Cam I Am

If you have tried to call me recently on my cell, no doubt you’ve heard my message that says, “My phone doesn’t ring, so leave a message and I’ll call you back when I’ve noticed that you’ve called.” Yes, I get comments about how I should get my phone fixed/repaired. But it’s not for lack of trying.

I currently have an iPhone 3G that I bought about a year and a half ago. Sadly, I’m a little hard on cell phones, partially because of my job. About 2-3 months ago, I had my cell phone in my hand and went to put it on the kitchen counter, but missed it and it fell on the floor. This hasn’t been the first time that I’ve dropped the phone, but I usually have a case on it. I didn’t this time. The result was that the phone completely functions, short of the fact that the speaker on it no longer works. This means that I can’t use the speaker phone or hear the phone ring.

So, I decided to wait for the iPhone 4.. I knew that there would be hype about it and that it would be hard to find. I have a friend that went to the Apple store in Toronto the day it came out and had a prolonged wait even after the store opened just to get one. I’m eager to get it, but not that eager!

So, since then, I’ve been popping into various Fido retail locations to see if it’s been in. The first couple weeks I expected it to not be in. But it’s been a month since it’s been released and stores are getting very few in.. And there seems to be no sign of a mass release in the near future..

I went to school for marketing, so I understand the rationale behind building demand and hype about a product such as this. But seriously! For me, this is now becoming an annoyance. Here I am, a customer willing to give money for a product that is being withheld by the manufacturer. I like Apple products, but I’m getting a little pissed. I tried asking the rep in the Fido store in Coquitlam Centre today when did she think that they would have a regular supply. Well, she kept cutting me off and not letting me finish my question. I tried to say that I have no problem waiting, but am I likely waiting a couple weeks before the market is adequately supplied with the phone or am I looking at 3-4 months. I’m sure she gets similar questions all day and every day, and I don’t envy her having to explain it over and over.. But I just need a new phone. One that rings!

So.. If someone from Apple happens to read this, I just want a damn iPhone 4! Stop withholding the product and release it outright. Demand doesn’t need to be built up for a product that you KNOW is going to be in high demand. You are just pissing off a lot of people and wasting their time by going to various retailers looking for it. I do have better things to do with my time than to chase down a product that you apparently want to sell.

START SELLING IT!

In the past week, I have purchased a Macbook Pro.  I’ve managed to set up a wireless network so that I could transfer photos, music and other files from my PC running Vista.  Setting up wireless printing from my Mac, through the PC has been a challenge.

I was doing alright at first.  After looking over countless webpages, I found out how to add the printer to the Mac.  I had it that it would queue up on the PC.  After that, everything fizzled out.  I could not get anything to printer from the Mac.  In the process of double checking everything, I am not able to get the Mac to see the printer on the PC.

Any suggestions?

You don’t have to very far back in my posts to learn that I recently got an iPhone. While I have had it for a little more than a couple weeks, I’ve had many opportunities to check it out.

First of all, I’m generally very happy with it. A co-worker just got a new HTC phone and isn’t very happy with it. That being said, I do have a few issues with this phone and new OS.

First of all, I’m very disappointed that there is no voice dialling available (especially with Bluetooth) unless you get the 3GS. It’s a feature that I will adjust to not having, but it is something that I would expect. The keyboard rotating and cut and paste options are definately nice to have, but I am noticing a lag/delay/temporary freezing occuring since the upgrade of OS. I can only assume that will be corrected in revisions of 3.0 in the near future, along with app software programmers tweaking their apps to work better with it as well.

In addition to this, it would be nice to create folders in the mail program. I understand that if I use IMAP it will sync everything over, including folders, but I seem to be reading 99% of my emails through the phone now..

That’s about it though. It’s much easier to type on a qwerty keyboard instead of a numerical keypad. And having the Internet available in the palm of my hand is really nice.

For those of you who don’t know, I’ve got another website that I sell custom-made wood growth charts.  I’ve had it for about a year, and while it doesn’t generate a lot of traffic or sales, it’s there. 

When I first made www.camscrafts.com, I used FrontPage to create it.  FrontPage isn’t that great of a program, but it got the job done.  While I wasn’t overly happy with how it worked (or didn’t work), it was at least something.  After a month of using the site I created, a friend of my offered to make up a new one for me, using his Mac.  I think it was a matter of 30 minutes, and he had designed the current site that is there.  It looks great!  I love the graphics and the friendly look to it.  And for the last year, it’s worked well for me.

Now, I don’t do a lot of promoting of the site, but I was going to start advertising it a little more.  I realized that I don’t have a gallery of pictures that show some of the work I’ve done in the last year.  So tonight, I tried to add in a gallery page.

This is when I started to run into problems.

I don’t have a Mac..  FrontPage doesn’t seem to play well with others!  I couldn’t incorporate a gallery page into my site because FP wanted me to have a FP-made page attached to the site. 

Now, the obvious answer is that I should buy a Mac (to save you from saying it, my next computer will be a Mac!  And you know who you are!)  All kidding aside, it seems that in order to avoid bothering my friend everytime I want to change my site or something, I will need to create a new one, once again in FrontPage.  So I tried tonight to re-create the current one in FP..

I might as well try building a particle accelerater out of a hamster wheel and an elastic band.  I probably would have more luck!  No matter what I do, FP just isn’t as versitile as the program on the Mac that was used.  I can’t get text over a picture without it trying to convert the picture to a GIF..

So, I will rebuild my site using FP and then attempt to teach myself HTML to tweak it the way I want..  Although, I am thinking about the CSS route..

Oh well..  for tonight, no new changes..

A couple of months ago, I got a Garmin Nuvi 250 GPS unit.  A number of friends and co-workers have this units and rave about them, so I was excited when I got mine.

So far, it’s worked great.  When I was working in an area that I was not very familiar with, it showed me all sorts of routes that I never would have thought of, even when looking at a map. 

Now, there are a couple drawbacks to having the GPS unit.  First, I’ve discovered that the maps aren’t always accurate.  For example, streets have been created in reality, that are not reflected in the maps of the unit.  This is easy to get around.   The other issue is spelling of some street names..

Now, Garmin does warn about this.  In fact, here is exactly  what they say..

One of the goals of Garmin is to provide customers with the most complete and accurate cartography that is available to us at a reasonable cost.  We use a combination of governmental and private data sources, which we identify in product literature and copyright messages displayed to the consumer.  Virtually all data sources contain some inaccurate or incomplete data.  In some countries, complete and accurate map information is either not available or is prohibitively expensive.

I can understand and respect that.  While in Vancouver, it seems to be very accurate, aside from newer streets missing, the spelling of the street names is fine.   While I was in Abbotsford (an area with less population), it was fairly good.  Some streets were misspelled, but overall it was good..

This weekend, my family and I drove up to Penticton for Thanksgiving.  We were heading up Highway 3, when I looked at the Garmin and noticed the next street that we would intersect, a few kilometers ahead. 

I couldn’t believe what I was reading..  I asked my wife to look, and she burst out laughing.  How had we missed this street, in all the years of us driving up and down the highway?

What?!?!?  Asshole River Rd? 

It turns out that the actual street name is Ashnola River Road.   It did provide us with plenty of entertainment for the weekend, with my wife and I occasionally calling each other an ashnola…

Over the past few years, I’ve been making sure that we switched most of our light bulbs over to compact fluorescent (CF) bulbs.  We’ve done this partially for environmental reasons, but mainly to save a little money on our electricity bill..

In the past, we rented, so when we moved, we brought all the bulbs with us..  When we bought our current home about 18 months, ago, I put in all the bulbs, with the exception of our kitchen that uses floodlamps, and our bathrooms that have “globe-style” bulbs.  My intention was that as these ones burn out, I’d replace them with their compact fluorescent equivalents..  Up to this point, I’ve been very happy with the performance of the ones I’ve bought so far.

So.. In the last few months, all three of the incandescent floodlamps in the kitchen and a several of the bathroom globes go out.  No problem!  I went out and bought new CF ones..  Then, I start to notice things..

First, the CF floodlamps and globes, take time to come to full brightness..  This is a pain, but I can deal with waiting a minute for them.  It’s a little dim in the kitchen/bathrooms at first, but it’s manageable.  Within two weeks of buying a floodlamp, it burns out..   Within 6 months of installing a globe, one of them burn out.

Now, for a product that costs up to five times the cost of an incandescent bulb, I expect it to outlast the bulbs that I haven’t even replaced!  Why am I wasting my money on bulbs that don’t last, or at the very least don’t seem to function properly..

So, while I’ll continue to use CF bulbs for “normal” lamps and lights, I think that I won’t be wasting my money to save money in the kitchen and bathrooms..

After my less the successful attempts of trying to install and use Easy Media Creator 9 the other day, I tried to find a new solution.  So, I did a little looking around online and at our local Staples, I decided to give Easy Media Creator 10 a shot..  So, with a little hesitation, I bought it.

I brought it home and started to go through the recommended Clean Install instructions.  Any remnants of EMC9 were removed with great ease..   So far so good..

I pop the new disc into the drive and run set-up..  I enter the Product Key#.  All good so far..

Then, the next 45 minutes of it slowly installing the software..  annoying, but at least there were no pop-ups to deal with..   Then the moment of truth..  I try to run it..  ARGH!  Same errors as EMC9 pop-up!  So, I try going to Roxio to download any software updates.

The update takes about 5-6 minutes to download because it’s about 750megs..  I watch it download, all the while thinking that this can’t be a patch, but an entire program download.  Sure enough, when it’s done downloading, it starts installing EMC10 again..   <sigh!>..   I wait another 45 minutes for it to install.  By this point, I’m not impressed and tempted to return it..

After waiting for the update to install, and following all the steps, I still get the same result.  I then looked at the forums to find that there does not seem to be a solid fix to the problem..

I packed up the disc in the box and went to Staples..  As soon as I mentioned Vista, they smiled, nodded and offered a refund..

Vista wins again.. 

If by posting this, I save even one person some time, it will be worthwhile.

For the last several months, I’ve been trying to find a decent video editor to take home videos on my DV camera, edit them, and put them on full size DVD’s (not the mini’s that they are currently on).

I tried about a dozen various programs, including the one that comes with Windows Vista.  The Windows DVD maker has the features that I want, but it doesn’t work properly (freezes anytime I actually try to edit the video…. not very useful!)

So, I gave up for a couple months..  A couple days ago, I was looking through some software CD’s I had in a pile in the corner when I see something that caught my attention.

I already had Roxio’s Easy Media Creator 9!  Wow..  I’ve heard generally good things about this program, and had no clue that it was shipped with my Dell computer that we about a little over a year ago!   I popped the CD into the drive, and sure enough, it confirms that it is already installed!   Cool..

I try to run it..

Here’s where the Vista factor kicks in.  It doesn’t work.  Cannot load a DLA file.  Unable to find a skin. C++ runtime error..   Yes..  my nemesis Windows Vista is rearing it’s ugly head.

So, I start searching on Google for answers and patches.  I find a couple patches, and get a little farther with the process.  I following the “Instructions for a Clean Install“..  No better..

So..  Do you get the following messages?:

1. Anything involving an error with C++ runtime.
2. Roxio Creator BDAV Plugin no supported by Vista
3. Skin Image menuseparator.png not found.
4. “Gathering required information” appears over and over when trying to load EMC9 up.

Here’s what to do..  Just give up.  After much exhaustive research, it seems that EMC9 is just not meant to work on Windows Vista.  Don’t bother with patches or the rest of the crap.  Just give up. 

Apparently, Easy Media Creator 10 is compatible with Windows Vista..   I don’t know if I want to try spending $80 to find out..   (I probably will in the end)

I hope that this helps someone.  There are a lot of message forums that have a flurry of activity about this dated Feb 2007 to July 2007, but not much else after that..

Comments?

After a few days of having my sites down, including my blog, everything is up and running again! 

This time, it isn’t 1&1’s fault like it was a couple weeks ago, but all because of me.  For the last several months, I’ve been running everything from a friend’s webhosting space.  Everything was working out well, until he told me that he is going to switch to another server that is run by someone else he knows.  This would have left me without a webhost.

So, in the past couple weeks, I have been (slowly) working on getting my own account with 1&1 and having my domain and everything else of mine switched over to my own account.  I think there was about 3 days that nothing was up and runnning until last night..  All that was left was a minor issue with my blog.  Obviously, I have it running now..

When does 1&1=Nothing? 

When their servers crash…and it takes them 4 days to fix the problem and put them back online..

Now, I have to admit, I don’t have a lot to complain about.  I don’t pay anything for the webhost I’m using, thanks to a friend that set up my domain for me and let’s me use his account for his webhost (Thanks Mark!), but I do find this frustrating.  The ability to rant about whatever is bothering me (or whining…either way), is kind of nice.  Every now and then, I get a response that is helpful.  But I do have another site on the server that is a side business.  It doesn’t get a lot of traffic, but occasionally I do get an inquiry.

So, my friend is going to be changing servers soon, but that does leave my sites out of the picture.  But I’ve made arrangements for this.  In the next week, I’ll be transferring my site.  Well..  Sort of..

I’ve set up my own account with 1&1..  You might be asking yourself, “Why would I stay with the same webhost company that I just had problems?”  Simply put, it’s easier to do it this way, and besides… all companies have their computer down times..   I just hope that this doesn’t become a habit..