Tip: Sending Large files by email

In my old life as a System Administrator, one of the problems I frequenly encountered was email messages bouncing around and failing to be delivered.

More often then not (more ofthen then I'd like). This was because the person was trying to send an email message with a huge attachment (> 10MB, sometimes 100MB)

Email systems were not really desinged for sending your audio collection or 60 minute home videos to all of your friends. If it works at all sending large files using email can be terrible and inefficient. It's somewhat like trying to ship your car via FedEx,maybe you can do it, but it would not be in your best interest to do so.

If you have a large file to share, you can always open it to many of the video sites like, revver, YouTube, or blip.tv, or use P2p software. However, this can make your video visiable to everyone which may not be desired.

The best way I've found for sending large messages is to use a program called Pando. It is easy to download install and integrates easily with webmail programs like Yahoo/Gmail, as well as outlook.

Once installed and setup, you don't even have to worry about the size of your files, if the file size you try to send is to big, Pando pops up and suggests sending it via it's P2P system. Pando encrypts your file and sends the recipient a link which opens their copy of Pando and recieves the file.

Now you can easily and safely email your home movies to friends and not get those "Non-delivery" messages.

Pando is free to download and use, but you can also get Pando Pro which gives you the following:

Up to 5x faster download speeds
Share bigger files - 3GB vs 1GB
No ads
Extended hosting time
Password protection for sent files
FREE tech support
Get a year of Pando Pro for a one-time payment of $24.95

If your a linux fan (like me) you can install the Pando Downloader (http://www.pando.com/dl/download/pandodl-0.9.1.0.tar.bz2). No full blown linux Pando client yet. Hopefully soon !

Enjoy !

Managing Diabetes

In this weekly Podlet, I dicuss my diabetes and what it means to me. I start with a simple dicussion of diabetes and my thoughts about it. The good and the bad.

I'm not sure which came first, my inner desire for personal self managment, self organiation, and will power which then helps me to manage my diabetes. Or did I learn these things as part of living life as a diabetic? Either way, the events in our live shape us and determine how we grow, so this is me relating one of my "personal growth experiances".

Click the play button below to give a listen. I hope you enjoy it.



I am happy to report that my blood sugar levels have been steadily getting better since the orginal recording of this audio. I still have a little way to go but I'm getting there one day at a time.
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This is part of a weekly audio podcast I am trying out. I hope you enjoy it. Each Friday, I will be trying to comment on various things about life, growth, learning and all the other things that pop into my head. If you like it please subscribe to listen to more.

Book prices in Canada

As the Canadian exchange rate continues to get closer (and surpass) the US dollar you might be tempted to think you can get things cheaper in the US. But as you can see from this article, things are not always as they appear. Read More... http://www.bwebcentral.com/blog/2/604

Book prices in Canada

So I went to the bookstore the other day, hadn't been there in a while, and was somewhat surprised to find a large difference in pricing ($) between the CDN$ version of the book and US$ version of the book. With the American and Canadian dollar exchange rates being so close at the present time.

I sought out to investigated this more closely and have learned a few 'interesting' things

Example: Purchase

Prices valid on Oct 22, 2007

Book: 9 Ways To Bring Out The Best In You & Your Child



Amazon.ca price $16.98, with shipping + taxes = $24.25

Chapters.ca price $15.16 with shipping + taxes = $22.32

Chapters in store price (book jacket): $19.95 + taxes = $22.95

Amazon.com price $11.53 with shipping + taxes =$20.51

Chapters.ca vs Amazon.ca = $1.80 / $1.93 shipping/handling

Chapters "in store" vs Chapters.ca $3.64 / $1.81 shipping/handling

So as you can see, I can not find an easy way to save myself some money by
purchasing the item online in US$. Whatever I "might" save on the
exchange rate is just offset by shipping/handling costs.

A few other important considerations are:

1) Duty/Taxes: You may be charged (and required to pay) extra Duty/Taxes
bring in a product from the US into Canada. Yes we supposidly have free
trade but non-the-less there are still some duties for some reason. So
it may end up costing your more (sometimes a lot more) in shipping then
wheat is shown online.

2) There is often a shipping savings when purchasing multiple items (eg: books) at the same time. So if you pay $5.50 for shipping of one book your might only pay $8.50 for shipping of 2 books. Like many other things..buying in bulk can help save you money.

3) Not all stores even ship to Canada from other countries (ie: USA). Especially if there is a .ca version of the company, you may be required to by that product at CDN$ prices, or you may not be able to purchase the product in US$ only at the online exchange rate. For example using a CDN$ credit card for a US$ purchase.

This book by the way, is awesome, I bought it at the "in store" price,
and am greatly enjoying every minute of it. I plan to conintue to investigate this further and give an economics class to explain things further.

FoxIt Reader to the Rescue

Where I work we have an excellent Health Plan. It does have the one "con" that my drugs cannot be billed directly at have pharmacists office. They do provide handy forms that auto fill in information. You print the form, mail it with your receipts, and voila I get my cheque/direct deposit a few weeks later.

This process would be improved if only a) the forms could be entered and submitted online or b) the actual PDF form would save the information I put into it. When I open the PDF file in my Acrobat Reader, I am immediatly presented with a warning that "Form Data cannot be saved". I have no idea why it is setup this way. Each time I open the PDF I have to retype the same information over and over again.

I searched for a way to fix this problem, and was very happy to doscover that the FoxIt Reader allows users to save form data, and re-save the PDF with this form data automatically filled in.

Tks FoxIt Reader, you rock !