This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon
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So today at lunch I went with Brandy and exchanged my Treo 600 for a new one under warrentee. Right now it just finished resyncing with my laptop to restore all my contacts and programs and such. This is now my FOURTH Treo 600!!!
#1) Ordered right after the things first came out. Got it all set up. Loved it. Used it a lot. One day, the screen just was blank. Backlight on, nothing there. It was a decent flashlight, but no longer a phone. I paniced and was all upset, ready to buy a new one. Brandy made me go to the Sprint store though. They said “looks like you killed it” and then went into the back and got me a brand new one in the box. This was while we were still in PA.
#2) While I was going back and forth between FL and PA (March through June) I was doing conference calls a lot, so I bought a headset for the phone. I proceeded one day to wrap the headset around the phone, stick it in my pocket, and then sit on it. The headset had a remote control volume and microphone thingy that would normally hand down and you talk near it. Well, it is a kind of bulky thing, and when I sat on it, it pressed into the screen, because the way I had wrapped it, the bulky part was on the screen side this time, and not on the hard back of the Treo. The screen was smashed to smithereens. This time the Sprint store told me that this was NOT covered under warentee, cause, well, I had smashed it. I had to buy a brand new one full price. Bastards.
#3) When I get calls on my cell at work… or when I have to make a call, I go outside. Two reasons: One, reception in this building sucks because it is basically a metal box. Two, my office has tall walls and a door, but the walls do not go all the way to the ceiling, and are pretty thin anyway. There is no privacy. So I go talk on the phone in the parking lot. Well… in the summer in Florida when you go stand in a parking lot it is HOT. And when it is hot I, well, um, tend to sweat just a tad. After a 15 minute phone call, my face is soaking wet. And, since I am holding the phone next to my head, so is the phone. And I have discovered that Treos don’t like being soaking wet. The phone would start to flip out and do all sorts of random things. The keyboard would become unresponsive. The screen would sometimes work and sometimes not. After a few hours it would all dry out and work OK again. Well… the first few times anyway. Eventually some of the buttons stopped working completely. Namely the “Alt” button that lets you type symbols like @ when you are doing email. And the shift key, that lets you do capitals. And the space bar, which, well, does spaces. Finally the zero key started to be erratic. And while I used the touch screen to actually dial phone numbers, you have to use the zero on the keyboard when you go through those menus and stuff for customer service. I kind of needed the zero. Anyway, I’m not really sure if it was the sweat or not, but this time Sprint gave me a warentee replacement. (And even if they hadn’t, after #2 I signed up for the $4 per month phone insurance to replace the phone for a small deductible if I destroy it.)
#4) The one I picked up today. This time instead of a brand new one in the box with all the accessories I got a “factory refurbished” one. Oh well. I was hoping for a new one again, but given the situation I won’t complain too much. This one looks like new anyway. I also bought a new case for it that completely encases the Treo, with a clear plastic front that you can actually use the touch screen and all the buttons through. So I never have to take it out of the case. Ever. So I should be able to sweat on it if I have to. And I got a new headset, but one big enough and oddly shaped enough I will not be tempted to put it in my pocket. It stays in the car use for hands free driving only, not for normal use when I’m not driving. So hopefully this one will be OK. And if I do destroy it by mistake, I have that insurance now.
Of course, now there is a Treo 650. I of course want one. Next time I kill the 600, maybe I’ll be able to upgrade. But as usual, there are a BUNCH of things on the “to buy” list ahead of that…
So for now, I’ll see how long I can make Treo #4 last. They seem to be averaging about 3 to 4 months each.
OK, one feature that is provided by this blog software that for one reason or other I never had activated and functioning properly is comment notification. I had it visible on the blog when I first launched it, but it never worked, so I eventually removed it.
Well, tonight I got it all up and running and working.
So now, if you add a comment to a post, you will have an option to check a box to be notified if anybody else responds to that post. Woo!
(I also get an email when someone responds to any of my posts, so now I’ll catch comments being added to old posts, which I sometimes miss these days.)
For now I am continuing to leave commenting wide open to anybody, but at some point in the future I may start requiring registration for posting.
This thing has other mailing list features to let me send emails to registered members and such, but I haven’t explored them yet.
One thing I may look into next time I have is to provide automatic notification of new posts to people who register for the mailing list on here or something. Right now I email the monthly top ten list whenever I make a post, but that is manual. It would be nice to automate that for the top ten. And then I guess letting any non-top-ten people that want to sign up for such a list be notified as well would be fine too.
But that’s require some more research into the tool and probably a little bit of custom modification of the code. So that will wait awhile. Maybe days. Maybe months. Next time I get inspired.
For now, I should have gone to sleep about 3.5 hours ago, and have to be up in 5 hours, so even though I’d like to look into this more right now, I will not.
So for now, content yourself with the fun new feature of being told if other people respond to posts you respond to… if you want that. :-)
I know I’d basically decided to switch off commentary on elections and politics and such for now cause I kind of overdosed in the weeks leading up to the election, but this is about MAPS. And I love MAPS!
I’d seen most of these in other places in the last week, but this page nicely puts them all in one place:
Election result maps
(via Andrew Sullivan)
This starts with the tradtional red/blue state by state map and shows the county by county one too. But then also shows the cartograms for each (with the states distorted so their sizes represent population instead of land area). And then it ends up with the “purple maps” that show various color shades between red and blue to show the how the percentage vote really broke down rather than just straight red or blue depending on the winner.
The red and blue ones make one wonder if another civil war is something we should worry about since the differences seem so stark and to align so neatly with geographic divisions. But looking at the purple map you see that most places are indeed a healthy mix ideologically, with some places leaning a bit more one direction or another, but basically most places being basically “purple”.
Well, OK, if you look at the last map he gives, where anything over 70% in one direction is solid red or blue, it looks bleaker and more divided again, but lets concentrate on the purple map in the middle!
Also, I note he has left out both Alaska and Hawaii, as many people often do. Perhaps we should just shove both of them back out of the nest and let them go their own ways. :-)
But hey, funky cartograms!
Just saw a link on Fark to a cool little Tool from World 66 that lets you easily plot a map of where all you have been in your travels. So of course I did so… I used my memory and also looked through the Visa’s in all my old passports going back to childhood. Here is what I came up with:
Note: On the world level they count Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands as countries, and on the Europe level they break the United Kingdom up into its parts… I wouldn’t have done either of those, but I’ll stick with how they set it up.
Countries of the World: Canada, United States, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Angola, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, France, Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland, United Kingdom
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Countries of Europe: France, Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland, England
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States of the USA: Alabama, Arizona, California, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachussetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin [Edit: See my comment in the comments section for revised map based on new information.]
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Provinces of Canada: Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec
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And that’s it! I need to get back into the grove of the random trips so as to fill in some more! Like I’m not sure how I missed Kentucky and Michigan! I have a call in to my mom to see if I visited either of them as a child and don’t remember. Those are the only two east of the Mississippi that I haven’t been in. And the next random trip will fill out Mexico, whenever we are actually able to get to it…
Anybody else want to share those? After you do it, they give a chunk of HTML which I think (although I am not sure) will work if you just cut and paste it into the comments here. [Edit: Looks like the site might be farked now… if it doesn’t work, try again later…] [Edit again: Farking has subsided, and pasting the HTML it gives you works fine except for a little extra code that shows up, but that is fine, it works.]
Of the regular readers here, I bet Ivan can do best on contries worldwide. Not sure if he is also who would do the best on states.
And beat me by five months too! I’ll have to get that HDTivo sometime! But new house and computer and maybe car will call come first. Darn Marcus! Well, at least it is broken. :-)
HD Tivo becoming unusable over the last few days
(Marcus Alzona, TivoCommunity)
Over the past few days, my HD Tivo (unmodified, working fine for 5 months) has becoming unusable. Its the same occasional problem I used to have with an SD DirecTivo or an SA Tivo – sometimes, you’d press something on the remote, and it either wouldn’t respond, or respond in a few minutes to all your presses (not a remote issue – you’d see one of the Tivo’s LEDs flicker as it receives the command). The problem would go away on its own most of the time, and a reboot would always fix this problem.
Oh, and hi to Marcus and congratulations on the new baby. :-)
Our birds haven’t done this… yet.
‘Rat bird’ feels at home
(Katrien Smit, News 24)
Rottie the rat thinks he is a bird… But it comes as no surprise when one realises that Madam and Tokkelos, two lovebirds, are raising this rodent. … “One day we realised the birds were carrying on as if they were breeding but there were no eggs. That’s when we discovered the small pink rat in a nest.”
(via Fark)
I’m all electioned out after the avalance of posts leading up to the big day. So time for some other stuff.
Brandy, in the new house, can we get some of these?
The Hidden Door Company
The Hidden Door is a masterfully crafted door made to replace any existing standard size swing-style door with a fully functional built in bookcase that comes equipped with concealed hinges.
When accessed, the bookshelf opens just like a regular door and can be made to open in or out and swing to the left or right. When closed the Hidden Door conceals the opening thus creating a unique “secret space” in the home or office.
(via BoingBoing)
There are pictrues here. I think it would be prefect to hide the lab in which I do my evil experiments in my labcoat.
Speaking of the house, an update for those who are interested:
Starting with the background: We put an offer in on a place and got a contract on it just before the first of the hurricanes hit this year. Then the house was significantly damaged by those hurricanes. We agreed to delay the closing date from October to December to give them time to do the needed repairs.
Current update: They told us this weekend that they would not be able to complete the repairs in time. Not because the repairs are taking a huge amount of time, but simply because SO MANY houses in this area need similar repairs (new roofs and water damage to some walls and ceilings) that there is a huge backlog for such work to be done. It hasn’t even started yet, and no roofing companies will even commit to a date yet. So anyway, since they are not going to make it, we get another chance to decide if we want to extend again, or to just ditch it.
So… we got the mortgage company to extend the rate lock we have for another month and a half. So we’re probably going to go ahead and give them more time. For one thing, financially the longer we wait, the easier it will be. For another, while we might poke around at some other available houses, we’ve kind of decided that we like this one and are willing to wait for it, as long as we CAN based on what the mortgage people will or will not allow. I have a few quibbles with the master bathroom, but otherwise we like it. The dollar per square foot ratio is better than most other things we looked at in our price range. And we like the layout. Like the neighborhood. Etc.
The key is of course that it actually get fixed. Roof repairs will have to be up to current standards, which will be better than the roof it had. They are required to put it back how it was when we looked at it before we signed the contract basically. If they can do that, then we want it. If they can’t… well, that is another story.
But from what we understand, the repairs are very doable, and they already have the insurance payments and all that… it is just a matter of contractor availability to get it done.
Although there is a chance that they could get a call tomorrow and the repairs would be done in a couple weeks, chances are we are talking about January at this point. Or perhaps later… We shall see.
OK. I voted for Kerry. I think Kerry would have been a better choice. I think Bush has made wrong decision after wrong decision and has generally made things worse. I think if things play out as expected and he gets his 270 electoral votes, those trends will continue for the next few years.
However… it is not the end of the world. He will do his thing for 4 years, and then there will be someone else. He will do upsetting things. He will do stupid things. But it isn’t going to bring the end of civilization as we know it. The fact that he won is not a huge miscarriage of justice. The people who voted for him are NOT stupid or evil. They just have different opinions of the right way to approach the issues of the day.
The whining is already starting. Hey, people, if Bush wins, he wins. Get over it. He will have won fair and square. The process will have done its job and a president will have been selected, and he will do his job for the next few years.
I think Kerry would have been better than Bush. But the truth is that in the end Presidents come and go. They do have a huge effect on the direction of the country, but there are a lot of other things that effect what happens as well, and there are instituional constraints on just how far a president can take things. Sure, damage can be done, but in the grand scheme of things, not THAT much.
Anyway, if Bush wins and you were a Kerry person… just move on and start worring about next time. And please, try to remember… he’s not insane, he’s not evil, he just disagrees with you (and me) and has a different approach to things. Thinking that way is completely counter productive… and annoying.
Both sides just need to start learning again how to respect and understand the other side instead of villifing them. The deep divides in the country are unhealthy. And the “hate” that is seen on both sides toward the other is a big part of the problem. Come on, just be rational and calm and move on.
One network just called Ohio for Bush. This should be over now.
Don’t worry Kerry folks, it will suck a little bit, but it won’t be THAT bad. :-)
Well, looks like another thing that I think is important probably won’t happen this time around, which is divided government… A democrat in the white house and a republican congress is OK. A republican in the white house and a democratic congress is OK. But have the same party in charge of both branches… no matter which party it is, and you have bad news. Basically because the government can actually DO something. When government is divided, government can be deadlocked, and it raises the bar for action from things that have a slight majority of support, to things that have a LARGE majority of support… much better. The less government can actually get done the better.
But, while it isn’t all over yet, looks like we’ll be all red again…
The networks are being SO timid. I understand why given how they screwed up in 2000… but back in 2000 they would have already called Florida for Bush and would be thinking about calling Ohio… and the election… for Bush. The margins are thin, but are there. It is possible they will change, but getting increasingly unlikely by the hour. We shall see.
But come on news networks. I know you want to be conservative, but this is a little too wussy. Go out on a limb a little!
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