geekiness
TomTom Sees Me, And Raises
The whole sordid story: Goodbye, TomTom, and Good Riddance | TomTom Sees Me, And Raises This may actually become a customer service blog post series to rival the epic scope of my classic UPC iParcel tale. (To fully appreciate this current post, read the previous one about TomTom first.) As a follow-up to the tragedy […]
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Goodbye, TomTom, and Good Riddance
The whole sordid story: Goodbye, TomTom, and Good Riddance | TomTom Sees Me, And Raises This may actually become a customer service blog post series to rival the epic scope of my classic UPC iParcel tale. (To fully appreciate this current post, read the previous one about TomTom first.) After twenty-two years of continuous, loyal, […]
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Lightailing Review (**): Beautiful, But Disappointing
UPDATE: Lightailing has updated their product page to include both a clickable link to the product reviews, and my own review. This prompted me to update this post to include only my product review. Suppliers should <em>never</em> lie. Ever. And fake or suppressed reviews? Those are lies. I’m basically a kid with extra decades on the […]
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The Rise of Skywalker, The Fall of Abrams
Meh. (Minor spoilerettes ahead.) Much like The Force Awakens, as a movie, and even as a Star Wars movie, it’s hard to find fault with how Skywalker rises. Granted, J.J. Abrams seems terrified of showing any emotion, judging by the way he cuts off any meaningful exchange before it finds too much depth. And–again like […]
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How Shazam Worked Before Shazam
Last week, while waiting for my train, I heard a song that I just had to identify. I held up my phone, tapped Shazam, and in seconds, I knew it was Music Box Dancer by Frank Mills. In an seemingly unrelated thread of my life, I decided that I wanted to learn to play the little […]
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The Excel Features We’ve Waited 25 Years For
Two new Microsoft Excel features have a good chance of becoming the most celebrated innovations in Excel history. No, not the 3D models that Office now includes. Nor any new calculation functions, charting features, or modelling extravaganzas.As a matter of fact, nothing at all about the content of Excel workbooks. I’m merely talking GUI and usability. […]
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Reset Buttons Are Evil
Dear web designers, Can you please STOP ADDING RESET BUTTONS to your forms? There hasn’t been a single user in the entire history of the interwebs who filled out a web form, and then went, “O wait, all of that isn’t right, I’ve entered the wrong information! What to do, what to do, but pull […]
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Dropbox And Boxifier: What A Team!
Full disclosure: I’m off Dropbox, and as a sad result, also off Boxifier. They still make a great tag team; that part of the below blog post stands. But recently, Dropbox announced that they would increase my annual fee by 20% for doubling my storage to 2TB (while I used only about 10% of the […]
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A Guide to Solving Rubik’s Cube
Blast from the past: my not-quite-eight-year-old son suddenly wanted to own a Rubik’s Cube. A couple of his classmates had one, and he was fascinated with the colorful 3D puzzle. I used to own a bunch myself, and had a method of solving the thing memorized from a convenient little booklet. Unfortunately, we had recently […]
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A password for my password
Underwear? Check! Toothbrush? Check! Dutch cheeses and beers? Check! Microsoft Surface for the required writing and critiquing? Check! This morning at nine, my checklist was already complete for the tenth anniversary edition of the Villa Diodati Expat Writers Workshop. My suitcase waited by the door; I’d even put my coat within reach. I’d even checked my […]
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