Beer and Chips

And by here I mean in my pocket! Thats right, on Saturday just a mere day or two after Verizon released the Blackberry Curve I walked into a Verizon Wireless store and picked one up! I gotta tell you I love it! 2 mega pixel camera, video capable, expandable storage, full QWERTY keyboard, bluetooth enabled brilliant screen and the list goes on. This is by far the most incredible phone I have ever had! Weather you’re a Blackberry fan or not once you pick up this phone you will be!

Thats right, the CDMA curve is here! I’m sure if you’re a true Blackberry (aka Crackberry) fanatic then you probably already know this. I am a crackberry fanatic but I havent had a whole lot of time to blog about this because I’ve been to busy reading other blogs trying to figure out when it was coming out! I don’t exactly have insider knowledge…

Anyway, the plan is that I will eventually get a Curve, since I am a Verizon customer, and I will post all my feedback on it here. If you have a curve I would love to hear what you have to say about it.

So late last month Microsoft officially announced that they are indeed going to stop selling XP, however Dell has probably found a hole in the plan. Dell plans to continue to sell Windows XP. To do this they will claim to sell Vista by selling the computer with Windows XP but ship it with a Vista Upgrade disk, what customer choose to do with the disk after that is up to them! We’ll see how long this lasts…

I, for one, am embracing Vista. However since I work in an Enterprise IT environment and see that some of our important applications don’t work on Vista. Now this really isn’t the fault of Microsoft and Vista. These companies have known for a long time that Vista was going to be coming, and now its been out for nearly 2 years. Its time to move forward.

On June 30th of this year Microsoft, and OEM companies (such as HP and Dell), will stop selling Windows XP. Is this really a smart move? I know of two companies, both my current and future employers, that have software that is not yet Vista capable. Now at this point is Microsoft’s fault or is the fault of the software vendor?

Well one might argue that its Microsoft’s fault for not making Vista backwards compatible with software and hardware. To that many critics are responding that its very hard for Microsoft to move forward and innovate when it has to keep coming back to support older software and hardware. I, for one, completely agree. How can Microsoft move forward and create new and interesting things when it has to keep code that supports older devices and software? Keep in mind this code that makes Vista compatible affects and limits what programmers can do to make Vista better, a perfect example is security. Because so many people wanted Vista to be compatible, instead of everyone upgrading to Vista, we are left with User Access Control. If Microsoft moved forward like it had originally intended too we would have much better account security controls than UAC.

Also the other side of this argument might be that its the software vendors fault for not patching or releasing a newer version that is Vista compatible. Vista has been talked about for many years prior to its release to the business market in November 2006 and the consumer release in Early 2007. Seems like something should have been done before now.

I, for one, welcome Vista. I have been a Vista user since its release early last year. I run it on my laptop, and when I build my next desktop that too shall run Windows Vista. There are many features of vista that I find myself missing and wishing I had when I go back to an XP environment. I find myself now very rarely using my desktop and picking up my laptop. I urge anyone out there who hasn’t tried Vista yet to go ahead and try it out.

On a side note, Vista has been so unwelcome and hated that it has been dubbed the Millennium Edition of the new age. For those of you not fortunate enough to have used Windows ME, trust me you didn’t miss anything. Windows ME was on my very first laptop that I got when I was 18. It was a p3 900MHZ processor with 120 MB of ram, its actually still kicking today as I use it for miscellaneous side projects. Anyway I saw the blue screen of death more times with ME than I ever have before. I have never seen Vista blue screen. As soon as XP was released I rushed out and grabbed a copy to throw over ME, that was the best move ever.

Well its official, the high definition format war is over. I’m certainly happy its over, but I’m not very happy about the outcome.

This all started earlier this year when Warner Brothers decided they were no longer going to support the HD-DVD format. Originally they were producing both HD-DVD and Blueray movies. This came just days before CES. This, of course, burst the bubble of many of HD-DVD’s supporters.

Recently major retailers, such has Wal-Mart and Best Buy, have decide to no longer support HD-DVD and push the sale of Blueray players and discs. When you consider that those two stores alone account for the majority of movie sales alone, thats another pretty big blow to HD-DVD.

Now finally, according to an article in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/technology/20disc.html?ref=technology), Toshiba has announced that they will no longer produce HD-DVD players. Good-bye HD-DVD.

I, of course, am upset about this because last year it seemed as if HD-DVD was a sure fire winner. HD-DVD was much easier to produce, there were more duplication facilities available so it would be much easier for film companies produce HD-DVDs for sale. Also it was cheaper. I personally have the HD-DVD player add-on for my XBox 360. Also, before the end, Toshiba was selling players for as low as $100!

Oh well. This time Sony wins. The good news is that for the rest of us (who didn’t jump the gun and invest 100s of dollars in the wrong format) we can now go out and confidently buy blue-ray players and movies without fear of blue-ray being washed away.

Hi folks,

I am here, alive and well. I just haven’t been posting much lately, for a couple of reasons.

1) This past week was CES, aka Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas. I am not about to compete with the millions + others that blog and talk about what went on at CES. For one, I didn’t go. I really wish i could have, but I didn’t. So even if i did report anything on it, it would all just be hear-say anyway.

2) School has started back up again for me. I am a full time college student, plus I work full time, so as you can see there isn’t a whole lot of free time for me anyway.

Also I wouldn’t look at this blog for your primary source of Technology news. Again there are many sources out there that will cover this kind of thing, and do an incredible job at it. I’m an amateur. I will cover some things or give my two cents about a particular topic but for the most part this blog is here for my family and friends, and whoever else happens to stumble upon it.

If you like what I am doing thats awesome! My primary aim is make a data base or an FAQ of the questions i frequently encounter when working and providing “IT” service for my family and friends. I am currently thinking about putting up a bunch of educational posts that will just be there to inform people of what something means or what something does.

Point in case. I have been trying to figure out how to setup a VPN server on my Windows Home Server. The first time i set it up I was unsuccessful because I was missing a port to forward to my WHS. I found a great source, unfortunetly I did not save it, on what ports need to forward in order to make VPN successful. I will be posting about how to configure a VPN server on WHS, or Win XP, and why someone might want to do this.

Anyway, with that all said, if you like what I am doing please let me know. If you don’t like what I’m doing or thing i should provide more insite or information, then by all means please let me know. Please don’t not “rip me a new one.” As I previously stated I’m an amateur and I’m just doing this fun.

So please have some fun with me!

Ok, so no joke. On the evening on the December 27, 2007, my girlfriend and I had just sat down for an evening brew, Sam Adams of course. Close to the end of her first brew she near coughed something out of her mouth. We went quick to the kitchen and dumped out the remainder of the beer into a glass. The beer was very dirty and filled with debris. My first thought was that it was just scrapings from the bottom of the brewing kettle, little left over bits of barely and hops. Well that wasn’t the case at all….

Much to our surprise we saw a mass of something stuck to the inside of the bottle. We took out a steak knife and dug out the debris. Even more to our surprise we found that it was card board! Painted on and moldy card board inside the beer bottle!

Luckily my girlfriend did not get sick from drinking most of this bottle of beer. I went straight to the bottle and found an 800 number. Upon calling the number an automated man of sorts told me it was after hours and suggested when I could call back. He also gave me an emergency 800 number that I could call, so I did.

I talked with a man named Clayton. I imagine my call was probably the highlight of his Thursday evening. He sounded quite surprised at what we had found and took a bunch of information down from me and about our situation. He told me that I should be receiving a phone call sometime the next day, and suggested that it would after noon.

Well here we are a week late and that call has not come. I did call the Boston based beer company back today and was directed to someone’s voicemail. I left them with all my information and hope to hear back soon. I will certainly let you know once I hear back!

Also, what do you think I should do? Leave a comment and let me know.

UPDATE: They called me!

Ok so yesterday (finally!) I got a phone call from a guy in their public relations department at the Boston Beer Company. They are going to send me a box and with a pre-paid shipping label they want me to send back to them the bottle and card board. They he also said that they were going to get the ball rolling on cutting me a check for a replacement 12 pack. Not really too exciting, but they did finally call me back. Its only taken about 3 weeks to hear back from them. This all went down on December 27th of 07. Here we are today, 1/16/08 and I heard from them yesterday afternoon. He did apologize for taking so long to get back to me and that he was just getting back to work this week. Must be nice to have a 3 week holiday vacation.

I’ll post more when I know more!

UPDATE: Faith restored!

So remember this whole story? Well now here we are mid March and I finally got a letter from the Boston Beer Company. A very nice letter indeed signed by the man himself, Jim Koch. Also enclosed was a check for the refund of the purchased beer which was also signed by Jim. It wasn’t a printed check either, it was a hand written check.

I must say, however long this did take, and thankfully no one was harmed during the drinking of this beer. I feel that I got a very thoughtful and well written letter from a very busy guy and this certainly restores my faith in the Boston Beer Company.

Cheers!

Happy new year all. 2007 was full of fun surprises. I am certainly looking forward to 2008. If you haven’t heard about it already here are just a few things we can expect to hear more about in the coming year.

Google’s Bid - Google pulled together the pocket change, $4.6 Bills, to participate in the FCC auction for the old analog TV spectrum in the 700 MHz band. What would good want with that? Is this for the Google phone we’ve heard so much about? Perhaps Google is starting its own cellular service. Or will they outsource the phone and the service to other companies? Only time will tell.

Verizon Opens Up - Verizon will be opening up to people. Later this year you will no longer need to buy a phone directly from Verizon. You will be able to bring your old phone or buy a phone directly from a manufacture and as long as it is CDMA you will be able to use on Verizon’s network. I think that after this move goes through other cellular companies will follow and this will help make cell phones more affordable for all, as well as push to make phones able to do more, such as what we’ve seen after Apple released the iPhone.

Local News.

Well here in the northeast Verizon has sold itself off to Fair Point Communications. Radio adds promise that Fair Point is looking to higher an additional workforce of 400+ employees. Also will they bring broadband to the far reaches of the state? How about fiber optic services? I know I cannot wait to find out! I’d love to have fiber at my curb.

Update! Vermont has denied the current proposal from Fairpoint and Verizon. While Maine has recently approved the proposal. I guess its back to the drawing board for Fairpoint and Verizon. We’ll have to wait and see what their new offer is.

Verizon Wireless is looking to buy Unicel! This just doesn’t make sense. Verizon Wireless and Unicel are two completely different cellular technologies. Verizon is CDMA and Unicel is now GMA. They are both cellular communications technologies, but they work very differently from each other and therefore making the networks incompatible. I’ve heard a rumor that AT&T may be looking to purchase the Unicel network, as they are currently not here in VT. Unicel has a very established network of towers in the state, in fact they provide service in many areas that Verizon does not.

I know I’m excited to see what is coming!

So my secret Santa at work must really know me! I got two twelve-packs of Magic Hat’s Feast of Fools. In these packs are four delicious beers! Of course there is Magic Hat’s signature #9. Love the apricot flavored beer and of course it is Magic Hat’s flagship brew. Next in the feast is Circus Boy. This is by far my favorite Hefeweizen. Excellent flavor and beautiful coloring. If you haven’t tried it yet, do it! Even if you don’t care for other Hefeweizens I’m sure you’ll fall for Circus Boy. Next is Magic Hat’s winter brew, Roxy Rolles. Now honestly at first I wasn’t a big fan of Roxy Rolles but after having had it on a few separate occasions it is growing on me. Give it a try, if you don’t like at first, then try it again. Now for the icing on the cake in this twelve pack. The fourth brew is odd notion. A really delicious beer for the winter months. All around great tasting beer. I also love the label. Magic Hat always has these great, colorful and fun labels on all their beers and this one is no exception. It is an animated winter scene of the Magic Hat brewing company.

If you haven’t been there yet point you browser on over to the Magic Hat home page. Very nicely done web page and take a look at the artifactory.Also if you have the opportunity definetly go check out the brewery! Very fun place to be and in the back of there store there is a bar where you may sample all of the beers that they are currently brewing. Truly a great time and great beer!

Ok so I have to tell you that I am a little frustrated with everyone knocking on Vista. All these compatibility issues are the same problems that are encountered whenever Microsoft has updated or released a new Operating System. It happened when we went from Win 98 to 2000 a little bit from 2000 to XP and it is happening again. I really don’t think a lot of people have even tried Vista and they are just echoing everything that they are hearing from everyone else.

I run Vista Ultimate on my HP Pavilion dv5000. It did not come with vista, it came with XP and I upgraded to Vista Ultimate a mere week after Microsoft released Vista. At first I installed the 64 bit version, since my laptop is 64 bit, and I was met with many driver issues. Now I wasn’t planning on leaving the 64 bit version on there, I just wanted to see if there was any noticeable difference. I will note that there is no reason to run 64 bit version of an operating system unless you have more than 4 giga-bytes of RAM. The 32 bit version will not recognize more than 4 gigs of RAM. My laptop has one gig and at times it does choke, but that is when I am running many programs at once.

Now I was so happy with the way Vista ran on my laptop that i decided to try to install on my desktop. Now it is very important that before you do any upgrade to your OS that you should backup your important files, which I what I did first. Next I visited the Microsoft Vista page and download and ran the Vista upgrade adviser. It advised me that there would be no compatibility issues with my desktop, which is a computer I built myself. So I continued onward and installed Windows Vista. Luckily I did have a second hard drive installed on my desktop so I decided it might be better to install it on the second drive, instead of writing over my primary partition and loosing all my data. This proved to be the right move because I had a lot of issues despite the claims of the upgrade adviser.

Bottom line if you are buying a new computer get Vista, unless you depend on older legacy applications. If that is the case, or you are a small business owner, I do highly recommend that you stick with Windows XP. Unfortunately after Microsoft releases SP 3 for XP they will no longer continue to support Windows XP, at least thats what they are saying right now. Also give Vista a try before you start knocking it!