iGo power tip

As you may know from reading my blog, my wife and I got new phones. Stunningly enough, both use the same power adapters.... so it seems. The BlackBerry Pearl 8100 and MotorolaRAZR V3xx both have miniUSB connectors, both came with computer USB cables for data/charging. both came with wall outlets. (I boght an iGo juice70 a couple years ago while out of town, so I tend to keep the proper tips around now.) So its safe to assume you should be able to find one iGo tip for both phones at this point.

Wrong, there are three:

http://www.igo.com/product.asp?sku=2634264
http://www.igo.com/product.asp?sku=2701879
http://www.igo.com/product.asp?sku=2709463

Dont bother calling support and asking what the difference is, you'll get the standard line "Each tip is custom made for each device" Just a little bit of googling and I found this:

I have an iGo unit and have used the A29 blackberry tip and the A32 RAZR tip. On the back of the tips at radioshack, you'll notice that the A29 is 5.0V at .6 Amps, and the A32 is 5.0 volts .9 Amps. I don't know what the A53 tip has becuse they don't carry it at the shack yet. I do know that both tips do charge my 8125 with no problems. The RAZR tip is faster, as it's higher current. One thing to keep in mind is that if you use the RAZR tip, you'll be able to use it to charge newer moto BT headsets as well without blowing them up. --morrias

So basically:
A29 for Blackberry............. 5.0V @ 0.6A
A32 for Moto RAZR.............. 5.0V @ 0.9A
A53 for Cingular 8125......... 5.2V @ 1.2A

So obviously all will work, A29 has more of a trickle than A53. So less battery heat on charge. If you've used your wife's RAZR adapter on your Blackberry, A32 should be fine..... but dont try and sue me for writing this, I'm not liable for your experimentation.

UPDATE: My blackberry wall unit says: 5v @ 0.75A. Wifes RAZR wallunit says: 5v @ 0.55A. wow, iGo really messed this one up.

Computer go BOOM

So I wake up yesterday and "head into the office" to find my workstation says its 5:27AM and is frozen. Ok, no biggie. I reset the box. about 5 mins after I'm into some emails, i hear a CLUNK from my hard drive. I think "damn, there goes my HD" obviously. So I boot it up again, kill almost every program, and proceed to do a dump of the image. About 4 hours later, its at 98%, and the status bar disappears. I assume its done. So I start testing the image, and I find I cant make a Norton Ghost 9 boot disk for myself! I find one online using my laptop, boot the box w/ it, try to read the image, and it only reads ".gho" images, IE Ghost 2003/8.0 or less. So I start looking for a Ghost 9 boot cd, luckily, torrent isn't illegal :)

I boot into that, see my image, and its corrupt. YEY! Thankfully, I have a July 12th image. So I go buy a hard drive (officemax 300 gig seagate for 129 - 15% "brownbag sale" + 8.25% tax). Pop the drive in my box, boot up with the ghost disk, try and read the 7/12 image, and it says it cant find a hard drive. DAMN, my motherboard or cable! swap out the cable, same story. So its 8:15, Fry's closes at 9. I get there around 8:50, and the cpu/mb combo I want is sold out. I end up w/ a abit NF-9f and an AMD Athlon 64 3500+. Bring it home, put in my case, put new HD on, it works. So then I begin a disk clone from the old drove to the new drive, knowing Windows will do crazy w/ new motherboard and controllers. It told me it would take 18hrs. So at 5pm today, I'll have a clone HD and the windows fun begins! Some nifty sites I found on the way are the ultimate boot cd and the ultimate boot cd for windows. its a shame I couldn't get this to work with ghost9, only ghost8.

UPDATE:
Windows Genuine Advantage is an annoying PIA. The cloned image said it wasn't genuine, plus the windows install wouldn't recognize the new board/proc. Re-installed windows. That full dump image ended up not being corrupt. So I proceeded with restoring my "Documents and Settings," then doing the "reinstall program, restore files from backup to the newly installed directory" trick for two days. I think im about 95% back to normal. UGH

Moral of the story is.... your backup image? don't count on it for a bare-metal recovery, as technology changes so much you'll end up upgrading your equipment and the image wont work properly anyways. Have a full backup every 2 weeks, monthly doesnt cut it.

weather station up!

So I finally got my weather station in a couple days ago. The thing came w/ batteries. That just doesnt happen anymore! So I wanna roof mount it w/ an old directv mount/pole... but it isnt tall enough and the roof will sheild it from gusts.... so I went on a hunt. Only place w/ a mast was radio shack. so this mast doesnt really fit my dish's mount pole. AND I need a place to put the rain guage. After some online research I found this. Needless to say, I'm not gonna pay 40 bux plus shipping for something I could probably make. I head to home depot, get some 26g aluminum sheeting and proceed to cut. about an hour later, I end up w/ a decent shelf (I'll post picts once i get it really mounted).

So currently its sitting on a mounting pole that isnt too snug inside a dish mounting pole, mounted to my rose planter, barely peeking over a fence.

If you are intrested, check out my weather link.

WMR968 ships, finally!

Now lets just hope I actually get the right one. http://isnoop.net/tracking/?t=1Z61RV150343728261

WMR968 update

So I got an email this morning from buy.com:

Oregon Scientific Complete Wireless Weather Station

This item is in stock but hurry, pricing and availability are subject to change.
Click here to view this product.

Why does it take almost 2 weeks for buy.com to get it when it was already available on OS's website? bastids! Now lets see how long it'll take to actually ship :)

WMR968 back in stock? come on.

[email protected] to me 1:30 am (14 minutes ago)

We just wanted to let you know the product you requested notification for (Model#WMR968 Complete Wireless Weather Station) is now in stock and available for purchase. Please feel free to click the following link to read more and place your order.

http://www2.oregonscientific.com/shop/product.asp?cid=18&scid=71&pid=83

Thank you for visiting Oregon Scientific and we appreciate your business.

The Oregon Scientific Team

Which makes me wonder WTF those people are smoking.

Oregon Scientific WMR968 Backorder

So I call OS to get a date on when THEIR supplier will have them shipping out to the retail suppliers. After getting put on hold a couple times, I'm initially told april, but after some more holds im told "End of may".

END OF FRIGGIN MAY!

So i then ask "i've been doing my research about OS and backorder issues. There seems to be a trend that you have alot of things on backorder, and for extended periods of time. After all these years of being a good and profitable company, why cant you figure out this supply issue?" All I got was "Our supplier is in Hong Kong, and they send us what they have when they have it". NICE. so some guy in hong kong controls your company.

IDIOTS.

So I call buy.com for a refund. turns out they dont bill until the unit ships. I asked for free 2-day shipping for my troubles. So i go online and call 3 more places that say they have em in stock. 2 of em say "no, thats a drop ship item" and one goes "we have 6 left". I submit my order, get an email saying "this is on backorder" turns out their computer didnt update. canceled that order. this is getting old.

Custom header in Thunderbird

So you want a customer header in TB...

create/edit user.js file:

user_pref("mail.identity.id1.headers","pgp1,pgp2");
user_pref("mail.identity.id1.header.pgp1","X-PGP-Fingerprint: CABE 26F2 DF3A 7457 9B9C 74A6 EAA2 62C8 B0A2 B90F");
user_pref("mail.identity.id1.header.pgp2","X-PGP-Key-ID: 0xB0A2B90F");

restart. pretty simple. id1 being the first account, id2 the second, etc.

For more detailed info, check out https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=61520 The most recent stuff is at the bottom

EOL

I hate when companies EOL a perfectly good and stable product for something inferior due to "contract restrictions" they just signed with someone else. You end up getting stuck w/ alpha-rate products and the end consumer gets to be the tester. friggin BS.