Keep reading, It’s okay, really. I’m not about to bash the man. I may even surprise you!

We as a nation voted this man into office. As of yesterday Barack Obama is the president of our great nation for at least the next four years. We should treat him with the respect that the office of President deserves. Just because I didn’t vote for him does not mean he is not my president. Give me a break! If you are an American, he IS your president! The Bible clearly teaches that every follower of Christ should spend time praying for their leaders. That includes everyone that has any authority over you. Our governmental leaders need our support and prayer. We need to honor him as our president and give him due respect.

On the other side of the coin, Barack is NOT the messiah! I deliberately only saw small portions of the inauguration yesterday. I knew what I would see. Throngs of people practically worshiping a man! If that isn’t a scary sight to see I don’t know what is. I half expected to see a giant golden Obama statue in the middle of it all; the servants casting their praise and offerings. I would rather have seen the money spent on the inauguration go toward the national debt.

The press has been fawning over the man since he threw his hat in the ring to run for President. I’m not looking for anything bad, I just want to feel like our media is unbiased. And our general populace seems to be hypnotized by his presence. Gushing, gushing, gushing. It seems to be nearly everyone’s reaction.

I understand he is our first African American president and I agree that that is a big deal. I just can’t help but to feel like most everyone is putting this man on a very tall pedestal. I hope for his sake, he can handle the pressure. And I hope for all our sakes that we don’t blindly follow any man.

Choose as you will. That is your God given (and American) right to exercise your free will. I’ll stick to keeping God first, not any man.

My office has been trying MS’s Exchange program for about three weeks now. So far it hasn’t worked properly yet, but that’s not even my issue. I was willing to give it a try based on the recommendation of the local computer tech company that our office uses. I think our problems with email delivery, transfer of contacts, calendars, etc. are almost worked out, but the program itself doesn’t behave the way we want it to. Big surprise, since exchange is based on Outlook, which in my opinion is a pile of junk.

What we want is simply to be able to pick multiple contacts at once when composing a message and the same for attachments. I know it isn’t too much to ask for an email program to allow multiple contacts and multiple attachments at one time. My personal email already does this. However, we have a business website with domain based email accounts. I can’t have a bunch of XXX@gmail (or whatever) accounts.

Another very important issue is cost. We’re a small company with shallow pockets. We’ve already blown a bundle on exchange licensing and configuration. We can’t afford to keep handing out money indiscriminately.

Can anyone suggest (and vouch for) any web based alternative email programs to MS exchange that are low or no cost? I’m also talking to my local tech about this, but I figure if I ask a large audience, I might get several options to check into. I hope some of you can help. Any input is appreciated!

Since I come from the field of architecture, I love to hear about any technologies that make our buildings and homes better. I find this pretty exciting for the following reasons.

1. There is no mercury in the bulb. There is also no filament like in incandescent bulbs. That means the bulb should have a long life.
2. The light that is emitted is the same as incandescent light, i.e. closer to natural light. Don’t you hate it when your clothes change color under fluorescent lighting?
3. The cost should be about the same as fluorescent.
4. They are dimmable and can work with timers, etc. Especially desirable in a home environment.
5. Recyclable as well as non-toxic. That’s got to make any “green” fan happy.

Instead of boring you with any more of the technical details. Here are the a couple of links if you’d like to know more.

http://www.vu1.com/technology/technology.htm

http://dvice.com/archives/2008/08/esl_the_newest.php

I didn’t reload K9 with the new PC, instead I decided to check out Vista’s built in parental controls. The parental controls are broken into many categories. I think that’s a step in the right direction, but it still isn’t quite right. Each category has several sub lists. I imagine the idea is to give the parent more customization options. In theory it sounds great. In reality, it doesn’t work, at least not to my satisfaction.

It took a bit of time to set up accounts for each of my kids, customizing the settings according to what I consider age appropriate options. After tweaking the accounts, I thought we had a working solution. I was feeling good about it. The next day the real world tests began and my hopes were crushed. I had to enter my administrator password several times for each account just so that my children could play games. And I’m talking about E type games, not teen or mature games by any means.

So it seems the parental controls don’t work all that well and I’m back in the same bag. I’ve gotten frustrated and just given the oldest my password. Doesn’t someone make parental controls that don’t require a lot of baby sitting? I haven’t tried Net Nanny yet, maybe I should check it out. I’m sure there are many more resources I don’t know about. If you know of any no cost or low cost software that really works and is parent friendly- your feedback is appreciated.

That in itself is enough to spark arguments, but again, that isn’t my intention here. I just want to put this link out there for anyone that believes like I do, that we as a nation should do everything possible to become energy independent. For me that includes solar, wind, hydrogen, biomass, electricity, air, water, etc. Anything that we can harness for energy is worth investigating.

I don’t care about the politics. There is plenty of blame to go around on both sides. The bottom line is that we need to make our voices known to our politicians that we expect them to DO something about our current situation. If after reading the link, you agree with the premise, please sign the petition.

 http://www.americansolutions.com/

NASA has recently revamped their website, and it looks great. On the main page, you’ll find a pop up article with a link to send a greeting to the crew of the ISS. I’m sure they appreciate any contact they can get from their fellow humans, especially this time of year. It must get lonely being separated from your loved ones during the holidays.

I’m amazed at the fact that we can send a message to our astronauts in space! The internet has made so many things possible that weren’t just a few years ago.

Windows XP SP3 Boasts Speed Boost, Same Testers Claim

If Vista had emotions, some days it would probably feel like the less-popular younger sibling of the homecoming queen — for instance this week, when the same performance testing developer who slammed Vista SP1’s performance revealed that XP SP3 includes a remarkable (and unexpected) speed boost. “”We were pleasantly surprised to discover that Windows XP SP3 delivers a measurable performance boost to this aging desktop OS,” said Craig Barth, Devil Mountain’s chief technology officer, in a post to a company blog on Friday.

What Intel Giveth, Microsoft Taketh Away

This, of course, will come as a disappointment for those of us who were hoping for some relief. Exhaustive testing confirms that Windows Vista is at least twice as slow as Windows XP when running on the same hardware. So it’s doubly painful to learn that the rumored performance tweaks Microsoft has been hinting at for SP1 simply “never materialized.” Bottom Line: Vista’s performance is what it is, so “get used to it.”

I want to mention what I think is the coolest of new technologies. Wireless electricity! Imagine not having those annoying wall plugs in your walls anymore! They’re never where you need them most and there are never enough of them! The technology is mainly aimed at recharging batteries in devices like laptops and cell phones. But soon enough, I’m sure we will we able to power any electrical device.

Architects won’t have to worry about where to place outlets and receptacles. Contractors won’t have to run wire in the wall cavities. I bet every contractor in the world will sing “Hallelujah” to that one! We will all be able to put our electrical devices wherever the heck we want them! We won’t be tied down anymore. Freedom! Freedom! Can you tell I’m excited about this?

One possible downside is concern over human and animal health. Since the technology is based on magnetics, it is possible that there are some problems, but according to this article, the scientists don’t believe so. Some people willingly use magnetics as a form of holistic healing, so how bad can it be? I suppose it depends on the amount of magnetic energy.

[tags]wireless electricity, magnetics, MIT[/tags]

Smart floors will probably become a reality. There are some MIT researchers working on the theory. The friction between your feet and the floor generates the energy they want to harness. They expect a little sponginess to the floor. I don’t think that would be so bad. It would be like walking on one of the newer running tracks.

The future of light bulbs. Our society, actually the entire planet is more and more buying into the Global Warming doctrine. We are quickly getting to the point where the general population won’t tolerate incandescent bulbs. Many of us have already switched to fluorescents. Fluorescent lighting is about 10 times more efficient than incandescent. Fluorescents also contain small amounts of mercury, which most know is highly toxic. While the mercury content is minute, it still poses a problem if your fluorescent bulb brakes. I just discovered that ACE Hardware stores in my area will accept burned out or broken fluorescent bulbs for disposal. I highly recommend everyone check with their local recycling agency to see where you can bring your old fluorescents. If a fluorescent bulb does brakes, put on a dust mask before handling it. Bag it and bring it to a reclamation place like Ace Hardware.

Okay, so now the better news. A fairly new type of lighting that is coming on the scene is LED lighting. It produces hardly any heat and it is roughly 60 times more efficient than incandescent bulbs. LED lighting is expensive, but like anything, demand will cause the price to drop. The next generation of LEDs are called OLEDs. OLED is LED lighting that can be put on large flexible panels. It is expected to be available around 2010. We will be able to put them just about anywhere to create any kind of lighting effect we want. You can have a panel of light on your walls or ceilings, etc. We won’t be forced to have a traditional light fixture if we don’t want one. Another feature of OLED lighting is that you can also control the color of your light. On demand color changes- Cool, huh?

[tags]Smart flooring, LED lighting, OLED lighting, Recycling fluorescent lights[/tags]

Four weeks ago I send a co-worker’s laptop in for service. The power plug had come loose and needed to be re-soldered to the motherboard. The first sign of trouble was when I called tech support. I got the typical Indian or Pakistani agent, who was barely able to speak English. After going through the troubleshooting steps they agreed that I would have to send it in for service. I was told there would be a $400.00 charge. After explaining (again) that I had a warranty, I was put on hold while they looked it up. I was informed that because we bought the service pack through a computer dealer, we would have to go to the computer dealer to have the laptop serviced. That is a another long story that isn’t even worth getting into.

Even though the service pack was in my name and business address, I went to my friend who happens to be my computer dealer. They took care of the tech support end and got it authorized for return. HP ships an overnight box for use in packing up the computer. The box came to me, not my computer friend. Another twist in the warranty fiasco. I brought the box to him and he shipped it out for me. These events all took a full week.

It was shipped during the July 4th week, so I knew no one at HP would even acknowledge its receipt until the following week. I waited for the following week to pass and still heard nothing. I called my dealer a few times during this week to see if they had been given any feedback from HP. Nothing.

During week three, I asked my computer dude, actually his secretary, to contact HP for a status. After three days of badgering, she finally got a human response. The shipping company showed it as having been delivered. Obviously, someone at HP signed for it. The ever friendly phone reps told her that they showed it as being received, but after that there was no record of it. That just didn’t sound good at all. A few more days of phone tag produced a “support manager.” Now with a name to go buy I started to feel hopeful. I should have known better. The manager finally admitted that the laptop was misplaced. He claimed he would find it pronto. Two more days went by.

At this point, I’d been patient enough and asked my friend’s secretary for the manager’s name and number. We both left several phone messages. We were kicked out of the phone service more often than not; the automated message claiming the mailboxes where full. On July 20th, I finally had a real conversation with the manager. He was apologetic and said they found the laptop. They would get it fixed and send it out immediately, then quickly let me know that immediately meant the middle of next week. Needless to say I was furious, which is saying a lot for me because I’m patient to a fault - or so I’m told. I made some demands for upgrades on the system since HP had totally botched this job. Mister Manager said he would see to my demands.

I intended to call on Monday to check on the status, but got busy and missed my opportunity. On Tuesday I got through but had to leave a message. Manger boy finally called me and informed me that they LOST THE LAPTOP! They LIED to me! They never located my laptop, they were just buying time! So after a rather lengthy conversation, HP is shipping us a brand new laptop with all the bells and whistles. But wait, there’s more! The new unit will probably take at least a week before it’s built and shipped. More delays. All said and done this whole deal took a month to resolve.

Unbelievable!

As a final note, HP refused to meet all my demands, but it met the bare minimum. Is this the treatment we should expect as consumers? I don’t stall and lie to my clients. I’m not living in a box. I know the reality of the business world, but come on, this is ridiculous! Of course me and my boss are angry and have a right to be. I expected to be treated with a little loyalty. We’ve shelled out our hard earned cash on a few HP systems, not just one. The problem lies with big, no HUGE companies, with deep pockets. They don’t have to play nice. Who’s going to make them? Legal action against big business is useless. Your legal resources will be exhausted long before theirs will be. Needless to say, there will be no future HP purchases by our firm.

My purpose isn’t to start a gripe fest, but I’m sure we are not alone in this scenario. I’d love some feedback, or even some advice on others’ experiences. Has anyone else experienced service nightmares from a computer manufacturer? How did you handle it? Was the end result satisfactory to you? Most importantly, I’d like to know if there are any suggestions on which companies can be trusted for our future computing needs. I work in a small architectural firm. Our technology budget isn’t large enough for some of the higher end manufacturers. We have to stay pretty much mainstream to get the price we want - like Dell, HP, etc. We can’t really afford names like Alienware. It has some sweet systems, but a little out of our price range.

[tags]Dell, Alienware[/tags]