On my way to Orange County, California (via Phoenix). It’s been a while since I had to fly and I am really hopeful my airport experience will be more positive than usual.
Yeni and I have had this one Bob Marley song stuck in our heads recently, so I leave you with:
Don’t worry about a thing,
’cause every little thing gonna be all right.
Don’t worry about a thing,
cause every little thing gonna be all right!
Rise up this morning,
Smiled with the rising sun,
Three little birds
Pitch by my doorstep
Singing sweet songs
Of melodies pure and true,
Saying this is my message to you.
Singing: don’t worry bout a thing,
’cause every little thing gonna be all right.
Singing: don’t worry about a thing,
’cause every little thing gonna be all right!
I attended Ann Arbor’s Cloud Camp yesterday at Google (in… Ann Arbor). Was a great “un-conference” about cloud computing and such. Took a few pictures and enjoyed the afternoon.
Ann Arbor DDA, you massively fail. If you were a ship, you’d be the titanic…
Can you believe in today’s world that a government agency would conspire and discuss the control of public information? What if that information was a top secret as… parking space availability?
I’ve posted an article on VoIP Tech Chat detailing the Ann Arbor DDA doing just that. My response to them is at the end… Please enjoy.
GoDaddy had some sort of “issue” that had this site down most of the day… Can you believe it? The nerve of them to mess with fredposner.com. Geesh.
Anyway, we’re back online and I’d love to share a new geeky blog post I wrote: Diff’rent VoIP for Diff’rent Folks. Oh, and I was interviewed by the Ann Arbor Chronicle about the parking lot application. The preliminary video is on YouTube… But I also have a version below
Update — apparently the site was down due to a denial of service attack.
(You should also take a look at Homeless Dave’s site for more interviews)
Welcome to Fred’s weekly review for the first “real” week of 2009. What did Fred do this week? Will Fred stop talking in third person? This and many more questions await you in this fantastic update.
Ok — so for the purposes of “whatever” I’m starting a week I guess on Saturday – Friday (if you’re keeping track, the answer to the 3rd person question is ‘Yes’). This week, I:
Yesterday was a “travel day,” with all the reminders of why I do not like to fly. But, thanks to modern travel, I made it home safe and sound. The temperature last night? 1° F. Ouch.
Snow in the neighborhood is piled higher than the mailboxes.
No much to report on a very busy mid-week. We received a big snowfall last night, which found myself prepping Yeni’s car for work this morning. Can’t say I’m enjoying the though of repeating that action for the next several months. It was c-o-l-d, cold. Oh, and snowy. Last time I was near that much snow, Mom made me a cup of cocoa with little marshmallows — of course they were real marshmallows added to the cup… not the pre-mixed yucky ones.
Things of interest today:
This mom from Gainesville has to get some sort of Mother of the Year award.
Woot.com is an online store and community that focuses on selling cool stuff cheap. They sell one item per day until it is sold out or until 11:59pm central time when it is replaced. The site will occasionally deviate from the one-product-per-day model for a “Woot-Off”, where a succession of products are available for a period of unannounced length, usually 24–72 hours. This mode is indicated by rotating lights and a bar displaying the percentage of product’s stock remaining. During April Fool’s Day 2008, Woot staged a Woot-Off offering the same product repeatedly, except for a few brief periods when Woot sold Random Crap instead.
In lieu of typical product sales, Woot occasionally offers a $1.00 (+$5.00 shipping) fukubukuro-like blind grab bag officially called “Random Crap”. Its accompanying picture has lent it the name “Bag of Crap” (Bag of Crap). The Bag of Crap includes dollar store items and may also include significantly more expensive items such as large flat-screen televisions.[6] The Bag of Crap typically triggers the flooding and subsequent overload of Woot’s servers with thousands and thousands of order requests. The available Bag of Craps typically sell out within seconds. Processing a customer’s order for a Bag of Crap, assuming he or she is first lucky enough to get one before everyone else, may sometimes take over an hour.
Yeni and I just came back from Lowe’s… where we not only purchased a new Carbon Monoxide detector — we purchased a new Carbon Monoxide detector on sale. That’s right, our local Lowe’s price beat Amazon dot com. Go gators.
The new detector is fancy schmancy. It not only had ac power with battery backup, it also displays the carbon monoxide levels within the area monitored. This means that we can monitor even low level exposure. The built in AC adapter even expands so you can place the unit on a desk, on the wall, or like we have… directly within the outlet.
Two detectors are better than 1 and we feel really comfortable with this added safety tool. Current level? 0. Nice…
Recently, Yeni and I completed an amazing 3200 mile round-trip “Expedition” from Ann Arbor to Fort Lauderdale. We drove through such landmarks as the Florida Everglades, the Appalachian Mountains, the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, and more. We experienced a range of weather and traffic — exactly what you would expect when traveling around Thanksgiving — but the scariest part, was waking up to the carbon monoxide alarm after returning home.
Like most “budget conscious” couples, Yeni and I try to save money when possible. When leaving for our extended trip, we lowered the thermostat to a brisk 65 degrees. After a very snow filled journey home, we raised the temperature up to 74, relaxed for an hour or so, and went to bed early.
Around 4am or so, I heard what I thought was the fire alarm; and not used to using natural gas in the home, I quickly got out of bed to investigate. You see, I like to avoid gas fueled explosions when possible, and assumed that the alarm would be followed by some sort of Bruce Willis / Jerry Bruckheimer fireball explosion. Well, no fire, but this alarm was so, so very loud.
When my eyes gained focus, I looked up high and noticed this wasn’t the smoke detector, but rather the Carbon Monoxide alarm. Well, we shut off the heater, got some warm clothes, tried to call 911 from the VoIP phone (and then had to use the mobile), and got out of the house. The fire department showed up and Yeni and I enjoyed the reflections of the emergency lights on the snow (I told Yeni they were her Christmas lights). We stood outside and let the fresh air remove our nausea and headaches. After 45 minutes (or so) of talking with the Fire Department, the levels had lowered enough for us to return inside.
In the morning, a furnace repairman could not find any levels of carbon monoxide. Our neighbor told us he had recently closed a vent when spraying for wasps and thinks that this action may have been the cause. Although we would have liked to have found a definite source of the carbon monoxide, it’s good to know that the alarm is loud enough to wake me from a deep sleep.
There’s a great site out there where you can create a cartoon avatar of yourself — it’s called Face your Manga (it’s an Italian company). Anyway, with this site, we now have Mr. Cartoon Fred.
Cartoon Fred meet the world. World, meet Cartoon Fred. Cartoon Fred isn’t really angry… he’s just drawn that way.
I’m flying from Detroit to Phoenix to attend Astrocon– a conference of Asterisk users. It’s the first time I’ve gotten to attend a conference on a product I both like and am interested in; so I’m pretty excited.
We woke up real early this morning and picked up Yeni’s mother who will be visiting us for a few weeks. I was hoping to sleep on the plane but my neighbor is a seat hog who moves in a violent jerking motion; it’s lovely.
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