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a horse is a horse of course of course unless of course the horse is Patches

20 April, 2007 14:55

A year ago I was writing:

I am a proud winner of a "Gargoyle Thing"!

George Takei

[Day to Day]
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enable mp3 support for the Samsung SCH-a930 from Verizon

16 April, 2007 18:13

Shane C. Mason posted a small article with instructions on how to enable MP3 support on the Samsung SCH-a930 from Verizon.  He notes that you must have a micro-SD card and a lot of patience because of its limited interoperability.

The phone from Verizon, as shipped, will only play WMA format media files by default.  This truly is dissapointing and manipulative since they advertise it as an MP3 phone. 

[Technology] [Software]
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Samsung SCH-a930 as a serial modem over bluetooth HOWTO

16 April, 2007 17:31

Verizon ships the SCH-a930 stripped of what should be easily accessible menu options for changing the mode of data transfer from a USB cable, to bluetooth for use as a serial and data modem.

I will not jabber about how to setup a communication link, since the scope of this article will just show how to change the phones settings.

  1. open the phone's menu and navigate to "settings and tools"
  2. press the '#' key and enter '000000'
  3. navigate down to "Port Map"
  4. if you need to access your networks data service through a bluetooth connection, navigate to DS(DATA), choose "bluetooth" and hit ok
  5. to map your serial modem link to your bluetooth device, select DM(DIAG) and select bluetooth in the following menu..  hit ok
  6. return to the "settings and tools" menu, navigate to "phone settings" and then "pc connection"
  7. select bluetooth and hit 'ok'
  8. for fax and data modem options, navigate to "call settings" in the "settings and tools" menu, and select the option for the next data call that is relevant to your needs
  9. initiate your connection from your computer to your phone - there are many sites with general documentation on how to do this

For dial-up (dun) networking, I have had luck with channel 16.  For a serial modem link,  channel 8 works well for my needs.

[Technology] [Software]
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Why I canceled my once loved and intuitive Yahoo! Mail Plus e-mail account and ditched Yahoo! Mail BETA

16 April, 2007 10:01

During the cancelation process, I was given a tiny little text area to express why I no longer appreciate what Yahoo! premium services offer.  Here is what I wrote:

Your phone support technician, Jake made no attempt to resolve the send/receive issue I was having with my account.  I asked if he could have someone look into the problem, or if he could transfer me to an higher level support employee, but he refused.  He made me aware, that sometimes it can take up to 48 hours for Yahoo!'s mail server to deliver mail.  This is not a service I would like to pay for.  I told your representative I would wait 48 hours, and if the problem doesn't magically resolve on its own, I would be canceling my account.  He replied it was my choice and I can do whatever I want.  Please note that the problem in question, verifying e-mail addresses had been a problem for well over a year.  When contacting your technical support over a year ago, I was given a work-around enabling me to bypass the verification codes.  A year later, which is now, the work-around no longer works, I need to setup forwarding immediately, your tech support chooses to not help, and your business does not care if a paying customer renews his premium account.  I don't feel the Yahoo! in the air anymore. 

[Day to Day] [Technology] [Software] [Bullshit]
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70 something better channels than air, but the choices occupy what time I should be watching TV

16 April, 2007 07:29

I upgraded my cable TV plan and have about 70 new channels to check out.  There is a little bit of a problem with this though.  When I had only a few channels to choose from, I would most likely channel surf for just a short while and stay on that channel, knowing nothing better is on.

Now I find myself spending most of the time channel surfing, and never finding anything I would want to watch for any particular length.

So I wonder which is the worst use of time: watching crappy shows like court TV programs and soap operas, or giving my fingers a work out changing the channels constantly, and hoping the heftier bill will pay for itself. 

A year ago I was writing:

what Easter means to me

Down with you bulky laptop! There shall not be any more of this rubish!

[Day to Day]
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myspew is now hosted on a dedicated server

15 April, 2007 01:40

I decided to purchase a virtual dedicated server for my web content.  It was a slow process since godaddy does not allow internal host to host connections.  I was planning on using FTP to dump everything on to the new system, but found I had to first download the content locally and then upload to the new system.  From what I understand, I could have clicked on "upgrade hosting account" and godaddy would have taken responsibility for the transfer.  I didn't do this, and man it was time consuming - web data, databases, apache directives... 

In any case, the BLOG is running beautifully at this point.  I still have to upload my pictures for Gallery 2, and then all will be well with my spew.

Performance has increased two fold.  I am amazed, at this point, that when I purchased a hosting account, it had no user configurability except for web content itself.  With this dedicated server, I can install, and use applications at the console as I would localy.  Not to mention ssh access.

A year ago I was writing:

fwd: re:fwd fwd: re, and so on - it cracked me up, so I shall share

Bergamot

[Technology] [Software]
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I have a bone to pick with LifeType

01 April, 2007 23:51

Recently lifetype 1.2 was released.  I was not planning on upgrading, as I was perfectly happy with the version I was using.  However, after release, I found out they were ending all support for lifetype 1.1.x  because of the small number of developers.

I just about shit my pants.  How the hell can pull support for your previous stable release all-together.  Some people don't have the time, knowledge, or the need for an upgrade, not to mention there are those whom have developed blogging platforms based on some of the later 1.1.x releases.

I don't care if there is only one person developing an application.  If you release it and end support after just one new release months later after end users have put possibly hundreds of hours into customization.  Or even if you, like myself, just wanted to stick to what works, how can we trust a group of people that don't catch you when your installation falls backwards, whether security wise or usability, when we truly need the help from those whom know best.

Could this be a sign that the LifeType developers are moving too fast?

The organization advised that everyone upgrade to 1.2, and on the 1st of April, yesterday as of this writing, they are recommending you hold off on the upgrade because of known issues with Microsoft's filesystem and double-byte languages.  Oh, and no matter what server software you are using, expect incompatibility if you use a data provider.

Anyone can fill a tub with water and bob for apples, but if there isn't an apple down there, then what the hell are you trying to do.  If you don't have a globaly acceptable roadmap, then you better also make damn sure the apple isn't poisenous and you can pull someone out if they start drowning in the tub. 

[Software] [Bullshit]
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FreeBSD - HOWTO mount a large FAT filesystem from a USB drive

01 April, 2007 22:32

While hooking up my external NAS with USB, I ran into trouble from mount_msdosfs saying that the drive was too large.  I have to say, right off the bat, this should be fixed immediately, kernel wise.  In any case, here is the method I used to successfully mount the filesystem.

If this is a fresh FreeBSD installation, or you do not have the kernel sources installed, you will need to have these available either from the installation CD or through sysinstall using the Internet location of your choice.

To install from sysinstall, navigate to: configure -> distributions -> src -> base -> sys, then install the kernel source.

The next step is preparing the kernel config with MSDOSFS_LARGE which will allow you to mount larger drives.

cd /usr/src/sys/i386/conf

cp GENERIC NEWKERNEL

Edit NEWKERNEL with your trusty editor of choice and add the following line.

options MSDOSFS_LARGE

Next, run the following two commands to initialize you new kernel config.

/usr/sbin/config NEWKERNEL

cd ../compile/NEWKERNEL

Then do the dirty and compile with these three commands.

make depend

make

make install 

[Software]
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