Disorderly Content

A scary thought, and an even scarier sight. But it's twoo, thanks to podcaster Trucker Tom, who captured a few moments of day one of our Tips From The Top Floor photo seminar in Fort Collins this past weekend. That's me nodding like a bobble head gone horribly wrong. Do I really look that silly? And will I do anything to change it, now that I know? Yes. And probably not.

It's a rare and wonderful thing when you meet someone you've been following for a while (following in a media sort of way, not as a stalker) and discover that they're just the way you hoped they'd be. I had such an experience this weekend, when I attended one of Chris Marquardt's Learning To See photographic workshops. Chris is the host/proprietor of Tips From The Top Floor, a most excellent podcast about (digital) photography. I've been listening to Chris for about three years now, and found him a most excellent combination of skilled photographer and engaging and articulate presenter and teacher. So how much of a pleasure to discover that he's just the same in person. More to the point, his workshop was worth every penny; I learned a lot about composition (the photographic kind, not the ones we had to write in elementary school) and had a fine time in the process.

Anybody who's interested in photography would be well advised to start listening to the show. It's a free download, and well worth the time and the nonexistent expense. As for the workshop, well, four days in Colorado with my camera and a bunch of enthusiastic photographers. What's not to like?

According to a piece in the Huffington Post, the author of "100 Things To Do Before You Die" just died, age 47. Wonder how many he got done.

While watching Democratic convention coverage while waiting for my flight home tonight: does anyone else think that Caroline Kennedy is what Ann Coulter would look like if she had a soul?

Just arrived in my inbox:

Goodday,

I require a partner to transfer $8.6m that belonged
to a dead customer of my bank.

Reply for more information on
the procedure.

Regards,

Jeeze, how lazy can they get?

I'd like to tell you about some spectacularly crappy software. And this time it has nothing to do with Microsoft, as hard as that may be to believe.

My story begins with my BlackBerry, a device I carry for work. BlackBerrys (that is the plural form, right?) have USB connections, which they use to charge and also to transfer files to a computer. I have no need of wired sync, over the air sync does everything I need, so I use USB just to keep the BlackBerry charged. I've generally been charging by connecting to a computer, either my Mac mini or my work Dell laptop. The problem is that in both cases the BlackBerry whines (not literally; it just puts up an annoying message) that charging from a computer won't work. In fact it does work; it just takes forever. But that got me wondering. I knew with an earlier BlackBerry that installing their desktop software on an earlier laptop seemed to make the charge work much more quickly, and without warning monologues. (If a dialogue doesn't let me say anything, it's hardly a dialogue, is it?) So I wondered if there was some software I could install on my Mac that would tell the BlackBerry to accept a charge and stop complaining.

Google is my friend, and led me to a package called PocketSync that RIM offers as a free download for those of us who don't do Windows. I downloaded it, and installed it. And that's where things went wrong...

First, the installer notified me that it shouldn't be run when other applications are running on the computer. To my surprise, clicking on Continue caused the installer to kill everything I had running. Not polite at all, thought I. But the installation proceeded, and seemed to go smoothly. I brought up the sync program, which offered to let me sync the BlackBerry's calendar with one of my iCal calendars. This seemed a fine idea, as it got past a limitation of using my iPhone with Exchange. Maybe I could finally get all my calendars on one device!

Except... what happened when it was done that the only calendar on my Mac was the one from the BlackBerry. All the rest of my appointments were gone. Vanished. And of course I didn't discover this until I was on a trip for work, and had to deal with it when I got home two days later.

My non-work calendars remained gone. Fortunately, I have been a devoted user of Time Machine, Mac OS X's new backup software. I removed all the PocketSync software from my Mac, and then told Time Machine to restore the Calendar directory from two days earlier. Everything was back, aside from a couple of flights I'd added since that backup.

The moral of our story: the people who produce PocketSync do more harm than good, or at least they did to me. Oh, and there was one good outcome: the BlackBerry now charges both quickly and without complaint. At least it does on my Mac; I'm not sure I want to go through this kind of exercise with the Dell.

...and not, I hope, to bury it.

If you know me at all, you know my taste in television is eclectic. And during this long and dull summer, while I waited for Psych and Mythbusters and Pushing Daisies to release new episodes (check, check, and still waiting), I let myself get sucked into something totally cheesy on ABC Family of all things. It's called The Middleman, it's like a snarky takeoff on all those British spy shows from the 60s, plus Men in Black, plus a whole bunch of other stuff. Yes, it's cheesy, but only the finest cheese, classic imported fromage. And the cultural references fly by at an alarming rate, most of which escape even me, whose steel trap mind my brother once described as intellectual landfill!

Take this week's episode for example, which guest starred Kevin Sorbo as a Connery-as-Bond ex-spy who's been frozen for forty years (okay, the concept is Austin Powers, but the delivery is pure Bond). We eventually learn his name is Guy Goddard, which I just discovered was an homage to the two male leads from Lost in Space. I mean, how cool is that? And what other show would feature a martial arts master named Sensei Ping, who for obscure reasons wears a Mexican wrestler's mask?

I'm telling you, you have to check this show out. Quickly, before ABC Family replaces it with something smarmy like that new Brenda Hampton show. I wasn't wrong about Farscape, right? Or Corner Gas. You have been watching Corner Gas, haven't you?

My day job involves tying together hundreds and thousands of servers to solve big problems for banks, brokerages and insurance companies. Some nitwit decided to call what we do Application Virtualization, which, while not inaccurate, caused no end of confusion with products from virtualization vendors like VMWare and... well... there aren't really any others that matter to the enterprise. And VMWare matters, like you wouldn't believe.

Which is why this article is such a comeuppance for VMWare and for everybody who sings its praises. In a nutshell, it seems a flaw in the latest VMWare update processes license expirations incorrectly. And anybody foolish enough to apply the update without rigorous testing is going to see their virtual machines refusing to start. Even worse, this is happening on a Tuesday, when Microsoft issues its weekly patches. And those patches force us to reboot...

Anybody interested in some application virtualization? I can almost guarantee we won't keep your servers from starting up...

Speaking of Monterey, we were wandering around the Monterey Bay Aquarium on Friday, when one of the displays caught my eye. This tiny creature looked so shockingly familiar, he just had to be the inspiration for Farscape's Dominar Rygel XVI. Heck, he even has earbrows!

Been a while since I've blogged. Not because I haven't had anything to blog about, goodness knows. Quite the opposite in fact. I've been traveling, first to New York for Thrillerfest, then to Chicago for a team building exercise with my day job coworkers (a little awkward, what with the salescritter layoff just a few days before), then to Columbus, Ohio to teach a class and help get a product installed (the class went okay, the install not so much), and finally to Monterey to enjoy the company of a couple of my Scaper buds. So it's been a busy time, and now I'm getting used to being home again.

So what's Columbus like? Surprisingly nice, even if the heat and the humidity had me wilting. The food was good, including Schmidt's Sausage Haus, yes, that very same Sausage Haus that John McCain visited as a way to neutralize Barack Obama's advantage in going to the Germany that isn't in the Midwest. I like the architecture in Columbus as well; lots of brick, which we don't see so much in California, what with earthquakes knocking them to bits. Granted, I'd probably go crazy if I had to spend too much time there, but four days went by pretty quickly.

And then there's Monterey, where we visited the aquarium, and a few wineries (I guess not all the good ones are north of the Golden Gate), and the Steinbeck Center in Salinas, and took a drive down the coast. Most relaxing, even if the mellow didn't survive first contact with that darn day job. Reality really does bite, you know?