Weblog of a “Switcher”

It's been pretty difficult for me to post here recently. I have had a confluence of things happen in my life that is making very difficult to post.

For those who don't know, I recently nabbed a new job after being out of work for just over 7 months. Also, my in-laws are here in St. Louis visiting. So I have had very little time to do much of anything other than work and visit.

Hopefully, next week will be different. My in-laws are returning to Texas on Monday and I'll have more time after work to find something to post about or write a review of. Actually, as far as reviews go, I have a program in mind right now. I'll have to leave myself a reminder to actually write the review up.

The job is with a company called Mobile Armor. We create software that helps protect laptop computers and smart phones so that if they are lost they can be destroyed remotely so that none of the data on the device will be seen by anyone who is not supposed to see. I came in at the beginning of a huge contract that if we succeed in winning it, will be an incredible boon for the company and be pretty much a first for the group that we are trying to woo. So I am pretty tired when I get home. This and the fact that I haven't been in a "work" mode for over 7 months, it's pretty draining right now. Hopefully, as time goes on, the company will hire some more folks to make our jobs a little easier.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: new job, post, quiet, Site Info

This picture was just sent out by Chris Luckhardt on Pownce and I have to say that I never made the connection until seeing the images side by side like this:

Wow, this really makes me wonder if the Mozilla folks had seen the nebula and used the image for inspiration.

Thanks Chris for finding the comparison and posting it on Pownce!

written by Dave M. \\ tags: comparison, Firefox, logo, nebula

Something must be going on at Yahoo! for all these rats to be jumping ship. First the creators of Flickr left, now I read that the founder of del.icio.us is also jumping ship. So I wonder what is going on over at Yahoo! that is causing all these older acquisition owners to leave Yahoo!.

We just got confirmation from Joshua Schachter, the founder of delicious, that he has decided to resign from Yahoo!. Mike Arrington just spoke to him and he said that the recent news coming out of Yahoo! pressed his decision to leave now. Joshua also said that the decision was made today, and that he has no future plans but will instead join the “gloriously unemployed”.

[From It Gets Worse: Joshua Schachter Leaving Yahoo]

I am aware that Microsoft was trying to do a hostile take-over of Yahoo! earlier, but I was under the impression that Microsoft gave up on that. I have heard that Mr. Carl Icahn is still in the news, but I don't know how much damage he can do at this point. Plus, with Google helping out Yahoo!, it seems hard to believe that Yahoo! is in trouble enough to cause these guys to leave like this.

Makes ya wonder...

written by Dave M. \\ tags: delicious, flickr, leaving, resigning, Yahoo

Wow, what an amazing turn of events:

Today, we announced a non-exclusive advertising agreement that will provide Yahoo! with access to our AdSense for search and AdSense for content advertising programs on their U.S. and Canadian web properties. In addition, we will work to enable interoperability between our respective instant messaging services allowing users better, broader communication online.

[From Official Google Blog: Our agreement to provide ad technology to Yahoo!]

Two competitors working together! I wonder if this is to help Yahoo! fight off Microsoft from taking over.

Still, It's a very impressive move by Google. If there are no ulterior motives, this would probably be the biggest PR move any company has ever done before. It's going to make Google look like saints!

Anyone have any thoughts on why this is happening? It sure looks like a good will gesture to me.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Google, Microsoft, Yahoo

I was watching GeekBrief.tv this morning and Cali told us that a new study claims that PlayStation 3's and HDTV's take up more energy than a refrigerator over the course of a year. There was an article that she linked to that I am linking to as well:

Power bills soaring? Turn off the Playstation: study | Technology | Reuters
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Don't blame the fridge for your steep power bills -- an Australian consumer agency study has found that videogame consoles and plasma flat-screen TVs are major electricity guzzlers, even when left on stand-by.

This article is utter BullShit! (Sorry for the language, but it's how I feel) I wrote about this once before, so I'll let you read that article in response to this: Absurd ad I saw on television.

I just felt that this needed to be said again. Don't let these BS studies make you start turning off your electronics all the way. There is no need. Electronics in standby mode use very little energy and will cause more grief than good in the long run.

Think of it like turning your alarm clock off every morning after you wake up. When you get ready for bed that night, you will have to reset the clock and the alarm just to save a few watts.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: energy, gadget, hdtv, standby

For the last 3 weeks or so, there has been nothing but speculation about a ton of new products for Apple. New 3G iPhone, Mac Tablet, renamed .Mac, etc... So what is happening?

Yep, WWDC08 is just around the corner.

I just love all the rumors and speculation; "The new 3G iPhone blah blah this", "Shipping packages labeled Electric computers...", "Apple has changed it's hard coded '.Mac' strings to variables...", "me.com being held by company that Apple uses for it's domains...", "Apple attempting to get ipod.me, iphone.me, mac.me...".

Funny thing about all these speculations and rumors is that they are typically accurate. It just cracks me up that so many blog sites go after these including Daring Fireball, which really surprises me, I've always thought of Daring Fireball as being the beacon of solid information and fact.

This reminds me of a presidential election. You start hearing about the candidates almost a year in advance, and the ads on TV start getting more and more frequent to the point you just want to shoot the TV. Just before the election, there are more ads for the candidates than shows on TV. I get so annoyed by all the ads, I almost don't want to vote as a protest.

I'll be so glad when WWDC is over so that all the speculation can stop. Of course then it's "See, we were 100% correct with our rumors...", "We were right on the money...", etc... for at least 2 weeks after the show.

Sure will be glad when it's all over.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Apple, Blogs, conference, Speculation, Wwdc

I was listening to This Week in Tech this morning and aside from some other rather weird discussions that had little to do with technology (in my opinion) they talked about the Internet Archive and more specifically the World Wide Web Wayback Machine. So I did a little digging and found my original first post as a blogger.

07-30-2000 - First Day!

The Wayback Machine has links to all my older web pages, or at least a lot of them. I actually thought that I had started posting blog posts earlier than 2000, but since the post "First Day!" has that title, I pretty much have to assume that the post was, in fact, the first one I had ever made.

Over time, as I switched to many different blogging software programs, I lost a lot of my older posts. This archive makes me wonder if I could recover most of my older posts. I'll have to research this some and see. If I do try to recover them, they will have to go to a different blog since they don't have a lot of posts about switching to a Mac in my past blogging.

Still, quite fun to look back.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: archive, machine, wayback, web

I know this has nothing to do with Switching to a Mac or such, but sometimes it's almost like we live in a science fiction show...

This is the first picture ever taken from a man made satellite of another man made craft landing on the surface of an alien world!

This coverage reminds me a lot of the Voyager craft passing by Uranus back in 86. Waiting for the first pictures to arrive from the spacecraft.

Truly awesome stuff!

written by Dave M. \\ tags: decending, lander, mars, phoenix

Grand Theft Auto IV has been released and is selling like gangbusters. So now it's time, yet again, for the news media to start attacking.

MyFox St. Louis | Grand Theft Auto IV - A Game Or Gateway To Crime?:

For the video game Grand Theft Auto irresponsibility is part of the programming. 

Violence, crime and mayhem fill just about every frame in every version offering a blueprint for bad behavior
...

Is it a game or a gateway to crime?

I just don't understand why the news media thinks that Video games are a way for kids to be swayed into violence and crime when there are so many movies out there that make GTA IV seem tame.

Why doesn't the news media jump all over violent movies? It's not because children can get video games easier than seeing violent movies, since a child can see a violent movie very easy and in the same way that a child can play a violent video game.

The only thing I can figure, is that the news media just don't "get" video games so they just attack them. Movies are easy to "get", you just put a DVD into your DVD player and off you go. With a video game, you actually have to figure out how to play the game and I'm guessing that these writers just don't have a clue how to play, so they assume that video games somehow brainwash their players into doing the acts that they do in the games.

I don't know, probably not, but I just don't get why the news media finds video games so easy to attack. Anyone have any ideas?

written by Dave M. \\ tags: gta, gta iv, gtaiv, media, movie, news, news media, responsibility, video game, violence

Well, this has turned out to be quite an interesting day.

It started at 4:37am when I was awoken by our bed shaking and a rumbling sound. My wife woke up a few seconds after I did and we both kind of just laid there wondering what in the world was happening. Thunder, a truck, quite a few things went through our minds, but earthquake wasn't really one of them. At least not at first.

It lasted about 20-30 seconds. At least the part we could feel. Overall it lasted more like about 20-30 minutes. The epicenter was located in Bellmont, IL, a small town just west of the Illinois/Indiana border about 120 miles east of St. Louis.

I have felt quakes before, both here in St. Louis and in Los Angeles, CA when I was living there for nearly a year. However, I am pretty darn sure that this was the most energetic quake I have ever felt. The quakes in Los Angeles were small tremors really, not more than 3.5 maybe 4.0. They happen all the time there but it was my first since I had moved there. It was also the first quake I had ever felt. I was in one prior to that, but I was a kid and my mother was driving us somewhere and I missed it.

In the LA quake, the building I was in shook for a few seconds and I sat pretty much frozen wondering what to do. I was on the 6th floor of an office building, so I really had no idea. The quake I felt here in St. Louis before was in Sept. 26 1990 and was a 5.0 magnitude. There was also a 4.2 that hit Feb. 5 1994. I'm pretty sure the one I remember was the one in September. I was sitting in my parents family room when I'm pretty sure I saw something out the window before the house started to shake. That one lasted about 10 seconds, but I remember being shook up and down in that one.

Today's quake was a distinct side to side shaking. Lots of items in the house were rattling. The most unnerving part was the length of the quake. It lasted way longer than I have ever felt one before. I had more than enough time to wonder when it was going to stop. From my initial looking around the house, nothing was damaged. The news has been saying that foundations might be damaged, but from what I can see, nothing has changed in the basement.

Since this one was pretty strong, I figured there would be aftershocks, and I wasn't disappointed. At 10:14am, we had our first "feel-able" aftershock. It registered 4.6 and has been felt by quite a few people too. It was pretty much the same as the first one. A side to side motion. It only lasted about 5-10 seconds, but was registering on seismographs for well over 7 minutes.

Now, for folks in California, this is not really news at all. In fact, apparently, since there was no severe damage and no deaths related to the earthquakes, the national news has been all but quiet about it. They mentioned "briefly" during CNN Headline News' weather report that "...the midwest has been shook with a small 5.2 earthquake..." (or something like that), then it was back to the weather and that was it.

Locally, the news has been all over this. Which is as it should be. St. Louis, although on a pretty scary fault, just doesn't really get earthquakes. Looking at the historical data from the USGS, actually ~68 since 1973, but most of them were under 3.5 and probably not really noticeable. Still, they are unusual for this area and since we are so near the New Madrid fault, the one that could go at any time and wipe out St. Louis, when one does hit, we here in St. Louis get a little nervous.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: aftershock, earthquake, quake, usgs