Sick

I have a cold. It's not life threatening, but it's annoying. I hate having to blow my nose every five minutes; or worse yet, when you try to blow your nose and nothing happens because it's so clogged with mucus. Yuck!

I installed Inquisitor as a Safari plug-in. I know a lot of people like to use Firefox, and so do I. But I like to use native Cocoa applications because of how well they integrate with OSX. For example, Option-Clicking doesn't automatically download a file in Firefox. And pressing Cntrl + Command + D while the cursor is hovering over a word doesn't bring up Mac's dictionary.

The one feature that I would love to see integrated into Safari is Firefox's search feature. I love that it gives me a status bar on the bottom of the browser and searchs real-time as I type. And then I can click "next" and "back" (I think) to scroll through the document looking for a string. I downloaded some kind of Safari plug-in from PimpMySafari.com that gave me this same kind of functionality, but every time Safari got upgraded it wouldn't work for a while.

Bad Day

What is it lately? I've been having some really bad days. Yesterday Liz, Roman and my mom had a stomach virus. Today Sophie has a cold, which in and of itself is not bad, but its complicated by the fact that she fell the other day and hurt her mouth and nose pretty bad. That makes for some pretty painful sneezing. I didn't charge up my Treo and as such I think I missed my staff meeting tonight at the cell phone store. And not just missed it, but Bia probably called for me several times and I didn't answer. I think the right thing to do now is to call her. Yeah, that's what I'll do.

Update: I spoke with Bia and there was no meeting tonight. Pheww! She said the store had a less than stellar day though. Hopefully traffic will pick up and hopefully I can start closing some business deals!

Anniversary

Today is my 2nd wedding anniversary. Congratulations to Liz and I. A lot of people talk about how difficult marriage is - oh, and it is, don't get me wrong. But it makes it so much easier when you marry the right person. Spending the day with my wife and children really made me think "what if I had married somebody else?" I don't think I would be nearly as happy as I am now. I don't think anybody else could be a better partner for me then Liz. She's extrordinarly patient with me, my family and our kids. She's smart. We get the same things and laugh at the same humor. We both can have our bad moods, but that is so transitory. Since we've known each other (about 10 years) I've become a completely different person and a lot of that has to do with her influence in my life. I appreciate that about her and I hope I never lose her.

PS - I didn't mean for this to be a real sloppy post, but I was just typing what I felt when I felt it.

PPS - Big shout out to Jess in the Wicked Witch of the West for givng me a voice mail reminder of my anniversary. I appreciate that you remembered and I appreciate that you thought to remind me (thankfully I didn't forget). You're the man for doing such thoughtful things.

College

So I never finished college...not even close. I was never a good student and be that nature or nurture, I don't think that aspect of my personality has changed much. And if it has, it's only gotten worse.

Now that's a strange way to start off a blog, right? Well, the reason behind it is that I've been think (again) of going back to school. But as usual, I'm confounded as to which direction to take on this crossroads o' life. On the one hand, I'm a banker by trade and there is a lot of schooling that could be done to increase my earning potential and move up in the ranks of the corporate army. But does it make me happy? Ahhh, now we have a key part of the dilemma at hand.

What really makes me happy is computers. Knowing about them. Understanding them. Programming them. Connecting them. Fixing them. Breaking them. Telling people about them. Showing people what I can do with one. That is what really makes me happy.

"So why don't you study what makes you happy, Joseph?", you ask. Good question, my read, good question. And I've got a good answer as to why not. My current employer (a bank) will pay for me to go back to school and learn banking. My current employer will not pay for me to go back to school to study computers.

And with a stay-at-home wife and two kids, I don't have the expendable income to be throwing at fancy learnin' clubs. It's not that it can't be done, it will just be more difficult. Maybe so difficult that I'll end up hating the decision that I've made. But, then again, maybe not.

Tha's enough back-and-forth for tonight. It's late (as usualy) and I'm tired (as usual) and I really should be getting to bed.

Treo 680

When I saw the first pictures of the Treo 680 on Treo Central I was psyched. Finally, a hipper, cooler Treo that I could rough up a bit, like an old, college roommate. However, after looking at the spec sheets, I'm less than impressed; kind of like finding out your college roommate is a Young Republican.

First and foremost, this is a GSM phone, which means, at best, it could only be EDGE or UTMS based. That is no equivalent for the EVDO bliss that I'm currently getting with Sprint. But that's cool, I could have more than one handset and switch out the SIM when I feel like carrying an unlocked Samsung t809. I made sure that it was at least running Palm OS 5.4.9 (Garnet) and was a little dissapointed when I found out it wasn't going to be running Palms Cobalt OS. But when I found out that it only sported a VGA camera, that was the end of the discussion. Not that a camera should be or ever will be a deal breaker on a smartphone (BlackBerry has made a huge name for themselves without ever putting a lense on one of their devices), but something like a VGA is a tell-tale sign of what the phone is really made out of.

I was hoping to pick up two of the new 680s (white for me and red for my wife), but I don't think that will be happening soon. I'll stick with my Sprint PCS 700p with a gash in the screen for right now. Hopefully, I'll see the new form factor (which I think is really appealing) and the rubberized paint on some CDMA/EVDO Treos real soon.

Apple

So I'm in the Apple store the other day, looking at a black MacBook, when one of the Mac Specialists comes over and starts talking to me. First of all, let me make a quick overservation. Is it me, or is it Apple corporate policy to disagree with whatever the customer says? A while back (before the MacBook and MacBook Pro), I went to the same Apple store looking at iBooks. When I told the Mac Specialist that I wanted an inexpensive and light-weight Apple laptop, she sneered at me, "Why don't you just get a PowerBook?" When I went back to the same store a week later and ran into the same Specialist and told her that I was considering buying a 12" PowerBook because I wanted an inexpensive and light-weight laptop, she said "Than you're looking for an iBook!" WTF?

So back to my initial story: I'm picking a black MacBook to see how heavy it is when this Specialist engages me and...well...on second thought, maybe I shouldn't blog anything because I'd hate to piss off Apple. I'll get back with more details when the time is right.

Apple to buy Think Secret?

I went to a chamber of commerce mixer last night. I was speaking with an account executive from a web design company here in town. As our conversation turned to technology I felt obligated to mention that I'm a die-hard Mac-Zealot. She mentioned that they recently interviewed the guy who started the Think Secret website. Apparently, he is a student at a private university here in town. This guy (I didn't get his name) told her that he started Think Secret when he was 16 and sold the website to a friend of his when he went away to college and now this guy is currently in talks with Apple to sell the website to them!

If this is true this raises some interesting questions. Is Apple buying the website to shut it down? Is Apple planning to publicize the purchase of Think Secret or are they going to control the website behind the scenes to use as viral marketing?

I don't know how true this information is, but Apple's history of legal strikes on rumor sites, this wouldn't surprise me.

Apple Store

Liz's 17" PowerBook developed some vertical lines going down the middle of her screen. I took it to the Apple store today to have a Genius take a look at it.

First piece of bad news: The first thing he did was inspect the outside of the computer and, in doing so, found a dent on the side of the bottom casing by the power cord. He brought this to my attention and than followed up by informing me that my Apple Care would be effectively voided due to any damage to the laptop.

Second piece of bad news: He also explained to me that had there been no dent on the PowerBook, Apple considers "screen anomalies" to be cosmetic defects and thusly not covered by Apple Care. Damn!

Third piece of bad news: The out-of-pocket price to have both the screen and the LCD replaced either by the Apple store or the Apple Care depot would be between $1000 to $1300 USD. For that price I could go buy a new Intel Mac Book.

Needless to say I didn't hand over my credit card to have the repairs done, though I did take the estimate print out in case I decided to follow through with it. So I guess Liz and I will just have to keep watching Diggnation with "pong" lines between Kevin and Alex. Why does Apple have to be so miserly about their insurance. Apple is developing a bad reputation about how they handle screen problems.

Some Don't Like It Hot

The A/C went out yesterday afternoon. Saturday afternoon is the absolute worst time for an air conditioner to go out of service because you won't be able to get anybody out to your house until some time Monday. It's pretty warm in the house right now, about 83 degrees. Hopefully somebody will be out tomorrow and hopefully it won't cost a small country's GDP to get it fixed.