Monthly Archive for August, 2008

New Direction, New Beginning

Published on August 26, 2008 in Ideas, Monthly Resolutions, Ricky and Site News. 9 Comments Tags: , , , .

I’m sitting in a hotel room in Boston with my family, ready to move in to Tufts tomorrow morning. I’m very excited, but predictably scared. It’s a huge change for me – from the countryside of Dover Plains to the urban sprawl of Boston.

In the beginning of this year, I vowed to set a new goal or focus for each month and work at it. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again – I messed up. August was noticeably missing a resolution, but the most important part of accomplishing a goal is getting back on track when knocked off course.

Let’s get back on track. I’m dedicating September to trying new things, meeting new people, and immersing myself in new experiences. Although this is what college is all about, I plan to put special effort into this endeavor. I won’t lay back and let these experience find me; I’m going to go out and seek them myself.

Besides the changes in my life, you may have noticed a change on this blog. Because this is a very symbolic time in my life, a time of transition, I changed the color scheme of the blog to something much more refreshing. It’s only one of many changes that I have lined up for this website when I get some free time.

I don’t know how my blogging will change now that I’m starting college, but I assure you that I will continue to write. I’m not sure how often or about what, but I will always write about the important things in my life and how they may relate to you, especially when it comes to bettering our world.

I hope you’ll stay with me on this journey.

My Tympanoplasty, A Retrospective

Published on August 23, 2008 in Ricky and Tympanoplasty. 98 Comments Tags: , , .

Earlier this year, I wrote about an elective surgery I undertook to recover hearing in my right ear. From the time I was little, my right ear drum had a hole in it, a perforation. I went for several procedures as a child to repair the hole, but none of them were successful.

Having that hole in my ear drum had always been a part of me. I learned to turn my head to hear people better, and I adapted to wearing an ear plug whenever around water, including and especially while showering.

Fast-forwarding eighteen years, this last February, my family and I decided it was time to take another shot. Consulting Dr. Lawrence Meiteles, we were introduced to and studied a procedure called a Tympanoplasty.

The idea of recovering any hearing was truly amazing to me – thinking about it made me instantly emotional.

As a student, I’d always refused to take any time off, unless I was particularly sick. In this case, for this reason, I was willing to take any amount of time off, even in the midst of a busy senior year of high school.

I retell this story now because it’s time to wrap it up. It’s been six months since the procedure and everything is well. I can bathe and swim without an ear plug and my hearing is much better, although not perfect. Although recovery was painful and tedious at times, I regret nothing… not even wearing this setup immediately after the surgery:

Big Bandage

At this juncture, I’m renaming the category of the blog that tells this story of my life from “ear surgery” to “tympanoplasty”. Hopefully, that’ll make it easier for Googlers to find my experience. I entirely and without reservation recommend the surgical services of Dr. Lawrence Meiteles to anyone with an ear drum perforation. I couldn’t be more appreciative to have something I thought I’d never have – decent hearing.

Mac Users, Don’t Buy from CyberPower Inc.

Published on August 18, 2008 in Apple, Rants and Tech. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Update (February 16, 2009): CyberPower has issued me a full refund for the UPS. They maintain that the issue is not with the UPS, but with my MacBook Pro, which appears to be correct.

CyberPower is an upstanding company with a great reputation. Their only fault in this situation was a representative with sub-par Macintosh experience. I appreciate their cooperation with working through this situation.

The original post is archived below, for posterity sake.

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I recently purchased an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) from CyberPower Inc. It’s the CP550SL, and it looked pretty good in the store. The box said it was PC and Mac compatible, had a comfortable number of outlets, and had standard shutdown features that worked out-of-the-box with Mac OS X. Great!

For anyone who doesn’t know, a UPS is a glorified power strip, a device that takes one electrical outlet and makes several. In addition, it has a built-in battery to power attached devices in the event of a power failure. Using a usb cable, a UPS connects to a computer so the computer can shut itself down before the UPS runs out of electricity.

I plugged in all of my devices, attached the USB cable from the UPS to my Mac, and plugged the UPS in. After cycling the power on all of my devices, I booted my Mac. Excited to configure the automatic shutdown options (the real reason anyone buys a UPS), I went to the Energy Saver prefpane of System Preferences.

Much to my surprise, all of the UPS options were grayed out. I couldn’t configure anything!
CyberPower UPS in Mac OS X Leopard

From here, I did the technical thing. I cleared out the user and system caches on my MacBook Pro, rebooted, and tried again. No luck.

At this point, I did the responsible thing – contacted tech support. I sent this email:

I just took the UPS out of the box and installed it with my Mac by plugging the USB cable into my Mac’s USB port. In the System Preferences panel, Energy Saver, I can see the UPS under the drop-down “Settings for:”. When I click that and go to the UPS tab below, I can see the battery level and model, but all of the UPS options (what make the UPS useful, like shutting down the computer after a certain period of time) are grayed out! The UPS is useless unless those options work. I’m an administrative user and the panel is unlocked.

I’m a poweruser, and I’m puzzled as to what the problem could be. Normally these things “just work”. Any help would be appreciated before I have to take this unit back.

This morning, I got this two-sentence response:

The grayed out option is a bug in the latest version of Mac. You can check for an update from Mac.

This response is unacceptable. First and foremost, “the latest version of Mac” doesn’t make sense. The Mac is a computer, the Operating System it runs is Mac OS X, and the company that ships both of those products is Apple Inc. A tech support person would never say,

The grayed out option is a bug in the latest version of Windows. You can check for an update from Windows.

Obviously, he or she would recommend that I check for an update from Microsoft or from Windows Update.

Moving on, there’s no update available from Apple! I’m running the latest version of the Mac OS; the next version, 10.5.5, isn’t expected for some time (more than two weeks). A responsible tech support agent would have told me that CyberPower Inc. is working with Apple to correct the problem and I should expect a fix on a certain date or time-frame. Due to his or her lack of detail, I will likely return this product to the store I purchased it.

The Apple market-share is a small fraction of the computer market. However, we’re a vocal fraction. Until this is resolved, I unequivocally urge Mac users not to purchase any products from CyberPower Inc.

Register for Change Harlem Valley Times Article

Published on August 15, 2008 in Dover, Press Appearances and Register for Change. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Stephanie Preston’s article about Register for Change made its way into this week’s Harlem Valley Times. Go give it a read!

As always, I quote it below for posterity’s sake.

Students raise political awareness with ‘Register for Change’ rally

DOVER – Students and recent graduates from Dover High School held a political rally on Aug. 9 in the Town of Dover to promote the importance of voting, as well as to inform the public about presidential candidate Barack Obama’s policies.

Bumper stickers, pins and signs were given out at the “Register for Change” event, and voter registration cards were available for residents to fill out.

A couple weeks before his graduation from Dover High School in June, Valedictorian Richard Mondello, 18, created a group on the social networking Web site www.facebook.com advocating to host a political rally during the summer. He received a large amount of feedback from his fellow students wanting to participate and join the group.

“I wanted to do something that would show that the young people of Dover are getting really involved and excited about the upcoming election,” Mondello said.

“I feel like young people hardly ever get good press, and I wanted us to do something positive and constructive,” he said.

After the event’s date was confirmed, Mondello and Dylan Young, 18, went to a town board meeting to get permission to assemble.

Mondello also contacted the Barack Obama campaign about the event, which is how he received the bumper stickers, pins, signs and voter registration cards that were available at the rally.

“There have been a lot of great people coming out to support us and coming up to the tent registering to vote,” said Justin Schneider, 18.

“I’ve been here since 8:30 for the cause. I’m not necessarily for a candidate. I’m for change and involvement in the political process. That’s what all of us are really trying to promote,” he said.

Congressman John Hall (D-Dover) also attended to help promote involvement in the political process.

“The wonderful turnout for this event is proof that bringing people into the political process will make a difference. I think it’s a great message to publicize,” Hall said. “The first step is to be involved and to vote.”

aim buddy updates beta

Published on August 15, 2008 in Social Media and Tech. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

I rarely put post titles in all lower-case, but since this is an article about web 2.0, peer pressure kicked in. I figured I’d try to fit in – you know, be hip? Lower-case letters are “hip”, right?

My Relationship with AOL

I’m weird when it comes to social networking and online presence. In my crowd of “real life” friends, I’m one of very few people with a twitter account. In that respect, I suppose I’m forward-thinking. However, it wasn’t until very recently that I set up a myspace account. My “protest” wasn’t all that visionary, I admit. I needed to suck it up, it being my loathing of poor design, obnoxious advertising, and Rupert Murdoch.

In my computing history, the last five years, I’ve had one constant – AOL Instant Messenger, AIM. From the very beginning, AOL has been in my computing life. My family used AOL as our ISP for a few months before moving up to high-speed Internet access. In that time, AOL’s stronghold on the dial-up market established them as the instant messenger of choice for all of my born-in-the-90’s friends. Although I’ve long since dumped the official AIM client in favor of Pidgin or Adium, you’ll almost always find me on AOL’s network.

AIM Buddy Updates

AOL Buddy Updates

AOL made a very interesting play that just came to my attention. The company launched a service called Buddy Updates, a status (away) message and buddy profile archiving feature. For someone used to having all content (away messages, buddy profiles) lost forever after alteration, this is a game-changer.

Although I feel ridiculous writing this, some people (rather foolishly) feel that AIM status messages are the last place they can quickly create content that won’t come back to bite them. With the default configuration of AIM Buddy Updates, this is no longer true. Before panicking, note that this feature is opt-out. Just go to the Buddy Updates website and login with your AIM username and password. From that interface, you’ll be able to shut the service off, but AOL’s hoping you’ll browse your friend’s recent activity (everyone), look at your content (just me), or setup the service (setup).

Impact?

AOL, a company that’s hemorrhaging money, is still making plays into Web 2.0. The idea of archived microblogging will be new to many users of AIM, but Buddy Updates still targets the more advanced social media user. That is, at the setup screen, users can add other web services, a la FriendFeed. Big names include Twitter, Blogger, LiveJournal, Flickr, del.icio.us, YouTube, and MySpace. Yes, the omission of Facebook eludes me, too.

I have few complaints about FriendFeed, but competition is almost always good. Even if it’s just another redundant web 2.0 service, I think AOL is welcome to the party of content aggregation.

Bitten by DRM on iPhone Applications

Published on August 13, 2008 in Apple and Tech. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Although this is a very bitter blog post, I won’t make it angry. I’m just disappointed in one of my favorite companies. Continue reading ‘Bitten by DRM on iPhone Applications’