Aimless Wandering

Person 1: Do you want me to drive you home?

Person 2: All the way to Alameda?

Person 1: No just as far as the bridge, I figured you’d be ok to walk the last 10 miles.

Can you just feel the love?

There’s been a lot of press over the last few years regarding how environmentally unfriendly the electronics in our lives are.  The amount of heavy metals and carcinogenic materials that make up the devices that have become a needed part of our lives is truly staggering.  For years we’ve been told that just tossing this stuff into the trash and allowing it to flow into landfills is a bad thing and that we need to properly recycle these materials.

So then why is it so hard to properly dispose of this stuff?  California even charges a fee on electronics purchased in the state to support e-waste disposal efforts.  That’s great, but why isn’t there someplace that will accept my e-waste nearby?  Why do the few places that I can find to dispose of my e-waste charge me fees?

Haven’t we learned our lesson with plastics and bottle recycling?  If you make it simple for folks to recycle - you increase the number of folks who recycle.  Don’t make folks jump through hoops or charge them still more to dispose this stuff, all that does is encourage people to toss this stuff in the trash can and continue polluting the landfills…

So we’ve been DirecTV subscribers for 6 years now if not longer.  Back in VA we had mixed experiences with our cable providers - one was really bad, the second was better but expensive, and the third was just ok.  So when we got our house (and a good deal on installation) we moved to DirecTV, which had the benefit of being cheaper than the cable that was offered AND gave us a DVR (Microsoft’s UltimateTV).  For the entire time we were in VA we were happy with DirecTV but once we moved the relationship started to go downhill…

From the very beginning we had issues - like with the installer who activated one box but not the other, and left the location set for Washington DC which meant that none of our local channels worked.  Then there was the overall confusion regarding local channels in HD - something we could get in Washington with an antenna - an antenna that DirecTV was willing to provide, but not install because we were in a “dead zone.”

Oh and then there was the Tivo debacle.  DirecTV used to have a partnership with Tivo and offered recievers with Tivo - the trouble is that the features that Tivo was putting in their stand alone units wasn’t getting put into the DirecTV Tivos.  Eventually DirecTV dropped the Tivos and came out with their own DVR, which is barely acceptible.  It’s a feature poor device with an interface that isn’t very intuitive.

However, what really pushed us over the edge is nature.  Our overgrown backyard has finally grown to the point where tree branches are interfering with the DirecTV signal.  Sadly it’s not just a matter of trimming it back.  Both The Wife and I have climbed up the 40+ degree incline to hack down trees in an attempt to make things better.  Unfortunately it now appears that the offending trees are too high up for us to get to in order to take down.  Which leaves us with either praying for calm days with no wind or dumping DirecTV.

Despite all the horror stories, we’ve decided to call in Comcast.  We’re minimizing our exposure to them and only getting TV, no phone or internet though.  Their internet service is faster, but I’m concerned about a few things - first is that we have a static IP for the business and “business class” DSL from AT&T.  Comcast wants a two year contract for their business class connections and we can’t give them that.  Since we share our internet connection with the business and the business has to have an internet connection I’m hesitant to play around with it and Comcast.  Combine that with Comcast’s latest bandwidth games plus our VOIP usage, bittorret usage (for legal stuff of course) and I’m not willing to run my data through Comcast.

On the plus side - we can get a Tivo again!  Even more on the plus side, a refurb HD Tivo is $179!  In the years that we’ve been Tivoless Tivo has rolled out some pretty cool services too…  so I’m pretty excited about that. 

Saturday’s the big day…  In theory we should have interference free TV and a Tivo by 2 pm on Saturday - either that or a new disrespect for Comcast…

So this I week I discovered why I’ve been having issues posting comments to Wordpress blogs.  It seems that I’ve been tagged as a spammer by Akismet - on every machine I use to surf the internet on.

At least I now know why my comments are disappearing, now if I could only figure out how to get off of Akismet’s black lists…

As if that wasn’t enough, I’ve noticed a tremendous increase in trackback spam lately on the Cruise Planners site.  It’s been on a slow rise for the last few weeks, from maybe 1 or two every few weeks to 40 or 50 in the last week alone.  I know the numbers aren’t high compared to sites with real heavy traffic, but still it’s a noticeable upswing in the amount of spam coming in.

I used to use Bad Behavior and Akismet to keep the spam under control, but thinks to problems with Bad Behavior’s blacklist I had to turn it off.  So now I’m looking for other options to cut down on the amount of crap the bots are trying to get on to the site….

It’s been an eventful weekend around these parts…  Although one of the things I wanted to do this weekend - go bike riding - didn’t happen.

For starters, I’m now the owner of a Black iPhone 3G.  I’d love to say it was an uneventful purchase - sadly it was a disaster. It’s a long story that maybe I’ll go in to another time.  However the root cause of the issue was AT&T.

However eventually the transaction went through and the phone was activated.  We knew the phone was fully activated because as soon as activation was completed I got a text from db telling me not to get the phone for at least another week because of all the problems!

By the way the lines that many Apple Stores were sporting even today - mainly because of the stupid activation process that Apple forces you to do in-store.  AT&T gave up on the in-store activation but Apple won’t let you leave unless the phone is activated.

As for the Ap Store.  There’s some pretty good stuff in there - unfortunately there’s even more crap there.  It’s also annoying that you can find multiple applications that do the same thing - some for free and others you need to pay for.  There’s also a surprising number of completely pointless and useless applications there.  Considering the number of reports I saw that indicated that Apple was very selective in who initially participated in the developer program I would have expected Apple to be selective in the applications that they allowed in the store.

Back when the iPhone was announced Apple talked about how they didn’t like how applications on Windows Mobile don’t ever actually close and consume resources and that they didn’t want the iPhone to do the same.  In thinking about it, it’s surprising that they would raise a stink about this since OS X does the exact same thing.  Just like in Windows Mobile if you click on the little X in the corner of OS X your application doesn’t really close…  it just hangs out and consumes resources.

3G is great, but I think that surfing the web on Edge on the iPhone is actually slower than on the Treo 750.  However, I think that it’s because the 750 pulls down fewer graphics and data than the iPhone.  However I think that the overall browsing experience on the iPhone is MUCH better.

I’ve a few times that tapping the Strategic Oil Reserves won’t make gas cheaper, but honestly I don’t think I ever really articulated it well.

John Schoen over at MSNBC however explains several of the reasons why the Strategic Oil Reserves won’t help us.

The price of oil is going up not because it’s currently in short supply - but out of fear that it might be in short supply soon.  Since there’s plenty of oil currently being shipped to refiners adding more to the pool won’t change anything.

Supply is so good that the US has stopped adding 70,000 barrels of oil a day to the Strategic Oil Reserve - but oil hasn’t gotten cheaper.

There are 700 million barrels of oil in storage.  Global consumption is 86 million barrels a day.  Now you’re thinking so that’s global demand, I’m in the US and extra oil from the oil reserve will help the US supply and ease prices.  The problem is that the price of oil is set on the international market not a domestic market. 

Then there’s the true purpose of the Oil Reserve - to make sure we have fuel if the supply lines are cut.  If things get nasty with Iran there’s a distinct possibility they will cut off the Persian Gulf and block oil shipments from the region.  If we tap the oil reserve to ease prices now, will there be enough oil to help us should things get ugly in the Middle East?

Many years ago we decided to upgrade to a bagless vacuum.  We decided that we no longer wanted a vacuum that just made a lot of noise and tickled the carpet and so we purchased a Hoover bagless upright.  I took great joy in using it and declaring that it “sucked like a Hoover!” (hint- that was a good thing).  It served us well but as it got older it started to not suck like a Hoover.

However it worked well as a companion to the Roomba, that is until it began to develp an annoying ability to redistribute dirt instead of picking up dirt.  Oh and then there was the weird odor - the vacuum started to give off a weird moldy odor when used.  I cleaned it with no change, but the kicker was when I came home one day and knew by the burning rubber smell that The Wife had vacuumed.  What I later discovered was that the main drive shaft had warped and eaten the drive belt.  The belt would have cost all of $5 for me to replace but the drive shaft was a different story.  I would have had to disassemble the entire motor to replace the drive shaft and that would have been a major undertaking.

So off it was to replace the vacuum and of course the first thought was “time to get the Dyson,” and then reality struck i.e the price tag.  So we did a lot of research and ended up with the Bissell Healthy Home upright.  While not cheap - it’s still half the price of the Dyson and while it doesn’t make the same “doesn’t loose suction” claims that Dyson does the design appears to be similar.

So far it sucks pretty well, and doesn’t appear to loose suction until the bin is full, and that’s led me to my completely unscientific theory about how the Dyson manages it’s claim to fame.  See the Dyson, much like the Bissell has a really small has a really small dirt cup - and that’s the secret.  By limiting how much you can actually suck up I think the cup is “filling” long before there would be enough in the cup to start affecting suction.  So if the vacuum actually was configured like a common vacuum with a larger dirt cup then I think it would also loose suction…  At least that’s my theory.

Well it looks like the feed problem has been resolved - sort of…

I was trying to track stats through Feedburner and had been uses the Feedburner Feed redirect plugin to do it.  For some reason it decided to stop updating the feed.  I tried using the Feedsmith plug-in to do the same since it is the officially blessed plug-in for Feedburner however it also didn’t update.  The feeds both checked out in the RSS validater but updates still weren’t being published.

So I’ve turned them both off.

The fact is there aren’t that many people who ever read this blog and it’s doubtful I will ever try to monetize it.  With that in mind, there’s really no need for me to worry about the stats that Feedburner provides.  Even more importantly, it appears that turning off the Feedburner redirects doesn’t affect folks who are already subscribed to the feed.  I was concerned that the change to the feed would break existing subscriptions but that doesn’t appear to be the case…

So welcome back…  All 4 of you

In particular dying old ladies with lots of money who either don’t have any heirs or don’t want their fortunes to be inherited by their children.  In the last few weeks I’ve gotten lots of e-mails from dying old ladies asking me to help them.

Apparently my reputation that I’m a very charitable person is growing and they have all decided to contact me to see if I could help with donating their money to a worthwhile charity.  Because donating money is hard.  And they all are generously offering me a cut of the money to be donated.  How sweet…

It seems I also am developing a reputation for moving large sums of money around.  Lately I’ve been getting contacted by bank managers in Hong Kong and various African and Middle Eastern nations requesting my assistance moving large sums of unclaimed money out of their country.  You know I’ve been working to become a master of international finance and it seems to be working.  Apparently all I need is a checking AND a savings account!

Oh, and I apparently just won a Puegeot 206 from Puegeot Automotive UK.  As soon as I respond to the yahoo.co.hk e-mail address Puegeot will be shipping me my new car!  No, I don’t think it’s weird at all that the UK division of an international auto company would need to use Yahoo Hong Kong to host their e-mail why do you ask?

Now if you’ll excuse me there’s some oceanfront property in Arizona I need to go and see…

I know the feed is broken and has been for over a month.  I’m finally at a point where I can start to troubleshoot it.

BTW - if you ever post to a discussion board that you are having a problem and looking for help fixing it and then you managed to fix the problem on your own - be kind to the other users and post what you did to fix the problem…

Just making a post that says “Oh nevermind I fixed it” doesn’t help anyone!!!