Dravor (Copyrighted 2005)

2:0

Way to go Podolski!

So as you remember, I have a Sprint Mogul phone, which was sold as having GPS support. 
Shortly after purchasing the phone Sprint negated that GPS portion.  Sprint and HTC, the
 maker of the Mogul, continued to push back the ROM update which would give us GPS
support.  While we are still waiting for the official release in March, some of the folk beta
testing apparently let the rom’s slip, and the folks over at forum.xda-developers.com and
other Windows Mobile Enthusiasts were able to take the drivers from that rom, and give us
a new rom containing the GPS Drivers, and the Windows Mobile 6.1 update.

So I present to you:

This is my Sprint Mogul using Google’s GoogleMap’s Application, with GPS turned on.  This is using the
satellite map overlap that you can turn on within the app. 

Here is a picture using the standard maps:

While the GoogleMaps application will not currently give you voice prompts on where to turn, you can plot directions to any place, from your current GPS location.  It’s ideal for those times that you get lost, and happen to not have your Garmin GPS unit in the car.  Initial testing has proved that this unit is within 10ft of the actual location, and has great accuracy.  Also this phone has a true GPS antenna, and I’ve seen as many as 7 satellites connected.  Some other phones come with GPS-A, which use cell phone towers to triangulate an area, and the towers then use that location to get GPS coordinates from the Satellites.  This is a nice solution since it does not require a phone connection to work.  GoogleMaps however is dependant on a data connection.  You can use other software like the TomTom software, which has maps on a SD/mini SD drive, which will let you GPS without even a phone conneciton.

Let me know what you think!

-Dravor

As some of you know I am a big HDTV buff, and love watching HDTV. I also am a big fan of Microsoft’s Media Center, which allows your PC to act like a DVR. I prefer it’s functionality and features over those such as TIVO, or features that your Cable Company’s DVR has. Some of you may have seen how we have organized our DVD Collection on the disk of a server downstairs, and any Vista Media Center PC in the house can view those DVD’s.

Here is a picture of what the DVD Gallery menu looks like:

This allows Caleb, or anyone in our household to pick a DVD via the DVD’s Cover Art, get information on the movie, and also play it. No more kids scratching up dvd’s, or dvd’s being left around all over the house. This can be done on any Vista Premium/Ultimate install, as long as you have enough disk space for the DVD’s.

The entertainment center is also new, we got it on clearance at Walmart for $79. It moves the TV up high enough to where the kids won’t accidently hit it, and I will no longer have to clean up fingerprints on the tv daily. The TV is a 32″ Westinghouse 720p LCD TV.

Here is a picture of one of the best features of this entertainment center, it has a moveable arm, allowing me to move the tv to the left or right, depending on where we are in the room. This pictures also is HD MTV viewed via Vista Media Center.

Now back to the main point of the post. Most of us have cable, and we rent those Settop Boxes from our cable provider. This really works fine with Vista Media Center if you are recording Standard Definition content, but what about HD? The only real solution is the CableCard solution. Essentially one buys a new PC that is CableCard certified, in my case we purchased the Dell XPS 420 with two Digital Cable Card tuners from ATI. Once setup, as you see above, I called Verizon FIOS TV to setup an appointment to install two cablecards. It did take two trips for them to get both cards working. Important Notes are:

1. Update Firmware to latest, 1.16 currently, available from ATI
2. Install all Windows Updates that are available
3. Disable Windows Firewall for the Tuners
4. Disable Antivirus for the time being, some cause issues during install

I was paying $30 a month in DVR and SetTopBox boxes every month, now we pay $8 a month for the rental of two CableCards. These cablecards go inside the two Digital Cable Card tuners, bottom right of the entertainment center with the green lights. Once inside and activated, they can now receive any content that you would get with a DVR or Settop Box, and you can now view this content inside Vista Media Center, and also record anything you want via Vista Media Center. Your recording limits are only limited to the amount of available Harddrive space you have.

Now, with this setup, one TV in the house has cable service, what about the rest? Well, in our Living Room we have an Xbox 360 for my gaming pleasures The Xbox360 is also a Media Center Extender, meaning it can play any media files on the Media Center PC in the Family Room, and use either of the Tuners on that Media Center PC. So now, I simply turn on the Xbox 360, have it boot into the MEdia Center Extender interface, and watch TV as I would normally, without a Settop Box.

Here’s a pic:

This is a Westinghouse 42″ 1080p LCD monitor, displaying Live TV via my Xbox 360 Extender. We also have a custom built Vista Media Center connected to the LCD as well. The main reason for that is that the Extenders cannot playback hard drive based DVD’s like you saw in the beginning of the post. Therefore we still use the PC for playing back DVD’s at 1080p, and for those times when computer gaming requires a 42″ screen

Lastly, we still have a bedroom, which is sometimes given to Robyn’s grandmother when she visits. Naturally, we want her, or anyone else in the room to be able to watch live tv. So therefore we have another Xbox 360, to display Live TV, or any Recordings, to our old 20″ CRT Standard Def TV. I am hoping 2008 will see an upgrade for the bedroom to an LCD TV.

So in short, I’ve spent quite a bit of money, the XPS 420 was $1300 with the tuners, and a 4 year warranty. The Xbox 360’s have their obvious uses as gaming consoles as well as being Media Center extenders. But we now have no more settop boxes we rent, saving us money every month, and we have one central location where recordings are stored . No longer does Robyn have to go through and delete old recordings because the Cable companies DVR only had 160GB’s available. We have started out with 250GB in this case, with a 500GB drive soon being added. This is in addition to 1.5TB we have currently for our DVD’s. With this setup you also have the ability to setup recordings from the PC, or from either of the Xbox 360 extenders. Currently we have a total of 3 tuners, 2 for Digital/HD Cable, one for the Local HD channels.

The viewing works kind of the way Satellite used to, I have 2 Digital/HD Cable feeds, if someone is on each the computer, and both of the 360’s one of them will have the same channel as the other, unless they are using tuner #3 for the Local HD channels. All in all, we do not watch enough TV to have to worry about this, but the cable card PC can manage using up to 4 digital tuners, although they sell at around $300 per tuner.

I should also mention, that the Xbox 360’s will need ethernet connections to the Vista Media Center PC, or 802.11A or N network gear, in order to be able to playback live TV, especially any HD content. So far this is a definite plus for us, as it allows us to get away from bad coax cable runs inside of the home, and instead rely on wireless and wired networking to host our TV viewing. It is also easy to move say the bedroom tv and xbox 360 to anywhere in the house, if we feel the need to have a TV there.

So that’s my story, I’m happy, and am amazed at how well it is working. I will say, do a lot of research, specifically at www.thegreenbutton.com before jumping into this. It’s not for the faint of heart for the setup, I did get frustrated, and would not recommend setting it up on 4 hours of sleep

-Dravor

So this past weekend we took a trip to Rhode Island to attend Uncle Ed’s memorial service.  The trip up was quite eventfull.  After picking up Cousin Chris in DC, we somehow ended up in Southeast, note, I was not driving :)  We then in our infinite wisdom decided to go through the city at 5pm instead of get on the beltway.  I’m still not sure who decided that.

The rest of the trip went fairly smooth with the exception of waiting for 2 hours to cross the GW bridge from NJ into NY.  There’s nothing like seeing 3 lanes on a bridge merge to 1, and having a SEMI and a Big Bus on each side of you, just 1″ from your mirror.  Needless to say I had to stop, because they did not seem to care about smooshing a van in between.  The semi driver though, had the balls to pull to the left, before coming back to the middle, just so he wouldn’t bust my mirror off.  So… he knew I was there, but decided to still get in front of me anywhere. 

This was about an hour after I was cutoff, in front of a toll both, by a Semi with a trailer.  Now one would think only a driver for a small company would do such a thing…. Nope, it was a UPS truck, license plate 0816626, we couldn’t see the state, appeared to be a redish plate.  The number of the cab of the truck was 268530, so if you seech him, tell him to watch his cutting off drivers in front of toll booths.

We finally arrived at the hotel in Connecticut at 3:45am, after having left at 4:15PM.  Luckily the kids were asleep in our hotel room at 4:30, in time for us to get 4 hours of sleep to then drive to Rhode Island.

All in all, the drive was worth the site of that Lighthouse in RI, and for the ceremony.  It has to be one of the most beautiful spots I’ve seen in the country, and defintiely rivals anything I ever saw on Cape Cod.  It’s so peaceful, and alive, I could spend hours just sitting there and staring at the ocean, and the sea gulls.  We followed up the day with my first time ever eating lobster.  While I still prefer crab any day of the week, it wasn’t bad at all. 

The trip back wasn’t too bad, with the exception of traffic by the Giants/Jets game, and bad traffic on 495 from the Skins game.  I’m just so tired of driving…… I need several naps and a vacation

I’m so psyched, September 24th, Verizon will be stopping by to install my 30Mb down,5Mb up FIOS Internet service, as well as FIOS TV.  It’s exciting to finally get a much better connection than what Comcast provides, and to have much better quality TV service.

 I’m currently working on getting Caleb’s room networked via some Cat 6 cabling, in order to get a desktop running for Caleb so that he can enjoy his favorite web sites, as well as Music/Recorded TV shows/Movies through Vista Media Center.  If anyone ever questions how fast these kids learn, at 3 1/2 Caleb was able to Open Media Center, Browse to the DVD collection, and watch what he wanted to watch.

 Now that is slick

 If you have question on how to setup Vista Media Center throughout the whole house, drop me a line!

So today I got to take several tests, one of them being an Ink Blot test.  You are shown a card and you tell the interviewer what you see.  I think at that point, I realized how un-imaginative I am when it comes to things like art, web design, drawing, etc.  I think it was one of the hardest things to do, to just look at the pictures and try to imagine what it could be.  Afterwards you have to review it, which makes you really second guess yourself

 

 

Well OBX rocks!  We got here at noon on Saturday hoping the house would be ready.  Of course it wasn’t ready until 3:45pm.  So we lowered the air pressure on the Jeeps, and went riding on the beach.  What total excitement, and inner happiness, peace, harmony all in one.  Driving just feet away from the ocean….. at first I swear I was scared doing 15mph, but after a couple days I’m now doing 30mph!

 The first day we just spent unpacking, getting food and drinks, etc.  Caleb woke up the entire house at 7am on Sunday morning with his proclamation… “LOOK, IT’S LIGHT OUTSIDE.  WE CAN GOTO THE BEACH!!!”  Not more than an hour later we were at the beach.  Even better though, and hence the title of this post, we woke up to see 2 wild horses in our back yard.  Literally feet away, and just hanging out.

After a full day at the beach it started getting dark, Robyn and I decided to take Alec, and head south to the Walmart, and avoid the storm.  It looked totally fine in the south.  Of course after 8 miles back on the beach, and 10 miles on paved road, I got to pull into a gas station because it was pouring.  We had the top up, but not front doors, side or back windows on, or with us, whoops

It stopped not long after and we made it to walmart after hitting a few more showers, Alec heldup really well.  On the way back though, Robyn broke out the Southern Living At Home umbrella I got from my visit to Birmingham, and opened it up over Alec in the back seat.  Everyone else who saw us must of though us fools.  Driving in the rain with no doors or windows, but yet having an Umbrella up on the inside :)  The beach ride back was fun at 20-30mph in wet sand

While grilling dinner under the house, it’s open will show pics, in the dark I then got a visit from a wild horse.  It almost decided to come under the house with me.  But then it headed the other way, but I did get some video which I’ll upload at some point.

We’ve spent a lot of money, but it’s all worth it.  To see Robyn and the kids happy, and see myself totally relaxed, no stress from work, I’m a totally different person.

 Oh also, today, boogy boarding, I rode waves twice, at least 30-35 feet right unto shore :)  Good waves with High Tide and all

 

 

Well, we made it here.  We got to OBX at about 12:00 noon today.  The house wasn’t ready until 4PM though so we did a lot of waiting in the car.  But around 4pm it was time, we lowered the air pressure in the Jeep, and drove 8 miles down the beach in the newly lifted Jeep of ours :)  About 2 miles into the drive, Robyn and I actually opened the flip back sun rider top that covers just the front passengers.  This let her stand up and get some video.  Pics will follow shortly, but video’s will probably have to wait.

 Seems like Corova doesn’t have much for wifi access.  I’m on right now with a Bluetooth connection to my cell phone

 Williamsburg was fun, we got there around 2PM on Thursday, and checked into our Hotel at 3PM.  Sadly Robyn felt horribly and I felt it was best to stay in and let her rest while I tried to keep the kids occupied.  We did have dinner at Ruby Tuesdays <Hey, it’s hard to find a place a sick woman will want to eat at>.  Sadly Robyn barely ate and still didn’t feel better.

Friday got better, but I was in a cranky mood after Caleb haven driven me crazy.  We did later in the day drop $50 in tickets at the Go Kart Plus center.  Caleb and I drove together in GoKarts on their Figure Eight track and the Euro track.  On the Euro track it was the two of us in one car, and a 12 maybe 13 year old boy and his younger sister in another car.  He learned quickly not to take the corners too wide as I got in front of him :)  When it came time to lap them though, he cut me off quick and I rammed into the back of them, on accident :)  Luckily we didn’t get thrown out.  Robyn follwed us up with her own GoKart ride with Caleb while I snapped pics and took video.

They had this really cool pool with bumper boats too where you could also shoot water at other bumper boats.  Caleb love it, with the exception thathe couldn’t drive the boat.  We even managed to soak Alec who was sitting with Mommy outside of the pool area.  We also got to watch as Momma kicked daddy’s ass once again in Putt Putt Golf.  I truly suck at Putt Putt Golf, lost by 5 shots, sigh.  Caleb as always did very well.

We went to one of my favorite restaurants in that area, 2nd street.  I should of gotten directions as we drove around for nearly 2 hours getting lost, even more lost, and then the Ultimate Lost.  We did manage to find a cool Patrol Road that sounds like it used to be used by the military, a couple of big lakes/resevoirs, and a close hand look/inspection of the gate of the local Naval Weapons Station.   The civil’s who now guard it were not very happy to see me lol

We eventually got to 2nd Street and enjoyed a great dinner.  At one point I went to clean up after Alec who decided to feed the imaginary dog on the floor.  I hear someone yell “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”  It was out waitress who couldn’t believe I was cleaning up Alec’s mess.  “Your on vacation, you shouldn’t be cleaning up”.  I guess she got a kick telling her friends that a customer of hers cleaned up after his son’s mess, and then left her a 33% tip lol.  (Robyn’s fault, I was gonna leave $13 which was 20% and Robyn said give her 20, so I figured $20)

So we got home, got the kids to bed, went to sleep, got up at 7am and headed toward OBX where we are now.

Water is warm, food is good, horse poop everywhere so we are looking for the Wild Horses.

 

More to come!

As some of you may know last month Sunrocket VOIP bit the dust, and I still had another 10 months of service left.  So what to do….

 

So I finally found a post allowing me to unlock my Linksys Voip Gizmo that SunRocket locked so nicely before going under.  This hack allowed me to make the changes outline here:

http://voipcalls4free.blogspot.com/2007/08/sunrocket-replacement-gizmo-project.html

 

Essentially, you sign up your gizmo with Gizmo Project where they give you a 747 area code number.  But you have to pay to have real phone’s call you.  That is where GrandCentral.Com, now owned by Google comes in.  Grand Central allows you to pick a local number, then add in all of your phone numbers, cell phones, home phones, gizmo numbers.  Then you decide to which phone your Grand Central number should ring.

 So essentially I now have free incoming calls until one of the two services goes down at no cost.  Grand Central also allows you to log into their site, and do a Click 2 Call.  Essentially, you pick the number you want to call, and the number you want to call from.  Grand Central calls both you and the recipient, and then connects the two of you.  This then allows me to get free outgoing calls as well

 

So… Robyn took Alec to go shopping and left Caleb and myself behind. I had offered to go outside and play catch after working on the Jeep. So we go outside and I throw to him so he can bat. He proceeds to launch 2-3 balls all into the neighbors yard, which is fenced off.

So we move on to playing football catch. After about ten minutes he declares

Caleb “Dad, I’ve had enough I am going inside”

Me “But Caleb, I really wanna play catch with you”

Caleb “Go ahead daddy, you can play catch with yourself, I wanna go inside”

Heh….

 

Then we were at Walmart, all four of us, walking through the women’s section. I was holding Alec, and politely pointed at the bra’s and told him, “Look Alec, there are the milk containers!”

For once Robyn actually thought I was funny