I'm very interested in electronic book readers, but there have been a couple of reasons why I haven't looked seriously into picking one up.  Generally my objection has been that they aren't ready due to connectivity, battery life, readability, cost and access to media.  Today Amazon gave us another reason not to - your books may get deleted.
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In between other, more important activities, I've gotten an Ubuntu system up and running so I could kick the tires of Notes 8.5 for Linux.
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Tried updating the ol' blog here again to try out the Blogsphere 3.02 template, but couldn't get it to work.  
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The Mac mine is a very cool piece of computer hardware, the only problem I had with mine was the measly 512 MB of Ram.  But when buying Apple hardware new, they really soak you on the memory upgrades AND require you to order on-line rather than pick up from their store, so I heartily recommend getting the base model from them and upgrading the Ram yourself.  With most Apple systems this is super easy, like with our aluminum iMac, it took about 5 minutes.  The Mini takes this normally straightforward computer task
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Despite the best laid plans disaster does, occasionally, strike.  in in the IT world that means you need good backups of your systems since, occasionally, your systems will melt down.

As you may have noticed, ExistentialBlues.com recently underwent just such a catastrophe.  Power blackouts shouldn't tank servers connected to UPS, but somehow things that shouldn't happen, do.  And on an annoyingly frequent basis, I might add.

The backup was, hmmm, not good, being three months old, I'll have to do better next time.  But at least it worked, which is much better than I've seen on other ocassions but much more sophisticated operations than mine.
After a looong weekend of being unable to give the server the attention it needed in order to rise like a Phoenix from its ashes, it's back.  Let the e-mailing and web server continue!
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I'm at a loss to explain how I didn't know about this site sooner.  It's hilarious, though it's focused on the excesses of the IT world, so the uninitiated may not be as amused as I have been.
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This is more than a day late, but still worth thinking about.

Thanks to our fearless leaders, daylight savings came three weeks earlier this year than they did last year.  Somehow this was supposed to save us energy, supposedly by having us all use less electricity to power light bulbs or something.

 

Well, that turned out to be wrong, no energy was saved.

 

It did do one thing, however, and it did it in dramatic style.  And that was cause techies to pull their hair out.  In case you're unaware, most computer systems automaticly adjust their time for daylight savings.  This is a feature, it means people can push fewer buttons.  But of course comptuers have to be programmed for when to automatically change the time, and reprogramming every computer in America is no simple thing.

 

Of course that's facetious, not every comptuer in America was updated.  Some people didn't care, some people live in areas with none of this DST sillyness and some computers (old school!) don't do DST.

 

My thought?  First, repeal DST in America, it will make all of our lives considerably easier.  Secdond, the government should stop passing stupid laws which don't help us. 

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It was with great anticipation that I read all the press releases and announcements from MacWorld.  And once it all played out..

I was disappointed.

I'd really hoped for a "must have" product.  The iPhone definitely isn't that.  It's too expensive, to little storage and is locked in with Cingular for service.  If the phone had a 30 GB drive and was unlocked for all providers...but it isn't.  So NEXT!

The Apple TV (formally known the the iTV, but apple backed off that name, probably because they have a business partner making the EyeTV) aims to be the bridge between the entertainment center and the office.  And, for music, it looks like a very cool way to do it.  You load your music onto your computer using iTunes, hook the Apple TV up to your home entertainment center, and before you know it you're playing music across your home network to that fancy surround sound setup you paid more for than you care to remember.  So cool!  But wait, there's more!  You can buy movies and TV shows through iTunes and stream them to your TV as well...buy through iTunes...hmmm...

That's right, kids, the only videos you'll be playing using Apple TV are the ones you buy through Apple.  That 400 disk DVD collection will still require you to pop a disk into your DVD player.  And that is why I won't be buying an Apple TV.

The wife and I recently had a conundrum on how to store all the DVDs lying around the living room.  If the Apple TV could do what I think it should be able to do, I'd have already bought one and a 750 GB drive and be ripping all those movies to my PC even now.  But no

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Updated to the 2.1 version of Blogsphere and am working out the wrinkles.  A lot of cool new features including a built-in photo album feature and support for remote blogging APIs. 

Coming soon: Random pictures and the Existentialism vs EOP (Every Other Philosophy) battles
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I'm very familiar with the trails and tribulations of fighting spam....of the e-mail variety.  Something new and unwelcome is the fight against referrer spam here on the ol' Blog
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As I started out on a Commodore 64 and moved on to Macs I don't see myself as a slave to the M$ machine.  But since I've been working in IT I've done almost all my work on Windows.  Now I've got a PC up and running with Linux and I love it.
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I've always wanted to be a writer...which may or may not ever happen, but after some light reading today I find I have a new aspiration in life: to be a technology editorialist.
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So I finally had to toss my old Voodoo3 3000 video card.  It was the first graphics card I ever bought and it served me well though countless hours of gaming, web surfing and general computer use.
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I've been remiss in recounting my recent travels and travails.  Here's the end of my story, where I return to Chi town and confront my cranky computer.

 

I actually enjoy traveling by air, I can easily go hours sitting in one spot as long as I have a good book to read. And as long as it isn't to cloudy you get the most amazing views of the city while taking of and landing.  This flight from Vegas back to Chicago had another bonus, we passed over and to the north of the most amazing lightning storm.  I was able to look into the center of a mass of gray and black stormclouds and see bolts of lightning flying non-stop.  Most of these were not leaving the clouds, and the location inside the system was always moving as some were clearly visible and others were situated more deeply, which I couldn't see directly but would light up the clouds and often give an incredible backdrop to bolts located more closely which I could see.

That light show probably lasted about 15 minutes, the rest of the flight I occupied myself with a fun piece of pulp-fantasy, A Sorcerer's Treason by Sarah Zettel.  Fun reading but not nearly as good as The Order of the Phoenix.

 

Landing was more exciting then I'd thought it would be.  O'Hare was under a storm warning and we just barely got in during a small window in the storm.  We came in extremely fast and low for the landing, which was a good thing since we hadn't even touched down when the rain started to pick up again.  By the time we'd come to a stop on the landing strip the rain was a full on torrential downpour. We had to wait 20 minutes outside our gate because the ground crews had been ordered inside due to the possibility of a lightning strike.

Safely back in Chicago I endured the cab ride down River Road, an experience twice as harrowing as the flights to and from Vegas combined.  Finally home at about midnight, I sat down at my computer, thinking I'd catch up on a few e-mail messages before turning in.  Unfortunately the computer gods had not been kind to me in my absence.  I'd left my PC running to download a few Linux ISOs, and sometime during my trip something flaked out.  Either something overheated, there was a power surge which went past the protector I've got everything hooked up to, or my PC was punishing me for being away for to long, because it was blanked out and would not come up.  After powering it down (the hard way via the power cord), it wouldn't boot past the bios screen.  30 minutes and a lot of cursing later I admitted defeat and called it a night.

I did eventually coax the machine into functionality, though it took a new power supply, a new NIC, updated video drivers and half a can of compressed air.

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As a friend gleefully reminded me yesterday, I am a geek.  And as a geek, nothing brings a tear to my eye in quite the same way as the untimely passing of good computer equipment due to evil, supernatural influences.
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