Out of Contact

Just wanted to let everyone know that I am in Georgia visiting family.  I am thinking of trying to have an impromptu meetup with WordPressers and other interested persons at Varsity in Atlanta.

I will post more as I know more.

One of the worst days

I just had one of the most stressful days of work in my life.  There have been administration changes at my place of employment, and with it some hard looks at the way we do business.  One of those looks was the website; I am going on vacation tomorrow to see some family, and I didn't know until 5:00pm today if I would have a job when I returned.

No fun I tell you, no fun at all.  And yes, thankfully I still have a job!

A little video for you all

Here is a short little video I took this morning.  I really need to get a new camera.  Click it! (it's an MP4)

I'm a Rocket Man

I have the audio of this clip in my iTunes rotation, but there is nothing like seeing the Shat himself work it.  Behold the greatness that is William Shatner doing Rocket Man.

Rejoice you of the IT persuasion

New episodes of IT Crowd will begin airing this coming Februrary!

I was clued into a fallacy in this post by Ben, so it has been updated.

And while we are talking about the British Networks, when are you people going to get your head out of your collective arses, and stop restricting your web video of shows to only Brits.  You know, some of us over here in the colonies would like to see that stuff too.

Anywhoo, if you are an IT Professional, you need to see this show by any means neccesary... I will leave those means up to you.  Gotta run, I have to force an unexpected reboot on one of my machines.

Beat Cingular

I realized after writing this that there are probably a lot of very smart people out there who already know this.  So this little missive is for all those out there that haven't been let in on this little secret.

At its own game.  I am a mostly happy Cingular customer; the plans and the phone are great and I have never had a problem with coverage.  After todays experience I am mostly happy, but also slightly irritated customer.

Today my mother-in-law tried to buy a new phone at a Cingular retail location.  We were informed that she couldn't buy just a phone, she had to buy a bundle that included the phone and two accessories.  This put the price tag of most of the phones in the 300.00 range, which was ridiculous.  Add to that they were trying to push accessories we didn't want on us and you get outrage and 'storming out of the store'.

After some debating we left the retail location and went to a Wal-Mart, which I knew for a fact sold only phones.  Here the options were much better, but only if you renewed your plan for another cycle or two.  My mother-in-law was out of her contract and on to the month-to-month zone and liked it; no plan renewal for us which meant the phones were still in the 200.00+ range.  Luckily for us the associate in the mobile phone section decided at this time to let us in on a nasty little secret.  One that Cingular doesn't want you to know.

There is no difference from a functional standpoint between the 'pay-as-you-go' phones and the plan phones.  In fact if you already have Cingular service and buy one of the pre-paid phones, all you have to do is swap the sim cards and your pre-paid phone becomes your plan phone.  Which means that for as little as 49.95 you can upgrade your phone without having to upgrade your plan.

Now for some people the plan phones would be better.  You want all the bells and whistles that come with the higher price tag; but if all you want is to make and recieve calls then go buy a pre-paid phone and stick it to the man.

WebKit for Windows

Apparently there is a browser based on WebKit for Windows.  I haven't been able to get it to install on my intel iMac running windows yet; when I do I will update with some thoughts on the experience. — via The Hicks

Apple opening up

How about that!  Apple has thrown a curve ball to the community today by launching Mac OS Forge, and populating it with a number of pieces of software released under the apache license.

This is an exciting move by Apple.  Currently the server houses the following projects:

• Intel Kernel Source — link
• CalDav Server Source — link
• Bonjour Source — link
• Launchd Source — link
• WebKit — link

For me the biggest bit of this is the CalDav server source.  Read more about it here.

Oh, and Mac OS Forge runs on WordPress.. :)

Hiveminder: A first look

Another service that was announced at this years OSCON was Hiveminder.  Hiveminder has been described as "RT for your life" by some of its users... and I gotta say I agree.  It is currently in a private beta phase, but I was lucky enough to get an account so lets briefly look over some of the high points.

For a more in-depth look at Hiveminder, surf on over to ani ruhama.

RT for your life

If you are not familiar with RT, the site describes it this way:

RT is an enterprise-grade ticketing system which enables a group of people to intelligently and efficiently manage tasks, issues, and requests submitted by a community of users.

Hiveminder takes the best parts of RT, slaps on some AJAX and more intuitive terminology, delivering a fun and useful experience for the most part.

Read the rest »

Our next style spotlight

As you can see I have moved onto another K2 style or modification.  Huh, so this is a mod of a mod... I think I can hear the fabric of the universe beginning to tear assunder.

This is a wonderfully styled theme, with some very nice attention to detail.  Very, very nice job Ben.