VMWare Fusion saves the day

While I was working on a ReceiptWallet issue, I needed an older data file, one that was in XML format and created from an older ReceiptWallet version. I have recent backups of all my data, but don't generally keep an archive of the data as the amount of storage space to keep regular archives is enormous and I've only thought about using archives once or twice in the last 10 years. I thought I was hosed, until I realized I had backups from my server before I retired it. Problem was that my server backup drive were formatted as ext3 (Linux format) and couldn't be read on the Mac without installing some extra stuff that might not even work on Leopard and could make my system unstable. So I looked for an alternative. I downloaded a CentOS virtual appliance from VMWare's Appliance Marketplace, ran it under VMWare, plugged in my backup drive, in VMWare, connected the USB drive, mounted the drive, found my backup, tar/gzipped the directory and then FTPd the archive back to my Mac. It sounds complicated, but the most time consuming part was downloading the 691 MB archive of the virtual application. The rest was just a few simple UNIX commands.

While Fusion worked great in this scenario, it isn't working with the Slide/Negative Scanner I just bought. I bought it to transfer some of my old negatives into digital format even though it got mixed reviews. With the lifetime guarantee that Hammacher Schlemmer offers, I couldn't go wrong if it didn't work or the quality was awful. Maybe VMWare will be able to address this issue with the next release; I suspect that the device is trying to pump too much data through USB or is doing something non-standard with USB.

iPhoto Subscriptions with Gallery2

We use Gallery2 to store and share photos of our son, dog, family, etc. While many people use free sites like Flickr, paid sites like .Mac and SmugMug, I like to have my own site that I can control and customize. Some of these sites offer prettier albums, comments, etc., I don't like giving up control. One of the cool features of iPhoto that is probably underutilized is the Subscribe to Photo Feed option. In the past, I've tried to set this up with Gallery, but have failed. My wife wanted to setup her mother's computer to get updated pictures of her son, so I gave it another shot in configuring Gallery2. Turns out, it is quite easy. Just choose Configure RSS Feeds for the album, change a couple of switches as shown in the picture below and then copy/paste the resulting URL into iPhoto.

One slight note with this; the feed only contains items that are marked as New or Updated. New or Updated is determined by the date. By default, items are considered new if they were uploaded in the last 7 days. I tried to set this up for my sister's site as my parents really liked seeing the pictures in iPhoto and for some reason it didn't work. Turns out the newest pictures my sister has are over a month old. So, change the New Items option in Site Admin to 30 or 60 days if you don't update your gallery too often.

Garmin is too cool

I'm subscribed to Garmin's blog and saw that they have a "garage" where you can customize the car icon on your GPS unit. While this seems like a gimmick, it shows that Garmin has a little sense of fun and forward thinking in developing their GPS units. In addition, Garmin has new "tours" if you will, that you can purchase which you load on the unit and has points of interests and directions. I'm not sure that the tours are up my alley, but being able to add this is just another cool feature of the Garmin units.

With all the free publicity I've given Garmin with my Forerunner 305 review, the least they can do is send me a nüvi 360 :-) My review (which I wrote over 1.5 years ago) still gets about 3000 hits a month!

Screwed by Bank of America

Today I reviewed my Bank of America mortgage statement to make sure that my payments were being applied correctly; I pay half of my mortgage twice a month on the premise that I'd cut time off my loan. Well, turns out that Bank of America's automatic payment program deducts the payments twice a month, but only applies them once a month. I found the original documents and found the fine print that this is how it works. Why on earth would anyone agree to this if it didn't apply the payments twice a month? I feel like such a moron for not catching this earlier. Now I have to go see if I can get it changed so that my payments are applied twice a month or change it back to one payment a month so that bank doesn't get the float. While this seems quite deceptive to me, I agreed to the terms and that just makes me stupid for doing it.

Uggh. Yesterday I was going to write about the sub prime mortgage market where I think that borrowers should take some of the blame for the problems, but now the tables are turned on me. I'm a well educated consumer and knew about paying twice a month would cut years off my loan and I still got "taken". All the fine print in mortgages screws over everyone including informed consumers.

If you have mortgage horror stories, please post a comment.