razmaspaz

I just finished reading an article on Vista SP1.

http://www.dailytech.com/Vista+SP1+Problems+Bug+Some+Users/article11164c.htm

Thats a lot of problems.  A major update to your OS causes some users to get stuck in a boot loop.  I really do feel for MS on this.  Its exactly why Apple won’t install its OS on 3rd party hardware, well that and the fact that they make all their money selling hardware.

All I can say is that I’m glad I haven’t positioned myself to be a MS customer for the next 10 years.  All that talk about leaving behind that old image of instability, and they can’t even roll a service pack out the door.

Apple announced full on Exchange support for the iPhone today.  Cool, really cool actually.  That’ll probably sell another 5 million iPhones.  What ain’t cool though is that they still haven’t updated Mail.app to support Exchange 2007 natively.  Sure, it works over IMAP, but I don’t have IMAP at work, so I’m SOL.  I’m tuck using Entourage for my corporate mail client.  Here I am with my last cord begging to be cut from the MS world, and I’m tethered by Mail.app.  its not supposed to be this way…Does Apple care more about their iPhone than their bread and butter customers, Mac users?  My guess is yes.  Oh well, where can I get an iPhone?

I’ve been up for a long time, I’ve been doing a lot of driving, and a lot of standing ot in the cold. Every bit of it has been worth it. I just got back from a great day in Wisconsin’s Driftless Area. I’m ready to go to bed, but I wanted to share the fruits of the day.

Yes, thats me with a big fish.

It was an absolutely beautiful day, made even more beautiful by big fish.

I’ve been going back and forth with Guest Poster Dylan Ross on fivecentnickel.com about market forces and a key phrase in his post :”For every dollar won over the market, one must be lost”. Ultimately I’ve decided I agree with him, but as a result of the conversation I’ve had some interesting side revelations. You can read the entire exchange in the comments. I think I’ve mostly served to frustrate Dylan, but its been a clarifying experience for me, helping to shed some misunderstandings and clarify some of my thoughts on the subject.

In my most recent response to Dylan’s comments I mention a shoe shine boy. The reference goes back to a story of John D. Rockefeller. Rockefeller was getting his shoes shined by a young boy, and the boy offered him some free advice on a stock. A tip if you will. Its assumed the boy had no idea who Rockefeller was and wanted to help the guy out. Rockefeller took a tip alright, but not the tip the boy gave him. He realized that if a shoe shine boy had advice on the market it must be overbought, and if it was overbought it was about to crash, about a year later it did just that, and Rockefeller pulled out just in time. I don’t know, or really care, that the story is true, it offers sage advice either way.

In my comment I made a comparison of the shoe shine boy to Jim Cramer. One I would think Jim wouldn’t be too happy about. Here’s my point. Jim Cramer wants to help the everyman to invest and make money in the stock market. Thats a laudable goal, and I can’t fault Jim for it at all. Jim’s show is wildly popular, I believe the most watched on CNBC. This has me wondering is Jim’s audience the shoe shine boy? Hes wildly popular with college kids, a portion of the demographic that would likely be better served spending their discretionary income on paying down debts than investing, and I think a good portion of his audience falls into a category of people who are in it for the short term.

So while Jim may have his heart in the right place, and be completely responsible in his actions on th show, I think his popularity could have been viewed as a bellwether that the market was overbought.

I don’t know what to do with that information. I’ve learned over time that trying to time the market is a fools errand. It does however make an interesting intellectual discussion. Take it for what its worth.

I was perusing the latest barrage of tips from Lifehacker today and I realized something.  Once or twice a day Lifehacker has some tidbit about Windows Vista, and I completely glaze over it.  I have distanced myself so far from Vista that I don’t even care about tips and news for the OS.  I can officially say I have never used, nor do I plan to ever use, the new OS.

That got me thinking.  Can I actually make it the rest of my life without using Vista?  I think the answer is yes.   I have a tower in my office that still has XP on it, but its just waiting for a motherboard upgrade for an excuse to become a Linux box.  (I’m not going Linux until I go 64bit)

When I say I’ve never used it, I mean I’ve never sat at a keyboard where the OS was installed, and I’ve never even sat through a demo of its features.  I think its fair to say I simply don’t care about the OS.  So will the day come when I’m using it at work?

Secretly I’m holding onto the idea that everyone will be using a Mac by the time that XP goes on the de-support list, but the truth is that won”t happen.  So will Vista become the OS of choice when XP is dropped, or will XP just continue to live on?  Personally I hope it survives.  It is afterall a pasable OS.  It functions reasonably well, doesn’t crash, and is (at least in my view) reasonably secure if you don’t go clicking on ads for porn and pills.  So maybe It’ll just stick around on extended support contracts for the next 20 years…IBM has managed to build an entire business on 30 year old mainframe support contracts because their stuff just works, so why can’t MS do the same?  They just might have to if Vista keeps turning out the sales numbers it has been.

If its important to point out complete and utter bullshit when it crops up, its even more important to point to the good stuff when it comes along.

The writing is terse and fragments are all over the page, but a sense place, like the feeling you get when drinking a great Burgundy, drips off the page. This is one of the best articles I’ve read in a long time, and possibly the best I’ve ever read on fishing. Somebody please knock some ice off the tribs so I can get out and catch a fish.

I haven’t decided if its Javascript, the lack of a decent Javascript editor, or people who abuse Javascript, but something about it smells really bad. That is all!

Its no secret among my friends that I’m an Apple Fanboy. I can’t help it, life really is better on the other side of the digital divide. February has been an interesting month for me when it comes to my Mac. With all the new releases scheduled for this month, I’ve been on edge, checking update site, and wondering when Apple will be so kind as to grace my life with the presence of their newest shiny toy.

Yesterday saw the release of two things that got me excited. First was Leopard 10.5.2. You can read all about it here, so I won’t dwell on the features. The biggest gain for me was that it got rid of that stupid translucent menu bar. Another rumored (though unmentioned) fix is that Time Machine does indeed work with arbitrary network disks. This doesn’t matter too much for me, as I don’t use Time Machine yet, but it will make a big difference soon.

The second release yesterday was Busy Sync 2.0 beta. This is a sync tool that allows Google Calendar to sync with iCal. Thats 2 way sync, not subscription. Yes there were tools for this before, gCal Daemon was one, it was great, then Leopard came along, and it wasn’t great anymore. Also on the market was Spanning Sync, but I felt the almost $25/year was a little steep. Busy Sync is only $19.95 if you act fast. At the end of the month it jumps to $25.

In addition to yesterday, Apple dropped a bomb this morning. Aperture 2. I’m not upgrading just yet, I don’t take the plunge on things like this overnight, but I suspect that this will be a welcome improvement to a piece of software that is making my leap into digital photography pretty easy.

On top of all that there are still two more nuggets to come from Apple. Time Capsule, the network drive/wireless router/print server/backup utility from Apple. My wireless router is literally falling apart at the seams and goes on the fritz every couple weeks, so this is a compelling product for me. Also on the list is the iPhone SDK. I don’t own an iPhone, I won’t buy one until it has 3G and 32GB, but the SDK is highly anticipated by many. Here’s to hoping it will be a worthwhile development platform.

February has already been a good month for me and my digital sanity, lets hope that it ends with a bang and that Time Capsule and the SDK are as compelling as they were made out to be.

In this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror. This is not an easy decision. I hate to lose - Mit Romney

Yeah, thats what Romney said as he announced he was “suspending” his campaign. I’m not a political crazy. I don’t want this blog to become about politics, politicians, or anything remotely in that vein. But I do want it to point out asinine crap when it occurs.

First of all, you don’t suspend a presidential campaign. You drop out of the race. The idea of suspending it and maybe jumping back in after skipping 15 states is just plain silly. If Romney kept plowing money into the race, he might remain somewhat competitive, but with no campaigning going on, there is no way he stays competitive enough to get back in it. Why is it so hard to just say “I’m dropping out”? What is more face saving about the term suspended?

The suspended thing could be dropped, I don’t get it, but whatever. What is a big deal is his cheap parting shot. The idea that if he doesn’t drop out of the race the terrorists are going to win is silly. The very thought that voluntarily reducing the number of choices for president makes us safer from terrorism is ludicrous. Choice is American, Presidential Elections are American, screaming and yelling ’till we turn blue in the face is American. Romney’s participation in the Race was patriotic and embodies everything about this country that is so great. His dropping out was not a blow to terrorism, nor was it a windfall. It was just the passing of another candidate in this year’s running of our most American Tradition.

I read a few photography focused blogs, and of late many of them ahve been mentioning hte “You Suck at Photoshop” series. Its crude humor to be sure, but there is some good stuff to be learned in there, and its VERY funny. I’m not going to link to it, frankly because I can’t figure out the backwards video sharing site its on, but a quick google search will give up the goods. It appears that its on youtube (which was not where I watched it), so thats good.