Microsoft has finally release pricing for the October 22nd release of Windows 7. Prices range from $119 to $319. From now until July 11th you can order Windows 7 for a 50% discount. See blog link below for more info.

Click here for more information.

Recently Parallels released version 4 of their virtual machine software which I have been using for many years now and have been recommending to everyone I can. I use the MAC version so I can run Vista (even tried Windows 7) and until this version it worked like a charm! But after upgrading to version 4, spending 12 days emailing tech support back and forth the performance is much worse than version 3! Here are just some of the issues I was having besides the terrible performance:

1. Takes 4 minutes to boot the image.
2. While running, programs run slow in the virtual image AND on my MacBook Pro! Clicking on programs etc. sometimes does nothing for up to 30 seconds.
3. Network (internet) runs very slow in the virtual image AND on my MacBook Pro!
4. Takes 4 minutes to shut down image.

Tech support was very helpful and tried every trick in the book to get my vm to run faster, which it did, but still was too slow. Why should it take 12 days of emails to get it to work better, shouldn't it just work like that when I start it?

So my recommendation is do not use this version until these issues are worked out and I will not be recommending it anymore. Sorry Parallels.

I wrote to McDonald's the other day letting them know I was over changed AGAIN at the local store near where I live. Also to complain that they continuously leave an item out of my order. Below is their lame response... nice way to pass the buck guys!

Hello David:

Thank you for your comments regarding prices at your local McDonald's.

It's important to know that approximately 85 percent of our restaurants are locally owned and operated by independent business people known as franchise owners. Each franchise owner determines his or her restaurant's prices by taking our recommendations into consideration, as well as their unique operating costs. This is why prices may vary from one McDonald's restaurant to another. Also franchise owners make decisions regarding charging for condiments.

We are sorry for any dissatisfaction you may be feeling as a result of prices at a McDonald's restaurant. Overall, McDonald's Corporation works very hard with our suppliers, research and development, and internal departments to consistently offer a broad menu that can be offered at a good value in our restaurants.

We appreciate your feedback and will share it with the appropriate people at McDonald's. Regarding your local McDonald's pricing, we encourage you to share your feedback with the restaurant Manager. We are sure the franchise owner would be interested in you comments.

Thank you again for contacting McDonald's. We appreciate your business and hope to have the opportunity of serving you in the future.

Matt
McDonald's Customer Response Center

Reynolds is now offering recycled aluminum foil! Click here for more info and to sign up for a free roll. (hopefully it will be cheaper)

I purchased this book after seeing Arianna Huffington on The Daily Show. She spoke highly of it and since I write maintain a few blogs I thought I could gain some some knowledge from it. The front of the book touts these statements:

• Getting Started
• Best Practices
• Getting Noticed
• Building Community
• Finding Your Voice

Also listed on the front of the book are numerous famous people like Harry Shearer, Jamie Lee Curtis, Bill Maher and more that wrote advice in the book. Wow, sounds like a great book... every blogger needs a copy! Think again!

Overall the book is just a 230 page advertisement for the Huffington Post. The statements listed above are just chapter titles and the star "advise" is not very aspiring. Just comments on their experience writing for the Huffington Post. Sure they do list a some useful tidbits like getting started but nothing in detail. Then the chapter just turns into how the Huffington Post got started. There were pages and pages on how Arianna and others came up with the look and feel of the site. All the experts they consulted, all the time it took to create something new and exciting and different from the current newspapers. So I finally got a chance to check out their blog and it looks like a newspaper! Wow, now that's a change! I quickly left because they came up with a design that "screams" at me and I don't like any site like that.

I vowed to finish this book (since I have trouble reading a complete book) and I did. But it got pretty painful since it's so self-indulgent! So in the end, not much real information but if you are a fan of the Huffington Post you will like this book.

So I've seen the commercials on TV, Circuit City is (finally) going out of business! So I thought I would take advantage of it and while doing errands today thought I'd stop by the one nearest to me. I had a few items in mind, not that I can afford it but I have been looking to get a flat-screen TV, I do need a new wireless router and few other items. I looked at the flat-screens and found a LG model that seemed like a good price. I thought I'd check the price on Amazon.com using the application on my iPhone... to my surprise it was cheaper on Amazon! Then I looked at the Linksys router and I found the same thing and the same goes for the other items I looked at. I even told some of the customers that were looking at the same type of items as I was that they could find it cheaper online.

So, I'm not a big time business guy, but it stands to reason that if you are trying to unload inventory, wouldn't you sell it at a huge discount? It seems Circuit City is marking all of their items at the original retail price (or more) and then applying the discount to that, which is still more than what you can purchase it from on Amazon (which includes free shipping over a certian purchase total). It's no wonder why this company is going out of business... it never kept up with compitition. So for one last screw over on the average consumer, now they are predending they are giving them a deal! (this of course does not apply to out-of-the-box prices)

I'm glad to see Circuit City go... the faster the better! I just feel bad that thousands of people that didn't deserve it will loose their job due to exceutives that can't get their greedy heads out of their butts.

Your thoughts?

Followup:
I sent this to KGTV Channel 10 here in San Diego and they are doing a story on it on 2/12/09 at 11pm. Tune in and see what they say!

Below is a review I did of my still favorite graphic manipulating program called Paint Shop Pro in a newsletter I use to write and publish called "The Shareware & Freeware Report" around 1994. PSP is the only program still around in this first issue that I published. Even thought the original designers sold it to Corel, it's still a pretty decent program for the price.

This is a really cool application for your iPhone, especially when you have some time to waste waiting in your doctors office. It allows you to download thousands of iPhone backgrounds (wallpaper) from Flickr. Here are it's features:

• Search over 50,000 Backgrounds
  
• Browse over 5000 unique backgrounds
• Choose from over 30 categories such as: Movies, Cars, Funny, Animals, Christmas, Models, Guys, Space, Cute, Sports, Games, Beaches, Water, Messages, Night, Hearts, Swirls, Explosions, Buildings, Cities, Fantasy, Sunsets, Technology, Flowers and many more.
• 100% Free

It's average rating on iTunes is 3.5 stars. I can't give it 5 stars for these two reasons:

1. Every time I download a background it tells me how to change my background. I think once a session is enough, don't you think?
   
2. Graphics are downloaded into the Camera Roll folder not the Wallpaper folder. Not sure if this is a security issue with the iPhone.

You should definitely check this one out.

The iPhone application GPS Mapper from InstaMapper LLC is a free real-time GPS traking service. You can use it to track an iPhone online, share your location with friends and family and record tracks for later analysis. Sounds cool, but even after a few updates, this application never seems to connect to the GPS on my phone. It did work the first time but after that it never did. I would not waste your time with this one. It's average rating on the Apple App Store is 2 out of 5 stars.

Yesterday I wrote a note on Facebook on how frustrated I am that even thought I have a 20GB iPod, it keeps playing the same songs and groups over and over again. I know there are thousands of songs on it that I never hear. One of my friends came to the rescue with what he does. He creates a Smart Playlist in iTunes that includes songs that have not been played in x number of days. Below is the Smart Playlist that I created:

You just can't beat the weather in San Diego. I just can't believe there is any better spot in America for weather than here. Case in point, I took the picture below the afternoon of December 30th, 2008 while walking along the cliffs above the beach in Del Mar.

There was a slight breeze blowing, no need for a jacket... just perfect. Just so hard to believe it was the end of December when most of the rest of the country is suffering from storms, snow pack and ice storms. We have this great weather with the only exception to the norm is that the nights are cooler than usual dipping down into the high 30's and 40's.

It's not too late to get a calendar for 2009! Click on the image below to purchase my 2009 calendar full of beautiful sunsets all taken in San Diego California.

For the first time in a long time I shipped something via my account with FedEx. I was totally surprised when besides the shipment cost they also charged me with:

• Home Delivery! What gives. Are they penalizing us if we want to ship to a personal address?!?!?!?!?!
  
• Fuel Surcharge??? Didn't the cost of gas go way down??

They also wanted to charge me for:

• Signature
• Pickup

But I took those off as soon as I saw how much they wanted. Dang, don't think I will be using them anymore! USPS only from now on.

Now that the 2008 election is finally over (did not think this day would ever come), here are some thoughts of reflection:

• I love this day because it means no more political ads on TV! My eyes and ears have been hit by thousands of mostly negative ads which I think are the wrong way to get your point across! If you spend 30 minutes tearing down the other side how will I know what your side will do??
• Okay, we all know that politicians lie or make promises they can't keep. I just hope that in the state this country is in and the world that they follow through. I also hope we the people make them keep their promises!
• In this day of age, I can't believe the ban on same sex marriage in California passed!
• I'm looking forward to my stress levels going down now that this is all over. I mostly blame the candidates, the political ads, debates etc. I have never seen such a huge level of negativity being placed on the American people. What kind of example do they show us? What kind of role models are they for us? To me, not very good ones. It's no wonder our political system is so messed up.

I just hope we all learn (including politicians) from this two long year experience. Keep the good and stop the negativity!

I have been in the online dating scene for longer then I care to admit... actually before there were online dating sites! I have so many stories it's not funny. I'm wondering if these things really work. Sure, the ads say they do but we all know the success rate has to be pretty low. I'd love to hear your stories... good and bad. I have heard so many bad stories when I have been on dates it's pretty scary.

Email me at the link in the Disclaimer section on the left side of the page.

If you are like me and not lucky enough to have a private office at work and have to work in "cube land", then I am guessing you could be as frustrated as I am with the people around you. It's amazing how unprofessional professionals are! I'm a software engineer and it's worse for me because most of us need a calm, quite atmosphere to concentrate. Very hard to achieve in the big open cube rooms of today. This is why I much prefer to work at home. I estimate I can get as much done in two days at home as I do in five days in the cube farm.

So below are a list of things you can anonymously leave on your co-workers desk to teach them how to be a good cube citizen.

Cube Life Etiquette

1. Use your quite voice in the cube farm. Remember how we were told that as kids and/or we tell that to our kids? Well you need to do that do so others can work instead of being distracted by your conversation. Remember, you are not at a bar or a sporting event!
2. Make or take personal calls in private! Always make your personal calls or answer them outside or somewhere private like a conference room or an empty office. No one wants to hear your calls to your doctor, kids school or even worse arguing with your significant other. This just brings in drama into the office and it's just plain inappropriate. For some reason when people use the phone, their voice goes up 3-4 decibels. Use your cell phone and take it somewhere else. Never use company phones, it's not your phone and you never know if big brother is listening.
3. Don't sleep at your desk. If you are that tired or hung over, stay home! If you need to sleep, go to your car. Sleeping at your desk is just plain unprofessional. Not sure why companies put up with it. They guy in the cube next to me where I currently work, not only sleeps but snores!
4. Smokers use breath mints!!! If you are going to blow 10-15 minutes of work time ever hour or so taking time off of your life (smoking) then do us all a favor and pop a few Altoids before you come back into the office. None of use non-smokers what to smell you when you get back into your cube!!
5. Don't scratch your butt in the hall! I'm not kidding you... I was trying to go to the printer and this guy was standing in my way, hand down his pants scratching his butt. Please! Not good and any public situation!
6. Take care of your personal hygiene at home or in the bathroom! No one wants to hear you clipping your nails etc. at your desk!
   

If you are going to the Del Mar Fair that starts this weekend, please check out the Photography exhibit. It's my favorite and I am happy this year that they have have accepted one of my photographs for the show. It's called "Desert" and was taken near Las Vegas, Nevada last year.

Here are some pictures I took on Catalina Island this year in June. Click on the picture below to view all the pictures.

Has your job been outsourced to India or some other country like mine has? Well tell the world what you think about it with this cool t-shirt I designed.

Click on the shirt to order one or two!

If you had bought $1,000.00 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00.

With Enron, you would have $16.50 of the original $1,000.00.

With MCI/Worldcom, you would have less than $5.00 left.

If you had bought $1,000.00 worth of Miller Genuine Draft (the beer, not the stock) one year ago,
drunk all the beer then turned in the cans for the 10-cent deposit, you would have $214.00.

Based on the above, 401KegPlan.com's current investment advice is to take that $5.00 you have left over
And drink lots and lots of beer and recycle.

http://401kegplan.com/keg/

 

So, today (about a week after the company that purchased us moved our computers into their domain) I was looking through Active Directory for security groups. I went to many of the folders but could not find them. Sure, I could search for them and they came up, but could not find what folder they were in. To my surprise, my new company has put all users, security and distribution groups in ONE folder?!?!?! Can you believe that? There are so many (over 70,600), they won't even load in the window to view them!

Hows that for organization and applying group policies!