stuff is cool

Okay I’m not nearly as much of a Google (the company) whore as some people, but I do think they do some really cool stuff and they give us lots of fun toys to play with. Now they’re giving away another, a 3D modeling tool called SketchUp. I haven’t actually downloaded and played with it yet, but I did notice a few things from watching their little tutorial/intro video that make me think of how clever this move is, and that’s what I’m here to write about.

So, the premise is this. Basically, people play with this 3D modeling tool, and they see that they can place their models in Google Earth. “Oh, that’s cool,” they say, and then they are told that they can share it with everyone else by uploading it to Google’s 3D Warehouse. The end result? A more detailed Google Earth for everyone else. All you have to do is install this “network link” into Google Earth and any georeferenced (ie, placed on the right spot on Google Earth) model in the 3D warehouse will automatically be available to you. So now when you’re viewing an area, you can view/download any of the georeferenced models available for that area.

But where’s the clever part in all of this? Well, if SketchUp is really as easy to use as the video purports it to be, pretty soon you have amateur modelers providing decent quality facsimiles of landmarks all over and georeferencing them for you and sharing them. Instead of having to pay modelers to do all this work and researching what might need to be modeled, instead you harness the general population and their own favorite places and encourage them to do the work for you. With the network link, you don’t get forced to see some crappy models either, you can pick and choose what you see. And I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point they start incorporating some of the user-submitted models into the building data layer in general. After all, they have to fix the St. Louis Gateway Arch at some point, and someone already made a better model for it.

Google’s “building data” version:

User-submitted SketchUp version:

Upon my return from Dallas on Sunday, I saw that I got mail from Wells Fargo (my bank) and inside was a notice basically brushing me off saying “well, too bad so sad” in nicer terms. So, seeing as how my apartment complex offered to credit me the money if my bank didn’t I thought I’d do the nice thing and offer up a copy of the letter they sent me for their records. I sent an email to the complex manager and within about 20 minutes or so she called me on the phone with a little update to the whole situation. Basically Wells Fargo is being kinda tight-fisted about the whole deal, but understandably so as apparently 19 people’s rent checks were from Wells Fargo. However, they apparently contacted Chase Bank (since some folks’ checks were from there) and they had a guy in their fraud department that was able to basically call up Bank of America (the thief’s bank) and say “hey, these were stolen, give us money back so we can return it to our customers”. So now apparently the handful of Chase customers will be getting their money back in the next 48 hours or so. Wells Fargo customers, on the other hand, may have a wait of 90 days or more as they may have to submit an affidavit to Wells Fargo and blah blah blah red tape. I don’t dislike Wells Fargo for this, I just happen to have a better opinion of Chase now

Oh and of course the perhaps more important part of the update (for the readers, not for myself so much) is that they apparently did catch the guy. Supposedly he claimed he was working for someone and had a notebook with printed up instructions on how to carry out the whole fraud operatoin, but from what the apartment manager told me that has yet to be seen. She didn’t mention whether or not the money was recovered, so she may or may not have known.

So if anyone’s looking for a trendy place to stay in Houston that has a pretty good apartment manager, Post Midtown Square’s the place to be. Kim Cook is the manager and she has done a pretty darn good job dealing with all of this.

So the hip new Web 2.0 thing to do these days is to have a flashy AJAX-ified web calendar, and Google is, of course, no exception. Today they officially launched Google Calendar, and although performance has been a bit spotty throughout the day, all in all I’m pretty happy with what they’ve got.

Now, Google is actually a bit of a late-comer to the game. I’d taken brief looks at Yahoo! Calendar, 30 Boxes, and the google-wannabe lookalike that is Planzo, but none of them really compelled me to use them. Yahoo!’s interface is a bit too cluttered (as usual), and the other two would have required too much work to get everything set up. Google’s is nice because (and I say this through gnashed teeth) it’s integrated with everything else Google has. When searching for other people’s calendars, it already has all my GMail contacts in there. When inviting others, it already has all my GMail contacts in there. When looking at an event, there’s a link with a map to the event which uses Google Maps/Local. It can send you reminders to your GMail account for when an event comes up. And, as an added bonus, it can send you an SMS message as a reminder if you choose - I’m currently awaiting my “activation code” to get these working. All in all, it’s pretty feature-complete.

So, I’ve been spending the relatively slow morning spending time playing with Google Calendar and adding events. I’ve set up my own separate calendar for my ultimate stuff, and I’ve added a few calendars just for fun: like the calendar with all the episodes of 24 on it, and the 2006 Astros schedule calendar. I must say that it’s nice that I can turn these on/off at will, to reduce clutter.

And lastly, I just noticed that if you click on the “print” icon, it makes a PDF for you. Very cool

As most Windows installs tend to do, mine was aging and slowing down and getting to the point where a few days spent backing my data up and reloading my laptop would be well worth it. Then, I stumbled upon a thread by goon Jacko on the SomethingAwful Forums regarding a piece of software known as the Altiris Software Virtualization Solution. Basically, what it does is that whenever you install an application it tracks all the changes and keeps it in it’s own “layer”. Now, the tracking of actions for an installed application is nothing new as I remember a product from over a decade ago, Quarterdeck Cleansweep, that did just that. But, the thing that makes this application special is the “layer” portion. Instead of simply logging it, it actually sequesters all those changes into its own special area which SVS will continually track changes to. So, if the program you install creates a bunch of settings files or whatever after you finish with the installer, SVS will know that and it will store those changes in its layer.

“So what,” you say? Well, there are three really awesome benefits to this approach (for me anyway):

1. Prevents things like “registry rot” where uninstallers don’t clean up after themselves appropriately, even for older apps that have crappy installers
2. Allows me to migrate not just the program’s installation, but the exact program setup — config options, added plugins, generated data — from one machine to another (this was a huge time-saver after formatting/reinstalling)
3. Ability to selectively activate layers allows me to keep up the appearance of just using my work machine for work stuff (not that anyone cares, but it makes me feel good)

With all these benefits laid out there for me, my decision was simple. I backed up all my data (several times on a few different machines … I’m paranoid), and went ahead and wiped my laptop clean and reinstalled Windows. To be quite honest, the actual operating system installation was basically the longest portion of setup time. While it was reinstalling, I was working on a desktop PC at work that I had set up to use temporarily while my laptop was down, and I was creating all sorts of layers for use on my laptop. Then 50 minutes later, once the OS install was completed, pretty much all I had to do was copy over all the exported layers and import them into my laptop. That was it.

One of my biggest pet peeves used to be “all the crap I’ve got” on my laptop and how navigating it was a pain, whether it be in the start menu, on the desktop, in the add/remove programs dialog, or in the filesystem. Now I can simplify things by only activating seldom-used applications when I need them. So when I get home I can simply deactivate a lot of the work stuff and activate my poker stuff In fact, that brings me to a feature I wish was in this software (and it might be in future and/or pay versions): grouping layers into “profiles”. So, in my case, I could have a “work” profile and a “home” profile. Activating my “work” profile would activate DameWare, the Admin Pak, and all that while deactivating stuff like PokerRoom and XChat. Activating my “home” profile would do the opposite. All in all, activating/deactivating the layers individually is relatively speedy, which is good because my one pet peeve so far in using the software, although it’s an understandable thing to have to do, is that in order to create a new layer, you have to deactivate all the layers. My solution to this has been to simply create them on that temporary desktop PC I used while reinstalling on my laptop and then simply copy the exported layer over and importing it on my laptop. That has worked fairly well so far. It takes a little longer to do the installation, but the benefits are worth it.

Since the wipe/reload, of course everything is running a bit snappier (including the virtualized apps).

Since this post is long enough already, I’ll just end with a little side by side screenshot comparison which shows the Add/Remove programs dialog and Start menu for two situations: all of my layers deactivated (left), and my typical set of work layers activated (right, click for full-sized versions):

Note that the Add/Remove programs dialog only has a bunch of the Thinkpad stuff (which included drivers, stuff I didn’t think would play well with virtualized layers) in the left screenshot, whereas programs like 7-zip, Adobe Reader, and Firefox are present in the one on the right. You can also see the Google Talk shortcut which appeared on the desktop after I activated that layer.

If you want to try the software, check out the tutorial here. This site also has some free layers available for download as well.

I think I have nerve damage in my mouth.

Last night Danny, my parents, and I went to Amazon for our usual Sunday family dinner. I ordered the mixed grill, as I always do. I noticed something green on my grilled shimp that I have neer seen before, so I picked it off, because I didn’t want anything on my shrimp. But I must not have gotten it all because all hell broke loose on my tongue. There was indeed a party in my mouth, but it turned into a riot.

I am not a pussy. I like jalapenos. This was a jalapeno gone rogue, a loose canon that must be stopped. Curious about my suffering, my dad tried one. If Stobie is in pain from something spicy, then it is SPICY. It was like my mouth stopped working. I couldn’t eat anything else because it hurt too much. Only after a cup of pineapples and a glass of milk did the pain subside. I am telling you guys, this was seriously hot. The manager said sometimes extra hot jalenos get mixed in with regular ones. Now I am paranoid. BEWARE! BEWARE!

Apparently some benevolent soul decided to play a cruel (and very illegal) April Fools joke on the residents of my apartment complex. They placed a “temporary” night drop box on top of the regular night drop box which sits right outside the leasing office, had a little placard on it stating what it was and even went so far as to tape up the opening of the regular night drop box and post a letter with the complex’s letterhead explaining what the box was for on the office door right next to it explaining “please use the new box for the time being blah blah blah.” Now, being the trusting person that I am, I figured “oh okay, there’s probably something wrong with the lock on the regular box and they don’t want everyone’s rent checks to be sitting in an unlocked box, and went ahead and dropped my rent check in.

So, on Monday I come home from work, ready to walk over to the light rail to get downtown to the Astros game and I see a letter from my apartment complex stuck in the door. Normally it’s not that big of a deal, it’s just stuff like “we’re going to be replacing smoke alarm batteries” or “someone left some trash somewhere, don’t do that” or, well .. you get the point. So I grab the letter, get inside to drop my stuff off, and read it. I was pretty disgusted to find out that in fact I had just deposited my rent check to a box that some hooligan put in place and has since walked off with. But I was also resigned to the fact that at that point I might as well just go to the game and deal with the situation when I got back because nothing was going to change in the next few hours.

After walking home from the game I dropped an email to the apartment manager letting them know that I was one of the folks who put their check in the drop faux. She actually e-mailed back relatively quickly letting me know the police incident report and the number to call (which turned out to be wrong by one number, but that’s beside the point). So, I went to look and see if the check had already been posted and, of course, it had. Naturally I put my internet detective hat on and figured “hey, once they give me the image of the check that was cashed I can give HPD the account number.” So, since that went up this morning I called HPD and gave them the info and now whoever did it is (hopefully) screwed. I figure they’ve got to at least have provided some credentials to create the account and probably have been on camera at some point.

In the meantime, here’s what I cooked up as an artist’s rendering of the thief:

If you’ve seen this man (that’s a Cubs hat, by the way, because screw the Cubs), please contact HPD immediately!

Update, here’s the crime scene as rendered by a different artist: