The visual voicemail on my iPhone quit working about a month ago (I won’t say what caused it), but I called AT&T today to see if they could help me get it working again after missing a couple of voicemails.

Surprisingly, I didn’t have to hold for an operator at all, but the operator I got had me on hold several times as she tried to figure out my phone’s problem. After trying several different network changes on the AT&T side and several changes on my phone over the course of an hour, the support tech finally gave up and suggested I needed to reinstall the Surprisingly, I didn’t have to hold for an operator at all, but the operator I got had me on hold several times as she tried to figure out my phone’s problem. After trying several different network changes on the AT&T side and several changes on my phone over the course of an hour, the support tech finally gave up and suggested I needed to reinstall the iPhone OS and offered to connect me with an Apple support tech to help me out. I declined the Apple help and told her I could handle the reinstall myself. Before I hung up on her I she made an appointment to call me back the next morning to see if my voicemail was working correctly.

After I got off the phone, I turned to my trusty support database, google, and queried, “visual voicemail broken iphone” and on the second page, two minutes into my search, I found my solution– reset the network settings under Settings > General > Reset Network Settings. My phone restarted and I immediately got two visual voicemails– Problem fixed!

I thought I already knew this lesson, but I guess I learned it again– Google your problem before calling for support and more than likely you’ll find the answer your need. Now, I get to to explain to the AT&T tech how easy it was to solve the problem.

I’ve been busy at work, with kids and teaching so I haven’t had much time to post, but I have kept up with the online and online journalism world. My new favorite way of staying up to date is all of the great tweeps I am following on twitter. You can see my five most recent favorites in the column on the far right or you can browse through all of my favorites on twitter’s site.  I don’t guarantee the quality of my twitter favorites. Many times I have just favored them on Tweetie to make sure I go back and check out the linked material when I’m on larger monitor.

I keep switching computers around at work and at home– just jumping from one computer to another to try something different out- and I have come up with a list of tools that I always install first thing when I take a new windows computer to use.  I’ve done this so much lately, that I’ve put all of these tools on my usb drive that I keep on my key ring (isn’t that a geeky thing to have?).

• Firefox - an extensible browser that renders appropriately
  
• Filezilla – easy to use ftp client
  
• Notepad ++ – small text file editor
  
• VLC - media player that will play almost any video or audio file
  

When I take on a new Mac or Linux machine I still use Firefox and Filezilla, but have a different text editor.

I also have a set of extensions that I always install in Firefox the first time I use it.

• Xmarks (was foxmarks) – a bookmarks synchronizer (I don’t use the password sync feature)
• Firebug – a quick html/css inspector
  
• Screengrab! – take a quick screenshot and save it or paste it.
• Measureit – answers how long or deep is that image?
  

I have a lot of others that I eventually end up installing when I need them, but these are normally the first four.

So what tools do you always use?

This must be the day of lists. Newsweek has a great list of the Seven Lies We Tell Ourselves About Facebook. I’ve listed the Newsweek “lie” and my response to it.

1. I only friend people I really know- I actually only friend people who I am willing to go out to dinner with so my standard is actually higher than this. There are several people who I’ve not friended because I don’t want to eat dinner with.
2. Facebook made me do it- I refuse to do something on facebook just because everyone else has done it. I won’t play the name game or 25 random things (that’s probably more because I’m lazy than anything).
3. Wall to wall flirting isn’t cheating – It’s horrible the way some people flirt and friend so outlandishly on facebook where they would be embarassed to be caught flirting in the same manner in real life.
4. I use facebook to keep in touch with people – I have to agree with Newsweek– I use facebook because I’m nosy (yes, I said it, now you can admit to it, too).
5. I’m so over facebook- I really am moving in that direction. More now than last week and more next week than now. When your grandma chats with you on facebook and asks you to post a link and then your 6 month old nephew friends you, it’s time to find another place to hang out.
6. I’m not so competitive- I hate most games- board games or computer games so I don’t care if you beat me. I don’t really know why I hate games. Just playing them really tires me.
7. Facebook is my friend- Ok. I know facebook isn’t my friend (just look how they flip flopped on their terms of service this week), but I can’t say it’s a business either or at least a successful one. On the other hand, I sure wish that I had come up with the idea and launched facebook or at least something similar where I could sue facebook for stealing my idea.

Some Sun engineers ran some tests to determine if yelling at your computer actually helped or hurt and discovered that yelling at your computer actually slows down the hard drive and slows down your computer.

I guess that means that my infrequent outbursts actually slowed down my compute rmore. I wonder what talking to my computer sweetly and bringing it flowers and chocolate will do?

I finished my ubuntu experiment today and went back and wiped my family computer and reinstalled Windows XP. It’s not that I didn’t have a good ubuntu experience, but it’s just my family kept wanting to install programs that only ran on Windows. I finally gave in when my daughter got a Barbie MP3 player for her birthday that only ran on Windows and my wife and I didn’t want her monopolizing our laptops to play with it.

In review here’s how our four months with Ubuntu went…

• Easy to do a basic install and update. Took some work to get my pci wifi card, but installing a wireless hp deskjet was easier on Ubuntu than windows.
• Everyone could sit down and use it without additional instruction– even my three year old.
• Did all the basic great– web browsing, opened word documents, spreadsheets, powerpoints.
• Ran all of the above much faster than Windows XP on my family computer with less than a gig of RAM.
• Free operating system and free software– even used GIMP to edit photos.

It’s a cliche, but it’s true for me– there and back again. I have bounced around between a couple of places and a couple of different types of jobs. Everyone once in a while I’ll throw a new place in the rotation and here I go again back to a new place that I added last fall.

It’s a long story that as I gain some perspective I hope I will be able to tell it all, but the short of it is soon I will be at UAMS in Little Rock running their Web Center helping them to launch their new consumer site and get a CMS running to standardize their edu site.

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• Too many people waste their time straining to do things that aren’t right for them.
• Too many managers ask the wrong people to do the wrong job– the job that isn’t a good fit.
• Too many companies focus on doing business outside their core competency.

How do you solve this problem?

• Find a job that let’s you do the work that you’re the best at.
• Don’t grasp at straws when you’ve fallen, rather refocus on your goals.
• Help your employees find their strength and then put them to work using their strength.
• Determine what your company does best and stay sharply focuses while outsourcing and spinning off every thing else.

Is it ever ok to break the rules? Here’s a case to consider.

In this mornings soccer game Caleb was playing goalkeeper and a player on his team had the ball and was under pressure about three feet away from him. The player passed the ball back to Caleb (who had a forward on him) with his feet so following the rules Caleb had to handle the ball with his feet and did not pick it up even though both of his coaches were hollering at him to pick it up. Consequently, the player from the other team kicked the ball right into the goal. The referee explained to Caleb’s coaches that Caleb was following the rules, but one coach just kept repeating that Caleb knew the rules too well.

In older more experienced leagues soccer players committ “professional fouls” and knowingly break the rules to prevent a goal. For example, the goalkeeper is out of the goal and a defender steps in front of the goal and prevents a goal from being scored with his hands or a forward beats the last defender between him and the goal and the defender grasps at the forwards jersey and pulls him down preventing a goal. You also see players in basketball purposely fouling all the time to stop the clock and put their opponent on the line rather than letting them take a shot.

So here’s my dillemma, do I teach Caleb about the professional foul? Tell him to go ahead and pick up the ball to prevent the goal, because at the worst if the ref calls it (which they only do about half the time) then under his age groups rules it would only be an indirect kick (two players have to touch the ball before it goes in the goal).

Do I teach him that it’s ok to the break the rules in a game as long as he is willing to accept the consequences of breaking the rules or is this to grey for him to understand? If I teach him it’s ok to break the rules of soccer under certain circumstances do I start down the slippery slope of it’s ok to break some rules some of the time depending?

Even though I am rarely posting on this blog now, I have switched it over to a WordPress blog. WordPress is a great blogging platform and is a great choice for a CMS for smaller sites. I’ve used it on several sites over the last couple of of years. I’m not completely satisfied with this WP theme. So expect to see some changes there before this blog gets forgotten about again.

While I moved this blog over from blogger, I also moved my wife’s blog over from blogger and set it up with it’s own domain – mamabyrd.com.

I’m running both of these off a webfaction shared hosting account. I’m trying to consolidate all of my side projects into this one hosting account and they offer unlimited domains. It’s a little more expensive than a base godaddy account, but it offers a lot more customization.