scott.hodson.blog

January 30, 2007

Free XBox 360 w/3-year MSDN Subscription

Filed under: Xbox — scott @ 3:48 pm

If you’re thinking of getting a MSN subscription you can get a 3 year VS.NET 2005 Professional Premium subscription (averages to about $1,100/year) and get a free Xbox 360. Get your boss to pay for the sub, keep the Xbox :)

Check out the offer here.

The Professional Premium sub includes VS.NET and OSes and other apps, but doesn’t include any of the Team Server VS.NET editions. Check out the MSDN subscription comparisons. The one being offered here is the 6th one, “Visual Studio Professional with MSDN Premium”.

My Trip to Frys, Returned My iPhone, No Vista in Sight

Filed under: Apple, Vista, iPhone — scott @ 12:25 pm

Returning My iPhone

I went to Frys in Fountain Valley today to return my iPhone (Linksys CIT200) because it’s pretty useless and cumbersome to use as a Skype phone.

After persevering through the usual act of Congress that is returning something at Frys, I went out to find Vista. There were no banners or ads for Vista, no fanfare whatsoever. I meandered down to the software section where they sell OSes and found it there. Each Vista and Office 2007 box was in a separate large see-through glass container. Hmm, there’s something to be said for digital distribution of software.

January 29, 2007

Bill Gates on the Daily Show

Filed under: Microsoft — scott @ 11:40 pm

Sorry, no side-by-side with John Hodgman :( Check out Bill’s “exit strategy” at the end.

January 28, 2007

Getting Ready for Vista

Filed under: Vista — scott @ 7:11 pm

Windows Vista Ultimate

Windows Vista comes out tomorrow. Time to get ready!

Make sure you get the edition you want. Compare editions of Vista here.

Buy the OEM versions, you’ll save about $50 below the retail upgrade price and much more less than the retail full version price if you do. Here are some sites that offer the OEM versions. You won’t get any telephone support from Microsoft so these are only for those that don’t need touchy feely support from Microsoft.

Of course these 3 retailers are all in CA so I’ll get taxed, anybody know of any non-CA based eTailers that sell OEM copies of Vista? I checked Amazon, no good.

Also, don’t forget to run the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor if you plan to install Vista on an existing PC to make sure it’s compatible with your existing hardware and to see how well your applications might work or not work after the upgrade.

Of course, the week after I bought my Dell E1505 last year with XP Pro they started offering Vista upgrade coupons to new laptop buyers, just my luck. Maybe I’ll call Dell to see if I can get a coupon but I’m not counting on it.

UPDATE: Here’s so more detailed technical info about what you can and can’t do with OEM versions.

“Ruby School” In Session

Filed under: OCRuby, Ruby — scott @ 5:34 pm

Last week we had our first meeting of Ruby School. If you’re interested in learning more about Ruby and Rails, come to Ruby School.

January 13, 2007

Secret Features of the iPhone Not Shown at MacWorld

Filed under: Technology — scott @ 5:25 pm

Check out these previously unmentioned features of the upcoming iPhone. I’m not sure how these features got leaked but it make the iPhone and even more compelling option.

By the way, did Steve Job mention anything about Macs at MacWorld? It just goes to show that event is really SteveJobsKeynoteWorld, not MacWorld. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple had a press event at the end of January, about the same time Windows Vista is unleashed on the general public, just to steal some of Vista’s thunder.

January 8, 2007

Block, Stop and Filter Blog Spam With Akismet

Filed under: Technology — scott @ 10:47 am

After getting so much blog spam on my blog I virtually turned off commenting on my blog by forcing all comments to moderated and then just never actually moderating the comments! Then I read about the Akismet plugin for Wordpress. It’s working like a charm, catching all of my blog spam! This is a great plug-in if you don’t have it running already and you are a Wordpress user. Check it out. It requires an account at wordpress.com and an API key, even if you host Wordpress yourself.

Download Akismet

January 3, 2007

How to Connect to EDGE Wireless Broadband on T-Mobile With a BlackBerry Pearl on Mac OS X

Filed under: Technology — scott @ 8:21 pm

Bluetooth EDGE Connection on a Mac

I found this link that walked me through it. Make sure you accept the connection request on your phone when you try to connect, and make sure you pair your phone with you Mac first before trying to configure this. Good luck! I’m only getting 140kb down and 11kb out (ouch) but it’s good to have around when no WiFi is available.

January 2, 2007

How to Get Rid of the Firefox “Restore Session” Window

Filed under: Technology — scott @ 5:41 pm

When I startup my computer, and start Firefox 2, I often get this window pop-up window below

Annoying Firefox Restart Session Window

I never want to “Restore Session”, I just want to start with a clean slate, so I don’t want this window to even pop-up anymore. To turn this off you can change the browser.sessionstore.enabled setting in Firefox. To do that,

  1. type about:config in your browser URL
  2. go to the browser.sessionstore.enabled setting
  3. change the setting to false

For more information about this config setting and other settings related to Firefox SessionStore features, check out http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.sessionstore.enabled

January 1, 2007

Why is Adobe Acrobat Reader Slow? Don’t Know, Use Foxit!

Filed under: Technology — scott @ 7:04 pm

If you’re tired of waiting forever for Reader to load up your PDFs you should try Foxit Reader for Windows, a free PDF reader that loads up much faster and gets your PDFs open much quicker. It even works embedded in web browsers for when you click on a PDF on a website. Check it out!

Powered by WordPress