Author Archives: J.D. H.

American Airlines killed our Kindle

Alternative title: What to do if your Kindle breaks after warranty coverage has expired. What happened: last night we found out our Amazon Kindle was dead. It had been killed by American Airlines. What we’re doing: We are getting a replacement Kindle from Amazon (see below). What we will do differently: We will be even more careful with carry-on items that may get “valet checked” when we’re boarding the plane. We will try to check all of our valuables before leaving

Snazzy Archives Error [solved]

The  Snazzy Archives plugin is a cool WordPress plugin for outputting snazzy archives. However, it seems that something in the latest update of the plugin (or possibly of wordpress) is causing some problems: Just allowed the latest plugin update this morning. My archive still displays… but shows this message above it… Help ! Don’t know why I’m receiving the following error message, after the latest upgrade: Don’t know why I’m receiving the following error message, all of a sudden, after

Drury, Fines, and Bricks

This morning I received an email from my alma mater, Drury University.  Leave it to them to try to sell you a brick (from a demolished building) for $20. Note, you will need to go pick up the brick and pay $20, it is not shipped to you :-). While I have fond memories of my classmates at Drury as well as the majority of the faculty, I was never a fan of Drury’s financial policies nor their “security” policies.

Favorite homebrew computers: 1997-2010

Some people enjoy building hot rods, or building model airplanes. I enjoy building computers. The first PC I built was in 1997, I was a sophomore in HS. I can still remember researching all the parts, using a computer in the HS science classroom (I didn’t have internet at home at that time). Tom’s Hardware and Anandtech were my primary sources of motherboard and CPU reviews.  Those two sites helped me immensely in choosing the best components for my “first

3.1GHz Quad Core System on the Cheap: $200

The need for cheap speed! Yesterday I read a nice little article over at Anandtech about unlocking the extra two cores in AMD Phenom II X2 555 CPUs. This lets you take a  dual core CPU and turn it into a quad core CPU*. *The extra two cores aren’t guaranteed to unlock and be 100% reliable, but it’s easy to stress test and see if your particular CPU can handle it. Reading other people’s experiences it looks like the success

Alternatives to Drywall

We’re planning on turning my office into the baby’s room. That means a couple things: #1 I need to find a new place to work, and #2 we need to redo the room to be more appropriate for a baby. Samantha already has a plan for #2, we’re putting in new carpeting and we’re going to paint the existing wood paneling. UPDATE: here’s the result of the painting over the wood-paneling 🙂 My new office is still up in the

Alienware M11x Netbook Specs

Photo of ports and basic features (scroll down for full specs) Updated: 2010.Feb.2nd with SIM card info and revised port list. Full specifications: OS: Windows 7 Processor: Intel® Pentium® Dual Core – SU4100 1.3Ghz 2MB Cache – 800 MHz FSB [base model] Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor – SU7300 – 1.3Ghz 3MB Cache – 800 MHz FSB [upgrade] Chipset: Mobile Intel® GS45 Express Chipset Memory: DDR3 1066 MHz SODIMMs – 2Gb min and 8Gb max (thus 2 SODIMM slots) Hard