Corey Gouker's Machine Inside the Mind

The time has come, I'm going back on what I said and likely going to pay full price for the 8GB iPhone. I've had my Windows Mobile (WM) 6 SmartPhone since March and at first I liked it, but then I started really using the web and trying to use the device for something other than phone calls, text messaging, and email. Guess what? It fails. Browsing the web on Windows Mobile is quite possibly the most unusable horrible experience I've ever had to endure on any gadget I've owned. Scrolling left and right is obnoxious, and I guess this is just thanks to the device itself which has a crappy jog wheel. WM 6.1 was announced some time ago and it's only in the past month that I finally could download it from Samsung through an equally obnoxious process. I tried other apps and even tried finding other web browsers for the device and sadly the experience wasn't any better. Windows Mobile is clearly not designed for your every day consumer. What's more, when it comes to browsing the web I'm not even sure how anyone could get any real work done effectively.

This is all really sad, I had gone from a regular Samsung candy bar phone so WM was a nice upgrade. WM 6.1 turned out to be the most minor of updates which hasn't helped me at all. Supposedly Windows Mobile 7 should bring major improvements from what I've read online. Now though I really feel it's too little too late. My prediction, by the time Windows Mobile 7 launches, Apple will have released their 3rd version of the iPhone and will be the dominant force for the smart phone market and everything that entails.

I've used a couple of iPhones, Dom's, Ivan's, Bryce's, all of whom use it slightly differently. I've probably played with the stupid phone for 30 minutes sitting in a store. One thing comes to mind when using it, it just does what I want. I browsed the beeb on Dom's and it was beautiful, it was an Internet experience that was truly enjoyable. The apps aren't that big of a deal to me, in fact half the crap in the iPhone isn't a big deal to me. So what it comes down to is this.

I'm dumping Windows Mobile for the iPhone because the iPhone has a real Internet experience.

This also leads me to realize I use a phone for 3 things, Internet, SMS, and phone calls. Everything else is a bonus.

For sale, AT&T locked Samsung BlackJack II upgraded to Windows Mobile 6.1 - $40.

So this is one I don't think I'll ever understand. I've got a WaMu Online Savings account, and somehow they're providing 3.93% interest / 4% APY. How is this possible when they basically went under and got bought out. 4% is one of the best rates around. Meanwhile looking at my 401K is rather depressing, since January 28th, it's -23.4%. I know it's stupid to look at it short term but it's just lame to think I would've been better off putting my money in a failed bank than putting it into a well diversified 401K (not counting the tax stuff of course). Either way, I don't think I'll ever get over the way credit and savings works. Seems like a complete sham when we can be charged 10% or more in interest yet we're lucky to even be getting 4% on the money the banks hold for us. Sure banks are a bit more reliable at paying up but still. I think maybe I should just invest in salt for the forthcoming apocalypse.

So I finally caved and decided to try out the always on instant status craze. Now I pretty much update my Live Messenger PSM all the time, especially when my Now Playing is turned on. However, I used to only update Facebook once in a while. Never updated MySpace. That was it, I didn’t (and still don’t really) care about any of the other sites, which frankly seem like a fad.

Like I said, I caved, logged into my Twitter account that I apparently opened a year ago, set it up so that Facebook and Twitter would communicate. Then I added the Messenger application to Facebook so those two could talk. I then updated my status in the Live Messenger dogfood, saw it updated Facebook and was amused, but looking at Twitter… saw nothing. How very lame.

Then I remembered reading this article on TechCrunch:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/31/pingfm-centralizes-status-updates-but-is-it-enough/

Hoping that maybe, possibly, someone would’ve managed to have the services in place to spread a status message across all services regardless of origin. This concept while simple and something that has been touted as the future for some time still eludes us… None the less within 30 seconds I was registered at HelloTxt, yet another website with yet another login to manage.

I then gave my login details to the 4 other social services that I have accounts with. This seems odd considering how much phishing is going on. Heck I bet there’s a lot of money and data to be had if someone were to create a cute Web 2.0 site that gathered account data like HelloTxt does then just sell it to the highest bidder.

After some additional reading and browsing I found this blog which discusses differences between HelloTxt and Ping.fm:
http://masontechbeat.blogspot.com/2008/07/title-fight-pingfm-vs-hellotxt.html

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for this reinvigorated interest in the web, if anything it seems geek is now chic, can’t go wrong there. But seriously? How on Earth do the 21 networks that HelloTxt communicates with manage to attract and keep users using their services? What value do any of them really have or add? Where’s all this VC coming from and can I have some please?

Now the point of all this is that it seems like there’s a lot of cool stuff going on, but the key issue to really making everything work is a central service for which all services communicate. There’s no central standard like RSS to make it all take off. In my mind all it’s going to take is Google, Yahoo, Facebook, or whoever to release a true framework that will be the platform for future services to grow. Google seems like the obvious candidate here with their ad platform and fingers dipped into everything you can think of.

It would seem like now is the prime time to make a move leverage the hundreds of millions of Live Hotmail and Messenger users and create an open platform for these Personal Status Message(PSM) sites to communicate. I’m sure that most people already have a Live ID so that won’t even be a major caveat. I tried finding a plugin for HelloTxt or Twitter for Messenger, the best I could find was this:
http://www.msgplus.com/scripts/search/?q=twitter
Sadly this will only update Twitter and since HelloTxt doesn’t seem to pull from Twitter the rest of the sites I’m on won’t get updated. FAIL.

If Microsoft has 300 million active Live Messenger users there must be at least half a billion or more PSM’s set every day. I’m going to guess if Microsoft had the open platform it would get used. Update your status on Windows Live, have it updated everywhere. Simple concept. This seems like a much better use of resources than changing bitmaps, adding more winks, and confusing users with design changes. Microsoft has Live Spaces, Live Messenger, and Live Mobile, what more is needed? Not to mention the close ties with Facebook. That’s a pretty fine start imho. Get tied to Twitter build some momentum and you’ve got the workings for real added value to Windows Live.

Now considering my PSM in Live Messenger doesn’t update my status on Zune or Xbox despite using the same Live ID. I’m just a little nervous that Microsoft may be latecomer to the conversation it should have started. Are there any conversations going on like this in Windows Live right now?

We shall see…

So one benefit of my job is that I get to work on some cool hardware long before it's released. While I couldn't say either way if I've played with the Inspiron 910, I have played with a PC running the Atom chips and such. I must say it ran Windows just fine and was totally usable. The form factor of x unit wasn't quite right for me, but this Inspiron 910 looks pretty sweet.

For the longest time I've had the thought that I'd only ever get laptops from now on. Figuring I could just get one with DisplayPort or HDMI and get an external keyboard, mouse, and 24" or 30" LCD for the 1920x1200+ experience. But that sort of requires a dock and such. Fine dandy, but I'd be paying a lot of money for lower end hardware. While I'm sure it'd run my daily stuff just fine it doesn't quite cut it for more hardcore stuff.

So I've sort of been thinking that a quad core iMac would be perfect for me. At the same time I want something mobile. Perhaps a quad core Mac Book pro or a Latitude would do it. Anyway, this got me thinking, why not get an iMac or regular Dell desktop. Then just get the Inspiron 910 as my Internet and IM box :). When I really think about what I do on a laptop... the only thing I do outside of IE is Messenger and some file management. So what's the point of having some crazy high end mobile PC?

I'd probably do a lot more if it weren't for the form factor or the fact I'm sitting down on the couch doing it. It's sad, in this day, I still can't quite live away from the de facto standard of PC usage, desktop, monitor, keyboard, mouse.

So my thought process behind getting rid of Exchange for a much simpler Hotmail or Gmail solution has got me thinking about simplification in general. I've been giving serious thought to dumping other complicated solutions for much mor elegant ones. For example no longer running my Server 2008 box in a domain, dumping all the services on the server and just hosting my blog and photo gallery in the cloud. In the end the server would just be a glorified file server.

Somehow though I can't bring myself to do this, I think it's got something to do with the feeling of control. Right now I can do whatever I want to the server or to any of the data. If I want to have my gallery full of 20K 8MP images I can, if I want to stream all my music I can. If I were to switch to Wordpress and Flickr I'd lose all that control.

I also find it amusing that while I want to just simplify things I'm also considering doing crap that's just the opposite. I'm tempted to switch from dasBlog to Community Server. I'm also thinking that if Apple announces Core 2 Quad's in the iMac's or MacBook's this month that I'll likely buy one and run Vista on it.

I'm tired of buying Dell's, they're just boring and work :), plus I wouldn't mind trying out OSX even if it's only for a few hours. I have considered just getting a new E series Latitude but meh, I'm not a fan of any of the Dell desktops either, they're cheap and quiet sure, but they just lack a certain something. Thinking about things a bit further, I'm kind of tired of using a laptop as my main machine. My neck is killing me from always sitting on the couch and typing away. On the other hand a laptop fits what I need really well. I guess I just need to get a small desk with a dock along with a real monitor and keyboard and mouse.

Who knows, things really aren't that complicated, everything I've got going on now just sort of takes care of itself and I don't do anything. When something does break though it is a pain. Would be nice if that wasn't the case.

I think I'm going to try and install Community Server now on coreygo.com get that running and migrate things over. Not sure what I'll do for redirection of this old site and how to migrate the data plus the RSS feed. Yay for complications.

I've been running Exchange 2007 for a while now. It was actually pretty quick to set up and maintaining it ever since hasn't required more than 5 minutes a month. There was the initial hurdle of needing the Edge Transport and the Hub Transport on different machines. Solved that with a 64-bit install of Server 2008 in a Hyper-V VM. Running your own Exchange server is definitely overkill, at the same time there's also something inherently geekishly cool about it. I mean I've got Outlook Web Access from anywhere and I can have one Outlook session download all my RSS feeds into Exchange which I can read anywhere or while mobile.

But why then have I removed 100% of the RSS feeds from Outlook and switched to Google Reader? Why now, am I considering becoming close friends with the Archive dialog and just keeping all my existing mail in a PST? Why am I considering just redirecting mail from my domains to a Gmail or Hotmail (oops sorry Windows Live Mail) account?

Email is the life force behind Microsoft, without it I'd be reduced to actually speaking to the person next to me , okay not really, I enjoy the cube work style at MS, I couldn't stand it if it were like Office Space but at MS it's a great social thing. Getting back to the point though, there are times where I'll email the person sitting next to me, it's just easier there's a record, and it usually moves work along. I couldn't give a percentage but Outlook is never closed, never. I don't know how many emails I get daily, the rules sort them all out.

Email at home... there isn't a whole lot to say about email at home. I get random red neck, McCain, and other weird emails from my Dad, I get emails from people warning about viruses and other crap which is usually fake or old, so I reply back with a link to the virus database or snopes.com. Oh and I get emails from family at Hotmail, at work, and 2 different domain addresses. The only other "real" email I get is all related to accounts I have online, whether it's NewEgg, Amazon, or the electric company. After that it's all spam, Exchange blocks it all, and I never see it. But when I look at my email for the past 3 months and see only 4 real emails that I've kept, WTF is the point!? Email for me personally at home is just dead.

So I don't know, I'm not sure why I even bother keeping my mail the way I do going back to the days of 1997. I should probably just export everything to a PST and then redirect all the mail to Hotmail then forget it, no reason to even import the old stuff really. Another option I have is to migrate my mail to a hosted Exchange account that's managed by the borg, even that seems like over kill.

Anyway, still not sure what I'm going to decide on, I've still got Outlook open at home, no real email since Thursday, I guess I should just start telling people that my email is dead and to never email me. Send me an instant message instead.

I really love Netflix and I'm sure I'll love it more once it's built into the Xbox. Still though there's a couple things I really want.

1. Maintain a complete history of every movie that I've been sent and have watched instantly. Denote these movies with a different icon or something. I can't really remember half the time if I've seen something or not. The rental history is obscure and annoying.
2. The new releases feature is kind of annoying now, not at all useful. I'm sure some love it, I personally hate it. What would serve me better and I'm sure anyone else who prefer home theaters to the overpriced counterparts would be a release history similar to what IMDB does for movie releases. Just list movies by release date in the theater from now until 6 months back. Even if the movie isn't on DVD yet at least then I could save it for later.
3. Allow me to share my list of watched movies in a nice view on the web more easily. Especially if it were possible to tag movies as "owned".

Heck, if there were a Media Center app to expose this that also worked on the Xbox as well that'd take care of one other little thing I'd like to have :).

I just moved to West Seattle and I love it. From the first day I woke up in my new place I think I knew I'd love it. I haven't even had a chance for everything to sink in and for me to discover all the new surroundings but no matter.

1. Running on Alki beach rules.
2. It reminds of all the good things I missed from SoCal, like the smell of salt water and real sandy beaches.
3. I'm close to everything, at least it feels that way. I've got a Safeway around the corner which I can walk to. Plus 10 other stores that I frequent.
4. Metro Market, PCC, and soon a Whole Foods. I went to Metro Market 2 miles from home and can only say that this place rules, and I'll probably stop buy most of my produce from Safeway or QFC. The yellow corn I bought today was the sweetest ever.
5. Real record stores within walking distance.
6. Sunday farmers market.
7. Awesome restaurants nearby.
8. Pagliacci pizza, best delivery I've ever had.
9. My commute to Issaquah is under 30 minutes, period.
10. There's a great feeling of being in a huge city like Seattle yet having the small town feel, people actually say hello and strike up conversation out and about.

I'm sure I'll end up having 10 things I hate, but so far, I can't really think of one. I think there's also something I love about the place I'm in, which was meant to be a half million dollar place but couldn't sell. So I'm getting a great deal on rent. One of the rooms is making for an awesome home theater and I can finally crank the volume up and can keep on having people over without any issues.

This rules!

Today I finally managed to prevent history from repeating. For the past two or three weeks I kept on thinking of stuff I needed to do before and after work. The odd thing is every single time I thought of something I'd make a mental note to remember it. Then I'd just forget it. I'd get to work or get home and realize how stupid I was for forgetting, and then... nothing. I'd not bother making a note to remind myself the next day.

Self defeating really, I know my memory sucks when it comes to a lot of stuff, why I don't make notes is things is beyond me. I guess I just figure it's a waste of paper and I'd lose track anyway. Making notes electronically doesn't work for me either since it's too slow and I never have the method for input readily available.

So the bottom line? Well, yesterday and today I broke out of it. Not sure why but I finally remembered to bring the Silk coffee creamer from the fridge at home into the one at work. Lame? Yes, but it's a perfect example of the crap I forget on a daily basis. In this case I bought the stuff over a week ago, and every day I'd arrive at work and forget it and slap myself mentally for being a dumb ass.

How to combat this mental block is beyond me. I just figured I'd finally remember to write about this sort of stuff instead of thinking, "oh I should make a note of that on my blog" then never doing it.

What can I say? Gore describing ways of giving the US a kick in the ass aligns to exactly how I feel right now as far as energy goes. Where's the $25K Tesla and the subsidized solar for homes? :)

The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels. In my search for genuinely effective answers to the climate crisis, I have held a series of “solutions summits” with engineers, scientists, and CEOs. In those discussions, one thing has become abundantly clear: when you connect the dots, it turns out that the real solutions to the climate crisis are the very same measures needed to renew our economy and escape the trap of ever-rising energy prices. Moreover, they are also the very same solutions we need to guarantee our national security without having to go to war in the Persian Gulf. What if we could use fuels that are not expensive, don’t cause pollution and are abundantly available right here at home? We have such fuels. Scientists have confirmed that enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth every 40 minutes to meet 100 percent of the entire world’s energy needs for a full year. Tapping just a small portion of this solar energy could provide all of the electricity America uses. And enough wind power blows through the Midwest corridor every day to also meet 100 percent of US electricity demand. Geothermal energy, similarly, is capable of providing enormous supplies of electricity for America. The quickest, cheapest and best way to start using all this renewable energy is in the production of electricity. In fact, we can start right now using solar power, wind power and geothermal power to make electricity for our homes and businesses. But to make this exciting potential a reality, and truly solve our nation’s problems, we need a new start. That’s why I’m proposing today a strategic initiative designed to free us from the crises that are holding us down and to regain control of our own destiny. It’s not the only thing we need to do. But this strategic challenge is the lynchpin of a bold new strategy needed to re-power America. Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years. This goal is achievable, affordable and transformative. It represents a challenge to all Americans — in every walk of life: to our political leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, engineers, and to every citizen. A few years ago, it would not have been possible to issue such a challenge. But here’s what’s changed: the sharp cost reductions now beginning to take place in solar, wind, and geothermal power — coupled with the recent dramatic price increases for oil and coal — have radically changed the economics of energy. When I first went to Congress 32 years ago, I listened to experts testify that if oil ever got to $35 a barrel, then renewable sources of energy would become competitive. Well, today, the price of oil is over $135 per barrel. And sure enough, billions of dollars of new investment are flowing into the development of concentrated solar thermal, photovoltaics, windmills, geothermal plants, and a variety of ingenious new ways to improve our efficiency and conserve presently wasted energy. And as the demand for renewable energy grows, the costs will continue to fall. Let me give you one revealing example: the price of the specialized silicon used to make solar cells was recently as high as $300 per kilogram. But the newest contracts have prices as low as $50 a kilogram. You know, the same thing happened with computer chips — also made out of silicon. The price paid for the same performance came down by 50 percent every 18 months — year after year, and that’s what’s happened for 40 years in a row.

I don't even care if it's alarmist or if the polar caps are going to be changing from a solid into a liquid in a few years. It doesn't even matter, it just seems to make sense to do go renewable.

1. They're all sold out.
2. I read the fine print, AT&T is bonkers, and I'm not paying $500 for a phone that'll be replaced in a year.
http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/specials/iphone-info.jsp

Yeah, screw that. Shame really, since having used the iPhone for a good hour I must say it totally kills my BlackJack II which is running Windows Mobile 6. I guess I still have the 6.1 update to look forward to though I imagine I probably will be seeing the v3 iPhone by that time and come March will grab one of those .

I was using something else before, Feedburner I guess, I suppose I could keep using it, but it seemed limited. While using Redfin today I noticed they had the Share on Facebook with the down arrow and that it was using the AddThis.com service. Registered real quick grabbed the generated code and popped it in. Had to refer to the macro definitions for dasBlog but it seems to be working right now, the code looks like this:

<!-- ADDTHIS BUTTON BEGIN -->
<script type="text/javascript">
addthis_pub = 'YOUR USER NAME';
</script><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php" onMouseOver="return addthis_open(this, '', '<%PermalinkUrlRaw%>', '<%itemTitleRaw%>')" onMouseOut="addthis_close()" onClick="return addthis_sendto()"><img src="http://s9.addthis.com/button1-addthis.gif" width="125" height="16" border="0" alt="" /></a><script type="text/javascript" src="http://s7.addthis.com/js/152/addthis_widget.js"></script>           
<!-- ADDTHIS BUTTON BEGIN -->

This will work well for any dasBlog user just change the username, users of other services will need to figure out the permalink url and item title macro for their service.

Went to refresh my camera equipment listing on Expo and instead got this...   

Windows Live Expo will discontinue service on 31 July 2008. In preparation, the following features are no longer available:

• Create a new account.
• Post a new listing.
• Extend a listing.
• Upgrade a listing to a premium listing.

All current listings will remain on expo.live.com until they expire.

We thank you for your patronage and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
-The Windows Live Expo Team

Annoying, but not too unexpected. I've never actually seen anyone use Expo outside of the Seattle/Redmond area. Oh well. Back to Craigslist. Unless of course Microsoft buys them out and does a redirect :).

So I was Googling my Dad just now to see if I could find any of his eBay listings since I was curious. I ended up just searching for his name and Arizona. Sure enough it returned his phone book entry as the first result. Next I tried my Mom, now what's funny about this is that my Mom has always been kind of paranoid and so back in the days of me living at home she'd make sure our info was unlisted. I guess somehow that got reversed and now it's nicely published. Oh and be sure to check out her Stained Glass website at GoStainedGlass.com.

The funny thing to me is that besides having her home phone it also has her address. I checked it out to see if Google updated the satellite view, nope, Live Maps still has newer. But Google has done one better. They actually for some reason unbeknownst to me went through Joshua Tree with a street view car and photographed poor little Joshua Tree. I lived there for I don't know, 13 years, so I guess you can say I grew up there. Now there are only 3 reasons why people actually know of Joshua Tree, the first is U2, the second is because it's sort of near Palm Springs, and the third is because of the National Park. I'm sure if my Mom had her way it'd also be known for it bearing the gift of her stained glass and my amazing wit. Har har.

Hopefully pasting in this iframe will work, but if not, feel free to explore. It's just completely amusing to me. I mean I know based on examination of the view that both my Mom and sister were at home and most likely sleeping during the time the street view car drove by and took the photos. I also know it was likely a Tuesday because they left the trash out but it hasn't been taken yet. What's more amusing to me and something I'll have to call dear old Mom about... I didn't know she replaced the front door with what looks like a red one. Truly, Google, thank you, "nostalgia without the plane fare". Though by the looks of it she needs me to come visit, that mailbox is looking a little dilapidated and in need of me fixing it once more.