(with thanks to Ana Marie Cox for the post title) I suppose the first question to be answered is, which “me” are you following? There are at least four. Yes, I know. Sigh. @smartwatermelon is my first, original Twitter account. It’s public, so anyone in the world can read my Tweets and follow me if [...]

(with thanks to Ana Marie Cox for the post title)

I suppose the first question to be answered is, which “me” are you following? There are at least four.

Yes, I know. Sigh.

@smartwatermelon is my first, original Twitter account. It’s public, so anyone in the world can read my Tweets and follow me if they so desire. Nowadays @smartwatermelon is the account most closely associated with my job at HP/Palm–many of my recent followers are (directly or indirectly) a result of this Tweet from Lisa Brewster (@adora) of Palm’s Developer Relations:  

That, on my first day at HP/Palm, gained me around 100 followers almost immediately and since I’ve been active in the webOS Twitter community I’ve picked up a few hundred more.

@smartwatermelon is also (sort of, a little bit, in some circles) known for being name-checked on The Rachel Maddow Show as a result of this Tweet, retweeted by Rachel herself and actually displayed on the show. I’m still gobsmacked over that one. 

Finally, as my primary public account, it’s the one to which I have various social-network services tied. You’ll see Tweets from Foursquare, GetGlue, Twitpic and Untappd. Quite a lot from Untappd, actually. It’s also the account which is shown in the Twitter widget in the right column of these pages.

So: techy stuff with an emphasis on mobile devices, Macs and general geekitude; politics, especially the liberal/progressive kind and especially the ridiculous aspects of such; social-network checkins; and beer.

The name? Oh, the name comes from a watermelon-flavored soft drink made by the Coca-Cola company that’s only sold in China but can be tasted at Club Cool at Epcot in Walt Disney World and also at the Coke Museum in Las Vegas. Well, you asked.

Interested? Intrigued? Inchoate?

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@swm_photos is a special account I use for live photoblog updates using my EyeFi card. When I take my camera, phone (for tethered Internet access) and EyeFi card on a photowalk, the resulting pictures are uploaded in nearly realtime and tweeted to @swm_photos. This is mostly so I don’t overwhelm @smartwatermelon followers with quick-succession tweets. I’ll tweet from @smartwatermelon when photos are forthcoming to @swm_photos.

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You’ve come here from a link from MousePlanet–one of my (infrequent) articles, the Twitter widget on the MousePlanet home page or perhaps you met me at at Disney park? You want @MPAndrew, my public account for MousePlanet, Disney and related Tweets.

I’m far less active on @MPAndrew than on @smartwatermelon (which might be a good thing) but if you want to know what I’m doing in the Disney-related Web arena then @MPAndrew is the account for you. It gets busiest around the time of our semi-annual MouseAdventure events and whenever I’m at or near one of the parks. I also occasionally tweet about some of the “backstage” or behind-the-scenes technical aspects of my work on MousePlanet.com.

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Not enough? You want to know the real me? Then @andrewmrich is the account for you. This one, however, is a private account. That means Tweets from this account aren’t visible to anyone I haven’t allowed to follow me.

My use of @andrewmrich is much more of a long-term, very high-latency conversation among friends who already know each other. If you already know me in real life (and it’s not from work or from a Disney connection) then feel free to put in a follow request.

I keep the followers down to a minimum on @andrewmrich, though, to keep the conversation at a comfortable pace, so don’t be offended if I don’t approve it. Just scroll up to the top of this post and re-read the clever and witty descriptions of my other three accounts again.

And thanks for reading.

Posted here because it’s too long to Tweet and I dislike serializing Tweets. I’ve been a DIRECTV subscriber for around twelve years. Through all that time I’ve almost always been pleased with both the actual TV service and their customer service people. There has been the occasional hiccup, as you’d expect, but overall it’s been [...]

Posted here because it’s too long to Tweet and I dislike serializing Tweets.

I’ve been a DIRECTV subscriber for around twelve years. Through all that time I’ve almost always been pleased with both the actual TV service and their customer service people. There has been the occasional hiccup, as you’d expect, but overall it’s been great and I wouldn’t hesitate to strongly recommend the service. (In fact, if you’re considering it, click the “Contact Me” link on this page for a $100 referral credit.)

DIRECTV recently, some would say “finally” introduced their whole-home DVR service- essentially the same as the local share ability built in to TiVo since the beginning- and since I have two of their HD DVRs (one upstairs, one downstairs) and an ever-growing list of subscribed series, I decided to order it. Unlike TiVo networking, which is free except for customer-provided equipment, the DIRECTV service costs $3 per month plus installation. I have a very strong wireless-N network but apparently HD signals require more bandwidth so they install a hardwire network for the DVRs.

I called last Friday and had one of the single best customer service experiences in my life. The rep was friendly, knowledgable and very helpful. She got the service ordered, gave me a break on the installation charge and took care of a few other unrelated issues on my account. We scheduled the service installation to take place a week later, today, between 4 and 8 pm. All would be well and I was quite pleased.

This morning, I received a call from someone who, almost completely unintelligably, claimed to be the DIRECTV installer and said he wouldn’t be coming today because he “has no equipment.” That’s a direct quote. He’s a DIRECTV installer and he can’t make it because he “has no equipment.”

I didn’t know what to say to that so I agreed to wait for his call next week when, presumably, he’d have some equipment. Then I got on the phone to DIRECTV customer service to find out what the hell was going on. The rep could only tell me that the appointment was still scheduled and she didn’t see anything to suggest that the installer wouldn’t be there as scheduled. She said she’d have “Dispatch” call me back shortly to confirm it.

Well, “Dispatch” never called and no installer ever showed. I blocked time for this today and it was wasted. I’m surprised and disappointed.

I’ll call back tomorrow, I guess, and try to reschedule. I will insist on a different installer because I will not allow the one I talked to this morning into my house.

Updates as events warrant.

Sure, it sounds silly, but a few of my favorite weekday lunch places on University Ave don’t offer WiFi (free or otherwise) and aren’t near enough to anywhere that does to pick up the signal. They’re almost close enough; my MacBook Pro and my Palm Pre can “see” the networks and try to connect, but [...]

Sure, it sounds silly, but a few of my favorite weekday lunch places on University Ave don’t offer WiFi (free or otherwise) and aren’t near enough to anywhere that does to pick up the signal. They’re almost close enough; my MacBook Pro and my Palm Pre can “see” the networks and try to connect, but not achieve or maintain a connection. It seems that this situation is the perfect one for one of these devices. I’ve found a few that look promising but I’m having some trouble choosing one. Feel like helping?

Hawking HWUN3 Hi-Gain USB Wireless-N Adapter with Upgradeable Antennas for Mac & PC (White) – $42.24

1000mW 1W 802.11g/n High Gain USB Wireless G / N Long-Rang WiFi Network Adapter – Dongle – $23.95

1000mW 1W 802.11g/n High Gain USB Wireless G / N Long-Rang WiFi Network Adapter – Dongle With Original Alfa 5dBi and 9dBi Rubber Antenna – $24.99

MacWizards Antenna & Booster for MacBook/PowerBook – $79.99

There’s quite a price difference between the least and most expensive, but the MacWizards item looks to be much smaller and sleeker. They all seem to have fairly similar specifications.

There’s also the rather different BearExtender n3 – $44.97

The BearExtender is an external device connected by a USB cable, not a plug-in antenna as are the others. It seems a bit too clunky, but the performance might be better since it can be moved around more freely.

What do you think?

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Update 2010-08-18:

Someone from the company that makes BearExtender found this blog post and contacted me, offering free shipping and a 30-day review period to try out their product. Not a freebie for review, just an invitation to buy one. I figured with free shipping and the 30-day return privilege I couldn’t really go wrong, so I jumped at it.

The BearExtender is not nearly as large as it appears in the promotional pictures. It’s actually a flat (maybe 1/2″ thick) square (around 2″/side) and very light, with a clip on the back to stick on to the Mac’s open lid. Comes with one short and one long USB cable, an antenna, and a USB drive which includes a getting started guide and the driver software. The software is really the only disappointment; it’s ugly and the usability is rotten. However, it does work.

My baseline use case is sitting at a cafe in downtown Palo Alto across the street from a Starbucks. With the Mac’s built-in WiFi, I can intermittently see the “attwifi” network and get a very weak connection that drops after a minute or two; essentially useless. With the BearExtender, I get a strong signal from the “attwifi” network, can immediately connect, and the connection stays up without dropping.

It connects without issue to my AirPort Extreme N at home, and also displays quite a few more networks around my home than the built-in WiFi. I’d say it’s well worth the money, which after all is only as much as dinner for two at a reasonably nice place.

Again, to be clear, I’m reviewing this on my own accord; I paid full price (less free shipping) for the unit and they didn’t ask me to write or do anything.

Buried in AP article about DirecTV’s quarterly results is this nugget of information: [CEO Chase] Carey said DirecTV will roll out a ‘whole-home’ digital video recording service starting in the second quarter that will enable customers to record programs on a DVR in one room and watch them in other areas of the house on [...]

Buried in AP article about DirecTV’s quarterly results is this nugget of information:

[CEO Chase] Carey said DirecTV will roll out a ‘whole-home’ digital video recording service starting in the second quarter that will enable customers to record programs on a DVR in one room and watch them in other areas of the house on TVs hooked up to linked non-DVR set-top boxes.

Well, it’s about time. TiVo (not DirecTiVo, just regular old TiVo) had this ages ago. Finally I’ll be able to record on the upstairs DVR and watch it downstairs or vice-versa. This should help with scheduling conflicts–I hope there is some sort of auto-conflict manager included with the new service.

This is part three of a theoretically infinite series. It’s been roughly five months since I brought home the MacBook Pro and almost that long since my last update to this series. I’ve become incredibly comfortable in the OS X environment and, with a very few exceptions, can do anything I ever did in Windows. [...]

This is part three of a theoretically infinite series.

It’s been roughly five months since I brought home the MacBook Pro and almost that long since my last update to this series. I’ve become incredibly comfortable in the OS X environment and, with a very few exceptions, can do anything I ever did in Windows. In the event I do need Windows, I can use VMWare Fusion to boot Windows XP from a Boot Camp partition with seamless desktop integration. Just today I found a solution to one of the last Windows requirements — syncing my HTC Mogul phone, a Windows Mobile device. Normally one would use ActiveSync to sync a Windows Mobile device, or pay $30 for Missing Sync. I’ve found a free product that does exactly what I need and no more: Eltima Software’s SyncMate. It syncs my contacts and calendars to the Mac’s Address Book and iCal, respectively, and can mount the WinMo file system as an external volume on the Mac for file transfer.

Here’s a current list of third-party software I’m using.

• Angry IP Scanner — the built-in Network Utility has most of this application’s functionality; I use either or both depending on what exactly I’m trying to do.
• Book Collector
• ChronoSync — I haven’t actually started using this yet, but I’ve installed the trial and am checking it out.
• CrossOver Office — supposed to allow (some) Windows applications to install and run directly in OS X, but I’ve had little success as of yet.
• Fetch — seems to be the best ftp client for OS X.
• Google Earth
• Jolly’s Fast VNC — even in public Alpha, this is the best VNC client I’ve found for OS X, and (apprehensive of using an Alpha) I tried quite a few before this one. Does what it says on the tin.
• Logitech Harmony Remote software — Web-based programming tool for my Harmony 880 and 670 universal remotes.
• Movie Collector
• NetNewsWire — my choice for RSS newsreader. I started with the built-in Mail application, but it couldn’t handle 200+ feeds with any stability; I tried Endo and gave it a couple of months, but eventually gave up on it after one too many crashes and system resource grabs — plus, its UI is a nightmare. NNW does what I want and does it well.
• OpenOffice.org — the excellent free, open-source alternative to Microsoft Office I’ve been using for years, now in a spiffy new OS X-native version.
• Opera — if you’ve been reading Project Insomnia for lo, these many years, you know I’ve been an Opera fan for quite a long time. Since switching to Mac I’ve converted almost completely to Safari. I keep Opera around for alternate-browser testing and also use it when I need to have more than one Google Account session open simultaneously, but it’s pretty much fallen off my radar in general.
• Remote Desktop Connection — the only Microsoft software on my OS X partition is a fine port of the standard RDC client.
• SketchUp — nifty 3-D sketching tool which I have so far been completely unable to learn. I’d like to use it to model the cabinet wall we want to build in the living room.
• SplashID — password vault, works with the Mogul to keep all my many and varied passwords safe. Syncing SplashID between the Mac and the Mogul is one of the very few remaining tasks for which I still need Windows; the Mac version doesn’t sync directly but only imports saved files.
• SyncMate — see above.
• TextWrangler — this is a terrific text editor that handles code of all kinds, from PHP to HTML to Java.
• TinkerTool — essentially the OS X equivalent to TweakUI.
• Transmission — BitTorrent client.
• VLC Player — for the rare filetype that QuickTime + Flip4Mac can’t handle.
• VMWare Fusion — see above.

I’m assembling a list of useful tips and tricks, things I’ve learned by trial and error or lucky Googling. That will probably be the subject of part four of this series.