Performance Zen

Author: spierzchala

  • My Jimi Wallet

    My Jimi Wallet arrived today. And it is exactly as advertised.

    Small. Compact. Solid.

    It forces you to seriously consider the items that you need to take with you on your everyday. I narrowed it down to exactly what I thought it would in this post.

    What I am waiting for are the hacks that are sure to appear from the hardcore GTD freaks. Likely they will be able to turn it into a dayplanner, notetaker and laptop computer with a paper clip and folded paper.

    UPDATE: I forgot to mention that the gift bag the Jimi comes in is a great carrying case for my Sony Ericsson K700i!

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  • Weirdness with GTK+ 2.8.9

    I installed GIMP for Windows this morning, along with the GTK+ 2 Runtime Environment (Version 2.8.9). As soon as I did that, GAIM went crazy. No more AIM, no more MSN, no more Gtalk.

    The lightbulb just went on a few minutes ago, and I downgraded to GTK+ 2 (Version 2.6.10). Bingo! Everything works again.

    Just a heads up for everyone.

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  • Skype Me!

    If you need/want to chat with me, you can now get me on Skype as well: stephen.pierzchala
    UPDATE: Just talked to Ian Holsman in Australia. Other than some speakerphone-like reverb, it was like he was down the street. Ok, I know, I’m late to the party again; but Skype ROCKS!
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  • Gtalk rocks!

    Ok, I decided to try this Gtalk thing. Called a friend of mine and it smoked! Sound quality was superb, with no lag. I will have to set ZenWife up with a headset and mic for when I go to Europe!

    PS: I am spierzchala on Gtalk.

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  • T-Mobile: How I love thee…

    Scott Johnson writes about how we all want to drop our mobile provider every once and a while. [here]

    I have the same provider that Scott does: T-Mobile.

    I am a complete T-Mobile lover. The coverage is great, and the use of GSM makes it so perfect for my travel needs, which includes the occasional trip to Europe. T-Mobile has been a great provider, and the fact that I never have to think about it should tell you how good they are.

    I will say that their selection of phones is limited. But guess what? That doesn’t matter. You can buy unlocked GSM phones on the net, and have a phone that is so much sexier than what the provider gives you. I have a Sony Ericsson K700i that I bought and it is so very hot!

    On the whole, I would never go back to a traditional US CDMA phone provider, as it is so old school, so, clunky, so…1995.

    T-Mobile, keep up the great work!

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  • Why I love Canada: Sports Trophies

    Canada is a great country because…the trophies that have been handed out to the professional teams in our leagues where granted us by members of the English peerage.

    LORD Stanley’s Cup.

    LORD Grey’s Cup.

    The US pro sports leagues just don’t have that level of je ne sais quoi.

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  • Spokane River Falls

    The Frog Blog brings us a link to a slideshow highlighting the Spokane River Falls.

    Our family visited Spokane often as I was growing up, but I have never seen the falls at full throttle. In fact, it’s damn impressive without water. This amazing outcrop, obviously shaped by water, with only a trickle dribbling over it.

    Reminds me of one of those places that we went as a family, when we were still family.

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  • Hardware sucks…at least for me.

    I remember now why I got out of the hardware support business.

    I am converting ZenWife’s old desktop into a computer for the boys. It took me nearly two hours to get it to boot properly. Then it hung trying to install Windows XP. So back to Windows 2000 Pro.

    That appears to be working. Once I get Win2KPro installed, I will try to update it to WinXP.

    I hate desktop support.

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  • Happy Birthday Liz!

    Tom Mahon reminds us that Queen Elizabeth turned 80 today.

    I’m a little less formal than Tom, so: Happy Birthday, Liz! Phil, give the lady a peck on the cheek!

    PS: As a Canadian, she is still officially my head of state.

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  • Fight The Bull: My god it smells in here!

    Usually I classify this sort of mail as complete nonsense, and delet it. But this one was such a classic, I had to post it.

    The letter is from the new CEO of the joint Borland/Segue. He is announcing that he thinks that Segue and Borland customers will be able to find cool ways to use the products of this new company…at least, after I translate it, it seems like that is what he is TRYING to say.

    …

    This is a great move for both of our organizations as we come together to tackle what we all know to be a key development challenge and the biggest opportunity for our industry – software quality. Borland and Segue have long shared a common belief that the challenge of software quality reaches far beyond testing and QA. Together we will approach this issue holistically, providing value at each stage of the software delivery lifecycle.

    Our focus now is on the development of a comprehensive Lifecycle Quality Management solution – bringing together our unparalleled process improvement expertise with proper skills training and a true end-to-end quality technology offering. Our goal is alignment of people, process and technology, proactively driving higher standards of software quality while systematically reducing costs associated with rework and maintenance.

    While continuing to enhance Segue’s quality and application performance technologies, we will also focus on delivering even tighter linkage with Borland’s broad portfolio of Application Lifecycle Management technologies. As part of a complete solution, these technologies will address quality across the entire lifecycle, eliminating quality issues at the root cause.

    …

    Chaucer and Shakespeare just rose from the dead, and they are looking for the marketing people who wrote this.