Category Archives: Smarts

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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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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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More Tmobile Wing, things

Before I begin, I would like to send some complaints to my friend Brown who not only helped me tune up my rear derailleur on my bike in preparation of this weeks Muddy Buddy, but he also gave me a bottle of wine he made several years ago; it’s excellent! This is only the second home-made wine I’ve had and this is indeed, a special treat.

I couldn’t resist the pun. I’m seeing a fair amount of traffic to my site over my posts about the Tmobile Wing. As I said, I love it. I mean it. There are some annoyances with it, but nothing out of the ordinary (compared with WinXP for example). I think I’ve done quite a lot with it.

Tonight, I succeeded in overclocking it to 260Mhz, (stock speed is 200Mhz). For me the difference is so much but I do like that the menus and the screen change / refresh happens more smoothly when you open the slider. I’ve gotten into turning off the WiFI and Bluetooth is if am not using it. The Comm Manager is pretty easy to access and use so I think that will help the battery life while it is being over clocked. And I say succeeded since when I first tried it, I was getting some weird blank screens and someone posted instructions for a manual install of the overclocking app and it worked great.

Continue reading →

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Will my Tmobile Wing replace my iPod?

Actually, no, it won’t replace my iPod but it will see more time with me. If you’ve been reading along, I got a Tmobile Wing. I love it. I’ve been a Treo user, (from a 600 to a 650) and have been a Palm user since my first Palm V. So going to a Windows Mobile based phone is something different, but not so much so. In my other posts about my Mio c310x, you’ll see that the Mio runs Windows CE. Therefore, I already have some experience.

A couple of the things I like about my iPod is Podcasts and being able to listen to stuff in the car while in transit to and from work. Since my commute is roughly +/- 30 minutes, I typically take that time to listen to a language podcast or do some language lessons. If you’ve seen my other posts about that, you’ll learn that I am also trying to learn German.

But at my PC or my Mac at work, I love listening to live music. Live in the sense that I am listening to streaming music; Internet radio. There is some sort of connection I feel when I am listening to someone else “talking to me.” The iPod doesn’t let me have that connection that I get when I am listening to something online. I thought about getting the FM transmitter for my iPod but who the hell wants to listen to FM when I’ve been spoiled by satellite? *shudder*

I have also gotten into the habit of listening to German audio when I am in bed going to sleep. I’ve read about how the mind absorbs information and processes it while you sleep. I also read that listening to foreign languages often will subconsciously help you with word order and pronunciation. Could be snake oil, but what the heck. Since the iPod has a sleep timer, it was easy to set it to shut off after 30 minutes. But the lack of frequent updates of the Podcasts and the level I am at helped contribute to an amount of boredom with the content on my iPod. I started to listen to music and not practice my language skills.

Now, on the Wing, it has Windows Media Player on it. And I didn’t sign up for a data plan since it is WiFi enabled and I have at least two AP’s at any given time. I’ve found the data connection via WiFi to be more than satisfactory since many of the WAP or Mobile enabled sites I go to have way less ads on them so web browsing from the device is pretty good.

More importantly, WMP is great at streaming online content. I started off testing with my old standby’s and moved to the holy grail for me; 24 hour streaming German news. It works and it works well. I didn’t experience too much rebuffering and with the USB-style headset/headphones that came with the Wing, the audio was quite good.

I was really excited to go to bed, listening to “live” content and in German. It work so well. In fact, I dreamt that I was in Germany and was having a hard time understanding what people were saying. It was a great, lucid dream that I found very encouraging. One of the high points was that I was in the library and they were selling beer inside; what a great idea!

So, with the Wing, I have to say that I still like it. The only drawbacks I have encountered thus far is that it appears WM5 and WM6 are different enough that not all applications work or that I don’t know all the shortcuts yet. Being able to make SIP calls with my home Trixbox PBX is really slick.

No, the Wing will not replace my iPod… but I think for what each device does, they certainly compliment each other with what I want to do, and that results in a product that makes ME happy.

Streaming Online radio that makes me happy:

Mobile / WAP websites that make me happy:

Mind resources:

I’ll post more Wing/WM6 updates as I learn and come up with stuff.

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i’d love to be your realtor!

Did you ever see those magnetic signs people have on their cars if they’re a Realtor? I have to laugh whenever I see one since I think of it like those huge inflatable gorillas or dinosaurs car dealers have:

Oh hey, that car dealer has a big inflatable gorilla… I think I’ll buy a car from them…

i’d love to be your realtor!

Anyways, I passed my Post License exam with what I think you’d call a “B.” I’ll take it. I took the class online and really enjoyed it. It was full of a good amount of real practical information that happens to be very applicable to my situation. So, yeah, I guess I’d love to be your Realtor. I’ll plug my broker:

I’m not on the website yet since I haven’t given them a picture yet.

I just wanted to post an update since I actually had a few people ask me about the follow up to this post:

Thanks!

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Repair install XP without deinstalling IE7… wtf?

Okay, I am going to toot my own horn here, I think I figured out something NO ONE else has. I’ll explain that later, but suffice to say, I’m pretty jazzed right now.

Unbeknowst to me, and apparently MANY people who installed IE7 out there, aren’t aware that you MUST uninstall IE7 prior to doing a repair install on WinXP. This is truly a F*$&#d up thing. I didn’t know about it, did you? Now, don’t get me wrong. I consider myself to be a UNIX and OSX guy, but we do use WinXP at home since it is really fine for the family. I’ve never been one to jump on the “I hate Windows” bandwagon, since it works fine to me. In fact, when conducting interviews at work, one of the questions we ask is, “How do you feel about Windows and why?” I’ve made hiring decisions based on the applicants response. …  Okay, so I digress.

It’s true. If you need to do a repair installation of WinXP and you installed IE7, you must or should uninstall IE7 before you begin. I think it is a load of crap this isn’t made more public or in fact is an issue, but it is true:

Here’s my deal. Memorial Weekend, I bought a package deal from Fry’s for a CPU + Motherboard. What was attractive to me was that I can get a dual core Pentium and a Motherboard with and AGP slot for $80. Yes, I know everything is going to PCI-E, but last year I bought a killer AGP card that I’m not quite ready to give up. And I have a bunch of DDR memory (not DDR2). So, I went from an AMD XP2600+ (that was overclocked to a 3200+), to a Pentium D dual-core 2.8Ghz CPU. I get to use my old stuff and get the best of both worlds until I make the jump to a totally new system.

Surprisingly, after installing the new motherboard in my case, WinXP booted up and ran just fine. Usually, you have to do a repair install on a new motherboard, but for some reason, it didn’t which I found surprising since I went from a nforce chipset to a VIA chipset and to a AMD CPU to a Intel CPU.  However, we were getting random BSOD’s over some IRQ issue. I figured I should to my repair install of WinXP anyaway.

I got boned.

Check out Article 917964 from Microsoft:

Before you perform a repair installation of Microsoft Windows XP, you must uninstall Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 from the Windows XP-based computer. If you perform a repair installation of Windows XP when Internet Explorer 7 is still installed, Internet Explorer will not work after the repair is completed.

To resolve this issue, uninstall Internet Explorer 7 from the computer, and then install Internet Explorer 6. After Windows XP is repaired, you can reinstall Internet Explorer 7.

Thanks, Microsoft. I am usually okay with trying to figure this stuff out, but how the hell would I have known this? This is so utterly frustrating, I was losing sleep over this. I followed everything in this KB article to the letter and none of it worked.

Here’s what happened to me. I did my repair installation NOT KNOWING THIS and when it completed, I got the message that said something like;

This copy of windows is insecure. Click here to upgrade to Service Pack 2…

However, IE wasn’t working AT ALL. So when I tried to do Windows Update or Microsoft Update, nothing happened. If I clicked on the IE icon, I got some obscure error message about some dll not installed.

Thankfully, everything else seemed to work. I could use Firefox and Thunderbird. But Windows Update was borked. I wanted to upgrade to SP2, but couldn’t. I read via Google Groups/Dejanews that someone in my same boat tried to install SP2 manually and ended up with a super foo-barred WinXP that wouldn’t boot at all. Then my wife called to give me an earful that Office 2003 wasn’t working. Now, the stakes have been raised.

So, I thought I should go ahead and restore from backup. I use Acronis to back up my main drive to a 300GB drive. Thankfully, I did it a couple of days ago. However, in this state, my other drives couldn’t be reactivated. And I had other issues.

  • If I tried to install IE7 I got errors saying it was for the SP2 version of WinXP
  • If I tried to install IE6 it said a newer version was installed.
  • If I wend to “Add/Remove Programs” it was blank.
  • Office didn’t work

So I couldn’t restore from the back up if I wanted to. However, I knew I had the images so if the worst case scenario happened, I could restore.

So, the only solution I could find was to format and reinstall. I’d hate to do that since it will be a lot of work and my wife is already frustrated. I sure wish I could get to work.

The big issue was that IE7 was for systems already with SP2, (now bear in mind that I already tried to uninstall IE7 via the mentioned ways in the above referenced article). I was stuck between IE6 and IE7.

Then I found a article about slipstreaming the install with SP2.

  • Slipstreaming Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Create Bootable CD

Maybe this would work. I followed the instructions and guess what? It worked! I got back into WinXP and everything looked great. Now, I was encouraged!

So now I reinstalled/repaired installed WinXP WITH SP2! But it wasn’t perfect. Windows Update and Microsoft Update were still spewing errors so I couldn’t update. If I tried Windows Update, I was met with this error message:

You receive a 0x80245003 error when you attempt to install updates from the Windows Update Web site?

    It would say files weren’t registered and you can select either to try to register them or get more info. I tried many of the fixes that were found on Google and none of them worked. Here’s Microsoft’s Article 919749 that explains more info:

    SYMPTOMS

    loadTOCNode(1, \’symptoms\’);You cannot install updates by using the Microsoft Windows Update Web site, and you may receive an error message that resembles the following:

    Error number:0x80245003. Windows Update has encountered an error and cannot display the requested page.

    The fix in that article did not work. This, however worked wonderfully. Here’s the link to this forum post:

    • Fix The 0x80245003 Error!!!!!

    Suggestion #2 got me going. I’ve just completed the rest of the updates since SP2’s release, so I think I am good to . After the first reboot, I had to repeat the above steps, but now everything looks okay after two additional IE7 updates.

    So, here’s a quick list of lessons learned:

    • Uninstall IE7 if you are going to do a repair install of WinXP
    • If you forget to uninstall IE7, your best best is to restore from back up and uninstall IE7.
    • Or make yourself a slipstreamed WinXP + SP2 installation disk.
    • Don’t forget searching DejaNews/Google Groups for useful info from the microsoft.* USENET newsgroups.

    I hope this helps.  Let me know how and if it worked for you and if you have any ideas or updates, let me know and I’ll try to keep this post updated.

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    Altruism

    Today on Slashdot, there was a super-interesting article on Altruism. Here’s the snippet:

    Dekortage writes “The Washington Post is reporting on recent neuroscience research indicating that the brain is pre-wired to enjoy altruism — placing the interests of others ahead of one’s own. In studies, ‘[G]enerosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex… Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.’ Such research ‘has opened up a new window on what it means to be good,’ although many philosophers over recorded history have suggested similar things.”

    I have always found altruism interesting, especially since I have children. I read an article when our twins were first born that altruism was something innate. I saw the boy twin exhibit altruism time and time again right when he was two years old. It fascinated me that now they saw that this is something we are born with, (lo and behold, hope for humankind).

    Here’s the link to the article that started this all.

    If you read the article that’s quoted in the /. article, it suggests that we are hardwired to get pleasure from helping others.  Personally, I can relate.   In reflection, other people I am drawn too, also exhibit altruism (much to the chagrin to our wives).   This is an interesting article and since this is something I’d like to help foster in our children, I have a little better understanding.  But given other examples I’ve seen, is this something that can be unlearned so to speak?

    Just as much of our characteristics are learned behavior, can being anti-altruistic also be learned behavior?  Unfortunately, I think so.

    Kids are amazing.  I have learned much from them and look forward to continuing to do so.

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    innovation, what a show…

    The other night, I was watching TV in the bed with the kids and Mel Brooke’s History of the World Part I came on. This is a classic movie, if for no other reason it shows Mel’s genius. The part we watched was the Spanish Inquisition with Mel as Torquemada.

    But the Inquisition’s here and it’s here to-
    “Hey Torquemada, walk this way.”
    “I just got back from the Auto-de-fe.”
    “Auto-de-fe? What’s an Auto-de-fe?”
    “It’s what you oughtn’t to do but you do anyway.”

    The remainder of the movie isn’t for kids, so we changed the station. But I can’t help but watch something like that and think about how great that movie was and the care and the thought that went into that. The next day, I was listening to the radio and Lola from the Kinks came on. It is a cold day when you hear a modern song like Lola. What makes it so great? If we were going to talk for an hour or so with a couple of beers, I could probably make my point and convince you that it’s one of the greatest songs, but if I have to explain it here, then you probably wouldn’t get it. Anyways, that’s just an aside.

    So, at work, I’ve been thinking about Innovation. If you have seen my blog before, you might be aware that I like technology. There are so many things I think are cool to play with and have integrated them into mine and my family’s life. Sometimes, my wife gets frustrated when things don’t work 100% but I wonder what my kids will be like when they are my age. Will they be rushing out to get the latest tech toys or will they try to build their own? Who knows, but I do like to encourage their innovator spirit.

    At work, I was writing a document on innovation and some of the challenges our company faces. I referred to an article that Guy Kawasaki wrote for one of recent issues of Entrepreneur magazine. His article really gave me food for thought. One of the most important points that I’ve been wrestling with is that you should make products that make your customers happy.

    The best example I can come up with and it really drives it home for me is my wife. We have a Trixbox PBX at home. I love it. But, it doesn’t work 100% of the time; it works 99.9% of the time. And we have to dial “9” to call outside. Me, I’m willing to put up with it. Or rather, it just doesn’t seem like an issue at all for me, but for my wife… it’s a pain in the ass. “Why doesn’t our phone work like everyone else’s?” Heaven forbid if my Mother-in-law tries to use our phone. They ain’t happy!

    Until I read Guy’s article, I thought that they were missing the point of having the “wonderful technology” in their lives making things better for them. Nope, I missed it. If the technology makes them happy, then we have a winner. I have a Roku Soundbridge; hands down one of the best and coolest things I ever bought myself. However, my wife is just as happy plugging her iPod Shuffle into the stereo. Her Shuffle, makes her happy.

    I get it, now I understand. But there has to be some sort of middle ground, don’t you think? A product can’t be 100% fool-proof and work 100% of the time, can it? Does that mean it has to be simple or just work good? I don’t have the answers yet, but this has been what’s been inside my thoughts as of late. Somewhere in this conundrum, lies the secret sauce.

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    using a heart rate monitor (HRM) successfully….

    Man, I should be doing my real estate class or practicing my German, but since I was getting back to exercising after a couple month hiatus, I need to refresh myself and I can get on my soap box.

    I’ve had three different HRM’s over the years and I think that each one has been an improvment over the other. The first one I got, I got from Aldi’s for $20. Hey, I figure that it was worth $20 bucks to try it. I was hooked. There was a little learning curve as I learned about the watch and my own body. I was able to see improvements and I minimized my injuries and colds I would get when I pushed myself too hard.

    I lost the chest strap on the Aldi’s HRM, and I got a Polar A5. It was a step up but more designed for walkers. Still, I really enjoyed it. I liked being able to see how many calories I had burned on my workouts. My next watch I got on a good deal. I next got a Polar F6 and passed the A5 to my wife.

    The F6 was even more impressive since you could upload your data to Polar’s website and track your goals, Lose Weight Exercises, etc. Pretty cool!

    Now, using a HRM successfully depends on a strong beginning. The most confusing thing was trying to determine my base heart rate. The first two HRM’s said to simply take your age and subtract your age and multiply that times 60%, 70%, and 80% to get your zone. This is fine if you have never Lose Weight Exercised but this doesn’t take into account your level of fitness. I have been running for years and following this method I was barely breaking a sweat, It was apparent I needed a better way to determine my base HR. Now, you might want to know why the base HR is so important. Once you have your base then you can determine what zone you want to target:

    Target Zones

    60 – 70% of max HR Weight Loss, building endurance

    70 – 80% of max HR Weight Management, improve cardio fitness

    Like I said, the Age-Based formula is only good if you have been a couch potato for the last five years. If you have been doing anything… and I recommend this formula anyways, I recommend Karvonen formula. Basically, you take your heart rate in the morning as you are laying in bed for three mornings, average them together, use that number for the basic calculations and you can get dialed in to your personal fitness level.

    More details can be found here:

    It took me some trial and error to get it right, but I understand it now. In fact, I made a spreadsheet that I’ll share here for you to use to calculate your zones in both the traditional method and the Karvonen method. You can view the spreadsheet here:

    Finally, I was suprised at how well the Polar OwnZone works. I have used it and was suprised at how close it was to the results I got from the Karvonen formula. While the OwnZone might be a no-brainer if your unit supports it, I think it is still important to know the logic behind it.

    A HRM will let you maximize your Lose Weight Exercises and help you avoid getting hurt or getting sick. In the summer when I push myself on seven or eight mile runs, I would almost certainly get a little cold. A HRM and some L-Glutamine helped prevent that.

    Finally, let me close with a story that I think will illustrate why I think a HRM is important for people starting out running or cycling. One day, when I was on a long run in the summer, I caught up to a guy who was walking but wearing running gear. I passed him on my steady pace only to be passed by him while he was running much faster than I. Then, about two minutes later, I passed him again while he was walking. Then he passed me again running fast. This went on another four times until finally we ended up at the same red light.

    “I just started running!” he said. This novice runner didn’t have any concept of pace. He was heading down a path of injury or over excertion and didn’t know it. Typically, novice runners will go this route and get hurt or discouraged. A HRM takes the guesswork out and gives you a detailed view into how your body is doing regardless of your fitness level.

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    page 37 of 1458

    Holy Smokes!  Tonight I signed up for and began my 25-Hour Sales Postlicense Course which is required for Real Estate Agents in their first year of obtaining their real estate licenses in Georgia.  On top of that, there is a proctored exam that needs to be passed before your one year anniversary.   Thankfully, you can take the class online.  But 1458 pages… it seems like an insurmountable amount of content to muck through.    And doubly-thankfully, the classes now work with Firefox (most OS’es), unlike last time I took an online real estate class where you had to use IE6 on Windows ONLY. *shudder*

    So far, the class actually has been pretty good but I’ve only done 20 minutes tonight.   I got just a hair over a month to get it knocked out so I think I am good to go.