Don't Back Down

Back in January (the 18th, I think, in case Amnesia comes calling), I ordered up a Leatherman Skeletool CX from Amazon. The price at the time was $79.85, with free shipping. I was happy, though for perhaps the first time in the history of times I've ordered from Amazon, I was going to have to wait for a while, since they were low on stock. I figured it would be worth the wait for this sweet little tool.

As it turned out, the wait would be a long one. On February 5th, I tweeted about how the product was delayed, while the price had gone up (the page at Amazon now shows another company not Amazon, as the primary supplier - though Amazon still offers it at $79.85, with free shipping, on the alternative link). On February 8th, I tweeted that now it was shipping earlier than expected, but it was still to arrive by March 18th. Guess what. Still not here.

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A while back, I purchased some CORSAIR Dominator 2GB Dual Channel Desktop Memory for a computer I was building.

The main reason I bought was because they just looked cool, and then because the reviews on Newegg were pretty decent. While I have mentioned before that I often shop at Amazon, I'll usually read the reviews at Newegg because they are just better. This was no different. This CORSAIR Dominator 2GB Dual Channel Desktop Memory was a bit more expensive, but they seemed to do the trick for me at the time, and ran well - unfortunately I kept running into a problem where I'd be running along (on my overclocked E6300) and something would lock up. This was invariably at the least opportune moment.

Read "Crucial Ballistix 2GB vs. Corsair Dominator 2GB" »

With the announcement earlier this week that Wal-Mart is going to be placing Redbox DVD vending machines in many of their US stores, I figured that it was time to see if any of them had made their way to Charlotte yet. A little over a year ago, when Peter mentioned Redbox on his site, I checked to see if there were any in Charlotte, and at the time, there weren't. Now, there are a few, mostly at Harris Teeter stores.

So we decided to try out renting from one of the machines to see what it was like. Overall, the result was decent. The idea certainly has merit, but there are certainly a few ideas where it can be improved. Being able to rent a DVD almost on impulse is pretty cool. I mean if it didn't have some chance of success, why would just about every store have stacks and stacks of DVDs that you could buy on your way out the door? The main thing that we noticed was in time. That is, it needs to speed up the process just a bit. Other than that, it was a decent experience.

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Of course I'm talking about file size when it comes to video. Or perhaps audio - though I don't really listen to much audio on my computer. Now that I think about it, I don't really listen to that much audio elsewhere either. Just in the car. But back to the point - if you store video, then you undoubtedly have come to the conclusion that it takes up a decent amount of space. If you browse most any of the popular file-sharing sites, you'll see that the low end of the equation - and I'm not counting the off-brand encodings, because they suck - come in around 700MB.

There are, of course, purists, who will tell you that 700MB isn't worth watching. And there are certainly examples where they are right. If you watch some videos (typically those with action in them), there are simply places where the frames can't keep up. Also, if you try and watch a 700MB MPEG, you aren't going to get very much video, unless you're just watching PR0N, in which case 700MB will get you all you need, and then some. But again, I digress. Let's say you want to settle in and watch a movie with the family. Just how much space do you need?

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A bit over two weeks ago, my cable connection went out. A bit over a week ago, I mentioned that it was still out. I'm happy to report that the problem seems to be fixed. Finally. I've had broadband cable for more than seven years, and this was - by far - the longest outage I've experienced. There were just two times prior to this that I had problems, and both were fixed with relative ease (one with a replaced fitting on the end and one with a replacement modem).

This time, the first week went by with promises of a node fixing the problem. When that was replaced, the problem went away for a day, and then came back with a vengeance. The modem was then replaced and then I lost connectivity entirely. I decided that I'd take matters into my own hands and at least got back to a bad connection, instead of no connection at all - but it took another several days to get someone back out to check things. When h e arrived, of course, everything worked. Until he left, at which point I reported that it was down again, and another visit was scheduled.

Read "Finally, Broadband Has Been Restored" »

If you should happen to have connected your Alltel phone using Bluetooth - be it an LG 8600 like I used or something else - then of course the next question is how you go about using the phone as a modem. Of course if you have reliable broadband, then this isn't a typical need, but it's still nice to know how to do it, or if it's even possible.

I did some reading on the subject, and it seems that there is no complete guide to this - perhaps because Alltel doesn't want you to know how to do it or just because there isn't a lot of call for it. When I called them, the only answer I got was that I could purchase a data card and a data plan for ~$60 per month. For a backup to a service that doesn't even cost that, it's not really feasible. So I decided to do some exploring. The good news it that it seems to work and the speed is good. The bad news is that the connection isn't great and the unknown is what it will cost.

Read "Using Your Alltel Bluetooth Phone as a Modem" »

Now that I had picked up a Belkin Bluetooth adapter for myself, it was really easy to get it hooked up to my PC. Just plug it into the USB port and i was ready to go. Unfortunately I needed something that I could connect to before it would be of any use to me. Being a bit of a collector of gadgets, I don't always think things through when I purchase them - it just seems like a good idea at the time, so I decide to do so.

Luckily, when playing with my phone, I remembered that it had Bluetooth. So I enabled it, and a whole lot of nothing happened. The two just sat there like the proverbial bumps on logs. It turns out that more needs to happen before you can do anything useful. But it's actually not hard to make the two talk. You just need to know a few things that will allow a little back-and-forth action between the phone and the PC.

Read "Connect Your LG 8600 to Your PC via Bluetooth" »

Reports say that broadband penetration in the US is approaching - or may have even exceeded the 50% mark, which is great. I have to say that I'm a big fan of high-speed access, and I've become rather addicted to it. My best estimate shows that I've had cable access to the net since August of 2000, which means I haven't had to deal with dial-up for more than seven years. It's hard to even think of anything else. Unfortunately, when it goes out, it means dealing with a great deal of frustration.

Starting last Monday, the signal quality of my line has gone downhill, and when I say downhill, I'm not talking about the bunny slope. I'm talking olympic-level territory. On Monday afternoon, I called - and was connected to - someone who managed to reset things and get it up and running. I chalked it up to one of those annoyances that I have to deal with from time to time, but figured I'd deal with it and get on with things. Little did I know what was in store. If I did, I might have just gone on vacation.

Read "What Do You Do When Your Broadband Goes Out?" »

Because of my recent communication issues with a cable telecommunications provider who just can't seem to get things right, I've had to log into my router a number of times to reset the line. And in case you're wondering, it's because I use a Cisco router at home, rather than the standard Linksys fare. It provides a better connection - provided the line itself is working. Unfortunately, if the line goes down, it doesn't do quite as good as job as recovering, which is odd, since it's a lot more expensive.

So it means that I need to log into the router and shutdown the line and reset it anytime the line goes down - which over the last week and a half has been several times a day. This isn't a difficult process, but it is a pain. Either I have to load up a serial session or a telnet one, and then type four commands. Like I said, it's not hard, but it is tedious. In fact, it's really tedious. So I decided to come up with a solution.

Read "Automated PuTTY Session to a Cisco Router via VBScript" »

Since it's Christmas, that means many of you may be looking at new gadgets at this time of year, so I'm going to look at one of the most common - and perhaps the most disregarded - of all. The keyboard. Even though we use the lowly keyboard every day, we don't pay it nearly as much attention as we should. This is very likely the most important piece of our computer, yet it usually gets pushed behind just about everything else.

Over the years, I've worked with a huge number of keyboards. In the beginning there were those old beasts that came with the original IBM computers. Some people like them, but I have to say that I don't. They just don't work for me. I've used laptop keyboards. I've even used keyboards for mainframe and midrange computers. Today, I'm still searching for the ultimate keyboard. It might go on for a while. But here, I'll take a look at the last four that I've tried.

Read "A Christmas Keyboard Comparison and Giveaway" »

A while back, I converted an original XBox to something new - an XBOXMEDIACENTER. It actually was a whole lot easier than I expected. I didn't even have to open it up, because through the judicious use of eBay, I managed to find a copy of the original Mech Assault (not the Platinum Hits version, that's just what comes up at xbox.com), which allowed the loading of a softmod.

Once I did, it's like a whole new world opened up. The people who have developed XBMC have done a bang-up job, by packaging a nice interface along with a great platform for playing all sorts of videos and even being able to load games - both those developed for the XBox and ROMs of all sorts. But I was frustrated because I couldn't get some AVI files to play. They would act like they were going to start, but after a second or so, they would just stop. I was pulling out what little hair I had left. Luckily, I finally appear to have found the solution.

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The power just went out for the second time in recent memory. It actually stayed out for a few minutes, which is unusual. In fact, I really thought that it would be gone for a while, so I had just shut down the computer. It didn't quite get through the whole power-down cycle before the power came back up.

Before you wonder how I was doing all this with the power out, I have a UPS, so I normally just ride it out. In this case, it didn't seem like I'd be able to do so, so I shut everything down and was getting ready to do something else. Then the power came back on. As mentioned, this is the second time in recently that the power has gone out for more than a second or two. The last time it was out for hours.

Read "How Often Does Your Power Go Out?" »