I am a Manager of Tech Support living in Chicago. For my job, Tech Support basically covers anything that is on their desk including telecom and cell phone service. I do not come from a technology background, but rather I have a background in Arts. (I have photos up on my Flickr.com site (see the link). I try to take the approach to technology that not everyone understands all the components to it, and so I tend to make sure to include some sort of explanation where appropriate for the less then technical people that may read this blog. I try to blog on a regular basis, but that is heavily impacted by my day to day schedule.
I have 8 pets, and they are all a little crazy in their own way. They are really one of my hobbies, one that I developed as a child and have yet to loose intrest in it. I have a page deticated to the “monsters’ please feel free to check it out as well. I post a lot of photos on Flickr.com of my pets as well.
Please feel free to ask additional questions or have me explain something further, you can also do this through leaving me a voice mail message using the Google Voice plugin below.
I do not get paid for my options or receive any free products.
I know this is a bit after the fact, but I had some sinus issues that knocked me firmly on my bum.
As a tech person, the news of the Verizon “Droid” phone has cought my attention. I am not a fan of the iPhone and AT&T. Apple would have been better off with someone that has a stronger network (at the 3G level) then AT&T currently has. I use to be on AT&T and was realistically paying for service that I only really got when I was going to and From work. It wasn’t worth the cost. Drpid started as a single phone (Motorola Sholes) but it turned out to be a new way of branding for Verizon, Droid means all the Verizon Android Phones. Liceincing the use of “Droid” from Lucas Films allows them to appeal to the geeks and anyone who has even a small ‘Inner Geek’ in them.
What I really like is the direction Verizon is taking with advertising. Companies have failed to make use of “viral marketing’ which is basically creating hype around an item or service, and getting the mass of people on the internet talking about it and sending the links they come across to their family and friends. They have realistically very little ‘airtime’ they have created a huge amount of hype around the phone. Not only from the generic/neutral sites, but also every time some iPhone/MAC user/site posts about how much they dislike this and are talking about how they will fail, it is just adding fuel to the fire.
If you haven’t heard, starting Sat. Nov. 7th, Chicago will be getting a new area code in addition to 312 and 773. The new area code will be 872. As someone that has to deal with telecom as part of work, this is something that has been on my radar for awhile. Although this is the first time that I had to address it at work.
For Illinois, this will make our 13th area code, 10 of those are in the “northern” section of the state. In other worse, what I would describe as Extended Chicago-land (which I see as the distance from Chicago not being that unreasonable, and even tolerable as a work commute). The 10th of these area codes goes active this Saturday. Like the last several area codes to be added into the mix, this new one is an overlap, specifically of the ones that cover the City of Chicago, and not the suburbs which have their own share of dual area codes. Although aside from the having to change habits, the addition of the new area code is hardly news worthy. However it is an interesting comentary on that even the capital of Illinois only has one area code that covers it as well as a good size chunk of the state. It really shows that the focus is in the northern part of the state.
Realistically the extra digits I have gotten use to, as most if not all cell phone providers will let you do the 11 digit dialing now. I find that it actually screws me up when trying to dial on a land line because I am so use to dialing the extra numbers, and land lines do not react well to the extra numbers. So in a way this will make my life easier. Looking at this on a larger scale though, when you consider how many numbers are focused in the northern part of Illinois, compared to the bulk of the state, you can’t help but wonder if all these numbers are necessary. I have to admit, between work and home, I have 4 different numbers that are exclusively assigned to me. I am also not the only one in my office that has 4+ numbers between work and home. The down side is that it is now one more area code to remember. It makes you wish for the days when it was just a few area codes to cover the same amount of physical space. It also makes me want to hold on to my phone number even more, there is something to be said for having a phone number issued from the areas that are full.
So what does this means for those of us living or working in these area codes (or any of the others that are in the overlay areas)? We have to dial 11 digit dialing now, which translates into 1 + Area Code + Phone Number (although realistically we only have to remember 10 of those). The exception to this is the 708 area code which at this time has not needed to add another area code. I would guess that it is a matter of time for them.
For Additional Information, please see the City of Chicago’s Website. It goes into far more detail about why this is happening and how to deal with.
First impressions are that they are really using a bare bones version of what was shown off in the demo on their site. (The very long video where they announced the product to a conference of developers). Someone I was chatting with pointed out that this “Beta” is almost an Alpha test, which I would have to say is true. There are features that they demonstrated that are not yet active, I would hope that they are planning to get a good size pool of people into the test and then start adding features, otherwise I think that they risk people loosing interest in it.
Well the fall TV season has started, and I will admit, I watch a fair amount of TV. As always, I try to watch a few new shows, but I am actually already disappointed with this years offerings. It seems like there isn’t much new or interesting. It really does seem like Hollywood has run out of new ideas, they keep revisiting their old ones over and over and over again. It would be one thing if they were from the same production houses, and in the same “world” such as the Law and Orders, or the CSIs, or now NCIS, but sadly that isn’t the case.
There are two new medical series that based on the descriptions seem more of the same old. That isn’t counting the ones from the summer. There are shows that look like they are trying to capitalize off of the popularity of shows such as Heroes and Fringe. SciFi is starting to be “cool” again. Of course you have all the reality TV shows, Game shows and Late Night (spilling over into prime-time) talk shows. I really hope that the few new series that I am even partially interested in watching turn out to be worth watching. I fully expect the new NCIS to do well based off of the popularity of the original one, the others are all up for grabs.
I had been keeping a list of some features that Google has come out that I wanted to blog about at some point. It originally started as an idea for ones to highlight at work as we are a Google Apps shop, but that got me thinking well why no here also.
Now as for the posting of this content at work, it is still one of those things that I will write up in more detail when I get a time for our users. I figured I would share this list here as well. Although for some of you, these are hardly new features.
Just one of the features I really like. I have more listed in the full article. In Calendars, they now have an option that you can add your contact’s birthdays to your calendar. Now this means that you have to have the birthdays there in the first place, but it is something that I think is a nice feature as I had created my own sub-calendar to do this but it is far easier to just plug the dates into the contacts and have it add automatically.
Apple has gotten a lot of attention in the last few days. First the news that they rejected the Google Voice application, then word that the FCC is looking at that rejection. Which makes me wonder who at Apple decided that it was a good idea to go and reject formerly approved apps. Specifically the VoiceCentral app, which not only had been up on their apps store for at least 4 months, but had also had updates approved. (See the link below) which just makes them look all the more suspicious. As I see it, Apple is in a no-win situation on this one, which started the moment they pulled the Google App.
My family has entered the world of Blogging. It use to just be my husband that was “Blogging”, (and then I started) but in more recent times my sister and parents have also started blogging. More of my friends are also blogging as well. It is a sign of how thing are changing, it use to be that websites were static pages that required a lot of updating. Now you have more dynamic sites out there which are a full time job to maintain and have a lot of quality content, but this doesn’t always make sense for most people out there. It is far easier to update a blog which you can integrate with the different social media websites. There are free or cheap photo hosting websites out there as well (you can even get free sites to host your blog). All of this combines to make blogging a very popular option, and why should I be all that surprised that more members of my family have started doing this.
So I had been meaning to for quite some time to scan in some old photos that I had and post them online for people to see. Somehow had ended up as keeper of a pile of photos, which more then a few I have no idea where they came from or even who everone is. It is fitting I suppose, that the one with the degree in Photography ended up with them. Well I got around to doing that this week, much to a lot of amuseument and enjoyment of the folks in those photos. It is hard to believe that so much time has past, and how much we have all changed.
I probably should have warned people, who woke up to their email flooded with facebook picture tagas and comments as there has been lots of discussion going on. That is one of the great things about Facebook, it allows for all of us to see the images, to comment on them, to help identify/tag some of the people, and to reconnect with each other. I got to add several old friends that I had lost touch. Now there is talk of trying to get people together, which would be a lot of fun. It wouldn’t be a hard task for this lot of people to organize, as our hobby in college was event planning.
I have more scanning to do this weekend, As I went to put the ones I scanned back, found some more to scan in.
The one thing that I am grateful for now, that I didn’t really have in the past, was a very nice DIGITAL camera. You don’t have to worry about scanning them in, my camera can do a far better quality, quick to share, and there have been more then a few photos that got scanned in that i had to squint and blow up to a nice large size to see who all was there to tag them, as the photos were not very large prints to begin with.
I went through the other night and started adding people that I know who have blogs to my website (under the Blogroll section of links). These blogs don’t necessarily have much in common with each other with the following exceptions:
I have met them all in person.
They are interested in having an Online Presence in some sort of format.
In the age of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other assorted sites and blogs. There is so much more to providing an “online image” and controlling it. It is important to control it as you hear more and more stories about people checking out canidates for jobs and more online before making a decision on that person. You should review the privacy settings carefully. If you are going to have contraversal items (pictures, topics, etc…) posted then you need to think about how that will impact your online image.
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