Anyway, ever since then, XP has refused to hibernate or suspend, which is painfully annoying when all you want to do is head out the door.  After a couple of weeks just dealing with it, I finally did what I was supposed to do and found this site which let me know that MSFT, in their infinite wisdom, didn’t account for >2GB of RAM.  Here’s the link to the hotfix.

Finally, I can tell my laptop to hibernate, and not find out 4 hours later that the strange whirring sound coming from my car is in fact the Dell, all tightly wrapped up in my work bag.

With that said, I found something cool I wanted to share.

The new Palm pre has a cool feature that aggregates all of your online profiles into one mobile view, agnostic of where it really came from.  I found a way to create a similar experience on my Blackberry Storm that worked out quite well.

The glue to all of this is Google Sync.  My Storm is connected to our work Exchange server, so I get all of my email, contacts, and calendar entries from work instantly on my phone.

However, I also have all my non-work contacts in Gmail, and I use Google Calendar a ton to keep track of non-work events.  Using Google Sync, I now have all of my work and personal contacts merged on my phone.  I also get a combined view of my calendar.

The icing on the cake comes from the new Facebook app for Blackberry.  Although, I really don’t like the new 1.6 version.  The 1.5 version syncs my FB contacts with contacts I already have.  It also syncs their profile photo over for instant picture caller ID, and creates a new Birthday calendar.

Other than fiddling with my phone, I’ve been working on our intranet and document management project to migrate to SharePoint.  I’ll post some more on this as we get a bit closer to release.

First, about git.  There are infinitely better resources to look to on what git is and why it exists.  With that said, I’ll just quicky say that git rocks for OSS development.  When I was flying back from DC, I giggled like a Miley Cyrus fan when I did my first disconnected commit.  My mind is still trapped in centralized repository thinking, but this has always been my greatest complaint against them: offline commits.  Now it’s so trivially easy I can’t go back.  The other wonderful thing is that a checkout of the repository is the whole repo.  That means I can view the full history locally without hitting the server.  It also means that commits back to the parent repository (or a remote push in git-speak) are really quick.  Also, branching is really really cheap.

Now for the ugly: git is horrible in Windows.  I mean, god-awful.  “But Andy, why would you use Windows? OMG M$ 5uxorz!!!!11111elevendyone”  Because we have Windows laptops at work, and I need to be able to commit to the project while at work.  Git has a ways to go here to be as simple as SVN to install, and it would be cool to see some IDE integration, although it’s certainly not a requirement.

When I say it’s bad, the main reason is that there isn’t, at this point, a truely native build.  I’m using msysGit and PuTTY.  Throw into the mix our corporate proxy at work, and the pain goes up exponentially.  However, it’s not a lost cause.  Using instructions gathered from a ton of places, I have it up and running.  Finally.

1. Get git!
   1. Follow the steps from github to get the binaries and generate your key
2. Get PuTTY
   1. Go ahead and get the Windows installer version from here.
3. Configure PuTTY
   1. First, we need to take the private key from step 1 and make it available to PuTTY
      1. Open PuTTYgen
      2. Click on Load
      3. Change the “Files of Type” dropdown to “All Files”
      4. Choose your private key file you created in step 1
      5. Enter your passphrase
      6. Go to File>Save Private Key and put it somewhere safe
   2. Next, we need to set up PuTTY to connect to github (or where ever)
      1. Create a new session called “github.com” with the host name set to “github.com”
      2. Set Connection>Proxy to whatever your corporate proxy settings should be
      3. Ensure that Connection>SSH>Auth has the “Attempt Authentication using Pageant” checked
      4. Go back to Session and save the session
      5. Click Open and make sure you get a login prompt.  If you do, close out.  If not, check your proxy settings.
   3. Now we need to give Pageant our key
      1. Open Pageant
      2. Click “Add Key”, navigate to your new PuTTY private key, and click OK.
      3. Enter your passphrase
4. Perform a clone
   1. Using either Git Bash or Git GUI, clone a public repository from github.com (eXPlainPMT is a great place to start!)
   2. If you get errors about an invalid host or invalid passphrase, Pageant can’t find the session we created in step 3.2

Most of these directions are modified from what I found at CodeSlower and github guides.

Last month we took a short but exciting trip to LA to see friends and family.  Angela’s relatives recently moved there and it was really great to see them.  We hadn’t really had time to see them since our trip to Taiwan in 2004.

Since then I have been busy at work, and so has Angela.  Jabber is as goofy as ever.

I picked up work on a new project in my free time, eXPlainPMT.  We use the tool internally at work, and it’s giving me a good codebase to play with Rails again.  In fact, I just put up a demo environment for people to explore on.

After getting frustrated with not having proper inputs in my car for my iPod, I finally replaced my stock deck with a new Pioneer.  It sounds good and has a dedicated USB input that actually handles my 13000+ song library on my iPod very well.  It does, however, rely too much on the remote for navigation, so I’m not looking forward to the inevitable day that I lose it.

In the garage, we finally cleaned out our old crap left over from the move in 2006 and I put some shelving up.  I think we gained a good 2′ of extra garage space on each side.

Inside the house, I got around to painting the kitchen nook.  It looks much nicer now, and since the paint has set in it no longer looks like the old Kraft Mac and Cheese nuclear waste orange.  I quite enjoy it.

I’m rambling, I know, but it’s been so long.  Last weekend we had everyone over for the KU-UNC game, and it was a great win for the Jayhawks.  On Monday I met up with Ethan, Donald, and Jeromy to watch the championship.  Amazing game, and I’m still in shock over Mario’s last second 3.

Alright, it’s time to actually get some work done.

My dad worked for IBM, so all throughout my childhood we had access to a computer and a fancy typewriter. As much as I could, I typed everything.

Fast forward to high school. In-class essays quickly ensured lots of face-time with the teacher as I would be asked to read large portions of my writing. Teachers weren’t amused.

This little bit of background was hopefully a nice segue into what has become an odd circle of note taking.

K-11th grade: Ahh yes, the spiral notebook. These were always impossibly unreadable – including by me

12th grade: My Handspring Visor! I had to really convince my parents that I could spend my money on this at the time. I scratched down notes, made TODO lists, even set due dates for my assignments in the calendar. In the end, all I really did is play Infrared chess and Pong with Kent Thompson.

12th grade – Freshman: The IBM Crosspad was, I believe, meant for fancy pants businessmen and lawyers. Leave it to me to ask for it for Christmas. Handwriting? Really? But it gets better! This device captures the pages and will do magic writing-to-text conversion. The downside, of course, is that it failed on every conversion with my handwriting, even with the laborious 100 page training guide. I made pretty graphs and emailed physics notes to Brandon once. Not too useful. I took this with me to KU and attempted to use it freshman year during the rare moment that I was awake. I ended up setting the alarm off in the libraries more often than actually using it.

College – Freshman and Sophomore years: And I wonder why I wasn’t big with the ladies freshman year! I grabbed my Visor and added the Stowaway keyboard (full size, take that, laptops!) and actually took really good, outline-format notes. This was very handy, required 2 AA batteries, lasted for months, and was 100% reliable. Why change it up, right?

Junior Year: During the summer between sophomore and junior year, I picked up a Toshiba laptop. At the time it was awesome. I ended up using MS Word to do my note taking in class. This worked out fine as all I was doing is taking down outline format notes with the occasional figure that could be recreated on the fly using wonderful Word Art. I also had a few professors that had Powerpoint lectures, so I could save myself the trouble of printing crappy PPTs and use their outlines. This laptop died a horrible death (I hate you, Toshiba, your laptops to this day have the same crappy, heat-damaging designs), which leads to…

Senior Year: I had my internship summer of 2004 and stashed away enough cash to get myself a 12″ Powerbook. I was the only guy with a Mac in any of my CIS courses and was chided daily by several professors, but I didn’t care. I used OmniOutliner to take my notes. It was really intuitive, which is saying something since it is replacing functionality that I had done before in notebooks, PDAs, and the ubiquitous MS Word. It had custom flags you could put on items, categories, fast searching, and a pretty UI.

Today: I eventually entered the working world and migrated my way to a decent job. The fun years of OS X were replaced by the same horrible Windows XP that I left behind in 2002, on an updated but equally troublesome business-grade Toshiba laptop. I had to adapt. That’s when I started using OneNote. I really like it and still use it today. It has it’s quirks and usability issues, but it’s stable enough to document out just about everything. I also put most of my sharable notes back into our team Wiki. Unfortunately, even in a company that is predominantly IT, there is a stigma against laptops in some meetings. I also find myself watching Explorer lock up through good portions of my day, so I need a backup datasource.

Enter my Moleskin. I have the smallish gridpaper one. It has a band to keep it closed, quality paper, a bookmark, and a pocket in the back. I still can’t read my handwriting consistently, but I have an intricate system of checkboxes and symbols to at least have a gist of what I was talking about. I can also scan these notes directly into Onenote for consolidation.

So, I still can’t write, but I’ve gone full circle in my note taking habits.

What does this really mean? Why haven’t we got to the paperless world we have been promised? Even today pulling out a notebook is more reliable and faster than grabbing a laptop. With the new laptops having more instant-on functionality with more impressive battery life, we’re getting closer. The big device that I’m looking for is an ultraportable with a tablet’s screen. 5+ hours of battery and a full-size keyboard would be even better. I guess I can hope that the Air will get an upgrade to make the screen have pen-recognition, right?

Security Question by Ramon Rozas III.

He strode forward, weaving amongst the students. His target was walking along with two other young men, blue LL Bean book bag over his shoulder. The man hurried to catch up and fell in beside the student with the blue bag. “Hello there!” he said, tapping the youth on the shoulder.

It really was a week of things breaking. After my 360 bit the dust, my router’s LAN ports all died. WLAN was fine, but anything wired was dead. After many calls back and forth to Fios Support (who never can figure out how to look my account up since I don’t have local phone service) they finally decided that I wasn’t a moron and drop-shipped me a new router. Woohoo.

Microsoft was also helpful after running through the entire script of questions, and Wednesday night my empty RTM box showed up, awaiting my lousy 360. Thursday I dropped it off at the UPS store in Southlake, which just so happens to be next to a GameStop. I had some money left on the gift card from Griff and decided to pick up Brain Age 2 for Angela. Right. Angela.

The guy at the counter isn’t the most knowledgeable man, but he loves to talk about games. Especially on my lunch break. I casually asked if he had any Wiis in, since I knew he had a decent supply of used consoles that get picked up within an hour of being dropped off. HE DID! And, what was better, he had a brand new Wii waiting for me. After careful deliberation while pulling my card out of my wallet, I purchased a Wii for Angela and I.

I love the Wii. I love the Wii like I loved playing NES for the first time at Greg Sorrell’s house. I love the controller, I love Wii Sports. I love the fact that Angela plays it. I don’t know how much staying power it has, but I’m excited for what the future brings in game releases.

I have a brand new copy of Bioshock sitting sadly in its shrinkwrap, waiting for my 3rd 360 to wander home. Hopefully it finds its way soon.

Unrelated to gaming, the new Spoon video, Don’t You Evah, is awesome.

Oh man do I love things like this!

So yes, that was a let down. But, on the plus side, VMWare released their new beta today of Fusion. It’s amazing (for it not being X) and the Unity feature really does work well. I put together a screenshot that makes me feel very dirty:

Anyway, I checked out Safari on XP and I could never get it to get past our corporate firewall. After I would authenticate, Safari would die. Interal sites worked fine, so it was partially fun filled.

As for the rest of the night, I have some cleaning up to do and then some Forza2 (just the demo because I’m cheap). Yeah, that sounds alright to me.

I loved Palm back in the day, and I got my Handspring Visor when they first came out in high school. The simplicity of the input and navigation and the intuitiveness in the interface were really unsurpassed to this day. Even Palm forgot Palm’s roots with recent Windows Mobile releases. It’s true, the old Palm OS was showing its age in the world of always-on WIFI, streaming video, and mobile content push. However, the biggest mistake Palm made was not coughing up the dough to pay for the Graffiti input method. But I digress. Today, Palm showed off their new Foleo assistant, something their now calling a “mobile companion”. I don’t know what the real point of this device is. Although there certainly seems to be a middle ground between smartphone and laptop, no one has ever jumped on the bus to purchase something that isn’t particularly powerful or mobile. I don’t think this device is any different. Also, it isn’t clear from the videos or Palm’s own site what input methods other than keyboard are available.

In other surprising news, the much discussed touch-based input video table rumored a few months ago from Microsoft is a reality. Formally called Microsoft Surface, this coffee table system features a multi-touch interface that allows one or more users to interact with the UI and do some very clever things. In one example, they drop a wireless-enabled camera on the surface which syncs the photos over to the screen. The user can then scale, move, and share the photos with others. To top it off, dropping a mobile on the surface makes it visible to Surface, allowing the user to then “toss” the photos from the screen to the mobile. While just a POC right now, the extensions to POS devices (including self checkout), sales displays, office collaboration and presentations, and geeky-cool home mods are endless. Can this be a sign that Microsoft can still innovate, or is this the next Bob?

Jabber did alright but was clearly confused by the whole event. She didn’t want us to leave and showed her first round of seperation anxiety since we got her.

After dinner, Jord and I headed back over to his Dad’s house for some 360 goodness. H3 beta all the way. I really wish I had an invite – that way I might not suck at it as much. Either way, we woke up to more rainy fun.

After lunch was eaten and Cathy was all set we hit the road for DFW, except this time we got to experience the famous Houston traffic the whole 40 miles out of the city. After that, torrential downpour the entire drive home. This evening, though, we were given a break in the weather and had a beautiful sunset to walk the puppy in.

Now, this weekend wasn’t without casulties. Angela managed to pick up another fun cough that she’s (hopefully!) going to be over tomorrow. Good luck with that, honey! As for me, since I cannot fathom going to bed before midnight, I’m continuing on by quest to rip all of my CDs. I started this task years ago and gave up, but for whatever reason I suddenly felt like picking it back up after listening to all of my old Napster/Hotline/AudioGalaxy-era bad music downloads from 2000.

Next weekend, Cat and Josh come in town to see the new baby and say hi to us. I guess I can rest easy knowing the weekend is four short days away.

Puppy is doing well, but it ends up that she has a very bad heart murmur, and we’re looking at our options. We have a meeting this Saturday with the vet to see what his take is, and then we’ll weigh it all out. It’s pretty sad, considering how attached we’ve already become, to think that she might have complications starting as early as next year. Who knows, really. It might be that she lives to be 16 and never has a problem, or we might be in a bad place soon. She’s so active and happy, I can’t imagine her being anything else.

I just want to give credit where credit is due to Alton Brown’s 40 Clove Garlic Chicken. Blank, you missed out. Delicious dish, and if you have the patience to peel 40 cloves of garlic I would highly recommend it.

That’s all in my world. Working hard on side projects outside of work and hopefully will see them come to production in a few short days.

Last week, she took me to see Louis Black at the Bass Performance Hall. It was so freaking hilarious that I couldn’t stop laughing. The venue was cool, too. It made me miss theatre and my old stagehand days in Local 31, but then I remembered the long hours working outdoors and was happy to actually be watching a show in the audience for the first time in a long time.

Speaking of Kansas City, we went back last weekend for Angela’s bridal shower and other wedding planning stuff. It was excellent to see everyone and spend time relaxing. We also got the cake, pastor, and string trio taken care of, too.

It was also good for my mom and Angela’s mom to finally meet, and from what I hear they had a great time together.

Okay, back to work for me, but I wanted to leave you with probably the most true and funny analysis of Net Neutrality:

http://www.linuxvirus.net/b2/?p=23