Overheard in the Office

"Whose coffee cup is that?" says I.

"It's mine," Ben replied.

"Oh yeah? Where'd you get it?"

He looks at the logo on the side and says, "The Midwest Sleep Clinic."

Michael says, "Why would they have coffee cups?"

Fixing my iPhone syncing & lag problems

I love my iPhone and have found the transition to the 2.0 software to be basically painless. I was also very much looking forward to updating from the "cloud" provided by MobileMe, essentially ensuring that everything would be up-to-date without having to physically attach the iPhone to my Mac. Problems arose almost immediately: I began experiencing huge (10-15 second) delays when making selections on the iPhone, trying to access applications or even make a simple phone call. I tracked down the issue and fixed it, and you can too. Here's how.

My problem was related to my contacts. After years in business, I have nearly 5,000 contacts in Address Book, but with version 1.0, I only synced "active" records to the phone. I simply created a group called iPhone and put everyone in the group that I wanted to have on the phone. Simple and effective. When I upgraded the phone software and turned on cloud syncing with MobileMe, however, I experienced an odd problem. MobileMe seemed to only want to sync *all* of my contacts, not just a specified group. After allowing this to happen, the delays and buggy performance began on my iPhone.

For me, I spend a lot of time out of the office. I'm rarely (but occasionally) adding new contacts via the iPhone, but I'm frequently adding new calendar events on both the phone and the computer. The events have to stay updated all the time so the office knows where I am and what's going on, but the contacts can be synced manually (by physically connecting to the computer.)
(Note: I attribute the fact that it took a few days to fix this problem as user error. I simply wasn't looking hard enough to find a fix.) Anyway, digging into the preferences, iTunes mentioned that I could control the push options on the iPhone. The problem was that calendars and contacts seemed to share the same preferences. If I wanted to push calendars (which I definitely did) I had to push contacts (which I was willing to live without.)

On your iPhone, choose Settings > Fetch New Data > Advanced > username@mac.com

You'll see that Calendars & Contacts are grouped together here and share the same option, whether it's Push or Fetch. Bummer.

But I eventually found a different location that offered what I was looking for:

On your iPhone, choose Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > username@mac.com >

This opens a MobileMe account info screen which provides the ability to individually control behaviors for Mail, Contacts, Calendars, and Bookmarks. In these settings, I turned Calendars on and left the others off. This allows my calendar to *always* sync automatically through the cloud but I can manually control Contacts.

So, back in iTunes, on the Info tab, I have the ability to "Sync Address Book contacts" and choose which selected groups to sync. Now the calendar is always right, the right contacts are on the phone and the complete Address Book is backed up on all my computers (and MobileMe), and the laggy performance on the iPhone is gone. Problem solved!

Overheard Around The House...

Getting ready to leave the house the other day, Grace said, "Mom, you forgot to brush my hair!"

"That's okay, honey," Char responded. "We're running late, so we'll have to do it later."

"Mom!" Grace hollered, "I'm gonna get cavities!"

[Other things I've overheard...]

"Follow that cab!"

On the way to tour the White House, we had to take two separate cabs, so Char, Marj, the twins and I jumped into the taxi behind Mom, Dad, Lily and Jack. Marj says, "Follow that cab!" I made some sort of off-hand remark about how she'd probably always wanted to say that. A few blocks later, the lead driver turned right and Abby yelled, "Follow that cab!"

The White House tour, in my opinion, was a little anti-climatic. It was actually cooler standing outside the fence a couple days prior and seeing Marine One land and then take off again. The House tour only lets you see about five rooms, and the docents do an admirable job of making sure that everyone moves quietly along. And keeps them moving. I think it took about 10 minutes to walk all the way through.

The Capitol tour, on the other hand, was fascinating. To hear the story of the rotunda painting and all the statues was pure delight, and our tour was very impressive. Someone asked how many statues of presidents were in the building, he thought for about a minute and then said, "Seven." Of course, he could have been bullshitting us, but he was convincing, nonetheless. (To add credibility, he was able to name the two statues from each state for every member of our tour and knew detailed histories of many of them.)

All in all, it was a great trip. I'll post more photos soon.

I can't improve on Colbert...

Comedian Stephen Colbert, mocking a report that one ethanol-fueled flight from London to New York would require a year's worth of corn from thirty soccer fields, remarked "You get to fly across the Atlantic AND destroy soccer at the same time!"

The Ultimate Arrogance

I've long thought that taking a basic food staple and turning it into fuel for our cars was the ultimate arrogance. The nose-thumbing equivalent, say, of turning down a friend needing a $4 loan and then using that $4 to buy a venti vanilla latte.

"Yes, I know you're hungry," we seem to be saying, "and I know you have kids to feed, too. But if I turn all of this corn into ethanol, there's a chance I could save ten cents a gallon."

The good news, I guess, is that we're developing new ways to create ethanol from the solid walls of plants that will be more efficient than the current method, which only uses about 50% of the dry kernel mass of corn. The bad news, which goes largely ignored, is that mileage decreases fairly significantly with E85, thus causing us to burn more in the first place. The rest of the bad news is that the "demand" for ethanol is driving food prices up and creating a food shortage.

You may have already noticed rising rice prices. Some retails stores in the US have begun rationing the amount of rice you can buy. Why? We're consuming (both eating and burning for fuel) more rice than we're producing. "For the first time, it's been clear that we are consuming more rice than we are producing globally," said Robert Zeigler, head of the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute.

Honestly, it all makes me just want to ride my bike.

I can't make sense of this math...

Last week, while they were on Spring Break, Char piled up all the kids and took them to the YMCA to play in the morning. Then they went to an early showing of "Horton Hears a Who." After the movie, they went out to lunch. When they came home, got out of the car and were walking up to the door, Lily said, "Mom, I'm bored."

Char and I got married ten years ago in January, 1999. Lily was born almost two years later in September. So here's the thing: If she was born seven-and-a-half years ago, where did this teenager come from?

"It is finished."

“It is finished.”
And bowing his head, he handed over the spirit.

On this Good Friday morning, I'm struck by the simplicity of this moment and the tension created by what followed. Jesus uttered, "It is finished" and then gave His spirit over, and it truly was the end of many things... the torture, the crucifixion, his suffering. But it was also the beginning of so much! The true beginning of the Church that would rise from the tragedy, the beginning of so many new lives in Christ, the beginning of our living with the knowledge that all he endured he had endured for us. And yet...

And yet, there is still so much suffering. The suffering of the sick, the down trodden, the oppressed. The helpless, the hopeless, the depressed. The lonely, the broken hearted, the lost. The poor, the hungry, and even the rich and well-fed. We are all suffering in so many ways, all waiting (hoping?) for the time when we might finally bow our own heads and give over our own spirits.

"It is finished," He said. And it was. And yet...