HDTV Part 2

In our last episode, the TV and Tivo had been ordered and I was awaiting the glorious dawning of a new age of TV viewing. Well, some progress has been made so I figured I would fill you in on the state of HD at the Hudgins'. I'm not sure if I mentioned it back then but I actually bought the TV from Amazon.com. It's a little strange to think of buying a TV online - especially a TV that weighs 125 pounds - but I read review after review of how smoothly it went. Not to mention that shipping was free and I saved the sales tax that would have been tacked on if I purchased it locally.

I got a notice that the TV would be delivered on a Tuesday so I moved a vacation day I had planned for Monday to Tuesday so that I could be there to supervise the delivery. They were supposed to be there between 1 and 3 but actually showed up at 11. They brought it in, unpacked it, turned it on to make sure it worked and left - easy peasy. Now, due to chicken and egg issues, I still had only Standard Definition (SD) TV coming into the house. Basically, I couldn't have the cable company switch to HD until I actually had the new TV since the old TV wouldn't play it. Thus, the new HDTV could only display SD TV which actually looks worse on it than it does on a regular TV. It's like enlarging a low resolution photo - the bigger you make it, the crappier it looks. Anyway, it was still a nice big picture but I had to schedule the cable company to come out and install the HD cable service - and configure the new HD Tivo.

The new Tivo is actually kind of weird. Normally, when you get cable, you need a set top box from the cable company that connects to the cable from the wall, decodes the signal and then sends the output to the Tivo, which records the show and/or sends the show to the TV. With the new Tivo, the cable comes out of the wall and goes directly into the Tivo which then hooks up to the TV. The cable company has to come out and install "Cable Cards" into the Tivo that allow it to decode the digital/HD signal that comes from the wall. In the dreaded support forums, I had read countless tales of tribulation about how the cable cards don't work, the techs don't know how to install them, they have to keep coming back, blah, blah, blah. Needless to say as the installation day approached, I was pessimistic about how many tries this was going to take or whether it was going to work at all.

This feeling was not helped by the first words out of the mouth of the installer when I opened the door and reminded him that this was a Tivo install - "I hate Tivos" was all he said.

Well, there were a few moments when it looked like we would have problems but after about an hour or so, I was fully up and running in HD Tivo goodness.

Of course, the HD from the cable is only 720p (720 lines of resolution) and the TV is capable of handling 1080p. Currently, the only way to get 1080p video into the TV is through either HD DVD or Blu-Ray "DVD" players. Turns out that the Xbox game console is a "relatively" cheap way to get an HD DVD player and that was the next purchase. I had sold the other game consoles we had accumulated on eBay so that helped take some of the sting out of this addition. Well, I went to Circuit City to get the HD DVD drive (it's a separate part from the actual Xbox console) and they didn't have any. I stopped over at GameStop and they had a new one and a used one for $50 less. Hmm...

So I got the used drive home and went to hook it up to the console. Did you guess that there was a cable missing from the box? Of course you did. Now, I have so many USB cables laying around that I figured that I surely had one that I could use. I examined the ports and determined that I needed a USB male A to male A cable. No, I did not find one in my jumble of USB cables that come with every other piece of electronic gear. Hmm... I knew GameStop wouldn't have it so I didn't bother going back. I checked on line at Circuit City and Best Buy - nobody had these things! How can that be! I even *went* to Radio Shack. Not only did they not have it in the store, they didn't even have them in their catalog! WTF!

I finally found it online from some obscure web site with a warning that these cables are not normally used and may result in short circuits of the devices that they plug into. I swear I heard ominous music playing from that website as I clicked the "checkout" button...

A week later, the cable came in and I was all excited to hook up the player and watch my first HD DVD movie (I had bought Transformers back when I had bought the player and it had been sitting there, mocking me for cheaping out with the used player). So, I hooked everything up, turned on the Xbox and the player, and - it sat there politely telling me to "Please connect the HD DVD player to the Xbox Console". Yeah buddy, I *did* connect the player to the console. That's what that freaking cable that I just waited a week for is doing! If I would have purchased the Xbox Web Cam "To enhance your gaming and online experience" I could point it at the connection and maybe this stupid machine could "see" that it was connected. Unplug, replug, power on, power off. "Please connect the HD DVD player to the Xbox Console". Arrggh!

Well, I guess there was a reason that it was a used HD DVD player. I'd have to take it back to GameStop (and pay $50 more for the new one). Optimus Prime was now smirking at me from the cover of the Transformers DVD case I swear.

The next morining, I awoke thinking about the player and had a hunch. During my attempt at diagnosing the player problem, I noticed another connector on the back of the player. I hadn't thought much about it at the time since these things often have unused connectors that are "Reserved for Future Use" and I figured it was just that (since I didn't actually have a manual for the player, seeing as it was used...). Stop me if you know where this is going.

Come to think of it, that connector actually looks like a mini-USB connector - like the kind that you use to connect a digital camera to your computer. Yeah, like the 5 or so that I pushed out of the way looking for the USB male A male A cable that I didn't have. Really, just stop me if you know already.

So, I hooked up the cable (yes, one of the ones I'd had all along), and turned on the console. "Please conn... Your HD DVD player is now installed. Enjoy your movies."

After touching up the chip in the wall left by one, now useless, "USB male A male A cable", we fired up Transformers, which by now had actually peed it's pants (or whatever the hell they wear) it was laughing so hard, and basked in the glory of 1080 HD.

It really was quite impressive.

HDTV- Huge Dilema over Television Variables

Despite my aspirations to the top of geekedness, I had not bitten into the High Definition TV craze. I suppose my cheapedness trumped my geekedness - at least initially. Of course, I'm bombarded by the HD marketing Juggernaut at every turn. Take the Sunday paper for example. Every Sunday, Skip faithfully runs out, grabs the paper and trots back into the house with it carefully nestled in his jaws and drops it at my feet.

As if!

OK, so, every Sunday, when I have Deb go out and get the Sunday paper as I sit waiting for my cereal to be poured, I anticipate opening it up and pulling out "the section". You know, the section of the paper that brings joy to millions and let's you escape from the drone of endless stories of corruption, hunger, pain and suffering. It's the one that's been around for I don't know how long. It's always changing though - being constantly updated and refreshed for today's lifestyles and interests and trends. You know what it is because you, like everyone else on the planet, have that need to take a break from all your worries and indulge in that guilty pleasure that is the CircuitCity flyer.

What.

You thought I was talking about something else? The funnies? Yeah, Dagwood is "hilarious". It sets me free...Sheesh!

So anyway, CircuitCity, and all the guys at work talking about how many inches they have and how their wives love it so much have just been nagging at me for such a long time now that I finally decided that I needed an HDTV. Thus began the process of "HD selection". Now, if you don't know already, there are several variables that go into the HDTV selection formula. First, you've got the three main types of HD TVs - DLP, LCD, and Plasma. Of course, each has it's tradeoffs which means that there is going to be a decision involved which, as you know, is not one of my favorite things to do.

OK, so DLP is off the list since it's a bit older and is projection-based so it's not "flat" like the others. That narrows it down to LCD vs. Plasma. LCDs are lighter, use less power and have matte screens that don't reflect a lot of light from windows and such. On the negative side however, they sometimes suffer from "lag" where fast moving images (sports for example), sometimes blurr or pixelate. Newer displays have faster refresh rates but they are more expensive and there are still some people who say they still see the laggies. Plasmas are slightly cheaper than LCDs as the sizes get into the 50 inch range, and they display fast moving images better and are generally judged to have a better picture. The down side to plasmas are they are heavier, use more power, and can suffer from "burn-in" - where an image can get burned into the screen if it is left on and static for too long - kinda like the score indicator in all those fast moving sports shows it's so good at displaying - of course.

The next dilemma is resolution. HDTVs are primarily divided into 720p and 1080p resolution. The number refers to how many horizontal lines comprise the picture. A standard TV has 480 lines of resolution so 720 is half again as much and 1080 is more than twice as much. Obviously, more lines is better but, of course, it costs more as well so the question becomes, do you really need the extra resolution. There are several factors involved here of course. One of the big ones is based on the source material that you are going to be watching. Well, it turns out that the High Def shows coming across from the cable provider are only 720p so a 1080p TV is not going to show any more information than a 720p set would so you could argue that it doesn't make sense to get a 1080 set. *But*, the new high def DVD players - called HD-DVD and Blu Ray (yes, there are two competing formats just like Beta and VHS of the VCR days) - are capable of delivering 1080p video. *But*,since neither HD-DVD nor Blu Ray has won the format war yet, and since different movie studios have signed on to one or the other format and therefore if you pick a format, your favorite movie might not be available on that format, and since the players are pretty expensive so you probably can't get both, and since some people say that by the time the format war gets decided it won't matter anymore since we'll all be just downloading our movies over the internet, it's kind of a tough decision...the resolution decision...yeah, remember...the first sentence of this paragraph...that one. There's more to the resolution question too - like how far away from the set are you going to be sitting and how big is the screen. Sigh...

OK, so there are a lot of choices available and what you really need is some advice from people who are knowledgeable on this kind of thing. I know, let's ask Google!

Big mistake...

Christ, you could restore the Mississippi river delta with the silt from the muddied waters of HDTV options found in reviews through Google. I don't know what affliction I have but it's the one where the *last* opinion you hear always seems to make sense. I can read an argument for getting a 720 LCD TV and think "Ya know, that really makes a lot of sense. I think I'm gonna go with that." But then, my mouse, with a mind of it's own, clicks on the "Why you should always buy plasma" link and in no time I've abandoned the LCD camp and fully embraced plasma. And then another 10 seconds goes by and the cycle has repeated itself - twice. The customer reviews feature of Amazon should be outlawed as cruel and unusual punishment.

So, I think there are a few more variable involved in the equation but at this point, I'm not sure what they are anymore. Basically, I boiled it all down and decided I wanted to get a 50 inch, 1080p, plasma from Samsung. I won't go into how many times *that* final decision changed on the way to the shopping cart but I clicked the Submit button and tried to relax before the first wave of buyer's remorse set in.

The next step of course is figuring out where this thing would go because it won't fit in the entertainment center that currently holds our TV. So Deb and I set out this weekend to find something to fit. There are a couple of options for the TV. You can wall mount it so it looks like a big picture frame on the wall or you can get a stand - a coffee table of sorts that the TV sits on, or you can get a massive piece of furniture that the TV sits *in*. I listed those options in order of increasing price. Can you guess which option we settled on??

Right, the three piece HD entertainment center arrives in 3 to 4 weeks (which is after the TV is set to arrive - hmmm). Oh yeah, and then there's Tivo. We are addicted to Tivo since it lets us record all of our shows and watch them when we want (and all kinds of other good stuff). Can you guess where this is going? Yup, the current Tivo is not HD capable. Now, the cable company will rent you a Tivo-like box that will record HD shows but, in one of the few product reviews that is nearly unanimous, it is generally agreed that - they suck. So now we have to get a new Tivo that can handle the HD shows. All I can say is this TV better be so good that it's like stepping into another world because that's the only world we are going to have. We are going to have to experience eating out by watching high def versions of The Iron Chef and this will probably be my last post since I won't be able to afford an Internet connection either.

It's gonna be so cool!

It was 50 years ago today - then

So, this post is waaaaay overdue. I really should do a better job at keeping at this (I was going to say that I have to be in the mood but that's really not an excuse). Anyway, I wanted to recap the Anniversary party - mainly because I'll forget the details if I don't (if I haven't already). You already know pretty much all of this so I'll try to fill in some details.

Deb and I had been thinking about what we (the family) should do for your upcoming 50th anniversary and we were having a tough time coming up with something that made logistical sense. The main ideas were either a cruise or renting a beach house. The cruise sounded fun but the expense would eliminate many people from being able to come (including probably us) and the beach house thing seemed like it would be difficult to really manage as well. We rubbed heads with Carolyn and decided a simple party in Portsmouth would be easiest - which sounds like it was a cop-out but really, all the fancy ideas seemed just too complicated. We figured we couldn't make it a surprise party so Carolyn called to tell you what we were thinking and to get a list of the people you'd like to invite. When she called after she talked to you, she said that you were flabbergasted that we would do this - almost to the point of tears! That surprised me actually. I was feeling bad that all we could come up with was a party in your apartment building after fantasizing about cruises and beach houses.

Anyway, the plans started rolling. Carolyn negotiated with the Caterer - who had to be brought down to Earth a bit - and I got the list of invitees - on paper. Yes, after years of working with Dad to get all his contacts managed online and electronically organized, I got about thirty sheets of paper - printouts from the address book. Sigh... I took one look at how many email addresses I was going to have to type in and said "This aint happening". So I hacked into Dad's email account (OK, not really. He knows I know his password) and exported his contacts into an Excel spreadsheet, weeded out all the duplicates, and fed the list into an Evite web-based party invitation system. For the people without email addresses (can you imagine!?), Deb sent cards.

It was kinda worrisome waiting for the responses to come in. Lots of people had already made other plans or couldn't make for one reason or another and I was worried that we had started too late. Slowly though, the list started filling up and we got in the car for the trip to VA. Let me rephrase that - the 12 freaking hour long trip to VA! The only good thing about the trip was that I had just gotten a transponder that you place in the window that, being tied directly to your checking account, lets you zip through toll booths in the "Fast Lane (tm)" without stopping and scrambling for coins under the seat. It's such cool technology that it was almost fun paying $3.25 to drive across a bridge. So, we got there not too much worse for the wear.

I don't really remember much of what we did on Saturday. Oh yeah, we went out to Walmart to get balloons and plants for the table. Yeah, so I entered WalMart into the GPS and said "take me there". Well, when it finally said "Arriving at Wale Mart, on left", all that was there was some large building that looked like it might have been a Walmart some time ago. Super. There was anther Walmart on the GPS so we said "take us there" but again, when we "arrived", there was not a WalMart in sight. We kept driving around this Mall area and the GPS kept "Re*calculating*" in that "why must you keep bothering me voice that it has", but finding nothing. We finally decided to head for a Target we had seen sign for. As we were pulling up to Target, in the distance, the familiar blue of a WalMart superstore appeared out of the mist (OK, 98% humidity) to a chorus of angels singing. So we got the plants, balloons, helium, ribbon, etc. and headed back to decorate and work off the computer questions punchlist.

We had a nice birthday party for Franmommie and then the party started on Sunday. Of course, you know all that happened at the party. It did seem to go pretty well - Deb and Carolyn were like a well-oiled machine and really did a great job. Everyone seemed to like the food, the singing, the slide show, and of course, seeing you and Dad and paying tribute to your wonderful life together. Photos from the party are here.
I've also got the slideshow uploaded to YouTube. It's a lower quality but still fun to look at.

Did I tell you about the drive home? No? Well, on Sunday, I had noticed that the transmission in the car seemed to be slipping a little (you know where this is going don't you). I think we were in New Jersey when, after getting off the highway for some lunch, the car decided it didn't really like shifting gears and taking us forward. It worked fine once we got it up to speed but it didn't like starting out - kinda like the VW bus in Little Miss Sunshine. So we get to New York and the GPS takes us over the George Washington bridge into congested NYC area - stop and go traffic. We get through that and then, in CT, the highway status signs say "Delay, next 26 miles". I think there was a smirking Smiley face icon on the sign as well. I punched "Detour" on the GPS and it took us off the highway, through some residential neighborhoods and onto...tada! the Merritt Parkway. I had actually tried to find this road another time and couldn't. It's a no-trucks, limited access road that was very scenic and flowing pretty well. As the miles rolled on however, the car got worse and worse. We made it home but it was touch and go. The next morning, on my way to work, the car just stopped going and I coasted into a parking lot in town. I did what I should have done earlier and checked the transmission fluid. It was bone dry. Did I tell you that I had just had my transmission fluid flushed and filled before the trip? I called Deb to come get me, and I went to the local gas station and bought a few bottles of transmission fluid. That was enough to make the car move and I drove it to the Jiffy Lube that had done the flush and informed them that I was not happy with the work they had done...

They fixed a leak but I think I've done permanent damage to the tranny. It just doesn't seem the same. Oh well. It just adds to the aura of the camry and gives yet another reason for the kids to cringe when they have to be seen riding in it.

The Mac Plunge

OK, so I did it. This actually goes back to shopping for a new car and the final realization that I really didn't want/need to spend that kind of money at this point. The problem is that I had gotten in the mood to buy "something" and once that horse gets running, it's pretty hard to get him back in the barn without something to show for it. Of course, the rationalization was that I was saving all kinds of money by *not* buying a car so I could buy something pretty expensive and still spend a whole lot less than I would have had I bought a car...

As I've written before, I've been tempted to switch to a Mac for awhile but I've always been able to talk myself out of it for practical reasons - like practically everyone else on the planet *doesn't* have a Mac. So I was looking at new Windows PCs - with the new Vista Windows Operating System - but I was just completely uninspired by the thought of getting yet another version of Windows. So, when I went to the Apple site to ponder the Macs, I saw that they had a deal where you get a free iPod with the purchase of a Mac. Oh, I should point out that this deal was for college students. How, you may ask, did I see the iPod deal? Well, I knew from last year when Kyle was getting all his computer gear for college that Wheaton has a special section of the Apple web site where Wheaton students could get discounts on Apple stuff. So, I figured since I am the financial portion of Kyle's college experience, I should be able to reap the benefits offered by Apple for student gear. That, and the fact that they didn't seem to require any verification of being a student on the web site...

So the iPod deal was a pretty good incentive. It was actually not free but I could get $200 off a $250 iPod. Of course, there's no small bit of irony here (I think that's what it is) since, during the music player decision process I went through a few months ago, I had originally bought an iPod and returned it for a Zune player. The Zune is not compatible with the Mac so I would need an iPod if I were to switch to the Mac. With this deal, I figured I could sell the Zune for about $150, get $200 back for the iPod and come out ahead of the game - just nod your head and agree.

Anyway, that's what I did. I bought a iMac, an iPod along with some video editing software - at ridiculous student prices - and other software that lets me run Windows on the Mac as well so that I can still run Quicken. I think I wrote about this before. We'll see how things go when it gets here...

May er Concert Experiences Be This Good

I wouldn't normally offer up a concert review but this one is warranted. Carly actually started the ball rolling by lobbying to go to a John Mayer concert that was coming up in Boston. The whole family has liked him from when we first heard his first album several years ago and we have generally liked his others, and the popular songs that come on the radio from time to time. But Kyle and Carly have really gotten into him lately - basically after the release of his third album. His music and guitar playing has been one of the key drivers that has prompted Carly to take up the guitar with earnest. Kyle has a friend at school who plays guitar and worships Mayer and he and Kyle have followed him closely.

When Carly started making noises about the concert, I thought it sounded like a good idea but I wasn't really sure how it would go down. I kind of didn't really think she would want to go as a family and said as much to her. She said "Nah, I don't care, I just want to go!" OK, well, what the heck. So I looked into tickets and found that the concert in Boston was on a Tuesday night. Kyle usually works every Tuesday night so that was going to be a problem. Then, I realized that I was going to be in Seattle that whole week so it was looking like Deb and Carly were going to have to manage the trip into Boston and back. Hmm... Deb wasn't too keen on that idea. She definitely did not want to drive into Boston (and back late at night) so we looked into trains. We quickly found that it would involve multiple changes between commuter trains and subways and a large risk that they might miss the last train back if they were not careful. Needless to say, Deb was not very thrilled about this. At that point, I found that John had another concert in Hartford on a Saturday. It was the day before I was to go west but it was the only way we could make it work. We still didn't know if Kyle could make it but I bought 4 tickets and sent the confirmation email to Carly's account. The next time I saw her, she let out a whoop!!

To make a long story a bit shorter, Kyle was able to go and we got to the concert with no issues. We had pretty good seats for getting them so late. We were in the first row of the second section which while pretty far from the stage, meant that there were no people directly in front of us. There were two warm up bands before Mayer played and they filled me with a sense of trepidation for the upcoming main show. The first band - I can't even remember the name - was not "bad" but they just weren't very interesting. They had a few catchy tunes out of the 5 or do they did but it was hard to understand the lyrics and the sound seemed "muddy". The next band - Ben Fold - was unbelievably bad. I'd actually heard of this band so I was amazed at how awful they were. Again, the sound was muddy but even worse was the singing. It was a three piece band and they all sang - in different keys. The main guy - Ben Fold - played the piano - a grand piano no less - and he basically just banged on the keys. It was terrible but my biggest fear is that the sound was going to be just as muddy for John Mayer. I was actually wondering if it was me and my failing hearing that was dampening out the highs.

After a long wait for John Mayer to start up he finally came on stage - with two more guitar players, a bass player, drummer, keyboard player, and a two-piece horn section - to loud applause. He launched into the first song and it was like the wax had been pulled out of the ears of the speakers (if you know what I mean). The sound was just amazing and the music was fabulous. John Mayer, it turns out, is a guitar virtuoso. Kyle had said that he was but it didn't really mean anything to me until I heard it for myself. The guitar playing - from him and his two band mates - along with incredibly crisp, sharp drumming made for an incredible concert. I can't really review each song of course but by the end of it all, we were all just in awe of the whole experience. It's hard to compare this concert with some of my all-time faves from back when I was a serious concert goer but I think it might have been the best. The only thing that could have made it better would be if I was a little more familiar with the songs. I'd heard them all before but I didn't know them deeply like the kids did. The other thing that was great about the whole thing was that we all saw it together. When the kids have gone to concerts and reported back that it was "great", or when Deb or I say how such and such a concert was great back in the day, no one has a frame of reference. Now, not only do we all have a yard stick to measure against, we all experienced an amazing event and will be able to re-live it for years to come.

Learning to Fly

A few weeks ago, my birthday was coming up and I was facing the question of what to do or get to celebrate it. I can never decide what I want of course, so it was somewhat frustrating. Well, I was chatting with some people at work and, I don't know how it came up, but the subject turned to vertical wind tunnels - the kind that people use to simulate sky diving. When my boss mentioned that there was one just over the border in New Hampshire, that sealed it. That was what I wanted to do.

To add icing to the cake so to speak, I got a few "thank you" bucks for my work on the POC that I wrote about earlier so I had some cash to spend on this adventure. Now, to fully appreciate the story, you have to understand that each year on Mother's Day or Deb's birthday, the family is subjected to some sort of "Deb" activity. These have ranged from trips to Plymouth, Sturbridge, art museums, butterfly habitats, and other sorts of "cultural" enlightenment experiences. Deb makes us go on these days because it's the only day that we can't really say "No, I don't think the Massachusetts Quilt Museum would be that fun to go to."

So, I figured I would declare a "Dad's birthday excursion" day but not tell them what we would be doing. This provided over a week's worth of them trying to guess where we would be going and just exactly how bored they would be by the end of said day. On the day of, we set out for the unknown. They were still trying to guess where we were going but couldn't figure it out of course, since I wasn't saying anything. They thought for sure it was the Duck Tours - car/boats that are used for tours of Boston - but when we passed the turnpike entrance, that theory fell apart.

They were really confused when we got off the highway in Nashua, NH because there really isn't anything there. We were driving down the road and, since Skyventure is behind a Best Buy, and we turned onto that road, they were incredulous that I had taken them to an electronics store in another state. Then they got a look at the building behind it, with the big bold INDOOR SKYDIVING on it. The sound of their jaws hitting the floor was quickly followed by "I'm not doing that!", "No way!" As we got out of the car though, I could tell the kids were kind of intrigued.

Inside, the kids agreed to give it a try but Deb decided that she would spectate and hold her finger over the 911 buttons on the phone for the duration of the flight. We paid our money and went upstairs to await our training, equipment, and flight. Meanwhile, we watched others in the tunnel trying to fly. Frankly, it looked pretty difficult. The person is pulled into the vertical air flow by an instructor who helps balance you as you lay out flat in the wind stream. At that point the person just tries to keep from bashing into the walls of the tunnel as they slip and slide in the blast of wind.

After a short wait, we got some brief instruction from our guide which basically consisted of "relax and keep your head up". We then got outfitted in knee pads, elbow pads, jumpsuits, ear plugs and helmets and then filed into the "chamber". The tunnel actually has a small seating area inside but out of the wind and there are two doors into the tunnel itself which has Plexiglas walls. There were about 10 people in the chamber with us and we each took turns flying. You pay by the minute and the basic package was two, one minute flights.

It's really hard to describe it but it was fun. There is no sensation of falling, just floating. The first time for each of us was a little shaky but much better than some of the other people we were with. The second time around was even better and we each were able to get some pretty good float time. Deb was shooting video and I've put it together into a little music video below



Afterwards, the kids were thrilled. Carly kept saying "I can't believe we just did that!" and Kyle came up to me and said how cool that was. We are definitely going to have to do that again some time.

This Semi-Charmed Life

It's been three days and I still find myself shaking my head in amazement. About a week ago on Friday, I got asked to sit in on a con-call about a POC (Proof of Concept) that the bosses were thinking of taking on (a POC is where companies have us set up equipment in our labs to prove that our stuff is going to do what we say it will do). The deal was that another company was trying to sell some of their gear, that works with our gear, to Farmer's Insurance. Our storage systems will talk to each other so that data on one system can be replicated to another system some distance away so that if there is some sort of disaster at one site, the data is still available at the remote site. This, of course, requires sending large amounts of data across networks and as the distance between the sites increases, the time it takes for the information to get there increases. This other company makes gear that speeds up the transfer of the replicated data and they wanted to get into our lab to prove that their stuff works with our stuff (which the customer already had).

The problem was that it was Friday, and they wanted to show this to the customer on the next Friday. Oh yeah, and this was the Friday before the Memorial Day weekend so there would only be four days the next week to set everything up for the demo. Of course, management said "It should be easy. Let's do it." So we stared scrambling around to try and get ready for the gear that would be coming in next Tuesday. Being the Friday before a long weekend, management usually sends out an email around 3:00 saying "Enjoy the long weekend. Feel free to leave 'as your schedule permits'". It's kind of a running joke that I always get tasked with something just before a long weekend and thus never get to 'leave as my schedule permits', and that day was no different.

So the next week (last week) comes and we get the equipment in and start setting it up (along with one of the guys from the company that makes the gear) and start slogging through no end of problems - mostly with EMC gear. The basic test is to set up a program that writes data to one of the EMC storage systems which then replicates it through the other company's gear to another EMC storage system and compare how fast it is both with and without the other company's "speed-up" gear. After fixing cable problems, hardware problems, and various other road blocks through a couple of late nights, we were finally ready for a dry-run on Thursday. Thursday morning, one of the account team members calls and says that they don't like the data we are getting and want to switch to a different load generating program. We tell him that it's too late to switch at this point and he hangs up in a huff. We got through the dry-run pretty easily but then went to try one more test and the third-party gear had a failure. We stay late on Thursday trying to get one of their boxes running faster but they finally determine that it's some kind of hardware problem that they can't fix in time so they'll just wing it and hope the customer doesn't notice. The demo, by the way, is actually taking place in San Jose via a remote video connection to our labs. The customer and the account team will be in SJ and will remotely connect to our computers here (just like I do when I view Dad's computer from home) to see the demo.

So Friday comes around and we make one last run through of the test and, of course, everything goes to Hell. Turns out the program we have been using to generate the data has filled up the disks of the storage system and won't run anymore. The process for creating the whole test environment has taken three days and we are faced with wiping out everything and rebuilding in about three hours. We first thought that maybe the disks were just very close to being full and that maybe could get a few more runs out of it so we started up the program again. It looked like it was going to run but it was taking a very long time to get started. We were watching it set itself up and as some numbers were incrementing, it was looking like it was going to take about an hour to get going. Cool, that would leave us with two hours to spare. Except that after about 15 minutes into it, it seemed to be going slower and it now looked like it was going to take two hours to start. Hmm.... A little while later it looked like it was going to take about 2.5 hours to start. Needless to say the tension was high. With about an hour and a half until show time, I called the account manager and told him our problems and that we may have to fall back to an alternate method of data generation which wouldn't provide them all the data they wanted. He said "Well, that would be very unfortunate. Please keep me posted." With about 30 minutes to go, the test finally finished initializing but when it started, it still would not generate any data. Crap! I had an idea that maybe I could re-initialize to a tiny fraction of the size of the original system and it still might work. So I stopped the test so that I could re-initialize - except that it wouldn't stop. I finally had to kill the test and reload the whole program. I fired it up, raced through the configuration of the test parameters and set the data size to 3% of it's original value and hit the Run button. It thought about it awhile, built it's test files and, praise God, started generating data. At that exact moment, I got a text message from the account manager that said "Well, are we ready or do I have to start dancing?" I fired back a text message saying "We are go!". We quickly reset for the beginning of the test, turned on the remote video session, dialed into the conference call, ran through the whole scenario without a hitch, said "That's about all there is to it.", to which they said "Thanks very much.", disconnected, and then collapsed into a heap.

One of the guys got a text message later that said something like "Wow, you guys hit that one out of the park!" Like I said, I'm still shaking my head over this. We were so close to absolute disaster to have it come off so well almost shakes my faith in atheism.

Music (player) Musings

It's been awhile since I've posted and I'm not really sure what to write about so I'll just ramble...
I jumped on the MP3 player bandwagon several years ago. I got one of the early hard-disk players that came out after the first round of memory-based players. The unit I got, from Creative, had a 20 Gig hard drive and was about the size of a deck of flash cards. This thing held all of my songs - which were ripped from CDs onto my computer and downloaded to the player - and was great to use in the car or the bike while we had it. I never liked the idea of smaller capacity players that held 50 or 100 songs - a small fraction of my music library - because it meant that I had to decide, before I left the house (where the computer was that had the full library) which songs I was going to want to listen to that day. Its the same problem with having (even) a six disc CD changer in your car. For me anyway, I never know what I'm going to want to listen to so I'd have to take all my discs anyway. I love being able to call up any song, artist, or album I want, whenever I want to listen to it.

So the Creative player served me well for several years. In that time, the iPod exploded onto the scene and has become the de facto standard MP3 player. Nowadays, you can't go into a store and swing a cat without hitting a shelf of iPod accessories and they are getting better, smaller, and more feature packed. The latest craze is the addition of video. So now, you can carry around your movies, TV shows, and home videos along with your tunes. Of course, all these new features were putting my old Creative player further and further into the dark ages and I was getting the bug to move up. The other thing was that the Creative had a really tiny screen that I could barely see which made it rather dangerous to pick songs through while driving (not that I ever did that...)

So, I started looking at new players. As I posted earlier, I've been thinking about switching to a Mac as my computing platform and, of course the iPod is tailor made for Macs so there was that whole integrated solution thing going there. The iPod works with PCs too though so I could conceivably get an iPod and still stay with the PC. Actually, the whole Mac thing was kind of fading so that was less of a factor. The other option was a new player from Microsoft called the Zune. The big plus from the Zune was that it has a bigger screen which is a little better for watching videos. The downside of the Zune is that it is competing against a well-entrenched iPod base and all the accompanying accessories. Well, I went back and forth a bit and finally decided to get the Zune. I went down to the local Walmart and picked one up. I got it there because they have a 15 day return policy whereas other places will charge a restocking fee and I wanted to keep my options open in the event I wasn't thrilled with the Zune.

I should point out that the Internet is both the best thing for research into purchases and also the worst. It's great because you can get the information from lots of other people who have taken the plunge before you and have written up their thoughts. It's awful because you can get the information from lots of other people who have taken the plunge before you and have written up their thoughts. There seem to be an equal number of people who love and who hate any particular product. There are horror stories about virtually every product. This, of course, plays into my indecisiveness and practically paralyzes me in my decisions.

But anyway, I got the Zune and set it up, and liked it. I loaded my songs on it. I loaded some videos that I had made - and they looked great. All in all I was very pleased. But...

The whole iPod juggernaut was still weighing on me. There are more things geared to the iPod - cases, adaptors, speakers, airline power connectors, everything is iPod. Then, I saw that Amazon had Zunes for $50 less than I paid. I went back to Walmart to see if they would price match and they wouldn't. So, I returned the Zune, intending to just order it on Amazon and save $50. Just as I was about to click "Checkout", I stopped, canceled my order and ordered an iPod.

I got the iPod, set it up, loaded my music on it and liked it - basically. The iPod uses iTunes software on the PC to manage the music that gets loaded on the iPod and I hated it. It was slow and difficult to use. I then tried to transfer those same movies that looked so good on the Zune to the iPod and - no dice. The iPod uses a different video format than what Windows uses so you have to jump through some hoops to convert Windows media (video) to Apple media. Frankly, I'm just not that interested in jumping through the hoops. So, I sent the iPod back to Amazon and ordered another Zune.

Crazy huh? Ain't technology wonderful?

Dance Dance Revolution

Waaay, back in California, just before we decided to move to New England, Deb and I signed up for a West Coast Swing dance class. I think we took about 3 or 4 classes before we did the big move and, although we really enjoyed it, we never "cemented" what we learned and it just faded away.

For our Anniversary last year, I found a place that had swing dancing and had a beginners class before the dance. We got there early and (I) struggled through the intro lesson and then kind of shuffled through the rest of the night. It was enjoyable but we really didn't know enough to make it fun.

(It was also kinda weird since, evidently, it's common practice to swap partners at these dances and therefore we had to dance with people who 1) we didn't know and 2)were way better than we were. The dancers were...how should I say this..."skewed toward the Big Band era" and so during the lesson where every woman shifted around the circle to the next guy after each part, Deb and I were paired with every imaginable shape and size of Foxtrotting Fun.)

Knowing that we really needed focused lessons to get over the hump (so to speak), Deb set about seeing if she could find some. Well, lo and behold there was a new place opening up in one of the mills in town that was going to have dance lessons. Of course their first series was "Latin Lovers Salsa Dancing" or some such theme. Oh perfect.

We've been to three classes so far and we are really enjoying it. We are learning the Rumba and the Cha-cha and I don't think we've even scratched the surface yet. We are supposed to practice between lessons and we haven't been very good about it so I think I'll go downstairs and see if I can interest Deb in a little Rumba before bedtime...

More Video Fun

This is kind of a convoluted story that starts with the editorial section in the local paper. Basically, these columns - written by local right-wing zealots - are a journalistic and grammatical embarrassment to modern living. I often want to send in rebuttals or simply point out the travesty of reason that they've committed in paragraphs 1, 2, 3, and 4 but I don't because I know it's futile. It does make me want to write *something* however except that I never could figure out what I wanted to write about. Of course, it finally hit me - I should write about computers and how to do things with them. So I sent a couple of emails to the editors asking if they would like me to do a column on computers. The answer? One said they might be able to squeeze in an article once in awhile and the other never even responded. Well, crap.

OK, switch threads...

It's been awhile since I was first bitten by the video bug. At first there was a flurry of projects and editing and enthusiasm but, like most of my hobbies, it has died down a bit. Loosely associated with the video editing is photo editing - specifically with Photoshop. I use it for tweaking photos of course, but it's also very useful for graphics creating and editing. For such a popular and powerful product however, it is very difficult to use. These are the kinds of things by the way, that I wanted to write about in my computer column for the paper. Anyway, during a trip to the High School for some meeting, on something, some night, I saw signs for an Adult Education class on Photoshop and I thought "I should sign up for that." Well, I never could find out when the classes started so I never did anything.

A couple of weeks ago, I happened to surf to the local access cable TV station and saw that Adult Ed classes were starting so I went to the web site and looked for the Photoshop class. The class was scheduled but after looking at the description, I realized that it was probably a little too basic for me since I had already learned a lot through trial and error and tutorials on various web sites. What I did notice however, was that there was a class starting that showed you how to make video for the local cable station. Hmm... Maybe, if I learned how to make my own cable access TV show, I could make one about how to use computers for various things like photo and video editing. Yeah that's it, screw the old school newspapers, we're going video!!!!

So I signed up for the video production class. The first week, the class was canceled since the instructor had to cover the local selectmen meeting. The next week, after wandering around the High School looking for the video room, I finally found the guy who was in charge. He informed me that there was a change of plans for the class tonight since somebody was coming in to tape a segment of their cable access show. "Great" I thought. I was looking forward to finding out how to use the equipment and now I was going to have to sit here and watch somebody else work on their show. Well, it turns out that Barry, the instructor, is a student of the "education by immersion" school so by the end of the night, I was running camera three, wearing headphones to get instructions from Barry in the production room, panning and zooming and being a real contributor to the making of the show. It was wicked cool and I had a blast.

It turns out that a small percent of every cable bill is earmarked as local access funds and goes back to the community. Well, a small percent of a lot of money is still a lot of money and this guy has equipment that is "the shit" (that's good). He's got studio cameras, hand held cameras, high definition cameras, portable mixing stations, the works. Plus, people who take the class can sign out anything and use it for their own projects.

This is going to be fun...

Big Mac Attack

I really never thought I would be in this position but let's start back at the beginning...

Upon Kyle's return from school for Christmas break, he let it be known that he thought the Apple MacBook laptops were way cooler than his Dell. I, of course, said "That's interesting. So what?" I had no intention of doing anything with Apple computers. Well, he kept noodling me about it - everybody at school has them, they are really easy to use, blah, blah, blah. He even kept changing my desktop wallpaper to an Apple logo.

Christmas this year was somewhat lean I will admit. The kids are getting bigger and the clothes they want are expensive enough plus the fact that tuition is a serious drain. So there weren't many (OK, any) big-ticket items under the tree. I was feeling guilty about this so I guess I was particularly vulnerable to his constant attacks. I had to admit, they are very sleek machines and the shiny new techno-geek in me was slowly being seduced by the dark side. I asked Deb what she thought and she straight-out said that he didn't need a new machine and we should nip it in the bud right there. It was a dose of reality that I needed to knock me back to financial reality.

I guess it wasn't a strong enough dose to kill the invading bacteria and they came back with renewed immunity to treatment. The other factor that started to weigh in was the fact that Carly really needed a new computer. That sounds so strange to say but what has been basically a luxury item is virtually a necessity these days. Her computer is a third generation hand-me-down and is very slow so she uses my computer which means that I sometimes can't get things done. Of course, most of the time she's playing games or buying songs on iTunes (with my account for some reason!) so it's not like she's being held back from working on her doctoral thesis but whatever.

So anyway, in a fit of insanity, I went to the computer store one night while Kyle was out and bought a MacBook. I figured I would bring it home and set it up for him (which would give me a chance to play with it) and he would be surprised. He was surprised alright. After he played with it a bit, he said, somewhat sheepishly, "We can still take this back right?". What! What the heck are you talking about!? It's just what you wanted!

He said he had been thinking about it all day and had decided that he really didn't need a new computer just because it was a sleek Apple and he shouldn't have been pestering me about it after all. Great! I told him I kinda wish he would have told me that a few hours earlier.

Over the course of the next few days, he agonized over that machine. He really felt bad about pushing me into this purchase and that was gnawing at him big time. I told him that it wasn't entirely his fault since I was interested in it too and the Carly factor weighed in as well (although I was still irritated at him and myself for getting into this situation). Although I knew the answer, I called CompUSA and asked about the return policy. $200 restocking fee on opened computers. Now, the computer I would have gotten Carly was about $400 cheaper than the Mac so if we were to return the Mac, give Kyle back his Dell, and get Carly a new machine, I would save about $200.

The other thing that Kyle was struggling with was the fact that his favorite game wasn't quite the same on the Mac as on the Dell. It seems like that might be about the least important aspect of the whole decision but I assure you that it is probably number one.

I finally gave him an ultimatum to decide to keep the laptop or return it. He finally said he wanted to return it. So, I said "OK, uninstall your games, take your name off of it, and basically get it ready to return." Of course, when faced with the reality of really returning it, he hesitated (for the 50th time) and decided that he wanted to keep it after all.

So, in the end, Kyle took his Mac back to school. Carly has a new (to her) Dell, and Dad? Well, Dad got hosed. I got to play with the new Mac and experience a sequence of "No big thing", to "Well, it *is* pretty cool", to "Wow, I really like it", to "Bye, MacBook. Have fun at school".

I *do* really like the machine and I was seriously into the analysis of whether I would want to switch and how I would go about doing that. There are a couple of things holding me back however. First, there are gazillions more programs written for Windows than for Macs. I think I have half of them installed on my computer right now. I don't use them all, all of the time, but when you need something, you can usually find it. That would not be the case (as much) if I had a Mac. Second, my killer app - Quicken - while available for the Mac, is about 2 generations behind the Windows version. Virtually every review of Quicken for Mac says it is garbage compared to the Windows version. Third, Macs are more expensive than PCs which sticks in my cheapo craw. Fourth, since I am tech support for Dad with his computer, if I switch, he would probably have to switch, and I'm not sure the time-space continuum could handle that kind of molecular restructuring. Actually, I'm just trying to be funny there. I actually have wondered if Dad just might find Mac easier than Windows so that might not be a concern after all.

If that were that, then there would be no question. The Quicken thing would be a deal breaker. Things are never that easy though are they. Turns out, you can run Windows programs on Macs using what are called Virtual Machines. We use these at work a lot and basically it is a program that simulates a physical computer. On that simulated computer you can, for example, install Windows just like you would install it on a real computer. Once you install Windows onto this Virtual Machine, you can install Windows programs (like Quicken for Windows) and end up running Quicken for Windows inside a window (to the Virtual Machine) on a Mac. This solves problems 1 and 2 above - sort of. This Virtual Machine, since it is implemented in software, isn't as fast as a real machine so processor intensive applications - like video editing, for which I've invested a bit of money in - won't run as fast and might not run at all. You can get around that however by dual-booting Windows and MacOS. This means that you can install both Windows and MacOS on the laptop and decide which run to run when you turn on the machine. Seems they've got pretty much everything covered.

It's been a few days since the Mac has gone back to school so the *need* has subsided somewhat but it's still simmering in the back of my mind. I figure my current desktop computer is good for another year or so. At that point, I'll revisit the issue and maybe do something drastic.

I'll keep you posted.