Barnson.org

In other news on an otherwise slow Sunday, Pakistan broke the Internet.

This year we filed our income tax return, and wonder of wonders, we’re getting a substantial refund. The reasons for this refund are pretty clear: we paid cash for Christy’s schooling last year, refinanced our home to take advantage of relatively low interest rates, and had a number of non-reimbursed business expenses. But it’s still not something we try to plan on in our budget.

Anyway, we had decided beforehand to split the refund the same way we’d done in previous years: 50% for family funds (pay down debt, add to our budget buffer, emergency fund, whatever), then the remaining 50% is split between the two of us. This means I got a bit more than in previous years, and more than enough to finally afford the replacement synthesizer that I’ve wanted to get for the past month.

So here’s the tally:

• Alesis Fusion 8HD, “Sweetwater Edition”, 88-key synthesizer. I got it from http://sweetwater.com/. As much as I love to support local businesses, nobody could touch this deal. $999.99, includes the maximum memory upgrade ($200 value), all of the Hollow Sun sound packs pre-installed, and the latest Hollow Sun “Nebulae” house/trance patch set ($50 value) included free. This puts Sweetwater very close to or better than eBay sellers for this 88-key synth, so I went with the company that could give me the full manufacturer’s warranty on the instrument. You gotta realize, I’ve never actually owned my own synthesizer. The closest I’ve come is computer-based soundfonts and some VST plugins for Cakewalk. I’ve wanted a synthesizer since I used to play on Quince Orchard High School’s old Yamaha DX7 and Ensoniq SQ-80. Now I’m finally getting my own seventeen years later, and I’m thrilled.
• Alesis Sumo 300 amp. Originally retailing for $500, this budget amp puts out around 150 watts RMS, has some decent built in effects and stereo pass-through, and a 15-inch woofer for resonant lows. And I picked it up for $200 with free shipping. There are some complaints about it online, and they boil down into two categories: if you drive the amp too hard for too long in a warm place, it will shut down, and it isn’t as loud as a 300-watt amplifier should be. Yep, the problem here is they rated it by its max wattage, not RMS. I figure it will be fine for a stage monitor as long as I don’t turn it to 11 and leave it there, and will pump out plenty of volume for rehearsals and solo venues where it can serve triple-duty for a mic, guitar, and keyboard.
• A couple of extra MIDI cables. I already own two 20′ MIDI cables that I bought years ago, but I figured it was time to buy some new ones.
• Four 10 foot balanced cables. Now that I finally understand the difference between a TRS balanced 1/4″ cable and an unbalanced cable, I’ll be paying more attention to my wiring to keep noise out.

Now, I also picked up a Proteus module a few weeks ago. I thought it was a good deal at $90. Well, unfortunately rather than the pop/rock Proteus/1, I ended up picking up the Proteus/2 due to not knowing the difference. The /2 only has orchestral sounds. I’m pretty sure I can figure out a way to use it, but I’m also pretty sure I can pick up that whole 4MB sample set for cheap and put it into my Fusion, then re-sell the Proteus to someone else. That’s what I get for not doing my research!

I also have a 49-key MIDI controller keyboard, and I just installed “Ubuntu Studio” on a spare laptop in hopes I can find a good replacement for my aging Cakewalk Sonar recording setup. I want to get off the upgrade treadmill a bit and stabilize for a few years with a setup that won’t need to change.

Things I still need: * A good 4-place mobile rack. 1U will be the slide-tray for my laptop, 1U will be the surge suppressor, and the other 2 slots are for future expansion (synths, reverbs, whatever). I think I found a good deal on one locally for $75 when new it’s $240 for this SKB rack. * A DLS Rotosim. This is the reason I want to be in stereo on stage, for a wailing Leslie effect. I don’t want to haul around a heavy real rotary cabinet, and this little pedal has to be heard to be believed. I previewed it at a local music store, and if I had an extra $300 I would have picked it up.

I’m like a kid at Christmas.

I looked at the calendar. I was certain the day was approaching, soon.

You see, in March of 2006, the little company I work for — let’s call them “Spittle Systems” — was acquired by UltraMegaCorp, LLC, Inc. BFG. That same month, I was required to relinquish my Blackberry in favor of something supported by UMC.

Now, my venerable Blackberry was not a bad device. It had a reasonable color screen, excellent email capability, and worked fine as a phone. Of course, like many of the smartphones of the day, you were best served by a headset if you wanted to talk on the phone, because the idea of holding a hunk of plastic roughly the size of a sub-compact car to the side of one’s face doesn’t appeal to everybody.

I was a glutton for punishment, and enjoyed the eventual permanent grease stain from my face on the screen. I felt that it gave some polish to the otherwise matte-finish of the screen, and besides, it gently discouraged random strangers from wanting to borrow my phone.

Him: “Hey, man, I need to make a call, can I borrow your phone?” Me: “Sure, dude, here you go”. (oil drips from the screen as I pull out a phone big enough to drive a small family around in.) Him: “Huh, uh, OK, I think I’ll borrow someone else’s phone that hasn’t been dipped in molten Crisco and converted into a Studebaker. Thanks anyway.”

Plus, I developed some enormous muscles on my right arm from lifting that brick to my face and putting it back again. Save the rude jokes. If I haven’t developed enormous muscles on one side of my body since the age of 10 from doing THAT, I ain’t gonna.

Anyway, I disliked some of the PIM functions of the Blackberry, but I admired the intuitive little scroll wheel, one-handed operation, and total lack of any need for a stylus with the device. Plus, the unit worked well to block the sunlight when wedged in the window of my car, though the car developed some suspension problems and a pronounced lean to one side as a result of this frequent use. Despite being generally satisfied, I did long for the ease-of-use of my old Palm (some model of which I’d used continuously since 1998). Some things worked better.

Well, after much research, I decided on a Sprint PPC6700. I was excited! It had a ton of features: wifi, bluetooth, web browser, email, PIM functions, camera, and expandability via a mini-SD slot. I waited with great expectations for the arrival of my new phone. And finally, a large UPS truck pulled up and unloaded the box containing my new phone.

I charged. I read forums. I found the nifty hacks. I tethered. I liked the phone a lot, and thought it was fantastic.

For three days.

Then reality began to sit in. And now I sit, two years later, having done my level best to learn to like this piece of … plastic. But those efforts were in vain. The phone, operating system, and synch software SUCK.

PPC6700, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.

1. Duplicated appointments. Just this morning, I synced the phone to find that my sole appointment for Friday morning was synchronized twenty-seven times. I now have over two dozen of the same appointment sitting on my phone waiting to be deleted. Yay.
2. As a result of these duplicated appointments, every single attendee of our Friday morning meeting has those twenty-seven appointments in their inbox. Except now, I appear to be the organizer, instead of the project manager who’s supposed to handle it.
3. Hardware reliability. I have replaced this phone three times under Sprint’s hardware replacement program (that $7 a month really came in handy…).
   • Phone #1: Worked OK for a while. I used it heavily. Then some keys stopped working after a few months. I worked around it. Then it began butt-dialing everybody in my contact list just for fun, even when it was locked. And finally, one day I reset the unit because it locked up, and it never turned on again.
   • Phone #2: I had it only a few weeks. The joystick stopped working, and I use the stylus as little as possible.
   • Phone #3: This little phone could not figure out its alarms. It would miss ringing an alarm, and then the next time I pressed the power button, every tone from every missed alarm would ring simultaneously, resulting in approximately five minutes of absolutely blaring cacophony. Of course, several of my alarms are set to repeat if I don’t acknowledge them, so they repeated the requisite three times. Worse, if I reset the unit to try to shut it up, the moment it booted up it would feel it was necessary to begin said alarms anew, and include a few from previous days which I may possibly have missed prior to the reboot. And… replaced.
   • Phone #4: This is the one I’m using now. It quietly does its job, but has many of the same problems I list elsewhere.
4. Contact list duplication. Do I really need every person in my contact list listed THREE TIMES the moment I sync? And the moment I sync again, do I really need all of those duplicated contacts I so painstakingly deleted from my phone put back again?
5. Contact list sorting. Why is my brother Jay listed in several times, one time under “Barnson”, and another under his wife’s name, then a third time with a totally blank contact entry but the full information available if I edit it?
6. No “alphabetize by X” available. Some of my contacts are alphabetized by their first name. Some by the last name. Others by company. There are at least two that end up listed as “Firstname (Utes)” in the contact list because the first line of the Notes field was “(Utes)”, referring to club members. Some others are organized by category, like they are named “Business” or “Personal”. And as far as I’ve been able to figure out — or any of my co-workers who have similar phones, for that matter — there is no way to change this preference either by contact or for the whole list.
7. Duplicates in my task list. Why do I have “Call John re: lunch Tuesday” duplicated five times in my task list, when yesterday it was only there once? And the task is complete, how come these new five copies say I haven’t called him yet?
8. Multi-clicking. Here is the procedure to enter a new task:
   • press Start button
   • Press the “down” joystick button thirteen times to get to “Programs”, then click.
   • Press the “down” joystick button six times, then “right” one time, then click to select “Tasks”. I don’t know why this isn’t a default drop-down item like “Messages” or “Internet Explorer” (which has five different ways to get it launched from this phone, no less), but it’s not.
   • Press the left shoulder button to select “New” to enter a new task.
   • Since I dislike using the on-screen keyboard, slide the keyboard out to type.
   • Start typing. A few characters in, of course, I realize that in “Task” view, if I slide the keyboard, even though it LOOKS like “Subject” is still the focus, it’s not. I need to press the joystick down once, then back up again, to get focus. Or else break out the stylus.
   • Finish typing. Look for a way to associate this task item with a Contact so that I can have a one-click method to know who I’m supposed to contact when I complete this Task. Oh, that’s right, I can’t. Bollocks. In the “Notes” field, I type in the name of the person and pray to the heathen gods that I can find the person when I complete this task due to the contact sorting problem listed above.
   • Click OK. Right, that was easy.
   • Oh, look. Once again, I completed some mundane task, and the screen won’t refresh. Looks like it’s time to reset the phone again.
9. Too many lockups and resets. Look, I realized a long time ago that I really can’t use third-party applications with this phone without it turning itself into an expensive, non-functional brick. So now I don’t. But just using the default applications, an awful lot of the time the screen won’t refresh and I have to reset the unit just to get it working again.
10. On-again, off-again DUN. Sometimes, tethering the phone via Bluetooth or USB just works. Yay! Other times, it refuses to recognize despite multiple resets, and shows up as an “unrecognized USB device” on my computer, or it will randomly lose its Bluetooth binding to my computer and I get to set it up all over again.
11. Although there’s a nifty “add attendee” item to add people from my contact list to a calendar item (yet not a Task, why?), never once has the phone attempted to notify those ‘attendees’ in any way, shape, or form I could gather.
12. For every other function on the smartphone, if a drop-down list is shown, selecting the drop-down category and pressing the “down” joystick direction results in a display of available options. Not so, the Calendar application! If you select the time and press “down”, it takes you down to the end time, or perhaps the “All Day?” field which responds the way it should.
13. I just discovered that if I change a meeting and have an attendee, the phone tries to notify attendees. So first you have to create it, then you have to change it, and then it notifies everyone. Twenty-seven times. Unless they are on a different system than the shared Exchange system you’re using, in which case it lets you think that the attendee is notified without actually doing anything.
14. Once you launch an application, it never exits unless you go to System-Settings-Memory-Running Applications and kill it. Yeah, I know “magic button” fixes this… I used Magic Button for months before getting sick of the fact that it only works half the time and, as a third-party application, causes its own set of freezes and screen corruption which requires a reset to overcome. Anyway, there is not enough memory to run all these applications, so the phone gets slower, and slower, and slower until finally you reset it out of frustration if you don’t know the specific path to clean things up.
15. MP3 playback hiccups. For a device which is having a lot of trouble being a PIM, maybe it could at least do multimedia halfway decently? It is not to be, MP3 playback is only seamless if everything else on the phone is turned off, you don’t have any calendar or task entries, the phone itself is in “flight mode” so that it doesn’t check in with the cell towers, and the amount of free storage is huge. And then… periodically it will hiccup anyway. Even with the latest firmware.
16. Every business I ever call requires me to navigate a phone tree to get the person that I want. Why do you shut off the number pad once my call is in progress? That’s just silly.
17. I can change my color scheme, sure. But it only changes the “Today” screen and the borders, so everything else still has that same default shade of blue regardless of theme.
18. The “camera” in this “camera phone” sucks. The only way to get a good, non-blurry picture is a still-life in the bright outdoors, with the camera resting on a solid surface and absolutely no motion or wind.
19. No stereo Bluetooth.
20. More butt-dials per hour than any other phone unless you lock the screen.
21. Funky headphone connector that nobody else uses. Meaning the only place you can buy headphones that fit is the Sprint Store.
22. How many ways do I really need to launch Internet Explorer? Do I really need a side-button, Start Menu button, Audible Player link, GetGood launcher, PocketMSN launcher, Windows Media album art link, and Software Store link to be able to get there? Really? We all know you can use the Internet on the phone, it’s about the only thing that works reliably and consistently.
23. Storage bloat with Sprint crapware, leading to frequent “almost out of storage memory” errors.
24. Huge delay loading MP3 ringtones. If I have an MP3 ringtone for someone, I better pick it up fast or they have already gone to voicemail.
25. If I set an alarm, I expect it to keep ringing until I acknowledge it. It’s there for a reason. I don’t expect it to shut off after 30 seconds, come back 30 seconds later, shut off after 30 seconds, come back another 30 seconds later, and then give up with just a dialog box on the screen telling me I missed my alarm.
26. Some keyboard keys get stuck for no reason, notably “caps lock”.
27. I cannot double-tap “caps” to turn off caps lock. I have to hold down the little red dot key and press Caps at the same time. And, as mentioned above, sometimes that simply doesn’t work.
28. Battery case cover breaks easily.
29. Holster doesn’t hold the phone well. It’s more of a “let-go-ster” than a holster.
30. It’s thick. Really thick.
31. I can’t turn off the sound of clicks when I do things like open the start menu, or selecting a menu item, without also turning off the sounds for Events. Which means I don’t hear things like warnings when the battery is low, attachment to a wifi network, or missed all reminders.
32. I can’t set the volume for things like those annoying system clicks separately from other events, like inbound calls. Basically, I don’t want my phone making noise when I’m using it unless there’s a call or a game or something that requires noises, but I do want it to be noisy when I need to hear it! Palms make this easy: System events, games, program events, and calls can all have their own sound schemes and volume levels indepent of one another.

For all its faults, it did stream XM radio pretty well using Musicdock, and the web browser was the first mobile browser I’ve used which didn’t totally suck. EVDO is fast, and the phone sounded fine. The vibrator would kick on when a new call came in, which eventually was all I relied on because the MP3 ringtone loading time was so awful. It charged from USB pretty well. And the Messaging/email stuff was pretty much OK, though if you wanted to get email more than once or twice a day your battery would run dry pretty fast. The Blackberry’s push-email was much better in this regard.

Another upside? The “self-portrait” mirror on the back of the phone was pretty handy. As a plus, that part worked fine even when the rest of the phone was a brick while I was repeatedly waiting for replacement phones from Sprint.

My urge to drop-kick this phone into the nearest swimming pool is at odds with my desire to have something for the two years of pain I’ve endured. I think I should put the phone up on eBay and give someone else the exquisite experience of having the crappiest Smartphone experience on the planet.

If you want a phone, go buy a real phone that isn’t running Windows Mobile. If you want a hunk of plastic that will let you surf the ‘net while sitting on the john and occasionally receive phone calls if you pick up in time, buy my Sprint PPC6700.

“George Lucas rapped my Childhood..” Now.. its an offensive term, and its not rapped, theres only one “p”.. and one that I hear bandied about.. mostly about Star Wars.. and I never got it. I kind of like episodes 1 and 2 and still LOVE Episode three. Who could really get so upset.. its not as good.. but its that thing you love, right?

Wrong.

Good lord, I am sad right now. I LOVED Knight Rider. It was trashy, silly, television that everyone seemed to have fun doing. Talking Car that could jump over trucks but was snarky and sarcastic, Smiling goofball good-guy who can’t be stopped. Bad Cars, cool sci-fi, and lots of fun.

This NEEDS to be given a 2008 gloss..

But alas.. someone took Knight Rider out into the shed and shot it in the face then ate it then pooped it out then put it on television.

Awful. I mean “Freddy’s Dead” awful. I mean Uhura stripshow awful. I mean Jar Jar, Fierce Creatures, Superman vs. Nuclear Man, Arnold as Mr. Freeze, The pets can talk too – AWFUL.

Acting worse than the B-Movies I always watch. Terrible neo-rage-techno music.. (and REALLY overdone sappy music that makes me feel better about the love music in Dead Hunt). Absurd camera angles.. MTV overediting (Literally 20 shots of a montage of Vegas to tell us “We’re in Vegas”).

My friends.. there are three car chases in 2 hours in a knight rider movie (and the car does not jump).. one in which an SUV almost outruns a supercomputer Mustang on sharp turns.. there are exactly 2 fights.. and KITT is not snarky.. he’s aptly voices.. but the car is sympathetic and boring. The hero is depressed. They have 3 minute scene about him having to pee.

Its terrible.. and BORING. REALLY boring.

Oh why.. it could have been good.. it could have been BSG or Buffy or even the new Terminator show.. it could have brought back an icon of silliness that would have been fun to watch in these dark times..

Instead.. it rapped. My childhood. Hold the “pee”

So I’m at the Live Blogging Thingy 2008. Entertaining, sad, funny, gross, and every so often poignant. once I am back at a computer rather than typing on a freaking phone, I will link to FiddleyGomme’s blog for the event.

Pete Dunn’s comments @ : http://twitter.com/FiddleyGomme (note: you may need to go back in the history if you’re viewing this after 2007-02-17).

A few photos (though the lighting is weird and they are kinda’ fuzzy): http://fiddley.com/iblog (once again, go to the history for today if you’re reading this much later).

Yeah, I have not seen this kind of cable for ten years. Seriously, the last time was when I was working for Las Vegas Computers, circa 1997 or so.

What we noticed first was a small leak under the stove. Then it disappeared. Next, there was a slight swell to some boards, but not enough to notice. Then one day, we walked into the kitchen, and there was a “holy cow!” moment as we realized there was a big hump in the floor, and that immediately above the tub in the basement was a spreading stain of yellow with a moldy spot in the center.

Yep, we had a leak.

Now, this wasn’t just any leak. I’m used to pressure-side leaks in a house. There’s a steady drip from some appliance or spigot in the house, and you just need to track down the cause of the wetness. I cut open the ceiling in the floor below the leak, and couldn’t clearly see where it was coming from. I could tell, however, that this leak was OLD… I pressed against the sub-flooring with my finger and was able to push straight through.

Gross.

Anyway, we filed the insurance claim and the demolition guys came out. It turns out it’s a sewer-side leak behind our kitchen sink, and it’s been there for YEARS. The mold was so well grown that it was stringy strands connecting boards over a foot apart. The smell was awful.

So right now, we’re living in a house without a kitchen, and the place we’re trying to rent out (price reduction coming soon! The market sets the price, and we’re above market, apparently.) simiultaneously has a tarped-up roof and no siding due to a windstorm.

When it rains, they say, it pours.

Well, in my case it’s a slow drip and a heavy wind. But I get the idea.

So i have spent the last couple of days listening to congressional hearings. I am beside myself about them. Apparently the Congress has nothing more pressing on their agenda, so they need to waste our tax dollars to investigate steroids in baseball. They spent about 4 1/2 hours on Wednesday talking to Roger Clemens about his suspected steroids use. Really? This is something that Congress needs to investigate? No laws need to be drafted, budgets reviewed, foreign policies to review? I know maybe we should have them investigate the NFL commissioner about the New England Patriots. No? Yeah – I think I will be sending more mail to my congressman to air my concerns over this. (I am sure they are tired of hearing from me).

Wow – our government is just scoring all kinds of brownie points this week.

hey.. I’ve been MIA (and will return) Meantime.. here’s someone else we haven’t seen since summer 1989 CLICK HERE TO SEE THE RETURN OF INDIANA JONES!!

Enjoy!

Bush has signed his stimulus plan. This plan offers $300 – $600 for individuals with income between $3,000 – $75,000. Couple with income under $150,000 will receive a refund of $1,200. Families with kids will receive an additional $300 / child (as of the end of the 2007 tax year).

The IRS will send out rebates — by mail or by direct deposit into your bank account — through the late spring and the summer. The rebates come in addition to any regular tax refund.

To pay for the rebates — which are estimated to cost about $117 billion over the next two years — the government will have to borrow more money, enlarging the budget deficit.

While I am happy to receive an additional amount of money, I am not sure that borrowing more money is the right approach. It seems an awful lot like we are taking from Peter to pay Paul. In the end the markers that these foreign banks have on U.S. assets will put us in a bad position. I think the shot of adrenaline that they are expecting this to provide will be short lived. The reports i have read state that they expect that only 20 – 40 percent of the rebates will be spent.

What do you think of the rebates?