I’ve had a few other domains registered for a while but haven’t publicized them. You may find these two useful:
If you want to go straight to my blog: wyszdom.com
If you can’t remember how to spell Wysz: theinternetissocool.com
If you can’t remember how to spell Wysz, and you certainly can’t handle “Wyszdom,” but you want to go straight to my blog: theinternetissocool.com/blog
My photo gallery, called Imagery, is now open for your viewing pleasure.
I don’t have much in it right now; in fact as of this writing I only have one album with some pictures of my K-1000 camera. But now that the hard part is done (installing and configuring Gallery 2), I should be able to add the rest of my library over the coming weeks.
I still have some work to do, such as organizing the photos on my computer, and then figuring out how to allow my family members to add to albums as well, while keeping them from public view. As of this writing I’m not allowing guests to add comments, but I’ll try and change that as soon as a comment moderation feature becomes available.
I only installed Gallery because I wanted to be able to host the photos on my own domain, but I wonder if it’s really worth the trouble when services like Flickr and Picasa Web Albums are so much easier to use, and don’t rely on me to keep everything up and running. I’ll probably end up uploading my photos to all three locations, so that way if I ever prefer one as my primary location in the future, it will already be all set. Plus, redundancy is always an essential part of a good backup strategy.
Please try it out and let me know what you think.
I’m in the process of installing Final Cut Studio 2 on my Mac Pro. As expected, the packaging is very slick and expensive-looking. And when I opened the box, I let out a small geeky giggle upon the sight of nine installation DVDs.
All this so I can edit videos of me wearing chef pants.
If you’re trying to send non-AT&T email on AT&T DSL and you’re getting error messages, contact customer support and ask them to open port 25. That is all. 🙂
I just saw Untraceable.
Comments (with ellipses…)
Alright, I’m off to go find a new window for my car…
Last night, between the hours of 9 PM and 7 AM, my passenger window was smashed and my brand-new GPS, which I received as a gift, was stolen.
It happens. According to the officer who took the report, it happens here all the time. I later heard from a coworker that they specifically target nice areas where people park outside and are likely to have a GPS. I’m glad I live in a “nice” area. So whatever, I have insurance, hopefully everything will be covered.
Someone else will fix the window, and a GPS is replaced with cash, so I thought the worst part for was going to be cleaning up the glass. It was pretty bad, and I’m still not finished. But it wasn’t the worst part.
You see, every Friday, they serve donuts at work. Delicious donuts, including a raised donut with chocolate frosting. This is my favorite kind of donut. Let’s call it a Wyszonut. Of all the great perks*, the free Wyszonut is the one I crave the most. Unfortunately, other people also like the Wyszonut. Last week, by the time I got in, all of the Wyszonuts were gone, and it bothered me for the rest of the day. I even considered going out and buying donuts at lunch. This morning, I was on track to beat the rush and get my Wyszonut. I opened the door of my apartment ant 7:10. Considering I routinely do this over two (and sometimes three) hours later, I was quite impressed with myself. But then there was the whole broken window delay, and I got in at about 9:10. All of the Wyszonuts were gone. That was the worst part.
Oh, and check out this picture:
![Broken glass with sticker reading [Security System and Immobilizer Anti-Theft System]](https://wysz.com/wyszdom/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/glass-1.jpg)
Update: The estimate for the window was below my deductible, and the GPS is a “personal item” not covered by my policy. This is going to be all out-of-pocket for me. Good thing I just spent all that money on a Mac Pro.
While configuring my Airport Extreme:
![This configuration will cause your base station's status light to blink amber. Are you sure you want to continue? Click Ignore to prevent your base station's status light from blinking amber for this problem. [Skip] [Cancel] [Ignore]](https://wysz.com/wyszdom/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/amber-1.png)
Quite an odd message for what is probably the most common configuration. Oh well, at least it works! Plus I can now print from my couch. Sweet.
“Being run over by a Zamboni would be flat-out cool.”
– The one and only Adam Lasnik
Here’s a simple recipe you can use if you’re having guests over for a party. It’s so simple that the video of me making it is less than five minutes long! It took 20 minutes of edited footage for me to make spaghetti.
As a side note, I plan on mastering future episodes in HD. However, I plan on keeping the podcast to an iPhone-friendly size only, as I don’t want to deal with managing an HD simulcast. If anybody has suggestions on how I could handle the issue of producing a podcast for multiple devices, please leave your ideas in the comments.
I’m writing this post with a fresh Internet connection. I was hoping this wouldn’t be a blogworthy experience, but you’re reading this.
I used to have Comcast. For unimportant and not terribly negative reasons, I decided to switch to DSL, since FiOS, which is what I really want, isn’t available in my building. In my area, it seems like AT&T is the best choice. Things started off pretty well. The ordering process was mostly straightforward, and I wasn’t that surprised to learn that ordering Internet without phone service would cause a bit of trouble, but not too much. They shipped me the modem, and there was no need for a technician to come to my apartment. I really appreciate this.
My service was scheduled to be available tonight after 8 PM, and around midnight I started the installation. Of course, it began with the dreaded installation CD. Maybe it’s just because I’m a Mac user, but I don’t understand why I need an installation CD for this. Just give me a list of settings, like… “Configure using DHCP.”
I didn’t see anything like that in the documentation, so I stuck in the CD. Fortunately my optical drive (which I hardly ever use) was behaving, and the disc included an OS X installer. For most of the “installation,” nothing was actually installed on my computer. It was just an application interacting with the modem via my Ethernet port. Fine. That’s understandable. But just when I thought I was finished, with little warning of what it was about to do, the installer opened a few scripts which did simply annoying things like adding bookmarks to my desktop, an arguably useful thing by setting my network preferences, but also some scary things like copying files to the Application Support folder, where they will probably hang out until the next time I do a clean install of my OS. The thing that freaked me out the most was when I saw it open Mail and attempt create a new email account. It completely butchered the settings, using my username as the incoming mail server, and naming the account after my password!
After that horrible process was over, I was online, and the connection so far seems snappy and stable. I checked the CD for an uninstaller, and there is none. If I were in a worse mood I’d call and complain to customer service, but that would go nowhere and I’m just not that surprised by what happened. It was easy enough to delete those desktop bookmarks that made my Mac look like a PC full of preinstalled trial programs, and I got rid of that email account which I’ll never use seconds after it was created.
The last time I had DSL I had to connect via PPPoE, so I’m happy that this time with DHCP getting the connection to my router should be plug-n-play, as long as the installer didn’t tie anything to my computer’s MAC address. I’ll update if that’s an issue.
Hopefully the rest of my experience will be smooth-sailing, but if you’re a Bay Area ISP and you have a painless installation process, feel free to get in touch with me. I already own cable and DSL modems.
Update: It looks like the damage was worse than I thought. When I tried to connect to my local wireless network today to throw some files over to my desktop, I realized that I couldn’t even turn my laptop’s Aiport on. Fortunately Apple’s discussion group was to the rescue again, and I found this post by Ryan Godfrey, which told me to create a new Airport service in the Network pane of System Preferences. Unfortunately the same problem recurred each time I would go back to the profile created by the installer. Deleting the AT&T profile seemed to fix things, and accessing the modem via a plain old DHCP Ethernet connection works just fine. What an unnecessary mess.
Update 2: I shared this post with AT&T and they got in touch with me to make sure all of my concerns were addressed. I told them that I just wanted my comments to make their way to whoever was in charge of the installation process. The representative promised that this will happen. If any new customers happen to see an improved installation, please let me know.