Joe and Jamie's Blog

Happy 21st Birthday Jamie!!

PPPPAAAAARRRRRRTTTTYYYYY!!!!!!

Now we can finally order a drink together when we eat out! :)

This past weekend Jamie and I went to one of her co-worker’s annual Christmas tree burning party out in Pawling. Annette and her husband Joe threw the party at their house with a bunch of their friends and neighbors. The party has become an annual ritual around this time since they moved into their home. This was the first time Jamie and I attended such an event, but it turned out to be very fun. I mean how can you go wrong with beer and fire?

I will say that it is absolutely amazing how fast the trees go up. It takes only about 30 seconds for all the branches to burn to ash. The heat gets so intense that you feel like you are getting a sunburn when you are 20 feet away, through your jacket, and over the 30 degree temperature outside. The flames easily reached over 12 feet with each tree, making it quite the spectacle of falling ash and smoke in the sky.

Can’t wait till next year!

It's amazing how high the flames get

Who threw the match in there?

Hot, hot, hot, hot!

It only takes a few seconds to completely go up

Its on FFFFFFFIIIIIRRRREEEE

Begin rant.

I had to do some work in White Plains yesterday, which is about an hour or more away from home. As usual, something happened over and over again on the drive back that always ticks me off something fierce. Why can’t people get out of the left hand lane on a highway/thruway/interstate/any multiple lane road?!?!?!?!

Now I understand that not everyone likes to pass that number posted on the speed limit sign, but do they have to prevent me from going past that number? Not to mention they create miles of traffic during rush hour.  Oh and I love the ones that do ten to fifteen miles UNDER the speed limit and refuse to move out of the left hand lane, those are the best and probably Darwin award winners.

I just don’t get it. Why must people just sit there with a mile long line of traffic behind them because they don’t want to get out of the way. Are they just that naive to their surrounding? There is a perfectly good lane on the right where people won’t force you to get out of the way, because that’s what it is meant for. These people just really tick me off sometimes, just like people who don’t turn on their headlights when its raining or storming out.

Why can’t New York be more like New Jersey and make it illegal to drive in the left hand lane except for when passing a vehicle? That is an excellent law. Hats off to NJ for making a great law.

End rant.

100 Posts Milestone

We’ve made it to the first milestone…100 posts!! I can’t believe it took me almost a year, but hey, I’m here now!

I love how my spam comments are ten times greater than my actual comments, but I’m sure thats normal.

Thanks to all the constant readers out there. Maybe during the next 100 Jamie might actually post at least one of them!

I purchased a little present for myself last week, something I have been wanting for awhile. I bought an internet security firewall router, a SonicWALL TZ 180. These devices are more of a business class type router. They are simple to configure like  a Linksys or Netgear, but due to the pricing and annual security license subscription its out of most home users league.

SonicWALL TZ 180 Internet Security Appliance

I work with these devices and larger models at many of our clients. We have actually started using these over Cisco routers because of the added security features. The SonicWALLs actually stop spyware, viruses and other malware before it even hits your internal network, kind of like Symantec for your router. This is a huge help because your computer based anti-virus can only do so much sometimes to try and stop malware. The SonicWALL is great for business environments because it will check incoming and outgoing traffic for malware, so no computer on your internal network can start spamming the world and getting your mail server blacklisted.

I chose to get this device for extra security. All of my computers are clean and always have been, but that is because I am an experienced computer technician, so I know what to do and what not to do. This SonicWALL stops other computers from potentially making my network unsafe and securing my very valuable documents on my hard drives now that I am pretty deep in some web development.

To read more on the SonicWALL TZ 180 please visit their website here, or just go to www.sonicwall.com to view their other products. If you are interested in purchasing this device, or similar ones, you can do so here.

This weekend I installed the latest update for my Palm Treo 700wx. I recently had to hard reset the phone back to factory defaults because I lost my picture messaging account. I remembered there was a 1.22 update months ago that I did, so I logged on the Palm site to download it again. Wee to my surprise there was a new 1.24 update that came out in December.

Now I love my Treo, but I also hate it. There were many things that irritated me about it. Once I saw that this update upgraded me from Windows Mobile 5 to 6 I was like a kid in a candy store. I said to myself “I bet they fixed a whole bunch of stuff I hated”. I actually was right for once, they fixed many things indeed. I like how there is even an option to do Windows Updates right on your phone!

The update to Windows Mobile 6 has made my email not lock up the whole phone while it was syncing, internet browser now displays pages better. Programs seem to run smoother, it has the new look of Vista without the performance loss (can’t they do that on the desktops too?), and they made solitaire look prettier!!! They also expanded what types of Office files it could open, and updated it to be compatible with Office 2007.

There was one thing that I did not like at all, which actually was pretty vital to me. They removed Terminal Serivces (Remote Desktop). I used that all the time to get on servers during emergencies while I was off watching a soccer game or at the mall or something. I dug deep into this wondering why Microsoft would get rid of that technology. I found out Microsoft made it one of those optional components for the cell phone providers, and that almost all providers chose not to add it to the phones. Big mistake I would say, there are many, many people not happy with this. Luckily I found something that places terminal services back on your phone, and is updated to work with Vista/Server 2008 computers too. You can obtain the download here.

I was getting very tired of the last theme. The huge header really bugged me, along with a few other small things. I like how this theme looks and does the comments pages. I decided to remove all the junk from the sidebar as well, which I think helps make it look cleaner and neater. I chose the free theme iNove, found on Wordpress.org.

So…how do you like it?