JRMWEBSPACE

Modified Droid Incredible 2 Silicon case for OEM Extended Battery

2012-02-04T14:00:00.000-08:00

Last week, I bought the HTC OEM Extended Battery for my Driod Incredible 2. I wanted to have a little more juice for the phone. There are several extended battery brands, but I chose to purchase the HTC OEM. A review on that maybe later.

I was disappointed that I could not find any type of case that would fit properly over the HTC OEM Extended Battery. I did try the Hyperion HTC Droid Incredible 2 Extended Battery Silicone Case, but like the reviews say it will not work with the HTC OEM Extended Battery. You would think that some case manufacture would mold a silicon case for this HTC product. I needed to have some sort of case for protection around the edges and to raise the front up a little when I set the phone on the front glass. Because I don't have access to my own silicone mold (yet), I did the next best thing. I bought a regular silicone case for the Incredible 2 and cut the back out. Not ideal, but will give me the protection that I am looking for right now.

I will continue to look at other avenues.

Picture 1: Droid Silicone Case.

Picture 2: Ready to cut the back from the case

Picture 3: Finished. Not perfect, but will work for what I need right now.

Happy New Year

2012-01-03T20:39:00.000-08:00

Ended the year with a nice two week vacation to Puerto Vallarta. I am ready to face what 2012 will bring. It is going to be another crazy year!!

Happy New Year!!!

FedEx Shipping.... The Ironic and Cool

2011-11-08T20:43:00.000-08:00

The IRONIC Part - Now, I know the shipping business have routes designed a particular way for cost saving reasons. But, did you know the best way to ship wine from Windsor, CA to Richmond, CA is through Sacramento, CA and then to Richmond, CA via Benica, CA. Look on a map that is quite a detour.

The COOL Part - It is really hard to be home all the time to pick up packages. Especially packages that require a signatures. FedEx has a great program to be able to have the package to be delivered to another location like my local FedEx Office location. Then I can pick it up while that location is open late on my way home. Love this to pickup those signature required packages like my Hall Wines. Check it out at FedEx.com.

How to Save $272

2011-09-26T22:46:00.000-07:00

Like many older cars my dashboard instruments lights on my 1999 Subaru Forester are going out. A couple of the lights have been out for years. When I noticed that I couldn't see my speedometer one night, I figured it was time to fix.

I called the dealer to figure out how much it would cost for service to fix. They quoted a price of $272 plus the cost of parts. Now, I knew that it would be expensive, but I really didn't think that it was going to be that high. After my recent expenditures on drain pipes (see previous entry), I really wanted to save a little money. And, I thought that $272 was a little high for changing lights blubs.

The Internet is your friend. I did a quick Google search and found out it was really no problem to replace the lights blubs yourself. 5 screws, 3 connections, and a little time you can do this for the cost of the parts. I called the dealer back to get a blubs I needed. They quoted me a kit for $37 dollars. More blubs than I needed, but hey that will be fine with me. I have some extras that I can replace too. Why get into the instrument cluster more than I have too? The parts were ordered. I picked them up a couple days later.

I estimated about 45 minutes for me to pull, change blubs and replace the instrument cluster back into the correct location. I followed instruction that I found here. It was easy. I would say that it took me 10 minutes to pull the part, a few minutes to replace the blubs, and then about 10 minutes to replace. So, I will say that it was only about a 30 minute job. It does take some patience to get the instrument cluster back into the location. I found going in at an angle helped as well as pulling the cable harness out a little to attach the connectors. Another recommendation would be to use the small shaft screwdriver vs. the standard shaft screwdriver. This helps for the 2 screws to remove the bezel and the top screw holding the instrument cluster in place.

So that was it. 30 minutes of my time and $37 parts kit I saved $272. I bet you could even call around and get parts cheaper at a Kragen Auto, Radio Shack or a similar place.

First Real Plumbing Problem

2011-09-13T00:00:00.000-07:00

When does owning a home suck? When you have a drainage leak that you didn't know how long it had been happening. I assumed that it was just a rain water drainage problem. It was a wet year for us. But, after having a friend of a friend contractor take a look and a smell starting, I was told that I have more than just a rain water drainage problem. There was about 3 to 4 inches of grey water in the crawl space of our house. So that was the smell! It is time to get the water cleaned up, find the leak, repair the pipe and to do this quickly.

To clean up the water, soil, and the smell, I had placed a call to Emergency Services Restoration. They have been great so far. They do free estimates and if needed can start the process right away. After clean up and making it safe we found the leak on the old drainage pipe that services both the kitchen and the washer. Bummer.

Now it is time to repair that pipe. I have been using Olivero Plumbing Co. for a while and always have been happy with their work. They did not disappoint this time either. Looking at the pipe they found that there was about a 4 inch crack in the pipe. Bummer again. So, rather than just do a quick patch, I choose to replace the entire length of the pipe from the kitchen/washer drainage to the 4 inch junction. As he was removing the old pipe I was glad that I choose the replacement verse the patch. I don't want to have the pipe that looked ready to crack in many other areas to do so and I would have to call out the clean up crew again. Pay more now to save more later.

So, what did I learn? Check your pipes regularly. If have you have a smell it is too late.

Now, how to pay for all this work??? Well, need some computer work? I am your man. Check out my Linkedin profile. I will do top notch work at a great price.

Food For Thought - Jobs at WWDC '97

2011-06-30T16:27:00.000-07:00

I have seen this before. You hear some irony, but overall you can take some really good management thoughts and reminders. What do you think?

http://youtu.be/3LEXae1j6EY

Life of an IT Admin

2011-06-03T21:22:00.001-07:00

Going to work early hoping to leave early, but getting that call that
requires your attention leading you staying late. Ugh....

Good news is that the application is fixed. Debrief will come later.
Now, it is time to go home and enjoy the weekend!

Surrounded by Technology; Still drawn to paper

2011-06-02T16:02:00.001-07:00

With all the technology that I am surrounded by in my work life and in
my everyday life, I am still drawn to the paper calendar. Now, don't
get me wrong, I still transfer all that I need to my calendar and
reference that on a daily basis. But, when I am thinking and doing
some long term planning nothing is better than spreading out a paper
calender. It just help me see the broader view of up coming events and
tasks.

What do you do? Is there something paper based that you have just not
giving up yet?

Keyboard Skills - Another Good Use of Gaming Skills

2011-06-01T09:59:00.001-07:00

Found another use of my former gaming skills. Odd repetitive keyboard
combinations on when changing file locations which I can not script or
automate the change.

Photo Stream of Setting up a Mobile Hospital

2011-05-30T21:37:00.001-07:00

Here is a photo stream of what it takes to set up a Mobile Hospital in Joplin after that major tornado hits the area and the Hospital. Scrolling through the stream looking at the devastation of the hospital should make every hospital take a look at their own disaster recovery plan.

I Am Still A Workaholic

2011-04-07T20:04:00.001-07:00

So you would think that having your first child you would stop being a workaholic. While I have cut down some, I am still a workaholic. So rather than staying late at the office, I tend to work remotely early in the morning or working after my kid goes to bed.

Is this good for me? I am sure not. My wife has the same problem…. But, I am thinking in baby steps. I try not to work every night. But, tonight and the nights for the for seeable future are not one of those. Maybe next month.

Malware: Even IT folks get it sometimes….

2011-03-30T19:30:00.001-07:00

Yes, I can admit it, even IT folks can unknowingly get come across a malware attack on their machines. IT happened on my laptop today at work. The difference is that most IT folks know what to do to limit the impact and get rid of the rouge infection.

While researching some excel formulas that I am never really good at, I all of a sudden I got this is fake antivirus “program” on my taskbar. I knew right away that this was cause by a compromised website. Defender.exe or known as a Trojan Mal/FakeAV-FB is just the beginning of an attach. Once installed the compromised computer can then become a gateway for other Malware/Spyware etc….

Immediately, I pulled my network LAN cable and disabled my wireless. I knew that this malware was only the gateway to try to install other malware/spyware. I then, restarted in safe mode. From there, I was able to run my malwarebytes (buy it and support a great product) and remove the threat. I also looked up on Sophos site to determine what other cleaning that I needed to do. After a little registry hacking and deleting Windows Restore points, I was good to go.

The quick action lead me to only have to remove the Trojan and not any other items that the Trojan would soon let in.

Not the best way to spend my lunch hour, but at least I am clean……

More EMR Parodies….

2011-02-17T19:42:00.001-08:00

I must be on an EMR parody kick. This one I found on Meaningful HIT News with Neil Versel (http://www.meaningfulhitnews.com/).

Dilbert: EMR Fun

2011-02-17T16:18:00.000-08:00

Saw this Dilbert comic the other day. Great EMR Fun. As an EMR practitioner and implementer, I found this to be very funny. For the non-geeky Star Trek fan, check out "PON FARR" reference.

Using SMS Technology In Healthcare

2011-02-09T21:12:00.001-08:00

So, I came cross this link fon twitter(@vwadhwa). It talks about how through the use of SMS text in India Emergency Healthcare is brought to rural India.

I have been to India once and would go back in a heart beat. It is simple amazing the use of cell phone technology and SMS throughout India. Power maybe have the occasional brownouts, but the cell phone and texting will live on.

What I like about this use of technology is rather than bringing in technology, the group adapts technology that already exists.

An Great Day in San Francisco

2011-02-03T19:22:00.001-08:00

While I am not here to gloat, well, okay just a little. The last couple days in San Francisco has been picture perfect. This was a shot from Greens in Fort Mason. If you never been, you have to go. Great food.

Batch Scripting Fun: Playing with Random Numbers

2011-02-01T21:24:00.001-08:00

Proof of Concept:

Today, I needed to generate a random number between 1 and 5. Depending on what random number came up, would determine what IP address from a pool of IP address the user would be assigned.

Maybe I had Craps on the mind, but this problem reminded me of dice rolling. All-be-it a 5 sided die. So to test, I thought that I would write a simple Batch script that would generate a random number between 1 and 5.

I had a pretty good idea that I would use the %Random% operation to generate a random number between 0 – 32767. Then I would limit that to between 1 and 5.

My first attempt turned out like this:

:loop
set num=%random%
if /i %num% GTR 5 goto loop
if /i %num% LSS 1 goto loop
goto finish
:finish
echo %num%
pause >nul
exit

Now it worked but it was slow because if you think about it, I would have to recalculate %random% every time the number was greater than 5 or less then 1. I needed to speed this up.

I knew that math would be the answer. I came across this Simulate a Dice Roll through a Google search. It showed that I was on the right track. I just tweaked it a little to at some logic to be able to run a command after finding the random number between 1 and 5.

@echo off
cls

:RandomLoop
set /A num=%random% %% 5 + 1
goto NumberFound

:NumberFound
if %num%==1 goto one
if %num%==2 goto two
if %num%==3 goto three
if %num%==4 goto four
if %num%==5 goto five

:one
REM Enter next item to do here
echo %num%
exit

:two
REM Enter next item to do here
echo %num%
exit

:three
REM Enter next item to do here
echo %num%
exit

:four
REM Enter next item to do here
echo %num%
exit

:five
REM Enter next item to do here
echo %num%
exit

:end
exit

As you see. The random number is generated and depending on the number 1 through 5, the next set in the Batch script can be executed. While this is a very simple programming 101 type of question, this shows how you can turn an classroom exercise into a practical application.

Using Windows Live Writer 2011 for Windows

2011-01-31T20:57:00.001-08:00

I thought that I would try something new. Or, at least new to me. It is the Windows Live Writer 2011. Windows Live Writer is apart of the Windows Live Essentials. Windows Live Writer is an offline blog writer for many different blogging platforms.

I am hoping that this platform will allow me to more easily write blog post drafts. So far so good. As I play with it more I will see if I continue to like this software.

Weekend Travels

2011-01-23T21:03:00.000-08:00

So we went to Sacramento for the weekend. Leaving on Saturday morning and coming back Sunday afternoon. For people that know me, I take the minimalist attitude of travel. However, when you travel with a 10 month old you have to get use to change. I am still working on this.

This is the way that I travel.

This is the way that Cooper Travels.

Do you see the difference? The crazy thing is that this amount of stuff does not change all that much if we are leaving for the weekend or the week...

A lazy SysAdmin -- Convert Bytes to Kilobytes to Megabytes to Gigabytes to Terabytes

2010-12-29T21:00:00.000-08:00

As a sysadmin, there are many repetitive tasks that one does during the day. I try to live by the sysadmin creed that if you have to do a task more than twice it is time to automate.

Recently, I have needed to convert Kilobytes into Megabytes. Now, I know the short cut is just divide by 1000. But, that is only just a short cut. Really the magic number is 1024. There are a lot of converters on the Internet. I use many of them. Because I have never been good at bookmarking or the bookmark is on another workstation, I have to continually search for that converter that I have used in the past.

With that, I borrowed the one that I found on the Internet here. I just wanted the javascript and I wanted add a reset button, so I cleaned it up a little and put it in a basic web page. What I came up with can be seen here. It is simple and does what I need.

Now I just need to put this page on an internal web server or on my local workstation and I can call it up when ever I need.

Day 7 – Travel Day Home…

2010-12-28T21:00:00.000-08:00

Check out of Lindo Mar was 11 am, our flight back to SFO leaves at 3:50 pm. What does that mean? Well, we have a lot of time at the airport. It is known that the taxis here are pretty good. The prices are regulated by zones, but we always ask the price before we leave, though we know what the price should be. This was important on the way to the airport. The taxis driver tried to charge us a larger amount then what should have been the price. Know the prices in the zones and you can call them on it. That is was we did. It took him a minute, but he realized the errors in is ways and agreed to the correct zonal price.

Remember don’t for get your immigration forms that they give you to fill out on the plane over to Mexico. I seemed to have missed placed mine somewhere between when we got out the airport in Mexico and back to the airport a week later. That cost us an extra 700 pesos. Boy have the taxes gone up, I remember when they were only around 350 pesos. Anyway a quick trip to an ATM and we were cleared to go. The agent did feel for us and we got an upgrade to economy plus with a middle seat free… Bonus….

Planning never goes as you hope. We tried to keep Cooper awake, but that just didn’t work. The flight was delayed just enough that Cooper feel asleep while we were waiting in line to get on the plane… bummer. The flight was fine, it was nice to have that middle seat free and be able to pass Cooper back and forth.

San Francisco welcomed us with the rain and cool temperatures. The reality that the vacation is over has sung in. Now it is time to get home, do laundry, and mentally get back to thinking about work. In the back of my mind, it is nice to know that we can do this all again next year. Same time, same place….

Day 6 – Trip to the Botanical Gardens

2010-12-27T21:00:00.000-08:00

With Cooper being so young and we can not afford a babysitter the entire trip; many of the excursions out of town are really not made for little kids. They tend to frown upon bring babies on the boat trips and I am not sure if the harness would be small enough for the swing above the canopy of the tress, but we found that we can go to the Botanical Gardens. That is something that would be good for all ages and not too long of a bus ride that Cooper would get to cranky. So we decided to go and tour around and eat lunch.

The Botanical Gardens was a great escape out of town up into the hills a little. I would suggest it for anyone who wants to get away from all the traditional tourist stuff in Puerto Vallarta itself, not that there is anything wrong with that. Also the food was again great.

After a Cooper nap we headed into town for the last time before we had to leave.

Day 5 -- A Night Out

2010-12-26T21:00:00.000-08:00

Found out that the fireworks last night were for a private wedding party. Still can not believe that Cooper didn’t wake up during the entire time.

This was our first night out without Cooper. Lindo Mar was able to arrange for a babysitter for Cooper while Anne and I went out to eat by ourselves. It was great!!! We decided to go to Daiquiri Dick’s in town. The food was great. Come to think of it, I have yet to have any food that I didn’t like here in Puerto Vallarta. You can find almost anything that you want. I will tell you that the Margaritas on the rocks are made just the way that I like it; very strong…. Mmmm.

We ended the day listening to a Chorus at the Guadalupe Church.

Day 4 -- Cooper's Lunch Date

2010-12-25T21:00:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, we brought Cooper to an event where Anne was volunteering and a co-worker at the event, just loved Cooper. I think it she said it was nice to have Cooper time during the hectic event. Through talking we found out that she lives and works in Puerto Vallarta. We said that we would call when we get into town. Today was the time that we could meet so that she could have some Cooper time and we can catch up on things. We ate at a local place in town (Loncheria y Cocina Economica), great Chicken Mole and the tacos were good too. This is the type of place where generally only locals go to have a meal. If you are ever in town bring your best Spanish and go to this local place for the Chicken Mole. It is open 24 hours…

Evening – Relaxing with some home cooked chicken and rice. After putting Cooper down at his normal bed time, fireworks started going off on the beach right next to Lindo Mar. I don’t think that I have ever been that close to professional great fireworks before. You would think that 20 minutes of fireworks would wake Cooper up, but no. He slept through the whole thing. He must take after his dad.

Day 3 -- Relaxing Day

2010-12-24T21:00:00.000-08:00

Nothing real special planned for today. After cooking a morning breakfast, Cooper and I took a walk along the beach. The beach is sandy, but also really rocky. This is good because we can see and hear the waves all night long, but this is not the type of beach that one can just walk for hours and hours one way to the other. Cooper and I did see some sea urchins and crabs hanging around the rocks. I tried to get some pictures of the crabs, but not sure if they will turn out.

After lunch and Cooper nap, it was a lazy pool time. We ended the night extending cocktail hour into dinner at the restaurant.