Recently in hi tech Category

Since I got this iPod Touch (detailed post forthcoming), I've suddenly become less computer dependent but more WiFi dependent. Right now I'm waiting for my chiropractor, using a random, WIDE OPEN access
point. So open, in fact, that the default username and password worked fine when I tried the admin login. It's rather sad, really.

Anyway, while having dinner with Noah and Abby last night, I rembrered that McDonalds has WiFi. Keeping in mind that this is America, they want money for it. Lucky for me they also partner with, among others, AT&T, for access. After a few minutes of thinking, I was able to remember my DSL credentials and actually get online. To load photos of the kids of the Internet. I'm not really sure why I had to, but suddenly the kids didn't care about the "Kung Fu Panda" action figures - they wanted to see their photos.

Technology: 1
Plastic toys: 0

I came home from Noah's baseball game yesterday to find a "Sorry we missed you" note from the fine folks at the USPS. It seems that someone is trying to send us a certified letter and no-one was home to sign for it. Now, for most people, the question becomes: who's sending us a certified letter? And even more importantly, why?

Did we inherit some money? Are we overdue on some bill? Is the town about to take our property and turn it into a park? Did my letter to the furnace maker have something close to the desired effect? Except for the last one, I'm not sure. The furnace maker actually had something in the mail that same day, telling me I was foolish for neglecting to include the serial number of our furnace. Silly me, thinking that if my name is the same as the one that paid for the dang thing, that they'd be able to look me up. But I digress.

The problem here is that I can go to the USPS website and track the certified letter - it's got it's own tracking number and everything. But when you go to the page, you learn more about the letter and where it's going than you do about where it's supposed to end up. While I can see that this would be useful for the sender, it seems that having even the city and state that it's coming from might also be helpful.

For the sender, to maybe make sure they entered the 20 digit tracking number in properly (especially since it can be hard to read the handwriting on the little slip).

For the recipient, to maybe give you a small clue as to who's trying to get in touch with you. Granted, something like "New York, NY" might not tell you much, but it's a little bit more than knowing that someone from somewhere is trying to send you some bits of paper and really wants to make sure you have it.

But that's just my thoughts on the matter.

Oh, and Noah's team won, in case you were wondering.

Jeffrey Zeldman Presents : The vanishing personal site

Our personal sites, once our primary points of online presence, are becoming sock drawers for displaced first-person content. We are witnessing the disappearance of the all-in-one, carefully designed personal site containing professional information, links, and brief bursts of frequently updated content to which others respond via comments. Did I say we are witnessing the traditional personal site's disappearance? That is inaccurate. We are the ones making our own sites disappear.

Now that's pretty darn insightful. Zeldman mentions Jody Ferry's site specifically, and it's a great example: a home page, and then links that take viewers OFF the site.

I've been posting more photos to Flickr than I have to my family galleries. I spend more time on FaceBook - mindless distraction that it is - than I do posting on my own site. And I just joined Twitter, for reasons that I don't know that I fully understand. To what end? I'm not sure.

I see his point - websites used to be all about capturing eyeballs and keeping them on your site. Then people started selling adverts, and it was even more important to keep those visitors coming in and staying in - or leaving through your adverts. Now, with the advent of all these more interesting services, and the ease with which they can be used, more people are just taking advantage of that ease and moving their content elsewhere. Why try to build your own photo gallery - or install someone else's - when you can just point people to your Flickr collection? Why post regularly when you can Twitter? Well, that's not quite the same, but it's similar.

I myself discovered del.icio.us and have all but stopped using the bookmark feature in my web browserS. Why? Part of it is the ease of having my bookmarks so easily available - especially from the multiple platforms and browsers. It's also a lot easier to find bookmarks when I need them - I tag everything going into del.icio.us, sometimes over-tagging them, but it's really easy to find stuff now - rather than spending 20 minutes trying to remember the name of a site, I go to the page for the tag that I believe is the right, and I usually have the link right there.

What does this all mean? I myself have been farming work out to others - and didn't think too much about doing it. Due to the nature of the internet, and the way my account is setup, my photos are public, my Twitters are public, and most of my bookmarks are public. Do I care? Well, sometimes I wonder if I'm sharing too much. But at the same time, I haven't done anything to lock down my family photo gallery - although it would be trivial to do so. I make an effort to keep my bookmarks private when it's not something I want shared with the public. I can do the same thing with my Flickr photos - and have done so in the past. Twitters, well, I guess that's more than a bit like this blog - I can, and do, self-censor. If I didn't, life might be more than a little awkward.

But where does it all lead?

A quick note to say that I'm now completely off the internet. For a whole weekend. Part of me is really cranky, and another part doesn't care simply because Cablevision no longer gets my money (well, after they finally send us a bill for the correct amount).

The problem stems from cancelling the TV service - the phone rep didn't understand me when I said "I also have a cable modem provided by Cablevision under a separate account" and I didn't realize fully what "disconnect you from the cable system" meant. Mostly my bad, but I feel that the phone rep should share at least some of the blame. What happened is that Cablevision feels that since I'm no longer a paying customer, then I shouldn't be on their network at all. You see, you can get basic cable for free if you're still connected - they can't stop the signal without a physical disconnect. The problem is, as I said, that I get my internet from them too. I hadn't fully fleshed out all my options for a replacement for them when it came to the fore on Thursday night - no internet. I called to complain, and Cablevision was nice enough to offer to send someone out between 10 and 7 the next day - provided I would be home in case they needed to come inside the house to check things.

Not for nothing, but if the internet stopped when you disconnected me from your wires, why would your tech need to come inside the house? Needless to say, I declined. They said that they could see about getting someone out on Saturday, but that was also not much more than a "we'll see what we can do, but no promises unless you're willing to stay on hold for 15 minutes" sort of thing. I passed on that too.

I called AT&T from work and signed up for a DSL package. I'm not happy about it, but I think I've made it clear that I want Cablevision out of my life. They overnighted me a kit, and I hooked it up, and.... nothing. A call to their tech support for new installs reveals that they can't hook me up for some reason, and they'll get back to me about it. I expect to get a call on Monday, but who knows. I'm not happy, especially since what I received from them (a wireless router/DSL modem) is not what I requested (a DSL modem) since I have all the extra fancy stuff I need already at home.

At this point, I fully expect them to tell me that they need to replace the equipment outside the house (a terminal, I think it's called) since it's a few years shy of being ancient. Oh, and quite dirty. But we'll see how that turns out on Monday.

More updates as events warrant.

Oh, and thanks mom and dad, for letting me use your internet while Ethan took an entirely too long nap.

CL&P Blog: All Criticism of This Website Is Hereby Forbidden

CL↦Blog brings up the topic of Dozier Internet Law's website and, more interestingly, their "User Agreement."

Ooops. Apparently I've managed to mess up - I just linked to them, so I've violated the "User Agreement" of their site:
We also do not allow any links to our site without our express permission

There I go again - I quoted part of their website, which violates another part of the "browse-wrap" license agreement:
Dozier Internet Law, P.C. has a lot of intellectual property on our site. For instance, we are the creators of all of the text on this website, and own the "look and feel" of this website. We also own all of the code, including the HTML code, and all content. As you may know, you can view the HTML code with a standard browser. We do not permit you to view such code since we consider it to be our intellectual property protected by the copyright laws. You are therefore not authorized to do so. In addition, you should not make any copies of any part of this website in any way since we do not want anyone copying us.

I think I might be in a lot of trouble now. Good thing I have a handy dandy user agreement of my own. (For the record, even thinking about my website means that you agree to the terms. Of course, I really should modify the agreement to say that you also owe me $5 for loading the site. I think I might have stumbled upon a new "revenue stream" for the site...)

Anyway, this type of heavy handed bullying has been tried before - and it usually fails before it even gets to the courtroom. On the rare occasion that it makes it that far, cooler heads usually prevail.

I wonder if Dozier will come after me? Time will tell.....

NIKE MISSLE BASE KC-SILO 60 - (eBay item 300156975741 end time Oct-31-07 05:23:14 PDT)

Sure, it's 60 acres. And sure, the Missle silos are filled with water. But there's an 800 sq. ft. fortified bunker you can live in. I'm thinking....
* 1 silo filled with water for free diving
* 1 silo with cargo netting for climbing
* 1 silo turned into a rock wall/climbing area
* paint ball in some of the land
* "agri-tainment" in other bits
* there's still room for the old homestead....

Of course, as Rudi pointed out, it's still in Kansas. Not that I have anything against Kansas - I just don't know if now is the best time to uproot the whole family and move.....

This might be boring, tedious, or both. If you don't have Cablevision for your internet/tv, or if you don't live in an area where they are located, or you just don't care, then move along. The rest of you can read more by clicking the link....

Todays drive into work was pretty atypical for several reasons. One was that I left the house when I meant to - since Jen was long gone when this happened, and the kids weren't actually fighting me (for a change), this was a pleasant surprise. Drop off went well, so that was good. A left, a right, a left, another left, and one more right and I'm on the highway - but the iPod is coming up with nothing but things I just don't want to hear. I had yesterday off so the family could visit my Aunt and Uncle who are visiting from Australia, so today is my Monday. I needed a little something to pick me up and get me going. It was a long hard road to finding something - I was 3/4 of the way to work when it finally happened: "Hot for Teacher", from Van Halen's "1984".

That song is only about 3 or 4 minutes long, so I had to find something else to fit into the remaining 5 minutes of my drive. What to do, what to do? The iPod was picking out more stuff I didn't want to hear - including several passages from an audio book that really, really needs to come off there - when suddenly I heard "Angry People" by Barenaked Ladies, off of "Are Me & Are Men Deluxe Edition". It's a double CD set that I got off of the iTunes Music Store, and it's chock full of BNL good-ness. Keep in mind that it's called "Are Me", but it's supposed to be read like "Barenaked Ladies Are Me" - or, as they put it on their podcast, "Barenaked Ladies Army" since their fans are so very loyal. Just a fun little tidbit for you there. Anyway, "Angry People" is kind of a happy, upbeat song, despite the name, and it helped continue the momentum built by "Hot for Teacher" to get me into a mindset that I'd be able to tackle the day.

Of course, when I remembered that today isn't Monday, and that I still have a piece of go-suh work cell phone and I have no idea when or if a replacement is coming. It works, but the battery won't hold a charge anymore - I need to charge it about once a day, and I don't use it to make more than two or three calls a day. BAD CELL PHONE!

But then I get to the office and there's good news! The new phone - a nice, shiny new phone - has arrived. A phone call, some idle chatter w/ the Verizon rep, and an activation later, and I'm playing with my new RAZR V3m phone. So far, it's working quite well - I've managed to get around to updating my address book with all the important phone numbers and email addresses, and then sync the phone to the work computer via BlueTooth. The biggest downside: Verizon crippled the phone. They don't let you do OBEX data transfers from the phone - which means if I take a photo with the camera, I either have to "PIX" the photo to myself (and use up messages that I think we pay extra for) or use the Micro SD card that the phone has - only you have to dis-assemble the phone to get at the card. OBEX, on the other hand, allows you to take and put data right from your computer to the phone and vice versa. Most other carriers offer it, but Verizon, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that you don't want that - they know what you want, and instead of being able to take your photos right off your cell phone, or play YOUR MP3 files on your phone, you really want to pay them to let you do it.

I don't want this to turn into a giant "Verizon is evil" rant, so I'm going to stop here, but point out that it's my phone, and I think I know what I want better than they do. Well, ok, it's the State of Connecticuts phone, but I have the same issues with my personal phone. Anyway, that's enough of that.

Clearly, it's been a while since I posted. In the post move ruckus, I was dealing with the normal change stuff, but when I planned the move, I seem to have forgotten just how extensive my old website was. All kinds of crazy stuff that I don't recall creating/linking to - but it's there, so I must have done it. Apparently.

Anyway, when I'm not checking out the missing file error log, then I've been tweaking things. Oh, and working on the continued success of raising the kids and all that other fun/crazy stuff. Which reminds me: parentingchronicles.com seems to be offline, largely in part due to the way that the site is configured. Sorry, can't change it now, but that will be fixed shortly (I hope).

What's new.... Well, the kids are almost done with school for the year. We had the kindergarten picnic earlier this week - it went well, I thought - and we also bought a new camera: The Canon PowerShot A560. It's a super-fancy 7.1MP digital camera with 4x optical zoom and some other fancy stuff - like the new Automatic Face Finder thingee, which is all the rage with the cool kids of late. If your camera doesn't have that, then you're camera is old and weak. Really. You should just give up and go home ;).

Anyway, like I said it's a great camera. The LCD is 2.5", which is pretty big - much bigger than we're used to. It makes it easy to see what you're getting a photo of, and makes it really easy to make sure you got the right shot. The only bad photos I've taken so far have been the ones with bad poses - or the usual eyes closed thing - I don't think there's a feature that can fix that, but I keep looking....

We've only taken a few photos with it so far, but as I said, they've been mostly good ones. :noah: has a T-Ball game today, so I'm hoping that I'll be able to get some good photos during the game. If not (it will be me and three kids), then I'm hoping to be able to post some of the photos from Kindergarten picnic the other day.

We've also got some exciting stuff going on in the schooling front. Miss Abigail (Miss B or just plain :abby: ) is making the exciting from pre-school to Kindergarten. We don't know who her teacher will be next year (although we're liking Ms. Griffin after all of Noah's success this year) we're sure she'll do fine.

Noah is moving up to the multi-age program. I think I've covered this before, but it's two classrooms that are both 1st and 2nd graders. It's a co-operative learning environment. I don't know much about the theories behind it, I just know that the school has had a lot of success with the program, they're proud of it, and :emma: had a good time with it when she was in the program. If our luck holds, Abby will be in the program in two years, which would mean that she and Noah will be together in some of their classes. Hopefully they'll do a little better dealing with each other than they do now - but since that's in two years, I'm hopeful that things will be ok.

:ethan: is progressing nicely. We're not doing anything formal with him, but he's a bit of a sponge when it comes to learning things. He's working on colors, knows a shape or two, and is just a great, funny little monkey. He's got more than a few words under his belt, and he's starting to put toddler sentences together, which makes everyones lives easier ("I want cookie" is much more likely to get a cookie and no tears than "That!" and a lot of pointing in a general direction). Plus, who doesn't love hearing "Daddy!" shouted when he spots me coming home and then a big hug from a little monkey? The other kids are all "Oh, hey, your home - can I have a snack?" or something.

Well, I think that's enough updating for now. Emma's got a party to go to, I have to get ready and then get the other three ready for the T-Ball game, and then there's supposed to be some time for some lawn mowing later today, I hope. Well, maybe. Photos and updates, and will hopefully resume on a more frequent basis starting later today - depending on how T-Ball goes, I should think.

So, on October 4, I was browsing a site, checking out pricing for some computer gadgets. As I occasionally do, I decided to do a price check on some network cameras. I don't _need_ one, but they're kinda cool, and I'd like to get one if the prices ever come down below $50 - they might be handy to have so I can see what's going on at home when I'm not there - enough said.

I noticed that one of the adverts on the search results page was to get a free camera. "Sure, but what's the catch" I said to myself - I've been down this road before, and never bothered to go past the page where they explain that they'll spam you and everyone you know if you sign up.