Author Archives: jaypoc

Okay, So maybe I can read after all.

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I’ve always enjoyed reading, when the reading was casual and on my own, but I always despised school requiring me to have a book read by a certain date. I have been very fortunate that at an early age I read some rather advanced books. One of the earliest I recall is J.R.R. Tolkein’s, The Hobbit. Being so into the story of the Hobbit-folk and Bilbo’s travels that I quickly moved on to The Lord of the Rings. These two books alone have gotten me through numerous book reports and childhood assignments. I also tagged along with Arthur Dent in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and the occasional sci-fi novel such as Alan Dean Foster’s Sentenced to Prism.

Beyond those, other stories and books are a blur. I grew fond of Science Fiction short stories and have read compilations by Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke, among others. But my reading stopped early in High School. I always collected Science Fiction compilations and occasionally thumbed through them. It wasn’t until I read about an offer for a free book to all “Urban Exploration” interested bloggers. I added my name to the list and a book was sent my way. I read, and enjoyed The Unseen.

Since then, I’ve been listening to a few podcasts from the TWiT.TV network. This Week in Tech, This Week in Google, Windows Weekly, Security Now and all the others. One of their sponsors in Audible.com and aside from the commercials, the hosts all rave Audible.com.  I never thought that I would enjoy Audio-books, but I just finished my second. I’ve now read (listened to) more books in the past 6 months than I have in the past 5 years!

The first was “on Intelligence” by Jeff Hawkins. I listened to about 90% of it. Jeff is (or was) a bigwig at Palm and has some interesting theories on Intelligence and how the human brain works (and why Artificial Intelligence is so difficult). He goes on to explain how teh brain’s ability to predict the future defines it’s Intelligence. Not the long term or psychic future, but I’ll leave it to the book to explain his theories which are pretty interesting and with in my scope of knowledge of the subject, plausable.

The second book, I just sat around for 4 hours finishing was Dan Brown’s “Digital Fortress”. a Fiction novel about a cryptographers plot to take down the NSA. Things get out of hand when he turns up dead, after his plans have already been set into motion. It’s a great story that had me hooked early and even had me laughing and shouting at the radio as if I were watching on television.

Utilizing time driving to and from work, and out with friends, to time “on the can”, I made it a point not to go anywhere without my Zune, and it’s really paid off. I have a couple of books that I’m looking forward to. Some on Audio Book and others in hard-copy. Eventually I’ll review them: Larry Niven, Ringworld, Neal Stephenson, Anathem, and a few I can’t think of off the top of my head.

To share my love, and spread support for TWiT and Audible.com, You can take advantage of the deal I used to download the 2 audio books by visiting www.audible.com/twit2. You can cancel if you don’t want any others, or stick with them and get 2 books a month. They have other plans too, so definitely check them out.

The Night I Met Santa Claus

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I was standing on the platform looking at the train. It was packed. Had I stepped on, I would surely have stood the entire way to Jamaica station, which wouldn’t be so bad, but then at Jamaica I would have to find the next train to continue on. I was hungry and there was a direct train coming in just under 30 minutes. I had been out Zombie-Christmas  caroling all night with Vince and some new friends from ZombieNYC.com, so I decided to head back up into Penn Station and get a late dinner. For some reason, I always find myself at Kentucky Fried Chicken when I get food at Penn. This night was no different.

After eating, I set out to catch the 1:06 train. Standing in the waiting area was a hefty man carrying a large bag, wearing a red coat, red pants, and even red sneakers. He had a distinguished white beard and was wearing a festive Christmas hat not unlike my own. Okay, Mine had elf-ears and bells, but it was still your typical red/white Christmas hat. As a zombie-caroler, we were handing out candy canes to people, and I made sure to take a handful with me when I left the zombie crew at Bar None. so I approached him, addressing him as Santa and offered him a candy cane and some friendly chatter. He was in the city visiting some friends, though in my mind, he worked at Macy’s or some mall. He was very friendly and really played the part of Santa, so I smiled, wished him a Merry Christmas, and we shook hands as he handed me his business card. Simply a portrait of Santa Claus on one side, and a very well done cartoon of Santa’s workshop on the back. Above the portrait were the words, “I met Santa!”. I laughed and walked away thinking how funny it was that I had just met Santa in the middle of Penn Station. This is where the fun of the evening ended.

I watched eagerly as the clock approached 1:06, however the track number for my train never showed on the large display in the station. It wasn’t until about 20 minutes past the time my train was supposed to arrive that people started to notice the smaller screens reading that due to switch difficulties, there were no trains running between Penn and Woodside. This meant no trains in and out of Penn Station. Announcements were made advising that the subway would honor Long Island Rail Road tickets to Woodside, but there was no mention of trains from Woodside to anywhere else. I waited on line to speak with an MTA agent. At 1AM on a Friday, you can imagine that there are a lot of people, mostly drunk and/or tired standing around Penn. By this time, the departure times for multiple trains had passed, so there were an exorbitant number of people stranded in the station’s waiting areas. To make matters worse, there was one MTA agent working in the office. By the time I got to her, she seemed pretty irritated and gave me an attitude because I didn’t understand her initial answer. Rather than simply stating that there was no way to get to Hicksville via LIRR/MTA, she explained the entire region claiming that all the main lines were out but some of the interconnecting lines were operating. This meant absolutely nothing to me, as I don’t ride the train that often. I don’t know what trains interconnect to what stations. She eventually clarified and basically told me I was S.O.L until the track issues are resolved.

My cell phone was dead, so I ran into Duane Reed and picked up an emergency cell phone charger. As I walked back into the waiting area, I saw that they had announced my train was on track 20. Excited that they actually fixed the train, I bolted across the waiting room to the staircase that descends on the train platform. I took a seat on the train next to a man who with his jacket seemed to take up 2 and a half seats. Perhaps it was his way of trying to discourage others from sitting there, but I refused to stand any longer. My feet were killing me. No sooner had we begun moving, when the train came to an abrupt halt. We were stuck again, and this lasted a while. I tried to sleep, dozing in and out a few times. According to the authorities, the train had somehow managed to jump tracks with some cars on one rail and others on another. It took about an hour, though it seemed like an eternity for them to get the train going again.

I managed to sleep for a better portion of the ride. I woke up amazingly as the train opened its doors at Hicksville Station. I jumped to my feet, grabbed my jacket and bag and ran before the train left and I was stranded again. I had made it. I looked at the clock and it was 4:15am. The 1:06 train got me home 3 hours late! I hate to look back and think that I could have gotten on that first train and made it home hours earlier. But then I wouldn’t have met Santa Claus.

Dumb things we do

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So I woke up at my normal time this morning. About 8:00 AM. I got ready, grabbed my camera and headed out. I work for a Radio Station on the weekends so today was going to be an easy day. The weather was miserable and we were promoting a pet store. The rain prevents some of the larget set-ups and I love animals, so pet store events are always a blast.

I pull up to work and walked in to see Jaime. I hadn’t seen her in a long time, so it was great to see her, though she’s usually only there during the week when the offices are open (She’s the receptionist.). It felt good, but something was wrong. I realized the lights were on. The lights are rarely on when I am there on the weekends. The morning DJ walked by saying hi to me. I asked Jaime what today was.

She said “Friday”.

Oops!

Don’t worry.  It ends well. I made it to my regular job on time (Thank god!). I wasn’t completely in “work attire” but since I had my station-branded collared shirt on, I was able to get away with it. I can’t believe I did this though!

Windows 7: Pin Folders to the Start Menu

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In the same way people spread the word if they find good mobile phone deals, I will be sharing customization tricks for Windows 7 to make it a more personal experience.

I’ve started playing with the Release Candidate of Windows 7 in anticipation of receiving my copy in October, so here’s a relatively simple registry hack to enable Windows 7 to pin Folders (and Libraries) to the start menu:

1. Open the Registry Editor (regedit) *NOTE* Don’t screw up your registry! Mistakes can make your PC inoperable!

2. Navigate to:  HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT \ Folder \ ShellEx \ ContextMenuHandlers

3. Right-click on ContextMenuHandlers and select NEW and then KEY

4. name the key, {a2a9545d-a0c2-42b4-9708-a0b2badd77c8}

That’s it! Now to pin a Folder to the start menu, hold down the SHIFT key while you right-click on the folder and you’ll see the option to Pin to Start Menu available. Note that this will not work for some special or system folders.

Facebook Discriminates Against Web-saavy Users

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Since it’s inception, I have had an account on Facebook. Over the years, it has grown to be one of the best social networking sites available. It’s users range from teens to adults, but a recent move by Facebook is going to upset a small portion of it’s users, the technically advanced users.

My email address is admin[at]jaypoc[dot]com, and has been for close to (if not more than) ten years. I have maintained this address as my personal email address and is the address that friends and colleagues know to contact me and/or search for me on social networking sites. A few weeks ago, I signed on to Facebook and saw a message stating “Our systems have detected that [email protected] is no longer a valid email. Facebook requires all users to maintain an active contact email.“.

It asked me to enter a new email address or re-confirm the same one, but would not allow me to reconfirm my valid email. I searched their help for a reason this was happening. It took a while to find it, but I located this absurd statement:

“Unfortunately we do not support email addresses with generic prefixes (e.g. info@, webmaster@ etc.). Since email addresses of this nature are typically used for organizations and businesses, we do not allow them to be used for personal Facebook accounts. You will need to use a personal email address that does not contain this type of prefix. There are no exceptions to this rule.”

Sure, Email addresses of that nature COULD be used for organizations and businesses, but only if the domain name is  owned by an organization or business. I own a PERSONAL WEB-SITE and have a PERSONAL domain name, so it’s only fitting that [email protected] is me. Facebook ignorantly refuses to accept that an individual could have their own domain name or web-site. Unfortunately, Creating a “valid” name according to Facebook’s statement would require me to reconfigure my mail server with additional aliases or email addresses. While a trivial task, none of my colleagues, friends, or family will know this new “facebook-compliant” address. How would they search for me? The simple answer is that they would not be able to. The basic functionality of Facebook, bringing people together, would be lost because of their closed-minded opinion that a domain name can not belong to an individual.

The fact remains that my email address is what it is. I will not change it for Facebook. If they want to kick me off of their system, then that’s what will happen. I will become a victim of discrimination not because of my religion or skin color, but because email address (while valid) doesn’t conform to their standards.