Hurm… my thoughts on Watchmen

Confession time; I’ve never read Watchmen.

Of course I do own 3 copies of it. When I got back into comics in 2005, it was the first comic I bought but it fell to the wayside as I attempted to get caught up with the current stack of on-going comics. After Watchmen was announced as a movie, I had made a mental note to read it before 3/9/2009. As early reviews started coming in, I decided it was best to not read the book and wait until after the movie. As involved with comics as I am, I’ve managed to completely distance myself with knowing anything about the Watchmen as possible. Its something I’ve always wanted to read and have tried not to spoil it for myself. Up until seeing the movie 2 days ago, the only thing I knew about the Watchmen was that some people skip the pirate parts when reading it.

To get right to it, I loved Watchmen. The movie is smart, brutal, political and sexy. While it’s a long movie it never felt long and I attribute this to the brilliant story. The first hour of the movie I felt was the weakest part. Most of the setup falls victim to the task of bringing the comic book pages to life. I could tell the timeline was straight from a book, a comic book none the less, as things jumped around too much for a linear medium like cinema. Once the second hour started and scenes in the past started to feel more like flashbacks and storytelling devices, I got invested in the story and everything started to flow much smoother. I could also tell there a certain level of depth missing from the movie. I can’t really explain it and I guess I won’t really know for sure until I read it but it just felt like the movie was only scratching the surface. As far as the acting went, Rorschach’s performance is on par, if not better than Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight. In the end, I think all the actors did a great job. I was a little cold to Dr Manhattan and Silk Specter when they were introduced but as their characters got fleshed out a little, they fell right into the part. Favorite part of the movie, “Hitler was a vegetarian.”

Watchmen as a movie was a complete success for me. In the end it made me want to go home and read the book which is the greatest thing the movie could have done. I just hope it will have the same effect on others. I plan on going to see the movie again once I’ve read the book to see if my thoughts has changed. My guess is I’m going to like the movie more as I’ll realize the movie is really just a companion piece.

I’m off the start reading the Watchmen.

Microsoft’s Xbox360 Wireless Adaptor vs Apple’s Time Capsule

After months of putting off buying the Xbox360’s wireless adaptor due to it being overpriced, I finally just gave up and bought one. Happy to finally get rid of the Linksys Wireless-G Game Bridge that has been a problem since day one, it was just my luck to discover that I couldn’t connect to my wireless network. After about an hour of trying everything I could, I gave a quick google search and discovered others were having problems connecting to an Apple Time Capsule router also. I had waited so long to get the wireless adaptor for the 360 that I wasn’t going to give up.

My Time Capsule is basically an Apple Airport Extreme 802.11n Router with a hard drive built in. The router supports 802.11 a/b/g/n while the 360’s wireless adaptor supports a/b/g. My laptop is a/b/g and the only other device I connect wirelessly is my iPhone which is b/g. This left me with a few choices. Currently I run the Time Capsule in 802.11n with b/g compatibility running at 2.4Ghz.

I’ll spare the details of the hours of headache trying to get this to work by saying this: the Xbox360’s Wireless Adaptor does not work with Time Capsule…yet. Well thats not entirely true. Lets looks at what options we have:

802.11n (2.4Ghz) = Not Supported

802.11n (5Ghz) = Not Supported

802.11n (802.11b/g compatible) (2.4Ghz) = Not Working

802.11n (802.11a compatible) (5Ghz) = Not Working

802.11b/g (2.4Ghz) = Not Working

802.11a (5Ghz) = Not Working

802.11g (2.4Ghz) = Not Working

802.11b (2.4ghz) = Working

So out of 8 modes, 6 of which are supported, only 1 mode works. 802.11b is the only mode that allows the Xbox360 wireless to connect. Pretty worthless. Right now this looks to be a Microsoft problem as there are reports of the wireless adaptor not connecting to other draft N routers. Hopefully Microsoft will add support for Time Capsule in the Spring Dashboard update like they added support for Airport Extreme 802.11n routers in the Fall Update back in December. Until its fixed, you will either have to run your wireless network in 802.11b only mode or hardwire the Xbox360 using Cat5.

CSS Naked Day!

What happened to the design?

To know more about why styles are disabled on this website visit the

Annual CSS Naked Day website for more information.

How to migrate from Spanning Sync to BusySync

My one year subscription to Spanning Sync is coming up and while I’ve been very happy with the program itself, the $25 a year or $65 one time fee doesn’t. Last year I opted for the one year subcription as Leopard hadn’t been released and I was hoping for some built in support for syncing iCal to Google. Well that didn’t happen. This year at Macworld, BusyMac showed off a beta of BusySync 2.0 which supports syncing to Google Calendar… all for $19.95 for 1.x and a free upgrade 2.0 when released. Thanks to a 50% coupon code, Google Calendar syncing only costs me $9.98. Due to the different way each program uses to sync iCal and Google Calendar, its not as straight forward to switch to BusySync.

1) Backup. This is the most important step. Go to iCal > File > Export and save each of you calendars.

2) Disable .Mac calendar Syncing – You should not use both BusySync and .Mac to sync calendars between the same Macs. This will end up causing you to have duplicate calendars.

3) Turn off Spanning Sync. Make one last sync with Spanning Sync then go into System Preferences > Spanning Sync and uncheck the “Sync with Google Calendar” box.

4) Decided where you want to “host” your calendars. This is where most of the work is done. Spanning Sync requires you to create parallel calendars in iCal and Google Calendar and map them to each other. BusySync uses a Publish and Subscribe model where one side is the host and the other side is the client. We will need to delete any calendars that are not the host. In my example, I had 2 calendars in iCal, one called Home and Work. Google Calendar had 2 calendars called Alec Peden (default calendar that you cannot delete) and Work. I mapped Home > Alec Peden and Work > Work. To BusySync, that would be 4 different calendars. We only need 2. Since you cannot delete the default calendar in Google Calendar, we will want to delete the calendar in iCal that you had mapped to it. In my case, it would be the Home calendar. All the other calendars you have, you just need to decide where you want the host calendar to be and delete the corresponding calendar. Since I use Time Machine to back up iCal, I decided on using iCal’s calendars as the host. It honestly does not matter which one you decide.

3) Install BusySync 2.0.

4) Setup which calendars to sync by going to the System Preferences > BusySync and click the Google tab. Place a check mark next to the calendars you want to sync. Keep in mind you can have host calendars in both iCal and Google Calendar. To read more about which calendar is the client and host, visit BusySync.

5) Sync. Everything should be setup and ready to sync. Your first sync may take a few minutes but you should start to see the calendars you checked show up in both iCal and Google Calendar. If everything worked out the way you want it, go ahead and uninstall Spanning Sync by Ctrl+Clicking the icon in System Preferences and choose “Remove”.

Note: If you run into any problems. Delete the problem calendar(s), recreate a new blank calendar in either iCal or Google Calendar, check the box to sync it in BusySync and once its sync, import the ICS backup you made in step 1 into iCal.

Wordpress 2.5, a new home and cybersquatters

Wordpress 2.5 was released last night which I promptly upgraded using the awesome Wordpress Automatic Upgrade plugin. Upgrade went great with no issues so far. I had been testing the RC’s on a test account for about a week so I was prepared for what was coming. I did have some minor issues with my theme, which makes no sense, but thanks to Rob, he fixed most of the issues. There still is one issue that I think I know what’s causing it but no idea how to fix it. Its small enough that you probably won’t notice it even tho you’re seeing it as you read this. I haven’t decided if I’ll just let it be or remove the CSS code totally. Time will tell.

I’ve also moved from my web host from Dreamhost to Media temple. I did this last week and it went very smoothly mostly due to learning from my last move. I got a lot of questions on why I decided to switch because I never had any issues with Dreamhost. Mostly was because media temple contacted me after a previous post and send me a t-shirt and note thanking me for mentioning them. That is the kinda company I want to give my money too. I’m also a sucker for any company with an iPhone interface. So far I’ve been very happy with the change and my blog does seem a little more snappy when loading.

To segue into the next thing, I was driving to work when I had a awesome idea for a domain name. I broke out the iPhone and loaded up media temple to buy a domain name. Of course, the site was already taken by a cybersquatter. This is the 2nd domain I want that is rotting away due to these cockgobblers. Dammit!

On the road again…

Thanks to my new job , I get to spend the next 3 weeks in the San Jose area while I go for training. I left today and should be back on March 8th. Currently I’m in Chicago, waiting on my flight to San Jose.

Since I was told Tuesday I was leaving this weekend, I haven’t really had the time to make any plans for while I’m in CA. While I’m sure most of my weekdays will be filled with studying, I do plan on going out on the weekends. I’ll have a rental car but its shared between 5 of us. My first order of business will be to get into San Francisco next weekend for WonderCon and hopefully headed to one of the iFanboy party’s at night. Other than that, I really have no plans but I’m sure I’ll figure something out.

Performance vs. Quality in a Help Desk Environment

Since I’m moving on from my current job at Ann Taylor, I thought I would share an essay I wrote for them comparing performance and quality in a help desk environment. I didn’t have a lot of time to work on this when I wrote it so I was about 80% happy with how it came out. You’ll notice near the end, it’s not a tight as it should be. Maybe one day I’ll go back and finish it up the way I wanted but for now here.

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