I got word from the Geico insurance adjuster the other day that the Santa Fe is not totaled. Seems that if the airbags deploy in any wreck it gets pretty expensive. My next step will be gap insurance to make sure we don’t come this close to being a one car family again.
Audiovox 8910 and BitPim
Alltel wants $3.95 a month plus charges against monthly minutes to “send” photos taken with my 8910 to my email account or a URL. – Ya, count on that. I downloaded this photo of Connor from my phone straight to my PC.
It came to my attention that the Audiovox 8900 is not the easiest phone to work with in terms of getting pictures off of using a USB cable. Neither BitPim or Brewsky support the firmware. Luckily I learned that the 8910 is not an upgrade from the 8900 – it’s a firmware upgrade from the Audiovox 8600 series. BitPim does work. Here’s how:
1. Acquire a USB cable for the 8910 off ebay with the Curital drivers (no need to pay more than $12.00).
2. When the cable arrives load the CDM8900 drivers contained on the driver CD BEFORE PLUGING IN THE PHONE. This process will load three different drivers and then assign your phone to Serial COM Port 4 when it’s plugged in.
3. Download and install the latest version of BitPim.
4. During the installation it will ask you to specify connection settings. First specify a download path to your local system. For “Phone Type” use LG-VX6000. For the COM Port use “COM4”.
5. Next go to “View” and “Filesystem” or click on the “Filesystem” tab. Then click under the “+” under “Name”. If you’re sucessfully connected you should see the directory structure of the phone similar to the one below. The next part is what confused me – where are the fr#@kin’ photos?!!
6. The image below shows the path to the photos in the “brew” directory. They are not in the camera directory as you might think. Just right click on one of the .jpeg files and select download.
Be careful messing around in the file system of any phone. There are very many stories on the web where people have fried their firmware for good. Your provider will give you a hard time about this if they realize what you were doing at the time the phone died. Use this information at your own risk.
Santa Clause came to see Connor!
…and left him all kinds of new things for us to fall over and trip on. But it’s cool because he loves his new John Deer 4-wheeler, even if he can only drive it backwards. Daddy pushes it forwards. Amy got a new camera phone on “the family plan” so it will actually save a lot of money. She also got plenty of other stuff she wasn’t expecting including a shopping trip to Aldos.
The best gift I got came from my dad (as usual). It’s my new Magellan Meridian Gold hand held GPS. More Geocaches are on the way to being discovered. I’ve got to come up with a cool theme of items to leave at the caches I find next year. I think I’ll post more about xmas later but right now I’ve got to go eat chicken wings.
Since several people have been asking I’m also going to work on the photos section of the site tonight or tomorrow so all the pics on my server can be viewed from one page.
Fun in the Hospital
I just spent the past two nights in Duke Regional Hospital in Raleigh. I was admitted throught the ER Tuesday night with a fever of 104.7 (I was told that’s impressive and that I shouldn’t have waited so long). We didn’t know if it was my Crohns disease or a virus causing the fever. 3 X-rays, a CAT Scan, four steriod injections and two days of anti-biotics is what it took to determine I had the flu.
I’ve made it 24 hours without any fever. I was admitted on no medications and came out on six. There is a full out assualt being waged by the staff of Raleigh Digestive Medicine to put the Crohns into remission. The main drug I’ll be taking is called 6MP. It’s a drug commonly used in combination with radiation to treat Lukemia. It’s used in small doses against auto-immune diseases like Crohns and Colitis.
Amy crashed the Santa Fe
Amy really did try to make it to Mary Kay’s duet at church this morning. She was heading down 64 towards Knightdale when a lady slammed on her brakes in front of her as the light turned red. It didn’t help that Amy was watching Connor do something in the back seat. She was doing about 40mph when she ran into the back of a Buick Rendezvous. Always a Buick… I hate those cars. Congradulations to Amy for making it through her first airbag deployment.
Amy and Connor are fine. A claims been opened with Geico and I’m certain of a Christmas present from them in the form of a rate increase. I don’t care because like I said Amy and Connor are fine. So’s the lady who was driving the ugh,…Buick. The car’s been towed to Barbour’s Towing and Recovery and Geico’s going to have it moved to a body shop tomorrow.
On a side note: Let me praise the durability of the mighty Olympus Stylus 300 digital camera. It sat completely submerged in a puddle of coffee in the dash compartment of the Hyundai until I arrived on the scene. I wiped it off with my shirt tale and took the pictures above. So far it’s proven to be indestructable.
WRAL.com – News – Durham Councilman Released From Jail
WRAL.com – News – Durham Councilman Released From Jail
Further evidence of Durham’s criminal element. Even the City Council members are spending weekends locked up. Is it beyond rational to think that if the city cleans out the scum in charge they might just make some headway towards cleaning up their sprawling ghettos?
ABC News: Kerik Withdraws His Name for Top DHS Job
ABC News: Kerik Withdraws His Name for Top DHS Job
Dude, your worried about something as small as a nanny’s immigration status when asked to work for this administration? That little flaw smells like fresh flowers compared to the stench you’d be keeping company. Neeext….
Lynchburg, VA
Over the river and through the woods…last Saturday we took an eventful trip to Lynchburg. At the beginning of our travels we got stuck behind the Creedmore, NC Christmas parade (think bumbkin) and then near Amherst, VA we watched a dump truck push a car up a highway embankment just 100 yards in front of us. The car came down, hit a pole and rolled on to it’s side. I stopped momentarily but then went after the dump truck which hauled a$$ outta dodge.
Once we finally arrived it was a pretty routine visit to grandma’s house. Everything within Connor’s reach was breakable so Amy and I spent the entire time keeping him away from the antiques. It’s amazing that a table can be full of dozens of objects and somehow he picks up the sharp one or the glass one. Luckily his new favorite word is “outside”.
Livejournal
Today I created a Livejournal page. My intention was to setup a Livejournal RSS feed for this site. I stopped when I realized it would cost me $5.00 every two months for syndication privileges. That sounds like nothing but I’m weary considering how many recurring technology fees I already pay.
Supreme Technology
This is a quote from FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell as he “applauded” the Supreme Courts decision to hear the case regarding the ongoing ISP-cable line dispute:
“The 9th Circuit’s decision would have grave consequences for the future and availability of high-speed Internet connections in this country,” he said in a statement. “High-speed Internet connections are not telephones.”
And people wonder why I loathe our purposefully ignorant government officials. It is a sad day when the Chairman of the FCC doesn’t weigh the importance of a technology like Voice over IP and doesn’t have the foresight to care what mediums it can be transported on. Go back to your office and fire up your ballpoint Mike Powell – have ’em put in a few more load coils. I’d be willing to bet the FCC’s Network Admins have already made sure your calls are IP based. But then again that would involve the government saving money… if anyone has inside info on this I’d love to know.
Another sad thing is the Geritol Gang (the Supreme Court) will probably not have the ability to weigh this technology into their ruling. “You mean people can make phone calls on the interweb?”