I know, I am getting tired only posting about depressing things. And yet again, it has been a few months since my last post and I will admit I am far from having anything joyful to talk about. Although in general, life has been somewhat strenuous for me and my wife for the past 4-5 years (since we moved from CA to WA), the past 18 months have just brought us to probably the lowest I've ever thought I could be at.

I know, you are probably saying "enough with the whining already". And I can't agree more. But part of the idea behind keeping a blog for me is an outlet to vent. And quite honestly, besides my wife who is i the same boat as I am, I do not have a lot of people in my life I can just spill my guts. Out.

So there it is... My up to date story, from best to worst...

JOB

On the bright side, I really enjoy my position within the Media Center Extender team. Although my schedule has been quite busy, there has been several new and interesting developments. Of course, since most of it is not announced, I cannot really mention much, at least nothing specific.

Part of my current work includes changes to the installation procedure (we call it FRUN for First-Run) for extenders within Media Center. The bulk of these changes are intended for the next version of Windows (currently Code Named Windows 7) and aim mostly at making the install procedure simpler and more understandable for our less tech-savvy customers. This applies to both making customers more happy but also in an attempt to reduce the volume of calls to the product support hotline. All this Windows 7 work this is something I have been on since almost the beginning of my employment within this division but at this point the bulk of the feature work has been completed and we are focusing on fixing bugs and improving stability.

In addition, I've spent a good amount of time over the past 2 months implementing some new features for the Media Center Extender portion that exits within the new and improved Xbox Dashboard that will be released this fall. I cannot get into much details at the moment since I am unsure of what has been announced. But overall, as with the Windows 7 work, we are improving the setup experience and also adding a few features which should improve the discoverability of the Xbox 360 extender.

Lots of work, very little time. Been somewhat stressful from that point of view as I have been dealing with several overlapping deadlines. Plus, to be honest, my multitasking abilities do let me down on some days...

HEALTH

On another "not so grim" note, my health has been doing better since my last post. After pestering my Dr's to death, they finally took action and ran more tests. Finally, that beats the usual "you're going to have to live with it answer" I have been used to...

For my digestive problems, it turns out I had signs of a bacterial overgrowth. This involves what is called a breath test. The test itself is very easy, you ingest a lactulose sugar based solution and then, you blow into a tube. Yes, that's it. The problem is that you have to repeat the blowing procedure every 20 minutes for a total of three hours! Like I have said, it is quite and easy BUT BORING test. From my understanding, the bad bacteria that can overgrow in your small intestines really likes lactulose and will feed on it like crazy. As a consequence, the bacteria will release some methane as a byproduct which can be measured through your breath. The test measures the variation of your methane level over time and based on the results, the Dr an determine if a bacterial infection may be at the source of my IBS like symptoms.

It does turn out that the test returned positive which was a sigh of relief since there was now a treatment plan that could be taken. The treatment involves the use of an anti-biotic (sorry can't remember the name) which is generally used to cure other type of digestive infections (such as traveler's diarrhea) but at a much higher dose and longer period than normally prescribed. The treatment work great for me at first. However, a few weeks after I had completed it, the symptoms came back slowly and after a few months, back to square one! On the bright side, I will return to see the specialist shortly and maybe the treatment can be retried at a different dosage level...

As for my other general issues (constant tiredness, muscle pain, ...), it turns out that the solution to the majority of the symptoms was just way too simple! Some of the symptoms combined together lit a light bulb in my PCP's head. A quick blood test confirmed her suspicion... Low Vitamin D... The average blood level of a healthy person should be in the 50-60 range, where as in my test it was reported as N/A (which, for this lab, mean a level below 7). This is somewhat scary. Turns out that very low Vitamin D can cause all sorts of problems, including generalized pain, tiredness, sleep disorders,.... I have been taking special supplements for a few months now. Although I do still feel sluggish at times, I do not feel like a cast member of Dawn of the Dead.

My wife's health is fairly good there days. She still has her ups-and-downs but overall she has been pretty stable over the past year or so. Well , except for some expensive dental issues (which will be covered in the next section), she takes care of me more than I take care of her these days.

FINANCES

Ah... Money... This is where my situation becomes much more complicated... Well, to put it in simple terms... WE'RE FLAT BROKE!!!

I know, everybody says the same thing from time to time. However, this time it is beyond bad. A nice combination of bad choices, poor decisions, bad luck and several visits from our friend Murphy has put us in the depths. As with everybody, I have been carrying some debt ever since I have completed high school and this has never really been a problem. I had good paying internships during college, combined with student loans allowed me to easily afford my tuition. Then after college, with always a continuous source of employment, having a few credit cards and the standard car loan we not out of the norm but payments were also within what I could afford.

Everything started to turn sour about 2 years ago. Of course, I did not see it coming, just slowly building up until it recently hit critical mass and my own personal finances just blew up in my face...

Although we did have a fair amount of debt about two years ago, what we owed in payments was around 60% of my take home income, leaving more than enough to enjoy life and not really have to worry. My only regret at the time was that I could have been investing more in my 401K. However, we were living in a townhouse and some members of the HOA were driving us up the all and decided it might be time to move into a real house. Initially, we were not seriously shopping for anything specific but wanted to get a feel for the current market. Although we did not have tons of equity in the townhouse (about 20k for a 320k house), it was enough to cover our moving costs and the house was in a good area and we felt it would be an easy sell.

We probably spent a good two months looking around, we were in no rush... But Mistake #1 happened... We fell in love with this little area around a like, which was about 10 miles from my work. Not that there is anything wrong with a lake, but for one, proximity to water does significantly inflate housing prices. And for two, we became emotionally attached to the area. At that point we were looking at two specific houses. The first one was mid-sized, in fairly good condition and on the market for around 550k. The second one was a little more secluded, larger but also older (hence needing a little more TLC at first) and was priced at 650k.

And here was Mistake #2, we became attached to the more expensive house. But even realistically, the lesser house at 550k was still almost twice what our previous house cost. We were not struggling with the payments on the other one, but in hindsight, the mortgage on the townhouse was at the limit of what is considered reasonable housing expenses (about 1/3 of take home pay). But we decided to move forward anyways and managed to get the price of the second house down to 605k. The house itself had been on the market for several months and the seller was stuck with two mortgages and was getting desperate to sell.

Getting a mortgage on the house was somewhat of s struggle and should have been a sign this was too much house for our budget. And this was Mistake #3... To make the deal happen, we ended up having to go with a non-documented income loan and a interest only payment structure to allow us to afford the payments, with the thought being that we could clear up the rest of our debt by the time the P+I portion of the payment kicked in ~10 years. With the no-documentation loan, I was also able to have my hypothetical home business income factored in (which I estimated at 30k/year at the time). Although the home business income estimate was accurate at the time, it did not account for any fluctuations and difficulties which could arise on that end, but I will talk more about that later...

As for Mistake #4, well decided to move forward with the purchase despite the fact that our townhouse had not yet sold. The market was good at the time and the townhome was priced well and in a good area, it seemed like a good deal. But it wasn't as easy as it sounded, the house sat on the market a few months. We did get three offers, but all of them fell through for odd reasons. At this point, we were fairly strapped as we had two mortgages to pay and used up most of our reserves. At the moment, our real estate agent decided to come through and she purchased the house from us using a "Deed In Lieu". The mortgages would remain in our names for the short term and she would make payments to us. I do not want to call this a mistake since it saved us at the time, but it is something we are still dealing with 20 months later. The agent has paid off the second mortgage on the townhome and the first mortgage is still in our name. She obviously has not managed to sell it yet, and it is understandable under the current market. But this extra mortgage on our credit had made our lives even more difficult.

Now, the house purchase was being completed, and it was time for the inspections... And Mistake #5... Turns out that the inspector was somewhat of a flake and did a fairly poor job. He did point out a few minor problems that are to be expected from an old house. The back patio had some dry rot in some areas, the roof was showing its age and would likely need to be replaced in 3-5 years, the furnace looked old and may need to be changed in a few years. These can all be big problems but were significantly downplayed by the inspector as items that would need attention but nothing immediate. The reality is that all these little items should have raised a red flag. And as we moved into the house, our friend Murphy followed us in.

A few days before our move, once the deal was completed, we ha a roofer come by to fix a few little issues with the roof. Was not supposed to be anything serious. Well in the few days between the closing on the house and the roofer's visit, there was enough rain to cause a portion of the drywall to collapse upstairs. Turns out the roofer found a damaged tile and someone had stuffed a piece of plastic underneath it to "fix" the leak. Also turned out that there are some leaks in the garage and around the skylights and we are still dealing with those as of today. And to add to this, one year after we moved in, our furnace is starting to become very temperamental and would need to be replaced. Ouch!

Now, we go back to about 18 months ago, Mistake #6 (or this one is more a S**t Happens event) occurred...

Without getting into specific details, I fell ill and had to take an extended leave from work. Although I did have short-term disability insurance, I still had to take a 40% pay cut for about 10 weeks. A 40% pay cut may not seem like a lot, but when you are living paycheck to paycheck, this can truly be devastating. Although we did survive and I finally got better, we did have to incur more debt to simply survive through that period.

Shortly after my return to work, my home business started having troubles of its own. There was a certain amount of implied income from the business that was expected since our mortgage was issued on that assumption. However, a large number of sudden returns, combined with a few non-paying customers had left another huge gap in my finances and income. Also, at about the same time, one of our two vehicle’s engine died and left us stranded. The SUV needs a brand new engine, but at about $4000 for the repairs, there are no way this could happen at the time (and has yet to happen still). And of course, this is a car for which we still owe about $8000 at the bank so we are essentially trapped with the car until we can either fix it or somehow dispose of it and repay the loan.

Since then, I have been living paycheck to paycheck, every bonus, ESPP, … Drained automatically into surviving and keeping up with our accumulated debt. Although I knew we were having some problems, I was living day to day like an ostrich with my head in the ground.

Forwarding to the present… Our other car is starting to break down (need a new $2500 catalytic converted), barely making it by paycheck to paycheck, bad customers not paying their large orders or simply defrauding us by using chargebacks on their credit card when we can prove that their order has been delivered to them,… It is just too much and I have finally come out of denial. I cannot deal with the stress anymore, this whole situation is simply making me constantly ill, and driving my quality of life into the ground and I must start taking action in order to dig myself out of the hole.

Of course, there is no magic solution, and this is quite frustrating for someone who like to have a solution and a plan ahead of time. I am reading a few books on the topic and starting to work on the problem. There is unfortunately no quick fix but I now have a better understanding of our situation and some of the steps needed to take care of it. It may take a few years overall, but we’ll get there… One day at a time…

What is my plan? Short term, I am still working on a budget (or I should call it a Spending Plan) so we can at least be balanced at the end of each month instead of digging ourselves deeper into it. But there are obvious money black holes at the moment that will need to be addressed. The first item is our house. We love the house, but the reality is that the mortgage is probably twice of what we should be able to afford. Also, with some many repairs that are needed in the short term, there are no way we can keep up with the maintenance without a significant other source of income. The second item is my home business, especially the online bookstore portion of it. Although it generally nets about $500/month in revenue, it also consumes significant amount of time in regards to dealing with customer service, returns and shipments. In addition, I have had a bad string of non-paying customers over the past year (I am currently owned over $6000) and although most pay in the end, the stress related to the collection process and day-to-day customer service is simply not worth the small reward. There are other smaller projects I could be working on which could generate better income. Therefore, I will likely shut down the bookstore operation over the next few weeks but I do intend to keep the book publishing portion of the business active for at good while, at least until current titles do not sell anymore.

I do feel like I need a small miracle to keep going. But the best I can do right now it to deal with the situation one day at a time and focus on one problem at a time. This keeps me much more focus on making progress towards the solution but also prevents me from feeling so overwhelmed by the overall situation that I feel helpless.

I can't believe it's been nearly 3 months since my last post. Somewhat scary that time flew by so fast!

Well, over the last few months I have been very busy with work and my other projects. On top of being somewhat ill, it just seems that I cannot catch up on anything. And I have to admit it is quite depressing. Maybe it is just the winters here (yes, I need daylight!!) but the energy levels over the past few months have been really low.

Struggling both with my bipolar disorder and some digestive problems which have been getting progressively worse, some days, I feel like I am just sinking in quick sand!

About the bipolar struggles this winter, well I have been a little more "volatile" than normal. To me, this has been induced be either a combination of the yucky winter weather out here and stress, or simply that my medication isn't working as well. I am holding on for now at least until the spring weather comes in and hopefuly it will clear it up. If not, well a medication change might be in order, something that I am really not looking forward to. Oh, and to make things worse, well my cholesterol is high so my Dr does want to put me on some medication for that. Well the problem is that the Bipolar medication is already harsh on the liver (which comes up as already elevated in my blood tests) and well, the cholesterol medication is pretty harsh also. Maybe I should start looking for a liver donnor right now

What really bothers me however is in regards to my digestive problems. These are not new and I have had some problems for about 6 years now, getting progressively worse over time... This past year has been horendous... I will not get into the yucky details but lets say that on some days I simply cannot go to work due to the pain and the fact I spend half my day in the bathroom. Yet, my Dr's do not really seem to care!! Last year, I did see a specialist who did a few tests including a colonoscopy (not a fun test I can tell you that). However, the few tests did not reveal anything really wrong and the Dr decided it was easiest to simply label me as having IBS. Now, don't get me wrong, it is quite possible that I do have IBS but the problem lies in the fact that IBS is not really a diagnosis but is intended to be a diagnosis of elimination (i.e: you have problems but we excluded everything else which may cause these symptoms). And from what I read, the list of other tests that should be run is much longer than a few blood tests and a colonoscopy!!  In the meantime, I am left to suffer. Both my work life, love life and social life suffer from this. And no matter what I eat, I am almost guaranteed to feel sick afterwards. I do have another appointement with another specialist in 1 month. I hope that it will yield more information this time...

Either way, with both problems combined it does feel like I am fairly disabled. Missing way too much work, never knowing when I will need to run to the bathroom, feeling miserable every other day, ... To be quite honest, not the best way to live a happy life...

Ok, enough whining for today, I promise. Hey, after 3 months, I had a little venting to do. I will try to post on a more regular basis and will try to talk more about the things I am working on at my new (well not so new now) job...

Apparently, saying "could have been implemented on DX9" in my previous post in regards to VC self-shadowing stired all sorts of drama on some of the user forums. Although the statement is accurate, I did not explain in more details WHY this was not done and why we kept this feature for DX10 only. This post is not intended to be harsh but a mere clarification of why the decision was made. My tone may seem somewhat pessimistic but this is mainly due to frustration from the fact that some of our fans seem to be on a constant quest to crucify us no matter what we do.

Back to the topic of why self-shadowing is only present on DX10, I was really quick and vague into giving actual reasons and wanted to be true and honnest in my statement, which apparently got taken out of context and distorted... Since the VC self-shadowing is essentially another form of shadow mapping as done with the exterior, it could have been implemented on DX9. However, there are two reasons why the self-shadowing of VC was kept as a DX10 features (beyond the force people to upgrade conspiracy theory).

• The first reason was briefly stated above which was for performance reasons. If we were to release this feature on DX9 and drop performance, well we would get crucified for doing so. Then again, I was being honnest and did say such a feature could have been done on DX9 but would hit performance significantly, yet we still get crucified. No matter what I say here, it is a loose-loose scenaro at least from the perspective of some of our fans...
• The second reason, which was not mentioned in my original post, is in regards to visual quality. Under DX9, the shadowmap resolution used is significantly lower and the type of filtering we can use is also fairly limited. This yielded some really blocky looking shadows within the VC. DX10 does give us more options and we were able to use a larger shadowmap for the interior and also use a high quality filter which allowed the shadow to be of good quality. Yet again, if we released the low quality VC self-shadowing, we would have been crucufied for doing so...

 I didn't realize I was that important until I got the email that I pasted below, wow "You were recently appointed as a biographical candidate to represent your industry in the Madison Who's Who Among Executives and Professionals, and for inclusion into the upcoming 2007-2008 "Honors Edition" of the registry". Talk about some generic description, in fact would be 100% generic if it wasn't for my name... I obviously knew something was fishy but wanted to figure out exactly what was the catch...

Here is a general overview of similar schemes... http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27053

Overall, they say that they are an important registry of people and that an inclusion within their registry is not only an honnor but is also a great networking tool that can bring significant business. And of course, none of this is free. So, you pay to get included into their member list, which you apparently were so deserving of being in (even though all they had was your name and email). And truely, who has ever heard of Madison Who's Who???

This actually reminds me of the Picture.com contest scam (http://www.greenfreak.net/?p=11). It is quite clever and i'll admit i've fallen for it...

You send a picture to enter the contest, no problem. Of course, your picture doesn't win the contest but is good enough to make their next picture coffee book and you get an offer to pre-purchase the book at a pre-sale discounted price (I believe I paid $40 for it). In a way, they avoid being treated as a scam as they do print the coffee book and send it, so you technically get what you paid for. But the real truth is that you've been lured into a simple bait-and-switch scheme.

You entered for free with the intent of entering a contest but ended up buying a $40 coffee book (which costs less than $5.00 to manufacture) that contains your, and about 2000 other pictures... So assuming about 20% of the folks fall for it out of 2000 pictures and that a book costs them $5.00, they come out with about $10,000... Hmm, maybe I need to change my business model ;)

---- Email ----

This happens to me at least 1-2 times per week. It's actually not something that is specific to Internet Explorer 6.0, but is most frequent with this app due to the way I use it. The fact is, IE can be a resource hog depending on the websites you visit, especially GDI resources...

But there is a gotcha on Windows... The number of GDI resources that can be used at a time by a specific application are limited. The main reason behind this limitation is to prevent a stray or "leaky" application from hogging all system resources and bringing the whole system down with it. By default, at least in Windows XP, the maximum of GDI resources that can be held by a process is set to 10,000. Once the app reaches this limit, it will be unable to get more resources and will generally start rendering oddly (missing buttons, window content not updating, ...) and then you generally have to kill the offending application and restart it...

Although not a fix, there is a way this can be minimized by increasing the maximum number of GDI resources that can be assigned to a process. The article quoted bellow (http://www.windows-now.com/blogs/kmkenney/archive/2007/08/29/increasing-gdi-and-user-handle-limits-in-windows.aspx) shows how you can increase the GDI resource limit from 10,000 to 16,384...

Have you ever been working with a good number of applications at once? Do you work with heavy workloads and large files every day? Alright, answer this - have you ever had Windows buckle under the weight of all of these applications and display error messages stating that the system is out of memory or out of resources, buttons and menus do not work correctly, or you get an error sound but no message on the screen? I've hit this numerous times, to the point that I've lost work because of it...

(By the way, Adobe, can you please implement that little feature that Microsoft Office has had for years known as "auto save"? I don't know how many times I've managed to completely max out Windows designing a website and have had Photoshop fall over dead and disappear off my screen, only to find out that when I open Photoshop up again that the entire thing saved jack-all, all of those layers and documents gone poof into the void of darkness... if Microsoft can do it, why can't you?)

Sometimes this happens even when you have a lot of system memory (RAM) still available. For instance, open up Internet Explorer and hold Ctrl+N to open up as many Internet Explorer windows as you can before menus, icons, and menus start displaying incorrectly, disappear, buttons aren't clickable, etc. Close a few out and check your Windows Task Manager in the "Performance" tab; I bet you will find that a lot of your Physical Memory is still available.

This article applies to:

• Microsoft Windows 2000 family
• Microsoft Windows XP family
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 family
• Microsoft Windows Vista family

This article does NOT apply to:

• Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 x64
• Microsoft Windows Vista x64

DISCLAIMER: I claim no responsibility or liability whatsoever should something go wrong, or if you incorrectly modify the Windows Registry. Please take extreme caution while following this publication and follow the steps correctly to a tee.

"Alright, if I have all of this memory still available, why is Windows saying I'm out of memory and out of system resources!?"

Simple: You have hit the "user handle" or "GDI handle" limit in Microsoft Windows. This limit is there for two reasons:

1. Leaky applications or faulty code & malware can't easily crash the system by attempting to overflow the system with GDI handles, making everything un-usable until a reboot is performed.
2. To prevent a user from opening up more applications than the system can handle.

If you have 1 gigabyte (1024MB) of RAM or higher, the default User Handle and GDI Handle limits can be pretty restrictive when running a large working set of applications that demand the most from your system and tax it heavily.

First and foremost, I must warn you that modifying these settings incorrectly can render your Windows installation near useless. Also, depending on your computer configuration and the amount of RAM in your system, you may wish to play around with the numbers until you find a setting that is perfect for your computer configuration and working set.

To back up everything, open the Windows Registry Editor:

1. Click on the Start button.
2. On the Start menu, click on "Run..."
3. In the Run dialog, type "regedit.exe" (without the quotes) and then press Enter or click OK.

 

Now, to backup a registry key:

In the Registry Editor on the left hand side, you will see the navigation pane. Using your mouse or keyboard, navigate to the following subkeys:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\SubSystems

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows

Right click on each of the subkeys above in the left hand pane and from the context menu that appears, choose the "Export" option. Save the exported registry data files where ever you wish, but make sure that they will be accessible should we need to restore them in the future.

Now that you have backed up the registry keys that we will be modifying, we can begin making modifications to the values in order to increase the handle limits in Windows.

With the Registry Editor opened, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\SubSystems.

You will notice a set of "REG_MULTI_SZ" and "REG_EXPAND_SZ" keys in the right hand pane. The one that we are interested in modifying is called "Windows".

To modify the key, double click on it. It should look something like this:

%SystemRoot%\system32\csrss.exe ObjectDirectory=\Windows SharedSection=1024,3072,512 Windows=On SubSystemType=Windows ServerDll=basesrv,1 ServerDll=winsrv:UserServerDllInitialization,3 ServerDll=winsrv:ConServerDllInitialization,2 ProfileControl=Off MaxRequestThreads=16

The section of this string we are interested in modifying is SharedSection.

In the SharedSection part of the string you will notice 3 numbers. What we are interested in is the middle value, "3072". Modify this value so that it reads "8192" instead.

It should look something like this after modifying the value:

%SystemRoot%\system32\csrss.exe ObjectDirectory=\Windows SharedSection=1024,8192,512 Windows=On SubSystemType=Windows ServerDll=basesrv,1 ServerDll=winsrv:UserServerDllInitialization,3 ServerDll=winsrv:ConServerDllInitialization,2 ProfileControl=Off MaxRequestThreads=16

Now that this registry entry has been modified we can continue on with the other values that need to be modified in order to raise the GDI limits.

In the left hand pane of the Registry Editor, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows. In the right hand side, you will see two REG_DWORD values, named GDIProcessHandleQuota and USERProcessHandleQuota. We will need to modify both of these.

The first key we will want to modify is GDIProcessHandleQuota. This keys value can be set between 256 and 16,384 (maximum), and the default value is 10,000. I'd recommend using 15,000 as a value for this key, however if you are doing a lot of multitasking, shoot for the stars and go with 16,384.

This key cannot be set past 16,384 as it is the maximum acceptable value.

Now, let's modify USERProcessHandleQuota. This keys value can be set between 200 and 18,000 (maximum), with a default value of 10,000. I'd recommend increasing this value to the same number used with GDIProcessHandleQuota, however as previously mentioned if you are working with a hefty application workload, shoot for the stars and go with the maximum value of 18,000.

This key cannot be set past 18,000 as it is the maximum acceptable value.

Do NOT attempt to increase these values past the maximum - Windows will become very unstable and may even stop working correctly. If Windows starts acting up after changing these values, lower them until the issues are resolved, or restore the backups of these keys' values that we created before making modifications.

Now that you've changed these values, restart your computer and tax the system using the Internet Explorer trick mentioned previously - open Internet Explorer and hold down Ctrl+N on your keyboard to open up new Internet Explorer windows. Continue this until menus, buttons, and user interface elements stop working correctly. Also, open any applications you run day-to-day while you are performing this, so that you can get more of an idea if you have everything configured correctly.

You may also want to monitor your memory usage and handles information in Task Manager to see whether or not the above registry values need any more modifications.

Yes, I admit it. I use Gmail for my personal and www.ParadoxalPress.com email (through their Gmail for domain support). Not that I dislike Hotmail, and they have made great strides from the original version of Hotmail.

For me it's a matter of freedom and which software best suits the way I work and the needs I have. And so far, Gmail is the best choice for me... Even if I do work for Microsoft and I would prefer to support our own software. When it comes to my own choices, its a question of what works best for me.

Ok. Enough blabbering, the one thing that does drive me nuts with Gmail is their so-so mobile support.

• Their mobile enable web access is beyond basic and having to deal with more than a few emails is tedious.
• You can use the non-mobile web view but it is not very mobile phone friendly.
• They have a Java app which works for regular gmail (not for domain mail) which is much closer to what I would like. But it is Java which requires me to launch an applet and does not integrate well with the other features of my Windows Mobile phone (Cingular 8525 with WM 5.0).

That being said, I sure wish Gmail had an API (such as some of the other Google services). I would take the time and write a native app to allow WM 5.0 and 6.0 access to GMail accounts. Would make my life so much easier :)

POP Support: Yes, Gmail does have POP support. But it has several problems that i've noticed so far. The first problem is that messages can only be deleted from your inbox if you select the option to have all mail retrieved through POP to be deleted, so deleting individual items through the mail program doesn't work. The second problem is that it does not allow you to take advantage of features such as labels. I've also noticed that some mails are slow to deliver. So although you can "check" your Gmail using POP, you can't really "manage" your mail with it...

From: http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=16743

"With the first PS3 price cut already announced, the industry turns to Microsoft, waiting for them to respond in kind. Michael Pachter thinks a response is coming this week, with a reduction on the prices of all the various 360 models. The internal hardware might be changing on these units soon too, according to Dean Takahashi." 

Ok, before I state my oppinion. Yes, I work for Microsoft but have nothing to do with the Xbox360 team and nor do I have any special insight into the topic. Yes, details of strategies are kept secret even internally to reduce the risk of a leak. But there are a few obvious thing as a fellow gamer, and someone who has been following the industry can say. Probably the best way is to summarize my POV with a set of bullet points.

• The Xbox360 is still significantly outselling the PS3 in most market. In fact, the PS3 sales appear to be much weaker than they would hope for and they therefore likely have an overstock problem right now.
• In terms of video game console sales, mid-summer is probably the weakest time of they year. Announcing a price cut at this point is somewhat stupid, any buzz generated will have fizzled out way before the holiday sales peak season. So in other words, if a price cut generates a 20% sales boost for a few months, they are shooting themselfs in the foot by doing so in the slowest sales period of the year. Almost seems like a sign of desperation to me.
• Ok, they announced the price cut before E3... Now what? Seems like that would be the "big announcement of the show". Unless they have something else under their sleeve.
• Oh, and despite the price cut, the cost of a PS3 is still insane. Plus their selection of game is still poor almost one year after launch.

Now, will the Xbox360 cut their prices? Beats me... I do know that as with any piece of hardware, the costs of production have been reduced since the release so this obviously makes the possibility of a price cut a possibity. But I doubt any such announcement, if is to occur will happen at E3. It's just a poor strategic choice in terms of timing. My guess is that if such a decision is made, it would be announced later this year before the holiday season where the "bang for the buck" of such an announcement would make more sense.

Plus, if the 360 is leading the road in terms of sales, attach rate, .... Why is there such an "urgency" that Microsoft needs to respond?

Anyways. Just my 2 cents....

Sheesh. Some people are idiots.

Some "wannabe" author who decided to go the self-publishing route via Xilbris had sent me a letter about one month ago accusing me of selling counterfit copies of his book on my website. Why? Well because the site listed that we had 100 copies in stock and of course, his current sales didn't correspond to that. I had not yet answered to the letter, as I considered this a low priority and was eventually going to get to it.

Now guess what, the idiotic author decided to file a complaint with the WA General Attorney. What really erks me with this is that the author obviously has no knowledge and understanding of the process involved with such do-it-yourself publishers and for print-on-demand books work. To me, the simple fact that the author would not educate himself properly and would rather hound and harass book sellers trying to sell his title makes me question the quality of the book in the first place.

Xilbris uses Print On Demand for the publishing of its titles. This means that there are no books that are pre-printed and are essentially printed as orders come in using a high-speed/quality/volume laser printing system. Xilbris, like most Prind On Demand (POD) publishers use Lightning Source Inc as the on demand printer. The main reason for choosing this provider is that it is owned by Ingram Books, one of the two major book distributors in the USA. Which means that since the distributor itself is printing the books, this means a quick turnaround when books are ordered.

One of the other pluses of Ingram, especially for a small online store like mine is that they offer drop-shipping services. This means that when an order is placed on my site, I simply route the order to Ingram who ships it directly to the customer. Although I do stock some titles, there is no way I can stock copies of every book out there (financially and space wise). The problem with POD books is that there isn't really a physical inventory of titles since they are printed as orders come in.

So this means that technically, the inventory level from the distributor would be zero. Lots of retailers don't differentiate between regular printed books and POD books so a stock level of zero would mean that the book would be considered as "backordered". But the reality is that with the current POD technology most orders can be processed and shipped in 24 hours. So to avoid this "backorder confusion" and promote the sale of POD titles, Ingram sets a token inventory level of 100 copies of all POD titles, which they feel corresponds to what they can realistically print and ship within a 1-2 day period.

Anyways, based on the sales figures the author showed to prove that I "must be counterfiting his book" there is no way it would make sense financially to create counterfit copy of self-published book with such small sales.