| Wednesday, April 26, 2006 Browser blues
I've been a Firefox user for a long time, but when I got my new laptop it was apparently susceptible to a long-standing Firefox bug where it will peg the CPU for no apparent reason. This bug was bad enough that I abandoned Firefox and went back to IE. However, I missed tabbed browsing so badly that I just installed the IE7 beta. Big mistake: In the 4 hours or so since I installed it, it has crashed at least a dozen times. I rolled my system back to before the install - first time I've done a system restore, and it works pretty painlessly.
comments (0) | permalink Thursday, March 16, 2006 Uniden TRU8866 voicemail indicator stuck on?
I recently had a problem with my Uniden TRU8866 cordless phone that I was only able to resolve through Uniden support, so I thought I'd post it here for others who might have the same problem. The issue was that the voicemail indicator came on and stayed on, and I don't have voicemail service. You can clear this indicator by holding the "page handset" button down for 5 seconds.
comments (1) | permalink Wednesday, February 15, 2006 Verizon Freedom: Bait and Switch
I'm changing jobs this week, and my new company would like to find an 'all you can eat' solution to my business phone and long-distance calling. I currently have POTS lines with Verizon, so naturally the first place I looked was at Verizon Freedom. Their Essentials package bundles unlimited long distance with the calling features I use (namely, Caller ID). They advertise Verizon Freedom Essentials at $34.95 per month. So, I emailed them and asked how much my total bill would be including taxes, fees, and whatnot. The answer: $55.70! In other words, $15 more per month, per line, than I am paying now. Um, no. My current front-running solution is to replace just my business line with Vonage, if I can do the wiring seamlessly.
comments (2) | permalink Tuesday, January 17, 2006 A paperweight for the ages
If I had $500 to spend on a paperweight, this would definitely be the one.
comments (0) | permalink Monday, October 31, 2005 Pen computing's unrealized potential
Several years ago, I remember being very excited by a Wired article that described a company called Anoto. Anoto had created a technology for pen computing, whose platform consists of an electronically-augmented pen that worked with special paper that allowed the pen to locate itself within a very large piece of 'virtual paper.' The promise of this technology was a previously-impossible link between the world of pen and paper and the world of the computer. However, the technology has pretty much failed to take off. The biggest hindrance, for me at least, is that the pen is still really huge -- too big to comfortably write with. However, I still dream of this technology being perfected; among other uses, this would finally solve the one drawback (for me) of using a paper planner, making its contents searchable. (As an aside, the same technology has been used in the new Leapfrog Fly, a pen-computing gizmo geared toward preteen children; I'll be interested to play around with that.)
comments (0) | permalink Friday, October 28, 2005 ISO decent blogging software
The past few years have seen an annoying proliferation in the number of blogs I'm maintaining; besides this one, there is one about the kids, and my 'professional' one about programming, and several others that I post to so infrequently that they're not worth mentioning. I eventually realized that what I'm doing here is trying to compensate, poorly, for Blogger's lack of post categories. So, I am on a mission to change blogging platforms, and simultaneously combine all of these various split personalities into a single (redesigned, natch) blog. (Somehow I find myself thinking of the Seinfeld episode where George talks about "Friend George" vs. "Relationship George," but I digress.) The first task, of course, is choosing blogging software. In an ideal world, I'd like something that Just Works, and that requires no special setup on the server side. In other words, I want CityDesk, except that I'm not willing to pay $300 for it. So the search continues; unless I find something better soon, I'm probably going to try WordPress. It does require some server-side software, but it appears pretty easy to install and use.
comments (1) | permalink Monday, October 24, 2005 How could they know?
Yesterday in the car my wife pointed out that David Bowie's "Rebel, Rebel" sounds like a Rolling Stones song. I hadn't ever thought about it, but it really does.
comments (1) | permalink Thursday, October 20, 2005 The Clock of the Long Now
Discover has a very accessible article about the Clock of the Long Now. This project appeals to me on many levels: (1) The Long Now Foundation is my cause of choice, philosophically speaking, (2) I love complicated all-mechanical devices, and I have a bit of a thing for clocks, and (3) While I'm not one for hero worship, if I had to choose one person I admire most, Danny Hillis might well be that person.
comments (0) | permalink Tuesday, October 18, 2005 Waterfield makes awesome bags
 I got a new bag a few weeks back, from Waterfield Designs, and it is just awesome. I plan to write an extended review for my Man-Bag Buying Guide as soon as I get unburied at work, but in the meantime I wanted to give them a shout here, because this is a really nice bag.
comments (1) | permalink Wednesday, September 21, 2005 Book recommendations
I had high hopes for WhatShouldIReadNext (found via LifeHacker). I always have trouble finding new books to read, and Amazon's recommendation system isn't much help. It turns out that this service isn't much help either, and for the same reason: Everyone likes the bestsellers, so that's about all it can recommend. For example, unless your taste in books is really off the beaten path, you're going to have trouble getting it not to recommend The Da Vinci Code to you. I suspect economists have a name for this phenomenon, and surely there is a way to get around it in these recommendation engines. For example, I loved The Lovely Bones, but every recommendation this leads to at either Amazon or WhatShouldIReadNext is either not my style or is an already-read classic. After that comment from the WSIRN staff, I tried it again, but as far as I can tell it's still broken. Even if I just enter one book - Cryptonomicon - its recommendations are unrelated and of no interest to me. Trying a different book didn't seem to change the recommendations much.
comments (2) | permalink Monday, September 12, 2005 Nothing new under the sun
Don't you hate it when you have an idea for a story -- indeed, in this case I'd already written a draft of the story -- and you find that your hook (in this case, the idea that magic spells would work like computer programs) has been done before? Sometimes when this happens, I later realize that the idea came from something I'd read and (consciously) forgotten about (e.g. one idea was quite similar to the Stephen King short story "The Sun-Dog"), but in this case it's strictly parallel evolution, because I've never heard of this book or its author. I'll definitely try it now, though.
comments (0) | permalink Tuesday, August 30, 2005 Unintelligent design
An excellent New York Times article about the utter scientific hollowness of the so-called Intelligent Design movement. If this crap ever appears in any of my daughters' classrooms, I look forward to helping her rip it to shreds.
comments (0) | permalink Friday, August 26, 2005 An inflammatory remark about stocks
The world is crowded with articles alleging that the average schmoe can and should pick and own individual stocks. The latest one I ran across, not to single anyone out, was this one (reached via Free Money Finance). Anyway, here's the inflammatory opinion I promised: Unless there is an industry that you know substantially more about than the average investor (if even then), you have no business investing in individual stocks.. I am a very smart person, and with more than a little understanding of finance, but I have little faith that I could outperform a few well-chosen mutual funds by picking individual stocks. Further, I believe that is true of the vast majority of people in the world.
comments (0) | permalink Saturday, August 20, 2005 Jewish like me
I am not Jewish, but look quite a bit like I am. Once, in 1993 or so, I was on a flight to Chicago. I was in that pair of rows that face each other on certain Southwest flights, and the other five guys in those seats were all friends, and frankly were all obnoxious assholes. I spent the flight reading, but I heard with the small portion of my attention that was listening a variety of off-color jokes and remarks about Jews. I don't remember any of it specifically, but it was definitely nasty enough that I wouldn't repeat it if I did. As I say, these guys were real jerks, so I mostly tried to just focus on my book and tune them out. We landed in Cincinatti, but I was to continue on to Chicago on the same plane, so they got up to leave and I didn't. Just as they started up the aisle, the guy who had been telling most of the jokes caught my eye and said, in a voice dripping with venom, "See you 'round, Hymie." In a rush, their whole conversation replayed in my head, and I realized that all of that bile was aimed at me! I reeled, and unfortunately they were long gone before I could think of a retort, but I felt sick for hours afterward. It isn't exactly Black Like Me, and it obviously is only a tiny taste of what it must be like to actually be Jewish (much less black or any other minority whose membership is readily apparent), but still I felt like it gave me a small taste of what it is like to be discriminated against. I spent much of my childhood being, essentially, discriminated against for being smart, but this somehow felt very different, and much worse. Even today, twelve years later, it sickens me to think about it; I can only imagine what it must be like to feel like that regularly for your entire life.
comments (1) | permalink Thursday, August 11, 2005 Aerobics is (are?) not easy
A while back, my wife and I went to the gym and entered what we believed was a cardio-weight-training class. We started with some aerobics that I assumed were for warmup purposes, but after about ten minutes it became clear that we had gotten the calendar confused or something, because this was an aerobics class. The fact that I was the only man in the room should have been a clue. However, by this point I have ego on the line; there's no way I'm going to be defeated by (forgive me) a bunch of women. So, I hung in for the full hour, giving 100%, and it was positively brutal. It was one hell of a workout, and I was sore for days. So, for you guys out there who stick to the weights and other "manly" sections of the gym, don't think that the women in the aerobics classes are slacking; try it once and you'll know better.
comments (0) | permalink Tuesday, August 09, 2005 Changing DST, but not very much
Among the provisions in the (mostly surprisingly reasonable, considering how many politicians have touched it) energy bill that was signed yesterday was a change to make Daylight Savings Time start three weeks earlier and end a week later. This is a dumb idea. Now, I'm all in favor of changing it -- in fact, I'd like to see it eliminated -- but where's the cost/benefit analysis that shows that the putative savings (based on a single study from 1975) of a measly 4-week change outweigh the losses from the many pieces of electronics that automatically adjust themselves for DST, and thus will no longer work correctly? The articles I've seen about this mostly cite VCRs and DVD players, but those don't really concern me. What I'm worried about are my atomic-synchronized clocks. For about 30 years I watched and waited for those to become affordable, and the three or four of them that I own bring me great joy. You never need to fiddle with them! This change to DST would require me to manually reset all of these clocks' time zones four times a year. And I'm not completely sure that some of them could even be made to work properly for part of the year, as they only include the four US time zones (for the week in the fall -- I think -- I'd need to be able to set the clock to the Bermuda/Nova Scotia time zone, which I can't do). Here's hoping that before this law goes into effect in 2007, our legislators come to their senses and strike that particular provision.
comments (0) | permalink Tuesday, July 19, 2005 My music wish
Here's the product I want to see: A unit, perhaps roughly the form factor of a 'boom box.' It connects to the internet via your home wi-fi network, and downloads music from iTunes (or wherever). The unit, and its remote, has thumbs-up and thumbs-down buttons on it, and it uses Tivo-like recommendation technology to choose what to play in the future based on what you've liked (and disliked) in the past. You'd pay a flat rate per month for the music. I'm sure you could cobble together something like this today, but the key difference is that my box is dead simple. You unpack it and plug it into the wall, and it starts playing music. While some might want to fine-tune based on whether they are in the mood for a particular kind of music today, I'd be happy with just a few controls: On/off, volume, and thumbs up/down. For extra credit, it would have the ability to stock your iPod, or a similar unit in your car, with stuff it thinks you like. This seems like a great fit for Apple's product line, and I'd love to see it happen.
comments (0) | permalink Monday, July 18, 2005 Evolution of my favorite film
Marginal Revolution has an interesting meme, tracking his favorite film over time. Here are mine, as best I remember:
1968 - Who knows? I don't remember seeing any movies before about age 4.
1972 - Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
1979 - The Black Hole.
1984 - The Terminator.
1986 - Brazil.
1989 - Sex, Lies, and Videotape.
1994 - Pulp Fiction.
1999 - The Matrix.
I suspect there might be more between 1972 and 1979, but I don't remember. It looks as if The Matrix has reigned longer than any of its predecessors; hopefully this isn't evidence that I'm getting old and set in my ways. I guess we'll know for sure if I start complaining that modern music just sounds like noise to me. Also, interesting trivia I just learned: The novel Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was written by Ian Fleming, and the screenplay by Roald Dahl.
comments (0) | permalink Thursday, July 14, 2005 Instructions
A few that I'd add to Life's Little Instruction Book: - Never pass up a chance to use the bathroom (from my childhood friend Jerry).
- Always keep your helmet with your motorcycle, and your carseat with your child (from my brother Mark).
- Never leave the house without your housekey.
comments (0) | permalink Wednesday, July 13, 2005 Organizational books
I've read a few books on (more or less) getting organized lately: - Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House. I'm only about a quarter of the way into this, and it's fantastic. It appears to cover just about every aspect you could want of "keeping house" (I hate how that phrase has been stigmatized as both derogatory and feminine). It also accomplishes the difficult feat of functioning well as either a tutorial or a reference.
- Organizing from the Inside Out. This might have done me some good five years ago when I bought it, but by now I found it pretty remedial. If you're a real train wreck, this might work well for you, but I found it pretty basic stuff.
- Ready for Anything. Though I am not much of a follower, I appreciated Getting Things Done. However, this book was much more self-helpy, and I didn't think much of it.
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