Thinking aloud: Azure, AWS, DevOps, cars and opinion from Alex Neihaus

  • What does Apple have against the English language? (or how to restore a minimized window in Mac OS X with the keyboard)

    Recently, hell froze over and I bought a MacBook Air. As you might expect, between then and now, I’ve spent a lot of time learning about Mac OS X (not hard) and retraining my finger-muscle-memory for Mac keyboard shortcuts (very hard). Who decided that Ctrl-F3 is the keystroke to get to the Dock? Or, who decided…

  • Hell freezes over: Windows fanboy buys his first Mac

    Remember when Apple first shipped a iPod that ran with Windows? Their website read “Hell Freezes Over,” their way of alluding to the fact that they had until then largely ignored the Windows world. I did the same thing to Apple Mac computers for decades, considering them mostly overpriced, consumer AOL-grade toys with no substance,…

  • Bye, bye solenoid — hello digital mobility machine

    Today, I picked up Tricia’s Volvo XC60, which arrived at the local dealer this week after an “intensive examination” by Customs and Border Patrol delayed its entry into the USA. I used the navigation system for the first time today because it was inoperable when we picked up the car in Sweden. (It comes pre-loaded…

  • Software only its mother could love

    I’m learning something, or actually re-learning, something fundamental about marketing: a new idea, a true breakthrough, won’t sell. I’ve been thinking about this because I’ve been talking to people whose job it is to follow/report/blog about software. And more than one has told me that I once worked on a very original product that, despite…

  • Old school and why it can be so cool

    If you follow my blog — and you know you should — you also know that I’ve been writing about cars a lot lately. It’s because I have mastered stretching the car buying process for as long as a year. Between research, taking delivery overseas and waiting for the car to be shipped home, that’s…

  • Oh, how my BMW mortal coil fails to fire

    Well, it’s come to this: cheap, tawdry misappropriations of poetic metaphors. Yesterday, something happened in my car that made it run rough and have no power. Come to find out today (thanks to an emergency visit to my pals at Village European) that the #4 ignition coil is dead. Prudence dictates that if one coil…

  • A brush with the Nobel Prize ceremony

    Everyone knows I am a big fan of BMWs; I’m already lusting after a new F30 3 Series, even though they haven’t been officially introduced into the US as yet. I especially enjoy seeing models we can’t get in the US when I am traveling. So, I am always on the lookout for unusual BMWs.…

  • We pick up Tricia’s new car in Sweden

    Greetings from Gothenburg, Sweden. I’m writing this as Tricia catches a nap – she’s a little jet lagged. How jet-lagged? Well, she fell asleep in a tram while touring a car factory today. A very LOUD car factory. That, my friends, is jet-lag. But I am getting ahead of myself. It took us longer than…

  • Bye, bye JungleDisk; hello CloudBerry

    I’m the geek my family and friends go to with their tech questions and for advanced support. If you want to do something more than just stare at your Android smartphone — like connecting it to your Office 365 Exchange account — or you want to get a game to run in a Windows virtual…

  • What took me so long?

    Something big happened last weekend. I’ve waited until now to blog about it because I wanted to consider what to say publicly about reconnecting with three of my old Boston University college roommates. Now, a week after dinner with Judson and Dana followed by drinks two days later with Judson and Nick (along with Nick’s…

  • Welcome to Southborough, MA: third-world city

    Another day, another power outage, courtesy of National Grid. Tonight, we lost power again. While we were out for only about an hour, the astonishingly unreliable National Grid distribution system has me thinking. First, National Grid should be heavily fined and their management replaced. Tonight, when I called “customer service” to report our outage (it…

  • National Grid improved nothing after Irene; continues to tell people nothing during crises

    Since at least Mark Twain, people have accepted that crappy weather and New England go together. Now, thanks to UK-based National Grid (can you picture “British” and “advanced engineering” together or “UK” and “superior service” on the same bill?), “third-world power distribution grid” and New England have come to be linked in people’s minds. In…