I was going to return this year, for CES 2012, but I was getting married on February 4th and I realized that I was crazy planning a trip to CES less than a month before my wedding! In retrospect I’m glad I didn’t go, there was plenty enough to do preparing for the wedding and honeymoon. Not to mention burning three weeks of PTO for the trip. But I still missed scratching that itch.

Now I’m hoping to return for 2013! Registration opened today and I just registered as Press. They’ve changed their requirements since 2009 and no longer have a dedicated ‘Blogger’ category, so hopefully they’ll still consider me a valid Press member. I’m hopeful; I think Gizmo Lovers meets all of their requirements for online media – it qualified before. But if they don’t accept me as Press I’ll register again as a standard attendee.

I’m looking forward to jumping back into the fray. The Cable Show was good, but there’s nothing quite like the zoo that is CES. It’s a consumer electronics geek mecca – information overload. As Stanley Spadowski said, “You get to drink from the fire hose!” I’m looking forward to it.

There were familial obligations – Mother’s Day, our nephew’s birthday, stuff that needed to get done around our house, etc. And my day job has kept me pretty busy lately, including a trip down to New Jersey this past week. Just a storm of time sucks and catching up from being laid up took up the rest.

So I have a bit of catching up to do here on recent events, such as TiVo’s latest software update, and a bunch of other stuff. But I think I’m healthy again and feeling as well as I can expect given the pollen levels. So I’m going to try to knock out some posts to catch up. Sorry I’ve been absent, it bugs me when that happens too.

The timing is good since The Cable Show hits Boston this week – Monday through Wednesday. Well, actually, there is a press reception Sunday night at Fenway Park that I’ll be attending as well. This is my first time attending The Cable Show, so I’m not quite sure what to expect. I’ve attended may other trade shows and conferences over the years, both as an exhibitor and as an attendee/blogger, so I know the generalities. But each show is different, so it will be interesting to see what this one is like.

I have a meeting scheduled with TiVo on Monday morning, just after the show floor opens. So if there is anything you really want to know about, leave a comment. Oh, but don’t suggest asking about obvious stuff like the forthcoming transcoder box and IP STB, or the new SDK, as those are already on my list to follow up on, along with the rest of the road map info they previously shared. Being that this is The Cable Show I expect a lot of what TiVo will have to say will relate to their progress in the MSO market with less focus on retail products. This is their show blurb:

Only the TiVo® service brings together the best of TV, VOD and web entertainment together in a single user interface, with one remote and one simple search across everything. And in this environment of increasing over-the-top competition and shifting consumer loyalties, TiVo is uniquely suited to combine over a decade of consumer experience with the ability to integrate with existing infrastructures and the know-how to execute with speed. New this year, TiVo is showcasing its whole-home and TV-everywhere solutions, which offer the same award-winning TiVo experience on every screen, big or small. Come see why more and more cable operators are choosing TiVo for their advanced-television solutions.

Still, let me know what you want to learn.

And if there is anyone else on the exhibitor list you think I really must visit, or anything specific I should ask about, feel free to suggest it. I can’t make any promises, there is only so much time in the day, but I’m always interested in checking out interesting stuff. And if you’re an exhibitor and you think I really need to meet with you, feel free to contact me.

Speaking of contacting me, I’m always interested in meeting up with my fellow bloggers, especially since I haven’t made it to CES in a few years. So if you’re going to be there and want to get together contact me directly if you have my info, or just go through the site. And if you’ve done The Cable Show before and have any pointers, I’m open to suggestions.

Hopefully next week I’ll have some interesting info to share.

Sorry for the radio silence recently, it wasn’t planned but fortunately it isn’t for a bad reason this time. I’ve just been pretty busy with work, the usual holiday hassle, and some of the last minute wedding preparations. (In case you’re new here, I’m getting married in five weeks – 2/4/12.) Fortunately it has also been kind of slow on the tech news front lately, at least as far as the stuff I usually write about goes. So I don’t feel like I’ve really missed anything huge.

That’s probably because CES is just around the corner and all of the big news is being saved up for the associated deluge. Unfortunately I won’t be attending CES this year. I had been thinking about returning this year but after some consideration I realized I’d have to be crazy to do CES so close to my wedding. Even ignoring the cost and the PTO I’d need to burn, when I have plenty of expenses and time off pending for the wedding and honeymoon, there are plenty of last minute things to attend to and I really don’t need the extra stress. So maybe 2013 with mark my return to CES. My fiancee has never been to Las Vegas and would like to see it too, so it’d be easier to justify. While I won’t be at CES this year I’m sure there will be plenty to cover and comment on.

All of that aside, there has been some gizmo activity in my life and I’m hoping to make a few full posts out of it. But for now I’ll share a little.

Just before xmas the Galaxy Nexus finally launched on Verizon and I ordered one immediately to replace my OG Droid. I love it. I was somewhat jealous of the Droid RAZR my fiancee picked up a few weeks earlier, but that evaporated when I got the G-Nex. I’ve decided to leave it completely unmodded for now – no unlocked bootloader, no root, and no custom ROM. I’d been running Cyanogenmod on my OG Droid for a long time, but I want some time with the ‘raw’ Ice Cream Sandwich experience to really see how it has improved. I have to say that, overall, I’m really impressed and pleased with it. I may end up sticking with the stock experience, we’ll see. So far there have only been minor things I’ve missed and I may be able to find apps for the functionality.

I will share one word of warning; the official Verizon car mount is a completely worthless piece of plastic crap. I purchased one and returned it an hour later. You may have seen posts on other blogs about it not having the built-in three pin connector for charging and audio output as we’d seen in some pre-release reviews, and that’s part of it. But for me even if it had the three pins I’d still think it sucked. It has a fixed neck, several inches tall. The only adjustment is the ball joint at the end where the phone goes. When I used it in my car the bottom of the G-Nex was as high as the top of my Droid in it’s mount. The OG Droid car mount was quite nice – plenty of adjustment. The G-Nex was way too high, and it blocked a good chunk of my view of the road, so it had to go back. Trying to mount it on my windshield was worse – even more visibility lost. Maybe it’ll work better in your vehicle, but that wasn’t the only issue.

The part that holds the phone is a very tight plastic ‘cup’ that you have to snap the phone in and out of. It took way too much force to both insert and remove the phone from the mount. Enough that I felt like I was risking damage to the phone. It was just too much of a pain in the ass. With my OG Droid I could snap the phone in and out of the mount with one hand instantly. I think the G-Nex mount sucks in every way and I really hope some decent third party options hit soon. I’m also waiting for the desktop dock to release; that at least looks like it is decently designed.

But the phone is just fantastic. Get one.

I also got another new gadget that I’ve been loving. My fiancee gave me a Kindle Touch for xmas. It is my first Kindle. I’ve been kind of eyeing them since the first Kindle, and e-readers in general since they hit the scene. Since I’m almost as addicted to Amazon as I am to Google, I knew I’d pretty much have to get a Kindle when I finally got an e-reader. (And it was definitely a when, not an if.) But the models with a keyboards always seemed a bit too clunky to me, and the Touch was the first model that really looked like what I was waiting for. It is nice and compact, about the size of a paperback (my preferred format), but lighter and even easier to hold than a real book.

I like it as much as I hoped I would. I plowed through the first novel in a couple of days, Scratch Monkey by Charles Stross. Now I’m working on Rule 34, also by Stross. I have a few other books already purchased and loaded, and I expect to be buying Kindle Editions going forward.

It doesn’t stop there. My nephew-to-be got an ASUS Eee Pad Transformer and keyboard dock from us; which I’d snagged at 04:00 on Black Friday from Best Buy with a little social engineering. (It was a ticketed item. I didn’t have a ticket. I’ll tell more if I get a full post up.) He’s 12 – yeah, we kind of spoil him. I set it up for him on xmas and loved it. I’d decided to pick one up for myself months ago, but held off based on early reports of the ‘Transformer 2′. That’s of course, officially the Transformer Prime now.

After my experience using his tablet on xmas I decided that I definitely needed one for myself. My birthday is 12/26 (yes, the day after xmas) so I now have a Transformer Prime and keyboard on order as a gift to myself. I’m really hoping it arrives before I leave for the wedding and honeymoon, as I’d like to take it instead of my laptop. (We’re getting married in Epcot, a destination wedding.) Either way I’m looking forward to it, and I’m sure I’ll have something to say once I have my hands on it.

And last, but most certainly not least, I’ve had a TiVo Premiere Elite review unit in my hands for a little over a month now. I’ve been using it as my main unit and I’ve had enough experience with it now to write up my review. I’ll get that out soon, but the short version is that TiVo is going to have trouble getting this unit back from me. I love it. I’ve had a couple of minor hiccups, but nothing of real note. I had a Premiere for a while around the time it released, though I never did review it (it was during ‘the hiatus’), but the Elite with the 14.9 software is definitely an improvement on my experience with the Premiere at release. And it is a notable improvement over the Series3 that is still my main personal unit. There are a few changes in the HD UI (which is what I’ve been using) that I’m not completely happy with, but on balance I’d recommend the Elite without hesitation. And if I’m allowed to purchase this unit at the end of the review loaner period, I will. The only thing that is really missing as a retail TiVo Preview. If I could pair one of those with the Elite it’d be perfect for my bedroom.

It hasn’t all been good experiences with tech though. My Slingbox PRO-HD seems to have died at some point in November, as I discovered just before a week-long trip to Seattle for work in early December. That’s unfortunate. And a couple of days ago my Onkyo TX-SR606 receiver started exhibiting an issue where it takes several minutes to ‘warm up’ and start passing the HDMI signal from any input to the TV. Checking online I see this is a long-standing known issue with capacitors on the HDMI daughterboard.

My unit is out of warranty by now since I bought it way back in June, 2008 and it only carries two years parts & labor. I haven’t had much time yet to look into repair options, but it has been a long, long time since I did any soldering myself. I’d probably have to find someone to do the work for me instead of risking it on my rusty skills. Not to mention the fact I no longer have the tools for the job. I’ll probably start with Onkyo and see what an authorized repair would cost.

All in all I’ve been having some fun with my new gizmos and I hope to get some full posts up with my take soon. Of course, I owe TiVo a review on the Premiere Elite for kindly sending me a loaner to try out, so I really need to get that out in any case.

I hope everyone had good holidays. Did anyone get any new tech toys worth mentioning? Leave a comment!

I’m talking about comments like these, which were left since my last post on the subject. Damon Aldora left this one on 11/4:

So this is DirecTV’s first attempt at a TV Everywhere option and just reading over the specs, it doesn’t seem very TV Everywhere-oriented. In order to use it you must be on your home network, and while doing that, you can only see the 20 hours that is available on the Nomad. You can’t even see live TV. That is why I use the 922 SlingLoaded DVR from my employer DISH Network. I love it because it lets me stream anything I have recorded to my DVR, and I can choose to watch live TV if I want as well. On top of that, I can go anywhere I want, and watch TV as if I was at home. So the Nomad is a good attempt at TV Everywhere, but is still too limited to be worth the $150 asking price.

And Joseph Lopez left this one on 11/16:

The new Nomad from DirecTV is a great idea but this doesn’t allow streaming to live TV. So when you go on trip there is no up to date info on news or shows. This is only provides what ever you load on it. You can only get 20 hours where with DISH Network’s TV everywhere you can get access to 300 hrs off the DVR. You can see live TV and this works on multiple mobile devices. I have enjoyed my TV everywhere since I am always busy. I don’t have much time for home. This gives me what I need. I work over at DISH where I signed up and received this free.

Damon used a Gmail address, while Joseph used his dishnetwork.com address, and both were posted from 204.76.128.217 which is a Dish Network corporate IP. So these Dish Network employees are spamming blogs using company resources, presumably on company time. You’d think Dish might want to put a stop to that, right?

Apparently not, based on the response Peter received from Dish PR head Marc Lumpkin when he inquired about the spam:

“We require our employees who post about DISH products to identify themselves as a DISH Network employee,” Lumpkin told me via email. “This appears to be an informative posting describing the options consumers have for getting entertainment and is posted in a discussion of a similar topic.”

Really? I asked. You sure you want me to print that?

“It looks informative to me and appropriate for those Web site discussions. I’m fine with the response.”

So there you go, if it isn’t being actively encouraged then it at least has the tacit approval from management. Dish is happy with their employees astroturfing blogs with crap like this. I’m going to steal Peter’s conclusion since he puts it very succinctly, and I don’t think he’d mind given the circumstances:

Okay. So, Marc, Kevin, Dish Network CEO Joseph Clayton, et al. — we don’t really need to spell out why this isn’t “informative” or “appropriate,” right? Because we don’t need to explain why you shouldn’t show up at funerals for people you don’t know and hand out flyers for term life insurance, either. Right?

But think about it this way: Stuffing BS comments onto Web sites is the kind of thing that low-rent scammers do. You? You’re a big, publicly traded company. You have 14 million satellite TV subscribers, a left-for-dead video-rental brand you want to revive, and big plans to launch a new Web TV service.

That’s a whole lot to take care of. And spending time and money on tacky, clumsy astroturf seems like it won’t help, and could probably hurt. This article, for instance, doesn’t go in the “win” column, right?

I couldn’t have said it better myself. The best things we bloggers can do is continue to delete such comments and blacklist users who leave them, and continue to call Dish out for the spam. Public shaming can work. If the fallout from the spam is damaging enough to their brand, they may reevaluate their stance. If you’re getting spam like this on your blog speak out about it; make it cost too much for them to continue doing it.

As I’ve said before, employees of any company are welcome to join the discussion and leave valid comments on posts. They can even pimp their employer’s products if there is a legitimate argument. But cookie cutter comments only weakly linked to the post are not legitimate, they’re spam. Don’t do it.

Now that Google+ Pages are available I’ve created one for Gizmo Lovers, joining the Facebook page and Twitter Feed. I also added a quick link to the page in the navigation column to the right. There don’t appear to be any WordPress plugins for auto-posting new content into G+. (There are a few for pulling content from G+ into WordPress.) That’s not surprising considering it just launched and it doesn’t look like Google has published a posting API yet, so I’ll be manually posting links there for now. For the past few days I’ve been sharing Gizmo Lovers posts on my personal G+ profile, but now that Gizmo Lovers has its own page I will no longer be doing so. This is the last one I’ll share there.

If you want to create your own G+ Page, hit up plus.google.com/pages/create.

They also launched Direct Connect, which allows users to add entities to their G+ Circles directly from Google search results when they prepend a ‘+’ to the search term. So instead of searching on ‘Pepsi’ and getting the usual results, seach on ‘+Pepsi’ and it takes you directly to the Pepsi G+ Page. And they released a quick video on that as well:

You have to satisfy some secret formula for Google to deign you worthy of Direct Connect, so it only works for select pages currently.

My Sling Adapter from my TV provider/employer DISH Network still beats them all. I get all of my TV channels streamed to me on almost any device, all live. It even gives me full control to record and watch things on my DVR. Anywhere I get 3G/4G or wifi, so I’m not tied down to my home network at all.

After my first post Gabe Gagliano of Tech of the Hub Blog forwarded me a few such comments he’d received – also from the 204.76.128.217 Dish IP and both using @dishnetwork.com email addresses. The first is from ‘Rose’:

I like how many devices you can play the streaming service on. What I don’t like is the content. I think it is horrible, and with them raising their prices I plan on leaving. I plan on going to Blockbuster through my provider/employer DISH Network. With them I can get it free for 3 months. Go to this link to check out the promotion through DISH [URL removed]. Blockbuster has some great deals going on and now is the best time to switch.

The next is from ‘Monica’:

I don’t think Apple will come out with an HDTV; they still have things to work on with the original Apple TV. I have Google TV and think it’s soooo much better than Apple TV. The biggest thing for me is Google Chrome; I love being able to surf the internet on the same screen as my TV shows. I really like the variety of apps available too. Even if I’m not watching TV I can use the Pandora or YouTube app or order a movie using the Netflix app. I work for DISH and knew a lot about the Revue but had no idea I would fall in love with it!

Note that the Logitech Revue Google TV links up with Dish DVRs as they partnered. So that’s the promotional link. And finally, one that just made me roll my eyes:

I don’t like how Netflix is removing services and hiking up the prices, I definitely don’t think that’s fair at all! I’ve been looking around and I found another alternative to Netflix and now that DISH Network has teamed with Blockbuster, they have a bunch of cool offers that are available to New and existing DISH Network customers as well as non-DISH customers. Blockbuster has the most extensive library of movies, games and TV shows and you can get thousands of On-Demand titles straight to your PC or TV! Customers will also have access to over 100,000 movies, TV shows and games by mail with new releases coming out before Netflix and Redbox. You can exchange them inside a Blockbuster store and even get Blu-Rays at no additional price. The best thing about this new offer is that you won’t find these titles on DIRECTV Cinema or Comcast on Demand and everything is combined onto one bill! I actually work at DISH Network and I’ve been wanting to tell people about this for a long time and I want everyone to check it out!

So “I’ve been looking around and I found another alternative to Netflix” becomes “I actually work at DISH Network and I’ve been wanting to tell people”. Yeah, looked real far.

Over on SlashGear a Jesus Lopez left this comment:

DirecTV’s new Nomad device is really cool, but I’m glad that I have my employee Sling adapter. With it I can stream live and recorded TV to my Android phone, iPad, and laptop. So not only do I have access to my DVR recording but all my live channels.

Like I said in my earlier post, I have no issue with people leaving genuine comments. But these aren’t the only such comments I’ve had left let alone seen on other blogs. Often the exact same text, or with minor tweaks. And with services like Disqus you can look at the comment history for a user and see if they’ve left many of the same comment.

So the question I posed last time stands – is this officially encouraged behavior? Could it be the law of unintended consequences, maybe some kind of referral bonus? (I think this is less likely now as only some of the posts contain a link.) Is it just esprit de corps and natural enthusiasm? (Call me cynical, but I highly doubt it.) This just smells like employees being ‘encouraged’ to promote the company’s products via social media. I’d love to hear from anyone who has the real info. Or from other bloggers receiving these comments. Let’s see just how widespread this really is.

I said a while back I’d get around to writing up the reasons for why this blog went on hiatus for over two years and this seems like a good time for that. It is no coincidence that it started shortly after the events in the previous post. Getting fired over them was a complete and utter shock, and it shook me up. Of course it meant I had to scramble to look for a new job. It also left me pretty pissed off, frustrated, and depressed. And, understandably I think, a bit gun shy about social media, blogs, and forums. If you look back I posted 37 posts in January 2009. I posted nothing at all in February, I was in a bad way. I tried to get back on the horse with a post in March and nine posts in April, but my heart just wasn’t in it and it was a struggle to post even that much. I made one small post in October, and then one post each in July and August of 2010, and that’s it until I relaunched in July of this year with 88 posts. I guess I’m back.

This is going to get very long, so I’ll cut here…

Now, I should tell the whole story and back up a bit. One of the things that contributed to my being fired over this was probably that I was almost fired for something similar less than a month earlier. I say probably because I don’t really know for sure. As some of you may recall, just after CES 2009 ended, several of the original founders of Sling Media announced they were leaving, including Blake Krikorian. I was actually still in Las Vegas when that happened, flying home that day. That morning I got a call from my manager to tell me the news. Apparently they’d called an all-hands meeting in the office to let everyone know. She was shocked and frazzled, and it seemed like things were kind of chaotic there, so the call wasn’t long. I went on with my day and caught my shuttle to the airport.

On the ride to the airport I was reading Twitter and checking out blogs on my Treo. As I recall I saw a tweet from Om Malik about a new blog post, and went and read the post. It was about Blake and crew leaving Sling. There were other posts up with quotes from Blake about his departure. In other words the news was out and public, and absolutely confirmed by the man himself. At that point I tweeted something along the lines of “Just heard Blake Krikorian is leaving Sling. That sucks.” Something like that, I tried to find it but couldn’t seem to go back that far in Twitter. I didn’t think anything of it, the news was all over. I just shared how I was feeling.

Well, just after I got the the airport I got a frantic call from my boss asking me what the heck I’d done. People in upper management were calling for my head. I had no idea, but it turned out to be the tweet. So I deleted it immediately, for what good that does. It seems that at the meeting, which I wasn’t at remember, they’d told everyone not to say a word about the departure until EchoStar had made an official statement confirming it. And they still hadn’t done so. So they want to fire me for the tweet for leaking news – which was already all over the net. I was dumbstruck by the very idea.

Their rational was that I should’ve just known not to say anything, even though I was reading about the news already and Blake himself had commenting publicly. Nothing I said was going to matter, it wasn’t like I was revealing any secret or confirming any rumors. The horses were gone and the barn had burned to the ground. Everywhere else I’ve worked the common sense rule has been that you don’t mention things that are internal only, and you don’t confirm any rumors, etc. But if hard information is out in the open then it is ridiculous to expect people to have to pretend it isn’t.

In the end I had to grovel and apologize profusely verbally and in writing, but I managed to keep my job. I found the whole situation kind of bizarre, but I didn’t realize it was foreshadowing what was to come.

All of this time I’d been Sling’s official unofficial representative on Sling Community. Sling’s relationship with Sling Community was kind of weird. They didn’t own it, it was run by Capable Networks. But I had a regular call with Capable Networks to keep them in the loop on what was going on with Sling, to give them a heads up. And we had a few blogs on the site, one of which I contributed to. I was also the one Sling employee truly active in the forums, constantly fielding questions, offering support, etc. Within Sling I regularly had managers and the like thanking me for dealing with some issue in the forums before it got out of hand, handling some support issue, etc. So lots of people knew what I was doing and approved of it, but it wasn’t an official thing. Part of that whole arms length relationship.

The post I made that got me fired wasn’t really any different than countless other posts I’d made over the course of the year I worked for Sling. And that’s what made it such a shock to me. Everything I said in the post about Sling’s plans were things I’d said previously – and the official reason I was given for my termination was that I’d announced company plans without the authority to do so. What I shared were items the product managers had told me it was OK to share previously. But I didn’t have official authorization, so it didn’t count.

The final conversation in which I was fired still bugs me. Basically it boiled down to me needing official written approval for every thing I said on the forums. Each individual post. Which makes no damn sense. If you have someone posting on forums like that you can’t have them asking for approval on every post or they’ll never post anything. You can’t participate in a community if you’re too tied up in red tape. My feeling is that it reflected the shift in management. Sling’s original management got social media. They understood the value of the community and the give and take it required, and they were willing to risk a few slips because it was worth it. But EchoStar’s management was the opposite, they didn’t like the idea of anyone who wasn’t an official corporate mouthpiece saying anything to anyone. That’s evidenced by them subsequently buying out Sling Community for the express purpose of shutting it down and launching a highly censored, support-only board.

I remain convinced that if I’d made that post before the change in management things would’ve played out differently, and I don’t think I would’ve been terminated. But that’s alternate history and what happened happened and there is no changing it.

Losing the job at Sling hit me especially had because it was contending for position as my favorite job ever at that point. I loved what I was doing as a Beta Program Manager. At the time we had several cool projects going that I was involved in. I was mainly running betas for SlingPlayer Mobile, but I was also involved with the Slingbox PRO-HD, and I was looking forward to the iPhone and Android programs. I was working out of my home, and I got on great with my manager (whom I’m still in touch with and consider a friend – she actually came to me about working for her) and my colleagues. I loved the community of users on Sling Community and was glad to be part of it. I was considering moving back to California to work in the home office. And I’d just returned from working Sling’s booth at CES, which I thought had gone very well. I was riding high and thought things were going great.

So when I had the rug pulled out from underneath me I crashed pretty hard. Fortunately I was in an OK position financially to be able to make it until I found work and I found a new job pretty quickly due to the Small World Factor. The manager who hired me was someone I’d worked with back in 2001 at a different job when I was a consultant. Due to my unique name when he saw my resume hit his inbox he remembered me immediately and I got the job. When I applied I had no idea he was with the company I was applying to, let alone the manager for the position. That was just dumb luck.

The job was doing IT for a hosting company, but it meant working the night shift (11-8, midnight-9) and I had an hour commute each way. I also tended to end up putting in a lot of extra time, so I’d often be leaving work at noon. And I was the only night guy, so it was a fairly lonely, isolating job. So my work days were effectively longer and I was tired most of the time (the overnight shift is tough on the body and mind). The anger and frustration faded fairly quickly, but the depression set in for a long while. I pretty much fell off the net. I didn’t just stop blogging, I stopped reading blogs, web comics, LiveJournal, etc. My heart just wasn’t in it.

But there was more to it than just that. In one of the last posts I’d made I mentioned that’d I developed a problem with my left hand. I woke up one day at CES 2009 and the outside of my left hand was numb – the pinky, half of the ring finger, and the outer part of the hand down to the wrist were pins and needles. I figured I’d slept on it wrong, but by the end of the day it wasn’t any better. Nor the next day. Nor the next. In fact, it got worse. I lost an increasing amount of sensation and motor control over those fingers. And the muscles started to atrophy, you could see the difference in my hands. I spent months bouncing between my doctor and various specialists until I was referred to a hand and arm clinic and the doctor there recognized the problem instantly.

The ulnar nerve is the nerve that gives you your ‘funny bone’. It runs from the neck down the outside of the arm, around the outside of the elbow, and down to the hand. It carries the signals for the portion of the hand I was having trouble with. Somehow the sheath around the nerve had become irritated and inflamed, and was putting pressure on the nerve. The problem is this has negative feedback. The inflammation pinches the nerve, which means it can’t slide in the sheath and every time you bend your arm it tugs on the nerve and irritates it and the surrounding tissue. Which makes it inflamed. Which pinches the nerve. Etc.

We tried braces and anti-inflammatories, but it didn’t heal on its own. It caused problems with my typing, and there was some pain, so I saved most of my typing for work. Since I wasn’t feeling all that great about being online to start with, having physical problems typing was just the icing on the cake and was more than enough to keep me away. I eventually had surgery at the end of October, 2009. An ulnar nerve translocation, I believe it is called. Basically they flayed my arm open at the elbow and moved my ulnar nerve from the outside of the elbow to the inside. So now when I bend my arm the nerve isn’t stretched – it is on the inside of the curve not the outside. I was in a case for a little while and I had to take it easy even after that. Then it many months for the nerve to slowly heal on its own, now that the irritation was removed. And I have an awesome scar.

We never did figure out what the exact cause was, but the primary suspect is simple – I lean on that arm. I’m a big guy – 6’6″ tall and, frankly, carry a bit too much weight – around 400#. (When I was in decent shape I was still around 300#. I’m pretty broadly built.) This means most of the world is too small for me – desks, chairs, tables, cars, etc. I’m right handed, so what I find I do, unconsciously, is tuck my left arm across my body as I lean forward. That puts a lot of pressure on my arm, especially at the elbow, as it ends up taking the weight of my torso. I try not to do it, but if I don’t actively think about it I find myself just naturally in that position. We figured it was just a cumulative thing. I leaned on it long enough and eventually it just had too much and got inflamed. And once it was irritated enough the negative feedback loop started. I didn’t feel anything until things hit the tipping point and my hand went numb. By then things were pretty bad.

I’m not back to 100%, and I probably never will be, but I’m at least 95%, maybe more. I have most of the feeling back in my hand and nearly all of the fine control. Typing is back to the way it used to be and there is no more pain. I have a very faint numbness tingle which seems to increase when I’m fatigued, but it is a big improvement over the dead meat feeling I had when it was at its worst. I was constantly jamming my fingers on things because I had no sense of where those two fingers were, especially the pinky.

I kind of lucked out having gotten into a relationship with a nurse just six weeks before my surgery. She was an incredible help in dealing with the recovery. Especially the first days. I had a nerve block as part of the surgery and my arm was completely dead from the shoulder down, and in a cast. No feeling, no control. It just swung around in the sling. Big fun. Without her around to help me out I’m not sure how I would’ve managed.

So all of these things added up to making 2009 a real banner year for me. And I really didn’t feel much like doing anything, let alone blogging. Even if I wanted to it would’ve been hard for me.

It took a while for that feeling to fade and to slowly start reading a few blogs, then some more, getting more active on Facebook (where most of my friends had shifted from LJ while I was out of the loop), etc. I had my first date with my now-fiancee on September 12, 2009 (just before my surgery, as I said above), and that relationship certainly helped improve my life and outlook overall. Of course, I live in Worcester and she lived in Boston which is an hour away, but fortunately not too far from where I worked. She’s a nurse and was also doing a fair bit of night shifts at the time, so we were able to meet up before/after our shifts, etc.

Though it did mean that what little time I had outside of work just shrank, since if I had the option of being with her or surfing around the net reading blogs… well, I’m a geek but I’m not that much of a geek. Not a hard decision to make.

I worked that job for about a year, until early 2010 when an opportunity with F5 networks fell into my lap. The brother of one of my best friends from college worked there and they were looking for someone with my skill set on the east coast. My friend’s brother mentioned it to him, and he thought of me. I wasn’t actively looking at the time, but it sounded like a great gig, so I applied. Long story short, I got the job. Not to knock the company I was working for, but it meant better pay, better benefits, no more commute (working from home again), and the work is much more stimulating for me than data center IT. It just suits me better and I’m better at it. I started my new job on 2/28/10.

It is a senior level position so there was a steep learning curve and a lot of time spent building my skills with the products and getting comfortable for myself – I tend to be pretty demanding of myself professionally. Between six weeks in Seattle for training, and then a few months of learning and adjustment on the job, as well as maintaining my relationship, well, it didn’t leave a lot of time. But my overall mood improved, and my energy levels were much better being off the night shift. So my online activities picked up and I started reading more blogs again, leaving comments, etc. And I started to get the itch to blog again myself. I even started making occasional comments about it here and there.

But I went through the rest of 2010 without really making real moves to get the blog going again. I was focused on my new job and my new relationship. In early September she moved in with me, which was good timing since I’d ordered a ring and I proposed to her on September 12, 2010 – the anniversary of our first date. (Yes, Monday was the anniversary of our engagement, the wedding is February 4, 2012.) I was increasingly active online, mostly on Twitter and Facebook, and also reading and commenting on a number of blogs again. But it was mostly inertia. I’d been out of blogging for so long at that point that I didn’t have the groove. And everything felt out of date, which was discouraging. But I would mention it from time to time and was starting to poke at things behind the scenes by the end of the year.

Come January 2011 and I was seriously thinking of relaunching the blog. I registered giz.lv to use as a custom bit.ly short domain. I knew I wanted to relaunch with a big update to get with the times – Facebook and Twitter integration, the custom short domain, etc. The problem was finding the time to do all the back end work. I didn’t want to promise anything until I knew I had things in a good condition to start over. So I spent the next few months researching software options, updating things on the server, etc. And then there was the final push to upgrade all the software, remove old plugins, add new ones, setup the links with Facebook, Twitter, and LiveJournal, update, or recreate, my affiliate accounts, and, most important of all, create the new look and feel for the site. While I liked the old look back when I created it, I didn’t think it had aged well and I really wanted something a lot more modern looking.

It was really a matter of finding, or making, the time to do all the grunt work that it takes to setup a blog. It is all the grunt work you don’t want to do but have to in order to get to the fun part – actually blogging. Not that blogging itself isn’t work, but it is a different kind of work.

I still have a lot to do. There are pages on this site with old info that need updating – the TiVo Resources, Support Gizmo Lovers, etc. Lots of broken links to fix (I’ve already fixed a few thousand, around 600 left now…) and other things to clean up. But I’m doing that bit by bit and it’ll get done in time.

In the end I’m almost happy that I got fired when I did. Sling Media has kind of gone downhill, IMHO, under EchoStar’s rule. No new boxes since the PRO-HD. The SlingCatcher came and went. The SOLO-HD that was talked about never happened, nor did the ‘God Box’ combo Slingbox/SlingCatcher. The SlingLoaded products are around but aren’t doing much. EchoStar’s MSO push hasn’t gotten very far. They have continued to update the clients, and I’m glad to see the progress made on the iOS and Android versions, as well as the upcoming clients for Google TV and Boxee. I was arguing for that kind of thing instead of the SlingCatcher back when I worked there. (But that’s maybe another post someday.)

A number of the people I really enjoyed working with left Sling after I was booted, including my manager. I probably would’ve bailed when she did anyway, since she was a big part of why I took the job in the first place. Other people I’ve talked to have indicated that the overall mood and morale isn’t what it used to be. If I had still been at Sling when the F5 opportunity came up I don’t know that I would’ve pursued it. Since I did enjoy working for Sling overall I don’t know that I would’ve felt any desire to apply anywhere else. I really can’t say, since I don’t know what my trajectory would’ve been.

In any case, the fact that I was out of Sling and working a job that I wasn’t really a good fit for put me in a position where I was open to new opportunities. And F5 is, hands down, the best place I’ve ever worked, and this is the best job I’ve ever had. I love the product, I love the people, and I love the work I do. It has its ups and downs, like any job, but most days I have no aversion to going to work. Not that I have a long commute – down the stairs from the bedroom. Which is a nice perk in itself, of course. And even though I work from home I feel less isolated than I did working the night shift in an office. I have daily calls with my team, email, Communicator, etc. I may be on the other side of the country from most of the team, who are in Seattle, but we interact regularly. The physical distance is less isolating than the temporal distance of being on the opposite shift from everyone else.

So things worked out in the end. I got fired, but a year later I landed what seems to be the perfect job for me. I’ve met a wonderful woman who shares my home and we’re engaged to be married. (And she’s motivated me to improve my home – new furniture, etc. Which I actually appreciate.) My health has improved. And my overall attitude and mood is much improved from 2009. I really don’t have much to complain about these days. My fiancee kept encouraging me to get back into blogging. She could tell it was something I enjoyed and missed, but that I needed a bit of nudging to overcome the inertia and finally get on with it again. So I owe her for that.

I’m happy to be blogging again. It feels like a slow slog sometimes, trying to rebuild my audience, but it seems to be happening slowly but surely. It feels a lot like launching the blog did in the first place, though there were a handful of diehards who stuck around through the hiatus. And I’m thankful for that. I’m still kind of finding my footing again, getting my groove back. The more I blog the easier it flows. So I think it is coming back to me. And I’ve gotten used to the changes in the tools I’m using. I have to say things are easier now than the were in 2009. Lots of improvements to WordPress and the plugins I’m using.

I hope you enjoy the new look & feel of the site, as well as the new content. And if you’ve read this whole post… wow, thanks.

So there you have it. I may have forgotten to include something here and there, but I think this is way too long already and it covers the important bits. I’m glad to have all of that behind me now and I hope the future is as bright as the present.

I like your review on Thor. I can’t wait to see this movie again because I give this movie 4 out of 5 stars. Personally I think that Thor is one of the best movies to have come out lately. If you haven’t seen it you definitely should. One way you can see it is by using Blockbuster Online. As a DISH Network customer and employee I can tell you that right now if you switch to DISH Network you can get Blockbuster Online FREE for 3 months! There are over 100,000 titles to choose from and TV shows and games you can get through the mail. Plus you can get 5 in-store exchanges per month with no due dates or late fees. More info online at [SPAM URL DELETED]

I deleted the comment, so don’t bother checking the post for it. It is clearly spam – there was no review in the post he made the comment on. This is boilerplate text slapped up based on some keywords. I’m not including the full URL because I’m not going to give a spammer the satisfaction, but it was to a signup page for DISH Network giving you three months of Blockbuster, and it included the query string “WT.mc_id=ECM_MKTG_DISH_BLOG_0611_A9Post&WT.mc_ev=click” which looks like a marketing program tracking code to me. (Companies use this to measure how well a specific form of marketing is working. In this case how many people sign up via a link with this code, and so how effective the spamming is.)

The comment was made by Robert Paulsen (bob.in.use@*****.com) from 204.76.128.217 on 09/15/11 01:27 PM. I’m tempted to post the email openly, but I won’t sink to that level. If you look at his Disqus comment history it is packed with comments on various blogs pimping DISH Network and related services. If you plug that IP address into WHOIS you get: Dish Network Corporation DISHNETWORK-NET (NET-204-76-128-0-1) 204.76.128.0 – 204.76.133.255. And it traceroutes back to their ISP’s gateway into EchoStar: ECHOSTAR-SA.edge1.Denver1.Level3.net. So this comment was made from an IP controlled by Dish Network.

This isn’t the first user to leave a spam comment like this extolling DISH Network or one of their affiliates. At first I just deleted them, banned the user from commenting, and moved on. But it started to form a pattern in my mind, and one of the users, Alison Ranon, even used her dishnetwork.com email address for Disqus, and she’s commented elsewhere as well. Unfortunately, since I’ve deleted those past comments, I can’t go back now and check the IPs on those as well. But I did look at the comment histories for a few of them before they were deleted and they were similar to this one – comment after comment extolling the virtues of Dish on blogs across the net. And generally claiming to be a Dish Network employee.

I admit there is an outside chance that this is some elaborate setup to tar Dish, but I strongly doubt it. I think there are two likely scenarios:
1. Dish Network is officially encouraging employees to spam blogs, and probably other social media outlets, to promote their goods and services. At best perhaps they’re encouraging them to do the promotion and some of the employees are taking it too far. This would be the more evil of the two.

2. There is some indirect incentive to employees to do this. Perhaps the tracking codes are unique, like an affiliate program, and they get compensated for signing people up via their links. That would reward spamming activity as there is little penalty unless Dish enforced some kind of rule against using the links in such a manner. This is more good intentions gone wrong due to human nature.

I’d like to think it is the second one and Dish isn’t doing something as evil as deliberately sending people out to spam the net. But still, it isn’t good for Dish to have employees spamming in their name.

Let me be perfectly clear, I don’t have an issue with employees leaving appropriate comments in which they promote their companies products. Like when I used to work for Sling Media, sometimes I’d see someone post about wishing they could watch a show while on the road, etc., and I’d comment that they might want to look into the Slingbox. If I posted something about satellite TV and a Dish employee wanted to offer their opinion, or present some facts, etc., that’s cool, I welcome it. If I post about video rental services and there is a legitimate hook to respond with a Blockbuster-related comment, go for it. (By legitimate I mean you can’t just comment about Blockbuster because someone mentions Netflix, etc. But if the post, for example, questions what alternative services offer then a reply of “Well, Blockbuster does X” is legitimate. Just use common sense.)

But I think it can be taken too far, and when it is clearly a boilerplate comment that has only the most tenuous relationship to the post, that’s spam, no question. Robert seems to have spent some time commenting on random zombie-related posts across the net, trying to tie it into AMC’s The Walking Dead and how Dish carries AMC HD but DirecTV doesn’t. The comments stink more than the rotting flesh of the zombies. His comments go back to March, and remember that these are just the comments on blogs using Disqus for commenting. Who knows how many other blogs he commented on.

For you other bloggers, are you getting comments like this as well? You might keep a closer eye on the IPs they’re coming from. I’d love to hear what you’re seeing.

Anyone from Dish want to comment on this? Either in a public comment or directly to me, feel free.

As for myself, I’m going to keep a closer eye on my spam comments and their sources and will use public shaming when appropriate.

Sorry about that.

Thanks to Josh G for pointing out the glitch. I appreciate it when readers let me know if there is an issue, I don’t always see it myself.

One of the hardest things about restarting the blog after such a long hiatus is rebuilding the audience. It’s not quite as hard as launching a blog from scratch, but it isn’t like you can jump back in and just pick up and everyone comes running back. I’m hopeful that syndication deals like these will help expose a new audience to Gizmo Lovers, and maybe some of them will come over and stick around for more.

I’ve added a Kindle chicklet to the grouping at the right as well:

Am I missing your favorite platform? And before anyone says Google+, they still haven’t allowed us Google Apps users in. When they do I do intend to look into the possibility of setting up a Gizmo Lovers page like I have on Facebook.

BTW, for the handful of you who might be thinking “Weren’t you there already?” Yes, kind of. Way back in 2007, when the Kindle first launched, I signed up the then TiVo Lovers and it has been there ever since. But this was before Amazon launched a self-publishing platform, so I have no access or control over that account. (The setup process back then involved emailing Word Docs back and forth!) They have a self-publishing portal now, which I’ve used to setup the new account, and I’ve asked them to remove the old product from their site. They’re going to invite any existing subscribers to migrate, then shut it down.

I’ve been increasingly missing blogging, and I slowly started getting things together for a relaunch several months ago. I decided that if I was going to start blogging again, first I wanted to make some changes, as well as adapt to the changes in online trends from the past few years – like social networking. So there are a few things I wanted to point out.

First, and most obvious, I’ve upgraded most of the software – new version of WordPress, new plugins, etc. I also took the opportunity to create a new theme for the site, based on the ‘TwentyTen’ default theme. I know a number of readers disliked the old green-on-black look, so I hope the new minimalist look is more to everyone’s liking. I’ve also upgraded to a new caching system, W3 Total Cache, to improve performance, and I’ve installed WPTouch to provide a better mobile version of the site.

One of the more notable changes is that I’ve switched to using Disqus for commenting. I felt that it was a more powerful system, and it is used by large sites such as Engadget, but also smaller sites – like this one. But it gives you one place to manage your comments from multiple sites, track other users you want to follow, etc. A small tip – all of the old site comments were imported into Disqus. If you have a Disqus account I discovered you can ‘claim’ them by switching your Disqus account email to whatever email you used on the comments. Once linked they’ll stick with your account even if you change the email again.

Gizmo Lovers has also joined the modern world of social media, and is represented on Facebook and Twitter. (We need 16 more followers on Facebook before they’ll let me have a nice short link.) New posts made on the site will automatically be mirrored to both, if you prefer to follow the site that way. (The twitter feed at the bottom of the site is my personal account. Mirroring the site’s Tweets on the site seemed kind of redundant.) Of course, the RSS Feed is still around. You may also notice that Gizmo Lovers has a custom short link URL now too – giz.lv, supported by Bit.ly Pro. I registered that several months ago when I first got serious about relaunching, all the cool kids are doing it.

Since I stopped posting, the TiVo Lovers LiveJournal community has gotten pretty quiet. I used to manually cross-post TiVo-related posts to the community, but I won’t be doing that any more. Instead I’ll be letting the software do it for me! I only intend to cross-post TiVo-related posts to the LJ community though, not all posts, to remain within the intended purpose of the community. (I may cross-post administrative posts, like this one, from time to time.) If you’re one of the handful of people still using LJ, and you want to see all the posts, there is still the ‘tivolovers-blog’ RSS feed account. Yes, it dates back to when the blog was TiVoLovers.com, before the switch to GizmoLovers.com.

Of course, there always has to be a glitch. One of the changes that occurred during the hiatus was that I migrated my domains over to Google Apps. Which means I’ve basically retired my old Gmail.com personal address, and migrated all of the various Google services I use to my Google Apps account. One of the last things I did before making my first public post was to open a new AdSense account under my Google Apps account. Unfortunately Google doesn’t provide a simple way to migrate an AdSense account. It is a real grab bag depending on which service you want to migrate, and AdSense is probably the worst.

When I saw it was active I switched all of the ad blocks on the site over to the new account, and started posting. Of course, just a couple of days later Google disabled the new account because it duplicated the old account. So now the AdSense ads on the site aren’t working. I’ve jumped through more hoops, closing my old account completely and that is supposed to allow them to re-enable the new account, but I’m still waiting on that. So that’s why you may see weird yellow-ish boxes on the site right now – those are artifacts of the missing ads. (I’m not going to complain if you use an ad blocker, but it would be nice to have some return from the site…) Hopefully Google will re-enable the account soon.

Aside from that, I’d love some feedback on the new site. Especially if you have any problems with it. Use the contact form to drop me a line. And if you are having problems, please include as many details as you can – platform (Windows, Mac OS, Android, etc.) – including version, browser – also including version, the nature of the problem (any specific error messages would help), etc. There have been a lot of changes under the covers, so I expect there may be some kinks to work out.

I still have some work to do. I plan to overhaul a lot of the existing content. A number of the pages are stale, a lot changes in two years. I’ll be working on that bit by bit.

Oh, and I probably should say one thing – I don’t plan to post as much as I did before the hiatus. I expect to be posting fairly regularly, but a lot has changed in the past couple of years and I don’t expect to be able to spend the hours a day I used to on research and posting. I’ll cover that more in my ‘what happened’ post when I make it, but I will say that one of the big changes that happened during the hiatus is that I’m currently engaged to be married, the wedding is slated for February. So life is a bit different now, in a very good way.

To those of you who stuck it out, thanks for hanging in there. And for those of you who may be reading for the first time, welcome, and I hope you find the site worth your time.

Check one… check one… sibilance… sibilance…

Sound good in the back? Great.

So, I see some of you are still here from the last show. That was nearly a year ago, thanks for sticking around. As you can see we’re cleaning up the place, modernizing a bit, and we hope to kick off a new tour soon. Thanks for your patience…

(Translation: I finally decided to update the site and give blogging another go. I’m still tweaking things, but I think I’m getting pretty close to having things how I want them before I start up again. And this is kind of a test post to make sure everything is working – like the new Twitter, Facebook, and LiveJournal cross-posting setup.)

So, you may have noticed that things have been pretty quiet around here for the past couple of months. I’ve received a few inquiries about just what’s going on and if I’d ever resume posting, etc. The short answer is yes, and I’m going to be trying to get back into the swing of things now, though it may take a little while to get back to speed.

What happened? Well, as I posted back in January, I’m having some problems with my left hand. Since that post I have had an EMG, and it confirmed what my doctor suspected all along – something is wrong with the ulnar nerve. My left pinky and ring finger, and part of the hand, are still numb. But it has been a few months and I’m adapting to it, so typing isn’t the struggle it was at first. I’m waiting for a neurology appointment and I’m still hopeful the issue can be fixed in the end.

But that was just the first in a chain of events. I posted that on January 20th, and my blogging was a bit lighter in the days that followed as I was still struggling with typing and most of what I could manage was devoted to work. However, that soon changed – I lost my job with Sling Media on February 2nd. The short version is that I was participating in discussions at SlingCommunity.com and I posted something I didn’t think was an issue in the context of the thread, and it probably would’ve been nothing – just a small post in a discussion forum. Except it got picked up by a popular blog (which I won’t name since I don’t really blame them, as a blogger I’ve done similar things in the past) and excerpted out of context, and from there a bunch of other blogs picked it up, and before I knew it it was a major issue for management – and as a result I lost my job. I was completely blindsided by this, and I’m still out of work and trying to find a new position. I hope I can do so soon, I really can’t remain unemployed for long financially. (BTW, my resume is here.)

This was a pretty big punch in the gut, and, honestly, it put me into a pretty bad depression. Believe it or not, this is the first time I’ve lost a job. I’ve been laid off a couple of times, but in those cases it was a company-wide thing and there were huge signs that it was coming, so it was expected and I was ready. In this case I was completely unprepared for it. I really loved working for Sling, loved the people there, and believed in the products, so it was very hard to have that end. My job with Sling was my favorite job, ever, and it will be very hard to find anything like it again. I really saw myself working there for a long time. I’m also the kind of person who really puts my all into my job, and I invest a lot of myself in my work. A good deal of my self-identity tends to stem from my work and my accomplishments therein. So my emotional reaction to losing the job was as if someone I cared for had died – it hit me pretty hard. And with the economy as it is, it is not a good time to be looking, so that’s amped up the stress a bit.

The timing was also bad because I had a previously planned trip to visit my family from 2/14 to 3/1. I would’ve been blogging less, if at all, during that trip anyway as it was a vacation and time to visit my folks. But it also meant I couldn’t really start looking for a new position right away as I would not be able to interview, let alone start, until after the trip. And, honestly, the depressed mood I was in was not conducive to constructive job hunting anyway. I just didn’t have it in me to keep blogging during that time, my head was elsewhere. And I was still angry and frustrated over losing my job, so I didn’t really trust myself to post about it in that state. I tried to keep participating in Sling Community for a short time, but I realized it was like salting the wound at the time and it was better to walk away, at least for now. I still care about the user community, so I may jump back in once things are more settled.

The upside was that I forced myself to pretty much ignore everything in my life for a couple of weeks and enjoy the time with my folks in Florida. We also took a few days to go up to Walt Disney World, and if you want a place to ignore life, you could do worse than Disney. So the trip gave me some time and distance from everything else, which is also why I deliberately didn’t do anything related to tech, blogging, or work. (Well, except for my usual annual IT service for my folk’s PCs, but that’s family. And I could do that in my sleep.) After returning home on 3/2 of course I had a number of things to deal with – doctors, unemployment paperwork, COBRA, starting to look for a new position in earnest, and just generally pick up my life. I’m pretty much back on top of things now and my mood is a lot better, though not quite fully recovered, so I’m picking up the blogging reigns as well.

I’ve been largely out of the loop – I completely stopped reading blogs as well as posting. I needed a break from things to deal with everything – but I’ve been saving emails and the like to work my way through. Right now finding a new job is my first priority, but I miss blogging and I figure it’ll probably be good for me to keep my brain in shape anyway.

Oh, and I’m not too proud to beg – since I’m unemployed even a little bit helps, so if you’re planning to make any purchases using the site’s affiliate links will provide a little something.

Thanks again for sticking with me through the drought, and I hope to be back to my old post volume soon. I wish I could make a living doing this, but that’s not going to happen real soon. I’m the meantime, wish me luck.

So typing is difficult, frustrating, and at times painful. Since I have to do a lot of typing for work, and work is more important (sorry, but it pays the bills), I’ve been focused mainly on that and not doing a lot of additional typing. I do have additional items from CES I want to cover, for example I talked to HAVA on the last day, and I will try to get to it soon. I’m slowly getting a bit better at typing with my gimpy left hand as I get more practice.

As far as I know I didn’t do anything to cause this. It just happened all of a sudden the Wednesday before CES opened. Maybe I slept on it wrong or something, I have no idea. It wasn’t as bad at first and I thought it might go away, but the more I tried to keep working normally the more it seemed to be aggravated.

So my apologies for the lack of posts lately, I’m hoping to get back to normal once this is fixed. Presuming it can be fixed of course and isn’t permanent, which I’m rather hoping it isn’t.

Affiliate programs vary, some offer a percentage of the sale to the site, others have a flat rate depending on what is sold. It may be pennies, but those pennies can add up. But you pay the same price you would’ve paid without using the affiliate link, and you help support the site – two birds with one stone, compounding your giving. It is a win-win situation.

So, when you go online to make your purchases, start at a site you enjoy and use their links, especially the smaller sites that don’t have a corporate parent to back them. Personally I tend to throw my referrals to sites like TiVo Blog or one of the many web comics I enjoy. So, while I do appreciate the support, I’m really hoping that you’ll take the opportunity to support any site or blog by using their affiliate links. Hopefully year-round, but especially at this time of year when so many purchases will be made. Pick a site, or spread it around – you have an opportunity to help sites you enjoy, and best of all it doesn’t cost you anything. Year round whenever I buy something online (which is quite often) I make an effort to use affiliate links from the sites I read regularly.

Happy Holidays, and thank you!

I can’t express how much I disagree with the very notion of California Proposition 8. I regret that I haven’t moved to CA yet so I could be able to vote NO on 8. (I’ll be moving to CA (again) at some point now that my job is based there.)

I’ve added their domain to my ad filters, but that can take a few hours to take effect. I just hope that, if you live in CA, you’ll be voting NO on 8 tomorrow. But, in general, even if we don’t agree, I hope you’ll be voting tomorrow. (Yeah, presuming you live in the US, are eligible to vote, etc… pedants. )

Comments are off on this one since I really don’t feel like having a political discussion on this blog. I wouldn’t have mentioned it if not for the ads and not wanting anyone to think I wanted them on this site.

As always, let me know if you spot a problem.

Example templates:

YouTube:
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BlipTV:
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Brightcove:
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I also finally got around to switching to Firefox 3 yesterday. I’d kept using Firefox 2 because of some of the browser add-ons I prefer not yet being supported on FF3. But they flipped the switch to start prompting FF2 users to upgrade, and I decided enough of the add-ons were now available to make the jump.

• Adblock Plus 0.7.5.5
• BugMeNot 2.0
• ColorZilla 1.9
• FirefoxView 1.0
• Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer 2.1.0.12
• FoxyTunes 3.0.4
• Google Gears 0.4.15.0
• Google Toolbar for Firefox 3.1.20080730W
• Html Validator 0.8.5.2
• IE View Lite 1.3.3
• Image Zoom 0.3.1
• InfoLister 0.10
• JavaScript Debugger 0.9.87.4
• Linkification 1.3.5
• Linky 2.7.1
• Live HTTP Headers 0.14
• MR Tech Link Wrapper 2.2.1
• Plain Text to Link 1.5.20080618
• Tab Mix Plus 0.3.7pre.080816
• Tweak Network 1.3
• View Cookies 1.7
• Web Developer 1.1.6

Unfortunately it looks like two of my favorite Firefox extensions are gone for good – Tabbrowser Preferences and Google Browser Sync. Tabbrowser Preferences was last updated in 2006 and it looks like development is dead and it won’t be updated for FF3. I’m trying out Tab Mix Plus as a replacement, and it seems to do a decent job, but if anyone has a suggestion for a better add-on to replace Tabbrowser Preferences I’d love to hear it.

And I was upset to find that Google has discontinued Google Browser Sync. If you currently have it installed you can continue using it through 2008, but you can no longer download the add-on and it wasn’t updated for FF3. This is the biggest loss for me, I made constant use of this. I loved being able to close FF and re-open it later with my existing session even moving from one machine to another. And keeping everything in sync – passwords, bookmarks, etc. I was thrilled back when it came out because it finally gave me something to match the old Roaming support in Netscape 4.7.

So far I haven’t found a replacement for it. I’m using Foxmarks for bookmark sync and backup, but it only does bookmarks. Tab Mix Plus has some session persistence, but only on the same machine. I checked out Mozilla Weave but it is in the very early stages, and right now they aren’t accepting any more users anyway. Google has turned over the code via Google Code so someone may resurrect it in a new form. But in the meantime I’d love to hear there is a good replacement out there.

This was an especially bad thing to find out because during the upgrade I lost my current bookmarks and they reverted to a set many months old. Back when FF3 was in beta I’d installed it alongside FF2 and it imported my bookmarks. I’d since removed the FF3 beta from my system. But apparently the imported bookmarks lingered, and when I upgraded from FF2 to FF3 yesterday instead of importing my FF2 bookmarks it just used the old FF3 set, yet it seems to have completely removed any trace of my FF2 bookmarks from my system. So I’ve lost any new bookmarks I’ve added since then, and, of course, just last week I’d finally gotten around to cleaning up my bookmarks to delete a bunch and file them, and now all the junk is back and messy. Sure there is a nice copy stored in Google Browser Sync, but now I can’t get to them. Even if I reinstalled FF2 the add-on download is gone. (If anyone knows where I can get the XPI to install it, that’d be great.)

In general FF3 is a nice upgrade, despite the troubles, though I’m really not seeing what is so awesome about the ‘awesome bar’ (as some call the URL/Location bar in FF3). Even in FF2 I disliked the way it’d suggest pages from the history and I always lock that down to just pages I’ve actually typed – as below. If there are any other add-ons or configuration tweaks you think I just have to check out, let me know. Share your Firefox tips for everyone to see.

Some of the settings I tweak in about:config in FF3 (definitely not a comprehensive list):

After five years running at CES I’ve decided on two important guidelines:
1. Book early.
2. If the hotel isn’t on a monorail stop, I’m not interested. (Seriously, since the monorail opened things are much better. Best way to get around.)

As you might have guessed, I just got around to registering for CES 2009 and booking my hotel. Once again I’m at the Sahara. Not the swankiest joint in Vegas, but it is on the monorail (and conveniently the other direction from the LVCC than most of the other hotels, which means most people are trying to pack into trains going the other way), the rooms are fine for me (I’m a man of simple needs – a clean room to crash in), and it is inexpensive. I’ve stayed at the Sahara the past couple of years. The Imperial Palace is also on a monorail stop and cheap, and I stayed there a few years ago, but frankly it was kind of nasty. The hallway carpeting was sticky and there was a funky odor. Ick.

This time around I’ve registered as Press/Blogger, though I have to see if Gizmo Lovers passes muster and they accept me. We’re no Engadget or Gizmodo, but I’d like to think we qualify. I’d like to be able to attend some of the press-only events that I couldn’t get into last year.

I’m looking forward to covering CES once again in January.