This is a great way to end 2007, if your a moron in New Mexico.

Two southern New Mexico men are recovering after accidentally shooting themselves while trying to trace a loaded .357-caliber Magnum as a pattern for a tattoo.

Smarthome is having a new years day only coupon for $20.08 off $100 or more. That's a good 20% off if you can keep it to $100.

Perceptive Automation has released Indigo 2.5 Beta 11 which now includes the long awaited Insteon Link Management. Links are a way to create scenes or groups with a single command sent through the power line. It also allows the setting of individual ramp rates and brightness levels.

I'm not completely familiar with Insteon PC software, but I don't think there's a software package that allows both link management and control of triggers and scripting in a single package. Yes, I'm a Indigo fanboy, but for good reason.

Here's some screen shots of the new features:

Manage Insteon Device Links

Edit Action Group

To start, the heater is a Frasier-Johnson brand, which doesn't appear to be made anymore and when it was, it was a low end brand. This heater has a EnergyGuide rating of 80, and the lowest scale is 78. Pretty much the least efficient you can get. The main problem is with the filter configuration. Two filters sit in a "V" configuration above the heating unit, but there is no easy way to install the filters.

There is no access panel in the duct work to put them in. The only way I can figure to put the filters in is to push them up from inside the heating unit. I have to reach about 12 inches inside the heater, reach around motors, electronics and whatever where I'm left with about an inch of space to get the filters inside. From there they have to balance precariously on a few pieces of metal in the "V" configuration, where I can't actually see how they are setting without getting down on my knees with a flashlight to look up inside the duct work. They aren't sealed against the duct work and one of them keeps falling out of place leaving huge gaps.

I'm looking at possible ways to cut up the duct work above the heater so I can access the filter area. Doesn't look easy though.

A lot of information on the intertubes on the energy bill passed by congress, like engaget, has incandescent bulbs banned by the year 2012. In fact congress did not specifically ban incandescent in favor of florescent technology or any technology. Trying to find a news source which actually reported the specifics was difficult, a article on thedailygreen.com has more information.

Under the measure, all light bulbs must use 25% to 30% less energy than today's products by 2012 to 2014. The phase-in will start with 100-watt bulbs in 2012 and end with 40-watt bulbs in 2014. By 2020, bulbs must be 70% more efficient.

They also say that florescent bulbs meet the 70% standard. What happens to bulbs higher than 100 watts? Scientific American had this to say

About two dozen categories of light bulbs are exempt from the U.S. law's efficiency requirements, including oven and refrigerator bulbs, candelabra lamps, plant lights, replacement traffic signal bulbs and the summer necessity -- the yellow bulb that doesn't attract insects.

Althought they will have a tough time meeting the 70% standard in 2020, incandescent are far from dead. I'm all for more efficient bulbs, but I am not a fan of the current compact florescent technology. I spent a small fortune on dimmable CFL bulbs only to be left with a pile of dead CFLs of which most lasted less than a year. I am not impressed with their dimming ability either (all of my switches are dimmable as part of my home automation system).

Whatever happens, incancesdents will get more efficient and CFLs and LEDs will get better/cheaper, and I will be happy to replace them with whatever works best. It may not matter anyways, 2012 is the end of the world.

My Palm TX and my iPod Photo are dead to me. literally. I think the batteries in both of them no longer hold a charge.

It started with my Palm TX about a month ago. One minute it would work and the next it wouldn't despite the battery showing a full charge before. Charging via USB wasn't helping it, I hooked it up to the wall wart charger which allowed it to operate for a few minutes.

My iPod Photo only lasts about 30 minutes on a charge. The battery indicator will indicate that it's mostly fully before it dies. Last year it would go a whole 8 hours.

I'm a person who lives off his PDA. Being without it for the last month has left me lost and naked. I'm not adjusting to life without it very well. I never listened to the radio with thanks to my iPod. Now I'm having to adjust to life without either. 16GB iPhone: where are you?

NASA Spider Problem Shuttle Atlantis STS-122

For a long time the discussion has been more focused on when we would open, and we feel like now is the right time. Taos has a long-standing tradition of being family oriented, and now with so many young people snowboarding, we are turning away more and more families, particularly families that traditionally come to Taos. Opening to snowboarding allows us to refocus on being a family oriented mountain.

I wasn't expecting this. Snowboards are designed in such a way that it's easy to sit on your ass or your knees from an upright position. It's those snowboarders that use this capability and stop right at unloading area of a lift or on a run, right where a skier is going and cannot stop quite so easily, that make them all look bad. Most ski lifts are designed for skiers, not boarders, which doesn't help things either.

About half the people I know use snowboards, at least I can go to Taos with them now. I will never forget the last time I was there, I lost my very favorite Canon S500 digital camera somewhere on the slopes.

I wrote perviously about how the shower in the master bathroom had leaked. Now that I have researched the issue more, I understand more about how shower floors are constructed. The original floor was constructed as a "mortar bed" and it was not constructed correctly. It was missing the bottom membrane. The mortar was placed directly on the cement floor. The membrane that was installed was brittle and too far under the top layer of mortar. Finally, there was no strengthening agent, such as chicken wire.

I didn't want to repeat what I considered a poorly engineered design so I looked into solid surface designs. Royal Stone produces a 48x48 solid surface pre-made floor that resembles stone (think Corian). The normal price is about $900, but my drain is not in the location of the pre-made floor so I would have to order a custom made floor. Since they would have to made a new mold for my application the price would be about $1600 at the cheapest. That's way too much to spend on just the shower floor.

I then found Tile Redi products which are a thick plastic solid floor that you can tile on directly. Cheaper at $679 (not by much), but not in the size I want and the drain hole isn't in the same location.

Now I'm back to the mortar floor shower floor as the replacement. Considering the price and how a proper floor is suppose to be built, there should not be a problem for the new floor.

Chertoff, who said over the summer that he had a "gut feeling" that the country faced a heightened risk of attack, said that assessment still stands.

That's enough for me, i think i will go hide under my bed.

If you view subscribe to this site's RSS feed and click on a link to one of my pages only to find a "not found" page, its all thanks to idisk. The problems first start with RapidWeaver, which still insists to publish the whole site instead of just new pages. During the course of publishing 1200+ pages my idisk will disconnect for no apparent reason.

Tiger had some problems like this but Leopard is a whole lot worse. Since the rss feed page is one of the first files to get uploaded, it shows up right away. The rest of the pages can take hours or days to be uploaded. If there's something you want to read, come back in a day or so and see if it finally was uploaded.

The pipe was pretty simple to make. I use my RSS feed as the source, filter based on the item.category XML item and use the output as the new rss feed. I have published this pipe and can be viewed at this link: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=ZuZMORNV3BG_9SduLe2fWQ.

CompUSA is going out of business. I'm not sure what it is, too much competition, high prices, they can't figure out what it is they sell? Back in the day (early 1990's), they were one of the few places one could find Apple computers and accessories. My second Mac, a Centris 610, was purchased from a CompUSA in Arizona. I recall writing on a AMUG BBS about this computer's 20MHz 68LC040 being "blazing fast".

The actual purchase of the computer was not so blazing fast. I went to the salesman and said I want to buy that computer. The salesman goes to his little WYSE dumb terminal type machine and comes back with paperwork for me to fill out. I fill out the rather long form then wait like an hour to actually get the computer brought to me. Then i take it up front to pay for it.

Once in New Mexico, CompUSA was the only computer store to sell Apple products. Despite it being on the other side of town, sometimes taking a hour to get there, I used to visit frequently. I actually bought Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" there when it came out since there was no Apple store in town at the time. It's probably been a good year since I've been there, prices are too high and their selection was poor.

I've had the opportunity to travel to Portland Oregon on short trips several times this year. There is very rarely a direct flight from the Sunport to anywhere except a state directly next to New Mexico. This time I went through Denver International Airport for the first time. I was pretty interested to fly through Denver this time because of the conspiracy theories associated with it.

anomalies-unlimited.com is the main source for the conspiracy theories. As I read through the sites, its easy to dismiss many of their claims. First one being that "Denver already had what everyone said was a perfectly fine airport - Stapleton."According to Wikipedia, Stapleton was serious too small and poorly designed to be the 4th busiest airport in the US, which is what DIA is now. I believe Wikipedia's explanation more then anomalies-unlimited.

My limited experience at the airport indicates that the airport is pretty well designed and huge. I think the A gates went from 1 to 99. Although I generally dismiss the conspiracy theories, I did note something strange at the A gates. There are these mosaic tile images of people standing and walking through the terminals located on the floor. They are kinda weird in that they are top views and you can only make them out if you get up high (there is a higher level one can view them). In between these mosaics are a border and on these boarders are words like "North America", "Europe" and "Antarctica". Next to these words are random symbols that seem to have no purpose at all. These are all mosaics which are pretty easy to make out, with continent names in upper case. Near some of these content names are other words in lower case and the tile colors are really close to the back ground making it hard to figure out what they say. The symbols kinda look like random characters from the Zapf Dingbats font. Perhaps these are codes to the Aliens that come through DIA to tell them which continents they need to go through when they arrive.

anomalies-unlimited.com does have one final item that I agree is strange, the odd tablet with a masonic symbol on it. Above that tablet is what appears to be a keypad. What the heck is this thing and why are there no better pictures of this thing than the poor quality ones on their website?

About a year ago most house remodeling projects came to a halt. Costs got a little out of control and I ended up with some large credit card bills. I've eliminated those bills and am ready to start back on my projects. I didn't waste any of that money, it was just a bit too much to spend at once. I now have this radical new idea that I will call "planning and budgeting" and I will apply it to projects going forward.

A quick recap on this project, the house was a foreclosure. Though not trashed, it was pretty dated and in need of remodeling in several places. The master bath showed signs of leakage in the shower. It's pretty clear that it's been going on for a while, it had leaked into the adjacent bathroom and into the master bedroom.

The demolition is about 99% complete. I intended to get a good amount of this bathroom completed this winter. I've got a basic plan put together, but that's a post for another day.

The Kindle can do more than read books, it uses Sprint's EVDO data network to connect tot he internet. There is no subscription sign up or fees required to access this network. Think this sounds like a good deal? Think again, Amazon is going to nickel and dime you to death on content. After you paid $399.00 for the device, you will pay for every book through Amazon. Best Sellers run about $10 each, public domain books costs $1.99. You can subscribe to RSS feeds, but you will pay $1.00 a month for each feed. These are the same feeds that are available on your computer for free. You can also get newspapers, but again you will pay. There doesn't seem to be anyway to get content onto the Kindle for free, you will pay Amazon for everything.

I don't have a problem with Amazon charging for content, or even all the content, but only if the hardware is free or cheap.

I didn't even write about the hardware, the screen or it's very 1990's look. I will leave it to people who have one to talk about those things. Most of the reviews I've read have been in the "meh" or negative category with a small number that really like it. I've been using Palm devices for reading books and RSS feeds. I expect my future iPhone to have this same capability. This one isn't for me and I doubt any device which is designed around business model instead of the users will ever be.

[Update 12/02/07 12:41 PM] I should note, I also don't like the Sony PRS-500 e-book reader. It has it's own list of issues, some of them similar to the Kindle. At least it's not as ugly.

The Department of the Treasury approved the design on May 25, 2007. The other three designs considered were "Zia Symbol over Textured State Outline," "Textured Zia Symbol over State Outline," and "Zia Symbol over Textured State Outline," with the Zia symbol marking the location of the capital, Santa Fe.

From the department of "one thing inevitably leads to another," we present Laboratory Conditions, a film we made on the way to making another film. Scouting for props and locations for our current film project, 72° led us to Los Alamos, New Mexico. We found a lot more there than we bargained for.

Laboratory Conditions

Amazon's new Subscribe & Save beta sounds like a terrific idea. It would save me a trip to the warehouse club for less interesting things.

Our new Subscribe & Save program is a great way to save an extra 15% on items you use routinely--coffee, shampoo, laundry detergent, and more--while helping to make sure you don't run out. Benefits include:

• A delivery schedule that fits your needs--every one, two, three, or six months
• Extra 15% discounts on our everyday price, whether you subscribe for a single month or for years
• Free shipping on every order
• E-mail reminders of upcoming shipments
• The flexibility to change your schedule or cancel at any time--no risks, no fees

I've started using Amazon's grocery service over the last 6 months and have liked it so far. This seems like a great extension.

Just because something is technically feasible doesn't mean that it's a good idea. A seekingalpha.com article gives 10 reason, none of which are very good, that Apple should buy AMD. Let me give you my top 4 list of reason Apple shouldn't and won't buy AMD.

1. Intel kisses Apple's ass
2. Intel gives Apple pretty sweet deals
3. Intel current has better technology than AMD
4. Apple didn't have to buy Intel to get the first three items

It might have been a good idea for Apple to buy AMD when they were switching from PowerPC, but now it's just silly.

Disclaimer: I work for Intel. These are just my opinions, I have no inside knowledge.

Leopard 10.5's "Alex" voice singing Depeche Mode's Just Can't Get Enough". Comedy gold people, comedy gold.

80% off Scottevest Tactical System jacket. Use SAVE80 at checkout. Expires 11/25.

Smarthome Free Economy Shipping for orders $75 or more.

Amazon's Black Friday page

Black Friday Product Deals from Overstock.com! Valid 11.22.07 to 11.25.07

FREE SHIPPING on LEGO orders of $99 or more placed before 30-Nov-07. Use Code FSA99 at checkout. Valid in US only, exclusions apply.

Click Here for the 2007 Drs. Foster & Smith Gift Guide! Everything you need for your pets! Expires 12.31.07

It was in the high 70's earlier this week. Now it's snowing. Only in New Mexico.

I didn't have my camera with me tonight so I borrowed this creative commons licensed photo from flickr.

[Update 11/23/07 2:34PM]: I've replaced the original photo with one of my own backyard.

I enjoy cooking. I'm no master chef, but I'm think I'm pretty good at the small list of things I can make. One of my favorite things to make is Thanksgiving dinner.

Assuming people aren't just being nice, I've received good reviews on my turkeys. There's no secret to how I make it, I follow Alton Brown's recipe pretty much verbatim.

Thanksgiving isn't thanksgiving without mashed potatoes. Mashed potatoes are my favorite food. I've spent years trying to perfect the recipes and a few years ago I found something that allows me to cheat. The Steam'N Mash by Westinghouse. I does a good job at making mashed potatoes, but it's nearly as fun to watch and/or demonstrate the machine.

Finally, I have started making home made turkey gray in the last few years. My favorite so far is generically called Turkey Neck Gravy. There's many variations of it, this website seems to have the basic recipe that I use. I only use the neck, the heart and gizzard go in the trash. Animal organs shouldn't be eaten as far as I'm concerned. I also like to add mushroom, then again I like to add mushrooms to everything.

I won't be making the main thanksgiving dinner this year. I will be making 15lbs turkey on Saturday.

MacOSaiX lets you build mosaic images from various photo libraries, including your, google images or videos. It's been in alpha state for ages, but glad to see it's finally updated and Leopard compatable.

Version: 2.0
Released: Nov. 19, 2007
New features:
Now compatible with Leopard.
Newly found images now "zoom" into place.
Image sources can now be designated as "filler".
Saving mosaics as very large images is now handled more gracefully.
Handling of EPS images is improved.
Bugs Fixed:
Folder image sources no longer reset when a mosaic project is re-opened.
Symbolic links are now handled correctly by Folder image sources.
Searching for flickr photos that match all of the given tags now works correctly.
Google images sources are working again when running on Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther).
Google images sources now load correctly when a mosaic project is re-opened.
QuickTime image sources now behave better.
No longer crashing when using red-, green- or bluescale colors with a Glyphs image source.
No longer crashing when getting the count of matching photos from flickr.
No longer crashing when an invalid image is chosen as the original.
No longer crashing when double-clicking the hand-picked image source.
No longer crashing at some point after editing an image source.
No longer crashing on quit when there is an unsaved Glyphs image source.
No longer crashing when clicking in the menu bar when no windows are open.
Many memory leaks were fixed.
Known issues:
Hiding the status bar is not working.
Zooming the window causes it to jump around.

Unlike the previous program I posted about, that didn't work, this one does. Leopaque makes your menu bar opaque. It's essentially a terminal command that changes a setting in Mac OS X 10.5 wrapped in a windowed interface.

It works perfectly.

A suspicious device was found at a Rail Runner train stop in Albuquerque.

Bernalillo County Sheriff's Lt. Duncan Sanchez said the device consisted of two white cylinders attached to a base with protruding wires. The Albuquerque police bomb squad used a robot to disable the device... Authorities declined to say what the device was.

Uh... yeah, I would call that suspicious. It was plugged into a outlet at the train station. Does this mean that power outlets will be banned next?

I'm really interested to hear what this thing is.

Smarthome has a public beta of new Insteon SwtichLinc like dimmer that does not need a neutral. Some houses do not have neutrals in every switch location which means they cannot use current SwitchLincs

How it Works
The INSTEON 2-wire Dimmer Kit comes with two main pieces: a companion switch that installs in the switch box and a fixture dimmer that installs in your light fixture. With these two devices you'll now be able to convert one of your two wires in your switch box to a neutral, enabling reliable control of your light. The companion switch and fixture dimmer are "paired" at the factory so both devices will act as one. This means that once they're installed, you won't have to go back into the fixture, either for control OR for linking to other INSTEON-compatible devices. Simply put, the companion switch's SET button acts as a remote SET button for the fixture dimmer, giving you added convenience and flexibility.

Sounds a lot like the switches that are wired up to ceiling fans to allow separate fan and light controls from a single switch

Check out the discussion on the Smarthome forums

Smarthome is having a 20% off sale. I doubt they will have one greater than this.

Use the code ESAVINGS at check out. The sale ends Thursday, November 15th.

Eternal Storms Software has a utility to make the menu bar in Leopard, Mac OS X 10.5, opaque.

[Update 11/11/07] According to the developers weblog, it's not working as expected for everyone.

I wonder if this is going to be housed in what used to be Fab7

A California company will build a supercomputer here that will be housed at Intel Corp. in Rio Rancho. SGI of California has been awarded an $11 million state contract to build the computer. Businesses, governments and schools will be able to use the facility, to be called the New Mexico Computing Applications Center, to model complex problems, according to Gov. Bill Richardson's office. These range from creating new products to modeling scenarios for New Mexico's future water supply.

This is both humorous and sad

But when novices who've had a few drinks get a hold of crowbars, drills and Sawzalls, the results are sometimes less than satisfactory.

A number of house bloggers were interviewed for this article, including myself. Many bloggers believe the reporter of the story, Jennifer Saranow, misrepresented herself.

The reporter told me she was writing a story about such work parties. People helping people. That sort of thing. When I described the plaster party to her on the phone, she expressed the usual polite surprise that people still help each other like that.

Then the reporter admitted the story was not a feel-good story about people helping their neighbors. It was a story about people throwing renovation parties to save money and inviting inexperienced friends over to mix alcohol with demolition - friends who ended up screwing things up or getting injured.

1902victorian.com's account of the story is pretty good. I recommend reading the whole thing.

I was contacted via my blog, but I took several weeks to get back to the reporter. By the time she had interviewed me, I think she pretty much had the story written and didn't dig too much. I did have a demolition part with plenty of beer but there was no excitement like some drunken friend taking out the wrong wall. I'm not mentioned in the story.

Intego is warning Mac users of a Trojan Horse on Mac OS X. Named OSX.RSPlug.A, it masquerades as a quicktime plugin that needs to be downloaded when watching porn. It then changes the DNS address on the users computer which points to more porn. MacOSXHints as a quick tutorial on removing the Trojan Horse.

Intego has warned about other malware on the Mac, only to be accused of overblowing the situation. The other warnings were more about theoretical attacks, this appears to be real. It's only showing up on porn sites now, but it could be a prototype for use in wider distribution later.

Look what CD I found in my stash. MacAdvocate 2 from the Fall of 1997, 10 years old. I also have a Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9.2 CD. Ahh... Good times...

The FedEx guy arrived at about 9am on Friday to deliver my copy of Leopard. I've read different things that suggest that Apple requested FedEx to deliver copies of Leopard as soon as possible or to get them as close to 6PM. I doubt either is true. In any case there was no T-Shirt in the box. I would have loved to go the Albuquerque Uptown Apple Store, but what a pain in the ass it is to get to that side of town. Thanks Mom, for going to the San Tan Apple Store in Az and getting one for me!

The first thing I did once getting it installed was to hook up an external hard drive and get Time Machine running. I haven't yet been able to allow it to copy the entire drive yet. I really like that Time Machine quits gracefully and without complaints when I disconnect the drive.

Spaces is the other feature that I have been using heavily. How i did I ever live without it? I love uncluttering my desktop with windows by moving them to separate windows.

UI wise, I don't have a lot of complaints. Chris Pirillo has a long list of issues, which I agree with. They don't bother me that much however. I don't like the transparent menu bar. It's very distracting and I will use the first hack to disable it. I used NextStep in the 1990's for a programming class pretty heavily. This is the most NextOS looking UI yet. It's interesting to see the core ideas of the early Mac OS (and much of that was in the NextOS) start to show themselves after so many years.

I'm looking forward to using iChat's screen sharing to fix people computers, as soon as they all get Leopard installed. Using Apple Remote Desktop was a pain.

From Popular Science Magazine:

Think of the Gastrovac as a crock pot, vacuum pump and heating plate in one. Suspend your food—pear slices, for example—in a basket above a flavorful liquid, such as wine broth. Seal the machine, and hit a button to turn the cooking chamber into a vacuum. The low-pressure environment pulls all the air out of the food, compressing it like a squished sponge. Near the end of their cooking, drop the pears into the broth and restore the pressure. The liquid rushes into the cells, infusing the fruit with an intense wine flavor. And no oxygen means no oxidation—so instead of turning brown, fruit comes out as brightly colored as it was when first sliced.

Leopard will be released on Friday, 26 October.

Smarthome is having a sale on Insteon Devices. The sale is 24 October through 26 October.

10% off over 70 Smarthome-brand INSTEON Products

I'm still hoping for a bigger sale before the holidays

I actually saw snow this evening at my house, though it could barely be called snow. None the less I am calling it snow. It was very very light, but they were flakes. It just left the cement a little wet. It was pretty darned cold out, about 20 degrees less than the normals for this time of year. So much for global warming.

I chose to contribute to the green house effect by running a fire in the fireplace for most of the evening.

The metal duct work is mostly rusted away. I would expect that the ducting would be incased in concrete, which it appears there was an attempt to do so. Except only 50% of the ducting had concrete surrounding it, the rest was up against dirt. Damp dirt, which led to the rusting and the mud which penetrated the ducting.

I pulled up the majority of rusted mess out. I allowed the pit to dry out then vacuumed up as much of the dirt with a shop vac as I could. I also found a layer of dirt in the 18 inch duct that leads to the main distribution center under the forced air heater. Thankfully that where the dirt stops.

If your interested in following the progress, you can view pictures at a flickr set.

I have read about many people on the Smarthome and CocoonTech message boards have a lot of their Insteon devices failing. Some people have had a high failure failure rate. I've been following these discussion closely because I have yet to have any failures. Until a few months ago.

My first device to fail was a Switchlink V2 that was controlling the bathroom light. The device simply failed to turn on the lights nor would the LED bar light up. If I pressed the reset button and held it down, it would light one of the LEDs. According the the Smarthome message boards, this is a common failure mode.

Despite the inconvience of having to replace the switch (in a room that has no natural light), I have to admit that Smarthome has been very generous with replacments since these switches are probably out of warranty. On the other hand, these are all early first generation type switches, which are showing design issues. So they should be replacing them.

The other switch that has died is a LampLinc V2, it simply doesn't operate nor does the set button have any effect. I expect that Smarthome will replace it without question.

Check out this local news report of a balloon crash in Rio Rancho with some pretty graphic video. This balloon was taking part in the Balloon Fiesta this week. Overall, I believe the safety record of the Balloon Fiesta is pretty good but these crashes highlight just how little control the balloon pilots have compared to a plane.

I took a early morning trip to the Balloon Fiasco as we often call it. I would have probably had four times as photos if I didn't run out of battery power. You can view the flickr set or watch the slide show below.

There was a interesting comment on a MacOSXHints entry about Filevault that I found interesting (check out the one by wastemytime).

While early versions of FileVault may have been susceptible to the corruption you fear, you should be aware that Apple quietly introduced a new version of it in Mac OS X 10.4.7 last year.
In earlier versions, the sparseimage's headers were written at the end of the file (they should've been called trailers then), so, if there was a problem writing or compressing the image, it could easily be corrupted.
With the 10.4.7 update, they introduced a new version of sparse disk images so the headers are at the beginning (appropriately enough), making them much more resistant to failure.
The catch is, if you created your FileVault with an earlier version, it continues to use the old, more fragile format. The solution is to just turn FileVault off, then turn it on again (probably using the secure erase option). The new FileVault will use the new format.

This week Leo Laport posted a review of the phone. Of course, he compares it to the iPhone describing the Curve as not nearly as easy to set up or pretty to look at but has more functionality than the iPhone.

It meets some of my requirements to combine my phone and PDA into one, and has the killer wifi VoIP feature but it's missing things that I use with my current phone. Sailing Clicker doesn't yet support Blackberry devices, instead the developers are "holding out for RIM to add JSR82-support (Bluetooth) to Java in their devices". Whatever that means, I doubt it will happen anytime soon. I not sure how well cross syncing between Outlook on a PC and a Mac will work. Finally, can you use make voice calls over wifi systems that require browser authentication?

Amazon only has two reviews, both positive so far. This indicates that it's a very new phone. As tempting as this phone was to run out and buy right away, I think I will hold off and see what happens in the next month.

I whined and bitched about my dam crappy MacBook Pro and how it wouldn't operate on battery. I always had to keep it plugged in. Multiple calls and visits to Apple resulted in them saying my out of warrantee laptop would need a expensive motherboard replacement.

I installed Battery Update 1.3, rebooted and unplugged my power connector. I expected an immediate power off, that's what usually happens. Nope, the computer stayed powered on.

I only left unplugged for a minute but it never ran on battery that long before. A longer term test will be next.

Update 10/07/07 12:09PM: I've been using it on and off battery power for several days and it's been working just like a laptop should. I noticed it wont charge to 100% a few times. I've reset the SMC to see if that will help. I'm happy but perplexed. Perplexed that it was fixed in this manner.

From wikipedia's entry on Lucid dreams:

A lucid dream is a dream in which the person is aware that he or she is dreaming while the dream is in progress. During lucid dreams, it is often possible to exert conscious control over the dream characters and environment, as well as to perform otherwise physically impossible feats. Lucid Dreams are known to be extremely real and vivid.

As far as I know, every dream I have is a lucid dream. I always have some level of knowledge that I am in a dream and the level of control I have varies from dream to dream. My dreams are always very dream-like. Best way i can describe them is to say the video quality is poor. Sometimes black and white or sepia, dark or bland colors. Until last Thursday night.

I was staying over at a friends house. Then I was in my house. How the heck did I get in my house and why did I feel like I was drunk? The lights in the bedrooms starting turing on. That would only happen if the motion detectors were set off. I picked up some hand tools, a pair of needle nosed pliers and adjustable wrench, to go check out the bedrooms in case someone was in the rooms. There was no one there

I come into the living room and sit down. At this point I realize that I might be in a dream. This dream is different than any other dream I've ever been in. The dream is so realistic that I cannot tell the difference between dream and reality. My house looks exactly the same in the dream as my real house. I'm talking "The Matrix" style reality here.

There's obviously something off just enough to clue me into the fact that I'm dreaming. What does one do to test if they are dreaming? I guess many people might pinch themselves. Not me. I begin to stab myself in my left knee with my needle nose pliers.

There is no pain. There is no blood. My knee is as if it was made of rubber. At this point I'm thinking it's a good thing I'm dreaming.

For the remainder of the dream I pretty much just hang out and marvel at the realism of the dream. And I do what I often do in my house, sit on the couch and watch TV. When the dream ends it fades out like a movie and I wake up.

I hope next time I have more control over my hyper realistic dreams, i certainly would pick a more interesting place to be.

I watched this same freaking show and did nothing with the information

DeShundra Jackson and her mother watched the TLC network’s broadcast of How the Lottery Changed My Life on Sunday evening and learned that the most frequently drawn lotto numbers according to the show are 8, 25, 31, 44, 50 and 54. It turned out Jackson matched four white numbers and the red number in Wednesday’s Powerball drawing. With her Power Play option, her prize was doubled to $20,000.

Lucky numbers to win lottery

The City of Rio Rancho has canceled it's contract with Azulstar for free (and fee based) city wide wi-fi access. According to the Albuquerque Journal (annoying ad viewing required), Azulstar owes the city $33,000 in electricity charges and continues to rack up the charges.

The letter, dated Sept. 20, said the wireless company failed to honor terms of the contract regarding payment for electricity charges, providing a satisfactory business plan and proof of its financial ability to offer continued service in the city of Rio Rancho.

There is always Road Runner Wireless, which is not sponsored by the city. Of course, their website looks like it was designed in 1995. Tables are not for layout.

A bear was sighted near North Hills in Rio Rancho. So far I find no reports that it was found.

A black bear weighing 90 to 100 pounds was spotted this morning around 8 a.m. near Unser and Cherry Road and was last seen heading in a northwesterly direction around 8:30 this morning heading in the direction of Colinas del Norte Elementary School on 23rd Avenue, Rio Rancho Department of Public Safety spokesman John Francis tells us.

I'm sure it was heading toward the school to eat the children. Isn't that what bears do?

There's been yet another story of someone's pictures taken from Flickr and used without permission. In this case, a picture of a girl was used in a Australian Virgin Mobil ad at a bus stop. Here is a picture of the ad on Flickr.

Every time I read of someone's photos being used without permissions from Flickr, I become concerned. I have and my photos marked with a Creative Commons Attribution, non commercial license for some time. The same as chewywong's photos. The problem with the Creative Commons licenses on Flickr is once you have set your photo to that, it automatically gives any user fully access to the full resolution image. Which allows large prints to be made. If Flick would allow a CC licenses and still give control over who has access to the high res versions, most thefts would probably be deterred.

I have no changed my the license to all of my photos to All Rights Reserved. I hope Flickr will address this issue.

Steve Jobs pretty much said that a 3G iPhone will come eventually. That shouldn't be a surprise. TheStreet is the one saying that it will be in the first quarter of 2008. I'm 100% sure it will be here in the next 5 years, within the next 9 months is a little less certain.

Navigadget says that Apple will add GPS hardware in the first quarter of 2008

The reason behind this rumor is the fact that Apple has been in touch with Broadcom’s Global Locate unit to supply chips for the phone. Global Locate, which was recently acquired by Broadcom, makes assisted GPS chips that use a combination of GPS satellites and cellular network signals to get a location fix. A-GPS will improve what’s a called TTFF, even making it possible to get acquire correct position indoors

I'm not holding me breath for either. What I am still waiting for is a minimum 16 GB of memory. I will keep my money until then.

After the layoffs my job changed some. I am no longer on compressed work week and moved to first shift (not my choice). I lost pay in the process. I also am busier and have more responsibilities than before..

I am thankful to have my job.

I've got plenty of things going on, but not in the mood to write about it. Hopefully things change in a while.

There's been quite a few bomb threats around town lately.

• 08/31/07 - I believe there have been several of these bank related bomb threats.

  Police are searching for a white male, about 6-foot-2, 180 pounds, who touched off the bomb scare shortly after 4 p.m. The suspect walked into a doctor's office on Juan Tabo, strapped "suspicious devices" onto a doctor and the doctor's assistant, then marched the two into the bank, Albuquerque police spokeswoman Trish Hoffman said.

• 09/07/07 - Rio Rancho High School.

  Rio Rancho Department of Public Safety Spokesman John Francis said the bomb threat was called in to