Google Sync

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Shortly after my last post, about moving to the cloud, I found Google Sync. With it, I’m able to sync GMail, Google Contacts and any editable Google Calendars to my iPhone. Because of all of this, I don’t plan on renewing my MobileMe account in a few months. I signed up for MobileMe because I liked the idea of instantly updating my Outlook contacts/appointments when I add/change a contact/appointment on my iPhone and vice versa. Ever since I got my Windows 7 PC, MobileMe hasn’t been syncing as well as it did on my Windows XP machine, especially with the calendars.

 

Moving To The Cloud

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In an effort to consolidate as much information as I can, I’ve decided to move everything over to Google. I’ve been using GMail ever since you needed an invite to open an account. Because of the experience I’ve had using GMail, I’ve decided to do more “stuff” in the “cloud”. All of my contacts have been imported into Google Contacts. All appointments and dates are now kept on Google Calendar, even though I have a few issues/complaints. Even though Google creates a separate calendar for my contacts’ birthdays and anniversariesevents, there is no way to view this calendar on my iPhone. I can only view my default calendar. Even though the calendar is named “Contacts’ Birthdays and Anniversaries”“Contacts’ Birthdays and Events”, it only displays birthdays.
I’ve even begun storing some spreadsheets on Google Docs. As I get more accustomed to it, I’ll store non-sensitive documents there also.
I’ve stored some photos on Picasa but still prefer Flickr instead. If Google allowed me to use some of the 7GB of storage they currently give me with GMail to store photos instead of allocating a separate 1GB for photos. For $25/yr, I get unlimited uploads and storage on Flickr. For $20/yr, I only get 80GB of storage on Picasa and I’m not even sure if I can upload videos to Picasa or if they only allow photos.
Once I get all this figured out, I plan on using Mozilla Thunderbird and Lightning to synchronize my email, appointments, etc to/from my home PC.

 

Selling Stuff

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After I was able to finally sell an old engagement ring I had, from a previous relationship, on Craigslist, I decided to put more stuff I haven’t used in a long time on Craigslist. If I can’t get rid of them in a reasonable amount of time, I’ll probably try and locate stores that would purchase the stuff, instead of having a yard sale. The hardest thing for me to sell (and not because of any sentimental value) will most likely be my baseball card collection. I’ve got about 200 cards if you don’t count the complete sets I used to get for Christmas. Unfortunately, the baseball card market isn’t what it was 20+ years ago, thanks to my parents’ generation. When our parents were kids, they would destroy the cards without thinking twice, or their parents threw them out thinking they were worthless. The prices of the cards issued back then is considerable. My generation suffered because our parents wouldn’t let us make the same mistake. They realized that they were playing with a small fortune back then. This backfired on us because not enough cards got destroyed for the prices to skyrocket like they did for cards from 50+ years ago.
I would’ve gone with Ebay but didn’t want to have to pay a commission and didn’t feel like taking a lot of photos of my stuff.
The stuff I’m selling consists of:

  • Baseball Cards
  • Basketball Cards
  • Football Cards
  • Garbage Pail Kids Cards
  • Compact Disc Collection
  • DVD Movie Collection(?)
  • Used Books (mostly belonged to my mother)

I haven’t fully made up my mind if I want to sell my DVD collection. I hardly watch any of the movies and they’re taking up space, but at least they’re accessible if I feel like watching something and there’s nothing good on TV.

There are a few other things I’ll probably just throw out instead of trying to sell, like my 1:24 scale slot Funny car (I used to do this back when I was in high school and haven’t done it since).

 

Better Control Of My Finances

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I’ve decided that I want to take a deeper look into my finances. I’ve been using Mint.com to track all of my accounts and spending habits but now I want to do that using the financial software I use, GnuCash. Before today, I treated my credit card bills as one transaction on the same day I paid it, so I don’t have a sense of exactly where my money is going, without looking at Mint.com. Starting today, I will begin to enter every transaction I make using my credit card. I wish I had been doing this earlier, but like they say “better late than never”. This isn’t the first time I had been doing something for a while, decided to change something and wished I had been doing it all along.

 

Graduation

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Total was my last day at DeVry University. After almost five years of going to school part-time (not counting the two years I spent at Penn State), I finally have my Bachelor’s Degree. I received my Associate’s Degree in October of 2008, so everything I’ve been taken since then has been general education classes required for my Bachelor’s. I’m glad to be done but not looking forward to the loan payments I’ll have to start making in a few months. Today also would’ve been my mother’s 65th birthday. I wish she could’ve been alive to see me finally graduate.

 

FreeNAS

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Tonight, I turned my old MythTV box into a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device. Originally, I was going to go and buy a Linksys NAS200 but then figured there had to be a way I could reuse the MythTV box. I stopped using the MythTV box when Cablevision started removing more and more channels that didn’t require a set-top box. I would prefer to have something with a hardware RAID built-in (either RAID1 or RAID5/6), but for now I’m just testing it out. I googled for ‘free NAS’ and found I had three options: FreeNAS, OpenFiler, and Ubuntu Server Edition.
I chose FreeNAS because it was a smaller download, and seemed to be the NAS software of choice. It supports a software RAID (0, 1, or 5), which is OK but I’d rather have a hardware RAID, so I’d have to install a RAID card into the computer if I wanted to use a free software option. I like that it can monitor the hard drives and email me if it detects an issue. It’s based on a different operating system that I’m not too familiar with but it is close enough to Linux that I don’t have too much to learn.
If I wind up running into any issues, I’ll probably skip OpenFiler and just install Ubuntu Server Edition.

 

New Year’s Resolutions

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It’s been a number of years since I’ve actually made a New Year’s resolution. I decided this year I would make a few. My New Year’s resolutions for 2010:

  1. Graduate DeVry with my Bachelor’s Degree
  2. Get the race car up and running
  3. Save up enough money so I can get my own apartment
  4. Play golf at least once a month this summer
  5. Lose at least 10 lbs
 

Windows 7

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For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been running Windows 7 on my home PC. I tested out a beta copy of Vista, for work, when it was available and despised it. I didn’t like getting bothered every time I wanted to do something and get asked if I really wanted to do that something. I was hoping Windows 7 would fix that, and it has for the most part. I still get asked when I want to install programs I’ve download off of the web. Hopefully, when Windows 7 is the majority version of Windows used, there will be a way to verify that the program you downloaded and are trying to install is legit and it’ll only warn you if it’s not sure (similar to drivers are digitally signed).
I like Windows 7 compared to Vista and am slowing getting used to it. I figure it’ll take me a few months of using it before I’m as proficient as I am with Windows XP. I do like how they’ve reduced the buttons in the taskbar to just the icon and it changes to a stacked icon if you have more than one instance of that program running. I also like how I can minimize a video, while it’s running, and watch it by just mousing over the icon in the taskbar. I still don’t care for all my programs being listed in the start menu. I prefer the way it is in XP where it cascades into columns. Because of this, I’ve begun pinning some of the apps I use frequently in the task bar. I even pinned the command prompt so I don’t even have to do ‘Windows+r –> cmd’ in order to check or renew my IP address. Another neat “feature” is the 3D version of Alt-Tab called “Flip 3D”. It’s the same thing as Alt-Tab, except you see each window from an angle and they shuffle like playing cards.
I don’t see myself running back to XP anytime soon and Windows 7 seems to follow the “every other version” belief I have. Ever since I’ve been using a Windows machine (back when 3.11 was out), Microsoft has gotten every other version of their OS right. In my opinion, 95 was horrible (mostly because it was completely different than what I was used to. A transition to a start button and taskbar would’ve been better); 98 (especially 98SE) was good; Me never should’ve been sold, XP has been great; Vista could almost be considered as bad as Me was, if not worse.

 

Web-based File Storage Services

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Lately, there has been a lot of talk about cloud computing, where most of the work is done on the Internet. One of the first uses of cloud computing has been web-based file storage services like Dropbox and FilesAnywhere. There are three main choices, that I know about right now, when it comes to online file storage (if you don’t count typical FTP/SFTP file servers, etc) – Box.net, Dropbox and FilesAnywhere.
Box.net offers 1GB of storage for free with a 25MB file size limit. For $10/month, you can upgrade to 5GB of storage, and a 1GB file size limit. You also have the ability to view the previous five versions of a file, with the paid membership. Right now, unfortunately, Box.net doesn’t have a utility to upload/sync files to their storage from a Windows, Mac or Linux computer, but they do have an iPhone app.
Dropbox offers 2GB of storage for free. Files uploaded to Dropbox via the desktop application have no file size limit. There is, however, a 300MB cap on files transferred via the website. For $10/month, you can upgrade to 50GB of storage; or for $20/month, you can upgrade to 100GB of storage. Dropbox keeps snapshots of every saved change in your Dropbox folder over the last 30 days. If you upgrade to one of their paid versions, they offer a service called Pack-Rat, which keeps an unlimited amount of previous versions and deleted files. Dropbox also offers an iPhone app.
FilesAnywhere offers 1GB of storage for free, and doesn’t appear to have a file size limit for uploading, but free accounts have download limits of 10MB per-file and 25 downloads/day.
I have an account with all three services, but if I had to choose only one, I would choose Dropbox. They even offer a way to get up to 3GB8GB of storage for free by getting other people to sign up. They add an extra 250MB of storage to both my account and the person who signed up, when they use a referral link.

 

NJ Devils Hockey

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I finally got to go to my first Devils game at the new Prudential Center in Newark. It’s a very nice arena and I really like how convenient it is for me to get to a game, since it’s only a 2 block walk from Penn Station Newark. I don’t have to worry about fighting traffic to or from the arena, like I did when they played at Continental Airlines Arena (now called Izod Center). The next game I would like to go to would be against the Rangers at Madison Square Garden.