Towing my Sailboat

I currently don't have an active need to tow my 14' sailboat, but I've always been wondering if I'd be able to do so with my VW Golf.

This photo pretty much seals the deal. If a Miata can tow it, my Golf can tow it ;) Now all I need is a reason to tow it somewhere and a trailer hitch on my Golf...



UPDATE 7/30/08: As if the photo of the Miata wasn't enough, I found a photo of a Golf towing my boat! Mystery solved.

Have IE6 and IE7 installed simultaneously

This is a very helpful thing if you need to do browser testing on version 6 and 7 of IE from the same computer (and you don't want to have to run a virtual machine/virtual PC instance):

Install multiple versions of IE on your PC

I installed it on Win XP pro and it works perfectly (and IE7 still works too!)

For the record, I only use IE for testing. Firefox 3.0 is my main browser.

Make a good product first, then worry about revenue

First and foremost, focus on making a good product that people like, then worry about how to make money. If something is driven by an innate passion inside of you, then is it really about money? I don't think it should be. If that venture goes belly-up, you may be out investment capital and out of the product you loved, but you should have at least acquired something from the journey and enjoyment of working with that passion along the way.

When I meet people and talk to them about Team Cowboy (my sports team management web site, www.teamcowboy.com), I often get asked the question, "so how do you make money?". I tell them simply that I'm focusing on adding great features and growing the user base. I do have plans to make money -- I have ideas on how to go about it -- but for now, that's not important to me. I'd rather focus on getting the features right, getting more users on the site, and making sure those users are happy (I'm fanatic about customer service; there's simply no excuse to not keep the reason your product exists happy). So far, I think I've succeeded in keeping my customers happy. It's definitely tricky sometimes when you run a free web site. Suppose you were running an e-commerce web site. If customers are unhappy or have a bad experience, you can discount their order, send them coupons, or use other incentives. Anything I give them comes directly out of my pocket (and not just out of my profit margin, as would be the case with an e-commerce site). I get a lot of feedback from my users during the course of customer service emails, and an ecstatic "Thank you!" is probably the most common thing I hear. That keeps me motivated and excited to roll out the great new features (and trust me, there are a lot of them).

I am not oblivious to the fact that as the site grows in popularity, traffic will increase, and that alone will start costing more in bandwidth and other related web hosting costs -- and those are just the hard costs that I MUST face to keep the site showing up when you go to the URL. I will have enough revenue coming in when it's necessary (and even a bit before), but it's not my #1 priority right now.

The article I was reading that made me think of this was about the upcoming release of Mozilla Thunderbird 3.0. At the end, David Ascher, Chief Executive of Mozilla Messaging said:

I'm deferring the revenue model issues for a while. The first priority will be to produce good software. The model used for Firefox was not to generate something that would generate revenue, it was to create the best browser possible. I'm following that recipe again.

Simple words and roughly what I'm going after with Team Cowboy.

Printing with Great prices & Great Quality: Overnightprints.com

I was recently in the need for some business cards for Team Cowboy and decided to give overnightprints.com a try. A year or two ago, I requested a sample kit from Americasprinter.com, and their quality is definitely amazing, and I was waiting for the opportunity to purchase from them (which, by the way, is probably a retailer's dream -- a customer waiting for the "opportunity" to give them business even after a couple of years). Anyhow, I started going through the motions to order with AmericasPrinter.com only to find that they don't even have online ordering! I reluctantly faxed in my order (as they require), and waited for a call back from a sales rep. A couple of hours later someone called me and said a rep would contact me either later that day or the next day. I'm already a bit annoyed at this point since I had to fax the order, and now I have to wait possibly until tomorrow? I decided to go with someone else. Maybe they should consider better customer service and online ordering! By the way, they never did call me but I received an order confirmation email literally about 24 hours after I initially placed the order. I promptly replied and let them know to cancel it and that I had gone with someone else.

That someone else was Overnightprints.com. Their web site was simple, their prices were great, and although I didn't have any samples in hand, I decided to give them a go. They even have an option to do rounded corners on business cards for a small upcharge.

I just got the cards today and they are GREAT. Free UV gloss on both sides (my design is on a white background so fingerprints are not really visible anyhow), and the color is deep & rich without any banding I've seen on some "professional" prints. I got 500 cards for $39.95 plus the rounded corners were $10 more total. I could have got 1000 for $49.95 (+ rounded corners), which is only $10 more, but I figured 500 would last me plenty long. Another cool thing about them is that you can order small runs of business cards -- as few as 100. This is great for small events with unique designs.

Anyhow, check them out, I highly recommend them and will use them again. FYI, they do Postcards, Flyers, Brochures, Letterhead , Greeting Cards & Envelopes as well.

[Update 6/23/07] Just received my sample pack in the mail. As expected, all great stuff. Heavy cardstock, UV glossy options, EXCELLENT full color (even with photos). I highly recommend overnightprints.com!

Virgin America - Airline Travel Reinvented?

I have heard about the airline, Virgin America, but have yet to fly on it. It sounds great. I think they actually "get it" -- that flying can be an enjoyable experience and they CAN differentiate themselves from aging (and extremely unprofitable) competitors.

I went to their Web site today to poke around and saw this thing called Superfly Wednesdays: free drinks, mingling, personal video, chat with other passengers? It's like 1960s air travel all over again except with a bit of technology mixed in. Check it out: Superfly Wednesdays

I've decided that given the option, I will pay a bit extra to fly with Virgin America. I've heard nothing but good things and I think that airlines that think outside of the box should be rewarded with more customers.

PS - While Virgin America is doing their thing, American Airlines recently announced that they will be charging $15 for the FIRST piece of checked luggage now. MSNBC article

How to Turn Junk Mail and Paper into Very Nice Bowls - Instructables - DIY, How To, craft, home

McDonal'ds...

Actual photo of a McDonald's sign in South Seattle... sad, very sad. The other side of the sign (not pictured) is correct (McDonald's)

Printable Paper!

Ya, I know what you're thinking -- "Paper that's printable? What an amazing invention!" Ok, maybe you weren't thinking that but I did.

However, once I went to the Web site I realized that it's pretty handy... for something...I think.

Anyhow, check it out:
http://www.printablepaper.net/

-T

Chumby: Alarm Clock Reinvented

This is friggen cool, and at $180 the price is very right:
http://www.chumby.com/

In addition to being an alarm clock (customizable, wake up to streaming music and much more), this thing connects to the FREE Chumby network over your Wifi internet connection and can utilize hundreds of widgets to show Weather, news, social networking info, and tons more. Very cool.

Turn a calculator into a metal detector

I haven't tried it yet, but looks interesting (and easy).

http://www.instructables.com/id/HomeMade-Metal-Detector/

Migrating to Ubuntu Linux...

I have considered switching over my desktop environment from Windows XP to Linux for a few years now. This consideration has gone through my mind about three times now. Each time I have tried in the past, I have felt that the graphical Linux environment was not quite ready for the average desktop user. In the past I tried Mandrake Linux and Debian Linux with Gnome on top. I have definitely settled on Debian in general for non-graphical Linux servers I have built -- I find it the most intuitive and the apt package manager is so easy to use, I love it.

Well, I tried again last night by installing Ubuntu Linux 7.10 Desktop on my IBM Thinkpad Z61t which already had Windows XP Pro on it. In a word: amazed. The install was nearly flawless. I downloaded the ISO from the Ubuntu site, burned it to a blank CD, then booted off of the CD on my laptop. I should note that the CD is not only an installation CD, but it's also a Live CD -- meaning you can literally run the OS from the CD without even installing anything to your hard drive. It would be handy to have that CD with you when you travel just in case your main Windows or Linux installation decides to go belly up. Anyhow, after the Live CD has booted, a handy "Install" icon resides on the desktop. Clicking that launches the main Ubuntu install process to get Ubuntu onto your hard drive.

I started the install and it walked me through resizing my hard disk (120gb total) into two separate chunks without losing any data - one for the existing Windows XP install on an NTFS partition, and one for the upcoming Ubuntu install which would be formatted as ext3. I was amazed that my video, sound, touchpad, wifi, ALL worked fine out of the box. I had to tweak some sound settings to get my microphone to work. The only thing I have found that doesn't work out of the box is my integrated webcam, but I haven't researched that much yet to see if I can find drivers to make it work -- I'm hopeful.

The Gnome interface is very nice -- very "Mac OSX" like. You can turn on additional graphical effects for moving windows which are very cool. The OS came pre-loaded with TONS of apps, most everything that the average desktop user might need -- the OpenOffice suite (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, etc.), graphics apps, Internet apps, and much more. I then found a couple of other things online to install some other apps such as Wine, which lets me run Windows apps right there within Linux. You can literally click on a Windows .exe file to install something, it's amazing. That is a nice piece of mind because if there is a Windows app that I absolutely need to have, I can likely still run it while running Linux. It really makes the transition that much easier.

My next step is to do some testing on my desktop machine. The tricky part there is that I would need to install it on a RAID-1 setup which is running on a Promise RAID controller. I need to do more research to determine if resizing that partition will even work -- and if it does work, if I will be sure to not lose any data. I have very important things stored on that RAID, so I will definitely be backing that up before I try anything fancy on my main computer ;)

I definitely think that there is still a bit more work to be done to get the Linux desktop environment truly ready for the average non-techy computer user, but it's getting very close.

My days running Windows (and other Microsoft products fro that matter) are numbered...

I've migrated from Outlook to Thunderbird/Lightning

Up until quite recently, I've been using MS Outlook 2003 as my email, calendaring, and contacts application. It's nice to have everything all in one and it synchronized very seamlessly with my AT&T 8525 Windows Mobile phone.

However, being away from home more was troublesome because I was getting my mail via POP3 -- leaving about a weeks' worth of data on the server in case I needed to access it while on the road. However, that really was only a little helpful since once I downloaded email into Outlook, I then filed it into my various Personal & Business folders -- so going online via webmail while on the road only revealed the messages all the Inbox, unsorted.

What would I love? An Exchange server -- but that means hosting it myself at my house (easy, but I don't want my email hosted on a Comcast cable modem connection), in a data center on a dedicated or colo server (I don't want to pay $60-$100/month for that), or using a third-party Exchange Server hosting company -- not SUPER pricey, but still more than I wanted to pay (they are usually billed per user and have limits as to how much storage space you get).

I have instead chosen to go with IMAP -- leaving all of my mail on the server, in organized folders, fully accessible from my desktop email application(s), via Web mail, or on my phone. You may be wondering why I didn't just stick with Outlook since it supports IMAP. The reason is that IMAP support in Outlook is, well, crappy. I am a true believer that Microsoft didn't want to make it "too" good since it sort of competes in a way with Exchange, at least at a conceptual high-level.

Anyhow, having switched to Firefox a while back, I decided to go with Thunderbird, Mozilla's open-source email client. It works great. I then use the Lightning extension, which adds calendar functionality to Thunderbird. Then, I use another extension, Provider for Google Calendar, to sync my calendar with my Google Calendar. I have another extension as well to backup/sync my Thunderbird contacts onto the IMAP server in a special folder called Addressbooks Synchronizer, essentially backing them up to the server just in case. And now, when I access my email from the web, I have the exact same messages and all subfolders, so I don't skip a beat.

Additionally, I use GooSync on my Windows Mobile phone to sync my phone calendar with the same Google Calendar that I'm syncing too with the Thunderbird extension.

Take a look at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=540330 for an article that covers the topics discussed in this post (except this guy used a different program (GMobileSync) on his Windows Mobile phone to do the Google Calendar sync).

Zappos: Great service

If you haven't heard of Zappos.com, they're one of the largest online shoe sellers around. Probably their largest claim to fame is that they have free overnight shipping and free returns - effectively eliminating one of the big concerns with buying shoes online: What if they don't fit?

Anyhow, I recently ordered a pair of shoes and they were a bit too big, so I'll be returning them (free of charge). I wanted to then order a smaller size, but they were out of stock. However, their Web site did not indicate when they'd be in stock. I chatted live online with a customer rep to see if I could find out. She told me that it wasn't looking likely, which was good information to know.

The main reason I'm posting though is that at the end of the chat, she suggested I take a look at some other (competitor) Web sites. I think that is very commendable when a company is confident enough in their offering to suggest competitor Web sites, to ultimately keep their customers happy (in this case, to get them the shoes they need as soon as possible).

A step in the right direction for electric cars/plug-in hybrids

A plug-in hybrid is a car which runs on 100% electric power for a period of time (i.e., a certain number of miles), then switches to a hybrid electric/gas model similar to the current production Toyota Prius.



Volvo has unveiled a plug-in hybrid at the Frankfurt auto show. Details and more photos here

On a related note, if you haven't seen the documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car, I recommend it. It's quite disturbing...

Why Net Neutrality is Important...

(Click for larger view)

One Word for IBM's Tech Support: Wow!

About nine months ago, I purchased a new laptop to use while I was away from home. I ended up looking mainly at laptop options from Toshiba, Dell, and IBM/Lenovo. I am an IBM shareholder, so I was able to get a shareholder discount from IBM/Lenovo. Since they are typically a bit more expensive, that definitely helped my decision. Dell was still price-competitive but I ended up going with the IBM Thinkpad Z61t for a few reasons:

1. I have owned an older Thinkpad 600E for a few years, which I bought used, and it is a rock solid machine. It's old and pretty slow by today's standards, but still works great. The only things I've had to do are replace the CMOS as well as the main battery -- both things that are common replacements on a laptop of it's age
2. The new Thinkpad I purchased has all of the fun bells and whistles I thought I might need in the immediate future: bluetooth, fingerprint reader, integrated memory card reader, firewire - and of course wifi and other things that are standard on nearly all laptops. The Dell models had most of these things as options, but it was tough to find one that had them all in a single laptop like the Z61t
3. The Thinkpad lines have a "toughness" about them -- things like shock mounted hard drives with auto-parking (so if you were to drop your laptop, your hard drive would be protected from data loss). If I shake my laptop in my hands a bit, the sensor picks up on it.
   

Anyhow, let me get to the purpose of my post -- IBM's tech support. I have been having a problem with 2 intermittent pixels being out on my screen -- they're not always out, just sometimes (hence the intermittent). The problem is not major, just very slightly annoying at times when I happen to be looking at something dark on the screen.

I went online to IBM's site to submit a support ticket. The form they have was pretty techy -- not very user friendly. It asked some pretty technical questions and some of the fields (like the address line) only allowed a limited number of characters (my address line is not that long, yet I couldn't even get my whole street name in there). The form was just sort of annoying and lame in general.

Now here's where the "Wow!" part comes in. Literally within about 3 minutes, I got a call on my cell phone from IBM. They got some additional info about my problem and then asked if I wanted to talk to tech support or wait until later.

Perhaps you're thinking, "I guess that's cool, they called really quick." -- but the kicker is that I filled out and submitted that online form at about 11:50pm on a Friday night... good job IBM. I have no desire to purchase a laptop other that IBM for the forseeable future.

PS -- unlike some other laptop manufacturers, when you get a extended warranty, EVERYTHING (except the battery) is warrantied for 3 years. Sometimes, you have to be careful because the screen is exempt or is only warrantied for a shorter period of time. I ended up not getting it fixed because the problem is not too bad -- and if it gets worse, I can still get it fixed within the next 2 years or so...

Refactoring vs. Refuctoring

Ran across this via an article on 101 Ways To Know Your Software Project Is Doomed, quite funny (for developers at least): Refuctoring

5 business lessons from Costco - (37signals)

A good 5-minute read: Link

A reminder about the power of email - (37signals)

For those of you that have had the pleasure of me going on and on about my "Content Watcher" app, this blog post at 37signals is exactly why I made it. RSS readers/aggregators are nice and all, but they require you to take an extra step to open the reader and do the reading. Content Watcher brings RSS content to you directly into your email inbox, where you are each day anyhow -- what could be easier? Link: A reminder about the power of email - (37signals)

Microsoft Surface: Hands-on First Look

This is pretty sweet, and despite how advanced it looks, surface computers will be seen in some retail locations by the end of 2007 (according to this video anyhow). Check it out: Microsoft Surface: Hands-on First Look

Thanks Enjay.