josh transient

there had to be an insane amount of work put into this. simpler, interstate-only version deep linked.

the big deal over the holiday season was that i got my parents a new mac mini to replace their 5-6 year old windows xp box. i even went ahead and loaded a copy of vmware fusion so i could p2v the old box, ensuring an easy migration from old to new. they absolutely loved it, and after a week’s worth of use, admitted that they hadn’t even fired up vmware to get into their old stuff.

after the gift deployment, we took inventory of windows-specific programs they used, and the best course of action for each. one that they relied on specifically was acrobat professional. after asking what they used it for, they came up with: scanning images directly to pdf, adding/deleting/rearranging pages, adding off-page and on-page comments, and highlighting text. mac users have had the privilege of the built-in preview app for awhile now, which takes care of all these things, so that was one fewer software package for them to buy during the transition. i gave them a quick run-through, which thoroughly impressed them.

being a newer mac, it came loaded with lion. lion has that new auto-save/versions feature. it is a terrible, horrible, scumbag feature that is poorly advertised, poorly implemented, and—as i’ve learned in the last 48 hours—not even consistent between applications. especially this one:

mom calls on wednesday. she admits to being hyper-frustrated about pages in a pdf she’s been compiling that have “gone missing.” i fire up screen sharing to see what’s up. the sidebar of her combined pdf shows 20-ish pages, but only the last five have actual thumbnails. the rest of the pages have a thumbnail that says “pdf” and content that says “pdf.” must be a versions thing, i thought, so i showed her how versions works. sure enough, i watched pages reappear as we looked at past versions.

obvious methods of getting those old pages didn’t work, e.g. dragging a page from the old version into the new version. i outlined a method by which she could make a few copies of the pdf, restore each to the version that had the most number of pages from the past, then merge all the copies together. there honestly wasn’t an easier method i could conjure up after 45 minutes of screwing around with it, so she agreed she’d do it on friday, when she had the day off.

a friday call prompted me to drop into screen sharing with her again, and every single past version of her pdf had been wiped, as if they didn’t exist. this is not how auto-save was advertised. so she starts the process over using my recommended procedure: open image capture to get all the pages first, then reorganize them in preview. this worked out much better than anticipated, and now that she has a workflow, i figured case closed. of course, the culprit (auto-deleting, auto-saved previous versions of the original pdf) was still at large.

imagine my surprise when, of course, mom decides to drop into a help file and find this:

that’s right, folks. versions doesn’t really do what it says on the tin—it cleans up after 24 hours, regardless.

apple: folks honestly aren’t ready for this…especially when it’s not obvious which apps have versions enabled. having large blocks of text in what used to be your save dialog is not going to make people “get it”, either. explain exactly what “save a version” means to people (“commit”, like in svn) and slowly, responsibly break them of their compulsive need to hit command-s every five minutes.

year-end playlist. sorry it’s not on spotify, but two very key artists (the weeknd and dlc) are not.

it’s not like it has to be said. please write/call your representatives.

holy crap…this dude culled multiple sources for their aotys from 2007 forwards, then linked all of them to spotify, rdio, etc. time to play a bit of catch-up.

after two codes unsuccessfully redeemed, i still can’t figure out why i now need two accounts (one xbl, one ea/origin) to play battlefield 3 online.

come up with a system administrator/engineer equivalent to the term “brogrammer”. because i’m wearing aviators, chugging a rockstar zero, raging on sharepoint, and listening to dubstep. (okay, that last part is a lie…i just loaded up darkest hour’s “undoing ruin”, one of the best overall metal albums in existence)

who has two thumbs and got a signed vinyl copy of fitz and the tantrums’ “pickin’ up the pieces”? this guy.

i think i just realized i don’t /dislike/ android - i just can’t stand the default droid sans font, all the white text on black backgrounds, or the app drawer mechanic. loading up the latest version of the miui ROM (romsmaster.miui.us) on an old galaxy s and getting a theme that replaces all that makes for a very usable device that doesn’t make my eyes bleed. also, swype is kind of amazing.

officialthrice:

Hey folks, to lead-up to the official release of Major/Minor on 9/20, we’ll be posting a new song from the record each weekday in the player below. Since we’ve already released the first two songs (“Yellow Belly” and “Promises”), both of them are included below along with track 3, “Blinded.”…

afitc. i’d just as soon spell out the entire acronym, or possibly go with something like “uh-fit-see”. apparently, the proper shortening of the already-shortened title is “uh-fiddick”. surprisingly good conference overall, and while 95% of the content presented didn’t necessarily pertain to my current job, it’s nice to have what they call a 10,000-foot view of what exactly is going on in the air force, and the department of defense in general. calls from senior leaders to streamline the insanely complicated acquisition and certification processes, understanding that the core network infrastructure must be prepped before signing up for any cloud-type solution. admittance that flipping the switch to allow youtube traffic again might have been a mistake. =) biggest takeaways, in semi-logical, sorta-chronological order:

• swag! =) /ahem
• dod 5000 series is designed for weapons systems, but is highly inefficient for information systems. it takes a six sigma program manager to organize everything. result is that 20% of projects are on time, and 60% are over budget. for the rest, it takes approximately 92 months to deliver on a project.
• dod’s report to congress recommends an entirely new process that has requirements based on capabilities, not programs or portfolios. desirable time-to-deliver is 18 months, with milestones every six months. advocates say even that’s too long and want new products in weeks. to do this, the plan is to:
  • keep goals small and focused. let the engineers (yay!) break up the process into small pieces to provide solid deliverables. smart engineers will prototype correctly so a lot of time isn’t wasted on documentation.
  • cancel projects in 12 months if there isn’t a deliverable. goal is six months.
  • award contracts in <120 days of rfp process, award task orders in 21 days.
  • approve recommended platforms in <30 days and give preference to fee-for service (saas, iaas, paas)
  • turn successful acquisitions into templates to eliminate duplication of effort.
  • repeat the mantra, “if it’s not illegal, it’s allowed.” drill it into leadership’s heads.
• stovepipes are called “cylinders of excellence” now. o_O
• ms. teri takai, the dod cio, had plenty of interesting things to say, particularly:
  • dod needs to start finding solutions instead of creating them, and accept an 80-90% solution. if big army has something the marine corps kinda likes, let ‘em in now, and get them in on new dev spirals.
  • industry wants government to go rapid now. so much so that they know how to work the process better than the government.
  • core data centers must be shared. like a true cloud should be.
• from a panel hosted by gen dickinson:
• new tech should be pushed often. web services up in <6 weeks.
• folks want to get to a point where af certification is good enough for the other branches.
• interoperability will depend on a common data format and a common identity management system. (ed: personally can’t argue this enough. in addition to rapidly building new solutions, we must also build them with the knowledge that they will be replaced, so add something akin to google takeout to every single project.)
• field devices based on mission. flight locator bags used to be 100lb/ea, now everything’s on an ipad, which organizes all the data and additionally saves on fuel costs by reducing total amount of cargo. not everyone needs one, though, so be client-neutral.
• disa decc is a good move; air force doesn’t have a good cost accounting model, so they can’t see long term benefits. big army saved 60% annually by moving all email to decc.

f-secure reports that a new worm has appeared on the internets called morto, specifically targeting port 3389 (windows remote desktop). sysadmins, be on the lookout. more importantly, make sure all your machines deny the ability to share local folders and drives via \tsclient (which is how the worm’s .dll gets copied over), force network level authentication and have local accounts with strong passwords (the worm runs a series of guesses for local admin rights) to prevent this.

that’s the phrase everyone keeps using when talking about the hp touchpads that got lowered to $99/16gb and $149/32gb. keeping an eye on touchdroid.

20 sep can’t get here fast enough.

went to the clint lowery acoustic/shaman’s harvest/greek fire/evans blue show. 100% of the ticket proceeds went towards the relief effort in joplin, mo. now if only the venue could put the same amount towards the overly-inflated drink prices…

century media bows out of spotify. article has a nice back and forth between their suits and someone who understands the current state of the industry.

last.fm never made sense to me until about six hours ago. in its first incarnation, it only scrobbled tracks listened at your computer. it was also able to retroactively scrobble tracks played on an ipod, but only if you synced it to an itunes library (which i don’t). in the context of natural listening environments (living room by way of xbmc and smartphone with music app), it makes way more sense.

back to square one.

again.