www.CadizTech.com

Montana View
Originally uploaded by taltoz.

Just thought I would share another Montana pic while I am finishing up a real post. Enoy…

Boy am I bad at this. As honorable as my intentions are I just never
get a round to writing here. Don’t give up hope though I have an
writeup I want to do on podcasting and it’s implications for media
devices such as PocketPCs in addition to some product reviews I need
to get to. Stick around.

Montana Sunset
Originally uploaded by taltoz.

I wanted to test out the new flickr setup so here is a picture from our families spot in Montana. I have not seen it in person yet but hope to one day soon.

As sincere as my intentions are it seems that every time I promise to be more consistent with this site it does not happen. While my reasons excuses are good it still annoys me that this site falls through the cracks. So here I am once again looking at ways to keep this site up. I have signed up for with a flickr account so I now have a place to store my pictures and can insert them into this site. We’ll see what else I can come with the liven this place up…

It is amazing how much the weather affects us. I spend the majority of my day lost inside a dungeon the maze of corridors that include my office (not that I am complaining, at least I have real walls and not a cube farm) without even a single window to the outside (the subject of windows that look out into a bland hallway is post in itself). For the most part the only time I see the outdoors is when I leave for lunch or leave for the day. Yet here we are on our second major hurricane (third if Bonnie had not fizzled out) and like everyone else around me I find myself glued to the weather channel and online reports of the storm. Which segways into the topic of how much technology has affected our reaction to weather (saw that one coming huh?). Think about it; one hundred years ago a persons concept of the weather was limited to their general area, what was affecting them. Sure there were exceptions such as the military which were concerned with weather on a larger scale but for your average person it did not matter what the weather was like in a different state, much less a different country. Now here we are watching these storms as they form on the far side of an ocean and tracking their movements for days. For myself the ability to perform this monitoring from my PC instead of being forced to watch the weather channel on TV is huge since I cannot stand to watch the weather on TV. I can pull everything up on my PC and have immediate access to the information that I want. The end result of all of this is a society of information addicted individuals. Isn’t it great?

It is funny how computer people get attached to certain programs and services. Anyway, no other service provides such a clear example of this as Google. The Google search service is the mainstay of many (if not most) technical computer users. As a search service it is so effective and simple that most (habitual) users would tell you they could not live without it. This has allowed Google to branch their services out to other areas (building on the search engine) such as news, shopping, and now (the current tech’s golden fleece) a Google email account; Gmail. And as usual Google made sure they did it right. They giving out a gigabyte of storage for each email account. This is roughly a little over a cd and a half worth of data, which is unheard of for free online storage. The combination of this amount of storage plus the lure of having an email account with the Google name on it has people lining up to get their hands on an account, myself included. What has made this even more interesting is the way that Google has gone about giving out accounts. Since the service is still in a closed “beta” status you cannot simply sign up for an account. Instead you have to receive an invitation from a current Gmail user. The original accounts were issued only to select individuals so they were able to invite their friends and so on with each wave of invitations that Google allowed the users to send. The demand for these invitations was so great that websites have been developed based entirely on obtaining a Gmail account. By using this invitation only system Google has been able to take the already high level of demand that existed for their email service and spin it into an all out gold rush. Even now, several months after they first started the process, people are still searching the net begging for an invitation. These invitations are already so numerous that if you want one you will more than likely be able find one online without having to resort to buying one off of Ebay. The good news is that the Gmail system actually lives up the hype and I have found it to be an excellent email system (though i wish that Google provided POP/SMTP support for it so that I could use Outlook). There really is gold out there so the rush will continue.

In the process of moving some PCs around at work we ended up with an extra flat panel monitor. The temptation was to much to resist so it is currently sitting on my desk next an identical monitor that I was “issued”. In about 15 minutes I had them both configured as a duel display setup (with a dual monitor wallpaper image thrown in for good measure). The reactions of others to this setup are what got me thinking. See for the most part the responses have been kind of a “I don’t see where you would need that but it looks cool” type of response, or a “How did you do that” response (which is not at all difficult and I am not trying to make out like it is). What I am actually waiting for is the response of “what are you doing with two monitors? Isn’t that unnecessary and excessive?” So while I am waiting for someone in power to tell me I have to “donate” my second monitor to someone less fortunate than I am I have to go try and scrounge up a spare video card so my boss can copy my setup. Then he too will enjoy the benefits of dual monitors, at least until he too has to donate…

Just an update to try and keep this thing alive. I have to setup a new host for the pics. You can also check out my online camera photos at http://taltoz.textamerica.com

Ok. Here I think I can show some of Jayce’s Pictures…