I have a Windows Media Center PC that I use as our TV hub for the entire house. Through Xbox 360s we can watch TV that is being recorded through the Media Center PCs. It’s a great little setup and makes it so that I can watch any of our pre-recorded TV shows or live Tivo-like TV from any of the TVs in the house. I also have it setup so that we can see our movie library and we can watch any of those with the push of a button.
Well, about a week or two ago, I was adding another hard drive to allow additional capacity for our movie library as I had already filled 1 TB of space with movies and needed more room. I got another 500GB eSata hard drive and had opened the case in order to install the eSata ports onto the back of the computer. The TV tuner card had an extra little input area that was using one of the slots. I did not need this so I was removing it to allow space for the eSata card. After removing it from the slot, I set it on the tuner card just below it so it would be out of the way while I installed the eSata ports. The metal edge touched a couple of contacts on the tuner card. There was a spark and the smell of melting electronics and the tuner card was toast.
So, we have not watched any TV for a couple of weeks. Saw only a few days of the Olympics. Streaming the movies still works fine but TV is a thing of the past. I have ordered a new card that allows both analog and digital TV to be recorded and can record 2 channels of each (double dual card). It was out of stock at the place where I found the best price. I ordered it thinking they would get it in stock and ship it fairly soon. Well, it is still on backorder and we are starting to get a little worried. Our shows will be starting soon and I’m not sure what we’ll do having to watch the shows when they are actually broadcast instead of recording them and fast forwarding through commercials. I can’t imagine going back to the old ways of watching TV.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the new tuner card will ship soon but let this be a lesson to you that even when a task inside your computer seems pretty simple and shouldn’t require you to shut down the computer, shut if off anyway. If not for the sake of the components, then for your own safety. Who wants their fingers fried in addition to their computer components? If I had followed this advice, we would still be recording and watching our favorite shows and I wouldn’t be out another $120.
Posted in Computer Networking |
This is the Eee PC by ASUS. I recently bought one to see how viable it could be for certain business applications. It comes equipped with 512 MB of Ram and a tiny 4 GB Solid State hard drive. The processor is an Intel 900 Mhz. It looks like the the video takes 8 MB of memory from the RAM so you are actually left with 504 MB for the computer’s use.
It is preloaded with a custom distribution of Linux which I didn’t find very useful (although others do). So, I loaded Windows XP Professional on it. One thing to note is that you must install XP SP2 or it will not install correctly. I only had XP SP1 so I had to slipstream SP2 into it and then it worked fine. Depending on which Eee PC you get, they will include a driver disk for XP. You install the drivers once you have XP loaded.
Once I had XP installed and all the drivers, I applied the available updates for XP. This included installing SP3. By that time, the hard drive was getting pretty cramped (I was afraid SP3 was not going to install because of so little space available). I went through and deleted just about anything I could that would still let XP run without errors. After everything, I actually have about 1.4 GB of space left on the 4 GB hard drive.
One possible use for this little guy is to allow remote desktop (terminal services) connections to a remote computer in order to run certain applications. In this instance, the Eee PC doesn’t need to have much hard drive space as nothing gets stored locally. For the sake of speed, I would recommend formatting the drive to FAT32 instead of NTFS when installing XP. While NTFS has some additional features, it tends to run a little slower. This is really felt on a little computer which doesn’t have the fastest processor or very much RAM.
For now, my kids enjoy having a tiny laptop they can play games on. They play lots of games at sesamestreet.com. This is a picture of my two kids playing pinball on it.
So, if you don’t need a ton of hard drive space for your particular application and you are looking for a small form factor, this is a very inexpensive solution. Total cost was about $350. I already had an XP license allowing me to upgrade it to XP. If you do not, you need to factor in that cost as well.
9-4-08 Update. I showed the EeePC to my client that I was testing it out for and he thought it was perfect. They are using it every day now. My poor kids were in tears when I told them that I sold it to my client. Maybe if they ask Santa…
Posted in Computer Networking |
I just upgraded this blogs software to version 2.6. Upgrading with WordPress has been very easy in the past and once again, the process was very simple. I have been very impressed by the WordPress software. It is far superior to blogging software I have used in the past. If anyone needs help setting up a blog, I’d be happy to help. Just let me know.
Posted in Computer Networking |
I bought this book because I thought it would be interesting to learn and understand the love languages of my kids. I was quite right. As of this post, I have a 6 year old, a 3 year old, and a 6 month old. I am not certain what love language the 6 month old is yet but I have a pretty good idea what the other two kids are and because of this book, I now have some great ideas on how to show my love for my kids in ways that make them feel loved. I always try to show and tell my love to them, but I didn’t know that I needed to do this in different ways depending on my child’s love language. What might let one child feel loved may not work for another child.
The book is all about keeping your children’s “love tank” full. when you are successful in keeping it full, your children will behave better, obey better, and grow up to be more loving and understanding in all of their relationships with others throughout their lives. I found the chapter on discipline very interesting as it is important to discipline differently depending on your child’s love language. I found that I often do not discipline very effectively and found many suggestions on how I could improve.
If you want to help your child feel loved, you should pick up this book and try to incorporate the ideas into your interactions with your child. It has also helped me to understand my wife’s love language a little better and be able to show her love more effectively and even though she has not read the book, she has taken a more active role in trying to show me love based on my love language as well. To try to help even more, I am also going to read: The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate.
Posted in Family |
I’m not really sure how it happened but I have become the resident finger and toenail painter in our house. Abby knows that if she wants her nails painted she should come to me and not to her mom. Mom just doesn’t have the steadiest of hands and ends up painting just as much skin as she does nails. She will claim that it is because of her lack of coordination.
One time Abby had a friend over and they grabbed a bunch of “The Friend” magazines and came up to my office and made my office their salon. They would sit and “read” their magazines while I painted their nails for them. So, if my day job goes bad, I guess I could open a salon and paint nails. I already have a great clientèle of 6 year olds. They don’t pay much and I’ve never gotten any tips. But they sure are a couple of silly kids.
Posted in Family |
We are on our way up to Idaho for the 4th of July weekend. My wife is driving and her sister Jessica is sitting shotgun. The kids are watching Alvin and the Chipmunks for the 1,000th time with their headphones on. I am in the back with Abby trying to get some work done along the way. I put my headphones on and set Windows Media Player to random. It randomly picked an album that I haven’t listened to for many years. It is the album “Love Among the Ruins” by 10,000 Maniacs. This was their first album after Natalie Merchant left them.
Anyway, listening to it brought me back about 10 years and flooded a bunch of memories into my mind of Europe. While attending college, some friends and I took about a week off and headed to . Germany and France. The trip was awesome. We rented a little VW Jetta wagon which held the four of us and all our gear just perfectly. We brought plenty of tunes including this album. I think it was fairly new at the time and so we listened to it a lot. Hearing it now is like going back in time.
It makes me realize that this life is short and we should try to create lasting memories and make the most of each day. Back then I wasn’t married and didn’t have kids so it was easy to make sure I was having fun and making my own memories. Now that I am married with 3 kids, I want to help my kids to have fun experiences that they can look back on throughout their lives. It’s funny because in the process of trying to create these lasting memories for my kids, I find that I am having just about as much fun and that I get to keep the memory too.
Posted in Family |
We have recently had a couple of unfortunate events happen here in Herriman. I won’t go into detail about them but it has been very interesting to watch and read the news coverage of the events. They don’t seem to get any of the details correct. How the events took place, what the circumstances were, how many people were hurt, or even the ages of people involved.
I know I can’t be too upset by it as they report on a story while it is still unfolding and take what anyone says as fact. But, shouldn’t they try to verify details before going live and reporting on it to the entire community. I have been guilty of this as I’m sure everyone has but I usually try to verify details before I go spouting it off to someone else.
So, for my blog, I will try to post things that are accurate. If I fail, let me know so I can correct my mistakes. Hopefully the news will some day get their details correct before they do their news stories.
(I know, a pretty boring post. I’ll have some posts on better subjects later)
Posted in Uncategorized |
I must admit that I never really saw the need for a blog in the past until I had my own. My wife was the same way. Why would she want to write a blog? It’s not like we believe ourselves to be great writers or anything and who would want to read our blogs anyway? To me, it is a way to write down helpful tips or fun memories. My wife loves to be able to record her memories and place them with some pictures. She always just figured “Oh, I’ll remember that”. Well, as much as we hate to admit it, we forget things all the time. Memories that we had of Abby, our oldest, have been forgotten and since we never wrote them down, we may never remember them. So, if for no other reason than keeping a record of our memories, I would encourage everyone to have a blog. You don’t necessarily have to make it public but it is a much easier way to share your thoughts and memories than keeping a written journal. There are many free online blogging sites such as http://www.wordpress.com and http://www.blogger.com. It’s easier than you may think to get started. You could be blogging in less than 5 minutes. Check it out.
Posted in Computer Networking |
We are traveling to Jackson, WY on a business trip / mini vacation as I write this. Jenny is driving so that I can work on the way. I thought I would write a quick post about mobile broadband. About a year ago, we decided to order mobile broadband through Sprint which is our cell phone carrier. The idea was that it would help me to be more available to my clients from pretty much wherever I am. Sometimes it is more difficult and time consuming to try to talk someone through a problem than it is to simply hop onto their computer and take care of it. And, since time is money for both me and my clients, saving some time helps everyone involved.
So, we purchased mobile broadband and haven’t looked back. It is awesome! I love being able to browse the Internet, check and reply to e-mail, hop on clients’ computers to resolve problems…from anywhere. Right now, I am doing all of this while traveling 75 MPH. On several occasions I have pulled off the freeway to take care of something for a client real quick so they don’t have to wait for me to get back home or to my next location. It works great right now but should continue to improve over time. Sprint has upgraded much of their network to take advantage of Rev A speeds. Before Rev A there was Rev 0. The basic difference is in upload speeds, not download speeds. Rev 0 had a very slow upload speed. It was basically as slow as a 56K modem but the download speeds were burstable to 2 mbps. With Rev A you get equal download and upload speeds of 2 mbps (burstable). The average speed is probably between 500 kbps to 1 mbps. That’s pretty decent for mobile broadband.
In researching mobile broadband, I found that Sprint is actually a very good provider. They do not limit the amount of bandwidth people are allowed to use where Verizon caps you at 5GB per month. Most of the message boards I visited rave about the Sprint service and tout it as the best out there right now. Others are slower, not as reliable, and/or limit your use of the service.
The cost for the Sprint mobile broadband service when I signed up was $60/month when you sign a 2 year contract and $80/month without a contract. So, if you have a need for it, I would highly recommend getting it.
Posted in Computer Networking |
That’s right, this is my SON, not my daughter. I thought it would be funny to put Makenna’s headband on him. He thought it was funny too and even posed for a picture. Isn’t he pretty? Tyler is crazy. This weekend he and I went to “Fathers and Sons”. It wasn’t anything fancy but he sure did have fun. Any time we went anywhere, like to the park, to the bathroom, to the car, etc. He would say “Let’s hold hands” so we walked everywhere holding hands. I think it helped him to like his Dad a little better as he has been a little poo lately and testing his boundaries quite a bit.
When we got home, I set the tent up in the basement to let it air out a little before packing it away. They have had fun playing in it and last night, Abby, Tyler and I slept in it together. I love my kids. (Update – I guess I left the tent up a little bit too long. Tyler decided to try to climb on top and broke one of the poles. Now I have to try to find a place that has replacement poles or repair pieces, fun)
Posted in Family |
