Category: Tekkie

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Kansas City Meetup

The snow has canceled school from as far west as Fort Worth, up through Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and then swiped an eastern path across the midwest states all the way to the East Coast and up through New England.

I called my sister in Kansas and she told me that schools are closed there for today, too. She has been home all day trying to learn how to use her new pc, installing her instant messenger and setting up a new email account. She’s learning her way around the internet – finally. She even surprised me with the confession that she’s hoping to start dating by using the internet.

Well, she’s been divorced for over two years. I say its about time she started dating. Especially if she uses a quality dating site like Great Expectations. I know my sister, and she’s not interested in a lot of casual dating. She wants to meet a nice guy and be in love again. If she signs up for Great Expectations Kansas City she can attend some of their local events that let people actually meet in a comfortable, non-threatening environment and really get to know someone. I’m glad she’s making the effort now – she deserves to be happy.

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Custom Skateboards

My sister called this morning and invited me to her son’s birthday party next week. She can’t do it this weekend because of the Super Bowl, so they picked next Thursday for the celebration. Part of the reason they picked Thursday is because they booked a suite at the Sommet Center for the hockey game that night against the Anaheim Ducks. There is a family joke about the Mighty Ducks, but that’s another story.

I’m not sure what to get this kid for a cool birthday present. He’s turning 8 and is just a typical eight year old – into all kinds of sports and video games. Uncle Adam’s present has to be awesome! I’m thinking it might be a good time to introduce him to skateboarding. I think that’s about the age when I first got interested in the sport. Of course, things have changed since I was riding skateboards. The boards themselves are much more tekkie and its all about a custom designed board.

The best web site I can find about skateboards is called www.warehouseskateboards.com. I’ve been reading up on their page “Skateboard Buying Guide” about skateboard basics and how to choose the right boards and components based on age and size. They also have some really wild designs for a huge selection of boards.

If I order it today I can get it shipped here in time for the birthday party, so looking at their choices for a longboard complete package, I’m going with the rad “Blind Reaper” design. This will blow his mind!

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Mix Tapes

Years ago I would buy albums that I liked and pull a couple of my favorite songs off of the albums to make custom mix tapes. Sometimes a friend would ask me to make a tape for them with specific songs onthem. I always thought that it would be great to make a custom CD with my favorite songs on them, but we did not have the technology available.

Now with home pcs sold with cd burners and dvd burners built in, and the internet with downloadable songs all over the net, we can all do that easily. Yet I don’t and I’m not sure why. Perhaps the thrill of having the music I liked right at my fingertips has waned. Perhaps the music has changed.

There is very little new music that even spurs me to go buy an album. Where I used to buy at least one album from every single paycheck, now I buy just one or two albums a year. Yes, it has gotten that bad. I really don’t like today’s music much and I’m not willing to spend my money on something that I don’t like. I find myself listening to talk radio in the car and you don’t buy albums of talk radio shows.

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Watch Out for the Latest Worm Attack

The IT guys just told us about a new worm called Downandup, Downadup, Kido!, or Conficker (all the same worm). It seems to be be delivered using infected USB drives. The worm hijacked the autorun program and shows a default selection on a fake download screen that looks just like the Windows download screen. The problem is that it shows installing it’s own virus as the default choice on the screen. So of course most people are going to click on it and then it is too late.

I use USB drives all the time but I only transfer specific files from the jump drive to the PC in use. I never use USB drives to install programs and although it is not foolproof, I think that is a good policy for others to follow. But if you have been infected, a site called F-Secure has a removal tool that should get rid of it.

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Voice to Text

Looking at most of the PDAs that have evolved into iPhone’s and clones, the focus has been to include some method of typing the alphabet and numbers into the equipment to send outgoing messages. Some have slide out keyboards with itsy bitsy QWERTY keys, some have teeny weenie buttons to be pressed in a different order, with lots of shift key and control key pressing to make all the characters workable. Some have touch screens that click when pressed. But most of them require the user to hunt and peck to send out their text message or twitter.

Now a company in England is releasing their new program that converts voice to text and works with the cell phones, called VoxLinks. I read about it online in a UK publication.

How cool is that? No more stylus, no more fat finger typos, no more squinting in the dark to find the right buttons. Just talk and turn your outgoing message or incoming voicemail into a text message. And if you subscribe to the Vodaphone service for your cell provider, you’ll get the software free. Awesome.

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Fusion vs Vista

I like Net Objects Fusion. I’ve used it for years in web site design and publishing. I also use it as a database of sorts – the organization tool makes it easy to keep track of multiple projects and little details like user names and passwords when you have a lot of different accounts. You can visually organize your data as if they were web site pages, and make changes using drag and drop.

So I always buy the next upgrade when it is announced. I also bought a new PC last year and it has Vista on it. But, evidently, the latest version of Fusion does not like Vista and I have a huge problem now. I like Vista – knock on wood – and have no desire to downgrade my Windows operating system. But I also need to be able to run my favorite programs on the machine!

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Happy Birthday, Google!

Wow – can youbelieve that it was just 10 years ago today that Goolge applied for incorporation? I’m not sure which day they are using to celebrate their birthday, as they applied on a Thursday but it was not accepted until that Sunday. I would think that it was birthed on the day that they applied and the real party started on Monday after it was approved.

Either way, the company is officially 10 years old and it’s amazing the progress they’ve made and the impact they have on everyone’s daily lives.

I use their search and their maps quite a bit, and I was one of the first users to sign up for their email. I also use their translate tool and Have bought a subscription to Google Earth.

This week they announced the launch of a new browser called, “Chrome.” I wonder what new goodies they have in store for us after this?

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Browser Wars

Another browser? Good grief! I was originally a Netscape fan, back in the days when you had to buy one on disk. They got muscled out and I reluctantly converted to Internet Explorer. Then my IT buddies turned me onto Firefox, and that’s where I plan to stay. Unless I buy a Mac, then I’ll have to use the Safari browser.

Now Google wants to get into the market and they have launched their own browser called, “Chrome.” The early testers are posting rave reviews, so maybe they’ve got something there. But for a little longer I plan on using Firefox and letting the new Chrome works the bugs out before I install it and give it a try.

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Y Mail

I see that Yahoo has introduced two new email service extensions to their free emails: @rocketmail and @ymail. I guess the @ymail is a slam on Google for their @gmail accounts.

I got my very first email account at MSN about 20 years ago. I had one at AOL for a while but didn’t like the AOL service and gave it up, although I have to admit that a few other times over the years I would get suckered into signing up with AOL again for accessibility issues or some reason. But AOL just never did it for me.

I can’t get past the fact that I was invited to go to work for them when they first opened offices back in the 80’s. When I went for the interview and took a tour of their offices, I was struck by how stressed out and anxious everyone seemed. There was absolutely no laughter or happiness evident in any of the cubicles or offices.
I knew after that tour that I didn’t want to work in an office environment like that. Quality of life is more important to me than the paycheck. So I turned them down and have had a bad taste for AOL ever since.