardware. Everything else in the operating system layers on top of the kernel. This being the case, keep in mind that anything I say in this post may not be true for some particular version of Linux. It should all be true for most of the major distros, or you should be able to replicate anything I talk about with a minimum of effort.
Linux is "free". This has nothing to do with cost (although you can find a number of distros that don't cost anything), but rather with the fact that the kernel source code is freely available. This may not seems terribly important to a non-technical user, but it has a lot of advantages for developers. Usually the source code for most or all of the applications is also available. Some Distros are really into the "free" thing and won't accept "binary only" contributions, others are more interested in selling you an overall product so they care less about the origin of every little piece. In either case nothing stops you from installing any software you want.
( continued below )
Jun. 22nd, 2007 @ 11:09 pm
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| » Windows-The Default |
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I mentioned a few day ago that I might do short series of articles about the "big three" computer platforms from my perspective. As a systems administrator I've been in a position to use, administer, and evaluate all three platforms, and look at the strengths and weaknesses of each. My most recent post was more or less one long bitch about a particular experience with a particular version of Windows. I'm going to try to avoid that here. When I talk about "Windows" I mean the platform, from a management and usability standpoint Windows hasn't changed much between WinNT and WinXP. Unless I mention otherwise, assume that I mean all version when I say something. Vista changed a lot of things, but it too can be brought back to looking more or less like an NT desktop. So without further ado, let's talk about Windows.
( Under the cut )
Jun. 17th, 2007 @ 09:58 pm
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| » Windows Vista |
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Wow! Two posts in a week! What a wild guy.
Several people on my f-list and on ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) goddessmusings's f-list have made posts in the last month or two about purchasing new PCs, thinking about purchasing new PCs, or upgrading PCs. Most of them have had to do with, or will have to do with, Windows Vista. Microsoft's latest operating system offering has the press divided on whether it is the best or worst thing to happen in the recent history of computing. I've seen some serious and very worrying complaints about its DRM (Digital Rights Management, the stuff that tries to make sure that only you can listen to that new song you just downloaded from iTunes) model. I've seen claims that it is a huge resource hog that will bring even lower end new hardware to its knees. On the other hand I've seen some very nice reviews of the look and feel and usability, and some people seem to really like it.
Now as many of you know, I am a systems person by trade. My primary workstation right now is a MacBook Pro Laptop provided to me by my job. I've previously used Windows up through XP extensively and am a competent, though not certified, admin of Windows machines. I am also a skill UNIX/Linux sys admin, and am currently employed as the senior systems administrator for a data center full of powerful Linux supercomputers. All of this to say that I know something about the computers. We get along.
So, if you care, this is my experience with Microsoft's latest, and theoretically greatest, OS. I'm one guy. This was one machine. Your milage may vary, but it makes this experience no less painful. Windows Vista is "teh sukc".
( See why under the cut )
Jun. 15th, 2007 @ 12:42 pm
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