Category: Technology

Dilbert on faxing

Faxes… Couldn’t have said it better myself

Faxes on some days are the bane of my existence. Texas eFiling for courts has helped, but our small firm still sees over 300 pages a day of faxes. Fortunately, most of these faxes never see paper thanks to my new friend Hylafax running on our Asterisk-based PBX. It took a lot of tries to reach a cost effective and reliable solution for inbound faxing – remember, the budget for technology...

Back to the stone ages of TV

Ok… so watching anything on a 46 inch rear projection DLP set is far from the stone ages, but the time has come to ditch cable. Ditch satellite. Ditch fiber to the premise. Customer service is king, they say, but it’s clear that the king is out to lunch. On the other hand, I’m fully convinced that there really is competition against the cable companies now. And I think that Netflix...

Customer service… Why bother?

Apparently, I’m not meant to watch television. I was terribly excited by Verizon’s FIOS TV service. Great picture quality. Competitive price. Then I called the customer service line to make a change. Heh. Soon I shall have to give up and build my own DVR and watch TV off an antenna. It took 45 minutes to get through to someone since I don’t have a Verizon phone line. I can’t even...

Ubuntu Circle of Friends

Dapper Drake… The next 24 hours

Well… I did it. I made it through a productive day of work with Ubuntu on my laptop. I may even try again another day. This article will be a little more technical (but probably not much more) than the tidbit that came out Sunday night. What’s missing? What’s great? Let’s find out… Let’s start with the what’s missing part… I’m a Microsoft Outlook addict. I have multiple accounts to make...

The trouble with e-mail

So… I saw Kelly Martin’s article on The Register sounding the death knell for e-mail. Not the first time I’ve heard it rung, and I sure hope not the last. E-mail is a great product – if you trust everyone using your network, or can discipline malcontents. Given the size and scope of the Internet, e-mail just doesn’t cut it. We need a system that authenticates senders. We need a system...

Remote threats

I’ll assume that by now you’ve been scared witless by the various adware, spyware and virus threats that have attempted to take over your PC in the past year. Some of you, no doubt, use Macs for the lure of safer surfing. You’ve doubtless learned by now that your laptop is in danger when you connect to public Wi-Fi hotspots (Why, Microsoft, won’t you allow us to automatically turn off exceptions...

US Visual Infrared Image

If NASA steps out

At dinner last night, Amanda asked me, “So, do you think NASA should be scrapped?” After a long, blank stare and a lot of blinking, I finally admitted I hadn’t thought about it. CPR skills come in handy at times like those, since I’m usually so opinionated. So, I thought about it. My internal philosophy seems to tell me that people are inherently good, government is inherently evil, and government programs...