Bluetooth etiquette

Ok, this is a pet peeve of mine. You engage someone in a conversation and they leave their bluetooth headset in their ear as they talk to you. Sorry, but this is really annoying.

Please, take off your headset when talking to someone face to face.

Aside from being annoying, you really look like a moron.

Unless, of course, you are Uhura. Then its ok. But even SHE took it off when she would leave her station... hmmm.... I think we'll credit her for the first ever headset etiquette statement. ;-)

Sweet walker

I've always been a fan of walking for robot locomotion. These guys have built a heck of a walker with resilience and excellent load carrying capabilities.

toaster, meet microwave

I think the engineers who designed Seth's toaster also designed my microwave.

I've blogged about this microwave before, and even though its been almost a year, I still hate it. The scary thing is that I'm actually getting used to it, but as soon as I use a normal microwave, its like a breath of fresh air.

How easy (or difficult) is your product/service to use?

What if you could decrease the number of clicks to buy a product from your website by one?

What if you could remove some paperwork for customers to sign?

What if, instead of a complicated interface, your product had a big green button on it labeled, "GO!"?

What if....

Made the switch

Finally made the switch to an iPhone. Yeah yeah, I said I'd wait for 3G, but I gotta say that I'm addicted to my iPod Touch and every day that passed was a day of wishing I would have kept that test iPhone last fall.

Also - the thought of traveling abroad with a lame assed loaner Sprint phone kinda pushed the issue a little bit. Just a little. ;-)

I bought a refurb'd iPhone from Apple and I gotta say, if it was used prior to me, there's nothing to indicate as such. I've always been impressed with Apple's refurbished products and if you were looking at saving some money on an iPhone, you can purchase with confidence. (note - AT&T just announced refurbished iPhones at $150 off retail! That's $100 better than Apple)

I hate that when that happens

Noticed in my quarantine digest this morning that Cloudmark is getting hammered by a joe job'er again. They seem to be a favorite target of spammers lately.

I don't know why spammers think that using an anti-spam company's domain in their spam attacks will help. Its not like we whitelist our domains in our products... Well, WE don't... BUT! I know some manufacturers have spacial rules for competitors and block their domains... now I'm not gonna mention a company who does this kind of FISHY activity, but I think somehow you can tell who I'm referring to. ;-)

En route

Whew!

Tick, Tock

When you're life is hanging in the balance, a minute can seem like an hour. Last night while transferring between the twins (that's what I call my two MBP's), I got down to the final minute (see pic below) of transfer before getting my life back.... I sat by holding my breath for a minute... Then two .... three and finally had to suck in some oxygen as the machine kept hanging there. 10 minutes... 20.....45....

Ok, this isn't working. Imagine this; its like 10pm and I've spent the better part of my Saturday resurrecting my machine(s) after the bungled 10.5 update, and in the last literal seconds, my Mac lifts its leg and pees on me. Freakin' amazing.

In the end, I prevailed. NEVER SAY DIE! Of course now that I can use Apple's Time Machine, I probably will never need it. ;-)

Uh oh

I finally got around to installing Leopard on my two machines yesterday. The backup twin MBP went without fail and works like a charm. Such that I did something stupid. I started the main MBP's upgrade without first backing it up.

The install failed.

Reboot and try again.

Then it failed again.

It actually booted into 10.5 after the second failure, and I'm using it now in this mode. Of course, my backup drives are at the office so I'm running in first thing this morning to get 'em and back this sucker up before anything else bad happens.

This is really annoying.

Catching up

Lets see....

NYC was quick. Too quick. Lots of rain. So much that I ruined my favorite pair of boots slogging through it all. It was nice to experience the city as a tourist for once. Of course with the rain we didn't get to do some things, but still had a blast.

Sunday was a hike. NYC to DTW to GRB, and then 5 hours later, GRB to DTW to MCO. Orlando's service providers at the airport are a disaster. There's a lot of lessons there on how NOT to run a service oriented business. With all the tourists they get through there, its amazing they're so clumsy at it.

Some of you have pinged me as to why I'm quiet on the Apple SDK. Actually, I've been too busy to post about it, but in the nutshell I think Apple really nailed it. Sure its not perfect, but I think they did a heck of a lot of things right and this is only the beginning. I was thrilled to watch Steve open the presentation with the statement that this is a major PLATFORM for Apple. I don't think many people fully grasp where this is all headed. Apple gets it. Microsoft, Nokia and the others don't.

I love my new USB EVDO card, but I forgot the software for Adam's machine so he can't use it. D'oh! Oh well, that's what internet sharing is for... Just look for my snarkly named wireless network... ;-)

And finally, we saw the shuttle go up last night - for about 3 seconds. Low clouds kinda ruined our view. Oh well. Perhaps next time. (photo is AP, not mine)

Busy week!

Wow! Time flies when you're having fun (ie. busy), and I've been super busy both at work, home and in between. Last Thursday was the Green Bay Entrepreneur's Conference. While I had reservations about the turnout as a result of the website being non-existent, I was pleasantly surprised by the numbers, and more importantly, the quality of the attendees. But more on that later...

Things are heating up in terms of travel starting with a NYC east coast trip later this week, InfoSec Orlando next week (and I hope to hit Coco Beach and catch the Shuttle launch Monday night!) and then the SecureWorld series starts. April is a death march opening with RSA (major product launch for us!), ending with Interop and in between we have Web 2.0 in SF and Infosecurity London which compete for my time in the same week. THAT should be interesting in terms of scheduling, no doubt. Then we get rolling with the ITEC spring series that runs until the end of June.

So much for dropping a level on Northwest's elite program. (smirk)

So, while I sort out posting from the recent events, enjoy today's sunset shot. Spring is just around the corner. I can't wait! ;-)