Geek

For the past 18 hours or so I’ve been in this total “hacker” mode and living like the nerd I really am. Not tired at all, I decided to rebuild a computer last night shortly after 10 last night and then installed the beta of Windows Longhorn I have. The rebuild took around 20 minutes, the install took just shy of two hours. Unimpressed with the future Windows Vista, I wiped out the hard drive and am looking at other operating system avenues for that machine. To be fair, the software I had was pre-Beta with lots of broken parts. But if the changes in this release stay for the final version, Windows Vista is going to be seriously fscked up.

Anyways, I went to bed around 12:30 to the sweet serenades of Earl’s snoring, still glistening from the sweat I talked about in my blog entry last night.

This morning I slept until the last possible minute and violated my routine completely. I did not empty the dishwasher. I did not make a lunch. I did not eat breakfast. I did not work out and I did not go for a walk.

I checked e-mail, burned a CD, showered quickly, brushed my teeth and dashed off for work.

Earl is having supper with the bigwigs tonight, I think I’m going to continue my geek activities and have supper at a local internet café.

And chase it all down with a Code Red.

We’ve been messing around with VoIP for the past couple of months, the latest contender being AT&T CallVantage. VoIP is pretty cool technology, in that it takes phone service, which has been around for over a century, and sends it out over your internet connection. You can take the phone adapter that provides this service, plug it into any broadband connection, and your phone number is active there. Anywhere in the world.

Too bad it didn’t work as planned.

There’s a couple of caveats with VoIP. Unlike POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service), it doesn’t work during a power outage. No internet connection means no phone connection. And since it’s portable, you need to make sure your 911 information is up to date in case of an emergency.

We’ve had CallVantage service from AT&T for about two months. Our home telephone number was transferred to the service. Outgoing calls have worked beautifully with the exception of not needing to dial “1” to dial a different area code and having to dial all 10-digits for all calls.

Inbound calls have been a different matter.

At first, our phone would ring four times and then instead of transferring to voice mail, it would just drop. Callers would get what we call “dead air” and then back to dial tone.

When I had AT&T look into the trouble, they did something so that our phones never rang and all calls went to voicemail.

Not a convenient scenario.

I’ve been on the phone with AT&T Technical Support for a total of 10+ hours over the past week, and when it wasn’t fixed today as I was promised by a Tier III support person, I decided enough is enough. I placed the order to switch back to Verizon.

VoIP is a promising technology and will eventually be the way everyone is connected by telephone. But it’s not 100% there yet. And with family literally scattered all over the globe, it’s important that our phone service is reliable.

Call me old fashioned.

Somebody in the Microsoft marketing department wasn’t thinking too clearly when they came up with Windows Vista. Not only does the name lend itself to one my new favorite terms, “Crashta La Vista Baby”, Vista is also an abbreviation of the biggest problems with Windows.

Viruses
Infection
Spyware
Trojans
Adware

It’s all so clear to me now.

So Microsoft announced what the newest version of Windows, expected in late 2006, is going to be called. Introducing…

Windows Vista. Clear. Confidence. Connected. Bringing Clarity To Your World.

Wow. I really thought the version formerly called Longhorn was going to be called “Windows 2006” or at the very least “Windows Longhorn”, much like the latest version of Mac OS X stayed “Tiger”. It certainly is a change of direction for the company, as an IT professional, I don’t think I’ve ever used “Windows” and “confidence” in the same sentence before. It’s a novel idea.

I really don’t get the whole “clear” concept, especially since the downloadable marketing video is fuzzy as hell. But that could be due to the bastard version of Windows Media Player that I have on my Mac.

“Connected”, well, that I must agree with, because an operating system that can’t connect is dead in the water with today’s technology. But heck, even DOS is connected.

Personally, I think the marketing department of Microsoft has kind of gone off the deep end with this one. Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m excited about the end product, as I’m always intrigued by new technology, even though I’m typing this entry with great delight on my PowerBook G4 using Tiger. Keeping up with the latest software from Microsoft is important in my line of work. I need to know how to keep those Windows computers running. But “Windows Vista”? Vista?

Like Crashta La Vista, Baby?

I’ve decided to utilize the Mac Mini a little bit more in my daily computing routine. I’ve been waiting for the USB interface that will allow me to record audio into the computer from my mixing board to arrive, but it’s been on back order for the past two months. So the Mac Mini has just sort of been sitting there. Then I realized that I can record audio easily on my PowerBook, so I’ve swapped the two to see how I like it.

Right now it’s a little disconcerting, because I’ve grown very attached to my PowerBook, but I think the Mac Mini is enjoying stretching his legs.

I really shouldn’t get so personal with inanimate objects.

I was lucky enough to be able to attend a work training course today, along with the director of the department I work in. I truly enjoyed the experience, as it gave me the opportunity to enhance my skills and be a more integral part of the team. I even raised my hand and asked a question about the software we were being trained on.

“Does this application work on anything other than Internet Explorer?”, hoping that it would hum along nicely in Mozilla Firefox.

“No, it’s only been tested on IE.”

Ugh.

There’s no escaping the monopoly of Microsoft and the buggy Windows OS. As I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions, I am a very happy but recently converted Mac OS X zealot. I love my Mac. I love the flavor of unix that lives under the hood. It’s stylish, yet fully functional, and doesn’t bring the headaches of malware, spyware, adware and fsckware that Windows introduces to the party. And I don’t even want to think about the viruses!

As I type this entry I am simultaneously fixing a family member’s computer which has Windows distorted beyond all comprehension. I was able to double the length of my beard in the time it took to open Internet Explorer. After this little waltz, I have my sister’s laptop to diagnose, a computer to finish building for my mother (she’s getting converted to Linux whether she likes it or not) and that doesn’t include all the “Please Help Me” requests I get at work.

It’s not that I don’t mind working on computer, because I like it very much. With all these projects, the geek in me is getting his opportunity to shine. But admittedly, my frustration with Microsoft products tends to shine through as well.

“Windows has not detected a keyboard. Press any key to continue.”

The software package we use at work is all built on Windows. It only runs on Windows. It’s so Microsoft centric that it doesn’t even try to use any other mail program when its sending out an e-mail bulletin. It’s Outlook Express or it’s tough luck.

You’ve heard it before. Close your Windows, and open the door. There’s a whole wide world of easy computing out there waiting for you.

Back when I first started the moblog, I started it on TextAmerica based on a feature on the now defunct TechTV’s “The Screen Savers”. I loved the service but probably didn’t do as much as I could with it.

Now I’m finding Flickr much more interesting, as I have several other blog friends using the service. So I think I’m going to start using Flickr and kind of abandon my Textamerica account, though I’ll leave a link to Textamerica too.

The other question is, do I want to post my photos directly into my blog or do I want to have them on a separate page.

Decisions, decisions.

My apologies if you find the technical talk boring, but I think I’ve figured out the stylesheets for my blog enough to get it to look good in all browsers, including Internet Explorer. If you find any pages that look odd, please drop me a line and let me know.

So I was ready to settle in and write my latest witty blog dialog. Not that anyone reads what I write but I amuse myself easily.

I grabbed the iPod, plugged in the headphones and was ready to jam to the last batch of music I downloaded.

Except they’re not on my iPod.

Spin the wheel, spin the wheel, click, click, click.

There seems to be *nothing* on my iPod. Whenever I plug my iPod in to synchronize with iTunes, iTunes closes and wants me to send a crash report to Apple.

OH MY GOD.

This is giving me flashbacks to Windows XP. Apple announced this week that they’re switching to Intel processors. We’re going to have Pentium Macs.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the dark ages.

I was all proud of myself for tweaking my blog page last night and getting it just the way I wanted it to look. Unfortunately, due to Microsoft doing their own thing, it doesn’t render correctly in Internet Explorer. So my sidebar ends up at the bottom of the page, sans my smiling face. I don’t know if its been doing this for a long time or since I just made the changes last night.

Sigh.

Thank you for your patience, I hope to have it fixed soon. If you are currently using Internet Explorer and would like to see how this page (and the internet in general) *should* look, I highly recommend following my “Get Firefox” link to the right, er, below.

Addendum: If anyone can help me with the CSS problems I’m having with Internet Explorer, I’d really appreciate the help. Everything looks great in Mozilla based browsers, but IE is moving the floating sidebar to the bottom and I can’t figure out why!