blindsquirrel.org

I have a fairly new VW Passat and the key fob has been randomly stuck in the ignition when I turn off the car.

Thanks to the Internet and the awesome community at vwvortex.com I found that there is an easy way to release the fob when this happens to you. Simply put the car in park and push the button on the side of the shifter a couple times and you’ll hear the fob release.

I called my VW dealer when it happened to me and the guy on the phone said he had never heard of the fob getting stuck. Maybe all dealers should read vwvortex as well.

I’ll still have VW look at the problem but it’s nice to have a workaround until I can get in for service.

I can’t even successfully use Safari to create or edit a post in Wordpress without it shredding the formatting, yet thanks to the brilliant folks in the Wordpress community I can manage my blog, including writing this post, from my iPod Touch.

Phenominal. This Touch is the best gadget I’ve ever owned.

Thanks to the creators of the WPhone plugin.

I’ll start with the puppy.  Margo is no longer with us.  She is now with a very good friend’s mother where she’ll get more love and attention than she knows what to do with.  As part of the deal I think we may be watching her over the Thanksgiving holiday so I’ll need to make sure I’m home so Val doesn’t lose her mind while Margo is with us.  By then she should be even more house trained and this time I’ll make sure to block off the kitchen so she is a little easier to watch.  The kids are excited.

I spent 5 days out in Las Vegas at the Citrix iForim App Delivery Conference.  Honestly, I wasn’t expecting too much this time but Citrix surprised me and it was a really good conference.  I cared about 3 things when I went there; virtualization, application streaming, and end to end performance monitoring and management.  Citrix delivered and I even got to see Cheap Trick at the closing night party.  Bun E. Carlos was not there (they said he had an operation earlier) but the band still sounded great.  Robin Zander sounds as good today as he did all those years ago.

I picked up a new 16GB iPod Touch a few weeks ago and I am blown away.  It is a great iPod even though it is not enough capacity to hold everything I have, but I still have my 80GB for all of that.  I use this one for all my purchased music and podcasts, but the real beauty is the built in WiFi and Safari.  The first thing I did with it was jailbreak it and add a lot of great applications that are out there.  It is actually the main computer I used while in Vegas and I always have it with me.  If only we had WiFi at work.

For work I have a Treo 700wx for a cell phone.   The Verizon network is good, but overall the phone is a disappointment.  It seems like there is always something wrong with it. Right now it won’t ring, regardless of the ringtone I select and am able to play a sample.  It will, however, alert me of a missed call or a voice mail, which makes no sense.  So I leave it on vibrate all the time since at least that piece works.  It connects up to our Exchange environment nicely, but the performance is nothing to write home about.  It hangs a lot and opening attachments is really slow.  MMS is painful but texting is fantastic, so at least there is something positive.  It’s uncomfortable to hold and use for long periods of time.  I pull the battery on average 2 times a week to address one problem or another.  It is definitely not a fast device.

Lastly, I upgraded to OS X Leopard a couple weeks ago.  I think I expected too much because nothing has really impressed me.  I don’t use Time Machine or Spaces and the translucent menus are just OK.  The Finder is better and there are a lot of little things that are nice improvements, but so far this is not an earth-shattering upgrade.  It’s nice to be at 64 bit.  I’m sure it will get better as more and more applications come out that require Leopard, but for me, for now, I could have waited this one out.

Did you remember to check your clocks today?