New Underwater shots up ...
Current mood: aggravated
Category: Art and Photography

It certainly has been a while, but I went diving on July 26th.  I just got the pictures up for you to look at ...


(Mood is due to a computer hang that occurred at an inopportune time while I was entering image data into my website.)

Currently listening : Empires By VNV Nation Release date: 2000-05-16

6:57 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Bright House Networks vs. Verizon FIOS - HD and Internet in Tampa Bay
Current mood: relaxed

Basic info first, as most of the time people's experiences are all a matter of context:

I had Bright House (BH) Networks in my old apartment in Temple Terrace, with an HD-DVR (see earlier blog posts about some of the things I encountered with it).

I now (briefly, as practically an hour after they finished setting it up, we were out the door to visit my SO's parents) have Verizon FIOS (V-FIOS) in Lutz (but it's so close to "New Tampa" it's practically there).

Here's the list of issues:

• Missing from V-FIOS: Bay News 9. BN9 is run by BH, so go figure.
  
• Missing from V-FIOS: History Channel in HD. Also missing - Science Channel in HD. Both of these I watched regularly. I haven't done a side by side comparison yet, but I'm beginning to think that Verizon's HD lineup currently lacks big time. However, my limited knowledge of how all this works thinks that it will be easier in the long run for V-FIOS to add HD channels (uncompressed!) than it will be for BH (which will probably have to use compression unless they start replacing all of their cabling with fiber).
  
• I had to ask for the "HD National" channels. I don't think they're an extra charge, but if I get an HD box, I shouldn't have to ask for the HD channels. If they do charge more, I'm going back to Bright House.
  
• I don't quite like the onscreen guide for Verizon FIOS yet. Perhaps it's just a usage thing.
  
• Not sure the setup for the DVR stuff is as user friendly as Bright House's.
  
• Verizon's set top box (STB) definitely does not allow for easy adding of external hard drives to extend the available recording space. With the Bright House box, I could add a 500GB drive via an eSATA port on the back. And, I think the default space provided by the Verizon STB is smaller than the default space in BH's unit.
  
• According to the installers, three days prior to my install, Verizon offered a "basic" package for "cable ready" TVs, but they have discontinued this service. This sucks, as I had a TV I wanted to add to my bedroom as well as our "guest" room, but I didn't want to bother with the expense of an additional box. With the oncoming switch in Feb. for broadcast TV to go HD, I think Verizon figured (and supposedly the government may have requested) that they didn't need to provide the service any more. This leaves me with two useless TVs (and one of them is a decent 32" TV).
  

• V-FIOS's service is provided through a single unit that combines the functions of a "cable modem" and "wireless router" that also has 4 10/100 copper ethernet ports on it. The unit is fully configurable (by default they set it up with a random SSID and use 64bit WEP, but I easily reconfigured the SSID and configured it for WPA2 and our laptops didn't notice a difference when they were powered up). With BH, on the other hand, I had been using a cable modem (that I had had for a while) along with a "wireless router" (mind you, I had spent some money on a g capable wireless router that also had 4 10/100/1000 ports on them; the V-FIOS installers said they were in the middle of testing such a unit).
  

10:49 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Switching from Bright House to Verizon
Current mood: curious
Category: Web, HTML, Tech

I've been a customer of Bright House for quite some time. I've been mostly satisfied with their service, but I was curious as to how good Verizon's FIOS was. I had heard from my financial adviser that he wasn't satisfied with it and was switching back when his contract ran out. I might have decided to stick with Bright House if it weren't for a sales call I got from them not too long ago.

The guy was simultaneously reading from a script but also straight off of a used car lot. Didn't let me get a word in until it was time for me to say "Sure" - except that I said, "No, I don't want phone service." That was rapidly followed by "I understand that sir" and more rapid fire commentary about services and products. I really wasn't interested in changes to my service at the time. But again, it was "So how about I sign you up for it?"

At that point I said, "No" and hung up. I looked at Erika after that and said, "We're going Verizon when we get into the new house."

So they're on their way out Friday. They suggest it might take as much as eight hours for the guy to set everything up. I don't think it will take that long; I know what I'm doing in this field (I think) and the previous owners of the house had Verizon.

Now when I called Verizon they wanted to give me a couple of things for the first 30 days - "firewall" and "antivirus." Frankly, being in the business, I know enough to know how to take care of my PC ... and only two of the four computers using my home internet will be Windows boxes (the other two being Ubuntu and a Mac). I'll be interested to see how it all works out, since Verizon is providing the wireless stuff. I'll need my workstations on a wired network - I wonder if they'll provide that or if I'll just end up disabling the wireless on my gigabit cable router? Oh well, we'll see. Verizon does have a "contract" (whereas Bright House does not). I think there's a 30 day "I changed my mind" thing where I can get out of the Verizon thing without incurring a hit. If it sucks, I'll just go back to Bright House (and complain next time I get one of those sales calls).

Currently listening : Version 2.0 By Garbage Release date: 1998-05-12

7:21 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Some neat pictures ...
Current mood: mellow
Category: Art and Photography

Deadliest Catch fans, be jealous! I got to meet the crew of the Northwestern - Sig, Edgar, and Norman Hansen:


Went on a little boat ride, and got some pictures of a damselfly:




I hope you enjoy them!

4:11 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Tech Blog = Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard), Active Directory, Canon’s "EOS Digital Solutions Disk"
Current mood: accomplished
Category: Web, HTML, Tech

So I guess it's clear that I have some pretty funky setups. Well, not funky, but there's a lot of parts to the puzzle ...

Work provided me with a nice Mac Book Pro (15"), that (less than a year of having it) had it's 160GB hard drive die.

So, I got it fixed, and installed from scratch Leopard (10.5) and then popped the laptop into work's Active Directory Domain. I set the laptop to autologin as my domain account, using a "mobile account" copy if I wasn't able to contact the domain.

As you should also be aware by now, I have a Canon 30D dSLR camera that I take a lot of photographs with. While my main machine at home is XP based, I do take the laptop on trips and have been known to use it as ... well, picture storage.

The Canon utilities are pretty good. Handling downloading better than iPhoto in my opinion, and the two photo browsers I've come across in them (Digital Photo Professional and Image Browser) show me photo data (such as shutter speed, lens, F-stop, etc) in a side window. So I went to install the Canon utilities (and so far, with my experimentation, it's version independent), I get this nice little error message:

"Don't have enough privilege to install. Log in as administrator and try again."

Thing is, my domain account has administrative privileges.

Here's my guess, though. My domain account also has a bunch of AD groups that it belongs to. It also gets it's admin privileges through domain account membership. I think the Canon installer pukes heavily on this. The trick so far is to log in to a local account with administrative privileges.

ADDENUM: Still in the process of rebuilding my laptop, it looks like there may be a similar issue with Microsoft Office 2008's 12.1.1 Update installer; earlier I had it tell me that Office 2008 (I think the error message was along the lines of "no compatible product installed") wasn't installed, when I had just installed the 12.1.0 update not 20 seconds before. This could just be some wierd fluke though. Also note that if your "local account" hasn't run Office 2008 (IE Word or some part of it) and didn't do the original installation of Office 2008, MAU 2.0 (if you go digging through the "Library" folder to find it) won't detect any available updates.

Currently listening : Your New Favourite Band By The Hives Release date: 2002-02-04

4:39 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Photos - Hummingbird!
Current mood: impatient
Category: Art and Photography

While visiting the girlfriend's parents, we watched a hummingbird make several visits to one of the bushes in their yard.

5:22 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

PS3 Game Review = The Simpsons Game
Current mood: happy
Category: Games

Needlessly difficult.  Game animation poor.

There's times when a game should be hard.  But the times when that hardness is not due to an increase in difficulty, but rather a failure at camera/control programming ... that's needless.

The Simpsons Game suffers from this constantly; as your control over a character is influenced by the camera angle you're viewing the game at (something that can easily be changed with one of the sticks).  Normally a game can handle this fairly smoothly; but the camera angle seems to constantly change at the most inopportune times, making what was going to be a simple leap between poles become a dismal failure.

Because of this, my PS3 controller almost made a short, quick flight to my HDTV multiple times.  I'm just glad my doctor wasn't monitoring my blood pressure at the time.

On to the animation ...

The cutscenes (at least the ones that were actually animated) were done very well.  However, while you're running your characters around the game, particularly if you're doing it in HD, you're going to be heavily dissatisfied with how well the characters are rendered.

I've also heard complaints about character switching.  Most maps (save maybe two) are done with only two of the characters.  On the PS3, you only need to have one of the relevant ones in your party of two (which wanders Springfield) to start a wave.

Other than that, I guess the game is okay.  If I were you, and you think the price is going to drop eventually, I'd wait.  It's not worth the near $30 I paid for it, given the poorly programmed controls/camera work and poor computer animation of the characters.

1:25 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Pictures - "I saw something really cool the other day ... "
Current mood: anxious
Category: Art and Photography

I was on my way to the store to pick up some soda, when I passed a road sign and heard a noise.  What I saw caused me to stop, turn around, and walk slowly towards my apartment for a little, bolting as fast as I could to get the camera only when I figured I was far enough away not to spook him ...

1:13 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

PS2 Game Review = Destroy All Humans! 2
Current mood: bouncy
Category: Games

Gameplay was very similar to DAH!  Fun, longer, and many of the more "clunky" control things were streamlined for DAH!2.  All in all, well worth it.

The only issue I had was that a few of the missions seemed a bit tricky, or overly long.

Might edit this blog later to put in more.

9:24 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Tech Blog = "Safely Remove Hardware" - "Operation has been cancelled"
Current mood: contemplative

"This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer."

It's not uncommon to see this if you're a "joe normal" user, usually in a corporate or "Active Directory domain" setting, particularly if there are Nazi-esque adminstrators afoot.

I use "Group Policy Objects" to configure certain permissions on a few public instructional computer labs that I administrate. I got a complaint today that they were trying to "Safely Remove Hardware" (a USB flash drive) and they got the "restrictions" message.

It took quite a bit of time to find it in Google, but the GPO in question is:

"User Configuration" - "Administrative Templates" - "Control Panel" - "Prohibit access to the Control Panel"

If you've "Enabled" this, then you're going to run into this issue. However, there are plenty of other ways (such as configuring a Mandatory Profile that doesn't list the Control Panel, or using the "Show only specified Control Panel applets") to "limit the potential access to do damage" a given user has.

Just so you know. :)

Currently listening : Matter + Form By VNV Nation Release date: 2005-04-12

8:24 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment