shahine.com/omar/

I’ve written in the past about how badly behaved applications pollute user space with clutter.

Well it seems that a number of apps are never going to “do the right thing” so I’ve devised an effective solution.

I make the folder/files hidden.

This has the effect of reducing the annoyance, and making me feel better .

I’ve done this for a number of folders, some annoying and some useful that I just don’t need access to (but still like in my Documents folder since FolderShare syncs it to all my computers)

I have been a happy customer of American Airlines for over a decade. It’s been my preferred carrier of choice. I’ve flown them so much, that I’ve achieved Lifetime Gold Status by earning 1,000,000 miles in about 7 years of flying and buying stuff on my Citibank Credit Card.

And my loyalty is nothing compared to the folks who achieve Lifetime Platinum (2,000,000 miles) or qualify for Executive Platinum each year (100,000 miles but in seat).

But this morning I too awoke to a story of a disabled woman who had to physically go to the airport with her 7 grandchildren because American would not re-route her over the phone.

The NPR story is just a testament to the pain some folks are experiencing.

"They said that we had to come here to the airport to get everything straightened out, that they wouldn't do it over the phone," she says. Carter's flight to Austin, Texas, was canceled Wednesday. She's sitting in a wheelchair, with her infant, 2-year-old and 4-year-old grandchildren all hitching a ride.

"Even when I told them I was handicapped, and I said my daughter's going to have to come and she has seven kids, a newborn baby, she said she was really sorry but that was all they could do," says Carter, one of tens of thousands of passengers that American Airlines has been apologizing to this week.

This brought chills to my spine and vivid memories of how Alaska Airlines abandoned us in Mexico back in January.

Jeff Jarvis believes we’ve reached a tipping point. I think I’d agree.

You simply can’t treat people this way and survive. We all hate the airlines. We hate the experience on the plane and in the airport. We should fear for our safety, given American’s shoddy (and, one wonders, fraudulent) maintenance work. (As the Times said this morning, at least the FAA is doing its job.) The airlines never see themselves as our advocates, friends, servers; no, they are our prison wardens and enemies as they fight down legislation that mandates they should give us the crudest amenities a prisoner would get: clean water, air, and a toilet. The economics of the industry as it is being run today are unsustainable. And apart from the all-business-class airlines I try to fly every time I can (Eos, Silverjet, and there are more coming), there is not one visible bit of innovation — not one attempt to get out of this mess — visible in the industry.

This is borderline criminal on the part of the airlines.

Right now American is focused on fixing their planes to make them airworthy. It might not matter in the end, cause my guess is the relationship with their customers will be broken for a long time.

BTW, American does MD-80 maintenance for many carriers that have MD-80s, so I suspect after they inspect all their planes, the international carriers will get hit with the same problems (those that have MD-80s).

For the past several years it has not been possible to get your Windows Live Hotmail, and Contacts on your Windows Mobile 5/6 Phone.... unless of course you were a Microsoft Employee in which case you just downloaded the bits and installed them (or you are a TMobile subscriber).

My wife, sister and father all have Windows Mobile phones, so I have been waiting for the day I could get them all set up.

Well, as of today, this problem has been fixed. Kudos to the folks on the Mobile team that made this happen.

The download has support for:

• Hotmail "push" access (your mail is "pushed" to your phone, you don't have to go get it)
• Windows Live Contacts synchronization
• Live Search bar for the home screen
• One-click photo upload to Windows Live Spaces

You also get access to all your folders in your Hotmail account.

If I were to describe Virgin America this is what I would say.

Imagine if the Airlines never stopped innovating in the mid eighties, and the flying experience got better. If you fly Virgin America you are getting an end to end flight experience that represents what flying is supposed to be like in 2008.

or

If Apple started an Airline the experience would be Virgin America.

Do I really need to say any more? Virgin is simply the best domestic flying experience I’ve had, both in First Class and in Coach. Let’s examine the experience.

But first, if you are short on time, here are the bullets:

• Great airport terminals at both SFO/SEA
• AC Power in every seat
• Nice Friendly Employees
• Good Food and Drinks  with on-demand ordering
• Fantastic in-flight entertainment
• Comfortable seats in First Class and Coach

The Airport

When you fly Virgin at SFO you are leaving from International Terminal A. There are very few airports in the world that are nicer than flying the International terminal at SFO. Built in 2000, it’s pretty much a fantastic terminal, from the attached parking garage with reasonable short term parking rates, to the amazingly short security line, to the great food offerings and plenty of seating.

On the SEA side of things you are flying out of Concourse A, which is also brand new, and not crowded. Comparing this to the mayhem of Terminal C and D where Alaska flys is not fair, but it’s an amazing contrast.

The Plane

Virgin has a fleet of brand new Airbus A320 and A319s. the Airbus narrow body fleet(A319, A320) are equivalent to the Boeing 737 series (737-700, 737-800, 737-900) and the Airbus A321 is equivalent to the Boeing 757.

Personally I like Airbus planes. My favorite plane to fly is the A340-300 which is equivalent to the 767 but 20 years newer. The smaller Airbusses are comfortable, quite and have all the latest and greatest technology. The cockpit is impressive.

Since the plane is brand new, it has a leg on everything anyone else flys domestically. Continental, Delta, American, United have increasingly aging fleets, and you can get stuck flying a 20 year old plane that has never had a cabin refresh.

The first thing you will notice is the cabin. The best way to describe it is the lobby of a W Hotel. There is pink and purple mood lighting, white leather seats in first class and black leather seats in coach with white iPod like plastic everywhere.

There is no carpet on the walls, no carpet dividers, no curtains, nothing that can get old and crappy worn out looking.

Instead of a "no smoking light" next to the "seatbelt" light, there is a "no portable electronics" light. Why hasn't every single airline replaced that stupid no smoking light with a no electronics light? I mean Hello, how many years has it been since smoking was allowed domestically?

All the seats have little steps for folks to place their bags in the overhead bins. This is a nice little touch.

BTW, all the airplanes have names. I flew to SEA on Jefferson Airplane. Virgin has always had an awesome sense of humor.

First Class

There are 8 First Class seats. Buying a first class ticket is reasonable compared to say American or United, but you’ll pay a few hundred dollars one way for one. I upgraded to First Class during the checkin process for $50, which was well worth it IMHO.

The seats in first class rival the Business Class seats on International Carriers (albeit no lie-flat). You have a motorized seat with presets like “Take off”, “Comfort” and “Relax” as well as massage functionality.

The seats have 55 inches of seat pitch. Compare that to Alaska's 37 inches and you feel like you are actually in First Class.

There are nice little touches like numerous pockets in the seat in front of you for your iPod, magazines, books, laptops as well as an AC outlet, USB outlet and Ethernet port in each seat (Ethernet is not lit up yet).

When you take off you get an appetizer served in trendy containers, followed by drinks and a hot meal with silverware. My breakfast was a stuffed tomato with potatoes. It was yummy.

Coach

The coach seats have 32 inches of seat pitch, which is not bad, but not great. Many airlines actually have 31 inches of seat pitch, which for a 6 foot 3 inch person is knee crushing. 32 inches is tolerable but short of Jet Blue’s 34 and 36 inches throughout their cabin. Luckily you can pay $15 more for a reserved exit row seat (or in my case the lady who checked me in gave me one). You get about 4 more inches in the Exit Row.

The A320 is noticeably wider than a 737 so the seats are a bit more comfortable (19.7 inches wide vs 17inches on A Boeing 737). Also, the seats have a physically smaller, thinner skeleton which actually increases the amount of room in the row. If you fly an old United plane with those ridiculously thick fat coach seats (which are not more comfortable) then you know what I mean.

The Coach seats also have power, usb and ethernet in each seat. The tray tables have little built in cup holders when they are folded up so you can, you know, go the the bathroom and allow other people in your aisle to do so without spilling crap. Thoughtful touch.

Do you have any idea how useful it is to have AC Power in every seat? It means I can use my laptop on the flight and arrive for work with a full battery, or that I can use my laptop on the plane and not run out of juice.

Food

In Coach you can order Drinks, Food and Snacks

Snacks are priced from $1 to $2. My options were:

• Buffalo Wing Chips
• Snack Mix
• Breakfast Oat Bar
• Chocholate Chip Cookie
• Organig Cranberry Nutbar
• Strawberry Fruit Leather

Meals are priced from $8 to $12. My options were

• Antipasto Salad
• Turkey Bacon Wrap
• Half Caprese Sandwich with Salad
• Fruit and Cheese Plate

Drinks are priced free to $6 and you get:

• Water
• Soft Drinks
• Beer & Wine
• Vodka, Rum etc

I placed an order for a snack and a bottle of water and it arrived in 3 minutes. I swiped my amex card into the remote dongle and it processed it immediately. Virgin is cashless, so you have to pay with a credit card. No waiting for the host to get you change any more.

Entertainment System

Both Coach and First Class have the same entertainment system. You have a physically large wide screen LCD touchscreen display to interact with called “Red”. You can also control the screen via the remote control dongle.

Red allows you to:

• Listen to Local Radio stations (similar to what you can listen to on virginRadio).
• Listen to a local collection of music (good stuff actually)
• Watch TV
• Watch a Movie
• Play Games
• Order food and drinks from your seat
• Chat with your passengers via chat enabled keyboard.

In the future you’ll be able to surf the web. The sound quality of the music is great, a far cry from what you experience on any American carrier (no hissing, low volume, or static).

There is plenty to keep you busy. And this is key. When are delayed 30 minutes during a ground delay at SFO you don’t care cause you barely notice.

While flying I noticed a bunch of friends sitting in different seats on the plane all chatting with each other. I thought that was pretty cool.

The Crew

Everyone that works for Virgin America is HAPPY. That’s right, they are smiling… most of them are young, energetic, polite, helpful and not patronizing or annoying. And who can blame them… they haven’t spent years working for an Airline that has gone bankrupt a few dozen times and has managed to screw them out of their pension, health benefits or whatnot. I do not believe any of Virgin’s employees are unionized.

On our flight we had about 20 folks connecting to LA in SFO. The flight crew busted their ass to get folks off the plane and to their connection by moving folks and their bags in the overhead bins to the front of the plane where possible and helping people with their luggage. I can't remember the last time I saw a airline employee go above and beyond like this.

During the flight the pilot was also awesome about being honest about our delays, how long we should expect to be on the runway, holding and so on.

The Schedule

For the SFO <-> SEA traveler, the schedule could not be better. 9:10 am flight in the morning, and 5:10 pm return flight getting me home for dinner with my wife.

Suggestions for Virgin

Some ideas for the future:

• Remember everything I listen to on the flight and store in with my eleVAte membership
• Preload my playlists and favorite radio stations when I board the flight.
• Follow the JetBlue route and assign a certain number of rows more leg room

Final Thoughts

I don’t know what else to say. Virgin is the best airline in the country. There is little to complain about, and a lot to love. My college roommate is a pilot for Virgin having spent years working at United Express and America West (now US Air). He loves his airline.

I salute Virgin for bringing some dignity back to domestic air travel. Now if they could just do something for the TSA run security line.

How do I know that a product is getting the proper amount of care and feeding?

When they fix and implement the little touches that make a difference.

I've been using IE 8 for a few weeks now and noticed that something that has always bothered stopped bothering me.

What is this feature?

The search box in the upper right corner now updates based on the searches that you do in Google, Live Search etc.

Let's day I fire up the web browser and hit control-E (the shortcut to take you to the search box).

I then type "Ryovac AAA" and get some results. However, I now want to refine my results by clarifying the search a bit.

So in the search page I type "Ryovac AAA Hybrid" and hit search. Now I open a new tab and want to issue that same search so I can browse a different page. Uh oh, the IE search box says "Ryovac AAA".

Well in IE 8 it says "Ryovac AAA Hybrid".

Thanks IE Team!

This feature is actually more useful when you are searching some error message you are getting on your PC and you are constantly refining the search over time and have like 5 different tabs open as you continue your research.

To me this feature is just like the one where IE finally started matching text in menus the way it's supposed to. This feature has saved me countless frustrating minutes.

For at least the past year I've had "blog about rechargeable batteries" on my list.

When we had Sarah, the number of things we own that use batteries increased an order of magnitude. I also noticed that rechargeable batteries have gotten CHEAP. Also, regular batteries, like CFL bulbs, contain heavy metals and need to be disposed of properly. If you throw them in the trash, well, you are breaking the law in California.

Up until February 8, 2006, California residents were allowed to throw away any 'spent' battery in the trash. However, Since February 9th, all batteries have been prohibited from every solid waste stream in the state due to those toxic materials.

I first purchased my rechargeable batteries in 1999 on my first trip to Japan. I marveled at the compactness and convenience of the Japanese Sony rechargers. More specifically my Sony recharger had a "wall plug" and could work anywhere in the world. Here in the US we were stuck with huge contraptions that barely worked. I picked up 8 AA batteries and a charger and still have them. In fact the only two gadgets I purchased in Japan (in Akihabara) were this charger and batteries and 2 sets of Sony headphones.

One of the items we used heavily for the first 6 months of Sarah's life was the Fisher-Price Nature's Touch Baby Papasan Cradle Swing. This thing ate D batteries at a rate of 4 per 3 days in some cases. I was not about to make Duracell and Energizer a big part of my monthly budget.

That's when I loaded up on lots of rechargeable batteries. I power every single battery operated device in my house now with rechargeable and I have about a dozen spare batteries waiting to replace others. There is no reason not to.

Well there is really no point in writing a post now, because Jeff Atwood has done it in his usual awesome kick ass style that you can only admire as a geek.

It's posts like these that keep his blog at the top of my list. It feeds my inner geek.

I plan on purchasing the La Crosse Technology BC-900 (use the link on his blog to purchase) right now. I have been looking for something like this. Thanks Jeff!

PS - Speaking of batteries, what ever happened to the "A" battery and the "B" Battery?

I wrote about this in the past, but CFL bulbs have a dark secret. It's near impossible to find a "safe" way to get rid of them.

CFLs contain a small amount of mercury, and well, there is already too much mercury in the water, hence the Tunas getting all loaded up with it.

In my area I've identified 2 places I can take my CFL bulbs for disposal.

1. IKEA
2. The local recycling center

CFLs are considered hazardous waste.

IMHO there should be curb side recycling or at least force everyone that sells CFLs to also support disposal.

But really, millions of CFL bulbs are still going to make their way to our landfills cause people are lazy or ignorant of the hazard.

The solution of course would be to have an energy efficient bulb that did not utilize mercury.

While I have lots of CFLs in my house (see my post on which ones I recommend) I also have lots of halogen and incandescent bulbs. I'm a big fan of the new Philips Halogena Energy Saver. Looks like Osram (aka Sylvania) is also getting in the game.

I expect LEDs and low energy incandescent bulbs to get better and more practical over time.

Bottom line is that CFLs have amazing energy savings benefits, but they are a major step down from incandescent and halogen bulbs. Hopefully CFLs will be a thing of the past in a few years.

I tried using my USB Wireless Lock again the other day, but it's just too dammed flaky. My PC would lock it self randomly even when my FOB was close by.

Then I came across this post on lifehacker about a program called Blue Lock that will use your Bluetooth phone and Lock once the phone is outside of the visibility of your PC.

I've been running it for a few days and it works flawlessly. So well in fact that sometimes it won't lock if I am around the corner because the range of bluetooth can be pretty substantial.

The program works best when your machine is using the Microsoft Bluetooth Stack. I have a Microsoft Laser Mouse 8000, which of course uses the MS Stack. But my Lenovo Thinkpad uses the Broadcomm stack (you can still use the MS one if you uninstall the Lenovo software).

Quick note. If you want your machine to automatically lock again after you unlock your PC (it doesn't do this) you need to go into the configuration file in the bluelock folder and change:

clearLockDeviceFieldOnLock=true

to false:

clearLockDeviceFieldOnLock=false

and definitely pay attention to the warning. I set my timeout to 30 seconds.

A few months ago, Torres sent me this link and told me not to watch this at work or I'd cry.

I watched it at work, in the teaming area of our floor actually... and tears did form.

Once a month I watch this video, for no other reason than to remind myself how lucky I am.

I spend a lot of time searching boutique web forums finding the answers to obscure questions.

It's a bit like searching the internet before there was Google (painful).

Enter Twing.

Pretty awesome.

[via lifehacker]

It seemed all great, but then I noticed that not all my events sync. Today for example, Google says I have 3 appointment, but really I have 5.

I found this gem in the help:

I'm using Google Calendar Sync and not all my events are syncing.

If your Microsoft Outlook events aren't being transferred to Google Calendar, check to see if the email address associated with Google Calendar is listed as the organizer or a guest of the event. Currently, Google Calendar Sync requires that you're either the organizer or a guest on an event to sync it properly. For additional details please see the Google Calendar Sync - FAQ in our Help Group.

Check to see if the email address associated with Google Calendar is listed as the organizer or a guest of the event?

What exactly does that mean and how do I ensure that the right email address is listed?

According to the FAQ:

To sync all events between Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar, the email address associated with Google Calendar needs to match the email address associated with Microsoft Outlook. For example, if you're using user1@domain.com with your Outlook Calendar, enter user1@domain.com in the Google Calendar Sync Settings window, and then view your synced events with the Google Calendar associated with your user1@domain.com email address. If you don't yet have Google Calendar set up with your user1@domain.com email address, just visit the Google Calendar homepage and click on "Create a new Google Account."

I have to create a new Google Account just to get all my events synced? Why do some work and not others?

Perhaps I should use OggSync, which doesn't have any of these limitations, and is what my wife uses to sync her Windows Mobile Phone to her Calendar.

For now I've just uninstalled the sync client.

There is a lot you can read about Getting Things Done that's primarily focused on you. How you deal with your email at work and home, how you deal with your stuff etc. Most all software is focused on yourself.

But what about GTD for your family? I've found that one of the most difficult aspects of implementing GTD isn't focused on how you deal with the fire hose at work, but how you deal with the fire hose at home, when you are sharing tasks with some one else (in my case my wife). In this case, my wife knows nothing about GTD and isn't willing to read the book, so in a way, my job is twice as hard.

It gets further complicated when you are raising a small child. It's then that the tasks and appointments that you have together require an extra level of focus. Today's software tools do a poor job of seamless integrating shared artifacts and responsibilities.

I haven't blogged about Productivity or GTD in a while because, frankly, I'm still figuring it out. It's been 4 years ago today that I started the process of learning about, understanding, and implementing GTD.

I've learned a lot in that time, and I've slowly altered behaviors that I continue to refine and improve. I've tried dozens of software programs and tools and find that I'm still not there yet, but I've gotten pretty far down the path of achieving "Mind like water".

Over the next few months I'm planning to write a series of topics focused not on how to implement GTD to get your inbox to zero (cause that's what a lot of the focus is on), but how to achieve a zen like state if you, like me, have a spouse and possibly a child.

Some of the tools are the same for yourself and some one else, but some require a bit more "help". I'll still occasionally write about learning's I've had about GTD at work (most specifically, the mechanism Scott Hanselman uses, called Inbox - CC, or what I call "Inbox - Hold"). Something that I learned while on parental leave.

But I've got a bunch of things that I plan to focus on like how to:

• coordinate appointments
• coordinate tasks
• organize and get rid of paper files
• cut down on your analog junk mail
• manage and share digital photos
• manage a bunch of computers and make sure they are backed up
• store and share passwords, bank account information, insurance policies, etc

and other topics I think of.

I also hope this serves as a way to force me to regularly post to this blog, something I've struggled to do in the past 12 months since our daughter was born.

Anyway, thanks David Allen, for writing your book and starting me down this path.

Google finally released a Calendar Sync add-in for Outlook. I downloaded and installed the software to do a 1 way sync of my Calendar so that my wife can see my availability.

Google did a fantastic job of building something simple "that just works". Unfortunately it only allows for sync of your default calendar and not any other calendars.

There are three options to sync:

• Two Way
• One way to Google from Outlook
• One way from Outlook to Google

I'm using the last one. Then I can share my free busy with my wife.

There is a little tray application that tells you what is going on:

This makes family scheduling great because in addition to that we have the following calendars:

• Family Calendar (all family stuff goes here, including people who visit). My wife and I have read/write access. note: this is just a regular calendar in Google Calendar.
• Omar's TripIt Calendar (so Lora can see all my upcoming travel).
• The In Law's TripIt Calendar (so we can see all our travel from our in-laws)
• few others

Here is a pic illustrating the calendars:

In addition to this I get email reminders a day in advance for all Family stuff, that way I don't miss anything.

Lora gets email reminders 1 week in advance for all my travel, so she is aware of things with enough time to plan.

Very cool stuff.

Helps a lot with "Mind like water".

A few weeks ago I replaced my Thinkpad T60 with a Thinkpad X61T. My reasons were:

• I want something smaller
• See bullet #1

I got tired of lugging around a 14 inch screen even though the T60 was the best laptop I've owned in many years.

Lenovo X61T

I was looking for something small that had a high resolution screen, and that only left a X61T for consideration (I was only looking at Lenovo laptops). The regular X61 has a 1024 x 768 screen and Homey don't play that!

I have to say, using a Tablet again is fun. There are some features in Vista (flicks) that I helped the team with over 2 years ago (I was an early tester using the flicks stuff on XP). It's nice to see them in the product.

Anyway, I very much like my X61T. There are a couple of things I don't like:

1. The screen has some weird coating that is impossible to clean
2. The resolution is high for a 12 inch screen (1400 x 1050)
3. It only has VGA out on the docking station and laptop. I plan to fix this with this gadget I just ordered.

But there is a lot to like. 4GB of RAM, 1.6 ghz Core 2 duo, 1GB of Intel Turbo Memory (flash memory for my hard disk allowing for Vista ReadyDrive).

I really like this laptop, and shortly thereafter I got to play with a MacBook Air that I bought for my Dad to replace his ancient Sony Vaio with cracked screen.

MacBook Air

When the details of the MacBook Air were unveiled at Macworld I was like "Bleh". Not for me. Steve just fixed one set of trade offs and created a new set of problems.

However, unpacking, holding and using a MacBook Air will change anyone's mind.

This product is special, it's so ridiculously light it reminded me of getting my first iPod nano... You just experience disbelief that this thing is a laptop.

However, the MacBook Air is not for me. The first thing I did was install Vista on it and get it all set up. Within an hour I saw a bluescreen. That was the only one for a few days, but lets just say this thing is a bit temperamental about waking from sleep, running on a battery, using the DVD drive and so on.

If the MacBook Air survives (I'm not sure it will, it could end up like the G4 Cube), v2 will certainly be the version worth getting.

I'd also like to see a higher rez screen. The laptop is quite large even though it's very thin.

Lenovo X300

Yummy. This meets every need I have in a laptop except 2

• VGA only video
• SSD only drive option

SSD is not worth the sacrifice yet. I hope they offer an old skool drive like Apple and help bring the price point down.

I've very excited about this laptop though...

Oh, it even has special feet.

Amazon finally has the new Soft Cover Moleskine Notebooks in stock!