My Blog

iPhone 4 Has Arrived.

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 22:00:20 -0500

On the 15th of June I was able to pre-order two black 32GB iPhone 4 devices. I was not one of those people who woke up at the crack of dawn to start my ordering adventures. Oddly enough I forgot it was the special until the train ride home. I had many problems using my mobile browser on the 3GS while commuting home. Once I reached the train station, I went over to the local Apple store to make an order. The store concierge shared that I can use the Apple store application on the iPhone to make a reservation. Three minutes later I got an email stating I have a reservation at the Chicago Michigan Avenue. For my spouse it took a little more effort, but after a number of attempts I received a second confirmation that it will be mailed to our home.

To my surprised on the following Monday, I received an e-mail stating that the unit has been shipped and will arrived on the 23rd of June - a day earlier. I was a little remiss since I will have to wait in line on the 24th of June. A lot of the Internet blogs stated that people were having problems with activation. My only problem on the 23rd was a session expired error which was resolved after a Mac reboot. Thereafter, the unit was fully functioning for my spouse.

On the 24th I woke up earlier and took a very early train to reach the Apple Store at 6:30 AM. The line was wrapping around the block and in the middle of the Eric block. The line started moving at 7 AM as the store opens. After every 15 to 20 minutes, the line was moving. By 10 AM I was approaching the Apple building. During the wait, the store handed out bottle water, Honest Tea (a half tea/half lemonade drink), Kashi Go Lean bars, Kind Fruit and Nut bars, and Cheeseburger and Fries from M Burger - a restaurant right behind the Apple store. By 10:40 AM I was the next person to receive the iPhone. The process was very simple and the Apple sales person offered a Mac to activate my iPhone after the purchase. By 11 AM I was out of the store on my way to the office. I was even surprised by two people walking on Michigan Avenue who congratulated me for getting the iPhone.

I did enjoy my time in line talking with the people around me, but I don’t think I want to do it again. This is my fourth iPhone purchase and if there is going to be a fifth generation next year, I will have mine shipped home (or to office). I am impressed with Apple’s choice to manage such a process, but it does put stress on the local community and law enforcement. There was a Chicago cop on a Segway, who did not enjoy his time there. Overall the guy was a prick and could have handled himself in a more professional manner, but I am sure he did not enjoy being there either.

To the hardware features, FaceTime is awesome. FaceTime is launched from the address book/Contacts. The FaceTime option appears when there is a mobile number on the contact. FaceTime works over the WiFi using your front facing camera. My first FaceTime call was to my spouse to give the update of the iPhone. I, also, got to see our puppy acting very bad in her cage. FaceTime only works with other iPhone 4 devices. Should you attempt FaceTime with a person who does not have the iPhone 4, you will receive a message stating that person is not available.

The other hardware features include the following:
• Apple A4 processor
• 512 MB RAM
• Two camera
★ Rear 5-megapixel still camera making video recording, HD (720p) up to 30 frames per second with audio
★ Rear has an LED flash
★ Front VGA-quality photos and video at up to 30 frames per second with the front camera
★ Both cameras support tap to focus video or still images and geotagging
• The display supports 960-by-640-pixel resolution at 326 ppi with fingerprint-resistant oleo-phobic coating on front and back.
• WiFi support of 802.11n

If you have the 3G iPhone, I would recommend you to upgrade to this iPhone. If you have the 3GS iPhone, I would say you can wait -- unless you want any of the new hardware features. For the 3G users, my recommendation is due to the increase processor speed and RAM. Also your contract for the 3G iPhone should be up for renewal; a perfect reason to make an upgrade.

Footnote: I do not receive a royalties for this blog entry. I own the device and did not receive any compensation from Apple.

Elli is in the house!

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 14:03:28 -0500

For a number of years, my spouse has always told me that we need to get a pet. First it was a dog, then a cat. Unfortunately during my cancer year and recovery, a pet was out of the question. Also the place where we lived was a no pet building.

As we were looking at new places, I was reminded again about us getting a pet. Naturally the home we live now is in a dog friendly community. What I did not know was that my spouse was secretly looking for a dog after my doctor gave me an all-clear for having a pet. As my spouse’s birthday was getting closer, I was told that the best birthday gift would be an Italian Greyhound.

I was shown where we could find one. On Memorial Day, I misdirected (or tricked) my spouse into going out for a day of errands. Instead of going out for lunch, we went to look at this dog and bought her. I wanted to name her Davida, but my spouse did not like the name. I did not like the names of Precious, Bell, Bella, Lady, and any of those predictive female dog names. I started calling her Elli while my spouse called her puppy. Two days later, I heard my spouse call her Elli and that resulted in her name.

You can always read more up on the breed on the web.

Lapse in the blog

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 12:06:33 -0500

As you can probably see, I have not posted many entries for 2010. There were a number of things which had to take a higher priority:
My spouse and I wanted to move to a bigger home. After 6 years, the previous home was small on space. With the pending move yielding two residences for a couple of months, life was pretty busy having to pack/unpack.
The family had a new addition; a puppy. After two years, I gave in to spouse’s need of having a pet. Now I get to “puppy sit” on weekends rather than small projects such as the blog or small home projects
Lastly the spouse switch jobs, the retail industry is not very good in this economy and the stresses of the previous jobs (from the lame management) were not changing.

Now with the new schedule and daily routines, I can come back to the entering blogs here. There will be a number of things to share about the new iPhone 4, the new Mac mini, AT&T 3G MicroCell, and much more.

Happy New Year 2010

Fri, 1 Jan 2010 11:40:06 -0600

Happy New Year to all you people on the Internet. Have a good holiday with your families.

Entertainment Center UPS

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 11:38:17 -0600

After about a month of thinking about it, I decided that my entertainment system needs to be connected to something more than a surge protector. I have a number of components connected to the system and i am concerned that a power flicker could damage any one of the components which has a hard drive. The equipment is not a computer, but it has as much hardware as you may find in a computer.

The first question I know you are going to ask about the components. My entertainment system compromises a Sony Bravia HDTV (40-inch as the room is not spacious), a TiVo3, a TiVo HDXL, and a Playstation 3. The latter three components have a hard drive. A power flicker could cause any of these devices to reboot themselves and I don’t want the hard drive to suffer. I want to apply the production to my computer desktop to these components -- protected by a Uninterruptibe Power Supply (or UPS for short).

The unit I choose was the APC Power Saving Back-UPS XS 1500 (model BX1500G). Here are the unit specifications:
Output Power Capacity: 865 Watts / 1500 VA
Nominal Output Voltage: 120V
Efficiency at Full Load: 86%
Waveform Type: Stepped approximation to a sinewave
Output Connections: 5 NEMA 5-15R (Battery Backup), 5 NEMA 5-15R (Surge Protection.
Typical recharge time: 16 hours

After I have plugged all the components to it, it said there was about 20 minutes of use. When I turned the TV off, the unit displayed that I have 50 minutes of use. I guess I will have a lot of recording TiVo use as I always have these units running. Overall I like the unit and it is nice to see an UPS which offers 10 outlets, cable surge protecting, and ethernet surge protecting.

I was able to grab the unit for $120 (US) as my spouse works at a retail store as the original price is $199 as of this post.

Footnote: I do not receive a royalties for this blog entry. I own the device and did not receive any compensation from Apple

Renovating the Media Library

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:10:01 -0600

Today, I finished assembling the new shelving system for my media library. My spouse and I were shopping on December 21, 2009, doing the Christmas shopping for family members. As we were close to Schamburg, IL which has a large mall and some other stores. We were thinking of heading over to see what is in the IKEA store and then head to Woodfield mall (across the street).

At IKEA, we decided to make a tour as we want to change a few rooms as well as watch out for items we could use in our upcoming move. My spouse become very excited as we were entering the store as there was a display of many stuff animals -- one of which was a hippopotamus. We have our first item to purchase. At the living room section we saw a great display of furniture for the entertainment center. I quickly saw a nice shelving unit with adjustable shelves that stood 75” x 23” x 7”. All the shelves were adjustable and all the pieces were modular to form your own configuration. As the display unit had DVD covers, I decided to see how many I could fit on a single shelf. Thirty-three (33) fit snug on the shelf and with a little rough math I figured about 7 shelves should be within a unit.

I shared my finding with the spouse, but I was asked to wait to do the purchase. Unfortunately it was an item on my mind after this trip. In fact that night I went on their website to design a configuration which could help me with the media storage. I was able to design a space of 69” that would hold about 792 individual pieces. These pieces are DVD/Blu-Ray/Consoles games. The console games were Wii/Gamecube, Playstation 2 & 3, and the original XBox. By reviewing the configuration on the website, I figured out that I could have 8 shelves rather than 7.

Now I have a bigger desire to get the units. Late that evening, I announced to my spouse that I will be getting new shelving units. In fact, I was Facebook’ing about it too as I was excited.

Why would I be excited? Short answer: These media items are in 3 rooms of our home. We have so many media items that guests at our home are amazed -- the configuration took about 180-inches of wall space (and stood about 4-feet tall). The old units were Sauder which were very bad. Bad because it was mix-match set of 9 short shelves units which could only hold 50 to 60 media items and two sort of better units which could old about 200 to 230 media items. Some of the units had shelves which were bending and the solution could not even hold everything. The console games were stocked on the entertainment center. I had about 100 DVDs on my desk and about 20 more scatter on various furniture in our bedroom and home office.

Before I continue with the store the obvious question is why are there many items? Well we like to collect shows on DVD and Blu-Ray. We get a couple each week the movies/shows are released. Plus, I like to play console games. The Wii can play GameCube as well as Wii games and the Playstation 3 (we own) can play Playstation 2 and 3 games -- I got the system when it was first released and included a chip to play the PS2 games. As older TV shows (like Incredible Hulk or original Transformers) were released to DVD, we collected them. It was a common trait my spouse and I did even before we met.

The next morning I went to the IKEA closer to home with a shopping list of the pieces I need to make the new shelving system. Surprising the units were heavier than I would have expected, but that did not slow me down. I was in and out of the IKEA store in less than 30 minutes. When I got home, I put then in the corner of our living room. I waited to assembly them after Christmas as I was working on other projects.

While the spouse was at work on the 26th, I assembled the three units I purchased. To my dismay, the extra shelving was too deep. I needed 7” shelves and I had 10” shelves. And to make matters worse, a snow storm settled home and gave 10” of snow. I wanted for it to clear and the next day (the 27th) went back to IKEA to exchange the shelves for the ones I needed. As soon as I got home, I finished the assembly and start moving the media to the shelves.

Unfortunately, I ran out of shelving space. It was great to see the wall full of media, but I had 2 of the smaller units and 1 of the larger units of the old system. Not to mention all the console games, Blu-Ray, and the stack of DVD at my desk. I had to laugh at the dilemma and show my spouse the progress I made.

Guess what the first words my spouse said? “Holy Shit. And this is not everything?” My spouse shared how it looked much better, but we need more units. I talked about getting three more shelving units , but I was told to purchasing two more. And my spouse noted the living look so much better. [Remember my spouse did not want to do any reorganizing during the holiday season.]

Which leads us to today. We went back to IKEA to get two units and the extra shelves. Once again we were in and out of the store in less than 1 hour. We had to get Christmas ornaments (The spouse loves Christmas ornaments). After having a nice lunch, we got back home and I had the shelves assembled in about hour. I got one unit filled with DVDs and realized we are not going to have enough room. (I hope you are laughing now? We were laughing as I should have gotten three units.)

As I wanted to have the new shelving system done today and all the media items moved to the new location, I went out one last time to get the sixth unit. I was there and back in less than 90 minutes in total time. The local store was short 1 extra shelving unit. Back again at home, the final two units were assembled within an hour. Completing the renovation, for the most part. There are a few odds and ends to get done:
• Sort/Organize the library - the spouse has this task
• Catalog the library using the bar code on the units (I have a scanner and software)
• Order the final shelf I need
• Minor fixes with wood putty (One of the units had minor imperfections on a corner).

As with any large library, there are duplicates. Items we both had purchases before we were a couple as well as more recently getting an extra copy as the collection was not well organized.

The above photo is the state of the media library at the time of the posting. I do not know the total count, but I can do an update blog entry. In regards to the space taken, the new storage system has a set of 3 units on two walls (in the corner) having the following dimensions 70.875-inches width,75.625-inches height, and 7.75-inches depth. This model has no corner transition piece (and it works out better). The old system had the following dimensions 180-inches width, 48-inches height, and 10-inches depth (it was more a wrap-around-system). The corner layout works much better.

And yes, I believe people will still be amazed at the collection.

Footnote: I do not receive a royalties for this blog entry. I own the device and did not receive any compensation from IKEA.

FInal footnote: There are about 5 shelves not filled with content giving room to add to my collection.

Merry Christmas

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 09:14:40 -0600

Merry Christmas to all you people on the Internet. Have a good holiday with your families.

BackPack

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:13:06 -0600

Today, I found this item at the local Apple store. it is a small shelf that can be mounted on the Apple display. Technically the back of a monitor is dead space -- space you will not normally use. I have external drives which I use for the Time Machine back-ups. I don’t use these drives for anything else.

In my home I have Apple monitors of all sizes. I have the 30” Apple Cinema HD Display (for my Mac Pro) and the 24” Apple LED Cinema Display (for my Mac mini or MacBook Pro). My spouse has the 27” iMac and a 20” Apple Cinema Display.

The product has a stand which can be affixed to the stand. The bracket has adapters for the thickness of the stand. The above 4 stands have a different thickness, but I was able to put a check on each of them.

Here are the dimensions:
• Width: 7 inches
• Depth: 4.5 inches

The shelf can support 5 pounds.

In my testing of the product I attached it to the 30” Apple Cinema HD Display. As the above picture denotes, you can have 2 of the shelves attached to the stand. The brackets have 5 different size inserts. While the manufacture does not state it works with the new iMac 27”, I was able to attach a shelf to it. My only complaint I can say is that the shelf is not as deep for a product such as the Mac Mini or the miniStack (by Newer Technology). Either product is not even 3 pounds.

Otherwise, I like the product and think it would compliment any iMac or Apple display consumer.

This product is made by Twelve South.

Footnote: I do not receive a royalties for this blog entry. I own the device and did not receive any compensation from Twelve South.

BookArc

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:04:45 -0600

Today, I found this item at the local Apple store. Traditionally I would lay my MacBook Pro flat on my desk (at work) or on my mStand at home. Unfortunately it still takes up the same space.

The product is real simple. The stand allows you to slip in vertically but allow you to have the DVD slot facing you. The physical footprint is 4.5 width and 10.12 inches depth. It has two pieces to it. The BookArc Stand and a silicone pad fit insert (which are 3 sizes). I was able to fit the 13-inch MacBook, the 15-inch MacBook Pro, and the 17-inch MacBook Pro. This leaves the only question why would you have the Mac closed? Well silly, I use the MacBook connected to a monitor. When connected to a monitor (as well with a keyboard and mouse), the MacBook/MacBook Pro functions like a desktop computer.

In my testing of the product I use the silicone pad fit insert labeled as 1. My spouse likes to use a speck with the 13” MacBook and you can still use that product with it. Just be sure you use the silicone pad fit insert labeled as 2. As there are three inserts, the insert labeled as 1 works with the aluminum unibody models, insert labeled as 2 works even when the thickness of the MacBook is increased with the speck. The insert labeled as 3 is for the thinnest Mac where as the insert 2 is the widest.

I like the product, but not all consumers connect their MacBook/MacBook Pro to a monitor/keyboard/mouse.

This product is made by Twelve South.

Footnote: I do not receive a royalties for this blog entry. I own the device and did not receive any compensation from Twelve South.

MacBook Pro 15-inch Follow-up

Tue, 1 Dec 2009 21:29:17 -0600

If you have read my past blog post on my Apple MacBoko Pro 15-inch, then you may want to refer to it as this is a follow-up post.

In my previous post I stated I was going to change the RAM configuration as well as replacing the hard drive. Today completes the changes. This model of the MacBook Pro 15-inch now has 8 GB of RAM and a 500GB 7200-RPM 2.5 hard drive (Seagate model).

I am still not sure on the configuration. I am debating to have this be the first Mac configured from an OS X Server as it will be much easier to maintain or manage than connecting to the server after the initial setup.

Currently the battery life is nearing 6 hours 30 minutes (not bad from the 7 hour max). It will take a few more cycles before I would trust the battery indicator. There is a recommendation to drain the battery down and allow a full recharge. I am not sure if it is useful as it is a normal recommendation to the “old style” laptop batteries. I never did this on the 17-inch model but thought to try it out with the 15-inch. Expect a comparison in a future post.