Category: General commentary

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The smell of fresh Gingerbread

Well, I finally – at long last – got my Droid 2 Global updated to Android 2.3, also known as Gingerbread.  Due to having installed a root app and a few other changes, it took a few tries.  I finally had to load the stock factory SBF image onto the phone, which thankfully doesn’t seem to have wiped any of my data.  After that Gingerbread installed just fine, and I’m enjoying the new look and a few different features.

One little issue that has been something of an a irritant since I started using Android…  the dialer/contact list.  With 2.2 (Froyo) you’d hit either the dialer or the contacts icon, and the dialer would pop up showing either the dialer (dial pad) or your contact list – whichever you used last.  A little annoying.  In 2.3 it acts exactly the same way.  I have an icon for Dialer and an icon for Contacts.  If I hit Contacts, it brings up my contact list.  If I exit that and hit Dialer, it brings up my contact list again – and I have to switch to the dial pad.  After switching, the next time I hit the Contacts icon it’s back to the contact list again.  So…  why does Contacts always bring up the contact list, but Dialer doesn’t always bring up the dial pad?  It just feels like a stupid little oversight.  Overall, though, I like the new look, and there are a lot of little changes that just give it a little bit of an improved “feel”.

It’s got me wondering how long I’ll have to wait for Ice Cream Sandwich…

 

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Migration time

I’m going to start moving my old web pages under the WordPress blog.  Over to the right side you’ll see a list of “Pages”, which is where the content will show up.  It’s going to take a while, but I really do need to move some of the old stuff over.  Of course if I find out I can still use the copy of Frontpage I’ve got installed down on the PC in the basement, I may change my mind and just link to those instead.

In other words, this is all extremely experimental at this point.

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Why I’m Leaving GoDaddy

There are a couple of reasons why I’m migrating off of GoDaddy’s virtual dedicated hosting service.

For one thing, I’m really not all that happy with GD to begin with.  While they haven’t done anything lately that has massively pissed me off, they have done so before.  Like when they claimed they had backups of my web hosting account stuff.  Well, they did, sort of.  When I needed it, they wanted to charge me $149 and it would take them two weeks to restore the data.  ‘Scuse me?  They should be able to rebuild an entire data center in two weeks.  Come on.  Then there was the time I contacted their tech support (and I do use that term loosely).  My virtual dedicated server (their term for a VM) was sputtering and dying, logging thousands of “NIC_NL waiting binding to NETLINK_ISCSI socket” errors.  Turns out their host machine was having problems which apparently went undetected for weeks.  It seems they didn’t even know it until I emailed their tech support.  Then they gave me some bullshit song and dance about “This process is most likely used for an internal purposes and unfortunately due to security reasons we are unable to go more in depth on this process.“  I suspect that means, “We don’t know what it was, so we rebooted the host and it went away”.  I don’t know.  I suspect they don’t either.  It really bothers me, though, that they apparently have no monitoring in place to tell them when things start going south.  I just wonder how many people on the same host wiped and re-imaged their VMs trying to fix the problem. 

Then there is the cost.  I have found what appears to be a very good hosting provider that charges 1/3 less per month, and their add-on services like extra bandwidth and disk space – should I ever need them — are FAR less expensive.  They also don’t treat their customers like complete imbeciles, and their web site is not a constant barrage of upsell that makes it hard to get to the stuff you’re paying for.  Anyway, I’m switching over to Linode.  The prepaid domain registrations and stuff will stay with GD for now, but I have zero allegiance to them – so if someone else has a better deal for domain registration when mine start to expire, I’ll yank that business from them as well.

 

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“What, you’re not on Facebook?”

Man…  I get this question from time to time, and it’s tough to restrain myself from going off on a minor rant.  Sometimes I don’t succeed.  So, I’m going to spell it out here, and never speak of it again.  I hope.

I have a number of problems with Facebook and other so-called “social networking” sites — Twitter, Myspace, and whatever new thing Google is throwing into the mix this week.  Some of these issues extend to so-called “cloud” services like Picasa, Google Docs and the hundreds of similar “Give us your stuff, we’ll take care of it for you” businesses.  Most of the issues I have revolve around three major points:

  1. Privacy.  Regardless of what you may think, Facebook and other sites are not secure.  There are fairly regular and major incidents involving privacy breeches involving Facebook and similar sites.  YOU may not always be able to get to your stuff (see below), your friends might not be able to, but you can bet that people you don’t want to will have access to it all from time to time — and you don’t know when, or how much of it.  If you bother to read the terms of service that you agree to (and which gets changed from time to time), you will see that you’re giving these people the right to use everything — your name, pictures, video and everything else — forever — however they see fit.  When they need a new revenue stream, where do you think that’s going to go?
  2. Information overkill.  Do we really need to know every random thought that passes through the head of every person you’ve ever known, and quite a few you don’t know?  How many examples of Facebook-spawned fights, feuds and divorces have there been?  It’s said that absence makes the heart grow fonder.  It can certainly provide the distance needed to maintain civility with people you don’t need (or want) to see or talk to every day.
  3. Security of data.  This pertains to social networking sites to some degree, but even more to the so-called “cloud” and other on line services.  Keep your stuff on storage media that you own and control.  Want to make sure you have copies of all your pictures and video?  Better keep it on CD, DVD, portable drives, whatever.  Keep backups.  Spitting it out to some web based service may be quick and easy, but in the end you have absolutely no control over what happens to it, nor any guarantee that it will be there when you want it.

So, no, I’m not on Facebook.  And I’m OK with that.

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Catching up on reading

I’m reading Brave New World…  somehow I managed to make it all the way through junior high and high school without having to read it.  Ditto for Animal Farm, although I believe I did read 1984.  It’s somewhat dated, but so far fairly interesting.  Always entertaining to read something that tries to predict the future state of the world, from 40 or more years back.  In the case of Brave New World, for example, there is virtually no mention of computers or personal communications devices (phones, etc) which would be an enormous part of any future world.  Of course Huxley would have had no way of foreseeing this in ’32.

One of these days I’ll finish reading John Adams, I think I made if about 2/3 of the way through.

 

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Another WordPress hack

This time some jackass(es) uploaded changes to several popular WP plug-ins that provided back door access to servers on which they were installed. Yet another reason to assume control of (and responsibility for) your own systems. I also try not to jump immediately on new updates of plugins and new software versions. The way I figure it, your chances of updating to a hacked version of something is reduced dramatically if you wait a few days or weeks after an update is released. It’s one reason I like to be informed of available updates, but not automatically have them installed — and I don’t want to be nagged (Avast, Adobe, Nikon…).

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CNC to the rescue!

I’ve got a big box of very expensive parts that all need to be modified due to a screw-up in a circuit board I had made. Tossing either the boxes or the boards is out of the question. I can fix the cabinets with a file, but doing so takes a lot of time and does some nerve damage to my fingers.

Enter the CNC machine. I bought a 1/32″ end mill and wrote a short program to shave exactly the right amount of metal from each hole that needs fixing. Now I can do one cabinet every 4 minutes, every one of them is perfect, and it’s far less stressful on the operator (me). The only trade-off it that it’s pretty noisy, between the CMC machine and the shop vac to suck up all the metal shavings.

I love this machine… 🙂

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Class actions

I got a post card in the mail today about yet another class action lawsuit.  This time it’s Sirius XM.  Apparently some people (probably former XM customers) were upset that Sirius bought XM, then raised their prices.  Well, yeah.  It’s a time honored tradition.  You buy up your competition, become king of the hill, and charge what you want.  Or sometimes you buy up your competition because they were close to going under anyway, and raise your prices so you don’t follow them down the hole.  So of course they got sued for anti-trust violations, and agreed to a settlement.

Naturally the customers who were affected got…  nothing, squat, dick.  Not that I care; it didn’t affect me in the slightest.  The settlement terms basically say that groups of customers can renew their subscriptions at the current rate, people who dropped their subscription can renew without a reactivation fee, and no one gets any cash.  Except, of course, the lawyers who will without a shadow of doubt get their hefty portion of the estimated $180 million in settlement valuation.  And of course Sirius XM might possibly get a bunch of subscribers back.  It’s like the Blockbuster class action settlements…  millions of people got coupons for a buck or two, to be used the next time they rented from Blockbuster.  I bet they (Blockbuster) really felt the sting from that!

What an incredible victory for the consumer.  Or maybe everyone but the consumer.  Class action lawsuits seem to be a are pretty good business to be in if you’re a lawyer, and if you’re a cagey defendant you can twist it around to your advantage.  In the end the only people who get screwed are the customers, who have to bear the cost of the whole sideshow.

 

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Too much workie, not enough play, and Spring harvest?

Been spending WAY too much time indoors, especially in the basement.  Working on stuff, creating more work, and most of all, definitely NOT getting the bike (either one!) out for its much needed exercise.  That’s OK, though…  this is temporary, I keep telling myself.  Got a few more weeks of hard work, then I can relax at least a little and enjoy the summer.  All of this work will allow us to enjoy some much needed and long awaited leisure time, especially next winter when we need it most!

I’ve been watching the progress of our apricot tree this Spring.  For the first time in a couple of years now, the weather has not been too cold, too wet or too generally crappy — and we have apricots!  Lots and lots of them.  Right now they’re green and about the size of nickels and quarters.  Need to get some bug spray on them, as I can already see some have little nibbles taken out of the skins.  I’d hate to lose them all to bugs!

Last year we had a good number of apples, but nearly every single one was eaten by insects.  The worst was late in the year when they ripened, they were besieged by wasps.  Seriously, who knew wasps like apples?  I was knocking down the empty shells of apples, and watching a dozen or so big fat wasps come out through holes in the skin.  That won’t be a problem this year.  I’m going to remove the buds from the tree and let it spend this year growing instead of producing fruit, then in the fall I’ll lop off the lower branches.  It’s getting to be a pain in the ass to mow around.  I may prune up the apricot tree as well after this year.  I don’t know how long it will last, though; it’s a little too close to a big sugar maple and I’m afraid  the maple is about to kill it off.

Hmmm…  maple trees…  maple syrup, maybe…  ?