Author: Sammy G

Does anyone have any advice about remote access software?

Thinking it beneficial to access my office desktop from home, I was ready to sign up for a web-based remote access solution. That is, until I saw Go2MyPC wanted $240 a year. Yikes! I came across I’m InTouch which looks good at $100.

Basically, I’m hoping someone with experience can offer advice.

Thanks!

Today…

**sniffle**

…we gather here to commemorate the passing of friends. Stalwart friends. Friends who have become more to us than simply music gear. These represent the finest of gigs and the finest of memories. And now they are leaving us to pass on to finer pastures.

Please set your yester-year recall machine to 1990, when Billy Joel showcased the release of the Korg T1 by featuring this magnificent keyboard on his Stormfront tour. The keyboard really took the musical industry forward by combining the best of sample sounds and programming in what was dubbed a ‘musical workstation.’ Oh, it was a beauty. And I, a young high school junior, was first mesmerized when Ben and I went to see the tour at the Caps Center and sat close enough to see Billy Joel play ‘Pressure’ on the T1 no more than 50 feet away from our seats.

The next summer was a lot of hard work, saving up lawn mowing money to pay for my share of the $4K Korg T1. In addition to my own savings, I was counting on graduation gifts from family to cover the rest of the cost. I told everyone I knew about my dream. I was somehow going to buy a Korg T1. There were sacrifices. I didn’t go out much. I was noticeably absent from Senior Prom because the cost of date and dinner would have subtracted from the T1 fund. I mowed every lawn possible, listening to tapes on my Sony Walkman and imagining my own hands prancing over those 88 weighted keys while bagging grass clippings in the DC summer humidity.

The day finally came when Mom and I strutted into Chuck Levin’s music store in Bethesda. Before walking into the store, Mom stopped the Oldsmobile station wagon, the automotive wonder (you wondered how it was automotive) that would someday earn the nickname “Big Gus” and someday carry that Korg T1 to many, many gigs, and Mom said to me, “you have to be ready to walk out of that store without buying it.” Such was the start of several excruciating trips to Chuck Levin’s before the board was finally bought. I had my Korg T1, and its massive, blue anvil case with the new-paint smell that never went away, even after 17 years.

At this point I didn’t have an audio system to blast that sucker. Enter Wandering Moose who was trying to sell his Sun amp and two TOA speakers. I shelled out the remaining bits of bucks to Wandering Moose and installed all new gear in my basement room at home, so that Matt could come over and figure out how to program the thing while I played nearby on the C-64. At this point, I was a high school senior with little social life but a big dream about musical glory.

Little did I know the T1 would end up scoring me much tang through college and beyond.

You guys know the next 6 years of the story. Through college and post-graduation, from its unveiling at Dani’s graduation party to the big stage at RPI in upper NY, that T1 and sound system traveled to more gigs than I can remember. It certainly wasn’t easy lugging that monstrosity around. These were the years before the trend of lightweight and portable electronics. Transporting the T1 took two people. But you knew it everywhere it was played, especially with the two bumper stickers affixed to the top, proudly boasting allegiance to the Washington-based NFL and NHL franchises. In the recording studio, on stage and in the home, it was a comforting presence to know the C01 Piano patch could be retrieved at a moment’s notice and push the smooth sounds of an Amin7-DMaj transition into the ears of waiting listeners.

The strange part of developing an emotional attachment to musical gear is you never once question its logical inclusion as the primary furniture piece in your life. Between 1990 and 2002, I moved every year, changing actual addresses. No matter where I lived, the Korg T1 and Sun/TOA combo received first dibs on location in living quarters. This made for a cramped summer in Virginia Beach when the T1 took up more space than my bed. Movers were never happy, but this was a protected asset in my life, a revenue-generating asset, an asset my insurance company was tricked into believing was only for recreational home purposes.

Ultimately, when founding my business, I had to impress investors with a significant amount of founder equity, and listed the Korg T1 and Sun/TOA as capital contributions. They passed from personal control and became enlisted in the corporate world.

And so after 17 years of bound partnership, more than half my life, today I part with these pieces of musical fortune. They have served me well. They have served us well. It brings happy reminiscence to push the ejector spring one last time and have pop out with original handwriting a Babbage’s 3.25″ floppy disk reading, “Matt’s Disk!” EQ levers on the Sun head have popped off, draw levers on the T1 have lost their response, but I never once needed repair, and I never once was failed in time of need, and the music will always play on.

I don’t drive E85 yet, but I likely will come May 2007. I want to start driving a car that runs on domestic, renewable fuel without compromising current levels of performance or convenience. The E85 looks like the best option available.

Most people would instinctively trumpet the electric hybrid as an option for achieving my goal. Right now I don’t believe hybrids are the best option, and I’m not sure hybrids will be a permanent part of the automotive future. First, electric hybrids still run on imported oil. Regardless of the amount of ‘barrels’ saved per year, it’s still oil brought in from other countries. Second, in a move I will characterize as massive, the EPA recently switched its fuel economy tests to ‘to better represent current driving styles and conditions’: http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/ratings2008.shtml

I saw a report detailing this EPA test switch impacting hybrids at the largest negative mileage rate…30%!!! This means dealership lot stickers showcasing hybrid sedans at 40MPG are soon going to read 28MPG. While hybrid mileage will continue to be better than E85, hybrid drivers pay a premium sale price (mostly for the hybrid battery) much larger than fuel cost disparity for an E85.

While mentioning fuel price, some interesting things are happening in MN. Because of political motivations, and thanks to a $2.2B budget surplus, the Governor is pushing to quintuple the number of MN E85 stations over the next 2 years. Governor Pawlenty is considered a potential McCain VP 2008 running mate, and so I also surmise state-backed rebates and tax financing for E85s to manifest, similar to the large federal tax rebates made available for hybrid drivers. I base this on MN currently seeing the price of E85 fuel at 75% of the price of regular gas. Thus, MN is compensating for the disparity between E85 fuel mileage and regular gas mileage at the pump. Fuel cost is the same.

And where does that fuel come from? E85 is made from corn. Soon it’s also going to be made from grass. That’s stuff grown from the ground. In my backyard.

As an aside, the first airline (passenger or commercial) to successfully switch planes to E85 is going to be ridiculously popular.

The downside is that all E85 vehicles currently available for purchase in the U.S. are trucks. I’m not a truck guy. I’m not a 10MPG and $50-a-fill-up guy. Bring on the mid-sizes, please!

Does anybody have any advice? I’m wondering how people feel about their hybrids. Anybody out there driving a flex-fuel or E85?

In an effort to clean up my registry, yesterday I bought, installed and ran Ace Optimizer Utilities from Acelogix for my office Compaq Presario desktop purchased back in the spring of 2004.

Registry files cleaned: 1,147.

Though a sophisticated user of consumer technology, I’ve always been wary of manually cleaning up my registry for fear of permanently damaging the box. Sure, I could back up my data and certainly restore or, worst case, buy a new disposable Wintel computer if I committed unrecoverable damage. But the disruption time and cost are not desirable. So I issue patience during lengthy boots, double-clicks, and even during hiccups at every right-click for menu draw-down, all the while contemplating the drawbacks of going in and taking on the registry myself.

Of course, I don’t even know how to find the registry.

I haven’t used any other software, so I can’t compare, but I heartily endorse Ace Optimizer. The suite of tools and interface is easy to use. Plus, it goes far beyond the rote “Administrative Tools” and “System Tools” that come with Windows OS. These tools are a joke, except for defrag, and I’m assuming there are plenty of 3rd-party COTS apps for this function as well. (As an aside, I found a free registry defrag utility that works great. I tried to attach but barnson.org won’t allow the upping of .exe files. Email me if anyone wants this utility.)

I especially love the fact that this software erases all my history, duplicate files, junk and residue from prior installs. For $40, including a lifetime version license, it’s worth it to speed up the system while having a resident watchdog app maintain efficiency.

Anyone else have any registry advice?

I appreciate all the calls over the past weekend asking what I want for the Holiday season. Just to make it easier for all my friends, I’ve decided to throw up my gadget wish list here. 🙂

Anyone have any kudos or warnings about the list? Or the fact that I’m too dumb to figure out how the html list code works (Matt’s help appreciated for formatting purposes)?

**Sprint Treo 700wx, 700p — need my NHL Mobile and my live video feed **Microsoft Zune or Zen Nano Plus (Creative) **JVC HA-FX33 Marshmallow earbuds, $20, www.jvc.com **Jabra BT125, $40, Bluetooth headset, www.jabra.com **Parrot Minikit, $125, Bluetooth hands-free speaker phone, www.parrot.biz **SanDisk Ultra II SD Plus, secure digital card, memory storage

What is everyone else looking at for a stocking stuffer? Geeks like me want to know.

Sammy G and Wife Unit in the hizzy. We fly in this afternoon late and leave Saturday night. Call me, email me or blog me if anyone wants to hang.

Home

Turn it on again.

I’m working on travel plans to Europe.

Last week while waiting for a flight I was rummaging through magazines at an airport newsstand. Like most people afraid of imperiling their intelligence while reading the national news weeklies, I flip past the full-page color ads. I intentionally ignore since most ads are for some drug I won’t have to take for 30 years or some truck I would never drive even if under the influence of those drugs.

However, one ad demanded my attention. It compelled me to stop and gaze. I couldn’t believe it.

There was Ed McMahon in his wrinkled smile and his bulging eyeglasses surrounded by pictures of other elders lounging in bathtubs. The tag line by Ed’s face read, “Doesn’t everyone deserve the right to a hot shower?” Seriously. The ad was asking seniors to spend their precious pension dollars on upgrading their home plumbing to have “the right” to a fancy new bathtub or shower.

Given the election season, and the terrible, awful things still pestering the world, from war and genocide, to corruption and greed, to people misusing the word ‘independent’, to human conflict and suffering, there was one thought that coursed my mind:

PREACH ON, BROTHER ED!!!!!!!

I don’t need much in life. I don’t need a fancy car, or nice clothes or gold watch, or even a bed. I will happily sleep on six feet of cleared floor space. But damned if I’m not waking up in the morning and taking a hot shower. That’s a natural right and I will fight for that right and there is nobody on Earth who will get between hot H2O and this body. Woe and pain comes to anyone who messes with my hot shower.

Wife Unit wants to run the clothes washer in the morning? NEGATORY. Wife Unit wants to run the dishwasher in the morning? NEGATORY. Wife Unit wants to take a 45-minute shower before me in the morning? NEGATORY.

If the founding fathers had hot water heaters in the revolutionary era, then they would have absolutely protected that right in the Constitution by specific mention. I’m surprised they didn’t use their foresight to have a special Bill of Rights section, maybe the 9½ Amendment, carving out a special unenumerated right for the hot shower.

The first time I was forced to take a cold shower was overseas, in southern Spain. I was slumming at a youth hostel to save money. I had no idea there were places in the world where hot showers had not been introduced. That was a disturbing experience. I still have disorders.

Anyway, if Ed McMahon, or the folks behind that ad somehow find this blog entry, please respond and let me know how I can pledge my life to your cause by sending everything I own and running to your convent and basking in the hot waters of your glory.

I couldn’t understand why Google would rush to spend $1.65B on YouTube. Sure, the site is wildly popular, but why the haste to gobble up the video technology and traffic? Then, this morning, I came across the true power of YouTube.

http://e-democracy.org/edebatemn06/?cat=19

The MN 2006 gubernatorial debates are being held online and powered by YouTube via the “MN Gubernatorial E-Debate 2006.”

In early 2003, when I started becoming involved in politics, I joined a Yahoo! group called ‘MN-POLITICS-ANNOUNCE’. Each day a MN political and legislative roundup was collected and sent in a daily email. It was produced by E-Democracy.Org, which I thought was a national nonprofit but came to learn it was a MN-based shop started in 1994. E-Democracy.Org claims to have created the world’s first election-oriented web site.

The past three years have seen an improved use of technology for increasing the quality of info collection and the presentation of the E-Democracy.Org data. Then I saw the debates this morning. The candidates you see are not 5th-party jokers. They are the real deal. To this point, Governor Pawlenty is still being touted as a potential GOP Presidential 2008 runner.

It’s pretty amazing to read, see and hear opening statements, answers to short questions and long rebuttals to other candidates. What makes this site even more amazing is that the Dem. And Rep. candidates shunned historically popular debate venues this year due to lack of agreement on debate rules. For anyone in the state who claims that 30-second TV ads aren’t intelligent, and that the local media is either biased or curt with reporting, then here are the issues and candidates in a broad and full stage, uncensored, direct and without truncation. And the Independence endorsee, Peter Hutchinson, is giving his opening statement using a mounted vidcam while standing in front of a bison.