Monthly Archives: April 2008

Loose Ends – Quick Update

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First, Colorado Springs is absolutely beautiful.  I’m out here for an HP Executive Briefing that went very, very well and the place is just amazing.  We’ve definitely added this place to our short list for future vacations.  I wish I had brought a decent camera as the one on my Treo700wx is as close to garbage as one can get.

Second, after sitting on a conference call for 90 minutes with a Treo that just kept getting hotter and hotter glued to my head, I finally broke down and purchased a decent bluetooth headset.  I picked up the Jawbone at the Palm store at the Pittsburgh airport of all places.  I know what you’re thinking, but their prices were actually better than the Apple store and they sell ones that are already charged.  Nice perk.  I picked up the black model.  The noise canceling seems really good and I can hear really well with this thing instead of the straining I used to do to hear from some of the others I have purchased over the years.  Hopefully this one is a winner.

Third, if you use VMWare Fusion, make sure to check out the update that came out tonight.  No problems with it so far, although anymore I tend to only fire up my WindowsXP VMWare guest to perform anti virus and Windows patch updates.

Fourth, are you running Firefox version 3 beta 5 yet?  If not, you should take a few minutes and check it out as the performance is excellent and it is very close to becoming my main browser, although Webkit has yet to let me down.  Very impressive release so far.  I think I heard the final release comes out in June.  Pick your operating system and try it out.

Fifth, I’m finding it harder and harder to avoid the iPhone as I am finding it harder and harder to find free WiFi where I need it.  The iPod Touch I use for so many things is nice when I have connectivity, but I almost wish I could have an iPhone with just the data plan.  I don’t really need the phone piece as work gives me a Treo that I have to have with me, but everything about the iPhone and iPod Touch is so much better that I can feel I will eventually break down and end up with an iPhone.  We’ll see how things look after the release of iPhone 2.0 in late June.

Lastly, I finally joined Twitter.  Why?  I don’t know, Robert Scoble told me to.  After having it for one short week I have learned that, for me, it is not a matter of being followed, but a matter of who you follow that makes it interesting.  I’m there as blindsquirrel.

That’s about it, looking forward to getting home.  I like seeing new cities, but I still can’t wait to get back home to Pittsburgh.

Advertising – How did this happen?

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I noticed when shopping this weekend at Kohl’s that it is not very easy to find clothes without some kind of advertising.  TShirts all have company’s names on them: jackets, sweat suits, even some pants have names or logos on them.  So what’s the big deal?

Well, usually companies pay to advertise – magazine, billboards, movie and TV placement, etc.  Big money exchanges hands.  Yet somehow it became acceptable for us to pay for the privilege to wear someone’s logo as free advertising; often times actually paying more for that privilege.

It just seems strange to me.  How did we let this happen?

So, I had to install WindowsXP today…

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Since VMWare Fusion has worked out so well, I was finally able to get rid of the last remaining Microsoft Windows computer in our house by installing WindowsXP on our shiny 20″ iMac.  We still need Windows for Quicken since the Mac version of Quicken is not even close to the Windows verion and can’t even import all of your Quicken for Windows data.  Since we’re giving our old Dell PC away I thought I would completely wipe the hard drive, boot from the WindowsXP CD and give them a nice, clean computer to start with.

I forgot how long this process takes when starting from scratch.  I had to load WindowsXP, then I had to use another computer to find any 3Com NIC drivers that would work, then I went straight to Service Pack 2 to reduce the amount of updates needed.  SP2 took quite a while to install, especially since it forces you to backup all your system files in case it has to revert back to them.

Then I ran Windows Update.  91 updates.  Wow.  After they completed and the system rebooted, I ranWindows Update again.  10 more updates.  Rebooted.  Installed IE7.  Windows Update.  More updates.  .NET.  Windows Update.  More Updates.  Might as well grab Silverlight while I’m there.  Oh, can’t forget Adobe Reader, Flash Player, and Shockwave Player.

It looks like I’m finally finished as I am watching it go through its (hopefully) last reboot now.  No way can there be any more updates for this thing.  Total time, somewhere between 4 and 5 hours – and I have Verizon FIOS – 15Mb of glorious bandwidth delivered over fiber to our home.

So thankfully it’s over.  Maybe I’m done building WindowsXP machines now.  The machine is too old to run Windows Vista, but I know from experience that Vista SP1 took somewhere between 1-2 hours to update on a brand new Dell computer.  That’s still a long time to me.

What did you do with your Saturday?