Technology

Other than the fact that I picked up a new phone when the Marine wanted an upgrade for his that had been stolen, I have pretty much been using the money I have been earning online for gifts (Christmas, Birthdays, etc..) and bills.

I found this little Freedom Keychain GPS unit online earlier today and ordered it. I have been toying with the idea of getting GPS to go with my phone for quite some time now and it was one of the things that I was looking for in a cell phone but is not included. I will be better off with an external unit anyway that I know will work with Google Maps and I may even look at some of the other free GPS software out there as well.

My birthday is in just a few weeks so that will have to be my excuse and will be my gift from me, to me, unless of course I make a shitload of money between now and then and find something else even cooler 🙂

I should get this tomorrow or maybe Saturday if I am lucky. Not that I ever get lost but it will certainly be nice to have just in case I follow the wife’s directions going somewhere (he said as he ducked the blows…)

I still need to write a review of the new phone on my tech site, so if I ever get time for that I will post one on the GPS unit as well.

I am off today and tomorrow, at least half of today. Since my manager at the top of the hill is on vacation I went in this morning to take care of the end of the week paperwork and closing out my weekly payroll and sending it to the corporate office. I managed to get home early this afternoon and took a much needed nap.

I have pretty much bummed around the rest of the evening, hanging with the girls and playing with my new cell phone. Did I tell you I upgraded my phone that I just bought a couple of weeks ago? The Marine had his stolen and wanted an upgrade to the exact phone that I had been using, the Motorola Q9m, and I wanted a real Pocket PC phone rather than an MS Smartphone. I picked up the Samsung i760 last Friday, the day it was released in the stores. Here is the i760 browsing the web full screen with Opera Mini, a very cool browser.

I posted about the forthcoming suite for Object Desktop subscribers called Magic back in the middle of the month and I just realized that I had not posted anything else. It was released and I switched from my spooky desktop to Magic immediately. I really like the skin. It’s bright without being too bright and all of the fonts show up great, which was an issue in the dark Halloween skin I was using at the time. Here’s what it looks like on my desktop.

Although I probably have a few more months before I start looking at new cars again, driving that rental this weekend got me to thinking about them. I am still pretty much up in the air as to what I want to get when I finally break down and get another car. I do know that it needs to be big enough to carry all of my work stuff as well as the girls if need be. I have been thinking about the Chrysler 300.

That’s one bad boy car. The Chrysler 300 started out in 1955 and has had a long illustrious history since then. The latest line of the 300 is a full size luxury sedan that was introduced as a 2005 model in 2004. Of course the one to get is the 300c which has a 5.7 liter Hemi V8. It has a five speed transmission and comes with standard 18 inch chrome-clad allow wheels, Chrysler’s Information/Entertainment system, SIRIUS Satellite Radio and backseat television. One sharp car. Add in a nice Chrysler 300 accessory such as this California Walnut Wood Dash Kit and maybe some more automation controls and you’ve got it made.

The whole thing will set me back a pretty penny though, so it may be awhile before I can spring for this whole package unless I happen to win the lottery all of a sudden.

I don’t know what the heck I have done but for some reason during the last month Windows Explorer crashes on me at random times when the computer is getting serious usage. Right now I have Firefox open with eight or nine tabs going, three more firefox windows open for posts to different sites, two windows of Windows Live Writer, Outlook, Windows Task Manager to kill Firefox when it starts using too much memory, BeyondTV, Windowblinds and various other background tasks. It’s no more or less than I normally have open but for some reason it has just decided that now is the time to start screwing up. Oh well, I will look at it later I suppose if it doesn’t resolve itself.

One of the things that was really nice when I worked in our IT department in Norcross is that I had access to some cool stuff. I was normally able to access the PCs in my house from work and vice versa. I was really nice to be able to control everything (including my lights) from work and work from home on the weekends when it was my turn. It certainly made it easier than having to make that 150 mile round trip on Saturdays and Sundays.

RemotePC is one of the biggest remote access solutions for personal computers. You can access your work and home computer from just about anywhere that has Internet access for under $5 a month. They have several different plans that are really affordable and it also costs less than gotomypc, one of their leading competitors.

I’ve tried using other solutions that are built in to Windows but have had varied results. The best type of remote access I have found has always been that of a dedicated solution such as RemotePC. It’s compatible with Windows Vista, which meets my needs and runs seamlessly and is very quick.

One of the things I like about RemotePC is the fact that it’s easy to setup a temporary license key and log into someone’s computer that is having problems and called me for help. I don’t have the luxury anymore of having a lot of free time to go to people’s houses and fix computers but I can usually manage enough time to fix it over the phone. This makes things even faster for me.

Just playing around with Live Writer and some of the built-in plugins.

There is also a now playing plugin that you manually add, which is good because it’s a pain to have it in every single post on a page. Here’s what it looks like…

Now Playing: Pixies – Wave of Mutilation – Best of Pixies – Debaser

There is also a "Quote of the Day" Plugin that I may or may not start using if I can remember

Quote of the day:
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality. – Jules de Gaultier