Hands on with the Verizon iPhone

This video from CNET is a good view of the Verizon iPhone. Enjoy

Foodie Adventures: Chicken and Dumplings

A few weeks ago my wife wanted me to make chicken and dumplings. I am not a huge fan of chicken and dumplings but I would go to the ends of the earth for my wife. So I started "Googling" to find a good recipe. Now you don't know this yet, but I am a mad scientist type cook. If I don't have an ingredient, I try to find a substitute. If it has a very unhealthy ingredient, I try to find a healthier substitute. Most of the time no one is any wiser, other times it is a failure.

For example, I made vegetable soup and my wife wanted some biscuits to go with it. I don't make biscuits often as they are not healthy if they are made correctly. I "Googled" a recipe and I only had fat free milk. I have made biscuits with soy milk. The biscuits looked great. They tasted horrible. Strange soy milk aftertaste. That was unexpected.

Anyway, I found a recipe online and I changed it some and it turned out great. Everybody raved about the chicken and dumplings. My wife wanted me to make it again yesterday, but I misplaced the original recipe I found online. You would think I could improvise and come up with it again, but I really don't remember what I put into it other than chicken and frozen (but defrosted) biscuit dough.

So we went to Cracker Barrel for lunch. I am not a huge fan of CB usually, but my wife is and that is all that matters. She, of course, had chicken and dumplings. I had the Cracker Barrel Sampler, which is meat loaf, chicken and dumplings, and country ham. I added turnip greens, fried orca, and brown rice. The brown rice was cooked with mushrooms. It was great.

iPhone your phone

So with this week's announcement of the iPhone coming to Verizon, you might expect it is time to swap over to Verizon from AT&T. Or you may be an existing Verizon customer and you have been chomping at the bit (as I did for a long time) to have an iPhone on Verizon. Halt! Stop right there.

As with any conversion, there are sacrifices. There are gains, but there are also sacrifices.

Gains:

1. Verizon network -- For most people this is all that matters. Verizon's coverage, at least in my area, is second to none. In fact many have put up with Verizon's monopolistic practices in areas where they were basically the only game in town for that reason. We put up with phones that we could load our own ring tones on. Limitations as to what web based things you could run, etc. I could go on but with the Droid phones and Verizon's initial efforts with them, they allowed a level of freedom they hadn't previously. Note: The downside to this is Verizon found out we were willing to pay more for a perceived more.

2. Hot Spot capability -- Verizon is shipping the phones with hot spot capability like they did the Droid 2 and Droid X phones. Yes, it costs extra but it is a nice feature. Note: The downside to this is Verizon found out we were willing to pay more for a perceived more. This seems to be an iOS feature and not a Verizon feature as AT&T may add this to their iPhones as well.

3. Antenna Gate is over... -- This is not proven yet. Based on initial testing by other organizations, it appears at least initially Verizon's version of the iPhone 4 phone has an antenna fix for the "grip of death"

Losses:

1. Data and voice at the same time -- You may or may not know, but on AT&T you can surf the web and make a phone call at the same time. With Verizon's first iPhone, you will not be able to do this. Why? Different technologies. AT&T uses GSM while Verizon uses CDMA. CDMA does not offer this capability. Now rumors of a specialized CDMA chip or the iPhone coming out initial with LTE (Verizon's new 4G data network) didn't happen.

2. Facetime -- Facetime will only work over WiFi. So you can't use your cellular network to get to another iPhone using Facetime. 

Draw:

1. iPhone 5 -- There will be a new iPhone 5 announced in June. Why? Apple always announces new products in June and September. Rumors are swirling that the iPhone 5 will come out in June and it will be 4G ready. Both for AT&T's network and for Verizon's network. Note: The downside to this is 4G is going to be in limited areas for a while. It will take Verizon and AT&T a while to get their respective versions of 4G to get out and about.

Conclusion:

Wait! I know, I know, your technology wanderlust is calling out to you and you want so bad. But you can have your cake and eat it too if you hold out for the iPhone 5. Besides, most of us are waiting on our contracts to be up so we can get a new phone anyway.

Other thoughts:

You could do just fine with a Droid 2 or Droid X. Granted the comparison of iPhone 4 and Droid 2 deserves its own entry.

CPT 101: Learning to use a computer

So recently as a Christmas gift I gave a friend of mine a computer I had bought from another friend for $40. It had a 2.8 GHz processor, 1 Gig of memory, and a wireless keyboard and mouse. I had also bought a 17 inch monitor from the same person for $30. So I had taken the 17 inch monitor and married it up with the family computer, you know the one that the kids uses when their laptops are out of commission (or borrowed by someone else in this case). My original intent on buying this computer was to build a Linux box for the family to save files to so I could backup all their data with my external USB drive. Basically a home media server. But it sat around and I began to feel guilty I had not given it a purpose.

My friend had wanted to write his life story for quite sometime and told me if I found a computer cheap or free or something that I had laying around, he would love to have it. So I decided to give it to him. First up, I had to clean it up. It had some spyware and some viruses. Sure, reinstalling Windows XP would have been quicker perhaps, but then the pain of locating all the drivers again (mainly network as that is the one driver that slows up the whole process of updating and installing drivers in this day and age of no media being shipped with computers). I installed antivirus. AVG antivirus  is a good and free antivirus. It doesn't update as fast as the paid for versions do, but it works for the most part. I also installed Malware Bytes and Super Antispyware. These are good and free utils that do a good job of scanning a computer. They cleaned up several nasties and I scanned the computer multiple times and rebooted multiple times to ensure it was as clean as I could get it.

Next I installed Open Office which is the best free Microsoft Office replacement you can download. I then went in and set up it up so that OpenOffice only saved spreadsheets in XLS Office 2003 format, documents in DOC Office 2003 format, and presentations in PPT Office 2003 format. I know OpenOffice format is becoming much more widely accepted and even Microsoft Office 2007 has a way to open and save (sort of, not truly 100% in OpenOffice format) in ODT format. But I find keeping things at good old DOC format makes life easier for people who are not 100% computer savvy. 

Then I re-enabled my friend's Gmail account. A long time ago we had created a Gmail account he could use whenever he was asked for an email address and when he was at my house, he could check his account. He sort of stopped checking it as mostly get received spam. But I re-enabled it as he had put my email address as his backup if he forgot his password. So I set him back up, cleaned up his spam, unsubscribed him from legitimate but not useful sites that were spamming him.

Then I created shortcuts for him on his desktop. One for Gmail and another for Google Docs. 

As my friend lives with his sister, she happened to have Internet and a wireless access point already, so I bought a wireless USB adapter to connect his computer to the network there. I bought the Cisco Valet. It was the cheapest one at Office Max (my town is too small to have a Best Buy) and it was the best reviewed. When I shop it is nearly required by law that I take my Droid phone, scan the bar code on any product I am considering and read reviews on Amazon and other sites before I buy a product. If I had the time to buy the product online, I would research and read reviews before buying anything, but when I have to have instant gratification, I am forced to either visit Office Max or Walmart for computer stuff. 

The device worked well and it had the driver on the built-in storage that came on the device. So I was able to get it working and on my wireless network fairly quickly.

So I proceeded to deliver the computer to my friend's house. 

On my way I stopped by OfficeMax to buy a cheap surge protector. It wan't cheap but it was good. I like the Belkin ones though I do love APC products. The pricing kept me in the Belkin range.

So I arrive and carry in the computer. I connected all the cords and plugs and plugged up the surge protector. 

Problem 1: Turns out this old house has three prong outlets but they aren't really. The surge protector says the house is not grounded. I proceed anyway. 

Problem 2: Suddenly the wireless keyboard would not work. The mouse did, but not the keyboard. Now I can work without a mouse, but a keyboard is essential unless I want to type using the character map. Not for the faint of heart. I tried resetting the wireless receiver that was connected via USB to the computer. The whole thing had worked fine at my house, but the thing would not work at my friend's. I speculated several things, one, I wasn't in a USB port that was immediately active on power on or some type of wireless device like a cordless phone was some how on the same frequency as the device. I tried several things and no luck. As the keyboard and mouse require batteries, I decide it is probably best I go and get him a cheap mouse and keyboard that is wired so I don't have to troubleshoot dead batteries all the time. So we go to OfficeMax again and I buy a cheap Microsoft keyboard and  a Logitech mouse. Both have to be USB as this computer is new enough to no longer have PS/2 ports. Mission accomplished. The keyboard and mouse work as advertised.

Problem 3: Wireless. So as the sister was leaving the house, I asked, do you have a WEP key for your access point? No was the answer I received. I immediately said, you should. So they tell me I can set this up if I want and just let them know what it is. But I didn't know the SSID of their wireless network. So I cranked up my Droid again and opened up the app, Wireless Analyzer. It showed me two wireless networks running nearby. One was much stronger than the other. So I assumed it must be the one, but... It had security set up on it. Hmmm. So we call the sister's cell and she informs me that there is some type of code on the bottom of her wireless router. Seems the local phone company had set up her wireless network and had created a WEP key for her. So I took a picture with my phone of the bottom of the wireless router, and plugged in the code into the PC's wireless configuration. We were now on the Internet.

Note: Yes, this brings up discussions about WPA, WPA2, etc. This network is G based and supports WPA2, which is what I prefer in this day and age of wireless encryption being easily hacked. Their network was setup with WPA, which meant the pass key wasn't as long as I would have liked. But it will be okay. They aren't protecting Fort Knox. This also lends itself to a discussion of wireless encryption in general, but that is better saved for a separate post.

So now I sat my friend down in front of the screen and we proceeded with a crash course on using a computer. His primary goals were being able to get to Live with Regis and Kelly's web site as he has a perhaps unhealthy obsession with Kelly Ripa. I gave him a Gmail crash course and a Google Docs crash course. I had created him a short cut for OpenOffice, but I stressed that Google Docs would save his work on the Internet (too much to explain the concept of "the cloud") so if his computer crashed, his documents would still be accessible.  He seemed to like that. So we create a document so he could try it all out. 

Having spent more time on this than I had planned, I was forced to leave my friend with an incomplete knowledge. But how do you teach someone everything there is to know about computers enough for them to get going with the Internet, with email, etc? It is a challenge. I told my friend, just run with it. Experiment. Don't worry, I can fix pretty much anything you do to it.

In the days that have passed, he has managed to send an email to Regis and Kelly, receive emails from a relative that he would rather have not gotten, and yesterday he learned how to delete those said emails.