Bluehost’s servers decided to take a dive, and they lost my entire website. I had backups of the databases, but a ton of information is gone. Bear with me as I slowly re-build this site…
A nod to the spammers
I was digging through the comment archives on here. 99% of them are SPAM and caught by one of my filters, but I noticed quite a few that were seemingly innocuous… and didn’t even have any links on them. It made for some good reading!
I’m really impressed with your writing skills and also with the layout on your weblog. Is this a paid theme or did you customize it yourself?
Free theme! Seasons 3.2 right now (though it’s a bit dated. I’ve had it for a couple years… though on the theme-to-post ratio, it’s doing pretty well…)
Thanks for sharing. What a pelsurae to read!
I’m so glad you aprpecaite it!
What a joy to find someone else who thnkis this way.
This reminds me of a shirt a friend of mine had in high school. It simply said: THNIK!
I’m not wtrohy to be in the same forum. ROTFL
Nope. No, you’re not. Especially since this isn’t a forum.
There’s a secert about your post. ICTYBTIHTKY
So, please don’t tell me then…
I quite agree with you. By doing nothing we learn to do ill.
…also…
I understand you. It is better to wear out than to rust out
That’s pretty insightful. I’m not sure what they agreed with, but I will ponder this.
Reviewing the results of google I stumbled on this page. I really liked it, and certainly I will fly my friends.
I don’t think your friends will appreciate that.
Finally a person that puts some real work into a blog. I do like what you have done with the blog.
Well, thanks. You do know I only post about 3x a year?
After reading both of your blogposts I staleness say i pioneer this specific one to generally be top cut. I hold a weblog also and necessity to repost a few snips of your articles on my own blog place. Should it be alright if I use this as retentive I own comment your web journal or create a incoming attach to your article I procured the dress from? If not I realise and could not do it without having your approval . I score fact noticeable this article to twitter and zynga story conscious for reference. Anyway appreciate it either way!
Stop… you’re too kind. Actually, seriously, stop. No, you can’t repost snips of my blog if you’re going to use that kind of grammar.
Too Cute!
The other night I went out to eat with a group of adults, which was great considering I’m always with my girls. But before I left the house, my oldest daughter insisted that I take one of her Pollies in my purse “to remember her by.” Maybe she was afraid I wouldn’t come back. Too cute!
Girly Girls
We have two very girly girls. They love all to do with princesses, fairies, barbies, and pollies. The last few days they have been listening to the same Barbie movie soundtrack over and over again. They now know most of the songs by heart and have been singing them constantly. Unfortunately, now both Ben and I have the songs stuck in our heads too. Is it cruel to want to hide the CD?
Happy Easter
My girls must be learning some things in Sunday school, but all week my three year old Samantha has been singing “Hosanna, blessed be the king of Ariel!” We got right away that she should be saying “Israel,” but with her three year old vocabulary, it came out as “Ariel” (a favorite princess mermaid that she likes). Still, it’s pretty awesome that Samantha and Hannah are running around singing Hosanna even if they are confusing an important word or two.
Speaking of Samantha’s vocabulary: it is awesome! She turned three in February and is speaking in full sentences already. I am constantly amazed. This morning she was telling her favorite story time teacher, Miss Judy, all about her Easter weekend. She told her that she had more than one egg hunt and that she went to Grandma Barb’s house. That she fell on the rocks and that her cousin Jossalyn got bigger. I can’t do it justice, but I wished that I could have had a tape recorder.
What is ‘Scrambled’ ?
The Scrambled Mind of Benjamin Flessner is an intentionally non-flashy website that is essentially a giant ‘About Me’ page. I made its first incarnation shortly after creating DigiMuzik.com in the late 90’s. I like the very simplistic nature of raw HTML, and since I consider myself more of a web ‘programmer’ than a web ‘designer,’ I never added much for styling. There’s very little CSS in use, and the random sprinklings of JavaScript are more for fun than function. In fact, I installed MultipleIE in an XP VM and was impressed to see that most of my site renders just fine back in IE3.0 (though the Javascript doesn’t work until a couple versions later).
I certainly don’t expect it to be an immensely popular site… in fact, Google seems to have refused to index it properly, and I’m trying to figure out why. In any case, I do it mainly for my own enjoyment, but if you’re trying to figure out anything about me, you could do worse… If you feel like digging or sharing or whatever the kids are calling it these days, feel free. I’ll probably tweet any significant updates to the few followers (8 as of this writing!) who might or might not care.
In any case… each letter stands for a page with some information about me or something that interests me. Though they sometimes change, they’ve been stable enough over the last year or two that I can write about them with confidence.
S – Songs I like – It used to be Lyrics under L, but I was concerned about copyright violations and decided to play it safe.
C – Computers and other gadgets I own
R – Ramblings – Sort of like Twitter, only spread out over a few years
A – Archives – Where old letters go to die when I replace them
M – Me – A brief bio of yours truly
B – Book Reviews – a collection of books I’ve read over the years and my thoughts/reactions to them (It used to be Bus Stuff, but that got a bit static… though my bus pages are still pretty easy to find.)
L – Lists – This has gotten pretty random as well, but it includes Benwords and my own, small version of the 555-LIST.
E – Entertainment – Mostly favorite comics and game site links, but I’ve been expanding it a bit lately
D – Decisions – My most recent fun adventure! I’ve made unique pages for over 100 words that start with D. Your job is to guess them and enjoy the results (and try to find all of them, though, of course, there’s a trick to it!). It even keeps score, if you allow cookies in your browser (and who doesn’t, these days?).
That’s it! Well, there are a couple of hidden Easter eggs, including a guest book (which, actually, isn’t too hidden if you read the changelog), but it’s full of content, and I actually update it every once in awhile (more often that I wrote blog posts, to tell the truth).
Me Time
Today I got two whole hours to myself – all alone! No kids, no phone, and no pressing tasks to complete. I went to the local coffee shop and enjoyed lunch, tried my first chai latte, and spent some time alone with God. I’m so glad that my husband encouraged me to do it, when I was considering doing something more stressful with the time by myself.
I love being able to stay home with my children everyday, but a day or even a few hours away from my children every once and awhile is essential and very refreshing.
Not just a phone
When is a phone not just a phone? Even my previous ‘dumb phones’ could play my audiobooks and let me check out google/facebook (albeit with a bit of a hassle), but a smart-phone can carry your whole music library, access any website you need, be a portable gaming system/camera/watch/calendar/mailbox, and loads of other things all at once! Here are a few things beyond the obvious: Continue reading Not just a phone
HTC Desire rooted and modded = AWESOME!
I took the plunge and rooted and modded my phone. I guess my warranty is void (until someone releases US Cellular’s RUU files), but if nothing’s gone wrong in two months, I’m probably good. I still haven’t figured out all the things I can do with this, but so far, it feels like I have a brand new phone!
First things first: rooting is not the same as modding. Rooting gives you access to the entire system to do fun things like change the CPU speed, backup your entire phone image, access the system partition (remove bloatware!), and install mods. A mod changes your phone, usually by installing a custom operating system. I rooted, changed my partition tables, AND installed CyanogenMod 6.1.
Root Programs (that I use, there are obviously others, like screenshot programs, cache clearers, etc.)
- setCPU allows you to over- or under-clock your phone. Since the HTC Desire is awesome anyway, I use it to underclock when the phone is not in use (or not doing anything heavy). The result – better battery life!
- Titanium Backup – Can back up not only applications, but their data too. This means you can restore an app to a previous version, or just restore your phone EXACTLY the way you had it before, without relying on every app’s unique (if not nonexistent) import/export functionality. This comes in handy when you’re wiping your phone to install a new mod.
- AdFree – block ads across your phone (examine your conscience, as some developers rely on these ads for income… better yet, buy the donate version of apps you really like)
- Terminal Emulator – who doesn’t want a terminal on their phone???
Partition Tables (Highly specific to the HTC Desire… don’t bother if your phone has 4/8gigs of internal memory)
There’s not much to say here… except when I first received my phone, I had just over 100mb for installing apps. After following a slightly modified version of what’s been come to known as Firerat’s cMTD method, I had 280mb free for apps. That coupled with Froyo will keep me going for awhile!
CyanogenMod
If you love compiling your linux installs from scratch and figuring out every little hardware detail… you’re free to roll-your-own Android install. For the rest of us, there are custom mods pre-built, and one that’s guaranteed to work on the HTC Desire is CyanogenMod. It’s essentially a customized Froyo ROM, so in addition to getting the Froyo upgrade early (we US Cellular customers are still waiting…), you get a few extra bonuses. Here are some of my favorites:
- Unlock via the OJ (optical joystick) – coming from an iPod Touch, this is a very welcome feature
- Torch – use the flash like a flashlight (standard Froyo, I believe)
- Freely tether your internet via USB, wifi, or Bluetooth
- Dismiss meetings from the snooze alert
- Notification bar themes / settings
- 270 degree rotation (finally!)
There are a few other features that do similar things that I get from Tasker, and the default launcher is ADWLauncher, a worthy alternative to Launcher Pro (though I still prefer the latter). Since I was already using Launcher Pro Plus, I don’t especially miss HTC Sense, though I had to find a replacement dialer (Dialer One is excellent).
Ready to make your HTC Desire even more of a super-phone? This thread has all the details in an excellently-laid-out guide.
How many phone numbers are too many?
So I recently revealed I have over 10 e-mail addresses I check regularly. Did you know we (the family) have 5 phone numbers as well? Actually, there are 8 ways to reach us via phone, but three don’t really count (okay, most don’t really count).
- Amanda’s Cell – Pretty obvious. If you know us or are her Facebook friend, you have this.
- Benjamin’s Cell – Ditto (it ends in BEN, isn’t that neat?)
- Benjamin’s Work – Really only Amanda needs it, but it counts. Technically you can call the front desk, so that’s 2 numbers, but my direct dial should generally be the only one used.
- Flessner Home – This one’s new. We’re still trying to get the kinks worked out, but soon enough we’ll reveal it to family members. It’s just a Google Voice account that rings both of our phones… if you’re in our contact list. Otherwise it just goes to voice mail. And the number’s really cool* (in my nerdish sort of way).
- Benjamin’s Google Voice – For a long time, I had a GrandCentral-then-Google-Voice number that I only used for SPAMish purposes (registering for free cars in malls and whatnot) and then more recently as a voicemail replacement. Then we got the ‘Flessner’ number, so this one was a little superfluous. Then I found out that using Google Voice as a real forwarding number AND as a voicemail replacement doesn’t always work (call cell, voicemail forwards to GVoice, forwards to cell, which forwards back to GVoice… :shudder:). So now my cell phone’s voice mail forwards to my private Google Voice number which always goes to voice mail. As an added bonus, this is the account I setup on my Android phone, so I can send text messages for free from it (so it’s worth knowing if I ever text you). Oh, and I got a new number, too: 515-DIGIBEN 🙂
I also have a VoxOx number as a text/voice forwarding number because Google Voice doesn’t let you link a cell phone to multiple accounts. It doesn’t work so well, though, and unless this fall’s upgrade improves things, I may be looking for something else (any ideas anyone?). In any case, now that my Google Voice app connects to my private Google voice account, there’s not much need for this anymore.
And I wonder why Amanda thinks I’m crazy sometimes. 🙂
*Flessner Home – It’s 4242-Flessner (don’t count). It’s pretty much the best cross-Ben/Amanda thing we could come up with. I figured you could laugh about it (HA-HA-FLESSNER) or because I’m the baby of the family, perhaps GA-GA-FLESSNER. It wasn’t until later that I realized it included the answer to life, the universe, and everything twice!