I’d never even heard of Cinerama before watching the Blu-Ray edition of How the West Was Won with John and Amy. Cinerama Adventure is a fascinating look at the then-revolutionary Cinerama system. Think of it as a predecessor to IMAX, except that it provided better peripheral views at the expense of requiring three separate cameras and projectors. If you’re at all interested in 1950s pop culture, film and video technology, film-making, or flying a camera-equipped B-25 into an active volcano, you’ll find plenty of things to interest you here. My favorite part might have been the discussion of how the movie industry targeted Cinerama to help counter the television-induced drop in movie theater attendance. I wonder if there’s a parallel with the current theater industry… maybe they could try something innovative instead of whining so much.
Entourage to get Exchange Web Services support
Great news from Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit: they’ll be releasing a version of Entourage that uses Exchange Web Services. This is great news because WebDAV, the protocol that previous versions of Entourage have used, doesn’t provide full support for every type of Exchange data item. The Exchange Web Services (EWS) version of Entourage will support full synchronization of tasks, notes, and categories with servers running Exchange Server 2007 SP1 or later. This should please some of the folks who have been lamenting the lack of Exchange sync functionality in Entourage. The best part: they’ll release this as a free update to Entourage later this year.
Comments Off on Entourage to get Exchange Web Services support
Filed under General Tech Stuff, UC&C
Survey on LDS beliefs and parenting
I just finished taking a survey on LDS beliefs and parenting. The survey is part of Steven Behling‘s graduate research towards his Ph.D. Part 1 asks some basic categorization questions, then asks you to rate how often you do certain things (such as punish a child without explanation, say “because I said so” when a child questions something, or reward a child for positive behavior). Part two focuses on your own opinions about acceptable or unacceptable parenting practices, some of which are kind of disturbing.
Apart from helping someone do academic research, I encourage my readers to take the survey as a thought-provoking means of exploring how you discipline and interact with your children. Having to honestly assess how often I do certain things has made me rethink some of the ways I interact with our boys, and I hope to make some positive changes as a result. This doesn’t mean that I think I’m a bad parent by any means, but I think there’s always room for improvement in any human relationships, parenting being no exception. Jesus’ admonition to “be ye therefore perfect” definitely applies. That’s hard advice to follow, but Elder Nelson has some good advice on the topic.
Comments Off on Survey on LDS beliefs and parenting
Filed under Spiritual Nourishment
Winterdance (Paulson)
Sometimes I read a book on some topic that inspires me to think of myself doing something with that topic– a book on aircraft design might make me wonder how I would fare as an aerospace engineer. Other books I read help me appreciate a topic or activity without necessarily wanting to do it myself (cf. A Blistered Kind of Love).
Winterdance did neither of these. It made me say, repeatedly and often aloud, that this guy is flat-out crazy. The Iditarod is one of the most grueling events in the world, and this guy wanted to run it. The story of his preparation for the races made me alternately wince (mostly for his wife, poor soul) and cringe. Imagine: sleeping with your dog team in its kennel, in your yard; letting fifteen sled dogs pull you on a bicycle then having to walk fifteen-plus miles home after they run off and leave you; getting sprayed by half a dozen skunks. The race itself is no better. I found myself unable to stop reading and concurrently wishing the book would end on the next page. I can’t really recommend it, but it was definitely an experience that will alter how I see future books. In fact, perhaps that’s the best summary I can come up with: the book is like the Iditarod in that respect.
Comments Off on Winterdance (Paulson)
Filed under Reviews
Woody’s SharePoint Designer book
Last week I was able to have a very enjoyable visit with Woody Windischman. He was passing through Toledo, so we met at the friendly neighborhood Waffle House. We chatted about SharePoint (or, more accurately, I listened), the ins and outs of being an independent contractor, and the publishing biz. He had just received his author copies of Professional Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007
Comments Off on Woody’s SharePoint Designer book
Filed under Friends & Family, General Tech Stuff
Christmas Fish update
So the boys and I took care of the Christmas Fish on Christmas Eve. First we called Bassett’s Market. Nope, they don’t process fish, but they suggested calling Churchill’s. Nope, they share a sink between the seafood and deli department and didn’t have time to sanitize it– but they told me to call Rohr’s. I did, and they handled the fish with no muss and no fuss. (Turns out it was a snapper from Costa Rica, not a rock cod). As a bonus, the boys and I had lunch at the Chinese buffet across the street from Rohr’s.
As a second bonus, the smoked salmon arrived Tuesday as planned. Good eatin’!
Comments Off on Christmas Fish update
Filed under Friends & Family, General Stuff
How I joined the Marine Corps
@ihenpecked on Twitter just said he wasn’t sure if the Marines would have been right for him. I didn’t think they were right for me, either.
Flashback: it’s 1986. The Cold War is happening, big time. I wanted nothing more than to fly jets, pretty much for whoever would have me, but I certainly didn’t work hard for it. I made a desultory effort to be nominated to the Air Force Academy or Annapolis, but my heart wasn’t in it (and neither were my grades, sadly). More or less as a lark, I took the ASVAB and did pretty well on it. That resulted in a flood of calls from recruiters. All the Air Force guys could talk about was missile maintenance, and the Navy recruiters kept talking about subs and nuclear power, neither one of which I wanted any part of; I was firm on going to college and couldn’t see putting that aside for active-duty service.
I had no interest in the Army or Marines, and told their recruiters that. The Army guy took me at my word, but the Marine recruiter, bless his heart, was made of sterner stuff. He kept calling me every few weeks, and it seemed like he always knew when we were sitting down to dinner. I finally agreed to go to his office to talk to him, and that was my downfall: he totally sold me. He convinced me of the benefits of serving in the Marine Corps Reserve, and that it was better to “test-drive” military service before making the commitment to get a commission and the obligations that come with it. (Advice that I took, having heard it from my grandfather, a WW II vet and retired USAF pilot.)
I left for boot camp about four months later, two days after graduating from high school. Then the real fun started 🙂
Comments Off on How I joined the Marine Corps
Filed under General Stuff, Musings
Awesome customer service from Café Press
I ordered Arlene three things from CafePress: two Twilight-themed T-shirts and a Twilight calendar. They arrived on time, as promised, but she wasn’t crazy about any of them (Tim and Julie got Arlene a nicer calendar, and the T-shirts were a bit too small). I e-mailed CafePress to get an RMA. On New Year’s Day, they responded in less than 4 hours and told me that they would issue a credit– and to keep the merchandise! I was amazed at the speed of the response and the lack of overall hassle. I’ll definitely do business with them again.
Comments Off on Awesome customer service from Café Press
Filed under Musings
Surprise! It’s a fish!
As Christmas approaches, we’ve had a steady feed of packages arriving at the hacienda. This is normal around this time of year; with Mom, Tim, us, and Julie all in different states there’s a fair amount of interstate commerce goin’ on. This afternoon, though, I was surprised to find a large white box outside my door.
The return address said “Seattle Fish Co.” That was my first clue. The second clue was the overpowering odor of fish that filled the kitchen when I opened the inner styrofoam cooler. Wrapped in paper was a plastic bag containing (wait for it)… a whole fish, head included. I immediately moved it out to the garage (which is cold enough, luckily, to store fish), then called the sender to figure out where this fish came from.
“Hi. Someone sent me a whole fish,” I said. “I think it’s a salmon.”
“Well, we don’t ship whole salmon,” said the lady on the other end. “Does it have a head?”
“Yes, it does, with an eye and everything.”
“Oh, that makes sense then. Someone just called me about this– there was a shipping mistake. You got a rock cod.”
After a bit of research, they called me back. A business associate had ordered some smoked salmon to be sent to us. Somehow, this order was transmuted into an order for a whole rock cod, which they promptly shipped. We thus received a fresh, yet unexpected, Christmas surprise. The good news: I’m going to take it to the market tomorrow and have it filleted and cleaned, then we can have some Boxing Day cod fillets. (Better news: the salmon is on the way and will arrive on New Years’ Eve!)
Comments Off on Surprise! It’s a fish!
Filed under Friends & Family
Great idea for Santa letters
From Peter Shankman‘s HARO newsletter:
So, the General Post Office at 34th St. and 8th Avenue is the one that gets all the letters addressed to “Santa – North Pole, Earth” every year. Well, did you know you can go and pick up as many as you want? I did! Meagan’s job this morning was to go to Toys R Us and buy a “Baby Alive,” a “My Little Pony,” a giant Teddy Bear, Play-Doh, Batman Indoor RC Racers, a Remote Control Helicopter, and right now, she’s struggling to figure out how to wrap all this stuff when NASA is constantly jumping in the wrapping. It’s a pretty decent feeling today here at HARO Central.
This is a great idea– I wonder if there’s a Toledo (or Seattle?) equivalent. Kudos to Peter for thinking of it!
Update: looks like the USPS has stopped Operation Santa for the time being. That stinks.
Comments Off on Great idea for Santa letters
Filed under Friends & Family
Skillz: Tim haz them
Congratulations to my brother Tim on the publication of his first book work: the Linux chapter in Next Generation SSH2 Implementation. Devin has a chapter in there too– it’s like old home week. (Personal to our sister: it’s your turn now!)
Comments Off on Skillz: Tim haz them
Filed under Friends & Family
StackSafe survey: get a SBUX card or win an iPod
StackSafe just sent me a request; they’re doing a survey of Exchange administrators (hosted by SurveyMonkey). The first 50 respondents get a Starbucks’ gift card, and they’ll draw someone at random to win an iPod Touch. It’s not a sales survey, and they’ve promised not to spam anyone. They’ve also promised to make the survey data available to me, and I’ll post it here once I get it. Take the survey here if you’re interested.
Comments Off on StackSafe survey: get a SBUX card or win an iPod
Filed under UC&C
U-Verse first impressions
So, I’ve had U-Verse for all of five days so far. Herewith a few first impressions after having used it a bit.
First, my installer gets an A+++++. He did a great job of setting everything up, putting wires where I wanted them, and cleaning up after himself. I am very well pleased with how the install went; I don’t know if he’s typical of AT&T’s field installer force but if he is that bodes well for them.
Second, Internet speed has generally been excellent, with speeds far closer to the rated limit. As an example, I got a measured 9.3Mbps the other day, which is pretty darn good. Jitter has overall been low, but I am still having occasional burps on my Mitel phone (haven’t tested the Tanjay yet). I had some difficulties getting all 3 of my wireless access points to work together; I ended up turning off two of them, because AT&T’s box integrates 802.11g and has enough range to cover the entire first floor. Problem solved.
TV: channel selection is OK. We don’t get the Toledo CW affiliate, or any other, nor do we get the digital subchannels for local broadcasters, both of which I miss. I’m glad to get BYU-TV again, and there are a few HD channels like Smithsonian that Buckeye doesn’t have. U-Verse HD picture quality is fair-to-good; I’d say it’s on a par with DirecTV but not as good (at least for the local channels) as Buckeye. I like getting STARZ and the other low-end movie channels as part of the bundle, but they only have about five different movies between them.
DVR: this is kind of a sore point with me right now. U-Verse touts its “Total Home DVR”, which puts a single disk-based DVR in one room and satellite units that can stream video from the “real” DVR in others. Great idea, and perfect for our house. There are some drawbacks, though. The satellite units cannot pause live TV, nor can they schedule recordings. That’s one strike. The second strike is that, for some reason, the unit in our bedroom keeps telling us that there are no DVRs on the network, so we can’t watch anything. (An AT&T tech is on his way over right now to see if he can fix it, though.) So, I’ll call that a foul ball… strike two. This morning, after rebooting both DVR units to try to fix that problem, all of the recorded programs were gone. That’s definitely a strike. (Arlene told me that the programs actually disappeared sometime yesterday, because they were already gone at 1630 when she and the boys tried to watch something.)
As long as I’m talking about the DVR functionality: I miss wishlists and suggestions, neither of which the U-Verse boxes implement. Search-by-name works well, and seems quite a bit faster than the TiVo. Series recording works well, as evidenced by the episodes of stuff I recorded before they got wiped out.
Interactive features: AT&T touts their U-Bar interface, which puts your TV picture in a frame that displays weather, sports, or other information. Unfortunately, all we get for weather is the name of our city, the forecast high/low for the next 24 hours, and a little weather icon– that’s it. This is pretty useless, especially compared to getting “weather on the 8s” with the local Weather Channel broadcast on Buckeye. Local weather is an oft-requested feature on the U-Verse support forums so maybe we’ll get it some day.
Miscellaneous grace notes: the TiVo allows you to see what happened to each show that was recorded or removed, which would have come in very handy in tracing where all my programs went.
My installer just left after verifying that the interior cable run is OK. We’ll see if things improve, but for now it’s back to the Alabama-Georgia game.
Comments Off on U-Verse first impressions
Filed under HDTV and Home Theater
Helicopter ground resonance
This one’s for you, Jim. Air & Space has a great article on ground resonance in helicopters. Basically, if you get the blade system to vibrate at just the right frequency, the helicopter tears itself apart. A couple of related videos: here’s one of a US Army Chinook from the rear, and another from the side.
Comments Off on Helicopter ground resonance
Filed under General Stuff, General Tech Stuff
HOWTO buy additional Microsoft CRM licenses
Suppose you want to buy an additional license for your existing Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online subscription. This sounds like it should be easy, and it is– once you know the trick.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can just do a web search for “buy dynamics CRM license“. That way lies madness, not to mention a big steaming pile of fail.
In related news, don’t think that because the Microsoft Online Services page says you can buy a Dynamics CRM Online subscription there that you can buy licenses for an existing subscription. You can’t.
You might think that the sales chat window that opens on several of the Dynamics CRM pages would help. The sales chat person suggested calling 877-276-2464, option 2. I did, and the phone rang and rang and rang without answering for about 90 seconds. Tom then answered and gave me the magic solution, which I include here so you won’t have to go through this same process:
- Log in to your existing CRM page.
- Click “Settings” in the lower-left corner of the page.
- Click “Organization Notifications and Status”.
- In the right-hand section of that page, click “Buy Licenses”.
Now for a brief editorial: this is a great case of an application that makes it needlessly hard to do something simple. Why not have a “buy licenses” link on the page where you add new users? Does “Organization Notifications and Status” sound like the solution to “I want to add a license”? Not to me it doesn’t. This is an area where the Business Productivity Online team at MS has far outdone the Dynamics crew. I sure hope that as these two services are unified that the BPO approach and design win out.
Paul's Down-Home Page 