Every time I go to post on this site I never do because it's not really fun anymore. Hopefully it will be fun again at some point. I'll catch you up anyway. Sara and I went to New York a couple weeks ago and it was pretty cool. It was the first time I had been but the third time from Sara. We got to hang out with our friends Heather and Jon while we were there a bit which was great, even though they're super busy planning their wedding which is in Denver in about another week. I loved it. We went a bunch of places: Mid-town, downtown, West Village, Harlem, Brooklyn we were there for a long time, six days I think. Also, we bought a Nissan Cube which we love. We are now, without meaning to, a Nissan family. I think the Cubes a really good car for the price. And it looks good too. Nick is moving back to the U.S. in a week which is great. Not to Denver, but to Houston which is pretty close. I'm just excited to be roughly in the same time zone as him, although I have got good about knowing what time it is in Dubai and greeting him accordingly (Good *morning* Nick! or Good *evening* Nick!, it can get tricky). I'm also excited because now he will be able to watch and discuss TV shows and see flickr pictures and such. Sara and I are going to have to visit him soon. Labels: life
Yesterday Apple revealed its new iPhone 3.0 software. I have to say that as a user, I'm not super excited about any of the new features, but I always do appreciate a software update. People have been asking (very loudly) for all of these new features, but personally they aren't too big of a deal for me. The features are: Copy and Paste In the 2 or so years I've owned an iPhone, there has only been one time I've actually thought "I wish I had copy/paste right now," however I'd bet when it's available I'll be finding a lot more reasons to use it. Hopefully it doesn't get in the way when I am not using it. Landscape Views in Default Apps I've had friends (JL) who have been craving this in the SMS app and others in the mail app, but I have to say, I have got so used to using the portrait mode keyboard that when I try and use the landscape keyboard (like in Safari) it slows me down. The keys seem too far apart. I prefer the portrait keyboard. Push Notifications This is referring to webservices (like AIM and Facebook) being able to push notifications and badges to your phone, like "bobby841 says: You there?" or "Brett Grubbins added you as a friend on Facebook", etc. I love the idea but my big problem is I always keep my phone on vibrate and there is only one vibrate style. This means I will have to pull my phone out of my pocket every time it vibrates just to see if I got a text message or if someone commented on my photo. Hopefully they will add more vibrate patterns in the future and let you customize the heck out of the notifications. Spotlight Spotlight is a way to search for your whole phone (search across music, photos, email, text messages, calendars, contacts, etc all at the same time). This looks pretty cool but we'll see how much I end up using it. Overall I am most looking forward to whatever small tweaks make it into the new software more than any specific feature, but I think the features will make a lot of others happy.
This post has nothing to do with routers. In my hockey game tonight, I had a conversation with the ref toward the end of the first period right before a face-off: me: "Hey, you need to start calling more penalties. It's getting bad out here, someone's going to get hurt." ref: "What things should I be calling?" me: "Penalties." ref: "You guys are falling down out there. It's hard to tell what's you falling and what a penalty." me: "Um, it's your job to know the difference." Then the ref called for another skater to take the face-off. Classy. I guess that's the kind of refs you get in the lowest league. We lost 3-2 but we had a goal that went all the way in the net and bounced out that they didn't give us. The best part about hockey is no matter how bad the refs are, it's still fun and great exercise. Labels: hockey
I recently received an Eye-Fi wireless SD card for my digital camera (which I will talk about in another post soon) which sends pictures wirelessly to your computer over your wireless network, among other things. The problem is that it only supports networks with WPA or WPA2 encryption, but my network (a D-Link DI-524+) is using WAP. No problem, I decided I would just change my network's security to WPA. So I updated the routers firmware and set the new encryption type. Then the network started cutting out every five minutes for a few minutes at a time. Also, my TiVo's network card doesn't support WPA. Luckily my neighbor had a spare fancy TiVo wireless adapter that *did* support WPA, so he let me borrow it the next day, so that problem was solved. But the network kept dropping out. Still. I did everything I could think of: I changed the channel, I tried different passwords, I changed the router's auto-updating time service, nothing worked. I came across a forum post that said you could install some new firmware on your router that made your DI-524 think it was a DI-624. I was out of ideas and getting frustrated so I tried it. Others had luck with this (other than some overheating) so I wasn't super worried. I flashed the firmware and lo and behold, it thought it was a DI-624. Also, lo and behold, it was still cutting out every five minutes. To make a long story even longer, I ended up giving up and buying a new D-Link DIR-628 which is pretty sweet, it supports 802.11n, g, and b running on a dual band (so my N devices won't be downgraded to a G network just because there are other G devices on it) and it's pretty fast overall. If you have made it to the bottom of this incredible boring post, I commend you and as a token of my appreciation for how bored you must have been to make it here, I present you now with this timeless and classic joke: A pirate walks into a bar with a sailor's wheel sticking out of his pants. The bartender says, "Why do you have a sailor's wheel sticking out of your pants?" and the pirate replies, "Yarr, it's drivin' me nuts!" p.s., The problem all along was (most likely) that I upgraded my firmware in the first place to its most current version which apparently is completely unstable. "Yea all that over at the Eagle Hotel? Huh, it's beyond everything." (If no one gets this is a day, I'll add another quote, so guess fast)
Last week I convinced myself I should buy iLife '09 which includes a new version of iPhoto. Apple added a new feature to iPhoto called Faces, which auto-detects faces in photos and lets you name them. I have to say, the feature is great, it's easy to add names to faces with keyboard shortcuts and it even auto suggests names for faces. After the first hour and a half, I commented via twitter that "going through the face-detection in iPhoto '09 and naming/confirming faces in photos is actually surprisingly fun and kind of addicting." But now, I am in hour 4 of face tagging and I have to say the joy and novelty is gone. And I'm only half way through my photos. I can see this having been a great tool if I used it from the beginning, but at the moment it feels like a chore. I suppose it will be worth it when I'm done when I can type a name in and see all the pictures that have that person's face in them. In closing, here's the funniest thing that's happened:  Labels: apple, photography, software
It seems we lost one of our Netflix movies. We can't remember seeing it in a month. We usually have one or two movies rotating through on a regular cycle but the third can take a while to watch (like Hotel Rwanda, Helvetica, or maybe some other various documentaries) so it's not uncommon to not watch our third movie within a month. We might have accidentally thrown it out in the recycling bin along with our junk mail. The problem is I don't want to accept that it's lost and pay the $20 or whatever it is, mainly because it's not a good movie. If I ever find it I won't want to be stuck with it. If it was a descent movie I'd have no problem because I would know that if I found it I might watch it a few times. Maybe even make a proper-looking DVD case for it. It's Tropic Thunder. There, I said it. Who knows how long I can hold out without "buying" the movie. I'm not happy about this. Update: After biting the bullet, I paid for the DVD on Netflix but then got this wonderful message: "If you find the lost DVD within one year, please return it to us for a refund." That's awesome, exactly what I would have hoped for but never expected. How cool!
Here is my review of the past year in 6 words: 2008: High highs and low lows. Regardless of how bad things may have been this year, I got married which was probably the best decision I have ever made. Here's to aught 9 being better. Cheers. Gobama! p.s. I'm drun. (You see, it's fuunier if you say "drun" without the 'k')
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