Schmee's Blog

It's been Awhile

noreply@blogger.com (Schmee) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 06:52:00 +0000

Wow where do I start? It has been quite a long time since I've updated this thing. Alot has happened in my life since then and I have kinda been staying away life on the nets for a while, Im not really sure why, I think it has to do with being more busy with everyday life, dont have the same amount of time to just sit around and watch twitter and listen to podcasts. Im hoping to get my self a new phone this summer that will help me get connected more. Ill probably be asking advice and posting my research results at some point.

Have a Good One.

Lee

Leaving for Basic Training

noreply@blogger.com (Schmee) — Mon, 12 May 2008 02:14:00 +0000

Well its that time, I leave for basic training on Thursday May 15th. Four days away! I go offline on Wednesday though.

I just want to write a quick note to all those out there who read my blog and my twitter followers. Thank you all for following me, helping me get my blog started listening to my constant babble on twitter. I've made some good friendships out there.

Just want to say a big thanks to @tw3nty3ight, hes a great guy to follow and tweet with, if you don't already follow him do so! Thanks man for all your help! And try and not get a new cell phone till I get back ;)

Next I want to say thanks to another great guy to follow, @dogboi hes been a lot of fun to shoot the tweets with as well, hes a great guy and it's been quiet since hes lost Internet the last week or so, will miss talking with him on twitter. Wish you luck in all your endeavors man! Good luck getting the search engine going.

I'd like to say good luck to @martinelli18 shes alot of fun to talk to and pick on at times. Shes also a great source to get dirt on @tw3nty3ight haha. Been fun following you these last few months, good luck with all your schooling! study hard and have a good time!

I would also like to thank @carrie1982 for following me, she is a lot of fun to pick on and she picks back so that makes it all the more fun! haha Good luck in whatever it is you do. haha!

And I want to say thanks to @throk, hes helped me with a few things and is an all around awesome guy! Thanks for following me! Good Luck!

Lastly I want to say thanks to @zachflauas and @christophmcleod and @crazyed89 and @dawgfan these guys are awesome! I don't talk to them a whole lot compared to some of the other, but they are some of nicest people I've met on twitter! You guys are awesome, one of them is twitters own "therapist" haha. Thanks for following me guys!

I hope to come back to twitter when I am done with my training, but the way the Internet works twitter may not be around then, if so I may find you guys elsewhere and hopefully we can still be friends :).
I'll be coming back in the beginning of october, and most likely I will not have any Internet connection till then, If I do it will be sparse and rather short, I'll be sure to stop by and say hi though!

Thanks to all my followers on twitter and else where! Take care of yourselves and keep in touch! I'll miss you all.

Lee "Schmee" Silcox

Virgin Mobile Sucks

noreply@blogger.com (Schmee) — Thu, 01 May 2008 21:22:00 +0000

Update on the Amazon situation.

noreply@blogger.com (Schmee) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:34:00 +0000

I called Amazon again today to see what was up with my download. They reactivated my song for me and I haven't had any further problems.

My experience with amazon had been really good, their customer service was good, solved my issues right away. They are a great service for purchasing music, great quality. I definitely recommend them.

Schmee

Video Blog!

noreply@blogger.com (Schmee) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 03:29:00 +0000

My First video blog! Don't laugh to hard!

Sorry the quality sucks, my camera aint the best.

Stalking on Social Networks

noreply@blogger.com (Schmee) — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 02:06:00 +0000

Hey everyone! Its been a while but I every time I sit down to write a post my mind goes blank. lol This time I am determined to write a full post. Enjoy!

Lately I have been thinking alot about stalking on social networks like Facebook, MySpace etc...
Alot of people consider it stalking a person when you look through their, photos and their profile page for no real reason, it's something I do when I am really bored. It's Kinda cool to get to see a side of your friends that you usually don't see. But is it stalking?

Here are a couple things I was thinking about during work today. I got really bored.

First lets look at browsing peoples pictures, is it that much different looking at their photos online than if you went and sat at their house and looked at them in a photo album sitting on their coffee table or wall? What would you do if you were invited over and they saw you looking at their pictures and asked if you were stalking them? Probably get a WTF look on your face.

And with their other information, if your invited to their house you know where they live, most likely have their phone number and its highly possible know where they work. So its not to much different their, and I guess people may not consider this stalking since they did allow you access to their info by adding you as a friend on facebook.

But what about those in your network? Same thing applies here IMO. If you do not have your privacy set to where only your friends can see your profile then you can tell someone their stalking you for just looking at your pictures. If you lived in a building where everyone shared common areas, and you left a photo album out then and someone walks by and is browsing through while waiting for someone or out of shear boredom , I doubt they have plans on stalking you.

Of course their are always exceptions, where those who truly are messed up in the head can use these as a means of truly stalking. I think my biggest thing about someone saying you are stalking them is that you may not be meaning any harm but when they say that it instantly brings thoughts of a wacked out individual to mind. Maybe we should find a different term for this.

And in the end if you are that concerned about some one stalking you online, unplug the friggin Internet. Seriously.

Schmee

Too many Facebook Applications.

noreply@blogger.com (Schmee) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 03:32:00 +0000

I just added a new friend on facebook, nothing out of the ordinary, till I looked at his application list. I count almost 500! Which is just way to many, how can you even keep track of them and the social network aspect of FB? It's getting out of hand.
ScreenShot of them all.

Schmee

TweetTee's

noreply@blogger.com (Schmee) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 02:27:00 +0000

I just got my new t-shirt from TweetTees today! I gotta say it is very nice, good quality shirt, love the design too. Dealing with them was great as well, I ordered the shirt on Tuesday and I had it on Saturday, that's not bad considering it came from Georgia! If you guys are looking for a way to show off some twitter pride this is a great way to do it!

FaceBook is Getting Old

noreply@blogger.com (Schmee) — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 19:43:00 +0000

I have been getting tired of Facebook lately, its getting to be the same thing over and over, the social networking seems to be second and all the apps seem to become the main priority.

I joined Facebook about a year ago, I think it was the beginning of march and I started to like it immediately. I was able to keep up with all my friends that I don't see that often, get to know some people I didn't know that well and just have fun. Then they added the applications, I initially thought it was a rather cool Idea, till I kept getting the requests to be a vampire or whatever else was popular that day. The communication between friends seemed to drop, and it became another game site almost. After a while things seem to calm down and almost get back to normal. But I still miss the way it was originally. I guess that's one reason I like twitter, there's no extras, just the conversation going on.

Schmee

Disqus

noreply@blogger.com (Schmee) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 02:18:00 +0000

I jumped on the Disqus bandwagon and added their comment feature to the blog, hopefully it will make it easier all the way around!

Schmee

Toluu Invites

noreply@blogger.com (Schmee) — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 18:51:00 +0000

I have 5 www.toluu.com invites left if any one wants one. Either leave your email in a comment however you like. Or shoot me an email at leetheschmee@gmail.com .

Living without TV

noreply@blogger.com (Schmee) — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 02:19:00 +0000

I have not actually sat down and watched any TV in the last 5-6 months and all I have to say is I haven't missed much. I can watch most of the TV shows online, I don't mind waiting a day or to see them either. There are a few things that I can not get online, like some of the less popular shows that aren't on the major networks, even so there is still ways of finding them.

As for the all the other things that TV has to offer, such as news, and sports, I don't really miss them all that much. I was at someones house today and the news was on and I never realized how much crap that is added to it. Reading it online is so much easier, it seem to be a little more balanced as well.

I can also choose what I want to see and when I want to see it, rather than having to either watch it at the time it comes on, or purchase a DVR and record it.

For me I do not plan on purchasing cable or satellite, unless they can give me something that I can not get online that would be a big enough draw to get me to actually watch it.

Schmee

Windows Vista SP1 and Logitech Keyboard.

noreply@blogger.com (Schmee) — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 01:20:00 +0000

Thought I would make a quick post in Service pack 1 for vista.

I installed SP1 on the 18th when it became available. I downloaded it with through windows update, took me about 10min or so to download the files, not a problem with that. Once I clicked "install" it started and it took it about an hour before I was able to get back online. Overall I haven't noticed any major differences, my laptop does seem a bit faster when opening files. Memory usage may even be down a bit, I forgot to check and see what I was using prior to the install. I also notice I haven't been having as many issues with my wireless card since installing SP1 so it may be working better with my card now.

So far I haven't had any thing happen that would make me tell someone not to install it. My computer still works and may be a bit faster as well.

Now onto the logitech software, I'll try to explain this the best I can, hope you can understand it!

I recently purchased a Logitech bluetooth mouse and keyboard combo from TigerDirect, the MX5000. I love it for the most part, being able to get away from my laptop keyboard is so nice, the mouse is a good size, although it is taking awhile to get used to using a large mouse again, been using a pocket sized for a while. The features that are built in and I currently have working are pretty sweet, the touch controls for the media player are nice, only problem is I touch it on accident and end up stopping the music playback. I also love the smart calculator that is built in, press the button and the LCD screen turns into a calculator and use the numpad, awesomeness. About the LCD screen when looking directly at in a well lit room it is great, as soon as I lean back in the chair it gets all distorted by the protective screen. I can still read it although it takes some getting used to. It displays the Date and Time as well as the current room temp and whether or not caps lock and F lock are on. The LCD screen also lacks a backlight which sucks. As for typing on this baby, its pretty good, buttons are easy to press their not to noisy but not super quiet as well. As for the mouse it works great, all except for the extra buttons. Need the software for that. The mouse comes with a built in rechargeable battery and a charging dock, while the keyboard runs off 4 AA batteries.

Now onto my problems with the software. I really would like to get the full functionality of this keyboard working. It comes with some sweet features like: Email and IM notifications for the LCD Screen (although no pidgin support) Quick buttons for email, messenger and webcam (or user preference) Multiple smart keys for quick access to certain programs, and customizable mouse buttons as well. All these would be great to have, unfortunately logitechs software SUCKS. I shall explain as best I can.

As soon as I installed the software they gave me, I went and started to setup up my preferences. So far so good, then it got interesting. I went to try and send an IM, every 10 or so seconds the window would go out of focus and I could not type. I would have to wait for it to refocus or click back on the window to resume typing at first I thought it was something that I was installing, as time went on it got more annoying. It was real fun trying to go to a new website, every time it came back in focus and I went to type it erased everything I had previously written. Fun times. So finally I uninstall the software they gave me, barely. I tried opening my control panel but couldn't because when the window refocused my start menu minimized. Finally think I had to go into task manger and end the process which then allowed me to continue.

So I got the software uninstalled and tried the version they had on their website. Same story. Called their tech support, 40 minutes on the phone with them in the middle of installing the 4th piece of software they told me to. They HUNG UP. So I uninstalled all their crap and haven't had a problem since. I plan on giving it a shot in the near future too. Just wanted to make sure SP1 one works ok.

Schmee

Multiple Monitors

noreply@blogger.com (Schmee) — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 00:52:00 +0000

I thought I would post my experience with running multiple monitors so far.

I purchased the Westinghouse 24" Multifunctional Monitor from Sam's club last week, and I absolutely love it! It comes with a VGA port, HDMI port, S-Video and component, composite ports as well. The picture on it is perfect once its set, there is a button on the side that allows selection of; picture, text and economy modes, which changes the brightness and contrast of the screen which makes it great for late night use, no need to take a lot of time to dig through the settings. Size wise I like the 24" screen, every web page fits with plenty of room along the side for other apps and such. Picture and video are awesome, I can finally sit across the room and watch a video with out dragging my laptop with. Sound quality on the built in speakers is decent, not high quality but decent enough for what I use it for.

As for running two screens, it makes life so much easier. I use my Toshiba laptop with a 19" screen as a secondary monitor. On it I usually have my buddy list for my IM accounts as well as my IM windows along with any other processes that I would like to have open at all times I.E ventrillo and media players.

Connecting the external was pretty simple, I plugged the cable in and turned them on and Vista asked how I wanted it set up, adjusted the settings and I was good to go, or so I thought. There have been a few times that I have restarted or changed a setting and my laptop monitor took over being my primary and I had to reset my settings, I have also had issues with my taskbar remaining on my external and my icons move to the laptop again a setting reset fixes it. There have also been a few times that I have had to restart because the quality went south, not quite sure why but it resolves itself after reboot.

As for compatibility I haven't had any issues running Firefox, windows media player, itunes and anything associated with them. I have had issue with my Toshiba High Definition DVD player though, it will not run on my external monitor. Which is extremely frustrating when I want to watch a HD-DVD. I found nothing on their website that would tell me why it does this.

Overall I like the dual monitor setup its great, saves time, helps productivity and looks pretty sweet. The few issues I have aren't that hard to overcome and there may be an easy fix for them as well. Who knows they may be fixed in SP1!

Thanks for reading!

My blog!

noreply@blogger.com (Schmee) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 02:05:00 +0000

I set up my blog! Pretty excited to give this a go, don't know how well I will do. Hope to get a post up sometime this week!

Thanks for stopping by! If you have any comments they are appreciated!

Big thanks to Dogboi, Throk and Dawgfan for the help and advice in start this. You guys rock!