imroot.com

When I moved into my new house a year ago, I decided that I wasn’t going to put in a land line. Instead we would just run off of our cell phones. After all what is the point in having three phone numbers for two people? But since I didn’t get a phone line, I have a 3-4 foot tall 10-inch PVC pipe sticking out of my front yard. Well actually three, because it turns out neither of my neighbors got a traditional phone line either. So AT&T has never made a trip out to do their typical thing where they tear up your yard burying the cable.

I tried to call them tonight. After navigating their menu which was a confusing mess of some menus that want you to SAY the number, and some that want you to PRESS number (seriously a phone company can’t get his right?), I was greeted by a pleasant sounding robot woman who told me my estimated wait time was 55 minutes. I wasn’t so pleasant back to her. I think this is one of the menus that could understand what you are saying, because it politely offered to schedule a call-back for another time.

So AT&T is supposed to call me back tomorrow, and which time I expect to be told that they don’t know how to help me because I don’t have an account with them. I mean after all, who in their right mind doesn’t have a land line? This ought to make for some really good blogging.

I have been having problems with Outlook 2007 bringing up a “General Failure” when trying to click links in an email, that they says the URL could not be loaded. After being annoyed by it enough I decided to chase down an answer. I found it here in an article titled “Outlook 2007 and Firefox “general failure” link incompatiblity”

Here are the steps in case the link doesn’t work:
1) Click on Start menu
2) Click on “Set Program Access and Defaults”
3) Click on the “Custom” button
4) Under “Choose a default Web Browser,” select the browser you want as your default (I use Firefox).
5) Click “OK”

Thanks for the help Daniel Robbins, whoever you are.

About a year ago, maybe a little more, I bought a copy of Adobe Web Premium CS3 for my Windows box. I don’t remember why I bought it for Windows, but it was the right decision at the time. After enduring Windows Vista on my PC for some time, I have gotten to the point where I would just rather do things on my MacBook pro. I know…big surprise.

This week I made the switch. Started using the Macbook for everything. There are a few tasks that I do that still must run on Windows. So for those I have parallels. But I really wanted my Adobe products to run on the native Mac side. So I called Adobe to see if there was a cross-grade option. I figure they were going to tell me “No, just pay us $1600 again.” But to my surprise they have a cross-grade plan in place.

You give them your old serial number (which they deactivate), fax them a nice little letter that says you are deleting/destroying the old software, and they send you a new serial number and DVDs. Sounded good to me, right up until the part where they deactivate your serial number immediately, it takes up to 48 hours for them to process your faxed letter, and then you have to wait for the DVD shipment. There is no electronic delivery option at all! So basically you are without use of your products for days (I haven’t tested so see if my products have actually stopped working yet, but the guy on the phone claimed that is what happens pretty much immediately)!

I’ve heard of people that just download cracks and key-gens off of BitTorrent and run Adobe products that way. That seems easier. Why is it that doing it the “legal” way is so hard!

Today we launched the new spatially enhanced InternetSafety.com. I almost can’t reach from one side to the other. It’s awesome. http://www.internetsafety.com.

It seems like every time I redesign this site it get’s more complex. Maybe that is just the way of things, but I don’t look forward to the next one, and oh yes, there will at some point be a next one.

So since I had the opportunity to play with an iPod touch at MacWorld in January I have really been wanting to replace my 30GB iPod Video with an iPod Touch. So before I went on vacation in May I got an iPod touch. I left my iPod Video at home and took just the touch with me.

While the photo capability to of the iPod Touch is truly superior to the iPod Video (I loaded some vacation pics on the plane ride back to show friends), I have to say, at the end of the day, I ended up preferring my old iPod Video.

My basic reason is that as an music play the iPod Video is a much better setup, especially considering that about 90% of my usage is in my car. So having tactile navigation for next, previous, play and pause is invaluable. I don’t have to look at my iPod while driving to make changes.

My secondary reason is that I was annoyed that I couldn’t change the volume of the iPod Touch without being in the iPod screen. So when listening to music, and doing something else, I couldn’t change the volume, and in some views of the iPod app on the Touch I can’t even change the volume at all. A very intuitive spin of the click wheel on my old iPod did this for me, and I could do it without looking at the screen.

In a few days the iTunes App Store will launch, and I think a number of games are going to show up for the iPod Touch/iPhone. That may change my mind in the future. But for right now, the iPod Touch can’t replace my iPod Video.

While SSHing into the webserver that imroot.com is hosted on this evening I was struck with the irony that I’m NOT root. Not on that box anyway. Not sure how I feel about that!

Recently my wife purchased a used road bike. It came with a Mavic M Tech 9 Cycle computer, but no user guide. It needed to be calibrated for some reason. After googling about every combination I could think of I had come up dry. That is when I got lucky and stumbled into one of those things that makes me look like an awesome online researcher. In desperation I google for just a basic bike computer, hoping that the manual from another computer would clue me into the numbers it was looking for. I ended up on a forum and the second link I clicked on was for an Avocet Cyclometer 15 User Guide. It is the same computer basically, in a slightly different case. The only difference I have found so far, is that the Avocet designates the odometer as “D” while the Mavic M-Tech 9 does so with and ODO. Other than that, everthing seems to work just the same.

Last night after mountain biking I dropped my key fob in my trunk, then closed the trunk, the problem was the car was still locked. My car came with BMW Assist, so I gave them a call and asked them to remotely unlock my car. They ran through a series of security questions, then sent a signal to my car. A few minutes later, my drivers side door unlocked, and I could pop the trunk to get my key. That is an awesome feature.

I recently rescued a Mac Classic II from destruction, that had been sitting undisturbed for 6+ years. In the early days of my career I actually did tech support on these things. I remember one time I had one that was having problems booting, and the hard drive (80MB) was making this click-click-click sound. So I went to my supervisor and told him the hard drive was dead, and we were going to need to replace it. He said “No, here use this” and handed me a hammer. He went on to explain “Tap it a few times on the sides of the hard drive and try it again”. Well it fixed it! Thus began my weird and wacky relationship with the Mac Classic II.

Now, back to present day. When I rescued this Mac Classic II I decided to try and boot it. So I plugged it in and turned it on. All I got on the screen was a black and white checker board pattern. So I fired up Google to find an answer. I found one, but couldn’t hardly believe what I was reading. Wash the motherboard by hand, or stick it on the dish washer! You have got to be kidding.

However, I had nothing to loose, so I did. I opted for washing by hand. With a few drops of dish detergent in a sink full of water I swished the motherboard around for about 5 minutes, pulled it out, and rinsed it off really good. After letting it sit out to dry overnight, I put it back it, and fired it up. Almost immediately I was met with the familiar “bong” sound, and it booted right up!

The technical explanation I have found is that the capacitors leak fluid after sitting around for a while. This gets on the motherboard and creates short circuits. Washing it, removes these short circuits and allows it to boot again. Weird stuff.

So I need some input on what to make of this classic machine. We are collecting feedback on moreron.com

So yesterday Ron posted that the google streetview car was in Acworth. I went on Google tonight and Acworth is already online. You can see the entrance to my subdivision, and if you know the right out of focus blob to look at, you can see my house.

I think they might still be updating and adding streets and there are some notable missing areas such as the area where our office is, and they have been on smaller streets. Looks like they have already covered a decent amount of the metro area already.