Big Dan's Corner

It started snowing Wednesday night and didn’t stop until early this morning here in Eldred. What to do when there’s a major snow storm and you cannot get out? I tell you what, change your bedroom around. Yesterday I dove into that. I changed it over to my ‘summer’ configuration, with my bed against the windows and computer tabled laid out end to end instead of in an L shape. I like the  L shape better but I have more room for both computers this way.

Now my TV stand is right near my bed which is good because the screen is kind of small and I can see it better. I’m looking into getting a new bed frame so I can get my bed off the floor and put up the headboard which hasn’t been up in quite a while. What I’d really like to do is get a new TV stand that has a proper mount for a flat screen TV. My current stand is designed for the old TVs with a long back. That’s a little while off though. My next furnature purchase is regular computer desk instead of two tables.

Today I got to shovel. I actually had to shovel out my door way just to get outside. I’d say we got closer to 3 feet than the 2 feet the news is saying. It took me a half hour just to shovel out a small path so that my mother could get to the store across the street. Then it took me 2 hours through and two trips to shovel out the car. Which we moved into to the town hall’s parking lot next door, so that that plow can come through and make a clean sweep.

During my first break from shoveling I wrote my review of the Samsung R451c from Straight Talk over on Almost Geek which I’d been planning to write for quite a while. I also decided to cancel my Straight Talk service and just go with my old Tracfone for now. As I really don’t use it much now that I’m home and therefore can justify the $50/mo bill for it. My Tracfone is only $20 every 3 months and I renewed my Skype incoming number and subscription for unlimited US & Canada calls. I’m able to text through Google Voice, so that save me a bunch of Tracfone credits.  I also started collecting my thoughts for my review of the iPod Touch which I got Monday.  Here’s a spoiler alert, I love the thing. I’ll probably write the review tomorrow.

Here’s a few pictures of my desk that I just snapped with my camera phone:

That is my main desk where I sit most of the time, has my main computer and most stuff use all the time on it.

This desk has my Mac Mini on it. I bought a monitor for it not to long ago thinking I would use it more and I do but the trouble is all my files aren’t on that computer so I wind up having to switch back and fourth. I’m not really sure what to do with it anymore. It may go out in the living room for everyone to use or I’ll throw it up on top of my entertainment center for media streaming.

How are you dealing with the storm? Do you change your furniture around often?

I left for Florida the first week in February, spent two weeks there, and have been home for a week now. I’m finally getting back into the groove of things. I had mountains of correspondence piled up along with a good amount of website maintenance that needed to be done. My trip to Florida was unplanned a buddy of mine was moving back to Florida from New York. I took the trip to help him drive down and get setup in his new apartment, stayed a week then took Amtrak back.

The trip was nice overall, 24 hours straight through in a car was no picnic but as they say “You gotta do what you gotta do”, I had a blast with my friends kids’. They’re all young, between 2-6 years old so I have lots of fun playing with them. The worst thing about Florida was the limited internet access I had. I could only get online at his mother’s house which has DSL but the speed is only marginally better than dial up. Then there’s the kids — you try getting anything done on your laptop with 3 kids running all over the place. :p I’d rather hang out with the kids then muck around on the computer anyway. I was able to keep up with my email on my cell phone at least.

Every time I go down to Florida I’m reminded of how much I love it down there. I lived down there for a few months in 2008 but my job didn’t pan out. The weather is always nice even though it was relatively cold this time around but still a helluva lot better than New York’s weather. People seem to be much friendlier. Friendly almost to the point of being nauseating but you get used to it. I’m trying to convince mom to make the move down there, she wants to get away from the cold weather too but mom’s not quite sold on the idea yet. I’d save up and make the move myself but mom’s not in the best of health and I’d rather be close to look after her.

The trip home was uneventful other than someone on the train getting alcohol poisoning and us having to make an unscheduled stop but that unscheduled stop turned into a smoke break. I guess that serves him well, his party bought all the alcohol on the train before we were even out of Florida. I couldn’t even get a beer before going to sleep.   Despite everything bad I’ve heard about Amtrak I’ve traveled to and from Florida 3 times and had no issues other than the train being a little bit late. 24 hours on the train is a bit much but not to bad considering they have regular smoke breaks and a dining car. When the train stopped in DC to switch to electric power I got out for a smoke break and seen the snow. Ick, I hate it! I got off at Newark Penn Station instead of my normal New York Penn Station thinking that I could more easily catch the NJ Transit train up to Port Jervis near my house. I still had to switch trains twice so it wasn’t much different other than me getting a little lost because I’m unfamiliar with Newark Penn Station. It turns out I’d been misinformed and my train to Port Jervis still runs out of Hoboken and I would’ve been better off just going into New York Penn Station like I normally do.

Sure enough while I was in Florida I missed two snow storms. Last night we had about 6 inches here, I just shoveled out from that and now tomorrow night into tomorrow we’re supposed to get over a foot of snow. Something tells me I should have stayed in Florida.

Anywho now that I’m back home and online you can look forward to seeing some more blogging from me as well as me being more active on the sites I regularly haunt. How is everyone’s winter going so far?

Thanksgiving was nice as usual mom put out an awesome spread. I helped out a little here and there, but she’s the mad scientist behind it all. I had a couple of friends over as they had to work tonight, so we figured to have them over this way they have a Thanksgiving Dinner.

You can see Tom before he went in the oven over there on the left. Aside from the turkey and stuffing we had candied sweet potatoes, asparagus, and pumpkin pie with coffee for dessert. It wasn’t a huge spread but with only 4 people what’s the point of making a huge thing the turkey, stuffing, and sweet potatoes were enough.

As seems to be tradition in our house we bought the cranberry jelly and forgot to put it out with dinner again. We seem to do that every year.

How was your Thanksgiving?

How ironic is it that I write “I’m back in the saddle.” Blogging wise and then you don’t hear from me for a few weeks again? Typical Big Dan

Things have been pretty good here, just normal stuff playing around with different operating systems and geek stuff but not accomplishing much of anything hence my lack of blogging both on here and Almost Geek.

A week after writing “When will cell phone companies stop playing games”, I went out and bought the Samsung R451C from Straight Talk, You will get a first hand review from yours truly in a few days. It’s my first smart phone although when compared to the iPhone and some of the Andriod phones it doesn’t seem all that smart. I’m still pretty amazed by it though, I find myself checking my email on it regularly, snapping pictures and sending them off to friends, updating my Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter status all at once via text message. Most of what I’m doing with the phone aside from checking email is pretty much useless but it is fun. :p

Well, it’s just after midnight here which means it’s officially Thanksgiving so Gobble Gobble! Happy Thanksgiving all!

With the turn to cold weather, I’m back to blogging again! Around April-May of this year I decided to take a break from blogging as it was getting quite monotonous, sometimes it’s sort of like talking to yourself. Overall I took a break from pretty much everything all summer except for a few sites I stayed away most forums and just hung out wasting time on Facebook mostly aside from keeping up with my own sites.

This past week I’ve been working heavily on building content for AlmostGeek.com a domain that I’ve had for a while but never really worked on aside from installing WordPress and leaving it sit. Almost Geek is going to be where my geekier stuff is posted, since BigDan.us is syndicated via RSS on a few sites, and most people don’t want to read the nuts and bolt geek stuff. . Over time I’ll link tutorials here on BigDan.us that have wider audience appeal.  I’ve already got a couple of tutorials and a few short tips published. The next tutorial I’ll be finish up this week is converting Roboform to Keepass with a Python script. Check out AG if you like. The WordPress theme that I’ve got up there has to go as it’s too busy in my humble opinion, so that’s also on the agenda for this week.

Within the next month I will also be launching vBulletin Admin a blog for vBulletin forum administrators. I’ve had the domain for quite a while but never got much past the install WordPress and let it sit stage.  I’m not quite sure what the layout or content strategy is going to be yet, I’m sure it will useful for forum administrators though.

On the home office front just this week I ordered a new 19″ monitor from NewEgg, for only $100 I couldn’t pass it up. I’ve been itching for a second monitor for quite a while. The new monitor  sits on my desk beside my main 22″ monitor. I’d planned to drive my Mac Mini with it but the Mac doesn’t detect it’s native resolution out of the box nor does the the resolution show in the preference pane (so much for it just works..ha), I refuse to pay $20 for SwitchResX, a program fixes the resolution problem, not because it’s a bad program or anything (although it does nag you on startup while in trial mode) but because this is something that should just work out of the box. Out of three monitors I’ve hooked up to my Mac it’s only detected one properly. What gives Mac folks? For now I have my Windows box hooked up to the 19″ monitor which Vista detected and it up automatically with no input from me. My main 22″ is driven by Mac which is cool with me as I’m comfortable using the Mac for all my every day tasks. I’d really like to get a real desk instead of just using to 4′ folding tables, maybe over the winter. Right now I’ve got a KVM switch just to share the same keyboard and mouse between computers, this week I’m going to try configuring Synergy and dropping the KVM.

Other than that, I’m back to exercising again. I took off a good month after a run with in a bear, I’ve finally got the nerve up to walk again; I started this week with about 1.5 miles a day. I’m hoping within a couple of weeks to do 1.5 miles twice a day. I got new long johns, two pair of insulated pants, and an insulated sweater with all that insulation I should be pretty good to walk all winter along although I don’t know how safe it is with no side walks and mounds of snow on the road shoulder where I normally walk. I really need a new knit cap and gloves, I definitely want safety orange just for visibility while I’m walking; not sure yet but I thinking of going with a ski-mask to keep my face warm, but really don’t want to look like a robber or something walking along the side of the road. LOL.

Today’s is a beautiful day it’s supposed to be in the low 60′s today and I’m looking forward to spending it offline after working on Almost Geek all week. I’m going to make some hot wings then go out for my walk, come home and just hang with the family. How was everyone’s summer?