Spoiler Alert

IMDB for some reason has "Spoiler Alert" written over its plot key words until you mouse over it. But most of the time it doesn't make any sense.

This is from a movie called Shades of Ray:






And When you mouse over you get:





I don't know how either of those two phrases could possibly ruin the plot, so I went to look at Return of the Jedi to see what it said.



The Plot itself seems to ruin the plot, am I right, but then the keywords are blocked out again and when you mouse over it you get:




How do the words, "Rebel, Death Star, Empire, Jabba the Hutt, or Princess" ruin the plot of Return of the Jedi?

Just an annoying little thing that I thought I could complain about today.

Google Contact Sync

For everything that Google does well, for everything I say "Google is the coolest" about, I have finally found something that I hate that Google has done.

Contact Sync sucks. I had a feeling that it was going to great problems, but when I finally got to it, it created huge problems.

I did a lot prior to starting the sync up so that I wouldn't run in to too many problems.

1. I made sure that my address book on my computer included everything from my google contacts.
2. I made sure that I had a backup of my address book so that if anything went wrong, I could restore it.
3. I deleted my entire google address book, thinking that if I start from everything on my computer, it would create fewer problems.
4. I uploaded my current address book to google.

At this point, my Google contacts and my address book were identical; same names, same numbers, same addresses, etc.

I then synced my iPhone to Google. You can only sort them with the first name first. I don't like that. Also, it creates 2 address books. One from your computer and one from Google. I don't like that.

Then I plugged my iPhone in and it downloaded my Google contacts into my address book, with the names reversed, so then I had 2 of each contact, on that read first name first and last name last, and one that read last name first, first name last.

Wonderful.

I deleted the duplicate contacts and turned syncing off.

It Happened

Don't look for a lot of new pictures on Flickr from me for a while. Flickr, which was blocked with one internet service, is now blocked with the other. So I am searching for a new way to get pictures up. One way that I had used in the past to upload pictures, and watch television, was to use a proxy called Hot Spot Sheild. Sadly it has also been blocked.

Twitter

I commented on my twitter last night that I remember liquid generation being a fun website to go to when I worked at MBE and needed to kill some time. I remember working Saturdays and having people crowded around to play the Movie Poster Game and other fun things.

Last night, for some reason, the website popped back into my head. I went there and played some games, but they were not as fun as I remember them being, so I posted on twitter that I remembered it being more fun.

Right after I posted that, there was a response from the liquid generation twitter account that asked me what I wanted to see there.

I am considering responding, "Could you just make it fun again?"

Apple's Apology

I am amazed that such a large company has the integrity to stand up and admit a mistake.

From Apple's letter to MobileMe users.

"Another snag we have run into is our use of the word “push” in describing everything under the MobileMe umbrella. While all email, contact or calendar changes on the iPhone and the web apps are immediately synced to and from the MobileMe “cloud,” changes made on a PC or Mac take up to 15 minutes to sync with the cloud and your other devices. So even though things are indeed instantly pushed to and from your iPhone and the web apps today, we are going to stop using the word “push” until it is near-instant on PCs and Macs, too."

Blue Still Means Fast

I understand a lot more about computers now than I did many years ago, but there are still things that come up that I have no idea about. Mark just brought up top level domains in a conversation and I had to ask him what that was. As it turns out .com is a top level domain in a web address.

I do now know that a blue cable is not what makes the internet fast, I still don't know many things. Like how to create a sub domain for my about page so I didn't have to create an entirely new site for it.

19 Million Dollars

There is a great online game that has been around for years. It is called Hollywood Stock Exchange. I started playing it about 6 years ago.

The basic premise is that they give you 2 million dollars to invest in movies, actors, movie mutual funds, and other such things. The price goes up and down pending on how much is trading and finalize on a price that is determined by the amount of money the movie makes or the actor made (I don't know how that part works really, I could probably do better if I did).

For years I just kind of casually went in and played, mainly focusing on mutual funds as I didn't want to look at it everyday. So for years I hovered around the 4 or 5 million dollar mark because I didn't care enough. Today my account broke the 19 million dollar mark.

You see as I have not had all kinds of things to do at night or over the weekends, I have been involved in the game. I don't sit on it all day long, but I check on it once a day and buy and sell as necessary, typically spending about 15 minutes there each day.

If this is any indication of how I would do investing in real stocks, I would totally invest the 2 million dollars people donated to the cause so I could try.

Email

I have some old email accounts with Microsoft and Yahoo that I haven't used in years, but maintain so that I have a user name for IM services. Every once in a while though I go to check the email sent to those accounts. Typically there is nothing there and for the last few months there hasn't been anything other than garbage.

I think from this point on I am going to forgo checking any of those superfluous accounts and check my chat logs to see if I even need to keep the usernames to IM people. It seems stupid to have any more than what I am actually using, though I will have to keep the Yahoo account information for Flickr.

Google Reader

I have habits that I have gotten into since I got to Dubai in February with Reader.  The first is that I limit my use of feeds on the weekends.  I mainly do this because there are two days at the beginning of the week that I don't get a lot of updates on because it is a weekend in the States.  So, Basically on Sunday and Monday I am reading stuff from Thursday, Friday and Saturday from the States.  If I don't limit myself, my downtime fun is ruined.  The other thing that I do is limit how many feeds I read in the evening.  If I read in the evening it limits the amount of feeds I have during the day to look at.  

I think that I may come to Starbucks on Monday night and hang out until the Keynote is over.  How sad is it that I would lose sleep so that I could find out what is happening at WWDC? 

FIrefox

Firefox crashes a lot on me.  I think it is odd because everyone else has really good luck with it.  Sometimes browser sync doesn't work properly, which is odd because I have never heard anyone else complain about it.  I would have attributed it to my computer, but I am on my second computer that this happens with.  I don't typically have on problems on my Windows machine at work, it is only with my Apples.  

I wonder if I have something that I keep moving from computer to computer that does this to Firefox?

The Internet . . . or Lack There of

So I set out to get hooked up for television and internet on Thursday night as I didn't want to live without it long. Here you go into a store and pay them and they come set it up at there convenience. I was super happy about it, but that is how it is. So I went in and filled out the application form and as I turned it in, they told me that Diamond 5 does not have internet or television access yet. I questioned this as I was told it was ready to go when I moved in, and they confirmed it, but . . .

they did tell me that the Diamond 4 has access. I replied thank you but I live in Diamond 5, so access in another building doesn't really help.

I proceeded to stop by another store and asked them about access. They told me that they have television access, but not internet access yet. So I filled out the tv application form, and when I finished found out that this guy had just saved me about 50 dollars a month. He wasn't interested in taking my money, he was interested in making sure I had what I wanted. He also took my number and told me he would call when the Diamond 5 had internet access.

As of today my television is install and for now I am stuck coming to Starbucks whenever I want to use the internet while at home.

I put some new pictures up, and was really impressed with the speed at which it uploaded. I hope my connection is that good when I have it installed at home.