Test post from IPhone.

I know, welcome to 2009..

The true cost of a first offense DWC....

...Well, financial cost anyway...



It has become more clear as to why Arnie would promise "Swift Action" when wife Maria Shriver was also seen DWC (Driving While Chatting)

I guess $150 is still less than hiring a personal driver, but a whole lot more than a fancy hands-free device Maria could make at home. . I was pulled over by a very determined SMC Sheriff's deputy who assured me it was a small fine and would not go on my driving record etc... Well, if you haven't noticed, the same guy who's wife won't be filling our State's coughers, has run this state so deeep into the red that a $20 ticket actually costs $150.

Playing with Maps

I recently spoke to a company called UMapper based in Colorado. They have a very cool front-end to allow common folks, like me, to generate custom and interactive maps. Given the season, I will attempt to map the habits and terrain used by SVST.

This mapping widget is rendering Open Street Map data which, for the Squaw Valley area, has been updated by Marc Prioleau. The widget is fully drag-able, zoom-able and explorable.

Ahh yes... PocketMail

Those of you who know me (and if you're reading this and don't know me, how did you find it and I'm sure you have better things to do ;-) know that I am still a huge fan of PocketMail. It combined a very simple UI with corner to corner coverage. Virtually anywhere you had a phone, you had coverage thanks to the Acoustic Mode technology. Acoustic Modems had been around. I saw my first acousitc modem when I was a boy at my Godparents house. They had two boys similar in age to me and my brother and lived on a large property in Woodside. The families would spend a lot of time together at teh pool, riding bikes, horses, camping out and generally having a great childhood. These gys also had this thingcalled and Apple. I don't know the Apple lineage very well but it had to be one of the first in circa 1973-75 ?? Anyhow, they also had an acoustic modem and called into a "Bulletin Board". Relavance? None. Juat a fond childhood memory and a brief introduction to how to dial a number, hear the squeals and stick the phone reciever in the two foam cups... same as PocketMail.

Why all this now? I saw a great article on TechCrunch today and I began to reminisce ;-)

Back to work...

Every penny counts...

...But when cellular voice traffic has become a commodity, you'd think that operators would want to get folks on and off the line as soon as possible. i.e buy larger buckets of minutes than they need. So I am continually surprised when it takes 13 seconds to just get to the prompt on Verizon's voice mail service. So, When leaving a voice mail for Verizon customer this morning, waiting the forever it took to get to the prompt, I took a look to find pass key to voice mail freedom.. and found it at this blog.
The results are:

• T-Mobile = #
• Cingular = #
• Sprint = 1
• Verizon= 1

Hope it helps.

Tom

"Lessons learned on Sesame Street...."

I, Like so many, but not all, of America's youth spent some amount of time watching my friends who live on Sesame Street play, live and learn. And somewhere along the way we were given the exercise to figure out out of 4 things on the screen, which one didn't belong in that group. You remember, 3 apples and a bike tire, 3 girls and a Tasmanian devil (ok, that one was tough for our fathers), and so on...

Now, along comes Facebook which is helping to create an online genre called "Social Networking": "A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others."

It is a great way to stay in touch with friends, share stories and photos invitations and all kinds of ways to "poke" your friends. It is also a great way to reconnect with folks that you haven't seen or met in a very long time... And since MySpace has made it's run and targeted a mostly younger demographic, the FaceBook users, for the most part, tend to be a little older, perhaps mature and less interest in fake names and .GIF icons all over the page... Yes, a kinder, gentler group of online socialites sharing daring tales of fantastic fetes and amazing feats of adventure. Welcoming new arrivals and trash talking your buddies around the globe. A way to connect and stay close when not near... and meet new friends too! It;s a place where the common man might stumble across the great and powerful and connect at a safe and distant level. A way for some of these folks to reach down and connect with the more common of man sometimes referred to as "Constituents". Where we can see these folks as real people and hear their message from their own fingertips... we think.

I digress, lets get back to Sesame Street:
Which one of these things doesn't belong with the others? ;-)

Now that I have become a Mac Fan Boy... Well, anyway... I really like my MacBook Pro and enjoy the ability to open and work with MS doc... but it comes at a price... When I went to open a power point, I was alerted to a critical update needed by the MS Office suite on the Mac.. ok... let's keep it up to date... so off I go...

Holy MegaBytes BatMan.. since when does a mere update take up almost 1/2 a GIGABYTE!!!! Oh.. Right... Despite the fact I'm working on a MCA, this is MS Software..... Ugh