Since I first heard that Delta was offering paperless boarding passes I thought how fun this would be to try. On my last few trips from LGA I decided to try checking in on my phone. The first time there was no option for online checkin, obviousy a problem that day. The second time I got my online boarding pass but it did not include the barcode so TSA could not use it. Today for my third time I got the barcode and figured everything was fine. I went through CLEAR for security screening and they did not have the computer to scan the screen. They went to all the TSA agents and nobody had gotten the computers out that day. Finally they found one person who had the computer. After some “fiddling about” they got the computer on and then tried to scan the barcode for about one minute. After they they “determined” that the barcode on my iPhone was not compatible with their scanner, I suspect they did not have any idea how to use the equipment. I was then sent back through the security line, I had to find a checkin kiosk that was free, print a boarding pass (so much for that tree) and then go back through CLEAR to be screened again. I am almost certain that this is not the process Delta had in mind when designing the paperless boarding pass system. Should I continue trying and getting frustrated or just use the old-fashioned paper boarding pass and be relatively headache free? If I choose tha later, then hours and many thousands of dollars are wasted on Delta’s part.

What should I do here?  Am I expecting too much?

As I have been trying to learn better ways of doing things I wondered today how I could find the current drive letter the command script was being called from.  I found people questioning it, I thought about writing an elaborate script to set a variable and parse it, but finally I found Rob van der Woude’s Scripting Pages which had the reference I needed.  What is the answer?  “%~d0″  Now how in the world would anyone ever guess or figure out that %~d0 returns the drive of the current command script?

So tonight I was wondering what my options were for upgrading from my current Windows XP Professional X64 installation to a 64-bit version of Windows Vista (Edition?).  I found a Microsoft KB article Installation choices for 64-bit consumer versions of Windows Vista which has my specific scenario “Installing a 64-bit version of Windows Vista on a computer that is running Windows XP Professional x64.”  I followed the link to the Vista Upgrade Advisor download page and after running the installation file I am presented with this message.

Sorry, the Upgrade Advisor does not support 64-bit editions of Windows XP or Windows Vista.

I recently came across some materials that were mailed by Apple to me at an early employer.  I was particularly intrigued by the cover letter extolling the virtues of Macintosh/MS-DOS Compatibility.  The time frame had to be in the early 1990’s.  The products they were referencing were SoftPC and the Orange Micro Orange386.  The closing sentence “Thank you for taking the time to learn why your next MS-DOS computer should be a Macintosh.”  Is this some strange future prediction?  How interesting that today with the Mac product line transitioned over to the Intel processors, more and more people are making the Mac platform their Windows computer of choice.  Welcome to the 90’s again.

As a side note, I found it particularly funny that when doing some research the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article came up for Orange 386.

I was recently on a Delta flight from JFK (New York) to MCO (Orlando) on a recently updated and modernized Boeing 757-200(E) which happens to be International configuration.  The first thing I noticed is that seat 1A is configured for crew rest with a small privacy curtain. The seat pitch was definitely not domestic, and they had foot rests and even quite fancy chair controls with two position memory even!  On the right front portion of the seat was a standard US grounded power plug and in the right arm rest a flip out video unit.  Finally I looked down to the left and noticed a small white piece sticking out.  I looked closer and it appeared to be a USB and RJ-45 port.  Could Delta be putting in the first pieces for in-flight data services?  I know JetBlue has been testing on-board wireless connections on their BetaBue aircraft, but the limitations make me believe this is of limited purpose.  

I received a letter from American Express a few months back that indicated they were discontinuing the ExpressPay key fob as of 31-July-2008.  I immediately wondered why they would make one form-factor RFID device stop working while still supporting it embedded in other products such as the American Express Blue Cash card.  Some of you may remember the original Blue from American Express which was a Smart Card, something that does not exist today in the US market.  The Smart Card has been removed and now Blue is just another card which happens to have ExpressPay RFID embedded.  I phoned the ExpressPay customer service line to enquire as to why they were discontinuing the, in my opinion, most convenient form-factor device.  They took my complaint and asid that somebody would get back with me in the next few days.  Even though it was American Express I half expected to hear nothing.  No more than two days later I have a very friendly call from a nice person working in the Salt Lake City office.  He listened to my concerns and explanation then answered my questions and took the time to make sure that I understood.  Apparently the original platform for ExpressPay on wich the key fob was developed had never been integrated with the rest of the American Express processing platform therefore the decision was made to discontinue that device.  Also apparently some people had problems with the key fob coming off the key chains.

My friend Mike and I have been discussing the benefits of points, miles or cash back from credit card products.  He finally figured out that the best option is just to take the cash so he encouraged me to get rid of my Delta SkyMIles card from American Express and get a Blue Cash because at least I could still use ExpresPay and it does have up to 5% cash back rewards program.  I phoned American Express customer service and asked if I could simply convert my existing Delta SkyMiles credit card to a Blue Cash, “no problem” was the response and less than three minutes later I hung up and my account conversion was complete!

I setup my email accounts for MobileMe and Exchange. But I was told that you cannot have more than one contact or calendar set or syncing. I was confused how on 2008 people designing mobile phones did not grasp the concept of somebody wanting to separate personal and business information. After having the phone for about ten days I got to looking around. I tried turning on the Exchange calendar and wonder of wonders the iPhone made a new group “All calendars”. With contacts I was not so adventurous. I looked online then made backups of both contact lists and tried it. The heavens smiled upon me and I not only did I have separate contact lists but I was also able to view a combined list. I should have expected this to com from Apple!

•  5000 Minutes $99.99
• Buddy time (Unlimited text and Mobile to Mobile) $10.00
• T-Zones (Unlimited 2.5G data on handset) $5.99
• Monthly Total $115.98

On AT&T with the equivalent services my bill would look as follows:

• Unlimited Voice/3G Data $129.99 
• Unlimited Text $20.00
• Monthly Total $149.99

The AT&T rates do not even include sending text messages outside the US.  T-Mobile charges $0.15 per message to send an international text and the incoming messages come out of my text messaging plan.  AT&T charges $0.25 to send an International text and $0.20 to receive an international text unless you buy their international text plan for $9.99 which includes too international text messages and additional messages are $0.20.Now to be fair, the T-Mobile price would go up to $129.98 if I had a proper T-Zones plan like T-Zones Total Internet however I can do anything I need on the phone with the T-Zones plan.  T-Mobile has not officially released their 3G network so their rates may go up but that remains to be seen.  Also if I was on the T-Zones Total Internet I would be able to tether my notebook to my phone via Bluetooth and use the phone as a modem, the iPhone still does not support this without hacking that I am aware of.So other than getting an iPhone what am I getting for  the additional $34.01 per month, $408.12 per year and $816.24 at the end of my required two-year contract before taxes!Take for example how another country is promoting the iPhone.  Optus in Australia has the following statement on their iPhone pricing page “Optus is making the iPhone 3G affordable for everyone.”  Does that even sound like something you would hear spoken aloud in AT&T offices?Also because of the progressive nature of Australian government, they do not allow things like mobile phones to be locked down to a carrier.  So when an Australian iPhone user travels to another country, they can simply purchase a local pre-paid SIM and have a local number without all the international roaming surcharges… GO USA!�

Am I reading things correctly “Adobe Flash Player is not supported for playback in a 64-bit browser…”?  What in the world is stopping Adobe from releasing a 64-Bit Flash Player?  I know it cannot be as simple as re-compiling it with the “64-Bit” checkbox, but people come on!  64-Bit computing has been increasing in popularity and availability for the last few years, is there really any excuse for this?

Along the way I have found a series of ups and downs trying to adapt. I was surprised and amazed at the number of applications that have specific 64-Bit versions of their applications. Overall application support was not a problem and I could run all that I needed. Lately I have been running into problems with drivers. It started when I tried to connect a Visioneer Strobe XP 100. At that point I did not realize that the 32-Bit drivers would not work, so I connected and tried and tried. Finally I phoned support and was told that I could try the Vista 64 drivers but they could not guarantee that they would work for XP 64 and they had no plans to support XP 64. Needless to say that did not work and I gave up on scanner support under XP 64.

Then a few days ago I needed to have a second network adapter to my computer. Since it is a small form factor the easiest way is to use a USB to Ethernet adapter. After doing some research I came to find out there are only two or three that actually are on the HCL for XP 64 and Vista 64. One of them was the Apple USB Ethernet adapter but since people in the forums were having trouble getting them going I figured it would be better to avoid this since I would probably need to dig through Boot Camp to find the drivers if they were even released yet. Then I found the D-Link DUB-E100, it was on the list and even less than $30. It arrived last night so I plugged it in today and no-where on the disc were drivers that would install on XP 64. I went to their web site and the download version was the same as the disc with the product. I did a search for “DUB-E100 xp 64″ and the first link is a product manual for the product that has a section telling you how to install the XP 64 drivers. I noticed two things about this manual. The URL indicates it is for 3.4 not 3.3, and also it is from the D-Link Australia site. AFter playing with the URL I was able to navigate to the Autstrlian drivers and download the 3.4 package with the XP 64 drivers.

On the flip-side I also needed to use a USB to Serial adapter I bought years ago, but guess what… I needed to buy a new version from the company because they did not offer XP 64 drivers for an “old” product. After researching I found a totally generic product that scared me a little but but claimed to support almost ever operating system from Windows 98 to Vista 64 including Windows Server 2003 64! It arrived in the mail with a 3 CM disc and I put the disc in the system. Autorun opens a splash screen with options to install drivers for the product and all the drivers are clearly in their own folders on the disc. The install goes smoothly and there are even drivers for OS X and Intel!

Someone please explain to me why a generic little USB to Serial adapter that cost $17 can have broad range driver support but USB to Ethernet adapters from the likes of Linksys, Netgear and others cannot support XP 64? Why does Apple upgrade OS X to support 64-Bit processors and without obvious turmoil in requiring new driver models? Every version of Windows in recent history has had a “new and improved” driver model which while it will cause a little hassle initially will solve the problems and be the end-all, only to be replaced again for some reason?

Finally I will note that I am displeased with scanner support in OS X. The Visioneer XP 100 will not work under OS X and I see no reason why Apple should not have better native scanner support. I thought Twain was supposed to be an industry standard? All the scanners I can find that are compatible with OS X are large desktop sized ones and I just wanted a small portable scanner for occasional use.