Tag: Personal

Returning to the blog

So I’ve been busy learning how to use Apple Motion 5 on my iMac and making videos for my son’s Boy Scout Troop, my daughter’s Girl Scout Troop, family videos, and goofy videos for friends. Some are publicly published on my YouTube channel.

This summer was my first return to Boy Scout summer camp in 30 years! Growing up in the Pittsburgh area, I spent many years at Camp Conestoga at Somerset, PA. Living in Delaware, my son attended summer camp at Camp Rodney in North East, MD. I spent my mornings at the rifle range helping with supervision, and the afternoons completing my training for Introduction to Outdoor Leader Skills. I’m looking forward to returning to camp again.

This is my second year belonging to a bowling league. Out team is called the Eccentric Raccoons and we hired someone to design a logo for our shirts. We are a three person team, but our Team Captain quit, which is causing us to lose points (but I’m suppose to have fun and not worry about winning and being upset losing the game.)

I also took an extended vacation this summer. Three days at Janes Island and then drove to Nags Head, NC for a week of relaxation with my family. Although the black flies and greenheads we out in force and it was humid, the trip was worth it. I turned off the work email on my phone and iPad and enjoyed the beach, some tours, wave runners, and bike rides. Hopefully I’ll be back next summer.

Dougherty Creek at Janes Island

Tags Bike Riding, Bowling, Boy Scouts, iPad, iPhone, Personal

Geek Stuff Home PC Personal

Fading Fix for HP Color LaserJet 2605

Post author By George
Post date November 10, 2013
1 Comment on Fading Fix for HP Color LaserJet 2605

HP Color Laserjet 2605

Over the last 2 months or so, I’ve noticed my color print outs did look as good as they use to. For example, I was working on a new idea for Cub Scouts, designing a new pit pass for the scouts to wear for Pinewood Derby in Spring 2014. The pass included a red, blue and yellow car, but the colors were off. The red car car looked yellow-orange with yellow flames.

So I ran the color calibration from the printer, and afterwards, the pit pass looked the same. I prided the supplies status page to verified there is toner, but it looks faded. So I stared searching for a reason why this was happening, and I came across the following page.

HP Colour LaserJet Fading Fix

The problem is the mirrors in the optical box on the HP Color LaserJet 2605, the box is not sealed. The mirror for the magenta cartridge collects a lot of dust. This dust keeps the laser from reflecting off the mirror correctly, and preventing toner from being picked up and placed on the paper.

The process took me about 2 hours 45 minutes to complete, but it was well worth it. My printer works great. Except for this one issue, the output is fantastic. Also, I didn’t have to spend $300 plus on a new printer. Below are pictures of the status supply pages.

Supply Status Page before cleaning mirrors.

Supply Status Page after cleaning mirrors.

Tags Geek Stuff, Home PC, Personal

iPad Personal

Trek’n Kind of Weekend

Today I purchased the Star Trek Into Darkness movie bundle from iTunes. I’m looking forward to watching the movie this weekend.

Download at maximum speed. Movie on screen, Captain.

Tags iPad, Personal, Star Trek

Bike Riding Exercise Personal

Fitbit Flex

Over the years I’ve tried to spend some time exercising. Usually riding my bike (bought a bike trainer for Christmas 2012 for the winter), walking or hiking. Although I’ve had some success with weight loss or maintaining my weight, I’ve been wanting to lose some more weight. Exercise is a great way to accomplish this, but I never seem to get anywhere. I need to track my calories, and being a gadget guy, I bought a FitBit Flex on August 1st.

What do I like about the Fitbit Flex? It’s easy to use. Install the app on your Mac or PC, connect the Bluetooth Sync Dongle, and setup your online account and set some goals. Then download the app for your mobile device, and start walking, jogging, or running. Fitbit Flex will track your steps, distance traveled, calories burned, active minuets, hours slept, and quality of sleep. You will need Bluetooth 4.0 in your mobile device to sync directly to the Fitbit app.

There are a list of other apps that work with FitBit including my favorite, MyFitnessPal. You can also set goals, earn badges, and workout with friends.

With the wrist band, the device is water resistant, not water proof. You can leave it on while washing your hands to taking a shower, but you shouldn’t swim with it. Fitbit Flex is light weight, and I don’t pay much attention to it. I’ll check my progress through out the day by double tapping on the face. Flashing dots appear to show me how far I am to reaching my goal. Once I hit my goal, the device buzzes like a phone on silent and flashes lights on the front. I have to admit, it is a good feeling knowing i hit my goal for the day.

With MyFitnessPal and Runtastic, I can track my calories burned and try to keep under my allocated calories for the day.

I’ve lost some weight within the last three weeks. I’m learning to eat smarter by watching my caloric intake and understanding I can have a snack once in a while, but it may cost me later for dinner, or maybe longer periods of exercise. I know it’s common sense, but sometimes you have to go back and retrain yourself on making better choices.

Tags Bike Riding, Exercise, Personal

American Holidays Personal

Happy Labor Day 2012

Happy Labor Day my fellow Americans!

I’ve made it another year staying employed as an IT consultant. The last year was very productive for me. My project for migrating the client I’m assigned to from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Office is almost complete. We migrated everyone from BlackBerry to iPhone 4S for Exchange server connection (including iPads), and shortly we will be migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7.

Tonight I’ll be feating on slow cooked ribs, grilled corn on the cob when the rain stops (thanks remnants Hurricane Isaac). I might tape off a small section of my office to complete the accent stripe for the office walls, and maybe read a book tonight.

Tags American Holidays, Personal

Home PC linux Personal

Goodbye Dell Dimension 8200

Post author By George
Post date August 25, 2012
No Comments on Goodbye Dell Dimension 8200

I would like to take a moment to say goodbye to my Dell Dimension 8200 system. 😦 I’ve slayed many monsters and demons on the Diablo series, and fragged many friends playing the Quake series, and destroying the the AI players in HOMM3 (plus actual work stuff).

When it’s time to decommission your home PC, think about the following:

Do you have a current backup?

Your first answer should be, “Let me double check.” There are a lot of options available such as; portable USB hard drive, DVD, CD, NAS, and cloud storage. I use a portable USB hard drive on my main computer, cloud storage to keep data synced between devices, and DVDs for long term storage.

Do you really need to recycle that PC?

Sometimes you can format the hard drive, reinstall the OS and start with a “factory build” image (make sure you have all your serial numbers and installation media or programs). You could also install Linux which requires far less system resources. My Dell 8200 ran Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and TurnKey Linux over the last few years.
Check with family and friends or nonprofits in your area. Some nonprofits will supply a tax receipt for your donation. Take the time during the hard drive wipe to double check the federal tax laws, and be honest when it comes to the value of your PC.

Wipe the hard drive!

Besides finding websites that will install malicious software to kill your PC, you can download free hard drive wipe programs, purchase wipe programs on-line or at a retail store, or use a bootable Linux OS from a USB or CD to wipe the drives. The wipe process will take hours to complete. My PC took 6 hours to complete.
Over the last 10+ years, many of the companies I worked for required the hard drive be physically destroyed in addition to wiping. Some might call this excessive, I call it standard procedure. You need to remember, that hard drive once stored every bit of information about you.
About a year ago I purchased a new paper shredder which can shred credit cards, CDs, and DVDs. I’ll go on record stating how much fun it is shredding DVDs.

Now that your ready, take the PC, glass tube monitor, and other accessories to the recycle event in your community. My community holds regular events for disposal of electronics, household hazardous waste, and other recycling programs.

Tags Dell, Home PC, Linux, Personal

Dropbox Home PC iPad LogMeIn Personal Skype Video

My New iPad

Apple iPad 3

After 2 years of shopping around for tablets, I finally purchased an iPad 3 aka The New iPad.

I was going to mention what took me so long to purchase the iPad, but it is a boring story about saving money, looking at tablets at least once a month, reading blogs about with everyone’s opinion, and just waiting for the tablet that had all the right features. For a few months, I thought the Asus Transformer 201 was the right device. Nvidia quad core processor, Ice-cream sandwich for the OS, and the optional keyboard to “transform” into a netbook.

But when I compared the iPad 3 to the Transformer 201, I felt the iPad was a better tablet. Yes, the iPad was more expensive, but over the last year I was becoming more use to the IOS interface, providing support for iPhones and iPads at work, and I really like my iPod. I have also noticed when I need to check my personal email away from home, or look at the calendar, I usually went to the iPod over my Android phone. Plus my Android phone needs to be replaced. Too many lock ups with apps, and I have to reboot it once a day.

I love my new iPad! I have used it every day for the last week for work and home. I take it to work and use Evernote to take notes of computers that I’m working on, use AIM app to keep in touch with colleagues and friends, listen to music, and attend web meetings with AT&T Connect. Plus several customers at work have made suggestions on apps and other accessories. I purchased a case at Amazon.com called the Bear Motion, in black. The case props up the iPad at a good angle for typing (writing this post on the iPad now), and for video calls using FaceTime.

I don’t have any major issues or complaints about the iPad. I do want to find a good office suite for the iPad, and it would be nice if Microsoft would realse a version of Office for the iPad. I know Pages, Numbers, and Keynote are available. I had several colleagues recommend Documents To Go as an option. However, after all these years of trying different office suites, nothing compares to Microsoft Office. It is a standard, and I’m familiar with the programs.

I would recommend the iPad to anyone, but i also tell people to look at all the options. They might like an Android or Windows tablet over the iPad. Maybe picking up the iPad 2 would be a better option for someone instead.

Now, let’s see if I can figure out how to upload a few screenshots I made last week using the WordPress app.

Lock screen for my iPad. Feels like a Star Trek Univerise

Tags Dropbox, Home PC, iPad, LogMeIn, Personal, Skype, Video

Linux Stuff LinuxMint Personal Ubuntu VirtualBox Windows 7 Windows Stuff Windows Vista Windows XP Work

Moving On to a New Job

New Job creative sign with clouds as the background

Today is my last day with my current employer and working for a fantastic client here in Delaware. I made a lot of new friends in IT and on the production floor. Some of them I will stay in contact with on Facebook or Google Chat, others I will see in the area. But now it’s time for me to move on, to take care of my family’s needs. Sadly the new job will not include Linux work, but there are high profile projects which are scheduled to begin shortly after my start date.

NPT_Office — My notebook running Linux Mint 11 and my fart bank

During my two year stay, I really appreciate the client giving me a wide latitude to develop my Linux skills. When I first arrived in 2009, my cube was filled with twelve PCs all running Windows XP or Vista. Shortly afterwards I installed Ubuntu 9.04 to learn how to use Linux in a production environment. Soon, I was running two Linux boxes; one as a personal file server with Samba and NFS, the other as a VM host for multiple Windows XP machines in multiple non-trusting domains.

By the time I left, I had four Linux PCs (one as a Linux Mint 11 notebook with a Windows 7 x64 VM, my original Ubuntu file server, a new Ubuntu 11.04 x64 file server with an external RAID 5 1.3TB disk box running Samba and NFS, plus a Linux Mint 11 PC running a Windows XP VM in the other domain for Active Directory support). I’ve also deployed Ubuntu 11.04 to my manager’s Dell M4500 notebook, Linux Mint 11 to a colleagues’ notebook, and started training another colleague, on using Ubuntu 11.04 with NFS and Samba.

I also had the chance to deploy RHEL 6 workstation as a host with a disk box for off-site archive, and a introduction to ESX for creating new Windows Server VMs.

I wish all the best to previous employer, my manager, my colleagues (local and other sites through out the U.S.), and to all the people I supported at the Delaware locations. I will miss working with you, and hope to see you soon!

Tags Linux Mint, Personal, Ubuntu, VirtualBox, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Work