Greetings from the innards of New York City's only real convention center. Despite that fact, on Wednesday I managed to get the one cabbie in town who had never heard of the place. I had to direct him there. I suppose the fact that he said, "Hey, 34th Street has traffic going both ways!" when he got to the intersection of 34 and 10th is the give away that he's new....

I stayed the last four nights in the Hotel Pennsylvania. I do not recommend it. Besides the news (which was conveyed to me by two different people) that the place has had bed-bugs, it has the following issues:

I'm writing this on a bus to NYC -- a bus with Internet access. Wireless Internet access. After five years of writing about nothing but wireless, it's my first time using it in a moving vehicle. Tho the connection kinda sucks. but hey, it's free. and anything is better than going through JFK ever again.

I've had to hand out bad news to technology companies before, usually in the form of a review of a product or service I didn't like. That just comes with the territory when you have a job like mine. But even after a decade and a half of doing this -- my 15 year anniversary of being in this industry just passed this week! -- I've probably never written anything that vendors take as seriously as the 20th Annual PC Magazine Readers' Survey results for desktops, notebooks, and printers.

Or, as we decided to call it this year, "Is Tech Support Getting Worse?"

(Answer: Yes.)

(Unless you buy a Macintosh.)

There's something disquieting about being on a phone call with a company and telling them what the numbers are in a survey that point out people, on the whole, really don't like their products. I think I know now what it's like to be a cop or doctor who has to tell a family member some really bad news about someone.

Thankfully, it's not my fault! The reader's said it, not me! I universally love all tech vendors and they should love me!

Well, okay, they should love me, yes, but some of them I wouldn't by a product from with even someone else's money.

Be that as it may, check to see who the reader's of PC Magazine like and who they don't. You may find some surprises. Then again, you may just find your worst fears confirmed.

Recognize this image?


If so, you grew up in the 1970s watching Saturday Morning Cartoons. It's the legendary Hall of Justice, home of the Super Friends, the worst incarnation of the Justice League of America ever. Still, it had it's moments, like Ted Knight voice overs ("Meanwhile... back at the Hall of Justice..."), and the Legion of Doom, Wonder Twin Powers, and Black Vulcan and Apache Chief! "Inyuk-chuk!" (Unfortunately, they also introduced Wendy and Marvin.)

Every generation has their own League in cartoons tho, and while I still prefer the Bruce Timm version, I've been catching up on the new The Batman show for giggles. It's okay. Today I caught the episode that introduced this new Bat's version of the League and laughed out loud -- that's right, I LOLed! --  when they showed the WatchTower, the JLA spacestation headquarters, which is an asteroid with the original '70s Hall of Justice built into the top of it. Awesome, with a side order of awesome-sauce.

Why does the so-called classic rock station I listen to play soooo much George Thorogood? Why not a little Creedence once and a while? Only time I've heard CCR on the radio lately was this morning at 5:15am, as I drove my wife off to go meet with some fellow CDLs for a trip out of town for some canine agility play-time. It was pouring, and the song was, "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?"

[Don't read the following unless you like backing up your files A LOT.]

I'm a little obsessed with making sure I back up all my data. Even useless stuff. I have redundant copies of emails going back 10 years.

It's not like I've lost much in my day. In college, when a bomb popping up unexpectedly on a Macintosh was a way of life, you learned to hit OpenApple-S with as much regularity as hitting the space key. Same with Windows 3.1, in case the BSoD was around the corner, waiting to turn you upside down and take all the documents and spreadsheets that fell out of your pockets.

For years now I've worked primarily off of a network drive. First it was a 40GB SnapServer (still in use), then I upgraded to a Linksys NLSU2. The latter is a network attached storage (NAS) adapter. You plug it into your network and then plug a couple of USB hard drives into the back. Both drives are then NAS drives, available to any computer on the network. You could even setup backups, so one drive would frequently copy to the other.

The problem with the NSLU2 is, it formats the drives in some proprietary way so if the NSLU2 itself dies, you can't just plug the drive into a computer USB port and get to the data. You'd have to buy another NSLU2! Crazy. So I decided to ditch that and buy the equivalent unit from D-Link, the DNS-120. I had some new (to me) Maxtor USB drives I could plug into it, so why not?

Problem is, the D-Link still uses a crappy format: FAT32. This means the size of a partition on a drive is limited. So on my nice 500GB Maxtor drive, it would only see 192GB at a time. Annoying. Plus, trying to decipher what drive is what when you look at the them (via the D-Link) on a Windows system was like reading Sanskrit.

Oh, and it was slower than frozen mollasses mixed with sawdust in January trying to roll up hill. A snowy hill. TERRIBLE performance. I hate that thing.

My bestest pal Joey-Joe-Joe, however, to my rescue. I traded him the NSLU2 I've had laying around for an actual Maxtor NAS -- it's the hard drive, but with Ethernet built right in. PLUS, it has it's own USB ports to plug in extra drives (sadly, still only FAT32) or even a printer. Psyche. I may be able to print from upstairs without leaving my computer on in the future. Backup the NAS on the other external drive and I'd have a way to access files if the NAS goes down. Psyche 2.0.

Why would Joe want the NSLU2 that makes proprietary formats? Well, because the unit can be hacked with third-party, open-source firmware now. People have turned that little thing into a full-blown computer. I should have just done that, but I felt like I'd tied up to much in paying for the D-Link. Now, I'm going to sell that thing faster than MoveOn.org takes out ads.

I spent my night copying files to the new Maxtor (180GB), formating another 152GB USB drive to plug into it, and resetting the nice 500GB Maxtor (with RAID! redundancy, otherwise it would be 1 terabyte) so I can use it straight off my desktop system. By tomorrow, I should be up and running.

Other backup strategies I use: SyncBack copies local files on my laptop to the server each night. Microsoft FolderShare syncs my work folder on four different computers (two laptops, Windows Desktop, and Mac desktop), and does so flawlessly, I might add. That software rocks, particularly because it's FREE. Every month or so I take whatever I'm working on story wise and upload it to Google Docs. And I send it there via GMail so there's a copy is saved there, as well.

Have you lost any files lately?

Last night I had my first ever dream that involved seeing/interacting with a sitting president of the U.S. of A. I find it very telling that mere moments after meeting him, he went over to a sewer hole conveniently dug into the corner of a back yard where the dream was taking place, and jumped in, suit and all, to do what ever presidents do down in there.

The wife and I are sitting in what we call the red room, because it's a room and it's red, laptopping the day away as the rain pours down.

I just walked out into the front yard, under an umbrella I keep on the front porch (and which I had to clear of moths who land on it overnight) to watch the front gutter of the house sag under the weight of the rain. I hope it's just clogged. Either way, the extension ladder will be out this week for a look-see.

Other items to do this week: any last minute prep for my two weeks away from home at the end of this month. I'm taking a bus down to New York (check it out, Cornell's Campus2Campus bus, it's a bus with Wi-Fi on board) where I'll work at PC Mag's office for a day and spend the next few days working at my company's DigitalLife trade show. Doing what, I dunno, but I'll be there. I like to think of it as my first time as a "booth himbo."

After that, I meet the wife in Connecticut and we drive on to Martha's Vineyard for Viable Paradise 11 (see Getting Into Paradise). I'm psyched and nervous as hell in equal measure.

Speaking of writing, I dove (dived? Doven?) back into writing book 2 of my kids fantasy series that I used to call The Thaumaturgical Three until my agent made me see the error that (except in my brainmeat, where it's still TTT). I wrote over 4,000 words of The Random  Chance Chronicles this past couple of days, andif I keep the momentum up I can have a
first draft done before VP11. VP11, however, is reserved for workshopping another work in progress (WIP).

The nice diff between these current WIPs and previous WIPs? I know I'll actually finish the current ones.

Tomorrow I'm going to try launch a salvo at the guy who stole the Squished Frog logo for his Second Life store and in a way I never thought I'd have to... using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA is a twisted little piece of legislation, but appears to be the best way to get this guy to take down the froggie pic he stole. ISPs must act on any DMCA request they go, even if it's bullshit. I'm happy to say my claim will not be, but ultimately the only true solution involves lawyers. I wish that guy were making a 100k a month using the logo, then I'd have one hired. Oh yeah, I'm as litigious as any old lady with McDonald's coffee spilled in her lap, it's true.

And you know what? I talked to my cousin last night, and he might just make me a new design anyway. This tired old site needs a pick-me-up. But not until we at least let this guy know we're serious.

It's like the surface of a sticky, fruity planet....

When battle last commenced, Joe had sent me an Xbox 360 I bought off him -- and it was covered in nasty, nasty fruit leather.

I had to send him a package last week, and I knew it had been far too long since he'd been fruited. Or leathered. Or whatever. The point is, I had to get back at him... and I still had plenty of fruit leather left with which to do it.

But what to do?

Of course. I'd send him a message. Written in fruit leather.

The result is below, held aloft by the recipient for the Skype camera.



Until the next time, my worthy opponent. Until next time....

(By the way, cutting out fruit leather letters and gluing them to paper? Sticky.)