I almost forgot about today’s daily gratitude post. Yesterday’s post had to do with web browsers and I guess today’s mostly has to do with my phone. So, thanks for the following…

Screen protector on my phone. Thanks for helping keep [...]]]> Hello, universe! It’s been a while since I started a post that way.

I almost forgot about today’s daily gratitude post. Yesterday’s post had to do with web browsers and I guess today’s mostly has to do with my phone. So, thanks for the following…

Screen protector on my phone. Thanks for helping keep my screen from getting dirty or scratched. It’s better that those things happen to the screen protector and not the screen, right?

Osfoora for iPhone. It’s probably one of the best Twitter clients I’ve used for the iPhone. I don’t feel like going in depth into that since this isn’t meant to be a review, so that’s all I’ll say.

Google Maps for iPhone – for showing me real time traffic and helping me find places while I’m on the go.

Sigalert – speaking of traffic, this site is great for that too. It’s only for Californians and Arizonans (is that what you call someone from Arizona or is it Arizonian?) though, but still great for checking traffic. They also have a mobile version of the site too, but it’s easier for me just to open Google Maps.

Being able to download apps on iTunes for transferring to my phone later. Very useful when my phone doesn’t have the latest OS installed and I want to make sure I still get the app.

And that concludes my phone appreciation post. I don’t know if I’ll continue with having another theme tomorrow, but it’s been fun doing it this way so far. Well, have a great day, everyone! And I’ll post again tomorrow!

Tabbed browsing – what did I ever do before this? Oh yeah, I used to have multiple browser windows open and taking up room on my taskbar, that’s what. I love my tabs… I used to [...]]]> Going with another theme for today’s daily gratitude post. Five tech related things that I’m thankful for/appreciate are:

Tabbed browsing – what did I ever do before this? Oh yeah, I used to have multiple browser windows open and taking up room on my taskbar, that’s what. I love my tabs… I used to not like them (crazy, right?), but now I can’t browse without them.

Saved sessions and session managers – it’s so nice being able to reopen the tabs I left off with and also having session manager add-ons/extensions that let me save and load specific sessions.

Adblock Plus – I rarely see ads anymore on most sites. There are some sites where I have to allow them or the site won’t work properly and some sites where I’ll allow them if I want to support the site by clicking on ads that interest me, but for the most part I don’t get annoying banners with sound, flashing colors, etc.

NoScript or Google Chrome’s Javascript blocking feature – it really helps keep my browsing sessions safe from possible malicious attacks and I know it’s my own fault if I ever get any malware because I manually have allow sites to load scripts. The only malware I’ve ever really had to deal with in the past few years is any that’s on other people’s computers.

The Gmail Manager extension for Firefox – if Chrome ever gets an extension similar to this, I’m permanently making the switch from Firefox. But right now this is one of the few I can’t live without because I have a ton of Gmail accounts for different purposes – a few personal (1 for family, 1 for friends, 1 for really close friends), internet marketing, junk mail, shopping, gaming, niche websites (I pretty much make a new address for every keyword I target). Gmail manager makes it really easy to switch between accounts.

Okay, so not only were all of those things tech related, but all browser related… and I still have a few more browser related things I can write about, so maybe I’ll continue with this tomorrow… or not, depending on if I still want to write about it by the time I make my post tomorrow. We’ll see!

That line, “Hello, Universe!” reminds me of an iPhone development tutorial I just did a few days ago. I believe this was the tutorial… yeah, that looks like it. I must have had a typo or maybe the code isn’t compatible with the new SDK, but that tutorial ended up not working [...]]]> Hello, Universe!

That line, “Hello, Universe!” reminds me of an iPhone development tutorial I just did a few days ago. I believe this was the tutorial… yeah, that looks like it. I must have had a typo or maybe the code isn’t compatible with the new SDK, but that tutorial ended up not working for me. I’ll write more on that later.

Anyway, here are a few updates on what’s been happening. I started a new 30DC site, but it took a lot longer for Google to even index it than it did for my first site. So I didn’t make my $1 in the challenge this year. The site is now indexed and ranking fairly high, but not high enough to get a lot of traffic, so I need to create more content! The subject line for this post was originally titled, “I need to write more,” but I made some changes to it.

I kind of feel like I’m spreading myself thin when it comes to coming up with new content on my main ranking vehicle because I used a lot of good content on the other publishing platforms. Hopefully I can start churning out more good stuff and ranking higher.

What’s kind of weird is my first site which isn’t ranking well for its main theme keyword is still getting more hits than my new site. Still no conversions from that site yet, but I’ll check my analytics and write new articles targeting the keywords that people use to find my site. I’ll keep plugging away at both sites.

I briefly mentioned this above, but I’m also learning how to make iPhone apps. The book I’m reading is this, but maybe I’ll subscribe to this site for a month or so just to see a few of their videos.

While I’m not new to programming, I am new to Objective-C and using Xcode. It’s a bit different than using Visual Studio, but Xcode is pretty awesome. Even though I am going through and typing each example by hand and leaving a lot of comments in the code, I don’t think I’m actually learning much Obj-C because once I try to do something simple using what I’ve learned so far, I end up having to go back and look up a lot of stuff. What’s nice about taking an actual class is that they give you assignments that help you reinforce what you’re learning. I do like that approach, but sometimes get bored during lectures and just want to start coding.

I started off trying to look for sites to learn from, but most of them are out of date and not really up to speed with tutorials for iPhone 3 SDK. I think what would be even better for me is to have someone locally who could teach me this stuff. I’m a quick learner, but don’t know anyone who would be willing to teach this for free. That’s understandable, so….

If any of you are iPhone developers in the San Diego area and need help putting your iPhone app together and are willing to teach a newbie iPhone programmer, leave a comment! If you can take the time to teach me, I will help you out with any two iPhone projects you need help with – as much help as you need on them for free! It probably won’t be limited to just two projects, but maybe when you need help in general and I can spare the time. I would definitely try to take the time for someone who was willing to take their time to help me learn.

Like I said, hit me up in the comments and maybe we can work something out! Or if you’re a mobile app development company in the San Diego area who wants an intern developer, leave me a comment for that too!

Took a little longer of a break from the game than I thought I would. I’ll explain why in a little bit… well, it was probably explained in an earlier post.

$49,000 +50,000 +51,000 +52,000 +53,000 ——— 255,000 going towards paying off the rest of 11.7 [...]]]> Hello, Universe! Remember me? Yes, I’m still alive!

Took a little longer of a break from the game than I thought I would. I’ll explain why in a little bit… well, it was probably explained in an earlier post.

$49,000
+50,000
+51,000
+52,000
+53,000
———
255,000 going towards paying off the rest of 11.7 acres of land.

Another thing I would like to have in the house I’m planning on building is a detached garage area. One that can not only fit the cars I previously bought, but also the RV, jetskis, ATVs, and every other vehicle I ended up buying. Maybe even build in my own auto shop area where I can hire a team of personal mechanics to do maintenance for me in my own garage. Sure, I took an auto shop class in college, but I’d rather have my car worked on by someone who really knows what they’re doing.

I think a personal auto shop area is a bit much, but then again, so is buying 11.7 acres of land to build a house on. I do want a covered area to park all the vehicles so that they’re not all sitting out in the So. Cal. sun, so it’d be nice to have a huge garage. Something kind of similar to the warehouse of the office I used to work in would be nice, but maybe at least 3x the size of it.

Ooh, I found an old picture I took of the warehouse. It was taken with my old Nokia 3220, so it’s not the best quality pic… I wonder if I have any pics from my digital camera. Anyway, here’s what the warehouse looked like (before we moved that computer inside the office):

I definitely would want a garage bigger than that since the warehouse could only fit at most one RV & one car.

And the reason why I haven’t posted in a while is because I’ve been playing around with my birthday gift to myself, the MacBook! Got it on July 21st (the day I thought I would post a new game entry). I’ve been trying to find the Mac equivalents of the various applications I use in Windows. I haven’t really installed much onto it so far. It’s definitely a different experience than XP, in a good way. I love it!

Hopefully, I won’t be buying another computer again for a while. It’s only been 9 months since I bought my Asus Eee PC, where usually I would use my computer for a few years before buying a new one. But like I said, I tend to splurge on my birthday and the MacBook was definitely worth it!

It’s getting harder to come up with things that I would spend money on. At some point, I’d end up with everything I could possibly need that I wouldn’t need to buy anything else. I think at that point, I’ll just [...]]]> Wow, up to day 8 and I still haven’t missed a single day.

It’s getting harder to come up with things that I would spend money on. At some point, I’d end up with everything I could possibly need that I wouldn’t need to buy anything else. I think at that point, I’ll just start donating everything. But we’ll see how long it takes to get there.

For today’s $8000, this is what I came up with. I hope this link works:

Velocity Micro FuzeBox Pro – I upgraded this as much as I could yet still tried to stay under $8000.

In case the link doesn’t work, here are the specs:

Case
TX Black – Home Theater Enclosure, Pure Aluminum, with Remote and Front Panel VFD Display
Power Supply 550 Watt Velocity Micro® Power Supply with Dual Blue Lighted Fans
Motherboard FuzeBox Pro Intel® ATX Motherboard with DDR2, PCI Express, 1333MHz FSB, RAID
Processor Intel® Core™ 2 Quad processor certified for FuzeBox Pro
CPU Cooling FuzeBox Quiet Cooling
DDR2 Memory 4GB DDR2-800 Low Latency Extreme Memory (2×2048)
PCX Video FuzeBox certified HDMI/DVI Video
TV Tuner ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner – Internal* (HDCP Video Card Required)
Second TV Tuner ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner – Internal* (HDCP Video Card Required)
Third TV Tuner ATI TV Wonder 650 Pro HDTV/SD/FM Combo Tuner (+$150.00)
Fourth TV Tuner ATI TV Wonder 650 Pro HDTV/SD/FM Combo Tuner (+$150.00)
Audio Fuze 5 audio zone sound subsystem
Hard Drive 1 3 x 1TB Storage – 300 Movies and 8000 Songs – RAID 5 (2TB Total) (+$299.00)
Optical Drive 1 Blu-ray Playback System (no CD or DVD burning capability)
Media Reader Integrated 52-in-1 Internal Media Card Reader
Network Adapter Integrated 10/100/1000MBps Gigabit Ethernet Network Adapter
FireWire 2 Integrated IEEE 1394 FireWire Ports, 1 front & 1 rear
USB 2.0 Ports 8 USB 2.0 Ports, 2 front & 6 rear
Ports StarTech Value 4 Port 16550 Serial PCI Card (PCI4S550N)
Operating System Genuine Microsoft® Windows® Vista Ultimate 32-bit with Digital Cable Support & SP1
Keyboard Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000 Silver Bluetooth (Recommended!) (+$165.00)
Mouse None
Media Center Remote FuzeBox MCE Remote Control – bundled with integrated IR receiver
Network Cable 10ft Premium Ethernet Network Cable (+$14.00)
HDTV Video Cables None
Digital Audio Cables None
Analog Audio Cables None
Power Protection APC® Premium Computer Surge Strip – 6 plugs (Highly Recommended) (+$15.00)
Assembly Careful custom hand wiring for maximum air flow, assembled in Richmond, Virginia, USA
Quality Assurance Individual custom testing for complete system stability, signed by the system builder and QA inspector
Documentation Owner’s Portfolio with Velocity Micro manual, driver disks, and accessory pack
Warranty** 3 Yr VelocityCare™ Parts & Labor Ltd Warranty, 1 Yr 24/7 Support with Emergency Hours, and On-Site Service (+$199.00)
Upgrade Plan Lifetime Upgrade Plan allows you to return your system for maintenance, upgrades, and tuning

Anyway, I ended up getting one back in October. And what I ended up getting was the Asus Eee PC 1000HA. Here’s why:

The Asus Eee 1000HA wasn’t actually my first choice. I was going [...]]]> If you’ve read this blog a short while ago, you’ll know that I was looking to buy a netbook.

Anyway, I ended up getting one back in October. And what I ended up getting was the Asus Eee PC 1000HA. Here’s why:

The Asus Eee 1000HA wasn’t actually my first choice. I was going to go with the black 6-cell Acer Aspire One with the 160 GB hard drive, 1 GB of RAM, Windows XP, etc. And I actually placed a preorder for the Acer on Amazon (since I had a $100 gift certificate I wanted to use). Amazon didn’t really have a confirmed date on when they were getting any Acers in stock. I’d notice that other sellers would get the Acers in while Amazon still had no estimated shipping date. Even when they did give me a date, my order didn’t seem to be moving along at all to the next phase.

Then one day, I noticed that the status for the Asus Eee 1000H and 1000HA both changed from “preorder” to “in-stock” – whereas the Acer still had no availability whatsoever with Amazon. It seemed like everyone was so focused on the Acer that the Asus was being ignored. So I thought I’d have a better chance of getting that instead. So I cancelled my Acer order and went with the Asus 1000HA instead. And I’m so glad I did that. I luvs me my Eee.

Here’s why I love it:

• The 1000HA comes with a little neoprene sleeve to put your Eee in for travel purposes, which is awesome since from what I was reading on Amazon’s forums of people who got their 6-cell Acers from them, they didn’t come with any cases anymore. Acer’s excuse for not supplying cases is that because of the extended size of the 6-cell battery, the Aspire One would no longer fit in the case. Who knows? Maybe now that the Acer 6-cell has been out a while, maybe they’ve been able to make new cases and include them. That, I don’t really know… maybe someone who recently bought a 6-cell Acer Aspire One can leave a comment about this.
• The Eee 1000HA pretty much comes with all of the same specs as the Aspire One, except that it’s lacking in media card slots… I forget exactly which, but it’s mostly the same thing. AND… the screen is a whole 10 inches instead of 8.9″. I don’t really know how much of a difference that makes, but I really love the screen on my Asus.
• The touchpad is also wider than on the Aspire One. And something else that the Eee has that the Acer doesn’t have is a multitouch capable touchpad. That’s right, multitouch, just like on the iPhone. It can detect up to three fingers on the touchpad for performing all kinds of handy gestures. And it’s ready to use right out of the box… at least it was for me when I got my 1000HA. Check it out here:

• This is a tiny little feature over the Acer, but the 1000HA has a built-in 1.3 megapixel camera. The camera on the Acer is just 0.3 megapixels. The 1.3 MP camera has served me well for Skype video chats.

Some things that might be annoying about it initially: the placement and size of the right shift key and the stiff mouse buttons. I didn’t think the right shift key would be a problem for me since I mostly use the left shift key when I type. But for those few times when I did need the right shift key, I’d accidentally hit the up arrow/pg up key. As I started using the Eee more, I became more aware of when I needed to right shift and would quickly glance at my keyboard to see where it was and make sure I hit the correct key. There are still some times when I’d press the wrong key, but it doesn’t happen as often anymore. If you want a netbook with a better right shift key placement and size, go with the Acer Aspire One. But I think the right shift key on the Eee is something that you’d get used to after a while, or you can remap the keys if you can’t get used to it.

A lot of people complain at how hard the mouse buttons are to press. For me, at first it was really really tough. I could see why people don’t like it. They’re extremely stiff. But if you just take some time just pressing the buttons non-stop to kind of wear them in a little, they aren’t as hard to press after a while. I think after about a week or so of using my Eee, the buttons weren’t so hard for me to press anymore.

Right now, my Eee is my main computer. It’s a really awesome little machine that does everything I need it to do… I really never used my old full sized laptop much for anything except checking email going online, downloading stuff, and watching videos. The Eee works great for what I need it for.

Also remember that these netbooks do not come with optical drives! If you need some sort of DVD drive, go with something else or pick up an external USB DVD drive that you can plug into it. I haven’t found myself in need of an optical drive at all yet, but I might go out and buy a slim DVD drive later down the line.