Author Archives: J.D. H.

Changes to the Amazon.com Associates Program

Amazon associates/affiliates received the following notice recently: We are writing to notify you of some changes to the Amazon.com Associates Program Operating Agreement, which governs your participation in the Amazon Associates Program for Amazon.com. All changes are effective on February 1, 2014. https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/operating/compare And here is my summary of the changes: Magazines go from a 25% affiliate commission (fee rate) to none Video game console products go from a 4% commission (fee rate) to 1% Overall this continues a trend by

Motorcycle the Ozarks: Highway 19 and Beyond

At a birthday party this past weekend I heard about a cool new site that details motorcycle day trips in the Ozarks. The trips feature HWY 19 and HWY 106 near Eminence and Winona MO. You can find out more at motorcycleozarks.com: Motorcycle the Ozarks Self-guided Day Tours: Maps and Route Informationhttp://motorcycleozarks.com/Try these great motorcycle rides! Jesse James Getaway Route Distance: 115 Miles Time Frame: 3-4 hours Attractions: Current River, Logan Creek Valley (B Highway), Awesome A Highway and Sinking

Thunderbird auto spell check not working [SOLVED]

Thunderbird’s ‘check spelling at you type’ feature quite working for me last month. Since that time I have been working without inline spell check in Thunderbird (and it has been quite annoying ;-)). Today I finally took the time to figure out how to fix the issue! First I tried simply checking my settings: The box was already checked to ‘Enable spell check as you type’ but I went ahead and unchecked/checked it and hit ‘OK’ just to make sure

[Err] 2006 – MySQL server has gone away Navicat/WordPress [solved]

Recently I tried upgrading to the latest version of the WordPress Download Monitor plugin. It did not go well 🙁 Thus, I tried to revert from a backup made using Navicat. Unfortunately, the restore would fail every time while trying to import my wp_posts table (a pretty important table!) I tried exporting the backup to a SQL dump and importing that. No luck. Finally, I tried resolving the actual ‘MySQL server has gone away’ issue itself and I had success. This tip

Dell Windows 8 Unknown Device SMO8800 [solved]

Q. I saw you help people with SMO8800 unknown device issues, but can you help me on my Dell Windows 8 laptop? Thanks! -Wobe A. Here is the download link for a Windows 8 driver for Dell laptops that will resolve the unknown device SMO8800 issue: (free fall sensor) OS Compatibility: MS Windows 8 64-bit, MS Windows 8 32-bit Laptop Compatibility: Dell E5420 Vostro 3450 Vostro 3750 XPS 15 (L502X) XPS 15z (L511z) XPS 17 (L702X) And many other similar

Fix the brightness adjustment buttons on a Dell M6700 [SOLVED]

Occasionally after a few hibernate/resume cycles, my Dell Precision M6700 laptop’s brightness UP/DOWN buttons become unresponsive (specifically, the Fn+Up Arrow and Fn+Down Arrow key combination). Rebooting will fix the issue but sometimes if you are in the middle of something that can be a major inconvenience. Thankfully the same solution I posted for other Dell models also works on the M6700 🙂 Instructions for re-enabling brightness adjustment (without rebooting) #1 Go into device manager and locate your display adapter (in my case,

Staying at Crossroads Inn & Suites in Salem MO

This evening we are staying staying at the soon to be Crossroads Inn & Suites. They are located at 1200 South Main Street, Salem MO (next to the Crossroads Shopping Center). The facilities are top notch and the rooms are the nicest in the area (actually better than most in Springfield in my opinion). On March 19th the hotel will be switching from the old Holiday Inn Express to the new Crossroads Inn and Suites.  They have some exciting changes in

Heating vaulted or cathedral style ceilings (efficiently)

Please note, this is a draft version of the post 🙂 Everyone I know that has a vaulted ceiling says they are very nice to look at but that it is very difficult to heat/cool a house that has them. The most recent example was this past Sunday at church. My friend is retired and her children have moved out on their own. Now her house is too big and the vaulted ceiling is costing her a lot of money

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