In general, the Kindle Fire feels very solidly built and is a quality device. There are a lot of apps available for it. Our favorites so far are “Plant vs. Zombies”, Where’s My Water”, angry birds, and some other bird game where you have a bird cage and you take care of birds but I don’t remember the name of it. I understand that Amazon acts as a middleman for the apps and will only allow certain apps in. I don’t really like this but I haven’t run into anything that they aren’t letting in that I feel I’m missing. Apple does the same thing with the iPad. Amazon has basically taken the Google Android software and customized it with their own interface. The interface is very intuitive and easy to navigate. I don’t have experience with Android outside of the Fire so I don’t really have anything to compare it with besides the iPad. It does not have a camera which might be fun to play around with but I don’t care all that much about a camera. Perhaps a future Kindle Fire will have a camera.

I have played with the iPad a bit and I wouldn’t say it is any better than the Fire in playing games or accessing the web. Most apps that are on the iPad that I have wanted are also available on the Fire. The iPad does have a forward and backward facing camera though. The iPad also has a much larger screen. Going from 7 inches to 10 is a big jump in screen size. I kind of like the smaller size though too. I could fit the Fire in a larger pocket and take it to church or something.

I do have to say this about pretty much all of the tablets whether they are from Apple or run Android, they are not productivity devices. If you think that you need one to help your productivity, you are mistaken. They are mostly toys. They help you goof off and waste time. Oh I’m sure there are some custom apps that are used in certain cases that may allow some work to be done but they really are not for productivity. Tablets are good for consuming media whether that be videos, music, websites, or books. Just try to type out a few paragraphs and you’ll see just how annoying it can be to create content. Anyone who says they “need” an iPad or a Kindle Fire is full of it. Nobody needs one. But, they are fun. There are tons of games available for them. Some are better than others. Most are really cheap, like $1. I think tablets will put an end to Nintendo DS gaming systems as games cost $30 each and aren’t as good as many of the games you can get for $1 on the Fire or iPad.

The price is where the Fire really shines. I have always felt that all these tablets are way over priced. If I had $500 to spend on some computing device, I would want something that can be productive so I would probably buy a laptop where I could type about 100 times faster than on any tablet. But $200 is a lot easier to swallow for a device that I’m going to use to simply access my media. I think it was money well spent and we have been having a blast on it. I think I echo my children in recommending the Kindle. Good job Amazon on a great product.

Seat 1A sounds awesome until you actually sit there. First of all I learned that the front row of seats does not have any carry-on stowing area. Since there is no seat in front of you, you have no place to shove your carry-on and they don’t let you keep it on the floor between your feet, I tried. I ended up having to put it about 9 rows back in the overhead compartments. That meant that I had to get out of my seat and head back 9 rows, open the overhead compartment and retreive my laptop for the flight and then go back near the end and put it back before we landed. I like to get in my seat and stay there the whole flight, especially on short flights like this one.

The next draw back is your tray. You don’t get one. It would be entirely possibly for them to install trays on the wall in front of row one, but they don’t. You just have to hold your orange juice and not set it down. Your laptop remains on your lap and that is pretty much your only option. I didn’t know how much I liked having a tray until I got seat 1A.

As for that extra legroom, that doesn’t exist either. I can generally stretch my leg out a little by sliding it under the seat in front of me next to my carry-on. In seat 1A, there is a wall. Just a wall. However, I did have a better view of the stewardess as she was texting pretty much the entire taxi to the runway. I didn’t know THEY were allowed to text while the rest of us had to turn our phones off. She put her phone away just before she had to sit down and get buckled for take-off.

And finally, the person in seat 1A is NOT the first one off the plane. In fact, you are just about the last one off the plane. Remember your carry-on? Ya, it is way back at row 9, so you have to wait for just about everyone to come walking past you on their way off the plane before you can finally go back 9 rows for that darn carry-on.

So, my advice for anyone flying, if you have a choice of which seat to take, stay far far away from Seat 1A. You’ll have a much more enjoyable flight.

So, the plane and Wicked tickets are purchased, the rental car is reserved and we are researching which hotel to stay at. Planning a trip is a lot of work and can get pricey pretty quick. But it will all be worth it in the end.

I almost made it a disaster though. Yesterday we went to the bank to cash a couple of checks. My wife almost always handles this (which is why I never have any money). This time she wanted to wait in the car with the kids and play solitair on my phone. So I headed in and gave the two checks to the teller and said I wanted to cash them. She asked for my driver’s license which is usually enough to get a check cashed. Well, she started asking me to verify the last 4 digits of my social security number, my address, the other person’s name on the joint account, my monther’s maiden name, etc. I couldn’t figure out why she was being so thorough. She finally said that she would go ahead and cash them but they aren’t supposed to without current identification. She said that my driver’s license had expired 5 month’s ago.

I was like “what the heck”? I looked at my license and sure enough, it was expired. And, since you have to have current and valid identification in order to board a plane, I would have missed my flight to San Francisco, seeing Wicked, and missed out on a very fun anniversary.

Thank you bank teller for being so thorough and letting me know that my license had expired. I have shown that driver’s license at a store I buy parts at many many times and they have never said a word.

Moral of the story is to do whatever you are doing to the best of your ability and don’t cut corners or be afraid to speak up when something is not right. If this teller had been too afraid to question my ID, I would have paid the price when I went to board the plane. So, thanks again.

After we got home, I gathered all of the required documents and headed in to the DMV and renewed my license. What a relief!

What the heck is Folding@home? That’s what I thought when I stumbled across a forum talking about “folding”. People on this forum were talking about their computer’s specs and processing power and how much folding they had done. It got me curious so I kept reading to see what they were talking about. I finally made my way to Stanford University’s website talking all about folding and what it is. It is very interesting.

Folding refers to protein folding and misfolding and how that relates to various deseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Mad Cow, Cancer, and a bunch of other deseases. When proteins do not fold correctly, there can be serious consequences  such as these and other deseases and conditions. In order to study the folding process, a lot of processing power is needed to do molecular simulations and calculate all that biological stuff. So, rather than spend millions of dollars building or renting time on a super computer, they have created one of the fastest super computers for free. It is made up of thousands of individual computers around the world. At the time of this writing, there are over 350,000 active CPUs which contribute to the project. That is quite a few CPUs considering that the project has been around for just under 10 years.

So, I decided to join the movement and contribute to hopefully finding cures for some of these deseases. It is fairly simple to help out, you simply download a small program from Standford’s site and install it. It will ask you some questions about how you want it to install and you are able to choose a username (not required) and can even join a team (also not required). If you would like to join my team, put in team number 183338 when asked. You can then track how much our team is helping and see your own stats for your username.

I have an old server down in my basement that doesn’t do much but sit there and drain my electricity. So, I thought I would put it to use doing something worthwhile. It is now crunching away on it’s first folding project. After you have installed the software, your computer automatically downloads a project from Stanford’s servers which needs to be computed. Your computer then crunches away on that project and does whatever calculations are needed. Once your computer finishes with the project, it uploads it back to Standord’s server and begins working on the next project. It can take days for your computer to finish a project. You’re probably wondering what kind of drain this has on your computer resources, well, it drains it a lot when the computer doesn’t have any other tasks to do but drains it very little, if any, when your computer is busy with other tasks. You see, the process is set at a very low priority. So, any other processes on your computer take higher priority than the Folding@home process. So, when your computer needs the processor to convert a movie file, or run your browser, it is able to take just as much of the processor as it would have without Folding@home being installed. Folding@home will drop to 0% processor usage if needed so that your computer can do any other tasks it needs to. On the other hand, when you are not using your computer for any processor intensive tasks (probably about 95% of the time), it will use as much of the processor as it can. So, you may see your processor at 100% whenever Folding@home is working on a project. Don’t be alarmed, it will allow any other task to use as much CPU as it wants to immediately if needed. So, it won’t slow down your computer at all.

So, why not give all of that idle processor power over to something useful and rewarding for everyone by doing your own folding. You’ll feel better about being a part of something so important and it it doesn’t really hurt you or your computer to help out. And agin, if you want to be part of my team, use team number 183338 when you install your software. Together we can be a part of the solution.

801-738-0668

 Let him know your name, how old you are, and what you would like him to bring you for Christmas. And, if you would like to have a recording of your message e-mailed to you, send an e-mail to Santa at santa@claus.fami.ly with the date and approximate time of your call as well as the child’s name and age and Santa will do his best to send your message back to you for your own enjoyment (Ask your parents for help with this part).

Pass this along to your friends and family so they can call Santa too.  http://stevemart.in/2009/12/10/call-santa/

Merry Christmas!

Pandigital PAN1502W02 15 Digital Picture Frame $149.97

Ok, so it’s sold out but maybe they’ll get more in stock. It was selling for $149.97. We had purchased a Pandigital as a gift once and the quality really was nice.

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SmartParts SP15MWA 15 Walnut Wood Digital Photo F $119.99

I have a client with a SmartParts digital frame that his wife gave him for Christmas and it also looks very nice.

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Smartparts 15 4:3 Ratio Digital Photo Frame $119.99

I tend to see a lot of the SmartParts frames available from many sites. Hopefully that means that they make a good product.

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Sunpak SF-150-42001SL 15 TFT LCD Digital Frame - $81.97

I’ve never heard of these guys but the price is sure right. Hopefully the quality is at least decent.

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I just double checked the prices before posting this. They could always change by the time you read this and they could sell out. Enjoy.

This beautiful, extra large digital multimedia frame plays music and supports most video formats. Choose the ViewSonic VFM1530-11 with a high resolution 1024×768 LCD panel for clear and crisp photo images. The 4:3 aspect ratio gives you minimum distortion or data loss. It’s equipped with a USB connection for easy content download and remote control. Handy brightness and contrast ratio adjustment and energy savings with programmable on/off, keep your photos right within view. This makes a lovely gift for special occasions and for anyone wanting a grand view of all their images. Effective Viewing Area: 12″ x 9″ (304mm x 228 mm) Brightness: 400 cd/m2 (typ) Contrast Ratio: 500:1 (typ) Aspect Ratio: 4:3 Viewing Angle: 120° (H) / 100° (V) Memory Card Supported: SD/SDHC, MMC, MS/MS Pro, CF Image File Format: JPEG Video Format: MJPEG, MPEG 1, MPEG 4.

This is my gift pick for this Christmas holiday. I bought another 15″ digital picture frame similar to this for my wife for Mother’s Day. She loves it. The reason I pick this one is that, as of this writing, it is selling for $139.99. Also, it is made by Viewsonic. I have always been happy with Viewsonic products in the past. And last but not least, it is large. A 15″ frame mounts nicely on the wall. We have so many digital pictures just hiding out on a hard drive that we don’t get to see very often. This allows us to be able to see the pictures and enjoy them. So, check it out and snag one before they are gone. I have already watched Amazon sell out of them and I’ve watched the price fluctuate up to $199, so get one ordered while you can still get it cheap and while it will still make it before Christmas.

Any ISP you use has DNS servers setup for their customers to use. Usually everyone just uses them without thinking about it because it is automatic and they don’t know they even have an option. Well, you do, and opendns.com claims that they do a much better job at DNS than the ISPs. If it were as simple as that, that may be enough reason to start using opendns.com but there is SOOOOO much more to it than that. Opendns.com is a way to actually control the DNS for a computer or network. Let’s say you don’t want the people in your home to be able to go to a particular website or even a particular catagory of websites. Can you imagine a scenario where that might be possible? If so, you would create an opendns.com account and program the opendns.com IP addresses into your router so that whenever someone connects to your network, all their website requests go through opendns.com instead of your ISPs DNS. Then you customize your opendns.com account to block certain catagories of websites or even individual websites as you see fit. Now anyone on your network that tries to visit a site that is in a blocked catagory will not be successful in visiting that site. They will get a page that lets them know the site is in a blocked catagory. Pretty nifty eh?

If you choose not to setup an opendns.com account, you can still simply program your router to use opendns.com or even individual computers and at the bare minimum, they will be a bit more protected against certain threats online. You see, opendns.com actively blocks many of the domains that certain viruses are known to “phone home” too when a computer gets infected.

I have opendns configured at several of my clients’ locations as well as my home and it does a great job of resolving DNS requests. And, we get a little bit of extra protection to boot. You’re probably wondering how much an amazing service like this costs as it is quite useful and would be so nice to use. Well, the greatest thing about it is that it is 100% FREE. That’s right, you get everything completely FREE. As of tomorrow, they will be launching a new enterprise version which I assume with carry some new bells and whistles but it will be a value added service which you won’t have to use. So go to http://www.opendns.com and check it out. You have absolutely nothing to lose and quite possibly a whole lot to gain.

I haven’t really gone through the nuts and bolts of actually setting up opendns on your network as I really just wanted to introduce it. You can get great instructions from their site but if you have specific questions, let me know.