Apple has added another feature to the AppleTV: Remote. Remote is a free application that owners of an iPhone or an iPod Touch can download and use to control their AppleTV or iTunes on their computer from anywhere on their network. This sounds a bit silly at first until you realize that you can use your AppleTV to power an all-house audio system and you can control everything that it does from anywhere. It is actually pretty cool. Not a feature that many people would consider paying for but as a free feature it is pretty neat.

Depressingly, Los Angeles is a gorgeous seventy-two degrees today while here in Newark it is ninety-two. Hot, humid, hazy and ugh.

InfoWorld ran an article about the lack of customer support people are getting from Dell and how, now, Dell is flatly refusing to support their products if sold through Best Buy! Customers think that they are buying a Dell and are even being told by Best Buy salespeople that there is a Dell warranty that Dell will service but Dell’s policy is that they just don’t honor those warranties – at all, period. Now we’ve discovered that they have this policy with machine purchased via Best Buy (what are you doing buying a computer there anyway?) but if they can choose when to refuse warranty service then what makes them service machines purchased anywhere? Apparently Dell’s warranty service is seen by them as optional. Maybe they will soon see actually delivering the computer that you bought as optional as well.

Mary called today. I have her new mobile phone number now if anyone is attempting to reach her. She is in Dansville these days rather than Warsaw.

My walk into the office in Manhattan was not nearly as hot as I thought that it was going to be. It is certainly hot and humid here today but it could be a lot worse. Because there is some possibility of rain there is a decent wind that helps to keep things from getting too warm. That is something that really gets to me in Manhattan is the complete lack of air movement. I am especially susceptible to a lack of air movement in keeping cool. Air temperature is not nearly as important to me as humidity and air exchange rate.

I forgot to mention yesterday that both Dominica and I had coworkers who had children born yesterday! Both were people directly on our teams.

Dad had a dentist appointment up in Rochester today and discovered that he has become quite a celebrity. Apparently the story of the little Boston Terrier, rescued from a shelter in Houston, Texas who went through being poisoned and then getting onto the Manhattan news and into a Boston newspaper, who recovered and now lives in a skyscraper with views of Manhattan, spends his days at doggy daycare and rides around wearing goggles in his BMW convertible is quite the story. They tell it to all of the dog lovers and children. So dad is now known as “Oreo’s Grandpa” and all of the patients at the dentist’s office know him (by reputation at least.) He walked in today and they called out “Oreo’s grandpa is here!”

I managed to escape the office at just about six in the evening which isn’t really too bad.  Dominica met me at Food for Life where we ate dinner.  It made the evening quick that we were able to eat so early and without any prolonged decision making or waiting as food was delivered.  We were home before eight.

Dominica spent the evening watching the last half of Stardust which she had rented from NetFlix but had not gotten around to finishing yet.  I recorded the 60th Episode of the SGL Podcast but was so tired and worn out that I was unable to get it posted until the morning.  By nine thirty when I finished the show I went straight to bed.  Dominica was not tired and stayed up for a long time reading.

Dominica is still fighting a really bad cold and we fear that it is now a sinus infection.  Oreo got me up in the middle of the night, around two in the morning, to patrol the perimeter and then to go back to bed.  He can be a very goofy dog.  I will be working in Warren tomorrow so I will be hard to reach.  I plan to return home early so that Dominica can pick me up at the train station on her way home.

The rain that we have been promised all week but have not seen finally came during the night.  Maybe that will cool things down a little bit although the forecast doesn’t seem to think that it will.

Andy is already underway preparing for the next Dice Tech Challenge.  This next one does not require a round of voting.  We will keep you updated.

Vote for OrbTrak

Every vote helps.  We are counting on the SGL community to help pull him through.  Tell your friends.  Get people involved.  It only takes a second to vote.

Andy’s OrbTrak web application tracks the current location of four of the night’s most interesting artificial satellites as they orbit the earth.  A handy guide for finding them for yourself.

Andy’s last Dice Tech Challenge entry was SpyHop: The IHOP Finder.

Our project for this weekend was to work on a system upgrade for the servers located at Washington Hospital Center. We have a small “data centre” there that has housed our main servers since they relocated from the University of Rochester several months ago. Rochester was more convenient but the space that we have here in Washington is much better and has allowed for greater expansion.

We would have crashed last night at the condo that John Nicklin rents from our friend Rob in Arnold, Maryland. This would have been Andy’s first trip to the condo. All of his former trips to Washington would have been based out of the Extended Stay Suites hotel in Alexandria, Virginia.

The office was hot and very uncomfortable even though it is February and cold outside. Nothing makes the office here cool in any way. Jonathan Stagno, who was living in Pasadena, Maryland at the time, came out to Washington to help out on the project as well. This is, I believe, the only time that Andy or Bob have seen Jonathan as of December, 2007 when I am writing this update.

The work went well. I no longer know all of the work that was done but I do know that this was the weekend that we did some major hardware upgrades to our primary Windows NT 4 IIS 4 Server (a.k.a. “Vienna”.) We added three additional 9GB SCSI hard drives and moved the machine from a straight drive to software based RAID 5 for speed and protection. “Vienna” was one of the two Compaq Proliant 800 servers that Andy and I used in Pittsburgh in March, 2000. At this time it was also upgraded from 128MB to 1GB of memory which helped a lot.

After our day of work in the office we left Stagno to return home and Bob, Andy and I met up with John Nicklin, Rob and Trish at O’Laughlin’s in the Bay Green Plaza in Arnold, MD.  It was quite the party.  We even managed to convince a “not too with it” Andy that he had run up a $500 bar tab (a fake provided for effect by the manager) and that Andy had to cover it if he didn’t manage to get a girl at the bar to kiss him.  The girl was there with a very large male friend who was in on the gag and hilarity ensued.