Archives-February 2007

February 26

Oh Baby!

Two Month Fetus

So, yesterday I found out that we are in fact having a baby! Tomorrow we have our first prenatal appointment and of course, one of the first things I did was to look up the best possible software to help me keep track of everything. I have to say, as far as Smartphones are concerned there is a definite lack of apps in this niche...scratch that, there is absolutely nothing. I finally decided on a PC app, MomtoBe, which is pretty robust and has space for task tracking, shopping lists, journaling, and has a neat feature which tells you whats going on in my body from week to week. It even has a pretty nifty built-in due date predictor- it estimates October 29...we'll see how accurate it is!

I'm excited, elated, and to be honest pleasantly suprised at how quickly it happened (guess that l'il trip to Mexico was great for more than one reason!!!). Its customary to wait 12 weeks to announce a pregnancy but to be honest, I can't keep the lid on this! WE'RE HAVING A BABY!!!!

February 25

Shhhh.....

February 23

Who's crossing these streets anyway?

A while ago I took these pictures which I keep meaning to post. My mother-in-law lives in 'retirement village' and every time we go and visit her I am endlessly amused by the crossing signs we pass:

February 18

Notebook to TV Screen

Wow! Here's a pretty cool sight- today I picked up the cables needed and was able to hook up my laptop to a television. What you can see in the pictures is my desktop showing on the TV.The major advantage to doing that is that all the movie clips that I have on my laptop, our shared external 250GB hard drive, and the recorded shows I have from Tivo To Go can be watched on the large TV screen.

February 17

Sneak Peek at the HTC Universal Sucessor

Here are some cool shots of the I-Mate 7150 which has Windows Mobile 6, 520Mhz SPU, VGA screen, WiFi and tri-band 3G

I love that this device is thinner than the Jasjar and also that it has the much needed soft keys on the front of it, which makes it more convenient to use when closed screen up. It also supposedly has Windows Mobile 6 but all the shots I've seen on it seem to be WM5. Hmmmm......

February 14

Windows Live Writer

If my post from yesterday seemed a bit odd and brief, it was-that's because I was testing out the new Windows Live Writer beta. This is one neat program which makes blogging from my pcs so much easier. Its almost like just typing into a Word document and then you 'publish' the entry into the web. It also lets you blog offline and then publish at a later time.
For me, the crucial selling point is the way it handles images. The image above of the Live Writer was obtained as easily as doing usingthe print screen and then pasting it right into the text field! (Hey, Quikboy-Michael- there's your answer!) It also works for Blogger and a couple of other blogs. Love it!

February 13

Thai Statue

I meant to post this a while back but I forgot. This is a statue in the lobby of one of my favorite Thai restaurants.

The Blizzardman Cometh

In case you missed it, Ludacris hosted SNL recently and was in what has to be the funniest skit I have ever seen on Saturday Night Live. In this skit, you have to listen to the hardcore rapper Blizzardman. Check it out. Laugh your arse off. Repeat as needed.

February 12

Empty "Remove Programs"List? Here's the Fix!

i've had one problem with all of my PDAs which I could never understand...eventually I would get to a point where my "Remove programs" list would be empty. I could not figure out why it was happening and just attributed it to something that I was doing wrong.Well, today I finally decided to look for a fix to this that didnt involve a hard reset (again!!!).The issue is that the remove programs list is only designed to list 50 programs, and once you have installed more than 50, the list becomes blank.

The solution to this can be found here. Its fast, its easy, and most importantly you do NOT have to do a hard reset. Yipee! Enjoy!

February 09

LOST is back!

And here's a little something to get you back in the mood:

February 08

Vista in Da House!!!

My new laptop is the HP Pavilion dv6000 and it is one sweet piece of...machinery! In addition to all the hardware niceties it has, it is also my first Windows Vista experience and so far I have to say, I'm loving it!

I downloaded the upgrade to IE7 on my desktop PC but its only within the context of Vista that it really shines. One of the features which I use all the time now is the built-in RSS reader. I don't know why I have always been hung up on having a third-party RSS reader (probably just habit from PDA devices) but this makes perfect sense:

Another program which is already available with the Vista UI is Mobipocket. This is what I use for all of my eBook reading, and it nicely synchronizes my bookmarks with my Blackjack.

For TV watching, the best applications hands down is SlingPlayer...seriously, this app is a stroke of genius! But now you can take it to the next level with Tivo Desktop if you have a Series2 or higher TiVo box. (Please keep the laughter about my MTV shows to a minimum, thank you!)

And one of my most recent finds is Sharpcast photos. This great freeware lets you sync photos across PCs and mobile devices (Windows mobile). Plus you can access your photos from anywhere via the web. I find this to be a less invasive alternative to Orb, and your computer doesn't have to be on.

Lately I spotted one of those uber-annoying Mac-PC commercials which attempted to poke fun at the security warning on Vista

Call me crazy, but I like the warnings as it lets me know exactly what's happening. And even though I've never tried a Mac, if they will make me as clueless as these commercials I will happily stay with PC.

February 04

How F11 Saved the Day!

An awful thing happened yesterday....my laptop wouldnt boot. Apparently my system32 file had become corrupt or was missing and wondows couldnt load. The reason why this REALLY sucked is because I had no recovery disk and no backup of my data. So I spent the better part of the evening poring throught the internet to see if anyone had some pearl of wisdom to share. Unfortunately, most of the options included utilities to create floppy recovery or boot disks, which is great unless your pc has no floppy disk drive (read: ME!!!) Finally we decided that we would just spend the money and go to BestBuy and have GeekSquad fix the problem.
Okay, so Geeksquad is basically the reason why I am now convinced that I need to own a tech support company. Seriously. The guy I spoke to said I needed to contact HP and have them send me the recovery disc, bring it to them and pay them $129 to fix the problem. I probably would have done that as absurd as it sounds until he told me thta it would take about a week for them to resolve the issue. No good.
Disappointed and despondent, we headed home and Dean pointed out a CompUSA on the way. We pulled in and figured we'd see if they could help. It was pretty much the same story, except the guy there pointed out that I could upgrade to Vista which would do a clean install of the system. I pondered it for a bit....I mean, this whole problem was because I had gone a bit with installing programs to make my laptop LOOK like Vista anyway. But to be honest, I wasnt sure that my laptop had that kind of horsepower in it anymore. But the whole Vista thing stuck in my head until I couldnt shake it. All those shiny new laptops in the store were running the 3D Flip interface, taunting me! I HAD to do it- I got a new laptop. As always, Dean's only contingency for my frivolity was that I try to break as close to even as possible by selling my old one once I got it fixed by the manufacturer.
After getting the new laptop home I opened the box and a very important piece of paper fluttered to the ground. I must have missed it in the packaging for my older one. Evidently, HP and Compaq Presario notebooks have a hidden feature, and if you press F11 during any part of the boot process it triggers the Recovery Boot program!.So I tried this, and lo and behold, after about half an hour my older laptop was almost as new with all my documents and installed programs intact (configurations and personal preferences were lost though). Tomorrow my older laptop (actually only about 4 months old) goes up on Ebay and I am a very Vista happy chick!!!

LULAMA SPARKLES

Search This Blog