For the software that’s not available yet through the Mac App Store, use AppFresh. I have been using AppFresh for over a year, so I don’t worry that it’s still a Development Preview.

Continue reading for the exact steps.

1) Create an iCal entry for the 1st Sunday of the month (or weekly, if you wish). Set a convenient time for your event.

2) As part of the iCal entry choose Alarm -> Open File -> Applications -> App Store. Set Alarm for 15 minutes before your stated time.

3) Then, choose Alarm -> Open File -> Applications -> Appfresh.app. Set alarm for 5 minutes after your stated time.

4) Install AppFresh.

5) In AppFresh Preferences -> General -> Scanning, ensure Check for updates on startup is checked, but uncheck “Check for available Apple updates”

6) For each application that you want updated, set it’s Preferences to _not_ automatically check for updates. This will help cut down on the number of popups when you start apps.

7) If you have multiple machines, sign up for an iUseThis account, and repeat the previous steps on all the other machines. AppFresh has a “Used and not installed” category.

Now, once a month, the Mac App Store will start, 20 minutes before AppFresh, which gives you plenty of time to perform any App Store updates that need to be done before AppFresh updates the rest of your software!

Note that I do not allow AppFresh to update running programs, nor Preference Panes or Menu Bar plugins. You can also right-click on any app and choose Exclude.

Enjoy!

I tried to upgrade WordPress (to the latest 3.1.2) using the built-in function that I’ve used many, many times now and it did not work. Everything seemed to go correctly, all the way through, including the DB upgrade, but apparently, it borked at the last second.

Fortunately, simply downloading, extracting, and the uploading the latest archive from WordPress did the trick. I wasn’t expecting it to work, but it absolutely did, retaining my settings, themes, plugins and everything.

Wow. I must say, I’d rather not have it fail in the first place, but what a spectacular recovery!

Separately, I had purchased a Clear iSpot to use for my Wifi-only iPad. This was a low-cost way to get my iPad on the internet when I wasn’t at home. $25 per month, and I got access to Clear’s “4G” network, anywhere it was available. Not a bad deal, really. My monthly usage was around 0.3 – 0.4GB (300-400MB) per month. Of course, their network wasn’t available outside of larger cities, and even though I don’t travel much, it wasn’t very useful outside of Loop 1604.

I added “Personal Hotspot” to my iPhone data plan, which technically changes it to “$45 per month iPhone 4GB DataPro with Tethering” … this allows me to cancel my iSpot, and save a few bucks. So, add $15 to my AT&T plan, subtract $25 from my Clear plan (actually, I will just cancel it).

In addition to that, while doing research on this, I noticed that I didn’t really use my 900 minutes a month on my voice plan. I mean, really, I had over 6,500 Rollover minutes. Turns out I use around 200 “Anytime” minutes a month. So, I changed my voice plan down to 450 minutes a month, thus saving me another $20 per month.

So, here’s how it breaks down for me…

Before:

After:

The benefits I get out of this are the fact that my personal hotspot can now run my computer, not just my iDevices, like the iSpot, my phone gets charged continuously when I drive my car, and I don’t have to carry yet another device (the iSpot). Oh, and all for the low, low price of saving $30 per month!

I work in the cloud files division, called Mosso, as a Linux Systems Admin. Tomorrow, I get to find out exactly what that means.

I spent the day today going through their “new-hire” process. It was actually pretty interesting.

We spent the morning going over and signing up for our health benefits. They provided lunch, and then the afternoon was spent with presentations from security and systems administration.

I also received parking tags and an ID badge.

I’ve never had to wear an official ID badge before. Of course, many of my school district clients had me wear visitor badges, so the concept isn’t completely foreign, but still, it’ll be kinda weird.

Jill and I went through all of the healthcare paperwork tonight. Whew.

Just found out while doing some research for a customer that HP has discontinued it’s 2605 series of printers.

What a bummer! They were inexpensive, reliable printers.

The good news is that they’ve replaced them with a new series. If you’re looking for an equivalent to the 2605dn, check out the new P2055dn.

Hopefully the new series will be just as nice.

We’ve been working on the store for a few weeks, and it’s now ready to go. Check it out! The store is powered by Zen Cart, which seems pretty nice.

Buy something for your Significant Other!

http://kiladesigns.com/

To view it, point your mobile’s browser at my URL (http://dereksblahg.net).

Let me know if it doesn’t work for you!

Next time you have the chance, kick someone over at AT&T for me. Thanks.

Then kick yourself for allowing AT&T to dictate how you sell product. Thanks.

Wow… purchasing an iPhone 3G was so not the experience I expected from Apple.

Ok, waiting in line for an Apple Launch, I don’t mind.

I got to the La Cantera store at 9am. They opened at 8am, so I figured the line would have moved some by the time I got there. Not so much. It didn’t even seem like anyone was coming out with new phones!

At 10am, Jill left to take Ian to his six months doctor’s checkup. She got back before I got into the store.

By noon, I wasn’t in the store yet. Let’s be clear, I was only 250 or so people back in line, when I got there at 9am. In fact, I wasn’t as far back this time as I was for the original iPhone launch. I waited in line from noon to 6pm that day, but that’s because the store was closed! I knew there was going to be a long wait… I even took a cooler and a lawn chair. And then, after the line started moving, it only took a half hour or so to get inside the store. But not today, though.

We were hearing from people coming out of the store that activation was taking about 15 minutes per person (per phone, I guess).

Once we got in the store, it didn’t get any better. We tried activating Jill’s phone first, an 8GB. Her activation failed for reasons unknown — perhaps the servers were having trouble at that point. I don’t know. Whatever, though, once that happened, then her phone number was caught in the middle of the “port” — because she was moving her phone number over from Verizon — and her phone couldn’t be activated.

So, we decided to activate my new phone, a 16GB model, and then work on hers. Mine activated just fine, no problem. Well, almost no problem. Once my phone activated, my old phone no longer worked. You wouldn’t think that would be a big deal, except that my new phone had to be plugged into iTunes before it could finish activation. So I was basically without a phone for almost an hour while we worked on Jill’s phone.

We waited in line again for a “concierge” to help us fix the problem with Jill’s ported number. He had to call AT&T directly, wait on hold forever, and then cancel her number port so we could start again.

During this entire time, you have to realize, the handheld kiosks that the Apple employees were using were working really, really slowly. So we finally got Jill’s phone activated, on the third try.

Then we went to another part of the store, and meet with another Apple employee to plug the phones into iTunes so that they can “upload the IMEI number”, according to one employee. Surprisingly enough, each phone at this step only took a minute or two. The employee told us when we walked up that it was taking “5 to 45 minutes” for this step. Boy, were we happy at this point. Just to get out of the store.

Let me say that all of the employees were nice, even though they were obviously frustrated. I mean, everyone was great, it was just a bad situation.

All of you guys (and gals) that skipped today’s launch… pat yourselves on the back.

On the other hand, a friend of mine, Chad, stopped by the La Cantera store around 10:30 or so, and said that he already picked his phone up, at an AT&T store, and everything went smoothly.

Of course, I heard from someone else in line that they went to an AT&T store, waited since 6:30am, just to find out that store had only been shipped 15 phones!! So, did Chad get lucky? I don’t know.

Stephen twittered today about the Northstar opening… reminding me that I took a few pictures of the event, and promptly forgot to post them!

Check them here.

I had recently installed a new router in my network to take advantage of the increased speeds coming from my ISP, RoadRunner. They offer 15Mbits down and 2Mbits up in my area, so I needed to finally replace my ancient Linksys WRT54G. The WRT only supports up to 10Mbit on it’s WAN port, although it does support 100Mbit on it’s internal switch. Either way, the wireless stopped working on it months ago, so it needed replaced anyway.

I had previously installed a little Belkin router as a simple access point in my house, just to have 54g wireless after the WRT’s wireless went out, but my new router supports wireless-N.

So I have the new router set up for N only, and the old router setup for B/G. Oh, and everything’s running WAP now, too!

Essentially, my AppleTV now has the wireless-N to itself, as I have no other wireless-N client devices.

I did have to order an Intel Pro 1000 PCI card for my server… it’s so “old” now that the on-board NIC is only 100Mbit.

So, I installed the NIC and the switch today, and my transfers from my Mac mini to my server increased dramatically.

I timed a 4.3GB transfer before and after, here’s how it looks: 8 minutes before, 2:06 after. That’s 2GB per minute, as opposed to only about 600MB per minute before. Woot!