blindsquirrel.org

This is a picture of the drain in our water fountain at work. Reminded me of the icon for RSS related feeds. Best picture I could get with the cell phone. I know – I need a life.

While on vacation last week I was messing around with all the syncing options I have. If you read one of my earlier entries about switching from Apple’s Mail to Microsoft Entourage you will recall that I use Exchange2003 at work, which syncs to Entourage on my PowerBook via the Outlook Web Access front end. From there Entourage uses Apple’s SyncServices to sync up with iCal in a new calendar it creates called Entourage. From iCal I can then sync wirelessly to my Motorola e815 cell phone via Bluetooth and my .Mac account. Whew! That should be some exhausted packets by the time they get to the phone.

Every once in a while my phone will stop syncing correctly and the only solution I have found is to tell iSync to reset the phone and overwrite everything on the phone during the next sync.

I was bored and thought I would try to figure out what was going on, so I thought I would wipe out everything from the phone to iCal, to Entourage and start all over from Exchange. So I reset the phone. Then I deleted the Entourage calendar in iCal. (You gotta hand it to the developers at Apple that wrote SyncServices; they are pretty fast!) Within a minute or so not only was the iCal Entourage calendar gone, but it had completely wiped out my Entourage calendar. Can you guess what happened next? Entourage did a sync with my corporate Exchange account and wiped out my entire Exchange calendar at work.

Now I was screwed. I should have made a backup before I started playing around but I didn’t and I got burned. Almost. I remembered that I had .Mac and decided to try a sync one last time with iSync telling it that .Mac should overwrite everything I had. It took a little while but my calendar items started showing up in iCal. From there they started showing up in Entourage. From there they started repopulating my Exchange2003 calendar at work. It took 15-20 minutes to get everything back, but I got it all back, including all the meeting attendees for meetings that I had scheduled.

I have written here before about how Apple needs to add more value to the .Mac service to make it worthwhile or I would probably not renew my subscription in October. This one simple thing just made .Mac pay for itself. Luck was on my side.

It seems like every quarter or so there is a rumor or discussion about Apple coming out with their own phone. I’ll go along and call it the iPhone. I am of the belief that eventually the phone is going to win when it comes to portable devices. In many aspects it already has. There should be little doubt that it is already the platform of the future.

For now I feel the iPod is pretty much the perfect portable music device. The integration with the iTunes music store is fantastic and that’s the only way I have purchased music since the day it opened. You can now do much of this on cell phones but I think that, for now, the cellular carriers are charging too much for that the offer and the storage is too limited.

What I wonder is if the iPhone is enough to keep Apple in the lead, since they would be using the carriers network to reach a music store. For me that store has to be iTunes. What incentive do the carriers have to give Apple any kind of break for using their network to get to the iTunes store? Not much. Maybe volume. So Apple may want to become a MVNO and control the entire process from end to end like they do today with the iPod and iTunes. They would still need to negotiate a great deal with the carriers but at least they would be able to leverage the network’s usage for cell calls as well as purchasing music.

Oh yeah, and it better hold as many songs as existing iPods. You can start with Nano levels but eventually I want to stream video to my iPhone as well. I need a flat cost for unlimited high speed bandwidth, unlimited local and long distance calls, and songs from iTunes at the same price point we see today.

Let’s see what happens here. I don’t expect this to happen right away but Apple sold a little over 8 million iPods last quarter and I believe more than 600 million phones were sold last year. As a shareholder I would love to see Apple own a percentage of that bigger pie. Most people tend to replace their phones every 2 years or so to get all the slick new features. Wouldn’t it be great to see them select that new iPhone for their new cell phone?

But then again, what do I know? It would be cool to have a Nano that could make phone calls, but it might almost be too small for me. Remember the iPod Mini? That would be an awesome size for an iPhone.

Really? Are you sure you watched the same show I did? Even she said she butchered the song. She had more bad notes than good. It was honestly painful to watch. Ace’s song was actually not that bad, but when you compared it to Kelly he sounded like a professional.

What are you people smoking? I see we’re back to voting on things other than talent. Right when I thought you guys finally had the hang of this.

When a little company called Burst beat up giant Microsoft over its patents we purchased stock in the company. Not because I thought Burst would become a huge company but because I really expected someone like Apple to come along and buy them for their streaming technology.

Instead, Apple goes to court and tried to invalidate their patents. Bad move in my opinion. Microsoft got out of it for 60 million bucks. Apple could have probably come up with a similar settlement, but now Burst is forced to counter sue Apple to protect itself. Although I can only guess how this will turn out, there are really only 3 ways this can go:

1 – Apple loses and has to pay Burst a ton of money
2 – They settle and Apple has to pay Burst a ton of money
3 – Someone buys Burst and Apple has to pay a ton of money

See a pattern? I believe Apple will need to break out the checkbook here because I think they’ll end up the bad guy in this one. Burst is the underdog here. I usually cheer for the underdog, which ironically is usually Apple. Apple is an interesting company and they seem to be lead by ego. We tend to think of Microsoft as the “evil empire” in the IT field, but I have to wonder just how bad Apple would be if they had anywhere near the market share that Microsoft has. Could be brutal.

I went and exchanged my Garmin Nuvi 350 at BestBuy like I wrote and was really surprised with the experience. I have never had such a positive experience at BestBuy before. Ever. Usually the store really irritates me and since they sell ZERO software for the OS X operating system I shop there much, much less than I used to. But, they were extremely helpful, gave me no hassle about the exchange, and we just generally very friendly.

It was an experience I have never had at a BestBuy, and I have been there more than 100 times at least. I walked away very happy and impressed with the service I received. Nice job BestBuy.

Also, tonight might have been the best overall night for American Idol since it has been on the air. I think just about everyone sang really well. Tough to pick a bottom 3 for tomorrow, but Kelly has to be one of them. She really struggled with her song. Chris did really well. The judges thought Katharine blew everyone away but I didn’t think she did that well. For me the bottom 3 would be Kelly, Paris, and Katharine, but I doubt that will happen. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.

I have to figure out what it takes to get my kids (you know, Paris and Nicki) to use utensils when they eat. We finally got through the wide open mouth eating with the smack, smack, smack, that comes along with every chew, but they would still rather pick up everything with their hands. It’s not like I’m talking about french fries or chick fingers here, I’m taking about green beans, meat loaf, and mashed potatoes!

Now that they know it drives me crazy I’m sure I’ll never get them to stop.

I did a bunch of research on a GPS Navigation system that we could take with us on vacation. I ended up with the Garmin Nuvi 350. This thing is nice and tiny with a crystal clear screen. It gave us very good directions and talked us through all the upcoming turns. We used it to find rest areas, restaurants, and lodging along the way. It never missed a beat. This thing has a ton of features I will never use though, like the MP3 player, Audible Book player, picture viewer, etc. You never know when the language translation program will come in handy, as well as the calculator, and a few other things.

But, with all the good there are a few things that could be better.

First is the navigation. On our trip we went from Pittsburgh, PA to Beaufort, SC. It correctly took us down I79 South to Route 19 to 77, etc. Exactly like we would have mapped it out ourselves. But on the way back it really fought against us going in the exact opposite direction of 77 to 19, to 79. It really wanted us to stay on 77 all the way to Charleston, WV and then up 79, which would have cost us at least 60 miles compared to going back up 19 like it had us take on the way down. We decided we knew best and took 19 home and it kept trying to get us to turn around and get back on 77. It wasn’t until we were more than half way up 19 that it finally gave in and started talking to us again. Everything else with the navigation was perfect.

When the volume is turned up it tends to break up and get a little fuzzy. It’s just not real clear at higher volumes. Probably a cheap speaker.

The next thing I would like to see is what direction the next turn is on the main screen. I like knowing if I will need to make a left or a right way before I need to. I can easily tap the screen at the very top that tells me what road is next and I will get the turn by turn display. I would still like to see that on the main screen though.

Battery life is supposed to be 4-8 hours I believe, but I think we saw closer to 2.5 hours with our Nuvi.

Cost. $799?! Ouch. That hurt a little but I at least feel I got a great toy for the price. Doing the research it looked like I was going to have to pay if I wanted the extreme portability.

Sometimes it takes too long to acquire satellite signals. Sometimes you turn it on and lock on to the satellites in seconds. Sometimes it is minutes. Minutes is way too long. This morning we left Beckley, WV and were miles down the road before the satellites finally locked in. Until that happens you see your map but don’t get directions, so acquiring satellites is a very big deal. We were on the wide open highway so it’s not like we were in a deep valley or snugged up against a building somewhere.

Tomorrow I will be taking mine back to BestBuy for an exchange due to the last issue I have. The LCD screen on mine developed a thin black like that runs vertically near the middle of the screen. How far it runs up and down the screen seems to vary depending on its mood; sometimes the line runs all the way from top to bottom, sometimes it is a few lines in different positions through the middle of the screen. Since I just bought it from BestBuy right before we left I am hoping I can get an exchange for a new one without much hassle. I’ll let you know tomorrow.

With all the needed improvements I listed you would think this is a negative review, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. This is a great navigation unit and we’re thrilled with it. My wife had to get somewhere on her own while in South Carolina and all she did was enter the address she wanted to go to and she made it to her destination with no problems. She likes it and found it very easy to use, so that is a huge deal for me. Hopefully my exchange happens easily tomorrow.

It’s great to get away for a while, but it always feels good to get back home. Don’t get me wrong, I would definitely rather still be on vacation, but it feels good to be sitting here in my own house after traveling for 9 days.

We had a great time in Beaufort, SC visiting Marsha and Mickey. The girls had a blast. We fished for 3 of the days and only Mickey ever caught a fish. 6 people fishing for 3 days and only 2 fish caught. That’s pitiful.

I got to golf at a place called Legends on Parris Island where the Marines are. Listed as one of the top 10 military courses in the world. It was a nice course. Really hot day, but I finally broke 100. I shot a 97. That’s still not very good but it’s the best I’ve ever done. Only lost 2 balls.

Between the 4 of us we have way over 100 bug bites on our bodies. It’s tough not to scratch since everyone is so itchy. Some kind of gnats I guess.

As usual I took a bunch of pictures.

Click HERE for pictures from Savannah, Ga.
Click HERE for the first group of pictures from Beaufort, SC.
Click HERE for the second group of pictures from Beaufort, SC.

I was hoping to post a lot of pictures about the trip we’re on but I really don’t have the bandwidth (literally) to post anything. I am rushing to send this before the wireless I am using from someone in the neighborhood goes away again. I tend to only get signal once in a while.

I’ll post the pictures when I get to a decent connection, but Savannah is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen. I took some pictures that came out much better than expected during one of those horse drawn carriage rides.

What else? Oh yeah, Apple released Boot Camp so you can dual boot an Intel Mac with OS X and WindowsXP. Do we care? Maybe a little, but I’d probably never use it. I don’t like booting between multiple operating systems. Eventually it will get old and you’ll want to stay with one. The novelty will wear off. I’d rather have virtualization. Let OS X be the host OS and let me run other operating systems at a decent performance as guests. Lots of rumors out there that Apple will do just that, but I’m also reading that VMWare has an OS X version running in their lab. Count me in on that one.

Microsoft released a bunch of patches today. Have you switched to Firefox yet? You’re running out of excuses – you know I’m right.

That’ll have to do for tonight. We missed the first 30 minutes of American Idol while we were out fishing. Forgot all about it. Wanted to see Bucky sing Fat Bottom Girls and see if Pickler mutilated Bohemian Rhapsody. I know a ton of you love her but she doesn’t have the horsepower to go the distance. If she does make it it will only be because of all the people in the south that relate to her – it won’t be based on talent. I still think Chris is the strongest singer out there. I figure Kelly and Bucky should start packing over the next couple of weeks. Ace’s run, based on his looks, will end shortly after. Elliott can definitely sing, but I don’t think he can outlast Chris and Katharine; my pick for the final two. Taylor’s run is almost over as well, and Paris, although talented, is creeping me out lately.