Category Archives: Info

Cool things to do and know.

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a couple of minutes of fame

Tonight, I had the sheer pleasure of being in the live studio audience for a TV special.  If you live in Georgia, you might know who Clark Howard is.  He’s great.  I’ve been listening to him for years and think he’s a great person that has helped a lot of people.  Tonight we taped a show for next Monday’s airing of a real estate special.  My sister-in-law and I were picked to be in the audience.

Some of you know that I am a real estate investor, property manager, and  agent.  My sister-in-law is my broker and we have worked together on a couple of interesting deals.    I have intended this to be my “Plan B” but as you might know, now is not the best time to fall back on this… maybe just not yet.

Anyways, we both enjoyed the show and the message Clark had to say.  If anything, I am more convinced that my philosophy on real estate is definitely solid and on track.  So, that’s a good thing and I am looking good, (if I do say so myself).

I don’t want to take anything away from the show so I won’t post pictures or what was discussed until the show airs.   The show airs on 9/10 @ 8PM Eastern on Channel 2, WSB.  Be sure to set your TiVos’.

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good things afoot

So, those of you paying any attention know that I got notice that I am let go from my current employer. But fret not since I am in excellent company. This year, I have been focusing on creating my “online presence” from blogs, to Twitter, LinkedIn, and recently Facebook. Honestly, I am very proud of my efforts since it allows me to talk about stuff that really gets me excited and even happy. At the very least, it’s an expression of who I am.

On to the future! I am ready to find my dream job and do something that I completely love. An old friend, Lance Weatherby, wrote an excellent post for folks in my position.

Lance pretty much summed up everything I had learned and read about this year. I found it a very helpful post. And I am sure it will help other people in a similar situation.

My wife’s cousin who has done international business gave me a similar lesson, although it was in a 45 minute care ride. His tactics were more for non-tech jobs, but the premise is the same; you got to network.

Having been at the same company for 12+ years, I heard that “you got to network” from every angle. But what does that mean? I had a really hard time figuring that out. For me, it really meant, be yourself. That’s a tough lesson. I guess some people can “sell themselves” but networking with other people means to me to be able to talk about what you know, love, do passionately. Don’t try to bullshit the bullshitter, (as my Dad used to say). Somewhere, along the line, someone I really respected said, “To be free you have to be totally responsible.” That means be honest. I can’t / won’t lie to my wife, employer, friend, etc. I simply can’t do it anymore. It’s not always easy, but I now see it’s the only way I can be. Having said that, I defer to Henry Winkler in “The Waterboy.”

Back to the “networking” issue. Of course I realize you have to sell yourself at some point. That’s the part I need to know more about.More later, but I am feeling very positive.

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yeah, I removed a post…

If you happened by earlier today, you might have seen a post about my currently employment.  I did get a severance package today, and since they were very clear about the risks of losing the package and gave very specific guidelines, I’ve decided to take down the post I made previously, since my wife would kill me if I lost the package!  😉  I am playing it safe and did this of my own accord.

Thanks to you that sent words of kindness.  Whew, I’m glad it’s over.

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facebook

The inevitable happened.

I joined Facebook tonight.  Okay, I’ll admit… I do think it is pretty cool.  I’m not going to write about how cool it is or why I like it since I am sure there are plenty of people doing that.  But, I will say a friend of mine recommended I join and I’m glad he did.  Actually, it came about since he was showing me a Facebook Widget for his iPhone.  I was surprised to see many names I recognized in his “friends” list.  It look appeared it was the thing to do…

My wife has a MySpace account.  I like the idea of MySpace, but I just don’t want to deal with the “overhead” MySpace has… “Thanks for the add, man!”  Facebook seems to be between LinkedIn and MySpace; that is something I could deal with.

Now, I don’t think there is anything wrong with MySpace; I just haven’t been bitten by the bug.  I have thought about (for a long time) setting up a pseudo-name and going to town, but given how much I got on my plate these days I don’t feel like I have the wherewithal to  commit to it.  At least with Facebook, I see it more as a “professional” social network.  Oh well.

If you’d like to be my “friend” on Facebook, look me up.  You know how to find me!

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Babe, I’m on fire…

The horse says it, the pig says it
The judge in his wig says it

Man, I don’t know what is going on but so many electical things have been breaking.. and I mean breaking in a big, bad hard way. Here’s a few things:

  • A/V Receiver
  • Roku Soundbridge
  • My Powerbook, sniff sniff sniff
  • Harmony Remote (taken apart, cleaned, and repaired!)
  • Sun Shade on our deck
  • check engine light in the car
  • BSOD’s on our PC (think that might be fixed, I got good at debugging core dumps in WinXP)
  • My Trixbox server had three kernel panics

And this is all within a couple of weeks.

The fox and the rabbit
And the nun in her habit says

I am pretty bummed that my Roku M500 is dead. I took it apart and see that if I can get a new part I probably good fix it. The question is, will I be able to buy just the part or do I have to shell out for a new complete one? I love this thing as it has profoundly changed me and my families life.

I am even more bummed about my Powerbook. It is unlikely I will get a new one from work and more likely I’ll get a Windows laptop. It isn’t that I have anything really against a Windows laptop, but I do love my Mac a lot. Maybe it can be repaired…

My mate Bill Gates says it
The President of the United States says it
The slacker and the worker
The girl in her burqa says

I’ve been learning Ruby on Rails lately. So far, I love it. My first project will be to do a UI for the Linux webcam software Motion. How did I get so far without knowing more about Ruby!?!?! This will be something you, the casual reader won’t ever see as it is intended for family and friends.

The general with his tank says it
The man at the bank says it
The soldier with his rocket
And the mouse in my pocket says

I am still loving my T-Mobile Wing. I have installed many apps, but the one I spend the most time with is Chess Genius. I might actually register it. No one ever IM’s me on it. sniff

The drug-addled wreck
With a needle in his neck says it
The drunk says it, punk says it
The brave Buddhist monk says

My brother-in-law has gotten a Nintendo Wii. What a neat thing! I want one! One an unrelated note, I’ve been learning quite a bit about Ethernet cameras; wired and wireless. I foresee some in my future.

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hoo-boy

It’s been a while since I last updated.  I was in Pasadena last week for an offsite.  It was great.  Sometimes I get the heebee-jeebies at my current job but then I spend time with some of these folks and I get all jazzed about things.   So traveling took some time out from me keeping up with the updates and I feel like I should post a minor update… even if it seems a little disjunct.

While in Pasadena, I presented on VoD and IPTV. I didn’t present on the technology behind it, (leave it to the NetEng guys…) but rather the market and the analysts’ predictions.   It was well received and I enjoyed doing the research on it.

Sunday morning, our audio receiver finally died.   Today I placed an order for a new replacement.  I can’t wait for it to get here! It will be a world of difference!  Thanks to the members over at AVSForum.

I’ve been doing some cool stuff with the Webcam/Linux/Motion set up.  I got in trouble with my wife so I pulled it all down.   In the meantime, I am learning Ruby on Rails to make it better.

I’m also spending a lot more time with Subversion for personal docs and projects, since my webhost gives me a ton of space.  I’m debating if I should just punch holes in my firewall or use my webhost for svn storage.  The jury is still out.

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Linux Webcams

Oh boy! I’m using the Safari beta on WinXP tonight. I have to say, that I was getting tired of Firefox slowing down my Powerbook that I decided to try Safari. So far, so good. I liked it so much, I am trying the Safari beta at home. So, I’ve been busy. Things have been good and I feel like I’ve been flexing my mental muscle. I’ve been spending my last few nights trying to get webcams working under Linux. I have a cheap-o webcam and was trying to help someone set up a situation where their family from overseas can “check in” on them from time to time.Again, as in most of my projects, I don’t want to pay for software and I want to remain legit. For WinXP, I found this site to be really useful:

(ah, a bug with safari… mental note and switching back to FireFox).

This was an incredibly useful site. I found this software linked from it:

I was really impressed with YawCam. It did everything I could imagine and then some.

  • live stream
  • password protected (various users)
  • scheduling
  • logging
  • tweaks

If you are running Windows, I’d recommend using that. It was really great. But, I wanted to take it further. I have an old Dell Laptop running Ubuntu. I’ll write a much more comprehensive post later about all the different options I found, but in the meantime, I have come to love Motion:

Motion For Linux

I ended up building it from source, (which was a pain in the ass getting all the right dpkg’s installed). But it is slick. Ken is my new hero:

  • Kenneth Lavrsen’s Web Cameras

The tar.gz Ken distributes has config files that are outdated. It took me a little while to figure that out, but if you read the wiki, then you should be able to figure it out. Maybe I’ll release my configs.

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A guest post…

I’m not typically one to promote myself shamelessly, but I do consider it an honor in some regards.   I recently had a guest post on the Earthlink blog, Earthling.    This is my personal blog, not related to Earthlink in any way and is my own commentary.  However, the post is work related.

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A glimpse into the crystal ball… or “Go, T-Mobile!!!!”

I knew it was coming, and here it is:

T-Mobile USA launches WiFi access for cellphone users

It is only a matter of time before my Wing is able to take advantage of this plan.   Since my Wing has WiFi, I am making SIP calls from it when I’m at home on my WiFi network, talking to my PBX, so why isn’t this far fetched?  Tmobile is rolling out two phones they know will work with this service.  The partnership with Linksys and D-link is to insure a rock solid connection, (IMHO they do make the best routers).  This is really sweet.

Once the tech gets ironed out, I wouldn’t be surprised if they allow other users who can figure it out to take advantage of this plan.   T-Mobile, congratulations on this announcement.

I’ll be curious to see how much news this gets in the US.  If you could use an iPhone on Tmobile via WiFi, would you buy one?

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multiple updates on various junk

I’ve been busy. It’s been good and I see progress being made. I see the light at the end of the tunnel. So, this post is going to be a mini-update to a bunch of stuff I got in the hopper.

Tmobile Wing

Man, I love this thing. Today I put new skins on it, and installed some really great apps. I’ll provide a more detailed post on it. Going from PalmOS to WM6 was painless and easy. I almost don’t even think of it. I miss on flash card program but other than that, I don’t think I’ll ever go back to a Palm-based phone.

XMBC on the Xbox

My brother-in-law is really happy with his hacked Xbox. We watched all sorts of international TV this weekend. I found this after poking around. Why hadn’t I found it before?

I found some great games I am playing on my Xbox. ChessMaster was really hard to find:

Trixbox

I am getting a lot of hits on my website for Trixbox related things. I hope you guys are finding it helpful. I’d love to hear some feedback.

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