Great to be in a crowd?

My iMac does this crazy thing where the desktop gets all kinds of “quilted” patterns on the screen. I’ve had it in the store and they can’t find anything. Of course they want to restore the OS and other mess. Isn’t this why I bought a Mac? Turns out tons of people have this problem. I’m just glad it’s a general thing and not my specific computer.

I suspect my next computer will be a small form factor PC with an unbelievable monitor running Ubuntu. The trick is to keep running open source applications or cross platform apps (like MoneyDance).

More Bars or more Pixels?

I recently updated my iPhone to the latest 2.1 release. There were a lot of improvements, but the one that interested me the most were improvements to the radio. I live in a cellular dead zone – I get a bar once and a while which is just enough to annoy me. Lately my iPhone goes “dark” at home and nothing but a reboot would get it connected back to the network when I left home. After upgrading the software I saw three bars! Could it be?

I made a phone call, pretty good quality call, just a tad of a “warble”. As I talked the bars when down to two, then to one. I walked around the house and got “bars” everywhere. This would be the first cell phone getting real reception in my house. Sounds good right?

Later I get a call upstairs (small miracle). Call doesn’t last long and drops. After trying several calls in different places in the house I see the same pattern. Start out with two or three bars, goes down as the call goes on. Sometimes it holds on; sometimes not.

So the question isn’t did the radio improve. The answer is YES! The question is did I get more bars in more places or just more pixels? Both I think. I think the bars seem inflated for what signal I really have (… more pixels), but it has improved.

You’ve got a Pizza Tracker for your Website Right?

My local Dominos finally started offering online ordering. Why order pizza online? I like to view what the specials are, see what things I can add, and get the family requests figured out without a stressed-out teenage employee on the other end of the phone. We’ve ordered Pizza Hut online for years, and it works fine. Kids have liked Dominos lately and it is literally “up the street” so usually order there now.

My wife ordered the pizza and found the website to be very simple and informative. It even keeps you up to date on the progress of your pizza as it goes from prep, bake, box, pickup. Really – no kidding. They call it the “Pizza Tracker
“. At the prep stage the status bar said, “Chris is making your pizza”. She knew write when it was boxed. When my wife picked it up she said, “is there really a Chris that works here?” They said, “sure – he’s right over there making pizzas”.

I guess as it gets easier to use technology to capture more information and make your website fun, interactive, and real time you should. I only have one request. Chris put LOTS of toppings on, next time can I request him?