Rollertoaster

I like to have some toasted bread for breakfast mainly on weekends when I have the time to sit down and have a long drawn out breakfast. My current toaster take a few minutes to toast so I don’t do this before work, crumbs everywhere and all that jazz. Anyway, as I was thumping around on my internet travels today I came across an Industrial designer from Singapore -Jaren Goh (wonder if he’s related to my friend Liyen Goh?) who created a toaster he calls the Roller Toaster. Basically you stick the bread in one side of this thing and you get toasted bread coming out the other end. Quite frankly the device looks like my Mac Mini power adapter with a heated core in the middle. A bit longer but it has that neat Apple-ish look to it. I noticed that a few other items in his portfolio had a Mac like look to them as well. Not sure that the toaster would help with my crumb problem perhaps if you put a tray right next to it. I wonder how you can prevent your fingers from getting burnt if you are making extra toast fro friends one right after the other. I also wonder how long it takes to toast?

No Stratus Grant for US

I found out that we didn’t get the grant that we applied for today. Congratulations to all the other places that did receive it. We haven’t gotten our rejection letter yet I found out by going to the grants website after my Boss informed me that he didn’t received any word one way or the other. It would have been exciting scrambling around to get the project done in six months and we were looking forward to it but guess we have to try again somewhere else or put the project on the shelf for a later time. The project has to get done some way or the other so its just a matter of coming up with the funds to do it.

Trying Journler Again

I’ve been looking for a journaling program for my Mac. Actually I’m looking for one for my work PC as well. I just stumbled upon Journler just now while checking out TUAW. I wish that they made this for Windows but this seems to be a strictly Mac app. Funny that I often find a program for the Mac that I wish they made for Windows but not nearly as often the other way around. Except for Photofiltre and MS Publisher I can’t think of much else. Oh this is another try Journler worked after I added /xmlrpc.php after the blog URL in the XML-RPC window. Tricky little bugger. It found all my categories. This is a really nice program. Only thing is I can’t post edits like I can with Ecto which I do alot…

Happy Thanksgiving

Its 9:15PM and I’m back from stuffing myself with turkey and other delights. Speaking of delights I had some turkish delights tonight haven’t had this in a while. It was from Bulgaria though not Turkey but yummy anyway. I had a good time and found myself watching some cartoons and such. I did the responsible thing and walked home instead of drive b/c I knew that I would have a couple glasses of wine and besides the night was nice and I thought walking would be a good thing. Its was! The streets were bare once in a while a car or a person would go by. You could smell all the Thanksgiving food and drink coming out of people’s houses as you went by it was so quiet. Kinda nice I haven’t had a Thanksgiving like that where I walked and just listened and smelled and felt the fresh air rushing on my face and the quiet it was very nice and I was thankful that there was no snow or ice out there like last Thanksgiving. No driving home with Enya’s new album blaring in my ear this time, keeping me calm at the wheel as I slide along on the snow and ice. Just some Capercaillie banging in my ear on low volume so I could take in the serenity before me.

Almost Done

So I finally finished installing the last of the programs on my machine today. Everything works except for the ArcGIS Pictometry Link tool. This allows you bring up an image in EFS by clicking on a spot on your map. I use this for exporting an image mainly now this doesn’t exactly work with ArcGIS 9.2. I’m wondering when ESRI will release a patch so I can install IE 7 right now they say stay away and IE 6 is killing me… We aren’t suppose to install other Browsers at work (don’t even get me started on why we can’t install Firefox). Anyway, all is well except for our email program which has been a constant pain since I laid eyes on it anyway. I think that we are switching next year to a better email client that will allow us to have to-do lists, calendars, archiving and all that other kind of stuff I took for granted at my previous place of employment. I’m just glad that my computer is back up and running. Now I just have to work out a few quirks and start churning out those surveys…

Hard Drive Reformatting Time

I spent the better part of my afternoon today reformatting the hard drive of my PC at work. Although I haven’t reformatted a HD in a year or so since I don’t have a Windows PC at home anymore I was surprised at how much I remembered. It wasn’t as daunting as I thought it would be and everything worked like a charm. Its one of the easier reformats I’ve done mainly because the HP computers came with a restore CD that you stick in and it walks you through the process. The only thing that I didn’t like was that the utility only allow you 2 hard drive partition choices Fat 32 @32xxx or NTFS at 76xxx my HD was 80 GB and I wanted three smaller partitions. I created the three partitions and finished up the rest in the Windows XP environment. I made sure that I got that antivirus on there really quickly in fact I got some paranoid-about this I disabled my network card and forgot to enable it after I installed the Novell Client which meant that I couldn’t find any of my servers. I figured it out soon enough and now all seems to be well. Tomorrow I have to reinstall the rest of my software oh all the work… put in the CDs wait for Windows to fatten up my registry again. I am amazed at how much faster the system is without all those programs on it though…

NEARC 2006

Wow! Its been a hectic couple of weeks. I just came back from the 2006 Annual NEARC Users Conference yesterday. It was a long drive up to Connecticut from here especially since we had some car troubles on the way up. We ended up getting there a day later and lost our hotel which was a bit of a drag since we had to find a place to stay and ended up having to drive back and forth at the end of the day. They gave us a nice suite in another Hotel 10 minutes away but we were hardly there except to sleep since all the activities were happening at the Mystic Marriot. That aside I had a wonderful time. I enjoyed meeting new people (this was my first NEARC conference), enjoyed the fun activities that we had (still sore from the limbo contest) and I found the content of the presentations and workshops to be both challenging and inspirational. I’m really looking forward to plunging into ArcGIS Server now that I’ve acquired some extra familiarity and some of the new tools in ArcGIS 9.2. Just got the Arc 9.2 boxes in today but I have to reformat my hard drive first. This reminds me of why I use a Mac at home.

Day Off

It was my day off today and I decided to take the opportunity to get some much needed exercise by going for a little hike. I was sorry that I didn’t bring my camera with me because I found more than a few kodak moments. As a treat to myself I decided that I would go check out the Apple section of a certain campus store not too far uphill. After much huffing and puffing up the hill I arrived at the store and went to the Apple section to see if they had any floor models of the new 24″ iMacs. I really just wanted to see what the footprint was like. After browsing for a bit I noticed that they didn’t have any… in fact all they had was what looked like an older 17″ iMac. I turned my face away from the iMac and went to look at the Macbooks (wanted to see if they had any of the new ones). I couldn’t get there coz this young man was all over this black Macbook (the one I was interested in looking at). He was asking the salesperson a lot of questions and I found myself answering a bunch of them on her behalf. I got a little irritated actually coz here I was my day off, just wanting a bit of eye-candy and I was Mac-evangelizing to this kid who was trying his best to get one (he couldn’t get over how small and cute the computer was). They of course didn’t have any of the new ones in stock and the young man wanted to get one today coz he didn’t have a computer at all. It turns out that he dropped his previous Macbook more than a few times and it doesn’t work anymore. He was hot to buy and they told this kid he had to wait two weeks. He also had some legitimate questions about the Macbook vs. the Macbook Pro vs. a Thinkpad which his friend was looking at. After the salesperson got a bit stumped on the specs and such I found myself answering this kid’s questions once again. Salesperson #2 came over and I decided that I would just walk away and let them do their jobs instead of doing it for them. Since they didn’t have the new Macbooks anyway, it wasn’t worth it for me so I just plugged my iPod back in my ear walked out of the store and continued back down the hill towards home. The whole thing left me wondering three things (1) Maybe I should get a job in that store I seem to know more about the product than the salespeople there- The hours wouldn’t work for me though since I already have another job (2) The salespeople at the store didn’t know the products very well which can affect sales big time especially when there are competing products around (3) Why does it take 2 weeks for someone to get a new computer? I realize that the new models just came out earlier this week but still 2 weeks seems a bit long to wait. On the Apple store the estimated shipping date says 1-3 business days but the salesperson told this kid 2 weeks. I’m wondering how often this type of misinformation gets communicated back to customers… Its funny on my way up the hill I was wondering why Apple has stores to sell their wares and why we don’t see more Apple computers at Best Buy and places like that. I think that after my little experience in the store today I’ve answered my own question.

Waiting in Line

I was waiting in line at the grocery store today and as I was waiting I noticed three ladies of Asian decent in front of me (2 directly and one on my left). As I stood there I glanced at them, then glanced at my groceries (jasmine rice, oyster sauce…) I looked back at them again and I was transported back to my Aunt’s house in Jamaica (where I was in April) and the conversation she had with us. Being older than my Mom she was telling us about my great-grandma who was from China, had apparently ended up in Panama and decided to settle in Jamaica. I knew there was some Asian connection in my family but did not know the full story. Anyway, my mind went back to the conversation for a second and then I found myself staring at these women in the grocery store and wondering what my great-grandma looked like? Was she short like the lady in-front of me or tall like the lady in the next isle? What was she like? Did she like to joke around like my Mom often does? Was she always serious? Was she happy? Somehow all these thoughts started racing in my head. I look down at my groceries again and I waited some more. Its funny that I can tell the difference between a Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese person. Some of my friends wonder how but I just know the difference. Its like when I listen to Mandarin or Cantonese I don’t understand a word but they sound familiar for some reason that I can’t explain every-time I hear it I’m transported to another place and another time. I admit that I like movies with these languages and I tend to understand what’s going on w/out even looking at the translation after a while… and the poetry of it all, the colors… I’m lost in it, simply lost. Who knows what my great-grandma’s story is, perhaps I’ll never hear the whole thing but somehow a part of her was passed on to me and although I don’t understand it I’m thankful for it. I finally exited the store and sort of smiled to myself as I went on… Its funny you look at me and I’m dark like my father but there is this mystery behind those brown eyes that my great-grandma left behind.

Zune Video Walkthrouh

I’m an iPod owner so when I heard about Microsoft’s upcoming Zune and saw the photos I wasn’t all that excited. Basically, being the visual eye-candy sort, the Zune did not appeal to my visual side. However, I do have to admit that the screen size is quite appealing and the fact that it comes with a FM radio integrated is pretty sweet. Turns out that Engadget has a walkthrough of the interface. Here is a nice Quicktime H.264 video. The community features are also quite slick. Apple could take a few cues from the Zune functionalities although they still have them beat for eye-candy. There is talk of a new iPod widescreen coming out for December but they are so tight lipped in Curpetino who knows what we’ll see. Its nice to hear though that Uncle Steve has given away the new 2G Shuffle to all the Apple employees. Not a bad marketing idea they’ll be showing them off all over the place and next thing you know the kids will want a couple for Christmas. Gosh iPods are becoming like candy nowadays albeit $79 worth.