Category: tech

iGone

It’s official, I ditched the iPad for the Nexus 10. My beautiful new beast arrived today! I’m so excited I can’t sit still. lol I’m still a multi-OS household but down to two now. lol I still have Windows on my laptop [1]No, I will not be upgrading to Windows 8. First time in MS history I haven’t upgraded when a new version came out.  However, I rarely crack open my laptop at all anymore. Usually, it is to write a really long email or more intensive work. If I could, I’d totally run Android on my laptop too.

This is my xmas present to myself this year. I’m still not caught up all the way yet so can’t justify spending a lot money on holiday stuff this year. It’s a wash on price so not bad for a self-gift.  I’ve already pre-sold the iPad. I sold it for just enough to cover the cost of the Nexus. I would have felt guilty making a profit, considering I won it from work. It’s going to a coworker’s little girl as a Christmas present. I threw in the Zagg keyboard/case since it won’t fit the Nexus. I’m sure she’ll love it, it’s in excellent condition.

I’m not kicking Apple & I gave it a good run. In the end, I just prefer Android. Apple gets props for setting the standard. To me, Android is more user friendly and provides for better functionality. It’s also a lot less restrictive on what I can & can’t do with it. This is my first foray into Android tablets so I’m hoping the Nexus 10 measures up. The specs are impressive and carrying the Nexus branding means it runs pure Android. [2]Which also means I get updates right away vs waiting for carrier tweaks for Android phones  So far, it’s a beauty. The display is amazing and it’s blazing fast so far. Even better, Google backs up not only your apps but also their working files. All my programs installed with all the working data! The only thing I had to manually setup was my email accounts.

My only complaint so far is some of my apps aren’t tablet ready. A minor annoyance but I can live with it. I’ll list out any big issues if anything major develops.

References

References
↑1 No, I will not be upgrading to Windows 8. First time in MS history I haven’t upgraded when a new version came out.
↑2 Which also means I get updates right away vs waiting for carrier tweaks for Android phones

Settling

Ok, I’m officially in my new hosting space. Apparently, I setup my account a bit wrong so they had to move everything around internally. I must say, while there were a few unexpected delays, the customer support team has been great. I opted for 1 month of managed shared hosting, which is a fancy way of saying I paid them to help me.  It comes with 24/7 tech support by phone, chat, email, and/or online.

I think I’m gonna be happier with them. I’m still discovering more and more how shitty 1and1 was in so many ways. I have direct access to chron jobs, apache, mysql [1]To be fair, 1and1 did give me mysql access, email filtering, IP blocking, etc. For basicaly a dollar more a month, I have so much more control over my domain and how it functions now. Some of these items are not for novices but it’s nice knowing I can use it, if and when I need it. I’ll definitely be using the chron jobs now.

In other news, I’m gonna attempt to import my old blog data into this one so I can do away with the duplicate setups. I figured since I’m moving all this stuff around, I might as well go for broke! lol I’m gonna try an XML import to avoid conflicting issues with API keys, blah blah blah. You shouldn’t notice anything significant. Well, if something goes horribly wrong you might see the domain go blank while I fix it again. lol

Another post coming today so sorry in advance for doube emails. I turned off subscribers so as to avoid bombarding everyone with emails.

References

References
↑1 To be fair, 1and1 did give me mysql access

Pings v2.0

As I settle into my new digs, you should begin to notice “likes” from Facebook showing up in the comments section. Imagine my surprise when they suddenly started showing up! I’m discovering several of my plug-in errors were caused by not by poor coding skills but my old host, 1and1.com. [1]Needless to say, I do NOT recommend anyone EVER using them. I can’t tell you how happy I am to be on a new host. If I’d know it would be this easy, I would have dumped 1and1 ages ago.

If anyone is interested, I’m now on lunarpages. My only beef so far is their tech support is only avail 24 hours by email. They do tech support by phone 7a to 7p. Not the end of the world but in this day and age you’d think it would be ubiquitous. Anyway, I’m now going back over a few of my old plug-ins to see if the original errors have been fixed.

In related news, I have like 10 or so posts backed up. lol It’s funny when I was holding off on posting due to the move, I wanted to blog about everything. heeheee Instead of dumping them on you all at once, I’ve scheduled them out every other day. Some I’ve already had to edit for relevance.

References

References
↑1 Needless to say, I do NOT recommend anyone EVER using them.

Comments

I have to give one particular spammer credit. His comments are often somewhat relevant to my blog. His email and link fields are the give away of course. But what makes me laugh is while the comments are often relevant, they are 99% of the time posted to the wrong post. I’m curious to know what program or bot he uses because the comments are almost comprehensible enough to be written by a live human…almost.

Sadly (for him), the filters are adequate enough to catch 100% of his many comments and they get moved to the trash bin w/o fail. Should you happen to be reading this, maybe if you tried spamming less, your comments would get thru.

Re-Kindle

For all 5 of you Kindle subscribers, the glitch has been fixed. You may have to re-sync your device(s) for it to show up properly.

I was loading a separate feed for the Kindle but it was causing problems. I have ditched it in lieu of the main RSS feed now.

Happy reading.

Poke

No, not what you’re thinking. However, have you logged in here lately? Moving on.

Being in a multi-device, multi-OS household, am I the only one that sometimes forgets you can’t reach up and tap the screen on your laptop or computer to move the cursor? lolol

I catch myself doing this all the time now. I’ll be on the laptop and trying to move the cursor and without thinking I’ll tap the screen expecting it to jump to my finger. I seem to be doing it more and more lately. I’ve gotten so used to being on the phone or the iPad, I’m totally conditioned to just tapping.

*tap, tap, tap* Is this thing on? 

Upgrades

I was on day shift all last week for meetings with our primary software vendor. We are in the beginning stages of upgrading our software. While with the same vendor, the new system is built new from the ground up [1]new as in newer than we have now but still mature as a product and in many ways fundamentally different from what we have now. These type of upgrades occur only a few times in the life of a call-center. With emergent technologies, it is a necessary upgrade. We must do this or jump to a whole new vendor which would be a whole a lot more money than just an upgrade. And a new system is always rough on the end users. lol

The process itself wasn’t bad albeit a bit tedious at times. I had to flex my hours for the week to accommodate the vendor schedules. While a hassle, not the end of the world and well worth it considering the impact this will have on myself (and others) as the end users. Only 2 big surprises so far. The first surprise was a functionality problem. The new system while more robust created a more tedious format for one of our daily (and constantly repeated) functions. The architecture of the new system would not allow a fix no matter how much money we might have thrown at them. We were upset because this was not properly demonstrated during the initial investigative phase. Needless to say this caused some tense conversations. My big boss happened to be in the meeting at the time and was also not amused. But, while unfortunate and most definitely annoying, it was not a deal breaker. It does mean some training issues are involved and some headaches for the end users for the first few months.

The second surprise came from a sub-vendor regarding hardware upgrades and would be a total deal breaker. The software to control the hardware had to be modified and the modifications were just not going to work for us. The sub vendor was a bit miffed and seemed completely at a loss that what they had designed wouldn’t work for us. It’s always funny watching folks who don’t routinely use the software they create get frustrated when the users don’t like it. There are certainly two sides to that coin but at the end of the day the user-base should be happy, or at the very least still be able to do everything they need to do. In this scenario, it just so happens some of SF’s daily operations are unique and created a conflict. Naturally, the fix requires more than just some drop-in code. The interface will have to be almost completely rewritten. From my perspective, I see it as poor programming as the issue deals with API calls and they wrote an interface with no flexibility. It was all or nothing and as-is, it was nothing for us. lol The good news is the vendor wants the contract bad and will bend over backwards to make it work within the budget constraints. Granted some money issues will be discussed but that is way above my pay-grade. I think we’ll end up with a decent fix.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bitching or even unhappy. I’m actually glad I got to be part of the process. Being a bit technology-inclined I had a higher-knowledge base to work from. And while I may not have understood some of the hardware terminology, I was never once lost in the process. Both my coworker and myself pointed out some real issues along the way and the main vendor was very responsive to our needs.

In the end, the project will probably remain on budget but just barely and there will be some serious code re-writes to accommodate what we need. The rewrites are going into the base code which means less headaches anytime a system patch or small upgrade is put out. As for us, there will be some definite training issues and adjustments but overall the upgrade will make life easier for us. The project won’t go live until early 2014 so still plenty of time to hammer out the details.

I was very happy my boss included us because often times a lot of very important decisions get made about software w/o the end-user being consulted. Our input helped avoid some major problems that would have been over-looked otherwise. This of course, saves us a lot of grief being stuck with a product that only partially meets our needs.

References

References
↑1 new as in newer than we have now but still mature as a product

Vs

I’ve mentioned a few times I am a multi-OS household. My laptop is PC, my smartphone is Android, and my tablet is Apple.

My rant today is about the respective app stores. They are certainly NOT created equal and I am not overly happy with the iOS market. If like me, you use both OS’s you’ll understand what I mean about the ecosystems being very different. On the Apple side, you see less free apps and more paid apps. On the Android side, you have a variety of both but often have a choice of a free (ad-supported) version vs a paid (ad-free) version. Both have their pros and cons.

For me, I prefer the Android ecosystem hands down. Primarily because there are many more demo versions of software I like/use. If I like it, I can pay for the full version. Or at the very least, if I purchase a paid only app, at least I can get a no hassle refund.

On the Apple side, there are far fewer demo or free apps. That wouldn’t bother me so much if they offered a convenient refund option like Android. While Apple does have a refund option, it is overly cumbersome and not always guaranteed. I’ve been thru 5 refund requests now and only 2 were refunded. On Android, I have 15 mins to test a paid app, if I don’t like it or it doesn’t function properly I can uninstall for a full refund. It’s all automatic, no grief, no hassle.

I can also dispel the myth that paid apps on Apple are better quality than many of the same “free” apps on Android. While it may sometimes be true, it is certainly not a guarantee. Four of the five apps mentioned above were because of functionality problems. While Apple has the advantage on the consistency of hardware specifications being the same, all apps are not created equal. I’ve found plenty that don’t work as advertised or are just poorly designed. Add that into the refund policy above, and you begin to see some mounting frustration. At least on the Android side, I have an easier time trying apps until I find one that works and/or that I like.

It is no secret I am a bigger fan of Android as an OS but Apple is still the leader in hardware and design when it comes to tablets. The iPad is beautifully designed, fully functional, versatile, and has an exceptional battery life. I love mine and am very happy with it overall. [1]Considering it was free, I ain’t bitching that hard! lol That said, Android hardware developers are fast catching up and I’d bet money within a year, you’ll see Android based tablets that are on par with the iPad. Either way, I wish Apple would climb down off their high-horse just a bit and take some cues from Android on how to make their user experience more enjoyable.

References

References
↑1 Considering it was free, I ain’t bitching that hard! lol

Current

I’ve been using Google Currents a lot lately for my news addiction. I quite like it. It works much like a desktop application in that the formatting is much smoother. It is very easy on the eyes as it has a very simple clean interface. It works on Android or Apple [1]being a mutli-OS househould has it’s challenges at times. and on phones or tablets.

The one down side is there is currently not way to sort or file your feeds into folders or groups. Everything gets it’s own little tab on the splash screen. While that is nice for a few sites, when you have well over 100 news/blog feeds like I do, that gets cluttered pretty quickly. It also makes getting from feed to feed cumbersome. You can add sites from their predefined list, any rss feed of choice, or you can sync with your existing Google RSS feed.

If you’re looking for a mobile RSS reader, I highly recommend it albeit the caveat above. Best of all, it’s free with no ads!

References

References
↑1 being a mutli-OS househould has it’s challenges at times.