Cabin in Pinecrest and Disconnected
This past weekend Dave and I hung out with our good friends Adam and Shawna. Shawna’s family has a cabin in Pinecrest, CA and we stayed there for a night. This cabin was the cutest little house ever! The whole thing was made of knotted pine and it was recently remodeled with beautiful tile floors, granite counter tops, and modern bathroom. It had one bedroom and a loft. I could easily live there if it wasn’t so far away from normal civilization. We had a great time and so did our dogs. Adam and Shawna also have a dog, Lucy, and she is quite the little princess. It irritated her to see our dogs play with each other.
Email Signatures: What's Appropriate?
I recently started my new job as a Graduate Teaching Assistant at the University of Denver. I thought since I have a somewhat professional position, I should upgrade my email signature for my school email address. I used my boss’ signature as a template. This is what it says:
Leanna Lofte University of Denver Department of Mathematics John Greene Hall 312 (303) 871-3300 llofte@du.eduIt’s the most obnoxious signature I’ve ever had. I made it blue to add a little bit of personality to something so dull. I think I’m going to remove my office phone number because I really doubt any of my students would ever contact me by phone. I guess I am bothered by how long it is. Should I turn school/department into one line? Something like this (and without the phone number):
Leanna Lofte DU Mathematics John Greene Hall 312 llofte@du.eduYeah, I think I like that more. But my question would be what is considered “correct” or “appropriate”. I have seen some pretty out of control signatures before. Ones that include various IM names and multiple blog addresses as well as business address/phone/office/email and company name – resulting in at least 10 lines. I’ve even heard of people including their photo! I mean, is all that information really necessary? I would think if someone needed all that info, they’d just email and ask.
In my opinion a good email signature would include the necessary information and nothing more, except maybe a fun quote to add personality. The shorter, the better. I don’t want to be intimidated by a signature. Here’s what the longest signature should contain:
- Name
- Job Title
- Company
- Department
- Office
- Phone #
- Quote
That’s eight lines. And I think someone requiring ALL these lines would be rare, except in the business world.
I want to know your opinion on this issue. What does your signature look like? What should/shouldn’t be included? What’s the most ridiculous and out of control signature you’ve ever seen? Do you judge people by their signatures? Tell me!
The Joys of Moving and Getting Comcast
Wow, I have been rather busy lately. My last post was when I was beginning my 10-day vacation with my family, which was a blast by the way. After our vacation, we had a few days at my parents house to do some last minute packing/preparing for our big move.
On Friday, the 22nd of August, we began the treacherous drive from Monterey County, CA to Denver, CO. This was the longest drive of my life. My poor dogs hate the car now. We did the 18 hour drive with only one 3 hour break at some hotel in Utah (not counting quick food and gas stops). Speaking of Utah… at first it’s pretty cool, lots of rock, red, and brown everywhere. But after about 30 minutes of the same look, it’s pretty boring. If you play World of Warcraft, think of Desolace… that’s Utah. We arrived at our apartment on Saturday night about an hour after the leasing office closed. The manager was gracious enough to drive down and give us our key.
My parents did this drive with us. My mom and dad were in the U-haul, while my husband and I were in my 1997 Honda Civic. I am so proud of my car for making it through the Rockies! Well, we unloaded the U-haul on Sunday morning/afternoon… wait, let me rephrase that… my husband and dad unloaded the U-haul while my mom and I shopped for some necessary items at Wal-Mart 
I didn’t get to begin the dreaded unpacking phase until Tuesday, when my parents flew back to California.
On Thursday, I FINALLY got internet. That in itself was an all day ordeal… freaking Comcast. So, my “appointment time” was 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM. At 12:15 PM, I was still waiting for Mr. Comcast to arrive. So I called customer service to see what was going on. The lady called the tech and said he should be here in about 45 minutes. She did not apologize. Ok, whatever. TWO HOURS LATER the tech calls me and says he’s 5 minutes away. Um, ok… You are an EXTRA hour and 15 minutes late and you chose to call me NOW? Well, he finally shows up and begins the process. After going downstairs to do whatever he does in the little box, he returns saying that it’s infested with hornets. Hornets?! After calling my apartment management to have them take care of it (which was a very long ordeal), Mr. Comcast realizes that the hornet nest (actually, they were wasps) is not, in fact, where the cable stuff is. Wow, this guy is good. He finds the real box (labeled “Comcast”) only to realize that he doesn’t have the right key! At this point, it’s almost 4. I’m pissed, so I called Comcast again. I explain the situation and the rep’s only response (with heavy attitude) is “If he’s taking care of if, then how may I help you?” What?! You can help me by giving me some sort of compensation because I’m about to send your boy out my door and get service from someone else! She puts me on hold then offers me a $30 credit to my account. Thank You. By the time Mr. Comcast finds his “missing” key and has our internet up and running, it’s almost 5 PM. All my plans for the day were ruined. Oh well, at least I have internet!
Calvin and Jobs
I stole these from Gizmodo. I love Apple and Jobs, but I still think this is hilarious. Enjoy!
Sonoma State Teaches Hacking
Sonoma State University professor, George Ledin, teaches a computer security course where he teaches his students how to write viruses. This seems to be a controversial class especially among spyware companies like Norton and McAfee. There are supposedly companies who have threatened not to hire Ledin’s students once they graduate, but Professor Ledin believes what he is doing is right. Newsweek writes,
Ledin insists that his students mean no harm, and can’t cause any because they work in the computer equivalent of biohazard suits: closed networks from which viruses can’t escape. Rather, he’s trying to teach students to think like hackers so they can devise antidotes. “Unlike biological viruses, computer viruses are written by a programmer. We want to get into the mindset: how do people learn how to do this?” says Ledin, who was born to Russian parents in Venezuela and trained as a biologist before coming to the United States and getting into computer science. “You can’t really have a defense plan if you don’t know what the other guy’s offense is,” says Lincoln Peters, a former Ledin student who now consults for a government defense agency.
I agree with Professor Ledin. It is absurd to believe that we could progress towards fighting viruses without first knowing how they are created. He goes on to say,
“Why should we shy away from learning something that is important to everyone?,” Ledin asks. “Yes, you could inflict some damage on society, but you could inflict damage with chemistry and physics, too.”
I am curious what other people think about George Ledin and his course. Personally, I think it’s a great course and computer science students at SSU are lucky to have that opportunity. I am a recent alumni of Sonoma State and remember speaking to one of my CS friends about this course. He loved the class and found it to be a useful tool in fighting viruses and never considered using his new knowledge for malicious reasons. Learning how to create and write viruses in a positive, controlled, environment could be quite beneficial and as another SSU CS student put it, ”the information is readily available to anyone with that[destructive] goal in mind anyway”.
iPhone 3G Activation… or Not!
Well, I lined up at my locat AT&T store at about 6:20 this morning and was about the 15th person in line. Everyone was in and out at a relatively quick rate, but with non-activated iPhones. The iTunes server has crashed so customers are being sent home to do the activation at home when iTunes is up and running again. I wish that was my only problem! For whatever reason, I was the lucky person who had even more issues at AT&T. I was under the impression that since I was already a customer of AT&T with the first generation iPhone that the process was going to go rather smoothly. Nope, not at all. The computer freaked out on the employee and was giving him errors when trying to update my account to the new iPhone plan. I was in the store for at least 45 minutes waiting for them to figure it out. In the meantime, they handed me the “accessory package” they were offering for $155. I couldn’t help but stare at the beautiful Jawbone bluetooth headset and fall in love with it. I also found a decent case that will look sleek and sexy on my hip. My dad was the one purchasing the iPhone for me and noticed I couldn’t keep my eyes off the accessories and bought them for me as well!
I am now sitting at home with a beautiful, sleek, white 16GB iPhone 3G that doesn’t work. WAIT WAIT!!! Update!!! As I am writing this post, iTunes is finally beginning to activate my phone. This is very exciting! I am currently restoring the new iPhone with the backup of my previous iPhone.
If you are having issues with activating your iPhone 3G, here’s what worked for me. Keep your iPhone connected to iTunes! When the error messages pops up about being unable to connect to the iTunes Store, click OK. Then click on another item on your list (I clicked iTunes Store), then click back to your iPhone. It will attempt to connect to iTunes Store again. Repeat this process over and over again until it works! Once I started doing this consistently and immediately after receiving the error message, I was allowed to connect after about 5 minutes. Not bad. I read that this is what Apple employees are recommending as this is what keeps your place “in line”. Be patient, and I’m sure it will work for you!
I hear that there are also issues with updating to the 2.0 software on first generation iPhones. I would suspect that this will be a problem all day. Not only are thousands of people activating new iPhones, but another group of thousands of people are trying to get the new software. This is going to be a log day for all us impatient iPhone lovers, but oh well, it’ll be worth it in the end.
UPDATE 1: AT&T screwed me. Instead of fixing the issues they were having when I was updating my account, they just sold me an iPhone and sent me on my way. iTunes has done everything it can to activate my phone, but since I “don’t have service”, I cannot finish activating. I basically now have an iPod Touch. I can play with the new software, but all the phone features are disabled. Sigh. I called AT&T and they said I need to return to the store where I purchased my iPhone to get it resolved. VERY ANNOYING! I’m gonna try to get something free out of the ordeal. I’ll update you when I get back.
UPDATE 2: Well, I went back to AT&T and got everything worked out. I actually went back to the same kid who was helping me before and the computer let him do the process just fine. I asked AT&T to waive my $18 activation fee for the inconvience for having to drive back to the store for an error on their end and they gladly obliged. I am now a very happy customer with a very beautiful white iPhone 3G.
During this 2nd attempt of activating my iPhone, I chatted with the employees about how many iPhones they sold and the somewhat long line at the store. This location received about 60 iPhones and only 5 white ones! I am SOOOO glad I got in line at 6:20am, otherwise I probably would not have gotten the white version.
Thank you Apple for this beautiful product. Now I’m going to try to get my MobileMe account up and running. What a day. I only had 3.5 hours of sleep last night. Thank God for Starbucks!!