Peter's Blog

Pandora for Windows Mobile at last!

2008-12-16T17:26:01.167-05:00

Just a quick entry. For those of us that use Windows Mobile phones, we can use pandora at last!!!! I've also posted a snapshot of my phone running the software. Notice the icon at the top for my bluetooth headphones. A2DP ftw

DirecTV for PC future is dead

2008-12-10T16:39:56.9665162-05:00

Long story short: DirecTV is bitch slapping Microsoft for not integrating Satellite TV into the Media Center TV Pack 2008 release. Since it was not integrated, the feature would have to wait until Windows 7. As much as MS is shooting for next year, DirecTV knows better.

It is still very depressing that DirecTV isn't going to stick it out. VMC won my heart when it could integrate many different sources into one UI creating a true 'set-top box experience' through a PC. Integrating Satellite TV would be one more way to corner the market and provide something NOONE else can.

http://www.gearlog.com/2008/12/its_official_the_directv_hdpc2.php from http://thedigitallifestyle.com/cs/blogs/ian/archive/2008/12/09/no-directv-for-media-center.aspx

Oh, cool Bourne on Blu-Ray.... wait a second.....

2008-12-05T14:35:30.0335674-05:00

Chris was out shopping @ Circuit City and gets excited,"Do I want Bourne on Blu-Ray?" Fortunately, he realized he asked himself the wrong question and decided to snap a picture. I miss the HD format war. Reminds me of my Browncoat days.

Nextel Text Messaging is Severely Broken

2008-11-30T15:05:02.839-05:00

I rely on my Nextel for emergency pages from our Police Dispatch Center. Their system pages out to Nextel phones only, but that's a different story. For the past week and a half, I've been missing text messages. And I am not the one.

Luckily, our department has been semi-aware and we've been calling each other to relay the messages. After each emergency call, I reboot my phone and all of a sudden the messages come flowing through. I did a bit of some testing, and I get about 25% of text messages immediately. The other 75% if have to reboot my phone to receive.

Nextel Customer Care confirmed this problem. They've had nationwide problems with delayed/missed text messages. Their official recommendation is to reboot the phone.

There is a good side to this though: the Nextel Customer Care center I got @ 11PM on a Saturday was in Washington, USA. The lady I talked to was extremely knowledgeable and very understanding. That was enough to calm me down and make me think they were devoting their resources to correcting the problem! I don't have a text messaging plan since I do not get enough emergency pages per month to make it worth my while to buy a text messaging plan. So I thanked the lady and asked if I could get reimbursed for all the test text messages I sent to myself. Got this email a few minutes later

Dear: Peter Fattore

Telephone #:

Sprint has added a credit to your account for $2.80. The adjustment reason is Courtesy Credit. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

If you have any questions, please feel free to respond to this email. Thank you for contacting Sprint. Have a great day!

Mokena, IL Police camera found

2008-11-26T14:43:12.425-05:00

So my fellow coworkers and I were going to lunch and we came across this police camera. The photo is too blurry to tell us if it is from Mokena PD or ISP, but I'm assuming Mokena.

This is the first one I've seen in these parts and it definitely intrigues me. There have been a few armed robberies lately, maybe this was in response.

I'll try to grab a better picture later

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WindowsLive OneCare is going away - Thank [insert deity]

2008-11-24T14:31:05.846-05:00

Windows Live OneCare has been another MS effort to offer a product they should have offered a long time ago. Honestly, I could care less for any antivirus. It only comes in handy when I go looking for cracks. I mean, I lost my CD Key to Max Payne.. Whatever...

Turns out Microsoft is done with it and they're going to release it for free. More specifically, they're going to strip out the backup software and other crap that it just nagged you about for not using.

Honestly, I still won't buy it, but it sets the bar for other companies out there and sends a [probably unintentional] message: STOP BLOATING YOUR SOFTWARE FOR NO GOOD REASON. I'm sorry, a firewall just needs to block incoming ports. If you need to control viruses trying to connect to the internet, you're too late already. Antivirus software needs to have a realtime scan, scheduled scan, and be able to update itself. Everything else that is packaged with security software is pointless to me.

Few to no companies seem to get that. I used to like Symantec Corporate that Bradley University issues, but that began to suck. So I moved to AVG. Now that installs an AVG toolbar and a link scanner of some sort. You don't notice it until you go to google and you get to see your search result page bombarded with extra AVG icons.

Side note: ~~Windows~~ Microsoft Update has been around for a while. Once in a while you'll see 3rd party updates show up, but it's still VERY RARE. Can MS open it up to all companies to provide updates? This would also prevent useless background tasks and start up programs! It would also stop the proliferation of malware. The majority of viruses trick people into installing based on lies about "upgrading" or "fixing a problem". A unified update application would circumvent all of this. This is a really sweet idea, and someone should pay me for it.

LHC Status

2008-11-19T15:50:58.2676152-05:00

http://www.hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/

HDD Format Failure - weirdest fix

2008-11-19T14:23:00.663-05:00

One of my machines is a nice EVGA 680i SLI Motherboard. She's sporting a RAID array of 2 WD Raptor HDDs, Core2Duo 1.86 Ghz overclocked to 2.8 Ghz, and a sexy LianLi case.

She has been my workhorse for a while now and hasn't let me down.

Recently, it has been a dedicated media center that my parents use. My father, becoming as nerdy as me (or maybe i got it from him), purchased a Seagate 1.5 TB SATA HDD: a beauty! It would NOT take a format under ANY condition. Considering I had a variety of HDDs in there already with an extensive history configurations, I had come to the conclusion that the drive was faulty. Receiving the replacement HDD, the same problem existed....

I was lost it. How could this happen? The HDD fails a full format around 73% EVERY TIME, and it would never take a quick format. It also failed the Seagate diagonostics software! The twist: it will format on another machine!

So I decided to try some updated 680i chipset drivers. It fixed the problem immediately. The drive took a quick format, and I started a full format on her just to be sure. I generally expect stability fixes in driver updates, but this is one of the strangest/largest issue I've seen get corrected.

Either way, thanks Nvidia for correcting it.

Who are you talking to on the phone? Seriously....

2008-11-10T15:29:23.0684619-05:00

Every morning to work is a blast. Generally involves school bus drivers clogging up rt 30 and schoolhouse, people not very awake at the wheel, people driving before defogging their windows, etc. Always exciting.

On a few roads, there are children at bus stops separated by only a home. I've literally seen a bus stop 3 times in 1 block because they didn't consolidate the bus stops. I had to walk to my bus stop and meet kids from blocks around when I was a kid (up hill both ways). Makes sense! I'll let someone else to the math on how much fuel their wasting, but I'm honestly more selfishly concerned about having to stop 3 damn times for only 1 out of 3 good reasons. There also are the crossing guards in their cars sipping coffee and reading the paper in their cars while I'm forced to drive 20 MPH because it is so dangerous for kids. But that's a different story.

But, to the point, EVERY morning, I see people talking on their phones while driving to work, I presume. Who the hell are you talking to? My buddy Chris said he does that in the morning with his wife, but they're probably in a phase of some kind since they recently got married. Good for them. To the rest of you people out there... you suck at driving, you suck more in the morning, and you suck even more with that phone glued to your ear. But seriously, maybe I just don't get it. Maybe your radio in your car is broken, so you're calling to get the weather, or news or something? Maybe you're calling your credit card company so you can get put on hold and listen to some music that makes 90% of people happy for the period of time they're on hold.

Educate me people....

Voting, you knew this blog entry was coming

2008-11-04T17:54:09.1504439-05:00

To start off, I'm tired of hearing "rock the vote", "vote if you care", "vote for a cup of coffee!!", etc. Let's start a new campaign involving: "Get involved with politics". Once an individual realizes he/she wants to control their future, he/she will want to vote. I will respect people who say they didn't vote because they chose not be informed. Honestly, to me that's one less vote for the democrats. (no, i'm not saying that if they were informed they'd vote democrat, but saying that many uninformed people will chose to vote Democrat due to some unnerving urge because they want change or something. Nevermind what the change is, but any change after 8 years of bush is good... blah blah blah) Note: that was the only partisan talk on this post.

Why do I have to show an ID to get some OTC medications, but I can walk in and vote and just rattle off my name. Wait... my bad, there was some hardcore security involved: I had to sign my name to verify who I was. Funny thing though, my original signature from when I registered was on the line below. Any fraudster would just have to do some sloppy on the fly copying and he/she would be good to go. If they were questioned, they could just say they got a disease or something. Who would question them?

Electronic voting...... OMFG N0T S3cure!!!! Whatever... why did my government pay for an electronic machine that would accept my ballot and print on it for me? Short of help for handicap people, this was a waste of money. ESPECIALLY since it had a bug. It gave me a summary of my choices, but it neglected to actually show me all of my choices. I did confirm that it had my appropriate choices by clicking "back" many times. I naturally also confirmed them when I had my printed ballot spit back out at me. Thanks for wasting tax dollars for something comletely worthless.

I'm sure I'll come with with some more depressing notions later, until then.

We're cornered-The future of internet

2008-10-30T12:12:02.1752091-04:00

We've been used to unlimited downloads, and being limited by speed. It's worked for many years and could forever in my opinion. If you want to save some cash, pay for 2mbps, great! Don't expect to stream video.

Comcast has been sending out propoganda explaining that they're going to cap users @ 250 GB/month because a SMALL percentage of users are using a lot of bandwidth doing BAD THINGS! First off, ~~fuck you~~, I know you're talking about me. Second, why is it that you're going to give us double our speeds for free if you're strained so much?

Let me explain why: Comcast's first business in our area was TV. For example, if I start using Netflix's HD streaming via XBOX 360, I will be interferring with their business model and will be taking away money from them. So, this is where the cap comes in. Since I'm also a customer of their internet service, it is easy for Comcast to implement unfair control measures. The cap discourgages massive downloads and gets customers to begin to get used to limitations.

Perhaps someday we'll be tiered like we pay for TV: $50 for basic package, $15 more for X,Y,Z content, $15 more for the whole internet!