Mitch in California 26-28 Feb 2010 – Part 1

To celebrate Robert David’s 50^th birthday I scheduled a short trip to California for the weekend of 2/26 – 2/28.  After the “Summit at Tulalip” all-week off-site meeting at work I packed some socks, underware, and running shorts in a backpack and headed to the sunshine State.

The shared-van “Shuttle Express” service is less expensive and more convenient than parking at the airport.  This time they were punctual, courteous, and efficient.  One of the passengers on the van was chatting for about 40 minutes on his cell phone about the regulatory arbitrage in China right now.  It turns out that the international “holding companies” that were created in the Cayman Islands, Isle of Man, Tonga, etc. for tax avoidance in the 1980s and 1990s are now flourishing by selling to the Chinese joint ventures.  The person in the van was a greedy sleaze looking to abandon his company to go work for a different law firm that needed his quant skills.  He was chatting with a head-hunter about an interview he just had.  He was a definite “no hire” in my opinion – no ethics, integrity, moral compass, or semblance of loyalty, team-ability.

There were not many people at the airport on Friday afternoon (a sign that the economy is still pretty bad).

Oakland expanded into two terminals since the last time I was there but it is still very small, convenient, charming.

I hitched a ride from OAK to the hotel with David Goldberg (remember my Vegas trip with Robert and David in 2008?).  He was arriving from Phoenix 10 minutes before me but his flight was delayed so he and his wife arrived 15 minutes later.  They rented a car (I had planned to take BART and a taxi) so I rode with them from the airport to Pleasanton.

Tri-Valley Inn reception, complete with mini-fridge. . .

Robert signs in at the reception.

The Tri-Valley Inn motel in Pleasanton ($49 for bed, breakfast, swimming pool, free parking) is a block from Robert’s house and is surprisingly good for the price.

The rooms are cold and dusty (no heating) but otherwise clean and cozy.  Robert stopped by to greet the out-of-towners as we arrived.

The sun-belt people thought it was cold but it was really not bad for mid-winter.

Swimming pool

I had packed a dinner and had eaten it on the plane so I went to my room and went to sleep. The others went out for a midnight dinner.

twit the quail leaves incubator, enters brooder

Removing lint from 2.5mm jack - unjamming microswitch

My (awesome!) phone is "naked" in my pocket all the time so lint, & gunk get into the 2.5mm headset / audio jack at the bottom:



And the microswitch inside would occasionally jam, so that the phone would never come out of "headset mode," even after the jack is removed. One day last year it just would not come out of "headset" mode at all. So for several months I have been walking around with a bluetooth headset all the time because the phone could not function without a bluetooth headset or a wired headset. It was very inconvenient. Finally, today, I started searching for a way to unjam the microswitch and found it here. live.com search is awesome! To unjam a 2.5mm jack microswitch:

• Start playing a music file or anything that should go through the main speaker
• Make sure it is playing by attaching headphones to the jack, then remove the jack.
• Soak a Q-tip in WD-40 and twist the cotton end into a tiny corscrew that fits in a 2.5mm hole.
• Twist the WD-40 soaked cotton into the 2.5mm hole and twist for three minutes.
• Put the headset in to make sure music is still playing
• Repeat if necessary

It works!

network for track meet

I think we need three wireless access point routers, one each at Registration, Announcer's booth, and at the finish line. They need to be on the same network so that all laptops, computers, and cell phones using the wireless network can communicate with each other. Should we run them in WDS mode or wireless bridge repeater mode? If all three wrt54g routers run dd-wrt, and the one in the announcer's booth has the radio power cranked up to over 100 milliwatts, will everything work?

The registration area has six (6) computers and two printers. Coaches sign up each athlete for each event; the meetmanager software tracks payments, assign heats, lanes, numbers, and schedules. Logistically the people entering the data share the registration area with food and souvenir vendors so it is crowded.

The announcer watches meetmanager's scheduling screens to see which races and events to call. The athletes must gather and stage in certain areas and then be sent to the right lane at the right time. Only one machine is needed in the announcer's booth.

The finish line has the photo finish cameras and electronic timing. They take a feed from meetmanager to get their data set up and meetmanager takes their results electronically to record times and scores. There are usually three or four machines at the finish line running meet manager. One of them is tethered to a cell phone and it uploads results from meetmanager to the public Internet as the races finish. Dozens or a hundred fans are under the announcer in the stands. There are lots of coaches, athletes, and helpers running around with phones, wifi-capable devices, etc.

FAQ

• Are the three spots shown connected with wires?

No; there are no wires, just power at each location.

• A wired backbone?

No network wires of any kind anywhere.

• You may be using a mixed AP/peer-to-peer mode?

Yes. The AP’s must be joined by bridging, repeating, or wds.

• Do you have a line diagram you can draw on a white board of each connection?

No, but the idea is that there are about a dozen machines, 6 at registration 5 at the finish line, and 1 in the announcer’s booth on one net with 3 wireless routers and no wires.

Agents in the Matrix and tough economic times

Before the movie "The Matrix," John Quarterman wrote an interesting book with the same title and around that same time Alan Kay published a great article about "software agents" that captured my imagination. Microsoft was interested in these ideas as well, and we brought some people and technology together into a suite of offerings that became http://agents.live.com/ (Windows Live Agents). While teaching in Microsoft's (awesome) Silicon Valley Campus in Mountain View I met a talented, articulate, warm and friendly developer in this area who is now looking for a job. I believe there is a huge promise and potential to Alan Kay's vision that we in computer science have yet to realize. But the economics and business models apparantly don't work so we're stuck with less appealing software, sigh.

OneNote rulez!

OneNote is the best computer application around. And now we don't need to retreat to live mesh or windows live sync or Groove or other file sync methods to get onenote notebook synchronization over the public Internet. OfficeLive now offers sharepoint services as part of the standard small business offering.

- Go to http://officelive.com/
- Sign up for a *SMALL BUSINESS* account with a liveid
- In the left column, click on "Business Applications"
- Click the green "Activate for FREE" button that appears
- In the left column, click on "Team Workspace"
- At Right-most column header, click on "+Add"
- Choose "Document Library" from drop-down
- Name it "notes" (or whatever you want)
- Under "Document Template" drop-down, select Microsoft Office OneNote section
- Click "Create"
- Under "New" drop-down, click "New Document"
- In OneNote, save the file (it's just that simple!)

Add people with a liveID as editors and such to your sharepoint site so they can also open, sync, share, notebooks. OneNote uses your liveID credentials and syncs to the sharepoint when it sees 'net. Pretty slick!

activesync via bluetooth

1 – Update to the latest windows mobile device center
2 – Follow these instructions to add and change the registry entries on the PC to COM5.
3 – Pair the devices
3 – On the phone, UNCHECK the [] Activesync capability the PC offers when the devices pair. Hit done, done, done.
4 – On the phone, in Activesync, select “connect via Bluetooth” and follow the prompts (add serial connection to PC).

This voodoo to make it work is insane but it does work and I can now sync outlook to my phone, yippee!

mio c220 GPS

Our Garmin Nuvi 200 series GPS that we received as a gift is fatally flawed.  Last week in Boston while trying to use it we realized that we frequently need a reliable GPS. Garmin has a great user interface and wonderful maps that are easily flash updated.  It's routing has been perfect in the USA and in Europe wherever we used it.  However, our unit cannot operate while charging and it frequently spends 20 - 30 minutes finding satellites.  On ocassion it takes a few hours.  So in Boston we decided to buy a new GPS.  When we arrived back home, I ordered a Mio 220 from Circuit City for $75 (with free shipping).

It arrived today and I eagerly unboxed it.  I pulled down the latest version of miopocket.

and it works like a champ.   I tested it while picking my daughter up from the train station in Seattle.  The GPS finds satellites instantly.  It plays MP3 files and movies.  The touch screen games work well.  I installed other Windows-CE software that also works.  It functions while charging in the car and the suction cup mounting is much better than Garmin's.  It holds on to the windshield firmly and extends further towards the driver.  It is also sturdier and appears less failure prone.

I have not tried any of the GPS programs other than the MIO software and maps that came on the DVD.  I hope the Garmin software will work with my maps from the Nuvi but I doubt it

Unlike Garmin's female voice (whom the kids call Maya), the Mio has a male voice.  The default US English units are yards (on Garmin they are feet).  Both the Mio and the Garmin had problems with the Amtrak station in Seattle but the street directions are fine.  I am more accustomed to the Garmin interface so I don't yet like the Mio.  Also, the Garmin's screen is much bigger.

I think it's pretty cool that the GPS runs windows so I can run lots of great software.

wishlist for my mobile phone

1 - I would like to add a USB wifi device.  Are there drivers for them available for windows mobile 5 or 6?

2 - I would like to get the camera to work better. Is there better camera software available?  The pictures have good resolution but the optics, colors, contrast, and focus are crap.  Can one attach external optics?

3 - I would also like to buy a bluetooth GPS device for use with streets and trips or tomtom or garmin  or other map software. Any recommendations?