Reinke Faces Life

***Begin Quote***
— In MyLinkedinPowerForum@yahoogroups.com,
“Reinke’s Networking Persona” <V2Y2R0N27RHJ6Y@…> wrote:

<snip>

If any one is interested, I’d be glad to walk you thru the
process or answer any questions.

<snip>

>Ferdinand (Fjohn),
>This is a new approach to me.
>
>Thanks for sharing it with us.
>
>I’d certainly welcome hearing more about it.
>

{Extraneous Deleted}

>Good to have you with us.
>
>Thanks,
>Vincent Wright
>www.VincentWright.com

***End Quote***

Well that is an “interesting challenge”, what is my approach to email? And, remember you asked for this ramble.

First, I recognize that email is a tool that been abused, perverted, and abused from its original intent. I think, assume, and guess that the intent was the electronic substitution for a letter. Since then, we have seen the electronic equivalent of junk mail, chain letters, and a garbage dump. I too am guilty of having one email account where I just send copies of everything. To reinforce that bad habit, Google now allows me to search it. Arghh, gag me.

So what is my approach?

Basically I’m a fan of Getting Things Done, because I don’t. So I recognize that most of my data, information, knowledge and wisdom comes in via email.

(https://reinkefj.wordpress.com/2006/06/07/turkey-thinking-about-dikw-data-information-knowledge-wisdom/)

I am experimenting with RSS as a replacement for the one way information flow that is currently represented by email newsletters but it’s a work in progress.

So, here we have a flood of messages with a varying degree of value. It’s just me, like the Dutch Boy sticking his finger in the dike, to allocate time and attention among these competing interests.

So first, I recognized that just like a giant salami, you can’t consume it by just gnawing on it. It has to be “sliced” into manageable portions. So, it seemed logical to divide my inbound email into accounts by topical interest. For example, in no particular order, College Alumni activities, Personal Networking, Liberty, High School Alumni, Work, Family, Technology, Friends, Blogging, WebPage, Consulting, Gunz, etc. etc. More about prioritization later.

One thing that I learned was that I have a bunch of demands that exceed my capability. So I ruthlessly prune based on “value”. I’m NOW very careful what I get into.

Another think I learned is that spam and signal to noise issues need to be addressed. I now have “public”, “semi-public”, “private”, and “internal use only” email accounts. (Ain’t gmail great. And all the other free email providers.) “Public” is obvious; it’s on documents, resumes, and such. It gets heavily spammed from time to time. “Internal Use Only” are email accounts that I use privately and never ever disclose. Why?

OK here’s a digression. You can take a public email account, forward it to an “Internal Use Only” gmail account, and then pick that up in your mail reader for your real use. Make sure you sanitize the settings like “reply to” so that they point to that real public email account. Don’t want to confuse people. Once a week (Sunday morning), I go check these accounts online for a misidentified good stuff ided as spam. It happens maybe once or twice a week. If spam slips thru, I go to the Gmail account and identify it as such. (You wondered why GMail has such good spam filters that quickly id the junk. They have a grazillion people like me doing the heavy lifting for them.) It eliminates most, but not all, the trash. This makes spam the exception rather than the rule. Last time I studied it, I think that 900 messages were reduced to 200 “good” by GMail. Of those, 6 were spam that slipped thru. So I don’t worry about spam on public addresses much at all any more. Thanks Google.

So, to recap, I have public1 that forwards to internal1 and is picked up in LookOut (Microsoft Outlook does strange things. So I call it LookOut to remind me about assumptions!) and stuffed into a mailbox “PTY01 – PUBLIC XYZ@YAHOO”.

Semi-public are the ones, like this one used in forums or certain websites. Everyone “learns” that I am a strange duck, and will ruthlessly abandon NEHW9YRN56359O if I need to. Again, when you are using reply, or at worst cut ‘n’ paste, most people could care less if I am NEHW9YRN56359O, 87U92IDOWIR2ZD, BIGFOOTYETI @ SOMEWHERE DOT COM.

So eventually every email account maps into its own LookOut mail folder that reflects its priority, purpose, and source.

Another divergence! Since I give each financial institution I deal with (Five) a unique email address for “me”, phishing attempts are laughable. If I get a PayPal “security alert” on any email account other than it’s dedicated account, then I can just quickly mark it as junk. If the years I have been using this strategy and its predecessors, I have NEVER had a phish on a private email account. SO I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. Seems an obvious fix to me.

Back to my activities list, I allocate my email time by just working down the folder list top to bottom. So my work activities get done before my alumni ones BECAUSE its email folder is closer to the top o the list. Crude but effective. LookOut rules automagically sort traffic into the appropriate folders. I even have LookOut rules that for example if a relative uses the “wrong” email address, LookOut will put it where it belongs. And, yes, I have one for inlaws and one for my relatives. No comment which is higher!

So my email strategy is to use automation and free accounts to be more productive.

Hope this explains me, my approach, and why I need to adjust my tin foil hat from time to time.

Fjohn

I gave them this comment.

> the key thing that thinkfree online doesn’t do is email. in order to
> truly replace microsoft office, it has to “do” email. I made this
> observation a while ago, and it’s still a key deficit imho. Fjohn

hat’s the same comment I gave them when I first tried it. Sigh.

Put up ZOHO, as part of killing a Sunday afternoon, and all it does is pin the cpu percentage. And, doesn’t appear to do email with gmail. YMMV but I nuked it. It has some strange web interface that conflicts with the wiki web server I have on luggable.

Dear 1&1 Hosting Company:

Care to comment on PcMechanic’s “tip”?

http://www.pcmech.com/newsletter/viewtip.php?tipid=671

***Begin Quote***

Do Not Let Web Hosting Companies Register Your Domains

… purchase your domain from a registrar such as GoDaddy.com or Register.com separate from a hosting package.

If you let a host register your domain for you, sure they will
register it for free, however if you ever decide to move to another
host they will either not transfer control of your domain or charge a
ridiculous amount for transferring it. Because they registered the
domain, they own it and are not obligated to transfer it to you.

***End Quote***

I recommend 1&1 and would like to know the policy on exiting domains. I’ve never had a problem, but there are always “first times” for everything.

Thanks,
Reinkefj

XDRIVE, now part of AOL (ugh!), has always been tough to use. Not that the interface was hard; no, just getting it to complete was a bear. Today, I was able to make it back up my new data partition. It ran for about five hours (double ugh!) on a high quality office. Sort of “closer” to the heart of the internet. I’m not planning to renew XDRIVE when my contract expires. But, I did get it to finally work. My trick was to delete ALL the backups. That seems to have cleaned up all the trash it was trying to deal with. Sort of like, “oh here a brand new backup”. It worked. So maybe that’s what it needed. A fresh start. FWIW!

I’ve discovered an entertaining use for PRINTERANYWHERE.

I defined my printer at work as sharable. At night it’s offline! (I have to lock up the Company’s laptop)

When I am home, I check my Company’s email via the web. Last night, I saw something that needed follow up. I printed it intending to stuff it in my bag and chase it in the AM. When I left home this morning that fact that there was nothing on the printer never registered.

This morning, when I got to work, and reconnected, (poof!), it prints.

Very kool. Like a delayed steal in baseball. Not thought required.

I don’t know if this is a design flaw, but I hope they keep it.

http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/08/14/202229&from=rss

Open Source
Why proprietary software is dangerous for business-critical applications
Monday August 28, 2006 (05:00 PM GMT)
By: Robin ‘Roblimo’ Miller
***Begin Quote***

But the real point here is that an entire medium-sized company’s executive staff has learned a hard lesson about the dangers of proprietary software, and members of that staff who previously resisted open source are now ready to consider it — and for business continuity reasons rather than as a money-saving measure, no less.

***End Quote***

So to summarize: (1) ALL “activation” schemes limit your recovery ability. (2)  ALL proprietary software is dangerous. (3) Open Source Software give you maximum flexibility. (4) Copyrights, as well as copy protection scheme, don’t protect bit do make life difficult for anyone who’s honest.

I use printeranywhere successfully. However, at night, when I hibernate my note book, the next morning it doesn’t “reconnect” printeranywhere. If I stop it and restart it, then it picks up like a champ. If I just do my usual morning routine and flip it open, it doesn’t relogon. If I go to the “show” and then to “relogon”, it doesn’t’ seem to remember my userid or password despite the remember me setting. Since it is in it’s own little world, I have to look up the userid and password. (Who remembers these things?) Then everything is hunky dory. Please fix this little dementia that the program has.

—

They said they would.

http://www.nikon.ca/products/coolpixp2/

I have come to the conclusion after wasting a lot of time on the “time saving” wireless network connection of the camera that: playing with it, depending upon it, or even buying the camera for it (which I did) was dumb. I bought it thru Amazon (and got screwed on the Amazon Credit Card discount, but that’s another story!) because of the positive user ratings. Now I wonder if I was scammed. The camera works, but the wireless hasn’t worked for a long time. I continue to play with it stupidly believing that as an injineer, I can make anything work. The software feels like a beta version written by amateurs. The camera sits there trying to connect and doesn’t. I’m now installing version 1.1.1 of the utilities. I think I’ll tell everyone I know about my non-wireless wireless camera. Arghhh! PS the canadian site is easier to use and faster than the us one. go figure? Double Argh!

http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/08/24.html#a1513

This will turn the “world” upside down.

From a strategic planning perspective, internal large IT organizations — could / might / possibly / actually — run “stuff” (i.e., testing, labs, prototyping, trials) in this “rental” space probably cheaper and faster than building our own.

We, as an “insider”, need to be better, faster, cheaper, six sigma than this “outside competition” lest our own business people do it without us.

Wow, the world just got harder!

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2006/08/24/printeranywhere-enough-said/

I’ve been playing with it.

https://reinkefj.wordpress.com/2006/08/24/tech-printeranywhere-shaping-up-nicely/

https://reinkefj.wordpress.com/2006/08/15/tech-printeranywhere-looks-like-it-could-be-useful/

There’s some key issues:

(1) Who do you trust? Non-private stuff.

(2) Some cosmetic issues that they are working on (laptop resume undoes the share)

(3) And, it has some specific uses (fax elimination)
and some non-uses (if you’re on a lan already you don’t need it).

(4) Please one hting that needsfixing (I forgot to tell them) that they should show email addresses.

All in all a good things especially iof you need it.

I’m in no way connected to the offering, other than it came in handy in a pinch, so I used it. This is my way of saying thanks.

(I’d be a raving fan if it was open source!)
****

One comment says there’s no way to protect from printing junk. I think you can require your OK to use it.

***

This utility allows you to “share” someone else’s printer.

Doesn’t make sense (to me) if you’re on a lan with a printer. That is, if I am home and want to print on my home office’s printer from my laptop in the living room, then I can share without this utility.

BUT if I want to print on that home office printer when I am at work say so my wife can read something, then this fills the niche.

It would also seem to eliminate the dreaded fax machine. I can print on my friend’s printer in North Carolina if he wasn’t such a Luddite. Rather than try to fax something to him.

That’s not to say this isn’t without drawbacks.

Clearly, it routes thru a server outside of my control, so I wouldn’t use it for anything I wouldn’t want to see int he newspaper. But, then that describes email and the internet as well. It would seem easy to have the two stubs at each end negotiate a public private key pair allowing the architecture to stay the same but the security to be bullet proof. Then when I “fax” my order for dinner tonight, I wouldn’t have to be concerned that anyone will know what I was having.

That pki implementation would also prevent eavesdropping, and serve as a model for peer to peer encryption.

http://www.meebo.com

This is an IM aggregator. It makes it possible to watch several IMs at the same time. That didn’t know my socks off.

Now they have a widget that you put on your web page and it allows a visitor to IM you. Hey now that’s interesting.

I put it on my personal webpage and let’s see if anyone uses it.

This critique is obsolete. See comments below.

When the 1AND1 hosting provider offered free blogs, I tried it.

I was singularly unimpressed when it turned out to be nothing more than a free WordPess blog like this one. Why was I fooled into thinking that there be something substantive behind it? No big deal. No harm. Nothing but some wasted time and effort.

Today, blundering about with MEEBO, I realized that my web page was down.

And, know one told me. Show’s you how popular I am! Arghh!!

I used FIlezilla to ensure that all my files were in tact there. Phew, that could have made me depend on my LUGGABLE to get them all back in place. OR, my backups. But, now need to pull the fire alarm … yet.

It appears that 1AND1 redirected the webpage to the blog unbeknowst to me. Double Arghhh!

I deleted the test blog, and eventually … … after ten anxious minutes … … it refreshed everything to where it should be.

Lessons Learned: Watch for the unintended consequences.

Updated 2007-04-07

1and1 has a new blog destination from it administration page. It now gives you a blog that appears to be a hosted version of WORDPRESS. It know longer throws you to the free WORDPRESS DOT COM site. That’s both bad and good. Good in that you can use javascript if you can figure out how. Bad in that the free WORDPRESS site has lots of assumptions that you can use without knowing too much. I pinged 1and1 support and they have no doc, no faq, and no real support for what they have deployed. (Dangerous?) They said it would be out RSN (Real Soon Now)! You, and so will Christmas. Any way this critique is no longer applicable. But I’d suggest caution in proceeding with the offering.THe reward MAY be worth the risk.

http://www.youos.com

It certainly has made me think. (Always a dangerous proposition!) I may quibble about it as an OS. IMHO an OS brings bare metal to life. YouOS stands on the shoulders of whatever OS is installed on one’s hardware. Having said that, it “feels” like an OS. Maybe if I write an app, I may have another thought, or two. Certainly congrats and kudos are in order for an “interesting” implementation.

I am getting organized. I’ve created a partition for my E drive and have begun moving all MY files to that drive. If I create it, then it’ll be there. Easy to backup.

LUGGABLE avoid winrot plan,My tentative plan is:

1. delete all downloaded software installer distributions <== DONE

Found that LUGGABLE has THREE partitions. Who knew?
#1 FAT16 47.03M 39.66M Free
#2 NTFS the C drive 90G 23G Free
#3 FAT32 3.02G 404.4M Free

WHY?

2. copy everything from HOMEDESK to the WD500;
3. make an image of HOMEDESK on the WD500;
4. GHOST HOMEDESK to cd;
5. pray;
6. repartition HOMEDESK’s 90 into 10-25-45-10+;
7. reinstall XP into the D drive;
8. see what I have lost?;
9. live happiply ever after?

HOMEDESK has a bad case of winrot. My tentative plan is:

1. delete all downloaded software installer distributions DONE
2. copy everything from HOMEDESK to the WD500 IN PROGRESS
3. make an image of HOMEDESK on the WD500;
4. GHOST HOMEDESK to cd;
5. pray;
6. repartition HOMEDESK’s 90 into 10-25-45-10+;
7. reinstall XP into the D drive;
8. see what I have lost?;
9. live happiply ever after?

Sounds like a plan. Comments

I thought they were actually doing something!

http://www.printeranywhere.com/index.html
PrinterAnywhere is a solution to print documents from a computer connected to the Internet to other people’s printers on the network. You can print directly from your application such as Microsoft Word, Outlook or any other program you work with to a printer connected to another computer next door or ten thousand miles away. With PrinterAnywhere you can share your printers with other or print your documents on someone else’s printer. Unlike fax, PrinterAnywhere does not require the documents being scanned and only then transmitted. don’t want to send (email) electronic copies of the documents. It is also useful whenever the recipient does not have the application to open your documents. Free download.

http://weblog.infoworld.com/foster/2006/08/15_a437.html#a437

THE GRIPE LINE WEBLOG by Ed Foster
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
HP Printers: The Older, the Better?

***Begin Quote***

Even so, many readers say that HP has fallen from the top of their list of suppliers because of quality issues.
***End Quote***

I agree printers suck. I had an OJ85 that ran forever. When it died, fixing it was prohibitive. I’ve been buying printers and they seem to die very quickly. Dried print heads. Strange failures. Expensive ink refills. It appears that Brother is my new choice. Absent any other info. Buy cheap ’cause you’ll be tossing them soon.

I have this defined in my rss reader:

http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch_feeds?hl=en&q=%22manhattan+college%22+-marymount&ie=utf-8&num=100&output=rss

AND it pulls up trash like this:

http://bet-wwts.com/archives/manhattan-college-basebal-l/56251/

Any thoughts?

I admire their ingenuity, but it wastes my time.

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10877-6093189.html#

***Begin Quote***

#1: Accidentally deleting the VP’s files without having a backup.

***End Quote***

I wouldn’t feel bad. There’s a reason why they call it “personal” computing. And, in an enterprise, any exec worht their salt doesn’t depend on centralized IT for recovery. I once had a low tech boss who printed everything, took it home, where his wife scanned it in to their home computer. Depend upon others at your own peril! If there’s a company policy against it, figure out a way to do it within policy!

http://pcmech.com/show/bizspot/981/

Surviving Disk Crashes
Category: Weekly Columns / Small Business Spotlight – August 9, 2006. Posted by Rahul Pitre.

***Begin Quote***

# You can’t find the Windows XP CD

# You can find the Office 2003 CD, but … the registration key has vanished …

# You purchased some software online and the downloaded file just got hosed along with the now-deceased hard drive. Of course, you don’t remember what user id you used for registration and the credit card used for the purchase was cancelled last year.

# You use the 1999 version of some software. … The 2006 version …  can’t read the version 1999 data files.

# Tech support asked you to make changes to the registry … you can’t remember what you did.

# You can’t remember the name of that little East-European program you use to take notes
***End Quote***

He left out the crap that comes with the system that you got with the system for free but there’s no way to reinstall it or register it or reauthenticate to it or reactivate it. And, it’s was registered using an now defunct email account for an isp that was acquired and spun out six times. Arghhh!

My list would go:

1. Window’s
2. Office
3. other MSFT products
4. free stuff that came on the hard disk
5. rud that your isp gave you (note: the free mcafee is probably why i’m in this mess!)
6. stuff you did
7. stuff you downloaded
8. stuff you bought with no media
9. stuff you bought, media & keys & stuff gone
10. settings inside programs that won’t divulge what you did or allow you to export your own data
11. time spent in recovery
12. all your data
13. all your methods and procedures

And this is a productivity enhancer?

I like to organize my contacts into logical groups (i.e., fellow alums, LinkedIn, Prepsters, Prepsters64, family, friends, acquaintences, coworkers, excoworjkers, exjobs). So I have different files for different groups. What happens when one person is across different groups? Does LookOut recognize people? Nah. That’s your problem!

It’s inconsistent. (Porbably the most damning thing one can say about a software product)

It takes mental vacations when you are pounding away, and goes off doing something or an other, all I am sure very important, but frustrating.

The right mouse click doesn’t always work. For example, when I am creating a new contact from an alumni record, I cutnpaste (didn’t know that was now a one word verb, did ya?) from an alums info on mcalumdb. Sometimes their birthday is in the mcalumdb, so I highlight it, copy it to the clipboard, take the “details” tab, highlight the trash that in the birthday field, right click getting ready to paste, and nothing. It doesn’t work. I have to cntl v it. Argh!

Also, “take the details tab” means I have move my right hand from the keyboard to the mouse to take it. Arghh! Each tab coulda had an alt key combo assigned to it. SO, I should be able to to an ALT D to it. I think that no one really used this stuff. It’s so obvious.