Ford, GM, Mazda add ipod support – about time. Is there any reason 5 years from now the entire entertainment center of a car won’t be replaced by an ipod? basically the manufacturer will install speakers and an amp and a connector for inserting ipods. all that expensive multidisc player hoo-ha will be gone. similar thing happening to home entertainment systems. it’s an ipod world.

As I mentioned a couple days ago, I’d really like to flip my home phone system to an asterisk-based system, but I need a reseller because a) i don’t have time to do the deployment myself, b) i don’t want to be frontline support for my household, c) a special case of a, i have some funky analog control stuff wired into my current phone system that i need someone else to spend time figuring out how to plug into asterisk – intercoms, some mechanical actuators. It is probably not that hard but I don’t have a lot of time.

asterisk reseller - Google Search – points me towards digium. They in turn pointed me toward bitstruct and digitalcandle, both of whom have been totally unresponsive – their websites don’t inspire confidence in their asterisk reselling skills either. The guys that did my home theatre install don’t do telephony projects, they pointed me towards someone who wanted to sell some exchange/activedirectory integrated thing, not what i am after.

If you know of an asterisk reseller/installer…

I ordered some outdoor flicker lamps from SMARTHOME - X10, Remote Control, Home Automation, Wireless Security, Lighting Control and some of them were defective. In a cranky mood I filled out their post-sales survey, and was contacted promptly by them and they are sending me a new unit. It pays to complain I guess.

• Wow the community of support for the VMWare virtual server is pretty interesting. I am totally missing out on this.
• Briefcase – a blast from the past.
• The PC De-crapifier. I could have used this last month.
• Phil keeps cranking out great Berry411 enhancements
• Wikicalc status update
• Cool notepad trick. Huh.
• Omnipeak personal via Larkware
• Phil tries carbonite online. I’ve switched to Sharpcast which is more what I need.

Attended a very nice dinner with Karen Holbrook this week, President of The Ohio State University. heard an update on the university, lots of new info for me. The growth and change in the University since my day is dramatic. Student quality has risen dramatically, as has admissions selectivity – the days of open admissions for ohio students are long gone (when I was going to OSU, they basically accepted all Ohio high school grads). The regional campuses have become 4 year residential institutions – I remember when the Marion campus was brand new, a single building. A $3.7B annual operating budget – not including capex. Nearly 60000 students – that at least hasn’t changed much.

One anecdote I heard from Karen – she always walks around on move-in day in the fall meeting new students. On day one, everyone is overwhelmed by the size of the institution. In 3 weeks that sense is gone – a student’s experience collapses down to the communities that student is involved with – the “liability” of size dissipates quickly, whereas the benefits endure. That is certainly my recollection as well.

I’ve been on a bit of a nonfiction jag:

• “The Best and the Brightest” by David Halberstam. I just couldn’t get into. Too much minutiae, not enough story telling. Contrast with The Strange Death of Liberal England which glosses over facts but tells a great story.
• “Why Stomach Acid is Good For You” by Wright and Lenard. Interesting theory on stomach function, stomach acid, and the damage done by antacids and acid suppressing drugs. If you are taking Prevacid, Nexium, Prilosec – you must read this book. It may or may not be right but it is a view you should understand for yourself. The core of it is this – heartburn caused by acid reflux is actually a symptom of too little stomach acid, and the downstream effects on your helf of having too little acid and thus incorrectly digesting food are tremendous. The heavily-marketed treatment of eliminating stomach acid does more harm over your lifetime than good.
• “Stumbling on Happiness” by Daniel Gilbert. There are some interesting discussions in here about what really makes us happy. But I hate hate hate the writing style – just chock full of oh-so-clever wordplay, knowing asides, wacky metaphors. This crap all just gets in the way of the story. You feel like the author went through the book and forced some clever construction into nearly every paragraph. Just annoying.
• “Nature Noir” by Jordan Fisher Smith. Wow! What a surprising book. A nonfiction naturalist book, but threaded thru with a compelling personal story. The writer has a message but rather than beat you over the head with it, he writes a moving and evocative portrait of the land and the people on it. Way more impactful than your typical nonfiction book.
• “All Markets are Liars” by Seth Godin. I expected to hate this book as I find most trendy business books to be tiresome. But I do resonate with the core message here – marketing is about telling a story, a story that your customers probably already know and want to believe. Like most nonfiction business books, would have been better as an article or a pamphlet, but still engaging.

IO2Technology: Heliodisplay/ Interactive Free-Space Display – these would be awesome for halloween. Though I bet I can achieve a good enough effect with fog and a projector – in fact for Halloween purposes it would probably be better.

EDSBS ADVANCED GRIDIRONOLOGY – a proposal for a football degree, akin to a performance art degree. I totally agree.

Getting ready to switch from a WidowPC box to an Alienware box. I’ve had the WidowPC box 8 months, it is a nice SLI liquid-cooled box, but it has had thermal problems from the day I got it and no longer runs. WidowPC is honestly not that responsive. I think they are just too small – my order number suggests I am approximately customer number 1000, and my support requests suggests they have handled ~4000 support requests — not large numbers, and too many requests per box.

Alienware offers onsite service and for the kind of bleeding edge boxes I buy, I think that is worthwhile. I just don’t have the time to be front line of support for myself, like Bob is for himself.

I hit Rattlesnake ledge this am at 630 – Rattlesnake Ledge Hike - a photoset on Flickr (not my photos) – a good wakeup hike. Saw no one on the way up, 2 people at the top, and then passed 40 people on the way down – it is going to be crowded up there today! Great to hit it while it was still quiet.

DIY Software from PC Magazine: Your Virtual Assistant – good article on deploying asterisk for a small business. I want to throw out the phone system at my house and put in an asterisk-based system, good tips in here, but I don’t have the time to do this and don’t want to be front line of support for the family. I really need a local asterisk var…

Brilliant articulation of how to think about the future –

A couple years ago, I was talking the Institute’s Bob Johansen about wisdom, and he explained that - to deal with an uncertain future and still move forward - they advise people to have “strong opinions, which are weakly held.”

Learning Movable Type: Plugin Compatibility and MT3.3 – i hate updating software, my patience was worn out years ago. but will have to do this one, start here for plugin gotchas.

Might be fun to go to this for a day next week – ONAMI : Events

Bob building his new PC – like me he is driven by gaming performance. His woes at fry’s – http://www.bobsplanet.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/72-Frys-Slimy-Practices-the-Bobsplanet-PC-project-continues.html – personally I have given up on Fry’s, they have acres of stuff but never the exact part I need.