My New Blog - Inside Internet Filtering
July 23rd, 2008I started a new blog at www.insideinternetfilteirng.com, it will be industry related stuff. If you use google reader, here is the feed url: http://www.insideinternetfiltering.com/feed/
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Tweet ThisOutspokin Bike Shop, Woodstock, Georgia
July 16th, 2008As the people who see me a lot will know, about a year ago a friend of mine nearly killed me by taking me Mountain Biking at Blankets Creek. I don’t know if it was the endorphins from the near death experience, but I was hooked. Oddly enough I don’t blog about cycling much for some reason. I guess it is because I would rather spend my time riding than blogging.
After borrowing and breaking two of my friend’s bikes, I decided it was time to get my own. I purchased a Specialized Rock Hopper from Outspokin Bikes in Woodstock, GA. I have been riding a couple of times a week on average for almost a year now. Now I take my friends out to the trails and try to kill them.
Anyway, this post is supposed to be a post about Outspokin. As much fun as Mountain biking is, some days I just don’t have the time in my schedule to drive the half hour across town to the trails, so I wanted to get a road bike. This way I could just take off from the house and ride. I went up to Outspokin and talked to Josh, who showed me through the different price points, and talked about the different frames, components, etc. They really know their stuff.
In the end I found a bike I liked (Scott Speedster S20), but they couldn’t get it in my size anymore for this model year. They ended up making me a good deal on a Scoot Speedster S10, the next model up from the one I liked. They did this just because they wanted to keep me as a customer. Which is probably the biggest thing I like about Outspokin, the way the treat their customers. They create a sense of community through great customer service, much the way all business was conducted prior to the invasion of the big box retailers.
Outspokin is on Main Street in Historic Woodstock, and in my opinion you won’t find a better shop in our area. Check them out.
Now I Remember Why I Don’t Have A Phone Line! (Part 2)
July 16th, 2008Previously on “Now I Remember Why I Don’t Have A Phone Line!”, I called AT&T only to find out they have a 55 minute hold time. So I requested an automated call back the next day.
They called me back right when I asked them to and within seconds I was connected to a customer service rep. Who asked “What phone number or account number are you calling about”.
I replied “I don’t have a phone number or an account with you. I am calling because I moved into a new house a year ago, and never had a phone line installed, however there is still a large PVC pipe and wires sticking up in my front yard that I would like to have removed”.
AT&T, “I can help you with that, what is the phone number at that location?”
Me, “As I started the call by saying, I don’t have a phone line at all, so I don’t have a phone number.”
AT&T, “Oh so do you use this line for high speed Internet only?”
Me, “No, there is *NO* (said slower for emphasis) phone line connected to my house at all, we just use our cell phones. However, there is a PVC pipe and some wire sticking up in the middle of the yard that has never been removed because I didn’t have a phone line installed?”
AT&T, “Do you know the Area Code and first three digits of a phone number in the area”.
ME, *thinking*, “Um 770, and 529″ (my brother used to live not to far from here and that was how his number started).
AT&T then collected my address, cell phone number (she finally caught on to that), name, etc. She said they will send someone out. So now….the waiting game.
Now I Remember Why I Don’t Have A Phone Line!
July 14th, 2008When 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.
General Failure When Opening Links in Outlook 2007
July 14th, 2008I 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.
Adobe Creative Suite Cross-Grade
July 8th, 2008About 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!
Wider Is Better.
July 2nd, 2008Today 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.
iPod Video vs. iPod Touch
July 2nd, 2008So 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.
Geek Irony
June 30th, 2008While 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!
Mavic M-Tech 9 User Guide
June 30th, 2008Recently 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.