So yeah, I just wanted to post a quick picture of me at work. The coolest thing I've done lately is hook up an extra monitor to my laptop and use the Extended Desktop functionality.

Now, instead of having to constantly switch between windows, I can have two displays, cutting out a lot of needless window switching.

Right now I've got the MLS (Realtor's search engine thingy) and Raleigh Craigslist open on my computer.

If you have an extra monitor, hook it up to the VGA port on your laptop, then right click on the desktop and select "Graphic Options -> Output to ->Extended Desktop -> Notebook+Monitor"

This will create a second desktop which you can use just like your first. For me, I have to do alot of transferring data from .pdf files into online forms. It gets pretty tiring to constantly switch between windows. This solution has definitely streamlined the process. Yay!

So I'm back on the blogging scene. Be sure to stay tuned for around one post a week.

We did it! Hahaha. We took apart our Xbox 360, piece by piece, and fixed the Red Ring of Death. It took about 2 hours from start to finish and a lot of patience. The hardest part, by far, was removing and reattaching the x-clamps that hold both heat sinks in place. 

Hey everybody. I'm promoting dad's new website, http://www.ncgetaquote.com

So what can we learn from the URL bar? Ever notice how a lot of sites have ridiculously long URLs, full of '?', funny names, weird extensions (cfm, php, shtml, asp, aspx, etc.)?

Huh, so my gmail inbox has the same number of messages as the current year. Yes, I celebrate a wondorous 2008 messages with Gmail. 

Just a little side note. Some of you may remember me mentioning that I was into web development. Anyway, that has progressed to me and Ethan creating our own website. Yes, with a friendly little click, you can visit EthanAdam.com and browse through some of our gallery pages, or get a quote for a logo or website design project.

So make my stats look good and visit www.ethanadam.com.

Feedback is always appreciated!

Alright, by now the immensely large community who visit my blog page day after day in hopes of a new post will be happy to see another article popping up on my homepage.

Today's topic is more of an addendum to last week's post. So I've been designing (actually programming) websites recently, trying to turn this into a career, or at the very least, a profitable summer job.

Ethan, my brother, had been helping me with the designing some of the web graphics. His work is quite groundbreaking. Sometimes its hard to even know how to properly implement some of the stuff its so cool.

Anyway, one unfortunate job of being a web programmer is making sure your site works with every browser known to man. Well, here is a quick little list of the browsers and browser versions one should check to make sure your website is fine in all of them.

Internet Explorer (IE for short)
Version 7.0
Version 6.0
Version 5.5
Version 5.0 (Optional, sites are beginning to discontinue support for IE 5.0)

FireFox
Version 3.0
Version 2.0
Version 1.5 (Again, this could be optional)

Opera
Latest Version

Safari
Latest Version

Flock
Latest version (Unnecessary, because Flock is essentially firefox under the hood)

You get the picture. Counting all the different versions of browsers, I currently have 9 different browsers installed on my computer. And I sure do love checking every page of a website 9 different times making sure everything looks the same.

Anyway, I would encourage everyone to try out some of the new browsers. My personal favorites are Flock and Opera.

Flock is a social web browser made primarily for viewing sites like facebook and blogger.com. And opera is awesome purely because of one feature. When you open a new tab, it opens a page with 9 thumbnail images of sites you have set which you can visit very easily and rapidly.

Lastly, with all the energy I have in me, if you are viewing this webpage in anything but the most current version of your browser (go to "Help -> about" to view your browser version), use the links above to download the most up to date browser of your choosing.

And if you happen to be using IE 6 or earlier, PLEASE DOWNLOAD IE 7 or FireFox NOW! As a web developer, I have learned from personal experience that even if a site looks perfect and crisp in IE 7, FireFox, Safari, and Opera, it will look like a happy meal (toy and all) stuffed into a blender and left on high for 30 minutes in IE 6.

I wish I were joking. And the next time you see a message telling to update your browser, do not click ignore. Those thirty seconds for a quick install will give me more piece of mind than you could know.

Hello everyone. Just a quick post to tell everyone to check out the website Ethan and I have designed for Tarron's Kennel. So please check it out and tell me what you like/dislike and what things could be improved.

It is under construction, so some links may lead to placeholder pages, but for the most part, you can get an idea of the website, its design ideas, and the flow.

Anyway, any feedback would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

If you are sitting at work and have nothing to fill your time, here is a simple, yet addicitive flash game.

All you use are the left and right arrow keys to steer through a 3-d maze of sorts.

Anyway, if you can beat the third level, let me know, thats as far as I've gotten.

http://js.pp.sohu.com/ppp/blog/widgets_0914/game/3dcube.swf

Here is an ad that just blew me away. I found it at hitslot.com so your welcome to check it out to see if the add is still there. Anyway, here is the picture I found. This just doesn't seem like something I would ever need or could ever find any sort of practical application for. Enjoy.

Mom, I know you think we play too much Xbox, but it could be worse.

Much worse. Click the link for the full story. This guy is 32, owns all 247 North American Xbox 360 games, plus 3 Xbox 360 consoles (the "Pro" "Elite" and "Halo 3" editions) and he has a wife and 8 year old daughter (and a full time job).

The Past

Cars manufactured before the 1970s were purely mechanical animals. The combination of advanced manufacturing processes and a deeper understanding of simple machines gave way to cars in the steam age. The idea was refined and redeveloped, eventually leading to the model-T: the first affordable and mass produced car ever. Technology changed and cars switched from steam to internal combustion. Manufacturing precision and speed increased with time, allowing for higher quality cars to be mass produced.

Coming to the 1970s, computers were placed in cars. At first, these were simple computers that monitored simple things, like oxygen to gas ratio and temperature. Even these simple computers helped engines run more efficiently.

The Present

Today, computers are an integral and inseparable part of any car. Cars now perform diagnostics and monitor most---if not all---working components. From air pressure in the tires to rain-sensing wind shield wipers, cars today do it all. GPS navigation systems are becoming increasingly common standard components in cars. In fact, desktop computers are even built into some high end models with internet capability, just like a regular computer at home. So with computers becoming increasingly common in todays cars, some might ask, what's next?

The Future

So here is my idea for where cars are headed next. Instead of making separate displays (GPS screens, etc), make the windshield itself the display. Instead of having to look away from the road to see where your going on a small 3"x3" screen with a map on it, the map would be overlaid on your windshield.

Manipulation of the screen would be handled by motion sensing gloves. If there was a high amount of glare on your hood, you could draw (using your gloves) to block the glare with a small box drawn on the windshield/computer display.

When driving at night, you could open up a night-vision box so you could see both via normal headlights and with night vision right beside it on the windshield.

Plus, some amount of normal computerness would be available, like opening a youtube window to entertain your guests, or checking weather reports. Traffic reports would be built into the GPS system.

Alerts (like your air pressure is low in the right front tire), would pop up directly on your windshield. Alerts telling you its time for an oil change would also display on the screen along with options to schedule an oil change, a map box showing you nearby locations for oil changes, and the functionality to call ahead and see if one is busy or not.

Lastly, the all-to-familiar "Distance to empty" feature would be much cooler. Instead of showing you a rough estimate of how many miles you've got left to drive, on the GPS screen, you could overlay a Distance To Empty map, showing the farthest gas station you can reach along your current route. Now, if you're running on empty and on a long trip, you can see exactly how far you can push it before running out of gas.

So if I could make a car, this would be it. You've gotta admit, it'd be hard to top!

So for this blog post after the long, cold, winter, I wanted to do something kinda funny. Anyway, I remember hearing some hype about Windows Vista and its revolutionary speech recognition. Having had other things to occupy my mind, testing of this particular feature escaped me. A few weeks ago though, I broke down and gave the speech recognition a whirl. At first things were a little rocky, so I tinkered with some settings in an attempt to optimize this tool to my speaking style. I even spent time training the darn thing! By now, I’m sure you’re curious as to what my final opinion is on Vista’s speech recognition. Well, I won’t spoil anything for you. Below is what Vista thought I said when I dictated this blog post to it in MS Word. Below that is a link to the sound recording of me dictating. Enjoy!

So for this blog posts after the long cold winter I wanted to do something kind of funny. Anyway, I remember hearing some hype about windows be stuck out his revolutionary speech recognition. Having had other things to occupy my mind, testing in this particular feature escape me. A few weeks ago though, I broke down and gave a speech recognition of world. At first things were able rocky, so like tinker with some settings and attempted to optimize this tool to my speaking style. I’d even spent time training the darn thing! By now, I’m sure you’re curious as the one my final opinion is on these two speech recognition well, I won’t spoil anything for you below is what the step by step my belly dictated this blog posts to get up in Microsoft word. Below that is a link to the sound recording of me dictating. Enjoy!

So here we are, poised and ready to venture forth into the wild untamed wilderness that is the router.

Ok, so what is a router? Well, on the absolutely most basic level, the router splits your internet signal so that multiple computers can share one internet connection. Now before I proceed further into what a router does and how, I would like to explain how a router splits an internet connection.

A cable splitter creates a copy of the cable signal. Imagine a pie. Each TV connected to a splitter gets a whole "copy" of the pie. A router, on the other hand, can't make multiple pies. It only has one pie, so it has to split it up into pieces to share between the computers. If one computer is downloading some huge files, it means the router doesn't have as much pie (or bandwidth) to share between the other computers.

The next order of business is how a router functions. Before I get started with this, I have to explain what an IP address is. An IP address is just like your street address. All mail that goes between your house and the world goes through your mailbox. All information between the internet and your computer goes through your modem. A router splits the "mail" between all the appropriate computers. For example, two people are browsing the internet. One visits www.google.com and another visits http://summerbreak05.blogspot.com. The router sends those URLs to the modem, which then sends them into the internet. The two webpages send information back to the modem. The modem sends the information to the router, which makes sure the right computer gets the webpage it requested.

So that is how routers/modems work at the most basic level. So what ELSE does a router do? Because all information between your computers at home and the internet goes through your router, your router provides a way to manage your internet connection and add protection via firewall. Almost all routers have a built in firewall which protects all computers connected to the router. Now the question is what is a firewall and how does it work? Your home network (all computers connected to a router) is like a small community. Without a router (and pretending your comptuers have no anti-virus or other protecting software), your community can send anything out of the community and anything can get in. A router is like building a castle around this community. So how does information get in and out with a giant castle built around your village? The answer is ports. Remember in the movies how castles have holes in the wall that can be opened and closed to allow archers to fire out? That is similar to a router. It operates all these holes (or ports) in your firewall.

For example, did you know that all website traffic goes through port 80? By default, routers leave the important ports open, like port 80. A lot of routers also allow you to open and close these ports. Have you ever had a program that went really slowly or not at all when connected to the internet? Likely, your router was blocking the port that the program was trying to use. It would be like trying to get in/out through the strongest part of a castle wall. You can open these ports, and your program will work fine, however, you can block ports to prevent computers on your network from using limewire or other programs you don't want to be used on your home network.

So routers have two basic functions. Split the internet signal and protect your computers. I would like to revisit one topic I mentioned earlier. The IP address. Imagine IP addresses are phone numbers. You have a global telephone number. Lets imagine mine is (111) 111-1111. This is the equivalent of your modem's IP address. But routers keep track of the computers by giving them all IP addresses. Think about it like this. If your trying to call someone in your community, you don't add the area code. But calling to Hawaii, you better have that area code on there. Your router gives each computer a "local" IP address, which makes sure the router sends the right information to the right computer. However, your modem is the one making the long distance calls and actually getting the right information from the webpages.

Anyway, that's all for now. Ask me questions in the comments and I will do my best to clear up any issues and hopefully make another networking post soon. Hope you guys like it!

Due to public demand, the networking 100 class is now being offered on http://summerbreak05.blogspot.com. So let's start with the basics about a connection.

What actually happens when you type in www.google.com? Well, its like shopping with a credit card. You can buy as much or as little as you want, but no matter what you buy, you have to swipe your credit card to purchase it all.

When you visit a website, you have to give that website a little information before you can view the page. That information is always the same. That information is the site's URL, in the case, it is www.google.com. If you visit my blog the information you would send is http://summerbreak05.blogspot.com. Sending that URL is like swiping your credit card. You can get an entire webpage back, just by sending out that URL.

Glossary time. Uploading is anytime information is sent FROM your computer TO the internet. Downloading is the reverse. Information is sent FROM the internet TO your computer.

So going to www.gooogle.com is like buying a furniture set with a credit card. In terms of physical space, you used a 1 inch peice of plastic and are taking home a pickup truck full of stuff. You upload a tiny piece of information to www.google.com and they give you a lot back (their webpage).

Uploading pictures is like going to a pawn shop. You take a bunch of stuff to a shop and walk out with cash. You send in a lot of information and take back just a tiny bit.

So Xbox LIVE uses more upload space. Browsing the internet is more downloading. But if someone is uploading pictures and using LIVE at the same time, its like two people cahsing in their life's belongings at the same pawn shop at the same time. It would be madness.

Which is what happens. Both LIVE and the upload process conflict with each other and make both slower and less efficient.

Stay tuned for my next class which will be Networking 103: The Router. If you want to know how to network multiple devices AND configure your router's firewall properly, I will guide the way.

If you are a particularly adventorous soul, you can check out www.port-forward.com for some helpful tips and guides on how to get the most out of your router.

Yeah, the time has finally come! I just wanted everyone to know that I will be reporting to the MTC on December 12th and after that I will head into the Utah Salt Lake City South mission for two years!

Woohoo!

Mom recently pointed out that I complained for her taking all the upload bandwidth. Here is a brief explanation of networking principles as it applies to the matter at hand. :)

Everybody knows about download bandwidth, which is usually just called downstream, or bandwidth. This determines how quickly webpages load, files download, etc. Browsing the internet is primarily download driven. However, it is still a two way street. When you type in a URL (like www.gooogle.com) you are sending a small amount of information to a computer (actually a server) somewhere which then sends you information back, which you then download and your computer displays the webpage. So browsing the internet is primarily download driven.

Xbox LIVE multiplayer matches are primarily upload driven (usually called upstream). What happens is one Xbox 360 "hosts" the match (he decides what is what in the match, whether you killed that person or not, etc). Anyway, because everything that you (the player) does must be verified with the host of the match, you have to upload information regarding every time you pull the trigger, turn, pick up weapons, grenade, etc. So we say that Xbox LIVE multiplayer matches are primarily upload driven. While you download information, the information is only the stuff relavent to you. You won't download as much information about a player 100 feet away who is off screen as you would someone who is right in front of you.

Typically, browsing the internet and Xbox LIVE exist harmoniously because one is download driven and the other is upload driven. However, two upload processes occuring at the same time (pictures and LIVE) can hamper both. Also important to note, with cable internet, the downstream capabilities are greater than the upstream capabilities. I can't say how everybody's internet service providers (ISP) operate, but typically the upstream is less than the downstream.

So anyway, that's why things went crazy last night. And now you know a little bit more about the internet in general, and what not. Enjoy.

Alright guys, this post might get a little dry, but I'll try to keep it as brief and entertaining as possible.

So I was running the other day and began pondering good and evil, free agency, and other interesting topics. By the end of my run I had developed a new take on all of the above topics.

I'm just gonna dive right in. What is power? Think about it. My musings led me to one conclusion. Power is the ability to act or to do. In other words power is potential. So what is action? Action would be the yang to power's ying. Action are the choices we can make as a result of the power we have. I compare this relationship to running. I have the power to run about 2 1/2 miles. That power means nothing without being able to exercise it and do the physical running. So the idea is one of action and power, both being equally necessary.

I then applied my new definitions to free agency. We all have the power to make our own choices. This power, like running, can be altered by our choices. Choosing to run daily will increase my power to run. Choosing to eat unhealthy foods instead of running will diminish my power to run, thereby limiting my choices. Even trying to avoid choice will affect my power to run. Inaction on my power to run will diminish it.

So now all the above was finally applied to good and evil. Right and wrong. Before I delve into that, I would suggest that every choice we make is by nature a sub-choice stemming from our power to choose. Since our choices affect our power to choose, all our choices have some kind of an effect on our agency, or power to choose. That line is the line between good and evil, and indeed it is a line. As a part of the definition of right and wrong I submit that evil is addictive while good is liberating. Think about it. A lifetime smoker is addicted to cigarettes. While services like charity do not consume the participant as do cigarettes, alcohol, or other vices that grab hold and tend not to want to let go. In other words, the sin itself entices us and attempts to control us. "Good" does not entice us. Our own desires for freedom and control over ourselves pushes us to do good. I guess you could call this a definition of the conscience.

My grand, overreaching point is this. Choosing the wrong negatively affects our ability to choose, enslaving us, while choosing the good positively affects our ability to choose, allowing us to choose more and more freely. So here is my definition of good and evil. Good increases our power to choose while evil decreases our power to choose. Even inaction has a result on our power to choose. By remaining inactive and not exercising our power to choose, we are passing up chances to choose the right thereby decreasing our power over choice. So the only way to better ourselves is to choose the right. We cannot simply not choose the wrong and think ourselves to be choosing the right and moving forward. It is only by choosing the right that we can obtain more power over choice. This path of right leads to a perfect control over ourselves and a perfect control over every choice we make.

So what do you think? Am I right, or way off base? I have only used my own personal experience and logical thinking to form my conclusions, so feel free to point out weakness or strengths of my argument. Anyway, enjoy.