gf-tech.com

Pain.NET aggravates me. I don't use it very often (which is the problem), but when I do, the pre-release version that I have installed has inevitably expired. Their decision to prevent me from using the app until I upgrade is frustrating and angering. All I want to do is resize an image. I don't want to have to upgrade a perfectly fine piece of software for this.

I know that they really want me to upgrade, but forcing me to upgrade is horrible. Since this has happened to me before I think I am going to go ahead an uninstall it. My time is worth more than this. A long time ago I installed the GIMP. I might have to give that a whirl again.

I've heard a lot about Android, the new mobile phone OS by Google. I am curios as to what it looks like, and what can be done with it. Today I read on Download Squad that there is a live CD version that can be downloaded. You can boot your normal computer in Android to test it out. You can also run it in VMWare or VirtualBox. Cool. I may give it a spin to see what the fuss is about.

Read about LiveAndroid here.

I was installing a defrag utility today on my work machine. The installer went through the usual installing stuff, then I got asked if I wanted to install the Yahoo! toolbar. Absolutely not. If I had wanted it, I would already have it installed. I was greeted with this:

The installer states:

By clicking the "Next" button, you agree to these software license terms

Technically if I don't agree to Yahoo's terms, I can't install the software I downloaded. Sure I can uncheck the two Yahoo related checkboxes, but by clicking next I am still agreeing to their terms.

Maybe I should uninstall that defrag utility and email the author and let him know why.

I'd read about dropbox a while ago and didn't think too much of it. There are getting to be more and more services that will allow you to use their disk space, and synchronize it to all the computers you specify. Dropbox didn't seem to offer as much as Windows Live Mesh but I gave it a shot anyway.

My first reaction was that the Dropbox synch was way faster than Mesh. Dropbox also keeps a history of what has happened, and shows you what is happening at any given time. Mesh does not. In fact, the only thing Mesh can give you is remote desktop access to any other computer in your mesh, which is interesting and helpful.

I was getting ready to uninstall both Mesh and Dropbox, then I read Joel's post on password management. I've been using my thumbdrive and a portable version of Keepass to store my passwords. As Joel suggested, I could keep my password file in my dropbox and use the installed version of Keepass. This way I add a new password, and I can access it from home too.

I then took things a step further and copied the Keepass exe to my dropbox. Now I don't need to install anything except the dropbox program and I have instant access to all my password from all my computers. Very cool. I essentially turned my 2 GB dopbox space into a 2GB thumbdrive that I don't have to carry with me.

Qualcomm, the makers of Eudora, have made a press release announcing that Eudora is going to be made open source.

Interesting. I think this is awesome news and hopefully it will help spread the adoption of Eudora (a program I have been using since approximately 1994). It will be based on the Thunderbird code. I hope that they can keep the look, feel, and useability of the current Eudora when they make this switch. I have tried Thunderbird, and it just reminds me of Outlook in how it operates.

The first half of 2007 is the anticipated release schedule, and I know I will be watching out for that.

I especially like one of the quotes in the release:

“Using the Mozilla Thunderbird technology platform as a basis for future versions of Eudora will provide some key infrastructure that the existing versions lacked, such as a cross-platform code base and a world-class display engine. Making it open source will bring more developers to bear on Eudora than ever before.”

This is an excellent way to leverage open source software to open up new markets. I also like that they are getting away from IE as the rendering engine :)

This past weekend my mom bought a new Logitech Harmony universal remote. It is a pretty fancy unit. Internet programmable, USB upload, controls pretty much every electronic device in your house.

Too bad Logitech totally screwed it up. Way too comlicated to set up. Even for me. I never have problems configuring and customizing software, yet this thing took me over two and a half hours to get completed. The first hour was just getting the software installed. Holy crap.

The first step was to plug in the remote to the computer and have it instal some USB related crap. Then I popped in the install disc and ran the the setup and got the software install going. Next thing I know the remote needed its firmware upgraded. OK. Fine. Go, do it. The firmware upgrade completed, the software install finished, and it was time to configure the remote.

Opening the software it started up and had me create an account on their website. It asked for some irrelevant data like where I heard of them and where I purchased the remote. It was mandatory. Why is it necessary to use the remote control to tell Logitech where it was purchased? I just filled in some randam crap that is useless to them.

When I eventually got to run the software, it checked for a newer version, and found one. It downloaded version 5, but it required that the previous version be uninstalled first. Thankfully the software automatically started the uninstall process. The resulting wizard had 3 options. Install, repair, or uninstall. Of course repair was chosen. Being unsure, I changed the selection to uninstall figuring I could always start over if that messed something up.

Apparently that was the right decision. Version 5 was then installed.

Finally I am ready to start configuring the remote.

I entered all the devices, manufacturers and model numbers, then confirmed each of the related settings (ie watching tv means turn off all other device, set the tv input to be the tuner). I had to confirm the setting for watch tv, watch a dvd, watch a recording, listen to cd, and listen to the radio. Upload the setting to the remote, and away you go.

Except that the watch dvd didn't work properly. I had to spend an hour figuring out that the remote was somehow flipping the tv to the auxilary input, then back to the tuner when going to watch a dvd. A whole hour to figure out how to make the remote use a different command that the tv understands. 2.5 hours of my time spent configuring a damn remote control. To top it off, version 5 of the software was crap. Slow as molasses, counter intuitive, not what I would call user friendly. Lots of time was spent waitng for the program to respond. Version 5 was an ActiveX control inside a branded internet explorer. It was made to look like a regular app, but didn't act like it. Click on next, wait for the refresh. Choose option, click on next, wait for the refresh. Not what you were looking for? Too bad, hit back, wait for the refresh. Too much time waiting for the app to refresh.

Way, way too complicated. Why couldn't the boxed remote and the boxed software just work together. Why did they have to be upgraded right away? Obviously they were released at the same time, so it would make sense that they should work.

Anyway, in the end I figured it out, but I just had to rant about the stupidity of the whole thing. There is no way my mom could have figured that out for herself (she even said so). If she had attempted it, she would have ended up returning it, and most likely would have thought twice about any other Logitech products. A simple concept turned ugly.

This past week has been a little stressful at work. I am in the middle of an important project which has a very tight deadline. The last thing I needed was a computer crapout, but that is exactly what happened.

Another person at the office had exerienced a phenomenon where files and directories that their domain profiled owned were being marked read-only, permissions to alter the files were being removed, and nothing they did would fix this. The IT department was stymied, and their solution was to re-install the OS on a new hard drive, then hook up the existing drive as a slave. All files were intact, and there was no chance of whatever was going wrong to repeat.