08 Sep 07 The trouble with the world is…

This was part of Bill Maher’s new rules tonight on his show Real Time on HBO.

“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.” – Bertrand Russell
Bill’s reply:
“doubt for lack of a better word is good. it suites human nature. doubt is what makes you care for. doubt is what makes you open to change.” – Bill Maher

Oh so true.

28 Jan 07 Battle scars from the winter weather

I know winter is only a month in but I sure hope I see the last of the white stuff other then in the mountains. I don’t mind snow other then the morons driving in it, in fact I love the snow. It completely brings the inner child out of me. I just don’t like the side effects of the snow as in the aforementioned bad drivers and chemicals they put on the road.

It is partially my fault that I got these scars. The days after the snow storm I went right back to my old rhythm, as in go 65 – 70mph on the freeway wherever possible. On my way to Canada two weeks ago I did the same, sometimes going 75 (I did manage to do Renton to Vancouver in just under 2 and half hours though).

Gave my car a nice hand washed bath today and waxed, de-waxed, waxed and de-waxed again and discovered these:

My own speeding and crappy chemicals to thank for. Contacted some company called Sprayless Scratch Repair in the Seattle area hopefully they can do something.

Yvo

09 Jan 07 Steve’s MacWorld 07 keynote

This week is Macworld 2007, an event where people from various industries gather to talk Mac held in San Francisco. It also features a keynote by Apple themselves often releasing new products (the two prior keynotes have seen new iLife releases for example and last year the intel iMac and Macbook Pro were announced). This year was no different, another keynote presented by Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs.

Rumor mills often predict what is coming, some even creating bingo cards listing the possible rumors. This year Apple announced the Apple TV and Apple iPhone. That’s it. Nothing else. Literally a 2 hour keynote talking about 2 products. Well in all honesty, the break down was this:
Sales recap – 20 minutes
Apple TV – 15 minutes
Apple phone – 80 minutes
John Mayer – 5 minutes

So no new iLife, iWork, Mac Pro, iMac, Mac Mini, Leopard release date, high def iTunes audio or video, or an update from Adobe concerning universal binaries. How utterly disappointing. Two hours wasted on products that were more suited to be shown at CES as these two products were exactly that… Consumer Electronics. Great so now I can stream music & sound from an Apple branded streamer (something my Tivo already does and it also comes with a lot more for the same price) and I can have a phone through a terrible provider (Cingular). Oh wait… nothing is shipping yet. The Apple TV doesn’t ship until Feb/March and the phone hopefully (knowing the FCC) ships in June.

Last time I checked this conference was called MACworld, where are the Mac related products. Where is Adobe showing off Photoshop CS3 and Illustrator CS3? Where is Leopard? Intel released new Xeon workstation CPUs last week, where are the 8-way Mac Pros? Nope instead Apple Computer drops the Computer and becomes “Apple, Inc.” Personally Apple should just rename Macworld to Appleworld because they are trying very hard to become the “iPod company” instead of making computers.

Ok… I’m done complaining for the day.

Yvo

19 Dec 06 Windstorm aftermath / day by day.

Almost 5 days (105 hours to be exact)… thats how long it took to get the power back on. On Thursday night the Seattle area was hit with what is called the worst windstorm in 13 years (Inauguration Day 93 was the last). Boy did the area feel it. Usually I brush off any storm alerts because to be frank, weather forecasting in this region is *far* from top notch. Even with the snow storm a few weeks ago they anticipated the bulk to hit on Monday when in actuality it hit Tuesday.

Thursday – Friday early morning
Thursday comes around and the winds start picking up in the late evening. Nothing too strong but a notable breeze. Around midnight is when the *shit* (in a manner of speaking) hit the fan. Strong gusts could be felt against my condo building causing minor sways in the building’s structure. A few flickers here and there but nothing major. My phone kept paging me that the servers at work kept going up and down (ping failures) so I logged in via VPN and shut them down gracefully before the UPS ran out of juice. At 1 am, Friday early morning we (Cam and I decided to go to bed). Right when I was ready to turn on the TV… the power goes out for a moment, comes back on for about 10 seconds and then bam… grid overloaded and we were in the dark. Cam and I just went to bed and assumed that everything will be ok by Friday night. We assumed wrong (the old sayin’ goes assuming makes an ass out of u and me).

Friday
Woke up at 7:30 am to find out my alarm clock wasn’t displaying the blinking “12:00″. Disappointment sets in when I start calling the number at work to see if there is work today (one of those emergency numbers). Fast busy via land line and cell phone. Phone lines are out to my work. Great. Called a friend who was on her way and she said that the power was out. I knew then that there was no point in coming in. Turned around and slept some more. At 10 am Cam and I start making preparations for a day without power. The radio informs us that a lot of people got hit. We surveyed our condo and found that the front of the building had gutters and all torn right off the building (pics later). Thinking that damage was the worse we were in for a surprise when Jose told us about the trees in the back. Root and all pulled from the ground like tooth picks (pics later). A little flabber gasted about the damage and we set out to find food. Dennys along I-405 (exit 7) was without power and the one in downtown Renton was completely packed with people waiting outside. Chang’s had just opened up so we went there and had some grub. We drove to my parents, who were without power and phone (they live in the Fairwood area). Helped my mom to get the generator started and Cam went to work. Watched the news there (good ol’ satellite TV isn’t effecting by any power outage… power the receiver and all is well). Came home to a dark condo and for the first time that I saw the milky way dust in Renton.

Saturday
Cam had to be at work at 10 am (mall still had power all this time). I decided to go to my work as the phones were no longer down. Being right across the street (literally) from the Seattle Times’ newspaper publishing gave me a hint that this certain grid had priority to get everyone a news paper. Sure enough. Power had been restored the night before at around 10:30pm. Got the largest sandwich at Quiznos and spent my day at work surfing, downloading & watching TV shows (such as the mid season finale to Battlestar Galactica and the season premiere and 2nd episode to Sleeper Cell). Also did a check on the servers and the dev servers were fine but our new NAS (Infrant NX NAS + 4x 750GB Seagate drives) won’t boot. Had lunch with Cam at the mall at around 7:30 pm. Then headed off to one of her coworker’s place as he had a ton of wood. All said and done I came home to my place at around 11:00. Spent a good 30 minutes unloading wood from my car. Cam came home to a fire and we just hung out in front of the fire place.

Sunday
Still no power. I thought to myself that Puget Sound Energy should rename themselves to Puget Sound NoEnergy. Their phone messages were as cryptic and self boasting as ever. They were proud to restore so many people in so little time. Hopefully the necessary finger pointing will be done after the dust settles. At this point juices of unknown origin came from our freezer and fridge which we managed to not open one single time in almost 3 days. Everything except a few condiments, waxed wrapped cheese, the salsa dip and Chinese dough was thrown out (probably around $150 – $200 worth). Others in our complex were doing the same. We grabbed clean clothes (thank god for doing laundry on Wednesday) and took a warm shower at my parents, who had their water heater hooked up to the generator. Spent the entire day there and decided to leave the animals there as Monday we’d be at work all day.

Monday
Woke up to find… no power again. Beginning to get annoyed I tried getting through the phone tree but there was no hope. PSNE was a hopeless cause. My work thankfully has two showers so I showered at work. Continually calling home throughout the day (answering machine picks up after 5 rings when there is power present) kept my mind further occupied. Trying to deal with a broken NAS was pushed back 24 hours. Hung out at Matt’s until 10:30pm then went home and waited for Cam. We got some Duraflame at a QFC in Normandy Park (where our wood supplier lives) and also received a lot more wood.

Tuesday
No power yet again at 6am (notice the specific time). Cam had to get up at 6 to be at work at 7. I decided to turn around and just snooze my cell phone (very persistent alarm clock btw!) every 10 minutes until 9am. At 9am I finally decided on one more snooze until I looked up and suddenly I saw flashing digits. Looking around the room to confirm my thoughts (I thought I was been delusional) I saw the night light on and Cam’s alarm clock flashing digits as well. I immediately got up noticed how incredibly cold it was but went into the room. Turned up all the heaters (sorry power company I am not going to conserve like you want me too, the people across the street never lost their power and have had their outside Christmas lights on the last 4 days). Checked the water heater to see if it was going and bam we were in business. Until 9:30 when the power went out again. Thankfully the PSNE phone tree was easier to navigate and I got to talk to a real human who said they just had to perform some tests. Power has been on consistently since 10am.

Conclusion
So what have I learned… be more prepared and having power is truly something I have become dependent on but at the same time there are ton of alternative ways to get showered and food. Overall I’m glad its over. Almost 5 days without power when you live 0.5 miles away from an interstate in the metropolitan area is… well inexecuseable and I hope someone will do something about the fact that PSNE needs to improve their network within the cities. I know we have some natural things and cities farther away from Seattle such as North Bend or Fall City can expect a power outage but the close metro area like Kent, Renton, Kirkland and Everett need to get a better infrastructure when it comes to power. No excuses.

30 Nov 06 Burned by WebLoyalty… right…

I guess it was bound to happen. My CC# got sold by a retailer (*cough* Fandango *cough*) and sold to a company called WebLoyalty. Today I logged onto my Online Banking website when I found this:

PURCHASE 90631128014076444262401 ON 11/28 AT WLI*RESERVATIONREWARDS. 800-732-7031 CT

for $10. Sure its only $10 but its simple fact that I never even authorized that. Googling this company resulted into a similiar experience by Adam Rosi-Kessel in 2004. He has been proactive about it as well. I praise him for going after this company. I wish I had the time and effort like him but alas I don. There are two things I learned.

1. Time to get a credit card for online purchases (which amount to maybe 3-4 purchases online a month)
2. Never get movie tickets from Fandango again.

I also praise my bank, Bank of America, when I alerted them of this transaction. They proceeded to shut down my debit card and reverse the charge (pending research). I figure the moment the research sees the words WebLoyalty… all will be well again. It is inconvenience to be without my debit card during the holidays but I’d rather have my account secure then to have my debit card number used in an unauthorized manner.

PS I know its Fandango because thats the only true “odd” purchase I made plus they are known to be linked with Webloyalty.

Adam Rosi-Kessel’s post: http://adam.rosi-kessel.org/weblog/the_man/webloyalty_aka_wli_reservations_is_a_scam.html
WebLoyalty and Fandango taken to court: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/09/12/lawsuit_claims_consumer_fraud_by_marketing_company?p1=MEWell_Pos3

04 Oct 06 Gah! Stupid construction

The blame is on me and me alone. I drive through a construction zone every single day. Near exit 20 on the 405 (Kirkland area) they are adding a dedicated carpool lane exit (joy another dreadful exit/merge point for traffic to choke on but thats a different rant post) along this stretch of intrastate freeway. Today coming back going south bound I got sprayed with dust / small pieces of glass (it would seem like). I could just hear it spray across the windshield. Only for a moment but you could hear it loud and clear.

The end result… two small chips and I mean small (the size of say 2-3 grains of sand) chips punctured into my windshield and something similiar to that effect on my hood. The windshield I can deal with, if I ever sell the car I’ll just have it repaired (and they are so small that it could be seen as specs of dust, its only annoying because its right on the driver’s side where one would look.) but the hood… ugh! Again small and hardly noticeable but its definitely got me looking into the paint protection services for one’s hood, especially seeing how sensitive Scion paint is to the environment.