Modern Soapbox

With media files increasing in size and bandwidth speeds getting faster, upgrading your hardware connection to the outside world has never been easier with a Wireless N USB adapter. Whether you have an older notebook or want to make your desktop PC wireless, this wireless adapter from TRENDnet is currently on sale for $20 with free shipping.

Data transfer can be slow, sluggish, and unreliable with Wireless B and G connections. 802.11n is the latest addition to the wireless standards family and supports a transfer speed just as fast as having a wired connection. Forget the hassle of running a network cable from one room to another or installing RJ45 jacks in the wall. Don’t bother opening your desktop to install a wireless card. Those are tasks of the past that are unnecessary today.

Just invest a crisp Andy Jack on a wireless USB adapter, plug it into a USB port, and let your OS take care of the rest. Once your wireless network is found, enter your super secret WPA key and now you can stream your large DVD images without a glitch. Make sure you’re packing Wireless N otherwise you’re two-thousand late.

Most notebooks purchased these days are equipped with Wireless N capability. Keep up with the times and make sure all of your computer systems have this standard. If not, then you know the solution is simply getting a TRENDnet Wireless N USB adapter and plugging it in. No need for a screwdriver, Cat-6 cables, or cutting holes in your wall for RJ45 jacks. Upgrading doesn’t get any easier than this.

The last update here was a couple weeks ago right before I moved to a new apartment. Time has flown as usual. March has arrived. The cold is leaving, and the Spring transition is in progress.

On February 19th, Mary and I officially moved into our new apartment. Moving was physically taxing, but we managed to get through with it by the end of the month with life’s usual routine of sleep, work, and school went on. Fortunately, our new apartment has an attached garage that no one is renting and we’re currently using it for storage. Our belongings would have restricted us from moving around the apartment comfortably if it wasn’t for that garage. This weekend, I plan on chipping away at what’s in the garage.

On February 20th, a mouse made its way into the apartment and stayed for almost a week. I’ve never had to deal with mice but I’ve dealt with cockroaches and other insect pests. I ended up getting some mouse traps and baiting them with peanut butter. In less than twelve hours, the mouse was terminated. The crime scene wasn’t too bad, and the clean-up was a cinch.

The house my brother rented the past few years needed to be completely moved out this past weekend as well. Along with the moving Mary and I did through the week especially on Friday and the cleaning I did on the old place on Saturday, helping move what was left in the house and cleaning it as well definitely took all of the energy I had left. I was nodding off at work and school on Monday and Tueday, but I’ve made it this far in the week A-OK. TGTF.

I’ve taken my first couple exams for the two classes I’m taking this semester. So far so good. The addition of taking classes to the 40-hour work week keeps me occupied Monday thru Friday. I still have a little time between work and school to relax as much as I can, and I’ve been doing a bunch of recovering earlier this week from all the moving I did over the weekend. Again: Thank Goodness Tomorrow’s Friday. I’m looking forward to this weekend when I won’t be hauling stuff back and forth in vehicles and unloading them or doing any type of deep cleaning.

My inner circle is making a much-needed transition, and we’re taking advantage of 2010. I hope to see some of our projects come to fruition by the end of the year, and the future is looking bright. As long as we stay focused and motivated, our work will amount to something we accomplished with our own effort.

We’ve been going over this routine for years, and we’re not trying to be huge nor make a huge dent in the world, but it’s better than being and doing nothing or not following through with our projects and ideas. We’re grown up a bit in the past half-decade, and we’re making changes that’ll take couple years to get us to that next level. We’re patient though. We’ve taken up this much time already, and we just need a little bit more.

I’m going to be a godfather in a couple months. Thanks, Joe. This means so much to me. The fact that you selected me to be part of your daughter’s life shows that we’ve formed a solid trust over the 10+ years that we’ve been close friends. I know I haven’t been around all the time, but we’ve always kept in touch. The time has arrived where I’ll have to be more active ’cause she’s going grow up so fast and we’re not getting any younger. I got this. =)

Now that the moving has tapered off and all that Mary and I have left is to get the apartment arranged, I’ll update this more frequently. So much for my New Year’s resolution to update this at least twice a week, but life has its way of getting in the way and resolutions are usually broken. ‘Til next time. Peace out.

To netbook and notebook enthusiasts, portability is a priority on the list of requirements that additional devices should provide. The Seagate FreeAgent Go portable hard drive keeps this in mind with its sleek and compact design.

One of the biggest advantages of these external hard drives is that the power source is combined with the USB cable. Unlike the larger relatives, the FreeAgent Go does not require an additional wire with an adapter on the other end to power it on. One less wire means one less item to carry around.

A hard drive as attractive as this seems like it would have a price tag that might deem it undesirable. Consider this. The tuxedo black FreeAgent Go packs a hefty 640GB of storage at a reasonable sale price of $99.99 with free shipping. That sounds synonymous to a great deal.

640GB is plenty of space to store your files, backups, music, videos, documents, and anything else you would keep on a hard drive. The software is preloaded, so you won’t need to deal with a CD when plugging it in. The hard drive on your netbook or notebook probably isn’t near the size of this puppy, so you might want to consider dropping the Benjamin on one to make sure you’ll have plenty of disk space to go around.

Before I go to bed during the work week, I go through a mental checklist to make sure that everything is in its right place when I wake up and get ready for work in the morning. The checklist is pretty typical to most people employed full-time and includes:

• setting the alarm clock (two in my case: the actual alarm clock that gets the beatdown when it goes off in the morning and the alarm on my cell phone that cuddles with me during that last hour of rest as I hit snooze on it when it goes off and on multiple times during that hour)
• getting the pocket residents together to go back in my pocket: keys, wallet, mp3 players, headphones

Last night, I didn’t do everything on my checklist mainly putting my wallet and keys in their specific location for easy retrieval. When I was ready to leave for work this morning, I couldn’t find my keys. I drove to work using a spare key but didn’t have my access key to get into the building so I had to ring the doorbell to have someone let me in.

On my ~8am break, I put on my jacket, went outside, and reached for the spare to get into my car and pulled out my keys. Ha.

The bed and pillows you sleep on is a mini-ecosystem. A recent study out of England suggests that pillows harbor dangerous bacteria and fungus. Bedrooms are a huge source of indoor air pollution and in the top three dirtiest places in the home.

On a typical pillow, you can find human skin cells, bodily secretions and excretions, animal hair and dander, bacteria and fungi, dust mites, perspiration, insect parts, food particles, cosmetics, lotions, and oils. After five years of using a pillow, 10% of the weight of the pillow is made up of dust mites and dust mite feces. Every ten years, the weight of a mattress doubles because of the same thing.

If you don’t have the proper protection on your bedding, then you are inhaling this eight hours a day every day of your life which can cause allergies. The cure is to have an impervious outer covering on your pillows and mattress. What’s in your pillow stays in your pillow and what’s outside stays out.

The best solution is an allergen pillow. The Healthy Dreams pillow with the Micrenza bio-filter is the first truly germ-free, mold-free, and allergen-free pillow available. Why risk your health to germs, mold, and microscopic critters that you can’t see with your naked eye?

Nothing can grow on the surface on Healthy Dreams pillows as long as you own it, and you never have to wash it. The Micrenza bio-filter keeps anything from entering the pillow and has the efficiency of a surgical mask. The ComforTech membrane that keeps moisture from passing into the pillow.

The cloud you rest your head on will be heaven sent if you use a Healthy Dreams Germ-Fighter pillow. This is the ultimate pillow on the market that provides comfort, peace of mind, and improves the quality of your sleep and the air you breathe. The technology in these pillows is a modern testament to ideology of a great night’s sleep.

Wireless signals flood the air to accommodate the mobile world always on the go. Most technophiles these days are equipped with either a smartphone or a netbook under $200 (or around that price) if they need to travel around with their geek gear.

Acer has an attractive line of netbooks on sale right now. These puppies aren’t the subnotebooks you might have seen a couple years ago. They’re loaded with specs that rival their full-size counterparts while delivering excellent battery life with mobility-conscious enhancements.

With the Intel® Atom™ processor combined with the Mobile Intel® 945GSE Express chipset, sufficient processing power fuels these netbooks to run your everyday programs. Web-browsing, email, and popular software suites like Microsoft Office run surprisingly well on Acer netbooks.

1GB of RAM resides inside to keep your system from bogging down, and memory management is handled optimally with the latest and greatest OS from the Microsoft crew, Windows 7. Wireless capability, a LAN port for those who still plug in, memory card readers, an 89% keyboard, three USB 2.0 ports, a multi-gesture touchpad, a 10.1″ LED backlit screen, a VGA port, and a built-in webcam are just some of the features packed into these little guys.

Smartphones can’t do everything that desktops and notebooks are designed to do. Netbooks are the future generation of computers that provide similar functionality like executing those crucial programs and necessary tasks that can’t run on smartphones. If you looking for an excellent solution to mobile computing, then explore Acer netbooks to find your match.

The Premium Electronic Cigarette™ introduces a brand new way of enjoying cigarettes and smoking without the awful smell, high expenses, and inconvenience to those around you. No tar. No tobacco. No carcinogens. No ash. No smell. No flame. The e cigarette is a demonstration of today’s technology.

How does it work? Air flows through the device which is detected by a microprocessor. The processor actives an atomized cartridge which injects tiny droplets of the liquid into the flowing air creating a vapor mist which is inhaled by the user. The non-flammable Electronic Cigarette looks, feels, and tastes like a cigarette, and delivers all the pleasures of smoking but does not contain tobacco, tar or any known carcinogens.

Refill cartridges start at ~$2 each and can be used for about 250-300 puffs depending on the model. Each cartridge is equivalent to over 20 regular cigarettes. Consider that the average pack of regular cigarettes is about $4.50-$6.50, this could be up to a 75% savings. Five kinds of atomized cartridges are available: High (16mg), Medium (11mg), Low (6mg), Ultra Low (4mg) and Zero (0mg).

Driven by modern microelectronic technology, the Electronic Cigarette is composed of a small rechargeable batter and a unique, safe replaceable atomized atomized cartridge containing water, propylene glycol (approved by FDA and used in many food products), nicotine, and a scent that emulated cigarette flavor.

The most popular kit starts from ~$70 which include two premium rechargeable batteries, six cartridges, a USB charger with AC wall adapter, a user manual, and a manufacturer’s replacement warranty. More smoke. More Puffs. No mess. Only 2 components. For smokers looking for a change or an advancement in one of their everyday pleasures, the e cigarette is the revolutionary new alternative to smoking.