I’ve upgraded my site to WordPress 2.9.2.
As always, I recommend WordPress to power your BLOG; it’s likely your hosting company offers it as an menu selectable install option, and it’s easy to install and maintain yourself if you’d like to take advantage of it’s full customization potential.
http://wordpress.org/
Mardis Gras was early and cold this year (I got a cold at the festivities leading up to the big event, so I’m staying in where it’s warm today and tonight)…
Mardis Gras is loosely French for “Fat Tuesday” — the day what the rest of the world refers to as Carnival (starting Twelfth Night [Jan 6]/Epiphany) ends on. Traditionally before Lent (which starts on Ash Wednesday, the day after Mardis Gras) the faithful would consume all the items that they were forbade from eating during Lent that would spoil before the end of Lent… which precipitated into a festival of sorts.
Mardis Gras is set by the same solar / lunar event that sets Easter (the first full moon after the Spring equinox — Easter is the first Sunday after that, and you simply count backwards seven Wednesdays for the start of Lent, and Mardi Gras).
Mardis Gras (and Carnival) have become unabashed celebrations with little connection to their religious roots (certainly we don’t miss a chance to commercialize a holiday).
There’s a wealth of information on Mardis Gras on the Internet, as well as live cam feeds to let you feel like you’re part of the debauchery.
From the City that Care Forgot… pass a good time!
If you have a flat rate cellular voice plan, you may not be interested in this article; but for most of us who simply don’t have cost effective options for flat rate plans this might help cut down on cellular bills.
Most cellular telephone companies off the ability to add one or more telephone numbers to your cell plan that will not be charged air time for inbound or outbound calls. It goes by various names, A-List, Friends & Family, My Favs, My Circle, etc.
Unfortunately, all of them limit the number of telephone numbers you can designate as air time free to a fairly modest number.
But… by using Google Voice, you might find that one air time free number is really all you need to greatly reduce your monthly cellular expenses.
You can go to Google and read a fair amount about Google Voice, they’re adding new features all the time so I won’t even try and cover all of them; just a few that might be of help to you (by the way, the “Call Me” widget on my web site uses Google Voice, and it’s no cost to the caller or me).
So how exactly can you use Google Voice — or really what will be covered in this post is how I use Google Voice.
First, I setup a Google Voice account a few months ago, mainly to be able to give out a telephone number that I wouldn’t be bothered answering when I didn’t want to, and still be able to get voice mail (at my convenience). Mainly I wanted to do this because I’m going to disconnect my home phone (AT&T offers “naked” DSL here, and since all my home phone does is provide telemarketers with a number to call I really don’t see a reason to ever answer it).
The Google Voice line worked great for receiving messages; I got them in my email inbox, and more times than not the voice to text transcription wasn’t very useful, but I could just click the link and listen to the message as well.
Second, I added my Google Voice number to my Verizon “Friend’s & Family” (what AllTel used to call “My Circle”) so that it would be air time free. Partially because there would be times when I wanted to actually route my Google Voice number to a phone so I could answer it (say when I was expecting a call), but mostly so that I could use Google Voice for outbound calls to people who were not going to be air time free.
So to use Google Voice for air time free outbound calling you need to log onto the Google Voice web site (there’s a mobile version of it as well, so if you have an unlimited data plan you don’t even need to be near a computer to make use of it) and simply instruct it to make a call. What happens is Google Voice calls you, then calls the number you instruct it to call and conferences you together.
To make all this air time free, you need to setup Google Voice to present you Google Voice call on inbound calls (that’s the number you specified as air time free with your cellular provider). This, unfortunately, means that you don’t know who’s calling, but there are some Google Voice features that help there too (I’ll let you go through all the features yourself).
For outbound calls you could setup Google Voice to present your actual telephone number, but it makes more sense to have your Google Voice number presented (especially for toll free calls, remember that they always get your telephone number).
Now you might not care whether or not you get charged air time for a quick call to your doctor’s office to confirm an appointment, but when you’re going to be on the line with customer service for half an hour (or more) you might want to think about the extra step of using Google Voice.
Now let me make it perfectly clear. I don’t trust Google with my personal and confidential information, so I would never have any sensitive data go through a Google Voice call; but hey, when it’s something like a customer service call people I don’t really trust with my information already have it.
You can request an invite to Google Voice, it’ll probably take ten days to two weeks before you get it. I’d recommend setting up a Google Mail account as well (you can forward the message from the Google Mail account or you can directly access the Google Mail account with POP3/IMAP4) to go along with Google Voice. In fact, even if you don’t expect to use Google Voice much, I’d say go ahead and setup an account now.
Also, Google Voice will be adding VoIP (SIP) service (they purchased Gizmo5) soon.
First, if you’re not having problems with your drive (unless it’s brand new, has no data on it, and you don’t have an issue returning it to the place of purchase or manufacturer) DO NOT DO IT.
Second, make sure you give yourself plenty of time, don’t try and do it quickly, or in between other commitments. Do it when it’s quiet. Make sure you have a UPS on your computer and that the weather is clear (so that there’s no likelihood of power outages).
Third, run the drive diagnostics from the manufacturer first. If the drive shows it’s having problems — return it to the manufacturer for replacement (most manufacturers will do advance replacement at no charge with a credit card; that gives you a drive to migrate your data onto, and a shipping container to return the failing drive in).
Fourth, many manufacturers support upgrading firmware directly from Windows (a few from other operating systems). I high recommend you choose the bootable CD approach — that way there’s no question whether or not you have something installed on your computer that might interfere. And if you’re using SATA I recommend you set your computer to SATA IDE/Legacy mode to insure that the upgrade (and diagnostics) don’t have any issues with your SATA controller (IDE/Legacy as opposed to SATA/Native, SATA/RAID, SATA/AHCI — different BIOS manufacturers will call it by a different term, but it’s the lowest setting for the controller, likely it’s what the default was).
Fifth, make sure you obtain the firmware update only from the manufacturer’s web site; and make sure that it is for your drive; and that it’s recommended as a general installation or specifically addresses an issue you’re having.
Sixth, make sure you read and follow the manufacturer’s procedure for updating firmware.
Seventh, power off your drive before you attempt to use it after updating the firmware. Most drives will not use the newer firmware until they are power-cycled; some drives just flat out won’t work until they’ve been “hard reset”.
Hopefully all goes well, but many drives become a brick if your firmware upgrade fails; a few can revert to the previous firmware and keep on running. If you have problems, contact the manufacturer, most drives under warranty can be replaced — but data recovery is not included.
NOTE:
Upgrading drive firmware may also change the first several sectors of the drive; I highly recommend that you backup the drive before upgrading the firmware.
In going through looking for a new domain hosting company I also looked to see about costs for domain registration.
I can certainly tell you that all my domains will remain registered at 1and1. I will be switching from a hosting package to their “instant domain” package (it’s free; but it does in fact have more than just basic registrar services).
Why?
Well, 1and1 isn’t quite the cheapest domain registrar (you can save a little with a few of the others), but 1and1 offers private domain registration at no additional cost.
A private domain registration does not publish your personal and confidential information in the ICANN database, so marketers cannot get your phone number or address. It does publish an email address that will forward mail to you; but you can easily filter mail coming from that address (it’s likely SPAM) or change it occasionally (make the domain public then immediately private and it’ll generate a new email address — it would be nice if they just let you enter an email address).
Also, I’m not sure it isn’t a good idea to keep your domain hosting and domain registration separate — that way it’s much harder to fall into a trap (though we have to hope that the companies we use for either of those services are reputable).
As I posted a couple weeks ago I’d gone ahead and moved some of my domains over to JustHost.com.
Mainly I was looking for an affordable hosting package that supports server side includes in addition to what I already had at 1and1.com for around same price. I also wanted unlimited bandwidth (but frankly I could have gotten that at 1and1.com with a cross-grade for just a small amount more per month with no hassle).
The way I started looking for a new host was to find some the “10 best” “50 best” or what ever they happened to be articles on the internet for hosting companies. I read through them, looked at their current offerings, features, and prices. The ones I felt were interesting I looked for reviews on the internet and read them.
Reviews from people you don’t know are not necessarily valuable. Read the review, see what they’re saying, see how they’re saying, and see if their needs and abilities closely ally with yours. And look for a pattern in reviews — if many people say the same thing, it’s far more likely to be true and not simply an isolated incident.
Once I narrowed down the field to a handful I reviewed any demos they offered of their control panel, features, etc. If they didn’t have any demo I placed them on the bottom of the list.
Then I tried their online “chat” feature to talk to a pre-sales person. If they didn’t offer an online chat I placed them on the bottom of the list (the very bottom — online chat is more important in the long run than a demo).
For the chat, I asked a few questions that there were in fact answers to on their site (just to see how quickly the person on the other end could provide me with a response, and if their response agreed). Then I ask any questions that I had that were not addressed by the site. Finally I ask one question that would require the person to actually think and apply the information on their site to the context of the question.
After that I decided on going with JustHost.com — they seemed like they provided the best package, best support, and most reasonable price. When I went to order the package they offered me a better price when I was going to navigate away from the order page to check on a couple things.
I’ve moved all my domains over to JustHost.com; I’ve put an affiliate advertisement for JustHost.com on my web page and my BLOG (if you’re going to order service from them, I encourage you to click on the advertisement on here so as to help defray the costs for maintaining my BLOG — and hopefully growing it; it won’t cost you anything).
Things I don’t like…
But…
Things I do like…
I often say..
Rarely do you get what you pay for.
With JustHost.com you may in fact get what you pay for (and maybe more).
That’s the name of the groundhog all this folklore is based on about Groundhog Day…
I’m not sure what happens if some groundhogs see their shadows and others don’t — average the results?
Anyway, I’m hoping Winter is as short as possible and that we’ll all have a nice, long, comfortable Spring.
All eyes are on Punxsutawney today.
That is day 32 of this year in the Gregorian calendar…
In 1865 President Abraham Lincoln signed the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, in 1998 Lillian E Fishburne is promoted to rear admiral and becomes the first female African American to achieve that rank.
Last year Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir is elected the first female Prime Minster of Iceland and the first openly gay head of state in the modern world.
A day to celebrate moving forward and leaving behind intolerance and bigotry.
