A month

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It has been a month since our Jean passed away. Times flies, yet it seems like it was yesterday. Nor a day has passed by without coming to mind, one way or another. We miss her like we did the first day. I truly dislike Warcraft, but I am keeping her toons alive, and advancing. Somehow playing something she dedicated so much time on, where she had so many good friends, gives me the feeling she still lives. Quiet mornings, though … ⌘ Read more

Back from vacations
We are back from vacations. It was a great one, but at the end we agreed that there is no place like home, for many reasons. They are mostly minor things, to which we have grown accustom to, but that combined make the type of life we live. I might detail some of those little things later.

A few posts will be due, to narrate some relevant things from the trip: Iberia and our misplaced luggages (and their English/Spanish phones lines), Hertz and our lemon like rental car, speed limits, Aix- … ⌘ Read more

Kent on Principal’s List

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Kent’s school Awards Ceremony was today. I did not take a picture there, but filmed a bit. The photo above was taken afterwards, at home. He was so happy –and I so proud of him!– to receive the trophy for being the whole third academic year on the Principal’s List (straight A in all subjects).

I am lucky I got him to smile t … ⌘ Read more

R.I.P. Dixie J. McCoy

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Our Dixie died in her sleep, on May 23rd, 2010. Her death brought sorrow, and she is greatly missed each day. We will never forget her sweetness, kindness, good advise… Her gentle smile will live in our memories.

Rest in peace Maxie Bizzenscooter, Astlyr, Thorir, kitty, Dixie Jean McCoy. We loved you, we miss you, we will remember you. ⌘ Read more

Drobo FW800
A Drobo FW800 (four bays) is all I want for Christmas. I will settle for one without drives, just the enclosure. I will buy the drives later. Slowly. One at a time.

Please Santa. I know Christmas is far away, I am just giving you time. The device will be used mainly for family photos and videos. It is a good use, for a good device. Could you… make it so?

Update 18 May 2010

Not sure if I still want it, based on [more](http://jan.rychter.co … ⌘ Read more

It’s decided
It’s decided, my next machine will be an Apple computer. Most likely I will end up buying a Mac Mini, although an iMac is also being considered. Now, who wants a (still under warranty) DELL XPS 630i? It is a Q6600 (quad), with 4GB RAM, 500GB HD, and NVIDIA 9800GT. Comes with Windows 7 Ultimate. Nice machine!

Note: Someone contacted me, but the email went to spam, and got deleted. Try … ⌘ Read more

Bright House saga
In two occasions I have written about Bright House service, or the lack of. Ever since my last entry, many issues aroused, but I never came here to document them.

They vary, and cover a wide range. So many Bright House technicians has passed by my house, I lost count. The proverbial “how many technici … ⌘ Read more

Video quality while on 3G
The same day I got the iPad 3G, I noticed a very contrasting video quality while using Wi-Fi and while using 3G. Videos watched on Youtube would have HD quality (Wi-Fi); same videos, while on 3G, would show horribly. Yet, videos on Apple, while on 3G or Wi-Fi, would show perfectly. All that whether using the app or the web browser, tested both.

Is it Youtube serving a very low quality video to 3G users? Is it AT&T doing it? Is it something built-in on iOS? ⌘ Read more

Thoughts on Flash
Steve Jobs shared with us this month his thoughts on Flash:

“Flash was created during the PC era —for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards —all areas where Flash falls short.

The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch vi … ⌘ Read more

iPad 3G status

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It seems that it will be here tomorrow before, or around 3:00PM after all. Just when I was starting to lose my faith… So happy! ⌘ Read more

Don’t talk to aliens

“We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.”

[…]

“If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t … ⌘ Read more

The wheels of justice
I thought twice before coming here and write two or three sentences. But sometimes two or three sentences is all you have. I had to do it: Apple Inc., you rock!

If you want to be a “journalist”, act as one. As Powazek wrote in a tweet, “Real journalists don’t buy stolen property.” ⌘ Read more

Paradox of the Active User

The “paradox of the active user” is a concept introduced by John M. Carroll and Mary Beth Rosson (then at IBM, now at Penn State) to explain a common observation in several user studies done at the IBM User Interface Institute in the early 1980s (later confirmed by many other studies, including my own): Users never read manuals … ⌘ Read more

Clan of the Cave Bear
Just saw the Clan of the Cave Bear movie, for the first time, on it’s entirety. Great movie. Touching; got me a knot on the throat in more than one occasion. I think it is a sad movie, and brought up many memories. Sometimes movies, like music, have that effect. Sometimes it is just us, and how our mind works. ⌘ Read more

Weekend starts
The weekend has started. It really started yesterday’s afternoon, but who is keeping tabs? The fact is, it is here and thus it brings a dilemma. If I do nothing—which is impossible if you have a kid—the weekend will fly by. On the other hand, if I get busy—and I will—it will fly by as well.

There are little things in life that keeps you, in a short term, looking forward to a near future. Of course there are others that makes you want to stop time, so that near future will not come. For no … ⌘ Read more

Glad I am not in North Korea
From the Wall Street Journal:

North Korea said on Monday it would issue new won currency this week that would in effect lop two zeros off the old —requiring 1,000-won bills, for example, to be exchanged for 10-won notes with, theoretically, the same buying power.

It said it would limit the amount of old currency it would accept in exchange, to the equivalent of about $40 worth at unofficial exchange rates.

— [Wall Street Journal](http://online.wsj.c … ⌘ Read more

Host hunting
I had had all my websites —this one, and many other test ones, etc—, plus my self-managed DNS on ServerBeach (now part of Peer1) for a very long time. They all reside on a dedicated server, which has, sadly, reached it’s end of life (EOL).

Although I can keep it as it is, doing so represents a liability problem, as I will be out of luck, should it decide to fail. The problem is, ServerBeach isn’t offering anything right now similar to the serv … ⌘ Read more

Bookmarklets I use
These are some of the general bookmarklets I use. I have them synchronized with Chrome and Google Docs, but I am listing them here in case I want to share them with someone else, like you (yes, you there, reading this now). Here there go:

• Tweet it! : document.getSelection ? document.getSelection() : document.selection.createRange().text); if (!q) q=prompt(“Enter your Tweet”,“”);if (q!=null) location=”http://twitter.com/home?st … ⌘ Read more

Use Google Checkout
I was going to write a longer note on Paypal and eBay, but after some time to cool down I do not think it is worth it. Instead I am going to recommend, wholeheartedly, the use of Google Checkout for all your payments and shopping needs. Really, once again Google did not let me down and transformed an otherwise nightmare into a pleasant auctioning/shopping dream.

If you must use eBay, find a way to use Google Checkout with it. Y … ⌘ Read more

The Hero
I am in love with the HTC Hero. I do not have one… yet, still, when thinking on a mobile device I would love to have, the Hero is what comes to mind. And what better song to keep my hopes alive than “Holding out for a Hero”, by Bonnie Tyler? So, here it goes!

Edited: Song removed. Did not wanted to get sued for hosting a sound track which copyright might forbid wide audience availability.

Can you feel it?! (smile) ⌘ Read more

Selling iPhone
In an effort to start saving money towards an Android based device (would love HTC Hero), I am selling my 2G 16GB iPhone. As the eBay listing reads, it is a very well kept, 2G 16GB iPhone, unlocked and jailbroken. No scratches, no blemishes. Bid starts at $1, no reserve. Yes, $1. ⌘ Read more

Bright House follow up
You will remember my previous Bright House post. The same day I wrote that, I got a call from a Bright House customer service representative. Since there is no need to know names, let’s call her Christine. I like that name.

Christine told me Bright House was aware I had publicly written about my displeasure with their services, and that her job was to make sure I was completely satisfied. Fair enough. After patiently listening … ⌘ Read more

Avoid Bright House if you can
I live in Central Florida. In my area, if I want cable TV and Internet, I have no choice but to use Bright House services. The competition is satellite TV/Internet and/or DSL (for Internet). Why am I recommending to avoid Bright House, if you can? It is simple: their service is far from being of a good quality and/or reliable. I will elaborate a little.

On cable TV, you get black screens (no video or audio), or “ Please wait” screens, constantly and randomly. You call, the … ⌘ Read more

Another Facebook rant
This one will be short, Twitter style… almost. A while ago I wrote about how Facebook has cached my OpenID credentials (wrong ones) and it was refusing to clear them after a few days. Well, twenty five (that is 25) days after, Facebook is still insisting on going to the wrong place, when I enter /bits/ as my OpenID on my “Settings → Account Settings → Linked Accounts → OpenID…”.

Now isn’t tha … ⌘ Read more

September 11th

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We will never forget.

Today, eight years ago, a group of humans, guided by a political agenda, a deep hatred towards the United States, and a mad religious fanaticism slammed airplanes into the World Trade Center, destroying the Twin Towers, damaging other buildings, and killing almost 3,000 people. A second airplane hit The Pentagon, and a … ⌘ Read more

IP migration
I have a deadline to meet. I must migrate all my servers, and clients to a private IP space. Servers must be done — if at all possible — by September 30th. Clients by October 30th. That is, this year. Problem is, I have never done anything close to it, and there are so many things that need to be done at once, I don’t know where to start.

I have a Linux DNS/DHCP to change (Internet facing one). I have an AD DNS to change (AD, as AD integrated zones. Three servers, actually. All for internal AD us … ⌘ Read more

Facebook and OpenID caching
When I first read that Facebook was going to allow OpenID logins, I was happy. OpenID means less usernames and passwords to remember. So I merrily went to setup mine, just to find out that their support was exclusively for OpenID version 2.0, and my implementation was 1.1. No graceful fall back, Facebook demands OpenID 2.0. So I decided it was time for me to upgrade my implementation for one capable to handle 1.1 and 2.0.

Of course, the first one I tried I did not like it … ⌘ Read more

Special, just like you
At first I thought I was special, when I received my first offering of marriage, or the bank transfer to help the widow of some foreign fallen dignitary. Then they kept going, and I knew I was “special”, just like everyone else.

Read one of today’s emails and smile:

I am 26 years old, just started work with Central bank of Nigeria, as a scientist and why i was diong system maintance . I came across your file which was marked X and your released disk painted RED, I took t … ⌘ Read more

Hello world, again!
I am starting over. I might “port” back some entries from the old weblog, but that’s pretty much it. Right now everything is in state of flux, running on a vanilla WordPress installation with a couple of plugins on. Work will progress as time permits.

There isn’t one single reason why I am starting over, but a few. Basically, the old weblog database was “dirty” with entries and rows, and tables from plugins… and god knows what other things (I ran quite a few experiments on that one) … ⌘ Read more

Aion, the WoW killer
Aion isn’t out yet for North America or Europe, but has already caused long time WoW players to quit. That is what my household has done, ending the life of two, four years old, accounts.

Beta 4 is coming up, July 17th and we can hardly wait. Preorder will give you access to the beta, so go ahead! Simply Google Aion and follow the appropiated link.

While we wait, it feels good to be out of WoW. Really liberating! ⌘ Read more

gOS is coming our way
Yes, it is coming!

We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear – computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to wo … ⌘ Read more

Safari 4 Beta
Safari 4 Beta is out and it is rocking. Apple has adopted (copied) quite a bit from Chrome interface and I have to say the browser looks and behaves awesomely under Windows 7.

But, why bore you with senseless praise? Go download it, and see it for yourself. ⌘ Read more

Email liturgy
I miss the days when emails were written with thought, and care. They were clear, and to the point. There was no HTML in them; replies were perfectly quoted, references were neatly annotated. Emoticons were kept to a minimum, if any.

No one does that anymore… well, not many of us do. I haven’t give up, I insist. For me, sending and replying emails is a liturgy. ⌘ Read more

NETBROS.COM for sale
Yes, I am selling this domain, which I have have since, well, I already lost count. If you are interested on buying this domain, please contact me. I would rather sell it directly than going through a broker. ⌘ Read more

Yet another
Yet another long downtime on World of Warcraft, just in the verge of the release of the second major expansion for the game. What a royal mess! You would think Blizzard has it figured out by now, down to a science, but…

I can’t imagine how tomorrow, with the expansion release, will be. Not going to “tune in.” Instead will let others have the “fun.” ⌘ Read more

Not allowed to tell
A local bank in front of which I sit quite often has a locked metal box sitting outside the branch. Yesterday my curiosity got sparked when I saw one of the employees (which I greet daily) opening it and taking a canvas bag out of it. When I asked what was the box for, she stopped like frozen, and muttered “ _Company doesn’t allow me to tell._”

Now, won’t you agree with me that such answer was a very silly —and dangerous!— one? ⌘ Read more

MCITP - Enterprise Server Administrator
The last two weeks were very busy ones. I went through a Boot Camp and obtained the Microsoft Certified Information Technology Professional certification, as an Enterprise Server 2008 Administrator. Much more to do with the product, but migration is on my close horizon.

As a side note, and totally unrelated, I will change the way this weblog look soon. I will probably start over as well, all the old content gone. Not sure yet about that last part, but … ⌘ Read more

Registration and comments disabled
I have grown tired of deleting bogus accounts. They do not do anything, they do not cause harm; it is just tiresome to delete, each day, 20 or 30 of them. So enough… for now. Those who had an account (which was created using OpenID), still can comment, but no new registrations anymore.

As a matter of fact… I think I will change this site completely. Soon… ish. ⌘ Read more

Einstein on religion
Einstein: Letter to Eric Gutkind

“… The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can for me change this. These subtilized interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the origina … ⌘ Read more

China earthquake help
Cities completely wipe out, thousands dead, thousands missing, thousands without anything left. China needs our help, and every little thing would help. Ten dollars might not be much for you, but when many donate we can make a difference. ⌘ Read more

From today’s Barack’s email

News broke this morning that Senator Clinton made three separate loans to her campaign in the past 30 days —including one as recently as Monday.

These loans total more than $6.4 million, which combined with her previous personal loans, add up to at least $11.4 million she’s loaned her campaign since February.

A spokesman said she may continue to “loan the campaign additional money out of her jointly-held assets” —which include more than $100 million in … ⌘ Read more

Hillary speaks like Bush
Obama accuses Clinton of using the language of Bush on Iran

In the sharpest attack, Obama said that Clinton’s threat to “totally obliterate” Iran should it attempt a nuclear attack on Israel was inappropriate. “It’s not the language we need right now. It’s language that’s reflective of George Bush,” he said.

Obama said it was time to get away from a foreign policy of “bluster an … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft DRM server going offline
Rob Bennett, head of MSN Entertainment and Video Services, wrote to customers in an email:

As of August 31, 2008, we will no longer be able to support the retrieval of license keys for the songs you purchased from MSN Music or the authorization of additional computers. You will need to obtain a license key for each of your songs downloaded from MSN Music on any new computer, and you must do so before August 31, 2008. If you attempt to transfer your songs to additi … ⌘ Read more

Lesbos islanders dispute gay name
Who has the right to be called Lesbian?

Campaigners on the Greek island of Lesbos are to go to court in an attempt to stop a gay rights organisation from using the term “lesbian”.

The islanders say that if they are successful they may then start to fight the word lesbian internationally.

The issue boils down to who has the right to call themselves Lesbians.

Is it gay women, or the 100,000 people liv … ⌘ Read more

Prepare to pay more
It seems that within four years –if nothing is done to prevent it (and nobody really knows what to do)– we [americans] will be paying $7 for a gallon of gasoline.

A very interesting post over Wired explains some of the reasons. A brief summary of them:

1. Oil companies getting tax breaks, and not passing those savings down, butpocketing them.
   
2. Theeconomic development in China and India, which increases the dema … ⌘ Read more

Russia warned over Georgia move
Russia warned over Georgia move

Nato has warned Russia that its recent troop build-up in Georgia’s two breakaway regions undermines its neighbour’s territorial integrity.

Would everyone chill out, please? This time Russians, specially. I think a “Back off, and chill” behavior is mandatory. ⌘ Read more

A day of sadness
Today we realized that we have lost our camcorder, and with it, all the memories we had since KM was born: from birth until his last birthday, at least. And the pain we feel can’t be explained. How could we be so stupid?!

Although we have thoughts, accusing ourselves for lots of things… what sense does it make at this point? Everything is gone, and discussing the why’s, what if’s and so on will not bring the tapes back. Things will be done differently on regards of the archiving of fami … ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu Hardy Heron released
503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

Service Temporarily Unavailable

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to
maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.

Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) Server at www.ubuntu.com Port 80

Duh! (Homer Simpson style) ⌘ Read more

eBay sues Craigslist
Referring to an eBay Press release:

Tainted Love – We are surprised and disappointed by Ebay’s unfounded allegations, which came to us out of the blue, without any attempt to engage in a dialogue with us.

Coming from a shareholder that views craigslist as a prime competitor, filing suit without so much as mentioning these assertions beforehand seems unethical, and … ⌘ Read more

Clinton wins in Pennsylvania, projected

Clinton wins in Pennsylvania – NBC News projected Tuesday night that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton had won Pennsylvania’s presidential primary, a victory that analysts said she had to have if she were to remain a credible candidate for the Democratic nomination.

I find it incredible how she has been able to get as many votes as she has. But after seeing McCain take over the Republican’s vote I should have expected an … ⌘ Read more