Then I tried to figure out what I could leave out. In retrospect there are things I did not use, tripods, camera flash, but that is about it. I also did not know that going into the trip. The same goes for the networking troubleshooting kit, but once again I was not sure if it would be needed or not. I used part of it, but not all of it. Six show shirts came as a result of starting with three irregular shirts and then having three more shirts provided. I did however use everything else in there at least once, some things twice even. I could travel lighter with the toiletries, such as using the more expensive travel sizes and not bringing the electric razor.

The question becomes to pack lighter what does one give up? Any suggestions? Oh yeah and this trip was a work visit to Las Vegas with some time spent doing physical work setting up the show booth.

The comment came in response to the post “Offline Writing“, I have gotten a comment or two from people I do not know, but this one looked a little too generic to be a real response. The response was

“Well, the post is actually the greatest on this worthy topic. I concur with your conclusions and will thirstily look forward to your upcoming updates. Saying thanks will not just be adequate, for the exceptional clarity in your writing. I will directly grab your rss feed to stay privy of any updates. Gratifying work and much success in your business endeavors!”

The e-mail was from Gmail, the author’s IP address was from France and the URL for their website is from Czech and about money transfers and advances. So I think it is spam, and marked it as such. The reason that is seems to be spam to me is, They commented in December saying they were looking forward to my upcoming updates, from a post in March that I have already made follow up comments on. That plus the fact that the last sentence does not apply to a personal website. The approach is unique and a new way to get the website links up. Just something to be aware of. for those of you out there.

After getting this spam, I decided it was time to update my purging of my Twitter spam followers. I then thought about it, do I want to have it still be public of should I make it private. The main concern is the privacy and security for the physical world by people knowing where and when I am, but then I shoot a big hole in it by having a website with a blog on it. I guess I could simply make my blog password protected, and only have invited people know about it. The thought spoils the aim I had in starting it in the first place, to share ideas, thoughts, events… etc. Then I thought about making it so that one has to register and then once registered the blog is open. I think anyone who has administered anything with a password knows that there will be an additional effort as people constantly lose them. The logic starts to wrap itself up pretty well in a circular form. What to do? I started thinking about perhaps having some blog posts protected, and others not. I wanted to look to see if WordPress can do that, however I am in a place with no internet access as I alluded to previously. (see, a little vague as to where I am; eh?)

I am still trying to figure an easy way to virtualize a LAMP server so I can travel with it and run it as a virtual machine under VMWare Fusion. I do this for the Windows OS I still use for a few applications that don’t work under Mac. I do not want to become an expert at installing and configuring a LAMP server, I want to be able to have a testing server that can travel with me. I do not want to simply turn on the server in the Mac, as there may be some idiosyncrasies between the Mac OS and the LAMP server. It has not been easy to find a simple solution for this one yet, but I have not given up yet. I am going to wander over to the VMWare forums and see if anyone has a solution.

I have both Parallels and Fusion to allow me to virtualize an OS for my Mac, and have found that the VMWare forums have better signal to noise most of the time, however I like the way that Parallels has decided to handle USB Human Interface Drivers a little better. I also do like that when I called Parallels about a work issue I was troubleshooting, Parallels connected me with a real program that worked through the use case process with me and called me back with answers and contact information if I hit the issue again. Then again, I have not had to call VMWare yet. So you may ask, which is better? I can’t tell you, I can tell you to try both and decide for yourself. Mine came down to the fact that VMWare ran a little faster and I knew more people who use it if I get stumped.

These type of questions come up very often and there is often no one answer that applies to everyone. An example I use is a question that came up a few days ago on the Digital Grin Forum, which is better for running Adobe Creative Suite; Mac or Windows? The answer is that of course it varies on your needs and other things to consider, but people often expect there to be a definitive answer. I wonder if people are looking for reassurance or an answer when they post some of these questions.

The Adobe Creative Suite issue is still causing me heartburn, as the speed at which they ran from supporting a product is disappointing. From a technical standpoint, I understand how they decided to not update previous versions of Creative Suite (anything before CS4) to support Mac OS X 10.6; a.k.a Snow Leopard. But the fact that when CS3 was the current version they had some challenges when one updated the Mac OS X to 10.5, a.k.a Leopard. I was patient and waited for them to fix the issue. I was disappointed but understand how it can happen. Under Snow Leopard, I cannot use Adobe Acrobat Distiller, basically the printer emulator, at all. (Acrobat was the package that had trouble under Leopard.) This coupled Couple this with the fact that the “Updater” that Adobe launches each time the application is launched, it is extremely frustrating. Luckily Mac OS X has the ability to create a PDF built in.

I did the searches to try and figure out how to turn off the “Updater” under Mac OS X; as there is not a simple preferences box to check or uncheck; one has to create a custom file and place it in the proper location. The directions are less than helpful. The directions are as follows:

1. Using a text editor or plist editor, create a new file named “com.adobe.AdobeUpdater.Admin.plist” in the folder /Library/Preferences
2. In this new .plist file, create a child at the root named “Disable.Update”
3. Set the Class of this new child to Boolean with a value of “Yes”

I was stumped, so I asked a programmer friend of mine, HanClinto, who is actually doing development of a gaming tool on his Mac. He was stumped as well. even once we got it figured out, it was to functioning, so I once again asked at DGrin and they suggested another location.

What truly irks me about this situation, is it is not an inexpensive software suite. I have been a customer with them since Aldus Pagemaker, Macromedia Freehand, and Adobe Type Manager – early 1990’s. I have tried to keep up when I can afford to. However I have not seen any real reason for going up to CS4 and a very steep upgrade price. Couple this with the fact that in my opinion Mac OS X going from 10.5 to 10.6 is not a major revision, that would be going from 10.5 to 11. This is akin  to a service pack in my mind. One should not expect this to be such a faster turn over rate nor so expensive. I believe that Adobe, as is many other software developers, to a subscription approach, keep updating the software to keep the revenue coming in. That is understandable; however the pricing structure is not. It is more expensive for me to upgrade my existing package (Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium) to the current version of it, than it is to purchase the Complete Package (Adobe Designer Premium) as a student.  So I am very much stuck. Being that I don’t use these tools professionally (I do use them at work under Windows XP SP 3 and a different license) I have a hard time paying as high a fee for an upgrade. The reason I got the suite is that I want to work in the same software environment at work as I do at home. It is advantageous in both directions, I hone my skills and can apply what I learn in my personal time at work. Our official graphics artists and I have even been trading tips and tricks, so it does work.

I will say that I do like how similar the environments are in both OS’s for Adobe’s products. Microsoft among others could learn a lot from them. I have stopped using Microsoft Office for Mac as it is so different from the Windows version. I am still disappointed with iWork under Mac, there are some features (pivot tables for example) that just aren’t there. I even tried to do the trial of the updated version iWork 09; however I could not see if it addressed just the basic thing of working with Microsoft Office 2007 for Windows better as I am some what of a power user in there. However that even failed. It can open an Office 2007 format document, but it can not save into one – you have to export it. If I do the same thing in Microsoft  Office 2007 opening a 2004 document, it allows me to save it in the older format and tells me what the problems will be, it allows me to work with it just fine.It also does not support many features I use often. So I can’t really interchange my work easily with others from Mac and once again, a different environment. Good thing I got Appzapper, time to get rid of iWork ‘09.

It seems cranky, I know, but these are the things that have been kind of irksome over the last few weeks to me. Aren’t computers supposed to make things easier? I have no problem with people making a profit, I have a problem with people gouging. I have no problem with wanting things to be a little different and unique between application, but if you advertise that one can exchange files with other applications, do not have some many problems; make it transparent to the user.

• http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/some-e-books-are-more-equal-than-others/
• http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html

Oh and I could not find anything on Amazon’s site about it…

Back to recovering from the Rally and commute back home

I left the hotel at 10:00PM Dubai Time, which is 2:00PM EDT. I then arrived at IAD at 6:00AM EDT. I boarded the plane at about 3:30PM EDT and remained in Seat 21J except for one trip to the facilities until 6:00AM the next day. So that is about 14.5 hours.

I was able to get some sleep thanks to the wonders of modern medicine Probably about 8 hours but not great sleep. There are times I can get good sleep on a plane, seat 21J was not one of them. The seat was not very comfortable, while it had tons of leg room as the “crew sleep seats” were in front of me, the seat itself was not comfortable. I ended up putting the pillow under my but to help.

I slept through dinner and breakfast was not very Brad Diet friendly. Good thing Mr. Budge took me out for a big dinner before I left.  I am not very happy with the traveler profile and meal situation.

We got in early which was nice, but I think it might have not actually gotten me through any quicker as there was a stack up at passport control with everyone arriving at 6AM. I think that when flights are scheduled there is some thought to staggering through choke points like passport control. As I said on my Twitter post (yes, you have to sign up to get the info) the process of passing through passport control was faster for me in Dubai than in Washington DC.

I was somewhat down periscope while I was in Dubai due to time changes and also do to the Internet usage situation. When I arrived my Blackberry was a doorstop. It was not turned on. That got sorted midday Monday Dubai Time. Trying to call AT&T from Dubai was not very succesful. Once work opened I was able to get it sorted out in about 15 minutes. Apparently saying I want International Calling meant I could make international calls. Whoops.

The other thing was that there were some sites that I could not get to through the Internet.

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Now before everyone starts chuckling and assuming that I was trying to get to “entertainment sites” I got this message on some pretty benign sites:

• Skype
• SmugMug
• iChat
• Amazon.com
• Twitter

So I was able to use the work laptop and its VPN connection to get to some things – but then I had corporate policy making things tough. For example I could not upload photos to my SmugMug account or get Skype to work. On my personal laptop I was able to get inbound Skype video chats, but not outbound phone calls.

Also the time change made life quite interesting as I would end up working long days as a result of getting back from dinner and it being midday back at the office. This would result in me being engaged and working until about 1AM Dubai Time at which point it would take me a little while to wind down to go to sleep.

I am sure that more things will be coming in upcoming Blog posts, but figured I should at least put this one up… Next flight leaves in about an hour. I think that this will only be 22 hours of travel.

Yup when one goes around the corporate IT and talks with people, they can get your Blackberry working in mere moments. Why I could not get through to anyone when I called… well they also changed that. Gotta love when someone just says I will take care of  it, and does. Even got me numbers for the next time – but hopefully there is not a next time…

I will say that not having the Blackberry did seem to cut down on the amount of distractions….. hang on my pocket is vibrating…….

Luckily the flight was not full in Economy Plus so people were able to change seats. I ended up having two seats to myself which was not too bad, reclined a little and got some sleep. I am not sure if getting sleep was the right thing but according to my body it was about 11PM when I left Washington DC, but it was 7AM Dubai time. I stayed awake through the meal service and then I fell asleep. There is something about a dark plane that just makes it easy for me to sleep.

I was surprised at the cleanliness of the plane lavatories during the flight. What I am not sure of is if it was poor cleaning and upkeep before we left or if they just plane (pun intended) got used hard in the flight. I doubt that they are serviced or cleaned during a flight so I guess that makes it somewhat understandable of the look of the facilities, but people are hard on them.

My seat preference has changed for international flights versus domestic flights. I typically request aisle seats on the domestic flights. However I have found that it is easier to sleep on the window portion of the two seats I have than the aisle seat. I think that this is due to two things. 1) I can lean against the wall a little if wanted; 2) I do not keep getting bumped in the process of people moving through the cabin. Of course this all goes out the window if I get upgraded to Biz or First as there, any seat would be good.

I am also pleasantly surprised by the inflight information that has been prepared for Arrival Information for Dubai that is playing on the seat back monitors. It explains where to go, what signs to look for, what documents are needed, and it includes pictures of the signs and the kiosks to look for. Very helpful, I am sure that part of it is to lower the amount of questions that are being asked but I still think it is very helpful and assuages some of the concerns I have about traversing an unfamiliar airport. This concern happens no matter where I travel to, domestically or internationally, just going someplace new and having to figure out where everything is located.

I will say that 24 hours of travel has been interesting.  I am not quite finished yet, but what I can say so far in looking back:

1. My body is sore – I am glad I packed ibuprofen in my carryon
2. The Red Carpet club definitely understands international travels as they kept it open later than usual as the flight was delayed
3. People can be courteous or rude no matter their background and ethnicity. I wonder though if they they are being rude or I am perceiving it that way.
4. My cell phone in Dubai does not work
5. The iPod Nano battery lasted the flight no problem.
6. My ATM Card did not work
7. I could not use my credit cards in the pay phones
8. 26 Hours door to door (House to Hotel)

The Kensington Rechargeable has the connector molded directly onto the unit.

So playing my Nano on it (2nd Generation) I am concerned about damage due to leverage as well as I will need to remove it from the case.

The Griffin AAA Battery has the connector on a captive tale.

I will not need to remove the Nano from the case and I am thinking it will not has as much risk for damage.

• Griffin TuneJuice Charger for iPod and iPhone (Black)
• Kensington Mini Battery Extender and Charger for iPod; iPhone 1G, 3G (Black)

So I used the key consideration to decide:

• Griffin TuneJuice – $44.23
• Kensington Mini Battery – $28.25

Very simple decision there. Plus the fact that Kensington was direct through Amazon and not having to wait for another store put the final solution in there. So order placed. Later that afternoon I got an e-mail from my friend

http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/tunejuice-for-iphone This is not available on Amazon, but according to Best Buy’s website, it is in stock in the Mishawaka store.

I had to go right by Best Buy while running other errands so I figured I would take a look. Yes, they had it in stock, it was $29.99. It included batteries. I decided to purchase it as that way I would have it while I pondered this next question, “Batteries or rechargeable?”

Using the Battery solution, I can easily replace the batteries. The batteries are typically readily available – if expensive – at airports. This also allows me to simply place extra batteries in my travel bag as it is just 4 AAA batteries. Not a huge problem. Not very green and can easily add up in terms of cost. However the flexibility of just being able to purchase more batteries as needed can make it pretty flexible.

The Rechargeable solution allows me to stretch the time I can use the iPod, however it still requires that I charge it. I went to the Kensington website to find out a little more information.  According to the manual I can charge both the iPod and the battery at the same time. However it does not say how long it will take to charge, and it is charged through a USB port. The thing that has me the most concerned is this section from the manual: “Do not store your Mini Battery Pack and Charger either fully charged or discharged. It is best  to store your Mini Battery Pack and Charger with 60% charge remaining. To check the charge level of your Mini Battery Pack and Charger connect it to a power source with a USB cable. Check the charge level lights for a 60% charge level.” Not exactly easy to do and seems to be counterintuitive to the way that a user would typically use it.

The flippant answer to this decision is to buy rechargeable batteries to put in the Battery. That would be about $13 for the batteries, and then I would need to carry that charger as well. Just what I need more electronics to travel with. Plus I would have to remember to charge them.

I am going to wait until I see the unit in person, by my hunch is that the usability of being able to purcahse, acquire, store, carry … etc. fully charged AAA batteries is going to outweigh the form factor of the unit. But kind of disappointing on two fronts, one that the Rechargeable is not more “flexible”; two that the pricing and searching did not reveal some of this information in a timely fashion. It just goes to show what happens if one gets too dependent on one source for purchasing items. Next time I think I am going to do a Froogle search in addition to Amazon.

Click for larger image

Yes, there was nothing to accept. I even called the tech support line to make sure I was not connected to a spoofed provider. It is actually that they do not have any terms and conditions.