Three-Letter Acronyms & Four-Letter Words

OK,

I have the new blog engine up and running. I have made a few posts and am going to keep futzing with it as time permits.

I am going to be making my posts on the new blog, rather than this one.

As previously stated, I plan to keep the TechnoSnobs.com domain, but re-purpose it.

So here goes, my new blog can be found at http://ben.dominguez-benner.com/blog

I really need to hit the hay.

Laterz

I don't want to post a link to the new blog just yet, I still need to futz with it some more.

But I got it installed tonight, I need to consult with the WordPress master (Jeremy) about a particular plugin that he is using that I want to use.

I bought some new domains as well, I am going to be changing up how I do things around here.

I am going to keep the Technosnobs.com domain, but I am going to re-purpose it for purely techno geek stuff, so code, geek projects, etc.

More about all of this will unfold this week, I swear.

The winds of change are in the air. (The hot, hot Texas air.)

Bedtime for Bonzo.

Laterz

Today, I gave my mom and David the gift of wireless internet.

For X-mas I gave my mom and David the gift of high-speed internet, via Yahoo! DSL.

Unfortunately, my mom's computer didn't have an Ethernet card. Notably, she never needed one before, the computer does have a shiny 56K modem.

However, the computer that I gave David did have an Ethernet card, as it was my old Dell, that had been hooked up to my cable modem at one point. My mom's computer however, was an HP that came as a bundle.

Moving on, on the way over to mom's we stopped at Best Buy and purchased a Linksys Wireless 54G router (with Speedbooster, LOL) and a Belking 54G usb stick wireless NIC.

Now, normally I would never, ever buy any networking gear for a home office other than Linksys. However, I really just didn't want to pay $60 for a wifi usb stick, the Belkin was $29.99. And as I have said before 'It is all made in the same plan in China anyway.'

I mean, honestly if you look at some of the high-tech gadgetry out there you will see that they have very similar form factors and that it is all just branding.

Back to the wifi adventure.

I got the wireless router online (not that it is any sort of technical achievement), I turned on the WEP security and I also rigged it so that the router does the PPPoE rather than the DSL modem. As this is the same setup that I have at the house. I didn't want my mom to have to deal the same fluke modem issues that I dealt with from time-to-time.

I will admit, in my haste to plug everything in I didn't pay attention fully and had plugged David's Ethernet cord into the WAN port and the DSL line into a regular router port. Oops!

I first got my laptop online as to make sure that everything was working as it should and to enable me to mess with the DSL modem and the router. I showed my mom how to enter in the WEP encryption key, should she need to show anybody how for next time.

After finishing up that WEP training, I installed her Belkin NIC and let her establish the internet connection (ie put in the WEP key).

She was online, high-speed style from her desktop. First time ever. She has been using David's computer for the last few months, which I am sure has been a pain.

I had thought about drop shipping her a router and a wireless NIC. But I was pretty sure that the steps necessary to get all of this running completely smoothly might be a little overwhelming.

This brings us to iGoogle, formerly known as 'Google Personalized Homepage'. I am not sure that I really like either name. I guess iGoogle is a little easier to say.

I showed my mom how to setup 'Feeds' so that she can have an easier time telling if I have updated my Blog. Notably, she picked on me for not having updated since the 21st.

After having showed her how to add a feed, she managed to show me something new (I had stepped away and wasn't watching her for a couple of minutes). She had found the 'Themes' for iGoogle. She had picked a theme that was fairly cute and also had an interesting aspect to it, because of the fact that the them has sort of a horizon look to it. They integrated the sun and moon part of the horizon to work off your local time zone, I am willing to bet that they have even worked it out so that the moon shows up according to the 'known' phases of the moon for your area.

The idea is that the sun or moon will be shown in the approx location of where they should be on the horizon for your area, cute and neat.

At this point I figured that I should see if mom wanted to blog. I know that she has enjoyed my Blog and as a whole I find Blogs to be a fairly good medium for sharing news and opinions about things.

My mom tends to be a private person. So unfortunately for all you out there that might want to read it, she has used Blogger's security features to limit the reading of the blog to invitation only.

This will likely mean only family and immediate friends. I am trying to convince her to run two blogs, one private and one public. This way she can post up her artwork and what not on the public side. I think My mom has a lot of good opinions, knowledge and art to share with the folks on the Internet.

One step at a time though, one step at a time.

She has wandered off to find some art work that she has been doing in class. So I better close out this post.

Oh yeah, I did upgrade them to Firefox 2 while I was here. I have pushed Firefox on my all of my parents. So far everyone likes it. Mostly I did it because it is a bit more virus resistant (proof) than IE.

Laterz

(I have to write up a post about the adventures in Detroit that Gina and I had the last couple of days, that will have to wait until tomorrow).

Gina sent me a link to this blog, 'What Do I Know?'.

I skimmed it real quick, she lives in the UK and is vegan. Looks like she posts vegan recipes on Wednesdays. I might have to try some of them.

Back to the grind.

Laterz

So Jeremy and I have been playing around with Google Analytics since around June of last year. (He got into it about a month before me, as with most things, Jeremy is recon or guinea pig.)

The past few weeks I have been logging into my Analytics account and looking at my stats for this month. They provide you with some of the best (free) web statistics reports that I have seen.

The interesting thing that I have noticed is that the month of February has been possibly the most popular month for my blog. Now, I am not political pundit, nor am I making a living off my blog.

I try to post things on the blog here that are more interesting than what I had for dinner or what cute thing the dogs did this week. However, I do occasionally give posts that are somewhat of that nature. In part, because my family reads my blog to keep up to date with what is happening down here in Tejas. Given that I work in the telecom industry I should probably call and give said updates more often, but a lot of the time my schedule doesn't meet up with theirs, or they might be over their cell phone minutes (Rachel).

Anyway, for those of you who might happen to find my blog, read more than one post and enjoy it, thank you visiting. For those of you that found my blog by way of Google and didn't find it interesting, sorry, check back later, it will probably be more interesting then.

Anyway, here are some partial screenshots from the Google Analytics dashboard. I love the graphs and "Geo Map Overlay" thing they do.

January


February


In the month of January I had enough referrals from Jeremy's 90in9.com site for it to show up in the top 5. This month not enough to get it's own listing in the pie chart, I just checked and 10 referrals this month.

But the month isn't over quite yet so maybe 90in9.com can make it into my Top 5 referral list.

I really do have to say that if you have a blog or any sort of website. You need to sign-up and use Google Analytics, it is a great package. There is a ton of functionality that I have even yet to begun to tap into. One thing I know is that my site ends up being visited by folks because of the name "Three-Letter Acronyms & Four-Letter Words".

Of which, I don't really do any lists of Three-Letter Acronyms or Four-Letter Words. Maybe I will have to setup some sort of little project to do just that.

As a whole, I don't really market my site. One of these days I will. But for now, I am content with passing on information of what has been happening to friends and family. And occasionally posting my pontifications about something I found interesting, or sometimes I just like to make a post about the funk.

I have been enjoying blogging. While most of my blogging is more just a journal of my life. However, I occasionally find the opportunity to comment on topics a bit more community based or based upon others people's blogs.

In doing so I am not only trying to give some data back to the 'Net, I also am contributing to the blogosphere. I have made comments on a few blogs here and there but tend to just read. I have found myself using my own blog to comment on other people's posts more and more.

This morning I saw on my feed reader that Anil was talking about "More Sociopathic Writing". I took the opportunity and commented on his first post, trying to be more social in my online interactions.

I feel quite honored that Anil mentioned me in his follow-up post. It sounds really cheesy, but I feel like a real part of the blogosphere now.

Well, I need to go and get ready. We are going to Ikea today!

Laterz

I went to 'An Event Apart' downtown today and it was quite interesting. (They also have a site called, A List Apart, I can't believe I have never seen this site before.

They were pushing CSS vs tables for design.

This is something that I am in full agreement with. The more CSS you utilize in your design, the more flexible your design will be. Because as the name implies "Cascading Style Sheets". It means that the style sheets cascade.

The idea that you can build out your design and have the elements defined, you can then build classes in a single sheet that will effect the style/layout. Very powerful stuff.

However, it is somewhat of an advanced concept. While it has been around for quite a few years (1997 or so), it is something that requires a bit more understanding of HTML and design. The gut reaction is to just do it in tables.

And on some level, knocking it out using tables is respectable. I have to say that I have never done a fully 100% CSS based layout. I normally utilize tables. Buddha normally loves tables, to quote the master 'Fsck CSS'.

However, that 'knocking it out' deal is a matter of proficiency. If one is proficient in CSS, then doing a whole layout in CSS shouldn't be a big deal.

I am familiar with CSS and what it can achieve, but I did learn quite a few things today. Some of the presentations were business related, some of them process related, others were CSS related.

With all of that said, I think I am going to finally get around to redoing the www.technosnobs.com homepage, which currently doesn't exist. I merely have mod_rewrite configured to automatically forward you to www.technosnobs.com/blog/. I am not sure if i will keep it that way, or move it all over to blog.technosnobs.com.

I do love me some subdomain.

All for now. I will be posting more here about my interaction with the holy CSS advocates. But before I go, I will say it was quite refreshing to see that while they tout proper web design and CSS, they were not jumping on the AJAX or Web 2.0 bandwagon. One might even have gotten the feeling that they were bashing Web 2.0 and AJAX (just a little). One of the guys did state that AJAX can be very handy in certain situations.

Laterz

Great Scott!!

So it is a three day weekend, I wish I could say that I have been spending it near a lake or being ultra productive.

But no such luck. I have been a wee bit productive. Playing for of a support role today.

Gina and John have been doing home improvement today. John arrived this morning at about 8:10, Gina had woken me up around 6:30 or so.

She made us breakfast consisting of blueberry pancakes, eggs, hashbrowns (like the ones @ IHOP) and crispy bacon.

Since I am a bit more technically inclined than industrially inclined I have been playing more of a gopher role today. I did get to play with a neat belt/disc sander thing. They had taken off the base boards and wanted me to sand some gunk off the back of them. It was some sort of caulk mixed with paint.

The idea was to get the base boards to a point where they could put them back on the wall, but flat. I apparently had a little too much fun with the sander, as they did not lay flat on the wall after I was done.

So off to the "Home Despot" to buy some base boards. I called Gina after I left to find out the size I needed. They have quite the selection there you know. I needed to get two very, very long pieces about 13 ft. The base boards start out @ 16 ft.

I found a style that I liked and then proceeded to walk around with 2 x 13 ft base boards standing straight up (I foolishly did not choose the lumber cart). I also had to pick up some caulk and some hinges, I also split a base board into two 8 ft pieces. Hopefully I won't have to go back to the Home Despot tomorrow, but I probably will.

I also had to make soda run. Then I picked up dinner from Delaware Subs.

However, I did have a chance to perform a role that I am familiar with. John had recntly built a pretty slick pc. However, due to a minor over-clocking incident it wasn't booting up properly. So I had a chance to flex my technical muscle, I looked up the model and found out that they make an ISO based BIOS package. So one burned CD later and John's pc was back in action. I won't try to say that this was a uber complicated problem, but it felt good to help out when I can.

So whats up with 1.21 Gigawatts?

I have been watching "Back to the Future" while working on migrating sites from the old Spry host to the new server.

"Earth Angel, Earth Angel"

But I digress.

So not many probably know that Google will soon be controlling our Internet interactions. As Jeremy is fond of saying "I welcome Google as our new lord and masters." Did I quote you accuratley there Timmy?

I have offered up the hosting of my personal domain's email to Google. Well, more accurately I applied to Beta their latest service offering, it is primarily oriented @ small businesses but they decided to let me play too. Google Apps for Your Domain

I found out about this offering by way of Anil Dash's blog that I try to stay current with, made all the easier thanks to RSS feeds.

Well, I got my technosnobs mail configured the way that I wanted. I also forwarded my regular gmail account to my new technosnosbGmail account, this way I'm not having to check multiple spots for mail. I am not sure whether I will try to use POP3 to get my mail or if I will just use gmail in the browser. Since I usually have googleTalk running I get notified of mail that I have waiting for me in the system tray.

Anyway, I have a few more domains and websites to finish transfer in the morning. But things are rocking and rolling. I already transferred Gina's blog over. I still need to do Amanda and Henry's blog, along with the sites related to uRevoo. But after tonight's practice those should go pretty quickly I have a nice little system working.

Jeremy needs to apply for Google's Beta too, since I haven't fully configured the mail functions on the new server, and now I don't want to bother figuring it out. Thanks Google, you appeased my inner lazy man.

Well, I better get to bed. John will be back early in the morning I am sure to finish up in there. We have to put up the new base boards still. But they are definitely done with the floor.

Narcoleptic time, laterz.

I wanted to make a quick post before passing out.

I have gotten the new server to a point where the OS, apache, mysql and php are ready to go.

I did a test restore of my blog, and it worked pretty well. I am going to need to restore the filesystem structure for a perfect restore, but the partial worked pretty darn well.

I also did a test install of dotProject, since the gd library is primarily used for that.

Well I have a few last clean up items for the server before bedtime.

I bought some expansion slot covers and a couple of new fans.

I think I need to be in bed in about 30 minutes so...

Laterz

So for anyone who read my first posts, I talked about trying to get that discipline of making daily entries. I did good there for a while.

However, as the title says, "Old Habits die hard". The past two weeks have been very work intensive. Which means that when I get home it is time to eat dinner, watch a little TV, maybe play a video game (you know to relax) for an hour or so, then sleep.

Let it be known that I HATE getting up early, so early morning posts are pretty much not on the table for discussion.

For what little adoring public that I have reading this blog regularly, namely my family, I apologize for the radio silence.

I am fully willing to admit that I am not the most organized person in the world. I rely on my memory quite a bit, which unfortunately is very full lately, and occasionally something pushes another thing out of my head.

My boss keeps this very neat and organized "To-Do" list and has suggested that I do the same. My mom had actually gone to training (paid for by the State of Michigan) to learn how to organize using Franklin planner stuff. When that happened, she got me one too. It didn't help.

I like the To-Do list concept. However, while I am a HUGE fan of paper notes and documentation, a paper To-Do list for me keeps being too inefficient and I fall back into my old habits.

In one of the books on Product Management, The Product Manager's Handbook, it talks about time management being very important. And I fully agree. I am currently have at least 3 projects that require my direct involvement to allow others to continue with their bits, I have another project where I am one of the primary contributors. Then there is all the random stuff that happens with being the Product Manager and subsequently the only one trained to do Sales Engineering for my products, I get tied up with customer questions, which for the most part are higher ranking than the other projects.

So while I am not the most organized person and I do not have excellent time management skills, I would argue that I am very proficient in judging what the priority of my ongoing projects are vs incoming randmon stuff, and thus working on the item that is most important first, even if that project just showed up 5 minutes ago.

So I think I have the whole project prioritization down. With that in mind, I have to say I really like dotProject. I did an install for work and another for Jeremy so that he can try to keep things straight on the uRevoo project.

However, it isn't really very portable, in the sense of if I am not connected to the web. Of course, except for vacations in northern Michigan, I am usually within 30 ft of a broadband connection. (Something to be proud of, I hope.)

Now, I am not advocating MS-Project, as that has issues revolving around licensing and being able to share project plans and schedules. But I think that is jumping the gun on a different post, one where I discuss my findings on dotProject vs MS-Project. I have used MS-Project 2000 when I was at Simplified pretty extensively. And I have used dotProject for PrivateTel & uRevoo stuff well enough to find that if you don't edit your php.ini file you can't produce the gantt charts for a project you need a gantt chart for. (You have to increase the maximum memory size allocated to a PHP script.) But again, that is for another post. Maybe one I will write up tomorrow.

So getting back to portable. Paper is portable, however, paper is inefficient from the perspective that it is a passive medium. I have noticed that recently I refer to lots of stuff as passive vs active. Not sure why, seems like the way to refer to some things.

Paper is passive becuase...
1. You have to write on paper, paper cannot write on iteself.
2. You have to remember read the paper, paper doesn't remind you to read it.
3. You have to remember to write on paper, paper can't remind you about something.

While I need something that is more Active...
1. Something that will remind me of meetings.
2. Something that will remind me of deadlines. (remind me a day(s) ahead, vs 5 minutes ahead)
3. Something that can sync with my computer, ie write to itself, sort of.

I had a Palm Pilot Vx, not just a V but a Vx. I just had to have that extra like 4MB of Ram. This was back in like 2000 I think.


(image courtesy of ePinions.)

However, I guess I wasn't geeky enough to truly use it properly. I also had a TMobile Pocket PC 2002, a PDA and a Phone. Thinking that carrying two things was too cumbersome, if I had them all in one, then I would be golden.


(image courtesy of PocketPCMag.)

Well it didn't work out that way. There have been many a smart person who has said "A tool is only as effective/productive as it's owner." I found the Pocket PC useful, I started keeping appointments and stuff in it. And I even paid for the GPRS modem service, so I could download email and what not to it. This actually was pretty useful. I could read some email without having to be at my computer. However, the GPRS service was SLOW, I mean it made 56k dialup seem fast. And then the work email server got changed and was no longer compatible with my pocket pc email client.

So, it got replaced by a smaller, easier to carry phone. Cuz that was kind of the other thing. I was nice not to have to carry a phone and a PDA. However, the Pocket PC 2002 wasn't as convenient to slide into my pants pocket as the various little Nokia phones I have owned.

My current phone is the Nokia 3220. Nice little phone, has a camera on it. And it even has a data port. Way cool, I can load MIDI files as ring tones, sync my contacts, and even my calendar. If I used MS-Outlook.

Well, I don't use MS-Outlook. And honestly, I never WANT to. I have been using Outlook Express since like 1996, quite fond if it actually. I tried MS-Outlook briefly in 1998 and over the years have been forced to help troubleshoot glitches with it. I will say the latest version seems to have lots of things fixed in it. However, I still don't want it. As a matter of fact, I think I have made a point of keeping it off my machine.

I tried Thunderbird briefly about a year ago, again a topic for another post. I didn't like it as much as Outlook Express, but it too has come a long way since my last encounter with it.

My point about mentioning my latest phone is that I have made an effort to enter things into my phone, IMPORTANT meetings and dates. I don't put lots of stuff in it, because obviously using the phone's keypad to enter in the information is inefficient.

That brings us to my next evolutionary step in trying to get myself organized. I have recently ordered a new PDA.

Gina had recently done a LOT of research on PDAs as she has a new job and wants to be very organized. She decided ultimately on the Palm Z22.


(courtesy of Palm)

Part of the decision was that she had previously been successfully organized using a planner (like the ones from Franklin, yet not Franklin). But felt that working for a hi-tech company meant that she should have a digital organizer. I would have to agree, when in geek rome, do as the geeky romans do.

Well the Palm interface has improved, it has color, it works more like windows. But between the Palm Vx and the Pocket PC 2002, I was a bigger fan of the windows based one. Yes, yes. I know "Reistance is futile", Microsoft, blah, blah. I am not saying they do everything better. But for me, I dig the WindowsCE/PocketPC stuff more than I do the PalmOS.

So I decided on going with an iPaq vs a Dell Axim or what not. HP has been making the iPaq a long time, and I think they do it best (make a WindowsCE based PDA that is.)

I shopped around. I decided that I wanted some wireless connectivity. But I didn't want to make this thing my phone. And honestly to get the Tmobile Pocket PC MDA was just out of my price range.

I wanted wifi, not bluetooth. You can connect wifi just about anywhere (even in northern michigan, see my post), but bluetooth is well more device-to-device networking still.

This meant that I was looking for the HP rx 1955.


(courtesy of HP)

I normally buy all this sort of stuff on NewEgg. However, this time around I decided to use Froogle.

And I eventually landed over at Overstock.com. I have never bought from them before, but Sara and Amanda seem to like them. While the unit I bought is a refurb the price was very right $189.00. NewEgg is like $275. On top of the Overstock has 2 year replacement/protection plan for $29.99.

So the grand total (including $2.95 shipping) was $221.94. I have bought refurb before, usually telecom hardware mind you, but usually prefer brand new toys. However, at an overall price lower than NewEgg and with a 2 year replacement (NewEgg's 2 year replacement plan is $59.99, so grand NewEgg total would have been $340.97, $4.99 shipping included).

So with my ass covered if the unit dies in 30 days and the price being well below new, I bought it. Unfortunately, I will have to wait until probably next Friday to start using it. I am headed to Dallas next week and it appears that I leave out before it arrives.

An MSU faculty member once told me that "If you do something consistently for 7 days it will become habit." I forget exactly how this came up, but it has stuck with me to this day. Only thing is that "Old habits die hard."

So I will keep you posted on how I like the rx1955 and how I am using it. I look forward to working some mojo with dotProject to get the data exportable into the rx1955, and at the very least, with the wifi on the PDA, I can access dotProject from just about every where.

All for now, lunch is over, back to work.