I got a iTunes gift certificate the other day and decided to buy some DRM Free music. For those who do not know, DRM is a type of protection that most sold music has embedded into the files so you are limited to how you can use them. In some cases, DRM protected music prevents you from converting the audio file to the format that your portable mp3 player supports. It is a real hassle. Plus my attitude is, if I pay for it and I have to manage storing it on devices I have to pay for, then I better be able to do what ever I want with it.
So if you are looking for DRM free music on iTunes, you need to figure out how to enable iTunes Plus. I can’t explain it very well because I barely figured it out. Once I got it turned on, I was able to view albums and artists who are in the iTunes Plus category. Unfortunately they try to help you by only listing the top 20, which didn’t help me at all. I have unique tastes. So after spending an hour Saturday night and 1/2 hour today, I finally found some DRM free music I can buy.
Today I bought Huey Lewis & The News Greatest Hits. Besides that, I also found the following artists who are part of the iTunes plus deal, and I recommend that others purchase this music to support the sale of DRM free music.
I’ve been wanting a plugin for Wordpress for a while now that would list other related posts to visitors. The best way to draw someone to read a previous article is to remind them of your previous posts in new posts. This extra step is a real hassle and frankly when someone is reading your blog simply from the feed it becomes more of a hassle than anything.
So tonight I searched and tried out a few similar posts plug-ins for Word press and finally came across this one (http://rmarsh.com/plugins/similar-posts/). This particular plugin gives weights to the post titles and uses the first 20 words in order to determine like characteristics. I just used the defaults for my blog and it works great. I am sure if I increase the number of words it scans in the posts to 50 it would be more accurate, but it’s working well out of hte box and I dig it. Now, I wonder what other posts it will recommend for this one?Â
It appears the clicky, knock, popping sounds in the front suspension of the 2007 Civic Si Sedans may have been solved. On the 18th, 4 days go, Honda announced a Service Bulletin on this very problem for other civic models. It does not include the 2007 Civic Si Sedans though. Since this problem is also occurring in the 2007 Civic Si Sedans, I fully expect to see this same bulletin for our 2007 Si Sedans sometime soon.
From the diagram pictured in the Advisory, it appears the ‘bump stop’ is the culprit. I suspect the rubber is getting depressed when the car is twisted at an angle. I don’t believe the defective bump stop is a safety issue but never the less I expect Honda to fix it as soon as possible.
Thanks to others contributing comments to my blog, I’ve found an array of other web sites that talk about the issue.
Thanks everyone who has posted comments on this issue on my post titled ‘2007 Civic Si Sedan - OH YEA!‘. You can always count on fellow Honda owners comradery.
If you are a Honda owner, I highly recommend you create an account on the Honda Owner Link web site. This account will provide you with recall information along with other information about your car. https://www.ahm-ownerlink.com
Update on September 6, 2007
Bill Pealer has contributed this video which records the popping sound that we’ve all encountered. I would like to say that the popping sound that I observe in my Civic is nearly identical. If you wish to skip right to the popping sound, fast forward the video to about 3:00 minutes.
Patriot Memory has very good RMA service. If you purchased Patriot Memory, rest assured your warranty will be honored. Link: http://www.patriotmem.com/
I got 2 1GB PC2 5300 sticks of Patriot brand memory in late July of last year. Both sticks worked great, then in April of this year one stick went bad. Unfortunately for me, the Inspiron E1505 was not much help in diagnosing the problem. The laptop was still under warranty when I called Dell. Dell support had me test lots of things, none of which was the memory. Eventually the tech had me give him the LED blink code that was coming from the laptop. According to the Dell support it was a code that indicated that either the system board or the processor was bad. Dell was so confident they solved the problem they told me to plan on sending the entire laptop back with the hard drive. So I spent the entire night backing up my hard drive to another computer. Then the next day I got the package to send the laptop back to dell and it said I could keep my hard drive if I had the knowledge to take it out of the computer. Agg, Dell phone support just never knows what is going on. So anyway, when I was getting ready to package the computer up, I decided I should take the upgraded memory out and put the original 512MB stick in.
Right before I packaged the laptop I thought maybe I would try to turn the computer on one last time. Well guess what, the laptop started fine. So now I had my own technical mind working, I tested each memory module separately in the computer and discovered the real problem, one of the Patriot memory sticks went bad. At that point I had to re-install windows on the hard drive, etc.. I decided to just run the laptop on 1.5GB of memory for the time being. I was pretty disappointed that my fairly modern Dell laptop is not as sophisticated as some previous computers I’ve owned 10+ years ago. A month later I decided I should see if the Patriot memory is under warranty. Lucky to me it was and when I contacted Patriot Memory, they wasted no time in getting me an RMA. Talk about two spectrums, Dell support was crappy but the Patriot was top notch.
Well, if you haven’t herd, Ty was sprayed by a skunk last night. The past 16 hours have been pretty rough on us. We were up till about 3am washing him with tomato juice. He likes the taste, but doesn’t like to wear it.
Here is a post skunk picture of TY. You can see the white of his coat is a bit orange now.
He smells like cheap perfume now. Hopefully the smell will wear off over the next couple weeks.
I’m done, I finished wiring the house 2 nights ago and it feels great. Actually I am not finished, I still have 4 more open ports in the patch panel and the whole first floor. :-p
Here’s a picture of my patch panel:
A picture of my desk somewhat clean. This is a rare sighting!
I’ve been slowly wiring the house with Ethernet Cat5e and Coax RG-6 cabling. The evening of the 4th I finally ran cabling up to the attic and dropped the wires into the bedrooms. All the rooms now have coax cable ports. I’ve punched down 4 Ethernet in two of the important bedrooms. Sometime this weekend I’ll finish the other 2 bedrooms.
I think putting 2 ports in each room was a smart thing to do. I color coded them so each room has both a blue and a green port. If we ever decide to get a home ‘lan’ phone, we now have the option of putting Ethernet phones in every bedroom.
I had to pull one of the cables off the patch panel. I still don’t know what the standard practice is for re-using a port in a patch panel that was previously used. I assume I can re-use the port but I haven’t found a blog post or web site to say either way. If anyone knows one way or the other, please leave a comment.
I didn’t wire everything on my own, as you can see Ty helped out!
So I am now working at home and it has its advantages and disadvantages. The biggest advantage so far is the food. Check out some of the things I’ve made for lunch.
Club Sandwich, two layers of ham and turkey with lettuce, tomato and mayo.
Hot Pepper Cheese Burger, yea it’s hot!
Cheese Coneys, It’s Skyline time, not quite as good as actual Skyline though!
