A couple months ago, my boss came to me and told me my work cell contract was eligible for a new phone upgrade. I did some research, and moving away from a hacked moto-Razr would only prove worthwhile if I were to pack in a few more features (like email, mobile internet, and maybe a better camera). I first asked for a BlackBerry Pearl because I already had a BlackBerry World Edition 8830 and I didn’t need the extra bulk. When he vetoed my request to add an additional BlackBerry Data Plan to the already pretty hefty data plan the company had, I went back to the drawing board.

Things I knew I wanted:

• Exchange Support
• WiFi and/or Mobile Internet that does not suck.
• Decent Camera (the BB8830 doesn’t have a camera)

The only decent mobiles out there that had Exchange Support for email were Windows Mobile 6.1 powered phones. I was also looking to not appear too greedy, so I tried to keep the budget for the new phone under $150. With our provider, the only real option at this point was the Samsung Omnia. I wasn’t upset with that, because it appeared to have fairly good user ratings. I received the phone and was pleased. It connected to Exchange without any trouble, it had an 802.11 radio, and a fantastic camera with more features stock than the iPhone.

Every few weeks I am the On-Call technician for the ISP/hosting company I work for. I’d like to be able to attach my cell phone to my laptop and be able to handle 95% of the work that I would typically be responsible for while on-call, which only requires a stable internet connection for RDP or SSH. I began to look for tethering options and came across WMWifiRouter in my searches. I was a bit skeptical because my wireless network has a reputation for disabling certain “features” that may allow the user to do more than they want to provide, but I gave it a go. Here were the necessary steps to make this work for my phone:

1. Enable Internet Connection Sharing on your windows mobile phone.
2. Restart the phone.
3. Install WMWifiRouter.
4. Restart the phone.
5. Run WMWifiRouter.
6. Connect to the wireless ad-hoc network it creates (see image) from your laptop or other wireless device.

From there, you should be able to browse the internet, download files, run a speed test, and connect to your office VPN to scare the night technician by printing to the network printer.

Those of you that follow me closely on Twitter or Facebook are already aware of my latest news. It shouldn’t come as a surprise and for some of you you’ll probably be saying “took you long enough”. After dating for nearly 4 years and great friends for about that much longer I asked my best friend to marry me.

This is a late post that has been sitting in my drafts folder for awhile. But, we’re onto the planning and man-oh-man is it a process!

Stay tuned!

Dumb Test » QuizRocket.com’s fun quizzes!

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In random order:

1. Although me and my brothers grew up in the same house by the same parents, I was born in a completely different hospital from them. My mother was a nurse at Alexandria Hospital when she got pregnant with me, and delivered me there.

2. I attended Georgia Tech for a year. I was a legacy applicant, both my father and my uncle graduated as Electrical Engineers. Since leaving: two of my cousins have also attended, one of which has already graduated and is working in Chattanooga a block away from me.

3. I have a scar on my chin from when I was in first grade and tripped while chasing a kickball at recess. 7 stitches.

4. I’ve never broken a single bone in my body. Neither have either of my two brothers.

5. I am an Eagle Scout, and have been in the Scouting program since I was 6 years old as a Tiger Cub. This should come as no surprise to anyone that has known me for more than a week.

6. The thing I miss the most from living in Virginia was coming home from Elementary School and playing outside with my brothers and the other neighborhood kids until it was dark.

7. My first computer was a Commodore 64. I had one in my room and taught myself simple BASIC programming before I turned 10 years old. I haven’t had any true interest in programming since beyond troubleshooting errors.
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ARES - Getting in the way?

The biggest thing (for me) that was not allowing the Amateur Radio Community to “recruit” me was the small but very public group of what I call “loonies”. The online ham community calls them “Whackers” or “Orange Vests”. These are the people that at any SLIGHT emergency will push themselves into the middle of the problem, often causing more harm than good. That is not the objective of ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Services). ARES members are there to support the existing EMS/EMA in the case of malfunctioning or disabled communications systems. ARES drills may take place, but are planned in advance and coordinated as to not cause any portion of the pool of emergency resources to be strained.

What has become a bit of a joke with the online community is how often these “whackers” will cover their vehicles in antennas and fill their dashboards with various equipment much more than is necessary to complete the task. Hamsexy, the website and forums of those hams and citizens turned off from the “loonies”, has put together a few articles showing the extent of their craziness. People have echoed their views of ARES from the non-ham public with anecdotes explaining the extent of the Orange Vests’ involvement in where they aren’t needed.

To complete my post, I’m going to insert a log from a conversation I had with some other hams that hang out in an IRC room I’ve been attending for a couple days now. It has been insightful, I’ve received a bit of feedback on a couple of the hot issues in Amateur Radio currently (D*Star was yesterday).

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Being a recent beer fan, I’ve begun to review various types of beer. Those of you that follow me on twitter may recall a few of my tweets announcing a new beer review over at BeerAdvocate. Well tonight has lent itself to a beer review of a coworker’s home-brewed stout, and Beer Advocate doesn’t have a good method for submitting home-brew reviews. I’ll begin now.

Appearance (20%) - Espresso colored body with a medium tan head. The head is fairly tight and hints that it may leave some lace behind, though only leaves small gatherings of froth. Carbonation cannot be detected behind the dark body.

Smell (20%) - Pine spirited hops on the first drift, though frothed milk and some light coffee can be detected when it warms.

Taste (40%) - A smooth coffee and cocoa flavor at the start leads to a piney hops finish. Very impressive.

Mouthfeel (10%) - The hops stays behind on the tongue but it’s not a sticky hops presence like in other beers. Coffee and cocoa bitterness is discovered on ructus (when I burp).

Drinkability (10%) - The first presentation of a Stubborn Man beer left some to be desired, this was by far a much better presentation. With some tuning and a bit of experimentation this could be a favorite of mine, definitely a great start. I’m looking forward to more of his dark bodied ales.

The Marks
A - 3.5
S - 3
T - 4.5
M - 4.0
D - 4.0
TOTAL - 3.9 B+

So there you have it, a solid B+. Looking back at all the beers I’ve reviewed, anything I’ve given a ‘B’ or above is well worth another visit. So visit his blog, send him a tweet, or otherwise let him know you’re interested in having one of his stouts.

Don’t let the title mislead you, I’m not going to review the latest porn (sorry, Osiris). What I am going to do is put my perspective on Kevin Smith’s latest film, “Zach and Miri make a Porno”. Having just recently seen it maybe now isn’t the time for me to put my review out there, but I can come back later with a new post and grab more attention to it after it has a chance to simmer.

I’ve found Kevin Smith’s movies fairly enjoyable over the last few years, but it’s usually the person himself that far exceeds the humor of his writings. I enjoyed his open forum discussions “An Evening with Kevin Smith” to be far more amusing than the content of his films. Things that define Kevin Smith are what make his works good. “Clerks”, to me, wasn’t nearly as enjoyable until I understood the adventure it took to become the movie. Jay and Silent Bob is more of a meme, though it played an excellent role in “Dogma” which I finde to be one of his funniest works. Chasing Amy is the best movie he’s ever done, and I was hoping for one as high a quality as it in “Zach and Miri”. Read the rest of this entry »

During this past weekend spending some time with my parents in Virginia (it was my mother’s birthday and she wanted to spend some time with her mother and sister) I’ve come back somewhat interested in getting into some of the more geeky hobbies of the years past Amateur Radio. Don’t be confused by the name Amateur Radio simply means it is non-commercial and they cannot be paid (with very few exceptions) for operating various stations across much of the US. Most of the “Amateurs” are very highly skilled electronic engineers (many without formal training) and build their own antennas and equipment for transmitting and receiving radio signals as well as analyzing.

A couple years ago for Christmas I got my dad a 2-Meter HT (Hand-held Transceiver) shortly after he received his Technician’s license (callsign KI4NDF) for operating a limited set of frequencies on Amateur bands. I had very little interest at that point, and was basically feeding his hobby. I saw modern day technologies as more interesting and my dad’s interest in repeaters seemed to be as close to talking on Skype or Ventrilo as anything else with a considerable less cost involved by using the latter. He has since tested for his General and Amateur Extra license and now has the callsign of AI4ZV.

It wasn’t until this past weekend that something actually piqued my interest… Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone that owns a cat should know these basic observations:

and I think he’s on to something here:

Mr President from LL Cool J and Boomdizzle on Vimeo.

What do you think? 1st amendment introduces the song, before some questions are asked. Lyrics to follow.

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