Dave's Tech Blog
A Third Eye on Technology

It’s 3 a.m. on Sunday the 26th and I’m just wrapping up the final touches to several upgrades and changes to Prymal Rhythm’s Website.  First up on the list is a calendar girl contest.

All of these hot babes are great looking but it is up to you to select your six favorite as they compete for a chance to be in an official Prymal Rhythm calendar.  Putting together the actual contest involved a good amount of PHP work by my programmer/site developer.  We had to come up with a way to help prevent ballot stuffing and figured the best way to do that is to require registration with a username/password and an confirmed email account.  This is where the next upgrade came in:  a new Members Area and a Forum for fans to chat with each other through.

This is a surprise bonus feature the fans have not been made aware of yet.

The last thing we did was basicly give the entire website a face lift by wrapping every page in the theme that was selected for the forum so the entire site matches and looks really cool.  There’s still a little work left to do but I would have to say we’re about 80% done now.  It’s been quite an exercise.

In a stunning announcement made today by the most powerful commercial software giant on the planet, Microsofts’ Steve Ballmer announced  what some are calling a “shocking” new marketing strategy: The next version of Windows will be 100% open-source and cost zero dollars to all members of the public on its day of release late this year.  Ballmer said that this is only an amplification of another recent advertising project Microsoft created recently which is centered around criticizing the high prices of Apple’s Mac OS X, saying that Apple fans are being played as suckers by  “paying $500 more to get a logo.”

Since the founding of Microsoft by Bill Gates, who stepped down as CEO  effectively handing the reigns to Mr. Ballmer, the software company has refused to  release its source-code; the programing used to create their popular operating system.  Keeping it closed-source has been a strategy used by Microsoft to ensure they could maximize profits on sales of their product, but Steve Ballmer said he felt the time was right to go open source for a multitude of reasons.  “Not only did we feel like rubbing it in Apple’s face by removing the price tag from our product entirely, but we feel it’s time to get some help from the public on refining Windows.  Because let’s face it; they use Windows more than we do, so we might as well let them fix it themselves for a change.”

Ballmer went on to explain that with Microsofts’ closed-source model, the repair of bugs and security holes in their software is much more challenging.  “Our studies have shown that software developers and programmers actually become less productive in direct correlation to the amount of money you pay them for their work.  It’s gotten so bad that the shutdown menu in Vista took several months to create and design, and that’s pretty damned embarrassing if you ask me.”

Reactions to the unexpected change have been mostly positive to sarcastic.  Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical which develops and promotes their free Ubuntu Linux operating system, considered the change to be a little amusing.  “You know what they say:  Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”  Apple CEO Steve Jobs responded to the move by boldly stating  “So what?!”  When asked if Apple would consider making a similar change in their software development model, he replied in a typical sales pitch: “It takes a lot of money to build computers as cool as ours.  Buy one,” he added with a crazed, hypnotic look in his eyes.  “You’ll LOVE it.”

The open-source version of Windows 7 was originally slated to be released late in 2009, but with the sudden change in development structure, Microsoft actually anticipates this date to be unusually ahead of schedule.  “Now that we’ve shaken our software development department down and replaced our laziest, most expensive programmers with dedicated Microsoft Windows fans who work for us out of sheer love for the brand, we anticipate faster development in the areas of security, stability and most importantly, system performance.”  Microsoft was also originally planning to release seven various editions of Windows 7 (Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, Ultimate and Star Trek Collectors edition), but it has been deduced that by making the software 100% open-source, the user will be able to get any edition they want for free simply by selecting which edition they want during installation at no difference in cost.  “It’s a win win for everyone,” added Ballmer.

Also:  APRIL FOOLS.

I don’t normally pass along virus alerts because they are often outdated and obsolete, but this one is strait from my IBM inbox.  You may have heard about a virus that is set to strike on April 1st in the news recently.  It is called Conficker.C and you can read more about how it works by visiting these addresses:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conficker
http://mtc.sri.com/Conficker/addendumC/

As stated in the links above, the virus takes advantage of a buffer-overflow vulnerability of certain server services on Windows based machines.  Microsoft issued an update (MS08-067) for Windows 2000 SP4, XP SP2 & SP3, and Vista to patch this hole back in October of last year. So if you have installed all available Windows updates you should be fine and not need to worry.  It is highly recommended you install all available updates if you have not done so lately.  To force your PC to check for available updates, click Start>All Programs>Windows Update and follow the on-screen instructions.

If your computer is directly connected to the Internet it is advised that you have a quality software firewall installed and blocking unexpected inbound traffic.  A comparison of free firewall software can be found here:  http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-firewall.htm

In addition you should also have a quality anti-virus software solution in place.  Any of the following will suffice:

• CA Anti-Virus
• Symantec Anti-Virus
• F-Secure Anti-Virus
• Panda Anti-Virus
• Kaspersky Anti-Virus
• McAfee Anti-Virus
• BitDefender Anti-Virus

I personally recommend  AVG Free Edition

In summery:

• Be sure to apply all available updates for Microsoft Windows
• Ensure you have some form of firewall blocking unwanted network traffic
• Install a quality anti-virus solution

Now lets all have a happy April Fools day!

I decided to update my About page on my website to show off the new specs I bought recently.  People were starting to tell me that I looked like a 14 year old in the older picture, so it’s about time I updated things a tad bit.

You’ll notice the watch I’m wearing in the picture.  That was a gift from my girlfriend for Valentines Day.  It’s made by Fossil and is called a “Skeleton Watch” because you can see all the gears ticking away on the inside from both sides.  She picked this specific one out because a long time ago I told her about being five years old and dismantling a wind-up alarm clock so I could see how it worked, and taking it to Kindergarten class for show-and-tell.  I don’t know what it is about stuff like that, but ever since I was a kid I’ve always been the kind of person who wanted to understand how all things worked.  It’s one of the coolest and most thoughtful gifts I’ve ever gotten from anyone.

Not so long ago I was given a scanner/printer from a client of mine who had no use for it (thanks Fred).  I don’t have much use for a scanner so I gave it to my mom.  After getting it to work for her I showed her how to use the built-in scanner import utility included with Windows XP to scan things.  With it she scanned off a bunch of photos from old albums, most of which were filled with pictures of me and my siblings from when we were kids.  You get a sense of going back in time, you remember things you’ve forgotten, by viewing photographs that are as old as you are.  Wanna know what I looked like when I was a baby?  Well here you go!

Guess what.  I still have that exact teddy bear.  It was a gift from my dad… I believe for my first birthday (I’ll have to double-check that factoid).  Here it is sitting on top of my PC:

Now… there were of course a lot of other neat pictures of me as a child in that collection.  Like this striking photo that I didn’t know anything about until a few weeks ago:

It was taken by a local newspaper photographer… I can’t remember exactly why at the moment but it was just after I was born in the good old days of 1982.  My mother still has the original news paper clipping with caption that used this photo… I’ll have to get a copy of that sometime.

Then there are the cute action shots:

Reading Garfield

Fixing The TV

Jammin’

Breaking Child Labor Laws (And Makin’ Bank!)

There are too many pictures to show.  No, I don’t feel like posting the one of me sitting on Santa’s lap while wearing a boy scout uniform (I’m not making this up either).  As funny looking as it is, I can’t help but look at it and think to myself, “Wow, look at all that brainwashing in action!”  Bottom line is, this was an AWESOME Christmas gift!  Thanks mom!

I got an email today from an IT recruiter asking if I might be interested in either one of a couple of field tech positions. Both involved doing work on home PCs for people who had purchased extended warranty/service plans from retailers (Staples/Office Depot was mentioned). It sounded innocent enough.  The job descriptions were pretty good and all, but one major detail remained unknown: What does it pay?

So I shot a quick reply back from my phone: “What’s the pay range?”

Most everybody I’ve ever gotten a job offer from or who have posted job listings state in clear print what the job is going to pay, usually like this: “Pay rate is $11 ~ $14 an hour, based upon experience,” or, “Pay is exactly $17 an hour, 8 hours a day for 3 days only.”  So you can at least get a ball park idea of what you will get if you pursue the offer.

His reply back to me: “Can you give me a call or do you have a number I can reach you at.”

This set a red flag off. For one,  his original email to me said he found my website… apparently he overlooked the phone number that’s plastered all over it (if not the entire site). Two: He didn’t answer my question.  What’s wrong with putting a pay rate down in written reply? From where I’m siting there is a lot wrong with not making this clear from the beginning. An email (printed text in general) can be honored of as part of the contract agreement.  It could even be used against them in court of they didn’t hold to a promise made or high-balled their offer to entice me.  But an unrecorded phone call? Who knows what kind of BS they’d throw at me. I could just imagine it: “Yes the pay will probably be X dollars. But it’s not even up to me so we’ll have to wait and see.  We need you to submit your background check/W-9 paperwork first.”

After giving it some thought I decided to not call, but reply: “I appreciate your interest, but must respectfully decline. I am quite busy with other contracts as well as my own freelance work and feel that there would be a potential conflict of interest down the road. I am also suspicious about ********’s policy of not quoting pay ranges in writing.”

I’m pretty sure it was the right thing to do.  There is a good chance that the job they wanted to offer me came,  not with hourly based compensation, but salary based compensation.  Salary (in my observations) seems to end up being unfair to most people.  You often end up working more than you had expected to work and get little if any extra thanks for your efforts.  And if you complain about it management will likely tell you its your problem to deal with, not theirs (which wouldn’t be their reply if you were paid by the hour).

It would be different if this job involved fixing PCs in an office environment, where usage policies were enforced and virus frequency reduced.  But salary pay to fix an unlimited number of home PCs that are who knows how many miles away and infected with who knows what?  I doubt I’d end up getting a fair break.  I’m glad I turned this offer down.

I recently decided to reconnect my Yamaha DJX keyboard to my computer and make some fresh attempts at writing music… for the first time in about 6 years.  At least, with this particular keyboard. I have a couple of other piano songs I recorded with a terrible 10 dollar microphone a few years back, but never had much luck at getting anything recorded with sophisticated computer software.  I decided it was time to work at an old hobby I dropped so long ago and see what can be done with more dedication and experimentation.

I give you the product of about 45 minutes worth of work.  Very little time was needed to lay down the tracks, and a lot more time was spent playing around with knobs and browsing through the large bank of instruments I have at my disposal to find just the right sound.  I’m excited to write more.

So, please enjoy this free download of a very short piece of music I wrote.

So my girlfriend and I decided to get a puppy dog!  Meet my new dog, Coda.  Her name has a few different dimensions to it that I think fit perfectly for the times that be.  In the Italian sense, it means “tail”, which is funny because she happens to have a pretty long tail on her.  In another sense it refers to the often ending riff of a song (or what writers might equate with the last stunning conclusion chapter in a great book; being treated as a spoiler of sorts by the readers).  It’s also similar to the word Eschaton, which is Greek for “The Last Thing,” so there ya go you 2012 apocalypse junkies.  ; )

For being a puppy of 9 weeks of age, she is pretty well behaved.  It takes patience, but it’s not too hard.  We spent a little time with the rest of the litter and picked her because she was the most healthy looking and because her temper was very mellow by comparison to every other dog around.  It’s events like adopting a dog with such potential that makes you do things a little different through your day.  It’s probably not too dissimilar to raising a kid… except it’s quite a bit cheaper.  It’s still just as fun an exercice of sorts. It’s like a form mediation by working your patience to the point where you build greater and greater tolerance for silly behavior. Speaking of silly behavior, the Vice-Presidential debates will be next Thursday, October the 2nd, so be sure to set your Tivo’s and home-made DVR’s to record that highly anticipated SNL spoof.

Yesterday I opened up the new Prymal Rhythm website at www.prymalrhythm.com.  It’s not completely finished, but we had to get something out the door fast.  There will be additional content, such as a photo gallery added in the future.  But otherwise the site is pretty much done.  Check it out, sign up for their news letter, pre-order an autographed CD.  And if you live in Denver or Ft. Colins, grab some tickets to one of their shows.