A few weeks ago at lunch I dropped my beloved iPhone 4 and shattered the back side glass. Fortunately I already knew the cost to replace it, as I had just been to the Apple Store the previous weekend with a friend who committed the same act of violence against his phone.

At $29 I thought he got away cheap – but I didn’t understand why my friend fabricated a ridiculous story about how the glass shattered on his phone. Later he told me it was to try to get sympathy from the Genius in order to replace the glass for free. Of course this lowered my opinion of him (not the lie, the fact that it was a terrible lie) and I knew it wasn’t going to work for me.

After recovering from my phone-dropped-glass-shattered induced heart attack, I scheduled an appointment with the Genius Bar online & was served by the very same Genius as my friend:

“How did this happen?” he asked.

I replied, “I dropped it in a parking lot.”

At that moment it felt like you could hear a pin drop in the store. All of the surrounding Apple employees looked toward me in shock & awe, not because I dropped my phone – but because I told the truth.

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

~George Owell (or not)

Unbeknownst to me, a store manager was standing right behind me, came up to the service desk, and asked for more details about my phone tragedy. It seemed as if nobody ever told him “Yes, it’s my fault & it hit the pavement.” The manager took my phone with him to the back of the store & came back minutes later letting me know the glass was replaced and that the repair cost was on him.

Nothing more than the truth made it free.

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Friends of mine wouldn’t hesitate to call me a barbarian for shooting little woodland creatures, riding 4-wheelers, drinking Coors Lite, and maybe dipping. But, they also don’t fully understand the closeness to nature that hunters feel; traversing the earth, observing animals and plants, being out in the woods when it rains. They don’t quite understand what it’s like to camp outside, look up into a pitch black sky scattered with twinkling little stars, and breathe in the majesty that is our universe. But I don’t hold ignorance against them. Anyone who enjoys the outdoors is soon made aware by spending a weekend in the blind with me that it’s a give and take relationship with nature, and often times it takes my breath away.

Hunting is an exercise in self-reliance and survival, as well as it is on conservation. Whereas hunting does take the lives of animals for food, for those who respect nature and the circle of life, it is also a way to help control over population, and to become aware of the systemic value of life-cycles, and the role we all play in maintaining our planet.

Trust me, hunting for Cheez-Its at the supermarket isn’t the same as hunting your own food. The value you place on what you’ve caught and killed, cleaned and eaten is a lot more substantial than what you put on your Skinny Cow cheese wheels and crackers. It delves into the meaning of life and death, of resourcefulness and respectfulness. That’s why I hunt, and I challenge you to try it once or twice to gain a better appreciation for gathering your own food.

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If I could have three wishes, one of them would surely be 100% accurate voice recognition with every electronic device that I interact with. I don’t mind typing but given the choice, I would much prefer to speak my commands rather than have to type them into a keyboard or hammer them out on an iPhone or iPad.

Voice recognition is obviously in its infancy but it is becoming quite good considering the tools we have to work with. In fact this blog post is being dictated into an iPad with the headphones that come with the iPad and so far it has been 100% accurate. I agree it could get confusing for a computer to decipher commands if you’re in a crowded room or there is loud music playing in the background or any other number of situations that might not be applicable to voice recognition.

That said how nice would it be to wake up in the morning and say, “turn on shower”. Or if you’re laying in bed at night and you want the lights off, instead of getting up to walk across the room you say, “turn off the lights”. How about you say, “did I remember to lock the doors” and the computer says “no, the back door is unlocked, would you like me to lock it for you now”.

It almost sounds a little like being lazy on the surface but I think it goes much deeper than that if you really ponder the possibilities. Steve Jobs seemed to be headed in the right direction before his untimely passing and I suspect that in the not-too-distant future, keyboard will go the way of the eight track.

Imagine how much we would save on hand sanitizer and carpal tunnel syndrome treatments.

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A few running/biking buddies had already been using the Road ID, so I thought I’d take a look. Needless to say, the price point for their ID bracelets are more reasonable than a smaller metal chain type in some cases, and the information you can keep on them is enough that it offers essential information, but enough to allow EMTs or others to identify you and take action. Mine has my name, DOB,  city, state, and zip, loved ones and doctor’s contact information, and of course, the fact that I’m a type 1 diabetic. They also offer Road IDs in several wrist models, as well as some in ankle, shoe, and dogtag form. They also offer a low profile dog collar tag for Fido, which allows more information, and costs less than the PetSmart tag I bought for my dog at $19.99 that is already broken.

I wouldn’t be anywhere without my Road ID. I wear it even when I’m not playing sports or participating in outdoor activities. Check them out if you’re in the same boat I am, of if you think that keeping identification readily available in case of emergency is a good idea. Road ID

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When sending email using a server on someone else’s network the errors in your own mail client may be less than helpful, saying ‘Server not available’ or something similar, leading the investigation in the wrong direction: towards the server you are connecting to rather than your ISP or local network.

Luckily many servers nowadays will have an alternate port open for this purpose (since a spambot is connecting to an MX server instead of your outgoing server they are much less likely to attempt connections to an alternate port as well). This is often set to port 587 though technically any port could be used.

Assuming SSL is not required, to test whether you are able to connect to a mailserver on port 25 simply open a command prompt and type ‘telnet someserver.yourhost.com 25′ (replacing the hostname with whatever outgoing server is provided by your host):

C:\>telnet someserver.yourhost.com 25

220 someserver.yourhost.com (IMail 8.21 57484-4) NT-ESMTP Server X1

If the screen refreshes and you see an SMTP banner as above, then that port is open for you to connect to and the issue lies elsewhere.
If you know that this server is working for other people and the port is being blocked however, you’ll see a connection failure just as if the server is down or not responding:

C:\>telnet someserver.yourhost.com 25
Connecting To someserver.yourhost.com…Could not open connection to the host, on port 25: Connect failed

C:\>

Ask your email provider for an alternate port to connect to and any other relevant settings. Assuming SSL is not required you can test to this alternate port in the same way as above.

C:\>telnet someserver.yourhost.com 587

220 someserver.yourhost.com (IMail 8.21 57809-2) NT-ESMTP Server X1

Note: The telnet program is not installed by default on recent Windows operating systems though it can easily be installed through Programs and Features by selecting ‘Turn Windows features on or off’ and checking ‘Telnet Client’, then Ok.

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For years friends and colleagues have told me how great QuakeCon was, and that I should go. My reply? Not interested. But this year, for some reason, I decided to go. No, it wasn’t a bet.

What I saw when walking in was quite disappointing in contrast to the tales of epicness that surrounded talk of this convention in the past. A few gaming stations, some displays, and the Bawls energy drink vendor, that was about it. It was more intriguing to walk into the Hilton Anatole and see ancient Chinese relics and antiques.

Did I miss out? Was I all along denying the chance to see QuakeCon at its greatest? Of course, the nostalgia of Lan-parties, and memories of a once great game series known as Quake is still present. But by visit to QuakeCon 2011 was my first, and will surely be my last, in memory of this once “stated” great convention.

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