e-Absolution - Paying For Your Traffic Sins Online

I recently received a traffic violation for failure to stop at a stop sign. I’m pretty sure I stopped, so I don’t think I was guilty, but like everyone else I didn’t want to be bothered fighting it. So I proceeded to go online to look up the fine. I was blown away to find out it was 90 bucks! I saw that I also had the option of going to “traffic school” to keep it off my record. This is nothing new. I think it was like 85 bucks in addition to the 90 dollar fine. But what shocked me was they now are offering an online version for a mere 100 bucks you can wipe away your traffic transgression from the comfort and convenience of your own home. $190 bucks, for a stop sign violation! And they don’t even have to provide an instructor for this money making machine. This was an injustice and I opted to have my day in court more to make a statement that they were going to have to work to steal 90 bucks out of my pocket. I ended up getting it reduced to $50 by taking a deal and pleading no contest. To conclude, I believe the system is broken for the following reasons. One, the poor police shouldn’t have a ticket quota which encourages ticky-tacky tickets. Two, it shouldn’t pay for their salaries this also encourages ticky-tacky tickets. Three fines should be proportional to the offence. I don’t think I damaged society $190 bucks for my alleged rolling stop. Four, I think that I should be “innocent until proven guilty” just like a normal criminal case. I would’ve like to see some evidence beyond the cop saying I did wrong when the result goes to pay his salary and meet a quota. Five, “traffic school” is a joke, and they should call it was it really is… Extortion. Just another way to get money by threatening put the ticket on our record which would increase our insurance premiums unless we pay up.

Why Google Can’t I Sync My Tasks

Am I the only one that would really really like to be able to sync my tasks with due dates like a calendar to my iphone? Really how hard would that be?

Help Syncing a massive library of Books in iTunes 10

So I added my entire library of eBooks to iTunes 10 with the desire to sync a few of them to iBooks on my iPhone. It just so happens that iTunes adds them all checked. Which means if your sync is on and you don't have much space you can go way over. So I start unchecking them one by one and it is taking forever. Here is the fix, uncheck the sync books in the books tab. Ahh, now I have my space back back on my device for syncing but that doesn't solve problem. Now go back to your iTunes Library under books and manually drag a book or two into your device. Magic! they sync over manually. However, even better you'll notice that when you go back to the sync books page on your in devices you'll notice that "Sync Books" is turned back on and only the books you manually synced are checked. Yea!

New Logo for our Tracking Program at work. I kinda like it.

More on Twitter, Facebook, and Buzz

It wasn’t long ago I was thinking Facebook was a pretty good idea. Now I’m thinking it’s not Facebook at all, its having all my friends and family using the same social service. I have been increasingly concerned about privacy on Facebook. But I guess they aren’t the only one collecting data on our internet activity. I would like to dump Facebook (mostly because I hate all the quizzes and apps like Farmville) but I can’t seem to leave until everyone else does. Twitter is pretty cool still but it has become more of a news and current events feed for me. I haven’t posted there much recently. I’ve come to hate tweets with a link and no content or those full of hash tags. Now, along comes Google with their new Buzz right in my email. I wish they hadn’t totally screwed up the launch because It seems to be the right amount of Facebook and Twitter mix I’ve been looking for. I think it needs its own method of easily posting videos (just figured out pics upload) rather than linking to other services. Linking to other services is cool but needs to be much faster. I posted a tweet and it showed up 12 hrs later in my Buzz feed. I’d really like to see a Facebook link to my friends status updates in buzz. And if I could could have a Facebook app update my status from Buzz I’d never have to log into Farmbook again. I could live like a e-agoraphobic comfortably within my gmail page. Crossing my fingers it will survive.

Hung up on Twitter and Facebook

It’s been a long time since I posted anything here. Twitter and Facebook have taken over for the majority of any online posting I do. Does anyone write or read these blogs anymore? I wonder if there was a good integrated app on my iPhone if I would post more. In fact, the only reason why I’m posting to my blog right now is because I finally gave in and installed the Windows Live suite which has the Window Live Writer blogging program. Honestly, I do know a few bloggers that are still active but they seem to be more of an electronic scrapbook for friends and family.

Disable slow iTunes backup (Mac and Windows)

http://klauskjeldsen.dk/2008/08/05/iphone-3g-disable-slow-itunes-backup-mac-and-windows/

Sent from my iPhone

Qik & the iPhone Woes

I've been playing around with the iPhone. Um, or rather, it's been playing me with crashing apps. I tried deleting them off the iPhone but these crashing Zombie Apps just wouldn't die. As soon I turned the iPhone off and on again, there they were again, minus one or two. So you can imagine with my addictive collection of nearly 100 apps that it took quite a while to kill all these apps one or two at a time. I tried readding them both from the phone and also all over again from iTunes. No good, still infected with the Zombie DNA. I think there is a problem with the apple DRM on the iPhone not playing nice with the DRM on iTunes. It seems like mixing app downloads and update using both iTunes and the iPhone app stores causes problems. I am pretty sure this has been the source of my problems, with perhaps a bit of operator malfunction. I managed to jailbreak my iPhone using Quickpwn and none of those apps seem to have any problems while ALL of my other apps were crashing second after starting. Anyway, I finally gave up and did a full factory reset, scraped all my apps in iTunes, and started fresh. After everything was working I did another quick jailbreak. Why? The only thing there that I really really want is an app called Qik. It allows streaming video from the iPhone live to the Internet. Apple has said no for some lame reason to video on the iPhone. Come on Apple get your head out... I almost thought Apple understood. Anyway, so now you'll see my Qik videos (and live feed when it's up) at the bottom of my blog. There are a couple of other things that seemed neat but not worth the risk of destabilizing my feeble iPhone again. Most of the cool apps seem to be MIA after the 2.0 update. I guess they are trying to redevelope their apps for the iTunes App Store. Oh dear... I feel another rant coming on about Lamers remaking once free jailbreak apps into for profit apps on iTunes.

Goaltime Rocks and keeps me on task

Every once and a while you come across something that just works for you. Goaltime is one of those things for me. http://ping.fm/52wiK

REVIEW: Garmin Colorado 400T
First the negative, so I can finish on positive note. It's a bit pricey in my opinion for what you get (just under 500 on Amazon). I agree with comments on the chrome-like finish (not impressive). I am not going to test the waterproof claim, as I am skeptical after looking at it (maybe light rain). The built in base map seems incomplete at the street level and they are often not very accurate. Of course the "T" (topo?) model's claim to greatness is the built in DEM (elevations) plus 3d view. Yes, it's interesting when you are around a mountain, but not so much zoomed in on a flat area.
Documentation seems weak in areas. For example, I'm wondering if I can somehow use my own maps on the 4gb external SD card I picked up at costco for 35 bucks. 4GB is really overkill for just storing geocaches as the max the unit can handle at once before droping the rest is 2000 caches (in addition to the 1000 waypoints). I found this out the hard way. I'd like to be able to switch to different directories on the fly from the unit rather than switching the gpx files out at the computer or using different SD cards. What am I going to do with that extra 3.9GBs (unless I buy their routable street maps)? While I'm on that, the base map doesn't seem routable if you want to navigate in a car (unless you make your own route from your own waypoints). I wish I could hook up my iPhone manage and download maps and waypoints/geocaches/POIs out in the wild.
It seems to take forever to load at startup (but maybe that's because I am almost maxing out the number of waypoints/geocaches). Another thing, it sometimes takes a long time to aquire a good signal and the other day it had a hard time giving an accurate/constant fix in some trees on a recent geocache hunt. At other times it seem really steady and spot on. I'm undecided on this point.
That all being said it is still a great GPSr (the best I've had so far). It is small, light, and feels good in the hand. I really love it for paperless geocaching. It is really easy to transfer data to the unit and SD card. I really like the integration to the geocaching website for downloading caches and uploading finds. Having a built in digital compass is really great for geocaching. I just feel silly spining around twice to calibrate it when I want to use it.
I haven't tried the new integrated "WhereIGo" adventures but that seems to have potential. I looked into building an adventure for my area but the current builder software seems really complex to do it right. I think I'll wait until they simplify the process a bit more (more GUI to the GUI).
I don't know anyone else with a Colorado yet but I like the idea of being able to transfer items to another unit wirelessly. I'm sure there are tons more this unit can do that I just haven't had time to get into. Would I buy again? Yes, it is really great for a geocacher or hiker (me). Can they improve it? Yes, hopefully with software updates to come (crossing my fingers)...