Downsizing

All of my electronics are turning on me. My phone and my camera have been giving me problems, but the most irritating has been my laptop computer. I've had it for a little over four years, so I suppose in this era it is a dinosaur. I wiped it clean and did a fresh reinstall of Windows last fall, and it helped some, but it became increasingly slow and unstable. I had no interest in replacing it, but it was time.

As an example, after a fresh boot and nothing else open, it took seven minutes for iTunes to open. And the program wasn't functioning for another few minutes after that. It brought me back to the time of AOL and dialup. Like back then, I got in the habit of doing chores while I waited for programs to open. Click an icon, make a sandwich. In the past few weeks when I had so little time at home to just check e-mail, it was exceptionally frustrating, so I started looking for a replacement.

I had dragged my destop computer down with the move, so that was an option. It just needed a monitor, so I picked up the cheapest one at Fry's Electronics. As a side note, the cheapest monitor was a 20" LCD flatscreen, which was a vast improvement on the huge CRT I donated to the Goodwill, so no complaints there.

But I really liked the mobility of a laptop. My old laptop was a near necessity when I was working in real estate. Back then, I decided to get a large screen version for ease of use and for presentations to clients. I didn't skimp on the processor either, but of course by now it is outdated. But it ended up being rather heavy and cumbersome, so this time I looked into the newer, smaller (and cheaper) netbooks.

Since I have the desktop to do the heavy lifting, I didn't need (or want to spend money on) a top of the line model. The netbook would largely be for e-mail, writing and surfing, so portability was the main concern. I found a Gateway model on sale for $280. It is crazy, but that is less than I paid for my smartphone three years ago. The smaller keyboard and screen are a bit of an adjustment, but quite frankly I am just so happy programs open in under a minute that I am willing to be pretty forgiving right now.

So, much of the weekend was spent backing things up and moving files around. Just like a physical move, it is a pain in the butt, but it is a chance to downsize and organize. I am going to try to avoid gumming up the netbook with too much stuff. I will be keeping most of my pictures and music on the desktop, as well as all those archived e-mails I can't seem to clean out. I am also testing out Google's Chrome browser as it is supposed to run faster and cleaner than Firefox and Internet Explorer. Smaller, leaner, faster!

There was a brief temptation to jump ship to Apple. An iPad would be a pretty cool way to go, but their base model was twice the cost of the netbook, and I just can't see giving up the keyboard just yet. Apple doesn't make a netbook, and their cheapest laptop is a thousand dollars, so I am still a PC.

I haven't moved or figured everything out yet, but I am at least back up and running (and not swearing at the computer screen anymore).

Isn't it cute?

Go for launch

Click to enlarge

Will the iPad change everything? Has Apple hit another home run, or will it not live up to the ever-increasing hype of an 'i-something' product launch? I have a feeling it will be a very (very) cool gadget, but unless you have money to burn, it might be a tough sell for something that falls between an iTouch and a laptop especially in this economy. As Sean put it, it is built primarily for consuming, not creating. But I'm sure there will still be lots of people in line this morning anxious to get there hands on one.

And the iPad has made it's mark in one way already - prices of e-books are going up. Publishers have been frustrated with Amazon's price-point of $9.99, claiming they can't make any money at that price. The coming competition from the iPad launch has allowed them to renegotiate with other e-book sellers. Amazon, Barnes & Noble to let publishers set price for e-books. Increased competition and prices go up. Not what I learned in business school.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have an iPad. Just can't convince myself that I need one.

Order out of chaos

My mind works through association rather than logic or reason. When I run those miles over the roads there is all the while a stream of consciousness, a torrent of ideas, coursing through my brain. One idea after another goes hurtling past like so much white water. Giving me here and there a new insight, a new intuition, a new understanding. Each in turn soon replaced by yet another thought, still another idea.

At those times I can believe Erich Segal’s story of wanting to dash up to a house and ask for a pen and paper to write a thought down. For he knew as surely as I that the thought, however clear, would soon be forgotten. And since there is no logical progression, no amount of reasoning would bring it back.

~ George Sheehan - Running and Being

When I am out on the roads, thoughts rush through my mind in a similar fashion. Like a free-association exercise where no idea is a bad idea, the mind just throws them out in succession to see what sticks. It can be wonderful to watch how the mind moves from one thought to another, and it takes me to interesting places. Unfortunately, the thoughts don't always stick, and revelations get left at the side of the road.

I am battling insomnia again this week. I have been up past 3:00am the last few nights. Though I am physically tired, I just can't seem to find the off switch for my brain.

I usually read for an hour or so before turning off the light. This usually helps clear my mind so I can shut it down for the night. Lately, I have been having trouble keeping thoughts at bay even when I am reading. They feel like a multitude of hands tapping me on the shoulder while I am trying to concentrate. When the book is put down and the lights go out, the thoughts wash over me. Sometimes there is a particular issue weighing on me that won't go away quietly, but at others it is just a stream of thoughts pinging around from subject to unrelated subject.

When I land on something of value, I try to write it down to get it out of my head before it is pushed out by the next free-association. Getting it down on paper seems to help quiet the mind a bit. I do this during the day as well, because even when awake those "brilliant" thoughts don't always stick with me. For a while I carried a small notebook with me, but it wasn't always practical. I've ended up with thoughts written on the back of receipts and any other scrap of paper I can find.

What I ended up with was basically a hundred little post-it notes scattered between my truck, pockets and bedside. Not the best system and it only adds to the feeling of disarray. I needed a new system.

What I have been using for the past couple of months is a Microsoft program called OneNote. It is kind of a digital version of the notebook, but with lots of advantages over the paper version. Like a thousand little post-its, you can take random notes on the page. The advantage is now you can cut & paste, and drag & drop your random thoughts and put them in some order. Like a notebook, there are separate pages, sections and binders to help organize your thoughts. Notes can can also be marked with various tags so it is easy to find that random thought later on. And if you forget to tag it, a quick search can find that buried note.

It is also a great tool for research. You can take screen clippings from websites that are then pasted into OneNote. A hyperlink to the website is also attached to the clipping so you can refer back to the original article. In the past I had used browser bookmarks to stash interesting articles, but they have grown to a point where it is difficult to see them amid the clutter.

In addition to text and webshots, you can put drawings, pictures, tables and audio notes into your work pages. OneNote is also integrated with the other Office products as well. If you tag something as a task in OneNote, it pops up in Outlook to remind you. Once you mark it as complete, it is updated in both places. Like Word and Excel, there are probably more cool features than I will ever use.

So, how does this help me when I'm not in front of my computer? There's an app for that. OneNote also has a mobile version that I have on my phone. When a thought strikes, I can make a note of it before it disappears. When I sync/update my phone, the notes pop up in OneNote. As I have been struggling with insomnia lately, I have been keeping my phone by my bedside for those 3:00am deep thoughts (with the ringer off of course). As for when I'm out running, I may need to carry a pen to jot notes on my hand. The original Palm Pilot.

I am hoping that by using OneNote, I can reduce the physical and mental clutter in my life, and capture that epiphany when it happens. And get some sleep.


Not part of the Microsoft Office family? There is also a free online program called EverNote that sounds very similar.

Nerdiness of another kind

After our running year-in-review party on Saturday, a game of Rock Band 2 broke out.

As I was the newbie in the room, they gave me the bass. Wise choice. Later in the evening I grabbed the microphone for a couple of songs. I mumbled my way through Elvis Costello's "Pump it Up" and I think I did only slightly better on Lit's "My Own Worst Enemy". Back to bass for me.

I could see how the game could get addictive. Air-band dreams mixed with high tech toys. Soon I was tapping my foot and bobbing my head as I played along. In my head, I was killing on the bass.

Give me my shades and I'll hang out in the back.

A few updates

On the job front, I didn't hear from anyone this weekend. I headed into work hoping that my key card would still work and I had a desk to return to. No alarms went off, so Monday started pretty well. There were four less of us than on Friday, and it sounds like they were the only ones that got a phone call. Apparently no news is good news.

On the computer front, I spent the weekend reinstalling programs. It took several tries to get my Outlook files to install correctly. I initially imported e-mails separately so as not to tie things up for hours. When I imported the calendar later, two different profiles showed up, and every entry on the calendar was doubled. Several tries later (with a little bit of swearing) I finally had it working. I had to dig into the registry which is above my pay grade. It was a similar fight with the program that had all my workout information.

Tonight it was great to have everything running again. While I was checking e-mail, Windows update loaded a service pack for Office. After restarting, the computer is stuck once again. It boots up but all I get is wallpaper and a pointer. Nothing else.

I tried using system restore - no dice. Then I tried the repair tool from the Windows installation disc. I walked away while it was running, and when I came back it was reinstalling Windows. It is probably wiping out everything my brother and I did over the weekend.

And now after doing the reinstall, it is stuck again on a "please wait" screen. Is there a cash for clunkers program for computers?

And it is raining for the first time in 26 days. It is actually a refreshing change in this unusual summer. With this long of a break, it was wonderful to smell the air cleansed by rain again.

A fresh start

I finally pulled the trigger and wiped the laptop clean. The only way it would boot up was in safe mode, and I ended up barely using it for a month. I stopped putting anything new on the computer, since I would only be adding more things to back up or lose. I think I copied everything important, but there may be a few surprises down the road.

I was fortunate to have my own Geek Squad to help me - my brother. He even pulled up in a VW Bug to complete the package. He has done this sort of computer overhaul multiple times personally and for work, so I just stood back and read off the 25 digit product keys when needed. So far the thing is running just fine. Tonight will be about reinstalling programs and moving important documents back to the laptop. I am currently waiting on Service Pack 3 to install. When I get Outlook back up, there will be a flood of e-mail coming my way. Sorry about any month old responses you may receive.

With the fresh start, I am going to do my best to load only important things back on the computer. There was so much junk clogging up the system - programs I barely used, leftover parts of things I thought I uninstalled, and 7 or 8 years worth of pictures and music. When I bought the laptop three years ago, the 80gig hard drive was four times what I was used to, but it didn't take long to cram it full of important and trivial stuff.

I am about to go through a purge of household things as well. Stuff that has been piling up for decades, and has taken over the house. It will feel good when I'm done I'm sure, but the pile is intimidating. I'll be digging through 20 years worth of things and deciding what is still important enough to hang on to. I need to set the bar pretty high, so it may be a painful trip down memory lane.

The first step is always the most difficult. The laptop was a small one in the right direction. I just need to keep moving forward, one box at a time.

Digital memory

The computer error I was getting was something like "Can not load locally stored profile". The error goes on to say that a temporary profile will be used, but that any settings or files will not be saved. When I went to the 'My Documents' file, it was empty. This is where the panicked question of backups come in. All my pictures, music, documents, work files, etc. were missing. I'm sure they're on the hard drive somewhere, but who knows what all has been corrupted at this point.

Some googling later, it looked like the solution was to create a new profile and then drag all the files over. After setting up the new profile, I went in search of the missing files. I found them, plugged in the external hard drive, and started dragging them over. It looks like April 30th is the last time I backed up some files. Not forever ago, but long enough that I wasn't sure what was new.

When I tried to copy over the pictures and music, I was denied access. After more messing around, I may have it figured out. In addition to all the personal files, some of the programs were missing as well. I have no idea why Windows is set up this way. It seems I would need to reinstall programs in each profile. I assume it doesn't take up twice as much space, but who knows. I would also need to set up Outlook all over again to access my calendar and e-mail. Once I was relatively sure my files were safe, I decided to step away for a while.

My laptop has been running more and more slowly, so I should probably just wipe it clean and start over. If this is what I decide to do, it would be a waste of time to set up this new profile temporarily. I also need to track down the installation discs for all the programs I use. Some of the programs were purchased online, so there are no discs. I'm not sure how easy it will be to download them without paying for them again. I don't want to go through this more than once if I can help it.

The main reason I have hesitated is that I'm sure I would miss backing up some files and they would be lost forever. Much like the boxes of memories I've moved from house to house, some of the stuff I haven't looked at in a long time, but if it was gone forever I'd be missing a part of my history, a part of me.

So, sorry if I haven't returned your e-mails. I've done a poor job of visiting the online sites to check my various accounts. I'd like to say it has been nice being disconnected from the electronic tether, but I know that the backlog is building hour by hour.

Tomorrow (hopefully) an STP recap.

AAARRRGGGHHH!!!

Turned on my laptop this evening, and it wouldn't boot up. When was the last time I backed things up?

Success!

So the installation of Verizon fiber optic went pretty well on Friday. The installer showed up within the two hour window promised, and was professional. There was a mix up on the work order, as they had indicated that I wanted phone service in addition to internet and TV service. When I told him that was incorrect, he had to call in.

I currently have phone service from Verizon, but only to get DSL. I plan to cancel both on Monday. According to the installer, if I gave up phone service, I had to put down a big deposit. So we had to wait around for their cancellation department to call me. That wasted 30 minutes. They didn't ask for a deposit, but I'm a little worried that now they will try to jack up the price or change the deal I was offered.

Anyway, the fiber optic works great. According to the online tests, our download and upload speeds are four to ten times faster. The TV service works just fine, though all the channels are different. The home media DVR works well, though it is missing those cool Tivo beeps and boops.

The home media portion of the DVR is pretty cool. As promised, you can watch recorded programs on any TV. You can also access the pictures and music from your computers over the wireless network. It doesn't support video though their website says it does, so hopefully that is on the way soon.

We haven't left alone long enough to see if the screen saver is anywhere near as cool as Apple TV's.

Fios is coming! Fios is coming!

We are getting fiber optic cable hooked up to our house. It will bring faster internet access than we have with DSL, as well as allow us to get rid of our land line since it was only there for the DSL. We will also be getting our TV over the fiber optic cable instead of the current satellite.

We are also replacing our current DVR with a "home media" DVR. It is supposed to allow you to watch recorded shows on any of your TVs, as well as let you access your computer for photos, music and videos ala Apple TV. Even the screen saver on Apple TV has been known to steal hours away as you watch your life go by in photos. If it lives up to the hype, it should be pretty cool.

What made us pull the trigger though was that it is a dollar or two cheaper than what we are currently paying for a better product. Plus with all the signing bonuses, we will come out noticeably ahead for the first year.

I am a little leery. Contact with any utility has never gone well with me. Power companies have shut off power because they hooked us up to the wrong meter (twice), a phone company sent me to collections because I "cancelled" my service rather than "closing" my account (or some similar semantic battle), a cable company spent 3 weeks trying to get internet to work (without success) then tried to apply the $150 refund to my TV bill even though they swore they were two different companies.

One of the real bonuses will be getting the desktop hooked up to the internet. The phone jack in the office has been busted for a long time. Not a big deal with wireless access to my laptop, but I've had to drag the new desktop out to the living room whenever I wanted to get online.

Fingers crossed that it all works like it should. If you hear from me sometime tomorrow, my luck with utilities has changed.

A few updates

I know you've been on edge of your seat (you haven't), so I thought I'd update you on some earlier entries.

• Stamps are $.42. I should have know this since 42 is the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything.

• Our street has a lovely new coating of asphalt. As anticipated, it makes my driveway look pretty dumpy. They were delayed a couple of weeks, but now the neighborhood is gloriously smooth on the bike. Now that the fight with Kenmore is (mostly) over, hopefully the Burke-Gilman trail will get its own fresh coat. Of course it is the rim-bending tree roots breaking through that really get you.

• The new desktop is running smoothly. The addition of memory has made all the difference. Vista hasn't been painful at all, except for the frequent "are you sure" queries. I have nearly completed the video for the Ragnar Relay contest and it should be live in the next couple of days. Even with a very heavy editing hand, it still clocks in at over 8 1/2 minutes. Too much good stuff.

• My treadmill stress test results came back. Looks like everything checked out OK. The nurse called to report there were no signs of ischemia. I had to look it up. I asked her if there was a report produced that would make sense to a layman. The answer was no. I was kind of hoping to see some charts and graphs - kind of my health on a spreadsheet.

• And finally, I am going through a little Olympic withdrawal. The men's marathon was the last event I saw. It was an impressive performance considering the heat and humidity conditions. The Americans finished in about the time they had planned, but it was only good for 9th and 10th. The winner broke the Olympic record by about 3 minutes.
  

Checks in the mail

I recently bought a new computer system, some additional memory and anti-virus software. I spent an hour plus applying for rebates on all of them. There were 5 rebates in all totaling $165. Certainly worth my time and effort, but still kind of a pain in the butt.

Each one asked for a slightly different thing: rebate forms, copies of receipts, proof of purchase seals, original UPC codes, serial numbers, blood sample, etc. Of course it also means scanning everything so that I can have copies if/when the rebates don't come through.

Companies hope you screw up and forget to send something in, or just forget the rebate entirely so they can keep your money. Some companies have also started sending out rebate Visa cards, semi-forcing you to go out and buy more stuff rather than having the cash to pay bills, etc.

When I went to my desk drawer it became clear that I haven't mailed a letter in a while. I found $.39, $.41, $.02 and $.01 stamps. I had to jump online to verify what the current going rate is.

Some companies like Costco and Staples allow you to apply for rebates online so you can avoid the "lost in the mail" excuse. I seem to remember legislation being suggested to eliminate the whole mail-in rebate scam, requiring stores to take care of it at the time of your purchase. That would be worth of the easy button.

Computer time

So I spent most of the weekend in front of the computer.

I was getting regular phone calls from Matt detailing what was going on with Annabelle and Holly down in San Diego. I would then log in to update his blog so that all the friends and family could check in on their progress. One of those times when the power of the internet is really appreciated. There are so many people following Annabelle's story that telephone or even e-mail trees seemed insufficient to reach all the people in her circle. I'm sure there were many people leaving The Dawg Run up on their computers and hitting refresh every 15 minutes hoping for a new post and update. It was a blessing to get to talk to Matt so frequently. Annabelle really is a miracle in the making, and it was my pleasure to do my part to share the story.

When I wasn't on my laptop updating Matt's blog, I was in front of the new desktop starting work on the RAGNAR video. There is a contest for the best video, and the submission deadline is August 31st. I wanted to get started because I knew there was so much video footage and so many great photos to try to squeeze in. Even though it was a 30 hour relay, I think I need to keep the video submission to a reasonable 5 to 7 minutes. I will probably do a longer version for the year-in-review DVD so the participants can see more of the great pictures and videos from the relay.

Vista has turned out to be the memory hog it was billed to be. The video/DVD software was running incredibly slow, sometimes locking up completely. The computer came with 1 gig of RAM, and Windows Vista was taking up half of it at idle. The video software was too much of a drag to be supported by the remaining half. The new, faster processor was hardly being taxed as the flood of information was trying to go through the pin hole remaining in the Vista clogged arteries.

I found 4 gigs of memory on sale, so now everything is running much more smoothly. Even so, I needed to chop up the project into smaller bits as adding all the video files to one project overwhelmed the program. Just like wider highways will be ultimately filled with more cars, software will continue to grow to fill larger memory sticks and faster memory.

Hidden costs

Well if we paint the room, we'll need to buy new furniture...

We finally bought a camcorder. With the events we've been running and the Year in Review DVDs we've been putting together, it would be nice to capture some footage. Trying to save some money, we bought a relatively inexpensive model.

It turns out that the only way to connect the camcorder to the computer is through a firewire card, which I didn't have on my laptop or desktop. So off to the computer store. I plugged the new card into the desktop computer and it worked without incident. However, when I started downloading the videos, the files were dropping many frames making the video choppy.

After doing some troubleshooting and tweaking a couple things, it still wasn't working well. My computer only had the minimum of memory recommended, and I would still need to buy a DVD burner. The desktop computer is also about 8 years old (from the Jurassic era I believe) so I wasn't sure how well it would handle editing video.

I did some shopping around and I was able to find a new system with a DVD burner for about $150 more than updating my old system with memory and a burner. Of course there are no Windows XP computers out there anymore, so now I have Vista. We'll see if it is as painful as the Apple commercials make it sound.

The videos downloaded without a frame dropped. So far so good. Of course my video software isn't Vista compatible, so there will be some more updating this week.

Resistance is painful

Apple's niche of world domination can be frustrating.

When shopping for a MP3 player, I chose not to get an Ipod. The main reason was the inability to replace the battery. When I was shopping, Apple was having a brief publicity problem. The first wave of Ipods were having battery problems as they have a expected life of about 18 months. When people contacted Apple to get the batteries replaced, they found out that there was no way to replace the battery, and that they should just buy a new Ipod. This guy actually sent his Ipod addressed to Steve Jobs and found that "Buy a new one" was the company policy. They later changed their policy to charge $99 to replace the battery (now $67)

As I am not a fan of disposable products, I bought a Creative Zen Micro. It has a replaceable battery, and the package actually came with a spare. I have been happy with its performance, and the battery is still taking charges. As it is not an Ipod, 99% of the supporting products out there don't work with the player.

The real problem has been buying songs online. Until recently, Itunes was about the only game in town where you could buy a single song without paying a monthly fee. As my player was not an Ipod, Itunes vast library was no help as the file type is proprietary and not compatible with other players. Thankfully Amazon.com has entered the market and I can now buy MP3 files online.

Except...there are artists that are exclusive with Itunes. I went looking for a U2 song last night and I could only find it on Itunes. In order to get the song, I would need to add the Itunes program to my computer, buy the song, burn the song to a CD, then rip it back off onto the computer as a MP3. My laptop has a nearly full hard drive and is already moving very slowly, so I had no interest in adding another program to gum up the works.

But I really wanted the song. My desktop computer has a new, relatively clean hard drive so I decided to load Itunes there. Unfortunately it is not connected to the internet as the phone jack is dead in that room. So I downloaded the program on the laptop, transferred it to the desktop, and installed Itunes. Since I couldn't get online, I had the wife buy the song on her laptop (she has an Ipod Shuffle, but no cd burner) and I copied it to the desktop. After jumping through all the hoops I was ready to start the burn to CD/rip it back off process.

Except...the song is right-protected. The wife bought it on her laptop and it needs to be authorized for the desktop. I typed in the password and waited for it to unlock, but it needed internet access to complete the authorization. So I dragged the desktop out to the living room to plug it into the wireless router.

Clearly it is time to upgrade from DSL to fiber optic and get the desktop back online. Plus I recently received a free Ipod Shuffle, so now Itunes is set to partially absorb me. The Shuffle is still in the box for now. It is best if we step away from each other for a bit.

Song price 99 cents - but it was no where near that cheap.