average admins

HOLY CRAP!! I couldn’t believe it myself.  The list includes (in no particular order): Blackberry 7100g, Motorola Razr, Palm Treo 650(sold then traded back for), Nokia 6682, Cingular 8125, Cingular 3125, Cingular 8525, Samsung Blackjack, Motorola Slvr, Motorola Razr V3i, Blackberry 8700c (2 of these), Blackberry Pearl (2 of these too), Blackberry 8800, Samsung D807, Blackberry 7130c, Nokia E62, Palm Treo 680 (2 of these, because one crapped out), Kyocera Strobe, and Sony Ericsson w810i.  That’s only with Cingular since June 2005. 

I am now with Alltel and have a new phone, a Blackberry 8703e.  If we’re getting technical, I must count exactly 2 years back and count an old Motorola flip phone, which I think was a v800 something or other.  So, if you’re keeping track, that’s around 25 phones or so.  Give or take a few I can’t remember.  Crazy, huh?!  All in the name of talking to someone.  Geez!  After asking Jeff how to enter into the Tech career, he said, “are you willing to spend the time and money to get new gear to keep up to date?”  Uh. . .Yeah!! Guess so! 

jason

So, I downloaded a new feature to my phone.  It’s called TeleNav.  After a recent trip to Dallas, where upon exiting the interstate to go to a local guitar shop, me, Jess, and my mom got lost on the outskirts of Dallas.  I knew I needed something to keep that from happening again.  So, I have now downloaded this program and will try it out as soon as possible.  I can’t wait.  Go to Telenav.com to see if your phone is able to run this program.  It’s a lot cheaper than buying navigation for your car and easier to use.

jason

I’m sure everyone has heard of or seen this already, but since it doesn’t happen too often, I thought I might as well blog about it. Basically an actor, comedian Eddie Giffin, crashed a 1.5 million dollar Ferrari Enzo….that wasn’t even his. Ouch!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62VmJReYNNI

Originally posted at cocoacrusty.com on March 27th, 2007.

I first saw this nice little trick a year or so ago. A fellow admin and friend of mine, Tommy, used a Bluetooth® headset to automatically lock his Windows machine whenever he stepped away from his computer and his headset was no longer in range of his PC’s Bluetooth® dongle. I don’t remember how I stumbled upon this blog post yesterday, but I am glad I did. This post shows you how to implement a similar solution using an application called Proximity and some Apple Scripts to achieve the same result.

The cool thing about this solutions for the Mac is that the events that are triggered when the specified Bluetooth® device enters and leaves the Mac’s Bluetooth® proximity are Apple Scripts. Apple Scripts allow you to easily program for the Mac. Apple Scripts are pretty much the same thing as shell scripts for any other operating system and command line environment, like batch scripts for Windows and Bash or C Shell scripts for Unix based and derived operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD. Basically, with a solution like this, you aren’t tied to the developer’s ideas of what should happen when you step away from your machine. The ball is totally in your court and your goal is only limited by your creativity and your programming ability.

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Originally posted at cocoacrusty.com on March 27th, 2007.

Ok, so I blogged a while back in November of 2006 about being back in the wardriving game. Well, it turns out, that wasn’t entirely true. See, after I posted that entry on averageadmins.com, I never really did any wardriving. When I finally got ready to get back in the game and make some maps and what not using KisMAC and Google Earth, my MacBook’s built-in wireless NIC wasn’t 100% compatible with KisMAC. It seems that the 2nd generation of MacBooks changed their wireless chipsets and the new chipset isn’t 100% compatible with KisMAC. So, according to this document on the KisMAC developer WiKi, my best bet was to get a USB wireless NIC with a Prism2 chipset. So I did…

The bad thing about having to get this type of hardware is a) most of the devices with these chipsets are older wireless cards and kind of hard to locate, or b) the newer cards that are still manufactured with this chipset are pretty pricey. Well, I did a little eBaying and found a D-Link DWL-122 for around $60 with shipping and insurance. This was a great find as this device was still new in the box and the price wasn’t that bad considering I had to locate an affordable wireless card with a specific chipset. I placed my order on the 20th of this month and got it in yesterday… Guess what?! That’s right kids! I’ve already put it to use.

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Originally posted at cocoacrusty.com on Wednesday, March 21st, 2007.

I have been fascinated with the Mac Mini for quite sometime and actually thought that this piece of hardware would be my entrance into the world of Macintosh due to its size, price, and the fact that you can use your already existing DKM. When I purchased my MacBook from the Apple Store in Plano, Texas, I talked with a salesperson about the Mac Mini. She said that a lot of people were purchasing the Mini for use as a server. I thought that was an extremely cool idea.

Think about it. Most data centers aren’t getting any bigger. Every server manufacturer out there is trying harder and harder to cram more and more into 1U rackmount servers. Even so, the length of these machines is way too long. I mean, you took a tower server and squashed it down to like an inch to an inch and a half tall but the rest had to be flattened out and spread over a larger footprint. The Mac Mini measures 2 inches tall and is 6.5 inches square. How many of those things can you fit on the real estate a 1U server takes up?! A lot!

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Originally posted at cocoacrusty.com on Wednesday, March 21st, 2007.

I have had my 30 GB Video iPod for a while and have been using my MacBook since late 2006. I bought my iPod at WalMart and it came formatted for a Windows machine. This was fine and all when I used a Windows machine and FreeBSD because I could read and write to the iPod with no problems as well as update the iPod via my Windows PC (yes, I have one… I’m sorry…). However, since I have been using my MacBook full time I haven’t been able to update my iPod’s software from 1.2 to 1.2.1 because it was formatted for Windows, I was too lazy to boot up my Windows machine, and I was honestly a little afraid to click on the “Restore” button within iTunes for fear of hosing my iPod.

Today, while working at a remote disaster recovery location, I had a few minutes to spare while a server booted up and recognized some new tape drives to press that “Restore” button within iTunes. I was scared, yes, but I did it. I clicked it! As soon as I did, iTunes told me that all of my music would be deleted from the iPod and the iPod would be returned to the factory settings. I accepted this and told iTunes to continue with the restore. As it was wiping my iPod it also upgraded my iPod to the latest version of the iPod software, version 1.2.1, and obviously, formatted the iPod with a Macintosh file system.

Now, as software updates are released for the iPod I don’t have to feel left behind due to laziness and fear any longer. I always use my Mac and can just update it inside iTunes at the click of a button. I’m glad I “made the switch” to Macintosh, both in my normal computing environment (i.e. my laptop) and in my iPod file system.

Until next time…

Originally posted at cocoacrusty.com on March 15th, 2007.

I stumbled upon this article the other day when I was reading through some of the blogs I monitor in Bloglines. The article is from O’Reilly’s MacDevCenter.com site and is about a patent filed by Apple in August of 1982 and granted in December of 1985 for a flip phone in the shape of an apple with a bite taken out of it. In other words, the phone is in the shape of the Apple logo.

If you review the patent through some nifty patent interface provided by Google, you’ll see 13 drawings (Fig. 1 - Fig. 13) of what the proposed phone would have looked like. This is pretty cool to know that Apple had an idea for a phone over 20 years ago. I am also very glad that this phone didn’t make it to market and that the iPhone will be their first cellular phone offering. If they had released this flip-phone back in the late 80’s or early 90s, they may not be around today to give us phone addicts the iPhone.

Until next time…

Originally posted at cocoacrusty.com on March 15th, 2007.

I am totally sold on hands-free communication when using a cell phone. I can not stand to hold a phone up to my dome and talk on it. It makes me feel all yucky inside. So, ever since I got my first Bluetooth® enabled phone, the Motorola RAZR V3, I have been sporting a Bluetooth® headset along with it. Before I go on about my latest adventure, let me give you a little history of where I’ve been.

Lately, I have been using a Plantronics Voyager 510 and a Motorola H700. Both of these headsets have their pros and cons, in my opinion. I have written a little bit of what I like and dislike about both of these units below.

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While perusing through UniqueDaily.com, I came across this website talking about the 10 most expensive phones in the world.  Go Here.  Of course, the Sony Ericsson Black Diamond is one the best looking phones I’ve seen in awhile.  Anyway, have fun, check it out!!

jason