The Redheaded Penguin

Okay, I decided to play around with my new fancy phone yesterday and remembered a Google Maps feature for mobile phones. Basically, if the software is compatible with your phone, Google can figure out where you are… or at least where your phone is. You can download the software at http://mobile.google.com if you want. If you phone has built in GPS (and it’s enabled) then that is what will be used to locate you on Google Maps. (Makes sense given that’s what GPS is for I guess.) But even if you don’ t have GPS (or choose not to allow Google access to it), Google can still find you. From what I’ve gathered, it triangulates your position based on the strength of various cell phone towers around you. It actually got pretty close with this method, but was a few blocks south of where I really was at the time. Then I decided to go ahead and try it with the GPS enabled and bingo it found me. Then I noticed I could use the satellite view in google maps… so suddenly, Google had me represented by a flashing blue dot inside of my house (well, okay, the dot was actually “on” the picture of my house and not an interior shot of the house… though I think that might next on Google’s mapping venture after they complete the street views.) Anyway, it just so happened that I noticed where the dot was in my house was actually pretty close to where I was sitting. So, I decided to go to the other end of the house… sure enough, google followed me through my house. No admittedly it wasn’t “that” accurate, but it did seem to know within just a few feet. It’s one thing to see the blue dot showing you were you are on a map… it’s something else when you realize it knows which part of your house you happen to be in…  when they have the street view following along with the GPS I think it will really start freaking people out a bit more…

(and yes, more photo 365 pictures are coming… just have to find time to get them cropped and uploaded… probably after this week though because of final projects I have to get graded…)

Oh, and yeah, I know there are probably hundreds of people (or more) out there who have been playing with GPS units and all this stuff for a while now so this is “old news” to you, but hey… it’s my blog and I’ll post what I want

Well, after hours of grief dealing with Outlook at home last night, I never could get it to connect to the exchange server at work the way it should… and it decided that it didn’t want to remember ANY passwords for other accounts. So, I scrapped the entire deal at home. I did make the switch at work, and didn’t run into any problems… it probably helped that I didn’t have as much email at work to convert over, but being able to setup the exchange was a huge plus I decided, especially since my new phone syncs with the exchange server as well. Now my calendar is always with me to remind me of those meetings and appointments that tend to slip my mind all the time… now, hopefully I’ll be able to make the switch at home… might have to stay home from work so I can talk to the campus IT folks to get it done though…

Blender squirrel…

Okay, with more and more things at work needing me to use Outlook, I think I’m finally going to bite the bullet, hold my nose, and make the switch from Eudora… actually, I started the process a few hours ago since I have to go from Eudora to Outlook Express to Outlook 2007… can’t go straight because that would be too easy. Luckily with the new phone I got, I can easily check my main email accounts and can even take advantage of the MS Exchange server at work… There are many many things I don’t like about Outlook though… the biggest is the way it stores emails (and attachments) in one huge file. I always liked the fact that with Eudora, each mailbox was it’s own file. So, with proper management and filing, no single mailbox file ever got that larger. This allowed me to create archives of old emails in Eudora… archives dating back to 1995 actually… now, I didn’t archive everything, but I did archive a lot. In fact, I think I have over 850MB of emails (not counting attachments) archived away. Well, when I imported these into Outlook, the main outlook file ended up being 1.4GB… I’m sorry, but no single file should be that large… especially if it’s just emails…

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LOOK! A new toy! Okay, I gave in and did something I probably shouldn’t have done. For the past few months I’ve had my eye on getting a new smart phone. I’d been looking to combine my old PDA (an iPaq purchased about 4-5 years ago I think) with my cell phone, so I’d have one less thing to carry around, but could still take advantage of the things the PDA offered… like reminders for meetings that I tend to forget about… anyway, given that I found out this week I’ll be getting a new position/promotion next Fall, I convinced Ruth to let me go drool over new phones… since I wasn’t eligible for an upgrade to the phone, I knew I couldn’t afford to get what I wanted… but then, the salesman started wanting to make deals… when it got to the point that the cell phone was about half-off, Ruth told me I should go ahead and get it… so I did… this is a picture taken with the new phone of the box it came in… hopefully with the new phone the quality of pictures I’m posting here will go up as well… well, they will be higher resolution at least…

It’s Fiesta time! After going to Alamo Heights Night last night (the 18th) here are the medals, prize tickets, etc. from our night at the 2nd Annual Chips & Salsa Fund Raiser. Ruth kicked you know what at Texas Hold ‘Em… though we weren’t playing for real money… still she wiped out myself and another player at the table on the last hand. I did good at the beginning but then went down hill and went all in for the last hand… still, Ruth started with $1000 in chips and ended up with over $8000 in chips… we were going to venture into the salsa dancing, but never made it… maybe next year…

Oopss… to much digging on the hillside, especially with the rain we had overnight… if you go back and look at the pictures from earlier in the week, you’ll notice how close they were getting to a tree at the top of the hill. Well, with the rain last night, the tree couldn’t hold on any longer and collapsed…

Boring week… more construction photos as the dig more out of the hillside…

Just a random shot while driving down the street…

It’s tax day! But what the heck, let’s get a construction photo in for the week

Yeah, they started digging out more of the hill… not sure why, but they are…