Marc's Musings Reality from Marc's point of view!

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/press.html

I think that this is premature. Some of the science awards take decades and are awarded only after the discovery or application has shown its value. I should think a peace prize should be awarded once the results of the efforts have been vindicated.

To do otherwise rather dilutes the reputation and meaning of the award?

Posted under Opinions

The below article brought an interesting response from one of my friends:

I’m all for it but it reminds me of the reverse logic gun advocates use when they suggest that giving everyone guns will make sure that no one gets shot.

To which I responded:

Nah, the gun advocates logic is a) theoretical and b) not that nobody will get shot, just that criminals are cowards and will be less likely to do their bad things if *everybody* is armed. Doesn’t really speak to crimes of passion and just plain idiot folk.

The below story seems to be verging on anecdotal (not sure if “road rage” has a clear definition for consistent reporting) but I thought it interesting since it goes with my philosophy of not fighting human nature but rather trying to come up with systems and rules that work with how folks function naturally….

Just like that building (I forget where now) that didn’t bother putting sidewalks and paths around for about a year and then just paved and landscaped around where all the wear marks were. The didn’t waste all their efforts trying to put up fences and signs trying to make people conform to some foreign idea of how people “should” use the space.

What do you think?

“When the speed limit was raised from 55 mph to 70 mph, incidents of aggressive driving dropped to zero.” (detnews.com)

Posted under Opinions

Also loosely (and probably poorly) translated – To Acquire, To Try, To Return.

I had heard about MagicJack from our local consumer advisor “Clark Howard“. The idea is that you get this USB dongle-like piece of hardware that you plug into your computer, it runs a bit of software that allows your computer to work with it and control a soft phone, and you plug any normal phone into the other end of the MagicJack appliance and you can make calls through your computer and broadband connection for next to nothing.

I had recently switched from AT&T to Comcast and Michelle wanted to have a landline (or equivalent) as she’s got a real bee in her bonnet about using a cell phone when she’s at home.

The MagicJack proposition is pretty simple, you pay $20 (Plus $6.95 s&h) for the dongle-device and then you pay $19.95 a year thereafter for unlimited local and long distance calling thereafter. At least long distance to Canada and within the United States. I didn’t pay too much attention long distance rates to other locales as I seldom call those.

The website is pretty sparse, I suppose that’s a good thing, but it didn’t give me a great sense of permanence. And the video of the kid talking to the MagicJack guy on the main page is just plain creepy.

I have to say the upsell when you’re trying to make the purchase is pretty annoying, it’s on a par with GoDaddy.com. There are about a half dozen screens you need to click through offering you a second MagicJack for X dollars, upgrade NOW for 5 Years at a reduced cost and on and on. But after wading through all that crap you finally can click to have the MagicJack sent to you.

I tried out my unit for about 10 days before I got an RMA off of the website and returned it. The first thing I noticed was that the unit really doesn’t play nice with Google Voice, which I’ve been using for years now and rather like. When you want to add a new phone number to your Google Voice account you get a confirmation number which you are supposed to punch into your phone when the Google Voice system calls you. Through MagicJack I couldn’t hear the Google Voice prompts so I had to just guess at when to type in the confirmation code. This happened for both mine and Michelle’s Google Voice lines as I was setting them up on separate days.

I also had that weird happening where iTunes would only play through my telephone until I rebooted the computer after I had first set up the MagicJack on my system.

If that were the end of it I suppose I would have been OK with it. After all $20 a year for phone service is pretty darned good. But I kind of wanted it to be reliable too.

I found that, about half to a third of the time, I could not pick up my Google Voice calls through the MagicJack phone line. If you’re not familiar with Google Voice, it defaults to a “presentation mode” where, when you pick up the phone, it will announce the caller and give you the option to pick it up, send to voicemail, record or ignore the call. I’d pick up the phone, the call would be announced and then none of my keypresses would be passed through to Google Voice. So I’d quickly need to pick up my cell phone to answer the call.

More frustrating, about one in five calls would end up being just crap. Either I or the other person on the line could not understand the other (it seemed to be one way failing at a time).

Finally, a couple of times during my testing, the MagicJack software simply stopped. No crash, no warning dialog, it just wasn’t running anymore. The first time I was at home and I just unplugged and re-plugged in the dongle-device. But the second time Michelle was home alone and, as far as she was concerned, the phone system just wasn’t working. My computer is always locked by default and it’s not really her forte, nor her desire, to troubleshoot the phone system when she wants to use it.

So I’d say that MagicJack is probably worthwhile for a modestly tech-savvy person living alone who leaves their computer on all the time and who hasn’t just simply moved to a cell-phone only existence.

For me, I’ve now re-upped with Vonage and things have been very smooth. Having the dedicated router for the phone (rather than relying on a computer being on) is a big plus. Also, the Vonage connection is rock-solid and I’ve had no problems at all with it working with Google Voice. I don’t install my Vonage router in the prescribed method (cable modem — Vonage Router — Linksys router) because I prefer to keep control over my system directly, so I have my Vonage router plugged into my Linksys WRT54G with DD-WRT firmware and have assigned it a permanent IP AND set the Quality of Service so that the Vonage router gets priority. Haven’t had ANY issues so far…

But, since nobody is perfect, I’ll keep an eye on it for a while

Posted under Retail Experiences, Tech Stuff

In iTunes, I use a Smart Playlist to keep track of and to order my podcasts.

I like to order them by assigning to them a rating each morning before I head out on my daily travels. There are a few podcasts to which I assign 5 stars that take priority over everything – current news – then there are things in which I am very interested so they get 4 stars and then 3 and fewer stars are given to nice-to-hear shows.

I’ve lately taken to using the “Sort Artist” column to sub-sort the podcasts. By putting in the date (i.e. 20090924) it keeps them in order of receipt from oldest to newest. The end result is that I don’t end up listening to all my same-named podcasts clustered together but rather hear them interspersed among each other in the order in which they were published.

My expectation is that, on my iPod, the sort order will be the same as it is in iTunes. Not so anymore. Nowadays, the order somewhat follows the primary sort (I sort on “Rating” and everything else follows). On the iPod, rather than sorting from most to fewest stars, it currently sorts the opposite way and the sort within the stars follows absolutely no rhyme or reason – not alphabetically either by “Sort Artist” or by “Name”.

In fact, I took some time yesterday to experiment and it does not sort on ANY of the hidden sort fields or any visible fields for that matter.

I tried the suggestion of right-clicking on the playlist and clicking “Copy to Play Order” but this has absolutely no effect. I further tried editing the Smart Playlist and unchecking the “Live Updating” checkbox. This only resulted in NONE of my podcasts showing up in the iPod playlist, even though all looked fine in iTunes.

I understand that this is a major glitch in iTunes and have read many posts of folks complaining about this, so I suppose I’ll sit pretty while waiting for Apple to get around to fixing it. This post is mostly for folks who are experiencing the same issue to stumble across to see what I’ve tried and to know that their issue is shared.

Posted under Podcasting, Tech Stuff

I was using WP-SpamFree to control comment SPAM.  But a few of my friends let me know that their comments were being refused as SPAM after they invested however long crafting a thoughtful message. Who knows how many others were being affected as I presume those folks who don’t even know me would just get ticked off and move on to some other part of the Internet.

I contacted the WP-SpamFree folks and all they would tell me was that the commenter’s machines had software on them that is usually associated with spammers. They declined to elaborate and wouldn’t respond at all when I suggested that a whitelist or some other override vehicle would probably be apt where you *know* the submitter and always want them to be able to comment.

I presume that, if my friends logged in, there would be no issue but it seems that a lot of folks don’t like doing that so I would be happy enough just putting in all their known addresses and then whitelisting those.

Anyway, I’ve had to switch to a different SPAM comment preventer solution so I hope the issue goes away without suddenly incurring a ton of comment SPAM.

BTW to be complete, here is the text of the error they received:

Your location has been identified as part of a reported spam network.
Comments have been disabled to prevent spam.

Posted under WordPress

*Updated September 23, 2009 *

After upgrading to iTunes 9.1 and rebooting, all is well. I’m pretty sure the real issue is the MagicJack. I’m seeing lots of weirdness from it. I’ll play with it for another week and then decide whether to go for Vonage instead. Had trouble verifying my phone in Google Voice. Sometimes I can’t pick up the phone (press 1 when presented with a call from Google voice) other times it picks up but one or the other end of the conversation can’t hear the other.

* End Update *

After performing a bunch of updates on my home machine beginning with the SP2 update for Vista home Premium, I went to play something on my freshly-updated-to-version-9 iTunes and… no sound.

So, while I’m trying to figure out what’s going on with that (all other sounds are playing just fine – media player, streaming videos) Michelle is trying to configure her Google Voice number to point to our new Magic Jack number. When she initiated the verification call to her phone, lo and behold, my iTunes music was playing.

Still trying to work *that* out…

Posted under Groan, Tech Stuff

“Twilight” by Stephenie Meyer is a very quick read. I found the book to be on a par with the movie in terms of complexity. It pretty much takes a straight path from beginning to end.

I’m a sucker for any story that involves immortality and has some kind of “reveal” plot (where someone with a positive secret such as immortality or some other attribute is either discovered or must show their hand). This book definitely has both but explores both facets through the angst-ridden vehicle of a 17 year-old girl.

I swear, if I was ever happy to be a guy, I came away from this book positively ecstatic not to have had to experience being a girl going through her teens. Certainly not that girl (Bella).  I went through my teenage years blissfully unaware of most of the issues that are dwelled upon and excruciatingly revisited throughout this book. Not to mention the emotional games that are played throughout. If this is an accurate representation of what life is like for a 21st century girl, it’s no wonder that illnesses such as anorexia nervosa and other valium-requiring mental conditions seem so rife these days. That anybody could be so completely absorbed by the minutiae expressed in this book stunned me.

Fortunately, the print was large and the spacing wide so this is a fast read. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ve pretty much experienced the book but with the relief of not hearing the inner angst-monologue. If movies are made of the remainder of the Twilight series, I’ll likely end up watching them as my wife finds the romantic angle somewhat captivating. But I’ll be giving the books a pass.

Posted under Books