The Shameless Gee-Whiz-Wow Nature of Modern News

I’m watching CNN’s coverage of the US presidential election, and I had to laugh at what they came up with: WILL.I.AM being broadcast as…a hologram. A hologram? Puuuuhlease. A hologram is a projection of light. What CNN did, as near as I can tell based on Anderson Cooper looking at a monitor to figure out where should look, is just a green screen trick where they projected WILL.I.AM like a weather map. It’s a nice trick, sure, but don’t insult science by using a term that’s completely inaccurate.

Oh yeah, and Obama is the next president according to CNN – and by a huge electoral margin. I tend to skew pretty strongly towards right-wing, conservative political thought, but after the past eight years of watching “W” doing his thing, let’s just say I was rooting for Obama. This is a historic day in a lot of ways, and I think Obama is going to do some good things in this world.

And being the pragmatist that I am, I’m going to compare the current USD to CAD exchange rate of 1.13 to whatever it is tomorrow morning. 😉

A Beautiful Calgary October Sunset

On her way home from work, Ashley’s usually able to see the sunset peeking over the horizon line near our house, and it’s not uncommon for her to mention a beautiful sunset happening shortly after she steps into our house. On October the 22nd, the sunset was absolutely stunning – the deep orange hues, including a strong burnt umber colour, was just breathtaking.

I Definitely Have Days Like This Sometimes…

[I may have taken this blog to an all-time low by posting a LOLcats image,
but hey, I could really relate to the image] 😉 Source

Apple Thoughts Now Live

I figured I’d just re-publish my welcome message, so here it is:

“I’m thrilled to announce the launch of the fifth Thoughts Media site: Apple Thoughts. It’s been almost two years since we launched our last site (Zune Thoughts), and I’m really excited to be expanding our network with another great site. Why an Apple site? For the past three years or so, I’ve been watching the “Apple tide” rising. By that, I mean the overall impact that Apple has in the market – and I mean real impact, not the mainstream media fawning and hype that accompanies every new product Apple releases. The number of people I know that have switched to Macs is staggering – the painful launch of Vista certainly didn’t help things, but Apple is making tremendous gains in the market. Earlier this year, 40% of all notebooks sold at retail over $1000 USD were Macbooks, and who can forget this picture? The iPhone? Game-changing. Not the right phone everyone, and definitely over-hyped, but it changed the whole landscape of smartphones and what people expect from them. The Apple tide is rising, and as someone who makes a living online, it would be a poor decision for me to ignore that fact.

Now I know what some of you may be thinking: an Apple enthusiast site? From the guy who really doesn’t seem to like Apple very much, and has been known to be quite critical of Apple, iPods, and Steve Jobs in particular? Well, here’s the second announcement: Apple Thoughts is the first Thoughts Media franchise site. By that I mean that I will not be in charge of running it: Thoughts Media Inc. provides the server, back-end infrastructure, and monetization support, while the franchisee provides 100% of the editorial content and community management. I’ve tapped a very talented, opinionated, passionate, Apple-lovin’ guy to be the Executive Editor of Apple Thoughts. His name some of you will doubtless recognize: Vincent Ferrari. Vincent has been a member of the Thoughts Media community for a number of years, and was on the Digital Home Thoughts review team for a time. He’s got the right kind of personality to be a fantastic Executive Editor, and if I ever need an AOL account cancelled, I know exactly who to call.

Here’s a special request to everyone reading this: if you use a Mac, an iPhone, or any product made by Apple, please make a commitment to this new community. Starting a community is tough work – it’s a classic chicken-and-egg scenario where, when someone comes to a Web site with sparse comments and empty forums, they think “Oh, I won’t make this community my home, there’s no one here”. So I’m asking all of you Mac-usin’, iPhone-totin’ types to read, comment, contribute, share, help, and above all grow the Apple Thoughts community. My hope is that by this time next year, Apple Thoughts will have a vibrant, passionate, helpful community of Apple fans. We need you.

Please join me in welcoming Apple Thoughts!”

Oh, and I’ll add this from a forum post I made since some people seem to be freaking out that I launched an Apple-focus site, even if I’m not the one running it:

“I don’t own an iPhone, I don’t own a Mac, and I don’t own any Apple product now that my wife’s iPod Shuffle broke (which didn’t surprise me, but let’s not get into that ). But I’m not going to be writing here on Apple Thoughts other than perhaps commenting in the forums like everyone else – I’m not even a member of the Apple Thoughts editorial team! I won’t be writing reviews or news posts. So from an editorial perspective, I remain completely focused on Windows Mobile, Windows Vista, the Zune, and overall Windows ecosystem. I’m still a Windows fan, and you can expect the editorial coverage on the other sites to remain the same. I’m super excited about Windows Mobile 7, Windows 7 (just got my beta invite!), and I remain firmly committed to the Windows world.”

How Old Are Your Tires? Better Check…

I’m pretty cautious about buying into Internet-hyped stories that I recieve from others over email, but this one looks quite legitimate: this 20/20 video explains the dangers of old tires. Like most people, I assumed the only danger in old tires was one of tread – as in, if your tires are so old they’re losing their tread, you shold replace them. This story explains how tires lose the elasticity in the rubber, and that can lead to some catastrophic results. I wasn’t able to find if Canada is any better than the US in terms of laws protecting consumers from buying old tires – though I did discover that Quebec has made it law that car owners put winter tires on their cars this year. The reason for this law? 38% of cars involved in winter accidents in Quebec have all-season tires on. Logic says then that if tires are the contributing factor in these accidents – and I think that’s a pretty big leap in logic – having better tires will reduce the number of accidents. I’ll be interested to see if that’s really the case. I’m in support of anything that saves lives and makes the road safer, but I’m not convinced winter tires are a magic bullet to reducing accidents in the winter months. The biggest problem I’ve seen with winter driving is simply driver idiocy: people who try to go the same 10 kmph over the speed limit regardless of the weather, and they tend to be people who drive trucks or SUVs, thinking that the heavier weight of their vehicle somehow makes them immune to the weather. Staying safe in the winter while driving is 80% driver IQ and 20% vehicle.

Dell’s New Nightmare Return Process

Dell sells a lot of products, and I figured that since nearly everyone reading this site has probably ordered from Dell at one time or another, it was worth sharing this story with you. I’ve also posted this story to Dell’s IdeaStorm, so if you have an account there, please go promote my suggestion.

So what’s the issue? Dell’s new return process (RMA) is horrible. It’s beyond horrible: it’s so frustrating it makes me not want to purchase a Dell product again. The way it used to work? You’d call customer service, talk to an agent, and they’d issue an RMA via email. Pretty fast and simple, with only the occasional frustration of having to deal with an agent who tries to talk you out of returning the product.

The way it works now? I phoned Dell customer service on October 23rd, asking for an RMA on an Inspiron Mini 9. I was told that my request would be passed on to the sales agent who processed my order, and he’d phone me back. What? I have to wait for a phone call from a sales guy to return the product? Not surprisingly, a full week passed and I didn’t receive a phone call – sales guys sell things after all. I phoned customer service again on the 28th of October, asking again for the RMA – this time, they emailed the sales guy again and told me they CC’d his manager. Two more days go by, and still no phone call from the sales guy.

On the 30th I call customer service again, and this time they give me his extension so I can phone him directly. I do, leaving him a message with all the details. No call back. On the 31st I phone him again, and after a few hours he phones me back – it’s now been 8 days since he was supposed to contact me. He tells me he’ll pass my return information to the returns department and I should expect a call from them within a week.

Dell’s goal seems to be to make it nearly impossible for customers to return products, thus boosting their bottom line by reducing the money lost on returns. I’ve easily wasted two hours of my time with all the phone calls I’ve made, and at the time of this writing I’m still waiting to hear back from the returns department.

It simply staggers the imagination that Dell considers this process acceptable. I will now have to think very hard about whether or not it’s worth ordering another Dell product in the future – they’ve created a nightmare return process that I never want to go through again.

Dell, go back to the old way of doing returns – the new system is a disaster!

Moving Virtual PC 2007 Files from Documents Folder

I installed Microsoft’s Virtual PC 2007 the other day, and it helpfully gives you the option of where you want to store the virtual hard drive for the virtual machine you’re creating. I put it on my D: drive, which is a pair of 500 GB Western Digital drives in a RAID 1 array. I expected all the changes I made to that virtual machine to be kept inside the virtual hard drive. Not quite! Virtual PC 2007 creates a folder inside the documents folder called My Virtual Machines, then inside that it creates a sub-folder with the name of your virtual machine. And inside that sub-folder, it stores all of the files that it creates for disk undo changes. In my case, after only a week, it was 2 GB of files in total. Because I use FolderShare to sync my documents folder across all my PCs and laptops, this was 2 GB worth of files that were useless everywhere but the computer that was running the virtual machine.

I scoured through all the program settings, and couldn’t find any option that controlled where these files are stored. Ugg. The good news? I was able to move the virtual machine files out of my documents folder and into the same folder as the virtual machine hard drive on my D: drive and everything worked seamlessly – it didn’t even prompt me asking where the files went. I made a slight change to the virtual machine, saved the changes, and watched as the change was comitted to the folder on the D: drive.

So, if you’re curious about whether or not you can move Virtual PC 2007 files out of the Documents Folder, yes you can!

The Importance of Setting Office Hours

I saw this interesting post over on Digital Nomads and I thought it was worth highlighting for anyone that works outside a normal office – although there may be lessons here for people that work in regular offices as well. I try to stick to a 9 AM to 5 PM work schedule, although there are some evenings when I’ll devote myself to writing or catching up on email. In order to minimize my online presence though, I’ll usually sign myself out of my IM client, and shut down Outlook (unless I’m playing email catch-up). And even though I’ve had the ability to use push email for years, I instead configure my Windows Mobile smartphone to check email every two hours during the day, and every four hours over the weekend. I also will happily ignore the email chime when it goes off. I never want to become one of those sad people who are trained like dogs to reach for their phone whenever they hear the email chime. Have you ever tried to have a conversation with one of those people? You’re talking, or they’re talking, and everything comes to a screeching halt as they have to check and see what email came in. Things have gotten completely out of control, and office workers need to take back control over their lives by working only within working hours. Ok, rant over. 🙂

George Lucas Heckled on Spike’s Scream 2008 Awards

I was watching the Spike TV 2008 Scream awards, and near the end, at the 1 hour 56 minute and 30 second mark, some guy in the crowd, within earshot of the microphone that Lucas was speaking from, yelled out “You haven’t been cool since the ’80s!”. Wow. It’s one thing to express your opinion about someone else, but it’s quite another to do so as a heckler from the crowd at an event where he’s being honoured. I doubt he made it back to his car alive – I’m sure one of those Storm Troopers gave him a little re-education on respecting the creator of the Star Wars universe.