Category Archives: GeekStuff


Windows 0 — Apple -1

I thought I should finally get around to sharing my impressions of the new 12.1″ PowerBook that I bought from Apple. Well, I sorta can’t do that yet – the freakin’ thing hasn’t shipped yet! Let met tell you this: this thing is starting out as a very, very negative beginning to my adventure with Apple. There’s been one problem after another with this notebook, and they haven’t even bothered to ship one to me yet – so much for the Switch being an easy thing to do.
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New PocketPC: HP 1910

New device alert! I’ve opted to sell my Toshiba e740 Pocket PC. No complaints with the device, but I had begun to feel like I’m trying to hit a fly with a building rather than a swatter. It’s got all sorts of stuff with it, like WiFi (802.11b) and CF/SD support, but I don’t use most of it. I used to use it for a MP3 Player, but the iPod has superceded that. I rarely play games on it or use the built in Wireless LAN. Never watched a movie on it. I used the CF slot for backups and the device for the Contacts, Calendar, and Tasks – maybe for solitaire.
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My Balance Gave Out!

Oops. More or less, anyway. I can’t think of any better way to say it, but I seem to have bought a new PowerBook. Yeah, you heard me. Even after yesterday’s revelations about how I wouldn’t be able to Switch fully, I ordered a new Apple notebook. What happened? Steve Jobs’ keynote address at Macworld Expo yesterday is what happened. I know it sounds odd – that a CEO’s speech could force a lone, mostly-pro Microsoft programmer to change his… um, well everything. I’ve been 99.44% pro Microsoft for at least a decade… It wasn’t Jobs’ words that have changed me – it was his products.
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Update: Mac Stuff

It’s been a while since I’ve mentioned my Apple on this site… that’s mostly because my G4 has been sitting mostly unused for a while. As you may remember, a few months ago I threw about $800 into a G4/450MHz tower, in an effort to see what all the hub-bub about OS X was. I’ve still got it running and I keep it up to date; it’s now running OS X 10.2.3 and even the recent updates to Office.X and the “I” line of Apple software. The problem is that I can’t seem to pull the “Switch” trigger.
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Update on the S105

I’ve had the S105 for a couple of months now and one of things that it has not been able to do is download MIDLets. MIDLets are phone based applications, written in Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME), that are downloaded over-the-air to your phone and stored there. They are typically games or other types of utilities, and are typically more robust applications, when compared to WAP web sites. Most of the phones that I’ve worked with (including Motorola’s T720, i90c, i95cL, Nokia’s 7210, etc.) have all allowed downloading without issues. The inability to download MIDLets to the S105 has been blamed on manufacturer, network, and software version – at the end of the day, it was simply the network and T-Mobile has been attempting to address this.
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The Morning Paper…

People sometimes ask me “How do you keep up with new technology?” and seem surprised when I reply “I read web sites.” How can they be surprised? I mean web sites are easy to publish and most of the ones that I choose to read update on an daily, if not hourly, basis… there’s no printing involved, no time to market – you change a file on a server and *bam* the page is instantly available. Maybe it’s what I read that’s key…
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Y’z Dock

Anyway, one of the neatest things about the new OS X interface is the dock. The dock is Apple’s answer to the omni-present task bar that is sitting on your desktop at the moment; it’s used to show the currently running applications as well as giving you a “Quick Launch” icon bar for launching applications. Like I said, it’s about the same as the Windows’ XP task bar, but with a great deal more flare and style – it’s basically become the new trademark of the Apple desktop. In fact it’s one of the neatest pieces of OS code that I’ve seen in a good long while, probably since the animated and fading menus of Windows 98 – I’m comfortable in saying “one of the neatest” because there’s been a new product released that is equally as cool, but for Windows XP users: Y’z Dock.
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Samsung S105 and T-Mobile USA

If you recall, I’ve been using an Ericsson t68 with coverage from VoiceStream since April. Times have changed. VoiceStream is now T-Mobile USA. Having been bought a number of months ago by Deutsche Telecom, they decided that their USA subsidiary should be named T-Moble, like the rest of their cellular franchises. Mostly just a name change, but I was sorta psyched – I mean given the great phone technology and service that I’ve seen with the international T-Mobiles, I was hopeful that they might bring the International methods with them. I can sum this up relatively simply: Hah!
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Shadow Puppets, by Y’z

It’s on the extremely rare occasion to find an application that live up to my expectations with a great piece of coding, but it’s happened just last week: Y’z Shadow is a small application that sits in the SysTray (next to the clock) and has only a couple of “tasks.” One is to draw user-configurable drop shadows, under both active and inactive windows. Don’t worry: there’s options for the size and opacity of the shadows and it really looks good when it’s running. Y’z will effect any open menu by turning it semi-transparent, which is a neater effect than you would think.
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Professional Therapy, in Progress

Therapy. I think that’s the best part of this web site for me – it provides me a way to get out my personal Rants and pass on Geeky knowledge; in some cases, I even get to declare certain outrageous experiences to the world. Regardless, when I started this whole thing up, I purposely planned never to attack personal Issues (person, place, or thing) too directly, because it can be problematic. In some cases, it’s about biting the hand that feeds you and in other cases, it’s so particular to my own life that no one would care anyway… in this instance, I have a very pointed Issue, but I doubted anyone would be interested. Then I realized that what has happening to me lately, might be happening to other people; this is how Dilbert got started, actually. People began to realize that the madness of the Cubicle Farm was spreading, and viola!, Dilbert was born. Having said the above, I have two Rants of a GeekStuffs nature. I feel I need to share some professional (or lack there of) experiences with my fellow Code Warriors.
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Resistance: DENIED – Say Hello to iRandy

Didn’t I say, just last week, that someone had to prevent me from dipping into the Mac universe? Well someone fumbled. My used G4 tower is already on it’s way to CT, along with a set of G4 System discs (for OS 9) thanks to eBay and a copy of Jaguar/OS 10.2 from Apple. I also discovered that since I am a professor, albeit part time, that I qualify for the Education discounts at Apple – I could have gotten the new 10GB iPod for $369 – that story just doesn’t seem to want to end!
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OS X: A Cry for Help!

Someone needs to stop me from moving to a Mac. I’ve looked at the applications I use lately, and with the exception of MSN Chat (which I’m told is being Mac-ified soon), my compilers (Visual Studio 6.0 and .NET), and CityDesk, everything else that I use is already ported to OS X. What’s OS X? That’s the latest version of Apple’s operating system, with a new user interface (known as Aqua) built on a version of Unix (mostly a flavor of Linux) – I’m assuming you’ve heard of it already, but if you haven’t Apple explains it better than I can in this little Rant. So not only do you get the warm and fuzzy feeling of stiffing the “monopoly company” of the PC world, but you also get the “hippie” feeling of OpenSource, Linux, BSD, etc. I think you get to show off not only an Apple Logo, but you also get to show off the Penguin – I don’t know for sure what’s proper in Geek-Etiquette.
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