LimaCC Tech Team in: A Christmas Carol

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I Wish It Was Christmas Today breaks the 100,000 viewers barrier.

We smashed the 100,000 barrier. Sorry to all 100,500+ of you who had to watch this.

Ok, so I can post from my phone.

So what

Windows 7 – A Joy To Behold

Man, I’m a-loving windows 7. I’ve installed it at home and am installing it at work with our volume licenses. If you haven’t tried it yet, you are missing out. I’m not a fan boy by any stretch, but this is the most stable and elegant windows ever. More to come.

Jack in the grass

Jack loves the park.

Our house is up for sale!

Check out the video:

Quest Week 9

Hidey Ho Everyone. Thanks to the Sawmillers for hosting last week and to everyone who brought snacks! It was good eats! Next week we're at the Roddens and I'll hopefully have a plan and some dates to choose from for our nursing home trip.

Here's week 9's reading.
Quest 9

Quest Week 8!

Hey everyone! Y'all rock. Great discussion last week. This coming Sunday's meeting is at Sawmillers. Again, lots of reading so I got it posted as soon as possible.

Quest Week 8 Additional Reading (pdf)

Week 8 Reading

Week 7 Reading.

Here is the reading for Week 7. Sorry it took so long to get it posted.
Quest 7

What I did to take my mind off things...

Quest Week 6

Hey, y'all, we had a great discussion. We missed those of you who couldn't make it but we had an awesome time. I'm not sure where we're meeting this coming week so check out the list on Google Docs. Here's our reading for next week.

http://spazbro.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Quest6.doc

Quest Week 5

Hey everyone! Thanks to the Roddens for their home and to Ben for leading. This week we'll be meeting at the Clevengers home (email sheenaclevenger@gmail.com if you need directions). Here are links to this week's reading. C y'all there!

http://spazbro.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Quest-5.doc

Palm Pre Review - Tyler

I can't buy every gadget. Sad huh? So I suck up to my friends who have the gadgets I covet. The following is my bud, Tyler's review of the very slick Palm Pre.

I am what you would call a power phone user…I wear my devices out with data access and use multiple applications all day long. I have for some time fought against buying an iPhone because AT & T has no 3G coverage where I live and in most the areas where I travel to, but I have used them and see there appeal. In addition, I have been consistently frustrated that Sprint’s smartphone lineup has left MUCH to be desired. Well no longer. The Palm Pre is without doubt the most fundamentally useful device I’ve ever owned. Not simply because it allows me to run my multiple applications simultaneously (avoiding the annoying Apple singularity) with excellent speed, but the way the applications are all integrated make it both  incredibly nimble and user friendly. Get an email with a link? Click it and a new window opens without closing out of your mailbox. Find a phone number in a text? Copy and paste it into your contacts. All of the phones functions are controllable through the intuitive gestures, so no matter where I am in any application, I navigate the same way around in it. The Synergy system is incredibly well put together (although it makes me all too aware of how many facebook ‘friends’ I have who I really don’t need on my phone – a way to selectively eliminate contacts on the device would be useful) and makes it very easy to find information when you use multiple sources to store information. Synergy also connects all messaging to the user - regardless of its origin - text someone and get a reply via messenger? No problem…they’ll be in one continuous chat box. I am generally not a camera phone user, due to the generally poor quality of shots, but the auto focus camera with flash takes incredibly vivid pictures with high enough quality to print and share. As an added bonus, the Palm boys figured out a way to convince iTunes that it is an iPod, so it will sync up to your iTunes library (assuming your music isn’t write protected).

The feel of the device is also outstanding, it’s ‘pebble’ shape fits perfectly in your hand or pocket, and while the screen is slightly smaller than the iPhone, it is vivid and functions perfectly well for youtube video playback or internet surfing. The inductive ‘touchstone’ charger is also excellent for the geek in your family (no more wires!), but I’ve found that despite Palm’s claims, charging time is a bit slower than directly connecting the device. The physical keyboard is a bit tight for my fingers, but it is only marginally smaller than the Treo’s and is still easy enough to use one handed or two. The ‘always on’ synergy also seems power hungry, and even on lighter use days I have had a nearly dead battery by evening (however the removable battery alleviates much of this, another of my iPhone issues). In addition, while the physical slide out keyboard is great, the edges when it is open are very sharp and make the device feel a bit unfinished when open. Overall the hardware is very nice but not fantastic. What makes the device is the OS which, in my humble opinion, out performs the iPhone in nearly every way. The one thing most associated with the iPhone tremendous appeal are the applications, which are not a quality of the device itself. While I doubt any phone will catch up in regard to sheer numbers, once Palm has WebOS devices on multiple networks (Verizon and AT&T both appear likely in the next year) they will have a much greater potential audience and should see a boom in options from developers.

In general, my praise is significant and my criticisms are few… and most are likely to be fixed on the next device to come out of Sunnyvale. Palm WebOS is clearly a platform that will attract both business users and social networking types...while Apple and RIM may own the market right now, when it comes to actual innovation, they have some catching up to do.

Man on the street interview for this weeks message

[flv:http://dailywiseguys.com/site/Portals/0/video/Become-Better-Person.flv 500 375]

This is what happened at Rite-Aid

[caption id="attachment_152" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="rite_aid_with_us_its_personal"][/caption]

Here is an audio clip from us getting thrown out of Rite-Aid.

rite-aid

HA gotta love celeb tweets.

Here is a Tweet (twitter mini-blog message) from Brent Spiner (Data from Star Trek) to Wil Wheaton (the Crusher kid from Star Trek).
brentspiner
RT @wilw: Ok, here's what you do: grab your nearest science project, reverse the polarity,  Uh, maybe I should just do it for you.  Whew!

This is what is going through my head today...

NO IDEA WHY? What's wrong with me?

Lancelot Link Secret Chimp... They made the credits so long so they wouldn't have to work so much with the chimps.

Quest - Week 3 Wind Up

Again, an awesome group time! I know I say that each week but it just is soooo good to have friends to not only spend time with but also be able to talk about things that matter is so cool.

Thanks to the Sawmillers for hosting and also to Jeremy for facilitating the discussion. Thanks to the snacks too! And thanks to you all for reading and coming with questions and thoughts.

Next week read quest-4 and we'll be meeting at the Roddens home.

Have a great week!

The Current Roll-In

[flv:http://dailywiseguys.com/site/Portals/0/video/Txting%20Rollin%20Weeks%203-6.flv 500 375]

Something cool for Macs

I use a few websites very often. Our own site at work, a company intranet, facebook, my blog, and it's kinda cool to have an icon on the desktop or dock to go quickly to that site. Well Fluid is a cool little app that helps my day. Basically you just open Fluid, type the web address, the name for the icon, and then pick an icon for that website. I put the icon in a folder I call WebApps then I dragged that icon to my doc. So now I have all my sites handy on the dock. Check it out.

Oh, by the way if you use PNG files for icons, you get cool transparencies.

Here's what it looks like on my dock.


Fluid - Free Site Specific Browser for Mac OS X Leopard

Ya Know…

Sometimes I come back here to my blog expecting new content. As I’m the only one who writes anything here, that seems too high an expectation. I need to develop a split personality who would write cool stuff here on the blog to entertain the other ‘me’.

Quest Week 2

Ok that pretty much rocked! Thanks for everyone sharing and talking and hanging out. I'm really excited to see where this is going.

Here's the info you need for next week. First of all there's a ton of reading so here are the links. You need to download and read both documents. Get started on it right away.

quest-3
quest-3-book-excerpt

Next week we'll be meeting at the Sawmiller's and Jeremy will be facilitating the discussion.  Instead of me putting directions on here (or even their address) just email or call them for directions.

I picked up a bike

I finally found a great bike and a descent value. I got a Giant Cypress. I've been riding it for a few days and I'm enjoying it greatly. And, get this, I'm riding it in the morning!

Quest Group - Don't forget

Don't forget to bring in the signed Week One reading that has the group agreement. Just click on this link - quest01.

As a reminder here's what we talked about:

• We'll keep the 7pm start time


• We'll try to keep it under 2 hours


• We'll meet at the Johnstone's next time and then start rotating to other's homes


• We'll eat before the meeting and share snacks


• Anyone interested in hosting at their home or bringing snacks, email John and he'll schedule


• Next time John will lead the discussion again and the following week we'll take turns leading the discussion

Here is the reading for week 2. quest02. Write out your answers to the discussion questions and bring them with you.

See ya Sunday.

Little ditty I played with

fusion-ho-down
Here's a little fusion ho-down that is completely useless but it's always fun to play with garageband.

New Family Tradition: Toledo Zoo!

We had a great time today! Erin, Jack and I went to the Toledo zoo. We actually bought season passes. We saw all the cool animals, ate good food, and had a great time. The weather was perfect too. Jack may be a bit young for really getting into animals (he'd rather watch other crabby kids, heh), but he was in a great mood the whole time. He especially loved the Dippin-Dots. Jack is stylin his cool lid

Well, I started some morning discipline…

It wasn’t a huge step. More of just moving my feet just a tiny bit rather than a strong step. After Erin ran this morning she came back and I put on my “running shoes” and walked for a half hour. Ya, not so tough but man it was awesome out this morning. I mean AWESOME. Though I don’t care if it’s raining or whatever… but man, sun was shining, light breeze, and hardly anyone out (just a few crazy runners). I came back home and read the rest of Daniel (strange ending to that book). And thus begins my life of discipline. I’m hoping and praying that I can keep up with this for both my physical and spiritual life.

Quest Group Week One

I had an awesome time with my new Quest group this week. Thanks for coming y'all. Here is a link to the Week One reading that has the group agreement you need to sign and bring in. Just click on this link - quest01.

Here's what we talked about:

• We'll keep the 7pm start time


• We'll try to keep it under 2 hours


• We'll meet at the Johnstone's next time and then start rotating to other's homes


• We'll eat before the meeting and share snacks


• Anyone interested in hosting at their home or bringing snacks, email John and he'll schedule


• Next time John will lead the discussion again and the following week we'll take turns leading the discussion

Here is yoru reading for week 2. quest02. Like we talked about, read it early this week so you can roll it around in your head this week. Think about the discussion questions so you have something to talk about.

One thing I did not think about was that next week is Memorial weekend. I know of one couple who will be away? Do you all want to skip next week and dive back in the following week or hang the Roddens out to dry? ha!

You all rock!

Let's see what apple does with 10.5.7

About the Mac OS X 10.5.7 Update
Normally I'd wait to see the fallout of a new OS update before installing, but meh.

Video of Jack

Jack and Erin on the swings

Backing Up is Good to Do

Ya, now I'm taking an evening to back up my precious laptop. Backing up is a tough biz. It seems to be more complicated than it needs to be. Backing up to an external hard drive (hd) is easy. But when you're backing up a laptop you need to keep it tethered to a USB or firewire cable to make sure it stays backed up (or at least you have to make sure it's tethered when you go to bed). But what if you have a house fire? You really should have an off-site backup. We use Mozy.com for our off-site backup. We pay a yearly rate for unlimited backup but that only allows you to back up one computer. The way around that for my house of 5 computers, is to have each comptuer back up to a folder on Erin's desktop PC. And have that PC back up to the Internet later that night. The only problem we've run into is that Mozy has a hard time telling what's new this backup and what's not new. So it tries to back up all 15 GB each time. Not cool. It takes a special mojo to get back up done reliably well. Hopefully I'll learn more as this goes on.

Star Trek

Got to see the new Star Trek movie today. I was ready for dissapointment and ready to be annoyed. But ya know what? Not only was the movie great, it also kept with the Star Trek mythos. Well, it kidna did, if you can call changing the past staying in the mythos. The actors did an excellent job portraying the younger versions of the characters we who have enjoyed the franchise have enjoyed for years. I'm not sure how I feel about how they got a clean slate but if it brings about more movies like I just saw, I think I'll deal with it.

DiskWarrior to the Rescue

Ok, I'm in a great mood now. Sad that repairing something jacks me up so much but whatever... it just does! My beloved laptop's hard drive failed a few nights ago with the dreaded Node problem. One file on a mac's hard drive, once corrupted, can prevent booting and cannot be repaired by OS X's beloved Disk Utility. So I purchased DiskWarrior and it arrived this morning and fixed the bad node and several other bugaboos on the drive. Thanks DW for saving my un-backed-up butt and BOO Apple for allowing such a week link in the file system chain with no way to resolve it.

A Quiet Night At Home

Time to kick back and relax... ok... enough of that I'm bored... time for bed. :)

I hate Murphy

Not Called to Understand

I was reading Daniel 8 just now. Daniel had some messed up dreams/visions. Rams and Goats fighting etc... But even Daniel didn't have an interpretation... he sat as I would with mouth open, mind in total confusion trying to figure out WHAT THE HECK any of what he had just dreamed had to do with ANYTHING.

This may not apply to mine (or your life) cuz I'm not Daniel. But it does offer me one consoling thought that I don't have to understand. There's not guilt in being confused. I can try to figure it out but there may be no prize for working it out. If it is obviously from God, just listen. If action is necessary, the directions will come along with it, otherwise wait.

I've done it! Mwa ha ha ha

I've been enjoying my Samsung Omnia (i910) for quite a while now. it's a great phone that sports a nifty interface, speedy performance, wifi, good bluetooth, awesome form factor and just about every feature a smartphone should have. My biggest gripe about the phone has been that Verizon has deemed to disable the built in GPS chip (or rather crippled it) to only work with it's own VZ Navigator (for fees) software.

Saturday night I updated my phones firmware ROM following instructions from the great phone site MoDaCo. I really did it to gain some functionality other than GPS but got to test it today and indeed it works. It really needs to be in a window to work due to a week receiver? But man is it nice to make your hardware do what it was designed to do and what we have as consumers, the right to do.

The upgrade should also improve the battery life, fix a low volume issue, give some interface tweaks as well and I look forward to fiddling with it.

Jack's Wheels

I hate phone companies

Ok, my boss Dan just got his 23rd phone (exaggeration) and he and I went thought and it was down to the Samsung Saga (windows mobile) or the Blackberry Storm. He went to the store today and picked up the storm and was told that it would sync his email, calendar, and contacts through our Exchange server that we host here at work. Well guess what. It WILL sync email but not calendar or contacts. If you want those two features, you have to add Blackberry Enterprise add ons for Exchange. BOOO. Here's my rant points:

1. Boo Blackberry for making someone either add expensive, enterprise software


2. Boo Blackberry for making us use USB cables to do anything useful with our phone


3. Boo Verizon for not making it super clear before the customer goes home what the phone can and can NOT do


4. Boo to the customer service reps who are apparently ignorant of their products and services.

Is it really that hard???

Microsoft Called Me This Morning

Ya, Microsoft rang me up to see if I was happy with the copy of Sharepoint 2008 that I had downloaded. As I haven't even installed it anywhere as we're waiting on the new budget year to add a new server that can handle Small Business Server, I didn't have much to tell the dude. But we did chat about a bunch of stuff ranging from what our experience with SBS 2003 was and what our needs were. Not a bad experience at all, but I can't shake the feeling that he was trying to get a count for our users and workstations vs. licenses. He may have hypnotized me as I'm feeling very Microsoft gung-ho.

Wordpress

Not sure how I feel about wordpress vs. dotnetnuke. On the one hand, there are tons of themes for wordpress and I can upload a blog entry from a desktop app. But the skins are a pain to customize and the whole architecture is new to me and frankly, I don't feel like learning PHP. DotNetNuke is clugey at times and can actually be a bit slow thanks to GoDaddy. I'd love your thoughts (If I ever make this site public).    

Test blog 2

All is well and good as i try to update this.

Ya, I did it.

I finally did what I've been putting off. I wiped our Video Workhorse PC and started fresh. Not only that, but I didn't just go back to the restore-disk version of XP but put Vista Ultimate 64. I've gotten most everything running even though i had to scrounge around finding drivers and such. I re-installed Adobe CS3 Production Suite and so far it seems that premiere at least is pretty peppy even though i do not have the matrox card installed. I think that in removing the Matrox render card, I'll be able to restore some of the basic things that have been lacking for a while (such as SATA Raid and some basic firewire stability). Render times look good so far. Woot.