DST2007

Well, our clueless leaders have done it to us again... acting without considering the consequences. I just got the lovely and informative notice from Microsoft that DST2007 is fast approaching. All of our computer systems may or may not be 1 hour off for two months of every year from now on.

To further add to my particular misery, having only started to recover from my laptop woes, and server hell... they add this festive bit of news:

Windows 2000 has passed the end of Mainstream Support and will not be receiving an update without Extended Hotfix Support.

What this means is that I now have to manually patch my OS on my main servers, and many of the workstations. I then have to try to do all the work that Y2K gave us... in the space of 1 month!

It should have been called the Software Sales Support act of 2006.

I think my strategy will be to move everything to the "Indiana" time zone, so that I only have to now MANUALLY update the system clock twice per year instead of 4 times!

--Mike--

LaptopJenny replacement arrives

It took a while, but the new laptop is here... an HP DV6000, which seems to be working well for the most part. I've got to figure out why it shuts off the WiFi with the lid closed... otherwise its perfect.

I've missed having a computer to call home.

--Mike--

It's the context

I tried Google Reader over the weekend... in yet another attempt to see why Doc Searls finds RSS readers so incredibly valuable... it played a bit... and left it cold.. just like all the other times I tried out an RSS reader.

It's dawned on me that the reason I don't "get" RSS... is that it has negative value for me. RSS is great if you just want to consume as much content as possible... but I like to keep things in context.

Context is a very important factor in the process of taking raw data and turning it into knowledge. Its also a very powerful antiseptic for spam. That's why I'm willing to put up with the inefficiencies of seeing things twice or more, manually pruing a tree of bookmarks, and manually typing in some important URLs from time to time, including: (Lets see how many I get right)

• http://doc.weblogs.com
• http://digg.com
• http://homepage.mac.com/dave_rogers
• http://boingboing.net
• http://metafilter.com
• http://steves-digicams.com
• http://slashdot.org

I've been going through the whole HP laptop saga, along with server games at work... so I've been using a lot of temporary workstations lately... you get used to this. I finally got my desktop machine at work back in shape... it's nice to be able to have a context for things that'll be stable.

I think we need to remember what the original foundation of this is... WWW... World Wide Web... it's the connections and linkage that make things valuable. Google couldn't work without it, and neither would Blogs, Podcasts, or any of the other things we're now building into social layers and infrastructure on top of it.

It's a value subtractive process to strip away context, with the added costs of spam and system gaming that can take place once there's absolutely no identity tied to anything.

Just like in real estate... it's all about Location, Location... and Location...

The web is all about it as well.

Thanks for your time and attention.

--Mike--

Kill Save!

A while ago I took Michael O'Connor Clarke's advice and started KillSave.org

We did the basic Manifesto... and let it all slide... in the now standard Web 2.0 slacker way.

Here's another case on why we need to Kill the "save" "feature"....

“Now dear, I’m done with the edits, but when I go back to the email and click on the attachment, I just see the original stuff my editor sent me, and I’ve done all this work and I don’t know where it went.”

“Dad, where did you save it to?”

“Save?”

Why in the heck should he have had to save it??? Can't the programmers default to saving a journal after every few keystrokes, in a known location?

Ugh! It's time for the "save" feature to die!

Bad merchandise and VRM

Just got LaptopJenny back from HP... and it's broken!

It shuts itself off after about 5 minutes of use... clearly they screwed up a heatsink or something.

Ugh!

I wonder if situations like this are part of the Doc Searls vision of VRM. A way for use to pool our data (ratings and reviews) outside of the vendor silos. I certainly hope so.

We could also use to to gather intelligence of what our CongressCritters are doing. ;-)

I'm tired of being a powerless pawn.

--Mike--

Virgina as Mona Lisa

Virgina_Mona_Lisa1
Originally uploaded by --Mike--.

All thats missing from this is landscape in the background.

Happy is the man with a good Wife... and a good Daughter. 8)

My HP DV5030US woes continue

LaptopJenny is still waiting for the repair... despite being promised back to me by December 6, 2006. It's the third display failure, exact same symptoms:

• Vertical stripe on the left edge which makes it look like the sync isn't quite right
• Position and pressure sensitivty in the upper left corner of the frame outside the display
• Total loss of video... resulting in vertical striped wallpaper.

I've had this laptop for a little less than a year... a fact which HP insists on pointing out everytime they try to "upsell" me extended warranty coverage (which won't cover the display if (when!) it breaks again).

I've found out that the reason for the delay is a shortage of the part required for the repair. I'm assuming its a mechanical design problem causing the LCD module to break from stress... but I'm no mechanical engineer... so I might be wrong.

I spent about $1500... got about 3 months real use out of it... before losing everything... twice! (HP says that my data is safe... but reformats it every time).

I'm going to save my pennies and get an Acer... they used to be shit in the 80s... but seem to deliver good bang for the bucks these days.