Arlo Gilbert's Blog: Archive

Apple now has more cash than the United States... →

Jul 29th

Mac OS X Lion & Outlook for Mac 2011 Problems

After upgrading to Apple OSX Lion I found my messages kept becoming “unread” again a few minutes after reading them… The solution ended up being to go into “System Preferences” -> “General” and disable the “Restore Windows when quitting and re-opening apps” Hopefully this post will help somebody in the future with the same problem.

Jul 29th

Behind the times

Monster.com has proven repeatedly to be our best source for hiring but my god their web site is just awful.. slow, not intuitive, does not support chrome etc..etc… Get with the times Monster.com!

Apr 25th

Apr 5th

A Real Life Flying House →

Mar 7th

Feb 27th

Feb 24th

1 note

Feb 23rd

Zappos Service

I don’t often comment on the service that a company provides unless it’s negative but the folks at Zappo’s have cornered the market on customer satisfation. I ordered a couple of pairs of shoes through zappos and because it was my first order they called to verify my address and billing info… ok that’s pretty normal, but then they told me 2 things that suprised...

Feb 17th

Great insight on the foolishness of the "Bay Area... →

Refreshing to read an intelligent person who can see past the glitz and glamour of bay area funding to point out the benefits of not being in the bay.

Feb 15th

“It took twenty years in the construction business before I learned that...”

– HVAC Technician

Feb 14th

Now What...

One of my favorite scenes in a film is from the movie “Finding Nemo”. All of the fish have wanted escape so badly, they have all desired their freedom so much and like so many of us they failed to anticipate that their wants might just create more wants. So the fish all hop out of the dentists office, they roll down a hill and into the ocean… and the puffer fish looks at the other fish and says...

Mar 25th

Great Business Concept

Rarely do I make a post simply to let readers know that I’m a fan of something, but there is a new new-to-me web site called mint.com that allows you to track your personal finances (investments, credit cards, bank accounts etc..etc..). The way it works is that you enter your account information and passwords to each of your bank web site’s and their system automatically logs in and downloads...

Aug 10th

3 Weeks with a Palm Pre, Blackberry Bold and Apple...

It goes without saying that as the founder of a variety of dot coms and angel investor in other tech companies that I am a hardcore techno-nerd. So when the Palm Pre came out, I had to have one. iCall was approved as a Pre developer some time ago and without a hands-on experience with the device, we really couldn’t make an educated assessment about the platform. As an iPhone developer, we...

Jul 29th

The Unappreciated Visionary

I enjoyed a post today on another Blogger’s site, Darryl Siry. Choosing to build ideas is hard work and it is not very rewarding most of the time. When people who are skeptical of ideas take every opportunity to put you down it can be harder to continue with a vision without questioning ones own sanity. Look at the Google guys as an over-discussed example, nobody in their right mind thought in...

Apr 24th

iCall Internet Phone - Live in the APP Store

Wow, well suprise suprise… after 6 months in limbo suddenly we received a notification that iCall would be available in the App store…. 30 minutes later it was available in the APP store. Honestly I had given up hope that Apple would ever approve us. Check it out at http://www.icall.com/iphone/

Mar 24th

Wealth, Crime and "Smarts"

I write on this blog in spurts and while indeed it is connected to my various corporate entities, I would just like to take a few moments to say a few things that have no connection to my companies. “Smart” is not a degree. It does not matter if you went to the finest ivy league school on the planet, they can not make you “smart”, they can only make you “learned”. As I have gotten older...

Jan 11th

The Poem That Defines My Life

I honestly believe that every person can find a poem that defines their life… My father read this to me when I was 5. I can remember how it sparked my imagination and sparked within me the knowledge that I could do anything if I put my brain to work. I re-read it again for the first time tonight to my 6 year old daughter and I forgot exactly how incredibly accurately real and inspirational it...

Nov 7th

Death In The Family

On Sunday at approximately 3:00 PM, my wife’s grandfather passed away. He was a stubborn, loving man who lived his life the way he saw fit for better or for worse. While I was not very close to him and only met him a handful of times, I can’t help but feel sad inside, not because he died, but sadness for the people who he left behind. I’m sure my thoughts are not unique, but I feel that death...

Oct 28th

MySQL Skip Grant Tables

I have administered and pushed MySQL to it’s limits for years, many boxes have fully melted under the load I hit them with, but today I’ve been absolutely blown away by this little used, not so well known configuration switch that DOUBLED the speed of every read and write. It is important to note that this particular configuration switch skip-grant-tables completely disables all authentication...

Oct 26th

Give Til It Hurts

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog. -Jack London Recently I have been engaged in working with a charitable organization… this organization provides a superior education to our children at a very reasonable cost but convincing people to give money has been an arduous task. I think that many people feel that...

Aug 21st

Watch

So my partner Andy and I invented this pretty neato company a few years ago named iCall and it essentially breaks down barriers to communications because it lets people make 100% free phone calls. Pretty neat huh? Well when the iPhone came around and Apple opened up their developer store, we knew that iCall on the iPhone was a match made in heaven. We put together this video (sorry, there was a...

Jul 17th

Airline Herd Mentality

I’m sitting here at Newark and my plane departs in 20 minutes. The moment they announced boarding everybody rushes to the front as though they are giving away money inside the plane. This is a 7 hour flight to Vancouver. What is the hurry to get seated? I understand if you have a huge carry-on that you need to get in the overhead, or even if you’re flying first class because you want to chug...

Jul 15th

Night Flying... Trying Again

So it’s been about 3 months since my last flight. Why is that do you ask? What does the picture on the left have to do with my lack of flying? Well, basically that is what flying at night is like and about 3 months ago I took my last night flight. It was… how do i say… frightening. Every blinking light looked the same, the night sky made it visually obvious how many planes were around us at all...

Jul 6th

Street Fighter II

Ok I admit it… when I was a teenager I was a video game nerd and my favorite game of all time was Street Fighter 2. The graphics were great for the day and age and my friends and I blew every allowance playing for hours during the pizza buffet at Mr. Gatti’s. There were 6 buttons for the game, 3 variations of punch, 3 variations of kick, and a joystick. The moves were easy enough to learn that...

Jul 3rd

Oil Is Not A Bubble

Lately I’ve been looking at the markets and the investment landscape and I’ll admit, I’m a cynic. Of course I was born a cynic and will probably die a cynic. That very cynicism though has kept me out of trouble with investing. The sub-prime meltdown inspired confidence in the greed of banks and their willingness to hedge their shareholder’s money with high risk investments. Tech companies for...

Jul 2nd

I'm back

I’ve gotten this blog moved over to a different host and am now running on a platform that doesn’t require me to use the cludgy old software that I was using. Primarily that was what kept me from posting, but I’m back and should start posting more frequently again.

Jun 30th

Explaining Income Taxes with Beer

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this: The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing. The fifth would pay $1. The sixth would pay $3. The seventh would pay $7. The eighth would pay $12. The ninth would pay $18. The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59. ...

Jan 25th

1 note

Growing Up Brady

Today I had a wonderful flight. It was my first 25NM solo flight, that means it was the first time that I took off by myself, flew to a destination by myself and then returned by myself. There isn’t a lot to say about it. It was fun, I was safe, I landed well, I took off well, I used my checklists and I talked to myself as though my instructors were in the plane. This it the one fun thing… and...

Jan 24th

Spirit Airlines Is A Bad Company!

Ok, i’ll join the hundreds and thousands of people who have blogged about what a rip off Spirit airlines is.. so here is my story: In January 2007, I purchased four round trip first class tickets for my family on Spirit airlines to the Grand Cayman’s for a vacation from February 9th thru February 17th. I purchased the scam trip insurance from Travel Guard (accidentally). Due to weather we were...

Jan 24th

Mitzvot.com

Mitzvot dot com is my new project… no it’s not live, in fact it’s not even in development yet, I bought the domain for a few thousand dollars recently (what a steal), but after having a few conversations with my wife about problems that day schools and other small/non-technically savvy organizations have, I decided that me owning mitzvot dot com must be more than a chance… it’s an opportunity to...

Jan 14th

Happy Belated Birthday To Me!

2 days ago was my birthday and I had a flight scheduled which was supposed to be my first solo flight. If you are reading this and you aren’t familiar with flying lingo, a “first solo” means the first time that a student pilot flies without an instructor in the plane. Most student pilots from my understanding prize the first solo so much that it fits in well with life events such as: * Birth *...

Jan 14th

Perfect Landings

Today I had a perfect landing…. That landing where you flare at the perfect moment and your wheels touch down just moments after the stall warning goes off… that landing where you aren’t sure if your wheels have even touched the ground or if you are just in an extended ground effect…. perfection. I swear, that sensation is better than any other feeling I have experienced (other than my kids...

Dec 8th

Crash & Burn Baby!

Today I crashed. Badly. At 600 feet in the air after takeoff my engine quit. I switched tanks, turned on my fuel pumps, switched to alternate air intake, tried to get the engine going again.. but no love. So I turned as fast as possible, but I didn’t maintain enough altitude and let my airspeed drop… then I crashed into the ground about 400 feet from the runway I had just taken off from… and I...

Dec 4th

Dec 2nd

Foggles & Open Doors

Today was another great flying day, my confidence (not over confidence) is really at an all time high with regards to my ability to be a good pilot in charge. The flight began with a *pop*… about 5 feet off the ground my door suddenly popped open. Mind you that an opening door is is not a dangerous event but it is extremely noisy, extremely windy, and even more so it is extremely friggin cold...

Nov 30th

Cross Wind Landings

Ok so perhaps I didn’t quite land the plane like this but there were times that it felt like it! After three weeks off from flying I was quite suprised that the flying wasnt so hard to pick up. I just gave myself permission to have a crappy flight if necessary and it turned out great. I owe a lot of that to my flight instructor Al. One piece of advice I can give to future private pilot students...

Nov 27th

Valuation Insanity in a Fragile Economy

I’ll admit it, I took macro economics and micro economics in college. I pulled by with an A+ and a C- respectively, but nowhere in these courses did my professors mention the falacy of money… that is, that money isn’t real, it doesn’t really exist. It only exists because we place faith in it and because it keeps moving out of and into our hands. Yes I know this sounds like the beginning of a...

Nov 26th

1 tag

Why Fly? Where Fly?

I’ll be blogging as much as possible over the next few weeks to make up for my lack of posting. I tend to be somewhat of a workaholic and it became clear that I needed a hobby to take my mind off of work and to give me something to talk about other than work. Whittling, yoga, underwater basket-weaving… those all seemed a bit boring so I decided that I would learn how to fly airplanes. What...

Nov 25th

1 tag

Good Day Westchester Tower!

I am starting this blog a bit later than planned. Initially the intent had been to chronicle my flying experience from beginning to end… but that clearly didn’t happen. Tomorrow I’m flying again after a 3 week hiatus. I have been flying Cirrus SR-20’s now for about three months and am very close to beginning my solo flights (or so my instructors tease me with).

Nov 25th