Adventure and perseverance on two wheels

Posted on August 1, 2010 by Steve

I came across the wild story of Former Hells Angel, Author and Martial Arts champion Glen Heggstad on the Biography Channel. The show was “I survived” and it features interviews of regular people who have survived extreme near death experiences. Glen Heggstad’s story was one of the most memorable for me.

Glen decided to go on a one man motorcycle expedition from California to the southern tip of South America. Along the way he was kidnapped by Colombian rebels for 33 days. They beat, humiliated, and tortured him. They had also setup many mock executions to break his will to live. For example they made him stand in front of an open grave and pointed a gun to his head. Glen came up with an even more amazing plan to regain his freedom. After Glen was released Glen continued his trip despite being severely underweight and malnourished. Glen moved on from his ordeal and has traveled all across the world on his BMW motorcycle.

Glen’s website is strikingviking.net You checkout the video of his numerous interviews and appearances. He has the video The national Geographic Channel did on his story. You can purchase one of his books and have it personalized and see the many full color pictures of the amazing places he has been. His book has high reviews on amazon but will not be personalized like purchasing through his website. His story was also featured on Locked up abroad. He currently lives in California as a martial arts instructor.

Windows home server installation and basics

Posted on July 8, 2010 by Steve

I decided to finally install windows home server. I have zero server experience and have heard Paul Thurrott gush about this many times on windows weekly with Leo laporte. I have a few computers in my apartment and i would benefit from windows home servers backup features and file hosting.

Picking the right system
The first step in setting up the server is to find a PC to install it on. I have a few older xp computers laying around and i figures they would be perfect for this project. I was dead wrong. Windows home server has basic requirements first you need a computer with at least a 100 gigabyte Hard drive. A typical person would want much more than this. So to be fair anyone serous about using windows home server is going to buy a new large hard drive. Most of the newer large disc drives are SATA and most of the older xp systems are IDE. This is a problem because windows home server doesnt support many RAID cards.

Installing the OS
Installing the OS is basic enough. I found the installation is very automated and doesnt ask many questions at all. This is unlike Windows XP setup which is painful due to how many times it will stop in the middle and require info. Once The OS is installed you have 30 days to activate and I had 94 Windows updates to do.

Drivers and updates
Its important install windows updates first and choose custom versus express. With a custom windows update you will have the ability to install needed drivers quickly, easily and it is very safe. Windows home server is based on Windows server 2003 which is also based on windows xp. When you are looking for drivers that windows update cannot find you may have to choose an alternate operating system. If you cant find windows home server in the choices of drivers on the manufacturers site choose server 2003. If server 2003 is unavailable choose windows xp. Xp drivers has worked for me. Windows may warn you about the driver not being signed. Ignore this and install the driver anyway. If you actually have a major problem with a driver. It wont be the end of the world, just a OS reload.

I will continue to write more about my experience with windows home server in the future.

Hot Air rework Soldering Station

Posted on May 29, 2010 by Steve

This is the hot air station i purchased from china on Ebay for my computer repair business. I purchased this unit mainly for de-soldering. Anyone who has tried to de-solder and remove components from a PCB board knows this can be difficult, time consuming and frustrating. Just when you melt one components lead the others harden up and hold it into place. The idea of hot air is that you can heat up the area and melt all of the connections at once. This leaves you with the option of removing the component without removing the solder with a de-soldering wick or a de-soldering pump.

This is what the box looks like. Its pretty simple really. There is no need for pretty pictures. Its a true white box experience. There are many different company names and models to choose from. I chose this one based on a few things I liked in the Ebay listing.

This is the handle for the hot air station. Inside there is a small fan. wires and a heating element. I liked that this model had the heating element inside of the handle. As you can see this makes it easy to replace the heating element if needed. There are many nozzles for the handle they are pictured above. There is a magnet kill switch in the handle and stand. So when you you place the handle back on the mount it automatically shuts off the air.

Above is a picture of the extra heating element included.
The station is digital and has 2 connections and heaters. One is for the soldering iron and the other is for the hot air. The dial higher up is the control for fan speed. The other two are for both heating elements hot air and Iron. Thats the other reason i chose this unit. It comes with a soldering iron.

Conclusion:

So far I haven’t had much experience with hot air de-soldering. I liked this unit because it had a reasonable price and many accessories. It even came with many soldering iron tips. Most of them are very sharp. If you find this blog entry helpful, or interesting please leave some comments. I would like to hear what people think.

The STS-132 space shuttle Atlantis final launch

Posted on May 24, 2010 by Steve

I was lucky enough to be able to make a trip to see the final launch of space shuttle Atlantis. The shuttle takes off in cape Canaveral near the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The space center sold all of their 9000 tickets in 30 minutes. Traffic leaving the space center was an extra 2 hours even though most people spent more time at Kennedy space center. There were people waiting for the launch with tripod cameras and beach chairs as early as 9am for the 2pm launch. This video was taken with my HD Flipcam.

FAA rule: Airliners cant hold passengers hostage past 3 hours.

Posted on May 1, 2010 by Steve

Apparently, U.S. Airways CEO Doug Parker isn’t brain dead. This is a trait uncommon in the American Airline industry. In a public statement Mr. Parker has made the simple conclusion that the Airline industry is responsible for the new FAA rule that states an Airline will pay hefty fines for kidnapping its passengers on a tarmac for over 3 hours.

Yes. I used the word “kidnap” because in too many situations airliners have somehow felt it was necessary to hold their customers on a tarmac for longer than 3 hours without returning them to the gate.

Here’s a classic example.

In February, 2007 JetBlue passengers were stuck on the tarmac for 8 hours. Jetblue employees somehow found it unnecessary to just bring the passengers back to the gate. When the story broke Jetblue added comedy to their disgrace by explaining the 8 hour delay was due to icy weather. The news didnt bother to remind Jetblue the story was not about the delay and the weather.The story is about the decision to hold passenger against their will for 8 hours!. Jetblue said in a statement that they will be refunding these passengers tickets. So what the lesson for this story?

Jetblue may legally kidnap you for 8 hours but, they wont charge you for it. Its free.

Intuit and Quickbooks SUCK

Posted on April 12, 2010 by Steve

I’m looking for an alternative to Quicken. Its a fairly good app. Intuit the makers of Quickbooks and Quicken have unfriendly business tactics that screw their customers.

Every year Intuit releases a new version of Quickbooks and Quicken. So far I haven’t noticed much of any actual improvements and I think most people don’t want or need to upgrade bookkeeping software.

This doesn’t fit into Intuits own financial plan. Intuits goal is to have their customers rebuy their barely updated software yearly. The problem is their customer base is bookkeepers, thrifty, and budgeting.

So what does Intuit do to solve this problem? They force their customers to upgrade by intentionally making their previous file formats obsolete.

Intuit and Quickbooks sucks. Don’t take it from me checkout the reviews left by their customers on amazon. Intuit thinks somehow if the push out a new version of their products and show a feature list that is basically identical to their previous versions somehow no one will notice. They are wrong and people are looking for an alternative to Quickbooks.

The Highlight Diner Fire

Posted on January 25, 2010 by Steve

The highlight diner once was a very popular diner in the Port Jefferson Station, Long Island New York area.
It went out of business after lengthy renovations and has been since abandoned.
A fire broke out sometime on January 23rd 2010 at around 3am.
The first video isnt mine. I shot the 2nd video.

Reflowing Motherboards SMD Chips

Posted on November 13, 2009 by Steve

I cam across a repair for some bad laptop motherboards. Some models of laptops have bad heatsinks for their Graphics chipsets. This heat can get so hot that it can melt the solder under the SMD chip and ball up and loose connection from the motherboard. The symptoms vary and basically are all of the tell tale symptoms of a bad motherboard.

This is a problem with IBM Think pad models T40, T41 and T42. Its also widely reported to be a problem for Some of the HP DV2000, DV6000 and DV9000 Series. The repair is not easy and requires an SMD rework station. Some technicians are able to reflow the SMD Chip solder with a heat gun. This is a dangerous repair and requires the technician to heat the motherboard enough to melt the solder under the SMD Chip but not enough heat to burn the components or melt any of the plastic. As you might expect this is a repair that takes some experience to complete reliably and some guts.

I am going to take on a few test repairs and see how they go. It should be interesting and a great service to anyone who needs this repair. If it gos well It will be nice to tell a customer they wont have to spend the extra money on a new motherboard.

Nutz at Night #19 – Fly Like A Rocket

Posted on November 13, 2009 by Steve

This show went live at 11PM Eastern time at Podnutz.com and is a part of the podnutz network. We start the show out with one of my topics. I talk about my experiences working for a private investigator. I worked as an under cover investigator. Part of my job was to write daily reports. These reports had to be detailed with what my day was like and what i did and saw. I go into detail how this simple task greatly improved my overall memory.
Steve tells his experiences with a small computer he purchased to watch flash video TV episodes and how it failed.

Another topic for me was why I really like Microsoft Streets and Trips as a GPS and my undieing love for Google Maps.

What I hate was about car lights and why they drive me nuts. Steves Like was a great free app called, Synergykm. Synergykm is a PC/MAC Virtual KVM Switch.

My like was how a youtube video called Extreme Base Jumping in Wing suits. Its some fantastic footage of base jumpers who literally fly around (for real) in special winged jumpsuits. The video demonstrates these jumpers flying next to mountains edges and move like rockets.
You can see this video below.

These are just some of the topics we had for the show. You can download the audio portion of the show here.

Nutz at night Episode #17

Posted on October 30, 2009 by Steve

This podcast was not recorded live due to the world series. We talk about google voice and its strange voice mail transcription. I mention one of my favorite websites Gethuman.com. Its a website that lists the various shortcuts through the “customer service” telephone systems to get to an actual live human being. We also talk a bit about steampunk laptop modifications. These are just a few topics.

Checkout the podcast here.

Random Curiosity

A healthy alternative to sunshine