Technology

Yahoo mail SMTP troubles?

Jeromey Balderrama

Has anyone been experiencing long delays sending Yahoo Mail through SMTP?  I’m a Yahoo plus user and use Thunderbird to manage my email.  However, since Friday the 15th my emails sent through SMTP are being delayed for hours on end.  Since Yahoo doesn’t report their system status, I’ve had to rely on anecdotal evidence from other users to validate my issues.  It’d be nice if Yahoo had some kind of system status page, maybe I’m just not aware of it.

Another Yahoo Mail gripe, I sent an email to a server that uses SpamCop to filter emails, and my email got flagged as spam due to the SMTP server’s IP address – definitely annoying to say the least.

I just wanted to put this out there for the sake of re-assurance (for both myself and anyone else that might be experiencing problems).  Working in the tech industry, I understand outages occur.  What frustrates me is when problems aren’t communicated well, especially when I go out of my way to pay Yahoo for Mail Plus.  I just hope this delay is extremely temporary and isn’t the norm for going forward.

Update: Yahoo has confirmed the SMTP outages in their blog. No ETA though.

Facebook Apps have crossed the line

Jeromey Balderrama

When Facebook opened up their platform last year for developers to integrate applications into their system, I thought they were taking a big risk.  One of the reasons why I (and I believe many) don’t frequent MySpace as much is because it became cluttered with crappy widgets, blaring sounds, – and worst of all – infested with spam.  I was wondering if Facebook was going to follow the same path.  After all, one of the reasons Facebook is attractive is because they have a clean standard interface.

These first few months have proven that Facebook was doing things right.  The apps weren’t too intrusive, were entertaining and allowed people to interact with others in a fun way.  However with thousands of apps now on Facebook and sponsoring companies trying to figure out how they can monetize their efforts, some apps have grown from a minor annoyance to becoming an invasion of privacy.

I always get these invites for the various apps, and usually if I do decide to try one out I’ll consciously hit the "Skip" button when it comes time to ask me friends.  Today however, I encountered my first app that wouldn’t let me proceed without inviting 10 friends to join the app.  Whatver.  This was an anomaly. I didn’t want to avatar’d self anyway.  This evening I got a request from a friend to the "Could you pass the US Citizenship Test?" application.  I was curious, added the application and went through all 20 questions of the test.  Before I could see my results I got encountered with the standard "Invite your friends" page.  Although this time I could not find the "Skip this Step" button. This app required me to sign up 20 friends in order to proceed to see my scores.

Screw you "Could you pass…"  Thanks for wasting my time!  I couldn’t care less about whether you get more Facebook installs, but I don’t think I’m the only one that’s not going to tolerate the shady tactics used by your app (and similar apps using this method).  Right now I can see the thin ice that Facebook is skating on, and they better be pretty careful about controlling the Bacn, or else they’re going to get the MySpace-like backlash.

Random gaming goodness, Romey’s consoles

Jeromey Balderrama

After posting about my Vista upgrade experience, it seems fitting to share some thoughts on the catalyst of the Vista upgrade: the Xbox 360.  I got myself a little Christmas present this year, finally breaking down and buying the Xbox, bringing my gaming system count up to 3 consoles: the Playstation 2, the Wii and now the Xbox 360.

This must be prefaced with the fact that I’m not a big-time gamer.  My time spent gaming tends to come in waves, where I may kill a whole weekend playing games, then won’t touch any games for weeks at a time.  This is regardless of any of the gaming systems, although I have to say that the novelty of the Xbox 360 hasn’t worn out and I’ve been playing it for about an hour each evening since I brought it home.

While owning three consoles does seem a bit excessive, each one basically serves it’s own purpose:

Nintendo Wii:  This is definitely the most popular console for my friends and family, basically because it transcended the gaming experience for them.  My sisters and Bethany, who never have historically been big fans of video games, love playing games on the Wii.   I think this is because the gaming experience on the Wii is so different, that it eliminates the old stereotypes that are brought by video games (all you do is mash buttons, the games are so boring, etc…).  The Wii also travels well, and has taken various trips to many parties, family & friend’s and even on my trips to New York (and now Atlanta).  However given the Wii’s short supply, I pray each time I disconnect it from my living room TV and put it in the bag. Favorite Games: Super Mario Galaxy (INCREDIBLE!), Mario Party 8 and Wii Sports.

Xbox 360: Has definitely found it’s niche in my home: as my solo & online gaming system.  While new, I don’t foresee the Xbox ever drawing diverse interest from the same groups attracted to the Wii, and the games aren’t as entertaining for non-gamers to watch.  This is button-mashing, traditional game-playing.   Basically this is my gaming system that I’ll play by myself (or on-line).  However, the hand-down appeal that Xbox has is the graphics and HD experience.  I fell in love with the 360 HD experience the same way I fell in love with football in HD.  The Xbox won’t travel, mainly due to it’s size, but also partly to the fact that I don’t want to jinx my HD experience with a standard-def TV. I do have an Xbox Live Gold membership (user RomeyInFC) and I’ve really enjoyed the online experience.  Favorite Games: Madden 2008, Halo 3, Assassin’s Creed (granted I’ve only owned the Xbox for 2 weeks)

Playstation 2: The only reason this console isn’t in a closet collecting dust is because of Guitar Hero.  When I bought Guitar Hero I did not have the Xbox yet, and there wasn’t a Wii version available, so I dusted off the PS2 solely for that reason.   I own about 15 PS2 games, and I’ve thought about bringing out Grand Theft Auto for old time’s sake, but PS2 is simply the “Guitar Hero machine”.  If I could I would trade away my PS2 with Guitar Hero 2 (and guitar) along with a few games for the Xbox Guitar Hero. Favorite Games: Guitar Hero 2, Grant Theft Auto (both Vice City and San Andreas)

If I were forced to pick a gaming system, I would have to say that it’s the Wii, but let me play some more 360 for another month and see where things stack up.

Vista Experience: 16 days later

Jeromey Balderrama

Sixteen days ago, I upgraded my desktop machine to Windows Vista, and so far, so good.  Let me put it this way: I haven’t been driven to uninstall the machine yet.  I’m not necessarily happy with Vista, rather just content with the OS upgrade.

My original motive to install Vista was based on my purchase of an Xbox 360.  I would like to use the Media Center capabilities to stream video over to the Xbox, and my version of XP Home wasn’t cutting it.  While I do have XP Media Center available to me, I decided to bite the bullet and do the install.  My desktop is a decently powerful machine, purchased about 18 months ago.  It’s a duel-core AMD box with 3GB of RAM.  After the initial install performance has been pretty decent.  It wasn’t as fast as a brand new install of XP, but it’s speed hasn’t diminished after loading all of my software (note to self: post list of computer-setup software), as it has on my laptop.  I also have a mid-range nVidia graphics card, so the Aero Glass features weren’t a problem as well.

For the most part I’m satisfied with my machine, but there are definitely a few quirks.  Originally when I installed the beta, I was frustrated with the changing of the keyboard commands, especially with the start menu.  I think this still may be an issue, but it’s been mitigated with my use of Launchy.  I used to use VNC for remote administration, but it runs horrible on Vista, basically being unable to filter out the Aero effects (despite my “low-resolution” settings, etc).  I still have VNC running, but am primarily using MS Remote Desktop to remotely administer the machine.  That runs really well, but has no web client the way VNC does.

Speaking of Remote Desktop, the other gripe I would have is that after logging in remotely and logging out, the next time I log in locally it resolves a blank screen.  My only workaround has been to press WindowsKey + L to lock the machine, Ctl+Alt+Delete to start the unlock, enter my password and be done.  I’m not sure if this is a glitch with my graphics card (although I have a mouse cursor on the blank screen), but it could be a Vista bug.  It’s definitely an annoyance and if I wasn’t so keyboard savvy I’d probably be screwed.

The local desktop experience is beautiful, and I do notice that I’m enjoying working on things in that environment.  I haven’t had any software issues the same way I had when the beta was out.  As for hardware, I had a little trouble with my printers, and I haven’t plugged in the scanner – I need to do that soon.

So far over two weeks in, I’m sticking with Vista.  We’ll see how it is at the end of the month, but it’s definitely not as bad of an experience as I was fearing.

Hitting the workout grind

Jeromey Balderrama

As pretty much everybody does, I made the New Year’s effort – I won’t dare to say “resolution” – to hit the gym.  Before Thanksgiving I was in a pretty good groove, but then illness and a busy December prevented me from ending the year on a good note.  Now I’m empowered by my gym switch from the Pulse over to the new 24 Hour Fitness in Fort Collins.  I decided to stop giving the Pulse my membership money due to the fact that it doesn’t seem that they’re putting any of it towards maintaining and improving the equipment and facilities there.  Walking into 24 Hour Fitness and seeing dozens of brand new cardio machines and weights spoils you, plus through Bethany’s corporate deal they were able to make us an offer we couldn’t refuse.

Right now I’m just continuing my goal of getting back into some sort of routine and thus getting back in shape.  I’ve found that I’m specifically goal-oriented as much as I just want to see continual improvement and consistency in my gym time.

I also use my gym time as an excellent opportunity to catch up on my Podcasts.  One of my favorite things is to listen to ESPN’s PTI and Around the Horn during my gym time, but a lot of times they don’t post until right after I get off work.  Because of this, I’ve resorted to killing time at work after 5 just waiting for them to post the podcast, or even trying to download the podcast on my laptop in the gym parking lots.  Thanks to my purchase of a Sandisk 1GB Mp3 player, but pretty much only for it’s ability to read Micro-SD cards.  When I head over to the gym I check ESPN on my Treo to see if the podcast is available (go figure, it typically is right when I walk out the door from work).  Putting my mobile broadband plan to good use, I download the podcasts onto my phone and transfer them to the Micro-SD card using my Treo’s SD port.  Next then you know, I’m happily listening to my podcasts and making the most of my time.

I realize that all of the new gyms and Mp3 players in the world won’t keep me motivated, that ultimately it comes down to my own ambitions, but I’m hoping that these new opportunities will continue to foster my positive gym-going habits.