Listen Up

The radio informed me today that there is some sort of belief that is starting to gain traction that walking while either listening to your mp3 player, talking on your cell phone, or texting your friends can be a distraction. I have no doubt that the latter is true, as it is very hard to both look at your cell phone as you type and pay attention to the traffic, but I question the first two. Granted, I imagine it does matter how loud you listen to your music. If you listen too loudly, you aren't going to hear the ambient noise around you. However, I also wonder what is to explain all the people out there that don't do any of these activities yet still seem incapable of navigating traffic.

It seems every single time I go through parking lots, there are people walking down the middle of the lanes reserved for automotives. Because, after all, it's not like there are cars in parking lots, right? Parking lots are built for pedestrians - so that they can spread out and meander and walk three to four abreast. That's safe, right?

Would the limited number of peopler that were involved in some sort of accident while listening to their mp3 player or talking on their cell phones have avoided the incident if they had been walking or running sans auditory technology? One of the people the news story talked about to support their position was walking down the middle of train tracks. Another person failed to notice the bus coming at her. Sure, you could say it was the technology but I see people without any technilogical devices to their ears behave this way nearly every single time I drive through a parking lot. Maybe it's just a complete lack of common sense. However, we can't say that there are just dumb people out there can we? We have to say that they are "distracted." That sounds so much nicer; it implies that these people are otherwise quite bright - if only this damn technology had not distracted them. However, I question its validity, maybe not in every case but certainly in quite a few.

I suppose if the issue really is a problem, the government has an interest in protecting the poor folks having to contend with these technology fiends (as well as the fiends themselves, I guess). However, what about all the other folks? Is there a way we can legislate to eliminate stupid?

Deleted Scenes

I realized that I forgot a couple segments from my last post. Probably the most significant one was that the server in our office went down just before I left on vacation. I am not, technically, our IT person. However, I do have a long history of fixing stuff that is IT related and we have a service contract with Dell for IT support. Hence, armed with a couple of cell phones and a sense of adventure, I worked with Dell to determine that at least one of the server's hard drives was bad and got it replaced and then determined that the remaining hard drive was corrupted and I needed to destroy and rebuild the entire array.

In theory, this should have gone more-or-less smoothly, as we had a complete backup tape that had gone off the night before. We backup every night and the backup was good and the tapes were brand new. So, I had a lot of positives in my favor. Plus, we have high level technical support at Dell. As such, you only work with the folks in the U.S. that speak English and really know a lot of stuff. I had a huge negative, however, Windows 2003 Small Business Server, which ended up being a thorn in my side and kept me in the office from 8AM Wednesday until 6:30AM, the next morning (Thursday). (This was the Thursday before I flew out to Costa Rica, and I still had not packed.) Who needs sleep, right? Apparently, I did. Because I distinctly remember going home and leaving a message for the person I knew would come in first that morning - not very long after I left, actually - to call out IT guy, with a detailed description of what I had attempted. I also had Dell notate the case file.

The heart of the problem was that Windows was not restoring correctly and nothing we tried seemed to be working. I kept having to start from scratch each time, and that usually took about another 40 minutes or so, to get to the point where I could try to restore again and then that part took about an hour. All of this led to some interesting comments and Tweets in the middle of the night that night. So, for any of those people that received comments from me at around 3 or 4AM that night/morning, thanks for writing - you gave me something to read.

While this was going on, I was still on decongestants and antibiotics for whatever odd sinus thing that had infected my body right before my trip. I am guessing lack of sleep was not the best course of treatment for all of this, but.... I did refuse to go to work for the remainder of Thursday and left the rest of it up to our IT guy. I felt a little vindicated that it took him a long time to fix it, as well. He spent all of Thursday in our office and when I cam in Friday morning, it still was not completely working. In fact, he ended up having to take it back to his office and work on it there. While I was in Costa Rica, however, I received an email to let me know that the server finally came back up.

I am still not fully convinced that the server is operating at 100%, but it is definitely functioning. I have us calendared to buy a new server in the first half of next year. Heck, for the amount that we ended up having to pay the IT guy, we probably could have just bought a new server.

Given my ability to become completely consumed with IT, it has been suggested that I consider taking a class or two in it. So, I am considering it. That and Spanish. I am horrible at foreign languages, but I feel like in South Florida, I have a better chance of being able to practice it and use it on a more frequent basis, and I think it would help me in my future travels.

Online Presence

This morning, I remarked to my girlfriend that I was surprised no one had developed an online presence reporting agency. You may be thinking, what the hell are you talking about, and that would make a lot of sense because I do not think that title is accurate. I think I can better explain what I am talking about than give a title to it.

Every year, lots of people pay for someone to keep track of their three credit reports, which are known to often be filled with inaccuracies but that can meaningfully ruin your life. For example, I have had to remove incorrect information on my reports at least twice and it was a nightmare. If I didn't get it removed I couldn't do other important things, like get loans approved for college or something, and you had to jump through so many hoops to prove to the agencies that the data they had was wrong. Unfortunately, you usually did not learn that there was a problem with your credit report at all until you were suddenly denied for something. Now we have credit monitoring systems, some of them even marketed by the same credit reporting agencies that so often seem to be getting the information wrong. Doesn't it seem they should have to have this type of system in place (for free) before they are allowed to hold that much power? But, I digress.

Later in the morning, a news report came onto NPR discussing how many people are using MySpace and Facebook to find jobs, in this the 21st Century. However, they noted that a lot of people do not think about what they put out on the Internet before they begin applying for jobs and that most of today's employers now Google all of their applicants to see what it out there in cyberspace about them. Once again, there is this thing where your past could come back to haunt you - even if it is inaccurate or an ex-lover decided to post pictures or video of it after you two broke up, after he promised the images were destroyed. It really seems that someone with a bit of a grudge against you and a little free time could wreak some serious havoc on your life, and you may never know it before it was too late. Given all of this, I am surprised that no one has derived a method for ferreting out such derogatory details on the Net and charging folks a small fee to monitor their information and to help them get it removed.

I suppose, for all I know, someone has already derived a method for doing this. Although, I imagine it could be difficult. What if what you publish now belongs to someone else? How do you force that company to remove it? I am not really sure. In either event, at least three lessons should be taken from this: Google yourself ... often, be really careful about what you put out there because it might be out there for forever - those emails that you write back and forth can be discoverable in court, and can also easily be posted to a Website, later, and if you are crafty enough, there is probably money to be made upon other people's precarious positions.

Another Blog

I don't know how it happened, but somehow I got roped into becoming a member of the creative team for a new blog. It sounds exciting when I say "creative team" doesn't it? It sounds like I am working on some super-awesome thing doesn't it? Well, maybe I am. One never knows. In any event, the new blog is all non-fiction and wholly related to the arts and advertising (what a combination). We will have to see what develops from it.

One thing I have realized is that Blogger is the home for me, for now. Over the past few weeks, I have been thinking of switching over to Wordpress because I think their themes are snazzy - especially the three column ones that Blogger does not seem to offer. However, I learned while I was helping on this new project that Wordpress has some limitations as well. For example, embedding with iframes is so not happening there and do you see that new Creative Commons icon on my blog - in the left hand column? No? Well, trust me, it's there. It took me a half hour to figure out how to get it to appear in Wordpress.

Wordpress does have some cool stuff going for it. For example, integrating your domain name is fairly easy and you can easily create separate pages for your blog, which can make it a more multi-purpose portal, with some open ended growth potential. However, I think the restrictions were enough to keep me around on Blogger, at least for a little while longer.

In other news, American Airlines will now begin charging you to check any bags at all. No, I do not mean any bags after the first one. I mean all of your checked bags are going to cost you. Fly safely.

SP-1

As some of you might remember, I happen to have very strong opinions regarding Windows Vista, and just when I started getting used to many of its idiosyncrasies, which I had a Microsoft technical support person tell me, makes it a better operating system, I received the Service Pack 1 update from Microsoft. Oh, hooray, for me. My computer now does not seem to know if it really wants to start Windows or just sort of sit there in a listless state for a minute or two. This is an improvement, right? I am sure Microsoft would silently coo in my ear that it is all for the best and that this release makes everything better, but from where I sit, it has basically downgraded my OS.

The other day, I went to a training with a bunch of attorneys. It required everyone to have their own laptop. It was here that I saw my very first Macbook Air. I did not really realize that it was anything special at first glance, but it was being discussed by everyone else in the room and the technical support person in attendance offered his two cents of derision for all things Apple. A few minutes later, the presenter's computer had a significant error, bringing down several key features of Windows and the programs running in it. The attorney looked over to him and said, "Want to borrow my Mac?"

I still am not sold on the whole Mac concept. My girlfriend has one and whenever I want to do something on it, I feel like I have to complete extra steps to accomplish anything and I do not fully understand its architecture with the installation and removal of programs. I assume if I took the time to learn about it, I would figure it all out, but that seems time consuming. In college, I worked as technical support help desk guy. The Macs were always the worst, until they upgraded them all and then everyone wanted to use a Mac. I still, however, did not experience the same joy with them. For example, it still bothers me that when I close a program in a Mac, it does not close the program because I have to quit the program to close it.

It is little things like that that can bug me. However, the Mac OS is probably still a superior operating system. After all, they originated the entire concept of Windows. All Microsoft did was make Dos look really pretty.

Vista Sucks

When I got my new laptop, I had no choice but to get it with Windows Vista. While I know some laptops are still available with Windows XP, mine was not and there was not a lot I could do about it. Begrudgingly, I played the Bill Gates game and got my shiny new laptop.

Upon receiving the laptop, I immediately tried to install XP Professional, but quickly realized that it did not have all of the drivers my machine needed and was really just going to be more of a hassle than I wanted. I decided I needed to try to learn to love this new operating system of mine, and there were some things that Vista did better thanXP ever had. For example, my startup time was about 30 seconds and it could go to sleep and wake up almost as well as a Mac. However, its constant warning messages and odd idiosyncrasies were driving me up a wall. After I figured out how to deactivate the bulk of them, I was greeted with the now familiar warning I get every time I start my system, alerting me to the fact that my system is not fully protected. Moreover, the Internet security suite that shipped with my system was not actually compatible with Vista. Yay, for me.

After finally getting Vista to run sort of the way I wanted, and getting the security suite removed, I started finding all the other programs it was not compatible with, including my journal program. Imagine my horror and misery when I found out the program that I was assured would continue to work with Vista no longer worked, and the more I looked, the more problems I had. Suddenly,iTunes was having issues and they were not going away. Now I had programs, and hardware related to those programs that would not work correctly. Bill Gates was ruining my life, piece by piece.

This weekend, I had to replace my flash based mp3 player. The one I used to take to the gym had decided to only turn on when it felt like it, and even once it had turned on, could turn off at any moment, without provocation. I tried negotiating with it. I tried multiple new batteries, but nothing was going to convince it. It was done. So, I went and bought a Sansa Clip. It was really a great little player, about the size of the newer Apple Shuffles but with FM radio and twice the amount of memory, for a much smaller price. Brilliant! Well, it certainly was perfect until I hooked it up to my computer and Vista said, "What the hell is this?"

I called Sandisk and explained the problem to the tech support guy. At first, he tried to tell me that it was just me, until I pointed out that other users on the Sandisk support forums were having my exact same problem. At this point, he confessed that some users did experience this problem because some versions of Vista had shipped with the required drivers and others had not. It seemed to him that mine had not, and what I would need to do is go to this Microsoft Web page and request that Microsoft send me a Hotfix (patch). This was awesome. I could not just go somewhere and download the driver I needed to run my new hardware, I needed to ask the Microsoft gods and hope that they heard my plea.

A few hours later, Microsoft emailed me back stating that they could not find the Hotfix I was looking for and telling me to call them, which I promptly did. The operator could not figure out how I had got this number and was dumbfounded at the idea that someone at Microsoft had told me to call it. Finally, he decided my story was too crazy to be a lie and connected me with technical support. I, once again, explained my issue, in excruciating detail, to the tech support dude (who sounded quite Indian). He was completely baffled as to why I was calling him. You could sense that he was hoping to be able to read to me from a script and "solve" my technical problems. This fell completely outside of the parameters to which he had grown accustomed. However, he made his best efforts, asking me if I was using Windows Vista, and that's where things went downhill.

I replied that I was using Vista and that it was the worst operating system ever. To which he tried to tell me it was an excellent operating system and I lost it. I pointed out every glaring problem with the operating system. I noted how many people and organizations were still unwilling to purchase it and how even Microsoft is starting to promote its next operating system, seemingly trying to brush Vista aside, and say, "Look at this really cool new thing that might actually work in a way you will like." I even pointed out the fact that the new Service Pack release forXP is supposed to add most of the best features of Vista to XP , making it almost completely pointless for anyone to upgrade, at all. It was right around this point that he decided he needed his supervisor, as I clearly knew too much.

The supervisor (another person sounding Indian, dots not feathers) and I traced the same path regarding the horror that is Vista and all the problems I have had with it. However, as we came back to focusing on my problem of the day, she remained completely bewildered as to how I had even gotten transferred to her department and insisted that I needed to provide her with theHotfix ID number. After I asked her for the third time where I was supposed to find such a thing, she decided I needed to call Sandisk back, as obviously Sandisk knows better than Microsoft how to patch Vista.

It was at this point that I took my new Sansa Clip, walked it straight back to Best Buy and spent $20 extra to get a new Shuffle. Sure, it has half the memory and no FM tuner, but it works and keeps me from having to deal with Microsoft, and you simply cannot put a price tag on that. Besides, if I decide to go Mac in the coming months, it will still work with my new system.