jerryjackson.net

UPDATE: After I made some substantial protests to the “office of the president”, a replacement phone was sent to me overnight. So – now they suck a little bit less.

I have a 5 month old Blackberry 8310 with what I now know to be the NOTORIOUS problem with the USB charging port. I phone AT&T customer support and the droid asks me 2 dozen stupid questions. LAST question is: “does the charging plug wiggle?” – I answer: “yes, it wiggles a very tiny bit” – then the droid tells me my warranty is voided due to physical damage.Â

Actually, it wasn’t 2 dozen stupid questions – the first question was “what color is the water exposure indicator” – THEN 22 stupid questions to distract the caller – THEN – WHAMO – “does your charging plug wiggle?”.

WTF ?????

I have 2 brand new 8310 units here with exactly the same amount of “slop” in the plug – so where the hell do they come up with “physical damage – warranty voided” ???

I guess having 5 phones on the AT&T family plan means nothing more than I get to pay them $3500/year for this bullshit. Plus the new 3g iPhone I purchased last week along with a 2 year contract upgrade.

I’m feeling really good about the fun I’m gonna have with this

att wireless at&t

I have some thoughts about what it takes to force decision making in business – and some day I will write at considerable length about it. The short version is simply this: “Pain is the only driving force behind business decisions”. Quite often the motivator is the desire to avoid or stop pain. In this case, I was experiencing enough physical discomfort to act upon it.

More than 10 years ago, I purchased a large (72 x 36 inches) well built desk from a used furniture dealer. It is, by far, the sturdiest and heaviest desk I have ever seen. The guy had dozens of them – all identical models – ranging in price from $50 to $200. The cheaper ones had varying levels of cosmetic damage while the $200 ones looked nearly new. I purchased the $50 variety (slight water damage on the bottom and lots of nicks and scratches on the sides) and have kicked myself on many occasions since then for not buying several of them.

As nice as it is, it is a plain rectangular shape, while I greatly prefer to sit in the L of an L-shaped desk such that I can support my elbows on the desk – which increases my comfort level substantially. For me, this translates into increased productivity.

Lately, I have been toying with the idea of building myself an entirely new, custom-designed, L-shaped desk. This would have easily consumed 2 full weekends of my time and around $300 in materials. Time I don’t have right now, and money I’d rather not spend given that my existing desk is otherwise perfect. Many months ago I built a super-custom L-shaped work area into a corner of my daughters bedroom – and have been jealous ever since that she’s sitting up there in total elbow resting comfort while I’m down here “suffering”

Finally, last night, I couldn’t take it any more. Time to head out to the garage to look through what materials I have on hand to use in building an “extension” onto my desk:

• 3/4 inch oak plywood – check
• enough angle iron with which to fabricate brackets to hold the desktop extension in place – check
• various wood screws – check
• skinny jig-saw blade for cutting the curves – check
• fresh belt for the belt sander – check
• could I actually FIND my 1/4 inch roundover router bit – check
• water-based poly sealer to waterproof the plywood – check

Two hours later the result is:

Reason for the odd shape is that I can swivel my chair 30 degrees to the left and comfortably use my laptop and still have a place for both arms to rest.

The brackets underneath:

These brackets are fabricated as a sliding piece connected to the wooden extension which slides into a channel attached to the desk such that I can slide the assembly out of there in 2 seconds to return to the orignal configuration.

Even though it is wide enough to partially block access to the top drawers, I can still somewhat use them without much trouble. If needed I can slide the extension out of the channels in 2 seconds and have full drawer access.

Here I sit – in total comfort!

In my last post about Youtube, I was exploring various ways to create and upload the best quality files to the Youtube service, however, I was still embedding the lousy low-quality video with monophonic sound into my web pages.

Now that I’ve discovered an easier way to embed the better quality versions of Youtube content using the Smart Youtube plug-in for WordPress, check these out:

This one is me goofing around with my Yamaha XS8 on a slow-n-easy jazz/funk beat (complete with mistakes!). Compare the video and stereo audio on this page to what you see and hear on the Youtube page.

Here’s another comparison with just a classic 12-string guitar sound you can compare to the one on the Youtube page.

Yes, it can sound like a piano too (this is the S700 Piano Sample) – compare to the Youtube page version:

Ok – enough of my feeble attempts at making a keyboard sound like a guitar – watch this (high quality with stereo whereas the Youtube page itself is nowhere near as good) to see how a true master does it – Steve Vai playing Tender Surrender:

I could literally start writing (whining) now about all the things I absolutely hate about Windows and never ever stop. I’ll spare you by listing only one of my most favorite complaints – I just adore this little dialog box that pops up almost EVERY f#^*!ng time you install “Windows Updates”:

Woohoo – yet another reboot to interrupt whatever else it is I’m trying to do. And HERE is where the one of the differences is – I almost never need to reboot my Linux workstations unless I’m upgrading the Linux Kernel itself.

Several friends have asked me: “What’s the difference between Linux and Windows and why would I want to try it?”

My typical answer goes something like this: If you’re a desktop user needing the “basics” such as web browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, and email – without the need for specialized Windows applications like AutoCAD or QuickBooks – then you’re probably a perfect candidate for trying out one of the modern Linux distributions such as Fedora or Ubuntu. Beyond that, you should enjoy more stability and nearly 100% freedom from worry about viruses. It is also worth noting that many current Linux distributions will probably work flawlessly with all your computer’s hardware (network, audio, video, printer, etc). Wireless network adapters have historically been difficult to configure in Linux – but that is becoming less of a problem. With Windows, you will very likely need to obtain and install additional drivers for those components.

Having been a long-time Red Hat Linux user (since around 1996), I personally use Fedora Linux because it is basically Red Hat and I’m very familiar with every part of it. Since then I have used many of the other Linux distributions and even worked professionally with them, but I always come back to Fedora.

However, for me, as a software developer and systems administrator, the differences go much deeper – right down to the kernel of each operating system.

To learn more, there’s PLENTY of additional information available on this subject.

I have been experimenting lately with how to get the best quality video and audio uploaded to youtube.com. Turns out there’s a bit of voodoo involved in order to achieve the best results.

Here’s my latest attempt (a video of me goofing around with my Yamaha XS8 keyboard):

My other feeble attempts are here: http://www.youtube.com/user/jerry4260

Thus far I’ve found plenty of good info on how to do much better than what I’ve done thus far:

• Hi-Res YouTube Hacks
• YouTube HD
• How To Make YouTube Videos Look Great
• An interesting forum thread at videohelp.com

There’s also a bunch of good free or low-cost utilities out there such as the ones listed at videohelp.com

While I usually use Linux for nearly everything and I believe I could get by with only Linux-based software for this video stuff, I am still experimenting with the Windows-based software to find something that’s easy to use.

This can’t be good: IndyMac Bank seized by federal regulators. The writer’s very careful choice of words about this at the FDIC site is interesting too.

I wonder what’s coming next….

• How are Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae doing? Here’s one writer’s opinion. 24 hours later: Treasury Secretary wants to shore them up.
• How long until we have $10+ per gallon gasoline? $15? $20?
• Does anyone know what hyperinflation is?
• Will panicked investors start bailing out on everything tied to stocks? It happened very quickly to Bear Stearns!

Looks like a lot of things will be “on sale” at bargain basement prices soon – Buy low, sell high!

Most people have absolutely no clue what money really is and how the banking system really works. I am most certainly not the tin-foil-hat-conspiracy-theorist type, however, over the years I have enjoyed the looks I get when I tell people how it all works – they look at me like I have three heads.

Watch this video to find out:
[googlevideo:http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279&q=money%20as%20debt&hl=en]

Common sense should tell anyone there is a mathematical certainty in the direction things are headed. Sadly, very few people watching that most excellent video explaining how it all works will believe it to be true.

Here’s another interesting video I found titled “Big Brother, the Big Picture”:
[googlevideo:http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4799447112501062338]

And that’s only the beginning of the problem…

My daily commute round trip averages 2.5 hours of driving. Multiplying that by 5 days a week and 50 weeks per year gives 625 hours of time. 625 hours equals almost 16 work weeks (assuming a 40 hour work week) of time I spend doing absolutely nothing productive during the year.

Then there’s the fuel. My daily round trip is 100 miles, during which time I average 40 miles per hour. The combination of distance and poor fuel economy while parked on I-4 works out to $4500 per year in fuel cost in my case. Recently, with the car I no longer have, it was much higher at around $7000 per year.

How about the 25,000 miles per year I’m accumulating on the car (not counting my personal driving which is another 8,000 miles)?. That’s yet another cost. It’s also a great way to expire the factory warranty sooner – even more cost.

Multiply the above scenario by a few dozen or hundreds of employees!

Can this be stopped, or at least significantly reduced? YES, it can be!

Thankfully, it is possible to perform nearly all the requirements of my job by working from home and connecting to the office computer systems via VPN over internet. One of the few reasons to come into the office might be for a face-to-face meeting (possibly involving a white board) which couldn’t be handled via a conference voice-call.

Then there’s the question of worker productivity. Several people I’ve talked to about this have a well rehearsed speech when arguing for OR against telecommuting. My speech is really short and simple:

“Any reduction in productivity while working from home as compared to working in the office will not be tolerated. Period!. If you’re goofing off instead of working at home and your productivity levels are negatively affected, you will be fired”.

Stated another way, either the employee can be trusted or not – and if not – the employee gets replaced.

It is also true that nobody forced me to purchase my home where it is located or forced me to find a job where I did, so maybe I should just shut up and enjoy the drive.

Now I just need to repackage this idea and take it to management. Wish me luck!

Did Jerry actually just mention an IDE? WTF? Surely the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have arrived. Anyone that knows me is probably already working to figure out the Baker Act procedure to have me committed before I hurt myself. I’ve been a died-in-the-wool-hard-core user of the vi editor for many years and the mere mention of me considering an IDE will have many people looking for safe cover. I must confess to having been a heavy IDE user many years ago when I was writing a lot of software for the Windows platform – but not many people know that about me. Since then I’ve worked on many non-Windows projects ranging in size from tiny to huge and written every single line of code for them using vi.

After being submerged down in the code soup, server administration, networking, and many other things for so long – I haven’t had time until now to check out the state of the various IDE tools to see if any of them sucked a lot less than the last time I looked at them. Even now I really don’t have the time for this, but the mental distraction is welcome plus the hope of finding something that truly works well and maybe improve productivity is worth it.

First stop – Eclipse. I’ve tried it several times in the distant past, didn’t like it then, and found I still don’t like it now. Several things that should have worked just didn’t work and I didn’t feel like doing the legwork to fix them. I know it’s a fine tool that is used and respected by many – but not for me today.

I suppose I should point out that I’m currently running Fedora 8 as my primary workstation OS.

Next I tried the new Netbeans 6.0. Not really all that new considering 6.0 has been out for a while, but still new to me. Perhaps it was luck, but the initial installation went very smoothly without any of the Java-related dependency problems I somewhat expected to pop up. In only a few minutes I installed it and had the code for my existing Ruby-on-Rails project loaded into it and was exploring the UI. My friend Adam had mentioned it supported vi key bindings so I searched for a plug-in and found jVi – a vi editor clone and installed it. WOW. There I was – using the most commonly needed vi commands while inside the very attractive NetBeans UI.

Ok – I needed to get back on track here and start figuring out why and how this thing sucks. I was looking forward to some disappointment with either the SVN integration or the debugging. Surely one of them would fail miserably!

Our SVN repository access is via svn+ssh with the magic of public key authentication – which makes getting to the secure repository just about as easy as it possibly could be. A half-hour later I had to conclude that NetBeans’ built-in SVN tool set was very nice indeed. I loved how the diff tool works in that I can actually edit and save the current file right there in the diff window (using standard vi commands too!). This would be great for adding those last few code comments just before committing the code back to the repository.

Looking forward to some disappointment with the debugger, I first needed to see what the work-flow would be like if I used the “Run Project” (F6) functionality. Since it wanted to run Webrick (which doesn’t support SSL) I had to make a few very minor tweaks to my code such that no redirects to an SSL page happen when RAILS_ENV == ‘development’. All was well. Very well actually.

Somewhere along the way I got distracted and watched the debugging example video. I clearly remember thinking – yeah right – it would take me all day to solve dozens of dependency problems before _I_ would be allowed to debug like they showed in that video. In reality, it took me maybe 5 minutes to deal with a few minor problems (totally unrelated to Netbeans) installing the ruby-debug-ide gem.

A few minutes later I was setting breakpoints in my code, stepping into the abyss that is the Rails stack, stepping back out into my own code, watching variables – and it wasn’t sucking. Matter of fact, it was a lot nicer than doing it the “old way” where I might be using PrettyPrint to view some big ugly hash variable and getting a headache trying to find the hash element I was looking for in the console output.

I later discovered many other useful things that just work as expected. Code completion works well – even to the point where it automatically constructs all the find_by_somefieldname method names for you. Some things will always be much faster for me at the command line – but for now I’ll be sticking with NetBeans 6.0.

Be sure to check out the tutorials and demos at: http://www.netbeans.org/kb/trails/ruby.html

Years after everyone else has already done it I am finally getting around to starting a blog. Those who know me also know I’ve been a little busy with an endless stream of projects for a long time. Starting this blog and keeping up with it may prove to be two very different things.

Who really cares what I have to say? Actually, I am intending for this to be mostly a technical reference for things I do. The only thing I hate worse than fumbling around to find a solution to a difficult problem is having to do it AGAIN because I didn’t keep good notes the FIRST TIME.

The wide range of technologies I work with have enough combined complexity and nuances that I simply don’t have enough gray matter to store it all. Moreover, I’ve conditioned my brain to forget EVERYTHING that I can easily find in a reference later. This can be a bad thing too. Sometimes it’s almost embarrassing to need a reference for basic syntax of a programming language I haven’t used recently….but at the same time I wonder why I can remember dozens of 128-bit WEP keys from nearly every wireless router I’ve ever configured.

Therefore, I could end up being the only consumer of my own blog postings about things like “DHCP Server Setup Notes” or “howto make Acrobat Reader work in FC6″.

On the other hand, maybe someone else will find something useful here too.