Holidays in Toledo

Click the album below for pictures from Hanukkah and Christmas in Toledo:

2008_12_23 Holidays in Toledo

Foxy

I've spotted a lot of wildlife in my backyard but was still impressed to see a red fox hanging out behind my condo this weekend.

AP news reader for Blackberry

One of my favorite Blackberry apps is the Wall Street Journal mobile reader. I just recently found the AP News mobile reader, which appears to be very similar (probably from the same developers) to the WSJ application. The AP News reader looks like it's actually formatted for a taller screen, such as the Storm.

Just remember to shut these news reader apps down when you're done with them, as the constant polling for new articles will drain your battery.

Google really likes Toledo

Google has just rolled out an update to the Google Maps Street View system that includes "almost the entire US".

However, in looking at the coverage of Ohio, the coverage of Cleveland seems to be sorely falling behind Toledo:



As you can see by the coverage map, the entire Toledo area, including surrounding communities is included in Google Street View. However, for Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, and Cincinnati, the surrounding areas are not nearly as thoroughly covered.

The Google driver who covered the Marietta area made some very interesting designs, but what is there in Southeastern Ohio to photograph?

Sidenote: Some of the paths that that Google has covered are kind of interesting. Sometimes, they'll just drive in a straight line and then the coverage will just stop. Other times, you can see that they do a circular path and then must have headed back the way they came. And other times it looks like the Google cars just go on random road trips.

Should we rely on the cloud?

I've been playing with the new Live Mesh service from Microsoft and like what I see so far. Live Mesh is an synchronization, collaboration, cloud-based storage service that allows you to access files (and even the computers themselves) from any other mesh-connected computer (or Windows Mobile phone) or via the Mesh web-based desktop. Apparently Microsoft is going to be opening up the Mesh environment to application developers, so it's only a matter of time until we start to see third party applications designed to run on the mesh platform.

For now, this seems great. Microsoft is giving away 5 GB of online storage that can be configured to sync up with any number of computers so that you always have access to the most current copy of your files - even if you're not actually on one of your computers. It also has some very nice collaboration features that allow you to define readers and contributors to your shared folders.

However, how much should we rely on Microsoft to keep this service perpetually in operation? I have used numerous other sites that were supposed to accomplish this very concept - although none of them did it quite as impressively as Live Mesh.

Take, for instance, AOL's XDrive utility. XDrive accomplished a lot of the same functions that Live Mesh does - shared storage across multiple computers with the ability to share your files with others. They even built client side apps that would mount your XDrive cloud-based storage as a drive on your computer.

However, take a look at the email to the right, which I just received from AOL today. [note: I removed the non-pertinent paragraphs from the screenshot]

The XDrive service, which AOL billed as a place to "Back up your valuable files" and to "Conveniently access all your files from anywhere", will be dead as of 1/12/09. According to AOL, "It is never an easy decision to shut down a feature, especially one like Xdrive that some of our members have used for a long time. But we have to look carefully at all of the products supported by AOL to ensure we’re providing as much value to our customers as possible."

So in typical business speak, they're trying to make it sound like they are doing their best to provide value to their customers while reducing the value that they are providing to their customers. Amazing, huh? Apparently they never realized that giving away 5GB of free disk space to anyone that wanted it could get really, really expensive. Now that the economy is in the can, they're trying to cut costs by eliminating this free service.

So, does this bode well for the Live Mesh service? Is Microsoft more reliable than AOL to continuously support their applications? I would think so, however, see another email that I just got recently - this time from Microsoft.

"As a valued MSN Groups or MSN Communities Web Folders customer, we want to notify you that the MSN Groups service will close on February 21, 2009"

Hmm....so Microsoft isn't above shutting down their online storage / collaboration environments either! MSN Groups is (was) another service that provides a lot of the same functionality of Live Mesh - online storage and collaboration. Granted, MSN Groups was painfully lacking in shared storage (3 MB or so...), so as a document repository, it was practically worthless. However, as Microsoft pushes users to rely on cloud-based storage, and soon cloud-based operating systems, we have to consider how much we can rely on these companies to maintain and preserve the cloud that they are asking us to trust with our valuable files.

My old doc is off to (re) join the Army

I just heard on the news that my doctor that I went to when I lived in Westlake is heading to Fort Hood, Texas to re-join the Army.

Apparently he served in the 1970's and celebrated Veteran's Day today by announcing his return to active duty.  

Kudos to Dr. Caravella, but it makes me recall some headlines from a few years ago about recalling troops who had left the service.  I just hope this was a personal decision and isn't a sign that our military is really desperate for doctors.

Google Video Chat

Video chat has been available for quite some time now via AIM. However, as more and more services move inside the browser, I guess it was only a matter of time until Google integrated it right into the Gmail/GTalk system.

I don't even have a web-cam to try it out, but certain family members have asked me about video chatting and it looks like this would be a very easy, free way to accomplish it. Not to mention that it's run by Google, so it'll probably work quite well.

On a side note, does anyone else remember when AOL Quick Buddy / AIM Express first came along and allowed you to chat with just a web browser? Impressive how far we've come since then...

"Hey, I hear you're looking for a caddie. I'm Tiger Woods — pleased to meet you."

Which is cooler? The fact that some random guy from New Jersey had Tiger Woods as his caddy for a round of golf at Torrey Pines or that they had a pimped out Buick golf cart?

Edit: Sorry for the broken image. Why do news sites insist on taking down their content? Don't they know that disk space is cheap?

Copyright laws don't apply to the GOP?

Apparently McCain doesn't think that the DMCA should apply to him.

Thankfully, Google disagrees.

A run on rabbit ears

While in Buffalo this weekend, I happened to be in numerous electronics stores while getting my grandpa all setup with a new 42" plasma tv.

I was highly amused at the drama that unfolded at these stores due to the recent fight between Lin Broadcasting and Time Warner cable. Apparently Lin Broadcasting, which owns the Buffalo CBS affiliate station, is hurting financially...just like everyone else. Their plan to increase revenue is to start charging Time Warner for the re-broadcast rights for their CBS station. Time Warner, however, refuses to pay, citing the fact that the CBS affiliate broadcasts for free over the air, and thus should be free for everyone.

Since no resolution could be agreed upon, Time Warner took CBS off the air for their cable customers. For most people, this wouldn't be a very big deal...they might just have to miss an episode of the Amazing Race or David Letterman. However, because the Bills game is on CBS...the citizens of Buffalo had quite a problem with the missing channel in their tv lineup.

The solution, of course, to watch the game without your cable company is to purchase an old fashioned tv antenna. Time Warner was even kind enough to pass out antennas for free to customers that braved the extremely long lines and short distribution hours. For those who didn't get their free antenna from Time Warner, you could purchase an antenna for up to $20 and be reimbursed by the cable company.

However, good luck finding a tv antenna at any electronics stores in the greater Buffalo area. During the weekend, I was at Best Buy, Circuit City, Sears, as well as 3 different Radio Shacks. Did any of them have rabbit ears in stock? Nope.

I don't know how long this standoff between the local CBS affiliate and Time Warner will last, but I'm tempted to buy a bunch of tv antenna in Cleveland and then drive to Buffalo and sell them for a profit. Actually, maybe Lin Broadcasting should do that as yet another revenue source...

I despise Mail-In rebates

I hate mail-in rebates. Let's get that out of the way right up front.

However, if the deal is good enough, I've been known to put up with the hassles of the MIR to get a few bucks off when buying tech items.

I've been looking for a good deal on a 1TB external hard drive for a while, so when I saw the following deal for a 1TB external drive for $90 after rebate, it caught my attention.

However, when you view the rebate form needed to get the $50 MIR, the chance of actually receiving the $50 seems to be slightly less than a snowballs chance in hell.

Check out the crazy hoops that you must jump through to get your rebate.

1) You must visit the rebate website and register your rebate to get a Claim ID
2) You must write down the Claim ID on the envelope (the claim ID isn't even on the rebate form)
3) You must mail in the rebate form (filled out in ALL CAPS) by 10/30/08.

(The purchase requirements are 9/12/08 - 9/30/08, so if you buy the drive on 9/30/08, you have 1 month to receive your item, decide you're going to keep it, and get to this step in the rebate process.)

4) You must wait until 12/11/08 and then you have a one month window (12/11/08 - 1/9/08) to go back to the rebate website and "verify" your information.

(According to the form, "In order for the money to be sent, you must check the status online to assure the information is valid.")

5) Then you must "allow 8 weeks from the postmark deadline date to receive your rebate"

(If you're thinking that 8 weeks after the postmark deadline date is during the one month online verification window, you would be correct...12/25/08)

If this all doesn't sound sketchy enough for you, if you read the bottom of the rebate form, it says "By submitting this rebate, the customer has read the rebate rules, requirements in this form and on www.mir411.com/policy.aspx and agrees to abide by them."

So you're supposed to follow all directions on this form, AND visit that website to see if there are any other requirements!

If you visit that site, it's pretty much the same rules as listed on the rebate form except for one little gem: "The rebate will be void if the rebate form was not signed."

So even if you followed the steps on the rebate form exactly: recorded your claim ID on the envelope, filled out the form in all caps, mailed the form quick enough, marked your calendar to verify the information online, and then waited some unknown amount of time for your check to come...your rebate money probably STILL won't come because you never signed the rebate form!!! And why didn't you sign the rebate form? Because nowhere on the rebate form is there a signature line!

Have I mentioned that I hate mail-in rebates?

Letterman vs. McCain

John McCain was supposed to be a guest on the Late Show yesterday, but bailed on Letterman at the last minute so that he could return to Washington to address the economic "crater" that America is facing.

As you can see, Letterman was not very happy with this:



What made the situation more interesting was that McCain then showed up on the CBS evening news being interviewed by Katie Couric in the middle of the Late Show taping.

There is now some speculation that the reason that McCain canceled on Letterman to appear on Couric's show was that the CBS Evening News was supposed to be airing an interview that Sarah Palin had given to Couric. In the interview, as with the other two interviews that she's done since being named VP nominee, she made a complete fool out of herself. So, it is speculated, McCain dropped in on Couric's show at the last minute so that they would have to air an interview with him instead of Palin.

Watch the clips of Palin's interview with Couric and see if you'd let her in front of a nationwide tv audience:

Lots of People Could Use a Cash Infusion

"Lots of People Could Use a Cash Infusion"

If average Americans acted like Wall Street . . .

Slacker Uprising

Michael Moore has released his new documentary covering his failed attempt to unseat President Bush in 2004.

Watch it below:

Or watch it here or download a copy.

7 Years later

In memory of 9/11/01, here is a link to the 9/11/01 web archive. This was a collaboration between the Wayback Machine at archive.org and the Library of Congress.

You can browse the web pages that were covering the 9/11 attacks as they looked in the days, weeks, and months after 9/11/01.

Cleveland Area Discount Offers

Stephanie recently discovered that numerous Cleveland area radio & tv stations were offering discount gift certificate offers via their websites.

After seeing Stephanie check numerous sites for new discount offers, I figured I could write a web page that would automatically check & consolidate all of the discount sites for her. (It helped that the stations all use the same 3rd party for their discount pages).

So, after a couple hours, my discount page was born. They usually have some decent offers, and they put new offers up every week.

Note: the discount page will take a few seconds to load, since in the background it's actually downloading data from numerous web sites.

Hallelujah, the pod is gone!

Apparently the court system scared my crazy neighbor into cleaning up and getting rid of the pod prior to her 9/3 sentencing. For the first time all summer I can actually look down the street without that eyesore!

The pod's all packed up

Those who know about the pod-lady who lives next door to me will be interested in seeing just how many packages she had in her garage.

I happened to see a couple of movers loading all of the boxes from her garage into her pod. Keep in mind that this pod is probably about 20 feet deep and the mover told me that it was packed solid all the way to the back.

Now that the garage has been cleaned out, she needs another pod for the rest of her condo...

Edit: According to the Summit County Criminal Justice Information System, pod-lady's sentencing date is 9/3/08. She's probably trying to get her condo cleaned out before then so she doens't go to jail.

Day trip to Put-In-Bay

This past Monday, Stephanie and I drove to Port Clinton where we met up with Mom and Don, went to the African Safari Wildlife Park, and then took the Jet Express to Put-In-Bay.

Click to view album

British Car Day 2008

While my Dad and Mary were in town visiting this weekend, we stopped by the British Car Show at Ursuline College. While there weren't as many cars there as last year, it was still impressive.

British Car Day 2008

Twins Day 2008

Pictures from Twins Day this weekend

Twins Day 2008

Go Tribe!

Here's a shot from the Indians v. Tigers game this past Tuesday. Unfortunately, the Indians lost, but it was Dollar Dog Night, so it wasn't a complete loss.

Is this legal in CA?

Apparently they are encouraging children to drive and talk on their phones at as young an age as possible.

Google's keeping us safe

During a recent visit to Chili's restaurant for Fajita-Rita Monday, I tried Google'ing the Chili's menu from my phone to check on something that I had ordered.

I was surprised to find that Google was blocking the chilis.com domain as malware!

A search for Chili's would result in the following Google results:
(Notice the subtitle of the result pages)



And clicking on one of the links would bring you to Google's standard "You-shouldn't-go-there" page:



I can appreciate that Google is trying to keep us safe, but blocking Chili's website? Are they trying to keep us from getting Salmonella via the web?

According to Google's explanation,

"Of the 48 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 2 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 07/28/2008, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 07/26/2008.

Malicious software is hosted on 3 domain(s), including bce8.ru, iroe.ru, kpo3.ru."

So apparently this is not Google trying to protect us from web-based food poisoning, but simply a case of Russian hackers somehow inserting malicious links into the Chili's website.

Buffalo July 2008

Stephanie and I were in Buffalo this weekend for a visit.

Check out the pictures below:

2008_07_26 Buffalo

Free PC>Land Line calls

If anyone needs to make calls from their computer to a landline and doesn't want to pay for SkypeOut or other pay per minute computer>land line VoIP service, check out the free EarthCaller service.

I just used EarthCaller for the first time to call an 800 number that always has a half hour wait - I really didn't want to burn up my cell phone minutes, and my client hasn't been nice enough to put a phone in my office at their location.

Using the EarthCaller site is extremely easy, just visit the website and dial. It needs to install their ActiveX control (IE only), but after that, you're all set to go. The sound quality on my 30 minute call was excellent (using an old headset that Ross gave me). I noticed some minor sporadic distortion, but for the most part, talking through EarthCaller was just as clear as talking on my cell phone.

Who knows how long this site will be available and/or free, but it's nice while it lasts

Weekend in NYC

Stephanie and I got a great last-minute airfare deal to NYC and decided to make a long-weekend out of visiting the Big Apple.

We flew out Saturday morning and got to NYC in time to meet Ross for a lunch of authentic "New York pizza" at Patsy's. After lunch we wandered wandered the Upper East side in the 95 degree heat.

Saturday evening, on the recommendation of Steph's sister, we ate dinner at Junior's and then saw Xanadu on Broadway. Both were excellent choices! However, we were so full from our dinner that we didn't get to try the famous Junior's cheesecake. After the show, we met at Ross & Molly's new apartment and then walked to Cafe d'Alsace for dessert and drinks.

Sunday morning, we met Ross, Molly, Eric, and Wendy at Penelope for brunch. We had to wait for over an hour for a table, but it was worth it. I would definitely recommend the Nutella French Toast!

After brunch, Stephanie and I made our way to the Empire State Building to get a good aerial view of the City. We had bought and printed our observatory tickets from our hotel lobby and was therefore able to skip the majority of the lines. After a short wait in the line to get to elevators, we headed up to the 86th floor observation deck. What a great view! Unfortunately it was pretty overcast that day, but the view of the city was still quite impressive.

Next on our agenda was a walk though Central Park. We had grand intentions of walking from the south end of the Park to the Boathouse - however, those plans didn't take the 95+ degree heat into consideration. We ended up just sitting on a park bench and people watching.

When we couldn't take the heat any longer we walked to the Shops at Columbus Circle, across the street from Trump Tower. The Shops is a very high-end mall, so we definitely couldn't afford to do any shopping there (we admired a $255,000 crystal sculpture on display) but we could take advantage of their air conditioning.

Stephanie's college friends, Craig & Amalia, met us in the mall and we had a drink in the Stone Rose, a fancy lounge supposedly owned by Cindy Crawford's husband. The drinks were good, but I don't know if they were worth $16 each!

After finishing our drinks, we walked the Upper West side and had dinner at a nice French restaurant, Bistro Cassis. Even though we couldn't tell if our waitress was French or German, we had a very nice time at dinner.

After dinner, we said our goodbyes to Craig & Amalia and took a subway back to Times Square to meet Ross & Molly for a late-night drink. (No...we don't usually drink this much) We met at the Ava Lounge, which is on the roof of the Dream Hotel. The drinks were ok, the waitress was less-than attentive, but the view was great...you could look down over the lights of Times Square. We had a very nice time at the lounge, until rain and lightening forced us to head home for the night.

On our way back to the hotel, we noticed a group of people swarming outside a theater exit trying to get autographs from someone. We went over to investigate and found that the commotion was around Bradley Whitford, currently starring in the Broadway show Boeing Boeing.

Monday morning, we walked to Rockefeller Center, where we had a New York bagel for breakfast and to saw the Today show taping. They weren't filming outside the Today show studio - they were busy converting the street into a beach tennis court - but we could see where they were filming.

After leaving Rockefeller Center, we took the subway to TriBeCa to meet Eric & Wendy for lunch. It is Restaurant Week in New York, and Eric was nice enough to modify his lunch reservation at the Tribeca Grill to include Stephanie and me. We had a delicious lunch off of the Restaurant Week Prix Fixe menu and learned all about morels.

After lunch, we said our goodbyes to Eric & Wendy and caught a cab to Chinatown so that Steph could go purse shopping. We had heard that the authorities had been cracking down on some of the knock-off purse distributors, and we definitely saw evidence of that during our trip. Most of the shops had removed the name-brand logos from their purses, leaving slits in the leather where the logos had previously been attached. We were assured by the vendors that they would re-attach the logo for us, but that kind of detracts from the mystique of buying a "name-brand" product. The vendors also seemed much more reluctant to invite customers into their back-rooms where the better knock-offs are sold. After much looking and negotiating, Steph finally got a couple of new Chinatown purses to add to her collection.

After Chinatown, our time in NYC was almost up, so we took the subway back to our hotel at Times Square, retrieved our luggage, and then caught a cab to Laguardia for our flight home.

It was a very hot, exhausting, expensive weekend, but we had a blast. Now that Eric and Ross will both be in the NYC area, we will definitely have to back more often!

Click below for pictures from the weekend:

2008_07_19 NYC

Dr. Margo

Congrats to Dr. Margelefsky! We all went out to Pasadena, CA last weekend to see Eric give his thesis presentation at Cal Tech. We didn't understand a word of it, but it was definitely impressive.

Click for Album

23-cent pizza for Cleveland

If you live in the Cleveland area, be sure to go pick up a $0.23 "apology pizza" from Papa John's on Thursday.

About time, VZW

Could it be? Looks like Verizon is FINALLY going to be releasing some decent smartphones!

The XV6900 in April and the BlackBerry Curve in May.

Looks like my Q's days are numbered...

Spring break in Tampa

Click for Pictures

Political Email Flood

Note to self: Don't register on a political candidate's website unless I want to receive daily (and sometimes twice-daily) email messages from said candidate.


Geesh. I'm glad I used my spam email account on Barack's website...is this many emails really necessary????

This definitely makes me glad that I don't have a home phone for them to call.

Watch out for upside-down cars

My GPS unit traffic screen this past friday evening at rush hour. The upside-down car icons are traffic accidents and the exclaimation point icons are incidents like road closures.

Made for an interesting drive home, but knowing where all the accidents were in real-time was pretty handy.

Digging out from the storm

Weekend in Hocking Hills

Stephanie and I spent the weekend in Hocking Hills with friends. Here are my pics and videos:

2008_02_22 Hocking Hills

And here are Jeff's pictures from the weekend.

Weekend in Cincy / Oxford

Stephanie took me down to Cincinnati & Oxford this weekend for my birthday. It was fun to roam around Miami and revisit my college days.

Click for full album

Vista after 2 months - Prognosis: poor

It's been two months since I got my new work laptop that came with Vista Ultimate pre-installed. During these past two months, I've endured a countless number of system hangs, windows crashes, program crashes, poor performance, and lots of headaches.

I thought it was nice, however, that Microsoft includes a tool with Vista to show you just how crappy of an experience it is. It's called the "Reliability Monitor" and it is a running graph that plots your system stability on a scale of 1-10. My system started off from the factory at an 8.92 (even Lenovo can't get this machine to a 10) and has tanked ever since.

As of yesterday, my system was rating itself as a 1.62 out of 10. It will probably be even worse tomorrow since I've already had Firefox crash on me about 6 times as well as Windows Explorer freeze and require a hard reset.



(note: you'll have to excuse the pasted-together image, but Windows only lets you see about 3 weeks at a time on the graph. I stitched the past two months together into one image)

Mail non-innovation

I recently took advantage of an offer from HP where they will send you a "skin" (big sticker) for your laptop for free. Why not, right? I'm not planning on putting any stickers on my laptop, but you never know when a 10" wide sticker of the Miami Redhawk might come in handy.

I ordered the sticker back in mid-January and recieved an order shipment notification email on 1/16/08.

After 3 weeks, I finally called the company SkinIt to inquire about the status of my free sticker. The British (?!?) gentlement who answered the phone verified that my order shipped back on 1/16 via UPS and that I should expect my package by 2/7/08.

Now, I know that sometimes UPS ground shipping is slow...but over 3 weeks? That's just crazy talk! I asked for a tracking number, since one was not provided in the shipment notification email, and was told the following: "Your tracking number is your order number followed by 'skinit'". Huh? What happened to the familiar 1Z* format of a UPS tracking number. Then I was given a non-UPS website that I need to use to track my package (www.ups-mi.net/packageid/).

If I hadn't made this purchase through HP, a pretty reputable company, I would have assumed at this point, that this is some kind of weird phishing website since it's obviously not UPS.

Skeptically, I visit that website (which is branded like the UPS site) and enter my tracking number. The results that were brought up are displayed in this post.

As you can see, my package was shipped via "UPS Mail Innovations", not really by UPS. I had never heard of this service before, but after reviewing the tracking information, I'm convinced that it is completely worthless.

UPS (the real UPS) transferred my package from California to Columbus, OH in less than two days. Columbus was the "UPS Mail Innovations Destination." Apparently this is a new fancy term for the dead-letter office, because that appears to be the end of the line for my package. After making it across the entire country in two days, my package is trying to journey up I-71 from Columbus to Cleveland. A trip that usually takes about 2 hours by car has now taken more than 17 days. Did they send it via pigeon?

I'm failing to see how this process is any sort of innovation. If UPS had just kept my package, it would have been delivered in 3 days. However, the innovations part has caused my package to get lost somewhere down in buckeye country.

I suppose I don't really care if this package ever shows up or not - since I have no idea what I'm going to do with my free sticker, but at least now I know to avoid the Mail Innovations.

Sony: The bad and good

Sony BMG has finally agreed to sell DRM-free music downloads. However, if you want one of the 37 available albums (no single track downloads), you have to go to your local Best Buy or other retailer and purchase a card for $13. You can then bring the card home, and download that album to your computer.

Why would anyone actually want to do this?!?


Sony BMG trades cards for downloaded tunes - USATODAY.com

On another Sony front, I got a chance to see Sony's new prototype OLED TV yesterday at the Sony Style store at Beachwood Place. It's pretty amazing to see a 3mm thin tv screen that has a picture that blows away any LCD TV on the market.

Sony's 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio 27-inch OLED HDTV - Engadget

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I'll take cash, please

I use a credit card that has the "WorldPoints" reward program feature. I have always just waited until I build up enough points for a 1% cash reward and then request a refund check. I decided, however, to see what sort of value WorldPoints is providing for the merchandise in their catalog. I found an item that was just over the 1% cash back point threshold of 25,000 points.

See the image below for the Hamilton Beach Eclectrics mixer which can be yours for only 25,200 points!



Now take a look below and see that, alternatively, you could redeem those 25,000 points for $250 in cash.



So...is buying the blender for those points a better value than the $250 in cash?

Ummmm....no.

According to the Hamilton Beach website, this blender has a MSRP of $200.



And anyone who has shopped online in the past decade knows that you can usually find products cheaper than MSRP on stores like Amazon. Here is the same blender on Amazon.com for $186.



So, if you were to redeem 25,000 WorldPoints for a blender, instead of the $250 in cash, you would effectively be overpaying for that blender by $64!