Palm Pre Fix!

I fixed my palm pre problems.

I bought an Iphone..

That's what she said!

The Best of Michael Scott Quotes

Palm Pre sucks (continued)

Hardware issues

How many palm pres have you exchanged?

Horrible build quality

Fastest Dying Cities meet

Deathfest? Dayton's mayor makes me sick.

Palm Pre SUCKS!

After my 4th palm pre, I got fed up and returned it. I ran into the following.

• Two phones had ear pieces that didn't work
• One phone had way too much slop between the back and the keyboard. The thing would creak and shift while typing.
  
• One phone's front would shift back and forth.

Total garbage. Seems like the only thing you can get that's worth your money is a gun. I shoulda shot the damn thing at the skeet range.

Palm Pre update

Welp..it's been a week and I'm on my 4th palm pre! Two of the phones I received had problem with their ear speakers. I couldn't hear or talk to anyone without using the speaker phone. These were brand new out of the box phones too. The other phone I returned had a flimsy back, which didn't appear to be connected correctly.

Apparently this problem with the ear piece is common (according to the net). Though sprint never tried to troubleshoot it. They just swapped me another phone. Hopefully this is my last pre!

Palm Pre

I just got the Palm Pre through Sprint. I put together a list of likes and dislikes. I'll post a final list after a month or so of using it.

Likes

• With Sprint you get more capability for the money compared to AT&T and Verizon. The simply everything is about $60 (if you have the employee referral discount - $70 normally) and the equivalent plan at AT&T is $100.
  
• Pre's "card" system is great for multitasking. You can have many apps opened at once. It'll also handle incoming events nicely.
• Google support. The pre integrates nicely with Google's mail, calendar, maps, contacts. This was a big plus for me as I already had all that set up with Google and it's free.
• The screen is HVGA and large.
• Cool accessories like the radiant recharging system that requires no cables.
• Gesture system is nice for navigation. To go "back", simply swipe the gesture area right to left.
• Web browser is fast and intuitive. It supports the pinch zoom in and out.
• Pandora application is sweet.
  
• When you plug it into a PC via usb, it's seen as a USB drive.
• Sprint navigation is unlimited and operates just like a GPS.
• The plan I have gives me unlimited everything except for minutes (which are 500) for $60 a month. So that's navigation, streaming tv, data, texting, etc..
• Keyboard though visually appears very small is actually quite usable.
  

Dislikes

• I used it a lot yesterday for pictures, GPS, google maps, and web surfing during the day and the battery almost ran out by the time I went to bed. It's a pretty good trade off for all the functionality though.
  

Jeff's Reef - August 2009

Global Warming

Global Warming???

Stripes Framework Rules!

• Leaps above Struts 1.
• Awesome binding capabilities. It binds multiple submit (i.e. action) buttons to the appropriate methods in your action and binds instance variables to their HTML form equivalents automagically by name.
  
• Don't need to put data on the request. This is inherently done as your instance variables in your actions are available on the request under the actionBean object.
  
• Non-XML hell. Only xml is the web.xml and configuration is minimal
• Combined action and action bean.
• Auto-discovers actions in classpath (no need for xml)
• Sweet validation with annotations. Wanna make age required? Just add a simple annotation and it auto correlates to stripes.properties to get the message and print it. You can even validate nested object properties this way. There are other methods for more complex validation too.
  
• Built in composite layout support with strips:layout tags
• Built in framework to catch exceptions easily and not display to user
• Easy ajax integration
• Insulation from request/http objects
• Highly testable - interface oriented
  
• Easy to extend
• Built in support for PRG pattern.
• Easy and fun migration from Struts 1
• More to come.....
  

Signs of an Incompetant Leader

Someone sent me this list recently. Do you work for this person?

1. Not take responsibility for a failure in the project they are responsible for. They are eager and willing to throw subordinates "under the bus".
   
2. Not provide rewards or recognition for positive employee performance. Not even willing to say "good job".
3. Not stand behind subordinates when they fail. Never leave your people to hang out to dry. Always back them up, right, wrong, or indifferent. If an employee tries their best in a situation and they fail to come through. They should be commended on their effort and not punished for the failure
4. Delegate work rather than balance work loads. This allows all attention to be diverted from them in case of failure. It may seem to them that are managing their people but in actuality they are creating work imbalances within the group. It can create unnecessary overtime for some and under utilization of others. A good manager is aware of the skill sets of all the people below them and should allocate work accordingly while trying to enhance the skills of everyone to be even more productive.
5. Humiliate or reprimand an employee within a group. This is a clear and visible sign of a poor leader. A good leader takes employee problems away from a group setting to a more private setting. If you have a boss that does this, it is time for a visit to human resources.
6. Manage crisis. If you are a company that has crisis managers, then you can say goodbye to innovation and progression. Proactive thinking is critical to the success of any company. If you are not finding ways to stop or reduce the amount of crisis that has to be managed, then your competition will pass you by. Leaders have to think out of the box and make change.
7. Not separate personal life from professional life. They will bring their personal problem to work. Working for these types of managers can be very dramatic. They are unable to separate their emotional imbalances while trying to manage people. They are less focused and will not give you the attention and direction you need for success.
8. Reduce all answers to Yes or No rather than explaining their reasoning. This is an example of a crisis manager who can not think farther than a few hours ahead. A yes/no manager finds it a waste of time to find the real answer through intellectual thought. They are already thinking about the next crisis.
9. Fail to communicate, and may not even have, expectations, timelines or goals. Bad bosses change their minds frequently leaving employees off-balance. Bad bosses change expectations and deadlines frequently.
10. Speak loudly, rudely, one-sidedly to staff. Bad bosses don't provide the air time for staff to respond to accusations and comments.
11. Take credit for the successes and positive accomplishments of employees. They are equally as quick to blame employees when something goes wrong.
12. Will not accept constructive feedback and suggestions for improvement. The bad boss can't deal with disagreement from employees who have their own opinions about work related issues.
13. Causes dissention among staff members by his or her actions and comments.
14. Have high turnover. Employees leave on a regular basis under them.
15. Are in it for the "title" of manager.
16. Fly by the seat of their pants on a regular basis. "Crisis management" is their forte.

UFC 100

UFC 100 is tonight. Some huge fights. WAR Mir! I'll be getting it PPV tonight.

http://100.ufc.com/

Battlefield 1943

BF1943 is set to be released on July 8, 2009. It's $15 on xbox 360 live downloads. If you're a battlefield fan, this one is more faithful to the originals.

Here's the official release date blog.

http://blogs.battlefield.ea.com/Default.aspx

Pictures are working

I got Picasa working as the back end web service for my picture portion of the site. Google has done an excellent job with their web services. It was intuitive and relatively easy.

Transformers Part Duex

I think Southpark got it right with their representation of Michael Bay. This is pretty much what happened in Transformers 2.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H24Lje9bN7k

"Those aren't ideas. Those are special effects!"

Movie was way too long. The visuals were nice, but that was it. It could have easily been 1/2 to 1 hour shorter.

However, Springdale IMAX is sweet.

Blog is live

Instead of hosting my own database for a blog this time, I figured I might as well take advantage of some of the free web services out there. With the Google Blogger API, this blog was quick to set up. I'll tackle Picasa on another day.

VMJeff.com is back!

Yes, I'm putting vmjeff.com back up. After a few years of inactivity, I figured it was time to rewrite the site using a recent MVC framework. I chose Stripes for many reasons, but the primary reasons are elegance & simplicity.

After using myspace and facebook for a few years I always found myself wanting to do more than what was provided. I came to the conclusion that both are too box'd in for my needs. Also, I needed a reason to continue upping my skillset outside of work.

MJ is dead

It disgusts me how MJ is being "remembered" through the media. The guy is an American icon and infinitely talented musician. Thriller alone is the top selling album of all time. Yet every channel I turn to has a story about his alleged child molestation or some other negative part of his life. Is this really necessary? The man is dead.