TechProsaic

Yesterday in a meeting I did something fun and pointless (which made it more fun!). Using my now mostly trusty hp iPaq 4150, I connected a terminal services session using the Pocket PC RDP client to my laptop over wifi. Then, I ran conf.exe and joined my boss’s Netmeeting conference–now in progress. He looks over at me funny but says nothing. A few minutes later he is sharing his Powerpoint presentation to everyone at 1024 x 768 rez. Then I show off to everyone his presentation on my little 320×240 screen. It was kinda funny. I can see about two words before I have to scroll. Quite useless! But it got a laugh out of everyone, which I guess was the point.

During the meeting I put the iPaq down and it powered off after a couple of minutes of inactivity. I tried to reconnect to my laptop but it failed. When I got back to my desk after the meeting I found that my laptop was totally hung. Had to reset the bastard. It’s ok, it was worth it.

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When I setup my desk at a new (to me) HP site I brought some of my Legos. Turns out there is a guy a couple of cubes up who is crazy about legos–seriously. Well I was going to put my kits together “by the book”, but he started fiddling so I just left him to it. Now just about every time I come up here, I have new creatons.

I had a co-worker shoot some pics with her Ericsson phone. Not the best quality, but you can get the idea.

The Flying Crane’s propeller turns when the wheels move.

The Mobile Catapult really fires. The white piece is the catch and its connected to a trigger you can’t see in this picture.

Here is the Bionicle Chariot. It doesn’t do much but roll.

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This makes blogging from my pda much faster. Still takes a little getting used to though. I like it, however, HP decided to put many non-English characters on here, meaning there are 14 meta-keys I will never use. wööt! ¡Voy al baño, séñor! I don’t even know what a “ß” is.

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For wasting your time with this incredibly addictive game.

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N is a small 2D platform game, really simple graphics, reminds me of a cross between Lode Runner, Xiao Xiao, and Ninja Gaiden. The game is a small Flash application, nothing to really install, you just extract the archive. It runs on Windows and Mac, and in Linux using WINE.

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While reading the What Newsreader Do You Use? article on therssweblog (which I highly recommend you read), I came across some good tips and several new toys to try out. Day-to-day I find myself using Bloglines the most. Since its a web-based tool, I can get to my news from anywhere, which I find useful. However–I am in Outlook all day so of course Newsgator looked really cool. I tried out the trial and did like it, but couldn’t bring myself to pay the $29 for it since I do use two different computers often and you can’t beat Bloglines for that. But I had known about these tools already. The best new thing found in the aforementioned article was intraVnews. intraVnews, like Newsgator, integrates well into Outlook. Unlike Newsgator however, it’s free. Now, I know that Newsgator is going for the whole service package thing and for the money, I think you do get a lot of added value. intraVnews has about the same core set of features, and I like the options and add subscription dialogs a bit better. It definitely passes the One Day Rule.

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Cool! Reading the news today I found a link to Jeff Sandquist today. I’ve heard of him before but I couldn’t remember when or where. So I read his blog, thinking maybe it would come back to me. Almost to the bottom of the page, I see where he referred to my comment referring to his Seven-Day Rule for evaluating new software. Here’s what he wrote on his blog about me:

Sweet! I’m so lame it took me near a month to find it.

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(I’m writing this from my iPaq, and that is pretty geeky. A little slow, but geeky.)

I achieved two geeky milestones this weekend. The first is that I installed Anapod on my PC. No, it gets better! I wrote about Anapod a week ago or so. It is a sync tool that can replace iTunes for music management of an iPod. It does not have a store, like iTunes, but for someone like me who already has a fair-sized library, you get what you need, plus some pretty cool extras. One of those extras (here comes the geeky part) is a built-in streaming audio server. So obviously, I just *had* to listen to the music on my iPod wirelessly over wifi from my HP h4155 iPaq. Pretty pointless, yet somehow satisfying!

Geek event #2:

You know those cheap plastic helicopter toys that fly 20 feet high or so after you pull on a string-wrapped axle? Well the neighbor kid had one which his dad promptly broke after two pulls. Not to be discouraged, we took the launcher apart to get at the axle. A bit of hacksawing produced a small mandrell that, once a screw was inserted, fit *perfectly* into the chuck of my Dremel tool! After a couple of practice runs, I had it flying pretty well. When next at my computer, I’ll upload some pics and a short video.

Media: (the guy in these is my neighbor Steve)
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Videos: low-quality (322k avi) / high-quality (1.38mb avi) [Windows Media Player 9 required, sorry if you don’t have that, I’m playing with codecs so bear with me.]

[4/11/04 11:34pm edit: added hyperlinks and photos & stuff]

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I got a call Friday (actually earlier, but we played phone tag for a few days) from a lady at Apple. She was from the Executive Customer Relations department. She was nice, but did not offer to do anything for me out of the ordinary aside from act as liason to the technical support and repair departments. But by this time I had already sent the DOA re-replacement back once more and it was in Atlanta by Friday (arrived at my house that evening). I asked “what can you do to make it up to me”. Took many minutes, and much demurrals on her part, but I eventually got her to agree to some concessions on Apple’s part.

They are sending to me the iPod Remote & Earphones and the XtremeMac iPod Case Black. Total retail price = $60. That’s what I paid for the extended warranty, so that works out pretty well. I still wish they gave me a new iPod to reset the warranty date, but I’m still out ahead for what I have. Wish it did not take three weeks and hours of phone calls.

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I have just about had it with Apple. I wrote about some problems I’d had with my iPod a bit ago. Well the troubles keep going. I received a new (actually brand-new, not a refurb) unit in the mail in short order, once I finally completed the musical boxes routine. Guess what? It was DOA. I sent that unit back for repair, and they sent the same unit back–unrepaired.

Today I sent this (42k pdf) letter addressed to Steve Jobs via Priority Mail. I wrote “Hal Rottenberg, a customer” on the return label. I’m hoping that plus the letter-sized priority mail envelope will get attention. Who knows.

In the meantime, I’ve begun the process yet again to get the iPod repaired. I’m becoming quite familiar with the process. If anyone has questions about the return and warranty policies, let me know–I’m an expert.

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