Salisbury House

Last night the Central Iowa IEEE chapter had their annual meeting at the Salisbury House. IEEE got one of the electricians who worked on the house restoration to give a tour. We got to see parts of the Salisbury house you don't normally get to tour. It was an impressive job. The Salisbury house has a lot of concrete, so outfitting the place with sprinklers, an alarm system, security cameras, and modern wiring was no easy task. They did a good job, in the places where the restoration is complete, you don't really notice their work.

The Salisbury House is a worth-while stop for anyone in the Des Moines area. If you haven't been there in a few years, it is worth checking out the restoration work.

While I'd like to have a house like that, there is no way I could afford their $12,000 per month heating bill in the winter.

Excellent Logitech Harmony Customer Service

A few months ago we bought a Logitech Harmony 670 Remote. We had an older Harmony remote before this, and really liked it.

Unfortunately the new remote stopped working properly after about a month. About four of the buttons failed to do anything at all.

After having me go though several reasonable attempts at trying to fix the remote, the tech support individual concluded it was a bad unit, and had a new one shipped out to me. I was surprised, good customer service is hard to come by.

So not only do I recommend the Logitech Harmony 670 Remote, I'll also recommend them for their customer support. Well done Logitech!

Ballooning Photos

Several years back, I got camera-happy at one of the National Balloon Classic events. This was before digital cameras were popular. The cost of the film and printing was over $200. But the real issue was, what do I do with all those photos?

Well, that question is easier to answer today. Not only has digital photography made taking photos cheaper, it has also opened up great ways to share the photos. You can create slide shows, like a relative of mine did with photos from the 2008 National Balloon Classic. You can see them here. I've also gotten a book created by Shutterfly with these photos. Shutterfly allows you to create a very high-quality book with your photos. And of course, sites like flickr, pbase, and picasa easily allow sharing photos on-line.

The Hobbit

Today our family went to see The Hobbit, a play put on at The Des Moines Playhouse. As usual, it was a good production. I really liked the stage construction, particularly with the dragon. The acting was well done too.

The KG Children's Theater does a really good job. For many years I thought they put on some lame puppet shows or something. Quite the contrary, they put a massive amount of work into it. I highly recommend their plays, even if you aren't a kid anymore.

Using NBC.com to watch the Olympics

Shawn Johnson's gold-winning balance beam routine was too late for my daughter to watch. So I thought I could cruise to the Internet to watch it. Here's what it took:

1. Search on-line for the video.
2. Find lots of You-Tube videos
3. All the You-Tube videos want you to go to some blog to watch. No thanks, probably a trick to download malware. I'll go the legit route and try to watch at NBC.com
   
4. Go to NBC.com.
5. Click on Olympic coverage, right up front.
6. Click on 'find by sport'
7. Scroll way down to gymnastics.
8. See Shawn Johnson, click 'download'
   
9. Oops, no download. I got a 'DRM' check screen.
10. I'm told it doesn't support Firefox without a Windows Media Player plug-in.
11. Search for WMP on-line.
12. Find the 'official' plug-in at a place that isn't Microsoft.
13. Try to see if this is malware or not.
14. Cross fingers and install.
15. Repeat steps 4-9.
16. Plug-in doesn't work at all.
17. Bitch about having to use IE. Thankfully, I'm not on my Linux computer at work.
    
18. Open IE. Repeat steps 4-9.
19. At DRM screen, I can now click 'play test video'
20. Now I can finally click 'Download now'! (Didn't I already do this a few times?)
21. Oops, no download. I have to install "NBC Direct"
22. Grumble about adding more crap to my computer just because I want to watch a video
    
23. Tell IE it is ok to install a new program
24. Click 'run'
25. Tell Vista's User Access Control it is ok to run the program
26. Read ra-ra intro screen from NBC.
27. Click 'continue'
28. Read 3,500 word license agreement.
29. Click 'I agree'
30. Wait while some progress bars flash
31. Get presented with a screen to sign in, or create an account.
32. Bitch that after all this, now I have to create an account so they can spam me with e-mail too.
33. Click 'Create New Account'.
34. Get scary alert box saying I have chosen to receive "HIGH QUALITY" video downloads. Oh, any I'll be joined to an NBC P2P network. Am I sure I want to proceed?
35. I'm not, but I click 'Yes' anyway.
36. I get a form to fill out. Some fields are yellow, some white.
37. Figure only the yellow is required.
38. Bitch I have to give a 'descriptive name' for this computer. WTF? I just want to watch one video?
39. Enter required info.
40. Oh, no the white fields are required too. I have to tell my zip code and birth date.
41. Make up a zip code and birth date.
42. Click continue.
43. Get a message that the registration servers are down. No account was created.
    
44. Click my only option, quit.
45. Cuss a lot.
46. Repeat steps 17-42.
47. Pray servers are up.
48. Get message that my e-mail is already registered.
49. Hit back a lot, and log in with the account I was told in step 43 that wasn't created.
50. Again, I have to enter a descriptive name for this computer.
51. Scary dialog saying ATTENTION! and HIGH QUALITY pops up again.
52. Click 'Yes'
53. Wait while progress bars flash. Something about "OpenCASE". Hopefully other customer know more about what that is than I do.
54. Get "Install is about to start" dialog. Crap, I'm just now starting to install? It says it should take about 10 minutes.
55. Cuss.
56. Click 'continue'
57. Notice this whole NBC Direct thing is 'Beta'. Is that safe?
58. Oh, great, the install puts another icon on my desktop. It didn't even ask. Kind of arrogant to assume it is so important that it deserves to live on my desktop, isn't it?
    
59. Congratulations, I'm not ready to start using NBC direct.
60. Oh, if you skip registration you get STANDARD QUALITY video. Not that HIGH QUALITY they talked about before. Hm, did I register or not?
61. Click 'close'
62. Oh, now I can register. What the hell was I doing before, if I wasn't registering?
63. Click 'register'
64. Says I haven't registered my e-mail, please click 'resend'
65. Click close, because there is no 'resend'
66. Now I can click 'resend'
67. Ooh boy, my request is being process. And they spell "You'll" with a box in place of the apostrophe. Classy.
68. Open my email.
69. Find registration confirmation.
70. Click on link
71. Get a page saying I'm confirmed. Click to customize my profile to get started. Hey folks, this is step 71, and I haven't even started yet?
72. Ignore that web page. Switch apps and go back to Direct Beta, click close
73. Click 'register'
74. A new dialog pops up. Hey! Important update. An operating system patch is required to use this beta!
75. What? I keep my OS up with the required Microsoft patches. Why do I have to download an OS patch from NBC to watch one silly 3 minute video? Should NBC be patching my operating system?
    
76. It says I just have to 'click here' to get the required patch
77. I get a dialog warning me I'll have to restart the machine after installing the patch.
78. Oh, and after the restart, please try running NBC direct again.
79. Click on the link. Get option to open a file. Also get warning about running files downloaded from the Internet from untrusted sources.
80. My wife come in, asks what I'm up to.
    
81. I tell her.
82. My wife points out I've been home an hour, and have yet to help my daughter with her homework.
83. Finally I give up. I then try to explain to my daughter why she can't watch Shawn on the balance beam.
84. "That's ok," my daughter says. "While I was waiting for you, they showed it again on TV."
    

Creating Presentations with Beamer

I like to use Beamer to create presentations with LaTeX. I love the slides it creates, and I'm not a big PowerPoint fan.

I have found this simple page of examples to be of more use than the 224 page Beamer manual. I mean, really, who has the time to read that?

2008 National Balloon Classic