Archive for the ‘Gadgets’ Category

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Things are finally starting to move!

Wednesday, July 25th, 2007

I’m not sure if anyone else heard about this yesterday but some drunken loony out in Cali decided to destroy a couple servers at a major data center that houses big-name sites/companies like Technorati, Six Apart, Netflix and CraigsList. This was before the huge power outage that they suffered as well so the last I heard there were a mob of people standing outside the building being very pissed off about the ‘breach of contract’ going on with the down time, guess they didn’t notice there wasn’t any power either – hm? I found the actual story itself on slashdot, a direct link to the article can be found here. I’m sure you’ll find some aspects of it both amusing and quite annoying – I know I did.

There were notifications up on a few of the sites that were experiencing downtime. I believe that Alexa (while it may not have been in this particular building) is also based out of SF and I know for a fact that they experienced some down time as well. This is why my site has been lagging for the last few days. And to think, I thought it was blogrolling being mean to me again (hrm…maybe they’re hosted on a server there too?).

My August theme is about 80% completed, I absolutely hate this blue monstrosity that I’ve got sitting up here and I made it a point to sit down and work on it this evening. It’s about 9am and I’m still awake. The template didn’t keep me up though, my eyes are crossing too much to even continue to move forward with it, it’s the fact that dinner was started at 5am (sauce needs to brew all day) and now I just have to give some things a quick stir before my head can hit the pillow.

I have a lot of work to do today, quite a few emails to get back to, and I need to make a phonecall to a dealership up in Jersey because we misplaced the ID number for our Sirius Satellite radio and now since I’m going to reactivate it for both car AND home use – obviously I’m going to need that number.

Long day, not enough hours – I’ll tell ya!

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Posted in Annoyed, Daily, Gadgets, Sitely, Stressed, Work | 2 Comments »

I’ve finally made my decision.

Wednesday, July 25th, 2007

So after finally getting a chance to talk to Adam, I’m confident that I’m making a good decision about school. I’ve decided upon Westwood Online. In total it’s probably going to run me in the $60,000 range but at the same time (after talking to Sean and working with his knowledge of financial aid and grants) I’m also confident that financial aid and grants offered through the school and other outside resources that I’ve been provided with will more than likely cover about half of the full tuition. So instead of hoping to get a $65,000 loan (I’m factoring in supplies here) I’ll only have to look into about $25,000-$30,000 which isn’t as bad as I originally thought it was.

I did some playing around with numbers and noticed that if I keep on the path I’m on, I’ll be bringing in about $45,000 a year and that’s just good enough for me. If I put the bulk of it into savings I should have the loan paid off before I even graduate and then I don’t have to worry about an excess interest payments.

I was considering taking the Web Design & Multimedia course but after talking to Sean I’m not too sure because he told me about how his step mother made some pretty decent money working only 4 hours a day at $80 an hour doing graphics design. Westwood also offers a Graphics Design & Multimedia course.

Adam explained to me that even with his Bachelors I still know more about actual web design than he does. After a quick look at the over-view of the course I found out that it’s all basic introduction based courses and there really is nothing new that I’ll be learning through that course. So now I believe I’m just going to go straight for the graphics design course. It’s all still in the same price range and I’ll be able to utilize the upcoming iMac purchase I’ll be making.

I’ve been talking quite a bit about that on AGn Designs lately but I’ve decided to take about $1600 and get a 20″ iMac that’s fully loaded, to my specifications naturally. I don’t have to worry about any excess crap. But I could also take the route of taking out a loan for school and take $3,000 of that and throw some major components into the larger 24″ iMac that, as of right now, is base-priced in the $2,000 range.

So here’s where I ask you to help me out. Should I wait for the loan or should I just get it now?

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Posted in AGn Designs, Boyfriend, Discussion, Gadgets, School | 1 Comment »

Buying my first baby

Tuesday, July 17th, 2007

For quite some time now I’ve been looking into used cars because purchasing a brand new one is not only financially stupid but with my comfort level in regards to driving, I’d feel more comfortable in an older car because I’ll more than likely ding something up. Now, I’m typically very careful with everything I do, especially driving, but I also know it’s important to know your boundaries. Going out and purchasing a new car just because you think you need it is beyond absurd. I’ve seen people who just bought a new one maybe a year ago and now they’re already upgrading to something newer. If you’ve got the money for it, great, but don’t force it down peoples throats that you think you’re better than them either, you know?

I’ve been looking through quite a few used cars based websites and I’ve decided to take the route of a Honda – surprise, surprise – but everyone in my family has owned a Honda at some point in time and I know for sure that they can hold up for quite a long time. My aunt drove her 85 civic for 20 years and that thing never once died on her. And in 20 years she only managed to put about 120k miles on it, which is hard to believe but when you work in town it’s hard to put too many miles on something it’s still about 6,000 miles a year, when you think about it.

So considering I learned on a Baretta (original ‘template’ for what’s now known as the Cavalier) I know that I’d be more comfortable in a smaller car like a Civic. I have considered going a little larger with the CR-V but that’s only because I absolutely love the car. I found one for about $15,000 that’s a 2002 and it’s in Black which is fine for me considering that’s the color I was originally looking into for any car I get but it also didn’t matter much either as long as I had a car – you know? So yea, either way I’m shopping in the $10k to $15k range because that’s what savings will permit me to purchase at the moment.

If you were shopping around with up to $15k for a ‘used’ or older model, what would you get?

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Posted in Gadgets, PPP | 1 Comment »

Talk about BORING

Monday, July 16th, 2007

Today was kind of sluggish for me, not sure if it was based on the fact that it’s a Sunday or what, but either way I really didn’t accomplish very much. I did get some work done for a few clients. I also managed to get some posting done for advertisers on other domains. I’m working on rebuilding a few things that I’ve kind of left behind in the past. I setup a few banners for advertisers and that’s basically the bulk of my day.

The one thing I was unable to accomplish – at all – was anything home based. I set out to clean up the kitchen, dining room, bedroom, bathroom and a much needed cleaning of the coffee table in the living room. I didn’t get around to doing any of it which is kind of annoying considering in a few moments Sean and I are going to retire to the living room for a little while and watch a movie. It’s hard to relax when theirs chaos going on around me. I may wind up starting on that clean up after I’m done posting here just so I can go in there and lay down to watch a movie without feeling over whelmed.

Mozilla Thunderbird I keep getting strange spam email to my girl@k.nu account, I may wind up moving things around there or just getting rid of the address in general considering everything is basically redirected to gmail anyway. I don’t even bother to log into websites for email anymore, I’ve got thunderbird housing about 8 email addresses at the moment – god I love this thing. Anything Mozilla touches upon is gold – I swear. I know it seems stupid to put up a screen shot but for those of you not using thunderbird, just the side panel alone can basically show you the perks of the program. Running multiple email addresses under one main login makes life very easy, especially when I’m working with clients on 3 different email addresses depending on where they came from. The cool thing about thunderbird is it’s networking capabilities. I’m running everything off of my external hard drive which can be accessed through my laptop as well, I don’t have to worry about just using one computer for email anymore, the way I used to with Outlook because it never updated the paths properly – fucking useless program!

In any event, I’m going to start on some cleaning and then hopefully get myself to bed.

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Posted in AGn Designs, Boyfriend, Daily, Gadgets, Work | 3 Comments »

The DS Browser!

Saturday, July 14th, 2007

With being sick for the last week I was kind of itching to get out of the house. Last night I did some grocery shopping but tonight was more of the fun shopping kind of experience. I knew we were going up to Dover to pick up something ordered from Sears and then knowing that Sears is attached to the mall we also spent some time in there as well. I had about $60 worth of gift certificates for FYE.

I needed a new pair of head phones so naturally I picked that up first. I’ve been using the same pair for a while now and they just recently crapped out on me. However, this was only after I’d lent them to Sean when his messed up. He’s now got my headset with the mic attached so lets see how long those can last – heh. So that was $10 of the $60. I then dropped $30 on something that I thought was going to be the coolest thing since sliced bread – The DS Browser. Yep, I own it! I went to quite a few different websites and let me tell you folks – your sites look like complete shit on the DS browser! I’m one of them, my stylesheet isn’t even reading properly because the browser itself is based on an older version of Opera that doesn’t read CSS properly – at all.

Knowing that I recently installed the iPhone plugin for WordPress which can be customized but it removes all of your excess crap from the sidebars and just puts the blog entries on the website loaded through iPhone. It does not effect how your actual template looks for browser based viewers, that will still load your original template. The iPhone plugin basically just perks up your RSS template for iPhone only users and goes from there. At first I thought it was for any RSS reading device but the plugin was programmed to only read the iPhones operating system. Naturally, knowing there are a few sites that are PS3 compatible out there, I went in search for a DS based plugin.

The one I came across claims that it’s going to give you just a basic template but unfortunately after activating this plugin it managed to fuck up my entire website. I also attempted to load the site through my RSS Feeds but that didn’t work either because it’s telling me that my feeds don’t exist since that’s how Opera actually reads them. So either way I’m going to have to work on figuring something out. I’m sure that I could just create a plugin myself or I can start coming up with basic one column templates for a while, guess I’ll find out when I get there.

Other than the browser I managed to pick up Lego Star Wars. I know that sounds kind of strange but I’m slowly going to build up a nice database of DS games over time because I do literally play my DS on a daily basis. Up until a few weeks ago I was playing Mario non stop and then up until this afternoon I was playing Sonic Rush (highly recommended) now my newest addiction (if Sean ever gives back my DS) will more than likely be Lego Star Wars. I saw it on G4 a few days ago and thought it was the cutest thing ever, so naturally that’s the reason why I picked it up.

Our mission today was to find a Wii but naturally in a mall that’s close to impossible. We came up empty handed in that regard but at least we can now surf the internet without having to boot up a computer. If it didn’t take so long to type on the thing, I’d probably be using it to blog right now. But, I know that I’ve written over 600 words at this point and if I was writing this on the DS I’d be on sentence #2 and completion would be somewhere around 6am lol.

Note: If anyone comes across a plugin for WordPress that’s for the DS and actually WORKS please let me know!

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Posted in Boyfriend, Daily, Delmarva, DS Postage, Gadgets | 1 Comment »

A business can rent too!

Wednesday, July 11th, 2007

Any successful business owner knows that, at some point, you’re going to have to tap into a computer rental or two depending on the needs of your company. A typically common one is a Mac Pro rental because so many companies are using Mac’s these days, it’s unreal. I’m not overly happy with Apple at the moment because they’ve decided to discontinue the iMac 17″ and redo the 20″ and 24″ with some kind of a brushed aluminum kind of setup. Why can’t they just leave well-enough alone, right?

Moving right along…

ComputerRentals.com is a great resource to keep around when you’re in desperate need for a computer. They’re currently the leading provider of short term computer and laptop rentals for businesses nationwide. They help companies at trade shows, ones who need temporary computers for short term projects and they’ll even equip offices with all of your computer needs after a disaster (hurricane, flood, tornado, earthquake, fire, etc.) They’ll supply you everything you need in order for you to get back up and running 100% until you can stand on your own two feet with out them. I’d recommend the MacBook Pro rental but that’s because I’m a sucker for anything Mac these days.

Did anyone actually get Windows based Safari working for them? Maybe I’ll rent from them just so I can actually get my hands on a mac long enough to know if I want to drop $1500 on a 20″ iMac in the future.

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Posted in Gadgets, LL | 2 Comments »

WordPress Plugin for Paid Blogging

Thursday, July 5th, 2007

Sean created a new plug-in that will more than likely help out many people looking to make the most out of paid posting, or just blogging in general. Most paid posting requires you to meet a minimum number of words before you can submit your post. Up until recently, however, the only Word Count hack available with WP 2.0+ only showed you the post count in the administration panel after you hit ‘submit’ or saved the draft and then went back to edit it later. This doesn’t help paid bloggers who have to work quickly, especially on PayPerPost, where offers are taken as quickly as they’re uploaded.

So he created a plug-in that’s WP 2.2 compliant called Leprakhauns Word Count which adds this real-time word count to your Write Post page in WordPress. It counts the true words in the entry, not the a href link attributes that can confuse most programs. You type your entry and hit “Calculate Words” and it doesn’t reload the page, it just shows up in the designated text area next to the button. I was using his original JavaScript one up until a few moments ago, now I’ve got the official plug-in itself tapped into there. I altered it a little bit for my own personal usage but that’s because I use a different administration panel theme for WordPress than the default that many people use.

Either way, if you’re an active paid poster and always having some trouble getting your numbers correct when submitting your post, this plug-in would more than likely be good for you.

Note: This hack will only work with WordPress 2.2. I’ve noticed when going back to edit a post that the calculate option doesn’t work but that could just be based on my own installation. Please report any problems with the script to Sean about that one.

Note #2: UPDATE! The hack has been fixed and should now work properly with all 2.2 installations. Entries may be a few words off depending on the fact if you’ve got hyphenated words in your entry. So right now figure I’m typing-up about ten words. Since the hyphen is between two words, it’s only listing it as 9. The script, at this moment, counts spaces between words. After that, however, it’s extremely accurate.

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Posted in Boyfriend, Gadgets, Sitely, The Web | 3 Comments »

It’s time for an upgrade

Thursday, June 28th, 2007

We have a small fridge in the office, Sean’s probably owned it for years but lately it just seems too small for the both of us. I buy in bulk when it comes to water, and once that’s all in there it’s hard to hold his 2 liter bottles of soda when he’d like to have more than one in there. It’s not even that I’m taking up a lot of room, it’s just the fact that the fridge is oddly narrow so it’s hard to really fit anything in there anyway.

The fridge in the kitchen is a lot smaller than it looks as well, so the freezer in there is kind of overflowing as well. I’ve been considering investing in getting a second fridge this way the fridge itself offers more room for Sean and I and we’d also have extended freezer space for the kitchen. I’ve poked around Sears and PC Richard, the two places I would normally shop up in New York because they were so close to my house. Unfortunately there isn’t either one in the immediate area for me. I’d have to travel all the way to Salisbury, MD or straight up to Dover, DE. I’ve looked into both General Electric (GE) and Samsung Refrigerators. A few places have brought me towards Best Buy but unfortunately they’re up in Dover as well so in the long run, I’m kind of stuck.

Other searches have brought us to considering an old-school freezer in the kitchen, there’s enough space behind the bar where we could place a low profile one, just to extend freezer space in there. Unfortunately that doesn’t help us in the kitchen. I assume that when Sean gets rid of the CRT monitors and finally upgrades to LCD’s, that we’ll be able to move things around in the office and maybe fit a larger sized refrigerator in there as well.

I’d discuss this with him right now, but he’s officially passed out – so much for staying up and watching TV with me.

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Posted in BLTV, Boyfriend, Gadgets | Comments Closed

Backgammon Masters have some interesting news!

Monday, June 25th, 2007

PPPA quick update for my favorite people over at backgammonmasters.com. Recently they’ve added Poker to their database. You can now play for real money. To celebrate this real money launch, they’re offering games with no house commission for a limited time. Ever since their launch, they’ve been gaining popularity with the online backgammon community, I myself am an avid player of the game online.

Now, poker fans will be able to login and play up to three game tables at a time which would overall increase their game activity and experience. Players can also play in no charge fun mode so that you don’t have to be at risk for losing any money when you go up against the professionals. For years now I’ve been playing online around Yahoo or any other site that just seems to have the game featured online, now I’m going primarily through them for all of my online gaming and I couldn’t be happier. The reason they’re gaining popularity with the online backgammon community is because of their graphically rich playing environment complete with realistic 3D avatars and sound…makes you feel as though you’re actually in the game.

For the past few weeks Sean has been playing a lot of Chess on Yahoo, little does he know that on my side of the room I’ve been fiddling around with my backgammon boards and beating the pants off anyone who comes near me. I rule like that, don’t I? He’s asked on a few occasions why we don’t personally have a backgammon board because he’d gladly play with me, the problem is he’s a pain to teach anything to, he wants to learn but I can’t even get him to put the seat down, how could I have the patience to teach him how to play? I’m sure something will work out eventually. For now, however, he has his chess and I have my backgammon!

Check out backgammonmasters.com, let’s play!

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Posted in Boyfriend, Gadgets, PPP | Comments Closed

Oh so very lucky!

Sunday, June 24th, 2007

I think I got lucky but I’m unsure of just how long this luck will be here. I checked with Microcenter hoping that maybe they would just have the monitor back in stock. I FOUND IT!. So now all I need to do is shift some funding around and then order it once I’m in the clear on other bills. I just hope this actually stays here for the next couple of weeks so I can get to it. I found another graphics card that may work out better for me so I’ve been considering changing that around as well. Instead of the one I listed previously, I think that this is the route I’m going to take. I basically just need to get about $300 together over the next couple of days. It shouldn’t be too hard considering I have some business coming in. I just need to keep my ass in gear.

I also have to put the rest of all incoming cash towards Birthday gifts, I know I should be getting this first BUT I’m not going up to New York for a couple more weeks because of car issues and schedule conflicts. Either way everyone is taken care of, and I’ve spoiled myself.

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Posted in Gadgets | Comments Closed

Publically answering emails…April feel’s special.

Sunday, June 24th, 2007

I got an email from my friend April asking what Graphics Card I’m going with when I start upgrading everything. I’ve decided to stay in the $115 range and the one I came across in that range ( that Sean claims is fairly decent ) is the Diamond Radeon X1650 Pro / 512MB GDDR2 / PCI Express / Dual DVI / HDTV / CrossFire Ready / Video Card the one I was considering earlier was in the $400 range but that’s because it’s a NVIDIA card and I’ve worked primarily with them over the years. Either way I’m almost positive that this is where I’m going to end up going. For now I’ll stick with poking through Tiger Direct, but I’m sure other resources will show up with time, I need to get some other purchases taken care of first.

As for the monitor, I’m still searching for it. April also recommended that I just go back to where I bought the first one. I then asked her if she really thought I was that stupid for not looking there FIRST. Microcenter no longer has the 17″ X2Gen monitor. Now they only have a 15″ in silver and a 19″ wide screen. They’ve told me that they no longer carry the 17″ so naturally I’m stuck in a hole at this point. I can either buy two of the exact same ones from another source and just give this one to Sean or I can spend only $150 on ONE and get the one I’m looking for. Either way I’m spending more time searching than I feel I should. Why couldn’t I have just been smart and bought both of them in the beginning? :ugh:

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Posted in Friends, Gadgets, Stressed | Comments Closed

Gamerz Discuss!

Sunday, June 24th, 2007

There are few gadgets in life that I can’t go a single day without using. Naturally my computer and the ever-so-lovely coffee maker in the kitchen will rank very highly on my list. For Valentines day Sean bought me a pink Nintendo DS. With he it got me Brain Age and since then I’ve loaded up on games like Big Brain Academy and Super Mario Brothers. Recently I bought “Magical Star Sign” which is an RPG but since the packaging was so cute, I figured I’d give it a shot. Unfortunately I don’t have six hours to get through the initial monologue, something I wasn’t aware of. This is more than likely the reason I’ve never played RPG games, I know that Jenny is into them, maybe if she has a DS I’ll treat her with an early Christmas gift…lol.

So today I realized that I’m strangely addicted to my Mario game, naturally this is because it’s the only actual GAME that I own considering the other two are mainly based on having to think. I consider myself old school and the original Nintendo controller is what I’d prefer over the bulky XBox360 and Playstation2 controllers, I was unaware of the fact that they vibrate and literally wound up throwing one across the room out of complete and total fear of what had just happened to me.

So, now finally getting to a point (I swear, there really is one). Who owns a Nintendo DS? What games do you play religiously? What game would you recommend that I play? I need ideas people, Mario is getting boring, no matter how much I’m in love with the little Ginny and his trusty green sidekick.

Discuss!

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Posted in Boyfriend, Gadgets | 2 Comments »

I must learn to pace myself!

Sunday, June 24th, 2007

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been looking heavily into Graphics Cards. The one I’m working off of at the moment is the standard integrated card that’s shared, I’d like to have a separate card so that I can regain some of my ram. I’ve settled on the card that I’d like but a feeling in the pit of my stomach is telling me that I’m making the wrong choice. Whenever I go to purchase anything for my computer I set myself in an estimated price range this way I can make it a point to stick with a budget. Naturally when I find something that’s way below budget, I not only get giddy but I also get greedy.

See, when I say I’m willing to spend maybe $250 on a Graphics card and I happen to come across the exact card I’m in the market for which is in the price range of only $100. I instantly think “Ooh, I’ve got $150 for something else!” this state of mind absolutely has to stop but I have an addiction to shiny computer parts and that’s just too bad for my bank account. So now that I’ve found the picture perfect graphics card for myself I’ve switched my gears and am now looking around for a second monitor and the little $15 adapters so I can run dual monitors with my dual DVI slots. I’m not quite sure if I’m saying that properly, I’m sure Sean will let me know if I’m wrong here. (Just asked, I’m right…women typically are.)

Anyway, so now that I feel as though I have the ‘extra funds’ for something new, I’ve been abusing my database full of coupon codes (thanks to KeepCash.com) and I’m poking around hundreds of sites in search for a second monitor. My issue here is that I’d like to get the exact same one. I have this thing about everything matching but I believe that my model of monitor is no longer being made. So if you’re interested in helping me on my quest, please let me know if you happen to come across an X2Gen 17″ LCD Black/Silver monitor. I’ll gladly give you a cookie.

I’m sure you’re saying “Uhm, Google gave me X amount of links with that search!”. I’m fully aware of what Google spews out with it’s search queries. However, the monitor I own has X2gen written on the bottom silver bar right above the power button. The ones I’ve come across all have them in the upper left hand corner. This doesn’t match and again, I’m picky! So if you happen to see one that has the x2gen written on the bottom then send that link over as soon as possible! I’ll bake and ship a few dozen cookies – I swear!

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Posted in Boyfriend, Gadgets, PPP, The Web | Comments Closed

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