It’s time to create a more permanent Teahm Beahm motion logo, so I spent a little time today cruising through the work of others.
I’ve always really dug the Focus Films logo, and though I’m a little embarrassed to say I watch his films, I think Jerry Bruckheimer’s motion logo is one of the best out there.
Village Roadshow
Rankin Bass
Stephen J. Cannell
Sit, Ubu, Sit
Production Logo
Motion Logo
Vanity Logo
Splash Logo
Logo Bumper
Production Ident
This post is for reference only (prices will not be current after tomorrow).
I’ve had a HELL of a time finding any specific prices for King Soopers lift tickets, but I just called the service desk (9:30pm) and here is the run down. Bear in mind, lift ticket prices change all the time (especially depending on time of the season), so these prices are only good for January 9, 2014. I’m just posting them to give people an idea of how prices might differ from the ticket window on the mountain (most places I couldn’t find any online information regarding what the ticket costs at the window). These are prices for adult, full-day lift tickets.
I actually ended up buying my lift tickets for Copper Mountain for tomorrow from Liftopia. They were $72. The Copper Mountain web site lists tomorrow’s price as $118 via the web (I assume this is the window price on the mountain, as all the other upcoming days are listed as $72 via the website). What I learned from this is that Liftopia has the best “night before you go” price for Copper Mountain (better than King Soopers and better than the restort’s website).
Lift tickets have gotten crazy. I normally buy an Epic Pass, but didn’t this year. If you go more than five times, the Epic Pass has paid for itself. In my opinion, Keystone, Vail, Breck, etc. are just too expensive to purchase a day of (or night before) ticket. I guess that’s good news for places like Monarch and Loveland, which I will be visiting more often (if it snows the night before)!!!
There is no question that Quickbooks is an AMAZING tool. If I had to do everything manually that is offered through Quickbooks, I’d be dead in the water with tracking work, billing clients, doing taxes, etc.
That said, I am constantly ASTOUNDED by the basic functions that are not addressed, or the horrible, horrible hoops one so often has to jump through to get things to work.
Several months ago, Intuit “sunset” my version of Quickbooks (2010). This is to say, they wanted more money from me, so they cut off some basic services (like being able to e-mail invoices) so I could no longer get by with a product that is only three years old. I can understand sunsetting products because you can no longer keep up support on ancient software (i.e. Microsoft shouldn’t be expected to still be actively supporting Windows ‘95), but to cut basic functions (that require NO direct support to the customer) is tantamount to gouging the customer.
I got another e-mail from Intuit this week that stated “Oh, by the way, if you want to generate 1099’s and you have anything older than Quickbooks 2013, you’ll be doing that BY HAND because the IRS slightly changed the formatting and we’re not going to make the minor changes in your ONLY THREE-YEAR-OLD PRODUCT that would address the situation.” Pretty douchey, Intuit. But since I have many, many 1099’s to generate, I decided to pony up the cash for the newest version (2014).
Be aware: Intuit sends out e-mails stating “we’ll give you a 20% discount on our product!” but the product sells for $20 less than that “20% discount” on Amazon every day. This is to say, Intuit often tries to sell suckers their product for $249 when they (Intuit) are also selling it for $178 on Amazon.
Anyway, I just set up Quickbooks Pro 2014. On the upside, everything seems to have transferred over without issue. Again, this is huge, and serious kudos are in order for Intuit getting this part right.
However, the first thing I wanted to do was invoice a customer. The new setup required me to associate a new e-mail account with the company file, but they WILL NOT let you use an e-mail address that doesn’t have it’s own outgoing SMTP server. I realize this could be justified by saying they are trying to minimize spamming, but who in the world would use QUICKBOOKS as their spam vehicle (especially when there are so many other FREE and EASIER ways to do it)?!
Like millions of people, I use Gmail to filter all my e-mail (the spam tools and search tools are just so much easier than maintaining your own e-mail accounts on a web server). It’s great that Quickbooks has updated their software so that you can use Gmail directly from their software, but you can ONLY use your main Gmail address. In other words, even though I have an account called “info@mybusiness.com” that I use from Gmail, I can only use “mymaingmailaddress@gmail.com” to send e-mail from Quickbooks. The only way to use my business address (info@mybusiness.com) would be to actually set up the address on my web server, and this would require setting up a program to check that address (rather than just having e-mail addressed to that address forwarded to my Gmail account).
ANYWAY, this was not made clear until I was asked to enter my e-mail password when sending an e-mail/invoice to my client. The send failed. But here’s the kicker… the e-mail window has ONLY two options “send now” or “cancel.” Thus, there was NO WAY to save the rather lengthy e-mail I had composed to my client! What kind of freaking nonsense is THAT?! You have an e-mail composer that doesn’t have the option to SAVE. Come on, Intuit.
Intuit also now has the Intuit Payment Network. I’m not going to go into what I think about Intuit getting into banking, but I do think that it’s INCREDIBLY annoying that they have the e-mail composer defaulted to placing ALL THE INFORMATION about how to use the Intuit Payment Network right SMACK DAB in the middle of your e-mail!!! Why isn’t this information at the end of the e-mail? Luckily there are ways to turn it off, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to MOVE the information (I actually would like to let my clients click the link to pay me by credit card, but I don’t wan that message RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF MY FREAKING E-MAIL!).
What Intuit needs to fix with Quickbooks:
Custom Bins simply store shortcuts to presets.
Preset Bins actually store the presets.
I mean, they’re both containers for data stored elsewhere, but this is how they function within the Premiere interface: one holds links, the other holds the actual presets.
Thus, Custom Bins allow you to organize presets while leaving them in their original location, which is useful when setting up a bin for commonly used presets.
Preset Bins are great for holding presets that are project specific. For instance, I’m currently working on a project with some pretty bizarre color balance and level settings. It’s not likely that I’ll ever use them on another project, so I’ve set up a Preset Bin named with the title of the project.
On the other hand, I use things like Cross Dissolve, Reverb, Brightness/Contrast, Colorista, and Exponential Fade in most of my projects. Thus, I’ve set up a Custom Bin named “COMMON” with those effects in it.
And now you know.
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I do a lot of file copying. Most people do. However, as a filmmaker, photographer, and recording artist, I do a lot of copying of massive amounts of data (my machine is currently running a >800GB transfer that’s been going for more than 20 hours).
The native Windows Explorer copy feature makes me nervous, because sometimes it drops data or runs into trouble with transferring data, and basically, for lack of a better term, just craps out.
A while back I finally found a copy program I like to replace the simple “cut and paste” in Explorer. Checksum verification was the single most important feature I was looking for. Basically this means each file is analyzed and assigned a number and then checked against the transferred file once copied. From the ubiquitous Wikipedia: “A checksum or hash sum is a small-size datum computed from an arbitrary block of digital data for the purpose of detecting errors that may have been introduced during its transmission or storage.”
When I shoot photos or video, I need to be absolutely sure the data is not lost or corrupted during transfer. Checksum verification helps mitigate this problem. I never transfer anything important without running checksum verification.
For this reason, I love TeraCopy.
I also love that you can pause a transfer, and also that you can initiate several transfers that will run in the order you set them up (rather than try to run them all at the same time… though that options exists as well).
I wish you could pause a transfer or test, shut down your computer, and come back to it. It doesn’t seem like there is anything that would prevent this from being possible (TeraCopy would just need to store the same “pause” information and then access it once the computer was restarted). This would be AMAZINGLY helpful for when you’re in the middle of a large file transfer but need to shutdown or restart your computer.
My biggest complaint with the program is that Code Sector brags about how FAST TeraCopy copies files. They say it over and over again. It’s even their freaking TAG LINE (see photo).
In all my personal experience and in EVERY review I’ve seen online, TeraCopy is proven slower than just about any transfer program out there… including Window’s native “cut and paste.”
But the thing that has REALLY been annoying me lately is just how insanely slow the file check runs after the actual transfer takes place. It actually takes CONSIDERABLY longer for TeraCopy to run the Checksum verification after the transfer than it does to actually transfer the files.
I would REALLY like to know what is going on there.
There have also been quite a few times where I’ve initiated a large file transfer and then left it to run overnight, only to come back in the morning to see an error from TeraCopy that states simply “TeraCopy has stopped.” Uh, ok. What about all the bragging on the TeraCopy product page about how TeraCopy will try again and again to transfer a file, but ultimately if it fails it will simply skip the file instead of crapping out (like Windows Explorer)? From the product page: “In case of a copy error, TeraCopy will try several times to recover and, in the worse case scenario, will simply skip the file, not terminating the entire transfer.” This has not been the case in my experience (on many occasions).
Still, though slower than Windows Explorer copy, I feel more secure transferring my precious data with TeraCopy. Perhaps it’s a false sense of security, but at least I sleep a little better at night knowing that checksum verification has been run after the file transfer.
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I used to buy most of my computer stuff on Newegg.com, but as of late, mostly everything comes from Amazon. At first this was because I signed up for a Prime membership and all my shipping was free, but now it’s mostly for price and selection (everything available on NewEgg is on Amazon, and usually at a lower price –with free shipping to boot).
Add to that that Newegg has started utilizing “click here to be sent an e-mail containing the price of this item” listings, and it’s just NOT worth my time to even LOOK at Newegg.com. What in the WORLD?! It’s a stupid idea, and when the prices are STILL higher than Amazon and I STILL have to pay shipping from NewEgg, why would I bother with NewEgg?
For instance: I’m getting ready to purchase a Samsung 840 SSD for my system OS. The price on Amazon is $225 (free shipping with my Prime account). I checked out Newegg just to make sure, and had to fill this out and check my e-mail TO EVEN SEE A PRICE!
On top of the inconvenience, the price is actually $25 more than Amazon, and I am also stuck paying shipping! Massive fail, Newegg.com.
Newegg has a new membership “free shipping” program like Amazon Prime, but why would I sign up for free shipping on NewEgg at the same price as Amazon when my membership at Amazon has SO MUCH MORE available (not to mention all the Prime Video Streaming available with the Amazon Prime program)?
I realize this is an example of a HUGE company crushing the competition and removing competition from the consumer which could eventually adversely affect the prices and services I see, but NewEgg needs to find a better way to compete with Amazon, because this certainly IS NOT IT.
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[see simple Bluetooth update at end of post]
I have a 2006 Jeep Liberty CRD (diesel). It has the in-dash 6 disc changer with Sirius satellite radio (which I will never use) part # P05091507AE. This was the penultimate of the stereos for the vehicle in 2006 (the RB1 nav radio was the ultimate) and is designated as the “RBQ” unit. However, it COMPLETELY fails to address MP3 audio (brilliant).
Every iPod/auxiliary input adapter out there says “NOT FOR RBQ STEREOS.”
Awesome.
I don’t want to replace my factory stereo with an aftermarket head unit, because I think they look like crap, they are more likely to be stolen, and they won’t work with my integrated steering wheel controls. I’m kind of assuming there may be another factory stereo I could purchase that will work with my steering wheel controls and already HAS an auxiliary input (or at least plays MP3 CD’s), but it’s a bit like the proverbial needle in the haystack (I searched a while and gave up).
So, I’m trying to find a DIY solution to address the problem.
This post (http://www.dodgetalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=308955) shows the installation of a TERK XM XMDCHY100 in a 2005 Dodge vehicle with the RBQ radio.
This unit is actually used to install XM Radio, but the adapter includes an auxiliary input so would work for my purposes.
I was not able to find this model (sales discontinued on every listing I found). For reference (if you find one), it looks like it was priced at around $100 new.
This post (http://www.srtforums.com/forums/f75/how-add-aux-input-factory-6-disc-622653/) seems like an even better solution, because it only involves a five dollar part from Radio Shack (a five pin 1/8” jack). It does involve quite a bit more work, however, so some readers may be intimidate by all the wiring and drilling for dash mounting involved.
The mod is performed on a vehicle with an external CD changer, but it seems like the mod would perform the same splicing into the XM Radio connection (turbo04 confirms this with his post here –worth a visit). You MUST use the five pin 1/8” jack (NOT the 3 pin), because the 5 pin jack will send a signal interrupt to the unit when a cable is plugged in (telling the head unit to use the jack instead of the satellite radio).
Also this mod (adding the 1/8” jack) will only work when there is an XM Radio unit hooked up, otherwise, the head unit will not “see” that XM Radio is a valid source, and just skips over that connection when you’re hitting the mode button. Furthermore, there seems to be some contention as to whether or not the XM Radio must be functioning in order for this mod to work. Many users report that without actual audio from the XM Radio (whether it’s the preview channel or an actual subscription), the stereo will not recognize the auxiliary input jack. Without performing the mod, I’m not sure how to confirm this.
Here is the same item on Amazon:
http://www.ipodcarpros.com/p63/PA11-CHR/product_info.html ($107)
and Crutchfield (though a search for your vehicle WILL NOT return the item on their site):
The first “most helpful” review on Amazon is from a 2006 Jeep Liberty user, so I am getting my hopes up. Another ‘06 Liberty reports that the unit won’t charge his iPhone 4 (might be iPhone 4 specific since he says it DOES charge his Nano).
This unit is more expensive than the 1/8” jack mod, but it does have the advantage of charging your iProduct and allowing you to use your steering wheel controls to access your iPod (though it only allows you to scroll through your first 5 play lists since it’s treating your iPod like a CD changer!!! [update] --evidently you can select which 5 playlists to access).
The PA11-CHR does have RCA input jacks, so with a simple RCA to 1/8” adapter you’ve also got a regular auxiliary input.
After reading all 22 reviews, there are quite a few reporting low hum or static, but one person suggests simply putting the unit in a static bag to solve the problem, so I think I may go for it. Some users also report that this unit switches over to FM Radio randomly, but most note that it doesn’t happen that often.
FWIW, several retailers selling this unit online say that it will not work with RBQ stereos, but other sites (and users) confirm that it will.
There was apparently something called the “Mopar iPod Integration Kit” available at one time, but damned if I can find it for anything older than 2008. [update] The only 2005-2007 model I’ve found is being sold for $318… almost the price of a new Jeep! This would most certainly be another great possibility if you are able to find one at a decent price (works with all models including the RB1 nav radio and RBQ). –just found the model number necessary Part # 82209616AD; the msrp was $175.
These are other numbers I’ve found for the Mopar integration kit for the ‘06 Liberty: JEP82209616AC, 82209616AC, 82209616.
Here’s a post on WKJeeps.com that shows all the iPod kits available from Mopar.
http://www.wkjeeps.com/ipod.htm
[UPDATE 5-17-15] I can’t believe how cheap some tech things have become. I recently purchased a Bluetooth dongle for less than $5 from Amazon. I plugged it into my Jeep’s USB charger and then plugged a 3.5mm cord from the dongle to the aux port in my PA11-CHR. Now every time I get into my Jeep, my phone automatically finds the Bluetooth dongle and I can stream music (and calls) wirelessly to my factory stereo. The iPod still works as well (just turn the stereo off and back on to switch from aux port to iPod port –whichever is active will take over).
Fantastic.
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