I just discovered an awesome new feature today on JAJAH, an awesome VOIP service that I use to make international calls. They added local telephone number mapping to your international numbers so you no longer have to initiate your calls via your computer - sort of like a local number alias for your international numbers. What this all means is that unlike Skype or the other VOIP services out there, you can call your international numbers straight from any of your JAJAH registered telephones.

As of today, all my international numbers that I would call via JAJAH and initiate through their website, I have now programed into my mobile so that I can call directly via my mobile. Bye-Bye to calling through their website...and Bye-Bye to waiting for Skype to add something similar.

This my friends is a killer feature!

Is the service free - NO, it's not, but for the convenience I think the 3.3 cents to China seems pretty worth it. The one downside though is that they start putting you on the clock once the phone starts ringing and not after the call is actually connected.

I went out to dinner last night at Bar Stuzzichini with Sarah and Liz.

The food was generally good. My pasta - Orecchiette e Cavolfiore was a nice and different take on a typical pasta dish. Gone was the typical tomato based sauce with some meat added in and in was a light feeling yet rich tasting sauce with Cauliflower. Cauliflower = awesomeness (said in the voice of Neil Patrick Harris as Barney Stinson).

I've got to say though, that I was generally underwhelmed by our appetizers. I think we just ordered totally wrong though because the couple at the table right next to us got the tapas style appetizers too, but their spread was WAY better. They got this big plate of prosciutto and a giant bowl of clams in addition to the fried risotto balls that we also ordered. Us - we got a small plate with one teeny octopus tentacle, three little rolled eggplant pieces, and four pieces of grilled zucchini that just wasn't that satisfying.

Would I go back again? YES, but only to redo my appetizer order to try to reduce my cost basis from my dinner last night. You know, to average out my sucky ordering from last night with some better ordering like the table next to us. And I'd probably switch up my entrée just for kicks.

WHAT WE ATE
Starters:
- Zucchine alla Scapece (Grilled Zucchini)
- Polpo (Grilled Marinated Octopus)
- Arancini (Fried Risotto cooked in a Chicken Broth reduction)
- Involtini (Eggplant stuffed with Ricotta)
- Carciofi (Fried Artichoke)

Main:
- Me: Orecchiette e Cavolfiore (Ear shaped pasta in a Cauliflower sauce with Breadcrumbs)
- Liz: Gnocchi all’Amatriciana (Potato dumplings in a light tomato and meat sauce)
- Sarah: Parmigiana di Melanzane (Eggplant with Tomato and Peccorino)

I just got a new external hard drive and the thing screams sweetness all over. I finally broke down and decided to spring for this tiny portable drive. It is a 250 gig Western Digital Passport and is so nice and small. The best part about it - no power brick!

While I have a larger external Western Digital My Book, I was finding that due to its large form factor and big power brick, I was not bringing it back and forth from my home and office to back up my data.

Right now, in order to have redundancy and overall general safety with my data, I back up my important data both at the office and at home. This not only protects my data against a hard drive failure - since I am backing up on 3 drives, but since my data is being backed up in two locations, I am also protecting my data against fire, water damage, hardware theft, etc.

Unfortunately, just the other day, I had a hard drive fail. This drive was not one of my primary drives and was more of a general back up drive for various older data. Since this was a rarely used drive, I never did have a full back up of its data...AND, since it was a rarely used drive and I have not looked at it in months, I don't even remember what was on it and what I lost...THIS IS WHY YOU NEED TO BACK STUFF UP. I was dumb.

At this point, I am testing out a new back up procedure to see how it works out. I've decided to use the new SyncToy 2.0 from the Microsoft PowerToys series to do my data synchronization. I previously used the 1.0 version, but found it a bit limiting since it wasn't smart enough to realize that when you use an external back up device the drive letters do not always stay the same and hence, your folder pairs don't stay together and your backup routine becomes a chore. As we all know, if your backup routine is hard, you simple are not going to do it!

The main data that I back up is all my photographs. Currently I have about 80 gigs worth of photos - RAW files, original JPGs, edited Photoshop files, etc. I've organized my data by year and then I have sub-folders within those year folders to organize by date/event. I've set up each year's folder as separate folder pairs within SyncToys initially just to get a clean sync of all my data and then later on, I'll set it up to just sync the whole drives.

My brother Brian just started a new blog where he discusses his travels. He just got back from an awesome trip to Brazil where he did all sorts of fun things and took pictures of horses taking big pisses. Go check out his blog: traveltheworldwithme.blogspot.com.

Over the next few weeks he'll be posting up a nice day by day log of his recent Brazil trip as well as details about his other recent trips to Dominican Republic, Italy, etc.

This coming March we are going to China together to spend some time in the Xinjiang province. Specifically, we are going to check out one of the world's oldest and largest markets in Kashgar. This is going to be a really awesome trip and I'll be sure to take tons of pictures.

People have asked me about the URL for this blog - What is 1215AM? To put it quite simply, 12.15 is my birthday and it also is the time of the day that when most people are sleeping, I am still awake. So in a sense, it has dual significance.

Sometimes I am working, sending emails to China, customers, etc...and sometimes I am just browsing the Net or editing my photographs.

One of the tough things about the line of work that I am in (really, the fashion industry is not nearly as glamorous as people think it is), is that I am communicating with people literally ALL the time. Each night before going to bed, I always check and respond to emails as our factories in China are hitting their mid-day stride and if I were to wait, a day goes wasted. I also need to catch our suppliers in Italy as they will be arriving into their offices shortly and we all know the Europeans - give them a reason to be late or to dilly-dally, and they will. Not a knock against the Europeans, but that is just the way they are. They aren't like the Americans where we live and die by our jobs. Perhaps this is the better way; I don't know. Unfortunately I do not know any different.

In the future, I hope to post a lot more on this blog and write about my work, and of course as the title of this blog says - The Things I Like.