Tuesday, May 04, 2010
My company, like many, has been trending towards moving much of its unskilled labor south of the border. In an American economic environment often hostile to the interests of business, this often makes sense. However, there are some concerns that corporations might want to consider:
"Now, drug-gang violence, until recently confined to Ciudad Juárez and other cities far to the west, is startlingly close by. Last month, some 30 gunmen stormed two hotels in Monterrey and kidnapped six people, in a shock for the city. The 130-mile highway from Monterrey to the border has seen a number of incidents, including a recent shoot-out between armed men and the Mexican military."
The hotel that was stormed is frequented by our staff when we are sent to Monterey. Monterey is where most of the work from here is being sent. Furthermore, that work cannot go there without our technical resources travelling there to educate the staff and mangement. If Monterey and Mexico cannot guarantee the safety of our people there, and if the drug violence continues to escalate, I would hope the decision makers would see fit to rethink these changes. Otherwise, the price that will be paid could be greater than a few hundred lost jobs.
.: posted by
Dave
9:56 AM
Saturday, May 01, 2010
If you've ever used iTunes, and an iPhone, undoubtedly, you've installed apps or downloaded music on your device without syncing it to your computer. Also, you've probably moved to a new computer along the way. That's what I've been doing all week, trying to get my data moved to a new MacBook Pro, and getting it synced with my iPhone. The process is trivial, but with one rather large caveat if you're not paying attention. When you check the box in iTunes to sync your apps, a dialog box opens that asks you if you want to overwrite the apps on your iPhone. Obviously, you don't want to do that, but I know lots of users who, in an attempt to sync their device, click Yes, only to find that their apps are long gone from their iPhone. Not a good feeling.  So what's the fix? It's rather simple, and requires you to know to look for it, I think. Right click in iTunes on your iPhone, and select Transfer Purchases. This selection is prominent in iTunes documentation, but to many users, it's very much non-intuitive, as it isn't part of the syncing process.
So if you're moving to a new machine, when you tether your iPhone or iPod Touch to your computer, trust me when I suggest that you follow this procedure (as well as backing up your device to iTunes) before doing anything else.
Labels: Apple, ITunes, Mac OS X
.: posted by
Dave
11:11 AM
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
In the last week or so, I've been acquainting myself with a brand new MacBook Pro. I decided that I needed one machine to run all of the various OSes that I use, so this was my choice. So far, I'm impressed. But there are, as expected, some quirks that I have to overcome along the way. On OS X, I've grown to like the Spaces feature, which effectively segregates my workflow in four distinctly hidden screens. However, I am a keyboard junkie, and I prefer to access it using the F8 key. This is well and good, until I realized that iTunes was popping up every time I tried to access Spaces. Well, it turns out that F8 has dual uses on the MBP. In this case, it also... yes, activates iTunes. Using the 'fn' key on the lower left corner of the keyboard activates the function key. Yes, I know, this is commonplace on today's consolidated keyboards, but for whatever reason, it didn't occur to me until I perused the Apple website. Alternatively, if you don't want to use the special functions, go to System Preferences | Keyboard and check the box in the picture below.  I prefer to have my full keyboard functionality, but this was very frustrating. Fortunately, if you're reading this, and you use a MBP, you won't share my frustration.
.: posted by
Dave
9:44 PM
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Is this blog still here? Apparently so. There's so little time in the day, and I've been working on other projects, such as learning Objective-C, the iPhone APIs, XCode, and blogging at my other site, http://www.theiphoneand.us. Maybe I'll get back to this blog soon, too... assuming I can find more time in the day. Heh.
Labels: Blogging
.: posted by
Dave
10:32 PM
|
