Welcome to The Hoosier Illuminati. Macintosh bigot, clothes horse, motorsports fanatic (as long as they turn right), Anglophile.

Clothes and manners do not make the man; but when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance. --Henry Ward Beecher

Blog is moving

The new blog is at http://blog.jeffnaylor.com. 

I’m still playing with the format and whatnot, but it’s getting there.

Life is intervening…

I haven’t spent a lot of time around the old blog lately, not because I don’t like my three readers anymore though.  Lots of things are going on around Chez Illuminati.

One thing that may be going on in the near future is the re-incorporation of my blog back into my primary domain.  hoosierilluminati was home for a long time, but there was a reason this domain existed in the first place and I’m not sure that it’s doing a lot of good for me to continue to maintain it.  Dunno, we’ll see. 

Change you can’t believe in.

Apparently there are people morons actually buying those stupid Obama coins, who are then perfectly enraged to find out they’re a scam, much like their hero himself.

Her collection of presidential coins is impressive and something Tanya Thomas takes great pride in. Her latest purchase, though, has left her feeling short-changed.

She paid The National Collectors’ Mint a pretty penny for four Barack Obama coins, But she thought $75 was a small price to pay to add the 44th president to her collection. That is until her daughter brought them home after show and tell at school.

“The whole front comes off. Its just a sticker stuck on top of a regular quarter or regular Kennedy half dollar. Its just a Barack Obama sticker stuck on top”, says Thomas.

This is the best laugh I’ve had in quite a while.  I’ll bet they came with a certificate of authenticity and everything.  Boy is there an irony in this story though, so many people buying something and then actually getting something completely different than what they expected. 

Don’t worry folks, I’m sure His Holiness is working on a program even as we speak to have the mint strike a genuine Obama coin with his likeness.  Probably paper money and stamps while he’s at it. 

Microsoft is opening retail stores

But this should in no way suggest they are “borrowing” from Apple yet again. 

Although the retail locations will obviously sell hardware that runs Microsoft software or the company’s range of peripherals, it will also be a branding and goodwill exercise, hoping to copy a little of Apple’s consumer engagement.

I’m not sure I understand the point of the exercise.  Microsoft is not perceived as a boutique company the same way Apple is, nor is there any problem whatsoever finding Microsoft goods in the retail marketplace.  It’s just another case of Microsoft’s lack of focus and feeling it has to match others’ successes in every environment.  One hates to use Dilbertesque phrases like “focus on core competencies,” but seriously, Microsoft, what are you?

And this, dear John, is why they make the Macintosh.

John Derbyshire, Nathan‘s avatar at NRO, is having a little spyware problem today.

Well, I’ve been having virus problems—actually “ad-ware,” I think. Shortly after opening up Firefox or Internet Explorer, ads for cheap air fares, porn sites, and (unkindest cut of all) anti-virus software would keep popping up.

I updated my security suite and ran all the programs. I jiggled security settings on my browsers to max. I tried a couple other things I found on the web. Problem diminished, but not by much.

Wanting to get on with some work, and not at the moment inclined to spend $150 plus two hours on the phone with an online clean-up service, it occurred to me to just try a browser I haven’t used before. So I downloaded Chrome, Google’s own browser.

That worked fine. Short learning curve, no more unwanted pop-ups. But … no Google toolbar! I have to re-create all my darn bookmarks; and they’re stuck here on my PC, so if I use Chrome on another one, I’ll have to re-re-create them. (Though since the ad-ware virus is presumably on my machine, I guess I can revert to IE or Firefox elsewhere.)

Well John, first, stay away from the porn sites.  Second, surely someone has told you to buy a Mac by now, but if they haven’t… buy a Mac.  Yes, I can hear your teeth gnash from here, but do you want to get your work done or do you want to futz about with crap like this?  And I can hear Nathan screaming at his screen that he uses Windows and doesn’t have these problems, and I also regrettably use Windows on occasion and don’t have those problems either, but we’re IT guys.  Derb is just a guy who has to use a computer and doesn’t have time to dick around trying to figure out how to keep the crud at bay. 

Derb, seriously.  Get a Mac.  Your life will be better for it.  And I’ll bet Derb writes a post complaining about all the people who tell him the exact same thing by 3:00.

EDIT:  I was almost right. 3:18. 

Oh, this can’t possibly end well.

Yes, your greatest / worst dream has come to fruition: Steve Wozniak will be featured on the next season of Dancing With the Stars. There’s not much we can tell you right now about his upcoming moves, though we will be watching with bated breath, quietly hoping for a double Lindy, the Sugarfoot, and Denise Richards being dipped on a Segway.

The Woz needs something to do to get him out of attention whore mode.  First Cathy Griffin, now… this. 

Seriously Woz, have you NO remaining dignity? 

Can you hear me now?

3rd in line.

God help us all.

Did Microsoft actually LEARN something?

Only TWO Windows 7 SKUs?  Are you kidding me? 

PressPass: Does that mean you’ll be streamlining the product lineup?

Ybarra: With Windows 7 there will be two primary editions: Windows 7 Home Premium, and Windows 7 Professional. We think those two SKUs will meet most customers’ needs.

Windows 7 Home Premium is the recommended choice for consumers. It gives them a full-function PC experience and a visually rich environment in everything from the way they experience entertainment to the way they connect their devices.

Windows 7 Professional is the recommended choice for small businesses and for people who work at home but have to operate in an IT-managed or business environment where security and productivity are critical. For those running Windows Vista Business, it will be a very logical move to Windows 7 Professional.

It’s still one more SKU than they need, but this is a start.  Of course, the fine print says…

For our biggest enterprise customers, we’ll continue to have an Enterprise edition. And we will work to make sure there continues to be strong value in Enterprise edition for our annuity customers with Software Assurance agreements. This edition will not be available at retail or by OEMs for preinstallation on a new PC. Windows 7 Enterprise edition offers advanced data protection, lower cost compliance and IT tools to streamline PC management and help save costs, while enabling access to information from anywhere for business users.

We know emerging markets have unique needs and we will offer Windows 7 Home Basic, only in emerging markets, for customers looking for an entry-point Windows experience on a full-size value PC.

We’ll also continue to offer Windows Starter edition, which will only be offered pre-installed by an OEM. Windows Starter edition will now be available worldwide. This edition is available only in the OEM channel on new PCs limited to specific types of hardware.

And certainly there is also a small set of customers who want everything Windows 7 has to offer. So we will continue to have Windows 7 Ultimate edition to meet that specialized need. Windows 7 Ultimate edition is designed for PC enthusiasts who “want it all” and customers who want the security features such as BitLocker found in Windows 7 Enterprise edition.

So they ARE still Microsoft after all. 

Sigh.

Bring on Snow Leopard.

It didn’t take Obama long to annoy me.

We’ve only known about the analog to digital TV switchover for THREE YEARS.  Not months, not weeks, not days… YEARS.  No one can legitimately claim to have been caught by surprise by this if they watch television.

So, of course, Obama is concerned that there just wasn’t enough time. 

The Senate has voted to delay for four months the switch to digital TV meant to occur in a mere three weeks, giving President Barack Obama the national breather he sought and setting up a House vote which could occur as early as Tuesday.

Broadcasters are dead-set against any delay, with an essentially ‘enough is enough’ position. Putting off D(igital)-Day would be confusing, what with all those PSAs running on TV advising us that it’s just about here. And then there is the small matter of what the switch is supposed to accomplish: freeing up spectrum for use by wireless companies and public safety agencies.

So although we’ve known about this for three years, another four months is going to make a difference?  People who couldn’t be bothered for three years to run down to HH Gregg and pick up a converter box are now suddenly going to leap off the couch because Brak gave them the official heads-up? 

What happens in June when this extension expires and the same people still aren’t ready?  Pull the freaking plug already.  These morons will just have to do without their Survivor/American Idol fix for a few days, they get what they deserve. 

Miss Indiana becomes Miss America

Further comment would be superfluous.

Spanning Sync: Highly Recommended

I wrote a while back about my frustrations trying to keep all of my calendars synchronized.  I thought Google CalDAV was going to be the answer, but it’s clearly not.  Google Sync does a great job of taking my corporate calendar and dumping it into Google Calendar, but CalDAV is a different story when it comes to iCal.  CalDAV creates a separate calendar in iCal, which is kind of ugly.  About half the time CalDAV claims I don’t even have a Google Calendar, which shutting down and restarting iCal seems to fix.  Most obnoxious though, is the fact that any CalDAV-created items on my iTouch are not editable. 

I’ve been holding off on trying Spanning Sync because I really didn’t want to pay for something that ought to just work, but it finally became so annoying that I decided to give it a toss.  And it’s REALLY slick.  It just works.  It works the way CalDAV should and doesn’t.  Google should be ashamed for not providing this thing themselves, they should wise up and buy Spanning Sync.  It’s the answer to a whole lot of problems. 

It will even sync Address Book to Google Contacts if you want.  I don’t, since I really don’t use Gmail for all that much, but it’s nice to know that you can. 

On something of the same subject, now that I have two Macs and the iTouch I talked myself into trying MobileMe, despite it having the dumbest name in the history of computing.  I’m forwarding all of my e-mail accounts to my MobileMe account, and I must say that despite the launch failures it’s working spectacularly for me.  All of my accounts fall into the same inbox now, and I can answer from either Mac or the iPod.  Contact sync works, iCal sync works, Safari sync works.  I’m not doing a lot with iDisk yet.  I set up a personal domain, which works.

I wouldn’t pay the $99 Apple wants for it (eBay is your friend) unless they finally do what should have been done from the very beginning and let me use my private domain name for e-mail.  They do that and they have a nearly perfect service.

While the market collapses generally….

...Shares of Apple Inc. jumped 9% in after-hours trading Wednesday, after the computer and electronics maker said its fiscal first-quarter earnings soundly beat analysts’ estimates despite a difficult environment for tech sales.

Maybe Circuit City should have been selling Macs.

“Even in these economically challenging times, we are incredibly pleased to report our best quarterly revenue and earnings in Apple history,” Apple’s chief executive Steve Jobs said in a statement.

Apple sold 2.5 million Macintosh computers during the quarter, compared with 2.3 million a year ago, while sales of iPods increased 22.7 million from 22.1 million.

Quarterly iPhone sales were 4.4 million units, nearly double year-ago levels.

It’s really kind of impressive that in this economic climate a brand that is perceived to sell at a premium should be doing that much better than the industry as a whole. 

The Markets…

Don’t seem to have the same faith in the Deity-in-Chief as the media does.

NEW YORK (AP)—The dawn of the Obama presidency could not shake the stock market from its dejection over the rapidly deteriorating state of the banking industry.

Financial stocks, many of them falling by double digit percentages, led a huge drop on Wall Street Tuesday that left the major indexes down more than 4 percent and the Dow Jones industrials down 332 points.

It’s about time.

On his last full day in office, President Bush commuted the controversial sentences of two former Border Patrol agents convicted of shooting a Mexican drug runner in 2005.

The imprisonment of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean had sparked outcry from critics who said the men were just doing their jobs and were punished too harshly. They had been sentenced to 11- and 12-year sentences, respectively.

Their sentences will now expire on March 20 of this year.

Ramos and Compean were sentenced in connection with the shooting of Osvaldo Aldrete Davila, who was shot in the buttocks while trying to flee along the Texas border. He admitted smuggling several hundred pounds of marijuana on the day he was shot and pleaded guilty last year to drug charges related to two other smuggling attempts.

The borders are there for a reason.  There should be MORE shooting of people illegally crossing the border, not less.