Geek

I don’t know if you know this about me or not but I’m a bit of a control freak. I have a tendency to insist that things happen on my terms. I like to know what is happening when, where and why at all times. I even want to know the ‘how’. This tends to extend to all aspects of my life, including the geek side of things.

Facebook is all the rage right now. With a few simple clicks of the mouse and some pounding on the keyboard in the right places, I can virtually dial up a quickly growing number of people from my past and present and see what they’re up to and where they are in their life. I think this is a brilliant thing about social networking because it makes the world a little less global and in a way a little more intimate. I’m sure that my Facebook profile has shown my in-laws more about me than they thought they would ever know. I have found old high school friends that I had completely forgotten about. I recently also found out the details of another random person in public, and to me that’s kind of scary.

It was a year or so ago that Earl and I were at one of the Saranac Thursday nights. I commented to Earl that a gentleman standing not too far from us was kind of hot. He didn’t really agree with me (he wasn’t really Earl’s type) but he could see where I would think he was hot (it was because of his bold moustache, in case you’re wondering). I overheard a friend call him by his first name. It put a name to a face.

The other night I couldn’t sleep due to on-call and while I was waiting on hold for a certain telephone company to do something about the issue I was having, I was clicking around on in Facebook reading various profiles and the like. I remembered that name that went with a face and decided to do a search on his name and the city we live in. I now know his full name, his age (he’s 31), the fact that he is straight, has a girlfriend and is a single father and what types of music and television he likes. I also know that he was recently hired at a technology based company as a salesman. Had he not protected his profile to be completely viewed by his friends only, I would undoubtedly know his cell phone number and more about him.

To me this is a little bit out of my control barriers. And no, I wasn’t stalking the guy; I was testing a theory by using the two bits I know about the guy: his first name and what he looked like. I have done the same before with a waiter at Applebee’s.

I think Facebook is a great way for us to connect. I really do. But the service is free and yet it’s making tons and tons of money for the owners of the company. I believe they are doing this by data-mining and selling appropriate ads tailored specifically to you. This makes me a little nervous. I became even more nervous when I received a call yesterday telling me that my “fat whacker” like pills were on the way. I had no idea what the caller was talking about and asked where they got the idea that I wanted these pills. Their response?

“From Facebook.”

Um, no. This is where I draw the line. So after this blog entry, I am ceasing the automatic cross-posting between my real blog and my Facebook profile. If you want to see my real blog, you can gander at jpnearl-com and see what I’m up to, on my own terms and on my own server. My cell phone number on my profile has been modified to one that I can easily control (it’s my magic on how I do that).

I’m going to play the social networking game on my own terms.

So today has been an on-call day and I have found myself with a lot of downtime. To pass the time between calls I have been watching “old” shows via the internet. It’s funny to call these shows “old” while remembering that Earl and I watched them together on their original run. I’ve been bouncing between episodes of “Charmed” and “Ally McBeal” with a smattering of a few other gems from the 1990s along the way.

One the things that I really miss about today’s television is the theme song and opening credits. I know the reasoning for eliminating the openers is to give the stations or networks more advertising time but the shows just don’t feel the same without some sort of opening theme at the beginning.

If I had to pick a favourite show that is current I suppose it would be “Private Practice”. I know what the show is about and I can tell the difference between the actual show and the gluttony of ads but it doesn’t have a brand identity. Now I know that they’re doing that dramatic thing by having the little sun explosion at a climatic moment near the beginning of the show and then superimposing “Private Practice” as an understated title on the screen, but being a 40+ year old something I expect more.

Now I don’t need something that tells me to sit right back and I’ll hear a tale nor do I have to hear the story of a lovely lady, but I like the titles to be consistent and separate from the action of the show. I’m not a fan of ramming the credits down my throat over the opening scenes of the show and quite honestly I don’t think it’s fair to the actors or production staff to be minimized in this fashion. In my mind a quality opening sequence gives the show credibility. I figure that the show must be good because they have taken the time, energy and expense to invest in an identity for the show. I suppose that the radio station program director in me is kicking in on the opinion here because I was constantly obsessed with coming up with a viable brand identity for any given station I was working on.

30 Rock still has an opening credits sequence and this is a great thing. Maybe there are more shows with opening credits that I’m not remembering at this late hour but I think a quality theme song helps a viewer remember the show and whether they liked it or not.

As the way of so many other aspects of the industry these days, I think ‘Hollywood’ is missing the boat by eliminating theme songs. Maybe they’ll make a return in 2010.

Last week I featured a video clip from an Elvis Presley movie and encouraged folks to figure out who the “cartoon voice” was. There was one guess, that guess being Betty Boop, which was incorrect.

Here is the video clip again. You are listening to the young blonde woman.

The young blonde woman is voice actress Nicole Jaffe. She has made very few live-action appearances, but she is most recognisable as…

… Velma Dinkley of the original “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?”!

Now that you know that when you watch the video clip above, you can probably totally hear it.

I’m such an audio geek.

And so begins another weekend of the monotony of on call.

No, I won’t give you back your two minutes if you watch this video. Imagine what the video would be like if I still drank.

I am loving the PUMA Index on my iPhone. This app helps you keep track of the stock index with a twist; each time the stock goes up or down the models take off or add clothes whilst doing some sort of activity.

Here is what I am seeing thus far today. It peps up the workday a little bit.

The app allows you to choose a male or female model at your leisure.

I’m a tech geek. I love all things techy and cool. To feed my tech geek needs, I watch many of the CNET TV podcasts that are released daily. I’m a big fan of “Loaded“, “Mailbag“, “Top 5” and many others. (I do wish they would do more Linux based shows, though.)

A couple of weeks ago my friend Greg was sick in bed with the flu. Trying to be the concerned friend that I am, I sent him a text message with the advice to get plenty of liquids, except my iPhone thought I should say “get plenty of liquor” in it’s attempt to be all knowing. I thought this was humourous, so I sent it into the CNET Mailbag “Autoincorrect” segment, where Molly Wood features humourous autocorrect snafus that many geeks can share a hearty laugh about.

My autoincorrect was featured on yesterday’s show. It made me giggle to hear someone else read it.

As a quick aside, I really enjoy Molly’s style. She seems like she’d be fun to have dinner with.

Yes, it’s true. I have been selected to host an official Windows 7 Launch Party. The event takes place on Friday, October 23. I’ll be giving away some door prizes (including a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium) and the party is more of a happy hour with some Windows swag and chances to play with the new operating system thrown in.

I have to admit that I am very impressed with the latest version of Windows. It surprisingly runs better than Leopard on my MacBook Pro (the jury is still out on my comparison to Snow Leopard) and looks and feels gorgeous. I have been using a 90 day copy of the RTM (release to manufacturing) version on my PC and I have been quite pleased.

I could get into lots of details of the changes and such, but I found a very thorough review of Windows 7 on ActiveWin. Follow this link to read (or skim) the 70 page review if you’re so inclined.

I was going to put my thoughts on Snow Leopard, the latest version of the OS X operating system from Apple for the Mac, on my geek blog. It was then that I realised that I had blown up that blog when I was moving servers a month or so ago. Instead of taking time to rebuild that blog before writing my experiences with Snow Leopard, I thought I would just include it here on my personal blog, since I have a lot of Mac users that read along. I also thought it might interesting for those that visit via their Windows based computer. But then again, all this geek talk could be boring altogether, so I guess I’ll just jump right into it.

We have four Macs in The Manor that have the chops to be upgraded to Snow Leopard. This is due to the fact that Snow Leopard is for Intel-based Macs only. All Macs have been Intel based (basically using the same processors as their Windows-based counterparts) for the past three or four years. Two of the Macs use have G4 PowerPC processors, one straggler is older with a G3. These will have to stay on the older Tiger operating system. The Macs that I upgraded included my MacBook Pro (the last of the previous generation with a 2.5 gHz processor), Earl’s MacBook Pro (same generation as mine, but with a 2.4 gHz processor), the studio Mac Mini (the first generation of the Intel Mac Minis with a single core Solo processor) and Jamie’s MacBook (the latest incarnation of the Macbook, I am remiss in knowing what processor it has).

The installation process on all four machines was relatively painless. Both my and Earl’s MacBook Pro went flawlessly, completing in about 45 minutes. My Mac Mini was the same experience, though it took about an hour. The fly in the ointment was Jamie’s MacBook, which I find ironic since it’s the newest computer in the house. When I started the install on his computer it froze about 10 minutes in. I had to force the computer off and start over, luckily, no files had been overwritten or moved prior to this and I was able to boot into Leopard before starting over with the upgrade. On each of the machines software upgrade immediately downloaded and installed an additional upgrade. I don’t recall what this upgrade was but it went painlessly.

Once the upgrade was in place I was ready to rock and roll. My MacBook Pro is my primary machine and I do a lot of different things on it: I edited video, I manage all my photos, I do all of my online interacting and I manage my finances. None of my applications have complained about the upgrade, everything seems to be working fine. I have even been successful with using Skype, which I had read on Twitter folks were having an issue with. I don’t know why I am lucky in that regard.

The primary thing I look for when upgrading an operating system is improvements in the user experience. A quick glance at the screen of a Mac will not clue you in as to whether it has Leopard or Snow Leopard on it. Both look pretty much identical in that regard. One little improvement that I enjoyed was an animation of the wi-fi icon that tells me when my computer is looking for a signal. Speaking of which, that area is a _big_ improvement since the upgrade; my MacBook Pro now finds my home wireless network in about a second when I open the lid versus the five seconds it took under Leopard. That delay used to irk me because I did not experience the same delay under Windows Vista or Windows 7 on the same computer; I’m happy that Apple fixed that.

Other UI (user interface) improvements that I am enjoying include the improvements to stacks on the dock. The scrollbars are a much needed improvement and quick look works flawlessly.

One thing not included in Snow Leopard that I wish had been included was a little bit of “glass”. While I think Microsoft uses this a little too much in Windows Vista and Windows 7 with their Aero interface, I think that a little bit here are there adds a touch of class to the UI. While there are some cool visual effects on the dock with both Leopard and Snow Leopard and the file bar across the top has a glassy appearance (if you want it), I think if Apple had included a touch more glass in Snow Leopard users would have had something to look to assist with the the feeling that they upgraded their operating system. Granted, Apple has said all along that they were focusing on the mechanics of the operating system with this upgraded by making it leaner; I still think a little bit of something in the UI would have made people are little more excited about the upgrade.

My MacBook Pro and my Mac Mini both feel decidedly snappier with the upgrade. Things are purring along beautifully and with the exception of one glitch when the computer went into sleep mode (the screen got stuck in dim mode when I was typing this blog entry), everything has been working great.

Because of Apple’s rock bottom price of this upgrade ($29 for a single computer, $49 for a family pack, good for five computers), I recommend the upgrade to everyone that has a Mac with the specs for it. I believe the speed improvements and the interface tweaks are used to it.

I am a very happy geek tonight. I found Super Breakout from Atari for my iPhone. Atari games are the coolest.