Keepin' y'all up to date

So, I know, it's been a while... seems to be my opening line on this thing for way too long.

Anyhoo... what's been up?

Several...

 

I've added another 'title' to my ever growing list on my resume.  I'm now on the occasional list for the Lakehead Adult Education Centre.  Which is cool, as I think my days at Scholars are done... haven't had a call in forever.  I think they've written me off.  Oh, well.  So we'll see if this could be a good thing or not.  I mean I do need to keep my 5 days in order to keep my name on the list.

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What else... band is getting more and more demoralizing.  Less and less commitment coming from the members, and to top it off my work is starting to ask me to attend things on Thursdays, so it looks even worse when I'm not there.  There hasn't been any real 'netting' from the recruitment drives.  That's kinda died off as a whole venture as well.  *sigh*

The jackets are ready for ordering -- maybe that'll help.  That and the appreciation night coming up.

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Work is getting cool.  Did the first trip to the region -- Pic River.  There was a career fair that I was asked to attend.  It was good.  Very cute as grade 1s came around and some 'interviewed' us.  Dave came with me and he did his LU stuff... made for a good trip.  Except for the speeding ticket in Marathon.  Oh, well... I was speeding, can't fault the officer for that.  And the chinese food was good.  Met a couple of the employers, we'll see if anything comes of it.

Outside of that, my 'future' there is starting to take a little better form.  I'm becoming a bit of a celebrity - they sent a camera crew up to do a 'day in the life of' kind of shooting for a video that'll be shown at the conference at the end of the month, and one of the employers I nominated won an award, and so they sent up another film crew to make a video for their award ceremony, and the employer wanted me to be a part of it.  So I'm getting to see these free-lance film producers.

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Ben had his 1st birthday over at Gammondale's farm, so Dean and I had a chance to go and hang together there.  I tempted fate and didn't take any allergy medication and I'm still paying for it.  Guess I am allergic to horses.

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For an April fools joke, mother nature has decided to bless us with more snow.  We were having amazing days lately.  I almost ditched all winter apparel.  But here and there it would snow... we had some really bad ice days (when I went to Marathon and passed by Schreiber all their hydro poles were iced over.  Awesome-- deadly, knowing they lost power for almost 2 days --but awesome).  So it was warm weather the past few days, and then last night it started to snow a little.  I woke up to barely being able to open the door.  It was apparently a single day dumping record since 96 or something.   Anyways, I knew it was worth getting the snow blower out for.  Got it started all by myself and my lovely wife decided to put up photos.  Over an hour of blowing to get the path free, and then the car was still stuck getting out of the driveway.  I'm sooo stiff right now... I could use a bath.  Made for a long day at work.

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Dean survived his first real 'injury'.  He apparently fell today and Mandy took him to the hospital.  He's fine, just bleeding a little.  He's got some scrapes and a heck of a bruise... but chicks'll dig it.  :)  On the topic of chicks... he had his first real hurt from a girl.  "Bully-anna" is going through her 'mine' phase and as such when Dean wanted to play with her toys, she subsequently pushed him, which he didn't take too well.  Get used to it boy!

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Don't know what else to say right now... enjoy some of the pics; check out www.saveourcbc.ca; watch the band at Folklore Festival... oh, that's right.  Speaking of band... been doing a great amount of piping gigs lately.  Did a funeral in Grand Marais for some easy US coin, did a SIMPLE gig at Naxo's for a bday party and heading out this weekend for a wedding in Coleraine (well, Grand Rapids really).  Wish it meant that I was rolling in the bank, but it's not.

 

Since we're on the topic of 'bank' I do have some $ coming in slightly... so I could splurge.  I haven't in a while.  Bell was offering the Palm Treo Pro for only $50 for slightly less a month than what Rogers is charging me.  Almost did it... but I'd hate to sink into the Pro for 3 years with the Pre coming out shortly... sure maybe a year or 2... but then I wouldn't be able to get it until my contract was up.  Hrmm... decisions decisions.  Back to scouring ebay maybe.

Win one for me!!

Yay, trouble with the phone is over... I guess.

 

For those who aren't here, I bought another phone off of eBay to use for work.  This time a Treo 650.  Amazing actually, for dirt cheap it came with the gps unit, all the car accessories, bt headset and a VERY good shape phone.  Only snag was that it was previously setup on Telus.  I figured since it was also a CDMA phone, that it should be no problem to hook up onto TBayTel.  I figured wrong.  Telus swore up and down that it would NOT work seeing as they have the lock on the ESN of the phone.  Took several phone calls for me to finally realize that it was a dead end.  They weren't giving up the leash on that phone.

 

So I explored options of porting my number to Telus... but I'm always hesitant... Telus isn't that big here.  But it seemed good as it used both Rogers' roaming capability and TBayTel's towers... so it seemed the best of both worlds, however the price was alot more (and Telus said if I had a PDA I would HAVE to have a digital plan or the phone wouldn't work).

 

So I almost switched... then I thought I'd give trying to crack the phone one more chance (earlier google searches led to nothing), and I was reluctant to as the last phone I did something like that to I ended up bricking the thing.  So I cautiously did some more research and thought I'd try something, and within seconds I had the MSL for the phone.  SWEET.  I couldn't believe it was that easy.  [i'll talk about what i did below]

 

Next phase was to see if TBayTel would accept it on the line.  So I went to the store, said "hook this up on the plan" and they looked at me curiously, but when I said here's the MSL code, they went straight to the back.  Ran into an old friend there who works for the company and said "they should have no problem doing this... it'll even better when they switch to GSM" (tuck that little bit of info away for later).  Anyhow, they came back in a few saying the code wasn't working (which it was.. I tried it earlier) and to which I had to point out that they use a #*# coding instead of ##.  2 minutes more and it was working!!  Score one for me.  I have a sweet Palm Phone now... now just if it'll tide me over until either the Pro or Pre come to Rogers.

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So here's what I did.  I went to the palm site and found the FIRMWARE update for Sprint for the 650.

I ran the program up until it says "Sync phone" at which point I pause and check out the "Install" folder of the phone and found the file:

CDMA Updater.prc

I copied that file somewhere else handy, and delete the rest.  Then go back and cancel the installation.

Put the Updater file on the SD card and load it onto the palm.  Run the updater, but from the Debug menu I click everything off except "Backup NV" (or something like that).  Then run the update.  Essentially it's just making a backup of the ROM.

Once that's over with search around in the ROM (use RESCO EXPLORER... GREAT program) and find the file CDMA BACKUP and use a hex editor to view it.

Search around for any 6 digit number and one of them should be the MSL.  I found a bunch and tried them all.

To test, go to the phone and punch in #*#MSL_NUMBER#

If it's the right number you then get a new screen showing the phone number and the ESN.  Sweet.

Good luck to anybody else if you want to try.

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Forgot the best part!

Forgot the best ending for the long weekend: my chocolate chip cookie dip... mmmm. Nothing says relaxing weekend like eating sweet dip and cookies late at night.

Here's the recipe:

• 1/2 cup butter
  
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
  
• 1 tsp vanilla
  
• 1 pkg cream cheese
  
• 1/2 cup icing (confectioner's) sugar
  
• chocolate chips (or nuts, etc...)

1. Melt the butter and brown sugar together, stirring until it just about boils... do it slowly
   
2. While it's melting beat together the icing sugar and cream cheese for a few minutes
   
3. take the butter and brown sugar off the heat when done and whisk in the vanilla
   
4. pour this over the cream cheese and icing sugar
   
5. continue to beat the mixture together and add in as much chocolate chips as you think necessary
   
6. Let it chill in the fridge to firm up.

it's oooh so good.  Take it out for a few minutes to get it to a nice consistency and use those cookie wafers...

mmm... so sweet tho'

Family Day Long Weekend at the Moore's house

So, after surviving the many birthdays week (Dean's, Margaret's, Mandy's, Greg's... sheesh these Knauffs and February... what happens in May?) we settled down and tried to resume the normal course.  Which was hard as Mandy's now back to work and that means extra shuffling about to get Dean to the various 'daycare' centres (i.e. grand parents homes).

 

 

Well a week or so of that and it was time for the first long weekend since Mandy's been back to work.  A new holiday which has taken on extra meaning for me.  See, last year they brought it in, and it was the first time that we were a real family, so it was really special.  This year was pretty cool too.  Here' s how the weekend went:

 

Friday at work, I spent the day making Mandy a Valentine's day card.  I picked up some popcorn and ... can't remember what else.  I got Mandy's Valentine's gift the other day (funny story on that:  I bought Mandy Raving Rabids 2... I wanted to get 1, but they were out of stock, so I grabbed 2 instead... turns out, that's what Mandy got me... so it worked itself out in the end).

 

Saturday (Valentines) - Mandy had to drive her dad to the airport at 5am, and then works at 7 and I tutor, so I get Dean off to my folks and then when I finish up I do some shopping around (still didn't find anything that made me go 'wow') and then Dean 'n I played at the house for a bit and I got it all cleaned up so Mandy could have a good 'me time' when she got home from work.  Turns out she didn't want to relax, so I ended up sleeping the evening away.  [so I used part of my wife's gift for Valentine's Day].

 

Sunday - Mandy worked again in the am, and I went to church with the li'l guy.  When we got home we cleaned up some more, so that this time Mandy could take her nap.  It wasn't the intention at first, but then she did nap and was out for a few hours.  When she woke up it was like 3 hours later and I had pancakes ready for her.  We stayed up that night to watch GET SMART.  Not bad... not GREAT either.

 

Monday (Family Day) - we woke up late and enjoyed some breakfast (made by yours truly).  Then Mandy had the idea to make handprints out of that salt-flour-dough stuff.  Turned out not too bad (See the pics).  Though it was hard to put Dean's hands in, and he started to cry, so his aren't nearly 'indented' as ours are.  Mandy had to go to work, and then I started on my first ever pot roast.  Not too bad I must say.  However... I missed where it said how much water was needed so I just used how much the onion soup mix needed... luckily I misread the 4L for 4cups... and then the recipe said I only needed 1/2 cup... so I overshot... but not by that much.

 

Dean's in bed now... finally (as much as I've enjoyed my weekend with him... he's been really whiny lately).  Mandy's not home for a few more hours.  Get a few minutes in on the Wii... and then it's the short week for me!  What sucks is that the short weeks feel like the longest ever!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

2 words

 

Fail blog

 

Google it, you'll soo enjoy the results.

...and it goes back

So it was fun while it lasted.

I played with Win7 for a bit o the computer, but I just didn't have the space on the hard drive to work it. Then I went and played with getting it on my laptop.  It took some real playing around to get it ghosted on.  Then there was problems with the touchpad, the vga driver etc... I got it worked out - so if you're trying to get se7en on a netbook, email me and I can help you.

I played around with it for a while, and it was working well.  Then against better judgement (I had read something on the forums against this) I installed messenger.  Hrmm... I tried to boot it into safe mode to uninstall it, but it wouldn't let me.  I couldn't boot into normal mode 'cuz it crashes with msn.

So here I am with XP again.  It works, I know it inside and out... I'll wait to get a hard drive for playing with seven on my desktop.

Lately I don't get along with electronics

So I've been putting a big push on lately to 'digitize' my work.  I've started to use OneNote to assemble items for projects and reports.  Google Docs for collaboration and sharing docs.  Access to track etc... I like to make things efficient.  If possible.

 

One way lately was that the phone I was given was pretty basic.  I'm used to my PDA... and I didn't want to fill up my palm with all work stuff AND my own.  It'd be too bloated.  I should find one just for work... and if it was a phone as well... I've never used a Treo, but I think I'd like to try.

 

So I do what most people like me do when they want something but are too cheap... they eBay.  I found a Treo700w.  And it wasn't a bad price so I get it home and play with it.  Not bad... since there was no Wifi on it, I try getting the BT part to work... no dice... well not easily.  And without a sync cable it's even harder.  Eventually I get it to workable condition.  I go to TBayTel to see if they'll switch the phone over.  Luckily they say they can't without a lock code and I'll need that to do it.  So I go home to find it and in my curiosity I decide to go and play around with the BT update... and as it turns out it bricks the phone.

 

Almost a full hour on the phone with Palm tech support leads me to believe that nobody at Palm understands what people ask.  Palm keeps saying that:

1. we won't replace it
   
2. we don't recommend that you do the upgrades we put on our site
   
3. we won't replace it
   
4. we don't fix phones either
   
5. headquarters doesn't have a 1-800 number
   
6. we won't replace it

After I've said to them that I didn't want it replaced they kept harping on the point that they wouldn't replace it... ugh.  What really gets me is that they said "we don't recommend you do the updates".  I mean... there was nothing on the site saying "don't do this IF"... in fact it was quite the opposite.

Oh, well... hopefully this guy in Ottawa can fix it.  I'd still like to try it out.  Windows Mobile does look kinda neat.

My next foray into something drastic is to try to find a way to get Windows 7 on my laptop.  I've tried it on the computer... and it's wicked... then I screwed something up and had to take it off... but I think I did it in the wrong way and now there's a folder on my one drive I can't get to...

Well digging on the eeePC forums I found a way to 'ghost' the files onto the laptop.  But this time I'm being smart.  I'm ghosting the image of the laptop as a backup... so I can 're-ghost' if I foul things up severely... hopefully.

25 minutes of backing up the old hard drive... 42 to go... so that means in roughly 2 hours I should have se7en on my eeePC.  i'm such a geek about it!