Thinking about a new Kindle

I resisted buying a new Kindle Paperwhite when they were on sale for $99 a few weeks ago. (The regular price is $119.) But now they’re on sale for $89, and I have a $50 gift certificate that my brother gave me for my birthday last month. So that’s tempting.

But I’m glad I held out, since it looks like a new Kindle is coming next week. Details are sketchy, but it’s probably worth waiting until the new one is announced before buying a Paperwhite. Of course, if the new one is a new high-end Kindle like the Voyage, I’ll probably want a Paperwhite rather than that anyway.

The thing that really motivated me to start thinking about a new Kindle, by the way, was reading a book with a bunch of footnotes recently. My old Kindle doesn’t handle that well, but the newer ones, including the Paperwhite and Voyage, show footnotes in a popup window.

Bat-Books

I went on a bit of a bat-binge last week, reading a bunch of Batman comics. I read Grant Morrison’s Batman and Robin 1-6, Paul Dini’s Streets of Gotham 1-7, Scott Snyder’s Batman 8-13, and Tim Sale’s Tales of the Batman hardcover.

The first two were in hard-copy, single-issue form. These were some of the last comics I bought from Westfield before I stopped buying monthly comics in 2009. The Snyder books were digital single issues from Comixology. And the Tim Sale book was a hardcover that I picked up at a convention some time ago.

Batman and Robin and Streets of Gotham were coming out at the same time, and dealt with the same characters: the Dick Grayson Batman and Damian Wayne Robin. Neither book really covers Dick’s decision to take over as Batman; I imagine that was covered somewhere else, though I’m not sure where.

Morrison’s Batman and Robin book was a fun read. The Frank Quitely art on the first three issues was great; I wish he could have done more. I’ll probably pick up the rest of Morrison’s run on this book.

The Streets of Gotham book was more of a mixed bag. Paul Dini wrote the first few issues, then there was a fill-in written by Christopher Yost, then Dini came back. And there’s an interesting backup featuring a new Manhunter character. The art on this book is by Dustin Nguyen. I loved his work on Wildcats 3.0, but he has a different inker here and the whole look of his art seems a bit different. It’s still good, but I was hoping for something more like his Wildcats work. I might pick up the rest of the run of this book, but I’m not sure.

Both of these books ran from 2009 through to the New 52 relaunch in 2011. I don’t really know if either book has a satisfying conclusion, or if they were just cut off in mid-story, leaving dangling plot threads. If it’s the latter, then it might be an exercise in frustration to pick up and read the remaining issues. I’ll have to read some reviews first and see if I can figure that out.

I’ve read only a few books from the New 52. I think the whole idea was interesting, and many of the books were well-received, but it’s all a bit too much for me to follow. I did pick up the first year of Scott Snyder’s Batman book some time ago, when it was on sale at Comixology. I read the first storyline a while back, and the second one over the weekend. I had mixed feelings about the first story, “The Court of Owls,” but the second one, “The City of Owls,” was pretty cool, and finished out the overall “Owl” story nicely. Greg Capullo’s art on this book is great. And the conclusion to the Owl story is fun and fast-paced. It’s really more of an action-movie Batman than a “detective” Batman, but that’s OK sometimes. I’m not sure if I want to read even further into Snyder’s run though. The next story would be “Death of the Family“, and that one sounds like it might be too grim for me. And I’m not that fond of cross-over stories. (The Owl story had a bunch of cross-over issues, but I skipped them, and still understood and enjoyed the story.)

I also listened to an episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour today, discussing Glen Weldon’s new Batman book. It sounds interesting. I might pick this one up. (Though of course I already know more than anyone needs to know about Batman’s history.)

In other Batman-related news, I still haven’t seen Batman vs Superman, and I’m OK with that. I’ll get around to it eventually, but I may wait until it’s out on DVD.

Database snapshots

At work, we do our Dynamics AX development on VMs, set up with a full install of AX (SQL Server, AOS, and AX client). Prior to our R3 upgrade, we were using local VMs, under VMWare Workstation. This worked out quite well. One of my favorite things about this setup was the ease with which I could take VM snapshots, allowing me to run destructive tests, then roll back, fix bugs, and rerun the tests without having to jump through hoops to reset my environment or set up new test orders, or whatever. It was all pretty clean and easy.

But, after we upgraded to R3, we set up new VMs on vSphere. There are a number of advantages to this, but one disadvantage is that I don’t have rights on vSphere to snapshot my own VM. (I’m sure I could ask an admin to snapshot my VM, but the typical testing cycle of snapshotting, rolling back, fixing code, snapshotting again, etc., would probably annoy the admins.) So I’ve been looking for an alternative way to manage testing destructive processes.

I’ve settled on using SQL database snapshots. AX 2012 R3 stores all data in one database, and all code in a separate model database. (Versions prior to R2 mixed code and data in one database.) I’ve worked out a process by which I can pretty quickly take a snapshot, run my tests, delete the snapshot, and start again.

Given a database called DAX12_PROD, here’s a quick run-down on how to execute this process.

(1) Stop the AOS server.

(2) Create a snapshot:

CREATE DATABASE DAX12_PROD_SS1 ON
 ( NAME = DAX12_PROD, FILENAME = 'E:\your_sql_data_folder\DAX12_PROD_SS1.ss'
 ) AS SNAPSHOT OF DAX12_PROD

(3) Start the AOS & run your tests.

(4) Stop the AOS.

(5) Restore from the snapshot.

ALTER DATABASE DAX12_PROD
 SET SINGLE_USER WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE

RESTORE DATABASE DAX12_PROD
 FROM DATABASE_SNAPSHOT = 'DAX12_PROD_SS1'

(6) If you’re done, then drop the snapshot.

DROP DATABASE DAX12_PROD_SS1

(6) Start the AOS.

So that doesn’t take too much effort and is pretty quick to run. The snapshot file is a sparse file, created with the same size as the actual database file, but not actually taking that much space on disk. So you don’t need to have a ridiculous amount of free space on your VM (as long as your test isn’t changing a ridiculous amount of data).

And yes, I know that it would be so much better if I could just run unit tests that don’t touch actual data, but it’s nearly impossible to do that for a lot of the stuff I have to do in AX. There are some interesting things you can do, in certain scenarios, like getting creative with setTmp, but that’s too simplistic for a lot of the testing I need to do.

my new iPhone SE

I successfully picked up my new iPhone SE from UPS yesterday. Weirdly enough, everything went smoothly with that. (I have a history of problems with this sort of thing…) I used these instructions to transfer everything from the old phone to the new one, and again everything went smoothly.

So now I have a phone that looks almost identical to my old phone, only with better battery life, more memory, and a few other improvements.

I’m now working on getting the old phone ready for trade-in. It took three tries, but I finally managed to get through the process on the BrightStar site, Apple’s partner that handles trade-ins. (They really don’t have the whole usability thing figured out.) I just need to wipe it and pack it up now, and I should get $150 for it. That $150 will be Apple Store credit, though, so I’m not sure what I’ll do with that. It would be enough to pay for half an Apple Watch, though I’m still not convinced I need one of those.

waiting for my iPhone SE

I will hopefully have my new iPhone SE tomorrow.

Figuring out the logistics of getting this phone has been a bit of a task. When I ordered it from Apple, in-store pickup would have been easiest for me, but wasn’t an option. Next-day shipping was free, but they didn’t say which carrier they’d use. It turns out they’re using UPS, which complicates things a bit for me.

There was an option (via Apple) to waive the signature requirement. If I did that, then UPS would probably have left the phone for me today, and I’d probably have it. But there would have been a non-trivial chance that someone would have stolen it, and waiving the signature requirement means Apple and UPS take no responsibility for that. So I kept the signature requirement.

Once I got the e-mail with the tracking number, I was hoping I could tell UPS to hold the package at their office in Bound Brook, so I could just pick it up. But you can’t do that with just a tracking #, unless you’re in their “My Choice” program. Which I can’t get into, since they think my address is commercial and not residential. I spent some time on the phone with them last year trying to straighten that out, but didn’t really get anywhere. And I checked last night, and the issue still hasn’t been fixed.

So I had to wait for them to make a delivery attempt and leave an info notice. Which they did today. With the info notice number, I can have them hold the package at their office. So I did that, and I can probably pick it up tomorrow. Of course, the office is only open from 8:30am to 6pm, so if I want to pick it up in the morning, I need to come into work late. And if I want to pick it up after work, I might not make it in time, if traffic is bad. Maybe I’ll go over on my lunch break. (And they’re not open on the weekend, so if I don’t get it tomorrow, I’ll have to wait until Monday.)

It’s kind of funny how many hoops I have to jump through just to get this package. But hopefully it’ll be worth it!

Podcasts

I listen to a lot of podcasts these days, and I’ve noticed that I’ve changed a few things up recently, so I thought I’d write up a blog post.

First, I’m still using Overcast. I switched to that, from Instacast, when that app/service shut down a while back. Marco Arment released a new version of Overcast just recently and wrote a blog post about it. He’s obviously the kind of guy that cares about what he’s doing, and it shows in the finished product. It’s easy to use and reliable. One of the interesting things he recently added to the app is the ability to upload files for personal use. This feature is only available to “patrons” who pay a modest recurring fee. I’m currently using Huffduffer to do something like this, so I don’t really need this feature, and I haven’t set myself up as a “patron” for Overcast, though I might do it at some point. (I had paid for Overcast back before he discontinued the paid version and made all features free, so I don’t feel like a freeloader or anything.)

In terms of podcasts I’m following regularly, I’ve added a few new ones recently, and also dropped a few. And I’m thinking about dropping some others.

For tech/programming podcasts, I still subscribe to .NET Rocks, Hanselminutes, and Mac Power Users. Hanselminutes is interesting most of the time, and is a weekly, 30-minute show, so it’s not hard to keep up with.

.NET Rocks (DNR) is about an hour long, and comes out three times a week now, so it’s a bit harder to keep up with. The way I have Overcast set up, I keep only the five most recent episodes of any podcast, and I’m often about three weeks behind, so this means that DNR episodes often drop off before I’ve listened to them. And if I didn’t cull some out, or rearrange them in my playlist occasionally, none of them would ever make it to the top of my playlist. Luckily, a lot of recent DNR episodes have been covering stuff that I’m not that interested in, so it’s easy to skip those. The “geek out” episodes that they do periodically, though, are really great, so I’d keep subscribing to DNR just for those, even if none of the other episodes were interesting to me. What I’ve been doing is occasionally deleting episodes that don’t look interesting, and/or rearranging my playlist to move the “geek out” episodes up.

Mac Power Users (MPU) is weekly, but is generally around 90 minutes long, so that one is also a bit hard to keep up with. I enjoy MPU, and have gotten a lot out of it, but I’m finding that, after listening to it for several months now, I’m not always getting a lot of new information from it. So this is another one where I’ll skip shows occasionally. I might even drop my subscription to it for awhile, then maybe come back and give it another try in six months.

Long ago, I used to listen to a number of music podcasts. Most of them went away some time ago, and I didn’t really replace them with any new ones, so I haven’t had many music podcasts to listen to lately, and I’m trying to address that.

My favorite music podcast, from way back, was Insomnia Radio (IR). This was a great show that stopped releasing new episodes several years ago. The main show spawned several spin-off shows, but I never followed any of those. I recently visited the old IR website, to see what was up, and was pleasantly surprised to see that the IR UK show was still up and running. But it doesn’t seem to be releasing on a terribly regular schedule. I added a subscription to it in Overcast, so it’ll be there whenever it does update. And the main IR show has been resurrected, though there’s only been one new show, posted in February, and nothing since, so who knows if Jason will do any more, but I’m definitely hoping that he will. IR also does a “daily dose” show that’s just a single song. I don’t currently subscribe to that, but I should add it, since that feed is still pretty active.

I’m also still subscribing to Warren Ellis’ SPEKTRMODULE, which is released only sporadically. (Only one show has been released in 2016 so far.) But it’s a cool podcast, though infrequent.

And I subscribe to The Many Moods of Ben Vaughn, which still comes out weekly, and is always worth listening to.

For humor podcasts, I subscribe to Judge John Hodgman, which is great. It comes out pretty consistently, once a week, and is always fun to listen to. I also subscribe to The Bugle, but that podcast went on hiatus a while back. They did a new one recently, and will hopefully do them more regularly this year, but who knows. I think they’re shooting for one a month.

For “miscellaneous” podcasts, I’m still subscribed to StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson. That’s still a lot of fun, but many of the episodes recently have just been the audio portion of the National Geographic TV show, so I generally delete them, since I’ve already seen the show on TV. And a lot of them are rebroadcasts of old shows, so I will often delete those too, if I’ve already heard them.

I’ve recently added a number of NPR podcasts. Note To Self is a pretty good one. It’s usually weekly, and 15 minutes long, so it’s easy to keep up with. It’s a tech podcast, but with a different angle than most other tech podcasts.

I’m also listening to Planet Money now. This one is also really good. Most shows are about a half-hour long, and are very well-researched, well-written, and well-produced. They generally do a deep dive into an obscure financial topic that illuminates something that’s important, but maybe not well-understood.

And I just added Pop Culture Happy Hour. I haven’t actually listened to any of those yet, but it looks interesting. So that’s enough NPR stuff that I’ve grouped them all into an NPR playlist in Overcast.

So I guess now I have a nice broad selection of interesting podcasts to listen to, whenever I’m in the car, or looking to listen to something before bed, or whenever. And I have separate playlists for tech, music, humor, and NPR podcasts set up, so I can switch between them depending on my mood.

Kurosawa on TCM

Earlier this week, TCM had a little marathon of Akira Kurosawa movies. I caught them all with a WishList search that I set up when I first got my TiVo Bolt. I’m still really liking the Bolt. I don’t think I could go back to the cable company DVR, and I hope I don’t ever have to. TiVo might get acquired by another company soon. If they do, hopefully they’ll keep making new hardware and supporting their existing hardware.

iPhone SE

I ordered myself an iPhone SE today to replace my old iPhone 5S. I ordered it from Apple (rather than Verizon), for no particular reason other than that the Apple Store website is nicer than Verizon’s.

It should show up at my home on 3/31, but it might turn into one of those things where the FedEx or UPS guy won’t leave it without a signature, and I have to go pick it up, in which case I probably won’t get it until 4/2. (I was hoping I could choose in-store pickup, but that’s not available yet.)

The iPhone SE is pretty much exactly what I want: a new phone that’s exactly like my old phone, only with a new battery, more memory (64GB instead of 32GB), Apple Pay, and a few other minor bells and whistles. I don’t want a bigger screen or that fancy 3D touch stuff. Heck, it should even fit in my old case (though I might buy a new case anyway.) And it’s been getting good reviews.

I’m planning on trading in my old iPhone, but I’m not sure whether I’ll go with Gazelle or Apple. It looks like Gazelle will give me $85 for it, while Apple might give me $150. Either of which is pretty good. (Verizon was only going to give me $15.)

I’m paying for the new phone at full price ($500), which is the first time I’ve done that, I think. Buying it on contract is apparently still an option for me. It would have cost only $50 that way, but my monthly bill would have gone up $20, so doing the math on that over two years, it would be slightly more expensive than buying the phone outright.

I keep thinking about leaving Verizon for another carrier, but I decided against that. My only real complaint about Verizon right now is that I’d like more than 3GB of data per month, or at least to be able to roll over unused data. But with more memory on the new phone, I can download more music to it, so maybe I won’t feel as tempted to use up all my data on streaming music, which is my usual problem.

Ken Butler

Yesterday, I went down to Whiting to visit my friend Gloria and celebrate my birthday. Since it was a nice day out, and I got an early start, I decided to stop by the cemetery and visit my parent’s grave.

The cemetery was nice and quiet, and it was a good visit. They seem to have finished the construction that they were doing, so the main entrance is open again, which is good. (But the bad news is that they still don’t seem to have any restrooms open on the weekend.)

I had a good dinner with Gloria and a couple of other friends. But, during dessert, Gloria got a call to let her know that our friend Ken Butler had passed away. He had been having a lot of medical issues lately, and Gloria had told me earlier that he was under hospice care, so it wasn’t entirely unexpected, but he’d only recently been moved to hospice, so we assumed he’d have more time. (Coincidentally, his birthday was right after mine, and Gloria had been planning to visit him at the hospital for his birthday.)

Ken was a good friend to my parents, and to Gloria. He had done a number of odd jobs around the house for my parents, and was pretty handy with that stuff, which my Dad admired. (These were the kind of jobs that my Dad would have done himself, before his eyesight got too bad.) And he was a driver for Meals on Wheels when my parents were getting meals through that program.

In recent years, he’d had to stop driving, but he had an old bicycle that he’d ride around on. I’d see him at Gloria’s house often, when I was down there visiting. He’d come by almost every day for a game of dominoes with Gloria, and he was always joking around and making her laugh.

I last saw him only about a month ago, and he seemed to be in good spirits despite his medical issues. He’ll be missed.