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

Freedom of the Seas, enable HDMI input?

Saturday, 2014.12.13 J.D. H. Leave a comment

We recently cruised on the Freedom of the Seas ship, and all the TVs in the state rooms were Samsung TVs with the inputs disabled. Here are some resources for enabling the HDMI input for movies and games: http://www.justanswer.com/tv-repair/1ru9u-turn-off-hotel-mode-samsung-ln32a450cih-tv.html http://www.justanswer.com/tv-repair/4gvxx-need-direction-unlocking-samsung-tv-ln-r238wx.html http://www.manualowl.com/m/Samsung/LN-R238WH/Manual/137686 http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18363835 It would be nice if Royal Caribbean avoided hospitality mode/hotel mode on their LCD TVs, but alas they do not 🙁

Speed test on Royal Caribbean

Sunday, 2014.12.07 J.D. H. Leave a comment

This speed test result is from December 2014 on Royal Caribbean, Freedom of the Seas cruise ship. The speeds are fairly terrible but the connection is solid. So, reading the news and uploading photos is doable as long as you are patient. Also, Royal Caribbean now offers two unlimited internet plans for cruisers. http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/a/1073657581

CamScanner OCR test

Sunday, 2014.11.30 J.D. H. Leave a comment

CamScanner is a rather nice scannerapp for phones and tablets. One of the most desirable features for me is the OCR capability. The OCR works well for basic documents with minimal formatting but alas, it is nowhere near as good as what Fujitsu has in the ScanSnap software (which embeds the OCRed text in the PDF and preserves excellent formatting). Here are the CamScanner results*: *Please note all text in the article is copyright WSJ and it is only posted

HP Stream 7 review

Friday, 2014.11.28 J.D. H. One comment

Picked up a HP Stream 7 at Amazon and have been loving it: +IPS display +Nice size and build quality +128GB MicroSDXC support +USB OTG support +Free MS Office +Free 25GB of Dropbox space +Runs Chrome and uTorrent quite well +Respectable battery life +Very nice hardware for a great price* *Amazon currently has it for $99 with free shipping! HP Stream 7 32GB Windows 8.1 Tablet (Includes Office 365)http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NSHLVD2/Lightning-fast performance: Get the speed and responsiveness of the powerful Intel quad

UPDATE: Ferguson verdict released

Monday, 2014.11.24 J.D. H. Leave a comment

Will post as soon as the verdict is live… UPDATE:No indictment http://www.mediaite.com/online/watch-all-the-best-live-streaming-coverage-from-ferguson-missouri/ Ferguson Grand Jury Has Reached a Decision in Michael Brown Case – The Atlantichttp://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/11/ferguson-verdict-grand-jury/383130/Will Officer Darren Wilson face criminal charges for the death of Michael Brown? The nation braces for the decision, which will be announced at 9 p.m. Eastern. BBC News – Michael Brown shooting: Ferguson jury reaches verdicthttp://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30185686A grand jury has made a decision on whether to charge a Missouri police officer over the death of

Construction update, bathtub update

Wednesday, 2014.11.19 J.D. H. Leave a comment

Our house continues to take shape 🙂 After getting the roof on a week ago, not much has happened since. However, having everything dry and protected is VERY nice! We have had some snow and heavy frosts as well. Today we picked up Samantha’s 68″ cast iron tub from the freight dock in Springfield. The tub looks awesome and the crate barely fits in our Chevy Avalanche! It should fit perfectly in the master bath and we are running some extra

Fixed skewed pages in ScanSnap

Monday, 2014.11.17 J.D. H. Leave a comment

I adore my Fujitsu ScanSnap ix500 scanner. It lets me scan 70+ pages with ease (simplex or duplex) all the while OCRing every shred of text and therefore saving me oodles of time. Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500 Scanner for PC and Machttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ATZ9QMOAwesome scanner which I really love. Easy to install and works seamlessly on my Windows 8 laptop. I use this all the time to scan and archive all the papers in my house and the… Read more However, today I

Read more computer tips, Software Tips, Work

AT&T double data rate table (cost per GB)

Thursday, 2014.11.06 J.D. H. Leave a comment

AT&T data plan table when they were doing double data: GB per month Dollars per month Dollars per GB 10 $115 $11.50 30 $145 $4.83 40 $165 $4.13 60 $240 $4.00 80 $315 $3.94 100 $390 $3.90 I chose the 40GB plan and have been very happy with the speeds. 🙂 However, their customer service has been terribly disappointing. 🙁