Steve Bargelt

Adobe Woes

I’m not really happy with Adobe right now.

Along with the new Sony DCR-HC42 MiniDV Camcorder for Christmas we also purchased Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 Plus Premiere Elements 2.0. We use Adobe Photoshop Album religiously with our digital photos and I wanted to get roughly the same religion with our videos. With our old video camera we never seemed to get the video into a viewable state. The footage just sat on the Hi-8 tapes and the only real way to view it was to hook camcorder up to a television. So when I saw the Photoshop / Premiere Elements package on sale at Best Buy for $49 ($79 minus a $30 mail in rebate) I snapped it up.

I was extremely pleased when I found two flyers in the box that proclaimed that I would receive two complimentary online training sessions just for registering each product (4  sessions in all). Being the good consumer I immediately tried to register my two new products. What a messed up experience. From PhotoShop Elements I clicked Help – > Registration and was presented with the dialog on the left. I clicked the link to find out how to receive my gift – I was rewarded with a “page not found” error (see below).

I figure – Okay – it is the day after Christmas so their servers are busy – no big deal. I’ll just register and I’m sure that I’ll receive an email or instructions at the end of my registration on how to claim my two free online training sessions. Yeah – I was wrong. I registered Photoshop Elements and boom, nothing. A big fat nothing. I’m still waiting Adobe!

Trying to register Premiere Elements was an extremely painful event. My “complimentary online training card” told me to register my software through the Adobe web site. The web form(s) are just plain confusing. I had a hard time figuring out what to enter where. I can’t imagine a computer hobbyist having a good experience with the site. So Adobe folks, why when registering my Premiere Elements would I want to change my Adobe Store account password? This makes no sense what so ever. Once I thought I had the web form filled out correctly – I received the error to the right. Oops. So I had to start all over entering my registration information. I guess they really do want me to change my password (the first time I left the password change fields blank). Talk about frustrating. At this point I would have given up, but damnit I want my complimentary online training! I finally mange to tiptoe my way through the Premiere registration forms only to be greeted with nothing. No links to free training. Damn. I was plopped back onto my personal page at the Adobe Store. Nice. Thanks.

Karma? The page I was one had a cute little icon asking if I wanted to take a survey. Hell yes. I was pissed at this point. I completed the survey (which sucked, by the way – I was constantly led down paths that made no sense. At one point I was asked why I was at eh Adobe Store, I selected “Other” and typed in my reason “registering new software” which seems that it should be an option since that is how I got here, eh? The next question asked me what products I was inquiring about. What? I was not inquiring about any products. I was here to get my free training. The survey was full of problems like this – questions that made no sense given my previous answers. Finally I made it to the end. Guess what? I was presented with the next wonderful error message!

Let me go out on a limb here and guess that Adobe outsources their web site development. Maybe not the entire thing but I bet they outsource at least the software registration section and the Adobe store.

posted @ Tuesday, December 27, 2005 12:38 AM | Feedback (0) |

Steve's Growth Chart

My parents moved into a very small space last year and while we were cleaning out I found a piece of paper that had my growth chart from about age 12 to age 14 1/3rd hand-written by my Mom. All I can think is that I must have been awkward, tired and hungry during these two years.

posted @ Saturday, December 24, 2005 4:56 AM | Feedback (0) |

DVD Profiler

I’ve been playing with DVD Profiler from Intervoactive Software off and on for a few years now. It is a very cool application that makes it easy to track your DVD collection. Here is a sample of my collection this is not all of our movies just a small sample that we’ve entered. I recommend that anyone with a large DVD collection take a look at DVD Profiler. One of the features that we really like is that ability to check out or “rent” a movies to a friend. Before DVD Profiler I can’t tell you how many times we couldn’t find a movie only to vaguely remember letting someone borrow it. Now we have a record of who has what.

One other cool time-saving feature is the ability to interface with a bar-code scanner. I picked one up off ebay for <$10 and we were able to enter our entire collection in one evening.

There is a free, full-features version that is supported by banner ads. Registration is a $29.95 for all future versions. Sign me up!

posted @ Friday, December 23, 2005 7:30 AM | Feedback (0) |

The Chronic of Narnia

This is so awesome… The Chronic of Narnia Rap

Gotta love the Geek Rap:
“I prefer MapQuest”
“That’s a good one, too”
“Google Maps is the best”
“True Dat”
“Double True”

posted @ Thursday, December 22, 2005 9:36 PM | Feedback (0) |

Stefan Goßner : ASP.NET 2.0 and MCMS - Site Navigation - Part 1

[via: Stefan Goßner : ASP.NET 2.0 and MCMS - Site Navigation - Part 1]

ASP.NET 2.0 and MCMS - Site Navigation - Part 1

This article replaces my earlier article about MCMS Navigation Providers which I have written while ASP.NET 2.0 was in Beta 2. After Beta 2 a couple of things have changed which prevent the earlier code from working properly with the final version of ASP.NET 2.0.

and --- ASP.NET 2.0 and MCMS - Site Navigation - Part 2

posted @ Thursday, December 22, 2005 7:56 PM | Feedback (0) |

On Be(come)ing Agile: 5 stumbling blocks for new corporate agile projects

Nice article on things that can trip up your agile efforts.

[via: On Be(come)ing Agile: 5 stumbling blocks for new corporate agile projects]

5 stumbling blocks for new corporate agile projects
A colleague and I were talking today about an organization that's getting started with Agile. This organization is struggling because they're missing many of the basic building blocks that Agile techniques leverage. Since Agile is a great way to reduce waste, improve quality, and increase throughput, many large IT shops are trying to adopt the techniques. But there are several "stumbling blocks" that can make it really hard to get off on the right foot with agile development.

 

posted @ Thursday, December 22, 2005 7:55 PM | Feedback (0) |

Moving Towards Agile Project Management

[via: Ohad's Weblog]

The lecture titled ‘Moving towards Agile Project Management’ gave a great intro to agile project development.

If you weren't able to come to the lecture… I've video taped it for you and yep the lecture is in English!

The lecture slides are available from Roy’s Team Agile site over ‘here’
The first part is available ‘here’
The second part (hat simulation) will be available later this week.

posted @ Thursday, December 22, 2005 7:33 PM | Feedback (0) |

TB Server: Power Supply Problem

What is EPS12V? EPS12V is a special, non-ATX standard adopted by the Server System Infrastructure (SSI) group to provide a more powerful and stable environment for critical server-based systems and applications. EPS12V equipment is not compatible with standard ATX or ATX12V PCs found in homes and offices. Power supplies built to the EPS12V standard include a 24-pin motherboard power connector and an 8-pin +12V connector.

Reading on in the Tyan manual they also recommend dual 12V. So I decided to check out Tyan.com to see if they had a list of recommended hardware. They do. Here is the list of power supply recommendations:

Now I have to decide between the (now famous) PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 850 and the Silverstone ST-65ZF. The simple choice is the 850 SSI. Rave reviews everywhere, MaximumPC selected it to power their Dream Machine 2005 and it is built like a tank… it does have two strikes against it though. Strike 1 = the price. $450 is more than I have paid for any other single component aside from the raid card. That is insane! Strike 2 = it is out of stock everywhere. I probably would have bought one from NewEgg last week if they had been in stock. Okay Strike 3 – it is huge. I’ve read where you need to mod the CoolerMaster Stacker 810 to make the 850 SSi fit. Okay – the simple choice is now the Silverstone ST-65ZF. I will update my component list next change I get.

posted @ Monday, December 12, 2005 6:57 PM | Feedback (1) |

Use IM to Ask Encarta

[via: Marquee de Sells: Chris's insight outlet]

Use IM to Ask Encarta
If you add encarta@conversagent.com to your MSN IM contacts list, you can ask it questions, e.g.

What is the size of Mexico?
When was Leonardo da Vinci born?
How many calories are there in an orange?
I want to see the map of Italy.
When was Abraham Lincoln born?
Solve 2x^2+7x=5

I especial love the "solve" thing. If I could figure out how to give it simultaneous equations, most of my boys' math home would be solved in IM...

posted @ Monday, December 12, 2005 1:11 PM | Feedback (1) |

Do you miss ReSharper in VS 2005?

Do you miss ReSharper in VS 2005, I sure do. Here is some info on an alternative called JustCode! by omnicore. Many thanks to Roy Osherove for his post.

General blog entry from Roy Osherove:

http://weblogs.asp.net/rosherove/archive/2005/12/03/432199.aspx

Full review from Roy:

http://weblogs.asp.net/rosherove/articles/ReviewJustCode.aspx

Looks like a free download at this point.

I haven’t used it yet… but plan to very soon.

posted @ Monday, December 12, 2005 1:10 PM | Feedback (1) |

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posted @ Saturday, December 03, 2005 11:33 AM | Feedback (0) |

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posted @ Saturday, December 03, 2005 11:32 AM | Feedback (0) |