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Love Affair with Google Apps Grows

I’ve made no secret about my love of all things Google lately. Recently I began to keep our budget on Google Docs. I gave up on Quicken and MS Money awhile ago. While they provided an easy way to balance my checkbook, what I really wanted was the ability to track spending against our budget. So last week I stretched my spreadsheet skills a bit and updated the Google Docs budget version with some summing and grouping that helps me balance our spending against our budgeted spending. I was so impressed with my color coded document that I showed Courtney. She was mildly impressed if just for the fact that I was so excited to show her.

Then, came the revelation. I loaded the Google Docs spreadsheet on my iPhone. I expected the spreadsheet to load full page, just like any other website on the iPhone. But to my surprise the spreadsheet loaded beautifully in a stripped down mobile phone read-only mode. While many sites give you an ugly mobile experience, Google’s iPhone interface for their Docs was simply astounding. Granted, I couldn’t edit the spreadsheet, it was enough to just view it. It’s the closest I could come to carrying the doc around with me at all times.

Tags: docs, google, iphone, mobile | No Comments »

iGot an iPhone

Courtney broke the story first, I recently bought an iPhone. After months of listening to podcasts that ranted and raved about the phone my gadget-aquiring-sensors freaked out and I couldn’t live without it. I bought it a week ago today and I can say that it’s worth every penny I paid for it.

Here’s what I got for my money:

1. Courtney can actually use the phone. I’ve had some crazy phones over the years. With the iPhone being more than just a dedicated phone, Courtney had her reservations about how well it worked as an actual phone. Within 5 minutes she was comfortable with the interface.  I don’t think either of us knew exactly how to dial on my MDA.

2. A new, working iPod. My old 4th generation iPod has been dying a slow death. It’s hard drive developed the “click-of-death”, which could be fixed with a swift whack on any hard surface. While I am grateful that there is a fix for the “click-of-death” I don’t believe it was extending my iPod’s life much longer. The new interface is slick and fun. It’s quicker too, when navigating to shuffle songs.

3. A GPS-esque map system. Google Maps I think is the killer app on the iPhone. While not quite a GPS, as long as I have a data connection through the cell provider I can find where I’m at and where I’m going to. This weekend we were out and about in Green Bay, WI visiting friends and family. Google Maps came in handy when navigating the streets of Kaukauna, WI.

4. A 80% normal web browser. Safari is awesome on the phone. But it’s still short of a full web browser. it chokes a bit when it comes to AJAX. Also, the touch interface gets in the way a little bit when trying to navigate the actual http://maps.google.com . But all in all, it’s the best mobile browser I have used.

Courtney was well aware of my intentions with the iPhone. I wasn’t about to pony up for AT&T service. I’m a very happy T-Mobile customer.  Courtney knew what it was going to take for me to use the iPhone. We were standing in the mall and I was damn-near pleading to get one. She looked at me and said, “You’re sure you can hack it?” “Oh yeah,” I assured her. When we got home I went to town and started researching how to get the phone unlocked and onto T-Mobile.

After an hour I wasn’t having much luck. Court asked me how it was going and I gave her the straight scoop. “You didn’t know how to hack itbefore you bought the phone?” “uh, no.” She called my bluff, I hadn’t done my appropriate research before I bought the phone. I wasn’t sure how easy or hard it was to actually unlock it. It took some time and some alternate instructions but at the end of the day I got it fully working.

So Christmas came early for me. I’m 400 bones down but at least I have traffic conditions in my pocket now.

Tags: cellphones, hacking, iphone, Jason | 3 Comments »

The Crazy Train Slows for No One

The last few weeks have been absolutely crazy. From the week before Riles birthday up until today I’m not quite sure what’s happened. I’ll try to recap:

Riley’s birthday came and went. It was a two day food fest that was just a riot. Riley was a good sport through it all. As with all 1 year olds, he didn’t really know that he was getting gifts. It was more of a second birthday party for me, the gift opener, if I were 1 years old. He enjoyed the cake. We have pictures somewhere but I’m not sure which camera they’re on. I think even Chad and Tina have our pictures somehow on their camera.

We spent Riley’s actual birthday (a.k.a. Halloween) buying ourselves Anti-Riley furniture. We replaced our Ikea television stand with something from Slumberland that was taller and contained doors. Riley’s favorite past-time is banging stuff on the television and digging through the poorly managed stereo wires. So we thought it was time to finally pony up and get some real furniture.

After Riley’s birthday weekend we spent last weekend cleaning up leaves. We had ignored them for most of October which meant we had to spend a fair amount of our Saturday catching up. We had shipped Riley off for the weekend to Camp Motylinski so we enjoyed some time to ourselves. We even caught a movie at the theater, something we hadn’t done in well over a year.

The next few weeks hold a ton of work for me. At the client site we’re trying to get the final release of the Q3 software out the door (if you hadn’t noticed, it’s Q4 now which tells you the urgency). Every day I am lectured about needing to put in extra hours. In the very short time I’ve been here the team has shrunk by 50% so some days it feels like almost a Herculean task that we are still on pace to launch on time. Regardless, by Thanksgiving all should be settled down.

Oh yeah, and in any free time I may have I play Guitar Hero 3. Courtney has already grown sick of my flying couch dives and my back-on-the-floor killer solos.

Tags: birthday, furniture, guitar hero, Riley, weekend | No Comments »

7th Grade Poem

I wrote this poem in 7th grade and never forgot it. My friend Peter thought I was a god for a semester for writing it:

Shit shot cosmonaut,

Itching sqeezing burning hot,

With ease,

release.

Tags: education, genius, Jason, poetry | No Comments »

First Birthday Gifts

Riles will be 1 year old next week on Halloween. Courtney and I have spent the last week reminiscing about last year at this time. The nerves, the excitement, and the fateful night two weeks before. Riley never really made many “shifts” during the pregnancy to indicate that he was going to pop out. It began quite nerve racking, actually. But one evening in mid October Courtney got up and paced around for most of night. Looking back on it, it was Riles only sign that he wanted out.

As we get closer to his birthday he’s starting the “new trick” phase again. Right before major milestones he seems to pull out some new trick. Within the last week he’s been saying “uh-oh!”, which sometimes comes out as a painful “oh-uh!” Try to say it backwards, it’s not easy or graceful to do.

On top of that he’s finally waving. We’ve been waving at him for 6 months now. Just this week he seems to have finally gotten the point. When Courtney and I pass him back and forth between us he immediately spins around and waves to the person he just left.

The best new trick, though, has been the hugs. He just started hugging us all of the sudden. It was like one day he just really, really missed us. And ever since he’s been throwing his arms around us.

So, his birthday will be fun. I look forward to it. Pictures next week.

P.S. - I taught Riley the “Pile-Driver” this week too. I told Courtney that he’ll need to know that sort of stuff for when he has a younger sibling.

Tags: baby, birthday, Riley | 1 Comment »

Taking It Online

I’ve struggled over the years to find a good, reliable solution for maintaining secure backups of my files. As my much of my real-world possessions become digital versions of themselves I’ve grown increasingly paranoid about losing them.

I’ve been averaging about 1 lost hard drive per year for the last 4 years. When a begins hard drive to fail I typically have to scramble to clear space somewhere else, or start digging through my archives in hopes that I actually did back up everything to one of the other corners of another hard drive. I’ve tried building dedicated server machines, I’ve tried a multiple hard drive configuration, but it is all too complicated.

Running parallel to all of this has been my growing concern for my carbon footprint. Sure, it sounds wacky. Why should I be concerned? I’m just some guy in MN. But I figure becoming more green isn’t a choice, but a lifestyle change. If we don’t start to become aware of our ecological impact now then we won’t be able to solve the problem later. We recently downsized from the truck to the Mazda, all new light bulbs are compact fluorescent (most that are needing to be replaced were already halogens). This article got me thinking about the waste of power I was spending keeping so many machines on during the day.

So to cut out one whole computer from the Broken Complex I decided to outsource my backup. I chose to use Mozy, for mostly the unlimited backup space and zero transfer charges. For 5 bucks a month I can backup any data on my machine. Mozy runs in the background constantly checking for new files. Once a night any new files are uploaded to Mozy. So far I’ve been quite satisfied with the service. Mozy makes it clear that they are not an offsite hard drive facility, Mozy is a backup solution, that’s it. It doesn’t work well as a file dumping grounds. It’s job is to simply ensure that the files selected on the local machine are successfully backed up to Mozy’s servers. There are other services that tackle both backup and remote storage, but they were cost prohibited to the amount I need to store.

The initial backup of 80 gigs of pictures and music took 6 weeks due to Comcast’s upload limit of 384kbps. It  finally completed the other day and we reclaimed a speedy network connection again. After the upload completed I was able to shut off a computer that had been running for 3 years. The computer room has become quite quiet.

Tags: backup, computer room, computers, environment, L1R1, nerd | 2 Comments »

The Toilet Runeth

I honestly cannot remember when the toilet started running, but as of late it had become more than a drip or trickle. It had gotten so bad that we’d get up in the middle of the night to shut the bathroom door AND our bedroom door just to muffle the noise.

3 weeks ago I bought a “replace-everything” toilet flushing kit. Unknown to me at the time, I didn’t need to replace “everything” per-se, the bolts holding the tank to the bowl could have been saved. Regardless, since I had all new parts I spent Saturday morning fixing the toilet. After living with the a running water noise for so long, the lack of it is deafening. But it also feels like a bad itch has finally been scratched.

In other news, I have switched jobs once again. This time, though, I think I’ve hit on something good. I made the career switch to consulting vs permanent employment. I’m still salaried through a consulting firm, but now get to enjoy the luxury of zero emotional attachment to the work. I still really enjoy working with the technology and working on solving complex problems. With consulting comes the automatic respect and expectations of a job well done. I don’t feel like a drone so much.

The downside, working at a large corporate healthcare client has seriously cut into my online social life. No longer am I able to ping anyone via instant messaging. If I try to access any sort of IM on my work computer I’m kindly reminded via the proxy server that I am violating corporate policy and if I continue attempt to access IM it will be reported to my manager. Yet-another-reason I’m glad I’m not an employee.

Riles birthday party is fast approaching. With it comes the release of Guitar Hero III for the Wii. If I’m not reading about GH3, I’m telling Courtney about it. While Riley’s birthday party will be fun, I will also be enjoying a few competitive “battle of the bands” round against Drew and Chad.

Tags: bathroom, chad, Drew, guitar hero 3, Home Improvement, house, Riley, Toilet, wii | 1 Comment »

Riley’s Halloween Birthday Party

A conversation between Courtney and myself:

[13:55] brokenindu: do we have to dress up for riles birthday?
[13:55] Courtney: yes!
[13:55] Courtney: i was going to tell you!
[13:55] brokenindu: dammit…
[13:55] Courtney: at Target they have an adult size gorilla costume
[13:56] brokenindu: you’ll look good in it.
[13:56] Courtney: its too big for me
[13:56] Courtney: you will have to take one for the team

Tags: costumes, halloween, Riley | No Comments »

No Rest for the Weary

The weekend started out with a bang but ended in a 3 am Charlie Foxtrot Monday morning. Let me explain:

Feeling feisty and hungry Friday night, we checked Riley into the “Grandparents Motel” and headed out for the evening. In search of a good steak we decided to hit Red Stone in Minnetonka. We enjoyed a fine 3-course meal sprinkled with wine and vodka. The only thing better than the food was the impeccable service. At one point I called over the manager to give kudos to our waiter.

Still Riley-free Saturday morning, we did a little birthday shopping for him. I don’t want to ruin any surprises but lets just say he’ll really appreciate all the new clothes we got him. We were beat tired from the night before so we settled in for a quiet night at home. Court put Riley to bed and I began reading Into the Wild. We hit the sack early and called it a day.

An hour later we heard a barking seal from Riley’s room. We listened for awhile as the seal got angrier. Riley awoke from his slumber angry and frustrated. The coughing kept Riley up. We were concerned because his breathing was quite labored and he was gasping for breath. With my history of asthma we’re overly concerned when we hear things like this. We hopped in the car and headed to the emergency room. By 3am Riley had been diagnosed with croup, an inflammation of his throat, and we were heading home for a little sleep.

Sunday we spent over at the folks house watching football. None of the three of us had slept much the night before. We made it through the ‘rents on sugar and caffeine. We all crashed early. Called it a night before night began.

My work pager rang at 2:30am. It was an urgent issue that needed attention. 2:30am is no time to be thinking, especially about work. Some item wasn’t showing on the website and it needed to be active by 5am. When in the T.V. biz this stuff happens at all hours of the day. I spent the next 2 hours troubleshooting and waking up many other poor souls. At the end of the night it was someone else’s mess up that got me up in the middle of the night.

This morning I’m flying on little sleep and even less motivation. I’m waiting for today to come and go. The kicker is that I will get no more extra sleep tonight. I have a scheduled upgrade for work at 2am. I may just have to call in sick tomorrow.

Tags: Riley, sleep, work | No Comments »

Amazon - The 3-step 1-click Checkout

As promised I just gave Amazon’s MP3 Download store a run. I wanted to purchase The New Pornographers Challengers. Here was the steps I had to go through to purchase it:

1. After arriving at the web site I found the album

2. I downloaded Amazon’s Downloader. It’s nothing more than a download manager application. Doesn’t do anything fancy

3. On the album I clicked the “Buy MP3 Album with 1-Click”. Although I am not an avid 1-click user it appeared to be the only option for purchasing the full album.

4. I was prompted to verify my purchase, which I did. I was then given an error message which indicated that payment could not be processed. It didn’t surprise me since I probably didn’t have my Amazon.com 1-click settings configured.

5. I configured my Amazon.com 1-click settings and proceeded back through the same checkout process.

6. I received a different checkout error indicating that I needed to update my credit card settings.

7. I went back into my account and removed any old credit cards. As a bonus I also cleared out all old shipping addresses.

8. I proceeded back through the same checkout process. I was given the same checkout error indicating my credit card settings were wrong.

9. Getting pretty fed up, I went into my Amazon.com 1-click settings and turned it off.

10. I marched through the checkout process again. This time because my 1-click settings were off I was given the option to choose a credit card to bill to. I selected the only one on the list (a valid one mind you) and was able to successfully complete my purchase.

The only option for purchasing a full album is a button on the site called “Buy MP3 Album with 1-Click”. But I was able to purchase an album without using the 1-click settings. It seems a little confusing to me.

The download process was seamless. A file is sent from the browser to the Amazon Downloader application which aptly handles the downloading of the files. A nice touch is the automatic import into iTunes. The downloader adds the songs to your iTunes library automatically.

The MP3 quality is 256kbps which sounds good. I have the track Myriad Harbour in both Mp3 and AAC . From what I can hear the songs are identical.

All in all, to save a few bucks and get the tracks without DRM I think the initial headaches of Amazon will fade. The interface is so-so for the Amazon store. It similar to the rest of Amazon, functional but not aesthetically pleasing.

UPDATE: Upon purchasing a second album the checkout process was only a 2-step process of clickin ghte “Buy MP3 Album with 1-Click” and then verifying the purchase. It would appear that after the first purchase 1-click is automatically set up.

Tags: amazon, mp3s, music | No Comments »