Tom Brady: Super Hero

Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is so f-ing cool I would like to punch him in the face.  And then run like hell so he didn't kick my ass.

Seriously, I watched Brady lead the Patriots to a 52 to 7 routing over the Redskins today.  He threw 3 TD passes and ran two more in on his own and I don't think he even broke a sweat.

Even though he has won multiple Super Bowls, forget football.  He's a rich dude who was having sex with Bridget Moynahan and he said f*ck that.  Apparently, he's so cool that she wasn't hot enough, and he decided supermodel Gisele Bundchen was more his speed.  Congratulations.

If you don't have even a little envy for this guy, you probably own a purse.

Going Digital - Backups

So, I've been converting my life to digital... CD's, photo albums, and saved papers anyway.

Now that I am collecting all this new data on my hard drive, I need to keep it backed up.  In my opinion, most backup software is terrible these days.  Absolutely terrible.  Nothing seems to work without either a lot of setup or maintenance (or sometimes both).  Its no wonder that most non-technical people have no reasonable backups of their data.

Backup software should be something I easily setup once, then forget about until I need it.  A co-worker recommended Mozy (www.Mozy.com) to me.  Mozy could not be easier.  It automatically and continuously backs up changed files to a secure remote server.   All files are encrypted and available to be viewed through a "drive" that shows up in Windows Explorer.  Deleted files are automatically purged after 30 days and don't count toward your quota.

2 GB and smaller accounts are free.  Unlimited accounts (mine is nearly 40 GB) are only $4.95 per month.  I couldn't recommend it more highly.

Pros

• Secure Remote Backup
• Absolutely painless to use
• Cheap
• Continuous backups that you won't even notice

Cons

• Initial backup takes a while (a product of slow upload speeds)

Next up, encrypting and securing sensitive data.

Going Digital - Paper

The final step in going digital - Paper.  I have a filing cabinet full of things I save for one reason or another.  Business receipts, past taxes, pay stubs, bills, investment statements... the list goes on.  The IRS now allows digital copies of documents, so keeping everything digital and shredding the paper makes sense.

The first thing I did was visit web sites for credit cards, cell phones, investments, etc. and sign up for paperless statements or billing.  Generally, you end up with a monthly email letting you know you can logon to the site and save a PDF of the statement.  Problem solved.

To help with the other items, I bought an HP 5610 All in One printer with a 25 page document feed scanner for around $100.  It is easy to setup but there is no driver only installation, so you'll probably end up with some software you'll never use.  With past HP All in Ones I've been happy with the software's ability to let me know my ink levels are low but can't say I have used the software for anything else.

Instead of using the HP tools for scanning, I use the Microsoft Office Document Scanning software that came with my copy of Office 2003.  It's a light-weight app that connects to the scanner without issue and supports the document feeder.

I started with two years of pay stubs from both my wife and I, about 100 in all.  Four cycles through the document feeder took care of them.  One small jam when I tried to initially run my wife's through the wrong way.  Her's pay stubs were mostly the size of a check and trying to feed them through horizontally didn't work because there wasn't enough paper for the rollers to grab.  The document guides are adjustable, so I just turned them vertical.

After each scan I was left with 25 TIFF previews arranged within the software's document viewer.  I printed all 25 of those to one PDF using the standard File > Print and selecting my PrimoPDF "printer".  PrimoPDF is a great free PDF print driver.  I use the Screen Resolution setting to minimize file size (versus Print quality).

I save the files using a date scheme like this:

20070101-20070601.pdf

to represent pay stubs from Jan 01, 2007 to June 01, 2007.  Using the YYYYMMDD format allows for better sorting when viewing files.

For new papers coming in, I scan those individually and save in a similar format (i.e. 20071015.pdf).

Here's some issues I've run into:

• Some things I get are printed front and back.  That requires two scans and the dragging and dropping the TIFF previews into the correct order.
• Printing PDF's is easy but feels like it takes too much time.  For example, if I scan 10 papers that make up 2 different statements and 1 bill, I have to print to PDF three times.  Pages 1 - 3 for the first statement, 4 - 6 for the second, and finally, 7 - 10 for the bill.  Could there be some software out there to help automate this?
• The bigger PDF's (25 pay stubs for example) are not searchable.  I've heard that with the OCR component of the scanning software it is possible to save OCR'ed text behind the scanned image to allow for searching.  I'll be looking into this going forward.
• Like the other parts of going digital, the hard drive is filling up.

The upside to the digital documents is worth it for me.  No more filing cabinet, easier organization, the documents get backed up.

Next up: Encrypting and backing up all of the digitized parts of my life.

Going Digital - Photographs

The next thing on my list to go digital is photographs.

I've always been a higher than average picture taker.  I've been hiking and camping in some really cool areas around the country and in Canada and have some hefty photo albums to remember the trips by.  I started out in college with disposable 35 mm cameras, opted for a Kodak APS camera for a while, and then had a few 35mm point and shoots before finally opting for digital.

I have around 5,000 paper photographs collecting dust in albums.  They don't rotate by on my Google Photos Screensaver and God forbid I actually pick up the albums with my hands like some kind of animal!

The solution seemed to be to get them scanned.  Luckily, I meticulously kept negatives.  Negative scans are cheaper to have professionally done and allow for a much higher quality scan.

I started with the professional route.  ScanCafe was by far the cheapest company I could find online.  $0.19 for a negative scan and you only pay for the scans you want (but you have to pay for at least half of them).  They scan negatives at a super-high 3,000 dpi.  ScanCafe also does slides, paper photos, and more.

I recently sent about 600 in, we'll see how they turn out in a couple months (not fast, but better than doing it myself).  Part of the slowness is because I also sent a couple hundred APS pictures.  Those run $0.44 each and I can also choose the ones I want.  Way more pricey than 35mm so I started looking for other options.

I came up with something simple, take the APS rolls over to my local Target store to have them re-developed onto a Kodak picture CD.  I took 5 rolls over the other day and got back some 11" x 19" images at 216 dpi.  Not the best in the world but decent quality at only $3.99 a roll.

I use Google's Picasa software to organize and do minor editing.  It simply does everything I need and is free to use.

Pros:

• I can use my digital pictures instead of letting them degrade in the photo albums that are never looked at

Cons:

• Can get expensive
• I'll probably have to upgrade the hard drive at some point to accommodate all this "digitizing"

Up next... Papers (receipts, bills, pay stubs, taxes, etc)

Going Digital - CD's

I'm in a quest to convert my life away from papers (bills, pay stubs, receipts, etc), CD's, and paper photos.

First up, CD's.  I've been ripping my entire collection to iTunes.  I've gotten solid friendly advice on formats and such, which I promptly ignored. I guess I'm not an audiophile so I just wanted something that was easy to do and universally accepted.  I went with a 160 kbps MP3.  Sounds good to me and doesn't take up too much room (around 70 MB per disc).

Pros:

• No more CD towers crowding the living room.
• Remembering some great old songs that have been collecting dust as CD's
• Having my music easily accessible in the devices I use these days

Cons:

• Painfully slow process ripping a few discs here and there
• I'll probably need a hard drive and iPod upgrade before this is finished

Up next: Photos.

Gutter Cleaning Robot

Today I ran across a new product from iRobot, the makers of the Roomba robotic vacuum.  The $99 iRobot Looj, a gutter cleaning robot, means no more scooping crap out of your gutters like a pig.

• iRobot Looj
• Watch the video

Australians in Danger of Living like Pigs

If the Australian government gets its way, the people of Australia will be living like pigs with no LCD or plasma screens.  While they probably don't watch quality NFL programming, they have a God given right to watch rugby, or whatever the hell it is they do down there, on big gorgeous HD screens.

From ABC News (found on Tech Dirt), the Australian government is considering energy ratings on TV's which would essentially ban current LCD and Plasma screens by 2011 due to their higher energy consumption.

Here's a great quote from a government donkey:

"By the time the standard came into place, with the industry knowing that the these standards are coming in, they can adjust their supply chains to make sure that the products will [meet the requirements]"

What a jackass statement.  Congratulations on over simplifying what it would take for the manufacturers to accomplish this not to mention the screw job the consumers would get in paying for the new technology.

I'm all for treading lightly when it comes to the environment but I'm guessing there are bigger problems that could be addressed than TV's.

F*cking Awesome!!!

Here's a new way to blow a few hours playing games... Caterpillar corp. has designed simulators for multimillion-dollar heavy mining equipment. That's right, you can shoot around in 180 ton dump trucks and massive excavators.

From Caterpillars standpoint, these are expensive machines that aren't easy to operate.  Simulators allow for training without taking the equipment out of service or wrecking the things.

The simulators require drivers to pass through timed obstacle courses in simulated mining pits, being careful to avoid wrecking multimillion-dollar rigs and causing the games to crash.

The driver's cabin in the dump truck bounces over the rough road of mines and some players enjoyed backing the truck up to a ravine and pulling a lever to dump the dirt load.

Read the article from PC World

Could Truck Commercials be More Ridiculous?

Don't get me wrong, I am not a truck hater.  I drive a truck.  I haul around my camper, crap from the yard, and 2 x 4's from Home Depot.

Truck manufacturers (specifically Ford and Toyota) seem to think I do the following:

• Use my truck brakes to stop a military cargo plane
• Pull a cargo container up a cliff
• Haul 10,000 lbs of concrete while dodging swinging I beams
• Haul a trailer full of crap on some giant teeter-totter contraption
• Pull trapped semis out tunnels to let ambulances through
• Drive a slalom course backwards... fast.

Just show my truck with room for 4 or 5, gas mileage better than 17 gal/mi, and the ability to haul the old door off my house over to the dump.  Trust me, every time I come across a semi trapped in a tunnel (which has happened exactly zero times in 16 years), I'll wait for professionals to extract it.

UPDATE: Rich Kasten has posted a counter-point article.

Kim Jong Il: International Man of Mystery

Great picture from the Times Online today:

http://timesonline.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2007/10/03/2071003q0194_00.jpg

I would have included the picture but the link makes it a little more suspenseful.  (And news outfits love to sue people these days.)

Where does Kim get such fashionable yet sensible dictator clothing?  Looks like he also downgraded the glasses a bit.  Too bad.

Father of the year!

Here's a Father of the Year story that I came across today...

A 10 year old girl in China, Huang Li,  wants to make it into the records books by being the youngest to swim the English Channel.  Good for her.  When I was 10, I had ridiculous ambitions too.  I wanted to be a long haul trucker, or a lawyer, or a stock broker.  When you're 10 you have all kinds of bad ideas.

Being a 10 year old, with the mental capacity and lifetime experiences of a 10 year old,  Huang Li thought it would be a great idea to practice swimming with her feet bound at the ankles and her hands bound at the wrists like she saw on TV.  Yeah... great idea.

Here's the point where normal parents step in and let little Huang know that this may not be her best plan in her short 10 years.  But not these superstars.  Dad tied her up and tossed her ass in a tributary of the Yangtze River.  For three hours.

Somehow she managed to not die and did indeed swim about 2 miles according to the story.

Hero-Dad's quote:

It’s not dangerous because, first, her swimming skills are really good and second, I was swimming with her, staying close to her. I had her when I was 35, so she is my heart. I would never play around with her life.

Yeah... way to go champ.

Mom had her stop swimming after three hours.  Not so she could stop her daughter from certain death but so she could feed her daughter some cake.

I couldn't make this stuff up. 

WTF? Who's dressing up a Roomba?

As part of my typical morning routine I checked the Top Headlines and Technology & Sciences headlines at MSNBC this morning.

The link that caught my eye read "Roombas fill an emotional vacuum for owners".  Being a Roomba owner, I couldn't think of any emotional void my Roomba has filled, so I clicked.

Apparently some over-paid and under-worked academic interviewed some crazzzzy Roomba owners who dress up their Roombas, name thier Roombas, travel with their Roombas, and one man who "introduced" his Roomba to his parents.

What's the over/under on girls this guy has slept with?  I'm guessing 0.

Check it out for yourself: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21102202/

Update: I ran across this site that sells Roomba outfits.  Holy Sh*t!

So this is blogging?

I figured I would start a blog. Seems like all the kids are doing it these days and I have no shortage of things to say. Now lets see if I have enough interesting and relevant things to say.

I caught a note on TechDirt today talking about the way Radiohead is releasing a new album. You can order a copy online that comes with a CD, a vinyl copy, lyrics, photos, etc. (collectively they are calling it a "discbox"). You can also order a download of the album... the interesting part is that you can name your own price for the download. Seriously. If you want to pay $1, go for it. When you place the "download" in your shopping cart, the next screen has a field to name your price. If you click the help link it simply tells you that the price you pay is up to you.

Local talk radio did a segment on it this morning also. Many callers labeled this is a "stupid gimmick" that would be a monetary disaster for the band.

I couldn't disagree more. As TechDirt points out time and time again, the music industry is changing (regardless of whether the industry as a whole realizes it). Buying *all* of your music on CD is already a thing of the past. While I agree that naming your own price is a gimmick and is probably not financially viable in the long term, the point is the band is driving traffic to their site and offering a package of extras in the form of the "discbox".

The money maker for the music industry is becoming less about the music and more about the other things like concerts, clothing lines, or even this "discbox". Radiohead figured out that their music is a promotional vehicle for these other items.

In the end, all I can say is "bring on the cheap downloads". After all, who is really going to carry around $20K or $40K worth of downloads on their iPods?