Email from my Boss

Here’s a little peak into my life.  I work for our Senior Pastor.  He likes to think of himself as a savvy tech person despite being just the opposite.  He emailed me recently needing a multi-function printer/copier/scanner/fax device for home.  I recommended one to him and let him know that my dad and granddad bought the same model and were able to set it up without my help. 

He bought one and then sent the tech team the email below.  This email is equivalent to me going to a heart surgeon bursting with pride that I was able to put a Band-Aid on a cut.  Enjoy.

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Guys,

By now you've probably heard (I assume this was on CNN) that I successfully installed a device at my house today capable of copying, scanning, printing, and faxing. No kidding--I've been doing all of that and more all day.

2 things I want you to know:

1. Please don't hesitate to ask me any tech question if you come up against a challenge that's too hard for you. We can do it quietly--I wouldn't make a big deal out of it or anything.

2. I don't want this to be a threat to your positions. You guys are still useful for some of the less complex tech issues--so all is well.

Have a pleasant afternoon.

Sent from my iPhone

Yes, I'm Still Here

I know I haven't posted much here lately, I find it easier to write in shorter, 140 character segments and only use blogging for longer posts.  However with the increased limit to Facebook and the unlimited limit of Google+ the need to use a blog for longer posts is not as great.

That said I do intend to spend some more time here next year.  I need to find a better way to link the longer posts of Facebook and Google+ with my blog so I'm not posting the same thing multiple places.

I have linked my blog to my Google+ profile so we will see where that takes us. I also need to figure out how to better tie this to Facebook and Twitter. Folks interact differently online so providing a seamless content approach to multiple platforms improves the interaction I can have with folks online, I just haven't figured a lot of that out in relation to my blog.

I'm also working on updating my layout using Dynamic Views and some other cool new Blogger features.  It will also be interesting to see how linking my Blogger account with Google+ provides features to make the content experience richer.

See you in 2012.

Another Daylight Saving Transition

Here I sit again on the eve of another Daylight Saving Time change having just wandered the house updating the clocks that aren’t smart enough to update themselves.  So between now and 2am some of the clocks are already set to the non-DST time while other clocks are set to the actual real time making the next moment of consciousness completely insane.

I’m constantly amazed at the misinformation surrounding Daylight Saving and why it exists.  First of all, there is no ‘s’ on the end of Saving.  It is not plural.  It is Daylight Saving Time, no ‘s’ but most folks, including those in the media, call it Daylight Savings Time perpetuating the misinformation.

The reasons for DST are also not cut and dry.  It isn’t for the school kids nor is it for the farmers.  The reasons and misguided perceptions that led us down the DST path are well defined in 2 books. Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time and Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time are both excellent reads and do a great job clearing up the mystery.

My passion against DST began years ago when our governor wanted our state to begin observing DST.  I’ve lived in Indiana for most of my life and our great state for the most part didn’t bother to observe the non-sense.  Some of the counties up by Chicago and some down near Cincinnati did to try to make things easier for their residents but for the most part most of Indiana stayed on the same time year round.  Working in IT this made things easy, as our clocks didn’t have to be changed twice a year.

At hand was the issue of confusion, as no one knew what time it was during what part of the year in what part of our state.  To make it easier our governor pushed for the entire state to be on DST so at least you knew what time it was where as it was the same year round.  Our state is still split with the counties by Chicago observing Central time while the rest of the state observes Eastern Time but at least it was consistent.

I personally met with our governor and several of our local legislators to express my objections to DST however, despite my best efforts in April of 2006 DST was turned on for Indiana.  This provided numerous technical challenges with scheduling systems and other calendar based databases that were not coded to observe DST so a lot of work had to be done to make things work, which is one of the key reasons I opposed it.

Then to add insult to injury the federal government extended the DST observation period by 4 weeks starting in 2007 so we had to make it all work one way in 2006 and then change it up again for the extended dates in 2007 doubling my disdain for DST.

So as we sit on this eve where I wonder what time it really is I hope you have enjoyed this reflection of how we got here.  Additional posts pertaining to this crazinessare available here.

I hope you have enjoyed fooling yourselves regarding what time it is as much as I have.

Until the second Sunday of March………

iPhone 4S Battery Life

A quick search of the internet reveals no shortage of people expressing dismay with the battery life of their new iPhone 4S devices running iOS 5.  I too have joined the fray and expressed some frustrations with the lack of battery life of the 4S.

My iPhone 4 had tremendous battery life.  My typical iPhone day starts when I take it off my bed side charger between 7 and 8am and ends around midnight.  My iPhone 4 would typically be around 70% with normal usage at the end of the day.  The only times I really ran my batter down to the 30% range was when traveling and off WiFi and uploading a lot of pictures using spotty 3G service.  Otherwise the battery life was outstanding.

My 4S however is usually around 25% when I end a normal day - a huge drop in performance and no where near what Apple promised.  If I have any variables now to my normal daily schedule my battery buffer is only 25% before I run out of power.  

One of the things I've always held of my Android friends is that my iPhone battery lasted a long time and they all would agree the iPhone had the better battery, that is until the 4S.

I've invested fair bit of time trying to figure this out but have determined there isn't anything I can do.  I've experimented with all sorts of configurations and with no luck.  So here's what I suggest you do if you too have a 4S and the battery life is disappointing.

1. Stop wasting time on it.  Just use the phone and stop tweaking the settings in a futile attempt to resolve the problem.  There are too many variables and current evidence suggests it isn't your issue anyway.  You probably have it configured fine, just like you are probably holding it fine too.
2. You are not alone, if you do find someone who posts their 4S has the same battery performance as their old 4 did please let me know.
3. For most of us the battery does last the entire day and for me that lets me get my stuff done.  It is just frustrating that compared to what we had before the latest and greatest appears to be under performing.
4. Turning things off will eventually turn the iPhone into an iPod.  I'm going to use the phone and the features I bought it for and until this gets fixed keep a charger handy.
5. My iPad is also running iOS 5 and while it's battery life appears affected too it is not as great.  Typically I can get several hours of use out of my iPad on the previous iOS version and only drop around 15%.  Now I'm dropping around 30% but the iPad holds it battery life better when in standby then the iPhone does.

While I don't like this I intend to be patient and wait this one out, with a charger close by.  My guess is the engineers at Apple, who are much smarter than I am, will figure something out and resolve this problem soon enough for us all to go back to bragging to our Android friends that we again have superior battery life and superior devices.  Until then welcome to the bleeding edge of technology.

iCloud Exemplifies Technology Short Comings

I’m a firm believer that technology should be designed to make our lives better and easier, not more complicated.  With the release if iCloud last week I’ve been working hard to figure out how it can help improve my personal use of technology but also be used in our enterprise.

Anytime I can use technology to automatically keep all my access point current then I consider it a win.  For example, we have an Exchange server, which allows me to keep my email, contacts, calendar, and tasks updated and automatically synced between all my access devices.  For me that is an iPhone, iPad, laptop, and desktop.

One issue has been bookmarks.  I like to keep my bookmarks synced between my devices so if I need to remote into an appliance on the network I can do that easily without having to remember an IP address.  I used to do this using Live Mesh however that only did my laptop and my desktop.  Live Mesh also failed when we started redirecting profiles for Windows 7 users, which included Favorites.  Live Mesh is not able to sync a redirected folder or any network based folder so it broke and stopped working.

I was hoping iCloud would be the solution to my problem but it isn’t, as iCloud also can’t sync to files on a network, which would include any folders you redirect.

I think this is a major failure of technology companies.  The argument is probably that these features are for home users to keep things in sync and not for those of us who use technology both at home and at work.  How short sighted can you get?  I’m sure I’m not the only person on the planet who thinks using iCloud to keep my bookmarks in sync between multiple devices, including those on an enterprise network they may have redirected folders and network based storage is a good idea.  Why cut your market share in half here when from a purely technology perspective how hard can it be?

My work around to being able to use iCloud at work was to ask our IT guy (me) to exempt my profile from redirecting the Favorites folder.  That allowed iCloud to work and work beautifully – much better even than Live Mesh ever did.  Live Mesh would replicate files but you lost icons and sorts.  iCloud perfectly mirrors what you have including custom sorts and icons.  I was able to exempt my policy through a little GPO magic which would allow me, if I was so included, to provide this same service for others who might want to sync their Favorites between their work machine, home machine, and iDevices.

I also did an extensive internet search to see if anyone else was having this issue and to my knowledge, I’m the first person to post that:

1.  iCloud will not work with redirected folder.  Period.
2.  iCloud syncs better than Live Mesh.
3.  GPO can be used to allow users to work around this limitation while still maintaining a backup of their Favorites using roaming profiles.

Maybe the genius’ at Microsoft or Apple will catch wind of this and figure out a way to open up their sync applications to work both on and off corporate networks thus helping even more people to enjoy their products.  Why make technology harder than it has to be.