Browse > Home /

| Subcribe via RSS

Blogography Davelouis - Late and Irate

City of St.Image via Wikipedia

So I finally have gotten the chance or energy or whatever to write about Dave from Blogography.com’s trip to St. Louis for Davelouis.

I decided before heading out of town that I’d be smart to get a GPS for the long drive and the fucking confusing traffic in St. Louis as the city decides to shut down its most heavily trafficed roads for months at a time.  Every other time I have gone to St. Louis, either as a passenger or driver, getting lost seemed to be top priority.

Getting lost is one of the things that annoys me the most in the world.  I guess it’s because it leads to my even great pet peeve, being late.

I got a GPS, that will be talked about in another post, it’s a story all its own.  And it lead me to being late… nice.

Once I got to Blueberry Hill I met up with the gang.  And since I’m lazy right now, I’m just going to steal from Blogography the summary of people (naughty naughty) in attendance.

  • Ajooja… from Ajooja. Winner, winner, chicken dinner! I have Ajooja to thank for everything, since he’s the one who entered the Grand Prize Drawing for Blogiversary V and picked St. Louis to meet. I had already met him last year at Davecago 2, but we’ve known each other online well before that (he wrote two previous blogs I enjoyed). It’s easy to find all kinds of nice things to say about Ajooja, but the fact that he went out of his way to drive me back to my hotel after the event just about says it all.
  • Carlos… who doesn’t blog, but has been reading Blogography for three years. Since I manually approve every comment here, I recognized his email address immediately when it hit my inbox with the subject “Dave Louis.” In some ways, it’s more interesting meeting your readers who don’t blog because all you know about them come from the comments they leave. Though it was no surprise to find that Carlos is just as kind and supportive in person as he has always been on my blog.
  • Ellipsis… a mysterious former-blogger that I’m pissed I missed out on, because if her blog was anything like she is in person, it must have been a very entertaining read indeed.
  • Gina… from SeeGinaBlog. One of my favorite Twitter People (Tweeps?!?), Gina was kind enough to not only go out to dinner with me on Friday so I wouldn’t have to eat alone… but she also let me watch her get tattooed, introduced me to her beau, AND didn’t yell at me when I forgot her name badge lanyard back at the hotel! As if being a truly sweet and interesting person wasn’t enough, she’s got a great eye for photography too!
  • Justin… from Just Justin. A very recent find, I first ran across Justin on other blogs I read. Like me, Justin is a Mac & iPhone whore. Unlike me, Justin is an amazing photographer. When I first found out about his blog, I sat down and read through every single entry so I could see beautiful shots like these. Yes, I hate him just a little bit.
  • The Queen from Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia. I always say that the best part of going to blogger gatherings is meeting the people behind the blogs you read. A close second is finding sweet new blogs you didn’t know about. My audience with The Queen was a lot of fun in person… but that didn’t prepare me for her blog, which is funny as hell. She wrote a re-cap here. But it’s what happened AFTER Dave Louis that made me LOL. And, while I would usually never forgive somebody for using “LOL” on my blog, Her Majesty DID blog a recipe for Gooey Butter CoffeeCake, so all is forgiven.
  • Sarah… who currently doesn’t blog, but really should. I award Sarah the coveted “Best Dressed at Dave Louis Award” for showing up in a classy “Zombies Ate My Brains” T-Shirt. The girl knows how to dress to impress at a party!

Yes, Dave did it best haha.

It was a great fantastical group of people.  I even kinda sorta knew some of them; “Ellipses” and Sarah both know a good friend of mine from Columbia who is also my old coworker and possibly my cousin (we never sorted that one out).  Sarah and I are pretty sure that we know each other on our own but we could not pin point our first encounter.

So we chitchatted, ate and had a fabulous time at Blueberry Hill.  There was a magic show going on and an Asian Elvis impersonator; both were private party only but that didn’t stop the imagination from flowing.

After talks of fudgy bunt cake a la mode and ooey gooey butter cake, the troupe of St. Louians decided that nothign would be good enough for Dave except Ted Drewes Frozen Custard.

I had enver had Ted Drewes and didn’t want to break my diet but decided one bite would be ok.  Of course Ellipses had to twist my arm a bit.

It was good but… THIS good?

I guess you could said it’s so good it’s to die for!

Oh snap!

Guess someone had more than their fill.  Old lady fell to the ground and well… didn’t get up for a bit.  She did manage to get up and put herself onto the gurney before they trucked her off though they did spend an awful long time there just sitting.  Something tells me they got themselves some Ted Drewes.

Before we too fell to the fate of the little old lady, we decided to part ways but not without a picture!

It was a great time and totally worth all the trouble to get out there!

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Tags: , , , , , , ,

iPhone 2.0.1 on 1G iPhone

August 10th, 2008 | 2 Comments | Posted in Just My Nerdiness

Tried to update my first generation iPhone to the new firmware 2.0.1. Didn’t work out so well…

Anyone know what an error (-19) is? Frustrating indeed.

UPDATE:
Seems to be that restoring the iPhone to 2.0 and then doing the 2.0.1 update works.  A step you should not have to take but a solution none-the-less.  Now to make this one a pay-as-you-go phone…  Should I pwnage jailbreak it and put it on t-mobile?  Do they have better no-contract plans?

UPDATE:
Can’t seem to get it to jailbreak.  Ideas?  I was using PwnageTool 2.0.2, said it failed.  I guess I need to know where the iPhone 2.0.1 firmware is on my computer and I need the bootloader files… which I don’t have and can’t find.  Hmmm, is T-Mobile’s network even worth the work or should I just GoPhone it?

Zemanta Pixie
Tags: , , , , ,

Tethering iPhone with Netshare

August 5th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Just My Nerdiness
The App Store Icon

If you were one of the lucky ones, you picked up a copy of Netshare while it was in the iTunes store.  Its status with the iTunes App Store has been under scrutiny what with it coming and going willy nilly.  Thanks to Nick Starr I caught it on one of its short lived moments in the App Store.

But if you did get it going, I highly recommend you hit up Apple Insider for a step by step guide to setting up Netshare with your iPhone. This of course allows you to hop on the internet with your just you laptop (ideally) and your iPhone.  To my knowledge, no one knows what AT&T will do about this.  They claim you cannot tether the iPhone and use it’s unlimited data plan at a $30/m savings to their regular data plan.

It gets really complicated as each application has to be reviewed by Apple before they are put into the wild for users to download.  Secondly this app costs $9.99 which means if they disable it, customers would demand a refund… Thirdly, Apple will technically have benefited from this app which AT&T might claim to be illegal under their contract.  Apple just renewed their exclusivity contract with AT&T through 2010.

Basically I’m thinking, use are your own risk!

I was hanging out at Diedrich Coffee today and thought I’d give it a try.

It took quite a few tries to get it going using the Netshare’s built-in instructions but Apple Insider’s tips were great and I had it up and running in no time.  And it works.  The speeds aren’t what I get on my Verizon card but in a pinch, 900kbps isn’t so bad.

Yeah so Netshare works pretty darn good, only one thing.  When I did an IP trace on the address assigned by AT&T, I got some interesting results.

It says the IP is coming from AT&T but it’s coming from the United Kingdom.  Not sure what that’s about but I’d be interested to see what other people are getting for their IP address when tethered to their iPhone.

Zemanta Pixie
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

iTunes 7.7.1 Destoys Library

Being the Apple fan boy that I am, when iTunes 7.7.1 came out yesterday, I hopped right on it.  Supposedly it fixed some bugs and stability issues.  I installed it through Software Update, went smoothly, usual, blah blah.

Then it started to sync my iPhone 3G.  It reinstalled every application, even those I had requested to not be installed onto the iPhone.

Then it said there were updates for all 24 applications.  I had them download and then install.

First off, let’s complain that iTunes keeps every version of every application, it never just deletes the old buggy ones.  So you end up with 1, 2, 3, 8+ versions of applications.

Oh and it loses them, or at least iTunes 7.7.1 did.  Do you see a problem here?

One hour later, still installing and then it froze.  I restarted the computer, then started the sync again.

Warning, 11 files could not be synced because they could not be found.

Warning, 100 files could not be synced because they could not be found.

Meanwhile, only 600mb+ songs synced out of the previous, um, 12gb of music.

Did a check…  Apparently some 10-90% of my music was moved to my Time Machine, as far as the library was concered.

10-90% because it would only show up if I tried to play or sync them and the vast majority of my synced songs didn’t sync…  So thinking that might extend throughout the Library… yeah…

Not only iTunes 7.7.1 “move” files from my 1tb MyBook external and into my other 1tb MyBook external which is my Time Machine, and not just to there, to inside of email account archives.  WHAT THE F*CK?!

So guess what I get to do?  I get to reload my entire iTunes Library.  Anyone that knows me probably knows that I have quite the iTunes Library of music, movies, television shows, applications, podcasts, games, audiobooks and then some; we are talking over 700gb of data.

Now I have no stats on my music, no play counts, skip counts, ratings…

Now I cannot sync to AppleTV or to my iPods or iPhones because I can’t do smart playlists.  I cannot say pick the newest 5gb, I can’t say choose the Top 1,000 Played, I can’t say pick the Top 5gb Top Rated…

I had stats on over 35,000 songs and over 1,400 television shows and 80 movies…

So now what?  Now I call Apple, first thing in the morning and bitch bitch bitch.

Never have I hated Apple, but this is really getting me close to that point.

Moreover, I have more stuff to bitch about.  iTunes refuses to Sync my Microsoft Exchange accounts from Mail to my iPhone 3G.  It also doesn’t store my iPhone Apps on the proper drive, they go to my Macintosh HD not my iTunes drive.

So much of this could be prevented by iTunes storing song ratings and play counts within the files just as MediaJukebox did.

It’s official, I’m pissed off.

Zemanta Pixie
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Stop the iPhone Backup Madness

July 28th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Just My Nerdiness

Thanks to Gizmodo for this one, here’s how you stop the backup process on your iPhone from ever happening.  Chances are you only will need to back up once-in-a-while.  I didn’t know I needed a backup for my phone in the first place!  Here are the steps to take.

1. - Quit iTunes.
2. - Open Terminal.app
3. - Copy and paste this in, then hit return:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool true
4. - Open iTunes
5. - Plug in your iPhone (2.0 or 3G) and sync.

It will take a few seconds, assuming you don’t have a ton of music or podcasts.

Changing the ‘true’ in step 3 to ‘false’ will re-enable the backup feature.

I’d probably recommend backing up once a week or each night while you sleep. With the new 2.0.1 firmware these problems are supposed to be fixed. Just switch False/True as needed and you can backup on your schedule.

It’s that easy.  Now you can sync and go!  No more watching the entire Dr. Horrible Sing-Along while you wait.

Zemanta Pixie
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

AT&T iPhone Wifi - Still Not Working

July 27th, 2008 | 4 Comments | Posted in Just My Nerdiness, Just My Rant

Not only does it not recognize that I’m on an iPhone and thus entitled to use their AT&T WiFi on my device, it won’t even let me log in with my AT&T Uverse credentials or my Starbucks Rewards username/password.  Grrr…

No iPhone Login? AT&T or T-Mobile?

Funny how when the signin fails for AT&T, it goes to T-Mobile Wireless.  Kind of funny but mostly annoying.  Oh well, at least Kaldi’s internet works, goodbye Starbucks until you get your Internet woes figured out.

Zemanta Pixie
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Starbucks AT&T Internet Stalls, Fails

July 23rd, 2008 | 1 Comment | Posted in Just My Nerdiness, Just My Rant

For the last week or so I have been unable to log into my AT&T WiFi account at any of the three Starbucks here in Columbia. I have three ways to log into the new WiFi network; AT&T Uverse, Starbucks Rewards and my iPhone.

If any of these methods would work, that would be one thing, but for all mediums to be down, and for this length of time, that is crazy.

AT&T needs to get their act together.

photo

photo

Tags: , , , , ,

Wordpress iPhone Native App Released

July 22nd, 2008 | 3 Comments | Posted in Just My Nerdiness

The new Wordpress app for the iPhone was just released, and blogged about right here! Check it out at:

http://www.snurl.com/32wnl/

It’s awesome. This is the first time I’ve used it and had it installed and to writing this post in under two minutes.

Let me know how it works out for you!  Even the picture was embedded through the Wordpress application.  I guess you can’t do inline formatted pictures, but meh, it can’t do everything I guess.

photo

Zemanta Pixie
Tags: , , , , ,

Remember the Alamo

July 14th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Just My Life

Saturday, after picking up my new iPhone 3G, Ryan, my dad and I met up with my mom at the Valencia Hotel on the Riverwalk.  From the hotel we walked down to the water to get some tapas.  They were tasty and the view was great.  I had not been to the Riverwalk in quite some time.

After the snack we took a stroll down to the Alamo and other similar sites.

Weve Certainly Got Direction

We've Certainly Got Direction

We passed my great grandfather’s pharmacy and the old zoo that was indoors, like in a building downtown… how crazy.  If the bears got loose… holy shit!

IMG_0540

The Alamo

IMG_0547

Ryan and I

IMG_0548

The Alamo from the back

Zemanta Pixie
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

iPhone 3G - It’s Mine

July 13th, 2008 | 1 Comment | Posted in Just My Life, Just My Nerdiness

After waiting a day to get the iPhone and avoid the massive lines and over night stays required to get one on the first day, Ryan and I packed up early and headed to San Antonio where we waited in a short line (we were number 22) for the new iPhone.

IMG_0533

They told us they had 36 on hand in the store, 5 black 16gb, 10 white 16gb, and the rest black 8gb iPhones.  Of course I wanted a 16gb and of course I wanted it in black.

Unfortunately, or so I thought, the last black 16gb iPhone was sold to the guy in front of me.  However, the white one is’nt so bad after all.  In fact, I like the look o the white one more than the black one so I guess in a way, I lucked out.

We got the phone no problem, I got the black inscipio case and the really nice screen protectors and pulled out my laptop to finish the setup.  We figured we might as well get it all activated before leaving the store, should there be any problems.

IMG_0534

I used my Verizon Wireless wifi card to get on the Internet and in no time at all my phone was activated and syncing up my music and applications.

I didn’t have any of the troubles other people were having in the day before and the entire deal went over just perfectly, despite was Chris Pirillo has been incessently blogging.  Direct fulfillment was your own mistake Chris…

Anyways, I digress.  The AT&T people did the best they could and everything went so perfectly and smoothly, not a single hiccup.

So far the new iPhone 3G is everything I was promised.  Great service, great speeds, great built quality and the battery life is working out just fine for me.

No complaints from me so far but if I get anything, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Zemanta Pixie
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,