DrahuszI have been in the IT profession over 27 years. Most of my experience was providing Workstation / Desktop support for several clients.
Today my daughter learned about Earth Day at preschool. All week she was learning about recycling, water conservation, turning out lights when you leave a room. We have been recycling for years and my children are pretty good with separating recycles from trash.
I might consider riding my bicycle to work once a week too.
Happy Earth Day!
Today the Steelers announced their 2010 schedule. I am looking forward to the new football season. I posted their schedule on my blog, and can’t wait for the 2010 football season to begin.
This morning I was reading some articles at Neowin and came across Google is way bigger than you realize by Benjamin Rubenstein. It was interesting to see a virtual representation showing the approximate number of dedicated servers from major tech companies. But that’s not why I am writing this post. I started to read the comments of others and found a link on YouTube which I found humorous.
Today was very busy for our family. I started doing laundry in the morning while the kids got ready to go out. Michelle started our taxes and was planning on working them most of the day. After lunch the kids and I went to Home Depot. We purchased 4 bags of topsoil weighing in at 40lbs per bag, one 15,000 square foot bag of Scotts Turf Builder with Plus 2 Weed Control, and some Marigolds that our daughter liked.
I was able to start the edger and trimmer with little problems, and the mower started on one pull. I usually do the seasonal maintenance on my yard equipment so it continues to work well. After getting all the yard work done (flowers will be planted tomorrow), I grilled hotdogs and zucchini with a little spice.
I took my son out to a local school that has several grassy hills varying in degrees to learn how to ride his bike without training wheels. Within 20 minutes he got it down and was able to make it to the soccer field. After an hour we headed back to the parking lot. He was able to ride his bike almost to the car before he fell. I’m very proud of him. He didn’t get discouraged and wanted to keep trying until the sun went down.
Tomorrow we are riding bikes with the Cub Scouts at a local park to earn the bicycle belt loop. Hopefully I will be able to get my car washed. Maybe I’ll grill up some chicken or burgers.
On March 30th it was announced on Phandroid that Motorola and Verizonwireless would be pushing out an OS update from the Motorola Droid, bring the OS from 2.0.1 to 2.1. I had the option to wait for the OTA (Over the Air) update or download the update and manually update the OS. I chose to wait for the update.
I read there are around 2 million Droid phones in the market and the update would be issued randomly. I figured I was not going to see the update until April 10th at the earliest. Yesterday around 10:45AM I was prompted to install the OTA update for my Droid.
The upgrade process completed within 7 minutes. I am amazed how fast the phone responds with this update, even though a small number of users stated the phone seem to run slower. I rebooted the phone and clock boot up at 40 seconds, a improvement from about 1 minute on my phone.
What’s included with the update:
I liked some of the Live Wallpaper but I think I will keep my picture of the Enterprise from the Star Trek movie for now. Most of the sounds I am using are Star Trek based. The pinch-to-zoom works very well in the native browser and the Gallery. For me it was already working in Google Maps before. I removed Dolphin Browser from my Home screen, but plan on keeping it installed if I ever need it again.
The new Gallery application is a huge upgrade. When it starts, you see all the different groups of pictures as messy stacks of photos. You can see other stacks by swiping your finger across the screen. If you tile the screen left and right, the the stacks will tilt a little too. Opening stack of photos will display them all side by side or you can restack them with a tap in the upper right hand corner of the screen.
I tried the voice to text feature and it was OK. I think I need to train the phone to recognized my voice. If I can get that to work, then I can dump the keyboard for all of my text messages.
I have not had the chance to try the other features with the new update such as improves pattern lock or the new weather and news apps. I keep forgetting to bring my Bluetooth headset to see if I can voice dial without using the screen.
For the past three weeks, my wife and I decided how we were going to update our bedroom from the 1970’s look from the previous owner. The room and closets were cover in what I guess was a popular design wallpaper. I will admit they did a great job installing the wallpaper and made sure the pattern matched throughout the entire room. I didn’t realize what I was in store for when I started.
I had a preconceived idea what I should have expected. I rented a steamer from Home Depot last year to remove wallpaper from the dining room and my son’s room. The steamer worked well and I still had all my tools from before.
Saturday morning I stopped in at Home Depot to rent the steamer. They had the one I used before but the customer service rep gave me a different unit. I asked why this one over the other that I used before. He stated everyone liked this red one better. It generated steam faster and it was lighter. But I noticed one thing right away, this red model does not have a base you can stand on. Reluctantly I took the one he offered and headed home.
After getting the room cleared out, I over filled filled the steamer with water and press the power button. I guess the time it took was faster. So I started on scoring the walls to allow the steam to help dissolve the glue. All of a sudden I heard my wife to get a bucket, the steamer started to leak water from the nozzle. This is due to me over filling the tank.
After cleaning up the water spill I was able to get started. Within 15 minutes I realized this streamer was a piece of junk. It generated steam, got real hot and burned my hand a few times when water or steam leaked, but it was hardly making a dent with the wallpaper. I had to keep the hand unit on the wall longer than I wanted. Even with this the glue was difficult to dissolve and pull the paper away.
I worked for 10 hours and finished the room and still had 2 closets to work on. The steamer was scheduled to be returned Easter Sunday by 9:00AM (that wasn’t going to happen). The next day the kids got us by around 6:30AM to have an egg hunt and dive into their Easter Baskets. We managed to get everyone to Church and got a good seat with 5 minutes to spare.
By the time Church ended, it was already 9:15AM. So I kept the steamer to finish the closets. How bad could it be? They are much smaller than the room, I should be able to knock this out within 2 hours and clean up well before dinner.
Well I was in for another surprise. The previous owner doubled up on the wallpaper in both closets to have the pattern just right. Huh?!?!?! I took four hours to finish. I was not too happy and was hoping the Customer Service Rep was working on Sunday.
Cleanup went well and I was out the door within 30 minutes. I got my wish, there was the Rep who told me how great this red piece of junk was. We spoke and he asked how was it? I told him all the problems I had. I explained this unit generates steam, but I just sits in the hand unit, it doesn’t direct the steam onto the wallpaper. He checked it out and said it was missing the metal bar which sits in the rectangle unit and connects to the nozzle. Without even asking, he offered me a refund for the second day.
Mean while my wife started to paint the walls with a tinted primer. Hopefully the painting will go a lot easier for her. We are going to order blinds tonight and remove the carpet this week. We have hardwood floors throughout the house. I know they need to be refinished, but I hope they are in decent shape. We are also looking for a new light fixture, maybe something in a brush nickel.
Oh, Happy Easter.
About a week ago I purchase my new Motorola Droid running the Android OS 2.01. The phone came with a two prong wall outlet which allows you to connect the short USB cable to the phone for charging, and a 16GB microSD card. I am disappointed I didn’t receive an owner’s manual, but I was able to download one easily enough. I’ll try to remember to post it on Box.net plug-in on the right.
I went through the standard phone activation with the Verizonwireless rep. I made a few test calls to verify the phone was working, now I needed to connect to my Gmail account.
Setting up Gmail was easy. All my contacts from Gmail were downloaded to my phone, and that’s when I realized my contacts in Thunderbird didn’t match what I had in my contacts list on Gmail. Using my Droid, I modified a few settings, but this was a little slow. I need more practice with the keyboard. Using a PC I modified my contacts to include birthdays, multiple phone numbers, home / work addresses, multiple e-mails, and pictures. Within a few minutes, all the information was downloaded to my Droid.
Setting up Facebook and Twitter was pretty simple too. I can check the post from my friends, post updates (I did several of them this weekend) and upload photos. I normally don’t text too much, but the Messaging app makes it easy to read and track a conversation.
I was amazed of the number of apps in the Market place. Several of my friends gave me a few “must have” apps. I’ve installed so far:
This is the coolest phone I’ve ever had. I bought a holster at the Verizonwireless store last week, and plan on getting an adapter for my I-Go car charger.
A few days ago I purchased a Motorola Droid from amazonwireless.com. I’ve been loyal Verizonwireless customer for about 10 years. I like their service, it is rare that I drop a call, Customer Service always assisted whenever I called, and the local store is OK.
I’m writing this post using my Droid and the free WordPress app I installed. Typing is a little tricky for me’ and I find my typing skills are slow. Practice makes perfect.
The Droid is the coolest and best phone I’ve ever had. Battery life is not that great, but I blame it on me exploring the phone. I also bought a holster from the local Verizonwireless store.
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Drahusz 