I recently made a tough decision to leave my job of 4 years (a long time when you're only 21) and venture on to something new. In a nut shell, I'm glad I made that decision. Well, I guess you can stop reading this now, that was pretty much the whole point of the blog post. I suppose I'll elaborate...

I worked as a system administrator for a department at Virginia Tech. My supervisor was the systems analyst for the whole department we both shared responsibility of making sure all the machines are in good condition and coming to people's aide when trouble arises. That was pretty much the whole job. We handled problems ranging from major catastrophes to pressing the "Num Lock" key for people when the keypad wasn't working. I am grateful for the experience because I got plenty of practice diagnosing computer problems daily, and I even got to do code the online conference room and equipment reservation system.

But I was starting to feel I had gotten everything I could from the job, and I am at a point in life where I am supposed to be gaining knowledge and experience for "the real world." So my friend Wes told me about an opportunity at BEV Web Support Services working as a web developer. I thought this would be great since I have the most fun when I am creating websites, whether for work or for pleasure. When I would have to create websites at my other jobs (in the IT office and video office), I'd often work on them off the clock because I had so much fun working on them. So, seems like it should be my job, right?

Well so far it's going great. I'm still going through the orientation process to learn how they operate, learning a ton along the way and I actually look forward to coming into work. I'm having a blast figuring out little PHP problems and learning jQuery. I'm interested to see how this feeling progresses throughout my time there, because I still don't know what I want to do after school is over, which is quickly approaching. I was thinking of applying for grad school to get my MBA, just to have it under my belt, plus my tuition would be paid for thanks to the athletics department. But, I'm a bad student, so that likely won't happen. It's not like I'm on academic probation or anything, but probably not Pamplin MBA worthy.

Anyway, that was kind of a life-changing event, so I thought I should update my poor, neglected blog. I'm gonna try to update it more because studies have shown that people actually read this thing for some reason, and while I've blabbered on about myself this time, I'll try to update soon about my favorite iPhone apps or something else more useful.

Now that class has started back up and I'm taking 19 credits and working 2 jobs, I'm always looking for the best way to keep track of things I need to do. 30 Boxes has become my favorite to-do list manager. But that's not actually it's purpose, it's a calendar web app, but that's what makes it so great.

The most important part of a to-do list item is when the item needs to be completed. Enter 30 Boxes. Its easy, one-line calender entry and tagging lets you enter an item in seconds, then it displays it on the day it needs to be done by with color-coded tagging for a great visualization of what's ahead.

I tried using iCal with MobileMe after using 30 Boxes for a long time, but it wasn't that helpful. I realized it was because of how I used 30 Boxes. I used it to keep track of when things needed to get done by. I know my class schedule, I know when I go to work, I don't need to see it on a calendar everyday. What I needed was to put special events that aren't part of my daily schedule, which isn't worth using iCal or Google Calendar.

30 Boxes allows me to see in a glance when out of ordinary events are coming up, when homework is due, and when exams are coming up so I can get mentally prepared. It shows me weeks at a time and gives me the time of the event right there, making a week-view option unnecessary and less efficient. I know iCal and gCal have month views, but it's not quite the same.

Color coding helps you visually comprehend what kind of events are coming up. I make exams red because they're the most important. When I see red coming up, I know I need to pay attention to it and prepare. Green is for homework, so I can see how much homework I have due soon. And I usually use blue for my job at the athletics video office because we do things at weird times and it's good to expect it. And if you have something that doesn't fit on a calendar, like a "someday" to-do item, just use 30 Boxes's actual to-do list feature!

Plus 30 Boxes has an iPhone version of it's site, proving the same fast typing interface to add an item. No fooling with Calendar's scroll wheels just to enter a date and time, just type it in.

It's the little things that make all the difference.

The dream that was the second generation Drobo was too good to be true. As you may have read, shortly after I got my Drobo, then they came out with the second generation Drobo that offered faster speeds and a quieter fan, two of the biggest complaints among Drobo users.

When Kevin Rose offered up 100 more coupons for $100 off the new Drobo, I couldn't pass it up again. I wanted to get rid of the noise and slowness my current Drobo offered me.

Now that it has come in and I've had some time to use it, did I get what I wanted? Nope. Here's a small breakdown:

• Speed: I was expecting a far greater jump in speeds going from USB 2.0 to Firewire 800. Instead, I only see about a 30% increase in speeds. Shouldn't I be getting close to 80MB a second of transfer speeds? I'm getting more like 25-30MB. The increase in speed is barely noticable.
• Noise: It's still noisy as crap. In fact, it may be worse. Instead of a soothing fan sound, I get that sound, plus a low-level hum, kind of like florescent lights. Very unpleasant.

Now the question is, do I put up with the new sounds and disappointing speeds? Or should I send it back for a refund? It seems it just was not worth the upgrade.

What ever happened to moblogging anyway? It used to be the thing to do when cell phone cameras came out. It's not like people stopped caring about what people have to share. Look at Twitter, Flickr, Facebook...heck, look at the internet. The only thing missing is moblogging. We need another moblogging site like TextAmerica (now offline) which was a social network, much like Twitter, where you could post an image from your phone, people could follow each other and comment on photos. I know there's sites like TwitPic, but it's just not the same, and I don't want to clutter Twitter with that stuff. I think photos would be just as interesting, if not more interesting, as Twitter.

Since I'm not up for tackling the project of creating such a large site, I'm just going to create my own moblog the way I want it set up. So far, it's going well, I just need to put the time into it to make it awesome. I'm uploading by email to Flickr to a pro account I use strictly for API purposes for other sites. Then I use PHP to grab the photos I upload and display them how I want and incorporate Disqus comments for them.

Why not just use Flickr to manage everything? I tend to think of Flickr photography and moblog photography as two different types, and I don't want to clutter my Flickr account with crappy iPhone images when I have nice images from my DSLR on there. Also, only Flickr users can comment. Plus this way, I can make my moblog do whatever I want and look however I want.

This might just be a silly idea and I'll start neglecting it because I was too delusional to see it wouldn't work, but once I get an RSS feed working, maybe put it in your feed reader and I promise I'll try to make it somewhat interesting. And if you're interested in my code, I'll probably give that out as well. Let's bring back moblogging.

I got an iPhone! That's pretty much all there is to say. Now, I'm working on writing some moblogging software for the web. For those of you who remember TextAmerica, it's going to be pretty much like that, where you can take a photo, email it in, and have it show up on your site and people can comment on it. There's a few services out there kind of like that but it's not exactly how I want it, so I'm going to build something out of Flickr's API since they support email uploading, and going to try to use Disqus for comments. I hope to have it up in the next few days. It'll be pretty sweet, at least I'll think so.

Yep, that's how my 2.0.1 install is going. How is yours going?

This is looking like a rare problem. I posted the issue on Apple's discussion boards. I've relaunched, rebooted, re-logged in, tried another computer, nothing works. If I find a solution, I'll post it here for posterity.

UPDATE: Still wasn't able to upgrade through iTunes a day later, so luckily, Taylor just got her iPod Touch in today and was able to download the update just fine, so I just took the 2.0.1 firmware off of her computer and restored it to mine. Janky and not really a fix, but if you're one in the small percentage who's having this problem, find a friend who has the firmware. I'd post it here, but you know, legal issues.

These days, everyone has SMS and email on their phones. This is the best way to reach me. It's easy for the sender to enter in their message in a short, concise format, and it's something you can casually do. With a phone call, you're shutting yourself out from the world around you, you're making noise, and if you're the one calling, you're making the person on the other end fumble around for their phone in a quick haste to answer it, and it may even be an inconvenient time.

Text doesn't have to be answered right away. Say you're in the middle of ordering something at Peet's, a situation which would normally be really annoying to get a phone call. You can let them leave a voicemail but then you have to check it, and you also have to listen for your coffee to be ready. Listening to two things at once is difficult, for me at least. With text, you can simply let it arrive and read it when you're ready while still being able to hear your coffee order. Also, college students will understand how annoying it is to get a phone call in class. You can't check voicemail in class unless you're sly, and if you're like me, you want to know what the call was about so you'll know what kind of action is needed. These may not be the best examples, but you get the idea: phone calls and voicemail are inconvenient and non-practical.

I feel like I'm doing someone a favor by sending a text message. It's like saying, "Hey, I know you might be busy right now, so here's a simple message that won't take too much of your time and focus, and you can get back to me at your convenience." People are usually good a returning text messages in a reasonable time frame, so time-sensitive messages should work fine.

Solutions to cutting out voicemail? If someone calls and I don't answer, I'd rather them just hang up so I see I have a missed call and I'll call them back. Maybe cell carriers can implement a "Press 1 to request a callback" type system, where if a call back is necessary, you'll know. A lot of times people call for no reason, making the callback awkward because they're all, "Oh, I just called to blah blah blah, no big deal."

Another solution came out of the recent iPhoneDevCamp. Andrew reported the top 5 apps to come out of the program and one of them was an app that transcribes your voicemails to text:

Brilliant idea. People who still want to stick with the old style of communication can still leave their voicemails, and I can still consume them the way I want to. I'm excited for this app and hope it works well and comes out soon.

With the rise in text messaging, I'm sure cell carriers are loving the extra fees they get to charge, which are quite ridiculous when breaking down the actual size of the data being sent. This is another issue that needs to get resolved, or at least someone needs to show me how these prices are justified. But that's a rant for another time...

UPDATE: Actually, I just got an iPhone, and visual voicemail is so amazing and pretty much eliminates most of my problems with voicemail. In fact, I kind of like getting voicemail now because it's so easy to listen to now. Anyway, this post still applies to the old way of checking voicemail.

I've always enjoyed looking at other people's desktops, I guess to see how theirs is laid out, how they work, what apps they decide to put in the dock or where they position them on the screen, what they keep running. I'm not sure why I want to know these things, but I guess it's to see if there's a better way to compute or if there are any apps I am missing out on. The shot above is what my desktop usually looks like on any given day.

Back when I ran Linux, there were threads in the distros' forums that were all about screen shots, and they were fascinating. There's endless combinations of window managers, docks, conky configs, and much more. Some were downright beautiful. That's something I miss about Linux, I wish OSX were as configurable. Lifehacker does screen shot contests sometimes, and those are the best since they're made by Lifehacker readers. But anyway, I know there's others like me, so if you'd like to share your desktop, I'd like to see it. I've posted mine and some points of interest and pointed out some apps out that weren't too obvious.

I know, my desktop is a complete mess. Do you have a better way to organize so many windows? Post yours in the comments, or if this is a stupid idea, let me know that too. Doesn't even have to be OSX; Linux and Windows are welcome. I used Skitch in OSX to make the screen shots you see here. And if you have any questions about anything you see, I'm glad to talk about it.

With the recent announcement of Google Calendar supporting CalDAV, I think we're getting closer and closer to replacing MobileMe. Why is this good? From some recent reports, I don't think I can trust MobileMe with my data. Plus, it's an overall fail-fest. Here are some current replacements of MobileMe's features:

• Email: Google IMAP baby! I've been using this to "sync" email on all my machines and devices and it works beautifully.
• iDisk: Mozy, S3, any online storage will do really. Most have clients to have it show up as a drive just as the iDisk would.
• Photos: Not even going to explain this one. Do we really need another online photo sharing service?
• Calendar & Contacts: Ok, don't actually have a replacement for this yet, namely for the iPhone, but it's getting harder to justify buying MobileMe just for this purpose, so we need something. gCal's CalDAV is getting us closer with it's seamless syncing and integration with iCal, we just need CalDAV support on the iPhone, which I'm sure Apple has no interest in implementing because as I said, it's getting easier and easier to shut out MobileMe.

Ever since the local news started broadcasting in HD, I've wanted to send in some HD footage for them to show. Last night, I got my chance, and it was awesome. Weather was the top story of the night, and they used the premiere of my HD footage to tease the weather segment.

I sent in the footage with the intention of them editing it in Final Cut or something since it's just a simple QuickTime file, but I guess they just didn't bother or wanted to leave the "amateur" feel to it. I'll remember this next time.

If you have a good eye, you can see me making typos in the chatroom and acting like a jackass.

It may have a damn sexy login page, but MobileMe is making Kevin a sad panda. Upon watching the WWDC Stevenote, I was captured by the pure magic that seemed to be MobileMe. Make a change to your email or calendar, and boom, the change is made everywhere else. It was too good to be true.

Instead of pinging the "cloud" each time a change is made, it waits a while and gathers all your changes and sends them all in bulk, even with the MobileMe update installed for Leopard, still kind of in a "syncing" fashion. Where's the instant gratification we all saw in the demo? What if I make a change on my calendar and then close my laptop? Do I have to manually make it push so I know it makes it? Will the delayed updates cause problems if I make changes on multiple computers? On top of that, there's all the random errors and issues:

I will continue to hope and hold out for improvements to MobileMe because this is something I've been needing for a long time. Right now, as much as it wants to be like Exchange, it's not. I'll give it till the end of my 60-day trial, k?

• You unlock the worlds by completing the Easy and Hard versions of each world. This is probably obvious but I wondered what was behind the question marked selections. After you complete Easy, Hard will show up.
• Be sure to start out with your device pretty level, but at a slight angle towards you. This makes sure you don't go shooting off when the level starts, and gives you a good starting position for fine control of the ball.
• The accelerometer is very sensitive, so you don't need to move it much. If you screw up and try to correct, you'll probably over-correct and make it worse and you're screwed, but try anyway and you might get lucky.
• Sometimes the game will crash upon launching. I've found turning the device OFF (not sleep) and back on will fix the problem.
• As far as I can tell, there's no way to save a current game. You have to play all 10 rounds of the Easy or Hard levels to move on to the next stage. Anyone know how to save your spot?

• People don't say what they mean - They'll say something is down or it's broken, but whatever it is will be totally fine and their problem will be something else or they just don't know how to use it. I hate it when people say, "My computer doesn't work," and say nothing more. Do they really think that's enough information for me to fix their problem? The conversations in this are very similar to those I have at work.
• Some people think they're right - Some people are competent enough to understand it's my job to fix things and trust my advice and diagnosis. Others insist they know more and say with confidence the problem is something else. When they're clearly wrong, that's frustrating.
• We do play games - If the servers and everything are working properly, there really isn't much to do, so we play games and other things to pass the time. The problem is that we get too caught up and actual work gets in the way. Total bummer.
• People freak out over remote desktop - They think it's really cool, and probably a little creepy, that we can log in to their session from our office.
• We use Exchange - I though how he added the guy's mailbox and deleted his email was hilarious. We never do this, we have some ethics, but it's definitely possible.

I'm not sure how much more I should go on since my name is all over this blog and anyone can read it. So I'll leave you with a photo I took of my cube a while back:

This is a shot of my current home screen on my iPod Touch (hold Home button and press Sleep button to take a screenshot!). As of now, the 2.0 software hasn't been released, so yes, I had to install the leaked copy (I think Apple won't miss my $10). So for now I've just installed a few free apps to play around with and of course I had to get Super Monkey Ball, the game that wowed everybody at the WWDC Stevenote.

Dude, Super Monkey Ball is hard. Definitely will take some practice, and that's what work is for.

I've been watching TWiT Live for hours tonight and it's actually been a lot of fun. Consequently I didn't get much done so I've felt kind of useless tonight, so I've been telling myself I'll just work this weekend instead. We'll see how that goes.

I was able to sign up for MobileMe during a brief window of uptime earlier but can't fully test it because they haven't released the update for Leopard and it won't stay up for more than ten minutes (that's what she said).

Photo by Thomas Hawk. Yep, about a month after I get my Drobo, new ones come out. Same thing happened when I got my MacBook earlier this year. So if you want a product to be updated, let me buy it so you can reap the benefits.

Anyway, the new Drobo has Firewire 800 and a new fan which supposedly makes it quieter, which is why I am showing you a photo of the back. The front looks exacltly the same from what I can tell. The only thing that seems missing is the integrated gigabit ethernet port...some day I guess.

Both new features sound amazing to me, so I'm thinking of selling my old one to buy the new generation. I'll need to wait till after I do some traveling this month first, but if anyone is interested, let me know. They're selling the old Drobos for $349, so obviously I'd have to sell mine for less (lame!). It's in good-as-new condition, there's not much of a way for it to get damaged since it just sits there.