J.D. Hodges | Every man has a story, this is my story.

It pays to keep paper statements

Monday, 2011.03.28 J.D. H. Leave a comment

I’m always surprised how often the “online statements” of Chase or Discover are “offline for maintenance” or suffering from “online error”. Sometimes it is nice to have a trusty paper statement as a backup :-). Top Search Terms:www.jdhodges.com+paper-statements (8)chase statement (5)chase online statements (4)chase paper statement (3)chase paper statements (2)chase online (2)chase routing number on paper statement (2)it pays to discover (2)chase (1)chase credit card paper statements (1)

Daily update: some long overdue projects

Sunday, 2011.03.27 J.D. H. 3 comments

The girls are visiting family in KS, so today I got some long overdue projects done: replaced the coaxial cabling for our WildBlue satellite internet (I previously nicked one of the cables, thus I needed to replace it) hammered in a grounding rod to attach the ground cable to (for the WildBlue satellite dish) finished running the ethernet cable from our office closet to the networking center of our home (thanks to my dad for helping me fish the wire

How to change iTunes backup Windows 7? [SOLVED]

Friday, 2011.03.25 J.D. H. Leave a comment

Here’s a great tutorial on changing the location of the folder that iTunes uses to backup iPhones/iPods/iPad. Change the Location of Your iTunes Backups on Windows Vista or 7 (iPhone and iPad) | The iPhone Guru http://www.theiphoneguru.net/2010/12/30/change-itunes-backup-location/Fortunately, Windows has a way of doing this using a concept known as symbolic links (symlinks, or in M$ speak, NTFS Junctions). A symbolic link is similar to shortcut, but… Specifically, the folder to be moved is “C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup”. Moving this off our your

Overcoming the Kindle Clipping Limit

Thursday, 2011.03.17 J.D. H. 4 comments

The Kindle is a wonderful reading device, unfortunately it has some arbitrarily imposed limitations that severely impact its usability for serious study or research work. One of the most limiting aspects, is the limit on “clippings”. These are the exported text highlights that you make when reading a book. If you find yourself reading a book for an assignment or article and have been fastidiously making highlights of important sections, you may very disappointed when you go to retrieve those

UnRAID preclear disk commands and notes (WD 2TB Green EARS drive)

Saturday, 2011.03.12 J.D. H. Leave a comment

Notes and misc info, some from the unRAID wiki/tutorial… How to preclear disk sdc preclear_disk.sh /dev/sdc How to save the preclear results (then accessible via network share “flash”) grep preclear /var/log/syslog | todos >> /boot/preclear_results_2011-03-12_WD2TB-Green.txt Samples results from: WDC_WD20EARS-00M_WD-WMAZA122XXXX Mar 11 12:59:23 Tower preclear_disk-start[2404]: smartctl version 5.38 [i486-slackware-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen Mar 11 12:59:23 Tower preclear_disk-start[2404]: Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/ Mar 11 12:59:23 Tower preclear_disk-start[2404]: Mar 11 12:59:23 Tower preclear_disk-start[2404]: === START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Mar 11

Read more Ask J.D., unRAID tips and tricks

Photography Links Feb 22nd: Ideas and Olympus Art Filters

Tuesday, 2011.02.22 J.D. H. Leave a comment

Add drama to landscapes in Photoshop – PhotoRadar http://www.photoradar.com/techniques/video/teach-yourself-photoshop-part-3-video-6-add-drama-to-landscapesWhat a great tutorial! Every time I think I’m going to have to delete shots that I didn’t think worked out as well as I hoped, you guys come out with technique’s that rescue my… 10 photography project ideas to try at home | News | PhotoRadar http://www.photoradar.com/news/story/10-photography-project-ideas-to-try-at-homeStuck in a rut and looking for a new challenge? The answer is on your doorstep with these photography projects to try at home. 32

Create seperate toolbars in Windows 7 (left, right, top of screen)

Tuesday, 2011.02.22 J.D. H. 2 comments

In Windows XP it was easy to add toolbars to the top/left/right side of your screen. Just drag a folder onto the edge of the screen and voila, your toolbar was there. You could auto-hide it, or lock it, or do just about anything you wanted with. Not so with Windows 7. You can only add additional toolbars to your primary taskbar. Furthermore, I believe that taskbar can only be at the top or the bottom of the screen. It

Laptop buying guide – notes

Thursday, 2011.02.10 J.D. H. Leave a comment

HP Envy 14 14.5″ Radiance display Sony VAIO PCZ +13.1″ -Runs too hot -Short battery life +Internal DVD drive Dell XPS L501x (1080p B+GR) Dell XPS L501x: DISPLAY An Excellent Mainstream Notebook – AnandTech http://www.anandtech.com/show/3999/dell-xps-15-l501x-review/6Wrapping up the test results, we have the B+GR LED (i.e. WLED) backlit 1080p display. We can’t comment on the standard 768p panel, but considering all the results we’ve… […] we’re awarding the Dell XPS L501x our Gold Editors’ Choice award—but only with the $130 1080p