it's all around us: November 2003 Archives

Obviously, I'm not the only one excited to be a new father -- David Letterman and his girlfriend (oh, Dave...) had a baby earlier this week. So, without any more delay... drumroll... Taped mere hours before Harry was born, the Top Ten list from Monday, November 3rd, 2003.

Top Ten Reasons I'm Excited To Be A Father via cbs.com

10. Instead of "You suck, Dave," I can look forward to "You suck, Dad"
9. All of America will get to watch him grow up on television, just like Cody Gifford!
8. My used hairpieces make cuddly fuzzy pals
7. Only the most cold-hearted state trooper would ticket a guy with an adorable baby
6. Asking mom to watch baby perfect way to keep her away from dog track
5. I stocked up on moist towelettes from the hospital supply room
4. Great new excuse for not hanging out with Regis
3. Anxious to put to use all the practice I've had raising my pet monkey Kenny
2. Two words: Swedish nanny
1. There is now tangible evidence that I have had sex

At the local library last week I picked up a copy of the 1975 book named The Bankers, by Martin Mayer-- a really interesting look at the banking industry in the 60's and 70's. About a hundred pages in, the author physically follows the path of a personal check after it is written -- in this case he writes a check to a local gas station and follows it all the way to the Federal Reserve Bank in New York City. It's really quite a process.

While I do use my debit card instead of checks a lot these days, the money travels through the same system. The appeal to me is learning about how these things work, and why I should or should not feel comfortable using one or the other. Also, when I write a check to someone, how does it actually get into their account? How does direct deposit work? Why are banks always solid looking buildings? The author talks about those kind of things, as well as a lot of annecdotal stories about the industry. Good stuff.

So good in fact, that I went looking to see how much a copy of this book would cost me -- there's no way I'm going to get the whole book read before it needs to go back to the library -- only to find out that Mr. Mayer has updated his book (May 1998) and republished it under the similar title: The Bankers: The Next Generation. Probably an intersting contrast from then to now. Santa: I hope you're listening.

Q&A with KJ
A good friend of mine came to me with the following problem, in need of some advice.

situation: I'm a school teacher who works from home quite a bit on documents ranging from small MSWord documents (~30KB) to large MSPowerPoint files (~10MB). Often, I'd like to start on projects at home, work on them a little during my prep period at school, and then have them back home again with me at night. I used to be able to just email the files back and forth, but my school no longer keeps messages on the server for me, so I can't send email to myself from school and expect to see it at home without jumping through some webmail hoops. Also, I've tried reWriteable CDs, but they are a little more hassle than I'd like. Oh yeah, I have an iMac at home and MSWindows at work.

question: Is there an EASY solution to this problem?

answer: Yes. There is. But first, the not-so-easy solutions.

The first thing you could do is to go in and adjust your "leave messages on server" options in your mail client, or just switch from a POP type email connection to an IMAP connection. The problems you might encounter here are: 1) you have no idea what I'm talking about, 2) your attachments might be larger than your school/corporation would allow, or 3) your home dialup internet would take 3 hours to download your presentation. This isn't the best option, obviously.

Another option would be to talk your IT department into setting up WebDAV access and then using it to share your data back and forth. Basically, you'd be able to mount a portion of your network drive at work from home. If you did manage to get this implemented, you'd still have the same speed problems that effect email attachments. So, let's keep looking.

You might purchase a couple of Zip drives -- one for home and one for work. This is a decent solution, but you still have two new pieces of computer equipment to maintain. I've never had any problem with Zip drives, but I've heard of many that have -- the click-of-death is something to look out for apparently. I'll say this solution is a problem due to too many movable parts.

Finally, I LOVE the way Apple addresses this problem, both through their .Mac service (about $100 a year for 100MB, slow on dialup) and their iPod (expensive, and not especially cross platform). In an all-Mac environment, I'd definitely recommend the iPod -- a portable Firewire harddrive with benefits. But we don't have that luxury...

So here's what I recommend: an USB Flash drive. They're pretty cheap, very small, have no moving parts (won't break or wear out quickly), and are cross-platform. For MSWindows 2000 and above they just plug and play. Same goes for the Macintosh platform. Get yours today.

footnote: I should, of course, mention a couple of limitations with this technology. Compared to a regular harddrive, the flash input/output is a little slow. The capacity is lagging too. But compared to a floppy disk or dialup download speeds, I think the technology is a winner.

The model I have (Fujifilm USB DRIVE 128MB) requires a driver for MSWindows 98, found here.

UPDATE: how quickly times change -- I have a 512MB jump drive now (04/05) and it is already out of date!