macapinlac.com

This was a pretty relax and chill out Friday night. Hung out with the family, read a few articles, watched a few movies and watched a video on data processing and machine learning. Yeap, I’m that nerdy. I spent a chunk of my Friday night (the late night part) watching a video on the algorithm and math of teaching a computer to learn.

I also bought the Microsoft Arc Mouse. Now the mouse itself is great, totally worth the money. All the reviews are true to form. The magnetic block that keeps the dongle attached to the mouse, the form factor, the way it collapses, and the way it feels in your hand. All great!

Microsoft should get better package designers though. I got the mouse at home and I was ready to open it but it took me 20 minutes to get it out of its packaging. The package was made to make sure that the mouse looked great in the packaging and on the shelf. Not for the person who bought the product to start using it. Admittedly, I’m a bit of an Apple fan boy but one of the things that Apple does right is packaging. The package is nice enough to display on the shelf but they’re always a pleasure to open.

The Arc’s packaging is super sub part. All the parts interlocked too tightly together, stickers were hard to unstick and everything scattered when I finally opened it. Microsoft, you fixed Windows 7 and I’ll admit that its leaps and bounds greater than Vista. You should fix your packaging!!

Ok, that is a geeky title. Let me assure you that this is more of a therapeutic post for me than anything else. I need to blow off some steam or I might walk up to a department, start yelling and throwing my blackberry at them (yes, throwing as in throw at person, pick it up again and throw at another person – I’m just that annoyed).

So, I have a work blackberry. I’ve had it for a few months now and it’s been good (not great since I have to carry two phones but it’s a manageable solution). I used the blackberry for three things: (1) Work email and work calendar, (2) BlackBerry Messenger to communicate with co-workers (and friends) as well as (3) some random games. During my onerous morning commute or in between meetings and buildings I usually use it for any one of those purposes. The good thing for the company is that when I do (2) and (3) I usually end up also checking my email and taking care of some work business while I’m at it. It allows me to work and generally these days because of the blackberry I’ve been working a little bit more outside of my core work hours (bad for me but generally a good thing for the corporation) and to be honest, I don’t mind it at all.

Enterprise blackberries are usually configured through some enterprise install process so that they can control the updates and keep a somewhat corporate image. It’s really a first step in making all of us have the same bowl haircut, wear the same clothes and speak at the same time in the same monotone language.

The latest corporate update to the blackberry removed two things. They removed the blackberry messenger and they also removed the games! It’s a trust issue and it impacts on the users in a very negative way.

What I would’ve done? Well, if the expectation corporately was to not allow blackberry messenger; I would not have installed it from the very first image. Don’t even show the users that it’s available. In this particular case, it would be better if they just limited the use of the bbm application to just corporate contacts instead of turning it off immediately. Better yet, find a way to tie it in with Office Communicator (the corporate instant messenger) so that it’s all integrated. Make the features better, put the correct limits instead of just taking it away.

Taking features away tells the user that you don’t trust them and that you’re punishing the population for something that a few people might have abused.  Gah!

So I’ve owned a netbook for a while now. I bought the Dell Mini 9 a while ago. It was half gadget lust and half a need to carry something lighter than the MacBook.

I had operating system issues. I bought it with Ubuntu with the intent of installing OS X on it, but because of hard drive space (I only have 16gig) I ended up moving on. I used a series of Linux operating systems like Ubuntu, Moblin and Jolicloud. Jolicloud was the most fun to use because it gave a nice balance of Ubuntu, a custom skinned front-end, and “applications”. It was really buggy and I couldn’t deal with the system crashes leading to reboots. I never got Moblin to work because the network card required some funky drivers that I couldn’t install, but it looked like a nice OS for a netbook. Ubuntu, although functional, is ugly as fuck.

Eventually, I installed Windows XP. I have to admit, for this netbook, is the best operating system. Everything worked, and I got all my tools working properly. I even ended up ordering a touchscreen for it (arrives next week from the time of this writing). The form factor of XP still requires you to have an external mouse

That being said, I still don’t know what to do with it. I can’t code on it without getting early onset carpal tunnel. I can’t flip it around and turn it into a tablet because I’m too scared to tear the case apart. Document writing is tricky and you eventually hit a wall with the inferior trackpad (maybe the touchscreen can help out). I started watching a movie on it and it was fine until it started working with bigger HD files and then it got really choppy.

So what would I use it for? I would say that it’s a glorified notebook (like the paper kind) / mp3 player and video player maybe a torrent downloader in its spare time.

Let me illustrate a scenario. Let’s say you’re a junior resident in cardiac surgery (for now let’s call it doctor level 5). Let’s also say that you’re working in a pretty big hospital. Let’s say that this case where a heart transplant comes in and while it is mainly a heart transplant case there are little issue where there is also a needed kidney replacement and a finger amputation.

Now let’s say that your team of doctors is ready to go in and do work on the patient except another ward who hired an external podiatrist says, “Wait guys! Use a swiss army knife to perform the surgery because it has a knife, a corkscrew, a toothpick and these freaking awesome stainless steel tweezers. And also, because we’ve been given the swiss army knife for free and I’m a podiatrist (which is also a doctor) which makes me an expert in cutting people up in surgery. Might I also add that a swiss army knife is trying to be the best tool for cutting and so we should look at the future of swiss army knives and what they want to be in the industry of cutting patients up.”

In which you reply, “Huh?! Really?! Am I being Punk’d?” *sigh* I don’t think I’m making any friends in IT.