iCade...

50% off, Bed Bath & Beyond...

When TV's get bored they watch the Saginaw River.

Taken at Boat Dock

ZaggMate No. 2 Fragrance

Bye heavily customized first run ZaggMate w Keyboard, with a custom
Zagg skin on it, who's little hinge prop up thingy finally snapped
off...Hello replacement updated and naked ZaggMate w Keyboard. I
really wish I could have transferred the skin to the new one, but you
can see it was only going to come off stretched and in layers.

I like the feel of these keys better though. I'm not sure what I will
do about the skin or if I will have one.

See the full gallery on Posterous

I was hoping for dance clubs

Siri...

Taken at Boat Dock

One thing I just don't get about iTunes Match...

My Top 25 Most Played auto-playlist contains 328 Songs?

Omnio WOW keys

$40 :)

I like. A lot. Might get another for home sometime. Docks, charges,
& syncs. Not too much room for people with cases on their phones.

Google Calendar textin 48368

It might be too much to ask, but I would like my Google Voice # to be
able to txt to the Google Calendar short code and be recognized.
(48368) You can only associate one number to your Calendar.

Thank you whomever cares.

Cock n Bull

Taken at Red Eye Cafe

I think if I was ever drowning I would grab onto a lime.

From Letters of Note:

My Pilot days are closing in

Late-2000, in an effort to find a sponsor for his act, stand-up comedian Mitch Hedberg wrote to the makers of his new favourite pen, The Uni-Ball Gel Impact, and suggested such a partnership. His amusing letter — or, more specifically, a draft of it as written on tour with his wife, Lynn — can be seen below.

Other examples of the late comedian's previously unseen writings can be found at the recently revamped and highly recommended Mitch Hedberg website.

Transcript follows. Image courtesy of MitchHedberg.net.

Image: MitchHedberg.net

Transcript

UNIBALL:

HI....

I AM WRITING TO THE MAKERS OF THE UNIBALL 'GEL IMPACT' PEN. UNFORTUNATELY I AM DOING SO WITH A PILOT P-500. AS OF THIS MOMENT, I HAVE YET TO LOCATE YOUR MAGNIFICENT PEN IN A STORE. AS SOON AS I FIND ONE I WILL PURCHASE ONE.

THIS IS THE DEAL....

I AM A STAND-UP COMEDIAN, MY NAME IS MITCH HEDBERG. I HAVE BEEN ON 'THE LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN' SIX TIMES. I HAVE A ½ HOUR COMEDY CENTRAL SPECIAL THAT IS PLAYED ON THE CHANNEL ALL THE TIME. I'VE MADE A GUEST APPEARANCE ON 'THAT 70'S SHOW' AND I HAVE A VERY VERY SMALL ROLE IN THE NEW CAMERON CROWE FILM, 'ALMOST FAMOUS.' I'VE DONE JUST ABOUT EVERY CABLE COMEDY SHOW AROUND.

RIGHT NOW I AM ON A TOUR IN AN RV WITH MY WIFE. OUR NEXT STOP IS RALEIGH, N.C.. ONE EVENING WE PULLED INTO A KOA TO SLEEP. I HAD TO FILL OUT A RESIGNATION SLIP AND THE SECURITY GUY HANDED ME ONE OF YOUR GEL IMPACT PENS TO DO THE JOB.

IT WAS A VERY SATISFYING WRITING EXPERIENCE TO SAY VERY LITTLE.

I WOULD LOVE TO ARRANGE A SPONSORSHIP DEAL WITH YOUR COMPANY SO I CAN PLUG THE THING. I'D BE SO HAPPY TO WEAR A UNIBALL T-SHIRT ON MY NEXT LETTERMAN SPOT. I'D PROMOTE THE PEN ANYWAY POSSIBLE.

I STILL HANDWRITE MOST OF MY JOKES. PERHAPS I WILL TYPE THEM MORE IF UNIBALL UNLEASHES A GEL IMPACT KEYBOARD. I USE PENS CONSTANTLY. YOUR PEN IS IT. I'VE TRIED BUYING EXPENSIVE PENS BUT NONE HAVE LIVED UP TO THE G.I.. SO SMOOTH AND EASY TO CONTROL.

IS THERE ANYTHING WE CAN DO TOGETHER? WOULD YOU BE INTERESTED IN CO-SPONSORING A TOUR? WE COULD PUT A LARGE BANNER ACROSS THE BACK OF THE STAGE: "GEL IMPACT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE WRITTEN VERSIONS OF THE JOKES THIS COMEDIAN IS SAYING."

I'D BE SO PROUD.

LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK AND THANKS A TON FOR READING THIS.

MY PILOT DAYS ARE CLOSING IN.

SINCERELY,

(Signed)

MITCH HEDBERG
(Address redacted)

SORRY ABOUT ANY SPELLING MISHAPS!

---

Original Page: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LettersOfNote/~3/MvmL5rA-qdI/my-pilot-days-are-closing-in.html

 775-293-8637 - pɐԀı ʎɯ ɯoɹɟ ʇuǝS

?

Uh wut? Better yet, Saginaw, don't tell me...

[Blah Blah Blah] GodFinger and wants you to join [Blah Blah Blah]

This blog just ended up being a collection of random venting when opting out of email lists doesn't work or something... So sad.  

See if you can opt-out for me?  Lol.  ngmoco sucks.  So does WeRule (crashes, and no the new versions don't fix anything) and GodFinger lost any "it was pretty cool" love when I get these stupid messages daily despite repeatedly opting out.

From: Plus+ <donotreply@plusplus.com>
Date: Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 4:11 AM
Subject:  is playing GodFinger and wants you to join

	O' Wondrous One! YOUR MOMMA has invited you to play GodFinger, the social god game for the iPhone and iPod Touch! Join now to start populating your planet with Followers, earning gold and buying items to customize your world. GodFinger is FREE. Download it to become a god now!

Don't want to receive these emails? Opt-out here

Eat Some Voicemail

If you read this blog AND if you like going straight to voicemail you should totally take advantage of this opportunity presented below. Ahh Technology.

Quickpost.

I have made $0.27 from this blog over the course of it's time on teh interwebs. Being that this blog cost nothing, it's pure profit, baby. I don't think I'll ever see it because it has to hit somewhere around $100(?) for Google to send me a check. By my calculations I would also have to make around 370 blog sites that ran for 3 years each to make that much. That's a whole lot of blogs about not caring; sure I'd be internet rich and drunk with the resulting power, but what would this do to the world's motivation? I just thought about it, and I can't live with the guilt already.

Thoughts I shouldn't be sharing.

TOMSShoes.com, man.

I saw an ad. That's where you can get shoes that are made Vegan-Friendly or something. I think I have an open mind, but I had not heard of such a thing; I assume it to mean these shoes must have some kind of nutritional value. Makes sense. There's always that chance you could be on a desert island with nothing more than a volleyball and the shoes on your feet. And in that case, you can't be stuck there wearing shoes you can't eat, on principle, after all. "People are going to laugh at you." - You just know when they find you, they will eat your shoes. You might dismiss this new trend as we all have some shoes on our feet, but I can see it now: you aren't going to want to be the one at the party who only brought the shoes on their feet to pass around. These days you have to be considerate.

Don't think Vegans are the only people craving a good forkfull of natural performance footwear. The Omnivores have their own shoes, as do the strict Carnivores. This can only be because the Vegans have put their stake in the ground and declared an end to the one-size-fits all approach to edible footwear. Apparently all these people are picky when it comes to eating them some shoes. I don't see it as that and my mom would agree. If she knew about this, she'd say any growing person needs some protein. So, I'm not going to judge them if they eat their own Keds, nibble away at Mr Pumpkin Feet's new shoes, or scarf down someone's Crocs. (Maybe the Crocs.) I don't call that picky, I call that knowing what makes you feel good, and a big size 14 cabbage shoe would probably make a Vegan feel good. They need that. They can walk home in the rain puddles, take off those cabbages, rub their feet a little, and immediately munch away after peeling off the outside leaves, of course. You can't just go substituting your happiness in place of what someone wants. You certainly can't when it comes to their nutritional needs. You have to give them the shoes they want in their mouth, when they want it.

That's TOMSShoes.com, man. Don't forget to ask about their soy-based socks and their open-tofu sandals.

Loldak

Computerese translation: Prepare for another round of extortion!

Hmm....

Lol ->

Oh, God, Dejavu. I hope it's not measured in ZDMT:

Cold Summer Re-Re-Visited

As my only subscriber to this blog, I thought I would give myself a nostalgic treat. Back in 04 I wrote something that I keep coming back to for some reason, reading it over, and realizing not much has changed in my thinking at times like this. Something feels off, and I don't know what it is. It's hard to explain how I feel when I feel like this, but this 04 post seemed to do it. Not much of my writing is even readable by me years afterwards - But this is. I don't know why, but I've been feeling down for the past week. It's not exactly depression, I'm not sure what it is. My anal-ytical side wants to think it's complaining about really having nothing to complain about, but that's too emo for me to accept. I just read this when I'm in those moods, and I feel better somehow.

What I really want to know is why I feel compelled to go to the trouble to repost it for a 3rd time. I want to think that maybe somewhere in the universe someone reads it and says, 'Woah. Now how the hell do I feel better from this?" Maybe they know actually, whereas I do not. My first reaction to me if I was in the mood to talk to myself after reading myself would be, "Oh this is your cry for help, attention, emotion." Nope. If you find this, take it in, but realize I'm not after any of the aforementioned responses, that's why it ends up here. By the way, I chuckle at the hallway of blood part, but the rest is all real. I really did break my safety glasses that day.

Cold Summer

It's one of those days...Ok, It's not. At least...I don't think it is. I mean it...COULD be, and I'm just too oblivious to see it. Well then again, it might...NOT be, and I'm paranoid and just wonder if it is or
could be. You see, I woke up this morning, but I'm not really awake. It is summer, yet it is cold. I went to work and didn't exactly 'work'. I went to lunch, without having lunch. During that time I relaxed with my GameBoy, while being annoyed and frustrated by the game. After...lunch, I came back to...work. I'm now writing this without writing about something; I guess that I'm not really writing. I can also say I'm 'not writing' this in Notepad, in other words, I'm 'not blogging' this and doing so without my blog. I'm listening to music right now without being able to hear it. Earlier, my safety glasses...broke when they fell. At my job I manage to manage without someone to manage and without having a manager. And, I report to no one, only you, right now: And there is nothing to report.

Yes, a day of insignificance, July 8th, 2004, made significant by writing this and now a part of my history recorded on this insignificant website. Compounding all this, I figure I shouldn't be afraid of impending unknowns; while a part of me says I should be. But one thing I'm sure of is that if the proverbial tree falls in the forest, and I'm not there to hear it: I won't care about it one bit, but I'm pretty sure I might "not write" about it. I mean, is there much difference between this body of text and "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" written 10,000 times? Maybe. The difference is if Jack had a copy and paste function in notepad, he might have had more time to play with the twins in the hall of blood.

And if all this confuses you and doesn't make any sense, then you understand, completely.

Time to paste this to my blog.

Ziff Davis Mean Time ZDMT

I mean, really, Ziff Davis? How long does that signal take to reach one side of your Borg collective? Back in 2007 you said it may take up to 7 days. Like some people say that God created the world in 7 days but it was like really lonnnnng days spanning millions of years. That kind of 7 days is when I will be unsubscribed, apparently.

Exhibit 1 - Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Exhibit 2 - Wednesday, October 31, 2007 (OMG Again)

Exhibit 3 - Monday, September 24, 2007

Today, you slipped an email past my handmade filters that automatically 'unsubscribe' me from the mailing list that is immune to any unsubscription - Yours. As an excercise in futility I clicked on the unsubscribe link. Strangely absent were the words 'it may take up to 7 days...." I now see the wording up top. I guess they confused too many people with their "God Days".

Once you enter this world, kids, you can never leave it...

If my crap isn't selling when it's free, then it must be time to start charging people. That way they know it has value. http://ping.fm/zINrb

Kodakian Extortion

Kodakian Extortion
Originally uploaded by jeffdiogenes

So check this out. I have like one picture on Kodak's photo sharing/storage
site, but not for long. I signed up because of relatives telling me how
super awesome this site was for getting prints (never do that!) and having
private pictures.
I disagree. Looks like they employ extortionists in their sales and
marketing departments.

In 2009, not being able to store 1gig at least of photos free in a service
online is a a shame and a crime against humanity in general.

I implore the world to not give into this extortion, there's photobucket,
flickr, picasa out there and they don't want to hold pictures of your
children for ransom.

SEND FIVE DOLLARS (a month) OR THE ONLY COPY YOU HAVE OF LITTLE BILLY NEXT
TO GOOFY IN THE MAGIC KINGDOM GETS IT. Wtf?

Viva La Retirement(!)

Viva La Retirement(!)
Originally uploaded by jeffdiogenes

I think I'll be cashing in this part of my tim hortons retirement plan, tomorrow.

Gladly

Gladly
Originally uploaded by jeffdiogenes

Please play again?
Yup, I will.

Bob E. Saturday

Bob E. Saturday
Originally uploaded by jeffdiogenes

She sits with a zen-like expression of content with the order she placed.

Mostly Testing Something

Mostly Testing Something
Originally uploaded by jeffdiogenes

Signed Perceptionists Album.

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." - Frank Zappa

Meijer parking lot.

200902081439_00006.jpg
Originally uploaded by jeffdiogenes

Meijer parking lot. Snow was just melting after basically all winter, looks as if it uncovered this TV. I think about 10 years ago *someone* would have taken it home and at least tried it. Nope........EVERYONE knows it's probably not HD-TV Ready.

Lol.

IMPORTANT BLOG POST

Tim Horton's now serves an appropriate and non-offensive quantity of coffee. Super Large.

Maybe Howard Dean Can Be Someone's Surgeon General...

A Political Blog Post.
I try to avoid this crap on my blog because there are plenty of places you get your news and politics, but this one issue is a BIG one for me, so I want to vent... The points I am making are things I have yet to see mentioned elsewhere. This video should also be titled "My Family's Ultimate Reason to Not Vote McCain". First, watch it:

I'll make a few statements here in an effort to convey my problem with McCain's idea:
1) Waiting for a medical problem to get so bad that you can go to the emergency room does not equate to good health care. However, many people are forced to take this route because they have no other options. Yes, they get a choice, expensive Emergency Room care that they will likely never be able to pay back, or suffer. If you were in that position tell me you would rather suffer just to not have some unseen "someone else" pay your emergency bills? Convince me I'm wrong if you want.
2) The same type of people who complain that Walmart is destroying the small businesses in every community would hypocritically see this idea as a good one. But they are also the ones that don't want universal government health care because they fear they will have to go to a Dr. the government tells them to go to. They want their fancy doctors with a "I got mine, too bad for you, loser" attitude. Because, in their mind, not everyone deserves the absolute best medical attention. A sort of "I am not my brother's keeper" philosophy. Convince me I am wrong.
3) Doc In A Boxes - You know, the Redi-Med offices, and those sorts of places - are a lot of people's only option for common, but non-emergency warranting health problems. We have this sort of idea McCain is talking about right now, but competitively. Why then does it make sense to him to be basically proposing that one company be given a monopoly to dispense health care. Convince me I am wrong.
4) Even if I suspend disbelief in this idea and try to let him convince me by brainwashing myself with it on repeat, he comes off as not knowing what the hell he's talking about.

Here's an idea! McCain should just propose the average person pay for this Walmart Emergency Room Service with food stamps! Then you can choose between this awesome minimal healthcare for Sally's broken arm, or food for all of your kids....CHOICES!

Convince me I am wrong. Oh and try to do it without mentioning the words Republican or Democrat, because that will automatically mean to me that you are looking at this with a closed partisan mindset.

Oh no way ZD!?!?!

I don't write much but man how inspiring: Ziff Davis filing bankruptcy... If anyone cares really. I know I do, it means I have to look at less auto-deleted ZD mail when I look in my email trash.

See previous posts for why they suck and where they went wrong in my eyes.

Bastards.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a6bISm6.ln5E&refer=home

DOWN WITH THE ZD BORG COLLECTIVE!!!!

Red lobster

Out on the town...not sure what's covered in butter sauce most here...
Shrimp?
Lobster legs?
Scampi?
The baked potato?
Or
Becca?

-Jeff @ Mobile

OMG again

Ok so yeah, I can attest that this afternoon's Ziff Davis unsubscription was not successful since I got the same damn email from the same damn people about the same damn thing to the same damn work email address. Duplicate. SPAM.

Guess I'll have to filter anything with Windows AND Games AND Magazine in it. Good going Ziff, way to create some brand awareness for your client.

On a related note, let me ask you Ziff-y-o, how's business been?

Ziff Davis is worse than a Russian Viagra Spammer

I like to quote myself, as well as talk over and over about the same old crap:

Previously in The Real World:

You see it takes 7-10 days for light to travel from one coordinate in the Ziff Davis Borg Hive to the emailing list coordinates. No wonder my request gets lost. It wasn't really lost, it was assimilated!

A bit of more Ziff Davis spam got past my "manual unsubscription" technique where any crap they send me goes directly to the trash. I've tried to unsubscribe for years, but as I have written before, that doesn't work.

It was sent without the words Ziff AND Davis and came from Games for Windows: The Official Magazine, a magazine I don't care for nor ever heard of. I know I didn't sign up for Xbox or PC Gaming crap coming to my work email address, but yet here is this mail.

Also, I did have a slight bit of paranoia regarding the spam they sent. It was signed by what must be my Ziff Davis Doppelganger Drone, Jeff Green, Editor-in-Chief, Games for Windows: The Official Magazine.

OOooooeEEEEEEoooooOOooooo.

Classmates.com is a scam in my opinion

I don't know about you, but I don't appreciate the trickery at classmates.com. You've seen the ads..if you have never tried it, here's what to expect:

You go there and see that a number of names are available of people you went to highschool with. You go to click on a name and it allows you to send that person a message.

Hey! What's that name there... That's my old neighbor I grew up with! I'll send her a message! At no point was I made aware that in order for my message to be read, either her or I had to pay these extortionists a $23 a year subscription. Well I sent that message months ago and now I get a notification she wants to read it, but neither of us are 'Gold' members so she can't actually see the message they let me send. NEAT! What a great system! Bait n Switch for the web is what this is.

The email you sent can't be read, Jeffrey.
Go Gold

Let friends read it!
Activate your Gold membership now.
Once you're Gold, friends can read the 1 message you've sent. Even better! As long as you're a Gold member, it's free for them to reply, so you might get a friendly note back.

You'll also get access to these Gold perks:



See guestbook names

Gab on message boards

Plan events and reunions

Bite.
My.
Ass.

So I'll never see what my old neighbor said because there is no way I'm paying $23 for less than 1k of data I actually care about. So Crista, if you are ever reading this, sorry, but that's just jacked and I'm not going to support that model of extortion. Unethical really.

These people work for Ziff Davis or something?

Ziff Davis is dead to me...DEAD

Dear Ziff Davis Publishers,

Much like I take time out of my day to hit 'Report Spam' on each of the emails your conglomeration sends me for the past 5 years, I am taking time to write this entry. I have just finished writing a filter that sends every message with the word 'Ziff' in it to my email trash. There, that should FINALLY get me off all your email lists. Yes I know, there is no actual conceivable way to actually get off a Ziff Davis mailing list. You hit the link to unsubscribe that is provided in the email, it sends you to a form where you can unsubscribe. You fill that out, and next page of the form tells you it may take 7-10 days to fully remove you from the email list. Sure seems like a long time, being that we are part of the INTERNET AGE. But I wait, hell I've marked "10 days" on the calendar each time I've done this. Yet, the messages, continue, every, day.

Sure, I hit the "mark as spam" button but then I realized, you will never be blocked as spam since your company is, 'somewhat legitimate.' - Because you provide a unsubscribe link.

You see it takes 7-10 days for light to travel from one coordinate in the Ziff Davis Borg Hive to the emailing list coordinates. No wonder my request gets lost. It wasn't really lost, it was assimilated!

I wouldn't write this if I didn't care who you've turned into. I used to enjoy reading each complimentary issue of eWeek back when our office was still 'pooling modems' to get everyone on the internet. You were pretty spammy then with 4-5 subscription cards falling out of each issue. You were pretty spammy telling me every 2 weeks for 2 years that unless I fill out your online form that I will never get an issue of eWeek again.

Around that time, I really hoped you were serious, as we had moved to a DSL line at the office for internet. My need for news concerning my industry was being taken care of by multiple sites 'run by amateurs'. Sure, the amateurs weren't even close to acting like a journalism unit most of the time, but they had the story in front of me as soon as they wrote it. By the time eWeek showed up in the mail, I had already read all the stories. Amateurs or not, they beat your professional pants off in doing what news should do: BE NEW.

Eventually you got a clue and stopped sending me threatening messages and eWeek issues. I'm surprised you didn't send your mother over with a pie to try and mend our differences really.

While I'll probably eat the pie she brings over, I'm definitely not going to forget how you treated me these last few years. You didn't grow with me, ignored me, and we grew apart. I let go of this relationship, I think it's time you move on too.

Rhoda Stevens (Baker) Tree

Rhoda Stevens (Baker) Tree
Originally uploaded by jeffdiogenes

School Is Over

School Is Over
Originally uploaded by jeffdiogenes

We had no idea how to celebrate.

Troll Ninja Stalker at Red Eye

Troll Ninja Stalker at Red Eye
Originally uploaded by jeffdiogenes

-Jeff

Geni.com

Geni.com is pretty much amazing to me. It's a genealogy site ("boring Jeff, boring!") but has more of a social network kind of look and feel to it. You put in your parents, spouses, and siblings and you can be done there if you want. However, the neat-o cool thing is you can invite those people to your tree via their E-Mail and they can also add whatever they want. Sort of like a wiki family tree in that sense.

I've tried all those "other" genealogy sites along the way but none of them ever made me feel like putting in my mother's maiden name in the wide-open web was a good idea. I'M LOOKING AT YOU ANCESTRY.COM. In Geni, privacy and information seems to have found a balance. Geni is also in a completely different universe from those other sites in terms of design, usefulness, and functionality. A good, different, universe.

I don't want to sit here and describe all the cool things about this site. You'll see them yourself if you are interested. If not, give your mom a link to it, I bet she'll get right into it.

I found a video for it if you want a little more info:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid271552949/bctid769369612

Omg's 30boxes.com + Facebook

More 30boxes evangelism to mention: It seems, and I haven't checked it they've announced it or anything, but my 30b account is now allowing me to link it to my Facebook account. Its able to pull Birthdays in, and looks like it will help me track that Face-time-suck-book site.

Omg's.

Omgs.

That is all.

Wait, no...

Omgs.

Friday is Douglas Adams' Towel Day

And Becca will be all set, for her towel hath arrived.

Originally uploaded by jeffdiogenes.
Friday is Douglas Adam's Towel Day

-Jeff @ Mobile

Speak and Tweet (Jott to Twitter)

First off, let me thank 30boxes for doubling my blog traffic readership to 3* with their brief mention of this post from this Tweet. Yes, soon afterwards, my wife decided to actually read my blog. Thank you 30boxes. Of course she's leaving me, and taking the cat, now that she's found out I've been posting pictures of her eating at various restaurants. But she's still got me 'on follow' on Twitter and probably can't stop the notifications. Joke's on her, that cat stinks.

Oh and I think because of that, I'm back down to 2 readers.

Thank you both.

And thanks to amuse for inviting me a few weeks back to try out egorcast. I remained steadfastly silent about my experience, but a comment to that Jott to 30boxes post from a dude named Bob at ladow.net prompted me to go back to amuse and ask if it was ok to share the site with others. After mulling on it for a couple hours, weighing whether replying to my email was worth his time for exposure to my 3 2 readers, he typed up a reply and accidentally hit Send.

So now that the door has been busted down for both of you, I can speak freely about egorcast. If you use Jott.com (or don't) and hoped you could just Tweet away without having to type that crap from your phone....egorcast fills that void. You sign up, and then it gives you a special email address to add to your Jott contacts. When you Jott to that contact, the Jott shows up in Twitter. It also works with filling the void between Jott and Jaiku.com (it's like Twitter, sorta) and WordPress Blogs (which this blog is not.)

So for Bob, dude, if yer still around, there ya go: Jott to Twitter.

Now I bet my wife will wish she didn't leave me before I setup her egorcast account. HA!

*I rounded down because I don't read what I post, either.

More 30Boxes & AdSense Gaydar

2 quick things:

• 30boxes.com has added full To-Do functionality to their site. Me likes. If you happened to have followed my instructions earlier this week on how to Jott to 30boxes, you may care to know that it works for the new 30boxes.com to-do's. The catch is, when you call, you have to spell out "T-O-D-O" instead of saying "To Do." Just mentioning it because it might not be obvious at first. Then again, I'm probably the only one calling his calendar up and talking to it...I tell ya, it makes you feel like you have a secretary...
  
• As I was about to write this post I noticed AdSense has developed some Gaydar? Maybe my posts scream "I'm GAY!!!!!" I don't know. And it's not like I'm offended, more like I just had a flashback of some Football Jock saying that to me in High School... 'Cept now that Football Jock is some Complex Phd'd Google Algorithm.
  However if I ever see it trying to taunt me with the "Beat it" song, then I'm totally going to assume Google and all the Jocks at my old High School have found me. And that it's a conspiracy.

Compuuuter Maaan

Did you read the previous post? No, I didn't either, and I wrote it. Hey pictures and video! I'm just posting this because this is, you know, the way I am every day.



And these 2 videos have nothing to do with being a Computer Guy, but they have Jack Black and I noticed them linked off the video above. I never saw them before now. Pretty weird.

Every point of this post is true

I just read a completely perfect post titled, "10 Reasons it doesn't pay to be the computer guy."

A snip:

Reason #5 - People Ask You To Perform Miracles

The computer guy is often mistaken for someone who possesses the combined skills of an old priest and a young priest. I’ll sum this up easily by example:

“No, I really can’t recover any files from your thumb drive, even if you did find it after it passed through your dog.”

All of it is true, sadly - but that doesn't mean I hate my job. Go read it if you want to understand more about my job:

• It is really a 24/7 job
• It is generally unrewarding when things are going right
• Why the hell don't I charge the people at work to fix their home computers.
• Why I don't make housecalls outside of helping people at work

In other news, you will fail to read it because you won't care. Everything falls in line! That's what I'm here for! :)

2007 SVSU Business Expo

2007 SVSU Business Expo
Originally uploaded by jeffdiogenes.

I'm like a sandwich, a sandwich for the INSANE.

This is a followup post, sorta, to the one I wrote yesterday.... And I guess this will prove how nerdy I am and leave you wondering how much time I have on my hands. (The truth is, I won't be able to get anything done if I don't get this off my chest. It's a mental condition.) I'll lay out the ingredients:

• 1 30boxes account. http://30boxes.com
• 1 Jott account. http://jott.com
• 1 Gmail account. http://gmail.com
• 1 Cell Phone.

I haven't talked much about Jott, but I'll briefly describe it as a way to send email using your voice. You call a 800#, speak the name of the person you want to Jott (or say 'Myself') and then speak your message. Your message is transcribed by computer and then emailed or text messaged to the person or person's phone. As added insurance against bad transcription, it sends the person a link to the original audio.

You may have seen in a few past posts that I was trying to Jott directly to my blog. That worked, and is kinda cool but barely useful since Jott is designed for short messages. To do it, I setup a Jott contact with the "email-to-post" address. When I call in, I say Blogger and whatever I say shows on the blog.

But like I said, thats barely useful. Like I might use it at a party sometime to divert people from striking up a conversation with me and have them talk to my blog. But, what I am finding is useful is having a 30boxes contact setup. Now since 30boxes doesn't have a special personalized email-in address it would be hard for them to know who the Jott was from (it comes across as notify@jott.com).... But this is where the wonderful Gmail comes in. Because Gmail allows YouEmailName+SomeWordHere@gmail.com, I can set up a filter in Gmail to automatically forward any message sent to jeffdiogenes+MySecret30BoxesWord@gmail.com to add@30boxes.com. Now 30boxes knows who it's from.

I seriously didn't expect at this point for 30boxes to be able to pick the actual content out from the rest of the email, but Oh My God, it does.

So now, imagine me on I-75 dutifully trying not to get killed while driving:

• Call Jott -> "Who do you want to Jott?"
• Say 30boxes -> "Beeeeeep"
• Say "Some Stupid Event, Next Tuesday at 4pm"

And it's magically on my calendar. On the right day, at the right time. Freakin easy.

Overkill? I guess the perspective depends on if you are on my side of I-75 while I'm trying to enter a calendar reminder before I forget it, on my PocketPC, with a stylus, at, 70+, miles, per, hour....

By the way, I also leave myself stikkits the same way. At some other point I may post about this: www.stikkit.com, but I think I have confused you all enough for one day.

Calendar Sanity

I'm in love with 30boxes.com. I don't know why, really. If I had to pin down a reason, it's because until this site, Becca didn't want to enter in all the birthdays and anniversaries she tracks into a computer. Every year I suggested she put it into Outlook or ANYTHING, just get it off paper.

She did what I guess a lot of people do: Every year, manually copy down all the notes and events to the next year's wall calendar/planner. I personally can't do that because my mind is always in "how can I do this on a computer instead" mode since about age 12. Just makes sense to me to have a computer handle remembering the things that repeat.

Plus her fear of computers doesn't help.

In her case, every year, it would get later and later into the year before she had this manual "upload" to the next calendar completed. If you were born between January and April, you might want to consider moving your birthday to about mid-May. Now that she's entered it, she doesn't have to do it next year.

So what did 30boxes have that Outlook didn't? It was a pretty calendar? That's one guess. Was it the fact it shows the forecast automatically on the calendar? Maybe. Was it because it has a natural language entry? ("Mom's Birthday, March 10" becomes a recurring yearly birthday). That's another guess. Text message reminders to her cell phone a day or two before? That's another good guess. I don't know really. Google Calendar could have done all this (maybe without the pretty calendar part?) but she just didn't like it like she liked 30boxes.

If you want to know why she likes it, you probably should ask her. I like it because "she can use it." That's all that matters to me, that a calendar exists that she will actually use.

From the nerd perspective, it even makes me like it a ton. It has the most options, settings, features, you name it, of any calendar I have tried online. It finds MySpace, LiveJournal blog, and shows them on my calendar if I want. It shows Becca's calendar on my calendar (cuz I want!) It shows my Google Calendar on my Calendar. It shows my Twitter.com on my calendar. I can email add @ 30boxes.com with a subject line of "Mom's Birthday, March 10" and it would add that to my calendar.

I donated some cash their way the other day, and received the shirt pictured. And just so you know, I didn't realize I was getting a shirt until after I donated.

If you sign up, and want to watch/stalk me, as always, I'm jeffdiogenes@whatever.

Yar Yar It's My Visual DNA

After reading a LiveJournal of a friend I did this silly VisualDNA thing. I'm still not sure why I did.

But their homepage does kind of creep me out.

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

[Jott from Jeff Sieggreen] This is going from Jott to blogger.

Jott From Jeff Sieggreen

This is going from Jott to blogger.

Listen to audio Set reminders, assign, and manage this jott on Jott.com Brought to you by Jott Networks, Inc.

[Jott from Jeff Sieggreen] Instant Jott

Jott From Jeff Sieggreen

Instant Jott

Listen to audio Set reminders, assign, and manage this jott on Jott.com Brought to you by Jott Networks, Inc.

Trying to email to blog without accepting the link

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around

http://mail.yahoo.com



----

By the way, why would I use a free email service that puts it's crap at the bottom of my emails automatically?

Ahhhhhhhh...

Ahhhhhhhh...
Originally uploaded by jeffdiogenes.

Smoke Break!

Trip to Culver's

Before Culvers:

After:

In the waiting area waiting.




Just playing around with this stuff. Here's a GPS trail of our trip.

Center: 43.450596, -84.038334
NW corner: 43.4950770, -84.1143622
SE corner: 43.4061150, -83.9623058

Map type: US: USGS topo map (2m; 2000px)

Width × height: 2000 × 1612 pixels
Resolution: 6.14 meters/pixel

North-south extent: 9.87 km (6.1329219 mi.)
East-west extent, at center: 12.26 km (7.6179962 mi.)
East-west extent, at top: 12.25096 km (7.612379 mi.)
East-west extent, at bottom: 12.26904 km (7.6236134 mi.)


If you have Google Earth you can trace our steps in this KMZ file http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/display/1175456510-13405-66.188.39.82.kmz
http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/display/kml_overlay/1175456720-14570-66.188.39.82.kmz


Tool used: http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/

Andy and Work

Andy and Work
Originally uploaded by jeffdiogenes.

Adopted.

Amero Article

Dear Mr Smith and Editors of The Norwich Bulletin

I read your article in the Norwich Bulletin (http://www.norwichbulletin.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070328/NEWS01/703280344 ), and the following statement caused me to write to your organization directly:
"Amero never denied the porn appeared on the computer. She said she had done everything she could to prevent the children from seeing the computer screen that day. The examination of her computer showed she had accessed the Internet for nearly the entire school day, with porn sites accessed for several hours during that time."

I find that this is misleading to the average person, and any IT Support/Computer Guy worth his salt automatically knows the truth hiding behind your article. It is this paragraph that tells me that you, as a reporter of facts, are not aware that pop-ups and spy ware will run and use the Internet all day if a computer is left on. This would cause Internet activity, you know.

Said differently: If you, as a reporter, reporting on technology, are unaware that pop ups and spy ware can access the internet all day without you knowing or seeing it, how would a teacher know? How can her ignorance as a schoolteacher make her liable? Most people don't know that if you close a pop up, it could very well still be running;

People. like. you.

The real story you missed (I think) is why didn't the school district prevent access to those sites? I bet if you ask if there is an internet filter they will say yes. If you ask why did it let porn images come in via pop up on a classroom's computer? Are they just letting porn through their firewall and letting the teacher take the blame? The Information Technology administrator of that school district should get 40 years in prison for letting porn through to the entire school, not the teacher that tried to stop the pop ups. At least she tried to shield the kids from it.

My experience on this planet tells me somehow you won't care, you got "your story" out there, and more exposure to your publication has been obtained. At least I know if I ever come across another Norwich Bulletin article, I'll be skeptical that any important details are actually correct or fact-checked.

Regards,

Jeff

The Quest for Portable Music & Podcast Sanity

Oy.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my trusty 20GB Rio Karma music player hath passed away almost at the ripe age of 4. I mourned my loss not just for the music but the personal attachment I had to that gadget. It did everything I wanted, the way I wanted and the way I expected. You could throw any type of music file at it and it would never tell you you couldn't play it. iTunes songs? It played em. DRM'd (that you buy online that you can only play on 1 or 2 machines/devices.) Music Files? It played em. Wacky non-standards-compliant VBR MP3's? Played.

You wouldn't believe the amount of crappy music players out there on the market right now. I know people love their iPods, but they are pretty proprietary and add a extra layer of hassle (iTunes) I don't want. Everything out there seems to want to protect you from your own music by introducing proprietary music loading software on your PC. Everything I looked at made me cringe in one way or another. Example: Microsoft's PlaysForSure certified or Microsoft's Zune certified? Do I even want to choose one over the other, or these both over competing technologies?

No. In fact...HELL NO. I don't know what the music industry thinks, but it seems to think everyone's got time to dink around with their music collection handpicking songs to put on so they can listen to the same songs over and over until it's reloaded with more handpicked songs. Oh I know, you can have iTunes randomly pick songs and shuffle them on your player, but even then, iTunes would double or triple my music library file space when it imports my existing collection into a iTunes library. I still fail to see the point in that system...but anyway....

Also, whatever I did get would have to be able to interface with podcasts easily.

Music players on the market as it stands now, just plain suck with the exception of some iRiver hard drive products. There, now you don't have to go find out for yourself the hard way. That still left me with the problem of no music player for the car. I had to find something, or I was going to go with the iRiver units, but even that wasn't "Like my Rio" because there was no network jack on the iRiver units. Boy that was a nice feature, my Rio accessible from any computer on the network at my house....

Before I made my decision I thought it would be a good time to give the current PocketPC Music Player software market another look. Before the Rio I tried using my PocketPC to play music, and yeah, it worked, but not without it's own hassles. Things like choppy music on certain VBR MP3's, lousy Filename/Tag support, and very very limited space on the storage cards killed the novelty off quick back then.

This time around, there are numerous freeware and shareware music players competing for a PocketPC owner's love. Add to this that my PocketPC needs have evolved since then and I am now using a PocketPC Phone. How well can a music player work on this phone? Also, how can I get my Phone with it's proprietary 1/8" stereo/mic, headset jack to play on my car stereo?

Oy. At this point, I think maybe my needs are too complicated....

I spent some time on this, and after trying many many many music programs, I found myself REALLY liking Pocket Player. Like, alot. It can handle all the music I throw at it as well as has support for some formats I never heard of. It wins in that department. I can bore you with some more details but just know its hands down the most user-friendly, customizable, kick-ass PocketPC music program out there.

With one problem, it is kinda crappy about the way it handles podcasts over a slow internet connection like my mobile phone has. (You see we live in a 2ndary market which means I get slow internet and everyone else south of Flint, MI gets fast EV-DO internet.) Over my slow connection, the podcasts can't be "live streamed" unless I want to listen to a very choppy podcast that pauses every 5 seconds. Which I don't. Ever. I don't neccesarily need to have a streamed podcast, I'd appreciate it downloading the whole thing in the background so I can play it later, but thats not how PocketPlayer handles it's podcasts. So now we add to the list.

Where are we? This is what I need: "Something I can use to play downloaded Podcasts, that picks random songs from my music, picks new music I downloaded and haven't heard, have it all play thru my car stereo ,and automatically get music on this PocketPC Phone - without me thinking."

Yes, ok, I'll admit, I'm my own worst enemy on this one. But, it turns out, it can actually be done. And I will admit it's not super slick but it works the way I need it.

Recipe:
1 PocketPlayer (You may substitute the default PocketPC Media Player, it's not too bad)
1 PPCTechs.com - Sprint PPC-6700 3.5mm Stereo Headphone Adapter with Built-In Mic & Answer Button (P/N: PPCPADPT20)
1 Generic Radio Shack Tape Cassette Adapter
1 Juice (Formerly iPodder)
1 Windows Media Player (meh)
1 PodNova.com account (optional)


Heres how it works:
I setup a PodNova.com account and then tell it what podcasts I want to subscribe to. I download Juice (freeware) that reads my PodNova.com account and pulls in the subscriptions and begins downloading the latest episodes automatically. I could skip the PodNova account, but I like being able to add a podcast from home or from work while I'm thinking about it rather than wait until I'm at work to re-find them to add to Juice. These episodes are dumped into a folder in my music collection called !Podcasts. Juice also handles cleaning up old episodes. Then in Media Player I setup an Auto-Generated-Playlist that will add anything under a week old that is in the !Podcast folder. I then assign that playlist to auto-sync to my PocketPC Phone using the sync feature of Windows Media Player. I also assign another playlist to find any new music from that week that I downloaded but hasn't been played. And if that wasn't enough, there's a 3rd playlist that will randomly pick crap from my collection just to fill it up. So everytime I put my PocketPC Phone in the cradle to sync my contacts and stuff, it's syncing those 3 playlists.
When I go to work, lunch, or back home I hook the PocketPC Phone up to the PPCTechs adapter which is hooked up to the RadioShack Cassette adapter that then plays through my car stereo.

And it sounds great in case you are wondering. PocketPlayer and the default PocketPC Media Player will also both pause the music if a phonecall comes in, and then it will start playing again from where it left off. Nice feature. And because the PPCTechs adapter has the mic and answer button, when a call comes in I hit that button to answer and talk to the other person hands-free. I even found a nice minimalist "skin" for PocketPlayer that you see to the right. It's black. It's functional.

So finally, a music setup I can use to play music. I'll admit to two drawbacks, 1) 1gig memory card on my PocketPC is not the 20gig I am used to on the Rio, but that's ok because I'm constantly syncing the PocketPC anyhow so 1gig ends up being "just right". The Rio did have an automatic shuffle and sync option but the program would have to be running for it to do that. I didn't sync very often because of that. And 2) It seems I have to manually delete songs I no longer want from the PocketPC for it to put more stuff on. That hasn't been a real problem because most of the time I want to listen to it at least once before it gets pulled off the player.

And because I did it all on my PocketPC Phone, I didn't need to buy a separate $100-$400 music player.

Yay!

And just so you don't think I wrote this all the while thinking my audience cares, this is the aPathetic blog, don't think that I don't know that you don't care. :)

Billy In Action

Billy in The Butt Hutt