Author Archives: Mike

About Mike

If you're reading this, you probably know me. If not, poke around and maybe you'll learn something.

A lot of geek in a small package

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Through the generous donation of time from my dear friend, Kristin, I was able to purchase an iPhone this past Saturday morning. I have to say that I’m quite pleased. Sure, I could have stuck with my current phone, but the fact is that the commercials are accurate. The device works as they say it does. I truly have a full web browser, functional email, impressive iPod, and a functional PIM all about the size of a deck of cards. I am still getting accustomed to how everything works and there are some minor nitpicks, but I think I will be quite pleased for the foreseable future.

Confused about Kristin’s involvement? Well, since the iPhone was released just over a week ago, supplies have been somewhat limited. Apple was kind enough to identify every night which of their retail stores will have some in the morning. Since the only reasonably close Apple stores are in San Diego (UTC and Fashion Valley), Kristin offered to get there early in case supplies are limited as she lives much closer. I argued with her that such an offer was unnecessary but since she insisted that she would enjoy the time away from the house to read, it would have been rude of me to decline.

All-in-all, I have a cool gadget and an even cooler friend.

No, I haven’t gotten one, yet.

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Since I’ve been essentially “off-net” for the last 10 days, I haven’t been following all of the iPhone hype leading up to it’s launch two days ago. I’ve been trying to get caught-up on feeds and, so far, I haven’t seen anything that I would classify as a “fatal flaw” with it which was my main reason for not buying one from the start. Well, that and the fact I was going to be in Canada at the time.

The one thing that I think is unfortunate, is that it doesn’t support video out from the headphone jack like the current generation of iPod with Video. My biggest concern now, which I haven’t yet determined, is whether it works with my iPod integration in my car. I wouldn’t have thought it would be a problem as they kept saying “it’s an iPod”, but it’s being reported that not all iPod accessories work properly with the iPhone.

Fortunately, my friend was going to purchase one at launch and if he has (I haven’t talked to him yet), it will take only 30 seconds to find out. Perhaps, the next you hear from me, it’ll be about my new toy.

So, would 1,000 pictures be 1,000,000 words?

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My family and I just got back today from a 3-day vacation to Seattle, WA and a 7-day cruise on the Sun Princess to Ketchikan, Juneau, and Skagway Alaska as well as Victoria, B.C. It was a blast and we all enjoyed practically every moment. I took just shy of 1,000 pictures and I hope you forgive me for not trying to equal them in this post. To attempt to do the trip justice, I’ll upload them over the next few days to my gallery. Fortunately, my work gives us not only the 4th but the 5th off this week and since working Friday after two days off would be just plain silly, I’m taking Friday off as well.

Update: I was finally able to get some of the highlights up in the gallery.

Very sexy storage option

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Even if you’re not in I.T. I’m sure you realize that having all your important data on a single drive is risky and the way data has a tendency to grow, you never have enough storage.

I recently found out about Drobo which is being touted as the world’s first storage robot. Kinda silly tag line, but the demo is extremely impressive. It’s a four disk enclosure that connects to your system (Windows or Mac) via USB and provides a very flexible and resilient storage volume for all your data. It doesn’t come with any drives but they will accept any SATA drive of any size and will automatically grow the volume and replicate the data while the system still runs. If a drive fails, just pull it out and replace it with one of equal or more size and it will rebuild the array and grow the volume, if possible.

If you watch the demo movie, you’ll get a much better idea of how it works. The downside is that the unit is $499 with no drives. I’ll have to think about it, but may have to start saving pennies.

A better browser for your cell phone

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While I wait for the upcoming iPhone, which I am likely (but not definitely) getting, I have been playing with implementing similar functionality in my existing phone. I’ve previously written about it if you want some details.

Opera Software has released a new beta of their very impressive Opera Mini. This new beta adds a full page view scaled to the phone’s display. No longer do you have to view web pages in a very tweaked format. You can scroll around and zoom in on any part of the page to read the content. It’s also quite fast.

It’s free and supports most cell phones that support most cell phones. Here’s a list of supported models.

It’s called an Oxford comma.

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English was never my best subject but if you have read my correspondence or even this blog, you can tell that I have basic, yet acceptable, command of grammar. What little I do know, I try to exercise to the point of almost obsessing at times. One such item is the use of the comma in lists. I was taught and was of the belief that you include a comma before the last item in a list. For example:

For lunch today, I had a hamburger, potato salad, and fritos.

Most people seem to omit that last comma which has been a pet peeve of mine. This past weekend, I was browsing through the Upstart Crow at Seaport Village and ran across a copy of Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss. It turns out, that particular item is called an Oxford comma and its inclusion or omission are both acceptable. Interestingly, in the U.S. it’s usually included but in the U.K. it is usually omitted.

Aren’t you glad you learned that?

Professional conferences are a necessary evil

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I’ve always been torn on the idea of attending professional conferences. I usually lean towards not going as I figure I can get any information that I need from various forms of documentation or from well crafted searches on Google so the effort and expense are not worth it.

In practice, though, I have been glad that I attended any conference that I’ve been to. It really is school. Sure, if you just have the book, you can get the information you need, but it isn’t the same as sitting and focusing on presentations to be exposed to things you wouldn’t bother with or sometimes even think about.

This conference that I’m at now is a good example. I technically knew what I needed before arriving, but having different ideas shared will make me a better administrator.

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Twitter Updates for 2007-05-10

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  • Just got settled in my hotel room and going to go foraging for food. #
  • Had a slice of pizza and watching MythBusters while surfing. #
  • update – #
  • Heading over to the Hard Rock. #
  • They’re feeding us pretty well here. #
  • You wouldn’t think that sitting at a conference listening would be tiring. You’d be wrong. #