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Friday, Nov 27 2009

chrome defect

minor defect after it updated itself (without telling me), it stopped showing the home icon on the top bar (they neglected to check for the previous state of that button when updating). i added it back in, no big deal, but easily noticeable, surprised their QA would miss it. also, chrome became very insistent on wanting to be my default browser after the update, a little too pushy. once, fine, but asking me every time i launched it until i say "never ask me again" was a little too much.

google is going down the path microsoft went 20 years ago. they are a natural monopoly, and they are slowly rolling over all kinds of companies unnecessarily. another sign that caught my eye, i don't know if anybody else noticed, on the QA session after they revealed chrome OS, somebody asked about other browsers running on it. the answer was "no, this is an OS based on the chrome browser", which is exactly the answer microsoft gave with IE years ago to make their case and push netscape and others aside, "it's built into the OS" they said. history repeating itself. if course others can write browsers to run on chrome, but as second class citizens. in any event, google better be careful, or they will get in more and more trouble with antitrust stuff.

home network

my home network has got exponentially more complex in the past 12 months. at any point i can have as many as 14 different devices connected with corresponding IPs. I know it sounds crazy, so here is a quick enumeration:

- a server
- 2 to 3 laptops
- a desktop
- an ipod touch
- an iphone
- a network printer w/ a wireless bridge
- an xbox
- a WD live
- an airtunes
- 1 to 3 tablets

it's a little out of control.on top of that, the wireless router broadcasts 2 SSIDs on different frequencies (2.4 and 5 GHz), and certain apps, like iTunes, don't play well across the LAN unless the machines in question are on the same SSID (for home sharing, for example). additionally, the Windows Firewalls, Norton and Kaspersky have to be properly configured to allow Bonjour, RDP, etc. to go through back and forth, and the router needs all the proper ports configured for forwarding to the appropriate devices behind it (which means defining certain IPs as reserved leases by MAC so they don't change). fun. all works, though, just requires some attention to get it properly configured.


Fri after TG

It's Black Friday. Had not bought anything yet . It was surprising to see people waiting in line at the Union Square Best Buy last evening, quite a few people had formed a line and were waiting for the midnight opening. That store, BTW, is awesome, it's a 24h Best Buy, which is super convenient.

Had dinner with friends at The Smith last night, it was perfect. Got home, and went to bed relatively early. I think I am under the weather again, I thought I recovered, but now I can a cough from my chest, started feeling it yesterday afternoon and was in full force this morning. Let's see if I can get it to go away soon.

Nicole is doing all the shopping for the family gathering tomorrow, we will have 16 guests for lunch/dinner at home (!)

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