Moving day

Today I moved cubes at work. Not really very far - it's just down the row - but I'm out of the giant four-person cube that I was living in, and now in a more traditional one-person-with-someone-sitting-across situation. I'm excited for a change (I hear it will do you good), but I'm certainly going to miss the camaraderie of the old setup, not to mention the ease of asking questions to my neighbors.

I was in meetings most of the day, so I didn't have much chance to get moved in much less hang out in the new digs. I was around long enough to discover that it seems to be about 10 degrees warmer in my new location, which I'm not fired up for. Recently it has been unseasonably cold in my cube, with seemingly a breeze blowing on me somedays. However I'd much rather be uncomfortably cold than uncomfortably hot. I'm hoping that it was a function of me wearing a long-sleeved shirt today and all my physical effort of moving stuff around (not much effort, but significantly more than usual).

But potential good news - I noticed that I had a wee bit of cell phone signal in my new cube too. I'm not sure if that was a fluke, but if I could psuedo-reliably get email and text messages throughout the day, oh man. It would be incredible if I could listen to last.fm, but I'm not holding my breath there. At my old location I would get email updates about twice a day, and never when I needed them.

I'll keep you posted as the news develops.

April in the D

Dropbox is Sweet

I recently started using this online backup storage service called Dropbox that's pretty awesome, and I'm going to tell you why. First here's how it works...

It's pretty simple. You install the client on your computer, and give it a folder that you want to keep synchronized. After the install, the software copies any data from the shared folder up to their server, and will automagically in the background keep the copy on your desktop in sync with what's on the server. The awesome part, is that you can install the software on however many computers you want, of any different kind. And as soon as you make a change on one, the client copies the change to any other computer that you have available.

So if you don't want to setup file sharing between two computers, or you have disparate systems that don't like to file share, you've got yourself a solution - just install the client and you're good to go. I've got the client installed on all of my computers, and it syncs quietly in the background. You can also setup public and private folders, so if you have a file that you'd like to have someone download, just drop it in your public folder and send them a link.

As an added bonus, using the web interface, you can access any of the files that are synced to the server via your web browser, from anywhere! Got some important files that you don't want to lose? If it's backed up to the internet, it's pretty unlikely that you're going to lose that file.

You get 2gb of storage for free - you can pay for more, but 2gb is plenty for what I'm using it for (and, if you click on my link above and sign up, I get more free storage =D ). So check it out, if you're in need of something sweet. Great for sharing files between your own computers, or with friends, and a pretty sweet backup solution.

One more thing, I've also started using another software product called 1Password that is for password management. I've always been pretty skeptical of software that holds my passwords, it just doesn't seem right. But then I thought about the password(s) that I generally use, and I thought, that's probably less safe. This software has browser plugins, so it automatically fills in passwords for me (when I ask it to) so I don't have to remember what they are.

Okay, so now you're saying, well that's great when you're at your computer, but anywhere else you're hosed? Ah, not quite. They also have an iPhone client that syncs with the desktop client, so I can access my passwords from my phone as well (doubly-password protected, obviously it would suck if I lost my phone and all my passwords were in plain-text). IN ADDITION, it's also setup to save my passwords in my Dropbox-synced folder...so that means on any other Mac that I have Dropbox & 1Password setup on, I can access my passwords exactly the same way - all synchronized automatically, instantaneously, whenever a change happens! How sweet is that!!??!?

P.S. I realize it is scary to have all my passwords and other important information on my phone, an easily loseable device...but you know what, that's how I roll. The convenience is too great, and I'd take that possibility as opposed to having crappy passwords all over the place.

Menards is the Wal-Mart of Home Improvement

Two home improvement projects attempted today, both completed...somewhat successfully. All the materials were purchased from Menards, which I'm not real happy with at this point.

First was replacing the closet doors on the washer/dryer closet. Turns out the new 30 inch doors are a quarter inch wider than the old 30 inch doors, and despite as much tweaking as possible, they just won't shut. At the bottom, that is. They do shut at the top, which is just weird. The doors are of pretty sketchy quality - for 44 bucks a piece I expected better. Another question though - what is the deal with rounding off important measurements? I was buying a piece of wood for a shelf a while ago, and there was the "actual measurement" and the "advertised measurement", both different numbers? Who goes around marketing 30 inch doors that aren't actually 30 inches, or a 18 inch piece of wood that's actually 17 1/2? That's ridiculous.

Second was replacing the medicine cabinet in my bathroom. The old one had a variety of failures, including one missing mirror and the mirror track was broken, meaning the remaining mirror was just perched on the edge, waiting to fall at any moment. So I picked out a pretty standard looking medicine cabinet/light fixture thing, and attempted to install it.

Removing the old one should have been a clue - the screws were all in the wall crooked, and all but one of which didn't hit anything but drywall. At that point I realized the shapes of the cabinets were different, so the hole in the wall which the wires (for the lights) are fed through would no longer in a convenient place. To make a long story short, I put a couple bonus holes in the wall, but the cabinet made it up. I think I matched the previous installer's record of one out of four screws in a stud. I'd like to thank the producers of the medicine cabinet for putting the "mounting boards" on the back directly behind shelves, making it almost impossible to put a screw through, and certainly impossible to put a screw through straight.

And as an added bonus, the wires coming from the wall were just barely long enough to reach, even after adding a bonus hole in the side of the medicine cabinet. Which I suppose worked out well, but I was a little concerned for a minute.

So I suppose it worked out - the cabinet is up, the lights work, and just a couple extra holes (oh, and a broken drill bit, which I believe is partially left in the wall as a "gift" to a future inhabitant). There is some missing wallpaper now visible where the old medicine cabinet used to be, which is pretty ugly, but it's going to have to do. The wallpaper is a little ugly anyway, if you ask me, so I guess maybe that's a push.

Moral of the story - of two products purchased from Menards today, I would say 100% of them sucked. Well, I did buy some compact fluorescent lightbulbs that seem to be good. So 2 of 3 products purchased sucked, if you count lightbulbs.

Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds

Fifth row, beeyah!

Baby wine bottles!

Search fail

So I went to meijer.com just now, and I wanted to see how much a pack of socks cost (I need to perform the Great Sock Exodus of 2009). Not wanting to discover where socks are in their navigation, I put in the keyword "socks" and hit search. What did I come up with...?

• books on crocheting socks


• rock em sock em robots


• clothes hamper


• coat rack


• hanging vinyl organizer


• creepy porcelain dolls


• fiber one bars


• Newmann's pasta sauce


• Wii Fit fitness pack


• a James Brown cd and a rock and roll Christmas hits CD


• birdfeeders

Things that I did not find:

• socks

Awesome.

UPDATE: Okay, after looking at their site, it's apparent that Meijer online doesn't sell clothes, including socks. So that would be why. Who does that, come on!

View from the car

Happy Opening Day!

At Bat 2009 iPhone App

I'm not a huge fan of purchasing applications for my iPhone. I like free stuff, because usually the free stuff isn't much less featured than the pay versions. But I have purchased a couple apps for my iPhone - one is a task management app, which is pretty sweet. Another is the Geocaching app, for which there is no free version (people tried, but since Groundspeak owns the data, they got no love). The Geocaching app, also worth the money, although admittedly I haven't really used it...ever, really. But it's cool.

Yesterday, I purchased another high-priced ($10) app that I'm confident is worth the cash. It's MLB.com's At Bat 2009. It's got not only live score updates throughout the game, it's got live updating box score, pitch-by-pitch plays including pitch locations, and even highlight videos during the game. All these things...maybe not worth the 10 bucks. They are pretty sweet, but usually I'm either watching the game, or I can get the updates from the tigers.com website.

But the kicker, is it also includes gameday audio for every baseball game - both home and away announcers. This is awesome, because due to MLB licensing restrictions, the local AM station (or any radio station) can't broadcast the games online. Now I could listen to the actual AM station, true, but not only do I not really have a radio handy, I'd also have to tune it and hope I get reasonable signal, which is questionable (questionable because I haven't tried). Anyway I now get every game in all it's digital glory, with Jim and Dan calling the game.

Awesome. iPhone for the win, again.