Last fall, I threatened that I would have the master bathroom completed by the end of the winter. Here it is spring and I did almost nothing to the bathroom. I have a variety of excuses that I wont go into now, however I did finally make some actual progress on it this weekend.

Before I can do anything I need to install the pocket door. Before I install the pocket door I need to relocate the wiring that exists on the wall where the door goes.

I need to decide how to wire up a exhaust fan, will it go near the light switch or near the toilet? I also need to figure out if I'm going to use a fancy digital shower control. If so It will use the power from the outlet then I can wire it up properly.

Finally I can install the pocket door. I have the studs marked to cut down, but I'm waiting for some friends to come by and verify my measurements before I screw it all up. I will save the pocket door install for another post.

A friend IM'ed me and asked if I heard about the bad gas. I said not really but I smelled and and had it all day long. That's not what they were talking about.

Inoue said the general managers at both Peerless Tyre and Costco told him that a Giant Industries tanker from a pipeline terminal in Moriarty on Tuesday delivered diesel to unleaded gasoline pumps at 10 stations in Albuquerque, Santa Fe and possibly points in between.

The screw up was actually by Western Refining Inc. The companies that gave out the bad gas are paying for repairs. I'm sure glad I didn't buy gas today.

Long ago, Motorola was the largest employer in Arizona. My grandfather worked there. My Father worked and retired from there. My Mom worked there. Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, a lot of my family worked there. I wanted to make computer chips so when I was 18, I applied to work at Motorola. I went to their employment offices and took their tests. They used to give math and other tests because they wanted highly technical people working there.

I grew up listening to my parents talk about their work at the dinner table and even though they were as far away from the CEO as anyone could be, yet they still knew that the company was poorly run. Engadget received a letter from the adviser to Geoffrey Frost, Motorola's Chief Marketing Officer to Greg Brown the CEO of Motorola describing how screwed up the company is.

It really angers me to see that you're really no different from the rest of the incompetent senior executives at Motorola -- but instead of merely being incompetent, you killing the company. Your lack of understanding of the consumer business doesn't give you a valid reason for selling the business; moreover, publicly disclosing your explorations of such a move, in an attempt to keep Carl Icahn off your back, shows how much you value the safety of your incompetence. You have no interest in fighting the good fight and attempting to mould Motorola into the market leader it can and should be; taking control of the handset division, as you have recently done, will accomplish very little -- it will simply give you an ability to say "we tried our best" when you finally cart the business off to the highest bidder.

Motorola was once a great company that made great products. I remember a Motorola radio in my grandfathers workshop. Everyone wanted a StarTac when they came out (I eventually had one when they got cheap, it's around here somewhere). 68k and PowerPC chips were very competitive with x86 chips from Intel.

Now they are splitting into yet more companies because they can't seem to figure out what it is they do. Thanks to this greedy, stupid management thousands of people in Arizona lost their jobs. Some of the former Motorola factories are still there as Freescale factories, but many of them were simply tore down.

I thankfully never went to work for Motorola. Instead I went to work for another company that makes computer chips. I look at the failure that is Motorola and compare it to what is happening at my employer. I hope my managers all the way up to the CEO learn from these failures too.

To follow up on my last post where my friends were stranded in a Yurt a few extra days due to the storm, my friend Rick has posted photos from the trip on Flickr.

Now, what am I going to do about it (them)? I found a PDF from NMSU which describes various ways to kill them. This is a problem for me. I don't use pesticides on a regular basis, only in extreme circumstances. I don't use chemicals other than vinegar to kill weeds. I use chemical fertilizers to a minimum. I'm not against the nuclear option, but only if I absolutely have to.

The PDF from NMSU states that repellants don't work. I could try trapping them. Trapping or poising them requires me to find their tunnels and dig holes.

On the bright side, the PDF does indicate there are benefits of gophers.

Although, in many cases, the damage caused by pocket go-phers is the overriding factor, the benefits of pocket gophers should be recognized. Some of these are:

• increased soil fertility by adding organic matter such as buried vegetation and fecal wastes.
• increased soil aeration and decreased soil compaction.
• increased rate of soil formation by bringing sub-soil material to the surface of the ground, subjecting it to weatherization.
• increased water infiltration.

The Rio Rancho Observers "Letters to the Editors" section continues to entertain. I think this person was on drugs when they wrote it.

Drugs legalized?

Editor:

According to an article in the Albuquerque Journal, we should legalize and subsidize drugs in order to prevent drug addicts from being killed while in the felonious pursuit of stealing, or robbing, using weapons of minor destruction.

It’s about time someone came forward with a logical solution to this problem, gee golly gosh, all along we thought it insurmountable.

Well, it just goes to show if you think long enough about a problem a solution will present itself.

Well people, you can rest easy now, sell your handguns, get rid of that ball bat and start feeding your pit bull again. The world, well maybe New Mexico, is a safer place now thanks be to solid intelligence, not unmixed with a heavy dose of whatever it is in that pipe, has arrived.

Quis,quid, ubi, quibus auxiliis, cur, quomodo,quando?

(Who, what, where, with what, why, how, when?)

Bob Harpley

Rio Rancho

I've joined the crowd, I found value in Twitter and opened a account. I'm not posting much at the moment but I'm sure my traffic will increase.

You can find me here: http://twitter.com/gregjsmith

Since the bluetooth on iPhone is reserved for only wireless headset they actually used WiFi to transmit data between the GPS receiver and iPhone. To make this possible the GPS receiver integrates a processor, Wi-Fi antenna, and even a microSD card slot to store the maps. The navigation software itself will also be accesssed via the WiFi GPS receiver using a web interface. The navigation software used and customized for LocoGPS is iGO 8.

Impressive young Skywalker, Hopefully they will ditch the web interface now that the SDK is available. Hopefully Apple opens up the bluetooth interface so this sort of overdone interface isn't needed.

I was thinking about the 30% cut Apple gets from applications. It seems like a lot but is probably less or the same than what PalmGear charges for Palm apps. Besides the fact that there are no hosting or credit card charges, how will it help to keep piracy down?

If you buy the application from the itunes store and there's no registrations to share, it should make it harder to pirate. What would stop some one from copying an application from one iPhone to another? Does the application become hard coded to the phone?

pocketgpsworld had the following to say:

NavNGo have developed a version of iGO MyWay 8 for the iPhone. It will use the upcoming iPhone GPS receiver and a demo video is available at YouTube. More details will be announced as soon as we have them!

What "upcoming iPhone GPS receiver"? With there be a external bluetooth GPS receiver available for the iPhone?

As a former Palm OS user, I was accustom to syncing my Palm device with both my Mac and PC. My primary interest with this cross sync is to get the same contact and calendar information on all three devices. This is a path that can be wrought with disaster since none of these devices have exactly the same fields. For my Palm devices, I used third party apps to deal with these differences. Pocket Mirror on the PC and Missing Sync on the Mac. They did a very good job and I almost never had to worry about data getting messed up or deleted.

Cross syncing with the iPhone is a different experience, it reminds me of the early days of the Palm. Syncing the iPhone on both Windows and MacOS is done via iTunes. iTunes does not expect a iPhone to sync calendars and contacts with different computers so it puts a extra dialog telling you this and asking if you want to replace or merge the data. This is an annoying extra step. The Windows iTunes interface is exactly the same as the Mac, including the sync dialogs.

The iPhone's calendar application is lacking in many ways. It does not duplicate iCal exactly, it's missing categories, it doesn't display attendees and the alarms are not persistent like they are the palm (they alarm once and that's it). Syncing with Outlook in a exchange environment has been safe so far the several times I have synced. iTunes has not wiped out categories or attendees or any meetings. I have noticed if I delete a individual appointment in a repeating event, it does not get removed from the iPhone. I'm suspecting that the iPhone stores categories and attendee information but it's not shown in the calendar interface.

Syncing the phone with the Mac, after syncing with outlook, results in a single category in iCal called "Outlook Calendar". if the iPhone does remember the categories and attendees, it doesn't transfer them back into iCal. For that reason I'm not syncing the iPhone with my Mac, Outlook wins in this case.

Syncing contacts works a lot better. The iphone contacts application (if you can call it that, it's actually located in the Phone application) does know groups, which is the equivalent of categories in Outlook. I first synced my contacts with my Mac, the with Outlook and there were no contacts missing or screwed up. When I synced back to the Mac and used the Check For Duplicates function in found lots of duplicates, I told it to merge them and I couldn't find any missing information. I think that category information might be lost with the sync but the contact entry is kept. The Mac's address book is kind of weird in the way it displays groups, so it might have the same contact under a group and not assigned to a group. I need to experiment with this a little more to understand what's going on. Since it's not loosing information I will continue to sync contacts and use the merge duplicates feature in Address Book.app.

This is my first look at cross syncing. I haven't researched it beyond my early attempts here. I can live without the calendar information on my Mac for now. I need contacts on all three systems. This cross syncing is working for me at the moment even if it's imperfect. It's no where near as good as it was on the Palm. I hope that either Apple improves the syncing experience or, more likely, a third party will step and take over the syncing.

After I purchased the Insteon thermostat adapter and T1700 thermostat bundle from Smarthome, they offered this $5.00 off deal.

Use this coupon code on checkout: eFebruary

Discount: $5 off any order of $50 or more (excluding auctions) on Smarthome.com

Valid Dates: Until 11:59:59 PM on 2/29/08

Check out this video of StyleTap, a PalmOS Emulator on the iPhone and iPod Touch. This is a proof of concept via PalmInfocenter.

A 91-year-old Sun City man, who is on oxygen and confined to a wheelchair, surrendered Thursday morning after a nearly six-hour standoff in which he was armed with a handgun, authorities said.

"Well, this is a strange situation," Arpaio told reporters

Armed 91-year-old man surrenders after standoff

YouTube video of the Mac sound effects song. Only a Mac user can appreciate.

Eating meat is not WRONG, but it is to be savored, appreciated, and enjoyed. Something died to make that steak appear on your plate, so having the grace to educate yourself about the animal itself is a gesture worthy of effort.

Show Your Kid a Side of Beef

Gov. Bill Richardson chimed in Friday on the fight for red light camera revenue between the city of Albuquerque and the state. Comparing the program to “big-brother,” Richardson said he is leaning toward signing a bill that would claim camera revenue for the state.

What? If he doesn't like them then introduce a bill to ban them.

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I have no inside knowledge, but I predict the following.

• Tuesday, February 19th: MacBook Pros updated. Maybe Mac Minis
• Tuesday, February 26th: iPhone SDK released. A few third party apps that had previews to it will release beta apps.

I can't help be be amused that the Mayor of Albuquerque has suspended the red light camera program over money. According to him, the purpose of the program was not to make money, but was to increase safety at risky intersections. Its questionable if the data supports this, but the program did make money, like $10 million. Oops, that extra $10 million wasn't supposed to happen. Or was it?

Now the state wants a cut of it, or I guess all of it, so goodbye cash cow. I'm sure all interested parties will find a way so everyone can profit. except the citizens.

This weeks Photo Friday is "What Is That?" I submit this photo I took at the Very Large Array near Socorro New Mexico.

How bizarre, I would expect schools to be overcrowded not due to insufficient enrollment.

Jordan Elementary School, a Mesa Public School located in Chandler, will likely close next school year because of declining enrollment, with its 486 students assigned to Frost or Pomeroy elementaries.

I went to Jordan Elementary in the late seventies and early eighties.

I'm shocked and amazed by the TSA blog. It doesn't seem to be written by government robots, but by actual human beings who seem interested to address TSA issues. Take this latest entry.

On Monday afternoon we began receiving questions about airports that were requiring ALL electronics to be removed from carry-on bags (everything, including blackberrys, iPods and even cords). This practice was also mentioned on several other blogs and left us scratching our heads.

So…we checked with our security operations team to figure out what was going on. After some calls to our airports, we learned that this exercise was set up by local TSA offices and was not part of any grand plan across the country. These practices were stopped on Monday afternoon and blackberrys, cords and iPods began to flow through checkpoints like the booze was flowing on Bourbon Street Tuesday night. (Fat Tuesday of course).

How can The President allow this to continue. It must be shut down NOW!

16GB iPhones released today. Took Apple long enough. If the retail Apple Stores have them, I will be buying one today.

Update 10:15 am: I was at the Chandler fashion mall Apple Store at 10am. They had them but had not processed them yet. They said come back in a 1.5 - 2 hours.

Update 02/06/08 6:19 am: I got the phone yesterday and have been playing with it all day. I was especially impressed with the box. The whole process of setting up an account and transferring the phone number from T-mobile was a terrific experience (I assume T-mobile will automatically cancel my account?) Yes, i know this is old news. I'm late to the iPhone game after all.

I have 3.61 GB left, therefore I was right in thinking I needed to wait. I've also watched some video podcasts which I didn't think I would do much of. Maybe I should have waited for the 32GB iPhone?

Search & Rescue could not reach them today. There are 3 parties stranded: 5, 4 & 2 people according to sherif's dpt (when I called this PM). Search called off for tonight. 2 snow cats being loaded for deployment in AM. Snow condition are severe... possibly record-breaking.

Hopefully, when they tried to leave the Yurt, they realized they couldn't make it out and went back. They will be warm and comfortable in the yurt but they are running out of food. I hope they get to them tomorrow.

Update 02/05/08 6:43 am: I'm happy to report that my friends are safe. Apparently, search and rescue wasn't able to make it to their yurt, equipment issues of some sort. When the owner of the yurt was contacted he said he could make it up, on skis. Which he did and guided them out. Impressive, no? Keep in mind this guy probably skis up to the yurt in between rentals with supplies to restock it. He could probably do it blindfolded. I now get to look forward to the stories.

Chama, by the way, has been declared a disaster area and I don't think they have figured out how they are going to get back there to pick up their vehicles.

There's a giant sink hole on Paseo Del Norte, a major artery through the west side of Albuquerque and Rio Rancho. The following comment was posted on the KOBTV's article on the road closure.

Well, those crews had better get busy! I need to use that road to get to TD's every day for my daily fix of skin and wiggles!

TD's is a strip club in Albuquerque.

Intel reported earnings yesterday, record earnings. Because Intel did not meet the expectations of analysts the stock is getting hammered.

Joel Hruska at Ars Technica has a great commentary on why they are expecting too much from a good thing.

Instead of considering Intel's Q4 2007 and projected Q1 2008 performance as proof of any weakness in the tech industry, financial analysts should step back and consider that they, themselves may have been irrationally exuberant. Intel's quarterly report and balance sheet reveal no pressing weaknesses. Business is strong across the entire globe, operating income and gross margins both rose significantly, and the company's lower-than-expected first quarter revenue projection is lower than analysts would like precisely because Intel chose to err on the side of caution.

Disclaimer: I work for Intel.

I have a love/hate relationship with Quicken. I love it's features and capabilities, I hate it's bugs and UI and poor quality from Intuit. Looks like they are addressing these issues. ArsTechnica visited the Intuit booth at Macworld and found a whole new Quicken like application called "Quicken Financial Life for Mac".

The 1.0 release will focus on core features: cashflow, downloading, taxes, budgeting. It will not work well with investments, being limited to tracking your holdings. As an example, I own 1000 shares of Apple (I wish), and that's worth $180,000 or whatever it is at the end of the day after downloading security info. Why the feature retrograde? Because QFLM is a whole new application—Cocoa from the ground up. It's a Universal Binary that takes advantage of Leopard... though I forget to ask if it is Leopard only. I'll update on on that. Intuit is currently looking for beta testers, so now is a good time to sign up... somewhere. You can do it here. It's your fault for not being here.

They say it's not feature comparable to the current version of Quicken, but it seems to have the features I'm interested in. I would sign up to be a beta tester if I could figure out where. I've signed up many years before but they have yet to ask me.

I've found little use for Dashboard. I use the stock and weather widgets and that's about it. Package Tracker is a extremely handy widget for tracking packages. It works well as a widget since it's something I simply want to check out once or twice a day. It also supports Growl, so if I'm sitting at my computer I get a instant notification of the status. The interface is well thought out and it's free, as far as I can tell.

The 4.0 beta is out with a lot of improvements. check it out at Mike Piontek's website.

It's on my list. These are the same guys who make the automatic paper towel dispenser I blogged about awhile back.

There's some discussion on this device at the Smarthome message boards and it's not know exactly what it supports, extra humidity or temperature sensor or remote fan control? The developer of Indigo has indicated that the final release of Indigo 2.5 will support this device.

It's hard for me not to run out and pre order it right away. The cheapest Venstar Thermostat is $70 and the adapter is $99. It might seem expensive but the TXB16 thermostat is $300.

moar funny pictures

Despite the humor, this is a amazing picture.

Back in 2005 I bought a iHome (now called a iH8 model). It was the first real ipod compatible alarm clock radio. After a little over 2 years of usage, I think I can give a verdict: Don't buy one.

First problem is the often complained about back light. It's bright even at the lowest settings. The entire screen is backlight instead of just the numbers. Second problem is the somewhat confusing button layout. Including the buttons on the very back related to setting the time. Finally the fact the the thing breaks over time is the main reason I cannot recommend it.

My iHome's back light stopped working over 6 months ago. I could live with that. About a month ago all the buttons stopped working. I cannot control a ipod, though at least it still charges one. My one data point doesn't do it alone. A little over a year ago a friend bought one. It too has also no longer is able to control a iPod, although it is still able to charge it.

That's two data points, enough for me to say the makers of the iHome have a quality control issue. I'm looking forward to purchasing the Sony XDR-S10HDiP HD Radio with iPod dock this summer.

Back in April of 2007, I complained about Acquisition's product registration. The issue is that Acquisition activation failed. The developer, Dave Watanabe, responded to my email saying that my activation code was pirated and offered no recourse. The problem with Acquisition's product activation scheme is it relied completely on a email address to activate. If a email address is public, it doesn't take much to guess by just trying out random emails of known mac users.

Dave may have not offered any further response to my emails, but he did eventually address the issue. In October I received the following email (yes, a little late):

Acquisition 2, a major new release of Acquisition, is due for release in the coming days. Along with this major release, new activation codes are being created for license verification. Since you qualify for complimentary upgrades to major releases, your code is included below.

Included was a new code that did not rely on my email address. Once again I can use Acquisition. Still, the whole ordeal put a sour taste in my mouth. I use Tranmission for my bittorrent needs and don't have much use for Acquisition unless there's something very obscure I'm looking for.

I've got a pretty good reputation on being on top of the latest technology. I'm usually considered a early adopter. I spent $1000 on a DVD player back in the mid nineties (which by the way that Sony 5 Disc player still works). Yet I don't have a iPhone, I don't like ebook readers and here I am about to say why I don't recommend HD discs of either flavor. Perhaps I'm getting older and smarter, perhaps technology sucks more than it used to.

Movie studio fragmentation is the problem with Blu-ray and HD DVD formats. Half the studios are on one format and the other half are on the other format. You need a Blu-ray player to see Spiderman, you need a HD DVD player to see Transformers. Thus, I haven't purchased either and haven't recommended either. The situation is improving and it looks like one format could be a winner.

Up until last week a 60% of the studios made Blu-ray discs, now Warner has announced it is switching to Blu-ray and it looks like Paramount may be making the switch as well. This just leaves Universal and a few small studios to make HD DVD disc.

I still say wait and see until one or the other format is declared dead by the sponsoring forums. Microsoft is a backer of HD DVD, for example, and won't let it die so easily.

Girls Gone Wild type Lantern Indoor/Outdoor Party String lights. Picture is of one pose type/women there are 4 other different women in different poses. You will recieve 2 each of the 5 different lanterns. Pictures are from the 1960s. Each of the 10 white lantern plastic covers measures about 4 7/8 inches tall x 2 1/2 inches wide (the size of a 12 oz. can of pop) like the ones in the picture. The 12 foot wire in this set of string lights is green and constructed like an extention cord so up to 3 sets of string lights can be connected together. These sets are specially configured by us for you and pulled from our brand new never used inventory. Some assembly is required, as in putting covers on lights.

This story from New Mexico is getting a lot of attention on the internets. Here's the original source.

She said the image appeared during a home construction mishap. Quintana said her husband was putting a special texture on the wall. The spray bottle he was using broke twice, which meant the texture couldn't be wiped off fast enough. This is how it dried.

The main control unit allows you to select the temperature, flow rate and to program the three personalised user buttons. These buttons illuminate when selected directly or via the remote control. Two backlit LCD panels display the water temperature and flow level and are controlled by the temperature and flow dials. The flow control dial can also be used to start the shower. To prevent children from turning the water above 38ºC, the SafeStop (temperature override) button must be pressed before the raising the temperature above this level - so there's no risk of accidental scalding.
For convenience, the Pause button allows you to temporarily stop the water mid-shower - great if you want to wash your hair. When you're ready to re-start you shower, press the button again and it will return to the exact same setting. Finally, the Stop button is used to turn the shower off. This button can also be used to turn the shower on at the safe temperature of 38ºC - perfect for when you have guests staying.

Pretty nifty. I can't seem to find US pricing or availablity for this product. Anyone familiar with this product or similar devices?