uvageek

It’s 11 days til Christmas and I have to say that I’m not really looking forward to Christmas this year. It’s not so much that I feel like I don’t have anyone to spend it with – I’m sure that my brother and his wife and kids would love to have Uncle Dan around, or perhaps to spend time with my extended family in Georgia or South Carolina… but oddly I just guess I’m not really in the spirit of things.

In the past I always remember there being something special about Christmas, whether it be decorating a Christmas tree with family or there being a specific toy or gadget or book that I was really interested in and hoping that someone would get me I feel almost like I’ve hit that Ecclesiastes state of feeling of vanity and commercialism.

Perhaps if I was actively attending Immanuel Bible Church I would be more in the spirit, and yet my heart still aches every time that I drive by, expecting to see either a Honda Accord or Acura MDX there.  Maybe if I was going to Reston Bible Church or McLean Bible Church on a more regular basis I’d be more in the spirit of giving and spreading the Word of Christ.  But I’m not… something to work on in 2011.

I do realize that I’m blessed incredibly by each and everyone of you that are reading this in addition to knowing that my family does in fact care deeply for me.  I guess it’s more just that the sense of loss still blows me away at times.  They say that the second year after having lost someone is more painful than the first – mostly because those friends that were close but not considered family have forgotten and moved on. There’s definitely a special group of folks that around every holiday or memorial date turn back toward the family and remind us of the good times and the things that our Mom had done to touch the lives of others – thank you each and everyone of you.

For me, I classify this feeling that I have at the moment as an instance of the invasion of the Christmas Gnomes getting the better of me. Funny enough, Mom had some little gnomes that looked similar to the one pictured to the right. Though they weren’t festively decorated in red felt with green branches, rather just red felt cloaks and fuzzy white beards.

So how to avoid the Christmas Gnomes you ask? Easy, surround yourself with friends and family. It’s time to rejoice in the Lord. It’s easy to let the post modern world that we live within try to focus on ourselves, but in reality this is the time that we should tune in all the more to God and remember what this season is meant for.

So while little kids are super excited about crawling around in boxes and big kids are excited to be playing games on a new arcade system, I’m starting to see why my parents were just excited to have family with them – definitely the best gift that you can ever have.

Grace and Blessing to you all and look out for those gnomes creeping in from the sides!

So for anyone that’s interested, GOOG-411 is officially gone. Kinda sad that it’s been retired on Veteran’s Day of 2010, but I suppose that all good things must come to an end. If you give the phone number a call it will give you a short voice recording even thanking you for the good times… I’m wondering what kind of phone messages were recorded.

On the brighter side of things though, Google SMS still works. So if you’re looking for a decent way to find information based on where you’re at, you can simply send an SMS message to 466453 (though 46645 seems to work too). First thing you probably want to do is set your location, which can be simply done by sending a message with “SET LOCATION <ZIP CODE>”. If you want to search somewhere else – say you go out to St. Louis for some reason, no problem, just change your location. If you’re wondering what time it is in another city, say in Wahiawa, Hawaii, just type the command, “TIME Wahiawa, HI” and boom, you’ve got the local time.

Interestingly enough if you use Google Voice, you can actually send requests that way so that you’re not incurring texting fees on your mobile phone.

If you’re really interested in learning more about how to use Google SMS, check out the help files. Pretty cool that there are event shortcuts – yes, that’s right, if you need weather results for a zip code, simply send an SMS with “WX <ZIP CODE>” – wicked sweet.

So recently I’ve been having some odd X201 issues… granted I’ve had the X201 for a little less than a week. Wondering perhaps if it’s a BIOS issue I wandered over to the Lenovo web site and find that the Version that is available is “version 1.22”.  Looking in my BIOS I see version 1.23.

Version 1.22 was released on 9/9/2010.  Version 1.23 according to the BIOS was released on 9/15/2010 with a BIOS revision of 1.35 and Firmware Revision of 1.17.

What’s up with this Lenovo? It’s not available on your website? Is it stable yet or are you just shipping it out for jollies?

Thanks DMIDecode port for Windows from GNU for helping to capture the below info.

# dmidecode 2.10
SMBIOS 2.6 present.
78 structures occupying 2863 bytes.
Table at 0x009639D8.

Handle 0×0000, DMI type 0, 24 bytes
BIOS Information
    Vendor: LENOVO
    Version: 6QET53WW (1.23 )
    Release Date: 09/15/2010
    Address: 0xE0000
    Runtime Size: 128 kB
    ROM Size: 8192 kB
    Characteristics:
        PCI is supported
        PC Card (PCMCIA) is supported
        PNP is supported
        BIOS is upgradeable
        BIOS shadowing is allowed
        ESCD support is available
        Boot from CD is supported
        Selectable boot is supported
        EDD is supported
        3.5"/720 kB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
        Print screen service is supported (int 5h)
        8042 keyboard services are supported (int 9h)
        Serial services are supported (int 14h)
        Printer services are supported (int 17h)
        CGA/mono video services are supported (int 10h)
        ACPI is supported
        USB legacy is supported
        BIOS boot specification is supported
        Targeted content distribution is supported
    BIOS Revision: 1.35
    Firmware Revision: 1.17

Definitely wondering what the deal is…

It’s a long weekend thanks to the 4th of July holiday falling on the Monday after. So what’s that mean for the majority of us in the technology world? Hopefully that means getting out of the house, doing some home or car maintenance, spending time with family, catching up on a book or hanging out with friends you haven’t seen in a while.

Just be sure you don’t fall into the case of Dilbert…

A little over a week ago, 5 February 2010, Snowmageddon descended upon us. Somewhere around 2 PM the snow began to fall, sprinkling the area gently, becoming a slushy foundation that would later freeze into a firm foundation for snow to pile there upon. Every few hours I was going outside and using a large shop broom and brushing away the initial slush and snow. Come nightfall the snow fall picked up and began sticking to the ground.

Overnight, we continued to shovel the snow every few hours. It seemed though that with every time we would go out that we had not dented the snow with any of our previous efforts.

By Saturday morning, the snow was deep and any previous efforts to clear snow were disturbed by wind blowing snow into drifts. Wandering about the neighborhood took precedent

After much shoveling and digging, the snow had finally died down, but my car still seemed to be weighted down by a significant amount of snow. I decided I would submit my thoughts to the world by drawing a little something in the snow.

All in all, by my car was finally freed from the snow by Sunday night.

Unfortunately more snow is on the way…

It’s Twenty Ten.

It’s been more than a year since I last gave my Mom a hug.
So the first is still on my mind fairly often, but with time, memories turn to smiles rather than gnashing of teeth. I still want to pick up the phone from time to time to say hi and see how things are going on at Immanuel, but I stop myself and just breath, realizing that life will never be the same.

It’s been more than a year since I’ve seen close friends.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen several close friends. Relating to my first though, several folks clammed up and weren’t certain what to do when Mom passed away. Several didn’t know what to say. Understandably, but just swinging by the house to say hello or calling would have been something that would have blown me away. Instead, while there seemed to be a ridiculous outpouring of sorrow on Facebook, I can’t say that there was one person that dropped by the house to share a meal or to say hello and see how I was doing. Granted, in some respects, I can’t blame them since I was over taking care of my dad through sometime part way into December.
Now that’s not to say that all friends have wandered disregarded me, but I guess it seems like “most” did. As time has gone by, some folks have come out of the woodwork to hang out – the “some” is relatively small. If anything I turn to my colleagues at work – some of them knew the full extent as to what had transpired, others just thought that there was an accident (hello, awkward!). These folks, while some not knowing Christ, were utilized by Him, providing care and friendship I would have suspected my Christian brothers would have rushed forward to provide – and people wonder why it’s hard to trust “christians” when they’re not true to the character of “Christians”.

It’s been more than a year since I’ve had the opportunity to really just be me.
Maybe I’m a little off on timelines, but it’s been a while since I feel I”ve had the opportunity to actually just be the kid that I like to be. In some respects I was able to be a kid in Nashville, TN over the past year, but not to just kick back and relax.

What’s that? You’ve got a vacation coming up?
If only. Though I suppose a trip to Hawaii would be acceptable to get away and just kick back, relax and breath.

So what are you looking to do this January of 2010?