Latest Blog Entries

Article posted on Jun 19

Beep.

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on June 19, 2009, 1:39 am

@x11r5 is a good friend of mine on identi.ca. You should friend him.

• Leave Comment
• Posted in Uncategorized

Article posted on Jun 10

Ally Bank update

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on June 10, 2009, 12:15 pm

Following up on Saturday's post: On Sunday morning, I received a call on my cellphone from an 800 number. "I'm not answering that on a weekend," I thought, and went back to bed. When I got up later, I found a comment waiting for approval on my blog, and it was from Al de Molina. (I did a little checking, and it seemed authentic, either from him himself, or something like a PR firm on his behalf.)

Sure enough, the voicemail waiting for me was from Alex from Ally bank wanting me to return his call. We played phone tag Sunday, and he got back to me Monday morning.

The call was pretty short. Alex said that the info given to me by the first call was wrong, and the rate quoted on the day you begin the fund transfer is the rate you should get. The problem comes from the fact that yes, some days they don't initiate the transfer on their side until the next day. However, it should have been a simple call to fix that in those sorts of situations.

My funds transfer has been completed, and I just verified that my account is showing 2.50% APY. So if this sort of situation happens to you, be persistent. Point out my experience if you want. Obviously this only applies to Ally Bank, since other banks could have different policies.

• 2 Comments
• Posted in Finances

Article posted on Jun 6

[RESOLVED] Ally Bank: No sneaky disclaimers, no fine print, just lies.

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on June 6, 2009, 6:32 pm

UPDATE: The situation has been resolved to my satisfaction. Al de Molina did follow through with his comment to get the situation fixed (see comment below), and I am impressed that this was taken care of before I even had a chance to drop the letter off in the mail.

I have made an updated post, with information about what happened, and what it means to other customers as well.

The original post is retained below.

Well, regarding that 2.50% CD I opened? It's now 2.30%. A phone call got me nowhere; they're claiming the rate is based on a seemingly random date, related to neither the date I opened (and funded) the account, nor the date the funds cleared. The difference between the rate they quoted me and the rate they gave me is $3.74 over the lifetime of the CD, but I'm not letting them get away with this, especially given their "open" brand. I have sent this letter to GMAC Financial Services / Ally Bank CEO Al de Molina, copied below.

While you are reading, watch this Ally Bank commercial, but with these lines:

"Would you like a 2.50% CD?"
"Yeah." [Gives her a 2.50% CD.]
"Would you like a 2.50% CD?"
"Yeah." [Gives her a 2.30% CD.]
"You didn't say I would get a lower APY."
"Well you didn't ask."

• 4 Comments
• Posted in Finances

Article posted on Jun 5

Achievement Unlocked: Credit Card Solvency

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on June 5, 2009, 3:06 pm

Click for a more readable graph. Savings is blue on the top, CC debt is green on the bottom. The line is the delta between savings and debt.

As of today, I officially have $3.37 more savings than I do credit card debt. As I mentioned in February, I had reached the point where my liquid assets (savings + checking + cash) were more than my credit card debt. However, a checking account is rapidly moving up and down, and savings vs CC debt is a more stable comparison. It wasn't until today that I could theoretically drain my savings to pay my CC debt, while still not affecting my day-to-day finances. Again, not that I would, so it's a mostly symbolic milestone, but it's a milestone nonetheless.

In other financial news, I have invested $2500 in General Motors. No really. Well...

GMAC Bank is now Ally Bank, and is offering some pretty decent rates. Well, yesterday they were even higher, when I opened a $2500 no penalty 9 month CD at 2.50%. Today they lowered it to 2.30%, after accusations from competitors that Ally was using the bailout as an unfair advantage over competition. (This link is pretty inflammatory against the competing banks, but it's the only news article I could find today, and is at least factually accurate.)

So I'm lucky I opened the CD when I did at 2.50%, even though 2.30% would have been very decent compared to the 1.39% my "high yield" money market account has plummeted to.

On that note, can anyone explain to me why "no penalty" CDs exist? My guess is the transaction limit (basically not being able to take, say, $100 out of your $2500 CD, only the whole thing) and long term stigma of CDs act like a mental barrier from people withdrawing early from a no penalty CD. But the question is, does that justify the significant APY difference between a savings/money market account and a no penalty CD? I'm not complaining, but I have wondered about that, from the bank's point of view.

• Leave Comment
• Posted in Finances

Article posted on Jun 3

My realty clock has gone off.

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on June 3, 2009, 1:58 am

If there's been a common theme for this year for me, it's been "savings". I'm still on track to eliminate credit card debt by the end of October, but about a week ago, it hit me. I want to own a home. It's been a passing wish for years, and I've browsed real estate listings off and on since the bubble, but it hit me hard this week, as I did my bi-monthly review to make sure I was still on track financially.

I want to own a home.

Until now, my financial views have been relatively short term: get out of credit card debt. I made a goal I could stick to, with a detailed plan, and I'm following it. But that just took me from January until October. I also knew that the money I was now spending on CC debt would be diverted to savings, and that savings may one day buy a house, but I had no sense of time scale, and I wasn't too motivated to figure it out. Now that's changed.

I want to own a home.

I made a spreadsheet. A couple, in fact. I've got some pretty ambitious plans, but as far as I can tell, it's not a stretch. This is all money I'm spending anyway, so I'm not overextending myself in this plan.

• I'm currently paying $720 per month for credit card debt, and saving $202.12 per month in what can solidly go toward buying a home. (It's actually closer to $250 in liquid savings, and if times are good, I'm skimming off the excess "immediate savings" into "home savings", but I'm not counting that toward long-term savings.)
• By the end of October, I will have my credit card debt paid off. I'm over half way to that goal, and on track.
• From November on, half of that, $360, will got toward extra principal payments on the car. The other half will go toward long-term savings.
• In December 2011, I should be making the last payment on my car, 25 months and $10,273 early. At that point, I should have about $18,000 in savings.
• So now I have $202.12 per month in base savings, a full $720 per month in what I was originally spending on credit card debt, and now $455.26 per month that is no longer being spent on a car payment. That's $1,377.38 per month. Yow.
• With $1377.38 per month being saved, it's only a short 10-month jump to September 2012, at which point I should have $30,386.57, a tidy down payment for a new home.

So that's my 40-month plan. What's yours?

I want to own a home.

The problem with all this planning and attention is I'm pretty jittery and excited about the whole process, and we're talking about something that is at least 3 years out. I've been looking through listings on Zillow a lot lately, thinking about crazy "what if" scenarios. The real estate market is great for buyers right now, for obvious reasons. However, I've found a great guide entitled How to Buy a House, and it's actually very good at convincing me that I shouldn't buy now, even if I technically could. See, even in a good banking economy, my debt to income ratio would be too high with both home and credit card debt. No good banker would lend to me now, even with my excellent credit rating. Of course, the scary thing is I probably would have been able to find a not-so-good banker before, even up to a year ago.

Still, the only thing I hurt by browsing Zillow listings is my sanity.

I want to own a home.

Food for thought: In these next 40 months, I'll be spending $37,200 in rent.

• Leave Comment
• Posted in Finances

Article posted on Jun 1

Hampr Firefox extension 2.0.0 released

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on June 1, 2009, 2:01 am

Hampr is a free, centralized, personal bookmark manager. Hampr is designed for users who want access to their bookmarks from several locations, such as home, work and school. Hampr is similar in concept to del.icio.us, but is not public in nature.

After a lengthy development period, I am proud to announce the second major release of the Hampr Firefox extension. The Hampr Firefox extension can be installed on multiple computers, which will all have concurrent, convenient access to your entire Hampr bookmark collection.

The 2.0.0 extension is a complete rewrite, and introduces new major functionality. The most visible change is the placement. By default, the extension installs itself in the same place as the Bookmarks menu (on Windows and Linux), but you can choose instead to place is next to the Bookmarks menu, as a sub-menu, or even as a toolbar menu button. Other new features include:

* Added tags support
* Bookmarks display can be picked: recent, untagged, or specific tag
* Added ability to load more bookmarks
* Added page context menu integration
* Added network caching
* Many added display preferences
* Many bug fixes and minor enhancements

Please visit the extension home page and give it a try! Hampr is fully OpenID-enabled; for information about creating an account, please visit the login page.

• Leave Comment
• Posted in Hampr

Article posted on May 30

Chef fo0bar presents: coffee syrup, etc

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on May 30, 2009, 6:44 pm

My New England roots are showing.

A coffee cabinet, coffee milk, and a bottle of coffee syrup.

While I'm from Green Bay, most of my extended family is from Rhode Island. There, coffee is king. Iced coffee is pretty much understood countrywide now, but this is a relatively new thing. Before chains such as Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts expanded nationwide, iced coffee was limited to pockets of the US, Rhode Island included.

But I'm not here to talk about iced coffee. I'm here to talk about, among other things, coffee milk. Coffee milk is the official state drink of Rhode Island, and is pretty analogous to chocolate milk. It's milk, mixed with coffee syrup.

What is coffee syrup? It's simply a coffee-flavored sugar syrup, and is distinctly Rhode Island. You may be able to find bottles of the stuff in parts of New England as a whole, but pretty much every grocery store in Rhode Island will carry bottles of Autocrat and Eclipse brand coffee syrup.

Sites like Only in Rhode Island can ship you bottles for a pretty decent price, but I decided to try my hand at making it from scratch, based on what I remember it tasting like. I think I've come close at a simple recipe, but I suppose I'm going to have to order a few bottles of the "authentic" stuff to compare, as it's been well over a decade since I've had an authentic Coffee Cabinet (more on that later).

Coffee syrup

Ingredients:

* 2 cups double strength coffee
* 3 cups granulated sugar
* 4 tbsp (1/4 cup) light corn syrup

Brew the coffee. I found that 1/2 cup grounds to 3 cups water will produce a little over 2 cups of very strong coffee. Thoroughly combine 2 cups of the coffee, the sugar, and corn syrup in a large saucepan over high heat while whisking often. Bring the mixture to a boil, then immediately take the pan off the heat and reduce the heat to low.

Do not walk away from this! Once the syrup hits a boil, it will foam up in literally about 3 seconds. If you don't move the pan off the heat, you will be left with a stove covered in napalm. (No, thankfully this is not known from experience.)

Bring the pan back to low heat, and simmer for 10 minutes, whisking occasionally. After 10 minutes, remove from heat and cool for at least 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. When the syrup is cool enough to handle, transfer to a dispenser bottle. You should have almost exactly 3 cups of syrup. I initially tried a generic squeeze bottle, but I later found that a 24oz pancake syrup bottle works perfectly.

That's not maple syrup.

What can you do with coffee syrup? Coffee milk is the first suggestion. Simply combine 2-3 tbsp of syrup with 1 cup of milk, and stir for coffee milk. You can drizzle over ice cream, or even make coffee ice cream!

Or you could make a coffee cabinet. I've heard several versions of the etymology of "cabinet", but it's what the rest of the world would call a milkshake. Everybody has their own preference on how to make a milkshake/cabinet, but here's my favorite:

Coffee cabinet

Ingredients:

* 3 scoops coffee or vanilla ice cream
* 4 tbsp (1/4 cup) coffee syrup
* 1 cup milk
* 4 ice cubes

Combine all ingredients in a blender and pulse.

Coffee ice cream would be better than vanilla, but the only place I can find coffee ice cream is a store brand at Safeway, and it tastes pretty wretched. I'd like to buy an ice cream maker to make my own, but can't justify buying another kitchen appliance that'll be rarely used.

Oh, and the irony here? I don't drink coffee.

Update: New concoction:

Caffeinated Russian

The name was invented by teferi, who immediately disavowed it.

* 2 parts vodka
* 1 part Kahlua
* 1 part coffee syrup
* 2 parts cream

Combine vodka, Kahlua and syrup in a Old Fashioned glass with ice. Float the cream, and stir lightly. This is a standard variation of a White Russian, but with a twist: when first trying it, I forgot about the properties of the syrup and only lightly stirred. The coffee syrup mostly stayed at the bottom of the drink, giving you a pleasant kick of coffee at the end.

• Leave Comment
• Posted in Chef Fo0bar Presents

Article posted on May 22

How helpful.

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on May 22, 2009, 9:23 pm

I really like Quicken 2007, but the automatically-generated pie charts aren't that helpful.

Yeah. That's great.

• 2 Comments
• Posted in Finances

Article posted on May 1

State of the blog

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on May 1, 2009, 10:50 pm

Did I really say I'd try to do 5 blog posts per week? Yeah, that lasted long.

Picking up from my last post, 2 weekends ago I went to see the 2nd home game of the Reno Aces. They lost, but it was still a great time. The new ballpark is beautiful, and after I got home, I flushed out the Aces Ballpark page on Wikipedia.

Last Thursday, I drove down to Los Angeles to visit poorsquinky and go party in the desert. Not the usual party in the desert, but a party in a desert in a completely different state! I had various mechanical troubles (more on that later, maybe), got sunburned, and got sick immediately after returning home. But other than that, it was a blast! (No, seriously, it was great.)

I've switched over the licenses for almost all of my Flickr photos to a Creative Commons license (by-sa). I haven't set my default upload license to cc-by-sa (just in case), but the goal is almost all photos I upload will be licensed appropriately.

Another Aces game this weekend. My apartment community will be having a rummage sale later this month, and I've got a lot of stuff I'd like to get rid of (and a lot more stuff I need to convince myself I need to get rid of), so this will be a good opportunity.

• Leave Comment
• Posted in Uncategorized

Article posted on Apr 17

Reno Aces home opener

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on April 17, 2009, 9:04 am

Tonight, the Reno Aces play their home opener against the Salt Lake Bees, at the brand new Aces Ballpark downtown.

Last year, the city announced that it was bringing a minor league baseball team to Reno, and building a new baseball park downtown. I didn't pay much attention to it, because I assumed it was a low league. See, "Minor League Baseball" is actually a federation of leagues, grouped into 5 classes (Triple-A, Double-A, A, Short Season A, Rookie), with sub-classes in some classes (for example, A is sub-divided into High A and Low A), and each class with several leagues within it. A comprehensive list of classes, leagues and teams is available at Wikipedia.

For example, growing up in Green Bay, the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers (current name) played about a half-hour drive away. They are a Low A team, but were still pretty popular, and fun to watch, but still a long ways away from the big leagues. They played in what amounted to a municipal baseball field until 1995, when they build a decent sized (for their class, at least) enclosed stadium.

My attitude changed a few months ago when I found out that the Reno Aces would be a Triple-A affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks. Triple-A is the best of the best in the minor leagues, and is literally one step up from Major League Baseball. Without going into too much detail, Major League teams each keep a 40-man roster, of which 25 are kept on active for that team. Most of the rest are allocated to their Triple-A affiliate. So the people who play for Triple-A teams are considered good enough for the big leagues, but are playing in the minors, essentially as a reserve system.

(Sidenote: A big faux pas is to say something to the effect of "when do you expect to go pro?" Almost all of the leagues in MiLB are considered to be professional sports; even more so for Triple-A.)

This is good news for Reno. Nevada as a whole does not have any major league teams in any sport. Las Vegas has the 51s, another Triple-A team in the same league as the Aces, the Pacific Coast League. However, Reno has not had a MiLB team for awhile before last year. The Reno Bighorns are a NBA Development League team that started last year. The league itself is fairly new, and from what I understand it's fairly equivalent to Triple-A MiLB, but for the NBA. The season ended last week, and I kept meaning to see a game, but never got around to it.

Reno has had MiLB and unaffiliated professional teams before, but none have lasted long, and none were higher than the (now defunct) Class C. And historically, the teams and the community have never put an effort into making it work. The last professional team, the Silver Sox of the unaffiliated Golden Baseball League, played at Moana Stadium, which can most generously be described as "aging". Ticket prices were high, attendance was low. To put it frankly, Reno has developed a passive resistance to professional baseball, due to the various false starts over the years.

This time is different, though. We've got a Triple-A team affiliated with a decent ball club, and a brand new, 10,000 seat Aces Ballpark. Opening day tickets sold out within 20 minutes. The owners have been promoting the Aces heavily, and there's been a LOT of buzz. Prices seem to be reasonable, between $7 and $23 for single-game seats. And there seems to be a much more accepting attitude, if still a little skeptical.

I wasn't able to get tickets to the opener, but I did get a ticket to tomorrow's game. Good one, too: first row behind the visitor's dugout, right next to first base. I'm excited to go, as the stadium pictures I've seen so far look amazing (by minor league standards). People are saying that while it's not the largest ballpark in the minors, it is the nicest.

• Leave Comment
• Posted in Uncategorized

Article posted on Apr 15

Review: SpaceNavigator 3D mouse

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on April 15, 2009, 10:10 am

As part of my previously-mentioned Second Life-ish semi-addiction, I bought a 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator 3D mouse. It's a $60 USB device about the size of a small fist, with a heavy bottom and a manipulatable knob. It supports three axes of spatial rotation plus movement in three dimensions. That is to say you can pitch, roll, yaw, move up/down, left/right and forward/backward, or any combination of these at the same time. For example, grab the knob and pull up to rise. To lower while barrel rolling to the right, push down on the knob while applying rotational pressure to the right. You basically have six axes to play with. (Yes, I know dimensional movements aren't considered axes, but just drink the Sony kool-aid for a moment.)

The Second Life client (and any client based off it, such as the Hippo OpenSim Viewer) natively supports the SpaceNavigator, and supports three modes. While in normal avatar mode, it controls your avatar: dimensional movement to walk/fly around, and roll/pitch/yaw to control where you look. When in edit mode, the SpaceNavigator controls the movement and rotation of the object being manipulated. Personally, I don't like using the SpaceNavigator for either of these modes. Movement with the SpaceNavigator is OK, but can get tiring pretty quickly. Yes, physically tiring. You're actually applying a significant amount of pressure to get it to do what you want it to do, and it can wear down your hand pretty quickly. As for building, using the SpaceNavigator is way too imprecise. More often than not, building is a much more mathematical objective than just moving stuff around. I would like an option to be able to use the SpaceNavigator while in build mode so I could manipulate the camera relative to the object, but that functionality does not appear to exist.

The third mode is where it really shines. Press the left button on the SpaceNavigator, and the SL client goes into Flycam mode. The camera is now detached from the avatar, and you now have complete control over the movement and rotation of the camera. This is what you can do with almost no practice:

That video was controlled entirely by the SpaceNavigator in Flycam mode, and was basically me tooling around Undef Lagoon randomly. One thing I should point out is that in that video, you'll notice that I was going forward at a constant pace while moving around. You'd be tempted to think that Flycam mode operates like a plane, with constant thrust, but no, I had my thumb pushing forward on the knob for most of it. Toward the end I do fly backwards for a bit. It's also a bit easier to understand the controls in this next video I made, as it starts out with a pull-back, while moving up and pitching down:

That video had a bit more jerky movement, because as I said, it takes a fair amount of pressure to manipulate the SpaceNavigator. So if you're not going full-bore (as I was throughout most of the first video), it's harder to maintain a constant pressure. Still, it has a lot of potential for machinima, and is just plain fun to use.

• Leave Comment
• Posted in Reviews

Article posted on Apr 14

Welcome to the show!

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on April 14, 2009, 12:03 pm

Welcome to the all new finnie.org! My personal domain is about to celebrate its 12 year anniversary (just old enough to drink!), but for the last half of its existence, it has been an Apache index page with a bunch of junk thrown together. In addition, I used to write on my LiveJournal since 2001. These two functions have been combined (with full history from my LiveJournal imported) into an Internet blogging extravaganza. I'll try not to wake the neighbors.

I've decided to try to manage this more like a traditional columnist: keeping a schedule, stockpiling ideas, thinking before I write. I'm going to work toward a goal of 5 daily updates per week, though I'm not firm on this. Wordpress makes it easy to keep unpublished drafts, and I've got a decent number of writing ideas to keep me going, so this shouldn't be too hard. One thing I will not do is writing for the sake of filler. There's already too much of that out there. I don't have deadlines or a syndication manager; no need to act like I do.

(That's not to say I'll be writing a Pulitzer-winning essay every day. Targeted inanity is not necessarily filler. Come on, I have standards.)

We'll see how long this lasts.

• Leave Comment
• Posted in Uncategorized

Article posted on Apr 13

Open source furries.

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on April 13, 2009, 5:08 pm

If you caught my Finnix in Second Life post on the Finnix blog, you know I've been dabbling in Second Life as a whole. I've had an account for almost 3 years now, but before the beginning of this year, I rarely logged into it because, frankly, it was boring. But after I bought land and started building the Finnix Information Center, I found my hook: the exciting part isn't being in Second Life, it was building in Second Life. Making things. Creating.

However, once the Finnix Information Center was "done", my interest started waning again. Sure I could tweak things, but it just wasn't the same as full scale creating. That's when I started looking, and found OpenSimulator. It's open source software that re-implements the Second Life protocol (libsecondlife) and allows you to build regions and grids. While that doesn't mean you can just attach your own server to Second Life (although in theory Second Life could be run on OpenSimulator some time in the future), you could run your own grid, or attach to a public grid. The most popular is OSGrid.

I've had a simulator running for over a month now, and it's been... fun. It's definitely a challenge. OpenSim is very beta and a moving target, which means recompiling software every week or so, random crashes, etc. Nonetheless, I have a main region up (Undef Lagoon, used to be "Undef Island" (yes, that's a pun) until it was no longer an island), and have given out space to homesteaders. It's also allowed me to try some larger scale projects than I could do in Second Life itself. Well, with enough land and money you could do anything in Second Life, but this is "free".

First up is The Cube, a massive 64,000 cubic meter cube of girders and glass. The first level is hollow and can be explored (and is the default landing point for the region), but inside it is 4 more levels of smaller embedded cubes.

The Information Center is a smaller version of the cube, for visitor/resident information.

This next one... well, took on a life of its own. I started by using Valve Source textures (CS:S players will instantly recognize them), and it sort of took off in its own direction. I now see what artists mean when they say that the ideas themselves come into being, and the artist is merely the conduit. That is to say, I accidentally created a cult.

The characters themselves (NOOBs) are an in-joke in Second Life, and OSGrid in particular. In fact, there is a 50-meter tall version of one in one of the OSGrid plazas.

• Leave Comment
• Posted in Uncategorized

Article posted on Apr 12

Review: Reusable grocery bags

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on April 12, 2009, 10:29 pm

A few months ago, I got a set of four reusable grocery bags from Walgreens, on sale for $0.25 each. Look for deals, but even at full price (usually $1 to $2 per bag), they are well worth it. Before that, I was downing in plastic grocery bags. My not-so-little IKEA plastic bag dispenser was filled years ago, and I seemed to find plastic bags thrown in pretty much every corner of the apartment. But these new reusable grocery bags combine the best attributes of both plastic and paper bags.

They're much bigger than plastic bags, mine at 1.3 cubic feet each. I can't find any info about the volume of your average plastic bag, but I'd guess one of my reusable bags is just shy of twice the volume of plastic bags. They're rigid enough to keep upright, but still flexible, and most importantly, foldable. The handles are sturdy and comfortable, and do not bind up and cut off the circulation in your hands like plastic bags do. And since you're carrying almost half the number of bags per trip, it's even less of a bind on your hands.

They're economical, too. I spent a whopping $1 for 4 bags, but they'll end up paying for themselves eventually. That's because Save Mart (formerly Albertsons) and WinCo give credits for every reusable bag you use: Save Mart at $.05 per bag and WinCo at $.06 per bag. Presumably Safeway and Whole Foods do as well.

My Walgreens bags are bit larger than your average bag. The bags I've seen for sale at Save Mart and Wal-Mart have the same floor space, but are slightly shorter. But don't limit yourself to what your grocery store offers! There are many different styles available on the Internet. For example here's a much larger model designed for bicyclists. Whatever bag you do decide on, look for that little loop on one side of the top of the bag. It hooks onto the plastic bag dispenser at grocery stores, and makes loading groceries easier. Your checker will love you for it (unless you bag your own groceries, in which case you will love yourself).

So comfort, economy and, oh yeah, that whole Earth thing. The only downside is actually remembering to bring them to the grocery store.

• Leave Comment
• Posted in Reviews

Article posted on Apr 7

Review: Dell 2209WA 22" E-IPS LCD

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on April 7, 2009, 1:36 pm

If you're a frequent reader of my blog, you know that the Dell 2005FPW 20" LCD was the best LCD made. Ever. It was an S-IPS display, and used the same LCD panel as the $1400 20" Apple Cinema Display (2004 model), but at better than half the price of the Apple, and with more peripheral features. For 4 years, I've had the 2005FPW as my primary desktop monitor, and I've been struggling to get something to complement it ever since. I bought a cheaper Dell SP2008WFP (TN panel), but ended up returning it within a week Last December I bought an HP w2408h 24" that, while still a TN panel, was supposedly one of the best TN LCDs on the market. I made do with it.

Earlier this year, Dell released the 2209WA, first in Australia/New Zealand, then later in the US. The 2209WA is a 22" widescreen matte LCD, E-IPS 8bpp panel, 1680x1050 maximum resolution, 300 cd/m² brightness, 1000:1 (up to 3000:1) dynamic contrast ratio, 6ms grey-to-grey response, and a 178° horizontal/vertical viewing angle. It currently retails for $279; I picked it up for $207 during one of their sales.

(If you are NOT a frequent reader of my blog, let me remind you that I am NOT a graphics professional. I am a Linux geek and amateur monitor snob, who happens to work at a marketing and design company. Graphics geek by proximity, you could say.)

What is IPS?

First off the bat, I'll explain a bit about what an IPS panel is. 99% of the LCDs sold today come with TN panels. TN panels are fast, usually have better contrast controls, and are above all, cheap. However, they suffer from bad viewing angles (the point at which the picture washes out or inverts) and low NTSC color gamut. And often, cheap TN displays are manufactured in cheap ways unrelated to the panel technology; a common occurrence is uneven backlighting. (Display a black image and look around your LCD. You can often see where the CCFL tubes are, and where they radiate light unevenly.) Many TN displays are also badly color balanced out of the box, usually preferring blue. (This is particularly bad in the LCD TV market, known as "showroom syndrome", where excess blue makes images look more "vibrant" in a television showroom.)

IPS displays have better viewing angles (often 179° horizontal, and 170° to 179° vertical) and high gamut, but at the expense of a higher response rate, and of course, higher prices. S-IPS was the standard for high-end displays, but the 2209WA is an E-IPS display. E-IPS includes the same features as S-IPS, but a slightly lower viewing angle (178° versus 179°) and a lower gamut than S-IPS (but still much higher than TN).

Physical Characteristics

The 2209WA features a square design with sharp lines. The base includes tilt, swivel and raise ability, and includes a hole in the back to route cables through. All three adjustment methods are relatively easy to do by hand, and stay in place well. The viewing area is matte, as is the outside of the bezel. However, the inside of the bezel (closest to the panel) is glossy for some reason, and as a result, it tends to reflect bright objects on the display that are close to the display edges. It's minor, but can be distracting.

The menu/adjustment buttons are square, the width of the bezel, from the bottom-right corner of the bezel. While this breaks the flow of the otherwise continuous bezel, it is useful, as the on-screen display's control legend lines up with these buttons. A chrome mirror Dell logo is at the bottom center of the bezel.

The 2209WA accepts d-sub VGA or DVI inputs, and can be configured to auto-sense signal from either port. It has a USB B (uplink) port to your PC, two USB ports on the underside, and two more on the left side of the monitor.

Calibration

I borrowed a Spyder2PRO from work and calibrated the 2209WA. Out of the box, the 2209WA was set to 6500K, though it doesn't actually list the color temperature, just modes like "cinema" and "gaming" that adjust the individual RGB ranges, and also fiddles with the brightness and contrast. Since I had the Spyder, I opted to start with the factory default settings, and adjust RGB by hand.

The 2209WA was fairly well balanced out of the box. It was a bit heavy on the green, but was easily adjusted. My final numbers at home were 100 red, 92 green, 96 blue, to get an even balance, and the final color temperature measured 6506K.

On the left is my 2005FPW, on the right is the 2209WA. Color representation is pretty well matched, but notice that luminance matching was NOT performed, and using default brightness settings, the 2209WA is noticeably brighter than the 2005FPW, though not overpoweringly so.

The backlight is excellent. Out of the box, I saw some barely visible vertical discolorations about 1/3 and 2/3 of the way down the display when on a black background, but after I calibrated the monitor, I couldn't find them again. There is virtually no light bleed from the sides, tearing is non-existent during full motion video, and ghosting is barely perceivable.

Miscellany

One of the biggest feature omissions is the lack of 1:1 pixel support. This personally is not an issue to me, but could be a deal breaker for some.

The behavior of the built-in USB hub is also a problem. With the 2005FPW, the USB ports were always powered, even if the monitor was off. Every Dell monitor I've seen since then (SP2008WFP, and now 2209WA) has switched to a model where if you power off the monitor, the USB ports are also powered off.

Impressions

The bezel looks a bit clunky; I still prefer the rounded bezel design of the 2005FPW. The lack of 1:1 pixel mapping and the USB issues are annoying, but not deal breakers. Also keep in mind that there is no composite/s-video/hdmi ports, nor any audio support. This is a monitor for graphics work, and is quite well suited for that task.

It's no 2005FPW, but hey, what is? But this is, hands down, the best value in IPS displays you can get right now, so I definitely recommend it.

• 3 Comments
• Posted in Reviews
• This post was imported from LiveJournal.

Article posted on Apr 5

That's DOCTOR Impostor to you!

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on April 5, 2009, 12:58 am

A few months ago, after reading the fine print on a burger menu (no, really), I vowed to use "Dr" anywhere a web form asked for my salutation. (I did do some research first. Apparently in Nevada, it is not illegal to call yourself "Doctor" without having a doctorate, UNLESS you are a pharmacist. Go figure.)

Today was my first opportunity. Dr Ryan Finnie will be in attendance opening weekend for the new Reno Aces.

Yes, it even printed that on the ticket.

• 2 Comments
• Posted in Uncategorized
• This post was imported from LiveJournal.

Article posted on Mar 27

Mummified meats

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on March 27, 2009, 5:45 pm

Much better. Thinner slices, better meat, longer drying and a tweaked recipe made all the difference. It's very peppery, just a little hot, and only a slight hint of worcestershire.

• Leave Comment
• Posted in Chef Fo0bar Presents
• Tags: jerky
• This post was imported from LiveJournal.

Article posted on Mar 27

I am weak.

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on March 27, 2009, 11:52 am

I just ordered a Dell 2209WA 22" e-IPS monitor for $207. It'll be replacing my debranded HP w2408h 24" TN monitor, which was fine quality... for a TN. This'll be the the 3rd Dell monitor I've bought (one was returned), and will go next to my Dell 2005FPW (ALL PRAISE THE 2005FPW) 20" S-IPS.

• Leave Comment
• Posted in Uncategorized
• This post was imported from LiveJournal.

Article posted on Mar 26

Beef Jerky update

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on March 26, 2009, 7:53 pm

Following up on yesterday's post, I pulled the jerky yesterday morning before heading to work. It was ok, but not great. I'll try to rationalize why:

1. It wasn't completely dried. I only froze the beef for an hour last night, and ended up slicing it a bit thicker than I wanted. It ended up being about the same thickness as the gas station jerky you get that's sealed between two pieces of plastic. While there's nothing necessarily wrong with that, it does take longer to dry, and 12 hours wasn't enough. It was still a little bit squishy in the middle. Not terrible, but it wasn't totally preserved, and wouldn't have been able to last for more than, say a month.

2. Wrong meat. I got a middle of the road top sirloin from wal-mart, and there was a little too much fat hiding out here and there. Again, doesn't totally ruin jerky, but fat is the first thing to go rancid in jerky, and also would have contributed to only lasting a month or so in an airtight container.

3. The recipe included WAY too much worcestershire sauce. It was a bit of a put-off for me.

So I ate my losses and decided to try again. On the way home today I stopped by a local butcher (Butcher Boy), and got 1 1/2 pounds of "London broil" (flank steak), with very little marbling and very little fat to trim. The price per pound was about the same as I paid for the top loin, too. I froze it for a solid 2 hours, sliced it as thin as I could, and played around with the recipe. I used a full recipe, but only used about 1/4 cup worcestershire sauce instead of the 2/3 cup called in the recipe. I've got 3 teaspoons ground pepper + a handful of whole peppercorns, paprika instead of red pepper flakes (which I did in the previous batch but forgot to mention; that part was good), and I threw in a few drops of Tabasco.

I'll start the fan before I go to bed (about 2AM) and leave it running until I get home from work the next day -- about 15 hours -- and give it a check before deciding on more time.

Oh, and to those who were wondering about the filters -- they worked out very well, and can definitely be used over and over.

• Leave Comment
• Posted in Chef Fo0bar Presents
• Tags: jerky
• This post was imported from LiveJournal.

Article posted on Mar 25

Line your air filter with beef, and a fresh, beefy scent throughout the house will be your reward!

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on March 25, 2009, 9:31 pm

Actually, I'm making beef jerky, according to this recipe (halved, 1 pound of beef). The beef is chilled, cut into thin, long slices, marinated, and placed on accordion furnace filters. A blank filter is placed on top, and the whole thing is bungee corded to a box fan. Here's the final setup, before being placed on my patio:

For the record, the filters are cellulose/poly air filters, not fiberglass. They ran me about $7.50 for a 3-pack, and obviously aren't usable as furnace filters after they're used to make jerky. But they should be reusable for future jerky batches.

I'll let you know how they turn out when they're done tomorrow.

• Leave Comment
• Posted in Chef Fo0bar Presents
• Tags: jerky
• This post was imported from LiveJournal.

Article posted on Mar 23

Savings update

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on March 23, 2009, 12:38 am

As part of my realization of getting out of debt being like a rehab program, I'm trying to be as open as possible. To that end, here's an update on my savings program.

Before 2009, I was transferring a paltry $50 per month into savings. And that was my savings account, at the same bank as my checking account, which was readily available due to ATMs and instant transfers. In short, I didn't save much.

As I mentioned before, I switched my W-4 withholdings from 0 to 2. To the foreigners out there, I was basically overpaying the government in each paycheck, and getting it back in one lump sum at the end of the year. By switching to 2, I'll be pretty close to even on my tax withholdings, so I'll only owe or get back a few dollars at the end of the year. This resulted in a net increase of take-home pay of $76.06 per paycheck (bi-monthly). That money is being transferred to my money market account. I've also switched my regular $50/month transfer to go into my money market account instead of my savings account.

It's worth noting that this account is relatively inaccessible. There is no ATM access (they offer a debit card, but I will not get it), and transfers take a good 3 days to process. Keeping this account at arm's length will help me avoid the temptation to use it. Basically, I'm only planning to make a withdrawal under one of two conditions: if I lose my job, or if I'm ready to buy a home.

So that's $202.12 per month. In addition, I have calculated that I'll be getting an extra $22 per paycheck in take-home pay under the new stimulus changes starting April 1. That money will be going to my regular savings account. All in all, that's $246.12 in savings per month. And the best part is, I didn't have to "sacrifice" anything. The initial $50 is still there, and everything else is either stimulus money, or "time-shifting" money I'd be getting anyway.

(Besides all of that, I also have $500 socked away in an old Sierra Pacific Employee Credit Union account that I would have to physically go to to access. That's literally last-resort, living-in-the-gutter money. (No, I never worked for Sierra Pacific. Long story.))

I'm currently paying $720 per month in credit card debt (yikes). When that is paid off (October 16 is the magic day by current estimates), I'll be splitting that money. Half ($360) will go toward extra principle payments on the car loan, and the other half will go into the money market savings account. So that'll make $606.12 in monthly savings, with an accelerated payment schedule on the car.

Now, I know you're saying, "So if you have credit card debt, why aren't you putting this $250 per month toward it to get it paid off as quickly as possible?" In a good economy, I probably would be. But times are tough. I've got a pretty secure job at a company that doesn't seem to be hurting, but things can change very quickly. I'm paying a low APR on my debt (3.99%), and while that certainly won't be offset by the interest I'm pulling in from savings, I'd rather be unemployed with debt and savings than unemployed with zero debt but no savings.

• 2 Comments
• Posted in Finances
• This post was imported from LiveJournal.

Article posted on Mar 18

I also approve of cute puppies.

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on March 18, 2009, 4:17 pm

Dear Lazyweb,

I currently own two 32oz bunny-killing cancer bottles, and I'm considering replacing them. It looks like Nalgene now sells BPA-free 32oz bottles, but there's still the whole bunny-killing thing. So can anyone recommend 32oz, wide-mouth, BPA-free alternative?

And on that note, does anyone own a Tritan bottle? Are they as strong as Lexan?

• Leave Comment
• Posted in Uncategorized
• This post was imported from LiveJournal.

Article posted on Mar 18

Get rid of those damn credit card preapprovals

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on March 18, 2009, 12:52 am

Go here, now. It's legit; it's run by the same cabal (Equifax/Experian/TransUnion) that runs AnnualCreditReport.com. (Which, by the way, is the ONLY legitimate "free" credit report site. The others, like freecreditreport.com are essentially scams where they sign you up for a "service" that bills your credit card after 30 days, and the only way you can avoid getting your card charged is by canceling between the 25th and 29th days.)

I've also heard good things about Green Dimes (which is apparently called Tonic now) for general purpose junk mail removal, but I have not had any experience with it.

• 1 Comment
• Posted in Finances
• This post was imported from LiveJournal.

Article posted on Mar 17

BREAKING

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on March 17, 2009, 5:44 pm

I discovered It's-It ice cream, which I thought was only sold in the bay area, at my supermarket. Well, there goes what's left of my health.

• Leave Comment
• Posted in Uncategorized
• This post was imported from LiveJournal.

Article posted on Mar 15

Or that guy. Yeah, that guy could cash it.

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on March 15, 2009, 5:53 pm

I got a rebate check from Gigabyte (a good 6 months after I submitted it). It says:

PAY       TWENTY & 00/100
TO DRAWER
OR        RYAN FINNIE
                                    OR BEARER

So the people who can cash this check are:
* Gigabyte
* Me
* Anybody

In that order.

• Leave Comment
• Posted in Uncategorized
• This post was imported from LiveJournal.