Beaker's Life

New Blog

2010-10-06T17:10:00.002-05:00

I have recently installed and am going to try and start using my own WordPress blog as opposed to Google's blogger. All new posts for this blog will be posted to my new blog at the following URL. So please update your bookmarks and thank you for being one of my readers.

http://www.beakernet.net/blog/

Microsoft Security Essentials for Small Businesses

2010-10-04T07:28:00.002-05:00

My anti-virus of choice is Microsoft Security Essentials, and I have blogged about it before. It is a very good, free anti-virus, from Microsoft and integrates really well. Up to this point it has mostly been free for home or home business based use. However the other night I was installing it on a friend's computer and noticed some text on their website that made me very excited, "Coming soon: Microsoft Security Essentials for your small business!"

This would mean you could use it in a small business environment instead of just at home for free. I immediately did some searching on Google and found not a lot of information, but in early October they will open Microsoft Security Essentials up for small business. According to some of the documentation they think it will mean you can install it on ten computers or less. However several of the forums I read also indicated that just means they will support it on only ten computers or less, and that it doesn't necessarily mean you are limited to installing it on ten computers. However that was a highly debated issue and I found no real answer on it.

So for you small business owners out there, keep your eyes on Microsoft Security Essentials as a free anti-virus solution may be just at your fingertips.

New Products in Beta

2010-09-28T13:44:00.003-05:00

There are a couple of major software products that I use and live by that are about to get a major face lift and upgrade. Right now both of them are just in their beta releases, the first one I would like to talk about is Firefox 4.

I downloaded and installed the Firefox 4 beta at home, and am truly liking it. The biggest thing they did was revamp the interface, moving the tabs on top and creating a Firefox button for all your menu options. For those of you who like the old layout of Firefox, you still have the option to go back. Firefox 4 will also allow you to make permanent tabs in your tab bar of things you always have open, such as webmail. It also has more security and even allows for better compatibility with the HTML5 standard and WebM format, making HD quality video that much better. But don't take my word for it, go ahead and check it out for yourself. http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/

The second piece of software that is getting a big change is Open Office. Open Office is moving to a new platform and will be changing its name to LibreOffice. It will still be a free product just like Open Office and used across multiple platforms. It will remain compatible with the major office suites out there. I don't know much about this one yet, but from some of the screen shots it looks pretty good. I may give the beta a try soon as well, so keep your eyes open for more information. Or if you want go ahead and download it and try it for yourself. http://www.documentfoundation.org/

12 Days of Mikey - Day 12

2010-09-12T23:30:00.001-05:00

So after getting up at Derek & Kelly's this morning, we headed out to breakfast at a place called Jensen's. They had some awesome maple butter syrup. Afterwords we headed back to Rochester so we could get ready for the BBQ on the north lawn.

We got home and immediately unpacked the car and started setting up tables and chairs on the north lawn. For those of you not familiar with what the north lawn is, it is what we call the space on the front lawn between our house and Brian and Michelle's. It has a small tree in front which creates a nice break from the street and makes a great meeting place to visit at.

Soon enough everyone started showing up. Tim & Jackie came and grilled brats and burgers for everyone. Nana brought an amazing macaroni and cheese dish that was way cool. Paula, Daniel, Ann, and of course Brian, Michelle, and the Wee Todds (their girls) came as well. We had a great afternoon of visiting and hanging out on the north lawn. Jill and I were still very exhausted from Saturday, and I kind of felt bad as I was not very energetic during the BBQ, but it was still a lot of fun.

Afterwords everyone headed home and Jill and I went back inside to catch up on True Blood and even managed to fit in the finale. So thank you all who had a part in the 12 Days of Mikey, it was a truly awesome birthday that I will never forget.

12 Days of Mikey - Day 11

2010-09-12T08:57:00.004-05:00

I apologize now that I do not have more pictures, but today was such a whirlwind that I just didn't have the chance. Day 11 belonged to Jill and she had setup several clues to outline a whole day worth of activities. When I first woke up I discovered a book that was a hide away book with a hidden compartment inside. In it was Happy Birthday buttons and a t-shirt that read, "Those who think they know everything annoy those of us who do."

Now this morning was also sad as we were taking out dogs up to Jill's parents to stay until we get back from our cruise, which is about 2 weeks. Kind of sad to see them go, and I will miss them. So we packed up the car with our stuff and dogs and I got my next clue which lead us to mocha at Dunn Bros.

After getting mochas I got my next clue, which was pretty obvious, a trip to her parents as that is where we were headed to drop off the dogs. When we got there I got a nice card from her parents and some money for my kayak. We then said good bye to our dogs and left for the next stop.

I got my next clue which turned out to be WineHaven. This is the winery owned by Jill's Dad's cousin, Kevin Peterson. We went there and had to stand in line, but Kevin saw us and immediately got us a glass of merlot to drink while we waited for tasting. We got to do some wine tasting, which we always enjoy. Kyle, Kevin's son, also let us try the new pumpkin wine that wasn't even bottled yet. I ended up getting a case, and as we checked out I got a couple of bottles of their rhubarb wine that Jill had called ahead for. They also gave me a box of their honey chocolates too.

So we were off to our next stop which was our friends, Derek & Kelly. We had lunch with them and I got my next clue, which was a present from Derek and Kelly. We were off to the Mall of America where Derek and Kelly set me up to do Aces. Aces is a flight simulator game, which Derek and I did some combat flying during World War II. It was awesome, we played for an hour and due to our 8 minute training, got to be revived several times during the hour.

Afterwards we met up with Kelly and Jill again and now we were off to MagiQuest. Last Christmas Derek & Kelly gave us gift cards for MagiQuest and today we were going to use them. MagiQuest is a cool LARP kind of game where you get an infrared wand and have to walk around zapping things to get spells, runes, and gold. You also get to build your own wand, which you keep, and can bring back to play again and again. You build levels in the game, much like a LARP kind of game. So Derek, Jill, and I played for 90 minutes and had a blast. Jill and I almost became Master-Magi at the end.

After MagiQuest we headed over to a restaurant in the mall called Crave. Crave is pretty cool as they have a broad selection of items, everything from sushi to pizza. We got a sushi appetizer and for dinner I got a crab crusted filet mignon, it was awesome. After dinner we headed back to Derek & Kelly's for a little wine, and then off to bed. We were all pretty tired from a long and awesome day.

So Jill did great for Day 11, it was almost like the whole 12 Days of Mikey wrapped in one. I got to see a lot of other family and friends, and do MagiQuest. So now that I am recovering from Day 11, it is time to get ready and see what Day 12 has in store. Thanks again to Jill for making Day 11 so very, very awesome. I am so lucky to have a wonderful wife that will plan such a great day for me. Thank you again Jill.

12 Days of Mikey - Day 10

2010-09-10T22:23:00.002-05:00

Today was Day 10 and honestly nothing happened for most of the day. One of my coworkers brought me a mocha and I suspected him, but no it wasn't him. Another gave me an iTunes gift card, nope not her either. When I went to leave I got paranoid and thought maybe they did something to my truck, nope truck was fine.

So I got home and Jill and I went over to Tim & Jackie's as we had planned to help them wall mount their flat panel TV tonight. When we got there I discovered that Day 10 was their day. They took Jill and I out to eat at Five Guys Burgers, which was pretty good. When they first opened they said their burgers were better than Newt's here in town. Now I must say that, no this is not the case at all. Newt's has more specialty burgers and a much nicer atmosphere than Five Guys, but the burger was good anyways.

Tim and Jackie also got me a Bazinga sweatshirt from one of our favorite shows, The Big Bang Theory. And a device I have thought of before called the Annoy-a-Tron, which makes annoying noises to mess with your friends and coworkers.

We got their TV mounted after dinner and it looks awesome, and then we got some peanut butter silk pie, which was a great end to the day. I am very tired and we are heading to the Mall of America to hang with our other friends Derek and Kelly. So thank you Tim and Jackie for an awesome evening and making Day 10 so much fun. Enjoy your wall mounted TV, it looks awesome!

12 Days of Mikey - Day 9

2010-09-09T21:49:00.004-05:00

Today Day 9 started with a sign taped to my monitors with a devil picture on it. I pretty much figured out who had Day 9 right then and there, it was my coworker Aimee. She always uses the devil head almost daily in Yahoo IM. And sure enough she came in and had a mocha for me. What I didn't expect was a little while later when my other coworker Aurora came in and also had a mocha for me, they both had Day 9. They were awesome and bought me lunch from Pi Pizza, it is a great place for wood fired pizza. Later this afternoon they got me again though, with all kinds of stuff. Some good and some bad.

The good things were a TARDIS cookie jar that makes the TARDIS noise when you open it. Also a mini-cake from Daube's bakery here in town and some bacon salt.

Now the bad stuff they got me were all vegan goods and snacks. Most of the people who know me know that I am more of a carnivore than an omnivore so this was pretty funny. I got some Veggie Stix and some other rice puffed snacks. Some Vegenaise, which is a vegan form of mayonnaise, kind of scared to even try that one. And some Mixed Sea Vegetables that look like something from low tide at the pier. But one of my favorites was a mix of Buckwheat Pancakes. I had tried these from the good food store before and couldn't even finish them, so I knew this one was a winner.

So thanks to Aimee and Aurora for a great day, some fun gifts, and for keeping me humble with vegetables.

12 Days of Mikey - Day 8

2010-09-08T20:51:00.001-05:00

Today was Day 8 of the 12 Days of Mikey and it was my friend Ann how had today. Unfortunately I was away on site visits today and was not there at work when she arrived. She had texted me to let me know there was a desert waiting for me when I got back to the office. When I got back I found a pie in the freezer and a can of whip creme in the refrigerator. I immediately went to the fridge and got out my pie. I wasn't sure what kind it was at first, but it turns out it was a key lime pie. What threw me off is that most of the key lime pies I have had are just kind of plain and almost gross. This one was definitely not! It had a very good citrus taste and almost reminded me of a brandy slush. I had two pieces of my pie before I let anyone else in the office know it was even there. I have never had a key lime pie as good as this one, and it threw me off for what it was. So kudos to Ann and a big thank you for an awesome pie on Day 8 of the 12 Days of Mikey.

12 Days of Mikey - Day 7

2010-09-07T18:49:00.001-05:00

Today was Day 7 of the 12 Days of Mikey and this morning I was called to the front office area to find Brian and the girls waiting for me. Today was Brian's day, and he made me one of my favorite deserts that he does, a blueberry torte. After they left I took it to the break room and sent out an email to all the staff letting them know it was here. Several came and had the torte, and about half of it was left from the initial attack. Afterwards I left on a site visit to Cannon Falls, so good timing on Brian's part. When I got back later this afternoon I found the entire torte gone. Not only is it one of my favorites, it appears my co-workers like it as well. So thanks to Brian for a great Day 7 and an awesome torte, as always.

12 Days of Mikey - Day 6

2010-09-06T21:29:00.005-05:00

Today's day was a complete surprise as we were going to go to the Twins game with our neighbors. We had breakfast at their place before leaving and I discovered Day 6 belonged to my neighbor Michelle. She has brian make a great breakfast, and got me an awesome coffee mug.

Now with the coffee mug you have to understand the back story a bit for it to make sense. I am always teasing my neighbor Brian that I want to abduct him and put him in the basement so he will bake for me on demand. After all, abduction is the highest form of flattery. So in honor of this they got me a coffee mug with the dialogue from Silence of the Lambs and back picture of his baklava. The dialogue on the mug is below:

"Now it places the baklava in the basket."
"Please! Please I wanna go home! I wanna go home please!"
"It places the baklava in the basket."
"I wanna see my wife! I wanna see my kids!"
"PUT THE #@^N$ BAKLAVA IN THE BASKET!"

Now what really made me NOT suspect them was today is Michelle's birthday, and that was why we were doing the Twins game with them. We had an awesome blast and saw the Twins beat the Kansas City Royals 5 to 4. It was a truly amazing day and I will always have my Brian coffee mug to remember it by.

12 Days of Mikey - Day 5

2010-09-05T18:52:00.002-05:00

Today was Day 5 of the 12 Days of Mikey. I woke up to find a gift bag on my laptop, and in it was a brownie box mix, walnuts, and chocolate frosting, all the ingredients for Walnut Brownies. The note was from Dee & Jay, who actually live in, and are currently located in, Green Bay Wisconsin. It turns out that Dee had sent the ingredients with my Mom when she had visited us a couple of weeks ago.

I emailed Dee though as I have found a problem with the brownies. I tried rubbing them together, dropping them on each other, placing them all in the oven, and in the microwave and I still have no walnut brownies to show for it. I am going to try putting them all in the washing machine or possibly the microwave. One of the appliances here in the house has to turn these ingredients into walnut brownies. Dee did respond and suggested I beg my wife to make them, I may have to resort to that in order to get walnut brownies. Anyways, thanks to Dee for getting me my favorite brownies, it was truly funny things morning.

12 Days of Mikey - Day 4

2010-09-04T22:14:00.003-05:00

Today was Day 4 of the 12 Days of Mikey. Today my friend Nana was the person who got me today. Nana is a friend from when I first moved to Rochester, back when I started at IBM. In many ways Nana has been like a second Mom to me.

When we got up Jill and I went kayaking with my sister, Charity, and my niece, Lita. While were were out Nana came into our house and put a lot of fun stuff on my desk in my office. She got me a box of candy, a Star Wars kite, a card, and a whole lot of balloons. She even got me a toy glow in the dark sword.

I thought that was it, but after we got home she started texting me clues and sent me on a scavenger hunt throughout the house. The first sent me down into the basement where we keep our wine. The clue Nana gave me when I got down there was to look for the Chest of Nana. I looked around our wine cellar and found an Abercrombie and Fitch bag, and quickly realized if Nana had to pick a chest, that'd be it. Inside was a collectors series PC game for Age of Conan Hyborian Adventures.

Later in the day Nana texted me again and this time sent me into our upstairs. The clues led me to one of our closets and in there was a bag containing the Star Trek Scene It game. This game has questions from all the TV shows, from the original series, to Voyager and Enterprise. I am very anxious to play it as I like the Scene It game.

We had Nana over for dinner and while we were eating I explained how much coffee I've been getting from the 12 Days of Mikey. She laughed and gave me a gift card for Java Detour, too funny. So as Day 4 comes to an end, it's been just an awesome day of hanging out with family and friends. Thank you so much to Nana for all the cool gifts and for coming over.

12 Days of Mikey - Day 3

2010-09-03T12:01:00.004-05:00

So for Day 3 of the 12 Days of Mikey the day fell to Paula. Her and her son Daniel came to my office today with a whole bag of awesomeness. They started by reading a poem they wrote and then handing me the appropriate present. Below is the poem they wrote:

On the third day of Mikey I must say we do, have several things to do with leashes for you. First we must keep Mikey safe on the water this fall, so we hope today you find this to be a ball. To keep your iPhone handy and dry, this first "leash" will do. With the right GPS application, we will be able to find you... We know how you love things on leashes so here is your next thing, To keep your oar always at the ready you will have to remember to bring... In the event your Jill and Brian desert you, we have thought of everything, dessert it is, that you will be able to bring. May the rest of your Mikey days be happy and as fun as yours today, your Kayak adventure birthday will take you away. Paula and Daniel

So the first thing they have me from the first part of the poem was hard plastic dry box I wanted when I bought my kayak. I didn't get it then and got a cheaper dry bag in order to save some money, but was thrilled when I got my dry box. The second thing they gave me was a paddle leash, so that way I can attach my paddles to my kayak. The third thing was freeze dried fruit and ice cream sandwiches, for when Jill and Brian are gone at the same time. They did that one weekend and Michelle, the girls, and I were reduced to eating crackers!

In addition to all that above Paula and Daniel also brought me some Dunn Bros. And not any normal Dunn Bros, I got a Chocolate Steamed Nirvana and a jug of their Infinite Black iced coffee I have been wanting to try. I did try it after they left and was surprised as it was a lot better than I thought. The other funny thing Paula said was she went to Dunn Bros and asked them which mocha I would prefer, after saying my name they knew exactly who I was and that I would want the chocolate nirvana. Maybe I go there too much. So as I am here at work in awe... a big thank you to Paula and Daniel for making it a truly AWESOME Day 3!!

12 Days of Mikey - Day 2

2010-09-02T21:47:00.004-05:00

Today was day 2 of the 12 Days of Mikey. It all started out like a normal day until I was on call for work and Sara from the front desk came in with apple tarts and a mocha for me. It was definitely Day 2 and I knew whose day it was, it was Jackie's. Jackie is Tim's girlfriend and yet another fabulous cook that I know. The apple tarts were amazing and I did my best to keep them on the down low from my co-workers, but still managed to share with some of them. On the box they apple tarts came in was a note saying see you tonight for surf and turf.

So for dinner Jill and I went over to Tim & Jackie's and had some great steaks and shrimp off the grill. For desert Jackie made brownies covered in ice cream and Reeses peanut butter cups. A better Mikey dinner there isn't, so for Jackie's day she comes out with two thumbs way up! I even managed to help fix their cable box while I was there as Tim had plugged the wrong cable into the port on the DVR. We even did some game planning for wall mounting their 40 inch flat panel TV. So as day 2 comes to a close, I find myself very happy to have good friends and extremely full of food!

12 Days of Mikey - Day 1

2010-09-01T19:39:00.008-05:00

On Friday June 11th was my friend's, Tim, birthday this year. To get him I organized a cake-a-thon and got several of our friends to make and deliver different cakes and deserts to him on his birthday. There were a total of four that were delivered throughout the day. To get me back he has organized the 12 days of Mikey. During September 1-12, leading up to my birthday, he is going to get me back each and every day. Something is going to happen to me each day, and possibly even multiple things. Today I was told this by him and have begun seeing the results. This morning started off with the following video explaining all this to me.

http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7021253/

After I got home from work I found he had delivered the chair pictured to the right. Now some history of this chair is that we call it the ball buster, as if you are a guy and sit in it you will quickly find it was not designed for men. He dropped this off in front of my house with a red balloon attached. I then came to blog about it and found a $10 iTunes Gift Card in my email. So all in all maybe a wash, depends on what use I find for the chair.

So I am going to try blogging this as all these happen. I will keep them under the 12 Days of Mikey label on my blog so that all of you reading this can follow along. So bear with me as we endure the 12 Days of Mikey, be they good, bad, or just embarrassing.

Malwarebytes in Safe Mode

2010-08-17T15:31:00.001-05:00

I've talked about Malwarebytes before, it is a great virus and malware removal tool. It is not a true anti-virus, but is great for getting rid of a lot of the stuff that gets past anti-virus. Often times you can run Malwarebytes, reboot, and all the malware comes back. This is because the fake anti-virus or malware has found a way around Malwarebytes or your local anti-virus. When this happens I run Malwarebytes in Safe Mode.

For those of you not familiar with Safe Mode, it is just that. It is a safe mode version of windows that disables many programs from starting and blocking things, such as malware. You can get into safe mode by booting up your system and as soon as you see your bios screen (such as Dell, HP, Gateway, Acer, etc) start hitting the F8 key many times. Windows will not boot up and you will be asked what version of windows you would like to start. Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Networking, etc.

Let's assume you already have Malwarebytes installed and tried to remove the infection and it didn't work. Boot into Safe Mode per the instructions above and choose Safe Mode with Networking. When it first boots up it looks like a lot of garbage on the screen, but then will ask you to login. Login as per normal, you will get message that says you are running in Safe Mode, go ahead and click OK. Now find and launch Malwarebytes. The first thing you will want to do is go to the Update tab and update it. This is why we chose Safe Mode with Networking so we would be able to update Malwarebytes. Now go to the Scanner tab and select Full Scan and let it go. It should find and remove your infection. After it is done, reboot and let it go back into normal Windows, then you can see if the infection is truly gone.

I must warn you this method does not always work, some infections are buried in Windows to remove properly. Typically if this method doesn't work it usually means it is time to reload the computer. But trying to remove the infection with Malwarebytes in Safe Mode is a good last resort before that.

My First Kayak

2010-08-13T08:04:00.008-05:00

When I went up to Lake Hattie with my wife's family this past fourth of July, I became addicted to kayaking. They had kayaks there that you could take out, and my co-worker Aurora had been after me to try it. So as I stood on the beach looking at them, her voice popped into my head and said "Do it!". So I did and quickly spent most of the vacation kayaking on the lake.

When we got home, I talked to her about getting one and she recommended the Current Designs brand that is manufactured right here in Winona Minnesota. She took me out on the Mississippi river and let me try both her and her husband's kayaks, I liked his quite a bit.

So now knowing more what I wanted, I went to Tyrol Ski and Sports where I met Greg. Greg was the salesman who got me a great deal on a kayak of my own, along with all the car rack equipment, paddles etc. I bought my kayak on Monday, August 9 and am loving it. It is a Current Designs Kestrel 140 Rotomold, recreational kayak. I've taken it out Chester Woods twice now and am truly enjoying it.

On another cool note I had told my co-workers Aimee and Aurora that I wanted a kayak and was looking to put TARDIS decals on it from Doctor Who. Aimee surprised me with my decals weeks before I got my kayak, making my want to get one that much worse. So if you are looking for a kayak, I would highly recommend checking out the Current Designs kayak line. I have found them to be of great quality and almost everyone I know with a kayak has one. As for my kayak, it is pictured to the left, I am sure there will be more stories and pictures to come.

Dinner for Schmucks

2010-08-05T07:53:00.001-05:00

Last Saturday Jill and I went with some friends to see the movie Dinner for Schmucks. The movie is based on a guy named Tim who is trying to get the big promotion at work, but in order to do that he must go to a company dinner party. At this dinner party the executives bring all kind of crazy people to see who has the biggest loser in the group.

I was excited to see this movie as I thought Steve Carel would be hilarious in it. The movie was funny, but I found the humor was more shock humor instead of laughing humor. The movie was still quite enjoyable and hilarious, but I didn't laugh as much as I thought I would. Steve Carel did an awesome job playing the part of Barry, even if the movie was not as laugh out loud funny as I expected. I was even surprised to see Jeff Dunham in this movie as well. Even though his part was small, it was hilarious.

I would say that this movie is worth seeing, but probably more as a matinee or a movie rental once it comes out on DVD.

Hungry Shark

2010-08-04T19:42:00.002-05:00

This week on the Discovery Channel is Shark Week, one of my favorite weeks. As this is Shark Week I looked in the iPhone App store for shark apps and came across a game called Hungry Shark. In this game you are a great white shark swimming around the ocean eating all kinds of things, including people, sea gulls, and other fish. There are obstacles to avoid as well as bonus items that you can eat, such as a traffic cone. I have found myself becoming very addicted to this game, especially since I can play it during the commercials of Shark Week.

There are two parts to this game, Part 1 is the free version, which is the one I installed. Hungry Shark Part 2 is 99 cents and opens up more levels and sea creatures to deal with. I am considering buying the full version, but have not yet.

So if you are looking for a fun iPhone game that holds some gore and action, I would highly recommend Hungry Shark. I know it is quickly becoming one of my favorite iPhone games.

Despicable Me

2010-07-24T09:18:00.006-05:00

Last night we went with some friends to see the movie, Despicable Me. I honestly have not laughed that hard in a long time. The movie follows the mis-adventures of a career super villain named Grue and three little girls that he gets mixed up with. Grue is voiced by Steve Carell, who I believe did an awesome job with this character. In addition to that add in some minions and an evil scientist on top of that, and you have a hilarious movie. But the movie is not all comedy, there is of course a good moral to the story embedded within it. So if you are looking for a fun, all around good movie, go see Despicable Me. It was definitely worth the full price of admission.

The Rice Trick

2010-07-18T12:06:00.003-05:00

A lot of people may or may not know about the rice trick, but I have had it come up enough that I thought I should share. So what happens to your cell phone or other mobile device, GPS, etc if you get it wet? Is it ruined, or is there anything you can do?

Well you can always try the rice trick. This was told to me by my friend Tim at AT&T. Basically if you get your device wet, turn it off and place it in a bowl of dry rice, completely submerged and leave it over night, or for a couple of days. The rice will actually absorb the moisture out of your device, and if you are lucky you will be back up and running. If not, you may need a new device. This trick doesn't always work, but is worth a shot before you throw in the towel. So the next time you get your device wet, give this a try before going to the store and spending lots of money for a new device.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

2010-07-17T10:00:00.001-05:00

On Friday night by wife held a digital scrap booking workshop at our house. Unlike normal scrap booking this means I can get behind it as it is all computerized. But this also meant I needed to disappear for a while. So I went out with some friends and we went to see the new Disney movie, The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this movie, as it is loosely based on the music with Mickey Mouse from Fantasia, but in real life. But if Disney can make a ride on their amusement park into three very good films starring Johnny Depp, then there is hope. I can say I wasn't disappointed, the move is very action packed and has a decent story line. The acting I felt was good, another awesome villain performance from Alfred Molina. Nicholas Cage also did very well, along with Dave, played by Jay Baruchel. Jay definitely made the apprentice a believeable character, and I am not sure anyone else could have pulled that off. The movie was cheesey in some spots, but again, this is a Disney movie, so you have to expect that. Definitely worth paying full price, and I would even be willing to go back to see a matinee. I also hope they might consider doing a sequel to this film.

One of my favorite scenes that I was hoping they would touch on was the broom / cleaning scene from Fantasia. They did do this scene in the movie along with the music. This to me was the cherry on top of the sunday, so to speak, and made the movie more credible to what they were doing.

So if you are looking for a good, family action film with lots of magic, I would highly recommend this movie. I know there are a lot of other good movies out right now, but don't over look The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

Lake Hattie 2010

2010-07-11T07:56:00.001-05:00

This past week we made our yearly trip to Tuck-A-Way Resort on Lake Hattie with Jill's family for the week of the 4th of July. We took both the dogs with so they could do swimming, they love that and just enjoyed a week at the lake. I got to spend a lot of time with my two year old niece, Allison, she is very funny and cute. Surprisingly she picked up the word "margarita" and can say it very well.

I did a lot of fishing, and caught several northerns. The biggest of which was 32 inches, 10 pounds. I went out one morning with Jill's Dad and my brother-in-law Tony. We had just come into a bay and I threw my line towards the weedbed as Jill's Dad started setting up the trolling motor. The northern hit almost immediately and started pulling line. I got it towards the boat and it jumped into the air and we all could see it. Tony got the net under it just as the lure came out of its mouth, and despite tripping over a tackle box, Tony kept it in the net. Kudos to Tony for that one. We released the northern but not after taking a couple of photos.

I also noticed this year at the beach they had some kayaks out that people could use, nothing big, just basic kayaks. The voice of my co-worker Aurora popped into my head and say, "try it". She's been kayaking for a while and has been encouraging me to as well. So I tried it, and loved it. I spend most of the week kayaking around the lake. Jill and I even did a trip around the bay in front of the resort, she also liked it. So maybe down the road there will be a kayak in my future.

So another yearly trip down with some good fishing and family fun. Jill and I are getting ready to head home tonight and then back to the normal day to day grind.

JotNet Scanner Pro

2010-07-01T20:08:00.000-05:00

After getting my iPhone 4 it has made me really focus on it again, spending long strolls in the App Store, looking at new and more functional apps. And I came across one I was actually surprised by, JotNot Scanner Pro. This app only cost 99 cents, but what it is, is a document scanner. It allows you to take a picture of a document with your iPhone, then process it, and convert it to PDF. You can then email the document off your phone, just like anything else. While this sounds great, and like something out of James Bond, I didn't really think it'd work very well. I was wrong, while the copy isn't as good if you ran it through a regular document scanner, it is good enough to read and be eligible.

So if you are looking for a good app to turn your iPhone into a spy camera, or just a half way decent, portable document scanner, JotNot Scanner Pro might be for you.

iPhone 4

2010-06-27T13:20:00.003-05:00

On June 15th I took a half day off as my wife and I were going with our friend Tim, who works at the AT&T store, to a Minnesota Twins game. He had told me the last week that I was eligible for the new iPhone 4, but I did not really believe him. So we went in on the 15th, which was also the iPhone pre-order day, and sure enough it was all true. I pre-ordered my iPhone and we headed off to the Twins game. Little did I know that the pre-orders went crazy, and they only ended up having enough phones to fill the pre-orders and only did it for that day. So time went on and I eagerly awaited my iPhone.

Eventually it came and I went in and got it activated. I got home and was able to restore my old iphone settings and applications onto it. I must admit this is one scenario I have to give iTunes credit for. Usually I refer to it as a necessary evil, but with its ability to Backup your phone and Restore, it made the transition easy. All my data, settings, and applications were there. Safari even remembered the last webpage I was on when I did my backup. So for this part, I have to give a thumbs up to iTunes.

The first thing I noticed right away with the new iPhone 4 was the speed performance. Which was one of the main reasons I upgraded. The iPhone 4 has the same processor in it as the iPad does. And all the hype about the processor is all true. The speed difference between my iPhone 3G and my iPhone 4 is night and day.

Most of the other features that I liked were the folders. This is not something special about the iPhone 4, but more about the new 4 operating system for the iPhone that Apple released. Even my wife was able to upgrade her iPhone 3G to the new 4 operating system, making even her iPhone 3G much more functional. She is do for a phone upgrade in January and I think she will have to problems moving to the iPhone 4.

So all in all I have to give credit to Apple. Usually when I hear a lot of hype the product falls short, but I do not think that is the case with the iPhone 4. Jut the performance enhancements alone are worth it. I am not going to go into depth about most of them, but so far all of them have been right on target. Especially the better camera, and the multi-tasking ability. So if you were one of the few lucky ones who were able to upgrade on June 24th, I am sure you are enjoying your iPhone 4. If you were not and are hoping to upgrade, the wait is worth it.

Toy Story 3

2010-06-27T11:40:00.002-05:00

Last night we went with our neighbors to see Toy Story 3. I was not really expecting much from it, after all for most movies by the third movie it has already been beaten to death, for example, look at Shrek. However I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. I would even say that it was just about as good as the first one, and better than the second.

The movie focused on what happens to the toys as Andy moves away from college. It shows how they adapt to such life changes, and explores the horrors of daycare from a toy's perspective. One of my favorite new characters though, was Ken, voiced by Michael Keaton. By far the most hilarious new character in this movie.

So if you are looking for a good, heart warming, comedic movie, I would recommend Toy Story 3. After seeing it, I had no remorse in paying full price for my movie ticket. Another win for Pixar!

Twins Game with Tim & Jackie

2010-06-16T20:06:00.003-05:00

Last night Jill and I went with our friends Tim & Jackie to the Twins game. The Twins played the Colorado Rockies, and won by 9 to 3. It was pretty close until the fourth inning, then the Twins got ahead by several runs. We were sitting behind a couple of fans from Colorado, but they were a nice older couple and were fun to talk too. Jill and I had a blast with Tim & Jackie, they both are so funny. That is them in the picture on this blog post. We look forward to hanging out with them again real soon. Perhaps another game?

Apple iPad

2010-06-06T11:36:00.004-05:00

A lot of people have been asking me what I think if the Apple iPad, so I thought this would probably be a good blog post. The Apple iPad is very cool when you first see it. It basically acts as a giant iPod Touch. I think it is great as it has access to the App Store and it does making reading books and doing some of the tasks on it much easier than the iPod Touch since it has the bigger screen.

However, it also has all the limitations of the iPod Touch or iPhone. The biggest one that I am going to discuss, and is my biggest hang up, is the fact it does not support Adobe Flash. Now on a cell phone or MP3 player I can understand this limitation, after all these devices were never meant to be full blown laptops or netbooks. However, now that they have made the iPad, which is supposed to compete with the netbooks, I think this is a major failing. There was a letter that Steve Jobs wrote explaining why he didn't want to support Adobe Flash. A few of his key points was he wanted the internet to start using different standards, such as HTML5, and to move away from Adobe Flash. He even called Adobe too proprietary, which I personally find hilarious and hypocritical coming from Steve Jobs. While I agree it would be cool if the internet changed and moved to different standards and relied less on Adobe Flash, the reality is that Adobe Flash is here and is what is out there. To sum it up, the end user when they get home with their new iPad are going to want to go on to Facebook and play their Farmville or Mob Wars games. Not supporting Flash on a device that is supposed to compete with a regular computer, is a major downfall. And for the cost of the iPad, you could save yourself a lot of money and get a netbook running either Windows or Linux that will allow you to do your Facebook games and watch Hulu.

I think the iPad is a great device that will show us of things yet to come, but due to Apples shortcomings, it isn't quite there yet. I know I will be keeping my eyes open to see if the iPad gets improved, or if another device comes out like it. Maybe a Google Android device similar to the iPad perhaps?

Ubuntu Netbook Remix

2010-05-15T11:12:00.002-05:00

Out of curiosity I decided to try the Ubuntu Netbook Remix as it is supposed to be build specifically for the Intel Atom Processor. I saw some advantages to the user interface as it opens all applications full screen with tabs on the top menu as opposed to using a normal windows menu. This was cool, at first. But after a while of using it, I started getting annoyed and missed my normal windows as well as the multiple desktop view you can get with the full Ubuntu desktop version.

As for the performance boost I was looking for by using the Netbook Remix, was not found. It performed no differently than the full version of Ubuntu on my netbook. So after being annoyed for a bit by the lack of normal windows, I reloaded my netbook back to the full version and am much happier now.

So if you are looking for a more menu driven, less windows environment setup, I would highly recommend the Ubuntu Netbook Remix. I think there are advantages for this as kiosks for even for children's PCs. But as for me who wants to do more techie stuff, I found it limiting. I do hope Ubuntu keeps making it as I think it is great they have another option for users other than just their desktop version.

Stray Husky

2010-05-07T23:13:00.002-05:00

Tonight we had some friends over for dinner, and had a lovely time. We let our dogs out and Flash just went nuts, we thought he was barking at the neighbor dogs. Turns out there was a big, white husky dog standing outside our gate to the backyard. We got our dogs in and I got the male husky in our backyard. It was raining out so we got a leash and lead him to our front porch. I called our friend Sue to see what to do next, as she is pretty much an expert on rescuing dogs. She told us to call dispatch and have an officer meet us at animal control. I did just that, and with the help of my neighbor Michelle we took the dog to animal control. He was a very good dog, and even sat nice for the car ride. I hope they find him a good home. He did look very skinny, so I think he may have been out and about for a while. Needless to say, Flash & Alexis were NOT happy about all this, but were happy when I got home with no strange dog.

The husky had a red collar and no tags. He seemed very young, almost a puppy. If you recognize him, he is at the Rochester Animal Shelter.

Doctor Who TARDIS USB Hub

2010-05-01T17:39:00.006-05:00

A friend of mine got one of these for me and sent it to me. I am an avid Doctor Who fan, have been ever since I was a little boy. So imagine how cool a TARDIS USB hub is to me. Basically once you plug it into the USB port on your computer, it works as a regular USB hub would, giving you access to extra USB ports. But if you plug a device into it, the light on the top blinks and it makes the TARDIS noise. You can also make the TARDIS noise by pressing the "Call Box" label on it for a demo.

If the friend who gave this to me is reading my blog, THANK YOU SO MUCH!! I literally wore down my netbook battery by pressing the demo button for the TARDIS noise.

Ubuntu 10.04

2010-04-30T21:23:00.000-05:00

So the new Ubuntu 10.04 release came out on Thursday, April 29th. I was eagerly waiting to upgrade my netbook to this, and after work last Thursday I did. I got home and run my Update Manager on Ubuntu and sure enough, there was the Upgrade for 10.04, so I went for it. Much to my dismay, it took forever. I believe this is mostly due to the download speed from their upgrade server. I am guessing a lot of people were doing the upgrade that night as well. Anyways, I let it go over night and it was successful. Friday, April 30th found my netbook with the new Ubuntu 10.04 release on it. Looking back I should have just did a from scratch install, as it would have been much faster.

My initial findings with the new Ubuntu 10.04 was that it was very purple. They have definitely tweaked the defaults to make it look more MAC like in my opinion, but it still looks like Linux to me. Some of the symbols changed, but other than that, it looks very similar to the 9.10 release. I am still playing and experimenting with it, but so far have found no problems. I like some of the new visual cusotmizations. I have also found that it takes my netbook a few seconds longer to boot up (still faster than Windows) but once it is up, the performance is much improved.

So if you haven't upgraded, I would say go for it. If you haven't installed Ubuntu at all yet, and are looking to, don't be afraid to jump into Ubuntu 10.04. It isn't that different from the previous version, but was totally worth the performance boost I got. I am still playing and learning some of the other features, such as the integrated music store, but so far all looks good.

Pocket God

2010-04-21T21:05:00.004-05:00

Normally I am not big into games, in fact I usually think they slow down systems and are more trouble than they are worth. This attitude is not different for my iPhone than my computer. However there is one game, that above all others is truly awesome, and that is Pocket God.

The way you play Pocket God is you have an island of pygmies and you are their God. This allows you to be nice to them, or not, I usually go with not. There are several levels and you get to do all kinds of different things to the pygmies, such as flinging them in volcanoes or feeding them to giant spiders. The animation and the different things you can do in this game, it was makes it truly entertaining. It is a riot to play, and a truly great way to release some stress. You will find yourself lots of hours tormenting your pygmies.

Pocket God is $1 in the iPhone App Store, and I can honestly say, I've gotten my $1 of entertianment out of it. Everyone I show this app too usually take my iPhone away and I don't see it again for quite a while. So if you are looking for just a fun, entertaining game, or just want to torment someone, check out Pocket God.

SaiSuke

2010-04-20T20:22:00.002-05:00

Another very useful app I have found for the iPhone is SaiSuke. SaiSuke is an app that syncs with your Google Calendar. It does not use the native iPhone calendar program, due to limitations with Apple, but runs it's own Calendar to access your Google Calendars. It will show you all calendars you have access to, as well as preserve the colors of those calendars you have set in Google. It looks just like the Google Calendar, except it is a local app. But some people would say, why not just access your Google Calendar through the browser, which you can. However, because SaiSuke is a local app and syncs with your Google Calendar, it preserves all the information even if you are not online. Giving you an easily accessible offline calendar if needed.

SaiSuke comes in two versions, the free version or the paid version for $10. We got the paid version as I didn't want ads, and wanted the extra functionality. This app was in fact the main reason we went with the iPhone versus a Windows Mobile phone or Blackberry. Google Calendar syncing was important to my wife and I for our phones, as we live off of Google Calendar. So if you are looking for a good app to sync with Google Calendar, I would highly recommend SaiSuke for your iPod Touch or iPhone.

Firefox Add-on: Coral IE Tab

2010-04-18T09:53:00.004-05:00

So before my only real complaint with Firefox 3.6 was the lack of an IE Tab add-on. Since then, Coral IE Tab has released newer versions that do work with Outlook Web Access. So if you are looking for such an add-on, make sure to install Coral IE Tab 1.82 or higher, and you should be good for using Outlook Web Access.

Now I have also noticed someone has released an IE Tab 2 add-on for Firefox. This came out sometime in April, I have not had a chance to try it or test it, and not sure if I will at this point. I am finally happy with the way Coral IE Tab is handling my Outlook Web Access email. But if you want to try it, go ahead and give it a whirl. Please feel free to post your findings to this blog post, I'd be curious to see how it is. I may try it myself down the road, but for now I am satisfied with Coral IE Tab.

Updated Labels

2010-04-18T08:02:00.005-05:00

I have been working on updating how I do Labels on my blog as I have a lot of Technology posts, that are kind of all over the place. I have broken them up into categories, hopefully making it easier for you all to find stuff based on a topic. You can also use the Search field in the top, right hand corner to search through all the blog posts as well. I hope that this helps make things easier for you, the readers. If you have any suggestions or ideas about how I could organize the labels to make it easier for you, feel free to comment to this post.

A Life of its Own

2010-04-17T19:13:00.000-05:00

A while ago someone had asked me to help them with a business Facebook page for them. I said yes, but they were so busy we never go around to it. One morning I decided to see how hard it was to set one up. It actually is very easy, and I had a lot of fun doing it. And so it was created and I began to wait to show it to them before linking it out there. However, it happened before I knew it. I finished some work on the page and went back to my own Facebook page only to see several of my friends becoming fans of this page. It took on a life of its own. I finally got a chance to show the page to the person it was for, and thankfully they liked it. It just one day, it went from no fans to about 55 fans. So if you are looking to do a Facebook business page, be ready in case it decides to take off, and leave you hanging on for the ride.

Logitech Touch Mouse

2010-04-15T19:46:00.005-05:00

In my many browsings of the Apple App Store, I found another App that I really like, it is called the Logitech Touch Mouse. But before I explain what this app does, I would like to tell the back story of why I was so excited to find it.

In our upstairs bedroom I have a desktop connected to our flat panel TV that we use as a media center PC. We use this for streaming online movies from Netflix and Hulu. The problem we have found is at night, getting up to turn it off. We can turn the TV off with the remote, but we do not have a remote for our media center PC. We were thinking of buying a presentation remote for this purpose, but then I found the Logitech Touch Mouse.

So what does this app do? It turns your iPhone or iPod Touch into a touchpad mouse and keyboard for your PC. The way this works is that you install the Touch Mouse Server software on your PC. You can set it to auto-start if you wish or turn it on manually if you prefer that method. Then you connect your iPhone or iPod Touch to the same wireless network as your PC and launch the app. The app will auto-detect your PC, and then you can connect. Once you connect it is pretty easy, it is just a touch pad mouse with buttons and an option to open the keyboard. You can then disconnect and you are done. The nice thing is you are connecting over your wireless network, so as long as you are in range of that you are set, regardless of how far your iPod or iPhone is away from the PC. The other bonus, both the app and the touch mouse server software are free.

So if you have a media center PC, and an iPod Touch or iPhone and were thinking about getting a presentation mouse / remote, save yourself some money and try out the Logitech Touch Mouse app.

Ubuntu to the Rescue

2010-04-09T10:19:00.011-05:00

As what usually happens when I head to the family's place on holidays, I work on their computers. My sister has a new Windows 7 HP laptop, but has been having several hardware related problems with it and was not happy about sending it back in. She has a decent Compaq Vista laptop, but that also was having problems. Such as being very slow and not having any battery life. So the question was, what can we do to make the old laptop better for when the new one gets sent away?

Well after some testing it was pretty clear the slowness was being caused by a hard drive problem. No system should take over night to defrag!! So we went to Best Buy and got her a new hard drive, not too difficult. The gotcha we ran into was the fact that she did not have her recovery discs for this Vista laptop with, and I had tried putting XP on it at one point with much pain and suffering due to drivers. So I asked her how she normally uses her computer. She said for Firefox and instant messaging. I suggested we could load it with Ubuntu Linux, as she should be able to do everything she wants with that. She agreed and off we went.

My niece, Lita, was there for Easter as well and helped me replace the hard drive and reload her Mom's computer with Ubuntu Linux. You can see Lita holding the old hard drive from the laptop in the picture to the right. The laptop is running amazingly fast now, and my sister is very happy with it. She is able to run Firefox and instant messaging with people just as she wanted. She said the user interface is very simple and straight forward. We have yet to really run into a road block for how she uses it. She even told me that she can now get about two hours on her laptop battery where before she was getting almost nothing. Not surprising since Ubuntu uses less resources than Windows.

So even though her new laptop is in the shop, we were able to get her old one up and running with Ubuntu, giving it a second life. Maybe somewhere down the road when she gets her recovery disks, we may reload it with Vista again, but if we do rest assured it will still be a dual boot Ubuntu Linux system.

Microsoft Security Essentials: Revisited

2010-03-31T20:23:00.007-05:00

Recently I have had a huge amount of home users come to me and ask my help to remove viruses and malware from their computers. So much so in fact, that I have done a lot of reading online and while I have not found any major new threats, it appears the malware is getting more aggressive, and so am I.

So while AVG is still a decent antivirus product, I have done a lot of research last weekend and compared AVG to Microsoft Security Essentials and Avast. Both Microsoft Security Essentials and Avast scored higher than AVG. So that made the decision for me, and I moved my computers to Microsoft Security Essentials. I have blogged about Microsoft Security Essentails before, so if you want to know more about it please read the previous Microsoft Security Essentials post.

My biggest issue with Microsoft Security Essentials was system performance. Well there has been some product updates and it seems to be running much better now, as I have not noticed a performance difference from when I was running AVG.

In addition to switching and running Microsoft Security Essentials, I have also running Malwarebytes in the background as a second line of defense. I do occasionally update and run a scan with it, just to make sure nothing got by my main antivirus. I have also blogged about Malwarebytes before and if you would like to learn more about it, please read the previous Malwarebytes post.

So with the increase of malware out there, I have moved to the Microsoft Security Essentials / Malwarebytes as my malware defense. So if you are looking for a decent, free solution I would recommend this two layered defense.

She's Out of My League

2010-03-21T20:32:00.002-05:00

My friend Tim and I went out to a movie last night as both Jill and Jackie were having a girls night. So we want and saw She's Out of My League. I wasn't really expecting a lot from this movie other than some stupid humor, but was pleasantly surprised. It was a lot better than I was expecting, and truly hilarious. I would sum this movie up as a romantic comedy, but from a guy's perspective. Definitely worth seeing, maybe for a matinee or a video rental if you are in the mood for a hilarious movie.

Mozilla Thunderbird

2010-03-17T21:51:00.007-05:00

Normally I am not a fan of local email applications. I use Gmail web interface for my main email account and tend to utilize its ability to handle multiple email accounts. However there is one application for a local email client that I do like, and that is Mozilla Thunderbird. Thunderbird is a local email application similar to Outlook or Outlook Express. It is created by the same people who make Firefox. Which brings out the main reason I like it, it is customizable. Much like Firefox, there are tons of different add-ons that you can download and install with Thunderbird, allowing it be YOUR email application.

The other thing I like about Thunderbird is how easy it is to configure IMAP email. Most email servers can do POP or IMAP. POP is where you download the email locally to your computer off of the server and that is it. IMAP synchronizes the email, so that it is the same on your local computer, or in a webmail interface. So if you bounce between the two IMAP is definitely the way to go.

The IMAP handling, along with Thunderbird's add-ons, allow for a great and seamless local email client. So if you find yourself not wanting just webmail, or miss the allure of a local email client, I highly recommend Mozilla Thunderbird.

Wireless Frequencies

2010-03-12T14:30:00.005-06:00

In today's world you cannot turn around without finding some kind of wireless network. Be it at home, at the library, or even you local coffee shop. So chances are most people reading this blog have wireless at home, or if not have thought about getting it. One thing to keep in mind if wireless frequencies. Your standard home wireless router broadcasts at 2.4ghz. All of them do, with a few exceptions. But one thing you want to keep in mind are other devices that also broadcast at 2.4ghz, such as cordless phones.

This very thing happened to me a few years ago. We got new neighbors that moved in next door, and we became friends with them pretty quickly. Not long after that I kept noticing that our wireless network signal in our house would drop drastically, from like 54mbps to 18mbps. I spent months trying to figure this out, and had no clue. I tried every channel on my router, with no luck at all. Then one summer day we had our windows open as did our neighbors. I was monitoring my wireless connection and it was holding at 54mbps. Then I heard my neighbor's phone ring, and as soon as they hit the button to answer it my signal dropped to 18mbps. Sure enough, they had a 2.4ghz cordless phone that did channel scanning. So whenever they were on the phone it would kill our wireless signal. So as an early Christmas present, I got them a nice 5.8ghz cordless phone.

So if you are planning a wireless network, or just trying to trouble shoot a problem like the one above. Maybe take the time to see what frequency your cordless phone and other devices use. If they are 2.4ghz maybe get a different device that operates in a different range, such as 5.8ghz or 6.0ghz. Even older phones that are 900mhz or 1.9ghz will work fine in a wireless network environment.

Team Viewer

2010-03-11T21:09:00.005-06:00

On one of the RSS Feeds I follow, I found a new application I had not heard of before. It is called Team Viewer. Team Viewer allows you to connect to another computer using a remote desktop like setup. We have a tool we use at work that is very similar to this, called Webex. However Team Viewer is free for home / non-commercial use. So I was very excited to get an application like this as I tend to help friends and family out of state with their computer problems. I also did some researching on the web to make sure they are a reputable company and that their software is secure, and as far as I can tell it all looks good.

Team Viewer works by installing their full suite on your computer. Then the person whose desktop you want to see can go to their website and select "Join a Session". This will prompt them to download an executable file that they can then run. This does not however install any software on the computer, as it just runs the program in memory. This will generate a specific user-id and password that they can give you. Once you have that you can input it into the Team Viewer on your end and at that point you can access their computer remotely.

I was also pleased to see that they have an iPhone app as well, so that I can access computer systems using my iPhone. I did try this and it worked, but I think I will have to get used to navigating around on the screen as the desktop appears very small on the iPhone.

So if you are like me and want to access systems remotely, I would definitely give a look at Team Viewer. I know there are a lot of other applications such as Webex, Citrix, and even Remote Desktop that you can use. But I found this one very simple and also like the fact that it is free for home use.

Ubuntu Linux

2010-03-09T22:15:00.006-06:00

Just last week I broke down at a sale and got a netbook. Now I have been wanting one for a while, but not for the purposes of having a netbook, but for the chance to check out Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntu Linux is a version of the Linux operating system that is completely open source, making it free for everyone. There is a desktops version, server version, and even a netbook remix version. Even though I have a netbook I want to do the full desktops version, giving me access to more applications.

The things I was curious about was the smaller system requirements than Windows requires. Ubuntu Linux is able to run at 256MB of RAM and only require about 4GB of hard drive space. Much smaller then most Windows installs today. The other thing that appealed to me was anti-virus requirement. If you see a modern MAC commercial, one of their biggest selling points is that they do not suffer from virus and malware attacks like Windows computers. Making their need for an anti-virus solution pointless. The same rule applies to Linux as well. This makes it a great choice for traveling and connecting to multiple wireless networks, as it will minimize the possibility of infection.

So after I got my netbook the first thing I did was go through getting Windows initialized. Afterwards I proceeded to install Ubuntu Linux. During the install it asked me if I wanted to setup the netbook as dual boot, allowing me to boot back into Windows whenever I want. The installer even let me change the partition sizes, so I was able to divide my 160GB drive into 2, 80GB partitions, one for Windows and one for Linux.

After the install, it found all my devices just fine and the netbook was up and running. One of the first things I noticed was performance. My netbook came with Windows 7 Starter, and while it ran faily well, it didn't run as nice as my full laptop. Once I got Ubuntu Linux loaded, the performance was much nicer than with Windows 7 Starter. It reminded me more of a smooth running XP box, which is nice and exceeded my expectations, especially for a netbook.

The other thing that was very easy about this, was the GUI interface. Now I have worked with Red Hat Linux at IBM a few years ago, and it worked pretty well, but you needed to be an advanced user to use it. With Ubuntu, that is no longer the case. The GUI interface is very intuitive and even comes with all the applications I am used to, such as Firefox and Open Office. They have really simplified the Linux interface down on Ubuntu, making it much more Windows like in a way.

One nice thing with Ubuntu Linux that I was impressed with, was its Software Center. The Software Center allows you to download and install several free, open source applications for Ubuntu Linux. You can search for any application you want, otherwise you can pick from some of their several categories, such as Accessories, Education, Games, Internet, Office, or others.

Something else about Linux that I have come to enjoy, is the multiple workspace feature. What this allows you to have is several virtual desktops that you can flip between in Linux. Each desktop allows you to have several applications on it. While this was a bit of a different way of thinking, coming from being a one desktop Windows user, I have really liked it. This feature I think is one of the best reasons to put Linux on a netbook. With the smaller screen size of a netbook, being able to have multiple desktops or workspaces allows you to compensate for the smaller screen. Making it a lot easier to have several applications running at once, and being able to bounce between them with ease.

In summary, I have really enjoyed my new netbook, and like it even more with Ubuntu Linux on it. I am not an advanced user of Linux, but am looking to broaden my horizons as I go forward. I think there is a great possibility for Linux, and am looking forward to continuing to learn it. Although I am not ready to give up my Windows laptop... yet. So as you are out there looking at computers, or have an older computer in the basement, just remember there are other options out there than just Windows.

Gmail: Checking POP3 Email

2010-02-22T19:32:00.010-06:00

In my travels today I helped a user reclaim control of her multiple email addresses, and this reminded me of something that I think is worth mentioning. One of the great features of Gmail is its ability to handle multiple email accounts through it. A lot of people use local mail clients and use POP3 to download multiple email address to their computer. While this works, it has been in my experience, there are better ways. When you POP your mail down locally, if your computer crashes you will lose it. One thing that Gmail does is give you the ability to POP the same email into Gmail, using Gmail as your local mail application. This is great as it allows you to use Gmail for multiple accounts while still keeping it web based.

To use this feature, you can find these settings under Settings and then Accounts and Import. Under the Check mail using POP3, you can setup your other email accounts. It will walk you through a wizard where you will be able to set this up, and even be able to set it so you can send mail from that account too. If you ISP or Email provider has SMTP settings, you can set this and send mail from Gmail through them as if it were any other local email client. Below is an article from Gmail help explaining how to do this in greater detail.

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=21288

This is just one of the many, and great features I have found with Gmail. I often times take it for granted as I also use Gmail to handle multiple email accounts, but it is one that I think is worth mentioning again.

The Wolfman

2010-02-19T23:22:00.001-06:00

Tonight my neighbor and I went to see the new movie, The Wolfman. This is mostly due to a girls sleepover at his house and a scrap booking event at mine. The movie was pretty good, and had many startling moments. Some of the plot was predictable, but enjoyable nonetheless. I have to admit I found the werewolf much more scary before I knew who it was and saw him up close. I think if they had kept that mystery going longer in the movie it would have kept me more on the edge of my seat. So all in all not a bad movie, I would definitely recommend it as a rental or maybe a matinee.

Microsoft Security Essentials

2010-02-03T09:59:00.005-06:00

As I am always looking for newer, cooler options I decided to try out Microsoft Security Essentials anti-virus program. Microsoft Security Essentials is a free anti-virus program that was derived from Windows Live One Care. It is provided free to consumers as long as they pass the Windows Validation test. It updates via Microsoft Update, approximately every eight hours. It does not allow any manual configuration in the program for updates and does it automatically. It has a very low system impact on the computer, making it a low impact software on your system resources. Its user interface is very simple to use and understand. I like Security Essentials as it is an "install and forget about it", type of program.

One of the things that has really impressed me with it, was its test ratings. It scored as one of the top three anti-virus programs, along with Symantec and eSoft. It even surpassed my personal favorite, AVG. This is quite an accomplishment, especially from a free software to surpass several others that are paid for.

So from everything I read and understood, I was more than curious to try it out for myself. I began by putting it on an XP laptop that had been running Symantec Anti-virus. I definitely noticed a performance boost and was quite happy. Happy enough to put it on my home laptop that was running Windows 7. However once I moved from AVG to Microsoft Security Essentials I noticed a performance drop. My programs were taking about one to three seconds longer to open, and it was utilizing half my CPU usage when I was opening programs. I did some more reading online and found this is happening to several people using Security Essentials on Windows 7. So sadly, with my hopes dashed, I went back to AVG Anti-virus as I really prefer my system performance. Hopefully in the next release they will address this issue, as for me I would definitely be willing to give this another try.

Firefox 3.6

2010-01-25T06:52:00.007-06:00

I have upgraded my system to the new Firefox 3.6 and so far it works great and performs as I would expect Firefox to. However, my biggest problem with it has nothing to do with Firefox 3.6, but with one of my favorite add-ons, the IE Tab.

The IE Tab add-on was my main reason for moving to Firefox in the first place. It gives you the ability to run Internet Explorer within a Firefox tab. Very handy for websites that prefer Internet Explorer over Firefox, such as Microsoft's Outlook Web Access email. But sadly this add-on has not been updated for Firefox 3.6, at least not yet. I am holding out hope that they will and my life of surfing the web with Firefox can go back to the tranquility I have come to take for granted.

Now when I did the upgrade it did warn me about this add-on problem, but I found another add-on called Coral IE Tab which seemed to be an enhanced version of the original IE Tab. I thought my problems were solved and proceeded with the upgrade. Much to my dismay the Coral IE Tab gets hung up in Microsoft Outlook Web Access when sending email. It is as if the add-on does not know how to close the tab after sending the email and gets hung. Other than this issue, it seems to work fine for the most part. However my main reason for needing Internet Explorer or an add-on such as this is for Outlook Web Access email, which we use at work.

So if you rely on the IE Tab and have not upgraded to Firefox 3.6, be aware of this problem. I am hoping that either the Coral IE Tab add-on gets an update to fix its problems with Outlook Web Access, or that the original IE Tab gets updated for Firefox 3.6. In the meantime, I plan to live with the Outlook Web Access Light Version or use Internet Explorer when accessing my work email. I still have hope though because if I know Firefox and Open Source, it won't be long before a solution will become available. So if you are like me, hang in there, I am sure a fix is coming.

The Princess and the Frog

2010-01-24T13:55:00.003-06:00

Jill and I went with our neighbor and her little girl Friday night to see Disney's The Princess and the Frog. This movie was done in the older Disney animation and really brought me back to the older movies, such as The Little Mermaid and Aladdin.

This movie tells a slightly different tale of the story of The Princess and The Frog. It is set in New Orleans, and brings a lot of the music and culture of New Orleans to the movie. Overall I thought this movie was good, not great for me, but good. It had a few different twists than you'd expect, but overall entertaining. If you want to see this movie I would recommend going at a matinee instead of paying full price.

Firefox Add-on: Adblock Plus

2010-01-23T13:43:00.004-06:00

One Add-on that I have come to like in Firefox is Adblock Plus. What it does is block advertisements on some of the main sites, which causes pages to load faster and with less cookies. Two of the sites I have seen the most improvement on are Yahoo and Facebook. I play the Dungeons and Dragons game on Facebook and this add-on has made a significant improvement on that game.

Once installed it will ask you to subscribe to a list, the Easy USA list is the one I would recommend. There are also options to unblock certain websites in case it happens to block something you want. You can also click to block certain things it may have missed, making it very customizable. When in doubt just right click on the red Adblock Plus icon in Firefox.

So if you are tired of advertisements and want to speed up your browser performance, I would recommend Adblock Plus. I have been extremely pleased with it thus far and plan on continuing to use it.

UPDATE - February 5, 2010
After installing the add-on I really noticed a performance boost from blocking all the advertisements. But after upgrading to Firefox 3.6 I started seeing some sluggishness while surfing. I thought it was my local ISP, but after some testing I found it was Adblock Plus. After disabling and then removing the add-on my surfing performance increased dramatically. So I am afraid I will have to re-tract the above blog post about this add-on as I prefer browser performance, even if it means advertisements.

iTunes Gift Cards

2010-01-02T17:52:00.003-06:00

Something I found out this holiday season is that not a lot of people know how to get iTunes gift cards directly from iTunes. Sure, we all see them in the store, hanging on the shelves as we check out begging to be purchased. But did you know it is even easier and safer to purchase them at home if you already have an iTunes account?

If you have an iTunes account and iTunes already installed on your computer all you have to do so go into iTunes Store, then click on Buy iTunes Gifts in the top, right hand corner of the iTunes Store. From here you have a few options on purchasing them, I am going to talk about my two favorites. These are the Printable Gift Certificates and Email Gift certificates.

Printable Gift Certificates let you put in any $10 amount, such as $10, $20, $30, etc. These are great as you can fill out the information, put in the amount and a personal message, then print the gift certificate right at home with the redemption code. No shopping lines, no wondering if the cashier activated the card, no worries. This is great if you don't want them to have it instantly and want something to wrap or put in a card.

The other one of my favorites is the Email Gift Certificates, these are just like the printable ones, except it is sent via email. This one is instantaneous, so make sure you want the person you are sending them to, to get the gift certificate right now. This one is really great if you need to birthday shop for someone who lives in another state, such as a sister.

In conclusion, the next time you are thinking of buying an iTunes gift card for someone, make it easier on you and them, and get it directly from iTunes. I know for myself first hand that there are several problems in the stores such as cashiers not activating the card, or other shoppers trying to get the numbers off of the cards. So take advantage of this great feature in iTunes and save yourself a trip to the store.

Malwarebytes

2009-12-29T21:15:00.006-06:00

I have talked before about Malware, such as fake virus spoofs that infect systems. Basically if you go to the wrong website, or click YES to install something you are not sure of, you will infect your system. It doesn't matter what kind of anti-virus you are running, once you give it permission you have just bypassed your security software. So make sure if you get virus messages it is from your regular anti-virus and not from something else.

One of the best tools that will remove a lot of these fake viruses or malware is Malwarebytes. You can download their free version from their website and run it and do a full systems scan. In many cases it will find and remove the malware and viruses that might be on your system. If you do run into this situation and can successfully remove the infection with Malwarebytes, I still highly recommend running a full virus scan after wards as many malware infections open the door for other viruses.

So in conclusion, try to be safe out on the internet, but if you do mess up there are a few tools, such as Malwarebytes that might get you out of a jam.

Avatar

2009-12-27T13:39:00.002-06:00

Last night my wife and some friends went and saw the new James Cameron, Avatar movie. I wasn't sure about paying extra to see it in 3D as usually 3D movies do a lot of unnecessary special effects that take away from the movie. This is not true about Avatar. They did a remarkable job with the 3D effects that added to the movie, and at no point did it distract you from the story line. Even the CGI animation effects and acting between the animated characters and the real people was seamless. And no point in this movie did I lose interest or was reminded I was watching a movie from all the effects. Although, I will admit I did try to bat a few bugs out of my way during the film, but that only goes to show how well it was done.

All the cool 3D effects and animation aside, the story line of this movie was great. It showed a very realistic view of mankind and you truly felt something for the characters. Again, the acting was superb. A truly wonderful film from top to bottom. Other than the packed theater, there isn't much I can say negatively about this film. So if you like a good movie, I would recommend going to see it, and shell out the extra money to see it in 3D. Trust me, it's worth it!!

Not My PC

2009-12-07T20:57:00.005-06:00

Something that seems to come up over and over again are people misusing their work computers. I have worked at several different places doing computer support and this is a very common theme. People use their work computers for personal use, and install whatever questionable programs. While there is a place for this, it creates a lot of extra work for the technical staff supporting the equipment. So if you find yourself looking at a new program, or just about to download something because someone sent you a link, stop and ask yourself, "Is this work related?"

Installing unsupported software can cause problems to your system and may not integrate well with your existing install. One case in particular of this happened when I used to work at "big blue". Some staff member had taken their new laptop home and installed the game Doom on it for their child. After a long weekend they called the help desk as their system was freezing up and not working due to the game install. So a lesson learned here is, if you want a computer for your child to play games on, perhaps buy one and not use your work computer.

There are other programs out there, such as Google Sidebar, that seem useful and helpful to a work environment can actually slow your work computer down. Realize that programs such as toolbars and sidebars tend to eat memory. So before installing them on your work computer, ask yourself if it is work related, or even management approved software. If your local help desk has to get involved the first thing they will diagnose will be programs such as this. Even while these may not be the actual problem, it will significantly slow down their ability to diagnose and solve your actual problem.

Some companies in fact have gone to great lengths to install security software on their systems to prevent users from installing software. This takes a lot of extra staff time, and creates a lot of extra work to generally use the computer. So keep this in mind if you are at a company where they are more generous with user privileges. You don't want to be the one who forces your IT staff to implement this kind of solution.

So the basic rule of thumb here is to make sure not to install personal or questionable software on your computer unless it is work related or approved. If you do want a system to install and use these programs on, consider getting your home computer. Remember your work computer is just that, it is for work. If you do find some software that you like and would want to install on your system, check with your local IT staff first. They will appreciate you working with them, as opposed to cleaning up a mess down the road.

Windows 7 Upgrade

2009-11-19T20:42:00.005-06:00

Like so many people on October 22nd, I upgraded my laptop to Windows 7. As I am paranoid, I bought a new hard drive for my laptop to install Windows 7 on. That way if it failed or the install went horribly wrong I would just pop in my old hard drive and be back at Windows Vista. One cool thing I found doing this, that I had not noticed before, is my laptop has a second hard drive bay. This means I can have two internal hard drives, so I have a great place to put my old hard drive after the upgrade is a success. Normally I like to do a fresh install of operating systems, but the license key I got for Windows 7 was upgrade only. However I did try doing a fresh install at first, but ran into several driver problems in doing so. This meant that I had to restore the factory default image of my Vista system on my new hard drive before continuing. I tried this without much hope because of lack of Windows 7 drivers from HP. However something cool happened, Windows 7 was able to import and use all the Vista drivers and I was back in business.

I've been running with Windows 7 for a while now and it seems fine. The interface is a lot like Vista, but the performance is better. There are also some great features with library sharing, making sharing data between systems a lot nicer. The only other major problem I have had are drivers. Since Windows 7 is so new a lot of drivers for things such as printers and even internal devices are not readily available yet. So I would say if your computer system is running fine with XP or Vista, I wouldn't worry about spending the money to upgrade unless you really want to. Support for these operating systems will be around for a while yet, especially for Vista.

As a post upgrade note, after I got my Windows 7 working and was happy with it, I moved my data and formatted my original hard drive. I installed it as a secondary drive in my laptop and turned it into an internal 250gb iTunes drive. I am very excited about that. The other interesting thing I found after upgrading is that our internet speed at home is faster, going from 10mb to closer to 20mb. This has nothing to do with my laptop, only that I noticed it after upgrading. So the two things that excited me most about doing the upgrade really have nothing to do with Windows 7 at all. But so far things seem to be going fine with Windows 7.

Orlando Vacation 2009

2009-11-18T19:39:00.004-06:00

Last week I went to Orlando Florida with my wife, my sister, and my brother in law. So on Monday, November ninth we went to the Minneapolis airport to leave. It was interesting as there were several people from the military also flying out. We even took some pictures for a couple that just had a three week old baby before he was being sent off. I think because of this our flight was over booked and they asked for volunteers to give up their seats. We had plenty of time so we volunteered and got put on a direct flight to Orlando arriving only one hour later than planned. For this the airline gave us $1200 in airline vouchers. We had a decent flight to Orlando and when we arrived we went to pick up our bags and found out they were not there. Evidently the flight from Minneapolis was canceled due to mechanical problems, so cool for us. The airline did get our luggage to our resort later that night, so no problems there.

Once we got to Orlando we stayed at our time share resort with Wyndham, which is always fun. It is more like an apartment than a hotel room. The resort has several pools and two lazy rivers, so many of our vacation days included several hours of swimming. We were even able to get discount tickets from our resort for Universal Studios. We paid less than a two day pass, but got a full seven days, which allowed us to come and go as we pleased at Universal. We also got a great deal on a special Disney Christmas Party from our resort too, but I will talk about that more later in this blog post.

At Universal Studios we had a blast. We got to hit all our favorite rides from last time such as the Hulk and the Mummy. The Hulk is a very smooth roller coaster that goes really fast. The Mummy is one of my favorite rides of all time. It is an inside roller coaster that is mostly in the dark, with lots of great effects. There was also a good amount of shopping done at Universal Studios. We all got matching Thing 1 and Thing 2 t-shirts, which was pretty funny. I also found a vendor selling a case for an iPod or iPhone that is rubber and sticks to smooth surfaces, even upside down. I got one for my iPod, but not my iPhone mostly because I wasn't sure how good it would actually be. Turns out it was great, I had a lot of fun sticking my iPod to all kinds of things, and only regret not getting one for my iPhone. Maybe I will order one off of their website. In case anyone else is interested, here is their website, http://www.iskinzzy.com/.

We also spent a lot of time at Downtown Disney, hitting the Candy Cauldron for caramel apples. Now caramel apples doesn't sound very exciting by itself, but these are granny smith apples, dipped in caramel, then your choice of chocolate, followed by a multitude of toppings that you can pick from. I think we went there two to three times while we were in Orlando. The other thing we found at Downtown Disney were the Disney Star Wars pins. These are pins of Disney characters, but dressed as Star Wars characters. There are two in a box, and they are random, so you are not sure which ones you will get. We did get lucky though and were able to get a few sets without a lot of extra pins. I got lucky on my last box and got the two pins I was missing for my set. We also found a Ghirardelli Chocolate shop there that not only sold chocolate, but mochas and sundaes. Alas, if only there was one near home.

As I mentioned before, we were able to get tickets for a special Christmas Party and Disney's Magic Kingdom. They let us in the park at 4:00pm and gave us arm bands. At 7:00pm they closed the park and most people had to leave, except for the people attending the Christmas Party. There was a special parade, live shows, and all the free hot cocoa and cookies you could drink and eat. The party when from 7:00pm to midnight, and the other bonus was that all the rides and stores were open. Imagine being able to get on any ride with no line at Disney World. It was awesome and we had a great time. I kept going back for the hot cocoa and almost lost it on Space Mountain, but enjoyed every minute of it anyways. We were not sure how late we would stay, but we stayed until 12:00am as we were having too much fun.

The following day after the Disney Christmas Party we flew home in the morning. It was a bit of a shock to the system going from 80 degrees to 40 degrees. I was so tired by the time we got home, and was severely jet lagged the following day at work. But would do it all over again.

Halloween Party 2009

2009-11-01T15:56:00.002-06:00

On Friday, October 30th we had our Halloween party for 2009. This year the theme was Gods, Goddesses, and religious icons. We had about twenty one people show up to the party this year. Some people couldn't make it due to work and colds. But it was a good turn out this year anyways. We came up with some new, fun games such as Build a Human which involved making the best human you could using nothing but cookie dough. We judged them after baking to see how they would hold up. Jill and I came up with another great game in which I dressed as a demon and Jill as an Angel. We then came up with 16 questions each to ask our guests. Jill's questions were all good things they may have done while mine were evil things they may have done. We gave prizes for the best of the best and the worst of the worst, it was a lot of fun.

Anyways this weekend we have taken down decorations and have spent most of today cleaning and putting the house back in order. It is pretty amazing the transition the house goes through for our Halloween party. We are already working on theme ideas and games for next year, so for your party goers out there keep checking your email as we get closer to Halloween 2010.

Flash vs Batman

2009-10-26T07:49:00.002-05:00

Last night my wife and I were watching TV and the dogs were resting quietly on the floor. All of a sudden, a bat comes flying into the room. Not sure where it came from or how it got in the house, but there it was. I ran to the kitchen and opened our back door hoping to get it out and grabbed a broom as the dogs started following behind it and barking. I turned to ask Jill to make sure the dogs had their rabies shots, as that was the first thing that popped into my head. Just as I turned back Flash jumped in the air, grabbed it and brought the bat to the floor. Alexis continued to bark at it, but wasn't going to touch it. Flash got it outside and let it go, not sure where the bat ended up, but there were no signs of it. We checked Flash out and made sure he had not cuts or anything and he seemed fine. So he got a Greenie for his efforts and many praises for being such a good dog.

AVG Anti-Virus 9.0

2009-10-22T21:04:00.003-05:00

For those of you, like me, who use AVG Free Anti-Virus there is a new version that has just been put out. AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 9.0. This new version is pretty much the same as the old one, but offers more support for Windows 7. The interface looks exactly the same and seems to run like normal AVG. However as I am sure support for AVG Anti-Virus 8.5 is going to go away, I would recommend upgrading. I have some instructions below for those of you using it so you can get upgraded to the new 9.0 version.

Go to http://free.avg.com/
Under the New AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 9.0 click GET IT NOW
Scroll down under the AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition column to the bottom and click DOWNLOAD
On the next screen you can click do download using CNET or there is a direct link at the bottom. Do not choose to do the Premium Upgrade as that will cost money.

Once it is downloaded click to install AVG, it should be able to install over your existing AVG 8.5 version. Make sure to uncheck the options for the AVG toolbar and for providing data to AVG. After that you should be all set and on the new version.

Where Have All The Computers Gone

2009-10-18T22:00:00.004-05:00

If you went out today to go buy a new computer today, you'd find the stores pretty much bare. There is not a lot out there to get as most of the stores are waiting for the release of Windows 7. This Thursday on October 22, Windows 7 will be released to the public. This means all the computers that the stores have in their back rooms pre-loaded will be available for purchase. So if you need a new computer you might want to look around anyways, as there might be some stores, or some places online looking to clear the last bit of their inventory. But if you want to wait and get a better selection, I would personally wait until Thursday and take a look at some of the Windows 7 systems.

As for me I am eagerly awaiting it as I want to take a look at the final release. My plan is to buy a new hard drive for my laptop and home and load Windows 7 on that. That way if something goes horribly wrong I can just pop in my Windows Vista hard drive and I am back in business. If you are looking to reload your current system the link below has some specifications on Windows 7. But the rule of thumb in this case is, if your system can run Windows Vista, it should be able to run Windows 7.

http://www.windowsreinstall.com/win7/systemrequirements.htm

So if you are like me, after Thursday you will probably hit the stores like everyone else just to check out some of the equipment and the prices for Windows 7 computers. From what I have seen I am excited enough to give it a try at home. See you all out in the stores after Thursday!

Speakeasy Speed Test

2009-09-10T22:02:00.004-05:00

One online tool I like to use, mostly to keep my ISP (Internet Service Provider) honest, is Speakeasy Speed Test. Speakeasy is a website you can go to and do a speed test of your internet connection. It will give you the download speed as well as the upload speed. Just go to the website and choose the server location closest to you. As I am in Minnesota I tend to usually choose Chicago. Then let it run, it will come back with the numbers that should be relatively close to what you are getting from your ISP. If not see if you are doing something that could be bandwidth intensive such as downloading video or online game. If you are still have problems contact your ISP and let them know the results of the speed test. There are also many other speed testing tools out there on the internet, but I have always been fond of Speak Easy, but that doesn't mean you cannot try others. So if your internet connection seems slow, or you are just curious, give it a test and see how it performs.

District 9

2009-08-22T06:10:00.003-05:00

Last night I went with my wife Jill and our friends, Brian and Michelle, to go see the new District 9 movie. I must say it was great! I have not seen just a good, science fiction movie in a long time. It also really showed some of the dark side of humanity and how we might treat alien refugees. I would definitely recommend going to see this one. Below is some spoilers of the movie, so if you do not want to know, stop reading here and go see the movie.

The beginning of the movie started kind of slow, doing mostly a Blair Witch Project, kind of news footage view of the movie. You learn about the alien refugees that they are referred to as Prawns. The aliens were mostly drones, or workers, but some of them were smarter and were trying to get enough of their old technology to pull together enough liquid fuel to get home. The main character was exposed to it and slowly started becoming an alien. You then come to find out that the aliens had decent weapons and technology, but never really used them against us, showing them to be a somewhat more peaceful race than us. Of course man kind was more interested in using their weapons and technology for ourselves. The problem is that the alien technology was biological based, and man could not use the alien technology. Now with the main character being a hybrid, the human race turns on him and wants to use him to learn get to the alien technology. In the end some of the aliens got away, going home to try and get help to save the others. But not before showing the greedy, self absorbed side of man kind.

So indeed a great movie with a lot of good science fiction, and morals to the story. If you are into this kinds of movie, I recommend you go see District 9, to me it was worth even going at full price in the theater.

GenCon 2009 Entry 5

2009-08-16T22:16:00.005-05:00

So today we got up and hit the GenCon exhibition hall one last time. We then hit Starbucks and Mike went to check out the wrap up for our True Dungeon event. They did a riddle reveal, then moved onto the auction part. I went back down with Mike and we watched them auction off some of the their older props and some items that could be used in the game, using the in game gold and not real money. One item they auctioned off was the holy symbol of Pelor that the NPC Monk wore last year. As you might remember I worked as the NPC Monk in True Dungeon last year and had wore the symbol many times. So using the gold pieces from the game, Mike proceeded to bid on the holy symbol for me. Another person was bidding on it too, he was also a monk from last year as well. But he only had 1920 gold pieces, and Mike had 2000. Needless to say I got my holy symbol back from last year and get to keep it. Very cool since I play a cleric of Pelor in both our Dungeons and Dragons game and in True Dungeon.

Afterward we got ready and drove through several hours of construction and Chicago traffic to get back to Green Bay, Wisconsin. Dee had a nice salmon dinner for us when we got in. My dogs were so excited to see us. Tomorrow Jill and I will make the journey from Green Bay back to Rochester, Minnesota. Then Tuesday will find us back to work. All in all, this was a great and fun year for GenCon and I am looking forward to next year and more True Dungeon.

GenCon 2009 Entry 4

2009-08-15T20:09:00.004-05:00

Today was busy. Jill and I did some shopping in the exhibition hall. We got stuff for some friends and co-workers. We also found new and better miniatures for our Dungeons and Dragons characters for our game.

I also worked at True Dungeon again today. I was the Ogre again. I had a lot of fun doing it, but I am thinking I may volunteer for something different next year other than an NPC character.

We are all going for Starbucks and to play the Battlestar Galactica board game that Jill got. It just isn't Battlestar Galactica without Starbucks.

GenCon 2009 Entry 3

2009-08-14T23:49:00.000-05:00

This morning I wasn't feeling the best and kind of stayed in until I had to do my volunteer shift at True Dungeon. Today I played an Ogre and got to harrass people as they came through my room of the dungeon.

Then later tonight I went with a group of new players on a run through the dungeon. One of the players, Randy was more experienced like I was. We let some of the new players borrow stuff from us to make their characters a little better. Randy had a decent Monk character put together. Using some special items, he had it so that when he got hit the monsters would take six damage, pretty nice.

It is late and I am off to sleep. Got another day at GenCon tomorrow and have to get in some shopping.

GenCon 2009 Entry 2

2009-08-13T23:03:00.002-05:00

First official day at GenCon is done. We found a cool Doctor Who booth that had a life sized TARDIS on display. We also picked up some of the old tv show on DVD as well.

We went on one of the True Dungeon runs, it is very cool this year. I played the cleric again and made sure no on died. Later in the day I also worked in True Dungeon as a monster and scared some of the people coming in. I even got one guy to fall on the floor, it was very cool. It is late and I am heading to bed, got another full day tomorrow.

GenCon 2009 Entry 1

2009-08-12T21:01:00.005-05:00

After driving several hours we have made it down to Indianapolis. We are mostly relaxing in our hotel room right now. We already got our badges and our bag of stuff from GenCon. Although I must say the free bag of stuff is pretty meager pickings this year.

Mike, Charity, and I went to our True Dungeon training tonight. I am playing an NPC (monsters) in the dungeon again this year. Charity will be helping players getting ready to enter the dungeon again as well. Mike is going to run one of the dungeon rooms this year too. We got our work schedules and free t-shirts from True Dungeon tonight as well. Should be a fun year this year, I am looking forward to see what tomorrow brings.

Salmon Fishing 2009

2009-08-10T20:13:00.009-05:00

Today my family and I went on our yearly salmon fishing trip in Door County Wisconsin. We use Reel Action Fishing Charters. They had a newer boat this year that is much larger, and nicer than some of their other charter fishing boats.

We left the dock at about 4:00am this morning. We got a total of nine salmon this year. Six of the salmon were all about eight pounds. Two of them were larger being at nineteen and sixteen pounds. Jay fought and landed the nineteen pound salmon. Dee hooked the sixteen pound salmon, but it fought really hard and I helped her reel it in for the last part of its fight. It fought all the way up to the back of the boat, definitely the best fight we had this trip. Dee fought it for about a third of the fight and when she handed me the rod there was still about 415 yards of line out. I also caught an eight pound salmon and a smaller three pound one as well. Trent landed an eight pound coho salmon, which I guess is one fo the biggest they have seen since the average size of coho salmon are about three pounds.

So all in all a great fishing trip. I am really tired and still feel like I am on the boat being rocked back and forth. We got a lot of meat to bring back with us and am looking forward to eating it.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

2009-08-08T22:26:00.002-05:00

Tonight I went to see the new G.I. Joe movie with my family. It was pretty good, decent character development, and great action. It really brought out the characters from the old cartoon show to life. So in my opinion, very good, at least until the last five minutes of the movie. I am going to talk details, so for those not wanting to know about the movie, stop reading here.

Most of the movie developed the characters really well, especially Destro and Cobra Commander. In fact they develop these characters for just about the entire movie. It isn't until the very last part of the movie that they truly become Destro and Cobra Commander, and then they are immediately captured without putting up a fight in the least. In the cartoon show they always got away at the end, and after building them up for the entire movie, it was a very weak ending. Kind of a, "Now I am Cobra Commander, you are Destro, and now we are captured." Just too weak of an ending for me.

Other than that, the movie was great. Lots of action, good building of characters, just not in the last five minutes. They have set this movie up quite nicely for a sequel and I would be surprised if they didn't do one. Actually I am hoping the sequel fixes some of the issues I had with the end of this movie. So by all means, go see it, just maybe go to a matinee.

Firefox Plugins

2009-08-07T09:55:00.006-05:00

One thing I have noticed with Firefox, mostly because it catches me off guard, are plugins. Because Firefox is not the native browser of windows, a lot of plugins such as Media Player and Adobe Flash require a special Firefox version in order to run those kinds of content within Firefox's browser. Once these plugins are installed however, everything just works great. Below is a link and a listing of the Firefox plugins I recommend installing to make sure your browsing experience is a good one.

The Add-ons site for Firefox has a whole section dedicated to just Firefox Plugins. The ones that I have come to install and use on a regular basis are Adobe Flash Player, QuickTime, and Windows Media Player. A lot of times if you are browsing and come to a site that requires a plugin, it will give you a message and a link to download and install it. Be careful however, as there are a lot of fake messages like that out on websites that ask you to install a plugin, but in reality it is a virus or malware. That is why I typically get my plugins off of the Firefox Plugins website.

Firefox 3.5

2009-08-05T20:01:00.003-05:00

My preferred browser of use is now Firefox, however it did not always used to be that way. I had tried it, but didn't like the fact that some sites still worked better in Internet Explorer than Firefox and didn't want to run two browsers. It wasn't until Firefox 3.0 that I was introduced to the IE Tab, an add-on for Firefox that allows you to run Internet Explorer in a Firefox tab. My problem was solved, I could now run two browsers all within Firefox. But I will talk more in depth about the awesomeness of the IE Tab some other time. I am an Internet Explorer user by heart, and I was happy to find other add-ons to make the behavior of Firefox work similar to Internet Explorer, such as New Tab Homepage and Tabs Open Relative.

So time went on and I liked the speed and performance improvement that Firefox had over Internet Explorer, in just about every scenario. Then Internet Explorer 8 came out and I was a bit impressed. The speed performance and stability seemed closer to Firefox than ever before. So I went back and forth about switching back to Internet Explorer, but realized it was too much effort really. Then Firefox 3.5 came out, and once again Firefox re-opened the gap that had always existed between Internet Explorer and Firefox. It was again faster and the performance was greater still than Firefox 3.0 and Internet Explorer 8.

Also some great new features, such as the new tab icon, in Firefox made the difference between the two even less. And a much added bonus as I was running an add-on that no longer exists to have my new tab icon. Firefox 3.5 also has some much improved ability with Private Browsing, a feature I noticed in Internet Explorer 8. Under Tools you can select Start Private Browsing and it will open a new browser window, but not cache any of the information on your system. This may have existed in previous versions of Firefox, but I never really played with it until I saw the feature in Internet Explorer 8.

So in all if you are thinking of switching from Internet Explorer to Firefox I would recommend it. It is much faster and much more stable. Especially with the new Firefox 3.5, as it once again sets the bar and makes Internet Explorer look like it is playing a game of catch up. Now with that said I must also say that I think Firefox is more for people who are more advanced users. There is a lot of customizing and plugins that need to be installed to get Firefox to work just right. And for users that don't want to deal with the extra work, I would recommend they continue on with Internet Explorer 8 as all the plugins are native to Windows. But for those of you who want to step outside the box and are not afraid to try something new or play, then Firefox is definitely the browser for you.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

2009-08-03T08:10:00.002-05:00

Last night Jill and I went to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince with our neighbors. We had a lot of fun and the movie was good. I have not read the books entirely yet, but know bits and pieces. This movie was very well done. If you have not seen it I would recommend it. I am going to talk about some of the parts of the movie now, so those not wanting spoilers who have not seen it yet, do not read on. Instead, go see this movie as it is one of the best so far this summer.

As I said before I know bits and pieces of the story without having read all the books. Like I knew Dumbledore was going to die, and they did it quite well in this movie. I did like finding out more about Snape in this movie and that he was the half blood prince. My theories, based on what I know of the books, is that even though Snape looks like he killed Dumbledore and is working for Voldemort, I think he is playing a double agent still. The killing of Dumbledore I think is more of a mercy killing than a murder, and something Dumbledore made Snape promise to do. Also in this movie we see Draco Malfoy being recruited by Voldemort to perform certain tasks, such as allowing them to get into Hogwarts and aiding in the killing of Dumbledore. Honestly I felt more sorry for Draco than anything, to be put in that position you could see how it weighed on him so, good stuff! This movie did have a lot more to do with teenage relationships than in past movies, but I think that goes to remind us that these are teenage kids, not adults. Even though they have adult problems.

So if you have not seen this movie yet, go see it. I heard that the next book is being divided into two movies, so there are two more movies still to come. I know for a fact that I cannot wait to see the next one.

Netbooks & Notebooks & Smartphones, Oh My!

2009-07-17T08:28:00.003-05:00

So as technology has changed more and more options are being put out there for people to use and look at. This week is a good example as I setup two netbooks for friends and got asked a lot of questions about netbooks and comparing them to laptops and smartphones. When trying to decide which of these devices you want to go with, you have to ask yourself that age old question, "What do I really need?"

Lets start by talking about a netbook and what it really is. A netbook is a slimmed down version of a laptop, that usually runs with an Atom processor which is slower than a lot of the processors out there today. This is why you see most netbooks running Windows XP home or Linux is most cases. Typically they also do not have built in CD or DVD ROM drives, but you can get external USB drives if you want to. So basically think of a netbook as a slimmed down version of a regular notebook, that is smaller and more portable.

Next lets talk about netbooks versus notebooks, and some of their main differences. As I said above it all depends what you are looking for. As a netbook is a slimmed down notebook, it is not be as fast or powerful as a regular notebook. When you go smaller and more portable, you loose power and performance. Such things that are typically affected by this are video, processor, optical drive, keyboard size, and screen size. However if you are not interested in all the power and performance of a full computer, and just want a nice, portable internet surfing word processor, then the netbook will work just fine.

The next thing that has become more available today that should be considered when talking about netbooks are smartphones. I honestly considered getting a netbook so I would have something more portable to do my email and websurfing with rather than hauling around my full sized laptop. Then I got an iPhone, and honestly my desire for a netbook went away. Smartphones today are so much more than phones and can do about just as much as a netbook. But smartphones are also limited to which applications they provide, and do not have the full functionality of a real computer. So again, it all depends what you are looking for.

In conclusion, I think netbooks are a good cross between a full laptop computer and a smartphone. If you really just want something simple and portable, then a netbook might be right for you. Just realize that it is not going to be as fast or as powerful as a regular laptop, and that a lot of the functions it is useful for can be done on a smartphone too. Personally, I wouldn't mind a netbook as a secondary computer, but not as my main computer. And since I have gotten my iPhone, I have the internet and portability I wanted without a netbook.

Windows 7 Pre-Sale

2009-07-10T07:51:00.005-05:00

I know this is short notice, but for those of you out there thinking about upgrading your systems to Windows 7, now is the time to buy. Microsoft is pre-selling Windows 7 for about half the cost, so you can get a license for Windows 7 Home Premium for $50 and a license for Windows 7 Professional for around $100. So if you are thinking you will want to upgrade when it comes out, I would suggest ordering your license now. I know this is very short notice to put on my blog, but the sale ends tomorrow, on July 11th. After that you will have to pay full price. Windows 7 is due to come out some time in October 2009.

I have a link to Tiger Direct that is selling it on their site as that is where I bought my copies. However there are many other places online that you can pre-order Windows 7 for the same price.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/sectors/campaigns/include/windows7main.asp?cm_re=Homepage-_-Spot%2006-_-Campaign_Windows%207

Lake Hattie 2009

2009-07-07T21:45:00.001-05:00

For the week before the 4th of July we went up to Tuck-A-Way Resort in Backus Minnesota on Lake Hattie for the week with Jill's family. They have done this trip every year for several years now. We have had to expand to two different cabins as the family has expanded over the years too. So Jill's parents, Jody, Tony, and Allison all stayed in one cabin while Trent, Jill, and I stayed in the other. We always take our dogs up there too because Alexis LOVES to play ball on the beach and go swimming in the water, she is such a lab. It is also very much a summer vacation for her too.

I believe it was the night of Sunday, June 28th that Jill, Trent, and I went out in the boat. Jill and Trent wanted to do some fishing for sunfish and I was itching to use some of my new lures for some northern fishing. Jill's Dad, Walt, makes his own fishing lures, so for Christmas I always get some, and was anxious to try them out. Jill was fishing for sunfish on one end of the boat and I was fishing for northerns on the other. It was not long before I hooked a small one on a spinner lure. Trent netted it, it was nice, and we threw it back. Just a couple of casts later I had another strike, but this one was bigger. We got it into the boat and found it to be an 8.5lb northern, 32 1/4 inches long. At that point Trent switched to northern fishing a caught a few more, as did I, but not before the last norther broke the big spoon off of my new favorite lure. But we were able to take it back with us and Walt was able to fix it.

The fishing continued to be fairly good the rest of the week, going on and off. I went out again with Walt and between the two of us we caught and released about nine northerns, the largest being 3.4lbs. Again, more lures damaged, I think I will have to put in an order to Walt to make me some more of this spinner lures. I had so much fishing that I even called work and extended my vacation for the rest of the week as opposed to coming back early as I had originally planned.

The other factor was that we were able to upgrade our cabin into a much nicer, and bigger cabin than we had. There are new owners at the Tuck-A-Way resort and they are doing some really nice things with the resort. The new cabins are much more modern and a lot nicer then the older shacks that used to be there. They have also put in new docks and new stairs down to the docks and beach. They have however kept the nice, family feel of the resort. It feels a lot more like going to stay with your relatives than staying in a hotel or some other resort. Jill and I even sat in the lodge and talked to one of the family members, Karen DuChene, for quite some time. And I personally liked that kind of atmosphere. That and they have kept it pet friendly, which for me is another big draw for this resort. As this is not just a summer vacation for us, but also for the puppies. So all in all a great week, I truly got to relax and unplug with some fishing.

Pidgin Update (2.5.8)

2009-07-06T14:36:00.003-05:00

As some of you may have noticed a couple of weeks ago Pidgin stopped working with Yahoo, since then I have been following them on RSS Feeds. To fix the Yahoo problem they released a new version, 2.5.7. However it also had a few bugs in it, such as not updating when users went offline. They have released another new version, 2.5.8, that should fix that problem amoungst a few others.

However there is more to the story if you are reading their RSS Feeds. Pidgin has been working on a new release, 2.6.0, however due to the change in Yahoo (which would have been fixed in 2.6.0) they had to quickly release 2.5.7, which created some more bugs, which they fixed in 2.5.8, so all in all keep in mind a lot of these "bumps" have been created by Yahoo forcing Pidgin's hand a little too soon. So for now, if you are not on the 2.5.8 release, go to their website and update to it. And keep an eye out for their new 2.6.0 release that should be coming out in the near future.

Found Dog

2009-06-27T18:32:00.005-05:00

Jill and I started out this morning on our vacation. We went to Coon Rapids to meet my in-laws. We stopped at Dunn Bros on the corner of a busy intersection and out of no where a beautiful chocolate lab came running to us. She was very friendly and loving, but had no collar or tags. We petted her and looked around, but no one was there. She started to head into the street so we grabbed her and put one of our extra collars on her. We took her down the street to the local humane society. Luckily she was micro-chipped and the humane society was able to get all of the owners information. They are going to contact the owners and get her home. So the vacation adventure begins and we'll see what the rest of the weekend holds.

Webkinz in Theater Mode

2009-06-25T15:54:00.005-05:00

Something that has come up for our neighbor kids and for some of the kids in the libraries is what to do about the Webkinz website. When they go to play the games, typically it goes down below the viewable screen, but does not allow you to scroll down. This is a limitation on the Webkinz website, not on your computer. Webkinz recommends changing your monitor resolution, but sometimes that makes things smaller to see, or your monitor will not accommodate a higher resolution. However there is a nice workaround that I recommend that is called Theater Mode. If you are in either Internet Explorer or Firefox and hit the F11 key it will resize your browser window so that it fully fills the screen by taking away all the rest of the menus. This typically gives the Webkinz website enough space to display all of its information. When you are done just hit F11 again and it will return your normal browser back to its normal size. So when full screen isn't enough, try Theater Mode.

Pidgin 2.5.7

2009-06-22T10:16:00.008-05:00

For those of you like me who use Pidgin for your main instant message client, you probably noticed that towards the end of last week Pidgin stopped connecting to Yahoo. While I am guessing this is probably do to something Yahoo changed on their end, Pidgin has released a new client that fixes the problem with Yahoo. The new client is Pidgin 2.5.7 and I believe it was released late yesterday or early this morning.

All you have to do is download the new version, then double click on the EXE file and install it. Just take the default settings as it will not overwrite your current Pidgin preferences. Also make sure to close Pidgin when you run the install so it will upgrade Pidgin correctly. Once done just go ahead and run Pidgin again, and this time it should have no problem connecting to Yahoo.

Also for those of you out there that run Pidgin as a Portable App, they just released the new Pidgin 2.5.7 for Portable Apps about an hour ago, so make sure to download and upgrade that as well.

I have been using the new Pidgin 2.5.7 since early this morning and it has been running fine. Thanks Pidgin!

iPhone OS 3.0 Upgrade

2009-06-18T07:50:00.007-05:00

Recently the awaited new iPhone OS 3.0 upgrade has finally come out. I downloaded it and installed it on my iPhone last night without any troubles, through iTunes. There are a lot of nice new features such as Cut, Copy, and Paste within the iPhone. I also like the new Landscape Keyboard feature within Mail, Messages, Notes, and Safari. There is even a new built in app called Voice Memos, which allows you to record audio from meetings, or just for reminders. I could go on and on about some of the new features, but you can check them out at their website. But the other thing I did like was the ease of upgrading and that it did not wipe any applications or data from my iPhone, only enhanced it. I have only been using the new iPhone OS 3.0 for about a day, and so far so good. I would definitely recommend doing the upgrade.

Seven Years Old

2009-06-17T21:19:00.007-05:00

It is hard to believe that our dog Alexis has turned seven years old today. We picked her out of the litter when she was just two weeks old and brought her home at six weeks. She immediately adjusted to our house and our lives. Alexis has been very much like a child to us, and often times acts like one.

Alexis has started to slow down a little bit, not lasting as long playing ball or frisbee, but she is just as hyper as ever. In fact today she was romping around the house with a toy and chasing Flash. In comparison Alexis still seems much younger than Flash. I think she will always be a puppy. As my sister-in-law Jody said, "Once a puppy, always a puppy." Here is hoping we have seven more years with Alexis.

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian

2009-06-14T12:13:00.003-05:00

So last night I went with some friends to see the new Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian movie. It was pretty good, and I would have to say that it is just as good as the first movie. I liked Hank Azaria as the new bad guy in this movie, he did an amazing job. I also liked Amy Adams as Amelia Earhart in this movie, she did a great job of playing the part. Another part of the movie that was more of a small funny item, was that there was a fountain with singing cherubs that sang for love. I recognized the faces of the cherubs as it was the Jonas Brothers. I was a little shocked at first, but checked the credits at the end and it was really them. I have to admit, I was a little depressed that I recognized them, oh well. But the rest of the movie was good, and if you liked the first one I think you will like this one for the most part. I would say on a rating, this one is worth paying matinee prices.

Windows Vista Service Pack 2

2009-06-10T21:29:00.009-05:00

For those of you out there that are running Windows Vista then you should be aware of the new Service Pack 2 that just came out for it. It is starting to come down through windows updates, but if you want to install it manually you can download it from the Microsoft Website for Windows Vista Service Pack 2. Once downloaded just run the EXE file and select the default options, it will reboot and do a lot of configuring. The install typically takes anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour roughly.

If you do download the service pack from Microsoft make sure to choose the correct one for your operating system. If you are running Windows Vista 32 bit, then choose the x86 install. If you are running Windows Vista 64 bit, then choose the x64. If you are not sure then go into the Control Panel and double click on the System icon. This will bring up a window, under the System section of this window it will have a field called System Type and will tell you if you have a 32 bit operating system or a 64 bit.

There are not a lot of new features in Service Pack 2 that are noticeable by the user, but the one thing that is nice is it is a roll-up service pack. This means it will install any missing windows updates that you may not have on your system. I have been running Windows Vista Service Pack 2 on my machines for over a week now and have noticed nothing. So if you have time, try kicking off a windows update or go download and install the service pack.

Fandango

2009-06-08T10:46:00.005-05:00

A great website I found for finding show times and even purchasing tickets for some shows is Fandango. Now up until this weekend I had not done a lot with Fandango, I knew it existed, but never really looked into it. We were at the movie theater and I saw signs for Fandango and a kiosk where you could buy your movie tickets, or pick them up if you bought them online. My wife and I decided to do a double feature and bought our tickets for the first movie, but not the second and went in. As I was sitting there playing with my iPhone I remembered seeing a commercial for Fandango with an application for the iPhone. So I downloaded it and sure enough it worked just like my other movie application except it let me buy tickets through my iPhone. So while sitting there waiting for the first movie to start, I bought tickets for our second movie using my iPhone. There is a $1.00 charge per ticket for using Fandango, but it was new technology and I had to try it. So after the movie my wife went to the concession stand and I went up to the kiosk. There was a big line at the normal ticket window, but I used the kiosk, swiped my credit card I used to purchase the tickets through my iPhone and they just printed out and I was done. It was very nice as we didn't have a lot of time between movies to stand in line. So I have removed my old movie application off of my iPhone and plan to use Fandango from now on, as it also allows me to purchase tickets and pick them up without waiting in line. I would like to point out that not all theaters use or allow Fandango for ticket purchases. We have one here in Rochester Minnesota that does Fandango, Wehrenberg Theatres, but the other two theaters do not. But I can still use it to get all my show times, so I am happy. So if you have an iPhone and want a cool movie showtime application, I would recommend checking out Fandango.

Disney's Up

2009-06-07T18:44:00.004-05:00

After seeing Land of the Lost, my wife and I decided to see the new Disney movie Up. This one was truly a good movie, and I would not have minded paying full price for it. It had a heart warming story, lots of action, and the parts with the dogs were hilarious. The dog Doug from the movie will steal your heart, and watching him made me miss my two dogs that were home alone for the day. I was surprised that the previews really didn't give too much away about the movie at all. I am going to try and not talk too much about the plot of the movie, as I think this one should definitely be seen in the theater. So if you are looking for just a good movie that has a little bit of everything, then go see Up.

Land of the Lost

2009-06-07T18:39:00.003-05:00

To celebrate our anniversary my wife and I decided to head to the movies today. The first movie we saw was Land of the Lost. I was eager to see this one as it looked funny, and I remember seeing the show when I was a kid. It was amusing, and the story was pretty good, but most of the funny parts were in the previews. It was an OK movie for me, but I don't think I needed to see it in the theaters. Still your basic Will Ferrel movie, mostly stupid comedy, but other than that, it was pretty good. I would definitely say this was more of a DVD rental than a see it in the theaters. I am glad I paid matinee prices and not full price for this movie. Still, it had its moments and it was cool to see them do a take on the old television show.

Which iPod is Right For You?

2009-06-06T12:26:00.013-05:00

I have had a lot of people ask me, I am interested in getting an iPod, but which one should I get? I am hoping to lay out some options below and talk about some different models associated with different uses. The real question you have to ask to start with is, what do you want to do with your iPod? Do you want to use it for carrying your music around, or for working out, or for internet and applications? These are all important questions to ask in figuring out what kind of iPod you want.

The first use I want to talk about is the one that is probably the most popular right now, internet and applications. There are really two iPods that will handle this, the iPhone and the iPod Touch. First let's talk about the iPhone. I have already blogged about this one and I have to say I like it. It does internet via cell phone carrier, or a normal wireless access point. The camera on it is great, and you can email pictures from it to anyone. This is a really nice way to go, however the downside is you can only get it from AT&T and have to pay $30 per month for a cell phone data plan, but that gives you internet access where ever AT&T reaches. You can still connect via your home wireless with it too for faster speeds. The iPhone comes in 8GB or 16GB of memory. The iPod Touch however is different from the iPhone in only the phone and camera parts. It does all the applications and can connect to the internet via a normal wireless connection, just like a laptop. There is no monthly fee associated with it as it does not connect to any cell phone carrier, but you only have internet access in locations with wireless. The iPod Touch comes in 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB. And as for both of these iPods the commercials are right, there is an app for that. So you can download and do almost anything you want with these.

The next use I am going to talk about is storage. When you get an iPod and start loading it with tons of music and movies, it can fill up fast. This is where the iPod Classic is useful. It does not have internet, and has limited applications, but what it does have is storage. I have an 80GB iPod Classic right now and for the same price as what I paid, today you can get a 120GB Classic. It's screen is smaller and it does not have the touch screen. But it can hold all your music as well as a ton of movies. This is a great iPod if you want a full media center on the go. Now the main reason this one has so much more storage than the others is that it has an internal hard drive as opposed to a flash drive. What this really means to you is, moving parts. So I would not recommend this one if you want something to take with you to work out with or jog with as it could damage the unit. But I am going to talk about some iPod options for this in the next section.

The final use I want to talk about is mobility, and what I mean by that is something you can take with you everywhere and maybe be a little rough with. As I explained above, these are the ipods you would want to take to work out, jogging, etc. There are two that I would consider good for this, the iPod Nano and the iPod Shuffle. The iPod Nano is basically a slimmed down version of the iPod Classic, but uses flash memory. It has a nice video screen and can do music and movies. They come in 8GB and 16GB. These are great if you want to take movies and music with you, but don't need the storage and want to be a little rougher with your iPod. The iPod Shuffle on the other hand, is the true form of sleek and portable. It has no view screen and only plays music, but it is extremely small and easily clips to your clothing or fits in your pocket if you want to go jogging or hiking. They come with 4GB of memory, which is plenty when you are just storing music.

So after talking about the different models and their uses, I hope that I have helped you figure out which iPod might work best for you based on what you want it for. As for me, I have two of the ones listed above. I have an iPhone that I use as my phone, internet, and applications. It is basically a small laptop I can take anywhere, however it doesn't hold much music or movies. That is why I also have an iPod classic that is my mobile media center, so I can take all my music and movies with me when I travel. So which ever way you want to go, I would recommend starting with the basic question, what do I want to use it for.

Happy Birthday Mr. Tim

2009-06-05T23:33:00.011-05:00

Tonight our neighbors had us over to celebrate the birthdays of our friends Tim and Conrad. Michelle got a great Man Cave sign for Tim to put in his apartment. It has kind of been a running joke that Tim's apartment is the man cave. When I helped Tim setup his wireless for his apartment I made sure that the wireless name was the Man Cave. Anyways, it was a truly fun evening shared by all, and again Happy Birthday Tim & Conrad.

Alexis & Flash

2009-05-31T15:58:00.009-05:00

As I have been trying to update and organize my blog, I realized I have not talked to much about my dogs, which is kind of weird since they are like our kids. We have two dogs, Alexis and Flash. They are both black labs, and very spoiled.

Alexis we brought home when she was only 6 weeks old, she has been with us all of her life. We got her from a friend's cousin, who also took home her sister Treanna. My wife, Jill, had read a lot of books on puppies as we had been awaiting the day we could bring Alexis home since she was around two weeks old. Jill had all these rules in place for Alexis based on what she had read. When we went to bring Alexis home, she seemed like a mellow little puppy, she snuggled all the way home. As soon as we got home and set her down, off she went. She had no trouble adjusting to our home, she basically declared it as her own almost immediately. As for all the rules Jill set, the following months would find Alexis breaking each and every one. I stayed out of the way on those. My favorite was the rule to keep her off the furniture. Alexis got on the couch and Jill went to get her down and she just stared at Jill, so Jill said fine and walked away, with the rule now broken and Alexis allowed on the furniture. She was a terror as a puppy, we had her go through puppy classes and we did not know peace until we got Alexis hooked on BALL. Playing catch with tennis balls became her favorite, and today is still very much her obsession. She is still very high strung and is often to smart for her own good, trying to manipulate us to get what she wants. She is almost like having a kid.

So about three years passed after we got Alexis, and our friend Clara was working at Paws and Claws Humane Society. She would often tease us about getting a second dog, and I didn't really want to. So one day she talked to me into visiting the shelter and showed me the four month old Flash. I thought he was cute, and figured if Jill met him that it would be trouble. Shortly after Clara brought him by our house for a visit, and he immediately ran into Jill's lap and snuggled, I knew we were in trouble then. Flash adored Alexis, but she wanted nothing to do with him, although he was very mellow and submissive to Alexis, so she tolerated him. Eventually it was time for Clara to take him back to the shelter, and she picked him up and took the toy out of his mouth and told him, "put the toy down Flash, it is time to go back to the cold, dark kennel". We thought about adopting Flash and realized if we would ever be able to do a second dog with Alexis, it would be Flash or none. So we adopted him and brought him home. We put him through puppy classes like Alexis, and found he loved to play with other dogs. He was so much mellower than Alexis, the kind of dog that is just happy to be there. But I was worried because I was not sure how well they were getting along. One night they were outside for a while and it was too quiet, I went to look and found the two dogs playing and running around the yard. As soon as Alexis realized I was watching, that was it, she didn't want anything to do with him. Evidently she did like Flash, but was trying to keep it a secret. Alexis is such a princess.

So those are the stories of how we got Flash and Alexis. They are two very different, but very good dogs. Both of them are like our kids and live a very spoiled lifestyle.

Down With Dial-Up

2009-05-29T15:24:00.012-05:00

One thing I sometimes come across helping home users, is that they want to get off of dial-up. Dial-Up was one of the first ways to get to the internet for the home user, reaching speeds of up to 56kps. And if you are using dial-up to read this blog, I am sorry, I am so very sorry.

The truth is that broadband costs for things such as cable modem and DSL have dropped significantly. A lot of users on dial-up still use things like AOL and are paying around $20 per month for this slow service. When I just read an advertisement online for Qwest DSL for $14.99 per month for about 1.5mps. Now some people ask what this means, what is kilobytes mean versus megabytes. Well your average dial-up speed maxes out at 56kb, where as the Qwest DSL I mentioned above is 1.5mb is really 1500kb. So if you are comparing the difference in speed is more like 56 versus 1500. Now it can go even higher, depending on how much you want to pay. My wife and I have our internet through Charter Cable Modem and 10mps, so that would be like 10,000kb instead of 56kb.

Another benefit of broadband versus dial-up is the use of a home phone. A lot of home users still have a home phone and when they are online, their home phone is unusable. If you go with a broadband connection, such as cable modem or DSL, then this does not block your home phone usage while you are online. People can call in normally and you can still remain online regardless. The other benefit is thatyou are always online, no having to run a program to connect to the internet, you turn your computer on and go.

So all in all if you are still using dial-up (and yes there are still a lot who are) I would seriously look at your cost and what other broadband solutions are out there and how much they cost. Remember, you will be getting rid of your dial-up cost so that can be rolled into the new cost of the broadband connection. And believe me, the difference in speed is simply amazing. I typically tell people the only thing you really get from dial-up is a lot of frustration.

Portable Apps

2009-05-28T21:46:00.004-05:00

Another great tool that has emerged has been USB flash drives. The easy replacement for the old diskette drives. They use flash memory and attach via any USB port. Now taking that technology one step further we find Portable Apps. This is a mock OS that you can install on your USB flash drive that runs all kinds of applications. So instead of taking just your data with you, now you can take your programs along with you too and open them on any computer. You can also install Portable Apps on your external USB hard drive as well, giving you even more storage. And yes, much like several of my other software reviews, the Portable Apps suite is free, as are the applications you can download and install.

Once you've installed Portable Apps on your drive you can run the program and it creates almost a second start menu that you can access your programs and data right from your flash drive. You can do what you need to do and save your data right back to the flash drive, and when you are done both you and your data walk away from that computer, leaving no trace behind. For example, wish you could use your Firefox from home with all your bookmarks? Now you can using Firefox for Portable Apps.

There is no software you need to install on the computer to make this work as it all runs from the USB flash or hard drive. However it does require a Windows computer to run on.

So all in all this is a great tool if you want to take your applications and data with you to work, or access them from a public computer, or even at Mom's house, without having to lug around a laptop or computer. I would highly recommend Portable Apps as they are constantly coming out with new and upgraded features.

Legend of the Seeker

2009-05-27T20:53:00.002-05:00

One show I have really liked this past year is Legend of the Seeker. My neighbor Brian got me hooked on it. We setup a laptop to his TV and watched the first couple of episodes on Hulu. Then I got Jill hooked on it and we set our DVR to record the rest of the season.

The show is loosely based on The Sword of Truth novels by Terry Goodkind. The show's premise is that a young man named Richard Cypher learns he is the Seeker, and must stop the dark lord Darken Rahl with the help of a wizard and a confessor named Kahlan. The show reminds me a lot of the old Hercules or Xena shows, but less campy and a lot better.

This has been one of my new favorite TV shows, however I am afraid based on its air time and following that it may not get renewed. I hope it does, but I would not be surprised if it does not. So if you want to check it out, all the episodes are out on Hulu and I would highly recommend watching them. I know when it comes out on DVD I will be in line to get them.

Windows Defragmentation

2009-05-26T22:02:00.002-05:00

On a Windows system when it saves files to your hard drive, it tries to go fast and puts them on the drive as fast as possible, but not necessarily in the most organized way. Much like when you are digging in the fridge you tend to just put stuff back as opposed to organizing it. However as time goes on when Windows needs to access the files on the hard drive, it takes longer to find them as they are not organized, which can lead to slower performance. So the way to organized the files on your hard drive is called Defragmenting. Defragmenting your hard drive is much like cleaning our your fridge, it re-organizes the files on your hard drive, increasing overall performance. I am going to talk about two ways of defragmenting your hard drive, one by using the built in Windows defragmentation tool and using JKDefrag.

Windows comes with a defragmentation tool as part of the operating system. You can access it by going to Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and then Disk Defragmenter. You can analyze and defragment your hard drive from here. However there was a significant difference in this tool from Windows XP to Windows Vista. In Windows XP you could analyze and it would show you the hard drive, with the red color showing fragmented files. Depending how much red, one would want to degragment. However in Windows Vista it only tells you if the drive needs defragmenting or not, with no visual display or progress when defragging. I would suggest running it about once a month regardless.

Another free tool I have come across is JKDefrag. This is a tool you can download and run that will defragment your hard drive for Windows, regardless if it is XP or Vista. It has a nice visual display for either, and does the same job as the built in disk defragmenter for Windows. But if you don't trust the built in disk defragmenter for Windows, this is a good alternative. Once you launch it, it will go through four phases before it is done. Much like the built in Windows Disk Defragmenter, you can stop it at anytime without any damage to your hard drive.

So whether you want to run the Disk Defragmenter that comes with Windows or use JKDefrag, I would recommend running a defragmention after installing or deleting any programs, or roughly once per month. This will keep your hard drive running smoother and increase its performance and life span.

jZip

2009-05-25T22:28:00.002-05:00

A lot of time we get files that are in the ZIP format, which means they are several files compressed into one file to make sending or moving a lot easier. Usually we can extract them using the built in Windows tool to do this. Other times we want to create a ZIP file to send to someone. The built in Windows tool is not so great at this part. I used to use Winzip for these kinds of operations a long time ago, but they soon began charging money and it was no longer worth spending the money to keep up with it. So one tool I have found, that is free, is jZip. jZip handles many different kinds of ZIP formats, such as the standard windows ZIP and the 7-ZIP formats. It is very intuitive and has a great GUI to make extracting ZIP files a breeze. One will notice a very nice similarity to the Winzip GUI if you have worked with Winzip before. Extracting a ZIP file is pretty straight forward, you click on Extract and select the desirect location and extract it. Creating a ZIP file is also very easy with this utility, just select New Archive and follow the process. So if you are looking for a tool to do a better job, or handle a different kind of ZIP format, and don't want to spend a lot of money, I would go with jZip.

Land of the Lost

2009-05-25T21:48:00.001-05:00

So today Scifi is playing a marathon of the old TV servies, Land of the Lost. I must say I got sucked into watching several of these episodes as I remember watching them when I was a kid. Watching the episodes now made me realize what horrible special effects it had along with a lot of bad acting. However I found some of the stories interesting, being a scifi fan and all. However after watching serveral episodes in a row I realized that there was no overall story arc as some stories contradicted others. And in the final season their Dad disappears and their "uncle" falls into the land of the lost at the same time, made me laugh. It was a pretty bad attempt to keep the show going after the actor playing the Dad walked away. However this in no way deterred me from wanting to see the new Will Ferrel movie, Land of the Lost. After watching the old TV show, it only made me really want to see the new movie as I know they will poke fun at the old show. And am hoping that it turns out better than what Will Ferrel did with Bewitched.

Fakebook

2009-05-21T23:07:00.003-05:00

A friend of mine sent me a weird message through Facebook yesterday, that only said Hello and had a URL link. I talked to her about it and it turns out that she logged into a site that she thought was Facebook, but realized too late it was not. She said it looked like Facebook, but the logo was wrong, she did not notice this until after logging in and giving them her Facebook userid and password. They then started spamming people in her Friends list in Facebook. Luckily Facebook disabled her account right away an notified her it had been compromised and had her change her passwords and security questions immediately.

So what are some things you can do to prevent this from happenning to you?

Make sure when you are logging into websites such as webmail, or Facebook that you are really logging into them. Use your bookmarks and don't use links from other websites to access them. Pay attention to the logos and layout of the website, if it doesn't look right, don't login.
If you have a Facebook account and get a message from a friend that only says Hello, do not click on the link and delete it immediately. You may also want to contact that friend via regular email and let them know their account is compromised.

Hopefully these tips will help some of you to look twice before logging in and make sure something like what happened to my friend doesn't happen to you.

Tiger Direct

2009-05-21T14:48:00.001-05:00

One thing I do a lot of is looking for bargains, especially on technology stuff. There are a lot of cool sites out there like New Egg, but the one I have found I use the most and refer back to the most is Tiger Direct. I watch this one as they have a lot of changing deals, which keeps me interested. I have purchased everything from memory to computers off of this site. Some of the deals you may have to dig down into the site, but they are worth it. Sorting by price is always a good option. Another reason I like this site as they have a lot of changing equipment, it gives me a chance to see some hardware or devices that may be new to me. There have recently been a lot of new netbooks and some great deals on external hard drive storage. In fact I was able to get a nice 32 inch flat panel LCD TV around Black Friday from them for $399, very nice. One thing to keep in mind when ordering from this site, and online in general is shipping. Remember you will have to pay a little bit extra for shipping, so when you order make sure it counts. So if you need to purchase a new desktop, or just need some parts or accessories, I would highly recommend giving Tiger Direct a look.

Mom Update - Almost Done

2009-05-20T20:16:00.000-05:00

I thought since it has been a while since I posted something about my Mom's cancer that I should probably put out some kind of update. She made it through chemo very well. After chemo they have been putting her through radiation every day for the past couple of months. In fact, on Tuesday, May 26th will be her last radiation treatment. So the prognosis is looking good and Mom is hanging in there eagerly waiting to be done with the treatments. They haven't seen anymore signs of cancer, so we are all hopeful that this will be the end to her cancer.

Computers and Summer Temperatures

2009-05-19T19:57:00.003-05:00

As Summer approaches and temperatures rise, one thing to keep in mind is the temperature of your computer equipment. Computers generate heat when running and have built in fans to keep them cool. When the temperatures rise the computer has to try and keep up with the rising temperature. Also computers that are left on all the time will also tend to accumulate more dust on their processors, making cooling a lot more difficult. If your computer is kept in a cool or air conditioned place, then you are probably fine and the computer will not have to work as hard to keep cool. However, Summer also brings more of a demand for electricity as people turn on their air conditioners to keep cool. So what should you do in all of this, well below I have listed some basic good ideas to keep your computers cooler and running well.

Dust them out, computers with a lot of dust inside will build up heat and have a hard time cooling off, which could lead to a heat event and computer problems.
Turn off when not in use, this will help cut down on your electrical bill and save your computer from overheating or working too hard to keep itself cool. I know some computers are left on over night for updates and virus scans, maybe think about changing that from every day to once a week and leaving it on over night just for that one night a week.
Move them to a cooler location, say you do not have air conditioning, maybe move the computer downstairs where it stays cooler over the summer, which will keep the computer operating temperature at a safer level.

Hopefully these tips will help keep your computer running at a safer temperature and extend its life well past the heat of Summer.