Archive for category Geekdom
Genius Toddler Wows BATTL
Posted by Versa Dave in Geekdom, Social Media on June 5th, 2010
It’s summer time. And for all you social media types, that means @tojosan’s Bring A Tweep To Lunch (#BATTL) is in full swing. Every Friday, Todd chooses a local establishment as the landing point for a potentially large crowd (like yesterday) or for as little as one person. Yes, it’s actually happened before; poor Todd was left to devour Ethiopian food all by his little lonesome.
This past Friday’s #BATTL was not limited to just one; in fact, we had 15 people (albeit 5 of those were kids). Speaking of kids, one particular spawn amazed a few of us that were lingering around post party. We were standing around talking when someone noticed that Drewbie (a 1.5 yr old boy) looked as if though he was planning a war. He rounded up all the sterling silver spoons within his tiny little reach; he pondered what position to place them in and at the precise moment, he’d strike the spoon in it’s new home. The table, you see, was of the patio variety; metal grated with the surface made up of hundreds of diamond shaped orifices. The act in itself was rather amazing to watch.
At one point, Drewbie decided apparently that a few of the spoons were just not sitting right, and like a brain-stopped artist who destroys his painting, he began to rip the spoons from their holes and created a new design. If you studied him closely, you could clearly see that Drewbie was plotting, thinking, concocting and organizing; this was not merely the ramblings of a toddler, but the birth steps of a genius.
We look forward to seeing your development Drewbie. Word of advice though, as you get older, I would advise your mother @ekcutshall that “Drewbie” may not be the most suitable name for the next Stephen Hawking.
I Want To Be A Geek When I Grow Up
Posted by Versa Dave in Geekdom on March 12th, 2010
I remember being a kid and always wanting my Dad to be a speaker for Career Day at school. I was proud of the fact that he was in the Navy and made a career out of it. Unfortunately, he was gone and out to see a lot. I don’t blame him; that’s the nature of the beast.
A few weeks ago, my oldest daughter’s counselor at school spoke with me and asked if I’d be interested in speaking at Career Day. At first, I felt immature and inexperienced, but I realized that I was able to do this. I’ve been in my field for 7 years now, and I think I’m qualified to talk to elementary school students about the perils of IT. I agreed to do it.
Today was the day of doom. It started off with an introduction to the Smart Board; which was a little embarrassing since the IT guy had no clue how to operate it. Eventually I decided against it since we ran out of time. I was scheduled for 4 classes to come in and listen to my presentation. I came prepared with 5-6 bullet point items, a poster board with some pictures, a router and an HP DL360 server. I was provided lunch by the faculty and staff, but quite honestly, I was looking forward to the cafeteria food. Today was taco salad. I was hoping they were having the rectangular pizza so I could dip it in ketchup; mmmm good. My daughter’s class was the last one to come in and turned out to be the least talkative. I had a hard time getting my daughter to shut up and an even harder time to get the other kids in her class to talk and ask questions.
I opened each class presentation the same way though. “Hi I’m Mr. Mills and I run the Internet.”
Vlogging Advice From A Pro
Posted by Versa Dave in Geekdom, Versa Life on February 4th, 2010
This past week, I went to New York for a business trip. I flew in on Sunday night and had some time to kill before the week started. It wasn’t difficult to figure out that if I was gonna be that close to @princessleah7x, then we HAD to meet in person. She picked me up from the airport in true style and headed into Long Island. She took me to this happenin’ sports bar near her house called The Main Event. Good burger and LOTS of TVs. At one point during the night, I decided to capture some video of Leah’s words of wisdom on vlogging. I happen to be self-conscious about vlogging because I think my face always looks too fat. Leah seems to think people would be interested. Check it out.
It’s A Hearing Aid. No Wait..It IS Bluetooth.
Posted by Versa Dave in Geekdom on January 15th, 2010
When I was barely a year old, my mom realized that there was something not quite right about me. Sure, laugh it up chuckles…I know there’s something not quite right with me. She however, could see something else, a pattern, a deficiency in my learning and speech. It wasn’t until I was nearly 3 that she got an ENT to finally see me, and then all was brought to the surface. I had a hearing impairment. 30 years ago though, things were different. My eustachian tubes didn’t grow right when I was born; they grew flat and narrow, not round and open. For years the doctors just threw sets of tubes in my ears. Eventually, it turned into more complex surgeries, prosthesis and implants, reconstructions, and just about any other procedure you can throw at broken ears.
At the age of 8, the doctors wanted me to start using hearing aids. I adamantly refused; by 14 I said yes. And as my Mom drove me home that afternoon, with ears filled with miracles of audiology, I stuck my head out the car window like a golden retriever; my eyes, closed, but my ears, open…to a brand new world.
Over the years, I’ve gone through many hearing aids. For about 10 years though, I went without a hearing aid in my right ear because of an extreme case of cholesteatoma. It completely disintegrated all the bones and my ear drum was nothing but a lifeless flab of flesh. Fortunately, an awesome doctor in St. Louis at Washington University named Dr. Joel Goebel, was able to bring new life back to that ear; and now coupled with the experience and talent of audiologist Jennifer Listenberger (again, of Washington University), I can now hear in my right ear with the assistance of a hearing aid.
When I first got the new hearing aid for my right ear, I had the option of picking a color for it. A color? Hearing aids are flesh color aren’t they? Jennifer asked me if I was going to grow my hair out. I said “Hell no!”. “Gimme the blue one” I said. And since then, I’ve been asked, no less than twice a month, by someone, if whether or not my blue hearing aid was some kind of a new bluetooth headset.
The day has come however, where I can answer that misguided person, “Why yes…it is bluetooth…but it’s a hearing aid too”. As of today, I’m now the proud owner of a Phonak Versáta SP for my left ear; along with the iCom communication accessory. In short, I can talk on my iPhone, via bluetooth, without ever picking up the phone, putting on a headset, or plugging in an ear piece…it all goes right through my hearing aid. I can even listen to the iPod on the iPhone through the iCom. As I sat in front of the TV tonight, with Rhyen leaning over my shoulder and Dylen laying against me, I was able to pair my bluetooth hearing aid and iCom with the MacBook Pro and listen to videos…yep…right through the hearing aid. I’ve already paired up with my Cisco phone at work too…worked flawlessly. In short, I’m happier than a puppy with two peters that I can hear.
Epic Apple Store Video Fail
Posted by Versa Dave in BingBong, Geekdom on December 2nd, 2009
The other night, myself and @ibeemi (Emily) went out for awhile. Dinner at Fridays, Apple Store at West County, hoosier hunting at Wal-Mart, Mill Stream, an exclusive Gentlemen’s Club in St. Charles, and then finally back to Mill Stream. It was a rather eventful evening, and most fun!
While at the Apple Store though, we made a quick video. Wouldn’t ya know it though….the damn mic was turned off on the particular iMac we were using. So while the video is mildly humorous, you can’t hear a dang thing. Enjoy.
Low-light Photography at Firebird
Posted by Versa Dave in Geekdom on June 27th, 2009
My friend @mdhugo and I decided to take our cameras to Firebird in St. Louis this past Friday night in order to work on our low-light photography. Of course we were also there to be entertained, but mostly just to be geeks. @donhead also joined us but was without camera. I tried and tried, using my Nikon D40 with 55-200mm f/3.8 lens to get good shots, but it just wasn’t happening. Out of 176 images taken, only a few actually came out with any kind of clarity. I’m going to try and find a reasonably inexpensive 50mm f/1.8 lens (I think that will make a huge difference).
You can check out the other 6 photos that I thought were semi-worthy enough by looking at my Flickr page.
*UPDATE: Check out @mdhugo’s post with his pictures.
Eeeeeeeeek…it’s so tiny!
Posted by Versa Dave in Geekdom on March 2nd, 2009
For years now, my obsession with even the most ridiculous of techy gadgets has gotten the best of me. I’ve found myself even scraping by with a few coins clinging in my pockets for the mere satisfaction of holding yet another invention of post-modern evolution. Over that past few years though, I’ve grown; matured if you will. I’ve learned that I have responsibility and my love of these purely inanimate objects can ruin my financial well-being…and so I’ve foregone many new creations.
When the “netbooks” came out, I was all but too unimpressed with them. Nothing about an 8.9″ screen bedazzled me. After months of reading of their hackability and ultra-über mobility, I started taking them a bit more seriously. After all…they were cheap; dirt cheap!
I finally reasoned with sanity and thought, “Well if nothing else, my kids can use it.” So I sold an old iBook I had that was laying around, and now I am the proud owner of an Asus EeePC Model 1000H. For the moment, I’m strictly running the pre-installed Windows XP Home Edition (SP3) but may sooner than later, dual boot Ubuntu as well. I have wrestled with the idea of hacking MacOS X on here as well, but given that my current MacBook is completely successful in all it’s day-to-day activities, why bother. I will be using this pretty much strictly as a work laptop. No, it’s not replacing anything, but when I’m at home, it will be used for work functions with the often necessary loafing-while-surfing function. At $329, it’s cheap enough to toy with and at worst, I’ll claim it for business use and be done with it. Plus my kids will enjoy it since the keyboard is just perfect for their tiny little fingers.
Newegg.com has gratiously provided me with a 2GB RAM stick to upgrade from it’s default 1GB (associated with a $21.99 cost of course). I’m not much for reviews (mostly because I’ve never done one) but know that I’m highly happy with the lil booger in it’s first 4 days.
Even Google has a Fail Whale
Posted by Versa Dave in Geekdom on January 18th, 2009
About a year ago (maybe less) I decided to push all of my mail services for my family over to Google Apps. My previous solution of running Squirrel Mail on a Linux server was just not cutting it. It was stable, don’t get me wrong, but the features left much to be desired to say the least. I did a little user survey within my domain (my mom, dad, brother, etc) and found they were just as dissatisfied with Squirrel as I was….so, off we were to Google.
I’ll cut to the chase now. My dad, oddly enough, seems to be the largest user of email within my domain. This past week, he went out of town. While he was gone, he started having this issue where he wasn’t able to retrieve email on his iPhone. When he got home, he was getting the same errors when using Apple Mail. It was telling him that it could not connect to the IMAP server. I attempted to log into his account through the web GUI and it was successful.
After a few days of searching around, I figured I’d give the Google Forum a search…and whaddya know…it worked. I found that users were having to “unlock CAPTCHA”….what the heck is that? I’d never done this. I couldn’t find anywhere on the forum though that would tell me how to do this. However, I did find someone who blogged about it…and so…I’m blogging it.
To unlock your Google Apps CAPTCHA, go to the following address (insert your domain obviously), put in your user information, insert the CAPTCHA shown and that should be it…it should then let you know that your CAPTCHA was unlocked.
https://www.google.com/a/yourdomain.com/UnlockCaptcha
Today…..my heart breaks
Posted by Versa Dave in Geekdom on January 14th, 2009
In our lifetime we will have severe, life altering changes and events that will resinate forever in our minds. For example, I know exactly where I was sitting when the spaceship Challenger blew up on January 28th, 1986. I also remember what I had for breakfast the morning I watched the Twin Towers come to it’s demise at the hands of terrorists.
Today…January 14th, 2009…the announcement was made that Steve Jobs will be taking a medical leave of absence from his day-to-day duties as acting CEO of Apple. This day will not be erased from my memory.
2.2 and still no copy/paste
Posted by Versa Dave in Geekdom on November 21st, 2008
Imagine my happiness this morning as I awoke to this big, beautiful screen glowing at me….”You have a new update”. Seriously Apple…this has GOT to be the one that provides copy/paste functionality…surely…you wouldn’t let it go on this long would you?
Yes….yes they would. No such luck in this update. I’ll play around with it through out the day and report back later.
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- When I was in high school, I didn't respect women at all. I didn't respect myself. I hurt a lot of people. I'm sorry. #confession
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