2005
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I had the PhatBox unit for Volkswagen but was installing in an Audi A6 wagon. The unit is exactly the same, but the cable is different. Chris did the solder iron magic and put a female DB-13 connector in place of the VW connector.
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We blew the fuse in the Audi head unit while installing due to plugging and unplugging a lot of times. I’d suggest not plugging the PhatBox in until you have the connectors fully connected.
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I upgraded the system files on the PhatBox to the newest versions. Took a few minutes on first boot but everything worked perfect.
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The physical install was a bit rough, a hole had to be cut in the back of the steel frame that held the old CD player to allow room for the cable. Be ready to cut into some serious steel.
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The screwholes on the unit weren’t ideally placed. In order to get the access panel back over the unit once installed new holes needed to be tapped into the aluminum chassis and even then the insulation had to be cut out to accommodate the unit. But after that, it fit fine.
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PhatVoice is a program to put higher quality voice prompts on your PhatBox DMS.
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Get more voices to create prompts with.
Roku M1000
Today we go straight from the PhatBox MP3 player in the car to the Roku M1000 for the baby’s room. I decided a couple of weeks ago that we needed to get music in there, the idea is both for us, the parents, and for the kid.
For the last year we’ve been in music nirvana with every bit of music we own stored digitally on our server. Obviously I didn’t want to start dragging out CDs to listen to in the kids room so I went looking for a stand-alone, WiFi music player. There are a lot of options and I’ve even played with some in the past (like this one that I thought was horrible). I decided to go for a high-end unit and ordered the Roku M1000.
This unit is simply amazing. I unboxed it, turned it on and put in my WiFi WEP key and instantly it was on my network. After a few clicks I was listening to streaming music. If only every product worked this well. I clicked a few more buttons and had upgraded the firmware in about 30 seconds. Seriously, I’d rate this one of the best products I’ve ever purchased. I’m tempted to rip out my Audiotron and replace it with one of these.
We can now put childrens music on infinite repeat in the babies room at the drop of a hat and every now and then we can play some music or podcasts for ourselves when feeding or rocking the baby.
PhatBox Installed
I’ve felt for a long time that the car was absolutely the best platform for digital music. You can be in your car for hours and you need entertainment. While a CD changer is a step in the right direction if you are like me you listen to those same six CDs for weeks, or even months, before changing them. I looked around a few months ago for solutions but didn’t come to a conclusion. Recently my friend Chris (excuse his website, I think he’s working on bringing it into this century) decided he wanted to pursue this goal so I piggybacked on his very thorough research and got a PhatNoise PhatBox.
I would say we installed it this afternoon, but unless you count fetching a few tools and asking questions I don’t have much of a place in the we. The install took the whole afternoon. A few things came up on the install. I’ll share them here for others that may try this at home.
I’ve only had it for a few hours now but I really like it. The voice prompting system seems to work well but I’m still getting used to it. When you turn it on the first time you get this rocking welcome sound. The PhatBox uses your standard car stereo so it cannot display menus with long text. PhatNoise has a fairly elegant solution to this using voice prompts. It will announce your genre for you, and it creates album names so you can pick what to listen to. As a bonus the random button on my head unit now has a purpose since it does something that is worthwhile. Anyway, you can read up on your own if you want more information.
Huge thanks to Chris for doing the install! I would have been way over my head. We didn’t take out the camera so no pictures of the install. I can now happily drive down the road listening to one of a few thousand different songs at a time. Plus, I get to feel cool since I’ve got a little Linux computer in my trunk.
PhatBox Stuff:
No Baby Yet
Well it seems public opinion polling on thingelstad.com wasn’t very accurate for the baby delivery. 58% of people predicted the baby would be here by today; the official due date for the kid. If the trend continues I don’t have a lot of hope that the 25% of you that predicted today or tomorrow are going to get it right either. It’s very possible that those three people that went for the proverbial “long ball” may get this right. These are probably the same people that guess 1 cent over the highest person on the Price is Right.
Tammy can’t wait to get the delivery on. The end of pregnancy doesn’t seem to be very enjoyable in any manner. If you’ve been there, you know the drill. Lot’s of bathroom trips and never being comfortable. She’s eager to begin the trip back to being a “normal person”, however this time also being a mom.
We are prepared for everything. I’ve been on a mad dash to finish a few final projects. It’s very odd to plan everything one day at a time. Whenever I make a plan for next week I have to footnote it with “except if the baby comes that day”. I’m sure it’ll still hit me like a ton of bricks when it does happen.
The Christmas Bell
Last week my mother came back from my grandparents farm with their computer. It had died, seemingly a terrible death, and I was going to see what magic I could let loose on it to bring it back. Mixed in with all of the computer junk was another item, my dear friend, the Christmas Bell.
The Christmas Bell is a fixture at the farm at Christmas. The bell has been there for every Christmas I can remember. For the simple cost of two-AA batteries the bell plays synthetic Christmas jingles for hours and hours bringing delight to all. It also has a small lamp in the dome of the bell that pulses with the music.
The bell has gone through some difficult times. A couple of years it was hanging in it’s deserved spot, by the phone in between the kitchen and the dining room, but was unable to play, victim of some shenanigans by my cousins and I no doubt. It fell several times and had broken apart only to be taped back together. The plastic next to the on/off button had melted. My uncle had even taken a soldering iron to it to bring it back to life once. It was the ultimate fighter, coming back to bring Christmas joy to all of us.
I received the bell in rough condition. It had become three separate pieces. Stiff, loose wires broken from their mounts were the only remnants of the cheer it used to bring. I traced everything and identified where it all went, soldered the connections back and flipped the switch, however no sound emitted from my dear friend. He just laid there dormant. I wondered about the switch so I bypassed that, nothing still. I did notice that the single chip on the tiny board, its heart if you will, got very hot when it was on. I’m sad to say that my best efforts were not enough to bring him back.
I have respectfully placed him aside in the hope that future technology will be able to cure what ails this great, red bell.
Grandpa with the Christmas Bell (2001)
Tree Mosaic
A few months ago my mother remodeled her kitchen and in the process she took out a window. This left the annoying problem of having a hole on the outside of the house. She asked Tammy if she would do a mosaic for this spot which Tammy finished last week and we installed today.
The mosaic is 32" by 50", definitely the largest item she has done. She worked on the piece for about two weeks and was somewhat obsessed with it. All in all it took around 50 hours to complete. It was in two pieces to make it more managable to work on and to install. Neither of us have done a permanent, installed item like this so it was all new territory.
We mounted it today and everything generally went well. We had some problems with the thinset, some pieces came off as we were getting it installed but we worked through it. I grouted it in because Tammy shouldn’t be working with grout when pregnant and I didn’t like the idea of her being on a ladder while pregnant either, which she complained about a lot. 🙂
We got the piece installed over about 2 hours. The grout just needs to be sealed now and my mother is going to frame it in so it looks somewhat like a window. It looked stunning from the alley as we pulled away.
Tammy is really great at mosaic. Requests for commissions can be submitted via this website. Prices are going up though. 🙂
Star Wars III
Tammy and I went to Star Wars Episode III today. We made a point to go to the DLP theater at the Eden Prairie AMC. The theater did a really great job with the entirely digital movie.
I liked the movie more than I expected. I figured it would be good, but it exceeded my expectations. The Star Wars crowd did not let down either, the nerd ratio was definitely on the high-end. The story was great. Perhaps my only negative, and it’s minor, was that I didn’t care much for the idea behind the droid general, although his saber moves were pretty impressive.
So the second arc of the Star Wars saga is concluded. I’m left really hoping that Lucas takes a stab at the final third arc with episodes seven through nine. We’ll see!
I’m looking forward to the War of the Worlds and the Chronicles of Narnia series to come to the theater.
Fun with MRTG and SNMP
I’ve been busy (obsessed) with getting SNMP monitoring of my home network working with MRTG for the last couple of weeks. It’s been much harder than I would have expected, but in the end I sure know a lot more about SNMP than I did before. This gives me a lot of information on my home network, like knowing how much traffic is going to through my gateway.
I found really strange things that don’t make sense to me. For example, different CPUs end up in different OIDs from one installation to another of Windows Server 2003. That’s very confusing and doesn’t seem right, but I’ve got proof positive right here on my box.
Daddy Boot Camp
I went to North Memorial today for Daddy Boot Camp. They recently renamed the class to the much more boring title of New Dads Class, but I’m going to insist on calling it Daddy Boot Camp. I guess they didn’t like the military overtone of boot camp? I dunno.
I got there promptly at 9:00 am and was a little surprised to only find two other expectant dads there. To be clear, this is a guys only class, no chicks allowed! We started at five after and it took until about 20 after for all the dads who were registered to finally arrive. Rule #1 to being a dad, learn to be on time and reliable!
We went around and made introductions. There was a truck driver, a computer guy (not me), golf course manager, machine builder, etc. Huge variety of backgrounds and professions. We also had to explain why we were there. One of the future dads said “so I can stop being afraid of being a father?” Get a group of anonymous guys like this together and your not going to get a lot of “touchy feely” talk, but he certainly hit a nerve with the whole room. It was nice to hear people actually fess up to being really excited, and also being totally freaked out about what is to come.
The instructor commented that when his wife and he were expecting he felt like he was always two months behind his wife. When she got pregnant she was engaged right away, but it took him until she showed. I can surely relate to that. Our baby is due in two weeks and Tammy is ready for it anyday. I feel like two more months would be just right.
The class was good. I learned how to swaddle a baby the right way, like the nurses do it. Down-up-down-up. I’ll show you sometime – I rock at it. While I’m now comfortable with the mechanics of changing a diaper, I still think it’s probably pretty gross. It was really funny how much happier all us guys got when we got to do things with the plastic baby dolls. Give us something to do and we are much better off than just sitting there.
They showed a video on Shaken Baby Syndrome that was horrific. It wasn’t violent or anything, didn’t show some baby getting shaken, it was just so bad. What a horrific thing to do to a little baby. Nauseated me just a bit.
In the last half-hour a “veteran” Dad came in with his daughter who was 6 months old and fielded questions. That was really good and the kid was just darn cute. He talked about the experience which was still fresh in his mind. I liked that.
PS: Quick update on the name front. Zaida is probably nosing ahead right now over Mazie. We’ll see what we think when she’s born. And, if somehow it’s a boy, we’ll just have to make something up!
MnPASS
I got my MnPASS transponder on Tuesday. I had my first opportunity to use it today on my drive into work. I hopped on the “sane-lane” at highway 100 into downtown. It only cost $0.25 so I figured I would just give it a try.
When passing under the sensor the transponder in my car beeped four times to indicate it had been recognized and I zipped on into work. I was curious to see how fast the system was so I logged onto the website when I got into work and was pretty impressed to see that my account had already been debited the appropriate amount. Very nice!
One thing I’m curious about is that the terms of use that you sign up for say they will share information with the highway patrol and they have individual timing for each car. Since they track each individual car through the lanes they can easily derive your average speed and I’ve heard of other states using toll systems and handing out speeding tickets to people based on the time in and out of the toll lanes.
All in all, it seems like a really nice system and I like how it’s being implemented.
Breastfeeding Class
Tonight Tammy and I took the breastfeeding class at North Memorial. I have to admit to a bit of hesitation with this class. I asked more than a couple of times “husbands are supposed to go?” Don’t get me wrong, I’m entirely into the whole baby experience but it wasn’t obvious to me what role the man really plays in making breastfeeding work.
Now after having taken the class I actually think it was one of the more interesting baby classes to date. Quite a bit of information that I didn’t know and I really left thinking how amazing the whole process is.
This weekend I’m taking the Baby Boot Camp class that is just for Dads. I’m actually pretty interested in that class. Hopefully they’ll answer some of the dumb first-time dad questions.
thingelstad.com Data Center
Over the last few months I’ve been on a steady march to increase my server capacity at home. Why? I’m not entirely sure why. How about it’s fun? 🙂
I decided to take a plunge into the deep end and get a rack for home. Getting the rack took up more space for just one or two servers, but as I add infrastructure it is much more compact. I went with the APC NetShelter VX 25U rack. I wanted to get a rack that had good depth and solid build. It also has removable sides and doors to make it very easy to get into. Overall, I like it a lot but it’s very heavy. Hopefully I don’t have to move it anytime soon.
We disposed of a bunch of servers at work and gave people an opportunity to get some in exchange for a charitable donation. I picked up four machines (they are the four Compaq 1U machines). This required the addition of another 1500 VA UPS which I just put in tonight.
Everything is working very well. I’ve got enough cable off the back to move it about 10 feet out into the room for access. The cable management in the back is a mess, but I’ll deal with that later. I decided to keep everything on the top half and leave the bottom open for later additions.
It’s all pretty loud but luckily I don’t care since it’s in the laundry room. It also generates plenty of heat. I’m done for a while now. The next thing I could see adding is an external disk enclosure to add a couple of terabytes of network storage.
Bike to Work Week
Next week is national Bike-to-Work Week! Take the opportunity to dust off the bike, pump up the tires and pedal on into work. I’m planning on wheeling myself into the office the majority of the week.
Finding Pants In Manhattan
I woke up in my New York hotel at 7:00 am this morning very tired. I didn’t get to sleep until fairly late the night before. I took my camera and a couple of lenses into Times Square to get some classic New York photos. My day didn’t start until 9:30 am so I could sleep in a bit.
After getting cleaned up I went to get dressed. I had flown in on a Sunday night so I was very casual coming in – sandals and shorts. Great to be able to fly in casual clothes. I got up this morning to put on my business attire, black slacks and a dress shirt.
Now, the last few months haven’t been great ones for me in regards to my weight. Let’s just use the excuse that I want to support Tammy in pregnancy. 🙂 So I’ve got a number of dress slacks that fit me, and I have a number that really do not fit. Well, as I got ready in my hotel room I put on my shirt and stepped into my slacks when sudden horror struck.
I had brought pants that did not fit! To be clear, this wasn’t a matter of just being a little tight. Oh no, these were simply not going to fit in any way, shape or form.
After expressing my frustration with the situation with some colorful language I realized how completely screwed I was. I had flown in wearing shorts and sandals. I had one pair of slacks that did not fit. I had 1 hour and 25 minutes before my meeting started. I seriously would have feigned illness, massive food poisoning or something, before showing up to a business meeting in shorts and sandals.
I shut myself of the horror after about 30 seconds and went into action. I immediately put on my shorts and sandals and headed down to the front desk. The woman there told me that Macy’s opened at 8:00 am and was 8 blocks down Broadway. I ran out, literally, and grabbed a cab. I got to Macy’s, ran to the door and found them locked. They opened at 10! She had the wrong information.
More colorful language at this point as I called back to the hotel. Things were looking very grim. The concierge told me of a place downtown, just 15 minutes on the subway that opened at 8 am. No way I would be able to make that work. I found a crappy clothing store selling super cheap junk but they had nothing that was better than what I was wearing. The concierge called a Banana Republic and they were open. As I prepared to head over there I thought about sizes. After calling them back we found they carry nothing bigger than a 38 which even at the best of times wouldn’t be for me.
I walked back to the hotel. At this point I called Tammy and expressed my despair. Panic was in my voice with only 55 minutes until I had to be at my meeting. I got to the hotel and the concierge worked the phones. Jackpot. She found a store that had the right size and would open early for me! I checked out of the hotel and headed out with luggage in hand and 40 minutes until the meeting.
I got to the store, ran in and grabbed a pair of dockers. Changing rooms were a time luxury I didn’t have. Dropped trou’ right in the store and put on the dockers. Fit! Great! Grabbed a new belt as well and left for my meeting with 25 minutes remaining, and a sense of calm having averted a total disaster.
I called Tammy to let her know the situation was under control and hung my head out of the taxi window like a dog to cool off, all the running around had worked up a sweat. I felt completely like I was in the TV show The Amazing Race. I think it’s time to segment my closet better!
Bad Leadership
It’s really hard for me to stop reading a book. Once I start I feel like I’m obligated to finish it. Usually this isn’t a problem because overall most books are worthwhile. However, sometimes I get stuck on a book. I start it, but it doesn’t catch me or it’s just not that good. As a result I just let it sit there. However, now I’ve committed to that book so I don’t get another one out. This results in a stall in my reading that can last months.
Such is the case with Bad Leadership. Mostly I found this just to be a bad book. The pitch is fine – we should focus on bad leadership to learn how to be better leaders. That makes sense. However, the author expands a topic that should be a lengthy essay into a full book. She does so by including example after example of bad leadership. Some of these stories are interesting in their own rite, but that’s not the point of the book really.
Anyway, I finally cleansed myself of this one. Decided it was okay to not finish it and have moved on to my next read.
Airplane Stare
I’m writing this on a plane. I’m flying from MSP to LGA, or for those not so “in the know” from Minneapolis to New York’s LaGuardia airport. I’m on a lovely Northwest flight flying in a trusty Airbus 320. I was bummed to not get upgraded. This flight was last minute so I’m flying full fare which almost always means you get upgraded but MSP to LGA is a really popular frequent flyer route and being silver elite doesn’t get you anything on it. Upgrades on this route are essentially the world of platinum elite only, booking over 75,000 miles a year. I did that a couple years in the past and frankly, I’m happy to sit in coach instead.
Having not been upgraded I took my spot in 17C. Aisle seat, usually I fly window but I actually kind of like this. I boarded early to avoid any hassle with my luggage in the overhead and took my seat. After a while a woman walked down the aisle and motioned to me, that universal motion without any speech, that tells a flyer that she is in your row. I got up and she took the window seat.
The plane continued to be seated with the middle seat remaining empty. The difference between flying coach with a middle seat open versus occupied is like the difference between community service and solitary confinement. This is the point where a frequent flyer develops “the stare”.
In combat soldiers talk about the “thousand yard stare”. I imagine that this is similar. I find myself glaring down the aisle as people walk onto the plane. They come down and you first look at their eyes. I’m in C, on the left side of the plane so people that start looking at the right aisles are okay. They are eyeing seats on the other side. But then others come down looking on my side. It’s just a matter of row number now. Some seat before reaching me, others go past. Either way it’s an ugly situation avoided.
What’s funny to me are the thoughts that go through your head as they approach. If looks could kill! You would think that through some mental power it may be possible to actually change their seat assignment. If only. And just as you think you’ve made it through to a more enjoyable flight, the gate agent may decide to send some stragglers on standby down the aisle. These are the real ones to be worried about. Your heart skips a beat waiting for these people to figure out who they will agonize by squeezing into just one last empty seat.
I made it through fine on this flight. The seat in-between is occupied only by magazines and papers.
Once in the air Northwest takes the opportunity to feed us. As with all airlines they’ve given up on serving actual food due to costs. Instead they serve SmartSnacks. I have to ask what it is that makes these snacks deserving of such an intellectual title as smart. The subtle implication is these are good for you, I think. After all, that would make sense as a “smart snack”. So inside is a granola bar, not bad. Summer sausage and cheese? Hardly smart. Oh, and two Oreos! Off to Harvard we go!
Before signing off from 35,000 feet I have a tip for you flyers out there. Working with your laptop in coach is always a trick. There is barely enough room, even for very small laptops. Since you have to squeeze it in, all to often you end up putting your laptops LCD screen under the lip of the seat in front of you. This exposes you to the horrible “laptop taco” potential. The scene shows the happy business traveler tapping productively away on his laptop when the massive gentleman in front of him unexpected reclines his seat, catching the screen of the laptop in the middle and bringing it to a crushing, terrible death.
Here is your tip! Use the latch for the seat tray. Once you have the tray down, flip the latch back into the down position. Now open your laptop and the screen will (likely) be stopped by the latch. This protects from any crunching of your precious screen. Your mileage may vary.
This flight is turning out to be one of the most turbulent flights I’ve been on in years. Yikes!
HTTP Compression
I finally got HTTP compression working on content that matters – like ASPX pages. It looks like pages are compressing about 4:1 or more. This should mean much faster download times since my broadband connection is my most limiting issue. I found some excellent instructions for doing this. You need to edit the IIS6 metabase for compression to work as you would want and this article explains it will.
I also moved Road Sign Math to it’s own web server now so it is isolated and I also enabled compression on it.
Let me know if you notice faster responses when you are browsing our site.
Google Web Accelerator, Just say NO!
I’ve got a ton of respect for Google. They do an amazing job with search. Products like Google Maps make my jaw drop. It’s innovative, works exceptionally well and does things that many wouldn’t think you could do in a web browser without client-side software. Their stock, GOOG, has certainly performed well thus far. I think they have a great approach to technology. They push the envelope!
The Google Web Accelerator is one of the newer products from Google Labs and it frankly concerns me. The pitch for the product is to save you time on your web browsing, sounds great right? Well, to do this you assign Google as your proxy server and then funnel all of your web requests through them. They compress things, prefetch things and do a number of other tricks to make browsing faster. This sounds great right?
Well, take note that everything you do in your web browser goes through Google. They say they are not using this information in any way, but I simply wouldn’t trust any company with that much information. The allure is just too much to resist. Google could track every thing you ever look at on any website. They can track how much time you look at each page. They could even take the opportunity to alter the content from the publisher before it gets to you.
Actions like this on the part of Google make the Googlezon story sound more and more realistic. Add to this products like the My Search History from Google and you see a real cauldron of privacy issues starting to boil at Google.
Glengarry Glen Ross on Broadway
Last night I saw the new production of Glengarry Glen Ross at the Royale Theatre on Broadway. We went with a small group from the office and had a nice dinner at Carmine’s before going to the play. Before I talk about the play let me make it clear that I absolutely love Glengarry! My first exposure to Glengarry, and David Mamet for that matter, was from the 1992 James Foley movie version of the play. The first time I saw this movie was an amazing experience. It was similar to watching The Godfather, or Apocalypse Now. I was amazed by Mamet. I was amazed by the acting. The movie contains what I seriously believe is one of the most amazing casts ever put together for a movie. Jack Lemmon. Al Pacino. Ed Harris. Kevin Spacey. Alec Baldwin. Alan Arkin. The cast is explosive, committed to the movie. It’s stunning to watch.
I had noticed Glengarry being done in play form once before in San Francisco but I never got an opportunity to see it. When I heard there was a new production on Broadway I was determined not to miss it again. So last night, as I sat in amazing seats right up front and saw the curtain come up on Alan Alda playing Shelley “The Machine” Levine I was ready to be amazed.
Now, with anything that you have really dissected and know so well you run a risk with seeing it another form. It may be great, but it’s going to be different no matter what. Certainly Alan Alda is going to do Levine different than Jack Lemmon. Alda did a great job though. The character was different, but still showed the desperation that is so defining of this character. Additionally the Alec Baldwin’s character that is so well known from the movie is not in the original play and as a result, not in this production.
The play was great all in all, but I left a bit puzzled. Glengarry is an extremely dark, black comedy. Most people that read the screenplay or watch the movie would find it very dramatic and even depressing. In fact many that I know don’t even like the movie because of the intensity of it – the dialogue is cutting and crass. When Moss is verbally attacking Ricky Roma in the 2nd act there is a venom in the dialog that is pure Mamet. It’s a scene that leaves you gripping your chair and wanting to shy away. But in the play there were moments of snickering. The entire play was riddled with more laughs than I would have ever expected to come from a production of Glengarry. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, just a different thing. It was a very different experience than I expected to have.
It was a great time and Glengarry will continue to be one of my favorite movies of all time. The cast was amazing. It was a real treat to see such a wonderful play with the original cast on Broadway. Mamet will continue to be one of my favorite playwrights and authors. He does dialog like John Woo does gunfights, jaw dropping.
Mac OS 10.4, Tiger?
If you have been reading my site for a while you know that I’ve been reconnecting with my Macintosh roots. I’ve had ups and downs with my iMac G5 but all-in-all it’s a very workable, fine computer with exceptional aesthetic and design. I had been reading more marketing than I care to see nearly ever about Tiger, the 10.4 version of the MacOS. A couple of comments on the approach.
Clearly Apple is leading a test to see if people will just pay an annual license for their operating system. The upgrades to MacOS X have been mostly annual, and they have been around $100 for the upgrade. On one hand I like this if it brings faster innovation, on the other hand I don’t like the impact of higher costs. I’m sure Microsoft is watching this carefully and taking notes, it would be a huge revenue driver for them. Additionally, I think this will make it harder to bring big revolutionary changes in the system since those can easily take longer than a year to even create, much less test and roll-out.
Secondly it frustrates me that these incremental releases of the MacOS (10.3 to 10.4) are given such fanfare. Ultimately, it’s not that big of an upgrade! Yet Apple makes all kinds of hay about how this is amazing. Add this to the huge pile of propaganda that Apple shoves out (like they have an open platform, right?) and it’s almost enough to make me chaffe in my Steve Jobs inspired black turtle-neck. Anyway, how about the technology.
In general? Yawn. The upgrade was amazingly easy, put in the DVD, watched a movie and came back to a rebooted already installed and happy iMac with Tiger (10.4). The webclips were the first thing I checked out (hit F12), they are neat, but this is really something you would expect out of a piece of shareware, not some major OS innovation. The search is nice, but not nicer than X1 on Windows. Other than that, you have a hard time even finding the changes. Upgraded versions of all the base software like Mail 2.0 are good, but where is the $100 in value?
I’m sure I’ll upgrade to 10.5 and 10.6 whenever or if they come out because I just have to have the latest bits, but I sure hope that the product innovation catches up with the marketing.
Living Green Expo
Tammy and I went to the Living Green Expo today. This is the 3rd year that we have went to it and the 4th year for the event. It was particularly great this year. In previous years it has been held in smaller buildings on the Minnesota State Fairgrounds, but this year they moved it into the grandstand and expanded it substantially. Attendance was also stellar. All the exhibitors were commenting on how busy it was, many were out of materials due to overwhelming traffic. It’s great to see such attendance for a great event like this.