Nick Switzer

So after updating my wordpress, I realized again I have forgot to update in a long time.  Anyhow, here’s a quick update on the fogless (fog free) mirror for the bathroom.  A friend tweet’d me a link to ShowerTek.  I purchased a mirror for about $20 and have been extremely happy shaving in the shower since.  One thing to remember is that when the water runs through the mirror, make sure it’s not shooting out of your shower/bathtub.  Hope this helps!

So after having my Treo 755p randomly reboot (really annoying when I am on a call), I decided I would hard reset the thing.  After having backed up my contact to both my Outlook as well as my Palm Desktop, I gave it a go.  First thing that I had a problem with was that my USB cable was not working well.  It either didn’t recognize it at all, or if it did, it said, “The connection between your handheld computer and the desktop could not be established.”  So after mucking with it awhile, (trying the solutions of: using a different usb cable; and continually plug and unplug until it works) Ifinally had to my roommate’s cable which does not have the power connection part and seemed to fit better.

Soon realizing I forgot to backup my high scores on my favorite game Text Twist, I realized I would have to redo my ringtones, as well as my System Preferences, Roaming Preferences, and my QuickDial links.  I use the Palm Desktop to do a Quick Install of my MiniTones application (great for adding and trimming mp3s to useable ringtones) and Text Twist.  I then reassigned ringtones to a few Contacts, and my voicemail, known/unknown caller, text messaging, calendar, and alarm.  Changed my Roaming Preferneces to allow since my office is in a basement, and AT&T has coverage but not Sprint (imagine that) and to never warn me about making roaming calls since I added it to my plan for $5.

Changed my System Preferences for my Color Theme and then moved on to changing my Speed Dial by selecting the “Label” using the lookup to select my contact, and then it autopopulated the Number and I just picked what Quick Key I wanted.

So I have everything I had before, with the exception of the Twitter email that Justin set up so I can twit pictures from my phone by quickly sending them to that email.  But overall, it was an easy process, once I determined that my USB cable was borked.

As many of you know, I just finished my first week at my new job.  I am training to be the Web Application Developer for .NET.  I am trying to figure out what is the best method to go about training myself to be MCTS and then MCPD with focusing in on ASP.NET for the 3.5 Framework.

I currently have chosen to lean toward C# for development over Visual Basic.  To me, it is much closer to languages I already am familiar with, such as Java, and would be an easier syntax for me to learn.

Back to training.  I am trying to decide what is the best method, classes, online, books, but more specifically what combinaton of these.  I have the 2 books that Microsoft had suggested for the two exams I have to take for my MCTS.  Not sure where else to go from there.  I have approximately 9 months to be MCPD certified, which seems a bit hefty, but hopefully I can do it.

Anyhow, if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.  Thanks!

Let me clarify.  I am not explaining how to get an article YOU may have written on the front page of Digg, unless you write for huffingtonpost.com.  I have read a lot of articles lately and it would seem to me that a large majority of the articles are from this site. 

Now I am not stating that it is a bad thing, but it seems as though if you are wanting to get your rankings and whatever up at the top, the best thing to do is wait for the Huffington Post to write a new article, and be the first to submit it to digg. 

After searching digg for the url “huffingtonpost.com” it came back with more than 50 pages of Front Page articles (I assume since it stopped at 50 it actually truncated the results). I would be curious to know how many of the “Top Diggers” posted articles from HuffingtonPost.com.

I find this an easy way to get your stats up and start charging that $1200-$1300 per article. I am sure there are other sites that fit this bill, but this one jumped out to me.

After checking my facebook, I went to add some contact information and found out that under the IM Screen Name, there was not a twitter option.  It has most of the major instant messaging programs, but doesn’t have Twitter.  Now I know it’s not technically an “Instant Messaging” program per se, but I do feel it should be added to the list.  You are simply telling people your screen names so they can contact you, so why not have twitter?  So I decided to send an email to facebook using their contact form and suggest they add at least twitter.  Here is my email:

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Technorati Profile. Looks like a nice little news site, I will definitely add it to my rss feeds!

Ok, so I finally found a good gadget to pull my Fantasy Football feeds into one gadget!  Add this!  It has the top 4 fantasy feeds added with good settings already.  Like any gadget you can change the amount of articles to display, the length of each article, and even the size of the font!  Let me know how this works for you all.  Or you can click the Google link below!

Well I finally got my site back up, and just in time to announce another blog I started.  It’s to show information on how to enhance your web experience, either by answering basic questions, showing you where to find deals, or going into more detailed information.  Whatever it is, I am there to write about it and explain it for you! my readers.  Go take a look for yourself at http://www.optimizeyourweb.net.  If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.

After visiting my mother this past Thanksgiving break, I had a chance to test out her new FIOS connection.  I tested it at a few places (dslreports.com, bandwidthplace.com, and speakeasy.net) on each of the available servers and it performed very well.  I believe it was at around 4000-5000 kbps for download, and around 1500 kbps for upload.  I’m not sure what package my mother has, but it  is definitely consistent and nice.  I had some screenshots of the speed tests, but I forgot to send them to myself.  I also played with her new TV options.  The HD that comes through looks very nice on my mother’s 50″ Mitsubishi HDTV.  I’ve never seen HD signal displayed on that TV, and it is was very crisp and clear.  I went through the options on the On-Demand and it cool.  The ones that I was able to select though were priced around $3, and I’m not sure what exactly that entailed since I didn’t want to accidentally purchase something for the sake of finding out how the service works.  Overall, I can’t wait until we get something similar in Tulsa, because with the price, I think it’s a very good deal.

As I sit here waiting for some updates to load from Microsoft, I think about how long it took me to update the drivers on this Dell Latitude D820.  First I had downloaded a few wrong drivers since they put several different drivers under the same heading (i.e. your laptop could have an Intel based Network driver, or a Broadcom, both of which are shipped with the D820).  So since there is not a way of knowing without looking at the details of your packaging slip (which I rarely have in hand), I have to guess at which to download.  One of these downloads was aorund 90MB, which isn’t totally bad for my connection here at work (took less than a minute) but would be extremely long if I was stuck on a slower connection (too much of a hassle).  It brings me to my point.  Why not just create a program that checks to see what exactly you need (such as Microsoft Windows Update, Gigabyte Download Center, etc.).  Is it that much of a waste of time to have one program that people can download which will detect the correct drivers that are needed.  This will also eliminate the problem of not knowing what drivers you need when the device is as general as “PCI Device”.  I still haven’t figured out what goes on this laptop that I have not downloaded, but they are likely not to get it seeing as how I’ve tried downloading a driver for what I think the device could be.  Just seems like it would be better for Dell to do this, or actually anyone in this position to do this, and would increase customer service, while decreasing technical support needed (maybe not significantly, but I’m sure by atleast a small percent).