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| | Tuesday, February 7, 2006 07:07:25 |
 I kinda knew this was coming. Google Talk is migrating into Gmail. When you have a conversation it's logged (if you enable the setting) in the Chats section and everything you talked about will be searchable. This is great for all of those times when I know someone sent me a URL to something or a slice of code but I can't remember what it was. I was also thinking that since Google is now federationable, you could techinically set up your own Jabber server, build a web interface on your site so that users can talk to you via your Jabber (you only need to use class.jabber.php to interface with it) and then log all of the conversations in your Gmail, voila, instant chat from your web site and logging, and you can then search your logs, forward them to users, whatever. Very cool.
 The reason I kinda knew it was coming is that most companies release their software on every platform. Google Talk didn't. They were like, here's your windows application and here's how to configure the rest of the Jabber clients out there to connect. My guess is, they wanted to build some support early with this and now they're making it so you can chat in Gmail, what do you need software for? Nothing. Just another step into their new venture, an operating system via your web browser. Damn I wish I had more than one share in Google.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006 19:23:34
Ian writes:
Gimme my new features! I'm not sure how they're rolling out the new chat services but apparently I have to wait to get 'em. twiddle of thumbs |
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| | Thursday, February 2, 2006 20:36:26 |
First and foremost, over the weekend we talked to the vet and she said to give the Crick some Immodium and that seems to have worked quite well. Since she's been much less licky and just has happy as before.
On Monday I forgot my gym shorts and so I dropped in on a Running Room to pick up another pair because I figured I spend enough time wearing them, that I might as well buy a decent pair. So I walk in and according to the dude there, because of the season, there aren't many shorts in stock so they don't have anything very long. They only have shorts that are shorter than my friggin' boxers. If that's not a fashion faut-pas, than I don't know what is. So I figured I'd try Zellers, no such luck either. Highly disappointed in the shorts department. It seems every time I want to buy myself new gym shorts, it's winter and I can't find any. You know what? 6 degrees isn't all that winterey and I could run outside in shorts at this time of year without getting all asthma'ey, so stock some damn shorts.
Monday was also Jury Duty day. Yes that's right, it wasn't enough that they already called me in to waste my time, it's happened again. This time I'm the 14th juror out of 12, so if; on February 13th, two jurors manage to weasel their way out of their duty, I'm stuck for a week on an assault trial. After seeing absolutely no evidence, I think he's guilty. I must say though, the Guelph court house is terrible compared to the Brampton one. There's no airline-style waiting area, and it's about 35 celcius in the court room.
Last night someone and I were talking about some new business plans and we're both very excited that we've (finally!) come up with a viable side business to sink out time and money into and it could potentially become our primary business in a few years. Very exciting stuff.
Anyway, I've got to get back to the gig. Some highly ignorant person is waiting for some work to be done and I need to put some finishing touches on it so that it can be seen.
Friday, February 03, 2006 18:52:35
mom writes:
My thought is to bring a folding lawn chair, if the courts can't provide a decent chair to sit on. And you'd better find some shorts and a t-shirt to wear for jury duty if it is that hot! |
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| | Saturday, January 28, 2006 11:41:53 |
 For the last few days Cricket has been acting funny. She threw up a lot of hair the other day and we just noticed her tail seems to be a lot more bare, so perhaps she's full of hair. She's been doing lots of swallowing. This morning we awoke to sloppy diarrhea on her bed and the floor and there was blood in it. Unfortunately the vet's at a conference today so we'll have to wait until she gets back this evening. She said that if the dog's happy it should be okay to wait. We're coming up with all kinds of theories, like she's eaten some burrs out of her tail and now they're scraping up her insides. Either way we're kinda worried about our pup.
I've been struggling for a long time now with my desktop computer because though it's a nice machine with 8 USB ports on it (4 permanent, two additional in the rear and two on the case in the front). They've never worked as high-speed devices. I wouldn't care because I don't use it that often, but you know when something bugs you and you just have to fix it. So I'm working on this guys' machine here and I wanted to take his hard drive and back it up using one of my IDE to USB2 things that I used to use a lot. So I tried some drivers with no help, then I finally found it. It's a frickin' BIOS setting, USB was enabled, but USB2 was disabled. Enable it and bam, I'm flying again. Also, I think this guy's hard drive might be fine too.
Saturday, January 28, 2006 15:49:24
mom writes:
Make sure you get Cricket seen as soon as possible. I hope the vet comes back early. Cricket the happiest dog I know so that may not be a good indicator. |
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| | Friday, January 27, 2006 09:55:01 |
I'm sitting here outside the Oakville BestBuy and there's a crazy amount of people out here waiting until 10am when they open and more keep showing up. I think they should consider opening at 9 instead.
Saturday, January 28, 2006 11:44:02
Ian writes:
I told the girl inside that they should open earlier and she said they opened at 9 and no one was there. Here's a hint; if your posted hours are 10 - 9, people won't show up until just before 10am. Also the PAP2 that I got is a new version, so it's not unlockable, so now I'm brute-force attacking it with a home-brewed project. I figure I'll be "in" within a week. |
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| | Wednesday, January 25, 2006 15:27:53 |
I just got a Bluetooth headset for my Blackberry because driving standard isn't easy or safe with a bulky phone in hand. I've only made one call with it but Tom's the biggest critic when it comes to the sound of a phone call. Next step is to find a good application to connect to my phone system from my Mac mini and then I can use this headset at my desk too. That was my favorite part of the SPA841 that I used to have on my desk.
Saturday, January 28, 2006 12:38:52
Ian writes:
It turns out that the M2500 is great. If you're in a parked quiet car. If you're driving, forget it. It picks up way too much noise. Next step is to try using it with a software phone on my mac mini. |
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| | Sunday, January 15, 2006 13:16:53 |
Gift cards are not all that they are cracked up to be. It used to be, I looked forward to receiving gift certificates for Christmas. Now, with the invention of the gift card, it's turned into a cash grab for the retailers.
Say someone incredibly thoughtful goes out of their way to get you a gift certificate for your local music store because they don't know what you want, but know that that store has something that will make you happy. Let's say that they go get you a gift card for $25. Very generous indeed. Anyway, you're presented with your card and you know exactly what you want to buy, but it's only $20 + tax. You go buy it and then your card has a balance of about a dollar. What the hell are you going to buy for a dollar if you even remember that you have that dollar left on your card!? It's ridiculous.
I say they should implement a percentage system. If you're within 25% of the total value of the card, you get your change. Instead, you're forced to go over the value of the gift card to get your generous party's money's worth and then you're forced to add to the total value to do so. So the evil corporate fat cat merchant gets even more money by selling that gift card.
Cards that work are ones that are for places everyone uses. In pretty much all Canadian cities there's a Bay/Zellers/Homeoutfitters (aka: Homo-outfitters) which one of those gift cards will work. They all sell stuff you need for around the house sooner or later. So whether you use your card for kitty litter or a nice new set of knives it's a very usable card and if you go a little over, it's stuff you needed anyway. Same with Loblaws/Zehrs cards, you need to eat, don't try to deny it. That card would be used and you're undoubtably going to go over that limit over the course of a year no matter how hard you try not to. The same could be said about Home Depot or places like that. You need light bulbs, garbage bags, etc.. Another terrific gift card idea is the mall-wide gift certificate. It works in any store in the entire mall and I believe they actually give you your change. (Hint: if you're shopping for me and don't know what to buy, call Stone Road Mall in Guelph and find out if they offer something like this. I don't know if they do but if they do, there's your backup plan.)
The other thing that pisses me right off about gift cards is the fact that they expire! You could give me cash and it would never expire, but that gift card that you gave me for Dar's Delights could expire on me after about a year. That's totally ridiculous as well. I gave you perfectly good money for my great uncle Ned to buy something in your sports store and you're telling me he has X amount of time to use it!?
One last thought; what if the gift card you're given doesn't work for you? You should totally be allowed to trade it in straight up. Great uncle Ned there doesn't need a gift certificate for a sports store, he's got all the hang gliding equipment he could ever want and he's not interested in anything else. So can't he walk in the door and get the $50 that I gave him in cash? No. Instead he's got to piss away $50 of my hard earned money so that he doesn't feel like I'm wasting my money on him and then he has to spend even more money on crap he doesn't want to go over the $50 I accidentally imposed on him.
In conclusion, the first thing I want to say is; don't get me wrong, if you got me a gift card this year, I'm extremely thankful. I just think that the vendors are going about this thing all wrong and incredibly greedily. You want my business? Be nice. I can easily take any of my business to your competition next year. |
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| | Saturday, January 14, 2006 10:36:57 |
I had a dream about my expenses last night. |
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| | Monday, January 9, 2006 09:24:01 |
Congress this week. Getting ready for too much work before and after hours.
Got my summons to juror yesterday in the mail. Bastards. |
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| | Monday, January 2, 2006 10:19:07 |
2006, Day 2. After recovering from New Years festivities, yesterday turned out to be a nice day. We just sat in the living room all day long. Didn't put a single kilometre on the car. That's a monumentous occasion. I fixed a couple of nagging bugs yesterday evening and got to play with Tony's new laptop. Very nice machine. It's one of the new Sony Vaios with a goregeous wide screen. I think I'm going to request one for 2006/7 budget year. You can see where they've fixed their mistakes too. The screen isn't held on the same way anymore, they have a much more rugged-looking bracket and they've made the laptop even slimmer. Plus the 15.4" wide screen is pretty sweet.
I've been arguing in my mind about how to set up some asterisk stuff and I've come up with some pretty good ideas for ways to automate a lot of the processes. It will be a pretty cool setup once I finally get some development time to get it done. |
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